Talk:Eastern Moldova

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What the heck is meant by the claim that this is "…the politically correct term used sometimes for the Republic of Moldova…"? Correct for whose politics? And no citation is provided. -- Jmabel | Talk June 28, 2005 05:20 (UTC)

http://www.russiannewsnetwork.com/countries/moldova.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1113586.stm

http://weecheng.com/europe/bbs/moldova/moldova1.htm

http://www.worldstats.org/world/moldova.shtml

http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Rumanian/Rumanian.html

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761566942/Moldova.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/10775/moldova.htm

Is that enough or should I get more?

Duca 2 July 2005 15:58 (UTC)

Most of these are "eastern Moldova" (with a lower case "e"). Only the Orbilat page uses an upper case "E". The first four clearly refer to Bessarabia, not to the entirety of today's Republic (they exclude Transdniester). The Orbilat page is not explicit about geography, but the reference to being part of the Soviet Union 1939-1991 would suggest that, again, Bessarabia is intended (Transdniester was already part of the Soviet Union 20 years earlier). Encarta and ThinkQuest are clearly referring to the eastern part of the present-day Republic: "Other important cities include Tiraspol and Tighina (also called Bender), both located on the Dniester River in eastern Moldova, and Bălţi, in north central Moldova"; "In May 1993, the Moldovan government announced that it would allow the Russian forces to stay in eastern Moldova until the area could be given special political status."

In short, not a single one of these citations bears out the content of the present article. I stand by my suggestion (made at Talk:Moldova) that this might become a useful page about the different ways this term is used, but that's about it. -- Jmabel | Talk July 2, 2005 17:50 (UTC)

Hi Jambel. It is me that started the article. First of all, I am not compleetely refuting your argument. Second of all: eastern Moldova is a very used term and it does apply to the Republic of Moldova. I did not mean for it to sound like Romanian irredentism. I would have written eastern with a small "e" but in this case eastern is the title of the article and it has to be written with capital "E". In the Moldova article we can change "Eastern Moldova" to small "eastern Moldova" if you want.

Thirdly, eastern moldova is also used to identify the part of Moldova annexed together with the Turkish province of Bassarabia in 1812. Some people believe that Bassarabia and the Republic of Moldova are fairly the same thing but they are not. Bassarabia was for almost 400 years a Turkish province and not part of the Moldovan principality at all. It was actually only the southern part of what was later to be known as Russian Bassrabia. The Russians annexed Turkish Bassarabia and also annexed all Moldovan land east of the river Pruth. That eastern part of Moldova is what trully corresponds to modern RM today.

Domnu Goie 5 July 2005 00:17 (UTC)

• So can you find citations for this usage? And for the claim that it is a "politically correct" usage? -- Jmabel | Talk July 5, 2005 15:25 (UTC)

[edit] Here they are

http://www.lumeam.ro/109923.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1113586.stm

http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/GeogHist/histories/history/hiscountries/M/moldova.html

http://globaledge.msu.edu/ibrd/CountryHistory.asp?CountryID=64&RegionID=2

http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/2003/geormold.htm

Note how I said that it is used by some people as the politically correct name for the Republic of Moldova, not that everyone uses it.

Domnu Goie 6 July 2005 00:00 (UTC)

• I only have a few minutes right now, but at a quick look, it seems to me that none of these make the statement that this is a "politically correct" usage. Its possible that I'm missing something in the first one, since it's in Romanian, and I'm not a native speaker: if the statement about "political correctness" is there, could you please direct me to the relevant passage? The BBC one I commente on above: it means, precisely, Bessarabia, in a historical context. I'll try to get a look at the rest of these some time in the next couple of days; so far, though, I'll admit I'm still skeptical. -- Jmabel | Talk July 6, 2005 04:43 (UTC)
• The cartage.org.lb page cited simply uses "eastern Moldova" to refer to Transdniestr (/Transnistria), as did one of the above: this would seem to argue against your point. -- Jmabel | Talk July 6, 2005 04:45 (UTC)
• So now I've made my way through the www.lumeam.ro, Romanian-language citation. It refers to:
  • "statului romanesc din stanga Prutului", an interesting circumlocution but nothing to do with the case.
  • "Moldova de Est, dintre Prut si Nistru"; once again, given the Dneistr as an eastern boundary, this is simply Bessarabia. That is followed in once case by the phrase "...cu raioanele moldovenesti din stanga Nistrului..." which is vague, but is closer to what you are claiming, in that it is a capitalized Moldova de Est that might extend (here and there) over the Dniestr. Even that is a quotation from a book that the author of the cited web page condemns as a continuation of bad Soviet scholarship and, in any case, it is clearly a historical reference, not a reference to the present-day republic.
  • "Moldova de Est (Republica Democratica Moldoveneasca)": the only "Republica Democratica Moldoveneasca" I'm aware of is the short-lived one from 1918 that united into Greater Romania. That is to say, once again, precisely Bessarabia.
• The only mention at globaledge.msu.edu: "In 1940, Romania was forced to cede eastern Moldova..." Lower-case "e", historical (not the present republic) and, again, it's Bessarabia: Romania could hardly "cede" Transdniestr, which it didn't control at the time.
• Finally from www.cc.jyu.fi: "Thousands of educated people left the country, mainly to Romania, which is Moldova's main road to Europe, both physically and mentally, since Moldovans are Romanians, they speak Romanian, and the republic is in fact just Eastern Moldova, or Bessarabia, which was once annexed by Russia." This is the closest to supporting your claim. Still, it isn't suggesting that "Eastern Moldova" is an actual name for the place, he's representing the thinking by which Romanians are concerned about Moldova as essentially part of their same nation, albeit not part of their state. And again, his immediately following mention of Bessarabia seems to paradoxically exclude Transdniestr.

The short of it is that I sure don't see anything here that adds up to support for what you are claiming: if anything, it suggests that the most common meaning of "Eastern Moldova" is to refer to Bessarabia, the most common use of "eastern Moldova" is to refer to the eastern portion of the present-day republic, especially Transdniestr, and that the use to refer to the present republic is purely rhetorical, not a "politically correct" name used rather than speak the name "Republic of Moldova". -- Jmabel | Talk July 7, 2005 01:05 (UTC)

"From 1812 to 1856 Russians occupied the eastern portion of Moldova, which they named Bessarabya"

I would think the cartage.org.lb site reffers to Bessarabia :)

I do not really understand why you are so skeptic about the term "eastern Moldova". I do agree that it is also used for Transnistria but then again most sites say "Transnistria is in eastern Moldova" but do not really define what "eastern Moldova" really is. Is Transnistria the same as "eastern Moldova". Well it appears not since they say "Transnistria is IN Eastern Moldova", thus suggesting that Eastern Moldova is something bigger then Transnistria? Is Eastern Moldova supposed to also include Tighina? Maybe but that too is unlikely since Transnistria or the PMR includes Tighina anyways. If you can come with source that has a map of the Republic of Moldova with "Eastern Moldova" (not Transnistria with Thighina) outligned and the map is really from a good source then maybe we can put that in. Otherwise, I think anyone can just as well argue that even when people talk about Transnistria being in "Eastern Moldova", the fact that the term "eastern moldova" is undefined, means that it can just as well be applied once more to all of Bessarabia.

I do agree with you that I could not find a site(nor did I look too much) that says Eastern Moldova is the politically correct used term. I saw that expression being used on TV, by a historian, I did not tape it and I did not look enough on the net either. If you want me to drop that sentence for now, until I can do further research, then I can, but the fact that the "Republic of Moldova" can also be called "eastern Moldova" is undeniable.

Domnu Goie 6 July 2005 14:15 (UTC)

• I'm skeptical because I haven't seen any good evidence. If one person used it that way once on television, that does not belong in an encyclopedia. If it was in anything like common use, I'd expect it to be rather easy to find a citation. -- Jmabel | Talk July 7, 2005 00:28 (UTC)

I appreaciate your "bluntness" but I have to ask you to pay attention to what I am actually saying. I said that it is undeniable that sometimes "eastern Moldova" can be used for " Bessarabia" or if you pay close attention to the article and historical facts, to what is actually central Bessarabia. This is because "southern Bessarabia" or Bugeac was actually the real Bessarabia, under Ottoman rule from 1484 to 1812. That Bassarabia or Bugeac only belonged to a Romanian state (Moldova actually) from 1392-1484 and was part of Greater Romania from 1918-1940. After 1484 though, it was annexed by the Turks and was part of the Ozi province, but informally known as Bessarabia( after Basarab I, a Valachian prince). This is the first time when the name Bessarabia is actually used and as I explained before, it only reffered to the Turkish sanjaks in what is modern day Bugeac. Moldova never controlled that territory aside from the period between 1392-1484. Turkey did. The Russians wanted to annex all land east of the Prut river and claimed that Bessarabia included in actuality not just the Bugeac but also Moldovan land east of that river.

Therefore, aside from the Bugeac, all land in the former Russian province of Bessarabia is nothing else but the eastern part of the principality of Moldova or eastern Moldova. That part of eastern moldova is also what corresponds roughly to the territory of the modern day Republic of Moldova. This is what I said was undeniable, not the politically correct part. In fact, if it makes you feel better I will erase that immediately.

I hope now, I finally clarified once and for all, the whole thing to you. If you still have questions or clarifications, I really think that something visual should help and that you should consult "Istoria Romanilor" by Giurascu( since you seem to understand a little Romanian and since that book has a very nice map of the region) or maybe you should take a look at these very nice maps which might clarify the whole thing:

http://www.euratlas.com/time2.htm#1300

If you look at the full maps for the years 1500,1600,1700,1800,1900,2000. you will see what I am talking about.

http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/europe/images/Moldavie-map-av1812.jpg

is another good site.

Domnu Goie 7 July 2005 01:25 (UTC)

I tried and failed to access this link. -- Jmabel | Talk July 8, 2005 04:48 (UTC)

• OK, we may not be so far apart. Yes, it was mostly the claim of "political correctness" that I was disputing.

• Moving on from there, would you agree that in the cases where Eastern Moldova is given as a capitalized designation, (1) it does not usually include Transnistria and (2) the term is usually used in a historical context rather than to refer to the present-day republic? -- Jmabel | Talk July 7, 2005 04:08 (UTC)

I agree that Eastern Moldova might not be understood to include Transnistria but this is not really always implied. About the historical part, I think that it's used in the historical context sometimes, but it still reffers to the modern republic as well, since it does reffer to the same territory. In any case, the title of this article has to show "eastern" as capitalized since "eastern" is the first word of the article.

Domnu Goie 7 July 2005 05:33 (UTC)

• The title has to, but the first sentence doesn't, and we can be clear about uses with and without a capital "e". This type of thing comes up all the time. -- Jmabel | Talk July 8, 2005 04:48 (UTC)

I agree.

Domnu Goie 8 July 2005 05:22 (UTC)

[edit] Significant rewrite

Duca and Domnu Goia, I've done a significant rewrite to reflect more accurately what Domnu Goia's citations seem to show. Please take a look and let me know if you have issues with the article as it now stands; I've made so many changes that I suppose it is now more my article than yours (albeit based on Domnu Goia's research), so if anyone has an issue with it now, it will be you not me. I am concerned to sort this out, because this research suggests to me that the use of "Eastern Moldova" to refer to the entire present-day republic is obscure enough that it does not merit mention in the first paragraph of the (much more important) article Moldova and should be demoted there to a "see also". (That's what pulled me into this article in the first place.) If that's still in dispute, I'd like to sort it out here, if possible. -- Jmabel | Talk July 9, 2005 06:45 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, I think you polished it quite well. For me it doesn't matter which comes first: the historical eastern moldova or the republic of moldova. Actually it's even better if it goes cronologically, like it does now.

I do think, nevertheless, that the article on Moldova should still say in the first sentence "The Republic of Moldova, sometimes called eastern Moldova, is a landlocked country in eastern Europe, located between Romania to the west and Ukraine to the east."

One more thing I think is quite needed here is a map. Jmabel maybe you can help me here. Maybe we can take the map from Moldavia and depict in red where Ottoman Bessarabia was and where eastern Moldova in its historical context was. In other words let's make it look more like this map http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/europe/images/Moldavie-map-av1812.jpg

Domnu Goie 20:33, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

• Feel free to make a map. Or several, on the various relevant usages. You can start from one of the GFDL or public domain maps, download it, and do pretty much anything you want with it. But why do you think the article on Moldova should still say this (and maybe we should take that discussion there: the only citation we have for it is a single political article by someone in Finland, and it isn't as if he is using it as the name of the country, he is just using the expression to quickly synopsize the perception he believes Romanians have of their stake in Moldova's fate. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:32, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

Jmabel, there are more then just the one you mentioned; and on top of that I agree with Domnu Goie. It doesn't hurt if it's mentioned there briefly.

Duca 19:45, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

If there are more, please provide examples. What we have is really not a very authoritative citation for this usage: if there are better ones, we should have them in the article. I'd be glad to change my mind if someone can show this is actually common usage.

As for "mentioned there briefly": I have, as I said, no problem with mentioning in a "see also" in the article, but so far I've seen nothing that suggests that it belongs in the lead paragraph. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:10, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Jmabel, first of all, there are plenty of sources above and how authoritative they are is something purely subjective. Second of all, I don't need 10.000 sources to prove something of such little importance. Usually, in most cases, just one source would do.

Now thirdly, I was just curious about your resentment and even hostility towards this term. I understand you have stars for contribution, etc. etc. and that you speak 8 languages, etc. etc. But do you think that even someone like that can have such an overtly hostile attitude towards a person who just wants to contribute an article to wiki. First you accused me of Romanian irridentism. Well if that was so, wouldn't I have written an article about "Eastern Romania", rather then "eastern Moldova". If anything, it calls for Moldovan irridentism, but certainly not Romanian.

Secondly, before you came to agree with me and actually rewrite the article, you wrote such overtly agressive messages that even you realized it and had to come back and rewrite one of them( "tone it down" as you called it). I don't know if this is part of a general anti-Romanian antitude or not( I read your impressions about Bucharest on your site, and you make it look like its the shit of the Earth. I went to Bucharest too in 2002 and found it pretty nice. If this is really how you found Bucharest, then you must have missed the best of it).

In any case, I assure you, I did not write this article because I am an irridentist. I am not even a unionist. I just wrote it out of geographical considerations. Please look at the article on Ottoman Bessarabia. If anything that article implies that the southern part of modern day Bessarabia has been under foreign administration for most of its existence and in fact it was for a very brief period under Romanian rule. I think, even you would agree, that the article there would rather call for a toning down of some Romanians' demands for the revendication of Bugeac.

Going back to the main point here: if "eastern Moldova" stays the way it is right now in the Moldova article, I don't see how it is going to hurt anybody. I got the source, I did the research and it seems that yes the term is used sometimes. The article does not say "The Republic of Moldova or eastern Moldova is a country...etc. etc.". And it doesn't say "Eastern Moldova, also known as the Republic of Moldova...". It simply mentions a fact, that the Republic of Moldova is sometimes called eastern Moldova.

Domnu Goie 13:56, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Jeez. Some of this seems rather ad hominem and (at best) tangentially related to the article, but the ad hominem part seems so far off the mark that I feel I have to reply.

1. First: This has probably all been blown a bit out of proportion. It came from my seeing a phrase I thought was problematic in the Moldova article. That's all. I don't have any political agenda in this matter. When I see apparently problematic phrases I try to sort things out. It's a lot of what I do here.

2. There are a lot of sources above, but only one of them -- a political article by someone in Finland -- uses the term in the way that the article originally wrote about.

3. No, you don't need 10,000 sources to prove something of whatever importance. But the fact that one not particularly notable person used a term once to (sort of) refer to the Republic of Moldova is not of encyclopedic importance. And you and I have both now done a good bit of searching and, as far as I can tell, both determined that actually when people say "Eastern Moldova" their meaning is usually something else entirely.

4. My hostility is not "towards the term". My hostility is toward claiming it is of such importance as to belong mentioned in the lead paragraph of the Moldova article, which is what brought me here in the first place. I think that mentioning this with such prominence is actively misleading, falsely suggesting that a very uncommon usage is tantamount to a common alternate name for a country. Even the one Finnish citation does not say that he (or anyone) calls the country "Eastern Moldova", just that Romanians (reasonably appropriately, in my view) think of it as part of their nation, albeit not of their state.

5. I don't have a hostile attitude toward you. I basically don't have any attitude toward you, except being a bit bewildered as to why you are arguing a case for including a phrase in the Moldova article when even the evidence you yourself produced mostly argues against it.

6. I did not accuse you of Romanian irridentism. I wrote (at Talk:Moldova, when the phrase was first written there as an alternate name for the Republic of Moldova, "I suspect (though I do not know offhand) that this usage reflects some specific politics, possibly Romanian irredentism. Does someone know what is going on here?" In other words, I found the edit bewildering, and was hoping someone could clarify whether the phrase was identified with some particular politics. I made what I think was a reasonable guess as to what that politics might be. In fact, though, rather than being identified with some particular politics, it seems to have almost no currency at all.

7. I didn't "[come] to agree with [you]": I rewrote this article to reflect what your citations actually showed: that the phrase is moderately common (though I'm still not convinced that it is common enough to merit an encyclopedia entry), but that its two apparently most common meanings are different from what the article originally said. If it's going to be here, it should be accurate.

8. You write, "you wrote such overtly agressive messages that even you realized it and had to come back and rewrite one of them( "tone it down" as you called it)." Yup. I got frustrated. Happens to us all. Unlike most people, I came back a few minutes later and rewrote things politely.

9. You write, "I don't know if this is part of a general anti-Romanian antitude or not": Wow. You can start from my talk page and see that I have written more about Romania in the Wikipedia than any other native English speaker, on topics ranging from theater, to public buildings, to rock bands, to historical and political figures, to political parties, etc. Believe me, I didn't do this out of hostility.

10. You write, "I read your impressions about Bucharest on your site, and you make it look like its the shit of the Earth." Then you didn't read much of what I wrote. I think Bucharest has its problems (largely because Ceauşescu's bizarre systematization ideas scarred the city badly), and when I landed a job there it was not easy (especially at first) to transplant 6,000 miles from home in a country I started out not knowing the language, but I liked Bucharest a lot, and I plan to go back when I get a chance to travel again.

11. I'm not sure I follow your paragraph about Ottoman Bessarabia and Bugeac, but I hope you don't mind if I don't pursue that direction: I came over here because of what I saw as an issue in the Moldova article; I don't know much about Bugeac, and my sense of the region is mostly north and west than that; I don't know a lot even about Moldova itself, but I know enough to keep that article on my watchlist.

12. And, as you say, "Going back to the main point here": I think this article, as it now stands, is harmless, though not particularly useful. I think the prominent mention of "Eastern Moldova" in the Moldova article is out of proportion to the importance of the phrase; as I've said, I'd have no problem including it as a "see also". As for whether it will "hurt anybody": only if they use Wikipedia as a source and make the mistake of referring to the Republic as "Eastern Moldova" in a paper or such and look foolish for using an odd locution. I suppose it's not a terribly big deal, I just prefer for Wikipedia not to mislead people. "Sometimes" can still be below the threshold of notability.

-- Jmabel | Talk 07:18, July 13, 2005 (UTC)