Voice of Tiraspol

CIMG6523, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

As has happened more times in the past than I'd care to admit, a few weeks ago a discussion in the comments section of Sean's Russia Blog sent me searching for info on a fairly obscure topic. One result was that I revisited ocity, the LiveJournal community set up by residents of Tiraspol - for those of you who understandably might not follow these things, that's the capital of the unrecognized Transnistrian Moldovan Republic (a.k.a. PMR, Transnistria, Transdniester, Pridnestrovie, etc.), a little strip of land that's been trying to secede from Moldova since the breakup of the USSR.

It seems that some of Tiraspol's netizens are unhappy with some of the initiatives of the territory's de facto government. Here are my translations of a couple of recent posts to the ocity community (which also exists outside of LJ):

Demand and complaint addressed to Evgeny Shevchuk, Chairman of the "Renewal" (Obnovlenie) party (posted by 06_07_1970)

Dear Evgeny Vasil'evich!

We woke up this morning and left our apartments intending to head to the cemetery and honor our dearly departed.

In the entryway of the building where we live, we found a huge quantity of "Renewal" party newspapers - they are strewn on the landing on every floor, in the stairwells, in people's mailboxes (several copies of this spam in each mailbox), and in the elevator. Part of the area in front of the building is already besmirched with your party's newspapers - some of the building's residents have tossed them out of the stairwell.

It should be noted that this is not the first time when the entryway of our residential building has been littered with such trash.

Based on these facts, I request that you organize the cleanup of the stairwells of the building at Zapadnyi Per. 19/1 in Tiraspol as soon as possible.

Otherwise, we will have to go to court with a complaint against the Renewal party and against you personally as the director of that organization.

With respect,

Residents of the besmirched [засранного] building

This complaint was also posted on a more traditional online forum, where it has generated some 25 comments. On LiveJournal, it generated the following comment by verba77:

They say our government is impoverished, but think how much money was spent on this garbage. Our authorities don't do anything useful for the people, instead they rub in the people's faces what good rulers we have.

I should note, in fairness to Obnovlenie and Shevchuk, that it's not unheard of for political parties in the post-Soviet space (and probably elsewhere) to engage in the "dirty trick" of placing their opponents' materials in locations designed to annoy voters. I seem to recall that one example of such "black PR" involved party A sticking party B's stickers on cars parked on the street. In this case, though, if I had to guess, I'd say the offending newspapers were probably left by overzealous "Obnovlentsy."

Here's another assessment of the local government by a resident of Transnistria:

Defense of human rights, Transnistrian-style (posted by verba77 [whose journal is subtitled "life with a 'special' child in a 'special' country"])

Two years ago, on June 7, 2006, Pridnestrovie first appointed a representative on human rights issues. An 10-room office was set up and luxuriously renovated to European standards. Dozens of new computers and other office equipment was purchased, excellent furniture, air conditioners, etc. There are plans to open branch offices of the human rights representative in other cities in Transnistria.

Interruptions in - and later complete denial of - the government's supply of essential medication to disabled children began around the same time.

Is it possible that the funds which had previously been devoted to saving the lives of disabled children are now going toward the human rights representative's office?

From my conversation with Transnistria's human rights representative V. Kol'ko last week:

- Does the non-issue of medications which are legally provided for to disabled children constitute a violation of human rights?
- Yes, of course, but what can I do about it?
- What do you mean, what, you are the human rights representative. Can you defend the rights of a sick child?
- There isn't any money in the budget for those medications, our government is very poor.
- Then why does the government have money for such luxurious facilities for a human rights office which is unable to protect human rights?
- What, it's my fault that the Supreme Soviet decided to create this office?

I might also suggest that our rulers do away with pensions and use the money saved to create an office of the representative of pensioners' rights. Or they could close the hospitals and open an office of the representative for the rights of sick people.

In the comments, verba77 explains that his family pays for a couple of more expensive medications, but is trying to get the government to pay for one cheaper item prescribed for their child which is included in the official list of medications the government is supposed to provide:

This has become a matter of principle, because those animals are buying themselves expensive official cars, building lordly estates, and renovating their offices to European standards using the money of the Transnistrians who break their backs working for them, but they refuse to comply with the law guaranteeing medication to sick children. But they spit on my requests and on all of us put together. The animals have made it to the trough.

And on a more humorous note, here's a comment from the same forum titled "[Customer] Service" (posted by sasha_ethna):

Tiraspol'. The train station. We get on the number 3 minibus, hoping to get to Balka.

...I was already handing the driver my fare when a one-lady orchestra came up to the minibus. She had a guitar on her shoulder, fancy luggage and several musical instruments. She tossed her first bag into the minibus and was getting ready to toss in the second, when the driver spat out "I'M NOT GOING TO BALKA!"

All of the passengers were baffled, the one-lady orchestra quickly retrieved her bags, and many people prepared to get off the minibus.

"But we all want to go to Balka!" said a few people.

"Everything's OK - that's where we're going. I just wanted to avoid all of that baggage," said the driver, revealing the logic behind his trick.

[update July 15]

Incidentally, there used to be a LJ community called Foto_PMR (I reposted one cool photo from that forum here) devoted to photos from Transnistria, but within a couple of months after I discovered and linked to it that forum disappeared, replaced by a LJ error message which reads “This journal has been deleted and purged.”

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What's in a name?

Valeri, we hardly knew ye!

[image source]

It seems that Valeri Litskai, the native of Tver' who has been de facto foreign minister of the PMR (as Transnistria's de facto government calls the territory) for as long as I can remember has been pushed out, and just at a time when some believe a resolution to the conflict might be in the works. We can only hope that the guy taking his place wasn't chosen because of his name - Владимир Ястребчак (Vladimir Yastrebchak). Ястреб means "hawk" in Russian. Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely), the "Tiraspol Times" (by all indications an online propaganda project funded by someone close to the PMR's powers-that-be) had a story forecasting this turn of events a couple of months ago.

Here is Regnum's article on the story, one-sided as their stories generally are on the post-soviet "frozen" conflicts and quoting extensively a rather tendentious Transnistrian "politologist" (who was, at least a few years ago, "dean of the Law Faculty at Transnistria State University"). And here's another Regnum story, quoting a Transnistrian politician's comment on the change, at a time when Litskai had just eight months left until retirement and (perhaps more importantly) when talks on resolving the conflict are reaching their final phase: "you don't change horses in midstream." We'll see if this change signals a revolution in the PMR's "foreign" policy toward Moldova, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Update July 11]

Here are some additional thoughts from a Moldovan think-tank on the reasons behind the reshuffle at the pinnacle of the PMR's foreign policy apparatus:

Some developments in the second half of June have made observers suppose that the race between Ukraine and Russia to control the Transnistrian regime has intensified. After Russia has refused to recognise Transnistria’s independence despite its promise to extend the "Kosovo precedent" Transnistrian leaders signalled the need to promote a "multi-vector" foreign policy which would replace the one addressing Russia only. The multi-vector foreign policy may consist in oscillations between Russia and Ukraine only, as the existence and the survival of the separatist regime have always depended on willingness of the two countries. [...]

In all likelihood, Russian authorities have decided to get involved in order to prevent the development of Tiraspol’s game with Kiev, given their "friendly" relations with Ukraine.

Litskai has made public the target of playing on contradictions between Chisinau and Kiev, while Chisinau is trying to get in the good graces of Moscow in the detriment of relations with Kiev. [...]

Transnistrian authorities have appointed Deputy foreign minister Vladimir Yastrebchiak as ad-interim minister shortly after the visit by Russian diplomats led by Zubakov to Chisinau and Tiraspol. The news agency Novy Region quoted sources in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as saying that Smirnov will fire Litskai soon for the pro-Ukraine policy he has tried to promote in the last months. The eventual dismissal of Litskai is allegedly linked to his alcohol addiction which often turns into public debauches. In these circumstances, one shall see the real reasons why Litskai is disgraced for: promotion of the so-called "multi-vector" foreign policy with oscillations between Russia and Ukraine, serious drunkenness, health, etc. Indeed, all these factors are convergent. [...]

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The lighter side of secessionism

There has been plenty of serious discussion from all quarters - not to mention overblown posturing from some - about Kosovo's declaration of independence. Heck, even here at Scraps of Moscow I have been unable to resist posting on the subject from time to time (though not because it should necessarily have any relevance or precedential value for the resolution of the other unresolved conflicts). But there is also a lighter side to the struggle of unrecognized states, de facto states, microstates and other secessionist entities for legitimacy.

For example, shortly after Kosovo's "UDI," snarky DC gossip site Wonkette - in a tongue-in-cheek style which was intended to ape American provincialism but really just confirms a sort of knowing indifference which may be worse than ignorance - posted a rundown of the other spots on the globe vying to be next:

The Foreigns Present: Your Guide To The Hellholes

Those crazy Kosovars! Their little declaration of independence has caused quite the shitstorm — not just among the great powers who are wrangling over whether to recognize them or not, but among the world’s other pissant quasi-countries, who are mad that they didn’t get to do it first....This week, The Foreigns will take you on a tour of the world’s saddest unrecognized not-countries.

The territories profiled were "TRANSNISTRIA: Come for the heroin, stay for the whores"; "NORTHERN CYPRUS: Maybe this 'independence' thing wasn’t such a hot idea"; "SOMALILAND: Proving that 'hellhole' is a relative term"; "ABKHAZIA AND SOUTH OSSETIA: Sometimes pawns are just happy to be in the game"; and "WESTERN SAHARA FREE ZONE: Sand, sand sand!"

The highlights of the comments section:

Bill Clinton: "Transnistria? I think I caught that from a New Orleans hooker once."

And:

"because nothing could possibly go wrong for you when your enormous neighbor is playing games with your sovereignty for its own larger geopolitical purposes!"

Huh. I have that EXACT phrase on my license plate holder.

But the real impetus for this rundown was not a month-and-a-half-old Wonkette post. No, it was my good fortune in happening upon a hilarious episode of Family Guy entitled E Peterbus Unum. Here is Wikipedia's plot synopsis:

Peter declares his house to be the new microstate of "Petoria." He spends a night in Quahog insulting Horace (at The Druken Clan) and bringing beer out into the streets, stepping on grass that can't be touched, and violating numerous laws such as littering, sexual harassment, and vandalism. He flaunts his diplomatic immunity by singing a parody of MC Hammer's song "U Can't Touch This" and mentions that he can’t be sued by Hammer.

Snubbed at the United Nations, Peter follows the advice of a diplomat from Iraq and annexes Joe's pool, calling it "Joe-hio." Days later, when Chris tries to go to school, he is turned away because the US Army surrounds and blockades the nation of Petoria with tanks and missiles as part of "Operation: Desert Clam." Further, all electricity and water has been cut and Lois home schools the kids.

Sadly, this is not one of the few Family Guy episodes that have been made available on the TV companies' new video site Hulu. But you can watch MC Hammer parody, "U Can't Touch Me," on YouTube, at least for now:

The idea of being "untouchable" - more commonly known as immunity - as well as a general bad-ass complex, seems like it could be common among the leaders of would-be states. The Family Guy parody calls to mind a story I heard from someone who'd had occasion to meet with Igor Smirnov, the de facto leader of Transnistria. Apparently Smirnov keeps a safe full of gold coins in his office, and when he wants to convince his interlocutor of the fact that he is both independent of Russia and not susceptible to Western inducements, he shows off his hoard.

The last bit of comic relief I wanted to share is about Kosovo, from a Wall Street Journal article last week:

Freedom's Ring: Kosovo Covets A Dialing Code

By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS
March 27, 2008; Page A1

Kosovo, which a month ago declared independence from Serbia, is working on a constitution. One problem: On the front page of the latest draft, the government phone number is Serbian.

....Kosovo has a problem, because it isn't a member of the U.N., and only countries that are can get their own dialing codes. So, land-line calls into Kosovo still must use the exchange, +381, of a group that many Kosovars detest: the Serbs.

"Every country's independence rests on certain pillars," says Anton Berisha, chief telecom regulator of Kosovo, a land of two million a little larger than Delaware. "One of them is a country dialing code."

Matters so mundane aren't usually considered the stuff of patriotic fervor. But in Kosovo during the past tumultuous decade, the battle for telephone autonomy has led to the ouster of the head of a telecom company, the dismantling of cell towers built by a Serbian company and two assassination attempts, one using a rocket launcher.

"I was not prepared for this kind of debate," says Mr. Berisha, the target of both attacks, which occurred last year. He now travels only with police escort.

In fact, dialing codes have figured in nationalist movements before, from the Palestinian territories and Taiwan to Catalonia and Sudan. "Even if it doesn't make sense, people are attaching more weight to having a dialing code," says Richard Hill, whose duties include distributing dialing codes as an official at a U.N. body in Geneva, the International Telecommunication Union, or ITU.

For those of a nationalistic bent, Mr. Hill says, a dialing code can be as meaningful as a flag, a national anthem or a team in the Olympics. He declines to comment on the Kosovo situation.

Without permission from the ITU, the Palestinian phone company has struck agreements with phone companies in sympathetic Arab countries to connect calls through the Palestinian company's unofficial code, +970. Previously, calls to the Palestinian territories connected only through the Israeli dialing code, +972, which is still used by callers from many Western countries.

As for Taiwan, as it emerged as an economic power in the 1980s, it began using an unassigned calling code, +886. Taiwan, too, persuaded some foreign phone companies to send along calls with the number it preferred. The move defied China, which has long claimed Taiwan and had assigned it a regional phone prefix as a Chinese province. After years of negotiations, the ITU in 2006 officially assigned the +886 exchange to Taiwan, while still listing the island as part of China.

Foreign Exchange

Dialing codes carried little of this political baggage in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they first grew in use and became standardized, according to Mark Cuccia, a retired library worker in Lafayette, La., who tracks phone numbers as a hobby. Creating a single list of dialing codes made it easier for international operators to connect calls, since countries often had unique phone systems.

In the 1990s, political events turned dialing codes "into a big phenomenon," Mr. Cuccia says.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early '90s led to a scramble for dialing codes by new states eager to underscore their independence. Tiny European states like Andorra and Liechtenstein, which had long shared the dialing codes of their bigger neighbors, felt compelled to get their own codes, too. Just last year, Montenegro, a former Yugoslav republic that's now independent, was granted +382.

The struggle for a Kosovo dialing code dates to as early as 1999. Bombing led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had just expelled Serb forces from Kosovo -- then a Serbian province -- and placed Kosovo under U.N. supervision.

The U.N. mission ousted the head of the Kosovo telecom operator after he bitterly opposed awarding a mobile-phone license to Monaco Telecom. His problem: Although the Monaco company had essential international roaming agreements, using the company would mean using Monaco's dialing code.

The disgruntled chief of the local telecom operator, which is called PTK, had wanted a bidder with no dialing code, so he could agitate for Kosovo's own code. But, a U.N. official told reporters at the time, PTK needed a solution that "would actually allow people to make phone calls."

Monaco Telecom began to charge PTK tens of millions of dollars in annual fees to handle Kosovar wireless calls. The deal meant that people abroad who called a cellphone user in Kosovo had to use Monaco's +377 exchange.

But that was still better than using a Serbian carrier, in the eyes of many ethnic Albanians, who are about 90% of Kosovo's population. Ethnic Serbs in Kosovo, most of whom live near the border with Serbia, can pick up signals from a Serbian carrier.

In 2005, a Kosovar delegation visited the ITU in Geneva to argue that Kosovo should get its own code, says Etrur Rrustemaj, a PTK official in the delegation who later served as chief executive officer of PTK.

Unsuccessful, Mr. Rrustemaj turned his attention instead to dismantling antennas installed by a Serbian wireless carrier in the Kosovo capital of Pristina, including one atop a PTK building.

He was careful not to destroy the antennas, just unplug them. "If I took them down, I'd be in jail for attacking minorities," he says.

In February of last year, after a muddled bidding process for Kosovo's second mobile-phone license, Kosovo declared the winner to be Slovenia Telekom. Mr. Berisha, the telecom regulator who oversaw the auction, had to consider foreign bidders, since Kosovo doesn't have its own dialing code.

Bullets Fly

One morning later that month, Mr. Berisha was riding in a car to work with his aunt and her daughter when gunmen emerged from the side of the road and opened fire on their car. No one was injured.

Just six weeks later, Mr. Berisha, by then commuting in a police vehicle with two armed officers, was attacked again. This time, one of the gunmen launched a rocket at the car. It didn't explode properly, and injured only the driver, he says.

One of the alleged attackers, later arrested, turned out to be an official of PTK, the local telecom operator. Mr. Berisha believes his attackers were upset that he had awarded a mobile-phone license to a Slovenian operator and at the prospect of new competition.

The solution, for nationalists who yearn for a Kosovo dialing code, would be U.N. recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation. But while the U.S. and more than 30 other countries recognize Kosovo's newly declared independence, U.N. membership is far from assured. Russia, which has a veto as a permanent Security Council member, has vowed to block it.

"We are forced to work with these mixed country codes, which has made our lives more difficult," says Mr. Berisha.

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A dog-and-pony show, starring a Bear

From officially approved "democrat" Andrei Bogdanov's wikipedia page:

In the summer of 1992, after a visit to Pridnestrov'e as part of a delegation of the youth union of the DPR [Democratic Party of Russia], he qualified Moldova's actions as "genocide against the people of Pridnestrov'e." The DPR's youth union condemned the position of the Russian government on this issue and called for immediate action by the Russian military "to save the people of Pridnestrov'e." [Bogdanov] blamed the Russian mass media for spreading lies about the events in Pridnestrov'e, and called the Russian government "sellouts." He immediately established a charity, "The Youth Chooses the Future," which collected money, medicine, equipment and food reserves for the defenders of the PMR.

This episode - far from the most bizarre one in Bogdanov's eccentric political career, which also included campaigning for pyramid scheme mastermind Sergei Mavrodi - is also mentioned briefly in his bio on anticompromat.

Amazingly, such a history of dedication to the PMR's cause doesn't seem to have won Bogdanov the support of politicians in this breakaway part of Moldova. Everyone seems to be supporting Medvedev and the continuation of Putin's course. This was the conclusion reached at an "international conference" which took place in Tiraspol last week, titled "Forward with Russia":

The conference was organized by the Patriotic Party of Pridnestrov'e. Participants included representatives of a number of other PMR socio-political organizations, as well as pro-Russian organizations from Ukraine, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, a representative of St. Petersburg veterans, the president of the "Planet of Children" foundation, and others.

A policy declaration adopted at this conference can be seen here.

Bogdanov also failed to win the support of the politically active youth of Transdniester, who are 100% behind Medvedev:

"PRORYV!": Demonstrations in support of Dmitry Medvedev will be going non-stop
Lenta PMR [reprinted verbatim from the PRORYV! website], Feb. 26, 2008

The week remaining until election day will be filled with many demonstrations organized by the International Youth Corporation / People's Democratic Party [ММК-НДП] "PRORYV!" [trans. - the name of this group means, "Breakthrough"] in support of Dmitry Medvedev's candidacy.

Young people from "PRORYV!" are working simultaneously in practically all of cities and towns in Transdniester. In personal talks with citizens, the "Proryvians" are explaining the importance of participating in the voting [голосовании], providing information about the location of election precincts and giving out calendars with Dmitry Medvedev's picture and an inscription calling on the recipients to come to the ballot boxes on March 2. According to PDP "PRORYV!" leader Aleksandr Gorelkovsky, March 2nd is a genuine national holiday for the 120,000 Russian citizens who reside in Transdniester.

"On this day we can come and vote for the president of our 'Greater Homeland' [«Большой Родины»]. Each of us understands how large Russia's role in Transdniester's existence has been: economic assistance, security guarantees, and the uninterrupted cultural-historical connection which allows us to maintain our national identity. The Russian authorities' attitude toward us in the future depends on voter turnout. That is why 'PRORYV!' is doing everything possible to increase the turnout and is endorsing Dmitry Medvedev. Unlike other parties, we do more than make political statements, and 'go to the people' in the fullest sense of that phrase. I am certain that serious political success can result only from direct interaction with citizens," emphasized Aleksandr Gorelkovsky.

More recently, it seems that one of the people behind PRORYV!, a shady guy named Dmitry Soin, decided to try to manage expectations, at least with respect to turnout:

"Turnout will be above 50%, but it will not be tremendously high. This is because many Russians [residing in Transdniester] are currently outside of Transdniester, and the ones who are here are certain of D. Medvedev's victory. 97 percent of the Russians we surveyed believe he will win. The lack of a sharp battle or intrigues will lower the turnout. From 88 to 92 percent of voters are prepared to vote for the main candidate, depending on the region surveyed. Mr. Bogdanov has the lowest rating, about one percent. V. Zhirinovsky and G. Zyuganov could get from 4 to 7 percent each

[all items translated by me - links to originals in Russian]

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Putin's Pridnestrovian Partisan

Putin has long been able to count on strong support from the farthest corners of Russia. But now he's got an even more distant amen corner. Backing VVP up at the recent United Russia party congress was a political leader from a patch of land that - while it's a shorter plane ride from Moscow than Primor'e - isn't even part of Russia.

The presence of PMR Parliament Speaker Evgeny Shevchuk at the United Russia congress as an "official guest" is interesting and not entirely illogical given that by some estimates roughly 25% of Transdniester's 550,000 residents are Russian citizens and thus will be entitled to vote in the upcoming Duma and presidential elections. It's also a mild spit in the face of Moldova's assertion of sovereignty over Transdniester. I've translated two articles from Regnum about this.

"Renewal" party of Transdniester to support United Russia in the Duma elections
Regnum.ru, Oct. 1, 2007, 3:35pm

Representatives of the Transdniester republic party Renewal, led by their leader - the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Pridnestrovie Еvgenii Shevchuk will participate as official guests in the VIII United Russia party congress, which will open on October 1st at 4pm in Gostiny Dvor in Moscow, reports REGNUM's correspondent.

The congress will be in session for two days. During the congress United Russia and Renewal plan to sign an agreement about cooperation between the two political parties. Evgenii Shevchuk told Regnum that Renewal will support United Russia in the December 2007 Russian Duma elections. "We support [United Russia's] campaign platform - the 'Putin Plan' - and will actively participate in campaigning [будем принимать активное участие в агитации] on the territory of the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic among citizens who have Russian citizenship and are participating in the Duma elections," said Shevchuk.


Pridnestrovian Parliament Speaker: "Putin's decision is intended to defend the interests of Russian citizens."
Regnum.ru, Oct. 1, 2007, 10:22pm

"The Russian President's decision to head up the federal candidates' list of United Russia suggests that the Russian state will continue to develop in a stable manner," said Pridnestrovie Supreme Soviet Chairman and leader of the Renewal party Evgenii Shevchuk in an interview with a Regnum correspondent on October 1, commenting on Vladimir Putin's agreeing to head United Russia's campaign list.

"In my view, this represents a strengthening of United Russia and a continuation of the dynamic course of development not only of Russia itself, but also the defense of Russian interests and citizens regardless of their country of residence. This decision means that the course will be continued in the future and developed in a qualitatively new way and on a new level. I hope that the party [United Russia] will win a majority of votes in the Duma, which will allow the realization of 'Putin's Plan,'" said Shevchuk.

Shevchuk also emphasized that the ideology of the Pridnestrovian Renewal party and the fundamental ideological underpinnings of United Russia are similar: "We have also always supported the programmatic documents of the Russian President and of this party [United Russia]. Naturally, the Renewal party is interested in signing a mutual interparty agreement and will be active in the campaign as one of the consolidating links around the idea of United Russia's victory in the Duma elections. Renewal will support United Russia in the Russian State Duma elections in December 2007."

As Regnum earlier reported, today, October 1, in a speech at the VIII United Russia party congress in Moscow, Vladimir Putin agreed to head up the party's candidates' list.

Yes, the original articles used "VIII United Russia party congress," and I decided to leave it that way - very nostalgia-inducing. One interesting aspect of this is that even as Putin himself was backing away from "Putin's Plan" (according to Lenta.ru, he "disavowed authorship of the plan" in his remarks at the United Russia congress on October 1) people like Shevchuk were lining up to endorse it as the salvation of Russia - and "compatriots" - everywhere.

Shevchuk's bio on the PMR Supreme Soviet website - interestingly, it identifies him as being born locally - in Rybnitsa - whereas Shevchuk's entry in the list of PMR officials banned from travel to the EU lists him as being born in Novosibirsk.

It looks like another politician from Transdniester is even more directly involved - in a way - in the upcoming Duma elections:

Pridnestrovian politician is in the federal lists of candidates to the State Duma of the Russian Federation
PMR News, Sept. 25, 2007

Active Pridnestrovian politician has been included to the list of candidates of the deputies of State Duma of the Federal Council of Russian Federation. Chairman of the Board of Pridnestrovian “Gasprombank”, Marina Smirnova, has found herself in the regional group number 90 of the party “Fair Russia”(“Spravedlivaya Rossiya”). Marina Smirnova is number two in the list. In case if “Fair Russia” gets more votes in this region, Marina Smirnova may become the deputy of the State Duma of Russian Federation

Although this item appeared on the sketchy pridnestrovie.info website, Fair Russia's website confirms that Smirnova is second on their regional list for the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District. Curiouser and curiouser.

[Update Oct 7 - FLB.ru has a list of 122 businesspeople who are on Fair Russia's party list, including Smirnova, and pokes fun at the idea of "bankers for fairness."]

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Waiting in the PMR

Photo by LJ user nicolas_82, titled
"ожидание
троллейбуса нет и нет..."
("Waiting - but the trolleybus just won't come...")

I have blogged a fair amount about the PMR, the secessionist entity (or de facto state, depending on your preferred terminology) located along Moldova's eastern border on a patch of land called Transnistria, Transdniestria, Transdniester, Transdnestr or Pridnestrovie (again, depending on your preference and politics). AFOE has recently blogged about this troubled territory - not once, but twice - and a couple of Austrian journalists have just published a book on the region that looks like it will be interesting (I've ordered a copy and will try to offer some sort of review once I receive it); but it can be difficult to find voices from the region unfiltered by spinmasters working for or against the PMR's secession.

With that in mind, I decided to poke around in the universe of Russian-language LiveJournals and found a couple of interesting communities. Foto_pmr - the source of the photo above - is an interesting if not very often updated site with a diverse array of photos from the region. The Tiraspol city community ocity also has a wide array of postings - everything from the city's new anthem (picked up from Russian news agency "Novyi Region 2") to photos of "the PMR's Paris Hiltons" and a post about "Electronic music in Pridnestrovie." I decided to translate a couple of posts from the ocity community.

A rhetorical question when the barrel is pointed at your nose
When you go into the recently built IDK [InterDnestrKom] service center, you feel like you're in a European country - everything is so awesome and captivating, and also unusual for this area (mirrored ceilings... I've been waiting to see them for a while, and the wall in the Quake room is cool). Then you go to the passport department at the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] and understand that you're in far-off 1993, and it's the same old sovok, and nothing has changed in all this time - you show up with your own forms/sheets of paper from a notebook and fill them out. Watching this contrast for an hour, you involuntarily start to think, "What sort of a state do we have? A wealthy one or a poor one? And that right there, bro', is a dilemma. Practically a rhetorical question.

And a second post, in response to the first one:

To the post about the poverty and wealth of our republic
Whenever I turn on the TV (although that's only rarely), on the TV PMR "news" I often see clips about the expenditure of budgetary funds on such things, that you can't help but think, "How much money must we have, if we can afford that?"

Today I saw a story about the restoration of the "Druzhba" hotel. Was this the government's idea?! The report talked about how they're going to make this so-called hotel into something beautiful. But literally the day before yesterday I was in the hospital. Probably 70% of the equipment there is older than I am [the poster's profile says he was born in 1987 - trans.]. And this equipment is going to check my health, make me well and keep me alive if something happens! Many operations could be done much more safely and with less pain, if the doctors had decent equipment. They showed my friend that if he got operated on here, they would have to make a hole in him the size of a fist, and if he got it done in Chisinau, then they would make a small incision a centimeter long. Because there they have more modern equipment. There must be thousands of such examples in EVERY ONE of our hospitals.

That's why I want to know, is the hotel's reconstruction really worth the danger posed to the health of the citizens of this republic if they should happen to come down with anything more serious than the flu[?]

I want to see a business plan showing the projected profitability of this hotel and in general all of the expenditures from the government's budget. For example, on the website of the Supreme Soviet.

Comments to the post are interesting and state that the hotel is actually being renovated by its owner, a private investor (but question the demand for a luxury hotel in the city), and that the PMR's budgets are published periodically and available by subscription.

The Hotel Druzhba received a mention in one of Edward Lucas's reports from the PMR earlier this year:

The misnamed Hotel Druzhba (Friendship) used to be the only place to spend the night in Tiraspol. For connoisseurs of truly dismal Soviet-style rudeness, apathy, squalor and clashing shades of muddy pastel, it is still unmissable. As a place to stay, its noisy, draughty rooms, with their nylon sheets, uneven tiles, flimsy locks and eccentric plumbing, leave a lot to be desired.

For other discussions by Tiraspolians and other Transnistrians, you can also check out this online forum.

[Update: this item is now cross-posted at Global Voices.

Also, I'd meant to mention that one of the reasons I liked the above photo so much is that it reminded me of a scene I saw from the Chisinau-Tiraspol marshrutka - an elderly lady sitting on an elevated manhole cover by grazing her cow in front of a bank of unfinished apartment buildings. The collision of urban aspirations with rural realities made for one of those images I wish I'd had the chance to photograph.]

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Virtual Reports from Virtual NGOs

Nicu Popescu had a post a few weeks ago about an entertaining development, if rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things, titled "Transnistria: a new virtual study."

Another Transnistrian propaganda report - published (according to the report) in Brussels, on the web page [created for the purpose of publishing this report] of a virtual institution called EODE ["Ngo European Observatory for Democracy and Elections"], in (rather broken) English and French, with the bombastic title "The ‘Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublika’: Building of an [sic!] European State and Experiment of Direct Democracy." In English this sounds sort of like "cultural leanings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan. The report's author, Luc Michel, is a marginal leftist, a self-declared fighter against American-Zionist imperialism. Apparently he was invited by "Nashi" to Lake Seliger. The other authors (if they even actually contributed anything) are just as bizarre.

This report is almost certainly intended as a counterweight to the fascinating and extensive report (prepared by actual legal specialists, including two professors at good law schools and a US Circuit Court judge) published last year by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and titled "Thawing a Frozen Conflict: Legal Aspects of the Separatist Crisis in Moldova." As such, it will likely be about as successful as the report promulgated last year about Transnistria by a fake NGO called "ICDISS" (a report which was disavowed by all of the academics and specialists it falsely cited as authors and contributors) which was exposed by Edward Lucas in a series of articles last year:

It seems more likely that the ICDISS is a bunch of lightweight opportunists in Washington DC, paid for by tycoons and goons in Transdniestria, perhaps with the encouragement of sympathisers in Moscow. The same money probably pays for the other websites [tiraspoltimes.com, pridnestrovie.net, visitpmr.com and transdniestria.com], and also subsidises ‘Breakthrough’ [Proryv], a local youth movement that apes similar pro-Kremlin efforts in Russia. Coincidentally or not, similar stunts are being pulled in the Caucasus and the Baltics.

Fake think-tanks, spurious reports and manufactured protest movements were common currency for both sides in the old Cold War; now they are popping up in the new one. Unprecedented money, effort and brainpower are now going into pro-Russian mischief-making in Europe’s backyard, to general indifference.

Whether you see it as merely entertaining, or outright sinister, the information war disguises hard questions for both sides.

Lucas himself posted an example of one of the other bits of disinformation floating around there which was likely organized in support of Russia - the spurious psychiatric assessment of Georgian President Saakashvili.

Of course, both de facto and real countries are capable of doing this without help from Russia or anyone else - all it takes is a bit of money and a good imagination - but more and more, such attempts are being outed, even when undertaken by real professionals.

Unfortunately for the PMR or whoever financed this "EODE" Report, it hardly looks like professionals of any sort were involved, and the final product doesn't pass the laugh test. For one thing (though I admit this is superficial), the organization's logo looks like it was designed by a 1970s-era 10-year-old - and whoever designed it doesn't know that NGOs don't usually include "Ngo" right at the front of their names.


It is littered with misspellings, and it cites publications and organizations that are impossible to take seriously, such as the Tiraspol Times and the "Community for Democracy and Human Rights." Sometimes the passages from the Tiraspol Times are just clumsily inserted without citation or editing, resulting in strange passages like "The outcome was seen on Wednesday in Tiraspol..." Fully half of the 150-page report is taken up by appendixes, which include two Tiraspol Times articles; the full text of the PMR's "Constitution"; two articles by and an interview with the Chairman of the PMR's "Constitutional Court"; and maps taken without citation from both the Economist and the CIA World Factbook.

Even better, two of the esteemed members of the bar who are listed in the report as having assisted in its preparation have bios that don't make them seem like they'd be particularly objective on questions involving the West's relationship with Russia (see page 12): one of them is listed as being "the legal consultant of Russian President Putin, of the State of Belarus and of the Government of Sudan"; another is "In particular lawyer of several Libyan State Bodies, he was also the legal consultant of the 'International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic' (Paris)."

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Alisher Usmanov - Богатые тоже плачут

The world's 142nd-richest person is wounded by a blog.

[Image source]

Thanks to a web host's fear of the UK's plaintiff-friendly libel laws, Uzbek/Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov was able to temporarily suppress some interesting material posted about him at Craig Murray's website. Notably, Usmanov has not taken Murray to court, presumably because his lawyers don't think he would win, even with the UK libel laws which put the burden of proof on the defendant. Based on material available elsewhere on the internet (for example, see Anticompromat's extensive bio and other information on Usmanov), it looks like at least some of what Murray claims may be true. More on Usmanov, including his interests in Transnistria (a topic not discussed by Murray), below the cut.

Murray, of course, was the UK's Ambassador to Uzbekistan who was sacked, according to him for being an opponent of the West's policy of tolerating Uzbek President Islam Karimov's human rights abuses. Murray has now reposted the article that drew the letter from Usmanov's lawyers, which is titled "Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman, is a Vicious Thug, Criminal, Racketeer, Heroin Trafficker and Accused Rapist," at a newly created Blogger blog - alisherusmanov.blogspot.com. The bit about Arsenal relates to Usmanov's ownership of a stake in the British football (soccer) club.

Usmanov may be learning a difficult lesson about using heavy-handed tactics to go after speech you don't like - often (at least in an open society), such tactics just get more people talking about the material you find offensive. Perhaps if Murray's blog was hosted in Russia, Usmanov would have had success getting his friends in the Kremlin (Usmanov, you'll recall, was the tycoon who recently pre-empted the auction of Rostropovich's art collection and declared his plans to donate the collection to the Russian state - he's identified by one study as belonging to the "liberal-technocratic" camp of Russian elites, as opposed to the siloviki - page 33 of this pdf) to deploy the new "anti-extremism" law against him. Another advantage he would have on his home-field media space is that he's the owner of the Kommersant publishing house.

But instead of anything resembling such a result, the case - well, actually, there's no legal case - the story has become a cause celebre for bloggers the world over, it appears. Nathan has an interesting post about the brouhaha at Registan, with interesting comments. The Moscow Times also had an article about the story yesterday, noting that part of the reason it's become such a big story is that the website of at least one other politician aside from Murray, hosted on the same server, was also shut down for "technical reasons." We'll see if Usmanov gets to be Arsenal Chairman, regardless of the size of his ownership stake. For the moment, it looks like he fought the blogs, and the blogs won.



Interestingly enough, I had been reading just a few days ago about Mr. Usmanov's ownership of a controlling stake in the crown jewel of Transdniester's industrial sector - Moldova Steel Works, better known as MMZ, which is the abbreviation its Russian name, Молдавский металлургический завод, at Rîbniţa (also spelled Râbniţa or Rybnitsa, or Рыбница in Russian):

The metallurgic production unit in Rabnita is by far one of the most important objectives in Transnistria. 4,000 people are employed in this factory and the whole Northern part of the separatist republic depends on this factory. At maximum capacity, the factory can produce up to one million tons of steel and one million tons of laminated products a year.

Several groups benefited of this production unit. First it was the Russian group Itera, which at the end of '98 bought 75% of the shares. Once the group fell into the disgrace of president Putin, Itera had to sell in 2004. The shares were bought by the companies from Liechtenstein , which at this moment control 90% of MMZ. The two companies are called Rumney Trust Reg and EIM Energy Investment & Management Corporation. Both companies used to belong to the Itera Group. The buyers hurried up to certify with documents the new property, while the only ones who admitted being part of the Itera group, were Youssouf Hares and Alisher Usmanov, a Syrian businessman also active in the Ukraine, and of Uzbek origin. [...] Hares declared to us that the factory cost 100 million dollars and that the exclusive manager of MMZ is Alisher Usmanov. [source]

Organizational chart compiled by the Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism,
showing the ownership structure of the MMZ steel plant in Rybnitsa .
[image source]

According to a report published last year by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York on various legal aspects of the situation in Transdniester (which the report refers to as "the TMR"), economic influence is one of the levers Russia uses to maintain its outsized role as a third party to the secessionist conflict between Moldova and the PMR authorities:

Besides direct economic assistance by Russia, the fortunes of Russian economic elites have become intertwined with a successful secession of the TMR. The TMR’s economy is highly reliant on Russia. “Just over 50% of [the TMR’s] officially registered exports are direct towards two key markets—Russia and Russian companies registered in North Cyprus.” To pick just one example, the ECHR found credible evidence that “from 1993 onwards Transdniestrian arms firms began to specialize in the production of high-tech weapons, using funds and orders from various Russian companies.”

More generally, though, the risk of the TMR’s privatizations—which were largely bought by Russian and Ukrainian companies—being unwound or otherwise jeopardized leads to a substantial interest on the part of some of Russia’s business elite. This is redoubled with the substantial interest that Gazprom now has in the proper transfer of shares in Moldova-Gas from the TMR to Gazprom as a valid means of paying off debt.

Or consider as another example the story of the Moldovan Metallurgical Plant (MMZ) in Ribnita. The Ribnita plant was built in 1984 using German technology and is widely considered to still be the most advanced steel works in the former Soviet Union. The Ribnita plant also generates between 40 percent and 66 percent of the TMR’s tax revenues. The TMR sold the Ribnita plant, despite the protests of the government of Moldova, to the Russian company Itera.

Then, in April 2004, Itera sold 75 percent of the plant to the Hares Group, an Austrian company, which purchased another 15 percent from other co-owners. Some have argued that the Hares Group is a “political buffer” which purchases assets in former Soviet republics and then re-sells them to the actual intended owners. In the summer of 2004, Hares allegedly sold 30 percent of the MMZ shares to Alisher Usmanov, one of the “metal tycoons” of Russia, who then announced a plan to consolidate MMZ with five other enterprises from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan making the new enterprise the fourth largest ore mining and processing company in the world. Such high economic stakes may well play a part in driving Russia’s political agenda, regardless of the requirements of international law.

[source: pp. 292-293 in this pdf (footnotes omitted)]

"Conditional recognition of privatizations" in Transdniester has been proposed as part of one potential settlement plan, but this doesn't seem to have made a critical difference in resolving the conflict just yet.



A few years ago, Usmanov seemed confident that there would be no unwinding of MMZ's privatization, or at least that he'd be able to "take steps" to avoid losing control of the enterprise:

Moscow 19 October 2004 14:56 Alisher Usmanov’s holdings in Moldovan Steel Works (MMZ) should not be jeopardised by the recent decision of the Moldovan parliament that cancelled all privatisation deals in the breakaway region of Transdniestr, the Russian businessman said last week. “I believe that the privatisation of MMZ was done under the legislation effective at that moment and that my subsequent participation in the acquisition of a share package in a company that owns MMZ stock was in good faith and should not be cancelled,” said Usmanov, who controls Urals Steel in Russia and holds a substantial minority stake in Corus Group. Usmanov said that he is planning no immediate action. “However, if [the recent developments] infringe the interests of the mill’s owners in any way, we will take steps aimed at the preservation of the mill’s uninterrupted operation, jobs and corporate ownership structure,” he added.

More recently, earlier this year there was speculation that Gazprom would give its right to receive Transdniester's extensive natural gas debts to Usmanov's holding company, Metalloinvest, which would then take payment of the debts from Transdniester in the form of the portion of MMZ shares that remained in control of the de facto state. However, all of the parties supposedly involved denied that a deal had taken place. Quite a tangled web, and I'm not sure of the situation as it stands today.

[Image source for all images of MMZ]

[Update - according to this multipart investigative report on the sale of Moldovan assets to Gazprom, what happened this March was the following:

“Gazprom” assigned Transnistria’s gas debts, in the amount of USD 1.3 billion, to the “Metalloinvest” Holding, which is also co-owner of Râbniţa Metallurgical Plant and Cement Factory. When informing the local media about the transaction, Anatolii Belitcenco, President of the Board of Administration of Râbniţa Metallurgical Plant specified that he did know the debt assignment conditions but that, thanks to them, Transnistria obtained a deferral for a few decades. Igor Smirnov, the leader of the self-proclaimed Transnistrian republic, responded to Belitcenco’s statement with as surprising as cynical a declaration: “Transnistria does not have legal gas debts because it did not sign any contracts with ‘Gazprom’. And so, Transnistria will not pay anything to “Metalloinvest”. Moldova must come to an agreement with Usmanov (Holding’s leader, who holds 30 percent of the shares of Râbniţa Metallurgical Plant), it is the one that has debts.”]

[Update Oct 10: IHT has an article about the brouhaha surrounding Murray's blogging about Usmanov, which is titled "Bloggers beware when you criticize the rich and powerful" and describes the initial shutting down of Murray's site as "the Internet equivalent of a smackdown." Via Registan.]

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Dossiers on Transdniester

While mining the research riches of the internet, I happened upon the English-language website of the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism (CRJI). They have a couple of sets of stories which touch on Transdniester. The first, called "The Final Frontier," is from December 2003 and is actually about the EU's expansion. It includes only one article on Transdniester, titled "Transdnister [sic] - the kolkhoz of smugglers." While the English translation leaves something to be desired (from the first sentence: "A modern sports complex erects downtown."), and observers have toned down some of the smuggling allegations in recent years, it may be an interesting read anyway.

The second folder I wanted to mention is titled "Pridnestrovskaya Moldavskaya Respublika – Terra Incognita" and contains a number of articles dating from 2006. The following description is offered of the project:

The project "Transdniester - Revealing Europe's black hole" is an investigation of CRJI, financed by SCOOP in Danemark and SAS in Switzerland. The participants in this project are the following journalists: Vitalie Calugareanu (Chisinau), Vlad Lavrov (Kiev), Igor Boldyrev (Odessa), Alexander Bratersky (Moscova) and foto Robert Ghement.

The journalistic investigation was financed by the Scoop project (through the Danish Investigative Journalists Association – FUJ) and by the organization Small Arms Survey from Geneva.

I've become much more skeptical of internet news sources since seeing how slick propaganda sites can be made to look. As with any previously unknown source that one has only seen on the internet, I feel the need to offer some sort of disclaimer. On the other hand, far from looking like something set up just to criticize the de facto Transnistrian authorities, this organization appears to target all of the classic targets you would expect good investigative journalists in the region to go after - corrupt Romanian officials, organized crime, problems in Moldova (including a feature with video - in Romanian only - on the recent scandal about alleged visa-selling at the Romanian embassy in Chisinau) and even Romania's alleged discrimination against Muslims "in its zeal to please the US." So I'm pretty comfortable recommending its fairly recent, firsthand reporting from the PMR. Or how about this - as comfortable as I would be recommending the work of any other equal-opportunity-muckraking outlet. Anyway, I hadn't seen this before, so I wanted to share it.

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"Radio PMR"

Two Austrian photojournalists who have done some work in Transnistria have placed an interesting collection of photos online. Some of the textual commentary is in German for now, but the photos are interesting nevertheless. It seems to be a fairly personal project (i.e., not as politicized as other online projects relating to Transnistria/Pridnestrovie), and the introductory page proclaims, "This is Radio PMR. News from our little Soviet Union."

The photos are broken into themes or little photo-essays and are organized by a table of contents of sorts. Definitely worth checking out - I was immediately hooked from the photo above, since it deals with the interesting situation of many people in the post-Soviet unresolved conflict areas, who have passports from their de facto state which are useless for international travel; in some cases, identity documents from the metropolitan state (in this case, Moldova); and often, a Russian passport, many of which have been issued based on applicants' tenuous connections to Russia as part of a strategy by Russia to create a basis for its ongoing presence in these regions.

"Passportization" has been a bigger issue in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where the residents were unable to acquire Georgian passports; and less of an issue in Transnistria, since many local residents were able to receive Moldovan travel documents. In these situations, the applicants for Russian passports needed the documents to travel internationally - sometimes to go to work in Russia - and were therefore happy to play along with the game.

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The pulse of the blogs - from Yandex

Yandex has introduced a new feature called the "Pulse of the Blogosphere," which allows one to track the number of mentions of a term (and compare up to six terms at once) within the Russian blogosphere over time. On the FAQ page for this project, curre