Authors

Discussion

Post-Soviet Moldova is formally constituted as a ‘multinational’ state, and education has been a central arena through which this plurality has been articulated, regulated, and governed. Curricula in the humanities, particularly language, literature, and history, have functioned as technologies of identity formation, positioning students simultaneously as members of distinct ethno-linguistic communities, and citizens of a newly independent state. Within this context, claims about language and culture have played a particularly prominent role in defining legitimate forms of belonging. 

This paper focuses on one key dimension of this broader process: the post-Soviet shift from “Moldovan” to “Romanian” language and literature education in the Republic of Moldova between 1991 and 1994. It asks: How did this shift reshape canon formation and national identity, and through what forms of authority was it legitimated? I argue that this transformation was secured through the convergence of state power with philological expertise, which framed Romanian identity not as a political choice but as a scientifically demonstrable axiomatic ‘truth.’ 

Drawing on a Critical Discourse Analysis of Limba Română, a literary and pedagogical journal published under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, the paper shows how language, literature, and education were discursively aligned within a single cognitive framework. Philologists, some of whom held political office, positioned themselves as custodians of ‘scientific truth’ in matters of language and identity, mobilized the Romanian literary canon as evidence of national continuity, and defined the school as the primary site for correcting Soviet-era distortions and securing national belonging. 

The paper argues that the uniquely unresolved question of whether the national language was “Moldovan” or “Romanian” positioned philologists in Moldova as exceptional epistemic authorities, allowing a philologically sanctioned narrative of ‘Romanianness’ to crystallize as hegemonic within language and literature education and to outlast subsequent political efforts to promote alternative models of identity and ‘multinationalism.’