Seventy years after succumbing to a stroke, Vladimir Lenin
continues to receive the best available medical attention.
The painstaking preservation of his body has been so
impeccable that to bring up the fact of his death seems
almost ill-mannered.
Seven years ago, Lenin's brainchild ? the Soviet state ?
also expired, after losing its battle with terminal capitalism.
But some parts of the organism have been slower to decay
than others. And a select few have been placed in a kind of
suspended animation. Such is the fate of one sliver of the
old Soviet Empire: Transdniestria.
Transdniestria, once part of Moldova, took on a life of
its own in 1990, as Moldova gravitated away from the
ailing Soviet Union. The Transdniestrian population then
proclaimed its own breakaway republic ? the PMR ? and
declared their allegiance to the Soviet ideal. Since then,
some unreconstructed Bolsheviks have expressed the
ambition to reassemble the severed body of the old Soviet
Union, with the PMR as its heart. Frankensteinian though it
sounds, the idea is consistent with Transdniestrian history.
Before World War II, Moscow used Transdniestria as a
base from which to claim, and eventually annex, all of
present-day Moldova.
In the PMR capital, Tiraspol, communism's star still
burns brightly. The main street is named "October 25
Street" for the anniversary of the 1917 revolution. Other
street names pay homage to the titans of communism: Marx,
Lenin, Liebknecht. (Ask for directions to the gas station and
you get a thumbnail history of the working-class
movement.) And in a roundabout on the approach to the
city, a Soviet-era agitprop tower confronts the visitor with
three slogans, by turns hard-line authoritarian and bleeding-
heart-liberal. One sign bellows: "Our Strength Is in Unity."
Another coos: "Peace, Progress and Human Rights." (The
third slogan, which I couldn't translate, could have been
"Freedom Is Slavery" or, just as easily, "Save the Whales.")
There are, of course, other parts of the former Soviet
Union where the physical legacy of communism is still
visible. The Baltic States may have cast aside their red stars
and Lenin statues with a shudder, but in Russia and
Ukraine, many of these symbols have been accepted as, for
better or worse, a legitimate part of the past. Still, there's a
difference between the widow who keeps her wedding ring
on and the one who keeps her husband's body propped up at
the dinner table. In the PMR the moribund symbols of the
workers' state are still invested with a living meaning.
There's a certain poignancy, then, in a marble plaque seen
on Tiraspol's main street. Unveiled in 1967 for the 50th
anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, it
announces the celebrations for the 100th anniversary,
scheduled to be held at the same spot in the year 2017.
There is every reason to believe that the invitation is still
open.
At the same time, this plaque may be the only part of
Tiraspol that looks to the future. The ideological content of
Transdniestrian symbolism, once faux-progressive, is now
explicitly reactionary. The reason is rooted in Transdnies-
tria's strange kind of secession: as Moldova leapt forward,
its "breakaway region" stood defiantly still. The
"Transdniestrian flag" ? a horizontal green stripe on a red
field ? is actually the flag of now-defunct Soviet Moldavia.
The hammer-and-sickle seal on government buildings and
police cars is also that of Soviet Moldavia. The PMR's
sovereignty is posited not on territory but on time: it has
seceded from the present and lain claim to the past.
But this strange preoccupation with the past can be
understood as more than a sort of necrophilia. Consider the
two monuments that flank the approach to Tiraspol. To the
left, Alexandr Suvorov, who founded Tiraspol and fought
the Ottomans for it, is immortalized in bronze, leading his
troops into battle atop a rearing steed. To the right, a Soviet
tank on a pedestal, beside the graves of fallen soldiers,
bears witness to the sacrifices of Tiraspol in World War II.
Russian nationalism faces Soviet "internationalism" ? but
this head-to-head confrontation comes off more like a
meeting of minds. And here lies the essential reason for
Transdniestria's secession: the national question. The PMR
is the product of a Slavic population's fears of assimilation
into a Romanian/Moldovan polity. Cut off geographically
(although not militarily!) from its traditional protectors in
Moscow, Transdniestria looks back longingly at the
empires, Russian and Soviet, that once anchored it in place.
No wonder, then, that the World War II memorial has
since been expanded to include the graves of those who
died fighting for the PMR during the 1992 civil war. Can
that quick-and-dirty military incursion ride the coattails of
the "Great Patriotic War"? The question is not just a
historical one. The shakiness of the PMR's viability makes
the construction of a glorious history all the more
important. Most every state builds its own myths. But few
today depend on them the way Transdniestria does.
