As a result of Gorbachov’s Glastnost policies in the 1980’s, “A literary debating society bearing the name of Moldovan poet and clergyman Alexie Mateevici—the author of a celebrated ode to the Romanian language—was founded in Chisinau in 1988.”. Through this society, an independent political organization “Moldovan Popular Front,” and a smuggled in periodical published in the Romanian alphabet, a mass movement began that resulted in the Great National Assembly and the Language Law of August 1989. The Laws announced that Moldovan will be written in the Latin script, and the government acknowledged it as stemming from a “Moldo-Romanian” linguistic identity.  
By making it an official state language of government and education and returning it to a non-Slavic alphabet, shows “the fully interconnected nature of status planning and corpus planning. For a language to be used in school and by government it requires a writing system, a spelling system,…in short, the dictionaries, grammars, and style manuals”. Fishman remarks that Moldova’s post-Soviet adjustment would be easier if there hadn’t been such rigid “forcing [of] a uniformly Russian-Cyrillic system” by the Soviet Union.  
As will be shown in the case of the breakaway zone of Transnistria, this alphabet shift lies at the crux of the territory’s split which allows much more Russian influence on Moldova today. For this paper, this split demonstrates the constructed nature of Moldova and that it is championed by the government for political purposes. In Moldova as a whole there are 70% ethnic Romanians and 15% ethnic Slavs, where as the Russian language is still the language of private business and access to a wider community. In Transnistria, only 30% are ethnic Romanians and the remaining are Russian or slavophone derived languages. Transnistria never was part of Bessarabia or Romania, and only was attached to eastern Bessarabians in 1940 with the invented Moldovan SSR which was created as a buffer between Romania and Ukraine. This Russian-Moldovan split is the point of contestation for Transnistria. 
There is a second split between Moldova and Romania. The language is really Romanian with an accent also spoken by people within Romania’s borders. These various pulls demonstrate the precarious nature of Moldova’s linguistic identity. The Russian population looks east and controls Moldova’s reliance on Russian energy and trade, whereas to the west Romania is trying to appropriate Moldova’s historical population into its own sphere and deny the Moldovan language. Moldovans are not interested in becoming Romanian, but through Romania, Moldovans have the possibility of getting a European Union passport.
As a result of the Great National Assembly, the Sep 1, 1989 “Law on the Usage of Languages in the Moldovan SSR” acknowledges that the “identity Moldovan-Romanian language actually exists” and that “Romanians live in the USSR, to make studies and…” “…the Moldavian SSR supports the aspiration of Moldavans living abroad” and that they have a right “to meet [their] cultural needs in their native language.” Furthermore, the preamble states that the “Moldavian SSR [permits the] conditions within its territory [of] the use and development of Russian as the language of communication between USSR nations and peoples of other languages nationalities living in the country.”  Title I Article 1, elaborates the “state language is the language Moldovan, who works on the Latin alphabet”. The Language Law also grants translations when necessary of official state documents for non-Moldovan speaking citizens, i.e. Russians, Gaugazians, Ukrainians, and Bulgarians.
