During the entire period of Soviet rule, Moldovan speakers were encouraged to learn the Russian language as a prerequisite for access to higher education, social status and political power. Transfers of territory and population movements, including deportations of locals and state-encouraged immigration from the rest of the USSR, shifted the ethnic and linguistic makeup of the republic. By the late 1970s, the number of Russian speakers in the Moldavian SSR had greatly increased. These changes contributed to the proliferation of Russian loanwords in the spoken Moldovan.