| Приднестровская Молдавская Советская
Социалистическая Республика (Russian) Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic |
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| Capital | Tiraspol | ||||
| Official language | Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan | ||||
| Established In the Soviet Union: - Since - Until |
2 September 1990 not became legal not became legal |
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| Area - Total - Water (%) |
Ranked n/a
in the USSR 4,163 km² negligible |
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| Population - Total - Density |
Ranked n/a
in the USSR 680,000 (1989)[1] 133/km² |
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| Time zone | UTC + 3 | ||||
| Anthem | Anthem of Transnistria | ||||
The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (PMSSR) was created on the eastern periphery of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) in 1990 by pro-Soviet separatists who hoped to remain within the Soviet Union when it became clear that the MSSR would achieve independence from the USSR. The PMSSR was never recognized as a Soviet republic by authorities in either Moscow or Chişinău. In 1991, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic succeeded the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.[2]
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The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic from which the PMSSR seceded was created in 1940 following the Soviet annexation of territory belonging to inter-war Romania. When Bessarabia was ceded to the Soviet Union as a result of an ultimatum, it was combined with a strip of land on the left bank of the Dniester which had formed the nucleus of a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), with Tiraspol as its executive capital, throughout the interwar period.
The newly fused territory became the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, and was quickly sovietized. In this process of collectivization and “dekulakization,” the left bank of the Dniester had a clear advantage: The territory had been collectivized during the First Five-Year Plan (FFYP) during the 1930s, it had enjoyed a reasonable amount of industrialisation, and boasted relatively experienced, trustworthy cadres.
The MASSR had been formed on the basis of what Terry Martin has termed the Soviet “Piedmont Principle”:[3] by creating a "homeland" for Moldovans across the Romanian border, the Soviet leadership hoped to advance their claims on Romanian territory. While the role of the MASSR in the Soviet Union’s eventual incorporation of this land was negligible— the Soviet ultimatum to Romania did not mention the Moldovan nation, let alone use its right to national self-determination as justification for the invasion[4]— the former autonomous republic did provide a Soviet elite ready to assume leadership in the new union republic.
In the second half of the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev set the political context for the war in Moldova and redefined the political process in the union republics with a series of reforms that comprised his program for perestroika. While intended to reinvigorate the Soviet system, perestroika also undermined the strength of key institutions which provided for central control of the Soviet Union.[5] This devolution of power to federal republican governmental was matched by a simultaneous explosion of mass participation in the now open debate about the Soviet future.
In the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, as elsewhere in the Soviet Union, political activity was expressed along various channels, including the groups and clubs organized independently of a government that had long withheld the right of association to any sort of civil organization. Two sets of concerns were particularly prominent in the debates that accompanied the opening of political dialogue in the late 1980s. The first was concern for the ecologic devastation that was so characteristic of Soviet industrial society. The second, and increasingly ascendant concern, revolved around the Moldovan (or Romanian) language and national heritage that many felt had been trammeled by Soviet and Russian domination.
These concerns found expressing in the activism of the Moldovan Movement in Support of Restructuring— a movement of the intelligentsia oriented mostly towards generalized economic and political liberalization—and the Alexei Mateevici Literary-Musical Club, which pulled together prominent cultural and political figures, activists and citizens to celebrate and discuss Moldovan language, literature and history.[6]
Work Collective Soviets (sovety trudovykh kollektivov, STKs) were another institutional basis of political mobilization. These were created throughout the Soviet Union in 1987 with the "Law on State Enterprises" as part of the perestroika reforms. They were intended to foster democratization and increase efficiency in Soviet industry. However, they were also ready-made forums for debate and provided a structure which activists used to take control of Moldovan industry in late 1989.
Newly empowered by the weakened CPSU, and increasingly pressured by the ascendant movement for national reawakening, the Moldavian Supreme Soviet (which became the Moldovan legislature in June 1990) announced its plans to debate a new slate of language legislation that might establish Moldovan as the official language of the republic. The two successive drafts of the proposed legislation--one released in March and the other leaked in August--touched off fierce debate in the republican press and led to the increased political mobilization of groups both opposed to the legislation and those in favor.
During the Moldavian Supreme Soviet session that eventually passed the language legislation on 31 August 1989, upwards of 500,000 people gathered in a "Grand National Assembly" in Chişinău's Victory Square outside of the Supreme Soviet building to show their support. Elsewhere in Chişinău and other cities, smaller rallies voiced opposition.
While the group Interdvizhenie-"Unitate-Edinstvo" was the first to organize significant opposition to the language legislation, more effective activity began in the workplace. STKs became the foci around which oppositional activity turned in the early part of the conflict. In Transnistria, close-knit work collectives were ready-made institutional alternatives to the Communist Party cells—also omnipresent at the Soviet workplace. From 1989 to 1991, many Transnistrian party members handed in their party cards or simply stopped paying their dues; simultaneously, the OSTK began using the STKs in the same way the party had used its cells. By the end of August 1989, STKs had de facto control over their factories throughout much of Transnistria. Often they worked with, or were dominated by, factory management. Occasionally, they effectively ousted unsympathetic directors or staff.[7]
Many that were to become active in the strike campaign had been suspicious of the language legislation from the beginning—they suspected this to be the first step towards “nationalization” of the republic at the expense of “their country,” the Soviet Union.[8] However, on 10 August 1989 I. M. Zaslavskii, a deputy to the Moldavian Supreme Soviet and resident of the Transnistrian city of Tiraspol, leaked a new draft of the law to the factory newspaper of the “Tochlitmash” Tiraspol Machine-Building Factory im. Kirova. Seeing that the new version would establish Moldovan as the only official language of the MSSR, activists from a number of Tiraspol factories came together to create the United Work Collective Council (Ob"edinnennyi Sovet trudovykh kollektivov, OSTK) and called an immediate strike that eventually led to the shutdown of most major industrial activity (concentrated in the Transnistrian region) throughout the SSR.
The peak of the strike movement came in September 1989 in the immediate aftermath of the MSSR Supreme Soviet's passage of the language legislation. Vladimir Socor, analyst for the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, places the total number of strikers in the MSSR at close to 200,000, writing, "By August 29, when the session of the Moldavian Supreme Soviet convened, more than 100,000 workers and employees at over 100 enterprises were on strike in the republic; their numbers almost doubled within four days.”[9] This level of mobilization was not long sustained. In part convinced that the language legislation would not be repealed, and in part reassured by the sympathetic conclusions of a commission sent by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union,[10] the OSTK (temporarily embodied in the United Republican Strike Committee) decided to end the strike on 15 September 1989. While the strike had failed in its immediate goal—to prevent the passage of the language legislation—it had demonstrated the power and the popularity of the OSTK, particularly in Transnistria.[11]
Together with the work collectives, the other locus of oppositional activity in Transnistria was local government. This was especially true after the elections of 1990 when the OSTK essentially took control of the city soviets of Tiraspol, Bendery, and Rybnitsa, the Rybnitsa raion soviet. However, even in 1989 these city and raion soviets expressed ever less timid dissent with respect to the government in Chişinău. In many ways this dynamic mirrored that between Chişinău and the Soviet central government in Moscow; with the communist party fading into irrelevance and facing strong pressure from social organizations and private citizens, local government institutions of Transnistria were increasingly willing to defy superiors in the name of satisfying local constituents. Even so the chairmen of Transnistrian city and raion soviets and city and raion executive committees (ispolkoms) in Tiraspol, Bendery and Rybnitsa were demoted or voted out of office completely with the elections of 1990.[12] In these, OSTK activists, often with technical backgrounds and mostly members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, took control of the city and raion soviets.[13]
Throughout 1990, OSTK-controlled soviets in Transnistria battled with republican authorities in Chişinău, many of the latter also elected in 1990 and that on a platform of national awakening. On 27 April 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Moldova took the symbolic step of adopting a new republican flag based on the yellow, red and blue Romanian flag. This highly visible sign of defiance against the Soviet government served as the pretext for the first big showdown between the republican government in Chişinău and the OSTK-controlled soviets in Transnistria. Within three days, the Tiraspol city soviet announced that it did not accept the new flag. In the territory under its jurisdiction, the flag of the Soviet Union was to be used until that time when the city soviet deputies could decide on permanent symbols. Although the Moldovan Supreme Soviet annulled this decision on May 4, the city soviets of Bendery and Rybnitsa soon followed suit on the 5th and 8th respectively. The continued defiance prompted the Moldovan government to pass a law on May 10 making the acceptance of the new flag legally binding. However, although the police and the court system were largely still loyal to the government in Chişinău, Supreme Soviet deputies were not willing to provoke the sort of outcry that would certainly have arisen if Moldovan officials had gone as far as arresting leading Transnistrian politicians. In the event, the Supreme Soviet continued to fume as events continued to progress in Transnistria. However, it was at a loss as to how to stop them. In mid May, the Bendery city soviet declared its intention to hold a referendum on the creation of the Dniester Republic. The Supreme Soviet again annulled this decision and forbade the holding of such a referendum. The republican government was, however, increasingly seeing the limits of its power to control lawmakers in Transnistria. Over the objections of the authorities in Chişinău, the Bendery city soviet held the election in July and then used the results as a further justification for separatist action.[14] This pattern continued throughout the year.
Quickly moving down the unprecedented path of secession from a union republic, left-bank city and raion soviets needed a popular mandate to justify their extreme actions. They laid claim to this mandate through a referendum campaign that swept through the Dniester area in 1990. In this campaign citizens were asked to vote on a variety of issues—whether or not to create a Dniester state, which alphabet to use for the Moldovan language, whether or not to accept the new Moldovan flag and others. Indeed, referendums constituted an act of defiance in and of themselves as the Moldovan government routinely declared the organization of such referendums illegal and routinely nullified the results.[15]
On September 2, 1990, in the face of the Moldovan declaration of sovereignty from the Soviet Union and with a growing mandate from the referendum campaign sweeping the Dniester region, delegates to the Second Congress of Transnistrian Deputies announced the creation of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
With the declaration of the PMSSR, city and raion soviets throughout Transnistria convened plenums and discussed the possibility of integrating themselves into the new republic. While many of the soviet deputies were those same delegates that participated in the Second Congress, these votes were not always uncontested affairs; in the case of the Dubossary raion, the soviet refused to place itself under the jurisdiction of the Dniester state. In the Dubossary city soviet, an organ with OSTK preponderance but not dominance, the majority prevailed with the support of only 49 of the 86 deputies (57%).[16] While results were more one sided elsewhere, everywhere confusion abounded. Many governmental institutions—the police, public prosecutors, judges—remained loyal to the government in Chişinău; some enterprises or villages defected from one local soviet to another to end up on the right side;[17] paramilitary men competed with police to provide law and order, and during 1991 began attempting to evict them from their former stations. Even in Tiraspol, consolidation was to take upwards of a year.
While the PMSSR was popular in Transnistria's cities, there was considerable opposition in rural communities. While OSTK supporters took control of city soviets in 1990, this was not the case in most of the raion soviets with their agricultural constituencies. The new leadership of the Grigoriopol raion soviet did not support the separatist movement[18] and the new Dubossary and Slobozia raion soviets actively supported the government in Chişinău.
Occasionally rural loyalists expressed their opposition with appeals and rallies. This was the case on 16 September 1990 when a meeting against the PMSSR was held in the village Lunga, near Dubăsari, with participants from all over Transnistria.[19]
The loyalist raion soviets expressed their opposition by flying the Moldovan flag,[20] and refusing to accept the jurisdiction of Tiraspol. On 17 September the Moldovan government held a working session in Dubăsari in the building of the raion soviet which was loyal to the central authorities in Chişinău.[21]
Moreover, many Transnistrian civil servants, including the police, employees of the public prosecutor's, and employees of the court system remained loyal to the government in Chişinău. These were often the targets of violence and intimidation as Transnistrian authorities attempted to take control of loyalist governmental institutions.[22] Seizing these state institutions took more than a year, and it was finished only after the War of Transnistria.
The key participants in the creation of the PMSSR were almost entirely from the ranks of Soviet industrial workers and factory administration.
Once the PMSSR had been created, the incipient government in Tiraspol fought an increasingly violent struggle for sovereignty with the Moldovan government in Chişinău.[24] Throughout late 1991 and into early 1992, workers’ battalions, increasingly the beneficiaries of weaponry from sympathetic Red Army officers and defections from among the local military personnel, grew better prepared than the loyalist Moldovan police in Transnistria. Police stations were captured, policemen were evicted, and in extreme cases workers’ battalions and police traded fire. Skirmishes in November 1990, and September and December 1991 witnessed continued Moldovan inability to reassert sovereignty in the region. Throughout the first half of 1992 the violence continued to escalate and culminated in a short, but bloody, war in late June 1992. The war left the separatists in Tiraspol with de facto control over most of Transnistria and the west-bank city of Bendery.
However, even as the Dniester Republic grew more established as a state, the end of 1991 brought with it the collapse of the state within which the OSTK activists had originally been striving to remain: the Soviet Union.
   | History of creation and development of the Parliament of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) - Parliament of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Pridnestrovie) |
| | Moldova - Cities, Towns and Provinces - Statistics and Map - Moldova: Districts & Towns - Statistics & Maps on City Population |
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