Transnistria

Within a few seconds of pulling my camera out of its bag a suited man came out and walked swiftly towards us. He flashed an I.D. saying that he was presidential security, and that we could not film here. The presidential office is the most imposing building in Tiraspol, the capital of the breakaway state of Transdnistria, and a huge statue of Lenin in front is an obvious monument for tourists and journalists to take pictures of. “Ne nado,” we don’t need it, said all of the security people. We were confronted another five times in the next 4 days. Fleur and I had come into the break-away region that morning on a bus from Moldova. I had spilled juice in my seat, which made the ride a bit uncomfortable as it leaked through the towel and right through the hole in my pants (see former post). The border crossing was uneventful except for the fact that it existed. We had to get off the bus and go to the immigration office where the Transdnistrian officials rifled through our passports before deciding that we were all right. Men with AK-47’s manned a road block a hundred meters back, looking pretty bored as they watched buses and cars trickle in all day. We passed through the border town of Benderi, which is part of Transdnistria though it lies on the Moldovan side of the Dniester River. The river forms a natural border and basically demarcates the de-facto state. Coming in, I saw “Russia brings peace and stability” painted on an overpass. Russian ‘peace keeping troops’ stood in a grassy median at the foot of the bridge on the eastern bank of the river, assault rifles slung over their backs and a tank barely concealed beneath camouflage netting. In Moldova, they referred to these soldiers as “Russian occupiers.” From the bus station in Tiraspol we walked from street to street asking for an address that I had written on some scrap paper. In the shadow of the main hotel, whose rusting sign was waving violently in the wind, we found the building where our hostel was supposed to be. I rang the bell to apartment 47, 4th floor, and a small woman named Olia answered the door. She handed us a key and explained how to get to another apartment where we would be staying. It turns out that this was not a traditional hostel. Our apartment was one room with a small kitchen on the 5th floor of a building with no elevator. The toilet and bathtub were in separate rooms and the gas stove had to be lit with matches. We didn’t linger in the apartment, but grabbed our cameras and headed back down Pravda (Truth) street until it connected with 25 Oktyabrya (October) street, which led to the center of the city. The streets were spotless and free of garbage, and compared to Moldova the place was downright tidy. There was no graffiti on the walls (or it had been painted over). The street was quiet and mostly empty, with only the occasional Lada or trolley car bumbling rustily down the wide avenue. The beer kiosks that dot the landscape of Ukraine and Moldova were noticeably absent on the streets of Tiraspol as were the enormous advertisements for Western companies. Instead of commercial advertising there were patriotic slogans and symbols hanging from buildings or plastered up on billboards. Blazoned across the front of one was “Tiraspol is our favorite city!” The only thing decidedly western in the country is a chain of restaurants called Andy’s Pizza, which is an American style pizzeria. I never found out who owns it, but they must have spent a lot of time in the States. In the main square is a colossal statue of a man straddling a rearing horse, the founder of the city. To his right is an enormous sign with the national emblem of the PMR, Prednestrovian Moldavian Republic, in its center: a hammer and sickle surrounded by ears of grain and a bounty of fruits and vegetables, a red star emblazed above it all. Across the street is an Orthodox chapel with a WWII tank situated right outside so that it almost blocks out the golden dome, Za Rodinu (for the motherland) painted on its side. A cemetery for the soldiers who died during the conflict with Moldova, an eternal flame and a couple of life-size bronze statues occupies the area next to the chapel. Transdnistria, or Prednestrovia (Приднестровье) in Russian, broke away from the disintegrating Moldovan SR in 1990 and declared itself an independent Soviet Republic. Gorbachev struck this move down, but the area remained independent in practice, and remained so after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There was a short war with Moldova in 1992 that ended in a stalemate after Russian troops, left over from Soviet days, took the side of the Transdnistrians. The country is internationally unrecognized though it maintains a de-facto independence, issuing its own currency, maintaining its own police force, postal service, and military. Presumably, it also has its own foreign service, which is active only in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two break away regions of Georgia and fellow unrecognized de-facto states. There is an Abkhazian and South Ossetian embassy in Tiraspol which Fleur and I visited. I sat down with a few of the employees there and explained that I would soon be going to Georgia and would like to see their countries, but that it was complicated because I am an American. They were very friendly and tried their best to be helpful, advising me to talk to the foreign minister about getting permission. Of course, I knew it would be impossible for me to go to either of these “countries,” particularly since South Ossetia is still a war zone. Fleur and I met with a local guy named Andrei who co-authored a book about Transdnistria and who works at the state-run radio station, Radio Prednestrovia. He took us around on a tour of the city, which consisted of all of the war monuments and was on the whole not especially interesting. When we passed the Russian peacekeepers Andrei insisted that we not film them. He explained that we would have to have a long talk with “some serious guys” if we were caught. Andrei told us that he was interrogated for 5 hours by the KGB after a journalist who he was showing around took pictures of the wrong things. The KGB, which still goes by that name, is still very active in Transdnistria. I asked Andrei whether there was any opposition to Transdnistrian independence in the country. He said that there was none and told us about a 2006 referendum where voters were asked whether they wanted independence “with free association with Russia,” or wanted to rejoin with Moldova. 97.7% voted to remain independent, though the European Union and other Western bodies did not accept this figure. The population of Transnistria is around 32% Moldovan/Romanian, so the 97.7% figure seems outrageously high. When we asked why Transdnistrian independence was unrecognized, Andrei said it was because the West was “stupid.” When pressed harder, he explained that America and the EU had succumbed to Moldovan “fascist” propaganda. A new president, Evegeni Shevchuk, was elected in Transdnistria this year in an unexpected victory for a candidate who Moscow did not support. Close to our apartment there was a banner with his face printed next to the slogan Poryadok budet (There will be order)! I asked Andrei what he thought of the new president and he told me that he was a good guy and was doing a lot. He said that Shevchuk had negotiated an agreement with Moldova for railway cooperation. Shevchuk had also fired the former head of the KGB, who had held the position for the last 20 years. The next day we took a marshrutka, or mini-bus, to the city of Dubassari, which had seen the first casualties of the 1992 conflict. The road between Tiraspol and Dubassari cut through wide expanses of farmland, with only the occasional old-world farm hut or rusting Soviet grain silo interrupting the rolling green fields. We came to the center of Dubassari where another soldier’s cemetery sat next to another WWII monument and another eternal flame. Another big government building and another memorial to the war for independence stood on either side of another wide empty street. I had heard that there were some buildings in Dubassri where you can still see bullet holes in the façade from the 1992 conflict. Not knowing where else to start, I went up to some guys in camouflage and asked them what they knew about this and how to find it. They turned out to be Russian peacekeepers, who have a strong presence in this city, and after struggling a bit trying to explain what we wanted, they just offered to give us a ride. We hopped in the back of the car next to one of the soldiers, with the other two in front, and sped off through this town. All but one of the guys were from Russia and they were excited that I had been there and knew about their cities. We became fast friends and when they dropped us off we all shook hands, glad to have met one another. The memorial didn’t turn out to be much, so we made our way back downtown. I had heard about a hydro-electric plant operating in the city, so I asked a police officer how to get there. He was a young guy and seemed really excited that a Western foreigner was in his town and speaking to him in Russian. Walking along, he asked me what kind of Russian profanity I knew before showing us how to get to the plant. We took a taxi down to the river where the hydro-electric plant straddled the bridge with Transdnistria on one side and Moldova on the other. We got out of the taxi in front of a little police hut, where I asked if we could film. The officer didn’t answer but asked for our passports and registration instead. After we showed it to him, he said that we could go down to the station, but couldn’t film it. We walked past another roadblock that was guarded by a Russian peacekeeper holding an AK-47. A few meters ahead was another trailer with about 15 more peacekeepers and some kind of heavily armored vehicle with a big machine gun on front. I spoke with another peacekeeper and asked if we could film. He directed us to a part of the bridge that looked out onto the Dniester River and said that we could film there. Of course, we were not allowed to film the Hydro-electric station or the peacekeepers. The one peacekeeper who I was talking to kept watch over us as we filmed, though he wasn’t being aggressive or trying to hurry us. I asked him a few more times if we could film him and the guns, but he said no. However, he offered to take a picture of Fleur and me together. Slinging his AK-47 over his back, he held her camera up and got a few shots of us. The official currency used in Transdnistria is the Transdnistrian ruble. There are only two ATMs in the country and they only spit out American dollars and Russian rubles, which you then have to exchange at a bank. I was trying to demonstrate this on camera outside of the bank when a man in a suit came out, flashed an I.D. and asked what we were doing filming. I told him it was a student project about traveling and I was just trying to explain the currency situation. He got on the phone and told us to wait. We stood there silently, the security guy with his arms crossed over his tie, not unfriendly just dutiful. A minute later the guy from the phone call, also in a suit, shows up and I explain to him again what we are doing. “Ne Nado,” he said, and then in English “we have problem!” He demanded we delete the footage. At the main market in Tiraspol a blind man was playing the accordion at the bottom of the steps, singing Russian love songs, cloudy blue eyeballs emerging from beneath his closed eyelids when he hit the high notes. Browned and wrinkled women with headscarves came out from another century for the day to sell. They hunched on the ground with their wares lying out on blankets. No one was yelling. The sellers were friendly and mostly excited to have foreigners. One man seemed angry with me for not speaking Ukrainian, or for being foreign, I couldn’t tell. We asked some women who were selling nuts how life in the country was. With a tincture of sarcasm they said it was fabulous. I was filming some market scenes when some guy comes up and tells me he’s security and that I am not allowed to film here. The nut ladies hassled him a bit, but he just shrugged in a way that said, “I’m just doing my job.” Walking around town looking for interview with locals, I met one young guy named Alexander who told me that the new president was a good guy and was doing a lot. He said that Shevchuk had negotiated an agreement with Moldova for railway cooperation and had fired the former head of the KGB. He also told me that Transdnistria was the victim of Moldovan propaganda and was internationally unrecognized as a result. When I asked about internal opposition and calls to rejoin with Moldova, he said that there were none and that 97.7% of Transdnistrians supported independence. We met another young guy named Oleg in the main square who talked to us about his country. He told us that things had lightened up under President Shevchuk, particularly since the former head of the KGB had been fired. He said that up until a few months ago the KGB had been really paranoid about spying and had committed human rights abuses against suspected foreign spies. Oleg said that the KGB has grossly exaggerated the spying problem since in his own estimation “only about 2-3% of the foreign tourists were actually spying.” I had been corresponding with a girl named Velena who lives in Tiraspol. She and two of her friends came to our apartment. We sat on the floor and talked about their country. They explained to us that the West, which was just responding to Moldovan propaganda, was persecuting their country by not recognizing it. I asked about internal opposition in the country and why ethnic Moldovans, who make up 32% of the population in Transdnistria, don’t support reunification with Moldova. One of the guys, Roma, explained to me that the Moldovans had also fought in the civil war and that they too supported its independence. In fact, 97.7% supported Transdnistria’s independent status. The other guy, Dima, told me about Shevchuk’s firing of the former head of the KGB, who was wanted for crimes against humanity committed while working for the KGB in Lithuania during Soviet times. Fleur asked how this kind of guy could have held this position for 20 years if he was so bad? Dima explained that “all politicians are criminals.” One of them mentioned Shevchuk’s success in negotiating a deal with Moldova that would open up railway connections between the two countries. The other two chimed in at this, saying that it was a great accomplishment. I asked whether, if given the choice, they would rather Transdnistria be absorbed into Russia—like a kind of exclave, another Kaliningrad— or reunited with Romania? Roma and Velena immediately said “join with Russia.” Dima said Moldova. The other two gave him sharp looks. Roma, with an edge in his voice, asked “why?!” Dima was quiet. The next day at the train station we were waiting for our bus to arrive to take us to Odessa. Fleur had gone off to get something to eat and so I was sitting on the curb and decided to take a picture of a brick smokestack and some ugly Soviet building. I took a quick shot. A man came up and told me not to photograph here. Crossing the border back into Ukraine, I was called off of the bus by the Transdnistrian border guards who proceeded to tell me that my crossing into Ukraine was not legal since I did not have an exit stamp from Moldova. Of course, when crossing into Transdnistria you do not get an exit stamp from Moldova, since it is considered their territory. I told him that I was now exiting Moldova but he said that Moldova was 80 kilometers in the other direction. I had read about this kind intimidation at the borders, which is just an attempt to get a bribe, so I told the guard that I knew for sure that I was exiting legally. After repeating that it was illegal once again, he dismissed me. That morning we had returned the apartment key to Olia. She stood in the doorway still in her nightgown as we thanked her and told her what a good time we’d had. I started telling her that I had been making a short film about the country and that Fleur would be writing a travel piece. A worried look flashed momentarily across Olia’s face. Regaining her smile, she told us just not to say anything bad about the country because we were registered here under her name and in her apartment. She said that she didn’t want anyone to come knocking on her door.