Moldovans in Ukraine

Moldovans in Ukraine (Moldovenii din Ucraina) are the third biggest minority recorded in the 2001 All Ukrainian Census after Russians and Belarusians. Unlike many other minorities, Moldovans often live in the countryside (71.5%) rather than in a city (28.5%), the majority in the northern and southern historical region of Bessarabia. There is an undergoing identity controversy among the Romanian speakers of Ukraine over whether self-identified Moldovans are a part of the larger Romanian ethnic group or a separate ethnic group.

History
After 1812, Russian Empire annexed Bessarabia from Moldavia. Initially, Romanians under Russian rule enjoyed privileges well, the language of Moldavians was established as an official language in the governmental institutions of Bessarabia, used along with Russian, as more than 90% of the population was Romanian. The publishing works established by Archbishop Gavril Bănulescu-Bodoni were able to produce books and liturgical works in Moldavian dialect of Romanian between 1815 and 1820, used both in Principality of Moldova and in Bessarabia.

From 1829 to 1905, the Russification policies were implemented and all public use of Romanian was phased out, being substituted with Russian. Romanian continued to be used as the colloquial language of home and family, mostly spoken by Romanians, either first or second language. Many Romanians changed Russified family names. This was the era of the highest level of assimilation in the Russian Empire.

In 1918, after being military occupied by Romanian troops, Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania. In 1940, Bessarabia was annexed by the Soviet Union. Around 65% of Bessarabia is part of the modern-day Moldova, with the Ukrainian Budjak region (part of the Odesa Oblast) covering the southern coastal region, and part of the Ukrainian Chernivtsi Oblast (Romanian: Cernăuți) covering an area in the north.

There were allegations from Romanian ethnic organizations and activists in Ukraine such as the teacher Zinaida Pinteac that in the 2001 Ukrainian census, individuals, especially, but not exclusively, in the Odessa region were pressured to declare a Moldovan rather than Romanian ethnic and/or linguistic identity.

Despite repeated requests from Romania to Ukraine to recognize Moldovans and Romanians as the same ethno-linguistic groups, as of 2023, Ukraine still considers them different ethnic groups and continued to use Moldovan language schoolbooks in the Odesa oblast until recently. In the Republic of Moldova, “more than half of the self-proclaimed Moldovans (53.5%) said that they saw no difference” between the Romanian and Moldovan languages according to a survey conducted by Pal Kolsto and Hans Olav Melberg in 1998 which also included the Transnistrian separatist region. According to Alla Skvortsova, an ethnic Russian researcher from the Republic of Moldova, "Our survey found that while 94.4 percent of the Romanians living in Moldova consider Moldovan and Romanian to be the same language, only half of the Moldovans (53.2 percent) share this view". Opinion polling from the Chernivtsi oblast indicated that a significant majority of the self-identified Moldovans thought that there was no difference between the Moldovan language and the Romanian language in that part of Ukraine. .

On 16 November, the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ukrainian government stated that it has initiated steps to abolish Moldovan language with Romanian. See ‘Official statement regarding the use in Ukraine of the term "Romanian language" instead of the term "Moldovan language"’, at https://mon.gov.ua/en/news/declaratie-oficiala-privind-utilizarea-in-ucraina-termenului-limba-romana-in-locul-termenului-limba-moldoveneasca The Ukrainian Ministry of Education stated that ‘The Government of Ukraine adopted a decision regarding the use of the term "Romanian language" instead of the term "Moldovan language" in Ukraine. Currently, work is underway to bring the current legislation of Ukraine in line with this decision, which includes many internal regulatory legal acts. Separately, we note that all further acts of the government will be adopted considering the agreements. And all civil servants who allow violations of the government's decision will be subject to disciplinary action. The facts reported in the media regarding the printed textbooks refer to the copies approved for printing in May this year. The main edition of these textbooks was printed in the summer before the decision was made not to use the term "Moldovan language". Today, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine has stopped any additional printing of these textbooks. And also develops a mechanism for replacing previously printed copies with textbooks in the Romanian language.' See ‘Official statement regarding the use in Ukraine of the term "Romanian language" instead of the term "Moldovan language"’, at https://mon.gov.ua/ua/news/oficijna-zayava-shodo-vikoristannya-v-ukrayini-ponyattya-rumunska-mova-zamist-ponyattya-moldovska-mova?fbclid=IwAR016ljXKqG2gBDvIBcyYQqnVyo92gJLCeQd3TpnzFBjadfQErv6ZTcp2cQ. See ‘Official statement regarding the use in Ukraine of the term "Romanian language" instead of the term "Moldovan language"’, at https://mon.gov.ua/en/news/declaratie-oficiala-privind-utilizarea-in-ucraina-termenului-limba-romana-in-locul-termenului-limba-moldoveneasca On 13 January 2024, the Ukrainian newspaper Dumska indicated that the last three schools had just changed the name of the language from “Moldovan” to Romanian” according to the Ukrainian ministry of education.

Demographics
The number of Moldovans was 258,619 in 2001, out of which 181,124 declared Moldovan (70.04%), and 2,790 declared Romanian (1.08%), as their native language. (the 2001 Ukrainian Census). The largest number of people who identified themselves as Moldovans, 123,751, lived in the Odesa oblast, while 67,225 lived in the Chernivtsi oblast. The people identifying themselves as Moldovans were a majority in Novoselytsia Raion (Chernivtsi Oblast) and more than 49% in Reni Raion (Odesa Oblast) before the 2020 administrative reform of Ukraine. The number of Romanians, according to the same 2001 Census, was 150,989, including 114,555 in the Chernivtsi oblast and 724 in the Odesa oblast.

In Novoselytsia Raion of the Chernivtsi oblast, there were 87,461 inhabitants, of which 50,329 identified as Moldovans, or 57.54% (out of which 47,585 self-identified their language as Moldovan, or 54.45% of the raion's population, and 2,264 as Romanian or 2.6%), 29,703 Ukrainians (35.05%), 5,904 Romanians (6.77%), 1,235 Russians (1.42%), and 290 others (0.29%). The raion had 87,241 inhabitants in 2001, including 34.08% Ukrainian-speakers, 64% Romanian-speakers, and 1.78% Russian-speakers. In 2001, in the capital of the raion at that time, the town of Novoselytsia, the population mostly identified itself as 54.37% ethnically Ukrainian, 35.82% as Moldovan, 1.63% as Romanian, and 6.84% as Russian. The distribution of the population by native language was Ukrainian 54.9%, Romanian 34.5%%, and Russian 10.1%.

The Reni Raion of the Odesa Oblast, in its boundaries at that time, including the city of Reni, Ukraine, had 40,680 inhabitants in 2001, including 19,938 self-identified Moldovans (49.01%), 7,196 ethnic Ukrainians (17.69%), 6,136 ethnic Russians (15.08%), 3,439 Bulgarians (8.45%), 736 Gagauz (1.81%) and 36 self-identified Romanians (0.09%). The inhabitants of the Reni raion were 37.88% Russian-speaking, 40.9% Romanian-speaking, 7.26% Ukrainian-speaking, 6.76% Gagauz-speaking and 6.61% Bulgarian-speaking. The city of Reni, Ukraine, the capital of the Reni raion, had 20,761 inhabitants in 2001, including 6,694 ethnic Ukrainians (32.24%), 6,126 self-identified Moldovans (29.5%), 5,589 ethnic Russians (26.92%), 1,012 Bulgarians (4.87%), 736 Gagauz (1.81%) and 22 self-identified Romanians (0.11%). In 2001, the city of Reni was 70.54% Russian-speaking, 13.37% Romanian-speaking, 12.5% Ukrainian-speaking, 1.52% Gagauz-speaking, and 1.35% Bulgarian-speaking. In the 2001 Ukrainian Census, Izmail Raion of the Odesa Oblast, within its boundaries in 2001, had a multi-ethnic population of 54,692, including 15,798 ethnic Ukrainians (28.89%), 15,083 self-identified Moldovans (27.58%), 14,072 Bulgarians (25.73%), 8,870 ethnic Russians (16.22%), 230 Gagauz (0.42%) and 34 self-identified Romanians (0.06%). Izmail Raion, within its boundaries at that time, had 54,692 inhabitants in 2001, including 26.34% Ukrainian-speakers, 26.21% Romanian-speakers, 21.56% Russian-speakers, 24.88% Bulgarian-speaking and 0.26% Gagauz-speaking. The city of Izmail, which is also the same as the Izmail urban hromada, had 85,098 inhabitants in 2001, including 32,500 who identified themselves as ethnic Ukrainians (38.2%), 37,166 as ethnic Russians (43.67%), 8,609 as Bulgarians (10.1%), 3,670 as Moldovans (4.31%), 788 as Gagauz (0.01%) and 31 as Romanians (0.04%). The city of Izmail had 85,098 inhabitants in 2001, including 15,353 Ukrainian-speakers (18.04%), 1,538 Romanian-speakers (1.81%), 3,898 Bulgarian-speakers (4.58%), 63,180 Russian-speakers (74.24%), and 327 Gagauz-speakers (0.38%). Kiliia Raion of the Odesa oblast, within its boundaries at that time, had in 2001 59,837 inhabitants, of which 26,659 ethnic Ukrainians (44.55%), 17,977 ethnic Russians (30.04%), 9,442 self-identified Moldovans (15.78%), 2,559 Bulgarians (4.28%), 2,263 ethnic Gagauz (3.78%) and 54 self-identified Romanians (0.09%). Kiliia raion, within its boundaries at that time, had 59,837 inhabitants in 2001, including 36.09% Ukrainian-speakers, 12.81% Romanian-speakers, 44.23% Russian-speakers, 2.52% Bulgarian-speaking and 3.69% Gagauz-speaking.

Various ethnic Romanian authors have argued that many individuals have changed their ethnic identity from Moldovan (or predominantly Moldovan) to Romanian (or predominantly Romanian). In the last Soviet census of 1989, out of 940,801 inhabitants of the Chernivtsi oblast, 666,095 declared themselves Ukrainians (70.8%), 100,317 Romanians (10.66%), 84,519 Moldovans (8.98%), and 63,066 Russians (6.7%). The decline in the number (from 84,519  to 67,225) and proportion of self-identified Moldovans (from 8.98% to 7.31%) was explained by them as a switch from a census Moldovan to a census Romanian ethnic identity, and has continued after the 2001 census. By contrast, the number of self-identified ethnic Romanians has increased (from 100,317 to 114,555),and so has their proportion of the population of the oblast (from 10.66% to 12.46%), and the process has continued after the 2001 census.

In 2001, the population of Hertsa Raion of the Chernivtsi oblast was 32,316, of which 29,554 or 91.45% identified themselves as Romanians, 1,616 or 5.0% as Ukrainians, and 756 or 2.34% as Moldovans (out of which 511 self-identified their language as Moldovan and 237 as Romanian), 0.9% as Russians, and 0.3% as being of other ethnicities (''see: Ukrainian Census, 2001). In the last Soviet census of 1989, out of 29,611 inhabitants, 1,569 declared themselves Ukrainians (5.30%), 23,539 Romanians (79.49%), 3,978 Moldovans (13.43%), and 431 Russians (1.46%). The decline in the number (from 3,978 to 756) and proportion of Moldovans (from 13.43% to 2.34%) was explained by a switch from a census Moldovan to a census Romanian ethnic identity, and has continued after the 2001 census. By contrast, the number of self-identified ethnic Romanians has increased (from 23,539 to 29,554), and so has their proportion of the population of the former raion (from 79.49% to 91.45%), and the process has continued after the 2001 census. For example, in the village of Ostrytsia in the Hertsa Raion, in 2001, 93.73% of the inhabitants spoke Romanian as their native language (93.22% self-declared Romanian and 0.52% self-declared Moldovan), while 4.96% spoke Ukrainian. In the Soviet census of 1989, the number of inhabitants who declared themselves Romanians plus Moldovans was 2,965 (324, or 10.05% Romanians plus 2,641 or 81.92% Moldovans) out of 3,224, representing 91.97% of the locality's population, and there were 205 ethnic Ukrainians (6.36%).

Notable representatives

 * Constantin Popovici
 * Ivan Bodiul - First Secretary of the Moldavian Communist Party
 * Petro Bolbochan - colonel of the Ukrainian People's Army
 * Sofia Rotaru
 * Tatiana Gutsu - artistic gymnast
 * Vasyl Tsushko
 * Volodimir (Moroz) - Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church