Country profile: Pridnestrovie

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Pridnestrovie, also known as Transnistria, lies in a valley between Moldova and Ukraine.

Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica proclaimed its independence in 1990, one year before the formation of the Republic of Moldova in 1991.

For more than 2,500 years the Dniester River marked the border between the two countries. The territory which today is home to Pridnestrovie (commonly known in English as Transnistria) has never at any time in history been part of an independent Moldova.

Caught between two dictators who were hellbent on domination, Moldova and Pridnestrovie were forced together in World War II. Despite Moldova later renouncing this act as "null and void ab initio" it still pursues a 17 year old territorial claim on Pridnestrovie.

The international community does not recognize its self-declared statehood, and the country has wrongly been smeared as a hotbed of crime.

FACTS [1] | LEADERS [2] | MEDIA [3]

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Street in downtown Tiraspol, the capital of Pridnestrovie.

Pridnestrovie - also known by the unofficial name, Transnistria - is a new and emerging country in South Eastern Europe, sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine. Although widely seen as part of Moldova, historically, Pridnestrovie and Moldova were always separate. Throughout 2500 years of history, the Dniester River forming the current border has been a traditional border between Slav lands (Scythia, 450 B.C.) to the East and Romanian lands (Dacia) to the West.

At no time in history was Pridnestrovie ever part of Romania or Moldova. Pridnestrovie (then an independent Soviet Autonomous republic; M.A.S.S.R.) and Moldova (at the time a part of Romania) were forced into a joint Soviet republic in World War II when Hitler and Stalin redrew the borders of Europe. In the breakup of the Soviet Union, Moldova denounced this forced and unnatural union and Pridnestrovie declared its independence; reverting to the historical Dniester River border and not wanting to be part of an independent Moldova and possible merger with Romania. By the time the Republic of Moldova was proclaimed in 1991, Pridnestrovie had already declared independence a year before and declined to enter into the composition of the new republic. A referendum among the voters confirmed their desire for independence and their rejection of a union with Moldova.

The inhabitants of Pridnestrovie are for the most part Slavic. This is in stark contrast to Moldova, on the other side of the Dniester River, where 4/5ths of the population are of Romanian descent and where ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians only make up 6 to 8 percent, respectively.

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Rybnitsa, a city in Pridnestrovie, overlooking the Dniester River.

Pridnestrovie meets the requirements for sovereign statehood under international law, as it has a defined territory, a population, effective elected authority, and the capability to enter into international relations. It is currently seeking international recognition of its de facto independence and statehood.

The country has to contend with a barrage of smears which tries to demonize it by linking it to corruption, organized crime and smuggling. It has been falsely accused of conducting illegal arms sales and of money laundering, but Moldova - seen as the main opponent of the independent government in Tiraspol, PMR - has been unable to support these unsubstantiated accusations with any hard proof or evidence. Poverty is widespread although not more than elsewhere in the region.

In March 2006, the government of Pridnestrovie lodged a formal protest against the surprise introduction of new regulations requiring goods entering Ukraine from Pridnestrovie to carry a Moldovan customs stamp. Moldovan officials insisted that the new rules, unexplicably backed by the OSCE, were designed to stop smuggling. Objectively, they amounted to giving wide control of Pridnestrovie's export economy to Moldova and were targeted primarily at goods which were already being processed normally by Ukraine's customs service (thus not targeted at smuggling).

This was a political move, and rightly seen as an affront to Pridnestrovie in the context of settlement negotiations with Moldova where it is known that the two governments are at loggerheads with each other. Pridnestrovie contended that such wideranging customs changes should be worked out by mutual agreement, after dialogue and negotiations, especially given the history of animosity in the region and the potential for conflict escalation.

OVERVIEW [6] | FACTS | LEADERS [7] | MEDIA [8]

OVERVIEW [9] | FACTS [10] | LEADERS | MEDIA [11]

Igor Smirnov, the elected President of Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica.

President: Igor Smirnov

The president of Pridnestrovie, Igor Smirnov, is a trade union organizer and former political prisoner of Moldova, and the son of a former political prisoner of the Soviet Union. When he was ten, his father was arrested for "anti-Soviet activities". Although the governing party suffered a defeat in the country's most recent Parliamentary elections, Smirnov's personal popularity remains high.

For nearly thirty years, Igor Smirnov was a welder and a press operator in a factory. There, just like Brazil's Luis Ignacio "Lula" da Silva, another welder-turned-president, he cut his first political teeth as a trade union organizer. Inspired by the style of Lech Walesa, the leader of Poland's Solidarity trade union, Smirnov used the power of the trade unions to bring political change not just to the factory but to society as a whole.

Just two years older than Lech Walesa, Igor Smirnov, too, went on to lead an independence movement which brought his country to freedom during the Glasnost-days of the late Soviet Union. His first time as a political candidate was in a local Tiraspol election in February, 1990. In a dramatic demonstration of how much the Communist Party’s power had waned, Smirnov beat his official challenger, the First Secretary of the city’s Central Party Committee, Leonid Tsurkan, by a 2-to-1 margin.

Pridnestrovie declared independence on 2 September 1990, and a year later, on 29 August 1991, Igor Smirnov was arrested by the secret service of Moldova. Hundreds of women sat down on the railroad tracks blocking the trains on the route Chisinau-Tiraspol-Moscow until Igor Smirnov was freed.

He was re-elected a third time in December 2006, in an election between four different candidates, including a Communist (who finished second), an opposition politician in favor of unification with Moldova, and a free-market entrepreneur.

Although elections have generally been shunned by most observers from the international community (in what Smirnov sees as "a clear double standards by those who preach democracy"), those foreign parliaments and organizations which did send observers have consistently declared elections in Pridnestrovie to be free and fair.

Yevgeny Shevchuk, leader of Pridnestrovie's largest opposition party.

Opposition leader: Yevgeny Shevchuk

Yevgeny Shevchuk, 38, is the Speaker of PMR's Parliament and the leaders of Renewal (Obnovleniye), Pridnestrovie's largest opposition party. The party won an unexpected 23 of 43 possible seats in the 11 December 2005 parliamentary elections, putting parliament in control of the opposition for the first time since the 1990 declaration of independence.

He is a lawyer and a former bank manager. He has been described as a social democratic technocrat with a European outlook, and a man of profound democratic beliefs.

A 2005 report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe referred to Yevgeny Shevchuk in the context of democratic reform, noting that Transnistria (as the report referred to Pridnestrovie) is "moving towards more pluralism" and highlighted the parliament's reform initiatives which were spearheaded by Yevgeny Shevchuk's party.

OVERVIEW [12] | FACTS [13] | LEADERS [14] | MEDIA

Following democratic reform, the authorities now exercise nearly no control over the media. There is no overt censorship, and media rights groups can no longer report with a straight face that self-censorship is widespread either. Printing facilities are partly state-run and partly in the hands of private groups, some owned by foreign investors. The nation's largest printing house is owned by private capital as part of the Sheriff group of companies. Some of the country's TV, radio and newspapers are privately owned and run independently.

The press