Moldova is not so much a product of history as its by-product, an epiphenomenon among nations that owes its inception to the deeds and doings of others. Its survival, however, is a measure of the character of its own peoples.
Moldova has no tradition of statehood. Its nationhood is not premised on a distinctive identity. Its language, a source of dispute and a subject of contention, is essentially Romanian. Its landmass is fractured. A sliver of territory beyond the Dniester broke away in 1992 to form the unrecognised Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic. There is a Turkic autonomous region near the foot of the country.
And yet, in spite of these fissures, Moldova remains for the most part a startlingly harmonious human salmagundi: more than 150 ethnic groups call it home. Europe’s poorest country has granted a warm welcome to tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees since 2022.
I was in “the accursed city of Chisinau”, as Pushkin called Moldova’s minuscule capital, just as riots intensified in Britain. The reparative tendency to make big claims for small and neglected places is one of the traps and tropes of travel. But Chisinau does not solicit the visitor’s sympathy. So much of its heritage was razed by invaders, occupiers, and marauders. Yet what remains asserts itself with certitude: low-lying buildings with grand neoclassical facades that line Stefan cel Mare, the city’s principal axis; modest houses that proliferate beyond the centre; brutalist bequests of Soviet reign that are randomly distributed across the city’s sprawl; colossal governmental buildings; graceful orthodox cathedrals.
There isn’t, in the capital of Europe’s poorest country, as there is in the newly rich cities of India and China, the overwhelming whiff of mimicry. Chisinau appears comfortable with itself.
What divides the city – and the country – is the government’s pitch to join Europe. Moldovans of almost all political persuasions proclaim their Europeanness – a term that is also meant as a negation of Moldova’s oriental associations and an advertisement of its “civilised” status.
What so many Moldovans find objectionable at the same time is what they regard as European mores. Many Moldovan parents claim genuinely to be afraid that Europe will corrupt their young and convert them into homosexuals. The politician who speaks for them is Igor Dodon, the pro-Russian former president of Moldova. He told me that Moldova, as an overwhelmingly Christian country, cannot countenance “LGBTQ”.
Dodon is more pragmatic, flexible, and intelligent than his critics will admit. But he seemed so completely fixated on this one issue that I couldn’t be sure if his obsession was the result of personal conviction or political calculation.
So little about Moldova, not to put too fine a point on it, suggests it is ready for political, social, and economic integration with Europe. But if Brussels is considering this prospect, the credit belongs largely to Maia Sandu, Moldova’s austere President with a cast-iron reputation for probity who, aided by her former foreign minister Nicu Popescu, succeeded in obtaining candidate status from the EU two years ago. She has repaired the country’s image and brought it out of the morass of dysfunction and corruption for which it was notorious not so long ago.
In the winters, Sandu, who lives in a two-room apartment with her elderly mother, turns off heating in the presidential office in solidarity with Moldovans whose gas and energy prices have shot up on her watch. It hardly matters to the voters that she isn’t directly responsible for the surge in prices. Her popularity is collapsing, especially in the countryside. “She is not corrupt, but what is the point if I can’t feed my family,” one Moldovan outside Chisinau complained to me.
Sandu, however, is shrewd and tough, and not nearly as sainted as Europe likes to think. In June, she signed legislation expanding the definition of treason in ways that could, as Amnesty put it, “target political dissent and critical voices”.
Last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Moldova violated the right of Alexandr Stoianoglo, the former prosecutor general sacked by Sandu, to a fair trial and awarded him damages. Stoianoglo has now emerged as Sandu’s principal rival in the presidential elections scheduled to take place on October 20. His candidacy, nominally independent, is backed by Dodon’s Socialist Party. Dodon’s withdrawal from the contest shocked Moldova, but the former president is not retiring. He told me that he will be in the race for prime minister in next year’s parliamentary election.
Sandu’s Action and Solidarity Party voted in parliament to hold a referendum on Moldova’s EU membership (technically, a plebiscite to allow constitutional changes to enable membership) on the same day as the presidential vote. But it’s far from certain that this sleight of hand will work to the incumbent’s advantage.
The government complains that Russia is subverting Moldova’s politics and imperilling its stability. The opposition grouses that the government is jeopardising traditional Moldovan values to propitiate Europe.
Sandu’s own colleagues admit that she faces a formidable challenge. If she doesn’t win outright with more than 50 per cent of the vote in the first round, the opposition is expected to unite behind Stoianoglo in the second round of the election. “We are looking at certain defeat in such a scenario,” a former government official told me. By November, the official said, “we will know if Moldova will continue into the future or go back to the past.”
