ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

PERINA: Well the American interests were to preserve and promote stability in this part
of Europe. We saw how the Yugoslav conflict had destabilized the Balkan region, and we
did not want another conflict destabilizing the Eastern Balkans, particularly a conflict that
could draw in Russia and Romania. So our interest was to try to resolve the Transnistrian
conflict and to help Moldova develop into an economically and politically successful
country.
Q: What was the government of Moldova like at the time?
PERINA: There were some big changes in the government while I was there. When I
arrived there was essentially a center left government under President Petru Lucinschi.
He had been a Communist Party functionary in the Soviet Union but after the Soviet
break-up renounced Communist ideology and moved toward the center, although he
really had interests on all sides and very cleverly played the entire political spectrum.
There were many such leaders with leftist pedigrees but re-born views in the new
republics that emerged from the Soviet Union. But about halfway through my tour, there
was an election and the unconverted Communist Party candidate won. It drew a lot of
attention because Moldova was billed by the media as the first country emerging from the
Soviet Union which elected a Communist president. This seemed to forget about
Lukashenko in Belarus, but I guess he wasn’t considered freely-elected. In any case, this
was Vladimir Voronin who was the head of the unreformed Communist Party in
Moldova, although he turned out to be a far more complex and difficult to categorize
President than most of us expected. He and the Communist Party were quite left-wing in
rhetoric and ideology prior to gaining power but then began changing to a more
pragmatic course. Indeed, Voronin eventually broke with the Russians over Transnistria
and has become one of the more pro-Western leaders in the former Soviet Union.
The main reason the Communists got elected was because the center and center-right
parties were incapable of working together. The leaders of these parties were just not
used to making alliances and compromising in order to cooperate with one another.
Everyone wanted to be the king. This is in fact a problem of democratic parties in many
of the post-Soviet states. So the Communists remained the single largest party and best
organized party. The majority of the country would have preferred a more centrist
government but the center right parties could not agree on a slate or single candidate so
their votes were split up.
Q: Was the land still collectivized from Communist days?
PERINA: It was one of the earliest countries where a land privatization program was
initiated. This was the major USAID program in Moldova and considered quite
successful. It was started under my predecessor, Todd Stewart, and concluded during the
time I was there. Basically, all the collectivized farms were divided up among members
of the collectives. The idea was that this would motivate efficiency and productivity
because people would have a vested interest in their little plot as opposed to the large
collective farms that were generally collapsing. Some people did criticize the
privatization with the argument that inefficiency was created by going from large to small
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