Moldavian Nationalism Runs High : Communist upheaval: Republic celebrates Armed Forces Day with an anti-Soviet rally. Elections are scheduled today.

Like the other republics of the Soviet Union, Moldavia on Friday marked Armed Forces Day as it has in the past, with quiet reminiscences of fallen soldiers and red roses left on massive military graves.

But here in the capital of the Moldavian republic, there was an unprecedented twist to the observances. Several hundred people carrying the blue, yellow and red flag of ancient Moldavia demonstrated in front of a government office building and a red granite statue of V. I. Lenin with signs that carried such slogans as “Down With the Colonialist Army” and “The Soviet Army Is the Bloodiest.”

Only a few months ago, the public expression of anti-Soviet sentiments brought a violent reaction from the authorities here. But nationalist emotions in Moldavia have reached such a high pitch in recent months that even the Communist Party leadership has begun to embrace them.

With elections being held today for the Parliament of the republic, voters are for the first time being given the option of voting for an authority other than the Communist Party. While the local legislature has in the past exercised little real authority, the strengthening of nationalist political groups seems likely to accelerate the movement toward creation of independent mini-states along the ragged edges of the Soviet Union. Parliamentary elections are also being held today in the Soviet republics of Kirghizia and Tadzhikistan.

In Moldavia, a land of 5 million people, opposition has largely crystallized around a group called the Popular Front of Moldavia, which sprang last year from a coalition of nationalist interest groups.

The Popular Front has endorsed more than 300 candidates in the election for the 380 seats in Parliament. The Popular Front is legally recognized as a mass movement, but since it is not considered a legal political party, it cannot field its own candidates.

In contrast, the Communist Party has nominated 1,588 candidates, roughly four candidates for every seat and 83% of the candidates on the ballot.

Despite what might seem like overwhelming odds, the party leadership appears convinced that the Popular Front will win the election easily, ending 50 years of Communist rule in Moldavia and putting a question mark over the republic’s future.

“We don’t expect many pleasant things out of the elections,” said Igor Tronin, the foreign news editor of Sovietskaya Moldavia, the local party newspaper. “Out of 380 seats, the front will win at least 300. I have no illusions about the future.”

In many respects, the Popular Front has been following the lead of nationalist groups in the Baltic republics such as Lithuania, where voting for a Parliament took place Saturday. While they share many of the same ideals, the Moldavians are constrained by highly emotional local issues from racing toward independence with the same speed as the Baltic States.

“If Lithuania gets independence next week,” said Iuri Rosca, foreign affairs spokesman for the Popular Front, “then Moldavia will follow, but not until two weeks later.”

Like the Baltic republics, Moldavia was incorporated into the Soviet Union at the start of World War II following Josef Stalin’s secret deal with the Nazis. Once called Bessarabia, Moldavia had been part of Russia from 1812 to 1918.

In between, however, Moldavia had been part of Romania. Most Moldavians consider themselves ethnically Romanian. They speak a language virtually identical to Romanian and believe that a Moldavian nationality was created by Stalin as an artificial barrier between the two divided peoples. But it was really the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu last December that prompted Moldavians to start thinking seriously about links with their former homeland.

The Popular Front now speaks about reunification with Romania as an eventual goal but acknowledges that many Moldavians, especially in rural areas, have long memories of tribulations under Romanian rule in the prewar years, making talk of reunification politically unpalatable at this juncture.

Instead, the Popular Front speaks mainly about achieving independence from Moscow to assert the Moldavian identity and help repair the economic damage of the last 50 years of Communist rule.

“We’re not satisfied with economic relations, we’re not satisfied with communist ideals,” said Rosca. “This country will fall apart very soon. We live in conditions of a colonial economy.”

The Popular Front maintains that the agricultural wealth of Moldavia, the smallest of the Soviet Union’s republics, is taken by the authorities at prices fixed decades ago, while imports into Moldavia from the “center” in Moscow are highly inflated. While the government maintains that Moldavia is actually a net recipient of 1 billion rubles annually in aid from the Soviet Union, the Popular Front’s arguments are extremely potent political propaganda among voters in a province that subsists on agriculture.

Leonida Lari, a Moldavian poet and political activist, maintained Saturday that because Moscow formerly dictated the republic’s political life, Moldavia had “only the illusion of sovereignty.” Lari warned of the possibility of Soviet military intervention in Moldavia and called on her compatriots to seek a peaceful transition to independence.

Demographics play a significant role in the elections, with 65% of the population being ethnic Moldavian. The two largest minorities are Ukrainians at 20% and Russians with 12%, mostly concentrated in the towns and cities, according to official statistics.

“In most rural areas, the front is absolutely guaranteed a victory by the purely mathematical distribution of the population,” said Sovietskaya Moldavia’s Tronin.

The strength of the nationalist fervor was illustrated last year when demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of people forced the government to adopt a law making Moldavian the official language of the republic and adopting Latin letters to replace the Russian Cyrillic letters that Stalin forced the people to use when writing Romanian here.

“We are Romanians--the Communists call us Moldavians, but we are Romanians,” said Mihai Ghimpu, chairman of the Popular Front’s election commission.

Indeed, one of the strongest opponents of the front in the election is a group called Unity, which represents the interests of the Russian-speaking minorities.

“There are a lot of fears and even panic among the Russian-speaking population,” said Anatoly Lisetsky, director of the Soviet history department at Kishinev University and Unity’s chairman. “Personally speaking, I’ll leave Moldavia if the front wins, if I can find a place to live.”