ABSTRACT
Slightly larger than Maryland, Moldova is bordered by Romania and Ukraine. The history of the Republic of Moldova is the history of two different regions that have been joined into one country, but not into one nation: Bessarabia and Transnistria. To a great extent, Moldova’s history has been shaped by the foreigners who came to stay and by those who merely passed through, including Greek colonists, invading Turks and Tatars, officials of the Russian Empire, German and Bulgarian colonists, communist apparatchiks from the Soviet Union, soldiers from Nazi Germany, Romanian co-nationalists, and twentieth-century Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Moldova was incorporated into the Soviet Union at the close of World War II. Although the country has been independent from the USSR since 1991, Russian forces have remained on Moldovan territory east of the Dniester River supporting a Transnistrian separatist region with a Slavic majority population of mostly Ukrainians and Russians.
