title: Russian-Moldovan Relations after the Collapse of the Soviet Union
abstract: After the break-up of the Soviet Empire a newborn Republic of Moldova faced a series of challenges, one of which was creating the political and economic foundations that would allow it to become the sustainable European country. It proved to be an extremely difficult task. Indeed, at the beginning of the 1990's Moldova was widely known as the poorest and the least economically stable country on the old continent. During the first years of independence the Moldovan leaders realized that the great