The Declaration of Independence was signed Aug 27, 1991 on the two year anniversary of the protests that spawned the Language Laws. It confirmed the Language Laws’ “declaration of Romanian as official language and the reintroduction of the Latin alphabet, 31 August 1989”. The Declaration even said that Romanian was declared the official language in 1989, which it wasn’t. What the Laws did say was that the Moldovan SSR acknowledged Romanians were living in the USSR and there existed an “identitatea lingvistică  moldo-română.”. With this overstatement of Romania’s influence on Moldovan territory, it’s not surprising that Russophone speakers were concerned that Moldova would try to align itself with Romania as had happened between 1918-1940.  
Further looking at the Declaration of Independence, one of the justifications to be independent from the Soviet Union was the voiding of the August 1939 “Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact and its consequences for Bessarabia”.  The Declaration acknowledged “ the existence of Moldovans in Transnistria” and thereby claims rights to “part of the historical and ethnic territory of our people;”  The Declaration also points out how “the population of Bessarabia, Northern Bucovina and Herta… as well as that of the Moldavian ASSR, formed on 12 October 1924,” where not consulted when dismantled from Romania and then attached to Transnistria under the “2 August 1940 "USSR Law on the formation of the Moldavian SSR,” This 1940 union was the first time Bessarabia was joined with the people on the Eastern bank of the Dniester River since the Middle Ages when they shared a territory governed by Kievan Rus. Moldova uses the voiding of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as justification for their independence from the Soviet Union.  
The separatists of Transnistria claim this same voiding as reason they should separate from Moldova. By declaring “the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact ‘null and void’. The same declaration also denounced the forming of the MSSR and its boundaries as being illegal.”. They insist that since the Pact was the only thing “which had previously joined Pridnestrovie with Moldova, the country's declaration of independence implicitly ruled out any claim it might have to Pridnestrovian territory under international law.”. Transnistria declared themselves a separate autonomous region in 1990 as a result of the return to Latin of the Moldovan language. Spokesmen for Transnistria said the Roman alphabet was inauthentic. They also feared that Moldova would attach itself back to Romania to whom they shared neither history nor language. Moldova eventually turned down Romania’s invitation for annexation (as it had been between 1918-1940) and began promoting their own unique multi-nation identity – which included the territory of Transnistria.
Yet in 1991, Moldova’s future seemed uncertain. Their flag and anthem rallied around Romania. Moldova adopted the National Anthem, “Awaken, Romania!” which was originally written in 1848 for the uprisings at the time, and then was the national anthem of the short lived 1917-1918 Moldovan Democratic Republic.. The song’s tone is defiant and echoes a call to arms. When that anthem became the National Anthem of Romania in 1994, Moldova changed their anthem to “Our Language”. It’s 1917 author Alexie Mateevici had been the name of the literary society in 1988. Rather than a militant call, “Our Language” is a thrilled celebration of the unnamed language which is described as “a burning flame”, “the greenest leaf”, “more than holy” where it is “wept and sung perpetually/ in the homesteads of our folks.”. Mateevici was a Bessarabian that saw his region as historically unique but felt Moldova’s future should be with Romania and Romanian language. One must question the intent of a nation’s intelligentsia that chooses a particular ethnically charged song to become the anthem of a multi-ethnic state where the anthem disenfranchises 30% of the population. The majority of these disenfranchised are Russophones. Russophones have much of the country’s wealth and run Transnistria, and Transnistria “produced one third of Moldova’s industrial output and more than half of its consumer goods”.
