Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This essay explores the advantages of a qualitative approach based on a preliminary analysis of a collection of street interviews broadcast from March 2022 to March 2023 in the Republic of Moldova via 34 radio programmes. While the results of the opinion polls reflect a clear division of opinion on the war in Ukraine within Moldovan society along pre-existing geopolitical lines, the interviews highlight the possibility of consensus among respondents voicing opposing views on the causes of the war. Regardless of ideological positions however, when asked, most respondents said they wished for peace. The author reflects on the potential inherent in that common response for a type of community based on inclusion and cohabitation.

Unlike in the Baltics, support for independence in Moldova was relatively low among the political elites and the general population when the Soviet Union collapsed. In the 1990s, the political parties in power pursued an incoherent program, as governments swung between reformist and conservative agendas. Economic crises and systemic corruption depleted citizens' trust in politicians and state institutions. This low institutional trust has hampered governance at all levels, and primarily in crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

AbstractResearch has shown that most homeless people suffer from weak support from family, relatives and friends. Based on a descriptive statistical analysis with biographical records of 810 subjects, and a thematic analysis of interviews with homeless people (N = 65), people at risk of homelessness (N = 5) and professionals (N = 20), the article explores the social support system of homeless people from Chisinau (Moldova). Only 18.6 per cent of all users of the Shelter for homeless in Chisinau were in a couple relationship (and only 5.6 per cent registered officially). For former detainees (23 per cent of the Shelter users) and care leavers (11 per cent), it is even more difficult to create a couple and to strengthen their social support network, as the institutions they come from did not foster their social support. As homelessness becomes chronic, people build social support networks with other homeless people. This social support helps homeless people to cope with stressful living conditions. The article suggests, in the case of Moldova, that social support relations with family, friends, acquaintances and other homeless people are affected negatively in the absence of policies and institutional measures targeted to encourage and strengthen such relationships.

The Centre for the Homeless in Chișinău embodies on a small scale the recent evolution of state policies towards the homeless in Moldova (a post-Soviet state). This institution applies the binary approach of the state, namely the 'left hand' and the 'right hand', towards marginalised people. On the one hand, the institution provides accommodation, food, and primary social, legal assistance and medical care. On the other hand, the Shelter personnel impose a series of disciplinary constraints over the users. The Shelter also operates a differentiation of the users according to two categories: the 'recoverable' and those deemed 'irrecoverable' (persons with severe disabilities, people with addictions). The personnel representing the 'left hand' (or 'soft-line') regularly negotiate with the employees representing the 'right hand' ('hard-line') of the institution to promote a milder and a more humanistic approach towards the users. This article relies on multi-method research including descriptive statistical analysis with biographical records of 810 subjects, a thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with homeless people (N = 65), people at risk of homelessness (N = 5), professionals (N = 20) and one ethnography of the Shelter.

This article aims at tracing a model of cultural Sovietization of the territories incorporated by the USSR in 1940, based on the study of this process in Bessarabia, a former Romanian province which became in June 1940 a Soviet republic (the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic - MSSR) and more specifically on the case of the Moldovan Writers' Union. The history of this process dates back to the creation in 1924 on a small territory on the left bank of the Dniester of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The author will therefore try to pursue the rather discontinuous and contradictory development of the creation of a cultural policy in the center of the Soviet Empire and implemented in a small Western Soviet republic, but no less important given its strategic position. This cultural policy is elaborated and applied in a tacit or explicit relationship of convergence or divergence with other integration models applied in other regions annexed in the same period (1940-1944), in an effort to consider local and regional specificities.

This article outlines the main social, political, and economic reasons that explain Moldova's delay in its post-Soviet transition, after gaining its independence in August 1991. In comparison to the Baltic States, Republic of Moldova has had a different starting point in the "transition race". First, the independence of the former Soviet republic benefited of a much lesser support within the Moldovan society -local population and political elites-, and on behalf of foreign states and international institutions. Moldova's agrarian economy and its strong dependence on Russian resources and post-Soviet economic system also disadvantaged its development. To this one could add state governors' low capacity to negotiate with foreign financial donors (mainly IMF and World Bank) in order to defend the local economic interests, but also to properly use the contracted credits. One of the main obstacles in Moldova's development path was the low quality of state governance and the advanced level of "state capture" (i.e. interference of vested interests into state governance) and thus its limited capacity to administrate a favorable transition based on existent economic resources and assets, not on their ruins.

This article aims to follow up the institutionalization process of the primary education in the rural areas of Bessarabia (today Republic of Moldova), during the inter-war period (1918-1940), from the perspective of the application of the corporal punishment in the public schools. The application of the corporal punishment also interacted with certain matters related to the everyday process of the primary education in the villages, such as the teachers' relationships with the local community, the school attendance, or the internal group dynamics within the pedagogical collectives in the rural schools. The corporal punishment was codified and became increasingly scarce in the inter-war years, correspondingly with the change of the attitudes both of the teachers and the pupils' parents towards the primary school.

After the Soviets annexed Bessarabia in June 1940, and again after its recapture in August 1944, the authorities launched a campaign to increase adult literacy. The context was one of high tension, as a result of the war and the policy of enforcing the re-establishment and (re-)sovietisation of government apparatus. The "elimination of illiteracy" was influenced by the ideological tradition of the "cultural revolution" of the 1920s and by wartime rhetoric, but it had both positive and negative aspects. On one hand, it was positive campaign for the education of the masses, for "cultural construction" and in favor of "civilising popular culture". On the other hand, it had negative objectives, because it was directed against "ignorance" and also against the "wrongs" of Romanian education and propaganda. The case of post-war Moldavia is a revealing one because of the great political importance which the Soviet authorities attached to literacy. My paper takes this example to examine how these dual components, both positive and negative, alternated and competed with each other, and were enmeshed both in the practice of literacy education and in the discourse which promoted it. To understand the whole process, I have brought together for analysis two important perspectives: that of the state (in a series of speeches and official documents) and that of the "people" (in a body of interviews conducted with a sample of rural inhabitants born in the 1920s). The agents of the literacy campaign - who represented the state but were mainly of popular origin – acted as bridges and intermediaries between the two "camps".

The creation of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) can be integrated within the social and political context that prevailed in the USSR during the 1920s. This political entity was itself engaged in elaborating an appropriate form for the organization of its "statehood" (gosudarstvennost'). Similarly to the other union or autonomous republics, the MASSR was far from being effectively autonomous, either in the economic or the political sphere. The fundamental fact that legitimized its emergence was the purported existence, on this territory, of a distinct ethno-national community: the Moldavians. Formed in 1924 according to an ad hoc decision of the central authorities for reasons of international politics (or, rather, international strategy), the MASSR became the object of a discontinuous national and cultural policy throughout its entire existence up to 1940. Several interest groups competed, first, for the administration of this territorial entity. Later, the focus of this competition shifted to the definition and creation of the fundamental components of the "titular nationality's" identity, expressed through national language, national culture, and national history. These interest conflicts resulted in a piecemeal and inefficient application of the projected measures aimed at social democratization and modernization and subsumed under the label of "cultural revolution". The process in question included simultaneous policies of "indigenization" (korenizatsiia), literacy and educational campaigns. The repeated failures of this selfstyled revolutionary project proved a major obstacle for the unitary national identification of the presumably autochthonous population, contrary to the designs of the MASSR's authorities.

The paper examines the making of a Romanian national and regional identity in Bessarabia after the union with Romania in 1918 by taking in the issues and conflicts moulding the Bessarabien literary milieu in the interwar period. Based on detailed case studies and constantly addressing the enlarged political and historical context of Greater Romania, it investigates the distinctions and tensions between the two generations active in the cultural arena, the "Elders" and the "Young", with theirs different cultural background and contradictory affiliations and sensibilities, with theirs divergent views on the role of the Bessarabien culture and politics.

Résumé La politique soviétique culturelle dite « jdanovienne » s'inscrit dans le contexte autoritaire de l'après-guerre et vise deux objectifs : d'une part, la consolidation et la centralisation du champ culturel soviétique sous l'autorité symbolique du réalisme socialiste, d'autre part, l'intégration culturelle et idéologique des nationalités à la suite de la réorganisation territoriale de 1940. Cet article propose une analyse socio-historique de l'institution littéraire en Moldavie soviétique sous le jdanovisme. Ce cas permet de prendre en compte les deux aspects de la campagne jdanovienne mentionnés ci-dessus. Le modèle littéraire unique que cette institution promeut à l'époque – le réalisme socialiste – est conçu comme un modèle de pensée et de comportement, voire d'identité. Les tensions qui s'exercent à l'époque jdanovienne entre le pouvoir politique et les écrivains et, à un autre niveau, entre les écrivains eux-mêmes, ont comme enjeu principal le monopole de la violence symbolique légitime qui suppose, précisément dans le contexte de la Moldavie soviétique, la définition des contenus de l'identité moldave, à travers la normalisation formelle et idéologique du réalisme socialiste.

Abstract
This introductory article highlights the main developments in the Republic of Moldova from the breakup of the Soviet Union to the present from the perspective of national sentiment and manifestations. Using Mark Beissinger's concept of "tides of nationalism", the article examines the bottom-up ethnic mobilisation between the "quiet" and the "noisy" phases of national projects in Moldova. With the persistence of the "quiet" phase of nationalism, in the last three decades, Moldova's population transitioned from identification based on ethnicity to one focused on civic coexistence. However, Russia's attack on Ukraine risks disrupting this balance, while contributing to the resurgence of ethnic sentiment at the expense of civic cohesion. Following an analysis of the literature in the field of "everyday nationalism", the authors present the contributions to this thematic section, highlighting the relevance of the Republic of Moldova's case within the regional and international context.