(National) identity crisis A Moldovan journalist grapples with her home country’s post-independence transformation
More than 20 years after moving abroad, multimedia journalist Natalia Jidovanu found herself grappling with Moldova’s struggles over national identity. The following personal essay, first published in The Beet, offers a first-person perspective on her home country’s trajectory since independence, recounting how the Soviet experience, economic hardship, and mass emigration continue to shape Moldovan politics and identity today. Weaving together reporting, photography, and reflections on her own identity, Jidovanu provides a closer look at a bigger picture, revealing how major historical events shape individual lives.
This story first appeared in The Beet, a monthly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. To get the next issued delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here.
I was fifteen when the news struck me like a hammer: We are leaving Moldova.
It was 10 years since independence, and the disruption of the old economic order and a lack of adequate reforms had brought Moldova’s agriculture-based economy to its knees. Once a breadbasket of the former Soviet Union, known for its rich farmland and vineyards, Moldova was now one of Europe’s poorest states.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, state ownership over agricultural land in Moldova was dissolved, and my father lost his job as a brigade leader at the collective farm in our village. The “National Land Program,” launched in 1997 with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), granted individuals title deeds, making them legal owners of land — small parcels averaging 1.56 hectares (3.85 acres) called cota in Romanian. But this mass privatization posed a challenge to the farmers now turned entrepreneurs: their newly acquired plots were too large to be worked by hand, and too small to be farmed profitably.
Without access to machines and tractors, farmers lacked the means to prepare the land, fertilize the crops, and harvest the produce. As a result, they were forced to either sell their cota or lease them to someone with a tractor and the know-how to use the land efficiently. My parents kept their plots (both husband and wife were entitled to allotments), but working the land brought more expense than profit. Our harvest was at the mercy of the weather and could not sustain our family financially.
We lived a simple life. The days began early, birds chirping in the apple trees surrounding our house, and the occasional cluck of a hen. We planted, nurtured, and harvested vegetables on the property my father inherited from my grandparents. We had our cota on the hill, where we grew grapevines, sunflowers, and corn. My sister and I went to the village school and learned alongside neighbors and friends who were like family. Still, my parents decided it was time to leave.
‘Every man for himself’
Three years earlier, my father had tried his luck working abroad.
A collapsing economy, long-term unemployment, and skyrocketing inflation were driving Moldovans out of the country at an unprecedented rate. With few options for legal emigration, most of this mass exodus occurred irregularly, as recruitment agencies and fraudulent job offers mushroomed.
My father used an agency to process his visa and make travel arrangements to Israel. It was a gamble that cost him dearly. He boarded a plane but barely touched Israeli soil. The visa he had invested his hopes in was counterfeit. At Ben Gurion Airport, border guards immediately detained and deported my father.
Having borrowed heavily to pay the agency, he had no way of repaying the debt. So instead of coming back home, my father borrowed again for a Schengen visa. The destination — Portugal. The debt grew larger, and so did his determination. Or perhaps, desperation.
On a misty night in Chișinău, he boarded a bus along with other men from villages across the country, each with their own stories of hardship and hope, all seeking opportunity far away from home. After hours of travel, in the dead of the night, they were informed that they had reached France. “Baieti [‘young men,’ in Romanian], from here, it’s every man for himself.”
What followed was a train journey that felt endless. My father traveled with a crumpled paper in his pocket with a stranger’s phone number and the constant dread of being discovered. One wrong move, one unfortunate encounter, and everything could fall apart again.
In Portugal, he found a job at a construction site, where he worked illegally for two months. Faced with a crackdown from immigration officers, the company’s owner eventually told him to leave. But going home to Moldova was not an option.
My father’s story is not unique. It mirrors the journeys of tens of thousands of Moldovans who left and continue to leave their homes in search of better lives.
In 2001, my father was able to legalize his documents and get a Portuguese work permit. New immigration rules allowed migrants, whether they had entered Portugal legally or not, to obtain legal status if they found a job. Once they became official residents, immigrants could apply for their families to join them.
I had just started attending high school in Cimişlia, the nearest city, sharing a room with my best friend and enjoying, for the first time, freedom as a teenager. I stood no chance of changing my parents’ decision or making my own. They believed that in Portugal, we could forge a path to a better life together.
I had dreamed of Europe since I was a child. My grandmother, who was a teacher, had given me a collection of chunky World Encyclopedias that I would read and re-read during the long winter nights, sometimes by candlelight. Each page opened doors to a world I had never known and places I had never seen. I’d sit and dream that one day I’d get to see all these wonders, that I’d break the boundaries of my small world and experience the adventures of life beyond. I wanted to be a traveler, an explorer, a citizen of the world.
The day I turned 16, I boarded a plane for the first time, leaving my youthful innocence behind to become a stranger in an unfamiliar land.
São Martinho do Porto
Life in Portugal was far from what I had imagined. Our first year in São Martinho do Porto, the famous resort town with shell-shaped beaches and crystal-clear waters, was difficult.
I refused to enroll in school because I was terrified of being held back and becoming a “repeater.” Having to repeat a grade was an aberration in Moldova, where the education system set high expectations for every learner. I did not know a word of Portuguese, and I did not feel enthusiastic about learning it. I also wanted to teach my parents a lesson. So instead of going to school, I joined my father at the ceramics factory where he worked.
I enrolled in secondary school the following year, but I struggled to fit in. A large number of migrants from Eastern Europe lived and worked in Portugal, and we were all labeled “Ukrainians” — a monolithic group of outsiders, whose unique roots and stories were blurred together.
I instantly became known as “the Ukrainian” at my school, even though I did not know a word of the Ukrainian language. My grandmother was, in fact, from the Donetsk region, but my only ties to Ukraine were vague memories of a park in Kyiv where I had thrown a tantrum until my parents gave in and let me have my portrait taken with a Polaroid camera.
I struggled to make friends and felt disconnected from my classmates. Conversations in the hallways were filled with references I knew nothing about: movies, fashion, soccer teams. My social knowledge felt inadequate, so I turned to my achievements as a measure of self-worth. I became the best student in my class, but the internal pressure to prove myself kept growing. I had always had strong opinions, but I grew increasingly self-conscious and learned to temper my views. I did not want to draw attention to myself. Though I had mastered Portuguese, my subtle accent set me apart when all I wanted was to blend in.
Seeking to belong in my new world, I cut ties with my Moldovan past. I tore up the letters from my friends — symbols of a chapter I was trying to close — and let the memories slowly fade into the background. If I was going to carve a place for myself in this new country, I needed to leave Moldova behind.
Back to where it all began
I land in Chișinău after a 20-hour journey. It’s been six years since my last visit and 22 since I left the country. It is not just a return to a physical place but also to a part of my life that feels so distant: Will the places that once shaped my world still feel like home?
At the airport, people speak Romanian and Russian. This bilingualism is normal here; most inhabitants of Chișinău speak both languages. But to my ears, it is jarring. Growing up, we only spoke Romanian at home, and it was the language of communication of my entire village. Russian was a foreign language, and even though it was taught in my school, I never got the hang of it.
A national census in 2024 showed that 15.3 percent of Moldova’s population are Russian speakers, even though ethnic Russians comprise only 3.2 percent. While Moldova has long been multicultural, Russian influence is a relic of the Soviet era. Workers were recruited to work in the Moldovan industries from other republics, including the Russian SFSR and the Ukrainian SSR, and Russian speakers became overrepresented in urban settings.
This period also saw the enforcement of a language called “Moldovan” (or “Moldavian”), which imposed the Cyrillic alphabet on the Romanian language spoken in the country. The Soviet regime claimed it was a different dialect based on peasant speech patterns, one allegedly more representative of the population than the “literary” language used in neighboring Romania. Meanwhile, the regime encouraged loyalty to the “Soviet Fatherland.” Those who dared to criticize its policies were persecuted for nationalism and silenced through intimidation, imprisonment, or deportation.
The national revival movement of the late 1980s ultimately marked the beginning of Moldova’s separation from Moscow. This wave of civic and political initiatives coincided with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform policies, creating space for previously forbidden demands. For the first time in decades, Moldovans could openly call for national sovereignty, freedom of speech, and a return to Moldovan traditions.
Moldova’s political scene saw diversity for the first time after decades of Communist Party dominion. The events of August 27, 1989, when the Great National Assembly for Independence took place in Chișinău, changed the course of Moldova’s history. Following the demands of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, the Moldovan Supreme Soviet adopted legislation on August 31 declaring Romanian the state language and reinstating the Latin script. The following year, the parliament declared August 31 “Romanian Language Day” — a national holiday that sent a clear message about the language spoken on both banks of the River Prut.
During the first Bridge of Flowers event on May 6, 1990, residents of Romania were allowed to cross the Prut without a passport or visa and spend several hours in Soviet Moldova. More than a year later, on June 16, 1991, a second Bridge of Flowers reversed the flow. This time, the inhabitants of Moldova were able to cross the border into Romania, symbolizing brotherhood, a shared history, and a desire for reconnection.
The victory over the language was followed by demands for free elections and a declaration of sovereignty. Then, on August 27, 1991, Moldova proclaimed independence from the USSR.
Moldova’s Declaration of Independence named Romanian as the state language, and the newly elected government asserted a common Moldovan–Romanian identity. Some politicians even spoke of reunifying Moldova with its “historical motherland.”
Meanwhile, in the Transnistria and Gagauzia regions, conflicts over language and identity had erupted into violent secession.
The eastern industrial region of Transnistria declared independence in 1990, leading to a bloody two-year war with Moldova. After the conflict ended, Transnistria became a Moscow-backed separatist state. Today, this breakaway region maintains Russian, “Moldavian,” and Ukrainian as its official languages — a direct rejection of Moldova’s Romanian identity. Gagauzia, a southern region home to a Turkic minority that also declared independence in 1990, saw clashes on a smaller scale but was ultimately reintegrated into Moldova as an autonomous territorial unit four years later.
By that point, Moldova and Romania had begun to drift apart. Moldova’s 1994 referendum on remaining an independent republic marked the end of reunification as a viable political option. The vast majority of Moldovans (95 percent) voted for independence as the way forward, effectively shelving the idea of unification with Romania.
In the years following the 1994 referendum, successive Moldovan governments began reviving the narrative of separation from Romanians. They argued that the country’s people are Moldovans, their language is Moldovan, and their history and culture are distinct from those of neighboring Romania. This trend accelerated after Communist Party leader Vladimir Voronin was elected president in 2001. His party openly celebrated Soviet holidays and flaunted its Communist name and hammer-and-sickle symbol, further straining relations with Bucharest.
Twenty years later, on Romanian Language Day, President Maia Sandu took the opportunity to call for unity. “I want the Romanian language to become a common denominator for all citizens of Moldova, whatever their mother tongue, and to function here in harmony with the other languages — Ukrainian, Russian, Gagauz, Bulgarian, and others,” she said. Nevertheless, the politicization of the language and Moldovan identity remains significant to this day.
As my taxi speeds towards the City Gates — two massive brutalist structures marking the entrance to Chișinău — scenes from my childhood play in my mind. Every year, during the last week of August, I would travel with my mother to the capital’s bustling central market on a mission to buy supplies for the new school year. It was a long-awaited day, but also an exhausting race through narrow alleys where the Russian language was king and my inability to speak it left me at the mercy of judgmental stares.
Years may have passed, but the feeling of alienation remains.
Europe Day
It’s my third day in Chișinău. The clock strikes 8:00 a.m., and I hurry towards the city center.
It’s May 9, Europe Day, a celebration of unity and peace across the continent. Yet in Moldova, the day has a deeper meaning: it is a reminder of the country’s aspirations and long journey towards joining the European Union.
Just weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Moldova applied for E.U. membership, securing candidate status by June. President Sandu, an avid advocate of European integration, set 2030 as the target for the country’s official accession.
A “European village” has been set up in the Great National Assembly Square to celebrate the holiday, with a concert called “Europe is YOU!” expected to take place later in the day.
But May 9 is not just Europe Day here. A short walk away, at Stefan cel Mare Central Park, a different kind of celebration gathers pace. A steadily growing crowd carries red flags with gold-bordered stars and bouquets of flowers. They are here to hold a Victory Day march — a solemn commemoration of the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany during World War II.
I remember celebrating Victory Day as a child in my village. Every year, locals laid flowers at the monument honoring fallen soldiers in the garden of our local government building, and our community center, the House of Culture, hosted gatherings to celebrate the veterans.
Portraits of soldiers and Soviet military uniforms paint the streets of the city as the crowd heads toward the Eternitate Memorial, the country’s largest war monument. “Spasibo dedu za pobedu!” the crowd chants in rhyming Russian, “Thank you, grandfather, for the victory!”
White doves soar into the sky as a symbol of freedom, and a sorrowful song echoes through the memorial grounds: it’s the story of a man forced to work abroad and the relentless pain of missing the family he left behind. Moldova’s population has decreased by about 35 percent since 1989, falling to 2.4 million. An estimated one million Moldovans are currently working abroad, either permanently or temporarily.
Finding no answers, only questions
Over the next two weeks, I travel north and south. I visit monuments and historical landmarks. I attend religious ceremonies and literary events. I reconnect with childhood friends and former classmates.
Back in my village, I sit with a glass of homemade wine. Moldovans and their grapes have been inseparable for ages, and wine is more than just a drink — it is both a sign of hospitality and a symbol of pride and connection to our land.
I listen to the stories of those who left and those who stayed behind, those who rebuilt their lives in distant places, and those who remained on the soil of our ancestors.
— Back then, we had everything we needed. We had work. We had an order. We had food on the table. We had friends. And we had a community. We laughed and cried together. But now we are adrift. Everybody is on their own. If only I could turn back time to live that life again!
— If I could turn back time, it would be for my youth only. I do not want the misery back. We worked day and night, and we had nothing. Our children built their lives in Europe. If they are happy there, I am happy with them. Europe is their home, so it is my home and future too.
— The future? It doesn't exist. We are on the edge of the abyss. For over 30 years, we’ve been lied to by the same individuals masquerading under different political colors. The European Union is an illusion. Reunification with Romania is the only way out. We speak Romanian. We are Romanians.
Listening to these conversations, I can’t help but think that my country is like a mirror reflecting back the struggles I have been trying to ignore. Caught between two opposing worlds, Moldova is grappling with its sense of identity, just as I am. We both search for a place where our heritage can reconcile with our ambitions. Our past, shaped by powerful outside influences and a struggle for freedom, continues to impact our present.
In Moldova, my years away have made me an outsider, a stranger in a familiar land. Portugal is where my life began to unfold, but it will never feel entirely mine. I am from both places, but I belong to neither.
I returned to Moldova looking for answers, hoping to find a resolution. Instead, I leave with more questions. Where do I belong? Do I belong anywhere at all? Are we a nation? Whose nation?
“If you don’t know your past, you cannot have a future,” a childhood friend who now works in the country’s judicial system argues. But the road is fraught with uncertainty, and each move forward feels like stepping onto shifting sands.
Moldova’s struggles with its national identity cannot be easily resolved, nor can my own. Building a nation from what has always been a multiethnic and culturally diverse population has been a difficult journey. The questions we carry may never find clear answers. Perhaps it is within the ambiguity of being part of different worlds that we can begin to forge connections, to ourselves and others.
Hello, I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of The Beet. Thanks for taking the time to read our work! Our newsletter delivers underreported stories like this one to subscribers once a month. Like all of Meduza’s reporting, it’s free to read but relies on support from readers like you. Please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign.
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Story by Natalia Jidovanu for The Beet
Edited by Eilish Hart
Natalia Jidovanu’s reporting for this story was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.