Romanian Scientists: Moldova and Transnistria Not Ready to Co-Exist in the Same State

This conclusion was made by researchers of the Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations “Ion. I. C. Bratianu”. Dorin Mocanu has studied some of the findings of one more Romanian study on the Transnistrian conflict. In 2019, the academic community of Bucharest has greatly increased interest in the situation around the conflict on the Dniester. Researchers from the Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations “Ion. I. C. Bratianu”, Romanian Academy of Sciences, have recently tried to find the real reasons for the serious differences between the youth of Moldova and Transnistria – the so-called post-conflict generation, born after the events of 1990-1992. After the first Romanian social research on the Left Bank, representatives of the academic community of Bucharest decided to systematically analyze the educational systems on both banks of the Dniester. Not looking ahead, we mention only a well-known fact: education systems in Moldova and left-bank Transnistria differ a lot. The Moldovan one is based on the French and Romanian models of education. The one of Tiraspol, in its turn, is guided exclusively by the standards of the post-Soviet Russian system. The first thing the authors noted: Transnistrian geography and history schoolbooks regard Moldova as a foreign country, while Moldovan schoolbooks have almost no information about Transnistria. Romanian researchers believe that such approaches only justify the confrontation between the parties. The main conclusion is: new generations on the two banks of the Dniester river express themselves in a completely different way socially and culturally, feel, think and live in a different frame of reference. Moldovan politicians try to ignore these facts, although this situation plays only in the hands of Tiraspol. The authors identified opposite description of many epochal historical events in schoolbooks of Moldova and Transnistria. Tiraspol books say that the Transnistrian land joined the Russian Empire at the end of the 18th century. The inclusion of Bessarabia in the Russian Empire in 1812 is presented as a benefit for the local population. The schoolbooks in Moldova read about Russia’s annexation and tough time for the country, which survived the period of misappropriation and stagnation, the exodus of people over the Prut and depopulation of Moldovan villages. As follows from school materials, to remedy the situation, the imperial government of Russia began to colonize Bessarabian lands with representatives of other nationalities – Germans, Swiss, Bulgarians and Serbs. The Moldovan schoolbook on the history of Romanians and universal history usually presents Russia as an aggressor state, which annexed the territory of Moldova. The Russian people are portrayed as oppressor towards the indigenous population. In Pridnestrovian schoolbooks, on the contrary, Russia occupies a special place of ‘big brother’, and the lands of “Bessarabia” and Transnistria are considered “originally Russian”. Descriptions of the events of 1917 – 1918 in the schoolbooks of the right bank and the left bank are also significantly different. Tiraspol describes this period as a time of momentous changes for the region due to the revolution and civic self-management; Romania is presented as an aggressor and occupier who invaded the zone of Moscow’s special interests. In the schoolbooks of the Republic of Moldova the sections about the “Great Union” of 1918 are entitled as “Movement of national liberation of Bessarabia and Transnistria in 1917”. The text reads that the territorial claims of the Ukrainian Rada to Bessarabia forced Chisinau to unite with the Kingdom of Romania. The Moldovan schoolbook also contains a chapter on the “Revival of the national consciousness of Moldovans of Transnistria” – the events of December 1917, when the Congress of Transnistrian Romanians, who spoke for the use of the Romanian language in education, justice, church and schools, was held in Tiraspol. Delegates of the Congress demanded to unite the territories of the left bank of the Dniester with Bessarabia, but to achieve this goal was impossible, since the Bolshevik regime was established in Transnistria. At the same time, the Moldovan authors, either by oversight, or intentionally divide the banks of the Dniester already at that stage, attributing the name “Transnistria” to the left bank, although at that time the region was the territory of Ukraine. The researchers come to the conclusion that one of the factors that makes it extremely difficult to resolve the Transnistrian conflict is how the conflicting parties perceive the historical memory. At the same time, the authors ask those who are engaged in the return of the Left Bank in Moldova: how much can you integrate a social group, which for the most part considers the Russian General Alexander Suvorov the national hero, and almost never heard about Mihai Eminescu? In conclusion, the Romanian scientists draw attention to the fact that the statements of the Moldovan President Igor Dodon about the close resolution of the Transnistrian conflict are not based on concrete calculations and are far from the truth, since Chisinau has already missed one of the key elements in addressing these differing points of view: the two societies must be ready and willing to live together, and that, alas, is very far. According to Romanian scientists, the research results show that at the current stage the two banks of the Dniester river are not ready to coexist in one state. At the same time, according to the authors of the study, the example of history schoolbooks is representational, but not the only one. For example, the geography course of study, they say, gives reason to believe that the two communities have long been learning to live separately. This is expected to be the subject of a separate research paper.