Click
here for info on the Print Journal
(and to purchase your copy)!
Obscure Country Profile #5: Moldova
By Lionel Beehner
---------------------------------------
A travel company’s website says it best. Generously called Dreams Tours International, the site beckons patrons to visit Moldova. “DO NOT! EMAIL TO MAKE RESERVATIONS! JUST CALL OR FAX US AT THE NUMBERS LISTED BELOW [sic],” it instructs. Trouble is, all the company provides is an email address. No phone number. No fax number. And to think how many would-be tourists or honeymooners have had their summer vacation plans to Chisinau* dashed by this misleading ad.
Probably not many, sadly; save the occasional backpacker looking for good bubbly. Moldovan wine is among the Continent’s finest. Even the Queen of England swears by it. But thankfully, like a rundown Dominos Pizza in the wrong part of town, Moldova delivers its plonk, mostly to Russians who can’t afford choicer bottles from Alsace-Lorraine.
Despite boasting 90,000 monuments, historical sights and statuary, Moldova is a mess of a place. The country - an ex-Soviet republic roughly the size of Maryland, wedged between Romania and Ukraine on Europe’s eastern periphery - has all the ingredients of a failed state: organized crime, rampant corruption, an impoverished populace, a communist in power, a fondness for weapons smuggling and human trafficking, and a separatist movement in Transdnestr, a swath of land peopled by ethnic Russians.
image
courtesy of graphicmaps.com
Historically, Moldova has never amounted to much. Though ethnically diverse, it’s been a hot tomato tossed around for centuries by the Ottomans, the Russians, the Austrians, and the Romanians. During the interwar period of the early 20th century, Moldova (then part of Bessarabia) enjoyed a brief independence. But then, thanks to a handshake between Molotov and Rippentrop in 1940, the region was handed back over to the Soviets, who extended their penchant for gray architecture, nameless storefronts and bureaucratic governance.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Moldovans have not fared much better. Sixty is the country’s magic number. Its economy has shrunk 60 percent since the USSR’s breakup. Monthly wages average just $60. And life expectancy is down to around 60 years for males.
In Chisinau, normally a dull place, daily riots have erupted in protest of President Vladimir Voronin’s effort to reinstate Russian as the official language. Romanian is the citizens' preferred tongue. Making matters worse, relations between Russian nationalists in Transdnestr and other Moldovans have grown testy; more than 2,000 have been killed in clashes since the early 1990s (Moldova’s flag even features a band of red in honor of the blood spilt defending its borders). Things got so bad this past summer that Europe considered sending in troops to keep the peace. Brussels thought better of it, remembering that the last European soldiers sent to Moldova wore swastikas.
But Moldova needs more than mere boots on the ground. More urgently it requires honest politicians, civil leaders, and, perhaps most important, economists. Moldova’s currency, the leu (pronounced like the British bathroom), which is tied loosely to Russia’s ruble, is not worth much. Foreigners are advised to bring dollars. Roughly twenty percent of Moldova’s population of 4.3 million work abroad and send remittances back home. In Transdnestr, the restive natives have even minted their own currency: the Transdnestrian ruble, worth about as much as a gum wrapper.
Despite all this, Moldova has its sights on joining the European Union. A vote is slated for 2007. Given the country's inflation (roughly 15 percent) and petite GDP ($11 billion), however, it is unlikely to make the cut. Moldova remains Europe’s poorest country, edging out Bosnia, Belarus and even cash-strapped Albania. Moldova is on few investors’ radars these days. To pull the country out of its economic slump, this needs to change. The government, run by an ineffectual and increasingly unpopular leader, has not helped things. Without outside capital, Moldova cannot hope to grow or be granted membership into the exclusive EU.
Moldova, for all its problems, is a beautiful nook of a country, outside its drab cities. Its terrain, hilly and dotted with vineyards, is where Pushkin once fell in love. Too bad, given current conditions, few tourists will ever venture there to see it, sample its wines or perhaps even repeat the poet’s good fortune.
*Chrisinau is Moldova's capital.
---------------------------------------
Lionel Beehner is a contributing writer for Seed Magazine. He can be contacted at [email protected].
© 2003 Me Three