According to the last 2004 census, minorities in the Republic of
Moldova - Ukrainians, Russians, Gagauz , Bulgarians and Romanians -make up
some 24.2% of the population along the Moldovan majority. These minorities
live today in a state that can be considered a "nationalizing" state, following the
concept proposed by Rogers Brubaker, a state where the authorities are trying to
build a nation-state following the classic model of the nineteenth century. In this
state, however, several trends can be observed and there is not a fixed definition
of what the Moldovan nation is. Generally speaking, Moldovanists insist on a
separate nation and people while Romanianists insist on the unity of Moldovans
and Romanians. The article examines this civic nation at the discursive
level. Following a methodology inspired by the Vienna School of Critical
Discourse Analysis, speeches by President Vladimir Voronin while he was in
power between 2001 and 2009 are analyzed. As his discourse can be seen as
belonging to the Moldovanist inclusive tendancy, the aim is primarily to
determine which role is played by minorities in these speeches. The speeches are
then compared with the speeches by interim President of the Republic of
Moldova in 2009-2010, Mihai Ghimpu, representing the opposite Romanianist
trend. Continuing the analysis proposed by authors such as Vladimir Solonari
and Stefan Ihrig, the article demonstrates that in Moldova, despite the fact that
the country is sometimes presented as a model of a civic nation, members of
minority groups are considered tolerated "foreigners" and that the Moldovan
society in the studied period seemed to be developing, at least discursively,
without taking minorities into account.