The administration of Gagauzia will stage a number of festivities to celebrate the ordinary anniversary of the Gagauz Republic that was proclaimed on August 19, 1990. The press service of the autonomous unit’s Executive Committee has told IPN’s reporter that celebrations will take place in the districts of Gagauzia on August 18, while the main festivity and the festive concert will be held in Comrat the next day.

Among the activities that will be staged in the region’s settlements are sports competitions, meetings with participants in the formation of Gagauzia, book exhibitions and people’s celebrations in the central squares. Moldova’s administration, ambassadors working in Chisinau and activists of the public and political spheres were invited to the August 19 festive concert.

By a decision of the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia of 2000, August 19 was declared an official holiday and a nonworking day in the autonomous territorial unit.

On August 19, 1990, the first Congress of the people of the southern settlements of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, inhabited mainly by Gagauz people, adopted the statement on the liberty and independence of the Gagauz people from Moldova, which proclaimed the creation of the Gagauz Republic in the composition of the USSR. Two days later, the presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic invalidated the decision on the creation of the Gagauz Republic in an extraordinary meeting. On December 23, 1994, Moldova’s Parliament adopted the Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia by which the southern region was given autonomous powers as part of the Republic of Moldova.