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Moldova: The Next Ethnic Powder Keg?
| Article
# : |
20276 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1992 |
2,620 Words |
| Author
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Michael Radu
Michael Radu, a research associate at the Foreign Policy
Research Institute in Philadelphia, specializes in African
and Latin American affairs. |
Largely missed by the Western media, the rapidly escalating conflict in the Republic of Moldova threatens to become another Yugoslavia. In fact, since the involvement of neighboring states--Romania, Russia, and Ukraine--is more likely and direct than in the case of Yugoslavia, the conflict in Moldova may soon become the most important in all of Europe. The combination of conflicting nationalisms and ideologies, the area's strategic potential, and most importantly, perhaps, the attitudes of the governments involved could well provide an insight into the future of many zones of the farmer Soviet Union.
As usual in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, the historical background is the inevitable starting point and the root of the present crisis. Its various interpretations are the pretext for all parties involved to justify their present claims.
Even the bare facts of the region's history are disputed, and naturally so. Most but not all of what is today the Republic of Moldova has belonged, from the fourteenth century to 1812, to the Romanian principality of Moldova, which at that time was far larger. Indeed, the historic boundaries of Moldova were the Carpathian Mountains in the west and the Dniester River in the east, with the northern and southern borders in a state of continuous fluctuation. Most (about 60 percent) of historic Moldova has belonged to Romania since that country's founding in 1859. The rest, however, and that includes all of former "Soviet" Moldova, has changed hands repeatedly between various countries.
The northern part of historic Moldova, known as Bukovina, was under Austro-Hungarian control between 1776 and 1918. To the south of it, the area between the Prut and Dniester rivers, all the way to their confluence with Danube, became known as Bessarabia and was a consistent object of Russian imperial ambitions (mostly centered around access to the Danube) since the eighteenth century.
In 1812 the czars annexed Bessarabia, thus gaining access to the Danube, and retained most of it until the Bolshevik Revolution. At that time, the mostly Romanian population of Bessarabia voted to rejoin the Kingdom of Romania. It is important to note at this point that no territory east of the Dniester River (an area generally known as Transnistria) either belonged to or was claimed by either historic Moldova or the Kingdom of Romania.
By recognizing Romania in the 1930s the Soviets renounced their territorial claims to it, but they
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