Paper long abstract:

Disputes over linguistic and national identity have long remained unsettled as discourses and political alliances have been succeeding each other thus redefining the relation between politics and public space in contemporary Moldova. This paper looks into how a group of few individuals, part of Moldova's new generations, became involved in actively shaping this public space. The apex of their actions was the so-called "twitter revolution", which affected the course of Moldovan political life in the spring of 2009. Drawing on the cultural archeology of the youth and individual heroism as a patriotic duty formed during the Soviet era (Pilkington 1994), this paper ethnographically details how a few individuals made use of the post-1990s concepts of "success" and of "a self-made person" to promote images of politically active and successful individuals within Moldova. The new image takes advantage of both the moral imperative constructed about the youth by decades-long Soviet propaganda and the popular images of individual success displayed in the increasingly consumer oriented society.