Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic

The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (Moldavian SSR or MSSR; Moldovan/Romanian: Република Советикэ Сочиалистэ Молдовеняскэ or Republica Sovietică Socialistă Moldovenească; Russian: Молда́вская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респу́блика Moldavskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika) was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. After the Declaration of Sovereignty on June 23, 1990 and until 23 May 1991 it was officially known as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova. From 23 May 1991 until the declaration of independence on 27 August 1991, it was renamed the Republic of Moldova whilst remaining a constituent republic of the USSR.

The Moldavian SSR was formed on August 2, 1940 from parts of Bessarabia, a region annexed from Romania on June 28 of that year, and parts of the MASSR, an autonomous republic within the Ukrainian SSR.

History

Creation

After the failure of the Tatarbunar Uprising, the Soviets set up an autonomous Moldavian ASSR on October 12, 1924 within the Ukrainian SSR on part of the territory between the Dniester and Bug rivers, as a way to prop up the propaganda effort and help a potential Communist revolution in Romania.

Socialist state

A socialist state or socialist republic (sometimes Workers' State) refers to any state that is constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. In Western usage, the term "Communist state" is often used in reference to single-party socialist states governed by parties adhering to a variant of Marxist-Leninism; however these states officially refer to themselves as "socialist states" that are in the process of building socialism and do not describe themselves as "communist" or as having achieved communism. Aside from the "Communist states", a number of other states have described their orientation as "socialist" in their constitutions.

A socialist state is to be distinguished from a multi-party liberal democratic state governed by a self-described socialist party, where the state is not constitutionally bound to the construction of socialism. In such cases, the political system and machinery of government is not specifically structured to pursue the development of socialism.

Republics of the Soviet Union

The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics (Russian: союзные республики, soyuznye respubliki) of the Soviet Union were ethnically based administrative units that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union. For most of its history, the Soviet Union was a highly centralized state; the decentralization reforms during the era of Perestroika ("Restructuring") and Glasnost ("Openness") conducted by Mikhail Gorbachev led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Overview

According to the Article 76 of the Constitution of the Soviet Union, a Union Republic was a sovereign Soviet socialist state that had united with other Soviet Republics in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Article 81 of the Constitution stated that "the sovereign rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR".

In the final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union officially consisted of fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs). All of them, with the exception of the Russian Federation (until 1990), had their own local party chapters of the All-Union Communist Party.