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| Veaceslav Craciun | |
A granite stele dedicated to veterans of the border guard troops was unveiled in Comrat on May 28, 2018. The news would have definitely remained an ordinary event at regional level if it hadn’t generated a scandal. It was established that the perimeter not of Moldova’s borders, but of another country were inscribed on the stone and the flag of foreign border guard troops was raised alongside the state flag of Moldova in the inaugural ceremony. The representatives of the Moldovan authorities expressed their discontent with what happened, while the Gagauz officials remained impassive.
Moldovan patriotism projected onto Russian map
The inaugural ceremony brought together several hundred locals, especially veterans of the border guard service, and the Bashkan of Gagauzia Irina Vlah, Speaker of the People’s Assembly Vladimir Kyssa, mayor of Comrat Sergey Anastasov and other local politicians. In their speeches, the officials spoke about Moldova’s independence and the importance of defending the national borders, but when they started to more thoroughly examine the monument, it was seen that the map of the Russian Federation was reproduced on it, accompanied by the inscription “State border is holy and intangible”.
The monument contained no allusion to the Moldovan state symbols. Only the hoisted flag of the Moldovan border police showed the event was related to the veterans of the Moldovan troops. But there was another flag under this, which could be identified as the flag of the Russian border guard troops with the assistance of the Internet. In combination with the map, this would have made a non-initiated person doubt the fact that everything happened in Moldova.
During the ceremony, none of the officials commented or focused on the particularities of the monument. Later, when being interviewed by local journalists, the mayor of Comrat admitted that the stele cannot remain in its initial form and will have to be remodeled. In this connection, he specified that the role of the mayor’s office was to only distribute the plot of land for the stele, while the monument is made by other persons. The Bashkan and the Speaker of the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia chose to keep silent.
Illegal monument
The incident caused a vehement reaction not only among Moldovan officials. According to the chief of the Border Police Fredolin Lecari, no one coordinated the installation of the monument with them.
“We are to clarify who ordered this monument, who made it and why was it installed,” Lecari stated for Publika TV.
In connection with this incident, MP Roman Botan made an inquiry to Minister of Education, Culture and Research Monica Babuc. He asked for the copies of all the documents needed to coordinate the installation of a monument – from the application to the local bodies to the design of the monument and the necessity of exhibiting this in public.
It was established that the Gagauz authorities didn’t comply with the legal procedure and the subject hasn’t been coordinated with the Ministry. Practically, the monument was set up illegally and is thus not under state protection and can suffer all the possible consequences, including dismantling.
Google is to blame
Ultimately, it is not a secret who is responsible for the appearance of the ‘mysterious’ monument. The initiative of making and installing the stele was put forward by the public organization “Granicerul”. Its head Ivan Kyssa confessed to journalists that Russia’s map on the stele is a mistake as the map of the USSR was to be engraved there.
The authors aimed to make a connection between the border guards of all the times, most of which served during the USSR and guarded the Soviet borders, including the Moldovan ones. But those that made the monument messed it up.
“I explained to them plainly that they should search for the “outline of the map of the Soviet Union” on the Internet. That’s all. I said nothing about Russia,” stated Kyssa.
If, as it became known, the Google search engine was the only expert involved in the creation process, this is undoubtedly irresponsibility on the part of the Gagauz officials who didn’t monitor the process and allowed things to develop as they did. But the happenings have also another facet.
Patriotism of self-suppression
The scandal about the monument resulted in a test of the respect for the state symbols of Moldova. The conceptual nostalgia for the baseplate with Soviet symbols can be justified. But the lack of a reaction, even a moderate one, among the senior officials of the region to the mistaken map and the presence of the symbols of the army of another state in the ceremony generate questions.
There is also the mysterious Gagauz patriotism that often appears in a Russian-Soviet light. In Moldova, it is hard to imagine that such a mistake can be committed somewhere else than in Gagauzia. It is as hard to imagine that somewhere else in Moldova they can celebrate the day of Russia with the same pompousness as in Gagauz-Yeri. Last year the size of the given event exceeded not only the activities staged to celebrate the Independence Day of the Republic of Moldova, but also those dedicated to the foundation day of Gagauz-Yeri.
It’s hard to imagine that a district council in Moldova would refuse to institute the Day of Remembrance for the Famine Victims of 1946-1947 for not being suspected of “Russophobia”. In Gagauzia, where about one third of the population perished during the famine, namely this virtual argument dominated.
After the scandal about the monument, deputy of the People’s Assembly Ecaterina Jecova wondered if the given map of Russia could have been inscribed with a well-defined purpose.
“It started as a noble thing, but ended as in the case of Chernomyrdin: badly as usual. Is this foolishness or ill will?”, the deputy wrote on a social networking site.
It would be too provocative if it was ill will and therefore it was most probably a mistake. The problem is that such mistakes are systemic for the Gagauz people and the inhabitants of the autonomous region, at least a part of them, do not treat such incidents as unordinary and even consider them typical for them. But the attempts to model the Gagauz perception of the political elements, of the own history based on such elements can generate a dangerous ideological phantom – the ideology of national self-suppression and national denial of the Gagauz people. There is a risk that the Gagauz people can become reliable supporters of these ideas, without seeing that these are based on foreign national interests.
Veaceslav Craciun, Comrat
IPN publishes in the Op-Ed rubric opinion pieces submitted by authors not affiliated with our editorial board. The opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily coincide with the opinions of our editorial board.