The article aims to reveal how the Romanian language (with its then name, the „Moldovan language”) functioned within the collective bodies of the State University of Moldova (then the State University of Chisinau). The interest in this period and institution is motivated by the fact that the years 1988–1989 represent the peak of the public manifestation of the ideals of the Moldovan citizens for a Romanian national identity and a Romanian language with a functional Latin alphabet on the territory of the Moldovan Republic. It is the period immediately preceding the declaration of independence of our country, which came as a last step, after a major legislative change - the switch to the Latin alphabet for the „Moldovan” language. We started from the assumption that the republic’s first-ranked higher education institution at that time and the only university at that time, the other higher education institutions having the status of institute, should have been in the vanguard of events, providing institutional and practical support in the implementation of the new provisions. The analysis of the archive materials, however, demonstrated that the Soviet higher school was one of the mechanisms of denationalization and ideologization in the process of creating the Soviet man, i.e. remaining refractory to the identity options of the patriotic intelligentsia.