The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (PMSSR), also commonly known as Soviet Transnistria or simply as Transnistria, was created on the eastern periphery of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) in 1990 by pro-Soviet separatists who hoped to remain within the Soviet Union when it became clear that the MSSR would achieve independence from the USSR and possibly unite with Romania. The PMSSR was never recognised as a Soviet republic by the authorities in either Moscow or Chișinău. In 1991, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic succeeded the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. MASSR and MSSR The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic from which the PMSSR seceded was created in 1940 following the Soviet annexation of territory belonging to the Kingdom of Romania. When Bessarabia was ceded to the Soviet Union as a result of an ultimatum, it was combined with a strip of land on the left bank of the Dniester which had formed the nucleus of a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), an autonomous republic of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic with Tiraspol as its executive capital, throughout the interwar period. The newly fused territory became the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and was quickly sovietized. In this process of collectivization and "dekulakization", the left bank of the Dniester had a clear advantage: the territory had been collectivized during the First Five-Year Plan (FFYP) during the 1930s, it had enjoyed a reasonable amount of industrialisation, and boasted relatively experienced, trustworthy cadres. The MASSR had been formed on the basis of what Terry Martin has termed the Soviet "Piedmont Principle": by creating a "homeland" for Moldovans across the Romanian border, the Soviet leadership hoped to advance their claims on Romanian territory. While the role of the MASSR in the Soviet Union's eventual incorporation of this land was negligible—the Soviet ultimatum to Romania did not mention the Moldovan nation, let alone use its right to national self-determination as justification for the invasion—the former autonomous republic did provide a Soviet elite ready to assume leadership in the new union republic. Perestroika in the Moldavian SSR In the second half of the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev set the political context for the war in Moldova and redefined the political process in the union republics with a series of reforms that comprised his program for perestroika. While intended to reinvigorate the Soviet system, perestroika also undermined the strength of key institutions which provided for central control of