The PȚB was officially founded in Chișinău on August 23, 1918, some months after Bessarabia's union with Romania. It was the fusion of two groups that has previously existed in the Moldavian Democratic Republic. Many cadres, including Halippa, had belonged to the "Moldavian Bloc", which represented Romanian nationalism faction within "Sfatul Țării", the republican legislature. The Bloc itself was a relic of the National Moldavian Party (PNM), which had existed after the February Revolution—when Bessarabia was still part of the Russian Republic. According to historian Andrei Cemârtan: "The members themselves made no effort to conceal that only the name had changed, meaning more precisely that the National Moldavian Party had become the Peasants' Party, as circumstances had changed."