A trip down memory lane: my first impression of the PMR

There has been a lot of discussion about Transnistria (among other things) in the comments section of Sean's blog recently. To grossly oversimplify, Transnistria is a part of Moldova that declared independence in 1990 and fought a brief war (aided by Russian troops) in 1992 for its de facto independence, which it enjoys to this day. I have been fortunate enough to visit the so-called PMR (Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic) several times in the past 10 years, albeit only for day trips. This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for the my academic program's newsletter after my summer studying in Moldova in 1999 (picture at right is from last summer - the entrance to the "Prokhlada" bar in the heart of Tiraspol):

During the last week of my visit to Moldova, my language classes were over, and I finally had the chance to visit the two places within Moldova to which no one wanted to accompany me. First, I visited Comrat, the capital of the semi-autonomous region of Gagauzia. My Chisinau hosts questioned my desire to visit what they saw as no more than a dusty provincial town, but I resisted their efforts to talk me out of it and even managed to have friends of theirs meet me off the bus and show me the town. I was met by a very interesting fellow who identifies himself as ethnically Moldovan, even though his last name is Rusu. He was one of the few people I met who was neither ashamed of his past Communist Party involvement nor particularly hostile toward Moldova’s current direction. A bit of wisdom he imparted as we passed through Comrat’s 2-block-long bazaar suggested he has retained a suspicion of free trade. “Sometimes two fools meet in the bazaar,” he said. “One is selling, and the other is buying.”

When I visited Comrat, there was only a short time left until elections for the local leadership, and the town was festooned with campaign posters. Pointing to the face on the most common poster, my host proclaimed, “That’s our biggest crook.” This was a sentiment I heard expressed rather frequently, about local government and especially about the federal government. When I asked if much attention was being paid to the upcoming elections in Gagauzia, my host responded affirmatively. My comment that this was probably a good thing was met with total disagreement.

“The politicians spend too much time and money on campaigning and on pretty posters, and not enough on practical matters,” I was told. This would seem to be at least one problem about which the electorate in the U.S. can commiserate with the Moldovans. Comrat was indeed sleepier than Chisinau--the centerpiece of my day-trip there was a lengthy afternoon nap--and the Lenin statue in front of the local government building added an anachronistic touch. Nevertheless, the infrastructure was far better than I had been told to expect, with reasonably well-paved roads and progress being made on a network of city water mains, apparently with assistance from the Turkish government. The other “local capital” I visited during my last week in Moldova showed no such signs of renewal and was decidedly less welcoming and relaxing.

I visited Tiraspol, the capital of secessionist Transnistria, on my last full day in Moldova. In retrospect, this was probably unwise, given the warnings I had received about travelling in this lawless region, but the lack of a document check at the border was reassuring. I was eager to change some money at the bus station in order to get my hands on some of the ridiculously worthless Transnistrian rubles. The sign specifying exchange rates was unintelligible, perhaps because, as I soon found out, these rubles were around three million to the dollar. Handing over three dollars got me a half-inch-thick wad of 50,000-ruble notes, in addition to several million rubles in 500,000-ruble notes. Looking more closely, I saw that the former had been denominated at 5 rubles when they were first printed in 1994, and that the extra zeroes had been creatively added on a second run through the presses in 1996. Thus bankrolled, I proceeded toward the city center under a dreary rain shower.

Tiraspol looked like the predictable result of a nondescript Soviet city after ten years of neglect. The “Board of Honor” on the building nearest the bus station was still sporting a stern portrait of Lenin at one end and a hammer and sickle at the other, but was otherwise empty. The main park, with a statue of Kirov looking out over an array of non-functioning fountains and stray dogs, was hopelessly overgrown, although an elderly man with a scythe seemed to be making an attempt at beautification. The residential areas were pure USSR, orderly rows of prefab-concrete apartment buildings somewhat the worse for wear, with trash heaps in the middle of the sidewalk at random intervals.

Reaching Tiraspol’s “downtown,” I noticed that Transnistria had other trappings of an independent state besides its currency. Some of the cars had European-style license plates with a Transnistrian flag on them, although many still had Soviet-era plates. There was a local bank, Prisbank, but it did not look as prosperous as the local branch of Gazprombank. Some Moldovans say that Transnistria has become the hideout for local mafia structures, a haven for arms and drug smugglers, as well as for traders in adoptable infants. All of this may well be true, but none of it was reflected by the underpopulated city market where desultory sellers hawked goods a cut below what I saw in Comrat. I saw no late-model luxury cars and in fact very few cars at all--most of the market-goers were disembarking from packed trolleybusses and trudging across a mucky field with a grand statue of Suvorov on horseback. In a nearby park I found the most interesting of the many Soviet-era memorials which remain in Transnistria: a time capsule from 1967, inscribed to the generation of Tiraspolians who were supposed to meet the 100th anniversary of the Revolution in 2017.

As in Comrat, the former local seat of government is graced with a large Lenin statue, but I found out that the people inside the building in Tiraspol take themselves a little more seriously. The Transnistrian White House, if you will, is a grand, Soviet-style monolith, and I wanted a photograph of this building, with its tri-lingual signage (in the three official languages of Transnistria, Russian, Ukrainian, and Moldovan--the latter in cyrillic script, of course) and the red-and-green “national” flag billowing proudly in the wind. Little did I know that it was considered a strategically significant building by the government. Although there were no signs posted to keep me from taking pictures, a young member of the “President’s Security Service” crossed the square and tracked me down at my next stop, the State History Museum. I never got to see the exhibit on “The First Ten Years of the Transnistrian Moldavian Republic,” because I was forced to accompany this man into the building I had just photographed, without being told what I had done wrong.

Needless to say, I began having paranoid thoughts that this was a shakedown, that my documents would not be in order since they had not been checked coming across the border, that since I only had ten dollars they would hold me for 24 hours and cause me to miss my flight, etc. In fact, I was impressed at how businesslike President Smirnov’s bodyguards were in enforcing the prohibition on photographing government buildings without permission. It was all very Soviet, from the way I had to answer my way through several layers of questions from several layers of authorities before I got to the militia captain who was actually responsible for violations of this sort to the nasty tone in which he asked, “So, are you allowed to photograph government buildings in America?” Since it took him 45 minutes to get to the scene of the crime (perhaps he decided not to rush when the guy telephoning in told him that “only picture-taking occurred--no other incidents.”), I had plenty of time to chat with the Transnistrian equivalent of the Secret Service. When the head of this crucial security organization remarked that life in the U.S. must be better and started to complain about living conditions, salaries, and the disparate perks given to members of government, I was at a loss for words.

Indeed, there did not seem to be much going on in the main lobby of the seat of Transnistrian power. One guard was posted in front of the main doors, looking out over the square for potential security threats like me. Cases of mineral water were being unloaded and placed in an elevator to go up to the offices of government deputies, and my captors tried to get the deliveryman to give them a bottle in exchange for two empties. When this did not succeed, one of them bitterly noted that of course each deputy needed a full case, because “after all, they have families and friends.” As soon as he arrived, the captain reminded me to be nervous by constructing the familiar, suspiciously hostile dynamic of Soviet authorities confronting a foreigner. He grilled me about the purpose of my visit and made me expose my film, but he then let me go immediately and did not try to extort a bribe. Impressed with this example of honest if inefficient law enforcement, I nevertheless no longer felt welcome in Transnistria, and I caught the first available bus back to Chisinau.

The bribe-taking occurs on the border, actually, in my experience. Although since that first visit, I've had friendly experiences on the PMR's borders as well as unpleasant ones. And the major updates to the 1999 account above, from what I observed last summer, are that they have redenominated the PMR ruble to a reasonable exchange rate, the area around the Suvorov statue has been nicely landscaped, and I wasn't stopped for taking pictures anywhere. Things in Tiraspol seemed marginally more prosperous, and the amount of time a foreigner is allowed to be in the PMR without registering with the authorities has been increased from three hours to 24 hours - I'll try to post some photos later on.