In the 31 years that have passed since the Republic of Moldova proclaimed its independence in 1991, Russia has always had people among the representatives of political parties and the administration in Chișinău, from the bottom to the very top of the hierarchy, from presidents, to ministers and heads of various departments. None of them have tried to hide their connections to Moscow, while others seem to have played their part flawlessly, ending up at the helm of nationalist and pro-European movements, which allowed Russia to control certain political developments in this country.
The best-known example is that of Iurie Roșca, the former leader of what used to be the number one pro-Romanian and pro-European faction in Bessarabia, today one of the most ardent supporters of theories promoted by Alexander Dugin, the Kremlin’s top political theorist and ideologist of the “Russian World”.
Some of them were exposed as Russia’s inside men and ended up being investigated for treason, while in the case of others we can only assume how they were tied to the Kremlin and what purpose they served in Chișinău. Some served Moscow’s interests of their own accord, while others might have been forced by various circ*mstances or caved in to blackmail and threats.
The following provides an overview of some of the people who’ve left their mark on the brief history of the Republic of Moldova, whose actions have contributed to larger or lesser extents to keeping Chișinău in the Russian Federation’s orbit.
The list is neither exhaustive, nor definitive.
Iurie Roșca, from iconic representative of national rebirth movements to Dugin’s friend and conspiracy monger
Perhaps no other politician in the Republic of Moldova has had a more surprising evolution for the public in general and his supports in particular other than Iurie Roșca. A graduate of the Faculty of Journalism with the University of Chișinău, class of 1985, in 1988 Iurie Roșca became a member of the Democratic Movement for the Reconstruction of Moldova, an initiative designed to foster reforms promoted by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1989, Roșca was one the founding members of the Popular Front of Moldova (FPM), an organization that back then brought all national parties under the same roof, and which starting 1991 managed to proclaim the independence of the Republic of Moldova. At the time, the proclamation was seen as a transitional phase of the unification with Romania. In 1992, Iurie Roșca became the vice-president of FPM, which in the meantime changed its name to the Christian-Democratic Popular Front (FPCD). Infighting and behind-the-scenes strife led to sonorous names leaving FPCD. Iurie Roșca was elected in 1994 president of the Front, which again changed its name to the Christian-Democratic People’s Party (PPCD). The party declared its pro-Romanian, pro-European and pro-NATO orientation. Over 1994-2009, Iurie Roșca was a deputy in the Moldovan Parliament. He was deputy Parliament speaker over 1998-2001 and 2005-2009.
In early 2002, PPCD staged widespread protests against the communist regime at the time, led by president Vladimir Voronin. The communist authorities had tried to introduce mandatory Russian teaching in schools, starting with the second grade, and a return to the Soviet canons of history writing. At certain moments, the protests brought together tens of thousands of people and lasted from January until April 2002. The protest actions stopped on April 29, after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution on the functioning of democratic institutions in the Republic of Moldova, which in fact signaled the victory of the country’s pro-democracy forces.
In the parliamentary election of March 2005, PPCD, with Iurie Roșca at its helm, grabbed 11 of the total of 101 seats in Parliament. Everything was fine up to this point, although Iurie Roșca was persistently rumored to be Moscow’s inside man and that he had allegedly divided the Popular Front as early as 1994 in order to weaken and scatter the Romanian forces in the Republic of Moldova. But the rumors remained just that, and no clear-cut evidence saw the light of day. The first major suspicion arose in 2005, during the presidential election in Moldova. At the time, the head of state was designated by Parliament, requiring 61 votes. The Communists, who had secured 56 seats, wanted their leader Vladimir Voronin to secure a second term as president, although they lacked the necessary number of votes. It was one of the few opportune moments to force the communists into making certain concessions, after years of holding all the power in their hands. Yet what did Iurie Roșca do? Instead of negotiating with communist deputies, announcing he would not back Voronin’s candidacy, thus limiting the prerogatives of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) and threatening to trigger a political deadlock that would eventually lead to the dissolution of Parliament and snap elections, Roșca announced that PPCD would vote for Vladimir Voronin. The communist leader also got the support of deputies from the Democratic and Social-Liberal parties, and was eventually designated president with 75 votes. Shortly afterwards, Iurie Roșca was designated Parliament deputy speaker. In 2007, with president Voronin’s tacit blessing, Roșca abusively took over the Euro TV station, owned by the Chișinău City Hall, which opposed the Party of Communists. By 2007, Iurie Roșca had become an even closer ally of Vladimir Voronin, who during his second term as president drifted further away from international organizations and the European Union, seeking closer ties with Russia instead. The approval ratings of Iurie Roșca and PPCD plummeted, and in the 2009 election, for the first time in 20 years, PPCD failed to secure enough votes to enter Parliament. Starting 2009, from a staunch supporter of European and Euro-Atlantic integration, Iurie Roșca became a Eurosceptic and a tenacious supporter of ideologies promoted by Alexander Dugin, which many consider to be the Kremlin’s top political theorist and one of the architects of the “Russian World”.
Mircea Snegur, always oscillating between East and West
Mircea Snegur was the first president of the Republic of Moldova. The fact that he was Moscow’s puppet is an overstatement, perhaps. Rather, Snegur played into Moscow’s hands over certain periods of his political terms in office, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, influenced by certain groups close to him or intimidated by threats coming from the Russian Federation.
The first major political office held by Mircea Snegur was first secretary of the Edineț District Committee of the Communist Party in the Socialist Soviet Republic of Moldova (1981-1985). In 1989, Snegur was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Moldova, a sort of political bureau of Parliament, and in April 1990 he became the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Moldova. In August 1989, he agreed to support a bill that made Romanian the official state language and sanctioned the return to the tricolor flag, a decision that earned him the sympathy of a substantial part of Moldovan society.
In September 1990, Mircea Snegur was named president of the SSRM by the Supreme Soviet, a position he held up until 1996, when he lost the election to Petru Lucinschi.
Over the course of his mandate, Snegur displayed an oscillating attitude towards national and anti-Russian forces. In 1991, he supported the proclamation of the independence of the Republic of Moldova and its recognition by the international community, as well as the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the territory of the newly created state. At the same time, Mircea Snegur condemned the occupation of Bessarabia in 1940 by the USSR, although he argued against the unification with Romania and distanced himself from the Popular Front, a faction that had supported him in the years before the collapse of the USSR.
In December 1991, president Mircea Snegur signed the decree whereby the Republic of Moldova became a (founding) member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a decree which Parliament would ratify only in 1994, after the Democratic Agrarian Party (PDAM) took power. The party had grabbed 56 votes and was supported at the time by president Snegur. The new Parliament majority adopted the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova, which stated the official state language was not Romanian, but Moldovan. The Constitution also changed the national anthem of Moldova, which up to that point had been “Awaken, thee, Romanian!”. In 1995, Mircea Snegur locked horns with PDAM, and part of the party’s followers in Parliament left the party. In February, 1996, Mircea Snegur signed a controversial decree whereby the breakaway region of Transnistria was granted the right to use the Moldovan customs stamp, without Chișinău authorities being able to control trade activity at the Tiraspol checkpoint.
After losing the 1996 presidential election to Petru Lucinschi, Mircea Snegur founded the Party of Rebirth and Reconciliation, and switched to a pro-Western rhetoric. The new party entered Parliament in 1998, representing the Democratic Convention of Moldova, although in 2001 it failed to meet the election threshold.
After withdrawing from politics, Snegur gave several interviews in which he continued to militate for closer ties with Romania and the West.
Another political figure that influenced the agrarian period in the Republic of Moldova was Andrei Sangheli. On July 1, 1992, Mircea Snegur designated Sangheli Prime Minister of Moldova. The decision was one of the prerequisites for signing the Yeltsin-Snegur agreement that put an end to the Transnistrian conflict in 1992. The agreement provided for the creation of a conciliation government with Andrei Sangheli at its helm. Sangheli later rallied the support the Agrarian Party. Andrei Sangheli went down in history for a notorious statement about Romania “never giving Moldova anything for free”. The statement came as Romania had provided the Republic of Moldova with several financial assistance packages as well as with military aid during the Transnistrian war, without which Chișinău wouldn’t have survived the conflict. In addition, Andrei Sangheli also stood out for signing several government decrees of the same number. Some of them were published in the “Official Gazette”, while others served personal or group interests.
Petru Lucinschi, the ideal apparatchik
Petru Lucinschi may be considered the ideal apparatchik. All his life, prior to the fall of the USSR, Lucinschi had assumed leading positions in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, from 1963 until 1991. Over 1986-1989, Lucinschi was second secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan, at the time one of the 15 Soviet republics. The second secretary commonly acted as Moscow’s representative to Soviet republics, in charge of overseeing the activity of the first secretary, and usually designated from the ranks of the majority ethnic group. It appears Lucinschi was the only second secretary of non-Slavic origin to have been appointed in SSRs. All the other second secretaries were either Russian, Belarussian or Ukrainian ethnics. As an adept of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform campaign, in 1989 Lucinschi was recalled by the Kremlin and appointed first secretary of the Communist Party in the Moldovan Socialist Soviet Republic. In February 1991, Lucinschi returned to Moscow, where he worked as press secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In 1992, Petru Lucinschi was appointed Ambassador of the Republic of Moldova (which by then had proclaimed its independence) to the Russian Federation. In 1993, as a representative of PDAM, Lucinschi became Speaker of the Moldovan Parliament, and in 1997 he was elected president of the Republic of Moldova, a position he held until April 2001.
There are several highlights of his term as president. First of all, with Lucinschi in office, Gazprom took over Moldovan gas distribution networks, which the state conceded in exchange for writing off Moldova’s debt for Russian gas. Today, over 50% of the MoldovaGaz company is owned by Gazprom. Another 13% of the company’s shares are owned by the separatist region of Transnistria, leaving the Moldovan Government with approximately 35% of the shared interest in this company.
Furthermore, Petru Lucinschi tried to change the outlook of the Republic of Moldova from a semi-presidential regime to a fully-fledged presidential administration, boosting the prerogatives of the head of state. Parliament however opposed his initiative and amended the Constitution, which meant that any future presidents would be appointed by Parliament.
It should also be mentioned that Petru Lucinschi was the first president who spoke in no unclear terms about the European integration of the Republic of Moldova. Admittedly, the agreement, back then, even in talks with Moscow, was to create a European Union that would extend from Lisbon all the way to Vladivostok.
Petru Lucinschi is also known for his relation with businessman Miron Shor, and later on with his son, Ilan Shor, the oligarch who despite being wanted internationally, still plays into Moscow’s hands in Chișinău. It’s worth pointing out that Ilan Shor is the main suspect in the billion-dollar theft case of 2014, and Petru Lucinschi was a shareholder at “Unibank”, one the banks targeted by Shor. At one point, the former president was investigated in the billion-dollar theft case, although he was later stripped of all criminal charges.
