Getting’ Mauled in Moldova

There is nothing even remotely true about the title of this blog post.  I did not get mauled in Moldova.  In fact, I barely remember a single bad thing that happened to me in Moldova.  I love Moldova, it is perfect.  Moldova, for those not paying attention, is one half of the ancient principality (? Duchy? Kingdom?  Wikipedia knows better than I do) of Moldavia, the other half belonging to Romania.  At various times throughout history Moldavia was split between the Turks and Russians, only temporarily reuniting in the interbellum for one last Romanian irredentist hurrah before being sliced in half one last time. 

Splitting already small linguistic groups is tough for everyone, trust me.  Not only is there an irrational, nagging, and tempestuous 19th-century notion that there should be an overarching political union or state that groups together all peoples who speak the same language (Kosovo, Greater Hungary, etc.) but when you’re dealing with an ethnicity with fewer people than the City of Toronto, then the number of “national” “heroes” who have done enough to advance the plight of their people is not only bound to be quite small, but also not exactly controversy-free when dealing with a Vehn Diagram such as Romania-Moldavia-Moldova. 

This is why Alexander the Great is headlining for Macedonia, and Skenderbeg has cornered the Albanian statue market (although a leading source has confided to me that we’re not far away from a 10,000 leke note with Jim Belushi on it, or the Eliza Dushku Parkway connecting Tirana with Durres).  In a similar vein, Nikola Tesla was born to Serbian parents on Croatian territory, so naturally both Croats and Serbs claim him as their own.  Of course, they ignore that Croatia subservient to the Kingdom of Hungary which itself was headed by a German-speaking Emperor in Vienna, Austria, the educational institutions of which Tesla’s research was articulated on, in Slovenia, Prague and Budapest, all before the Austro-Hungarian Empire was split ad infinitum into the bite-sized chunks we know and love today.  

So naturally, the biggest problem facing Moldova upon the creation of their SSR and subsequent blebbing off from the Soviet Union, was what great historical figures would adorn their banknotes and rename squares and boulevards from various declensions of “Lenin” or “Soviet”?—tough decisions indeed.  The Moldovans have settled on Stefan cel Mare, or Stephen the Great.  He fought a bunch of battles, etc., maintained the independence of the Moldavian people, etc., and preserved the territorial integrity of Moldavia.  As this ancient principality cover both sides of the River Prut, so do claims to Stefan’s legacy.  Moldovans see themselves as the inheritors of this principality and have adorned every banknote with his visage, but he was also voted greatest Romanian of all time. 

This leads one to suspect that it’s a skilled art and unique set of conditions that must be met in order to take the fiery Romanian ethnicity and order them neatly on a grid.  Of course, we have the Soviet Union to thank for this, as nobody knew how to construct, order, and grid a nationality quite like they did.  As such, Moldova is one large, gridded agro-coop today, firm in its resolve that “Moldovan” is both an ethnicity and a language, albeit related to Romanian.  So the only thing “mauling” me in Moldova was the concept of the Romanian ethnicity and the mental anguish involved in trying to wrap my brain around it.  

The divisions are fairly stark.  My first time in Romania (2007) involved a conversation with a Transylvanian Hungarian-Romanian who was pro-Transylvania and interestingly enough, pro-Ceausescu with limitations.  Many Transylvanians, whether Romanian, Hungarian, Saxon or otherwise, see the region as an entity unto itself, not a part of Romania or Hungary.  It had been for many centuries and perhaps very well it should be, too.  When I asked him about places to go in Romania, he suggested only Transylvanian destinations.  I asked about Iasi and he said, “Iasi!? Yes, it’s okay, but once you’re in Iasi, you’re in Moldova, and that’s practically Ukraine, and then you’re in Eastern Europe!”  

Unaccustomed to having my geopolitical paradigm so abruptly and arbitrarily realigned, I undiplomatically blurted, “Um, where do you think we are now?!” He said that before the First World War, Transylvania was a part of Europe, part of the West, and then it was ripped away and stuffed into the Balkans.  I chose not to counter that perhaps Transylvania was part of the imagination in the West, but that Bram Stoker and his novel’s many derivatives had severed any plausible ties between Transylvania and its dubious claims of Western heritage.  Besides, if Romanian tourism is based on Transylvania, and the image of Transylvania is based on vampires that never actually existed, aren’t we all better off with a lie that makes us happy than a truth that ruins our childhood?

So Moldovans resent Romanians for patronising them; Moldavians and Transylvanians resent Wallachians for Bucharest’s economic and political cachet; Hungarians resent Romanians for taking Transylvania; Transylvanians resent Hungarians for adopting such possessive discourse; and Romanians resent Hungarians for not assimilating.  What we have learned is that the so-called “Romanian ethnicity” is rife with internal divisions, and can’t agree on a history.  That, if anything, makes it European.