Abstract

LOPEZ JIMENEZ, José Ángel. Construction and Deconstruction of National Identities in Transition after the Soviet Union’s Dissolution: From Soviet Moldavia to Independent Moldova (1989-1994). Rev. mex. cienc. polít. soc [online]. 2023, vol.68, n.248, pp.225-250.  Epub Aug 20, 2024. ISSN 0185-1918.  https://doi.org/10.22201/fcpys.2448492xe.2023.248.78245.

This article analyzes an exceptional model for constructing and deconstructing ethnic identities during the period prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and in the context of the creation of the independent Republic of Moldova. Relying on the conceptual analysis applied by the Soviet doctrine to the different ethnic-national groups, ethnic minorities, nationality and citizenship, and the complexity of the integration of the nationalist phenomenon in the federal model, we address its historical dynamics of belonging to empires, the integration into the Soviet Union through Bessarabia and its artificial republican creation that endowed the Moldovan identity with a territorial and federal structure. The pro-Romanian irredentist nationalism at the end of the 1980s and the subsequent independence of Moldova unleashed a configuration process of alternative ethnic identities (Romanianism and Moldovanism) and secessionist movements (Gagauzia and Transnistria) that turned the republic into a genuine laboratory of ethnic engineering at the service of the political and intellectual elites of the different nationalities residing in the territory.

Keywords : ethnic identity; nationalities; Romanianism; Moldovanism; Moldova; Gagauzia; Transnistria; constructivism.