History of Transnistria

This is the history of Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), an unrecognised breakaway state that is internationally recognised as part of Moldova.

All these facts confirm the creation of defensive earth dykes (called Trajan Walls[3]) from the Prut river to the Tyras area, in order to defend these new territories of the Roman Empire.

The Walls, which, three metres in height and two meters in thickness, with broad outer fosse and many remains of forts, stretch in two almost parallel lines... from the Pruth to the Dniester... may be also Roman.

The area of Transnistria was under the rule of the Goths, who, in the 4th century, were divided into the "Tervingi" and "Greuthungi" tribes, (traditionally identified with the Visigoths and Ostrogoths), the border between them being on the Dniester river.

Indeed, some academics believe that on the coast between the Dniester and Danube rivers there was a romance speaking community until 1050 AD, that was destroyed by the Pechenegs[8] Transnistria was inhabited mainly by the Cumans and wars against them may have brought the territory under the control of the Kievan Rus' at times around the 11th century.

On the coast the Byzantines built a fortress in the area of the destroyed Tyras and named it Asprocastron ("White Castle" – a meaning kept in several languages, like in actual Ukrainian Bilhorod).

Meanwhile, the Crimean Khanate conquered the southern portion of Transnistria south of the Iagorlîc/Jagorlyk river, which was included in 1504 in the region of Yedisan and was under the control of the Ottoman Empire until 1792.

The border between the two states was set on a brook known in Moldavian chronicles as Iahurlîc[14] and in Polish source as Jahorlik or Jahorłyk[15] (today Iagorlîc, in Transnistria).

During World War I, representatives of the Moldovan speakers beyond the Dniester (who numbered 173,982 in the 1897 census) participated in the Bessarabian national movement in 1917/1918, asking for the incorporation of their territory in Greater Romania.

In 1927 there was a massive uprising of peasants and factory workers in Tiraspol and other cities (Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Kamianets-Podilskyi) of southern Ukrainian SSR against Soviet authorities.

Troops from Moscow were sent to the region and suppressed the unrest, causing around 4,000 deaths, according to US correspondents sent to report about the insurrection, which was at the time completely denied by the Kremlin official press.

This trend increased in the late 1930s, as a result of the 1937-8 Polish Operation of the NKVD as well as the ceasing of educational instruction in the Moldavian ASSR for all non-Moldovan populations in their native languages which was replaced by Ukrainian and Russian.

According to the Soviet census of 1926, in the districts of Camenca, Rîbniţa, Dubăsari, Grigoriopol, Tiraspol and Slobozia, a territory roughly similar with today's Transnistria, there were 44,11% Moldavians, 27,18% Ukrainians, 13,69% Russians, 8,21% Jews, 3,01% Germans etc.

[citation needed] The Moldavian SSR, which was set up by a decision of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 2 August 1940, was formed from a part of Bessarabia liberated from Romania on June 28, following the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, where the majority of the population were Moldovan speakers, and a strip of land on the left bank of the Dniester in the Ukrainian SSR, which was transferred to it in 1940 (the strip being roughly equivalent to the territory of today's Transnistria).

[30] The territory — called Governatorate of Transnistria — with an area of 44,000 km2 and a population of 1.2 million inhabitants was divided into 13 counties: Ananiev, Balta, Berzovca, Dubasari, Golta, Jugastru, Movilau, Oceacov, Odessa, Ovidiopol, Ribnita, Tiraspol and Tulcin.

[32] The Romanians and Moldovans in Ukraine east of the Bug river were calculated by a German census to be nearly 800,000 (probably an excessive number), and were made plans to move them to Transnistria in 1942/43: but nothing was done.

A group of these had been made to make records of their folk music "in order to preserve proof of the permanence of the Romanian element in the distant East" (Universul, March 15, 1943).

Many thousands of Romanians (ethnic Vlachs of Transnistria) were killed in those months or deported to gulags in the following years[34] The Moldavian SSR became the subject of a systematic policy of Russification.

However, on 22 December, the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed a decree "regarding the measures that would bring the situation back to normal in the Moldovan SSR".

Moldovan forces entered Dubăsari in order to separate Transnistria into two halves, but were stopped by the city's inhabitants, who had blocked the bridge over the Dniester, at Lunga.

[36] In the course of the confrontation, three Dubăsari locals, Oleg Geletiuk, Vladimir Gotkas and Valerie Mitsuls, were killed by the Moldovan forces and sixteen people wounded.

Forces of the 14th Army (which had owed allegiance to the Soviet Union, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Russian Federation in turn) stationed in Transnistria, had fought with and on behalf of the PMR side.

Despite the ceasefire agreement, Russia had continued to provide military, political and economic support to the PMR, thus enabling it not only to survive but to strengthen itself and acquire a certain amount of autonomy from Moldova.

[citation needed] In the security zone controlled by the Russian military forces, the Transnistrian government continued to deploy its troops and to manufacture and sell weapons in breach of the agreement of 21 July 1992.

At the same time, Transdniestria gained the right, subject to mutual agreement, to independently establish and maintain international connections in such fields as economy, science, technologies and culture.

Later in 2005, President Vladimir Voronin made a statement rejecting the 2003 Kozak memorandum because of contradiction with the Moldovan constitution which defines Moldova as a neutral state and could not allow any foreign troops on its soil, while the country cannot join military alliances.

In May 2005, the Ukrainian government of Viktor Yushchenko proposed a seven-point plan by which the separation of Transnistria and Moldova would be settled through a negotiated settlement and free elections.

The posts, staffed by both Moldovan and Ukrainian officials, are intended to reduce the hitherto high incidence of smuggling between the breakaway state and its neighbors.

The 5+2 in the name refer to Moldova, Transnistria, Ukraine, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and Russia, plus the European Union and the United States as external observers.

[43]In April 2011 Russia agreed theoretically to create an autonomous region of Transnistria inside the Republic of Moldova, but there were many other problems to be solved in the talks.