SUMMARY:

In their article, which concludes the forum on Moldovian history and history writing, A. Cusco and V. Taki embark on a task of critical reflection on contemporary development of history writing in Moldova in connection with the historiographic legacy of competing national and imperial projects and the politics of identity and general political development after 1991. The authors start their deconstruction of the national and imperial historiographic canons with placing “Bessarabia’s” history in the context of the history of the Russia’s empire collapse, the emergence of the Soviet state and its various transformation, and the shifts that took place in the state’s policies toward the “national question.” Focusing on the Soviet period, Cusco and Taki map the debates about the status of the Moldovian language, in which numerous references to the history of the people and territory occupy a pivotal place. The exhaustion of “indigenization” policies accounts for Romanianization of intelligentsia in the late Soviet period. Focusing on the post-Soviet period, the authors investigate the peculiarities of the reception of Romanian historiographic canons in the post-Soviet Moldova and relate the debates about the historical definition of nationhood to the present day politics’ fluctuations.