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The city of Kamenka, in the extreme north of Pridnestrovie, was founded 399 years ago

KAMENKA (Tiraspol Times) - Pridnestrovie's northernmost city, Kamenka, turned 399 years old since the day it was founded; in the year 1608.

Anniversary celebrations were held in the Peter Wittgenstein Urban Park where residents danced to music by the Kamenka-Rybnitsa folk group "Chance".

Kamenka mayor Vladimir Bychkov told the press that the Kamenka region is undergoing a massive facelift and that quality of life is improving drastically, with intensive gasification of city being completed this year. The work is done by 23 construction cooperatives which have so far laid gas mains to 1,300 private homes in the city.

Kamenka's phone system has recently been upgraded and now consists of 30 digital centrals. Broadband internet ADSL is also available on-demand throughout the region. Modernizing the communications infrastructure has been done entirely by Pridnestrovie. Neighboring Moldova has had no influence in the region for the past seventeen years, and all work which has been done since then has been entirely handled as the responsibility of the government of the unrecognized republic of Pridnestrovie.

Nabokov stomping grounds

Wittgenstein's estate in Kamenka was the childhood playground of Lolita-author Vladimir Nabokov. Visiting his aunt Elizabeth, who had married into the Wittgenstein family, young Nabokov wrote fondly of his days in Pridnestrovie in his memoirs: "Picnics, plays, stormy games, our mysterious park, charming old Batov, splendid Wittgenstein estates."

Peter Wittgenstein was a colleague of Aleksander Suvorov, the founder of Tiraspol. Between them, the two Russian generals modernized the north and the south of what is today Pridnestrovie. Today, the city that Suvorov founded is the capital of the Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica (PMR), also known informally as Transdniestria. And in the north, on Wittgenstein's estate, lies a large health farm: The Dniester Sanatorium, which is open to both local and foreign tourists for holidays including spa- and fitness treatments.

At the time which Kamenka was founded, in 1608, Pridnestrovie was part of Poland. Earlier, it was part of Kievan Rus, and after the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth it became subsequently a part of Russia, then Ukraine, and the Soviet Union before finally declaring independence on 2 September 1990.

Throughout its entire history the territory has always been majority Slavic. At no time in the past 2,000 years was the territory ever part of any independent Moldovan or Romanian state, or any predecessor state to Romania or Moldova.

See also:
» Kamenka: A little Switzerland-on-the-Dniester [1]