Moldova, once the home to the finest vineyards in the Russian empire, is now, along with Albania, one of Europe's poorest countries. But with a revival in it's wine making industry and greater promotion of tourism Moldova hopes one day soon to join Romania (who are set to join in 2007) within the EU. With a land of such breath taking beauty, it's easy to understand why Moldova hopes the country will become one of the favourite tourist destinations in eastern Europe over the coming years.

Population: 4.534.654

Largest Cities (over 100,000 inhabitants):

Chisineau - 927.016, Tiraspol - 253.714, Balti - 176.502, Cahul - 105.234

Total area: 33,843 sq km
land: 33,371 sq km
water: 472 sq km

Chisinau

Chişinău (Russian Кишинёв, Kishinyov, also Kishinev; Moldovan Cyrillic Кишинэу) is the capital and the largest city of Moldova. The city is located on the river Bâc, a tributary of the Nistru (Dniestr), and is divided into five administrative districts. Its total area is approximately 565 km² (338 sq. miles). Founded in 1436 as a monastery town, the city was part of the Moldavian Principality, which, starting with the 16th century fell under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of the 19th century it was a small village of 7,000 inhabitants. In 1812 it was occupied by Russia, who made it the centre of Bessarabia. Its population had grown to 92,000 by 1862 and to 125,787 by 1900.

The town played an important part in the war between Russia and Turkey (1877–78), as the chief centre of the Russian invasion. In the late 19th century, especially due to growing anti-semitic sentiment in Russia and Poland, many Jews chose to settle in Chişinău, so in the year 1900 43% of the population of Chişinău was Jewish. Chişinău was the site of two major pogrom April 6–7, 1903, and October 19–20, 1905 which were among the reasons for the large emigration of Eastern European Jews to Western Europe and the United States in the years immediately following.

Romania held the city from 1918 to 1940, when it was seized by the USSR. Chişinău is a major industrial and services centre; its main industries include consumer and electrical goods, building materials, machinery, plastics, rubber, and textiles. The main service fields are banking and shopping/commerce. The city is home to thirty-six universities, and to the Academy of Sciences of Moldova.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city has become a relatively lively and well-appointed capital, with a much higher standard of living than most rural areas. There are two bus terminals, with another one under construction, an international airport (Chişinău International Airport), and an international railway terminal.

Moldovan culture

Moldova's cultural tradition has been influenced primarily by the Romanian origin of its majority population and cannot be understood outside of the development of classical Romanian culture, in which it played a significant role.

The roots of Romanian culture reach back to the second century A.D., the period of Roman colonization in Dacia. During the centuries following the Roman withdrawal in A.D. 271, the population of the region was influenced by contact with the Byzantine Empire, neighboring Slavic and Magyar populations, and later the Ottoman Turks. Beginning in the nineteenth century, a strong West European (particularly French) influence came to be evident in Romanian literature and the arts. The resulting mélange has produced a rich cultural tradition. Although foreign contacts were an inevitable consequence of the region's geography, their influence only served to enhance a vital and resilient popular culture.

The regional population had come to identify itself widely as "Moldovan" by the fourteenth century but continued to maintain close cultural links with other Romanian groups. The eastern Moldovans, however, those inhabiting Bessarabia and Transnistria, were also influenced by Slavic culture from neighboring Ukraine. During the periods 1812-1917 and 1944-89, the eastern Moldovans were influenced by Russian and Soviet administrative control as well and by ethnic Russian immigration.

Moldova's folk culture is extremely rich, and the ancient folk ballad, the "Mioriţa" plays a central role in the traditional culture. Folk traditions, including ceramics and weaving, continue to be practiced in rural areas. The folk culture tradition is promoted at the national level and is represented by, among other groups, the republic's dance company, Joc, and by the folk choir, Doina.

In the early 1990s, Moldova had twelve professional theaters. All performed in Romanian except the A.P. Chekhov Russian Drama Theater in Chişinău and the Russian Drama and Comedy Theater in Tiraspol, both of which performed solely in Russian, and the Licurici Republic Puppet Theater (in Chişinău), which performed in both Romanian and Russian. Allthough among those controled tendencies by soviets real artists in music formed real art-bands such as "Ciocîrlia" led by Serghei Lunchevici(Loonkevich),and "Lăutarii" of Nicolae Botgros. Members of ethnic minorities manage a number of folklore groups and amateur theaters throughout the country.

Moldovan music is closely related to that of its neighbor and cultural kin, Romania. Moldovan folk is known for swift, complex rhythms (a characteristic shared with many Eastern European traditions), musical improvisation, syncopation and much melodic ornamentation. Pop, hip hop, rock and other modern genres have their own fans in Moldova as well. Modern pop stars include O-Zone, a Romanian and Moldovan band whose "Dragostea din tei" was a major 2004 European hit, guitarist and songwriter Vladimir Pogrebniuc, Natalia Barbu, who is well-known in Germany, Romania and Ukraine, and Nelly Ciobanu. The band Flacai became well-known in the 1970s across Moldova, turning their hometown of Cahul into an important center of music. The Miorita is ancient ballad that is a very important part of Moldovan folk culture.

Clip of Moldovan folk music

A brief history of Moldova

Moldova's Latin origins can be traced to the period of Roman occupation of nearby Dacia (in present-day Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia), ca. A.D. 105-270, when a culture was formed from the intermingling of Roman colonists and the local population. The Moldovan plains were inhabited since ancient times by Dacians, and it is thought that the name derives from the Dacian words molta=many and dava=fortress, city. Situated on a strategic route between Asia and Europe, Moldova has suffered from several invasions, including those of the Kievan Rus and the Mongols.

The greatest Moldavian prince, aptly named Stefan cel Mare (Stefan the Great) with his army of Boyars and retainers fought of invasions from the Turks, the Polish and the Crimean Tatars. Stefan fought 36 major battles and only lost 2. At the end of his reign, Moldovian independence was secured and no more Moldovian gold went to Turkish hands as tribute. Moldova then experienced a "slump." Weak kings let incompetent boyars rule the state and not pay taxes, bankrupting the state. Moldova succumbed to Ottoman power in 1512 and was a tributary state of the empire for the next 300 years. In addition to paying tribute to the Ottoman Empire and later acceding to the selection of local rulers by Ottoman authorities, Moldova suffered repeated invasions by Turks, Crimean Tatars, and Russians.

In the begining of the 17th century, magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth intervented in the affairs of Moldavia, clashing with the Ottomans for the dominance over that territory. Eventually, Poland renouced the claims to Moldavia in 1613. In 1792 the Treaty of Iasi forced the Ottoman Empire to cede all of its holdings in what is now Transnistria to the Russian Empire. An expanded Bessarabia, named after the Wallachian ruler Basarab I, was annexed by, and incorporated into, the Russian Empire following the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-12 according to the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest of 1812. After Russian's defeat in the Crimean War (1853-1856), the Treaty of Paris stipulated that Moldavia (and Walachia) were to be placed under the collective guarantee of the seven powers that signed the treaty and the retrocession to Moldova of Southern Bessarabia (Ismail, Bolgrad, Kahul counties). In 1859 Moldavian state united with Wallachia, by election of Alexander John Cuza as prince of both Wallachia and Moldavia, laying the foundations of modern Romania. By the Treaty of Berlin (1878), Romanian government ceded Bugeac (the southern Bessarabia) to Russian Empire.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Declaration of Rights of Peoples of Russia encouraged the various nationalities in the Russian Empire to gain their independence, Moldova became an independent Republic on December 2, 1917. On the request of the new Moldovan administration ("Sfatul tării"), on December 13, Romanian troops entered Bessarabia. On March 27, 1918 there was a vote for the unification with Romania. Formerly ruled by Romania as part of the principality of Moldavia, Eastern Moldova was occupied by the Soviet Union (with German consent) in 1940 as a consequence of a secret protocol attached to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. On 2 August 1940, the Soviet government created the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian SSR), with its capital at Chisinau (Kishinëv, in Russian), by joining most of Eastern Moldavia (known as Bessarabia during its occupation by the Russian Empire) with a portion of the Moldavian ASSR (the rest was assigned to the Ukrainian SSR). In creating the Moldovan SSR, Eastern Moldavia (Bessarabia) was once again divided, severely undermining its historical and economic integrity. Several southern regions and access points to the Black Sea through the mouth of the Danube River (the city of Ismail) and Nistru estuary (the city of Belgorod-Dnestrovsky) were ceded to Ukraine, leaving the Moldavian SSR landlocked.

The territory stayed as a part of the USSR after the WWII as Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and the state had a brutal denationalization policy toward the native Romanian population, the Soviets massacring, imprisoning and deporting to Siberia almost a million of innocent people, just for trying to change the population structure of Moldova. The ethnic cleansing was especially directed against the Romanian intellectuals that decided to stay in Moldova after the war and propaganda was made against everything that was Romanian. The conditions imposed during the reestablishment of Soviet rule became the basis of deep resentment toward Soviet authorities--a resentment that soon manifested itself. During Leonid I. Brezhnev's 1950-52 tenure as first secretary of the Communist Party of Moldavia (CPM), he put down a rebellion of ethnic Romanians by killing or deporting thousands of people and instituting forced collectivization.

The year 1989 saw the formation of the Moldovan Popular Front (commonly called the Popular Front), an association of independent cultural and political groups that had finally gained official recognition. Large demonstrations by ethnic Romanians led to the designation of Romanian as the official language and the replacement of the head of the CPM. The first democratic elections to the Moldavian SSR's Supreme Soviet were held 25 February 1990. Runoff elections were held in March. The Popular Front won a majority of the votes. In September the people on the east bank of the Nistru River (with mostly Slavic population) proclaimed the "Dnestr Moldavian Republic" (commonly called the "Dnestr Republic") in Transnistria, with its capital at Tiraspol. Violence flared up in Transnistria in autumn 1991 and then again in spring 1992. A ceasefire agreement was negotiated by presidents Mircea Snegur and Boris Yeltsin in July. A demarcation line was to be maintained by a tripartite peacekeeping force (composed of Moldovan, Russian, and Transnistrian forces), and Moscow agreed to withdraw its 14th Army if a suitable constitutional provision were made for Transnistria. Russia and Moldova signed an agreement in October 1994 on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria, but the Russian government balked at ratifying it, and another stalemate ensued. Russian troops are still in Transnistria today.

President Snegur signed the Partnership for Peace agreement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in March 1994, and in April Parliament approved Moldova's membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States and in a CIS charter on economic union. Although it is more than 10 years after the independence declaration, the traces of the Soviet regime's propaganda are still very deep and the Romanian Moldovans are still afraid and ashamed of their origin.