The last of a three-part series
om the cartoon Rocky and Bullwinkle in which Fearless Leader explains the Cold War to the Pottsylvanian politburo.
'We have no natural resources,' he says, gesturing toward a chart on the wall – for every category of resources there is a big fat zero.
'We produce nothing,' he says, pointing to a second chart – for each type of production there is a big fat zero.
Then Fearless Leader raises the glum mood. 'But there is one thing we have plenty of,' he says. 'Mean! We must find a way to export this mean to, say, America!'
Cut to Boris Badanov and Natasha Fatale trotting in front of some stereotypical middle-American background, hatching some fiendish plan that only moose and squirrel can foil.
Well, Moldova is a lot like Pottsylvania, except it doesn't even have much mean. Just enough, it seems, to inflict further misery on itself.
At the Ukrainian-Moldovan border by the Danube, the Moldovan border post consists of two little trailers. A new, white Mercedes sits waiting on the Moldovan side for some rendezvous. Another white Mercedes is racing toward the border, honking at a mid-'80s Japanese car and trying to pull it over, practically running it off the road.
But the guy in the Japanese car refuses to stop until the very last moment, and both cars screech to a stop right in front of the rail-crossing-style barrier. Immediately a burly, butch guy jumps out of the Mercedes and starts yelling at the guy in the Japanese car, who jumps out from his car, answering with an 'oh sorry, I didn't understand' tone.
Butch and burly opens up his trunk, still yelling, and pulls out an ancient, dusty handcart. Meanwhile an ancient, stooped man with a bushy, gray beard, wearing a black felt suit and bowler hat in 35-degree weather, emerges from the passenger seat of the Mercedes and, with the aid of a cane, starts heading for his cart.
He only makes it about half-way before the deal is arranged, his cart is getting loaded into the trunk of the Japanese car, and its back door is opened for him to get in. Butch and burly goes back to his Mercedes, kicks the stray dog that's been hanging around him, climbs in with a slam, makes a screeching U-turn, and races back the way he came. The guards wave the guy in the Japanese car and his new passenger through with hardly a word.
I'd been hauled off the bus by the Ukrainian guards and made to feel lucky to be allowed to leave, but the Moldovans don't even look to see that I have a visa. By the time I get to the bus route's final destination – Cahul, southern Moldova – I've befriended the driver's assistant and figured out why there was no room under the bus for my things. They hardly get paid and make all their money smuggling gasoline from Ukraine. The passenger cargo space is packed full with gas cans.
I ended up having dinner with the driver's assistant's family. By candlelight, because the electricity was off. The power goes off every afternoon in the Moldovan countryside, and sometimes it doesn't come back on at night. The running water was off at the time, too. But the food was all wonderful, especially the fresh, homemade bread.
'How we live,' they kept apologizing. It seems to be the Moldovan national slogan. They insisted I write an article about it.
Sadly, it has been written, but no one read it. Whoever keeps such statistics has even recognized Moldova as having supplanted Albania as the poorest country in Europe.
There are a lot of reasons, but the main one is the incomprehensible waste of post-Soviet agriculture. As the former 'vegetable garden of the USSR,' Moldova really can't afford it. Virtually everyone in Moldova has enough to eat, but in money terms, Moldova is two to three times poorer than Ukraine and Russia.
Moldova's shadow economy is also tiny and seems to be focused on smuggling, with the separatist sliver on the right bank of the Dniester – the Trans-Dniester Republic – where the previous Soviet and now Russian army base sits, occupying most of land. The smuggling works like this: From either Ukraine or Moldava proper, you put goods onto a train or truck heading through Tiraspol, the capital of the separatist sliver, and smuggle them across either way.
For example, by conservative estimates about half of Moldova's petroleum products are brought in this way. And the Moldovans just don't have it in them to go after the Russian army-mafia doing the smuggling. Instead they're trying to get in on the action.
I left Tiraspol to another time when I can better prepare myself. Everywhere I go I'm told the next stop down the road is oh-so-dangerous, but with Tiraspol, I believe them. I did visit Comrat, though, the not-so-bustling capital of the Gagauzi Autonomous Republic, which is part of Moldova.
Ga-ga-u-zi, pronounced with four syllables. These are the Turks who settled in Bessarabia just after Russia took it over in the early 19th century. Southern Moldova is basically the inland part of old Bessarabia, and it's mainly populated by Gagauzi Turks and Bulgarians. Their rebellion against Moldova in the early '90s is much less famous than that of the Slavs on the east bank of the Dniester, basically because they had no Russian army base behind them and so had to come to terms with Moldova. They got a pretty high degree of autonomy, although state authority seems very weak everywhere in Moldova.
By the way, for most of the 19th century and the early 20th century, all of Moldova plus the coastal part of Bessarabia now in Ukraine was known as Bessarabia. This was due to a classic white man's trick. The Russians agreed in a peace treaty with the Ottomans to pull out of all but Bessarabia. So the Russians applied the name Bessarabia to a region about three times bigger than Bessarabia.
Anyway, if you think something so weird as the capital of a Turkish region in Moldova must be worth a visit, think again. There's nothing there and little sign of Turkish culture in town except a couple bars and a hotel run by the town's Turkish elite. They are very few, however. The Slavs and Moldovans seem to be the middle class of Comrat, and the Turkish villagers appear to be the bottom rung of society. I got the feeling someone besides the Turks was behind the rebellion.
I thought life would be better in Moldova's capital, Chisinau, but I was wrong again. What a depressing and lifeless city! I found myself losing patience with the constant complaining and pining for the Brezhnev era when, even according to people who were kids at the time, Moldova was 'absolute paradise.'
The Moldovans' passive helplessness drove me crazy. Moldova seems to be waiting for another king as good as Brezhnev. It may wait forever.
Tom Warner is the former editor of the Post.
