Moldova (4): Transnistria, a Day Out in a Non-existent Country

Transnistria: A Hankering After the Good Old Days of the Soviet Union or a Model for Brexit?

What and Where is Transnistria?

After three days in Moldova we set off for a day out in Transnistria. As the geography of Moldova is not generally well-known (and that may be an understatement), here is a map.

The position of Moldova in Eastern Europ

All the Moldovan posts have contained versions of that map, but it does not mention Transnistria, so here is another map.

Moldova and Transnistria (or Transdniestria)

The officially unrecognised Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, aka Transnistria, is a 400km long strip of land across the River Dniester from Moldova (de facto) or from the rest of Moldova (de jure). It achieved independence after a five month long war with Moldova in 1992.

That answers ‘where’ and ‘what’, ‘why’ is more complicated and is appended at the end of the post.

Crossing the Transnistrian Border

Transnistrian national flag

Driving south-east for an hour or so brought us to the border outside Bender. Since the July 1992 ceasefire agreement, Russians control the buffer zone; N is unworried by that, seeing them as guarantors of continued peace. Russian officers with caps the size of dinner plate strolled around looking reassuringly relaxed.

Formalities took place in a portable wooden office. We completed a basic form, showed our passports and were given permission to enter (ie a slip of paper to be surrendered on leaving). Not being internationally recognised, Transnistria did not stamp our passports.

Bender

It was quick and low key, the process being identical for N and Leonid. Leonid drove us the short distance into the city, parking within view of the second biggest grain silos in Transnistria (tourist attractions are few and far between!).

Sheriff supermarket - and those grain silos, Bender

The Transnistrian Rouble (or Ruble)

Money-changing, N informed us, is on the top floor of the supermarket opposite. We then had a memorable discussed about how much we would need. ‘You will want lunch,’ N had said, ‘a souvenir, maybe a fridge magnet, and you might like to send some postcards, $10 should be enough.’ Those may not have been her precise words, but that was the precise number. ‘10 US dollars each?’ I repeated, wondering if that could possibly be enough. ‘No, $10 between you.’ ‘Including lunch and a beer?’ ‘Yes.’

One Transnistrian Rouble - a currency unrecognised outside this small non-country - is worth almost exactly the same as a Moldovan leu so 10 US dollars bought a little over 150 Roubles. N showed us some Transnistrian coins, multi-sided plastic tokens, straight out of a toybox.

One Transnistrian Rouble (worth about 5p)
Alexander Suvarov (more later) on the front, the WW2 Chitcani Monument on the back

Шериф (Sheriff). Who Runs Transnistria?

The supermarket is one of a chain belonging to ‘Sheriff’, a company, founded in 1993 by two former members of the special forces. Sheriff also owns (among other things) TV and radio stations, a publishing house, a mobile phone network, an advertising agency, a construction company, a distillery and several bakeries. Transnistria is a democracy, of sorts, but leading members of the government and their relations have senior positions in Sheriff, and vice versa and with their newspapers, TV and radio stations the company can influence both the elections and the elected.

Bender's Military Historical Complex

Outside the supermarket is Bender’s triumphal arch (see A Collection of Arcs de Triomphe). There were 12 Russo-Turkish Wars, starting in 1568-70 and finishing with the First World War which finished both the Ottoman and Russian Empires. The Arch commemorates the Russian capture of Bender Fort in 1806 but was originally erected in Chişinău and was destroyed, with much else, in 1944; this is a 2008 replica. The major result of the 1806-12 war was the Russian Empire’s gain of Bessarabia (approximately Moldova and Transnistria), so the arch is a message, or warning, from the Russian orientated Transnistrians to the Moldovans and their European ambitions.

The Arch of Bender

The nearby Military Historical Memorial complex, also dating from 2008, is guarded by a statue of Grigory Potemkin. Later rather upstaged by the battleship that bore his name (films have much to answer for), Potemkin rose from relatively humble beginnings to become the commander-in-chief of all Russian land and sea forces, and the lover of Catherine the Great. Locally, he commanded the Russian forces in two successful wars against the Ottoman Empire (1764-74 and 1787-92) and was governor of South Russia.

Grigory Potemkin, Military Historical Complex, Bender

The military graveyard beyond contains the remains of soviet soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War (or World War II, as we call it)…

Military Historical Complex, Bender

…but there is also a memorial to 489 victims of the 1992 war with Moldova.

Memorial to those who died in the 1992 Moldovan War, Bender

Bender Fort

A short drive took us to Bender fort.

Stephen III (the Great and Holy) of Moldavia (a rather larger principality than modern Moldova) built a wooden fort at Tyagyanyakyacha in the 15th century as a defence against Tartar raiders. The Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent took the town in 1538, renaming it Bender, which remains its official monicker, though it is know as Bendery in Russian and Ukrainian and Tighina in Romanian (if it was my choice, I would go with Tighina!). The stone fort is of 16th Ottoman origin.

The Russians attempted to take the fort several times in the endless series of Russo-Turkish Wars, succeeding in 1779, 1786 and 1806 (and losing it in between).

Bender Fort

Baron von Münchhausen was an officer of the besieging Russian Army in the 1735-9 war. After retirement he became a minor celebrity by telling outrageously tall tales of his military exploits. Even more exaggerated tales appeared in fictional form but the author (now known to be Rudolf Erich Raspe) used Münchhausen’s real name so could never claim authorship for fear of a law suit. Other stories by other authors were later added to the oeuvre.

Baron von Munchhausen

The Russians wanted to know Ottoman plans, so von Munchhausen welded a seat onto a cannon ball and had himself fired across the River Dniester and into the castle. After a little spying he fired himself back. The cannonball is on display beside von Munchhausen’s bust.

Lynne and von Munchhausen's cannonball, Bender Fort

We walked past busts of the Great and the Good of Imperial Russia…

A sample of the Great and the Good of Imperial Russia, Bender Fort

...and entered the fort.

Entering Bender Fort

There is little inside except a small museum (with a large school party).

Inside Bender fort

The gatehouse…

Gatehouse, Bender Fort

…was open. In Ottoman times the first floor was a mosque and the mihrab can still be seen…

The ghost of the mihrab of the ottoman mosque, gatehouse, Bender Fort

While the top - effectively a minaret - provides views across the Dniester to von Munchhausen’s firing position…

Von Munchhausen fired himself from just the other side of the River Dniester

…the new church behind…

The new church behind Bender Fort

…and down into the Russian military base.

Russian base, Bender Fort. It is not very interesting, but you rarely get a chance to photograph the inside of a Russian base

Bender's Old Railway Station

Bender’s former railway station is not far away. Вокзал (Voksal) is Russian for station, the word derived, in a roundabout way, from London’s Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, while Гара (Gara – like the French ‘Gare’) is Romanian written in Cyrillic. Romanian is a romance language; in Moldova they have reverted to writing it in Latin script, not so in Transnistria.

Here we are outside Bender's old railway station

The interior is evocative of its era…

Inside Bender's old station

…and outside there is a pleasing old train, but as a tourist attraction it needs some work.

Steam train, Bender station

We left Bender across the Dniester bridge. According to international law Transnistria is really part of Moldova, while Bender, on the Moldovan side of the river is really, really part of Moldova, except, despite what Google maps might say, it isn’t. During the 1992 war the Moldovans sent their three MiGs to bomb the very bridge we crossed trying to prevent Russian and separatist forces reaching Bender. They missed, which was fortunate; only 25% of Bender’s citizens are ethnic Moldovans while Russians and Ukrainians make up 68%; if they had succeeded the war would have been longer, the bloodshed greater.

Tiraspol

Tiraspol is 10km to the east. With 133,000 citizens it is slightly bigger than Bender and was once Moldova’s second largest city, now it is the capital of Transnistria.

25th of October Street is slightly shabby, slightly down at heel. I had not realised how the sight of someone carrying a heavy shopping bag has become so unusual at home - it makes this look like a picture from the past.

25th of October Street, Tiraspol

Beside it are more war memorials, one for the Afghan War….

Afghan War Memorial, Tiraspol

….and another for the Moldovan War.

Moldovan War Memorial, Tiraspol

While across the street is very different memorial, even celebration, of that conflict.

Tank monument to the Moldovan War, Tiraspol

The sign marking 28 years of Transnistria (first erected to mark the 25th anniversary and updated annually) resembled half-hearted Soviet era propaganda…

Commemorating 28 years of Tansnistria
See 'Why is there a Transnistria' to discover why this sign uses 1990 instead of 1992

…while the expression of love for Tiraspol was half-hearted western crassness.

I love Tiraspol

I read (somewhere?) that Transnistria was a shrinking, aging and impoverished society waiting faithfully for the return of the Soviet Union. ‘25th of October Street’ (the date of the 1917 Russian Revolution) and the statue of Lenin outside the parliament building suggests there is some truth in that…

Lenin outside the Transnistrian Parliament
(To avoid any confusion, Lenin is the bloke on the pillar, I'm the one wearing shorts)

…and Transnistria is the last country in the world with the hammer and sickle on its flag (see top of post). But Transnistria is not communist, it is a flawed democracy (maybe a mobocracy). Prince Grigory Potemkin guards the Military Historical complex while busts of worthies of the Russian Empire adorn Bender Fort. And it is Generalissimo Alexander Suvarov, founder of Tiraspol, and fighter of the Turks on behalf of Catherine the Great whose face is on the money. An equestrian statue of Suvarov stands in its own square by 25th of October street.

General Suvarov galloping towards a pedestrian crossing, Tiraspol

And if the hammer and sickle looks a bit dated. Transnistria has a secondary flag. You could so easily mistake for the Russian flag, the same coloured stripes in the same order, but the aspect is different, it is a tad longer and a smidgeon thinner - so totally different really.

Transnistria's other flag

As we walked through the back streets towards N's recommended restaurant she said ‘It is like the old Soviet Union, there is a sense of community. Nobody has much but they all help each other.’ We had encountered nostalgia for the Soviet Union on our Trans-Siberian trip in 2007 (particularly from Sacha in Listvyanka) but we had not expected it from a well educated young woman (N was 11 when the Soviet Union folded) who hoped her country will one day join the European Union (and was at a loss to understand why we had voted to leave.) Had she picked this up from her mother, once a leading member of the local communist party, or just fallen for the usual guff about the ‘good old days’?

Backstreets of Central Tiraspol

Parallels between Transnistria and Brexit

Either way, her remark, and the Transnistrian’s contradictory reverence for both the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire helped me understand their position. Like Brexit voters they are hankering after a past that never was and are perversely trying to invent it. Fortunately, they have the Russians to bail out their faltering economy. We have no one.

N’s father, if I might digress a little, was a football coach – indeed he still is, feeling no need to retire. Transnistria has two professional clubs, FC Tighana in Bender and Sheriff Tiraspol (I wonder who owns them?). Both play in the Moldovan League, indeed Sheriff Tiraspol have won it 17 times this century (leaving little for anyone else) and have reached the group stage of the Europa League on four occasions, but have yet to progress further. Like Brexiteers, Transnistrians want the advantages of being inside while remaining outside; unlike Brexiteers they have had some success. Most Transnistrians also have Moldovan citizenship, others Russian or Ukrainian, many have multiple citizenships. Not unlike the Brexit rush for Irish passports.

A Lunch of Dumplings

The unnamed restaurant was in a rambling wooden building with heavy beams, booths hidden away in semi-darkness and staff in traditional costume. We ate pelmeni, Russian spherical dumplings of minced beef with a cheese sauce, and pierogi (aka vareniki) Ukrainian pillow shaped dumplings stuffed with sauerkraut and sprinkled with fried onions. We shared the bowls which may have done little for our ‘five a day’ but were tasty, less heavy than they sound and were under our $10 budget. We might have been pushed if we had paid for our beer (a ½ litre of good quality draught beer was 50 pence) but N and Leonid kindly donated a couple of tokens earned on a previous overnight trip. The date stamp ran out today and they were working.

Lunch in Tiraspol

Afterwards we strolled through wide, scruffy streets,....

Strolling the streets of Tiraspol

...acquiring a fridge magnet, postcards, and Transnistrian stamps plus, as they are not recognised outside Transnistria, some Moldovan stamps - and we still had 4 or 5 roubles over! Shops were not easy to find, they hardly bother with signs or marketing – like the good old Soviet days – but they were there. And that was about it for Tiraspol..

Bender Fort on a Transnistrian fridge magnet

Back in Chişinău

Our return journey was uneventful, leaving Transnistria being even easier than entering. Back in Chişinău, we said goodbye to N who had been an interesting and informative companion, went shopping for presents and watched Sweden beat Mexico in the World Cup.

We dined at the ‘Robin Pub’ near our hotel…

Robin Pub, Chisinau

…. another establishment featuring dark wood, but this time elegant rather than rustic – pity there were so few customers. I enjoyed my pork with sour cream and mustard sauce, apple and fried potatoes, and Lynne her tagliatelle and mushrooms. We had another good value bottle of red and then, as it was our last night, an espresso and brandy. Moldova is proud of it brandy (divin in Romanian) and earlier N had recommended ‘Surprise’ a ten-year-old distilled by KVINT (owned by Sheriff!) in Tiraspol. It was undoubtedly the best brandy I have ever drunk that was not Cognac.

Coffee and 'Surprise' Brandy in the Robin Pub, Chisinau

And Back Home

Next morning Leonid took us to the airport where we bought some ‘Surprise’ [it tasted as fine back home as in Moldova].

KVNT Suprise 10-year-old Divin

When booking I had wondered if it was possible to fill a daily flight from Stansted to Chişinău. During the World Cup it certainly was – Chişinău is a gateway to Russia. The flight had been packed with England fans on the way out, Peruvians and Chileans on the way back – we wished them well for their onward journey - our long drive back to Staffordshire was tiny by comparison.

Moldova (and Transnistria) Posts

Part 1:Chisinau, a Modest Capital
Part 2:Purcari, Fine Moldovan Wine
Part 3:Orheiul Vechi and Cricova Winery
Part 4: Transnistria, a Day Out in a Non-existent Country

Why is there a Transnistria?

Below is a simplified version of how Transnistria came to be what it is.

In 1812 Moldova (including Transnistria) was ceded to the Russian Empire by the Ottomans. The area was largely Romanian speaking and attempts to Russify it met with only partial success.

In the chaos following the Russian revolution, Moldova west of the Dniester joined Romania while Transnistria became part of the new Soviet Union, becoming more Russified as industrialisation dragged in Russian and Ukrainian workers.

After World War II Moldova was also absorbed into the Soviet Union, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic having the same borders as current Moldova (including Transnistria). Transnistria, though, remained somewhat apart. Russians were the largest ethnic group and together Russophone Russians and Ukrainians formed a majority of the population.

In 1990 before the Soviet Union broke up, Transnistria declared itself a separate Soviet Socialist Republic as a pre-emptive strike against growing Moldovan nationalism. However, the Moldova that became independent in 1991 included a reluctant Transnistria. The immediate adoption of Romanian as the only official language provoked Transnistria to declare independence as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. A brief war (March-July 1992) caused 700 deaths, but once the Russian 14th Guards, stationed in Tiraspol, joined the separatists the result was inevitable.

According to international law the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic does not exist. Transnistria, Russian inspired Georgian breakaways Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and The Republic of Artsakh once an Armenia speaking enclave in Azerbaijan, all recognise each other’s independence, but no one else does. Although Russia has annexed Crimea and is working on Eastern Ukraine, it has supported but not, as yet, absorbed Transnistria, Abkhazia or South Ossetia.