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Economie
and attention. It lacks central Europe’s glorious culture,
the pungent romance of the Balkans, the charm and excitement
of the Baltics, or the huge strategic importance
of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Its main role is that
of a country so obscure that it can safely be ridiculed,
as it was in a book about a hapless British comedian’s
attempt to play tennis with the national football team.
Moldova is indeed flat, small, isolated, and ill-run.
But it is not ridiculous. Its sadnesses spill over to other
countries in the form of smuggling and prostitution. Bits
of it—chiefly the breakaway puppet state of Transdniestria
- are sinister. Its fate is tremendously important. As
it wobbles between east and west, Moldova may be the
first country that the Kremlin wins back from the west
since the 1970s. Simply getting there is quite hard. Deplorable
state interference (to protect the national carrier)
means that the low-cost European airlines that fly
to the farthest corners of countries such as Poland don’t
serve the Moldovan capital, Chisinau. Municipal corruption
means that no western hotel chains have opened.
The best one is an ex-brothel, built for Turkish clients.
After four lucrative years, the owners changed its name
and went respectable, more or less.
The best way to get to Moldova is from Romania.
Ties between these two countries ought to be the closest
anywhere in eastern Europe. They share, broadly
speaking, a common language and history. Moldova
was part of Romania until 1940, when Stalin grabbed it
as part of the Nazi-Soviet pact.
Romanians mostly find it hard to think of Moldova as
a separate country: rather the same way many English
used to feel about Ireland, and still do about Scotland
and Wales. Romania’s beleaguered (and currently suspended)
president, Traian Basescu, a cheerful former
sea-captain, sees Moldova as a failed experiment that
would be much better off rejoining Romania. His views
would be fine in his old job, discussed in a lively harbourside
bar, lubricated by a few glasses of Romania’s
national drink, tuica. Coming from a head of state, amid
the delicate levantine gold filigrees and white plaster of
the former royal palace, they sound crass.
Only the most flimsy euphemisms disguise his real
views: Moldova is run by an incompetent provincial Soviet
elite that has lost the confidence not only of the
outside world, but also its own people. They are signing
up for Romanian passports en masse - he reckons
800,000 out of a population of 4.5m. Romania’s newly
won membership of the European Union makes its citizenship
- available to most Moldovans - irresistibly attractive,
and the process of unification unstoppable.
Yet a few moments’ thought show the difficulty with
Mr Basescu’s simplistic notions. Romania struggled to
get into the EU and is now struggling to survive there.
Moldova has far worse problems, and is not even in
the waiting room for membership. The last thing the EU
wants is another chunk of dirt-poor, ill-run, ex-communist
nuisance. What would happen to Transdniestria,
the mainly Russian-speaking territory that was stitched
to Moldova in Soviet times, and now tries to be independent?
Crucially, reunification with Romania is not popular
in Moldova. Mr. Basescu’s views may be coloured by
the rapturous reception he received from his fans there
during a recent visit. But less than a sixth of the population
declare themselves as “Romanians”. The majority
have got used, over the past 50 years, to living in a
separate country. They do not want to go back to being
a neglected province of Greater Romania”.
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