Moldova – Post-Communist Europe’s ”New Man” Or Sick Patient?

Courtesy of Eugen Tomiuc

Moldova has been a permanent geopolitical sore spot on Europe’s map ever since its inception as an independent state more than 15 years ago. Uncertain about its identity, the formerly prosperous agrarian ex-Soviet republic found itself involved in a conflict with a Moscow-supported separatist region even before declaring independence in 1991. The falsely idyllic image painted by the Soviet propaganda about the Moldovan country-side – simple, hospitable people making excellent wines for their masters in Moscow and for the rest of the Soviet camp – gave way to a tough new reality where abhorrent poverty lead to human trafficking, crime, and mass-migration.

Troubled Identity

Continuous pressure applied by Trandniestrian separatists, who in 1992 fought a proxy war with Moldova on Moscow’s behalf, left the country in economic and political limbo – too poor to appeal to Western investors, and too troubled to be considered a viable political partner for the West. However, the European Union’s eastward expansion and international unease about Kosovo’s recently proclaimed independence might be offering Moldova’s cornered communist government an unexpected way out of a growing domestic and foreign-policy crisis.

Most of what is now the Republic of Moldova had been under Czarist Russia’s domination for the previous century, under the name of Bessarabia. From the early Middle Ages until the start of the 19th century, present-day Moldova was the eastern half of the principality of Moldova, which in mid-19th century united with the other Romanian principality, Wallachia, to form modern Romania. Notably, nowadays Moldova was not part of the Principality of Moldova when it declared its union with Wallachia, in 1859. However, its population has always been overwhelmingly Romanian-speaking, despite a massive influx of Russian-speaking population from the rest of the Soviet Union after the end of World War II.

In the 1930s, Stalin’s ideologues first floated the notion of a Moldovan language, different from Romanian only in that that it was spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. The propaganda campaign was meant to offer the USSR an excuse to re-annex Bessarabia — which had become part of the modern Romanian state in 1918 — under the pretense of “reuniting” the speakers of the newly-invented Moldovan language living in the USSR (a small autonomous “Moldovan” Soviet entity) with the Romanian-speaking population in Bessarabia.

After World War II, when it became one of USSR’s 15 republics, the territory was rearranged along the lines of Stalin’s own version of the “divide-and-rule” philosophy. The south, which had a Black Sea shore line, was given to the Ukrainian Soviet republic, and in exchange, Moldova got a poisoned gift – the narrow stretch of land on the left bank of the Nistru (Dniester) river, which had not been historically a part of the modern Romanian state – but had been inhabited in the Middle Ages by a Romanian-speaking rural population. (However, beginning with Peter the Great’s pan-Slavic push toward the East, from the 18th century on, Romanian-speaking dwellers were either Russified or pushed back to the territory between the Nistru and Prut rivers.)

During and after the second world war there were mass-deportations of Romanian farmers — under the typical Stalinist accusation of being “kulaks,” or enemies of the people — from Bessarabia to Siberia, while Russian speakers were encouraged to settle in the new Moldavian Socialist Soviet Republic. The population exchange resulted in a serious altering of the ethnic texture mainly in Transdniester and in urban centers.

Those farmers who were lucky enough to survive the harsh Siberian winters were allowed to return only after 1956, when Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s crimes. Those who returned had already been subjected to decades of brainwashing meant to erase their national identity. Many of them, mainly the young ones, were unable to speak Romanian or spoke a broken version of the language, which they were led to believe was “Moldovan.”

Even now, most print media sold in Moldova is in Russian, while the few Romanian-language publications come straight from Romania. In the capital, Chisinau, cinemas show only movies dubbed in Russian, although a majority of the population is Romanian-speaking. Television and radio is also dominated by Russian-speaking stations.

Short-Lived Revival Leads To War

For almost half a century, until 1989, Soviet Moldova’s official language was Moldovan — or Romanian spelled in Cyrillic. In 1989, under the pressure of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, a revived national movement in Soviet Moldova managed to re-establish the Latin alphabet and fight for recognition of its Romanian identity. The movement culminated with Moldova becoming independent in August 1989, shortly after the Soviet hardliners’putsch against Gorbachev failed, ultimately leading to the demise of the Soviet Union. By then, though, Transdniester – which comprised mostly Russian-speaking urban populations in several industrial centers – had already declared independence for fear Moldova’s new national revival would end in re-unification with Romania.

Most Russian-speaking people in Transdniester were either Russians or Ukrainians relocated after the war in the region to build an industrial and energetic basis which notably was located outside the rest of Soviet Moldova. Transdniester was Moldova’s industrial and energetic lung – a transplanted lung, easier to control by Moscow because it was inhabited by Russian speakers who identified themselves with Moscow much more than with the native, ethnic Romanian population forming the overwhelming majority of Soviet Moldova’s population.

Independent-and-recognized Moldova fought a war with independent-but-unrecognized Transdniester in the spring and summer of 1992 – a small, lightly armed force of Moldovan police pitted against Russian-speaking militias from Transdniester reinforced by Cossack mercenary fighters and overtly supported by the Soviet Union’s 14th Army deployed for decades in the region. The lopsided fight ended abruptly with the 14th Army’s intervention on the side of the Transdniestrians. Witness accounts spoke of massive civilian casualties among Romanian-speaking rural communities in Transdniester after the 14th Army used heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery.

For more than 16 years after the conflict was suspended in an uneasy truce, Transdniester never gained international recognition, but managed to do just fine, controlling huge Soviet era weapons stockpiles ready for sale, and managing to maintain a weapons manufacturing industry in the region which still reaps handsome profits for the leaders of the region and their masters in Moscow. (Investigative reporter Peter Landesman, in his ground-breaking “Arms and the Man” investigation for The New York Times connects notorious arms dealer Victor Bout with the Transdniestrian arms-selling mafia).

The continued presence of Russian troops in the region added a plus of safety to the Transdniestrian regime, which never seemed really interested in settling its beef with Moldova – probably because the status quo proved too profitable. Russia, although never officially recognizing Transdniester, has permanently and steadily supported the separatist regime. Some reports say the lucrative arms smuggling in the region reaps an estimated $1 billion annually, part of which ends up in high-placed hands in Moscow.

Whose President Is Voronin?

Moldova’s current communist president, Vladimir Voronin, himself a former Soviet general born in Transdniester, has always reinforced the Stalinist-era idea of a separate Moldovan nation, although maybe out of opportunism rather than conviction. Voronin came to power in 2001 promising horribly poor Moldovans a return to the relative welfare of the Soviet era. Initially regarded by many as a mere Moscow stooge, Voronin soon made clear that he had his own political agenda, tidily summed up in one objective – staying in power at all costs.

Voronin presided over the largest mass-migration in Moldova’s short independent history, which saw up to one million people leaving for either the west or Russia to escape choking poverty. Paradoxically, this mass migration aided Voronin and his communist government in two ways: it helped the country’s bankrupt economy survive through hard-currency remittances from Moldovans working abroad – the UN estimates that $1 billion, or 31 of the country’s GDP comes from remittances – and kept the “no” vote at a safe distance during his reelection campaign in 2005. The communists, better organized than the rest of the atomized political opposition, managed to win reelection easily by turning to their advantage a popular perception that the situation had slightly improved materially.

But, with neighboring Romania’s entrance in the EU in 2007, the government found itself threatened by Bucharest’s citizenship offer for all Moldovans with Romanian roots – that is, some 70 percent of its 4.5 million people – a door ajar toward the West for whatever workforce was still left in Moldova. Many Moldovans left the country forced by poverty — but also because they felt betrayed by a president and a regime acting and talking as if it represented the Russian-speaking minority, not the Romanian-speaking majority.

Moldova’s regime now feels threatened economically both from the east and west. Russia made clear it would use its newest and most formidable weapon – energy exports — against energy-deprived Moldova like it did with all other ex-Soviet republics who fell out of line. The west, meanwhile, is siphoning whatever is left of Moldova’s workforce, more easily since Romania has joined the EU and is offering fast-lane citizenship to Moldovans.

To appease Russia, Voronin is playing once again the Transdniester card – making promises of wide autonomy amounting to de facto-independence for the separatists in the hope that settling a 15-year frozen conflict at the very moment Kosovo’s troublesome independence has caused a lot of apprehension in the international community.

No Way Out, No Way In

Voronin however appears to be in desperate need of a feasible approach to fend off the threat from the west – the real big one. He knows that, for all the official anti-Romanian rethoric, Moldovans increasingly turn their heads toward Romania as their only hope out of a present and a future of poverty and isolation. Moldovans of Romanian origin – that is, the large majority of the country — are either already abroad or looking for a way out. As already proven by hundreds of thousands of Moldovan citizens who have settled in Romance-speaking countries like Italy or Spain, they are adaptable, well-educated and hard-working. Unlike other ex-Soviet bloc labor migrants – Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Albanians — Moldovans learn foreign languages easily, especially Romance languages, but not only.

More and more, these Moldovans who settled abroad and used to send billions of euros back home to their families, thus helping the moribund economy to rebound and giving Voronin a false argument that his government has generated economic growth, are now taking their families abroad and settling there for good. Moldova’s Russian speakers meanwhile have become more and more isolated within Moldova. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, ethnic Russian and Ukrainians used to control most of Moldova’s criminalized economy. They are currently faced with a new reality: poor native Moldovans, whom the better-off Russian minority used to treat like second-class citizens even after the demise of the Soviet Union, are now either coming back with more money or not coming back at all.

Self-isolated by its incapacity to learn the local language and by a toxic post-imperial arrogance complex, the ethnic Russian minority is also becoming poorer. There are increasing signs that ethnic Russians themselves would favor Moldova’s EU membership – in fact, many ethnic Russians are trying to obtain Romanian citizenship. Of course, not out of a sudden outburst of sympathy toward their perceived historical enemy, but for practical purposes: a Romanian passport can offer you a passageway to the West, where nobody will ask you why you can’t actually speak Romanian.

Where does this leave Voronin though? When even the ethnic Russians — his most loyal allies in denying Moldova’s Romanian identity – are becoming more attracted by the western neighbor, Comrade Voronin may have but one way out – becoming Mr. Voronin, or Domnul Voronin, in Romanian.

A recent and rather strange report in a Romanian newspaper notorious for its unorthdox ways of attracting advertising funds claims that Voronin, the champion of Moldovan language and identity, is in fact the scion of a die-hard family of Romanian patriots from Transdniester who fought in the anti-communist resistance in Romania’s mountains. Little Volodya, the newspaper claims, was somehow captured by the Soviets during the war and put through a Manchurian Candidate-like brainwash program to erase his identity and replace it with a Homo Sovieticus type of conscience.

Ridiculous as it may seem (it would be hard to imagine the Soviet 1950s psy-ops specialists preparing little Volodya for Moldova’s presidency), this bizarre story might raise suspicions that it is but the first step toward Voronin’s change of image – something that could justify in the eyes of the Romanian public his rabid anti-Romanian rhetoric and policies for the better part of this decade.

Voronin did attend the NATO summit in Bucharest, but only for five hours on April 3. While some say he was there to cut a deal both with the alliance and with Moscow by reassuring either side of Moldova’s neutrality — in exchange for what? — others point out that Voronin’s rushed take-off from Bucharest, without meeting his Romanian counterpart or even waiting for the arrival of his Big-Brother-and-namesake from Moscow, Vladimir Putin, might show an alarming level of isolation. Moreover, whatever Putin may have discussed with his U.S. counterpart and with NATO officials may prove to have an impact on Moldova. The international community has been worried by Russia’s refusal to keep its pledge to withdraw its 1,500 or so troops from the Transdniester, and its subsequent unilateral denunciation of an arms-and-troops limitation pact. If Putin or his successor will want to cut a deal with the West on the issue, Moldova will more than likely have to pay a price.

What follows would be hazardous to anticipate. However, let’s give it a try. There is still one more year until the 2009 election in Moldova, when Voronin’s second and last presidential mandate is set to expire. His role in Moldova’s already small-time politics would diminish considerably. Unless, unless… Could this former Soviet general — of Romanian origin, nonetheless — aim to become the champion of re-unification with Romania?