An American compares Transnistria and Moldova

In late winter, the countryside of tiny and largely forgotten ex-Soviet Moldova looks a bit like the aftermath of Stalin’s scorched earth policy during the retreat from the Germans in World War II. The low rolling hills are covered with barren orchards and untended vineyards, the higher peaks dusted with dirty snow. In endless rows, short shrubs reach up out of the ground like the ghastly twisted claws of once-angry, now-dead subterranean trolls, and the abandoned fields range in color from brown to gray to almost black.

Dotted around the wasteland are small villages that look mostly empty as you drive through them. Occasionally, a local inhabitant can be seen trudging along the side of the road carrying heavy sacks, wearing a facial expression of half-anger, half-confusion. Children in grubby clothes, mangy dogs, and other stray animals run around in the softening mud. Amid the gloomy squalor and desolation, a billboard for Western cigarettes may rise suddenly out of nowhere, depicting young and ostensibly fashionable glamour pusses sitting at a disco bar laughing their heads off.

Moldova – once the Moldavian SSR – is the poorest country in Europe according to many reports. The number of young Moldovan women found working as prostitutes in places like Bosnia and Kosovo (servicing the foreign troops) is out of proportion to Moldova’s population compared with the number from Ukraine or Russia. Recent nearby wars have provided Moldovans with a ready market for their out-of-work young female population – renowned for physical attractiveness. The Moldovan wine once sold in West European supermarkets no longer lines the shelves, making the country’s most viable export just another casualty of corruption and obstructive EU regulations. Estimates of the number having fled the republic range from 25% to 40% of the population, but could be higher for all anyone knows.

Moldova west of the Dniester corresponds to the area historically known as Bessarabia, named for Basarab I, who made a small principality out of territory in present-day Romania in the first half of the 14th century. At the end of the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-12, the Ottoman Empire ceded Bessarabia to Russia. In 1919 the area became part of the Kingdom of Romania, but only until 1939, when Hitler and Stalin agreed that it should go to the USSR under the Nazi-Soviet Pact. During World War II, pro-Nazi Romanian forces of General Antonescu’s fascist regime briefly overran the area, to be driven by Soviet troops in 1944.

The only place within the internationally-recognized borders of Moldova that still functions more or less in one piece is the separatist region of Transnistria, a sliver of territory running north-south to the east of the River Dniester ("Nistru" in Romanian). Transnistria’s leaders have pledged loyalty to Moscow since fighting a war in 1992 that left the territory under their de facto control. The secessionist Transnistrian regime – a pariah of the West – has since retained the breakaway republic’s Soviet-era infrastructure, meaning the lights are still on not only in Tiraspol (the capital) but in outlying towns as well. Meanwhile, most of Moldova west of the Dniester has been eking it out in darkness and - in winter - bitter cold, in pursuit of "reform" with no visible rewards.

Little wonder, then, that over 50% of the electorate voted for the Communists on election day. In the small southern city of Comrat, an old woman on crutches told me her pension was well below subsistence level and was seldom paid on time. Her neighbor agreed, complaining loudly: "We don’t want a perfect life, only something a little better than now." It was difficult to imagine that conditions could get any worse. A polling station worker in the small village of Mihailovka told me: "People couldn’t care less about the geopolitical orientation of Moldova. All they want is to live decently, have enough to eat, and drink the occasional glass of wine."

The press conference that afternoon by representatives of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) would surely shed light on all this, I thought.
First to speak was Kimmo Kiljunen, MP from Finland and Special Coordinator of Election Observation for the OSCE Chairman-in-Office. "These elections in Moldova consolidated a democratic trend that should continue," said Kiljunen, thrusting his chiseled jaw forward as he gazed out over the heads of the audience, apparently believing every word out of his mouth was a piece of oratory genius. "The elections in the Republic of Moldova were carried out in a proper and democratic manner."

There were a few token complaints from Kiljunen. For instance, only 18% of election commission workers were women. "This is a significant problem," said Kiljunen, "and a challenge for all of us." Although nauseatingly PC, the complaints never rose above the innocuous. Then, just as I was about to go and look for rotten tomatoes to hurl at the unbearably smug Finn and his colleagues, there came the rub.

"Unfortunately, the people in Transnistria couldn’t exercise their right to vote," said Kiljunen with stern sanctimony and a momentary grimace. The only "major problem" with the election had been that "the parliamentary election did not take place in Transnistria because of the authorities there."

There it was, then. The evil regime in Tiraspol had denied its inhabitants the right to vote, spoiling an otherwise perfect day’s outing. Special polling booths had been set up on the west bank of the Dniester River for Transnistrian voters to use, but few had apparently bothered to make the trek. The OSCE chalked this up to the Transnistrian authorities "discouraging" people from voting. Never mind the fact that Transnistria had already held its own parliamentary elections, and they looked cleaner and more orderly than their counterpart in Moldova proper.

Perhaps the spirits of average Moldovans have not been sufficiently broken yet, so that the people still place some hope in politicians like Voronin to bring real change for the better. Perhaps there are not enough old people picking discarded scraps of food out of rubbish tips yet. The West will sooner or later want to rectify this situation with a comprehensive program of reform, to help Moldova build a new, super-mean-spirited generation enterprising citizens that can put a younger, "fresher" face on the all-pervasive corruption and lead the republic into full slavery. Then, as Moldovans dab their grain alcohol-scented tears with the flimsy hanky of bogus, Western-style parliamentary democracy, they will at least be able to console themselves that – although their lives have lost all semblance of dignity – at least the West has declared them to have "civil society" and "human rights."

Chad Nagle is an American writer and lawyer licensed in the District of Columbia. He has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and several other periodicals. This column was part of a larger piece originally published by Antiwar.com