 Other groups, such as Gagauz, Jews, and Germans also settled in the region during the Russian rule..The Tsarist policy in Bessarabia was in part aimed at denationalization of the Moldavian element by forbidding after the 1860s education and Liturgy in Romanian.However, the effect was an extremely low literacy rate (in 1897, 18% for males and 4% for females) rather than denationalization.