loss in numbers and influence followed. A vast network of local groups had allowed it to organise very effectively in 1989. It was able to attract hundreds of thousands to the Grand National Assembly in 1989, but only a few hundred to similar rallies in 1993. Its spiritual leader, the author Ion Druță, became disillusioned and settled in Moscow. Snegur and other former reform Communists, once allied to the Front, moved to consolidate the new state and their position within it. The president came out as a strong anti-unionist after Moldova's defeat in the June 1992 War of Transnistria; to retain any hope of securing Transnistria, the idea of union with Romania had to be dropped, and so the Front moved into opposition and the anti-unionist Agrarian Democrats formed government. Druc and other members, convinced by 1991-1992 that the goal of union had been lost, settled in Romania. Pan-Romanians themselves split into the FPCD and the more moderate Congress of the Intelligentsia (formed April 1993), which also included former Frontists. By the time of the February 1994 election, in which the FPCD took 7.5% of the vote, the Popular Front tendency had dissipated from the vanguard of Moldovan politics. Its legacy was further undermined three days later, when language testing for state employment, due to begin that April, was canceled; and the following month, when a referendum overwhelmingly affirmed Moldova's sovereignty. No Frontist has held a major ministerial portfolio since the Druc period; moderate pan-Romanists, though they came to eclipse the FPCD in the mid-1990s, had completely disappeared as an organised political force by the February 2001 election. Still, Roșca's PPCD, successor to the Front, continues to be represented by a small parliamentary contingent, and informal but powerful cultural links ensure that the pan-Romanist trend has retained some influence in Moldova. Notes References Alker, Hayward R.; Gurr, Ted Robert; Rupesinghe, Kumar (eds.). Journeys Through Conflict: Narratives and Lessons. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, . Beissinger, Mark R. Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State. Cambridge University Press, 2002, . Fawn, Rick. Ideology and National Identity in Post-communist Foreign Policies. Routledge, 2004, . King, Charles. The Moldovans. Hoover Press, 2000, . Kolstø, Pal. Political Construction Sites: Nation-building in Russia and the Post-Soviet States. Westview Press, 2000, . Melvin, Neil. Russians Beyond Russia: The Politics of National Identity. Continuum International Publishing Group, 1995, . Political movements in Moldova Defunct political parties