Authors

Discussion

This paper examines the identities of populations in Moldova who are characterised as ‘pro-Russian,’ exploring how geopolitical pressures shape their evolving and insecure identities, and highlights the importance of understanding domestic grievances rather than delegitimising them through geopolitical attribution.

Rather than functioning as Moscow’s proxies, they long for stability, neutrality, and cultural continuity, challenged by the pro-European and pan-Romanian policies. Drawing on electoral data, surveys, media discourse, expert interviews, and a case study of Gagauzia, the paper identifies four factors shaping this orientation: (1) Sovietism and nostalgia for welfare, material stability, and civic equality; (2) resistance to cultural and linguistic change, such as the renaming of the language and revised historical narrative; (3) alienation from the government policies, reinforced by reduction in political and media spaces; and (4) the pressures of geopolitics, which force citizens into binary choices they would prefer to avoid. The Gagauzia case illustrates how a challenge from the central government can lead to defensive mobilisation of an ethnically distinct region. 

Thus, a political identity has emerged that is fuelled by insecurity, concerns over the future of statehood, a threat to be drawn into an East-West confrontation, and, in Gagauzia’s case, defiance. The paper cautions against regarding scepticism of the pro-Western trajectory of national development as illegitimate or externally orchestrated: for many Moldovans, defending familiar values, sovereignty, and neutrality is a locally grounded response to their problems, and they do not see a break with Russia as being in their interests.