Throughout the modern history of the Romanian space, academic institutions have played an essential role in consolidating national identity, standardizing the Romanian language, cultivating national history, and forming Romanian political unity.
The Romanian Academy, founded in 1866, was established as an institution of cultural unity, expressed through language and history, and the presence, from the very beginning, of three representatives from Bessarabia among its founding members confirms its integrative role and mission to ensure the unity of the Romanian people.
Alongside the Bessarabian Romanians, scholars and writers from all Romanian historical provinces became members of the Academy’s first nucleus, so that unified cultural Romania was created in 1866-1867, long before the existence of politically united Romania in 1918. In other words, the Academy had from the start a vocation for the unity of the Romanians.
In 2026, the Romanian Academy will celebrate 160 years of existence, an occasion to reflect on a historic mission fulfilled with dignity: that of being the guardian of identity, through language, culture, and Romanian collective memory. Throughout its existence, the Romanian Academy has been not only a scientific institution – the supreme forum of intellectual recognition and a privileged space for fundamental research – but also a true repository of the nation’s conscience, capable of transcending time and continuously upholding the truth.
The Academy of Sciences of Moldova, created in 1961 in a dramatic historical context, marked by the consequences of the Second World War and the forced incorporation of Bessarabia into the Soviet Union, had a complex and often very difficult mission.
Despite the ideological constraints of the time, this institution managed to preserve, develop, and pass on to future generations the scientific and cultural tradition of the people located in the eastern half of the old Romanian land of Moldavia. Today, despite the vicissitudes related to harmful propaganda, it is known worldwide that the identity of the people on both banks of the Prut River is Romanian, and the two sister Academies have had and continue to have a fundamental role in defending this truth. Through rigorous research, reflected in prestigious academic publications, through scientific debates, and through publicly assumed positions, they defend the essential values of the people: the Romanian language, history as it actually was, national culture, and a shared future. Aware that the path to political unity of the people, given the current geopolitical conditions, is a complicated one, the Romanian Academy and the Academy of Sciences of Moldova have opted for a strategy of lasting rapprochement, based on institutional cooperation and joint actions.
Three years ago, the two academies developed a Joint Action Plan, which aims to jointly celebrate national holidays – National Culture Day, Romanian Language Day – as well as other symbolic moments in the identity calendar. A striking example of this cooperation is the official declaration of 2025 as ‘The Year of Mihai Eminescu,’ at the joint initiative of the two academies. This gesture holds not only commemorative value but also symbolic significance: Eminescu is the spiritual bond of Romanians everywhere, and this joint recognition represents a reaffirmation of unity in language, culture, and destiny.
At the same time, the selection of personalities from both banks of the Prut as members of both academies reflects a recognition of each individual’s merits, as well as an institutional will to build a common scientific and cultural space, in which administrative borders are effectively secondary in relation to truth, value, and our unity. Science, by its nature, has no boundaries. In the Romanian space, neither does culture, being Romanian on both banks of the Prut. In this context, the ongoing rapprochement of the two academies is not a temporary act, but a natural process, a demand of the times. This rapprochement also fits organically within the European trajectory of the Republic of Moldova, which favors institutional harmonization, the opening of borders, and the reconnection of historically and culturally fragmented spaces.
In the long run, the de facto disappearance of the artificial border along the Prut is not just a political aspiration, but the result of a lengthy process of spiritual, cultural, and scientific reunification. In this process, the Romanian Academy and the Academy of Sciences of Moldova play the role of architects of lasting unity, laying the foundation on which, at the appropriate historical moment, the political unification of all Romanians can also be achieved. Thus, through responsibility, continuity, and fidelity to the truth, the two academies – the Romanian Academy and the Academy of Sciences of Moldova – reflect the ancient unity of the Romanian people and build, day by day, a new one, toward the triumph of truth, toward the glory and spiritual prosperity of Romanians everywhere. Acad. Ioan-Aurel POP, President of the Romanian Academy
Acad. Ion TIGHINEANU, President of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova
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