Travels in Romania,Moldova and Gagauzia

BY ADAM SMITH ALBION

TRABZON, Turkey 10 May 1995

SENTIMENTAL JOURNEYSI set off from Istanbul on a circuit of the Black Sea intending to visitthe Crimean Tatars, but became so intrigued- re-intrigued, Ishould say by the Romanian-speaking world that I abandonedmyself to it and never even reached Odessa. Of all the Balkan coun-tries, I feel most at home in Romania, and I enjoyed wending myway north through the Turkish and Tatar communities along the Do-brogean littoral. In the Republic of Moldova, I was welcomed by theGagauz Turks, and traveled their autonomous republic of Gagauzia.It was fun and exciting to be in a country where my Romanian, Rus-sian and Turkish interests coincided. Finally undertaking a senti-mental journey of a different kind I was transported back to thetime of Peter the Great and spent Orthodox Easter among the Rus-sian Old Believers at the fork of the Danube Delta.

THE MOLDOVAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

To fly from Bucharest to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, I choseAir Moldova. Even dirt-poor countries consider the prestige of a na-tional carrier a necessity. I was curious how Moldova would adver-tise itself in the air. We were not in the air for a long time. The pas-sengers waited in their seats for half an hour until the pilot arrived. Itwas 7pro, and as we waited the sun went down. Then we waited inthe dark. One man had brought a dog on board, a terrier, that ran upand down the aisle barking. Eventually a flight attendant asked himto keep it on his lap. There were piles of luggage on the empty seats,small crates and plastic-wrapped bales that passengers had been re-luctant to stow. Finally someone put the key in the ignition, thelights went on and the propellers began turning.

The ex-Soviet Republic of Moldova is a skinny, virtually landlockedcountry of 4.4 million people that launched its independence on 27August 1991. From 1919 to 1940 it formed a part of Romania (Molda-via-Bessarabia) until it was sliced off by Stalin along the Prut riverand incorporated into the USSR. It was heavily Russified, and allschooling was naturally in Russian. Its ethnic make-up today is 64%Moldovan, 13.8% Ukrainian, 13% Russian and 3.5% Gagauz Turk.Moldova is famous, incidentally, for its wines.

The country is bisected by the Dniester river, and the Russian popu-lation is concentrated along the eastern bank. Moldova hit interna-tional headlines in 1992, when the Transdniestrian Russians declaredthat they were seceding. After fighting that initially sparked fears ofa new Yugoslavia, a separatist republic of Transdniestria was estab-lished with its capital at Tiraspol. They received strong support in

Adam Albion is an Institute Fellow writing about Turkey’s regional role andgrowing irnportance in the Black Sea and theformer Soviet bloc. He is based inthe port city of Trabzon, on the Black Sea.

this from the Russian 14th Army, stationed in Tiraspol.After protracted negotiations, Russia agreed in October1994 to withdraw its army, but the troops remain, andthere are no prospects that they will leave soon.

Chisinau is a pleasant, leafy, unexciting town of 700,000people. It has the atmosphere of a provincial capital,which is precisely what it was. From its neo-classicalTeatrul National Mihai Eminescu to the statue of StefanCel Mare in the park it reminds you of a nice Roma-nian town in Moldavia like Iasi. It makes you unpopu-lar to say so aloud, however. (At least people react lessseverely, thankfully, than Ukrainians, who become ap-oplectic if you stand in the centre of L’vov beneath thestatue of Mickiewicz and dare to remark that not onlyMickiewicz but all the architecture around you isPolish.) Moscow has added, in its usual heavy-handedway, the grey parliament, the ugly government offices,the Cosmos Hotel and the signature Soviet miles ofprefabricated apartment blocks. I didn’t see any West-erners, although I bumped into a couple of Ukrainiantour groups being herded from place to place, still faith-

fully taking photographs of the public buildings.

One such building was my first stop in Chisinau. As inall the ex-Soviet republics, the Academy of Sciences ofthe Republic of Moldova is a grim cube that appears tohave been modeled after MVD police headquarters inMoscow. I do not imagine that this is a coincidence. Ifthe British Museum’s columns and pediment are in-tended to reassure the visitor that the treasures are be-ing housed in a temple of reason and enlightenment,then the architecture of Soviet Academies implies thatscholarship and science are things to be cornered,trapped, nailed down and imprisoned. (As for the mes-sage being beamed out by the glass pyramid in front ofthe Louvre, I am agnostic.) I had my fill of Soviet-stylescholarship later, as I describe below.

I was hoping to get some advice and orientation aboutthe Gagauz. was also taking the opportunity to pay acourtesy call on behalf of the Ethnic Studies Centre atthe Romanian Academy where I served on the Interna-tional Board of Directors in 1992-1994. The connection

Current Fellows & Their ActivitiesBacete Bwogo. A Sudanese from the Shilluk tribe of southernSudan, Bacete is a physician spending two and one-half yearsstudying health-delivery systems in Costa Rica, Cuba, KeralaState (India) and the Bronx, U.S.A. Bacete did his undergraduatework at the University of Juba and received his M.D. from the Uni-versity of Alexandria in Egypt. He served as a public-health offi-cer in Port Sudan until 1990, when he moved to England to takeadvantage of scholarships at the London School of Economicsand Oxford University. [The AMERICAS]

Cheng Li. An Assistant Professor of Government at Hamilton Col-lege in Clinton, NY, Cheng Li is studying the growth of technoc-racy and its impact on the economy of the southeastern coast ofChina. He began his academic life by winning the equivalent ofan M.D. at Jing An Medical School in Shanghai, but then didgraduate work in Asian Studies and Political Science, with anM.A. from Berkeley in 1987 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1992.[EAST ASIA]

Adam Albion. A former research associate at the Institute forEastWest Studies at Prague in the Czech Republic, Adam isspending two years studying and writing about Turkey’s regionalrole and growing importance as an actor in the Balkans, the Mid-dle East and the former Soviet bloc. A Harvard graduate (1988;History), Adam has completed the first year of a two-year M. Litt.degree in Russian/East European history and languages at Ox-ford University. [EUROPE/RUSSIA]

Cynthia Caron. With a Masters degree in Forest Science fromthe Yale School of Forestry and Environment, Cynthia is spend-ing two years in South Asia as ICWA’s first John Miller MusserMemorial Forest & Society Fellow. She is studying and writingabout the impact of forest-preservation projects on the lives (andland-tenure) of indigenous peoples and local farmers who live ontheir fringes. Her fellowship includes stays in Bhutan, India andSri Lanka. [SOUTH ASIA/Forest & Society]

Hisham Ahmed. Born blind in the Palestinian Dheisheh RefugeeCamp near Bethlehem, Hisham finished his A-levels with the fifthhighest score out of 13,000 students throughout Israel. He re-ceived a B.A. in political science on a scholarship from IllinoisState University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University ofCalifornia in Santa Barbara. Back in East Jerusalem and stillblind, Hisham plans to gather oral histories from a broad selec-tion of Palestinians to produce a "Portrait of Palestine" at this cru-cial point in Middle Eastern history. [MIDEAST/N. AFRICA]

Sharon Griffin. A feature writer and contributing columnist onAfrican affairs at the San Diego Union-Tribune, Sharon is spend-ing two years in southern Africa studying Zulu and the KwaZulukingdom and writing about the role of nongovernmental organi-zations as fulfillment centers for national needs in developingcountries where governments are still feeling their way towardeffective administration. She plans to travel and live in Namibiaand Zimbabwe as well as South Africa. [sub-SAHARA]

Pramila Jayapal. Born in India, Pramila left when she was fourand went through primary and secondary education in Indonesia.She graduated from Georgetown University in 1986 and won anM.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illi-nois in 1990. She has worked as a corporate analyst for Paine-Webber and an accounts manager for the world’s leading pro-ducer of cardiac defibrillators, but most recently managed a $7million developing-country revolving-loan fund for the Programfor Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) in Seattle. Pramilais spending two years in India tracing her roots and studying so-cial issues involving religion, the status of women, populationand AIDS. [SOUTH ASIA]

William F. Foote. Formerly a financial analyst with LehmanBrothers’ Emerging Markets Group, Willy Foote is examining theeconomic substructure of Mexico and the impact of free-marketreforms on Mexico’s people, society and politics. Willy holds aBachelor’s degree from Yale University (history), a Master’s fromthe London School of Economics (Development Economics;Latin America) and studied Basque history in San Sebastian,Spain. He carried out intensive Spanish-language studies inGuatemala in 1990 and then worked as a copy editor and Re-porter for the Buenos Aires Herald from 1990 to 1992. [THEAMERICAS]

Teresa C. Yates. A former member of the American Civil Liber-ties Union’s national task force on the workplace, Teresa isspending two years in South Africa observing and reporting onthe efforts of the Mandela government to reform the nationalland-tenure system. A Vassar graduate with a juris doctor fromthe University of Cincinnati College of Law, Teresa had aninternship at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies inJohannesburg in 1991 and 1992, studying the feasibility ofincluding social and economic rights in the new South Africanconstitution. While with the ACLU, she also conducted aSeminar on Women in the Law at Fordham Law School in NewYork. [sub-SAHARA]

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ensured me a warm reception from the MoldovanAcademy’s Vice President, Dr. Haralambie Corbu,which I gratefully acknowledge here.

In his office it was spacious and bright, but to reachit one had to walk through long, unlit corridors- I satdown to coffee with the Academy’s minorities special-ists. The top expert on the Gagauz was Dr. Stepan Ku-ruoglu, an older man with a shock of white hair. A Ga-gauz historian and poet, Dr. Kuruoglu one of the 13Gagauz MPs (out of 364) who served in the 1990-1994parliament.

We had a real Babel going. Two colleagues were speak-ing Russian, which should have been the obvious limbafranca, but a young woman wanted to practice English,while Dr. Kuruoglu resolutely determined that he wasgoing to speak Gagauz Turkish with me. Dr. Corbuand I had already started in Romanian. Most of theRussians speak Romanian poorly or not at all. The atti-tude of many, long accustomed to dominance in theUSSR, is that Romanian is an upstart language thatthey have no use for, independent Moldova or no. In-terest among the Gagauz in learning Romanian hasalso been generally low. Plenty of Moldovans haveeven fallen out of the habit of speaking their own lan-guage (President Mircea Snegur speaks passably).Thus our conversation at the Academy was regularlypunctuated with breaks to translate between Roma-nian, Russian, Turkish and English.

The Moldovan sitting on my right explained, however,that efforts were being made to conduct more of theAcademy business in Moldovan. After all, it befittedthe country’s premier intellectual centre to work in thestate language. I blandly remarked that Moldovan wasRomanian, of course. was not prepared for his reac-tion. He colored a bit and looked pained. "No, no, no

not at all," he said. "Well, perhaps once, yes, in thepast, possibly, but not now, no, no indigenous mor-phological changes, you see vocabulary transforma-tion borrowing and adaptation of Russian scientificterminology no, no, quite different thingsaltogether!"

Meanwhile Dr. Kuruoglu was sitting on my left. Hehad watched us talk and smilingly inquired what -wehad been saying. I summarized, in Turkish. He wasnon-committal. He even nodded when I expressed myopinion that linguistic nationalism was a very sillything. His sympathetic reaction emboldened me to sug-gest that Gagauz might be just a regional variant ofAnatolian Turkish. Now he colored. "Ah, now thereyou’re wrong," he said sharply, tossing that mane ofhair. "The divergent path of the Gagauz nation hasbeen well chronicled. If we begin with the Ottoman de-struction of the Dobrogean Uzi state, which is the eth-nogenetic source of the Gaga-Uz people, in the thir-teenth century, and their subsequent separate coursesof cultural and linguistic development..."

And thus was assured that Turkish and Gagauz are as

different as chalk and cheese [see Appendix]. What anodd situation! On my right, a man speaking perfect Ro-manian (albeit colored with soft dark L’s and other liq-uid Russian sounds) was protesting that he was doingno such thing. On my left, another was patiently ex-plaining, in What was recognizably Turkish, that hewouldn’t be understood easily on the street in Trabzon.I could have sworn we were playing out an absurdscene written by Ionesco or Stoppard. Or was I in thepresence of two latter-day versions of Moliere’s M.Jourdain, who had spoken prose his whole life andnever known it? I listened to these dogmatic speecheswith disbelief and then with dismay, until the happythought dawned on me that at least my resume was ex-panding effortlessly, with two new instant languages."And if I know Moldovan and Gagauz," I said to my-sell "I can claim fluency in Canadian and Australian aswell."

The fiction of a separate Moldovan language was partand parcel of Stalin’s land-grab of Bessarabia. To createa psychological obstacle between Romania and the newMoldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, he decreed that thelanguage be written in Cyrillic letters Atattirk’s strat-egy in reverse, as it were, when he eliminated a majorbarrier between Turkey and the West by banishing theArabic script. To pretend that, in 1940, the artifice ofStalin’s blue pencil could spontaneously generate abrave new language, like a mature Athene jumpingfully-armed out of Zeus’ ear with a war-cry on her lips,is absurd. But before anyone assumes that absurdmeans impossible, let them cast an eye toward ex-Yugoslavia today, where coals are heaped on the headof anyone rash enough to maintain that there is, or everwas, a joint language called Serbo-Croat. Newly edited,rigidly separate Serb and Croat grammar books (writ-ten in Cyrillic and Latin letters respectively) are beingchurned out in Belgrade and Zagreb as I write.

But one must keep perspective when discussing lan-guage developments in the Balkans, because all this lu-nacy pales in comparison with the last twenty years ofCeaucescu’s rule, when he launched the campaign toprove that Romanian is a Slavic language. Here is moregrist for Ionesco’s mill (who indeed was Romanian).can hardly imagine a more hopeless task. Romanian isa Romance language whose roots are in the coloniesthe Romans planted along the Black Sea (one recallsthat Ovid lived out his exile in Constanta). Romanian’sLatin roots are inescapable. Translated into Romanian,Julius Caesar’s most famous book begins "Gallia este di-visa in trei parte" and his most famous utterance is "Ve-nii, vazui, invinsei’m a remarkable correspondencegiven that 2,000 years have elapsed. Nevertheless, Ro-manian scholars were exhorted by Ceaucescu to showlinguistic solidarity with the Soviet Union. Theypounced on words imported into the language fromRussian and Ukrainian; instituted small spelling re-forms to make Romanian look more "Slavic"; inventedsilly declension categories, and combed the languagefor aspectual verb usage [!]. In short, they mercilesslylopped arms and legs off Romanian in order to force it

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into a Slavic Prokrustovo lozhe. I sincerely hope thosescholars today look into the mirror with shame. Thespelling reforms were quietly rescinded a few yearsagO.

Language wars

Comic theatre is powered by dramatic irony. Twentyminutes’ walk from the Academy there was an ironicbackdrop to our discussions over coffee. At the verymoment that the man on my right was affirming theseparateness of the Moldovan language, 5,000 protest-ers were shouting outside the main government build-ing. Their purpose was to debunk the idea of a Moldo-van language and to boo those who were perpetuatingit. Students had announced a "permanent strike" onMarch 27, and a hard core of fifty had pitched tents onthe steps beneath the Prime Minister’s office. The dailydemonstrations lasting from 10am-lpm had swollen to150,000 people at their height and had quickly becomethe most important issue in Moldova.

The students’ primary demand was that the govern-ment formally admit that the existence of a Moldovanlanguage was a lie and modify the Constitution accord-ingly. Article 13 of the Constitution reads, "The statelanguage of the Republic of Moldova is Moldovan writ-ten in Latin letters," which they were insisting bechanged to "The state language of the Republic of Mol-dora is Romanian." In the same spirit, the studentswanted more Romanian and less Russian history to betaught in schools and universities. They considered ob-fuscation of Moldova’s true language and history to besymptomatic of their post-Soviet government’s lies,cover-ups, contempt for the populace, continued reli-ance on Soviet-style ideology, unreformed attitudes to-wards democracy, and barnacle-like tendency to clingto the past. The handbill they were distributing (in Ro-manian) reads, "Those in power want to forbid us to studythe true history of the nation and to oblige us to learn a falsehistory, written at the command of those who occupied us,who took your land, forced you into kolkhoz’s and took manyoff to Siberia." The preamble to their list of demandsreads, "We cannot let lies, falsehoods and ignorance affect thesouls ofgenerations ofyoung people, such as has happened to

Student osculation

I spent an evening with the students at their tents. Noone was older than 22. It was a never-ending slumberparty. Where were the austere, disciplined Czech andSlovak students I remembered fighting for their causein November 1989? Here they smoked, played chess,strummed guitars, sang, hugged and kissed a lot, andthought up slogans for the next day. Here is a selectionof that evening’s product: "Jos analfabetii, jos Agrarienii[Down with the illiterates, down with the Agrarians(the party in power)]," "Astazi capitala, maine toata tara[Today the capital tomorrow the whole country]," and"Libertate te iubim/ Ori invingem ori murim [Liberty, welove you/Either we win or we die]." Occasionally citi-

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zens would bring them a loaf of bread or a plate of sa-vory pastry and whoever got to it first would eat it im-mediately. I asked for their names and noticed thatsome had difficulties writing them in Latin letters.When it got late I was offered sleeping space in a tentand I accepted. But after an hour all the jungle noises ofhugging and kissing got on my nerves. I had to walk themile or so back to my hotel. I spent the whole way turn-ing over in my mind moral laxity vs. seriousness of pur-pose, asking myself if the students were just stupid kidsplaying, or engaged in something fine, and furiouslywondering whether Hemingway was right when hewrote that the surety and righteousness that you needto make a stand can only come from continence.

On April 16 the "permanent strike" was suspended,conditional on the government’s showing progresswithin fifteen days. On April 20, the ConstitutionalCourt directed that Articles 13 and 118 of the Constitu-tion, where the word "Moldovan [limba Moldove-neasca]" appears, be modified to read "Romanian[limba Romana]." President Snegur spoke to the parlia-ment and said it was time to face reality. The studentswere happy and high-rived one another. I still frettedover whether young revolutionaries should be moredignified. Moldovan passed into history, probably asthe only language not abraded away by time but abol-ished with a stroke of the pen. And my resume shrank,diminished by a court decision.

CHISINAU MARKET AND A SOOTHINGPAMPHLET (FIRST READING)There is a third demand on the students’ list that hangsrather uneasily with the other two. This is that salaries,pensions, and student grants be increased to match thecosts of living and that they be paid on time andthat privatization and land reform be implemented im-mediately. This portmanteau demand has not beenmet. I argued with the students for a long time that De-mand Three was too broad, throwing in virtuallyeverything including the kitchen sink. The key to pres-sure is focus (after all, Pressure Force divided byArea), and here they were spreading themselves thinby trying to cover too much. Their retort was that theeconomic crisis had reached such a pitch that theycouldn’t remain silent. Furthermore, all three demandsdovetailed with the theme of government lies and theanti-reform mentality. For instance, there was money topay salaries, but the President didn’t want to release ituntil the eve of elections in 1996; and there were noreal reasons to stall privatization- only the sullen,half-veiled hostility to the idea on the part of ex-communist bureaucrats and apparatchiks in theadministration.

Certainly the country is in poor shape. The averagemonthly salary in most places is $28, dropping, how-ever, to $5-10 in Transdniestria where the separatists’ersatz currency has declined to 10,000 coupons $1,while a kilogram of the cheapest meat I saw costs$2.50, a sum equal to a monthly pension. Forty-six per-

cent of exports still go to Russia, and only 8% havebeen re-oriented to the hard-currency customers in theEuropean Union, to whom Chisinau sells mainly to-bacco and wine. Moldova doesn’t even have its ownbottling plant (the Soviets bottled the wine outside therepublic), so it is constructing one now with a $30 mil-lion credit from the EBRD. Sixty-six percent of GDPcomes from an agro-industrial complex that is wastefuland uncompetitive. Moldova also enjoys the dubiousdistinction of having the biggest cement factory inEurope.

In the Soviet period there was food to spare and thefruits and vegetables in jars that one saw in Sovietstores often came from Moldova. Today almost every-one I met partly relied on a garden or on relatives liv-ing in the country to grow food, especially outside thecapital. It seems that the best that the President himselfhas to say about the present state of affairs is asfollows:

After all, the Republic of Moldova is a country, auto-mobiles drive from one end to the other, the trolleybus-ses run, people are well-clothed and good-tempered,there is water, no one is dying of hunger" (Tara, 18April 1995).

The economic situation can be judged from Chisinau’scentral market. It is an extensive, mainly open-air com-plex with two central pavilions for vegetable stalls andseparate small buildings for meat and dairy products.Cooking oil was being decanted from huge tanks la-belled "Lapte [milk]." Half-rotten mackerels were soldubiquitously. To approach the gate, you elbow yourway through a crowd of money-changers, men andwomen, willing to buy as little as a dollar or a fewDMs. Once past them, you find yourself entering an ee-rie corridor of middle-aged women. They line yourpath on either side for at least 20 meters and you can-not help walking between them. Although there is onlyan arm’s length between you and them, they don’tshout or jostle or try to attract your attention as Turkswould, but watch you, quiet and sullen with seriousfaces. They are holding up things for sale. These itemsare almost certainly their own possessions ransackedfrom drawers and closets or ice boxes at home: a pairof socks, a Derby hat, tennis shoes, a bra and girdle(dangled by the straps by the unselfconscious ownerwho presumably wore them in better days), a jar ofjam, boys’ and girls’ colored underwear, toys, rope,farm implements, and lots of dried fish, gripped rig-idly and held vertically like spatulas, as if I was aboutto be slapped as I passed. I was profoundly uncomfort-able. I felt like one of the Fascists made to run thegauntlet to be hacked and beaten to death by Republi-can villagers in For Whom the Bells Tolls.

I regularly heard that the government was dragging itsfeet on economic reforms. I did not investigate thequestion. But it is well to remember that Moldova, likemost of the East European countries, has not only anex-Soviet administration but an ex-Soviet population

as well, for many of whom the mechanics of capitalismcan seem obscure, discomfiting, and not very welcome.(Anyone who remembers the attack of angst whentheir first computer was unpacked, complete with ahefty instruction manual, might sympathize.) For in-sight into how ordinary Moldovans must regard pri-vatization, I enjoyed immensely a 28-page saffron-colored pamphlet, in Russian, cheekily being sold onthe street outside the Ministry of Economics. Its very ti-tle seems to hint at the panic that it knows the reader isfeeling and that it aims to quell:

"You Have Received Vouchers and You HaveAcquired Shares."

WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH THEM?[CHTO S NIMI DELAT’?]

Part I: How Does Voucher PrivatizationThreaten Us?

"How does this measure affect us? Wise people say:We survived the war, we’ll survive privatization too.And they’re right: so the thing to keep foremost inmind is that there’s no reason to be overly frightened.First of all, privatization- like all sudden calamities

encompasses everyone, running the gamut fromnew-born babies to those who (as the phrase goes)don’t give a damn any more. Second, some of how itwill all turn out depends, of course, at least partly onus: we all have to mobilize ourselves and think hard to-gether how we are going to get out of this businesswith minimal losses or even, to the extent that cir-cumstances permit, with a little profit. So we want toshare with you some observations and recommenda-tions on this question.

"First and foremost, there is no direct threat of ourtumbling into the swamp of private property. Privateproperty is being created in our country in differentways which we will not describe to you here, inas-much as those involved in the process know all aboutit, while those who aren’t involved don’t care anyway.So, it is simplest to regard privatization as an inocula-tion. It won’t leave a trace on babies. It may displaysome irritating side-effects on youth. Adult citizensmust treat it as an unlucky but not dangerous infec-tion. And pensioners have to watch out for a heart-attack. But basically, citizens are going to comethrough this development calmly and are going to un-derstand that, whatever happens, family peace andharmony will not be disrupted by the cries of irrespon-sible television journalists

The pamphlet runs through the basic concepts ofvouchers, stocks and shares, equity and dividends,and ends with Ten Golden Rules for the Voucher-Holder ("Rule 3. When acquiring shares or investingvouchers, pay attention to the dividends, not thevalue of the property belonging to the company issu-ing shares... Rule 7. Avoid investment fundswherever possible... Rule 9. Don’t participate in auc-

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tions"). Who’s afraid of voucher privatization?

TURKISH ACTIVISM IN GAGAUZIAMARIA VASILIEVNA NARRATES

It takes 3 hours, traveling directly south from Chisinauin a filthy local bus reeking of gasoline, to reach Corn-rat, the capital of Gagauzia. It is a muddy village of26,000 people, 68% Gagauz. It stretches in two strips,sandwiching a large common about a kilometer longfor grazing animals. Walking from the bus station, Ipassed right through the centre without realizing itand had to double back. There were plenty of remin-ders that many Gagauz, living in the poorest area ofMoldova, feel keenly the loss of the USSR. In fact,when voting on Gorbachev’s All-Union Treaty, a ma-jority chose to remain in the USSR. The most powerfulparty in Comrat is the communists not the reformedcommunists calling themselves socialists, but the com-munist communists. (To be fair, the second town of Ga-gauzia, Ceadir-Lunga, is more liberal, with a more"progressive" mayor, although such terms are all rela-tive, a smattering of private enterprise, etc.)

Overlooking the main thoroughfare, Victory Street, is abuilding still crowned with the hammer and sickle anda "Glory to Labor" sign. Near the bus station is the"Kolkhoz market." The Parliament of the Gagauz Re-public is still on 196 Lenin Street, with a statue of theman himself untouched outside. I later asked a GagauzMP why the statue hadn’t been taken down, as else-where in the ex-USSR. (Significantly, the statues arestill standing in Transdniestria.) He answered grufflythat people had a lot to thank Lenin for, and Moldovatoday was a good deal worse off than during the Sovietperiod: "When the situation sufficiently improves thatwe are better off than we were under Lenin, we’ll takethe statue down." And, importantly, there is a sky-blueand-white church with cupolas, since the GagauzTurks are Christians.

I say importantly because Dr. Kuruoglu insisted lookat it and absorb the message that, as one of Europe’soldest Christian groups, the Gagauz "deserve theirplace in Europe." Racially, the Gagauz are an offshootof three Turkic nomadic groups, Pechenegs, Polovtsi(Cumans) and Oghuz (Uz) who appeared in Dobrogeaaround the beginning of the millennium. There arerecords that 3,000 Pechenegs adopted Christianity inthe year 1140, and 30,000 Cumans followed a centurylater in 1246. They moved progressively north to avoidpressure to convert to Islam at the hands of the Otto-mans. Eventually they ended up in the Budjak steppe(south Bessarabia), where they are now.

Today there are 153,000 Gagauz living compactly in thesouth of Moldova (with another 40,000 to be found scat-tered around, mainly in Kazakhstan and the Odessadistrict in Ukraine). This tiny group of people has gen-erated interest out of proportion to their numbers, par-ticularly in Turkey and in Strasbourg, for two reasons.

First, the new Turkish activism toward "Turks abroad"

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from Bosnia to Kyrgyzstan has not overlooked the Ga-gauz. Gagauz President Stepan Topal is received athigh levels in Ankara. Turkish embassies have helpedGagauz representatives to lobby abroad, and Turkspaid, for example, for Gagauz to attend the Meeting ofMinisters and Representatives of Turkic Republics inBishkek in 1992. Respectable Istanbul art galleries likeAlkent Aktiiel have hosted shows of Gagauz painting,and a Days of Gagauz Culture show is being plannedin Ankara for September.

The Gagauz have not been loath to stress the ethnicconnection. The third largest street in Comrat isAtatiirk Avenue (Atatiirk sokaa [sic]). There is a largemap painting on the side of a building in the center ofComrat depicting "The Turkish World." Turkey, Cen-tral Asia, Crimea and Gagauzia are all picked out inred, together with their national flags. The flag of Ga-gauzia is blue with white borders and has a white me-dallion in the middle showing the Bozkurt, the legen-dary grey wolf that led the Turks across the mountainsonto the steppes. (On their map, Azerbaijan is shownconnected with Nakhjivan across Armenia and touch-ing Turkey mistake, or prediction?)

President Siileyman Demirel came to Moldova forthree days in June 1994 and visited the two majortowns in Gagauzia, Comrat and Ceadir-Lunga (popu-lation 23,000, 67% Gagauz). He pledged $35 million inaid for Turkish teachers and schoolbooks and to helpdevelop agriculture, irrigation and drinking water fa-cilities, which are large problems for the Gagauz. (Onlya tiny fraction of this sum has been disbursed, about$800,000 in Eximbank credits.) Also, TIKA, the foreignaid agency of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, began op-erating in Moldova in August 1994, with almost all itsprojects oriented towards the Gagauz. Here is a selec-tion: the Gagauz newspaper Anas6z was given com-puters and a photocopier; Turks helped set up the Ga-gauz bank (Oguzbank); the Gagauz have receivedprimary school textbooks from Turkey; there are aca-demic exchanges between Turkish universities and theGagauz university in Comrat, which opened in Febru-ary 1990; a Gagauz printing press is being set up (only34 Gagauz books have been printed in the last 30years); and there is talk of offering the Tiirksat commu-nications satellite to beam Turkish TV (state channelTRT1) into Gagauzia.

Second, the status of Gagauzia itself is unique in Eu-rope. According to the Law on the Special Legal Statusof Gagauzia, adopted in December 1994, "Gagauzia isan autonomous territorial unit, with a special status asa form of self-determination of the Gagauz, that consti-tutes an integral part of the Republic of Moldova" (Art.1). The autonomy offered the Gagauz, at least onpaper, exceeds anything ever offered the Basques, theCorsicans or the Bolzano Germans. They have a Presi-dent and Speaker of the Parliament, Departments ofCulture, Education, Health Care, Labor and Social Pro-tection of the Population, and Mass Media and Pub-fishing. Gagauz are not obliged to perform their mili-

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Bucharest.

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tary service outside Gagauzia, and should Moldova goto war, they stay within their own borders as HomeGuards defending Gagauzia. There are some muffledvoices at the Council of Europe muttering that the ex-tent of Gagauz autonomy could be a bad precedentand open a Pandora’s Box if ethnic minorities in theWest get wind of it.

I wish to single out the day spent at the home of Ma-fia Marunevich, Director of the National Research Cen-ter of the Gagauz Republic. Maria Vasilievna was anacademic in Chisinau who exchanged her apartmentthere for one in Comrat in order to dedicate herself tothe Gagauz cause. We ate sheep’s feet in aspic, friedbrains, pickled mackerel and black olives. We drank abottle of wine from her own press that was excellentand a Kaberne sauvignon that was not as good, and

then a red Romanita from Ialoveni, and then a vodkathat went down like alcohol astringent or tincture ofiodine being poured into an open wound. I asked herhow Gagauz autonomy had been achieved. This iswhat she said:

"We’ve been working to preserve our identity for along time. Don’t forget, a Comrat Republic was pro-claimed during the 1905-7 revolutions, as far backas that. It was suppressed by the Russians and Bes-sarabians but we didn’t give up. We are like theChechens in this. And we are very conscious thatthe suppression of Chechnya could happen to usand everything that we have gained will be re-versed. Moscow’s bad example has emboldenedleaders across the ex-USSR to try strong-arm solu-tions to their problems. Just look at Kiev cracking

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down on Crimea and Nazarbayev ruling by decreein Kazakhstan. Who says the leaders in Chisinauwon’t change their minds about us? Who will stopthem if they do? Europe? Ha! Turkey? Maybe.

"Gagauz autonomy was proclaimed again in No-vember 1989 by a Congress of Representatives, atthat time of course within the framework of the So-viet Socialist Republic of Moldova. There was a lot ofdiscrimination and provocation to make us give upbut a council of 16 kept working and a year later, inAugust 1990, the council went even farther and ex-pressed the united will of the people by proclaimingthe Gagauz Republic independent of Moldova, Wescheduled elections for the new Gagauz parliamenta month later, on October 24.

"When Chisinau found out, it sent busloads ofthugs to disrupt, our elections. They were latercalled "armed volunteers" but they were there atChisinau’s behest, just like in Romania when train-loads of Jiu Valley miners were brought in byIliescu to rampage through Bucharest and smashopposition offices. There were clashes and therewas blood. Russia’s paramilitary troops came fromTransdniestria to help us defend ourselves. [Why?]They made common cause with us because theycould appreciate our fears. The Russians are asafraid of discrimination by Chisinau as we are,which is why they have thrown in their lot with the14th army and set up their own state in Tiraspol.

"But as I was saying, for four days there was astand-off and then a siege. People were being killed,and we were approaching the threshold of a civilwar. [How many people were killed?] Maybe five. Idon’t remember. Our major towns were sur-rounded but we still managed to communicate se-cretly and we held the election. The thugs besiegingus were loud, rowdy, often drunk shooting in theair or at our houses, but the Gagauz were disci-plined and grimly determined and worked to-gether. We really consolidated as a people then.

"1991 was the year that Kuruoglu and our otherMPs walked out of the parliament for 7 monthswhen our autonomy proposals were shelved with-out a hearing. The Moldovan deputies had beenelected as old Soviet officials and nothing could bedone with them. In the meantime we held Presiden-tial elections in December 1991 and Topal was cho-sen with 97% of the vote. Only when the new parlia-ment was elected in February 1994 the first post-independence parliament did things get movingagain. And in fact everything moved very fast. Dem-irel’s visit had an impact by smoothing the path fora provisional understanding between Comrat andChisinau. He underscored that Turkey wanted tosee a Settlement for the Gagauz Turks within the

framework of an integral Moldova, which was help-ful. It damped down the radicals in Chisinau whowere accusing us of separatism. The $35 million

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credits also oiled the wheels. But that does not meanwe aren’t very cautious, always looking out for anybacksliding by the government."

A few points here merit comment. First, Chechnya ison everyone’s mind in Gagauzia. It is a symbol, ashadow, a metaphor, a premonition of what could hap-pen to them. Their apprehensions are surely exagger-ated. Moldovans at large approved the autonomy ar-rangement in a referendum. Most people I met inChisinau said they’d heard of the Gagauz but couldn’tcare less about them. I challenged Zinovia Ocunschi,Director of Chisinau’s Department of National Rela-tions, with the information that the Gagauz were waryof possible steps taken against them by her officethat they even conjured up Chechnya-type worst-casescenarios. She sighed and gave me such a long-suffering look as if she was at the end of her tetherwith giving assurances and about to throw her handsin the air, that I felt sorry for her and dropped the sub-ject. However, it is a fact that the Gagauz have beencollectively traumatized by the standoff against the"armed volunteers." As well as stashing a lot of weap-ons that have come from Transdniestria (includinghand grenades I have seen them), the Gagauz haveorganized a local militia, the 300-man Budjak Battalion,to protect them in the future.

Second, the Transdniestrians’ support for Gagauz au-tonomy is revealing. Their interests have converged in-sofar as both Russians and Gagauz refuse to be whollysubordinated to Chisinau. After Moldovan indepen-dence, one shared fear in particular drove the Gagauzto seek autonomy and the Russians to declare indepen-dence in 1992: viz., that Moldova would reunite withRomania. Romania’s occupation of Bessarabia from1919 to 1940 is remembered, not fondly, as the time ofthe right-wing Iron Guard, Romanian nationalism andanti-Turkish feeling. Fears of Anschluss with Romaniashould have been laid to rest with the March 1994 pan-Moldovan referendum that firmly rejected the idea.Nevertheless, it is true that corner kiosks sell reviewssuch as Glasul Natiunii: Revista Reintregirii Neamului["Voice of the Nation: the Magazine for the Reintegra-tion of the People"], which prints the Romanian na-tional anthem on its front page; it is true that the statepublishing house churned out last year an old classicby Stefan Ciobanu written in the 1920’s called The Un-ion of Bessarabia; and it is true that nationalists in Roma-nia such as the Romania Mare group make irredentistnoises.

Therefore, for most Gagauz, the most crucial and emo-tional sentence in the Law on Gagauzia is hidden inArt.l.4: "In case of a change of the status of the Republic ofMoldova as an independent state, the people of Gagauziashall have the right of external self-determination." This re-markable concession by Chisinau a victory for theGagauz negotiators can be decoded to mean "Ga-gauzia can secede if Moldova joins Romania." (Givenits geography in Moldova, poor economic prospects,limited natural resources, etc., it is unclear how Gagau-

zia could secede in practice, however. Patriotic elancould only carry the Gagauz so far.)

From the Russians’ viewpoint, the Gagauz have beentoo successful. They egged the Gagauz on to demandautonomy, but lobbied desperately to put on thebrakes when they unexpectedly saw a liberal settle-ment coming. The Russians had long maintained indiscussions with international organizations such asthe Council of Europe, the UN and the CSCE (nowOSCE) that the leaders in Chisinau were unreasonablehardheads with whom it was impossible to do busi-ness. Chisinau’s remarkable flexibility towards Gagau-zia denies the Russians this cover and exposes Tiras-pol’s own intransigence.

HISTORY AS SCIENCE, SOVIET STYLE"If I may ask," I said tentatively to Maria. "I grasp thechronology of the struggle for autonomy, but there isstill a central mystery about it all. What is autonomyfor?"

Like all Gagauz, Maria instantly replied, "We are a na-tion [halk, narod]. We live where we have lived for cen-turies, compactly, in Central Budjak, which is our oneand only Motherland on Earth. Accordingly as a nationwe have a right to an autonomous republic, for a na-tion must have its own state, or it can never determineits own destiny."

In case this argument does not appear as self-evidentto some Western ears as it does to many Eastern Euro-peans, I wish to excerpt from a document that Marialent me to read for the evening. It was originally pre-pared for the Council of Europe in March 1994, to"present the truth" about the Gagauz once and for all(51pp + cover letter, in Russian). Part is called "BriefHistorical Information about the Gagauz Nation andthe Scientific-Historical Aspects of its Fight for Self-Determination." Part II is called "Sovereignty and Self-Determination of the Gagauz Nation." In my view, thedocument is a masterpiece of Soviet scholarship. In itsappeals to historical determinism and apodictic truths;its inability to build an argument or define terms; itsnon-sequiturs; its sweeping generalizations; its crash-ing pedantry; and its clap-trap about the scientific les-sons of history, it is a worthy product of an educationalsystem that discouraged people from thinking clearly.

When I brought these papers to my bare hotel room tolook them over, I was hardly surprised to find the elec-tricity cut off for the night. I did not expect, however,that neither the reception nor the single shop in townwould have a candle. Since that evening was my onlychance to read the papers (and a photocopier was un-heard-of), I thanked my luck when I met the gate-keeper of the church closing up for the night. He un-locked the heavy door, I nipped in, thanked him and re-turned to the hotel. Thus it was that I read this warped,almost surreal document, taking notes through thenight, in a dingy cell lit by twenty orange prayer-for-

the-dead candles, set at intervals along the window-sill.

The cover-letter, signed by the Gagauz President andSpeaker of the Parliament, explains that these materialswill categorically prove that the Gagauz are a nation,and overthrow the notion that they are just a nationalminority living in Moldova: since to maintain that theyare a national minority "distorts the basic argument sub-stantiating the natural right to self-determination of the Ga-gauz...[who are] undoubtedly a classic example of a nationdeprived of its statehood." It is never explained what anational minority is; what makes for a natural right; orwhy a national minority should not enjoy equallybroad rights of self-determination.

What is a nation? "Contemporary science defines a nation(synonym: ethnos) as a community of people distinguishedby a commonality of language, a single ethnic te’ito, asingle ethnic self-consciousness and self-&nomination (eth-nonym), distinctive particularities in traditional and dailyculture, common origins, and a common historical destiny"(II. 8). What "contemporary science"? A problem overwhich UN rapporteurs have anguished and Westernthink-tanks poured seas of ink is solved in a paragraphwithout support or justification.

To "prove" the Gagauz are a nation, we embark on anindescribably tedious, 10-page unsourced (and henceunsubstantiated) journey through Gagauz history, in-troducing us to every Turkic tribe and group related tothe Gagauz ethnogenesis from the fourth century onand bringing us up to the Soviet era. Enormous painsare taken to establish that the Gagauz belong on theirpatch of territory more than anyone else, because theywere there first. "Ideologists’ ideas during the last 70 yearson the status of Moldovans as an "indigenous" population...are responsible for just one more myth of a chauvinist char-acter" (I. 16). Does this imply that the Moldovans arenot a nation and thus, because they had the wrong his-tory, do not deserve a state?

Now we move on to "scientific concepts of sovereigntyand self-determination of nations in their concrete historicalmanifestations" (II. 1). This section aims to demonstratethe categorical need of a nation for a state, but it doesno such thing. Far from arguing anything, it merely re-peats the axiom in different forms. The reader is bom-barded with alarmist exaggerations, appeals to "com-mon sense," and references to "life." Here is oneexample of each:

"In its relations to the Gagauz nation, the Republic ofMoldova shows that it is a mini-emph’e, and the Gagauzplay the role of a politically and economically oppressednation without rights (or ratheT; such a situation willarise if theh" legal status is not constitutionally deter-mined)..." (II. 2).

"Can a nation exercise its full powers and politicalfreedom,preserve and create new national values without a definedstate organization and its own representative and judicialorgans ? Without a budget ? Certainly not" (II. 12).

Institute of Current World Affairs 9

"Life has shown that only by creating their own nationalstructures for self-government (in theframework of politi-cal territorial-national autonomy) will they [the Gagauz]ensure their protection against inevitable assimilation(whether Romanization or Russification) and be able toconsolidate the intellectual powers of the nation, and thusensure their national revival and self-preservation in thefuture" (II, 14).

I believe this awful document merits the space I havegiven it, because it explained a mystery that hadnagged me since I arrived in Gagauzia. I had not hadan answer to the most basic question that sprung to mylips about all the fuss to forge a Gagauzia: "In practicalterms, what does territorial autonomy allow the Ga-gauz to do that they were unable to do before?" I hadput this question in various forms to MPs, bank tellers,shopkeepers, asked the librarian, quizzed the head ofthe Artists’ Union and the director of the Gagauz Eth-nological Museum, and interrogated Kuruoglu till Iwas blue in the face: "What particular grievances wereunable to be addressed without territorial autonomy?What goods, services and advantages might the Ga-gauz now enjoy that were unavailable before? Whywere you so eager to create a new tier of regional gov-ernment above your heads?"

These were the people who had voted for autonomy,after all. But I only heard the mantra that the Gagauzwere a nation, and there could be no self-determination without a state structure. If pressed forclarification, they were lost without a compass. mustconclude that, with all the agitation and struggle, noone really knows what an autonomous Gagauziameans for them, including the leaders who now havethe reins in their hands.

As the Republicans’ 100 days were winding down inWashington, it was bizarre to be poring over a docu-ment that appeared to boil down to an emotional butmotiveless call for more government. You don’t haveto be a die-hard fan of Proudhon or Paine to believethat less bureaucracy is usually better than more. Withmy candles burning low, tried to put the best possibleinterpretation on what the Gagauz were about. Possi-bly, territorial autonomy could be interpreted as an ap-peal for less centralized government in Chisinau andmore local administration in touch with the people. Inthat case the Gagauz were keeping pace with the mostmodern trends in. the European Union towards subsid-iarity and devolution of power. But somehow Idoubted that anyone had been thinking in those terms.I remembered the statue of Lenin and the communistemblems, the Soviet-era reliance on the state, and feltsure that the Gagauz had fixed on the idea that Gagauzbureaucracy must be the solution to Gagauz problems,and had not thought much farther than that.

The secession clause in case Moldova unifies with Ro-mania is impressive but symbolic. The military serviceoption is a limited but at least tangible concession fromChisinau. Otherwise, the Gagauz ideologists must now

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consider what they want to do with their new edifice.One important provision in the Law on Gagauzia con-cerns language: "The official languages of Gagauzia shallbe Moldovan [Romanian], Gagauz and Russian" (Art. 3).In other words, the Gagauz effectively can opt out ofhaving to learn Romanian for official purposes- Icommunicated with no one in Romanian the wholetime I was in Gagauzia- and can stick to Russian.2The number of people who still speak fluent Gagauz isvery limited. Intellectuals are naturally eager to re-establish education in Gagauz (the last primary schoolwas closed in 1961). This aim is laudable if the Gagauzare truly to be preserved as a nation, although it is farfrom obvious that achieving it required territorial au,

tonomy: probably it could have been pursued togetherwith Chisinau in the framework of already existingCSCE provisions for minorities, to which Moldova issignatory. As for the real business of making territorialautonomy work, the practical details of regional gov-ernment budget, taxes, and the running of local ser-vices- I can only wish that the Gagauz would startturning their minds away from the fourth century andface the twenty-first.

LIPOVANSI cannot close without two words about Romania’sRussian Old Believers, although they do not impingeon Turkey in any way and I am exceeding my brief.But they deserve a newsletter of their own. I spentEaster week, celebrated by the Orthodox Church aweek later than in the West, in the village of Jurilovca.Old Believers are those who refused to accept the re-forms in the Russian Orthodox Church introduced byPatriarch Nikon between 1652 and 1666, a periodknown as the Raskol of Russian Church Schism. Toescape persecution, the greater part fled throughUkraine and Bessarabia (crossing the path of the Ga-gauz at some point who were moving north awayfrom the Ottomans) and ended up in Dobrogea. InRomania they are called Lipovans, presumably be-cause somewhere along the way they settled amonglime groves (Russian lipovii, lime so they are theoriginal Limies).

Their traditions have been preserved intact from the17-18th centuries; their culture is the village culture ofthe early Romanovs. Their Russian is old and tricky,often sounding like Ukrainian or even Slovak-Ruthenian. Men and women greet by kissing on thelips. Religious services including the homily (pouchenie)has stayed in Old Church Slavonic. So has the Eastergreeting Christos voskryesye, "Christ has risen." Beforethe Easter midnight service, where we processedaround the church carrying candles, I had to becoached how to stand, bow, and cross myself Lipovan-style The Lipovans cross high on the shoulders, as ifthrowing salt behind them for good luck using twofingers instead of the three dictated by Nikon.

There seem to be an immense store of folk songs andoral religious poetry transmitted usually from mother

to daughter, forgotten or at least unexplored by outsid-ers and uniquely preserved among the Lipovans. Theyawait study and transcription by a Lord or a MillmanParry. Their low, polychromatic houses with court-yards come out of folklore and fairy-tales that were oldwhen Pushkin was retelling them. As a guest I sat inthe Red Corner under the icons in the kitchen, andslept on a stove.

Do you ask me if I was bewitched and enchanted?How can I avoid confessing that I lived on sentimentfor seven days? I forgot my age and surrendered thecritical skills that had been bought for me by an expen-sive education. I fell prey to all the traps laid by theearly Romantics. Where Sterne and Radishchev ledwith their own sentimental journeys, I followed. Vil-lage ways were patently better and modern cities werenoisome. I learnt that the beautiful is morally good,just as Plato said all along. I stood on my feet for hoursduring services, fed with meditations and dazed withincense. What cake was ever better than paskha? Whatgrape made better wine than Afuzalie and Dvofra-noshny grown in Dobrogea? And when I encounteredvillage girls on the street in their shal’ky and shupky andkofty headscarves, pleated skirts, and short coats cutlike Voltaire jackets- and wearing bright tassledcords around their waists, how could I not prefer them,

like Radishchev, to the most sophisticated women thatSt. Petersburg had to offer? GI

NOTES:Certainly it is suspicious that the Mayor of Chisinau

turned on hot water in the capital for the first time insix months only a few days before the April 16 localelections. As an election bribe, his strategy failed: lowvoter turn-out (34%) necessitated a second round ofvoting in Chisinau. (66% were bathing?)

2 Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communica-tion in Gagauzia, and was even established as such byone of the first laws passed in Comrat ("On the Func-tioning of Languages on the Territory of the GagauzRepublic"). Securing the primacy of Russian is anotherinterest the Gagauz share with the Transdniestrians.

APPENDIXIt is such a close call whether the Gagauz language isseparate from Turkish the distinctions are so techni-cal and the subject so emotional that I offer an ex-cerpt from the Ceadir-Lunga local paper (Gagauz sesOand suggest the reader judge for him or herself.Spoken Gagauz is looser, naturally, and subject-verb-object is common word order (hence, little Turkish-type clausal embedding).

"I’AFAY3EPH" BIIIilMEKJl/P XEM KAHTAPJIAMAKflAP

( FAFAY3JIAP XEM BYJIFAPJlAPO3CYHHAP

XeM pliC nynnanunakeK. Bapa- OuOatublHa aOMUHUCTpaTueOap oOucuan Ounn.nn Faza-. nnane,mOa Ouun Oup nepff tceny3DeOa taLue(a Ouaaep# Oa za- rpu6ynnaldaet cbaeHunOu.pant eepunep." Xanu3, ty Oynyn-Maunap Oana 8enep KaefynOa pacunun unepneMecuHd,

Institute of Current World Affairs 11

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