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| | Moldova Language, Religion, and Culture |
 | | The Moldovan dialect of Romanian, spoken by the majority of the people of Bessarabia, was viewed by both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an impediment to controlling the local populace. |
 | | Although both Romanian written in the Cyrillic alphabet (that is, "Moldavian") and Russian were the official languages of the Moldavian SSR, only 62 percent of the total population claimed Romanian as their native language in 1979. |
 | | The new Moldovan constitution, adopted August 27, 1994, states that Moldovan, written in the Latin script, is designated as the official language, but provisions were made for Russian and other languages to be used in areas of minority concentrations. |
| www.country-studies.com /moldova/language,-religion,-and-culture.html (568 words) |
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