Transnistria. Background of the story.
I took some time to sit down and understand the whole background behind Transnistria. I want to share that here.
I took some time to sit down and understand the whole background behind Transnistria. I would like to share that here. I will mostly describe the historical background and relation of the region to Ukraine.
This region was important since middle age or even earlier. That's all because of the Dniester river, a communication route. It used to belong to Rzeczpospolita, Crimean Khanate, Cossack Hetmanate, the Russian Empire, and more. Since the end of the 18th century and until 1918, it has been part of the RU empire.
Keep in mind that the region never had such an unusual form as today. It usually was split between other administrative regions.
After the First world war
Naturally, Pridnestrovia was also part of UNR and later the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. In 1924 Stalin created Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) in UkrUSR. This was the turning point. Moldavians did not have a majority there.
This was a new shape of Ukrainian SSR:
Of course, Stalin didn't care about minorities. The reason for creating such autonomy was simple: to prepare legal reasons for annexing Bessaribia, which the USSR lost according to the Treaty of Paris(1920). Moreover, the Soviet Union did not recognize Bessarabia as part of Romania.
Creation of MSSR
And it happened relatively soon: in 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia. This plan was part of the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Parts of newly annexed land were integrated into UkrSSR, and the rest turned into the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR).
But what about an Autonomous republic on Ukrainian territory? It was dissolved, but a small part was given to MSSR. This small part is exactly what we call Transnistria right now. These were six districts of republican control.
Historians describe this as "mine" put in Moldova because the region did not have a Moldavian majority. And this mine exploded. The situation was unstable in the 1980s since there were strong national movements among Moldavians. Naturally, these did not happen in these 6 districts because Moldavians had no majority. Moreover, there were opposite movements in Prydnistrovya. Keep in mind that the political elite was mostly non-Moldavian too.
End of USSR
In 1990 there were the first attempts to establish autonomy in Transnistria. But the situation escalated one year later.
New Union Treaty was scheduled for August 20th, 1991. Its idea was to reform USSR and give more autonomy to member states. Interestingly, Moldova would not be part of it, but Transnistria wanted to sign the treaty. Same with Abkhazia (a region in Georgia). It is hard to understand how that should have worked out technically with one part of the country signing the treaty.
Due to the August Coup in Moscow, the treaty was never signed, and supposed members started to declare independence. Those who opposed the idea of the Union Treaty also used this situation to declare independence, and Moldova declared it on August 27th.
Transnistria had strong pro soviet views, contrary to the rest of Moldova. They supported the coup, and when the coup failed, they declared independence. Surprisingly they did it two days before Kishenev, on August 25th.
Tiraspol and Chisinau declared independence, which is how the actual conflict started. Interestingly, the Transnistria president Igor Smirnov went to Kyiv to negotiate about joining Ukraine. Some Ukrainian nationalists from UNA-UNSO supported this idea and even volunteered to fight for separatists. However, Smirnow was kidnapped and imprisoned by Moldovan special forces on the way there, spent some time in jail, and was released several months later. These are his comments from 2011 given to the media called Ukraina Moloda.
He wants to sound like they support Ukrainian culture, but according to Hromadske, there was only one Ukrainian school in Transnistria in 2015. Also, we don't see the anti-war movement in Transnistria. I wonder why…
As said at the beginning of this thread, I will not go into details of the war itself. This was very similar to "DNR" and "LNR" creation. Soviet/Russian 14th army was stationed there, playing a decisive role in the war. This war also froze with the agreement, which was never completely fulfilled.
Thanks for reading.
Interesting read .. thank-you. It seems similar in some aspects to that of Northern Ireland .. one major difference is the Island of Ireland is .. well an island so the border is much more obvious ... The major difference is that of the sectarian nature and reason for Northern Ireland's existence. Noting that Britain 'imported' Scottish protestants to NI to create a pro unionist majority there, the manipulation of a population is a common theme.