Moldavian schools in the Transnistrian Moldavian Republic

Moldavian schools were first established in Transnistria after the founding in 1924 of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic , which was part of the Ukrainian SSR . In 1940, the former Moldavian Autonomous Republic was divided, 8 regions were incorporated into Soviet Ukraine, and 6 regions were merged with part of Bessarabia into the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic . In the Ukrainian part of the former Moldavian autonomy, Moldovan schools were transformed into Russian-language schools, but in 6 districts that remained part of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the schools in the Moldavian language were preserved.

The Transnistrian authorities boycotted the Moldovan language law of 1989 , in which Latin writing was introduced as the official language of the Republic of Moldova, and all Moldovan schools in Transnistria were ordered to preserve the Cyrillic alphabet. After the war in Transnistria ended in mid- 1992, local schools began to be regulated by the Transnistrian government. Schools that decided to use the Latin alphabet in 1989 were under pressure from the authorities, and most of them were forced to return to the Cyrillic alphabet. Only six schools of the Romanian language in Transnistria were allowed to preserve the Latin alphabet.

Attempts to increase the number of schools using the Latin alphabet are met with severe repression. In 1996, the director of the only Moldovan school in Slobodzia , who supported the desire of parents to teach in Latin, was fired and forced to leave the region. In 1999, a Moldovan language teacher at the Bender Pedagogical College was fired for promoting the Latin alphabet in the institution. The dismissal was preceded by threats by telephone and aggression in the building where she lived ^[1] .

In September 1996, the administration of Grigoriopol used the Cossacks and police to stop the activities of the Moldavian school ^[2] . On October 2, 1996, three teachers were arrested and taken to Tiraspol . On October 7, 1996, teachers were released as a result of the demarche of the President of the Republic of Moldova and the OSCE mission.

Another attempt to secretly teach the Romanian language in Grigoriopol, in the “state school of Transdniestria”, failed in 2002 . The teaching staff and parents were openly condemned in the local press as “enemies of the state” ^[3] . One by one they were invited to "reconsider their views", threatened with job loss and the corresponding right to housing. Children (and teachers) were forced to write explanations of why they used the Latin alphabet, and local officials attended classes regularly to check if the training was being conducted “properly”. The Association of Parents and Teachers was abolished, and its head, Mihai Speian, was arrested ^[4] . The Moldavian school in Grigoriopol was forced to move to Dorotskaya , a village controlled by Chisinau, and children go to school 10-15 km daily.

In the summer of 2004, Transnistrian authorities closed four of the six schools in the region where they taught Moldavian using the Latin alphabet, known as the Romanian. This measure affected some of the 3400 registered children, and teachers and parents who opposed closure were temporarily arrested for up to six hours. During the crisis, the Moldovan government decided to create a blockade that would isolate the disputed region from the rest of the world. The blockade was ineffective due to the lack of cooperation from Ukraine , led by Leonid Kuchma . Transnistria, in response, has taken a number of actions aimed at destabilizing the economic situation in Moldova, in particular, by shutting off energy supply from power plants that were built in Transnistria during the Soviet era. As a result, this crisis caused power outages in some areas of Moldova.

The leading figure in the conflict was Elena Vasilyevna Bomeshko, the Minister of Education of Transnistria. According to her, and the official policy of Transnistria, this language is referred to as “Romanian” when it is taught in Latin, and as “Moldavian” when the Cyrillic script is used. Transnistria rejects accusations of anti-Romanian bias and prefers the Cyrillic alphabet of the Moldavian language as a way to preserve the original language, pointing out the fact that in the Middle Ages the Moldavian Bible was always written in Cyrillic ^[5] . Although the Romanian language has used the Cyrillic alphabet for centuries, it is no longer used in Romania. Cyrillic is still used in some parts of Moldova, but only one newspaper (owned by the state by the Transnistrian authorities) prints several hundred copies of the Cyrillic alphabet ^[6] .

Closed Romanian schools were reopened after registration with the Transnistrian authorities as private institutions. Pressure from the European Union (a travel ban was introduced for 10 Transnistrian officials) may have accelerated the process ^[7] , but they still have the status of “private schools” and therefore do not receive funding from the Transnistrian government.

Many teachers and parents of students studying in Cyrillic-type Moldavian schools have contacted the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights of Moldova with a request to support the translation of education into Romanian (Latin alphabet), as there are no prospects in studies based on the Cyrillic alphabet and Soviet education programs , and children cannot graduate anywhere in the world ^[8] . The OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities condemned the actions of the Transnistrian authorities as “linguistic cleansing” ^[9] .

An OSCE report for June 2005 states: “If they [Moldovan parents in Transnistria] register their children in one of these schools offering the Moldovan curriculum using the Latin alphabet, they risk being threatened by the regional security service and will see that their work will be in danger. However, sending children to one of the 33 Transnistrian schools in which they teach Cyrillic in their native language is hardly an attractive alternative, since schools follow an outdated curriculum and use textbooks from the Soviet period ” ^[10] . This is the reason why many Moldovans from Transnistria send their children to schools with the Russian language of instruction, where there is no oppression.

The Transnistrian authorities do not recognize diplomas issued by Moldovan schools using the Latin alphabet, which makes it impossible to train graduates of these schools in Transnistrian higher educational institutions ^[11] .

The participation of the European Court of Human Rights

In November 2006, the European Court of Human Rights agreed to consider lawsuits filed by three Moldovan schools in Transnistria (from Tigin , Rybnitsa and Grigoriopol) with regard to violation of their right to education and the right to work in a non-discriminatory manner. Three relevant schools hold Russia and Moldova responsible for the violation of their rights ^[12] . In June 2009, the Court held hearings in three similar cases. ^[13] In 2010, the Court held that the case was partially admissible ^[14] . In 2012, the Court held that the applicants' right to education was violated by Russia, but not violated by Moldova ^[15] .

Pressure on Transnistrian authorities

In November 2006, the head of the OSCE mission in Moldova, Louis O'Neill, called on local authorities in the Transnistrian city of Rybnitsa to return the confiscated building to the Moldovan Latin alphabet school located in the city. The building was built by the government from Chisinau and was almost completed in 2004, when the Transnistrian police took it by force during the crisis ^[16] .

• En Transnistrie, la grande Russie s'apprend dès l'école , article in Libération January 25, 2007
• The Moldovan-Administered Latin-Script Schools in Transdniestria OSCE 2012

Transnistrian side

• Moldovan schools in Pridnestrovie

Moldavian side

• Information about the situation of national schools form transnistrian region of Republic of Moldova
• "The policy of linguistic cleansing in Transnistria"