In Moldavia, What's Yours Is Mine

By James Carney/Chimishliya

A ragged band of 200 Moldavians, some armed with chains and knives, milled around the main square of rural Chimishliya last week waiting for orders to begin a civil war. "This is our land, our home, and we will fight for it," explained Ion Rosanu. "We have to protect the integrity of sovereign Moldavia." Rosanu and his companions were among thousands who mobilized to prevent the Gagauz, an ethnic Turkish minority, from seceding. When the Moldavians marched toward the Gagauz region, only the arrival of troops from the Soviet Interior Ministry kept the peace.

But the troops weren't enough to prevent bloodshed in the Dniester River valley, a region east of the Moldavian capital of Kishinev where ethnic Russians have also proclaimed their independence from the republic. Skirmishes between Moldavians and Russians outside the town of Dubossary reportedly left at least six dead and 30 wounded.

Appealing for peace, Gorbachev seemed to take sides with the Moldavians, saying, "We have to give separatists a real fight here." But the violence showed just how tenuous a hold the Kremlin has on its splintering empire. As ethnocentrism sweeps through the land, even minorities as small as the 150,000-strong Gagauz are seeking self-rule. And Russians, who once enjoyed colonial privileges in the outlying Soviet republics, now find themselves on the defensive as nationalism prevails.

The demands of both subgroups were rejected by the Moldavian parliament, itself locked in a separatist struggle with the central Soviet government. The republic of 4.3 million, 65% of whom are native Moldavians, was historically a province of Romania but was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. Last June Moldavia declared its sovereignty; two months later the popularly elected parliament renamed the republic Moldova, adopted a flag similar to Romania's and declared Moldavian the official language.

However much Moldavians want autonomy from Moscow, they are not about to tolerate fractures in their own republic. When the Gagauz went ahead with elections for a separate parliament, the Moldavian government declared a state of emergency, cut telephone lines and set up blockades to seal off the minority region. After Moldavian and Gagauz leaders began negotiations to avert violence last week, reports that the Dniester republic planned to move up their own parliamentary elections incited the bloodshed outside Dubossary.

Many Russians living in the republic believe the Moldavian government wants to reunify with Romania. Most Moldavian leaders emphatically deny this, and few observers believe the Kremlin would tolerate it. But Alexandru Moshanu, chairman of the Moldavian parliament, said last week that the future of the Soviet Union may hold only a choice between "chaos and a new dictatorship." If so, Moldavians may yet decide that they have no alternative but to try to erase the border with Romania.