page_title: Demographics of Moldova
section_title: Soviet era data
hierarchical_section_title: Demographics of Moldova / Languages / Soviet era data
caption_attribution_description: English: Map from the University of Texas showing the five major ethnics groups (Romanians/Moldovans, Ukrainians, Russians, Gagauz and Bulgarians) in former Moldavian SSR in 1989, just before the collapse of USSR.
context_section_description: In the Soviet census of 1989 members of most of the ethnic groups in Moldavian SSR claimed the language of their ethnicity as their mother tongue: Moldovans (95%), Ukrainians (62%), Russians (99%), Gagauz (91%), Bulgarians (79%), and Gipsies (82%). The exceptions were Jews (26% citing Yiddish), Belarusians (43%), Germans (31%), and Poles (10%).
  In the Soviet census of 1989, 62% of the total population claimed Moldovan as their native language. Only 4% of the entire population claimed Moldovan as a second language.
  In 1979, Russian was claimed as a native language by a large proportion of Jews (66%) and Belarusians (62%), and by a significant proportion of Ukrainians (30%). Proportions of other ethnicities naming Russian as a native language ranged from 17% of Bulgarians to 3% of Moldovans (Russian was more spoken by urban Moldovans than by rural Moldovans). Russian was claimed as a second language by a sizeable proportion of all ethnicities: Moldovans (46%), Ukrainians (43%), Gagauz (68%), Jews (30%), Bulgarians (67%), Belarusians (34%), Germans (53%), Roma (36%), and Poles (24%).
caption: Ethnic map of Moldova (1989 data)
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