Moldavia

Moldavia (Romanian Moldova), former principality, located in southeastern Europe in what is now Romania, Ukraine, and Moldova. At its largest, Moldavia stretched from the Dniester River in the east to the Siret River near the Carpathian Mountains in the west. From north to south it extended from Bukovina to the Black Sea. The eastern half of the principality came to be known as the region of Bessarabia.

Moldavia emerged as an independent principality in the mid-14th century. In 1512 it became tributary to the Ottoman Empire. Early in the 18th century the region was ruled by Ottoman-appointed Greek rulers, known as phanariots. Moldavia was occasionally occupied by Russian forces during the 18th and 19th centuries, and in 1812 Russia acquired Bessarabia. In 1856 the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Crimean War between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, restored southern Bessarabia to Moldavia. Moldavia and Walachia merged in 1859, assuming the name Romania in 1862.

In 1878 Russian forces reannexed southern Bessarabia, and all of Bessarabia remained part of the Russian Empire until 1917, when the imperial government collapsed. In 1918 Bessarabia united with Romania. In 1940 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) occupied Bessarabia and made it part of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). Romania retook Bessarabia in 1941, but the USSR regained it in 1944. When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the Moldavian and Ukrainian SSRs became the independent republics of Moldova and Ukraine. The western half of the former principality of Moldavia is a region in Romania still known as Moldavia.