Ex-strongman stumps for the Smirnov 2006 campaign

Formerly the world's strongest man, Leonid Zhabotinsky, when he was at his peak as shown in this file photo

TIRASPOL (Tiraspol Times) - The planet's former strongest man, many-time Olympic and world champion and record-breaker, Ukrainian-born weightlifter Leonid Zhabotinsky has called upon the voters of Pridnestrovie to re-elect current president Igor Smirnov in the upcoming 10 December presidential elections. In his telegram to the Smirnov campaign headquarters, the super-heavyweight athlete wished Smirnov to win "an unconditional victory... Smirnov stood at the cradle of Pridnestrovie's statehood, so he is supposed to march this thorny road to the very end".

Leonid Ivanovich Zhabotinsky was born in 1938 in a small village of the Ukrainian SSR, which at the time was part of the Soviet Union. Pridnestrovie (then called M.A.S.S.R.) was also part of Ukraine at the time, and did not include Moldova, which was part of Romania and separated from Pridnestrovie by the river Dniester - the same border that again today separate the two countries; only one of which is recognized internationally.

Zhabotinsky went on to become an outstanding Soviet weightlifter who set a total of 17 world records in the superheavyweight class and won gold medals at the 1964 and 1968 Olympics.

Born into a Cossack family, but of Jewish heritage, Zhabotinsky was exceptionally heavy, weighing 165 kg (364 pounds). At the 1964 Games in Tokyo, Zhabotinsky battled his teammate Yury Vlasov in a dramatic contest, setting a world record in his final lift.

He set his first world record in 1963, starting an outstanding series of international achievements. Between 1963 and 1970 Zhabotinsky set 17 world records in the superheavyweight class and won gold medals at the 1964 and 1968 Olympics.

Zhabotinsky: "Recognize PMR's statehood"

Zhabotinsky wants Pridnestrovie's statehood to be recognized internationally and believes that Igor Smirnov is the man who ought to get that job done: To finish what he started, in the words of the former world strongman.

Located to the east of the Republic of Moldova, between the Dniester River and Ukraine, Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica covers a fixed territory of 4,163 sq km with a total of 816 km of defined, demarcated borders and 555,000 inhabitants.

The territory which is today called Pridnestrovie was originally part of Imperial Russia. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Pridnestrovie formally became part of Ukraine, itself part of the Soviet Union. Moldova, in contrast, was by then part of Romania.

Soviet planning in 1924 split off Pridnestrovie as the M.A.S.S.R. which also incorporated parts of Ukraine but none of Moldova, again observing the Dniester River as the historical international border. No international borders were changed: Both before and after the creation of M.A.S.S.R., all of Moldova stayed fully a part of Romania. This, like numerous other borders in Europe, changed with the advent of World War II.

World War II’s Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed between the foreign ministers of Stalin and Hitler, included a so-called “secret protocol” dividing Romania and a number of other countries into spheres of interest of the two. The Moldovan part of Romania was assigned to Stalin, who invaded and annexed it to Pridnestrovie (M.A.S.S.R.) in 1940. The resulting area became known as M.S.S.R., a component part of the Soviet Union. Occupied by force, and in an act of war, this marked the union of Pridnestrovie and Moldova an event which Moldova later formally was to renounce as null and void ab initio.

In the breakup of the Soviet Union, Pridnestrovie - which is also called Transdniester in English and Transnistria in Romanian - declared independence on September 2, 1990.

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