Moldova
country in Eastern Europe
Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, with an area of 33,843 km2 (13,067 sq mi) and a population of 2.38 million. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised breakaway state of Transnistria lies across the Dniester river on the country's eastern border with Ukraine. Moldova is a parliamentary democratic republic with its capital in Chișinău, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre.
Most of Moldovan territory was a part of the Principality of Moldavia from the 14th century until 1812, when it was ceded to the Russian Empire by the Ottoman Empire (to which Moldavia was a vassal state) and became known as Bessarabia. In 1856, southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavia, which three years later united with Wallachia to form Romania. Still, Russian rule was restored over the entire region in 1878. During the 1917 Russian Revolution, Bessarabia briefly became an autonomous state within the Russian Republic. In February 1918, it declared independence and then integrated into Romania later that year following a vote of its assembly. The decision was disputed by Soviet Russia, which in 1924 established, within the Ukrainian SSR, a Moldavian autonomous republic on partially Moldovan-inhabited territories to the east of Bessarabia.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Moldova” as country in Eastern Europe. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as country in Eastern Europe. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q217. VIAF identifies the subject as 152364951. The Library of Congress control number is n90720192. Authority coordinates are 47.250, 28.517. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1812, 1856, 1878 and 1917.
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This entry incorporates text from “Moldova” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.