The man who wouldn't be king

Igor Smirnov, 65, is a former political prisoner whose father was jailed by Stalin. Locals say that he is not a foreigner

TIRASPOL (Tiraspol Times) - He wasn't born here, so what is Igor Smirnov - a newcomer - doing as the only president that Pridnestrovie has ever had since it declared independence more than 16 years ago?

That is a question which only an un-informed foreigner can ask. For the people of the unrecognized country, the answer is obvious: He is our president, he is the link to our past, he has secured our present, and he is - many here hope - the link to our future.

To understand the man who wouldn't be king, but who anyway ended up on the throne of a country that is not yet on the map, we must start in Siberia, in the cold of World War II.

A shared past: Communist confusion

Igor Smirnov, now 65, was born in Russia's far northeast, in a city called Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The city was founded by the explorer Vitus Bering, the man who also gave his name to the Bering Strait. The climate is subarctic. It is hard to get to: It is the second largest city in the world that can not be reached by road.

It was World War II when Igor Smirnov was born, and life was hard in the Soviet Union. But the war was not felt in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. There, near the arctic circle, life had always been hard. And with more children on the way, Igor's parents sought a better life in the sun: In the south of the Soviet Union, near vineyards and the balmy Black Sea climate.

They found it the Ukrainian SSR, just miles from what is today Pridnestrovie. Here, Smirnov Sr dabbled in local politics, but in the early 1950s that could be dangerous. Stalin's purges were raging, and the security apparatus of the Soviet dictator zoomed in on Igor Smirnov's father; "rewarding" his activities with fifteen years of hard labor and another five in exile.

With Stalin’s death in 1953, lots of Soviet political prisoners got early release. Igor Smirnov's father was among them.

The younger Smirnov made his career as a welder and factory hand in the southern Kherson Oblast of Ukraine, next door to what is today the country that he leads. He had been in the area since he was three years old. He considered himself a native, and indeed, at the time, it was his country: The Soviet Union stretched from Siberia to the Dniester river, and beyond. Indeed, he was a native. It was only later, with the breakup of the Soviet Union, that he became a "foreigner".

The Russian Lech Wałęsa

Working his way up on the factory floor, Igor Smirnov involved himself in trade union activities; just like Poland's Lech Walesa, two years younger, had done with the "Solidarity" (Solidarność) movement. In Smirnov's case, he became one of the leaders of the OSTK, the United Work Collective Council. The movement, just like Solidarity, was formed as a strike movement and a counterpart to the Communist Party.

By now, he had become a resident of Tiraspol and leader of the workers of a local factory.

When the strike campaign failed to produce the expected results, OSTK activists turned their attention to upcoming elections. Using institutional resources and popularity acquired during the strike campaign, OSTK activists worked to get sympathizers elected to office, both on local and republican levels.

Inspired by Solidarity in Poland, the OSTK organized strikes ... something which was previously unheard-of in the Soviet Union. Between 16 August and 22 September 22, 1989, the OSTK brought over 200 factories and other state-run enterprises into the strike campaign. At its peak in early September, over 100,000 workers participated in the strike in opposition to the Soviet Socialist Republic's leadership and its Communist authorities, among them - in 1989 - a Communist general by the name of Vladimir Voronin, head of the dreaded Interior Ministry police force. Today, the same Voronin is president of Moldova.

When the strikes failed to bring changes in Communist policy, OSTK took advantage of perestroika reforms and relaunched itself as a political party - a tactic also followed by Lech Walesa's identical Solidarity movement in Poland.

OSTK candidates fared well in the 25 February 1990 elections. In Tiraspol, OSTK leader Igor Smirnov defeated the Communist Party candidate for the position of chairman of the city Soviet.

Resident: "His past is our past"

The Soviet Union was a huge multi-ethnic state in most parts of which Russians had made their homes. On a smaller scale, but even more pronounced, the same was true for Pridnestrovie; in the past itself a part of the Soviet Union. There was nothing "foreign" about a Russian, with Russians, Ukrainians and Moldovans making up roughly equal percentages in Pridnestrovie. Everyone speaks Russian, and it is rare that someone identies himself on the basis of ethnicity. It is a question reserved for the census takers, it seems. Ethnicity does not play a role in the day to day of daily life.

" - His past is our past, he is one of us," says local resident Alina Costirceanu. "He was born in our country, when it was all the same country: The Soviet Union. He is not a foreigner. He understands what we are, and what we struggled against in the past. He remembers the bad things of the past, that we wanted to change. But he also remembers the good things, the things that we always wanted to keep. Igor Smirnov fought with us for our ideals, our dreams and changes, and he was always down there with us, side by side, never up high like the Communist party leaders."

Coming from the factory floor, Igor Smirnov was not afraid to get his hands dirty, remembers fellow OSTK organizer Boris Shtefan, a shop foreman from the “Elektromash” electronics factory and trade union activist.

" - I don't think that he really ever wanted to be a leader," said Shtefan in an interview shortly after the first election of Smirnov. "He only got involved in all of this out of a sense of civic duty. It was the kind of Soviet loyalty that is sometimes hard for a foreigner to understand. Not a loyalty to the leaders, mind you. After all, we stood against the Communist. But a loyalty to the little people, to the ideals and to the dream that we could make a better society for all of us, regarding of ethnic background."

Remembering how his father had been imprisoned, Igor Smirnov was skeptical of the political establishment. A year later, in 1991, he himself was taken prisoner. Accused of being a "secessionist", Moldovan authorities held him incomunicado in a Chisinau basement from 29 August 1991 until 25 September 1991. In the basement, he was regularly tortured and even forced to sign a false statement renouncing his people's wish for independence. He was only freed after thousands of women joined in public protests organized by Galina Andreeva, who staged a Gandhi-style sitdown strike on the railroad tracks; blocking all train traffic on the Chisinau-Tiraspol-Moscow route.

The present

If Smirnov had doubts about his commitment to independence, that vanished when he emerged from the dark Moldovan cell. The month in solitary confinement taught him to trust Chisinau authorities even less than the Stalin henchmen who had imprisoned his father.

Today, the voters of Pridnestrovie - also called Transnistria, in Moldovan, or Transdniester, its unofficial English name - see Igor Smirnov as someone who will never budge on independence. This is the way that most of them want it, too. So he is "their man". Because of his personal history, and the torture which he suffered when he was jailed by Moldova, he will not easily give up what he now sees as his life work: The international recognition of the independence of the little country which was founded by public referendum on 2 September 1990.

Smirnov works an average of 15 hours a day. There is no evidence that Smirnov is interested in power or money. He drives a Skoda and goes to theater with his wife at least once a week, always without bodyguards.

The small and unrecognized country which he leads is called a Russian protectorate, a reference to the place where Smirnov was born and the language that the entire population speaks. But, says his defenders, Smirnov was not born in Russia: He was born in the Soviet Union, and at the time, Pridnestrovie was part of that. It was the same country. Smirnov was never a foreigner.

Pridnestrovie has always been more Russian than Moldovan, with a Slav majority and a history as part of Russia going back hundreds of years. It has never at any time been part of an independent Moldova, and it has never at any time in history had a Moldovan majority. The Slavic population - which Igor Smirnov is part of - has always been the majority in the territory which is today Pridnestrovie, or PMR to use the initials of its official name.

A future without Smirnov

Igor Smirnov has announced that he will retire from politics when the Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica obtains international recognition as a sovereign state. He says that this goal his life's work.

The inhabitants in Tiraspol, Bender, Rybnitsa and the other cities know that this is what he works for, first and foremost, and this is why they vote for him.

" - Smirnov is our link to the future," says Dubossary voter Andrea Densuşianu. "Of course we don't want to have him as a president forever. All we want is to make sure that our independence is secured. We want the rest of the world to recognize that we have decided to be independent, and that nothing will ever change that."

Iosif Glavina agrees: "He should finish what he started. That is all we want. I am Moldovan, but like most of my neighbors here, I am first of all a Transnistrian. We have no future with Moldova, and the only way to get better relations is for them to respect us for what we are, and then we will respect them, too, as good neighbors. I am ready to move on, and get a new president, but I prefer that Igor Smirnov completes what he has started, and makes sure that our independence becomes final."

See also:
» Igor Smirnov, Pridnestrovie's "Khozyain" President

On the web:
» Profile of Igor Smirnov