From the 12th to the 19th century, Romanian was usually written using a
local variant of the
Cyrillic alphabet. The earliest extant Romanian text is a 1521 letter written in such an alphabet. A variant based on the reformed
Russian civil script was first introduced in the late 18th century, and became widespread in
Bessarabia after its annexation to the
Russian Empire. The rest of the
Principality of Moldavia gradually switched to a
Latin-based alphabet, adopted officially after its union with
Wallachia that resulted in the creation of
Romania. Grammars and dictionaries published in Bessarabia before 1917, both those that used the label "Moldovan" and the few that used "Romanian", used a version of the Cyrillic alphabet, with its use continuing in Bessarabia even after the 1918 union, in order to make the publications more accessible to peasant readers. The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet was officially introduced in the early 1920s, as part of the Soviet bid to standardise the orthography of Romanian in the
Moldavian ASSR. This also further Soviet political objectives by marking a clear distinction from the Latin-based Romanian orthography introduced in Romania in the 1860s. As was the case with other Cyrillic-based languages in the Soviet Union, such as
Russian,
Ukrainian or
Belarusian, obsolete and redundant characters were dropped in an effort to simplify the orthography and boost literacy. Cyrillic was briefly abandoned for a Latin-based Moldovan alphabet (in the Moldovan version of the alphabet, compared to the Romanian version, the letter
 â was missing) during the Union-wide
Latinisation campaign in 1932. Cyrillic returned to the official orthography for Moldovan through a 1938 declaration by the Central Executive Committee of the
Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, now with an orthography more similar to standard Russian. Following the
Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, it was established as the official alphabet of the
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic until 1989, when a law returned to the standard, Latin-based, Romanian alphabet. There were several requests to switch back to the Latin alphabet, which was seen "more suitable for the Romance core of the language", in the Moldavian SSR. In 1965, the demands of the 3rd Congress of Writers of Soviet Moldavia were rejected by the leadership of the Communist Party, the replacement being deemed "contrary to the interests of the Moldavian people and not reflecting its aspirations and hopes". When the Republic of Moldova
declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, it returned to a Latin script as the official orthography for the Moldovan language. However, the breakaway
Transnistra region has retained the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet as their official alphabet. ==Description==