50 Lei As long as we live on this earth

Issued to mark the 30th anniversary of Moldovan independence, this coin takes its title from a line in "Limba noastră," the national anthem — a poem originally written by Alexei Mateevici in 1917, just months before he died of typhus at age 26. The lyric carries particular weight in Moldova, where questions of national identity, language, and the relationship with Romania have remained politically charged since the Soviet dissolution in 1991.

Mateevici wrote the poem in Romanian at a moment when Tsarist-era suppression of the language was barely lifting.