Fight for preserving Romanian language did not stop in postwar period

The member of the commission for studying and assessing the consequences of the Communist regime in Moldova, professor Gheorghe Negru said the fight for preserving the Romanian language did not stop in the postwar period and many persons were persecuted and remained without jobs because of their convictions in that period, Info-Prim Neo reports. The archives of the Security and Information Service reveal serious violations of the legislation and cases of persecution of the persons who said Moldovan is in fact the Romanian language. Hundreds of reports on such cases will be made public. Gheorghe Negru said an extraordinary case happened in the 1970s, when Bessarabian linguists returned from an international symposium held in Iasi. The delegation was headed by the director of the Language and Literature Institute of the Academy of Sciences Nicolae Corlateanu. He was later questioned and persecuted for not opposing the identification of the Moldovan language with the Romanian one. It was a great scandal as the Moldovan linguists rendered reports concerning Romanian, not Moldovan. The case was discussed by the Central Committee and Corlateanu was dismissed. His colleagues were also persecuted. The file contains more than 30 pages. Another file examined by Gheorghe Negru concerns a judge who worked in one of the southern districts of the country. He said openly that he spoke Romanian and that he was Romanian. There were informers everywhere and they told the administration of the district. The case reached the presidium of the Supreme Soviet. One member of the presidium discussed personally with the judge. ”Campaigns against bourgeois nationalists had been conducted since the 1940s and after the war. After the 1960s, the pro-Romanian manifestations became more evident,” Gheorghe Negru said. According to him, the well-known First Secretary Ivan Bodiu often informed about nationalism-related cases and pro-Romanian manifestations of nationalism. Gheorghe Negru said the fight for defending the Romanian language has never stopped in this territory, it only took different forms.