Facts about Transnistria*

Internationally unrecognized entity proclaimed in Tiraspol on 2 September 1990, initially styled the Moldavian Transnistrian Soviet Socialist Republic. Currently known as the Moldavian Transnistrian Republic, or MTR, (Russian name: Pridnestrovskaya Moldavskaya Respublika or Pridnestrovie), this breakaway entity, referred to in many sources as Transnistria or Transdniestr, consists of a narrow strip of land (180 km by 32 km) nestled between the East bank of the Nistru River (Russian: Dniester/Dniestr/Dnestr River) and the border of Moldova with the Ukraine on a small part of what used to be, between 1924 and 1940, the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The separatist authorities in Tiraspol exert their rule over five Soviet-style districts—Camenca, Dubăsari, Grigoriopol, Râbniţa, and Slobozia—comprising a total population of 555,500 (2004 est.). Except for nine villages bordering the east bank of the river (Malovata Nouă, Cocieri, Coşniţa, Doroţcaia, Pârâta, Pohrebea, Roghi, Vasilevca, and Corjova), the area controlled by the MTR includes all of Moldova's land on the east bank of the Nistru. On the river's west bank, the self-proclaimed MTR controls the city of Tighina.

The MTR, which declared itself a "customs control zone," uses the ruble (dubbed “Suvorov”) as the local currency, preserves the Soviet-era state symbols, and maintains a strategic importance due to the deployment of Russian troops there and the industries and power plants concentrated on its soil throughout the years that preceded the disbanding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). About 30 percent of Moldova's industries and over 90 percent of its energy production are located on territory controlled by the Tiraspol authorities, whose policies have made evident that the conflict with the government in Chişinău is not essentially about ethnic and linguistic issues, but mostly about political orientation and geopolitics.

The Tiraspol leadership is leftist, antireform, and conservative. Furthermore, it has no intention of negotiating seriously with Moldova to alter a status quo that is in its favor. Most of the key figures in the Tiraspol administration are Russian and/or Ukrainian citizens and is widely believed that they were sent to Moldova by the Kremlin to organize a secessionist movement to prevent Moldova’s independence moves. Igor Smirnov, a former military plant manager in Tiraspol who came to Moldova in November 1987, is MTR’s president since 1991. His government controls the mass media, oppress civil society organizations and opposition political formations, while his sons run the republic’s main businesses through the notorious Sherif Company.

MTR has been populated by the same ethnic groups as the rest of Moldova, although local Russians and Ukrainians, taken together, outnumber ethnic Moldovans. Such a situation developed as a result of Russification and due to influx of migrants from other parts of the USSR as working force for military plants and other heavy industries. According to data from the recent census organized by Tiraspol authorities in 2004, Ukrainian ethnics make up 28.8 percent (a slight increase from 28 percent in 1989), Russians—38.3 percent (up from 24 percent, 1989), and Moldovans 31.9 percent (down from 40 percent, 1989), thus the share increase of the Russian ethnics was made on the expense of Moldovans who were forced to flee the region due to discrimination policies. Romanian-speaking Moldovans have only 88 schools where the language of education is Romanian, out of which only eight are allowed to use the Latin alphabet.

Tiraspol broke away from Chişinău in protest over the 1989 laws regarding the return to the Latin script, the establishment of Moldavian rather than Russian as the official language of the country, and the change of the republic's Soviet-style flag to a new one, almost identical with Romania's tricolor. A series of small-scale clashes occurred in late 1991 and early 1992, culminating with a short but violent armed conflict in which Russia's 14th Army sided with the government proclaimed in Tiraspol.

In the wake of a cease-fire agreement signed at Limanskoe on 7 July 1992 under the mediating authority of the commander of Russia's 14th Army, Alexandr Lebed, negotiations have been going on between Moldova's authorities and the self-appointed Tiraspol authorities in a series of attempts to settle the conflict by reaching an agreement on granting expanded autonomy to the Nistru east-bank districts, as Moldova's "Transnistrian Self-Administered Territories." The arrangement would provide the region with the right to exert jurisdiction over taxation, police forces, budget decisions, and other issues. However, the Tiraspol leadership has constantly turned down Chişinău’s offers to grant the east-bank districts such a status, sticking to its claim to statehood.

With its diminutive form, this last bastion of Soviet Communism in Eastern Europe is generally regarded as evocative of the former USSR in a nutshell. In 1997, the MTR applied for membership in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and, later on, for full-scale integration into the CIS political and military structures. That same year, the Tiraspol Supreme Soviet chairman declared that the Transnistrian republic will demand that Moldova accepts full integration into the CIS and that it joins the Russian Federation-Belarus union, viewed as a possible future model for the MTR's status vis-a-vis the Republic of Moldova. A nonbinding referendum on joining the Russia-Belarus union was held between April and June 1998, with over 66 percent of the ballots supporting the union. However, like the province of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea (isolated from Russia by independent Lithuania and Poland), the east-bank separatist region, has no common borders with either Belarus or the Russian Federation.

A key factor in the stalemate is the continuing presence of Russia's military base in Tiraspol, where Moscow keeps its only permanent deployment of armed forces outside Russia's borders in Europe. The Tiraspol enclave is considered to be a strategic stronghold in the proximity of the volatile Balkans region and a turntable in arms trafficking between this internationally unrecognized entity and other volatile regions, including Kosovo and the Caucasus. In 2004, in the Ilaşcu and others versus Russia and Moldova, a case examined by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, it has been concluded that the Russian 14th Army and other elements of the Russian government had contributed to the creation and continued existence of the Moldavian Transnistrian Republic.

Another important factor in preserving the status quo of the MTR is the Ukrainian factor—the illicit trade that occurs over the Ukrainian border with MTR allows the separatist state to survive, and has been profitable to some business groups in Ukraine.

New promising developments took place in 2005 through the implication of Western players in addressing the security concerns related to the existence of MTR. In October, the United States and European Union have joined as observers the inefficient negotiation format, comprised of Ukraine, OSCE, Moldova, and MTR, and formed the new “five plus two” format; in December, the EU Border Assistance Mission for the Ukraine-Moldova border was launched, aiming at suppressing the traffic in arms, drugs, and human beings, as well as the regular commercial contraband of which MTR is consider to be both a source and a transit route.

*Source: The Historical Dictionary of Moldova, (496pp). Authors: Dr. Andrei Brezianu and Vlad Spânu. Scarecrow Press, Maryland, USA & London. 2007.

Video links:

Transnistria Trafficking Arms On Europe’s Doorstep (Documentary; 52 minutes; Dec. 2005; By France's Canal +)
Transnistria - Europe's Black Hole (Documentary; 33 minutes; Dec. 2006; By United Kingdom's Journeyman Pictures)

Related document: Key elements of the 3D Strategy for the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict