The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (PMSSR), also commonly known as Soviet Transnistria or simply as Transnistria, was created on the eastern periphery of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) in 1990 by pro-Soviet separatists who hoped to remain within the Soviet Union when it became clear that the MSSR would achieve independence from the USSR and possibly unite with Romania. The PMSSR was never recognised as a Soviet republic by the authorities in either Moscow or Chișinău. In 1991, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic succeeded the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.The Supreme Soviet changed the official name of the republic from Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic to Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic on 5 November 1991. See: "Postanovlenie verkhovnogo soveta Pridnestrovskoi Moldavskoi Respubliki ob izmenenii nazvaniia respubliki," Dnestrovskaia pravda, 6 November 1991, 1.
MASSR and MSSR The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic from which the PMSSR seceded was created in 1940 following the Soviet annexation of territory belonging to the Kingdom of Romania. When Bessarabia was ceded to the Soviet Union as a result of an ultimatum, it was combined with a strip of land on the left bank of the Dniester which had formed the nucleus of a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), an autonomous republic of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic with Tiraspol as its executive capital, throughout the interwar period.
The newly fused territory became the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and was quickly sovietized. In this process of collectivization and "dekulakization", the left bank of the Dniester had a clear advantage: the territory had been collectivized during the First Five-Year Plan (FFYP) during the 1930s, it had enjoyed a reasonable amount of industrialisation, and boasted relatively experienced, trustworthy cadres.
The MASSR had been formed on the basis of what Terry Martin has termed the Soviet "Piedmont Principle":Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire, Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 274-5. by creating a "homeland" for Moldovans across the Romanian border, the Soviet leadership hoped to advance their claims on Romanian territory. While the role of the MASSR in the Soviet Union's eventual incorporation of this land was negligible—the Soviet ultimatum to Romania did not mention the Moldovan nation, let alone use its right to national self-determination as justification for the invasionCharles King, The Moldovans, Romania, Russian, and the Politics of Culture (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000), 91.—the former autonomous republic did provide a Soviet elite ready to assume leadership in the new union republic.
Perestroika in the Moldavian SSR In the second half of the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev set the political context for the war in Transnistria and redefined the political process in the union republics with a series of reforms that comprised his program for perestroika. While intended to reinvigorate the Soviet system, perestroika also undermined the strength of key institutions which provided for central control of the Soviet Union.See Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted, The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Inadvertently undermining the power of the communist party, Gorbachev set the stage for a devolution of power into a federated state structure which essentially resulted in the devolution of power to the governments of the fifteen Soviet republics. This devolution of centralized power to republican legislatures ("soviets" in the terminology of the Soviet Union) was matched by a simultaneous explosion of mass participation in the now open debate about the Soviet future.
In the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, as elsewhere in the Soviet Union, political activity was expressed in various ways, including by organizing groups and clubs independent of the government that had long withheld the right of association to any sort of civil organization. Two sets of concerns were particularly prominent in the debates that accompanied the opening of political dialogue in the late 1980s. The first was concern for the ecologic devastation that was so characteristic of Soviet industrial society. The second, and increasingly ascendant concern revolved around the Moldovan language and whether it was distinct from the Romanian language or not, and national heritage, which many felt had been trammeled by Soviet and Russian domination.
These concerns found expression in the activism of the Moldovan Movement in Support of Restructuring—a movement of the intelligentsia oriented mostly towards generalized economic and political liberalization—and the Alexei Mateevici Literary-Musical Club, which pulled together prominent cultural and political figures, activists and citizens to celebrate and discuss the language, literature and history of the Moldovans.William Crowther, "The Politics of Democratization in Postcommunist Moldova," in Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. Karen Dawisha, and Bruce Parrott, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997), 288. Cultural revival was just one of the issues championed by such informals in early 1988. However, during the course of that year events around the Soviet Union, and particularly the bloody clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh and the pogrom against Armenians in Sumgait, brought issues of ethnicity increasingly to the fore in the union press. In Moldova, social movements increasingly began to focus on three issues involving language: the identity of the Moldovan language and whether it was separate from the Romanian language or not, the alleged artificiality of the use of the Cyrillic alphabet for this supposed Moldovan language, and need for Moldovan to be given the status of official language of the republic. By June 1988, the Moldovan republican government began taking its cue from social movement leaders and discussing these issues, touching off the events that culminated in the creation of the Transnistrian state.
Social mobilization came late to the eastern cities that became the centers of pro-Pridnestrovian activity (mid-1989) and it followed a different model than it did in western (Bessarabian) Moldova. Social mobilization in Tiraspol and Tighina (Bender) was mostly achieved through workplace networks called Work Collective Councils Work Collective Soviets (sovety trudovykh kollektivov, STKs). The mobilization in Transnistria was a reaction to the national revivalist mobilization in Bessarabian Moldova. Russian-speaking workers in the eastern factories and Moldovans with a strong identification with the Soviet state used work collective councils to organize opposition to national revivalists in the Moldovan capital. The councils were created throughout the Soviet Union in 1987 with the "Law on State Enterprises" as part of the perestroika reforms. They were intended to foster democratization and increase efficiency in Soviet industry. However, they were also ready-made forums for debate and provided a structure which activists used to take control of Moldovan industry in late 1989. The national revivalist movements were created essentially from scratch and led by cultural figures. The "internationalist" (pro-Soviet) movement in Transnistria took advantage of workplace institutions to build a countermovement and looked to engineers and factory managers for leadership.
The Supreme Soviet discusses language law Newly empowered by the weakened CPSU, and increasingly pressured by the ascendant movement for national reawakening, the Moldavian Supreme Soviet (which became the Moldovan legislature in June 1990) announced the creation of a body—the Interdepartmental Commission for the Study of the History and Problems of the Development of Moldovan—to research the language question and make recommendations. Staffed as it was with Moldova's Romanianized cultural elite, the commission recommended the republican government accept all three points of the national revivalists' demands. (That is (1) the identity of the Moldovan and Romanian language, (2) the artificiality of the use of the Cyrillic alphabet for the Moldovan language, and (3) need for Moldovan to be given the status of official language of the republic. See above.) Armed with these recommendations, the Supreme Soviet asked for the draft legislation to be presented in March for "public discussion" of the proposals "before the next session of the Supreme Soviet" in August."Postanovlenie Prezidium Verkhovnogo Soveta Moldavskoi SSR O podgotovke zakonoproektov Moldavskogo SSR o funktsionirovanii iazykov na territorii respubliki," Narodnoe Obrazovanie, 28 January 1989, 1. This move did nothing to diffuse the inevitable tension involved with the very project. Proponents mobilized to expand the legally protected role of the state language and push the Supreme Soviet to recognize the identity of Moldovan and Romanian while opponents mobilized to protect the legal status quo. A further draft leaked in August further escalated tensions because its opponents believed that it was even more pro-nationalist and radical than the first draft.The text of the proposals can be read here: (March version:) Proekt "O statuse gosudarstvennogo iazyka Moldavskoi SSR" and Proekt "O funktsionirovanii iazykov na territorii Moldavskoi SSR," Narodnoe obrazovanie 1 April 1989, 1. (August version:) "Zakon 'O funktsionirovanii iazykov na territorii Moldavskoi SSR,'" Sovietskaia Moldaviia, 3 September 1989, 1, 3. See Charles King for a discussion of the debate that followed the publication of the first language law drafts: Charles King, The Moldovans, Romania, Russian, and the Politics of Culture (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000), 91.
The law was passed in a stormy Supreme Soviet session on 31 August 1989. It declared that "The state language of Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic is Moldovan. The state language is used in political, economic, social and cultural life and functions on the basis of the Latin alphabet."" Zakon Moldavskoi Sovetskoi Sotsialisticheskoi Respubliki: O statuse gosudarstvennogo iazyka Moldavskoi SSR," Sovietskaia Moldaviia, 31 August 1989, 1. However, it went on to promise protection of Russian and other languages of Moldova's minority populations. The passage of the language laws was accompanied by massive rallies outside the legislature building in Chișinău with upwards of 500,000 people gathered in a "Grand National Assembly" in Chișinău's Victory Square outside of the Supreme Soviet building to show their support. Elsewhere in Chișinău and other cities, smaller rallies voiced opposition.Vladimir Socor discusses the "Grand National Assembly" in "Moldavian Proclaimed the Official Language of the Moldavian SSR," RFE/RL Report on the USSR 1, no. 38 (22 September 1989): esp, p. 14. The most effective opposition came in the form of a massive strike movement that originated in the Transnistrian city of Tiraspol.
Strikers and strike breakers