Valentina B. Iepuri and Donald L. Dyer
 

          This paper will explore socio-political changes in the former Soviet Republic of Moldova as they are reflected in matters of language in present-day Moldova. An overview of attitudes toward the Russian language in Moldova, its status, role, and functions after the fall of the Soviet Union will be given. Attention will be paid to the lexical and semantic evolution of Russian, the influence of Moldovan/Romanian on Russian, and the specific “national coloring” which Russian has developed because of inter-cultural and inter-language contacts with Moldovans in the country. This paper will also provide fresh data and examples of the use of the Russian language in Moldova. Observations and conclusions will be based on a comparative study of explanatory dictionaries of Moldovan/Romanian and Russian and a study of the language of Russian print media in Moldova, as well as economic and socio-political texts and their translations into Russian.