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| Veaceslav Craciun | |
The Our Language Day passed unnoticeably in Gagauzia. No festive meetings and concerts were held in the Autonomous Territorial Unit and the local administration didn’t even bother to congratulate the population on this occasion. These are arguments in favor of the opinion that the Gagauz people do not know and do not accept the Romanian language, which is widely spread in Moldova. But this is mainly a stereotype. First and foremost, the Gagauz population has never been hostile to the Romanian language. If one wonders who is to blame for the fact that Gagauzia remains a region where Romanian is spoken the least, this should look for answers in Chisinau first of all.
“Moldovan volapük”
When the Gagauz colonists moved from the Balkans to south Bessarabia at the end of the 18th century and the start of the 19th century, they settled on rather unpopulated territories, having as neighbors, besides Moldovans, Bulgarians, Germans, Ukrainians, Albanese people and others who formed a varied ethnic-linguistic landscape. Did the Gagauz people use the language of the largest ethnic group as a means for communicating with the people around in such conditions?
We can affirm this when we speak at least about the Gagauz villages that formed part of the Cahul and Ismail counties of the Principality of Moldavia.
As to the rest of the Gagauz people, who remained within the borders of the Empire all the time, a particular picture of the presence of the Moldovan language in their life is provided by the researches of Russian scientist Valentin Moshkov, who visited several Gagauz villages with an expedition at the end of the 19th century.
In his work “Languages of Bessarabian Gagauz people”, which represented a separate chapter of the book of another Russian ethnographer of German origin Vasilii Radlov, “Samples of people’s literature of the Turkish populations”, Moshkov noted that “in such an ethnographic diversity of the Bessarabian population, each individual should know at least two languages, but there can also be met persons who know three languages”.
And then: “It is clear that this polylingual mass needs a common language, a volapük that would be understood by everyone. Until recently, the role of this volapük was played by the language of the dominant population – Moldovan – and Russian started to also occupy a place recently owing to the schools, but this advances slowly”.
Moshkov wrote down his observations at the end of the 19th century, but the book was printed in 1904. The situation until the “Romanian period” actually didn’t suffer essential changes and the Moldovan language could be used by the Gagauz people in business and trade.
22 years of “efficient training” and Soviet nothingness
The positon of the language in the Gagauz communities changed radically in the interwar period when Bessarabia formed part of the Kingdom of Romania. During 22 years (which is a shorter period than the independence years), several generations of Gagauz children, mainly boys, studied at least four grades in Romanian. Many of the Gagauz people older than 80 remember very well the Romanian language.
When World War II ended and the Soviet power was established in the region, Romanian moved to the second place not only because of the appearance of a contraposition between “Moldovan” and “Romanian”, but also following the diminution of the role of this language in the life of the Gagauz people. The domination of the Gagauz language in family and informal communication and of the Russian language in education and secretariat work simply left no room for a third language.
Nevertheless, even if the number of Gagauz people who knew Romanian/Moldovan in the Soviet period declined vertiginously, it would be right to speak about the presence of Romanophobia. Many representatives of the Gagauz intellectuality in that period knew Romanian very well. The Gagauz people could study the works of Creangă, Eminescu and other Romanian classical writers that were translated by Nicolai Tanasoglu and Nicolai Baboglu. The Romanian literature was popularized by Fiodor Angheli, famous Moldovan diplomat and writer of Gagauz origin, until his death in 2014. But this is actually the history of recent times when the Romanian language’s position in Gagauzia is ambiguous.
Want, but do not know
In 1994, Moldova’s Parliament adopted the law on the special legal status of Gagauz-Yeri that provides that Moldovan, alongside the Gagauz and Russian languages, is the official language of the autonomous unit. Even in the absence of special researches, it is highly improbable that someone will dispute the fact that Moldovan is the most vulnerable in the region.
In three towns and 23 villages, there are only two schools teaching in Romanian. The Gagauz children’s knowledge of Romanian is limited to the school program and cannot be developed in the absence of a communication environment. This does not yet mean that the locals do not want to study the Romanian language and sociological researches prove this.
In 2016, the Institute for Public Policy conducted a study of the integration of the ATU Gagauz-Yeri and Taraclia district into society in the Republic of Moldova. The results confirm the general impression that the Gagauz people know Romanian insufficiently, but admit that they should know it.
Thus, according to the study, 48.4% of the surveyed inhabitants of Gagauzia named Russian and almost 45% the Gagauz language as communication language in the family. Moldovan/Romanian is spoken at home by only 2.6%. Answering the question if the children should know the official language, 77.9% of those polled gave an affirmative answer.
The answers given by the Gagauz respondents to another question should also be analyzed. Asked to say what should be done for the Moldovan citizens who do not know the official language to study it, the respondents mainly answered: the official language should be taught in all the localities; training at school should be improved, and the number of lessons of Romanian at school should be increased. State financing is needed to do this, at least in the case of the last two answers. This is a persisting problem in Moldova. The authorities made it clear that the people in Gagauzia should know the official language, but offer no support to them in this regard.
“There is no money, but you should learn”
Several years ago, there was the perception that Moldova reviewed the approach to this subject. There was adopted the Government’s work program for 2016 – 2018 providing that the official and Gagauz languages will be taught in Gagauz-Yeri under a long-term program.
The year 2018 is close to an end, but the promised program has neither been approved nor implemented.
First deputy Governor of Gagauzia Vadim Ceban, speaking on the public TV channel of the region on August 27, related that he discussed the prospects of this program with Minister of Education, Culture and Research Monica Babuc and learned that the Ministry attaches importance to this program, but more about it could be said after the next year’s parliamentary elections.
In contemporary Gagauzia, the interest in the Romanian language increases. Many Gagauz young people and their parents realize that the mastering of the official language is not an abstract ”duty”, but a competitiveness factor and a factor of professional development. The Gagauz families’ interest in enrolling their children at the two “Romanian” lyceums also reveals this. Only Moldova’s policy remains unchanged and reminds of the well-known dialog of the Russian Premier with pensioners from Crimea: “There is no money, but keep it up”.
P.S. To avoid unproductive discussions, the apparent difficulty in correctly naming the official language was substituted with the arbitrary alternation of the names “Moldovan” and ”Romanian”. The given approach allows the readers to name the language as they like, in accordance with their own perception of the given subject.
Veaceslav Craciun, Comrat
IPN publishes in the Op-Ed rubric opinion pieces submitted by authors not affiliated with our editorial board. The opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily coincide with the opinions of our editorial board.
