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Internationalist Mobilization during the Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Moldovan Elections of 1990

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

John Alan Mason
John Alan Mason*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of History, 539 Arroyo Ave., Unit B, Santa Barbara, CA 93109, USA. Email: jamason@umail.ucsb.edu
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Extract

In September 1989, speaking to the Republican Strike Committee of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR), Erkin Nurzhanovich Auel'bekov, assistant chairman of the All-Union Soviet of Nationalities, asked a question of great importance to Soviet citizens in the increasingly fragile union: “Is there such a thing as a Soviet narod (people), or is this just an empty fiction?” For Auel'bekov and the assembled strike committee, the answer was not in doubt. “Certainly for all of us here,” he continued, “there is such a narod. There is a passport, there are Soviet people (sovetskie liudi) and, moreover, there is justification for thinking that this is the most important achievement of the past seventy years of Soviet power.” Soviet patriots, they agreed, needed to protect this narod from the process of “nationalization” that threatened the Soviet Union and its constituent people both locally in Moldova and more broadly in the union in general. The protection of this achievement in Soviet nation building became the mission of an “internationalist' ” movement as it moved from a strike campaign to stop language laws in 1989 to an election campaign in 1990. The political strike of 1989 had achieved none of its immediate goals and as internationalist activists moved into the second phase of the conflict over the future of Moldova they invoked imperiled Soviet achievements as they first attempted to take the Moldovan government through the ballot box, and failing at that, to take the eastern region of Transnistria out of Moldova.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , March 2009 , pp. 159 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

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Moldova Suverană (Chişinău).Google Scholar
Molodezh’ Moldavii (Chişinău).Google Scholar
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Report (Munich).Google Scholar
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Alfer'eva, L., ed. Slavy ne iskali: sbornik vospominanii uchastnikov sozdaniia i stanovleniia PMR. Bendery: Poligrafist, 2000.Google Scholar
Bakurskii, S. V. Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskie problem demograficheskogo razvitia Moldavskoi SSR. Chişinău: Shtiintsa, 1984.Google Scholar
Bershin, Efim. Dikoe pole: Pridnestrovskii razlom. Moscow: Tekst, 2002.Google Scholar
Chinn, Jeff, and Roper, Steven. “Ethnic Mobilization and Reactive Nationalism: The Case of Moldova.” Nationalities Papers 23, no. 2 (1995): 291–325.Google Scholar
Dawisha, Karen, and Parrott, Bruce. Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Departmentul Statisticii al Respublicii Moldova. Anuarul Statistic Al Republicii Moldova, 1992. Chişinău: Departmentul Statisticii al Respublicii Moldova, 1993.Google Scholar
Diukarev, Viktor Vasilevich. Pridnestrov'e—proshloe, nastoiashchee, budushchee, za kulisami politiki. Dubossary 1989–1992 gg. Tiraspol: Uprpoligrafizdat PMR, 2000.Google Scholar
Gosudarstvennyi komitet SSSR po statistike. Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1989 goda. Minneapolis: East View Publications, 1992.Google Scholar
Gryzlov, V. F., ed. Nepriznannaia respublika: ocherki, dokumenty, khronika: dokumenty gosudarstvennykh organov Pridnestrovia. Moscow: Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk, Tsentr po izucheniiu mezhnatsionalnykh otnoshenii instituta etnologii i antropologii im. N.N. Miklukho-Maklaia, 1997.Google Scholar
Katchanovski, Ivan. Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova. Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2006.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Stuart J. Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War. New York: Cornell University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
King, Charles. The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Kolsto, Pal, and Malgin, Andrei. “The Transnistrian Republic: A Case of Politicized Regionalism.” Nationalities Papers 26, no. 1 (1998): 103–10.Google Scholar
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McAdam, Doug, McCarthy, D.John, and Zald, N.Mayer. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Meyer, David, and Staggenborg, Suzanne. “Movements, Countermovements, and the Structure of Political Opportunity.” American Journal of Psychology 101, no. 6 (1996): 1628–60.Google Scholar
Snow, David, Rochford, Burke E. Jr., Worden, Steven, and Benford, Robert. “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation.” American Sociological Review 51, no. 4 (1986): 464–46.Google Scholar
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Volkova, Anna. Goriachee leto 1989 goda. Tiraspol: Tipar, 2004.Google Scholar
Zelenchuk, V. S. Naselenie Moldavii. Chişinău: Shtiintsa, 1973.Google Scholar
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