Back in the USSR

Tanya nervously dials the telephone, hopeful that she will connect with the brother she has not heard from in two weeks. Sasha only lives 50 miles away, but he might as well be on another planet… or at least in another time. After a few expectant minutes, Tanya slams down the receiver; service to Sasha’s city is still out, disconnected weeks ago by order of the government.

Tanya is one of many citizens caught up in the madness engulfing the Republic of Moldova. The chaos following its 1992 quasi-civil war with the breakaway region of Transdniester has left families out of touch from bouts of severed communications, while a jittery new border is defended by gun-toting militiamen. The situation adds insult to injury: the specter of recent Balkan conflicts has left foreign investors reluctant to consider Moldova, ensuring that it remains the poorest country in Europe.

Unless you are a connoisseur of fine European wine (Queen Elizabeth prefers Purcari, one of Moldova’s best) it is not likely that you will have ever even heard of Moldova. About the size of Maryland, the nation is part of the Eastern European region known as Bessarabia – considered by many the northern terminus of the Balkans, and has been a political football for over a century. Historically inhabited by Romanian speaking peoples, it was part of Romania until the Soviet Union annexed it at the end of the Second World War and turned it into one of the USSR’s 15 republics. Forty-five years later, when the USSR disintegrated, the region declared its independence as the Republic of Moldova. It is a measure of the nation’s history over the past six decades that many of the country’s elderly residents, even though they may have never left their home village, have held three different nationalities during their lifetimes: Romanian, Soviet, and Moldovan.

In Soviet Moldova, as in all non-Russian regions of the USSR, Moscow use forced Russification to consolidate its power and influence on this distant frontier. Romanian speaking Moldovans were shipped to other parts of the USSR, while ethnic Russians were transported into the region. The Soviets also took advantage of Moldova’s forward location in Europe to establish an important military base there. The stronghold was a stockpile for weapons and ammunition, along with a cadre of troops, and served as a marshalling point for reserves in the eventuality of conflict with NATO. The soldiers stationed in Moldova became the Soviet 14th Army. The proximity of a Soviet military base, coupled with Moldova’s temperate climate, made this southern corner of the USSR a favorite retirement destination for aging Russians, especially those who had served here in the military.

The plan worked well for half a century. Most locals became bilingual in Russian and Romanian, and Moldova lived in ethnic domestic harmony, albeit under the watchful eye of Moscow. Trouble only began to brew when the Soviet Union crumbled.

After Moldova declared its independence in 1991 there was serious talk of doing the historically logical thing and reuniting with Romania. Yet for many residents – ethnic Russians in particular – the idea of becoming Romanian citizens held no appeal. So it was that Moldovans who opposed reunification with Romania (although it was simply being discussed, not planned), under the leadership of former Soviet technocrat Igor Smirnov, took preemptive action. In 1992, they declared their own republic between the Dniestr (Nistru) River and the Ukrainian border.

The Pridnestrovian-Moldovan Republic, known as Transdniester, declared its desire to stay within the orbit of Moscow’s influence, embraced much of the Soviet lifestyle, and began forming militias. The Moldovan government in Chisinau moved to quash the rebellion. It might have succeeded, had not Transdniester received considerable help from a sympathetic 14th Army still stationed in the region. The ensuing civil war left more than 1,000 Moldovans dead before Russia “officially” intervened and placed “peacekeeping” troops between the warring factions. A stalemate resulted, creating a de facto nation that looks a lot like the former USSR in miniature.

Although not officially recognized by any government or the United Nations, Transdniester mints its own money, prints its own postage stamps, and has its own ragtag military. Igor Smirnov, a Russian metal worker originally from Kamchatka, has been Transdniester’s only leader. His administration holds on to power by wrapping itself in a thin veneer of nostalgia. Two-thirds of Transdniester’s 750,000 residents are senior citizens. The youth are all but gone: over 700,000 have departed Moldova in search of a better income and a more secure future. The elderly Transdniesterians yearn for the “golden days” of the USSR, when they could lead quaint but dependable lives in retirement, when their pension could at least buy their groceries. But that reality is a long way off. The average retiree receives $18 a month from the government, even though the Smirnov regime has determined that $45 is the monthly survival minimum. This largely explains why 80% of the elderly are still employed, most in back breaking agriculture work, and why they embrace Smirnov’s aspiration to return to the halcyon days of communism.

In an attempt to ease the recovery from the post-communist hangover, Soviet symbols have been smashed, removed or relegated to museums in most of Eastern Europe. In Tiraspol, the capital of Transdniester, such symbols have been freshly painted and polished. A towering statue of Lenin keeps watch over the parliament building (along with the ever present police), and the hammer and sickle are incorporated into most official seals and monuments. The press is strictly controlled, functioning as a mouthpiece for pro-Transdniesterian propaganda, and foreign visitors are required to register with local authorities within three hours of entering the rebel republic. It is truly the closest one can get to visiting the USSR without a time machine.

Tanya does not care for time travel. In fact, she is not a fan of history at all, preferring to live in the 21st century. Unfortunately, due to ancestry that gave her a Polish surname, she is hassled more than most when crossing the border to visit her brother in Tiraspol. But of course Tanya is not alone. Political flare-ups and squabbling has prompted Transdniester, which produces 90% of Moldova’s electricity, to frequently shut down transmission lines.

The latest tensions revolve around language. It was not until 1989 that Moldovans were again allowed to write in non-Cyrillic script. The ban was a standard Soviet practice aimed at USSR-wide assimilation and affected many non-Russian nationalities, from Tatars to Latvians. With perestroika came the right for Moldovans to use the Romanian alphabet. But the Transdniester secession in 1992 halted this advancement. Tiraspol, under international pressure, allowed some schools to teach Romanian using the Romanian alphabet, but the Cyrillic alphabet was clearly preferred. Then, in the summer of 2004, in what the United Nations’ Organization for Science, Culture and Education (OSCE) described as a form of ethnic cleansing, Transdniesterian police stormed and closed all Romanian language schools. Chisinau reacted by severing communications and closing rail connections – essential for transporting Transdniesterian agricultural products. After a flurry of accusations and threats, Tiraspol initiated a call up of reserves, in anticipation of a flare-up in the civil war. With the help of Russia, the United States, and the European Union, cooler heads prevailed. By the fall of 2004, the testy relations between uneasy neighbors had returned to the status quo ante, except for people like Tanya, who still cannot telephone her brother.

Solutions to the decade old crisis have been slow to emerge. Replacement of Russian troops with UN peacekeepers has been delayed because Russia failed to adhere to its obligations under the 1999 change to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which required Russia to remove its troops from Moldova by 2002. Russia, meanwhile, cites NATO expansion as its motive for non-withdrawal. Regardless of the status of Russian troop deployments, however, it is clear that, as long as Transdniester exists, it will follow Moscow’s lead – it has no other protector.

A possible outcome of the crisis is the federalization of Transdniester by Russia, transforming it into a Russian enclave similar to Kaliningrad. Other ideas being discussed are convincing Transdniester to become a semi-autonomous region of the Republic of Moldova (although Tiraspol has already rejected this idea), or acknowledging the region as a sovereign nation, something a third of Transdniesterians already consider reality.

An informal poll of nearly 100 residents in the region showed that the solution preferred largely depends on one’s ethnicity. Most ethnic Russians favor federalization with Russia, or forming a new nation, while the majority of ethnic Romanians view the region as part of the Republic of Moldova and prefer reunification.

Meanwhile, Maxim, a young employee at an Internet café, summed up the prevailing viewpoint of the under-30 crowd: “I really don’t care what they decide, but bringing back the ways of the Soviet Union is not the answer. They should stop wasting time and money on this and address the real issues in Moldova. We are the poorest country in Europe. People are hungry and some are begging in the streets. The old will be gone soon. They had their chance, now it is ours. We should concentrate on making a better life for ourselves, not on which language should be taught at school.”   RL