We entered the last month of 2021. The winter holidays knock on our doors. But December is not just the month of carols, December is also marked by two other events – both essential for us and both are political: the Great Union of Alba Iulia and the disappearance of the Soviet Union.

Another anniversary has passed: the 103rd anniversary of the Great Union of Alba Iulia – an epochal event, marked with golden letters in the History of Romanian People. On December 1, 1918, Romania lived its fulfilled destiny and its Golden Dream from Mihai Viteazul onwards, after the Union of all Romanian provinces (Bessarabia, March 27, 1918), (Bucovina November 28, 1918), Transylvania, Banat, Crişana, and Maramureş (December 1, 1918) within the same national state – Greater Romania. December 1, through the essence and scope of the event that took place in 1918, was and continues to be the most brilliant Lesson in Romanian History, which deserves and must be known by heart, from sea to sea, as a board of the assembly and transmitted, testamentary, from generation to generation … The Great Union of Alba Iulia is not a calendar event of a single consumption. The Great Union of Alba Iulia is an event that must be consumed daily, in order to be recovered, rehabilitated, and resumed in order to be reborn, after what happened to Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Maramureș as a result of their reoccupation by Soviet Russia in 1940 and after 1944. History cannot have just the past.

On December 1, which since 1990 is also Romania’s National Day, in Bucharest, Alba Iulia, in all of Romania, beyond it and in the entire Romanian world, was a holiday. Romania took its military troops to the parade in Bucharest (a sign of honor of the Event and the Forerunners of the Union), and Alba Iulia reopened the gates of the Great Union for the messages of Romanianness from all over the world. The Bessarabians went there, the Transnistrians too. In Bucharest, but also in Alba Iulia. The event did not go unnoticed in Chișinău either, but without the magnitude of the ’90s (except for the events organized by the Romanian Embassy in Moldova), although, according to polls, the number of pro-Union people in Moldova is growing, no matter what the statistics say. . That would be a remark. Another remark would be that in the political environment in Chișinău, discussions on the Union are rare, or it is considered a thing of the past. There are a few more considerations. One: pro-union parties (de facto or formal) have fallen (for whatever reason) from the front lines of Chișinău’s political life, and those who have taken their place either avoid the subject or dislike it. Two: some of the leaders of the political right, after developing, can no longer afford to speculate on the subject of Union with Romania, since, in the 30 years since we broke away from the USSR, they have not done anything to get closer to Romania. And three: in Moldova, although we have officially registered 70 political parties, we do not have any purely pro-Romanian party, which would be consecrated to the Ideal of the Union in a real way, not formally.

The Liberals were the last, after the Christian‑Democratic People’s Party, to lose the primacy for the pro-Romanian party title, after entering the government with the Democratic Party, together with Vladimir Plahotniuc. Uncovered politically, the most beautiful lesson in Romanian history risks being left unlearned until the end. Not by everybody, obviously. But by those who suffered for many years, confused and scared with the myth of Romanian bourgeois-landlord occupation, from agrarians to socialists. The ”right” has long lacked a party devoted to the interests of the country and an ambitious, fascinating, credible, and vocal leader. And a Country Council. The last parliamentary elections showed as clearly as possible how weak the national right is in Moldova. And why is this happening? And why are we afraid to make one out of two banks of the Prut?

On December 25, 1991, the USSR ceased to exist – the world’s second-largest political and military power after World War II. Soviet Russia had lost the American Cold War. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, resigned on the same day. On December 26, Moscow recognized the independence of the former union republics and the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The history of 1918 is practically repeated when after the Russian revolution of February 1917 the dismemberment of the Russian Empire began, the peoples of the Empire claiming their right to self-determination. Two months after the revolution, the Moldavian National Party was established in Bessarabia, on October 23-27 the Country Council was formed as a legislative body, and the autonomy of Bessarabia was proclaimed, on December 2 the Democratic Republic of Moldova was proclaimed, which on January 24, 1918, proclaimed its independence, and on March 27, the Country Council votes to unite with Romania. That was it. The whole procedure from the dismemberment of the Russian Empire to the Union of Bessarabia with Romania took 13 months. That was in 1918. What was in 1991 and beyond does not compare. In 1991, in Chișinău, the Parliament voted for Moldova’s Independence from the USSR. It could have been considered as the first step towards Romania. It’s been 30 years. Compare it to the 13 months in 1918. Aren’t we too late with step two? Isn’t it really clear that those who don’t want to hear about the Union with Romania are the ones who steal from us the most? What does Independence do for us? We have a Constitution, and what? We have the Parliament, the Government, the Presidency, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Courts of Justice … And what’s their value for us besides having them?