WSJ.com
December 21, 2001
East of the Oder
Europe's Biggest Little Black Hole.
By Vladimir Socor. Mr. Socor is a senior analyst for the Jamestown Foundation, 
publishers of the daily Monitor, from which this article is adapted.
Ever heard of Trans-Dniester -- the would-be state on the banks of the Dniester 
river that marked its tenth anniversary this month? Its act of birth was a 
decision in Dec. 1991 to separate forcibly from Moldova in order to remain a 
part of the Soviet Union, refusing to accept the latter's collapse. The 
following year, Russia's 14th Army and its creation, the Trans-Dniester forces, 
defeated Moldova in an operation commanded by General Aleksandr Lebed, cementing 
the secession. Thus was born what passes for the status quo today, a rogue 
statelet on the threshold of the Balkans, propped up by Russian troops 1,000 
kilometers away home.
Trans-Dniester poses a unique set of problems for Europe, for Western 
institutions and indeed for international security in the Euro-Atlantic area. 
The challenges arise in the spheres of economics, democracy and international 
security.
Trans-Dniester is Europe's single largest "black hole." Its security apparatus 
controls a 400-kilometer sector of the Ukraine-Moldova border. There, massive 
flows of contraband -- oil products, cigarettes, a wide range of industrial and 
agricultural goods, light weapons -- as well as illegal migrants are moving from 
Russia and Ukraine to Europe and vice versa. This traffic embraces the space 
from Russia and Ukraine to Germany, and branches off into the Balkans. 
Trans-Dniester's customs service, headed by President Igor Smirnov's son, 
functions as the indispensable nexus. These operations have also corrupted some 
officials in Ukraine and Moldova. Thus has the Trans-Dniester system shown its 
potential to spread.
Moscow has favored this corrupt system because it does not want Trans-Dniester 
dependent on Russian cash injections. Trans-Dniester gets indirect subsidies. 
For gas deliveries alone, it owes more than US$600 million to Gazprom -- a 
staggering $1,000 for every man, woman and child in a deeply impoverished 
population. Meanwhile, the Russian company Itera has grabbed the Ribnita Steel 
Works, which is by far the largest industrial enterprise in Moldova on either 
bank of the Dniester and a profit-making exporter on Western markets.
In the area of democracy and human rights, Trans-Dniester has earned the 
reputation of the last Soviet enclave in Europe, a "Soviet theme park" in terms 
of visual symbols and the resumes of its officials. Behind that official facade, 
the plight of Trans-Dniester's oppressed population is being widely ignored, not 
least by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other 
international bodies.
This is just about the only place in the former Soviet Union in which the Soviet 
communist putsch of August 1991 was successful, with its local leaders retaining 
their power into the post-Soviet era. The current holders of power are not 
locals but arrived there at the end of the Soviet period, hold ex-KGB or 
military ranks, are citizens of the Russian Federation, and undoubtedly form 
part of chains of command centered in Moscow. President Smirnov hails from the 
Habarovsk Territory in eastern Siberia. Putative foreign affairs minister Valery 
Litskay comes from Russia's city of Tver; he worked during the 1980s in 
Moldova's capital of Chisinau as an official escort for foreign students and 
visiting academics -- a line of work typically entrusted to KGB informers. 
Trans-Dniester's self-styled defense minister, Lieutenant-General Stanislav 
Hadzhiev, is variously said to hail from either Tatarstan or North Ossetia.
The chief of Trans-Dniester 's security apparatus, Lieutenant-General Vladimir 
Antyufeyev, is considered to be the most powerful individual there and the 
guarantor of the political leadership. He arrived 10 years ago from Latvia via 
Moscow, heading a group of Soviet special force and KGB officers, straight from 
perpetrating violent assaults on civilians in Latvia and Lithuania. This group 
formed the nucleus of Trans-Dniester's security apparatus.
Trans-Dniester represents a unique case of ethnic minority rule in contemporary 
Europe. According to the residents' self-identification in the census, 
Trans-Dniester's population consists of 41% Moldovans, 28% Ukrainians and 25.5% 
Russians. But political authority and security functions are mainly being 
exercised by non-native Russians, citizens of the Russian Federation, 
concentrated in Tiraspol. Outside visitors typically focus on the Russified 
city, ignoring the natives in the countryside.
The Soviet social structure remains a mix of kolkhoz socialism and neofeudalism. 
It resembles the feudal pyramid: Moldovan and Ukrainian peasants, unenfranchised 
and enserfed in the kolkhoz economy, at the bottom. At the top are mainly 
Russian rulers and military officers. They exercise an equivalent of the 
mediaeval "monopoly of arms," along with the informal, predatory "customs" 
taxation also reminiscent of the feudal system. In the middle is an amorphous 
middle stratum of state clerks and private traders, the latter existing on 
privileges by grace of the rulers. The industrial working class clings in many 
ways to Soviet values.
Trans-Dniester is the only remaining laboratory in Europe for Soviet policies on 
nationality and language. The goal is a merger of identities into a single one 
(what used to be called "the Soviet people") based on linguistic Russification 
and the fostering of political allegiance to Moscow. Moldovan/Romanian and 
Ukrainian -- native languages to three quarters of the population -- are 
completely excluded from government and administration, and relegated to a 
marginal role in other spheres of public life. The authorities are especially 
hostile to the Latin script.
Trans-Dniester has the perverse distinction of sitting atop the largest 
ammunition stockpiles in Europe outside Russia. Some 40,000 tons of that 
Soviet-era ammunition is deposited there. Much of this ammunition's shelf life 
has expired, making it untransportable, and much of it is stored in dangerous 
conditions. Western countries in the OSCE plan to finance and build an 
ammunition disposal plant on location. The Russian military also sits atop 
massive stockpiles of light weapons and other Soviet-era equipment.
Last month, the Russian military completed the scrapping and/or removal of heavy 
weaponry from this part of Moldova, in accordance with the adapted Treaty on 
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE). Under OSCE decisions, Russia is now 
obligated to withdraw all of its remaining 2,600 troops from this area by 
December 31, 2002. Three dangers persist. First, Moscow might drag out the 
scrapping/removal process and then seek to retain some troops past the deadline, 
on the pretext of guarding those stockpiles. Second, it might insist on 
receiving a "peacekeeping" mandate for its troops. Or, third, it might cajole 
Moldova or the OSCE into accepting some Russian troops as "guarantors" of an 
eventual political settlement in Trans-Dniester.
-- From The Wall Street Journal Europe


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