ABSTRACT
The Republic of Moldova is the post-Soviet successor state of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Most Moldovans claim the Moldovan language as their mother tongue while the Russians, a good proportion of the Ukrainians and the Gagauz are Russophone. The Republic of Moldova exists within a historical environment of conflicting claims of sovereignty and of cultural identity. Conscription of young Moldovans into the Red Army served the same purpose. There can be little wonder that a strong threat of antimilitarism emerged as Moldova reasserted its national identity in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Conscription of Moldovan youth into the Soviet armed forces, in which the language of command was exclusively Russian, and their individual postings to remote comers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, cutting them off from their culture and language, was an integral part of the Russification campaign.
