Popular Front of Moldova - Rise To Power

Rise To Power

Elections to the Moldovan Supreme Soviet were held in February–March 1990; while the Communist Party was the only one registered for this contest, opposition candidates were allowed to run as individuals. Together with affiliated groups, the Front won a landslide victory and one of its leaders, Mircea Druc, formed the new government. The Popular Front saw its government as a purely transitional ministry; its role was to dissolve the Moldavian SSR and join Romania. Its militancy grew: at a March 1990 rally, the Front adopted a resolution calling the 1918 Union of Bessarabia with Romania "natural and legitimate"; for pan-Romanians such as Iurie Roşca, unification was the proper outcome of democratisation. The Front helped set up a massive demonstration on May 6, the Bridge of Flowers, which saw multitudes gather on both sides as eight crossings on the Prut were opened and people crossed freely between Moldova and Romania. The policies of the Druc government included a virtual purge of non-Moldovans from cultural institutions and the reorientation of educational policy away from Russian-speakers. The nationalists argued that the Popular Front should immediately use its majority in the Supreme Soviet to attain independence from Russian domination, end migration into the republic, and improve the status of ethnic Romanians. At the Front's second congress in June 1990, it declared itself in opposition to the leadership of Mircea Snegur (president of the republic's Supreme Soviet), which it claimed was failing to maintain order in restive regions and was too slow in pulling Moldova out of the USSR. At the congress, the Front's executive board, headed by Roşca, openly called for political union with Romania, and Front statutes were changed so that members could belong to no other political organisation.

However, this strident line, coupled with receptiveness to union in Romania (led by Ion Iliescu after the December 1989 Revolution), caused other Moldovan politicians to become more public in their desire for the continued existence of a separate state. A chief supporter of Moldova's sovereignty was Snegur, who became president in September 1990. Also, in protest and fear of the events of 1990, the now-alienated regions of Gagauzia and Transnistria moved to break away from Moldova, declaring their own independent republics on August 19 and September 2, respectively.

Faced with what they considered a concerted effort by ethnic Romanian nationalists to dominate the republic, hardliners and minority activists banded together and began to resist majority initiatives. Organized in the Supreme Soviet as the Soviet Moldavia (Sovetskaya Moldaviya) faction, the anti-reformers became increasingly inflexible. Yedinstvo and its supporters within the Supreme Soviet argued against independence from the Soviet Union, against implementation of the August 1989 language law, and for increased autonomy for minority areas. Hence, clashes occurred almost immediately once the new Supreme Soviet began its inaugural session in April 1990.

The leaders of the FPM were driven by the core belief that Romanians and Moldovans form a single nation, and should eventually make a single country. Although an explicit unionist position was not adopted until it had been relegated to permanent opposition status, the Front leaders supported a rapid unification with Romania. In addition, some leaders of the PFM were quick to alienate ethnic minorities and PFM sympathizers from within the Soviet system. The discrepancy with the immediate economic needs of the population, and the alienation of many sympathizers stood at the core of the Front's inability to remain in power after 1992.