The Moldavians are the native inhabitants of the Republic of Moldova and historical Moldova, the territory on the East of modern Romania (8 counties) and some areas situated in Ukraine (Northern Bukovina, South Bessarabia), that belonged to the Moldavian State in the past. The above-mentioned state existed for 500 years, occupying an area of about 100,000 square kilometers, after that it was governed in a variety of forms - from compact residence of the Moldavians in the Russian province to the state entities with varying degrees of independence (MDR, MASSR, MSSR). Finally, it transformed to the modern sovereign state of the Republic of Moldova. Nowadays, 36% of the historical territory of Moldova is the part of the Republic of Moldova, 46% is part of Romania and 18% of Ukraine.

According to the statistics, the world population of the Moldavians is more than 10.3 million people. Thus, the historical territory of the former Moldavian state is the home for more than 8.87 million of the Moldavians: 2,741,849 people live in Moldova (this number includes 177,382 of the Moldavians, who are residents of the eastern regions of Moldova), about 5.5 million of people live in Romania, about 0.45 million of the Moldavians live in Ukraine.

The Moldavian Diasporas exist in many countries, where 1.5 million of the Moldavians live on temporary or permanent basis. According to the official data, there are large Moldavian communities in Russia (172,330 people), in Italy (68 591 people), in Portugal (21,147 people), in Kazakhstan (19,458 people). The Moldavians live in such countries as Belarus, Spain, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Tajikistan, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, France, Greece, Germany, Israel, Poland, the UK, the U.S., Turkey, Hungary, Uzbekistan, Cyprus, etc.

The Moldavians in the Republic of Moldova

According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Moldova, based on the 2004 census, in ethnic structure of the population of the Republic of Moldova the Moldavians conclude the majority of the population - 75.8% of the total number, representing an increase of 5.9% compared with the census in 1989. Along with the Moldavians, the population of Moldova is represented by the Ukrainians - 8.4%, the Russians - 5.9%, the Gagauzes - 4.4%, the Romanians - 2.2%, the Bulgarians - 1.9% and other nationalities - 1.0%. 0.4% of the residents of country didn’t specify their nationality.

The population dynamics of the main ethnic groups (according to the census)

The national structure of the population reflects the changes that have been in evidence in our society during the last 15 years. Among those changes we should specially mention the intensification of the population emigration process. During the census in 2004 year 78.8% of the country's population specified the language of their nationality as their mother tongue (first language they learned in early childhood), and 20.8% defined other language that is different from their national language.

78.4% of the citizens of Moldova specified the Moldavian as the native language, 18.8% named the Romanian, 2.5% considered the Russian to be their native language and 0.3% of the population mentioned other languages. 64.1 % of the Ukrainians specified the Ukrainian as the native language, while 31.8% of the Ukrainians reported that Russian is their native language. 6.2% of the Ukrainians, 4.4% of the Russians, 1.9% of the Gagauzes, 2.2% of the Romanians and 7.1% of the Bulgarians confessed that they usually speak the Moldavian language.