TRANSDNISTRIA

A living museum

In 1992, at the farthest edge of the Republic of Moldova, along the border with Ukraine, a new country was born: Transdnistria. Its birth was a painful one—over a thousand people died in the 1991-1992 war of secession with Moldova. The Russian “peacekeeping” army arrived in 1992 and remains stationed on Transdnistrian territory to this day.

Internationally unrecognized, the Republic of Transdnistria is a relic of the former USSR, preserving its reflexes like coins in a museum. War, poverty, repression—if these words seem commonplace, here they must be spoken in hushed tones. Transdnistria is a place where the victims of a quiet form of terrorism live: totalitarianism.

Statues of Lenin seem to stand watch over trafficking of all kinds. The state’s monopoly on the economy extends to a monopoly on thought. Human rights are disregarded. Minorities are taught that Russians are the “modern people.” What was once an ethnic war has become a cultural war, with the Cyrillic alphabet imposed. Children still draw tanks and portraits of Lenin.

Magritte once painted a picture of a pipe titled “This is not a pipe.” A painting of Transdnistria could be called “This is not a dictatorship.” Reality, at times, is surreal.