included a recognition that Moldovan and Romanian were the same language. In essence, the laws enshrined Romanian as Moldova’s official language. The country’s clocks were set to Bucharest time; the phantom of reunification flickered for a few weeks until
realpolitik crushed it. Having engineered the overthrow of Nicolae Ceau
escu and manoeuvred Ion Iliescu, his old crony from Moscow State University student politics in 1950 and 1951, into the presidency of Romania, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev leaned on the Romanian president not to push the reunification issue. A few months later Gorbachev was gone, Moldova’s post-independence momentum had been lost, and the old hierarchies and old faces had settled down to the business of ruling the country in the old ways under different banners.
