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The Moldavian SSR (Moldovan Cyrillic: Република Советикэ Сочиалистэ Молдовеняскэ, Romanian: Republica Sovietică Socialistă Moldovenească, Russian: Молда́вская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респу́блика) was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1990.
History Previously, during 1921 - 1941 the Soviet Union set up an autonomous Moldavian ASSR between Dniester and Bug rivers and surprisingly, it gave many rights to the Romanian minority there, possible to encourage a dissent of the Romanian Moldavians.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Soviet Union and Hitler's Reich brought the teritories of Romania situated east of Prut into the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940, and a new Moldavian SSR was reorganised between Dniestern and Prut rivers, the old Moldavian ASSR being dismantled, save the area of Transnistria which was assigned to the new Moldavian SSR.
Romania joined Hitler's Reich in the summer of 1941 and recovered Eastern Moldavia, but at the end of World War II, the Soviet Union reoccupied Eastern Moldavia and reorganised it as Moldavian SSR. Romania itself remained under military and economic control of Russia years after the end of World War II, only in 1958 did the Red Army withdraw from Romania. The territory of Moldavia east of Prut river was further broken into pieces, its northern (North Bukovina) and southern (Bugeac) parts were assigned to Ukrainian SSR. After this decision, only 60% of the Moldovan teritory which was part of the Soviet Union was in Moldavian SSR.
The republic's name was changed to the Republic of Moldova in 1991, and it declared independence after the attempted coup in the Soviet Union. After an initial desire to unify with Romania, a civil war began in Transnistria in 1992 and since, the Moldovan government has no control of this region.
Culture Much of the pre-WWII elite of Moldova (the "intellectuals" and the "bourgeoisie"), as well as hundreds of thousands of ordinary people were killed or deported, especially to Siberia and to the Asian steppes such as those of Kazakhstan (in 1940 and then massively in 1949). (even nowadays, there are tens of thousands of Romanians living there). Just like in other parts of the USSR (such as the Baltic states), a colonization of Slavic-speaking people was started in Moldova, which nowadays has a 13% Russian-speaking minority.
Romanians of Moldova were encouraged to adopt the Russian language, which was required in order to get a public function (Russian was supposed to be the language of international communication). Political and academic positions were given to members of non-Romanian ethnic groups (only 14 percent of the Moldavian SSR's political leaders were ethnic Romanians in 1946).
The USSR government encouraged the developing of a "Moldavian culture", said to be distinct from the Romanian one, as well as a Moldavian language, which was claimed to be different from Romanian (although even the Soviet linguists disagreed with this). Literary critics stressed the Russian influence of Moldovan literature and ignore the parts shared with Romanian literature.
In order to emphasize the alleged differences and to break ties with Romania, Romanian language (officially named Moldavian) was written with the Cyrillic alphabet. Names of some towns and villages were changed to more Slavic-sounding or named them after various Communist leader.
Soviet propaganda included the doctrine that the Romanians oppressed the Moldavian people before World War II and that they were liberated by the Soviets.
Demographics Ethnicities (1989 est.):
Economy Although it was the most densily populated republic of the USSR, the Moldavian SSR was meant to be specialized in agriculture, notably fruit production. The only region of Moldova in which industry was built was Transnistria, which in 1990 accounted for 40% of Moldavian GDP and 90% of its electricity production. | 
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