Memorial plaque unveiled in honor of intellectuals who signed Letter of 66

Chisinau, 17 September /MOLDPRES/- The National Library of the Republic of Moldova, at the initiative of President Maia Sandu unveiled today the memorial plaque in honor of the intellectuals who signed the Letter of 66, 33 years after the publication of the Open Letter, in the newspaper "Public Education" ( September 17, 1988). This plaque pays homage to the intellectual elite who published an open letter in the Chisinau newspaper "Public Education" to the authorities of the former Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, calling for a return to the Latin alphabet and the declaration of Romanian as a state language.

At the beginning of the event, the director of the institution, Elena Pintilei, mentioned that in that open letter, addressed punctually to the Interdepartmental Commission formed by the Presidium of the former legislative institution in Chisinau for "studying the history and problems of Moldovan language development", he strongly advocated Soviet linguistics on the “two distinct Romance languages ​​north of the Danube”, ie in Romania and the Moldavian SSR.

By formulating this requirement, as well as by pleading to return to Latin writing and granting the status of state language to the mother tongue, the Romanian language, the entire language policy of the regime was challenged. The impact of this call was enormous, giving a strong impetus to the unleashing of civic consciousness and popular energies in support of the claims made, ending, no less than a year later, with the declaration of the mother tongue as the state language and the return to the Latin alphabet. Writers, people of culture and science, among the first signing the writer Bogdan Istru, linguists Marc Gabinschi, Arcadie Evdoșenco, Vasile Bahnaru, Alexandru Burlacu, Constantin Tănase, followed by Vladimir Beșleagă, Iraida Condrea, Valentin Mândâcanu, Emil Loteanu, Gheorghe Mal , Aurelian Silvestru, Dinu Mihail and others. The last one was signed by the late publicist Vlad Pohilă, one of the three initiators of the Letter, together with Emil Mândâcanu and the mathematician Viorel Cibotaru.

Present at the event, Minister of Culture Sergiu Prodan said that at that time, the risks of signing such a letter were extremely high, so that you could get in trouble for such initiatives.

Writers Arcadie Suceveanu and Vladimir Beșleagă, the university professors Arcadie Barbăroșie and Iraida Condrea, journalist Dinu Mihail, PhD in philology, Emil Mândâcanu and others also spoke during the event.