side, rallying many prominent Moldovan intellectuals, such as Grigore Vieru, Eugen Doga or Constantin Tănase, argues that Moldovans have always been Romanians, even if the modern history separated them from the rest of Romanians. Moldovenism is thus regarded as a Soviet attempt to create an artificial nationality with the goal of ethnic assimilation of Romanians living in the Soviet Union. The other side emphasizes the distinctiveness of Moldovans such as Moldovan historian and politician Victor Stepaniuc states that Moldovans have always been different from Romanians. Some claim that, for Bessarabian Moldovans, the long isolation from the rest of Romanians (between 1812–1918, after 1940) was "more than ample time [...] to develop [their] own separate national identity". After collaborating for several years with the Pan-Romanian Popular Front of Moldova, acting president Mircea Snegur moved close to the Agrarian Party of Moldova, a strong supporter of the Moldovan identity. During his visit to Bucharest in February 1991, he talked about "Romanians on both banks of the Prut River", however, during the presidential campaign in 1994, Snegur stressed in the speech Our Home the existence of a distinct Moldovan nation as the foundation of the state. The speech was immediately condemned by the intellectuals. Representatives of The Writers' Union, the Institute of Linguistics, the Institute of History, Chișinău State University, and other institutions declared the speech an affront to the true identity of the republic's ethnic majority and an attempt to further “an invention of the Communist regime” by erecting a “barrier to authentic Romanian culture”. Nevertheless, Snegur's stance helped the Agrarian Party of Moldova win an absolute majority in the Parliament. Moldovan self-consciousness A poll conducted in the Republic of Moldova by IMAS-Inc Chișinău in October 2009 presented a detailed picture. The respondents were asked to rate the relationship between the identity of Moldovans and that of Romanians on a scale between 1 (entirely the same) to 5 (completely different). The poll showed that 26% of the entire sample, which included all ethnic groups, claimed the two identities were the same or very similar, whereas 47% claimed they were different or entirely different. The results varied significantly among different categories of subjects. For instance, while 33% of the young respondents (ages 18–29) chose the same or very similar and 44% different or very different, among the senior respondents (aged over 60) the corresponding figures were 18.5% and 53%. The proportion of those