Thirty-one years ago on August 27, the Republic of Moldova was born as an independent state. Around this time, separatists on the left bank of the Nistru River established an unrecognized state of their own, with the dispute still remaining unsettled to this day. How this frozen conflict has influenced the path of independent Moldova was the subject of a debate held by IPN today.
Igor Boțan, the standing expert of IPN’s Political Culture Debates series, noted that since ancient times many cultures believed in the mystical meaning of birthmarks and moles. It was believed that in this way the stars left their mark on the human body. “Probably, in our case it is not about stars as celestial bodies, but about the ruby stars on a certain building”, joked Igor Boțan.
Igor Munteanu, affiliated researcher at the IDIS Viitorul think tank, believes the circumstances created in 1991, when the Soviet Union was disintegrating, gave rise to a political model where the elites in the Soviet republics were fighting for survival. “The model chosen by the local elites in Moldova was a game of contradictions between those who wanted to preserve the Soviet Union, on the one side, and the national, cultural and administrative elites from Chisinau who opposed and fought for Independence, on the other”, said Munteanu, an ex-MP and former ambassador to the United States.
He says that any state is built based on a contract with its citizens, however, at the time of separation from the Soviet Union, the Republic of Moldova had no citizens in a sense. “It was very difficult for the citizens of the Republic of Moldova to accept the newly acquired statehood and obviously to play by the rules of an independent state. This is where the great vulnerabilities of Moldova as a state come from, what you called a ‘birthmark’. The birthmark is actually related to the lack of a clear vision of the political elites, because in an effort to compromise with the former Soviet center, the political elites delegated part of the state’s sovereignty to the center”, thinks Igor Munteanu.
According to him, many elements of the Moldovan statehood appeared by imitation, by “transplantation” of institutions that did not exist until 1991. “The birthmark, even if it is a metaphor, can be explained by the inability of the elites of 1991 to assume the role for which other political elites, in the Baltic countries for example, were prepared. The Baltic nations had strong ties with the West, they had governments in exile, they had a developed and strongly preserved historical memory. Whereas in the Republic of Moldova they were trying to guess which model is most compatible with the aspirations of the population, and so the political initiative was lost in late1993. Practically, the option of reunification with the Romania was put on hold”, says Igor Munteanu.
Alexandru Flenchea, ex-deputy prime minister for reintegration and director of the “Initiative for Peace” NGO, said that what happened between 1990-1992 were processes naturally related to the disintegration of the Soviet Empire. “There are voices suggesting now that even the current war in Ukraine, the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, is the continuation of the Soviet Empire’s disintegration. I admit that it would be difficult for me to refute this thesis, because we have been witnessing the disintegration of the Empire for three decades now. The metropolis opposes and still has these phantom pains,” he said.
Alexandru Flenchea says that what happens in Donbas actually replicates the scenarios that unfolded on the left side of the Nistru in the early 1990s. According to him, these familiar scenarios were drawn in a certain capital “with ruby stars on a certain building”. Back then on the left bank of the Nistru, weapons were distributed to so-called civilians, coordinated by people with military experience. “And the Moldovan society in the 1990s was practically in the making, either in transition or in a process of self-definition, which is not completed even in 2022”.
“Unfortunately, I believe that the Republic of Moldova was not prepared for such scenarios at that time. It had no institutional capacity, no political experience, no institutions, no national army. Even the national police were in the process of being trained. But I’m sure that, even with a greater degree of preparation and greater stability, when such a military machine of a foreign state moves against you and weapons are distributed en masse to tens of thousands of people, it is very difficult to do something about it”, declared Alexandru Flenchea.
The debate titled “Moldova’s independence with a Transnistrian birthmark” was the 260th installment of the Political Culture Series, run by IPN with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
