As the Party promoted Nikolai Stepanovich to ever more important positions, the family moved from Petropavlovsk to the Ukrainian SSR, where the Red Army had recently expelled the Nazi German military.

The Smirnov family was reunited in central Russia near the Ural Mountains, where Nikolai Stepanovich directed a primary school and Zinaida Grigor'evna worked as the editor of a local Komsomol newspaper.

Smirnov displayed a great enthusiasm for Soviet life, pursuing higher education in the evenings and weekends after work and participating in a number of athletic and cultural activities.

One side believed that Moldova should be independent from the Moscow Kremlin and turned into a nation-state, possibly in a union with Romania where a virtually identical language is spoken.

Smirnov and many of his colleagues were suspicious of the possibility of language laws from the beginning, they suspected this to be the first step towards "nationalization" of the republic at the expense of "their country", the Soviet Union.

Many Moldovans reacted with outrage at this infringement of their sovereignty and the Soviet central government publicly rebuked the separatists for making the situation worse and pushing Moldova further toward independence.

Igor Smirnov emerged as a leader of the OSTK on a regional level as Transnistrian politicians and activists worked towards sovereignty from the Moldovan SSR in the summer and autumn of 1990.

[9] In 1991, Smirnov was arrested in a secret operation by special forces of the Moldovan Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kyiv, accused of "the intentional territorial dismemberment of the Republic of Moldova" and brought to Chișinău.

[10] In his new role as chairman of the PMSSR Supreme Soviet, and later, president of the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic (PMR), Smirnov worked to gain recognition for the state.

Andrey Safonov, owner and editor of the Opposition newspaper Novaia gazeta got 3.9% and Renewal Party MP Peter Tomaily, standing as an independent candidate, got 2.1%.

He organized a referendum on 17 September 2006 where the Transnistrian population was asked whether Transnistria should be reintegrated into Moldova (which was rejected) or remain independent and join Russia in the future (which was approved).

[17] Smirnov has announced that he will retire from politics when the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic obtains international recognition as a sovereign state and has called this goal his life's work.