Quite some years ago I accidentally visited Transnistria. I honestly wasn’t planning on updating my frozen conflict bucket list, I just happened to need to go through the ‘country’ as I was travelling to Moldova after my stay in Odessa. Since there was a lot of hassle at the border, I arrived late at Tiraspol, unable to continue my trip on the same day towards the west. But it ended up being an hilarious experience.
So what’s going on over there?
Transnistria is a teeny-tiny breakaway region wedged between Moldova and Ukraine. Over here ethnic Russians and Ukrainians together outnumber ethnic Moldovans and that leads to trouble.
It all started in 1990, when Moldova broke away from the Soviet Union. The Russian and Ukrainian people in the region felt left out, or isolated and hoped to remain part of the Soviet Union. A civil conflict in 1992 followed and ever since Transnistria has enjoyed a de facto independence, even though it has been internationally recognized as a part of Moldova.
Nowadays Transnistria is home to more than 500,000 people and has a parliamentary government, an army, a flag (with a hammer and sickle ánd a red star – of course) and even its own currency. It has all the outlook of an independent nation, except that it ain’t one. You won’t find it on a map, and not a single member of the United Nations recognizes its existence. Its government and economy are heavily dependent on subsidies from Russia, which maintains a military presence in the territory. Political competition is limited and all media outlets are controlled by the state.
All in all an interesting case study, especially because it felt like time stood still over there at the time of my visit. Even though the Soviet Union has crumbled, it’s still like the 80’s are alive over there.
Perhaps the situation is so weird because the conflict has never been fully resolved.
As I was on my way from Ukraine I was lucky enough to be seated in the bus next to Transnistrian / Ukrainian police officer that loved dance music. Since he was a great fan of the Dutch dj Armin van Buuren he was pretty eager to help me – a fellow countryman of Armin – out while crossing the border.
I didn’t even ask for it, nor did he ask anything in return. I never experienced more random situations while travelling as in the east of Europe. This for sure was one of them. The guy – he was also my age – made sure I didn’t even have to talk to one of the officials. Great, as my Russian back then was even more rusty as it is now.
After we finally made it to Tiraspol, he pointed out a hotel, waved me goodbye and turned up the volume of his Armin van Buuren-song. I withdrew some local money – which felt like monopoly paper (with images of Russian figures like Catherine the Great) – at the only bank I could find, and checked in one of the most Soviet kind of hotels I’ve ever visited. It was like I’d entered the Soviet 70’s and I clearly was the only tourist around.
The next morning an enormous statue of Lenin was shining in the sun outside of my hotel and since I had some time to kill until the bus would leave to Moldova I decided to enjoy my time in this open-air Soviet museum.
It appeared Lenin was guarding the entrance to the Supreme Soviet, the house of parliament, an anachronism in itself. Pictures of Stalin and Medvedev (in charge at the time) were as omnipresent as those of the Transnistrian president.
The people obviously found it weird that a young not so Transnistrian woman was walking there, but apart from some raised eyebrows none of them made any comment to me. I could just walk around freely in this small Soviet state. If you’re ever around and interested in Soviet culture I’d really recommend you to take the plunge. If not, enjoy the pictures of this random encounter!
