"Your going where?" After some pondering, I realized this was really the most fitting name for my blog. After all, it was the most common response from people when I told them where I was headed. The map to the left will give you a better idea of where Moldova is located (highlighted in the countries colors of blue, yellow, and red). The history of Moldova is a complicated roller coaster, marked by a fickle sense of national identity that is only attainable through the rise and fall of contrasting political regimes. Today, the struggle continues as they push for prosperity in a relatively new era of independence.

Below is a brief account of the recent history of Moldova. If you would like to read more about the history of Moldova, please follow this link The History of Moldova. Or you can also check out the Moldova Wiki page by clicking here Wiki Moldova.

Recent History

Most of the territory of Moldova was before World War II the Romanian province of Bessarabia. It was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and combined with existing Soviet territory - an area on the left bank of the Nistru (Dniester) river, to which Stalin had given the status of autonomous region in 1924. The newly formed State was named the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR), one of fifteen Soviet republics.
Like all other Soviet republics, the MSSR was governed by the Communist Party leadership in Moscow, through local subordinate party and government structures. The economy was centrally planned, also from Moscow. Moscow decreed that the local language, originally Romanian (a Latin language), was written in Cyrillic script and renamed Moldavian. Russian was obligatory in schools, in administration and of course in dealings with Moscow. Political dissent, nationalist sentiment and any other manifestation of opposition to the one-party, were suppressed by the KGB.
As the political climate began to ease in the late 1980s under Gorbachev, nationalist stirrings began in Moldova as well as in other soviet republics. It became a strong trend by 1989, leading to a declaration of independence in August 1991.