Moldova

Moldova is a small country sandwiched between Romania and the Ukraine. Historically the territory has spent a large period of time as part firstly, of the Russian Empire and then after the second world war as part of the Soviet Union. However as communism began to collapse Moldova was able to gain it's independence on August 27th, 1991. The ethnic population living in Moldova are very closely related to Romanians, indeed the 'Moldovan language' is almost identical to Romanian. However, there are also large numbers of Ukrainians and Russians living here, many of whom use Russian as their first language.