The article deals with a comparative analysis of «Moldavian question» in Bessarabia in late XIX and early XX century. Bessarabia was an object of symbolical competition of Russian Empire and Romanian national state. The comparison of Bessarabian case with other «national questions» in Russia shows that the Moldavians had complex position in the ethno-cultural hierarchies and their national movement demonstrated resemblance with the nationalisms of both «western» and «eastern» national borderlands of Russian Empire. In Romanian national imagination and policy Bessarabia played smaller role as compared with Transilvania and Bucovina.