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Tensions in the mosaic of Moldavia ©

KISHINIEV, Moldavia — Most of the
Soviet population is voting this month in
hard-fought multiple candidate elections
for republican parliaments and _ local
Soviets, a process that is likely to continue
for several weeks as many contests go into
second and third rounds. (The Soviet rule is
that a successful candidate must have over
50 per cent of the eligible vote).

Here, in the tiny republic of Moldavia,
population four million, the first round of

voting on Feb. 25 saw barely one-third of '

the parliament’s 380 seats filled as a tough
three-way struggle intensified over the
future character of Moldavia and even its
membership in the USSR.

Of all European Soviet republics, Mol-
davia is probably the least familiar to the
world. The USSR’s only Balkan territory,
Moldavia’s modern history began when it
was taken from Turkey by Russia in 1812.
For over a century after that it was a pro-
vince of the czarist empire, called Bessara-
bia, until it was seized and incorporated into
Romania in 1918. Later, under the terms of
the secret protocol to the Hitler-Stalin pact,
it was re-annexed to the Soviet Union in
1940. It is the consequences of this complex
history that the predominantly Romanian-
speaking Moldavians and the republic’s
many ethnic minorities are now struggling
over in their search for a better system anda
new identity.

“The goal that unites our movement is
that of achieving true self-determination for
Moldavia,” says Mikhai Gampu, 38, a law-
yer who serves as press spokesperson for the
nationalist Moldavian Popular Front. “We
are for the sovereignty of the republic on its
own territory and economic independ-
ence.

The list of grievances that Gampu cites
sounds like a typical indictment of the
Soviet system, one that might easily be
heard with few variations these days in
Riga, or Kiev, or Sakhalin Island: ““We are
not masters in our own home,” he says.
“We Romanians constitute a minority in all
big cities of Moldavia and we are only the
majority in rural centres. Altogether,
Romanians are just 64 per cent of the popu-
lation today, though we were 80 per cent in
1940,” at the end of Moldavia’s 22-year
period as part of Romania. “This is the
accumulated consequence of Russification,
not just czarist but also Soviet.”

He continues: “We do not have political
control over our own economy. Plans are
still made in Moscow to tell us what we
should produce, how much, what the price
will be, where to send it, etc. The income
remaining in our republic is averaging
barely 30 per cent. Seen from the point of
view of international law we are not a sover-
eign state, we are a colony”.

The Popular Front seems to have done
well in the first round of the elections, elect-
ing 23 of its own members plus a large

number of other ethnically-Moldavian can-

didates whom it had endorsed. Yet it is
likely to be denied a significant majority
because of fierce resistance to it from other.
ethnic groups in the republic, a problem for
which the Popular Front has mostly itself to
blame.

A national awakening is taking place
across the Soviet Union, and virtually all of
the country’s 140 or so ethnic groups, even
the smallest, are being drawn into it. It is
mostly viewed in Moscow as a pro-
perestroika phenomenon, although there
are trepidations about it all. National
movements have sought to demolish old
command-administer economic and social
structures, to win and implement economic
independence, to restore or create for the
first time democratic national institutions of
sovereignty as well as guarantees of lan-
guage, culture and ethnic dignity. These are
general goals shared by all Soviet nationali-
ties including, ironically, the Russians, and
warmly supported by Gorbachev and the

8 e Pacific Tribune, March 19, 1990

progressive reformers at the centre.

Yet many of these movements, while
brandishing the slogans of self-determina-
tion and independence for themselves, turn
angry and intolerant when their own minor-
ities demand the same. This would seem to
be the key to the present turmoil in Molda-
via.

The Gagauz are a unique community-of
about 150,000 ethnically-Turkic Christians
concentrated in five southeastern districts of
Moldavia, where they have lived at least
since 1812. When the Moldavian parlia-
ment passed a language law last fall which

ignored Gagauz language needs and =

national aspirations, the Gagauz joined the
Slavic minority in a mass strike which
almost paralyzed the Moldavian economy.
On Nov. 12, the Gagauz went a step further
and became the first Soviet minority ever to
unilaterally declare its own autonomy.

ie Bincaa gine:

Members of Moldavia’s Popular Front march during the republic’s election campaign.

re-unite itself with . Romania — which
increasingly seems to be the strategic goal of
the Popular Front.

“Membership in the USSR is becoming

the key problem of inter-ethnic relations,” .

says history professor Anatoly Lisetsky, 60,
chair of Inter-Movement, the organization
which has taken up the grievances of the
Slavic minority and also the much-
tarnished vision of Soviet federation. “We
admit the right of self-determination of
nations up to secession, but we are also for

the right of the USSR to defend its integrity '

through political means. We think disinte-
gration would be a disaster and the end of
perestroika.

“T defend the Soviet idea,” Lisetsky says
with some passion. “I believe a renovated
federation of equal nations, in which the
rights of all would be protected, is worth
fighting for. We are only just beginning to

Fred Weir

“We don’t want our own autonomous
republic just for the sake of having one,”
says Mikhail Kendigelian, the 64-year old
co-chair of the Gagauz “Khalkhi” move-
ment for autonomy. “We need historical
protection for our people. We are on our
own territory, and Gagauz people do not
have any state formation anywhere else in
the world. Every nation has the right to
self-determination, and we want to exercise
that right.”

That draws a tough response from the
Popular Front. “We’re opposed to the
Gagauz demand for territorial autonomy,”
says Gampu. “We support their desire for
cultural freedom, but they have no moral
right to territory. We Romanians are on our
own land, we have history here (... ) The
Gagauz certainly aren’t from here. We
don’t demand that they should leave, but
we will not permit any division of Molda-

vian territory. The Slavic minority in Tiras- ,
pol are demanding independence, the :
Gagauz want independence. Who’s next, :

maybe Bulgarians? Jews? Gypsies?”

The third element of the Moldavian tri- :

angle are the Slavs, mostly Ukrainians and
Russians, a great many of whom have deep

roots in the region — particularly in the ‘

centres of Tiraspol and Bendery — going
back to the 19th century. They have threa-
tened to declare independence from Mol-
davia if it moves to leave the USSR or to

FROM MOSCOW

recover from Stalinism, and we don’t need
any new extremisms. I am in principle
opposed to replacing the cult of the person-
ality with the cult of the nation.”
Inter-Movement also appears to have
done well in the elections — though with
little support at this point among Moldavi-

ans it is clearly locked into its mainly Slavic °

urban strongholds.

One might well ask: how does the Mol-
davian Communist Party fit into this pic-
ture? With 115 of the 140 parliamentary
deputies elected so far being Communist
Party members, it is, predictably enough,
claiming victory. ‘

That pattern can be expected to repeat
itself over most of the USSR, where the
overwhelming bulk of candidates running
everywhere are, in fact, party members. But
the significance of this defies analysis: virtu-

ally all of the leading candidates of all of the .

diverse and often antagonistic social and
political movements happen to be commu-
nists. The party, at least at this stage, seems
outwardly as relevant to the process as a
soccer club.

But perhaps there is more to it: “The
party has not identified its own slate of
candidates for these elections,” says Eduard
Smirnov, deputy head of the Moldavian
Communist Party Central Committee’s
organizational department. “Why not?
Because we have, in fact, a single-party sys-

tem which is now in the painful process of
becoming pluralistic. Our duty is to pro-
mote that process, not try to stifle it. Hence
we view this hands-off approach as an
appropriate tactic for the transitional
period. If in future we shall have a multi-
party system, then naturally we will fight for
our own slate.”

As Moldavians of all ethnic groups
struggle over the coming period to work out
a new understanding of relations between
themselves and with — or without — the
USSR, probably the last word will belong to
those unsung experts who even now are
wrestling with the monumental, complex
job of trying to break down the old com-
mand economy and replace it with one
based on cost accounting, self-management
and economic independence.

“T get a little impatient with those who
speak glibly about Moldavia being a ‘col-
ony’ of Moscow,” says Nikolai Bondar-
chuk, deputy chair of the Moldavian
Planning Committee. “Of course there have
always been deep injustices rooted in the
system, and we had virtually no control
over our own economy. When all the strings
were held by the centre the laws of motion
of the economy were a mystery to all of us,
we had little way of knowing our true posi-
tion and it was easy to see ourselves aS
exploited.

“But go to Moscow and see for yourself:
They are even worse off than we are in
many respects. They aren’t living high o
our sweat and toil. You can’t find anyone in
the country who is. We are all dealing as”
best we can with the same economic
impasse.

“And we should remember that this sys
tem, for all its problems, industrialized,
modernized and developed Moldavia. Our

_standard of living today is far higher than

that in Romania, for instance, though
were the poorest part of Romania beforé
World War II. In fact, whether we calculate
our figures in rubles at Soviet prices, or t
to imagine them in world market prices, th
Moldavian Republic has been importin|
more than it exports within the Soviet sys-
tem for many years. We have actually been
net beneficiaries, and the hard truth about
economic independence is that it will make
this situation untenable for us. This is ou
real problem. ;
“Now we need to go over to economi
independence, to a more rational syste
that gives us greater control but al:
increased risk and responsibility. This i
going to involve hard work and a difficult
transition. There will not be any quick fixes:
despite some of the things you hear peopl
saying out there. In the final analysis,
simply could not afford to give up the t
mendous advantages of belonging to an
having privileged access to the huge Sovi
market and integrated economic complex”.