 At the same time, the Moldavian ASSR, where ethnic Romanians were a plurality, was disbanded, and just under half of its territory was joined with the remaining territory of Bessarabia to form the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, coterminous with the present-day Moldova.Although Soviet troops were forced out in 1941 by the invasion of Axis forces, and Romania re-established its administration, the Soviet Union reconquered and reannexed the area in February–August 1944.The official Soviet policy (1940–1941, 1944–1989) also stated that Romanian and Moldovan were two different languages and, to emphasize the distinction, Moldovan was written using a special Cyrillic alphabet (the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet) – unlike Romanian, in which Romanian Cyrillic alphabet was replaced by Romanian Latin alphabet in 1860s.