From: andrei@hanauma.stanford.edu (Andrei Popovici)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: The Grand Duchy of Transdniestria?
Date: 27 Jan 1993 04:45:57 GMT
Organization: Stanford University, Department of Geophysics
NNTP-Posting-Host: hanauma.stanford.edu

In article <1993Jan27.014908.14110@dxcern.cern.ch> gen@vsnhd7.cern.ch (Eugene Chudakov) writes:
>In article <1993Jan25.172930.1@cc.helsinki.fi> thietaniemi@cc.helsinki.fi
> (Tapani Hietaniemi) writes:
>>
>>Reading the Radio Free Europe reports is interesting indeed!
>>The detail below got my attention this time:
>>
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>>> LEBED URGES TERRITORIAL CHANGES IN MOLDOVA. Lt.-Gen.  Aleksandr
>>> Lebed, commander of Russia's 14th Army in Moldova, warned in
>>> Pravda of 20 January that hostilities may resume "at any moment"
>>
>><deleted>
>>
>>> In the same interview, Lebed called for the "Dniester
>>> republic's" accession to the Russian Federation under a status
>>> similar to that of Finland within Tsarist Russia.     ^^^^^^^^
>>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>><deleted>
>>> Vladimir Socor, RFE/RL, Inc.
>>------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
<stuff about Estonia deleted>

>   Using the same legal logic Russia may claim the left bank of Dniester back.
>The right bank (Bessarabia, as it was called at that times) was given 
>by the soviet government to Romania (1920?), but the left one was left in 
>the *SR (or how it was called at that times). Sometimes after 1940 or 1945 
>the internal border was changed in favour to Moldavia. 
>   I don't know very much about the history of this region. I read somewhere
>that Tiraspol (the main city of the "Dniester republic") had been
>founded by Rumyantsev or Suvorov (the end of VXIII) during wars with
>the Ottoman empire, but I'm not sure about the source. 
>   Also, at least some part of people there have a will to go back to Russia
>or Ukraine. This will had been instigated not only by conservative generals 
>like Lebed (general Swan, sounds good) but also by the cause of Moldova's
>newborn politicians to join Romania, which was proclaimed to be
>historically inevitable. Some unfortunate lower level politics also
>should to be mentioned, like a popular slogan "Churka-chemodan-vokzal" 
>(something like "You assholes, grab your stuff and fuck away", pardon
>my French). I've seen this slogan on a photograph in a newspaper,
>BTW it might have been a provocation, who knows? 
>Then the eagerness of Moldova to use a military force against 
>the separatists (or "freedom fighters"? :-) ) and the subsequent casualties 
>on both sides didn't help quite well to avoid the alienation.
>
>The "Estonia-Moldova connection"  :-(  slightly amused me :-).
>
>   Evgeni 

Historically, the left bank of the Dniester has never been Romanian, and 
I think it should stay Russian/Ukrainian.
There are however two problems that need to be adressed:
One is that of the territories that were given to Ukraine in 1945 (or 
sometime after the end of WWII)--the northern and southern ends of Moldova.
Hoping to regain these territories in exchange for Transdniester is 
one of the reasons for the Moldovans' trying to hang on to the left bank.
These territories have been part of Moldova and then Romania since Moldova
was formed (13th century--Romanian after 1859), and a majority of the 
population is ethnic Romanian there.

The second problem is that there need to be some guarantees regarding
the rights of the Romanian minority in Transdniester, rights that are 
openly violated now. 

I think there won't be a mutually acceptable solution in the conflict
unless these two problems are adressed.  

Andrei

been openly dicriminated against since the split from Moldova. 
Hopin