Surprise in Transnistria

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They had their Presidential elections recently. First round results appear to be...

Yevgeny Shevchuk - 38.5
Anatoliy Kaminsky - 26.5
Igor Smirnov - 24.8
Oleg Khorzhan - 5.1
Against All - 1.9
Others 1.1

Smirnov was the incumbent and had been President (insert your own inverted commas if thou wish) since 1990. Notably he'd fallen out of favour with the Russian government, who not so subtly backed Kaminsky, the candidate of the opposition Renewal party, of which Shevchuk is also a former (?) member.

Second round results appear to be...

Yevgeny Shevchuk - 73.8
Anatoly Kaminsky - 19.7
Against All - 4.4
Spoilt - 2.0

[minionofmidas]

So the elections in Russia happened between rounds 1 and 2? What was turnout like in the two rounds?

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

*looks* good, but still iffy.

I never understood why this "country" has not joined the Ukraine

[The Mikado]

What do we know about Shevchuk?  Other than that he wasn't the Russians' pick?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What do we know about Shevchuk?

Only what his wiki and parliamentary biographies say. I'll link to the former and post most of the latter:

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[Yelnoc]

From Wikipedia.

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I believe the bolded may be a case of Wiki vandalism.  The source cited does not appear to ban him from entry to the EU; I'm not actually sure what it means.

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[Colbert]

*looks* good, but still iffy.

I never understood why this "country" has not joined the Ukraine

because this "country" is more a russian enclave than ukrainian

[Bacon King]

From Wikipedia.

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I believe the bolded may be a case of Wiki vandalism.  The source cited does not appear to ban him from entry to the EU; I'm not actually sure what it means.

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It's a blanket ban on senior officials of the Transnistrian government in 2005 (which included Shevchuk, Smirnov, and Kaminsky, among others) from entering the European Union until the government stopped its oppression of schools that taught Latin-alphabet Moldovan (as they do in Moldova) rather than Cryllic-alphabet Moldovan (like they prefer in Transnistria). I don't know how serious these problems were or whether the ban still exists. I also don't know what Shevchuk's role in it was; if you can trust his wikipedia article, he sounds like a bit of a reformer.

[Third Party]

Note that "Transnistria" is the Romanian name for Pridnestrovie. The country's official name is: Приднестровская Молдавская Республика ('Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic' in English). During Tsarist times, half of my ancestors lived in what is now Pridnestrovie and the Ukraine's Odessa Oblast, so the election is a matter of interest to me. I think Pridnestrovie should ultimately become a member of the Union State of Russia and Belarus (along with the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia).

[Yelnoc]

Note that "Transnistria" is the Romanian name for Pridnestrovie. The country's official name is: Приднестровская Молдавская Республика ('Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic' in English). During Tsarist times, half of my ancestors lived in what is now Pridnestrovie and the Ukraine's Odessa Oblast, so the election is a matter of interest to me. I think Pridnestrovie should ultimately become a member of the Union State of Russia and Belarus (along with the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia).

Why Ukraine and Kazakhstan?

[Free Palestine]

*looks* good, but still iffy.

I never understood why this "country" has not joined the Ukraine

I find it annoying when people put "country" in quotes.  As if a country is only a country when the bloated world powers say so.  They declared independence, they are independent.  Let's not be bitchy over semantics and sh-t.

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

I'd but the same quotes around any other supposed country that is equally small or powerless.

[Хahar 🤔]

Note that "Transnistria" is the Romanian name for Pridnestrovie.

It's also the English name.

[Third Party]

Why Ukraine and Kazakhstan?

Most people living in southern and eastern Ukraine speak Russian language. In fact, most of the area was originally called Novorossiya (‘New Russia’) after Catherine the Great brought the territory into the Russian Empire. As for Kazakhstan, I have ethnic kin there and their government is interested in joining.

It's also the English name.

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[Yelnoc]

Why Ukraine and Kazakhstan?

Most people living in southern and eastern Ukraine speak Russian language. In fact, most of the area was originally called Novorossiya (‘New Russia’) after Catherine the Great brought the territory into the Russian Empire. As for Kazakhstan, I have ethnic kin there and their government is interested in joining.

I can see the argument for eastern Ukraine, but isn't the western portion of the country very anti-Russian?  As to Ukraine, I know the Government is on board with the Eurasian Federation plan for economic reasons, but I have not seen any indication that people of Kazakhstan want to surrender their sovereignty back to Moscow.

[ag]

I think Pridnestrovie should ultimately become a member of the Union State of Russia and Belarus (along with the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia).

That would imply a split of Ukraine and a bloody civil war. Probably the same in Kazakhstan, though on a smaller scale. I guess, it is doable w/ not much more than a couple of million deaths and a few decades of guerilla warfare in Ukraine's west. Perhaps, that way you could limit the number of Ukrainians sent to Siberia to a few hundred thousand. If Russia strengthens its internal  controls, it might even limit the number of terrorist attacks in Moscow to a few dosen a year for the first few years and even stop them almost completely within a generation or two.

[ag]

Actually, the question who speaks what is not that simple. The linguistic boundary between Russia and Ukraine is not sharp - it's a continuum from village to village. Linguists usually classify most local dialects even in the border provinces of Russia as, strictly speaking, Ukrainian. All of Ukraine, except for Crimea, in this sense is Ukrainian speaking.

Of course, these days this is important less than which literary/"standard" norm people adhere to. In Ukrainian East it is, unquestionably, Russian. It is the preferable literary standard of overwhelming majorities in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces and of sizeable majorities in such eastern provinces as Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkov. Even if the "dialect" there is Ukrainian, it is not recognized as such by its speakers - they think of themselves as speaking Russian (though many would identify as ethnically Ukrainian, the national language for them has "low" social status and causes negative reactions). The local Russian norm, though, is somewhat distinct from that in Russia proper, local media are increasingly separate. A particularly divergent Russian norm has always been dominant in Odessa - it's a very peculiar speach, though, clearly, Russian.

[ag]

The cituation gets more complex as you get towards Ukraine's heartland. In Kiev (the capital) most people tend to use Russian more in their daly life, but are, usually, fluent in standard Ukrainian as well, and strongly identify themselves as Ukrainians, not Russians. Ukrainian has higher status here than in the east, and pro-Russian sympathies tend to be much weaker. Overall, Kiev and surrounding areas would strongly resist any attempt of reincorporation back into Russia.

Once you move further West/Northwest (w/ the possible exception of Transcarpathia) literary Ukrainian standard becomes dominant and attituteds towards Russia and Russian get seriously negative. By the time you get to Lviv, Russian is a foreign language and "moskal'" is a cuss word. Local dialects are increasinbly transitional into Polish/Slovak/Rusyn, but Ukrainian is clearly the proper standard. Lviv has only been under Moscow from 1939 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1991 - before 1917 it was Austrian, later it was Polish, and Russia is, at best, an unhappily remembered foreign occupier. Even Stalin needed nearly a decade to pacify the area after WWII, and he was willing to kill en masse. Any attempt of reincorporation into Russia would mean these areas either quickly seceding (probably all the way east to Kiev, at least), or launching a major guerilla war.

Transcarpathia is a bit strange. It's a mixed bag of Ukrainians, Romanians, Hungarians, Rusyns, Slovaks, Russians and whatnot. Some local dialects are really strange mixtures of Slavic and Hungarian. As such, it's identity is more ambuguous and there is some sympathy to Russia, absent in the rest of the West.

[ag]

Transnistria is different. Most of it is quite accidentally "Moldavian": before WWII it was Soviet way of maintaining claim to what was then Romanian province of Bessarabia, on the other side of the Dniestr river: a few districts w/ ethnic Moldavian/Romanian minority were declared a Moldavian Autonomous Socialist Republic within Ukraine. When Bessarabia was captured from Romania (initially in 1940, eventually in 1945), this Modavian ASSR was merged into the new Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, even though majority population there was Slavic (in exchange, Ukraine got the southern part of Bessarabia, initially as Izmail province, later incorporated into the Odessa Province, as well as chunks of the Bukovina, which became, in part, the above-mentioned Transcarpathia).

[ag]

One way of insisting on the separate "Moldavian" identity of the new Moldavian SSR was "transliterating" the local Romanian dialect into Cyrillic (in Romania proper, including the part of the historic Moldova, centered around Iasi, that has always been one of the three major constituent parts of Romania) Latin alphabet is used (though, there is, indeed, some medeival precedent for using Cyrillic). Consequently, a new written standard was formed: Moldavian, as distinct from Romanian.

At the time of the Soviet break-up "Romanian" nationalists in Moldavian/Moldovan SSR insisted on the "return" to the Latin alphabet in the Republic. This was viewed by many minorities/pro-Russian Moldavians as an attempt to integrate into Romania (in fact, once stripped of the alphabetic distinction, the two languages, if they are two languages, and not one, are extremely close and the nationalists frequently did have pro-Romanian sympathies).

The former Moldavian ASSR rebelled, hoping to stay within the Slavic-dominated USSR (the local population is a mixed bag of Russians, Ukrainians and Moldavians, the latter being a minority). W/ Russian help they suceeded.

[ag]

In the new state they maintain, formally, a trilingualism, w/ "Moldavian" still using the Cyrillic, though, of course, Russian is dominant. Transnistria is an oficial local Moldavian name of what the same government in Russian calls Pridnestrovie and in Ukrainian Pridnistrov'e. Thus, the common English usage of Transnistria is not implying anything about any claims: Transnistrian government has that name (in Cyrillic Moldavian) on its own stationary.  Though, of course, it's a bit ironic, as during WWII occupation of the adjoining portion of Ukraine (including even Odessa) by Romania, this was how the Romanian government called the entire occupied area.

Interestingly enough, the boundary of Transnistria does not coincide w/ the Dniester river. On the right (Moldovan) bank of the river, Transnistrians held onto a sizeable town of Bendery, and a few adjoining villages as well. On the other hand, Moldovan government still controls a few villages on the left (Transnistrian) bank. In a couple of places Moldovan holdings nearly cut Transnistria into two, though complex arrangements are maintained to prevent that and also to preserve communication of Moldovan "enclaves" w/ the rest of the country.

[minionofmidas]

Why are you collating the Ukrainian portion of Bukovina (itself an artificial country created by the Austrians from a thinly settled portion of then-Turkish dominated, Romanian-inhabited Moldova that they annexed in the 18th century, and then peopled with Ukrainians, Jews and a few Germans; the Germans and most of the Jews now having disappeared of course) with Transcarpathia (which was a part of Hungary since its boundaries were first fixed until 1918, then of Czechoslovakia until 1945, but whose population is highly mixed but majority Ruthenian) - just because they are both outside core Ukraine but on the west side? They don't even border on each other!

[platypeanArchcow]

One way of insisting on the separate "Moldavian" identity of the new Moldavian SSR was "transliterating" the local Romanian dialect into Cyrillic (in Romania proper, including the part of the historic Moldova, centered around Iasi, that has always been one of the three major constituent parts of Romania) Latin alphabet is used (though, there is, indeed, some medeival precedent for using Cyrillic). Consequently, a new written standard was formed: Moldavian, as distinct from Romanian.

In fact, Romanian was written in Cyrillic until the mid-19th century, although it was a very different Cyrillic from the one ultimately imposed on the Moldavian SSR.

(The story of the "Moldavian language" is also fairly interesting.  Soviet linguists in the 1930's tried to craft a standard from the trans-Dniester dialects that were within their borders, which were actually fairly divergent.  When Bessarabia came into Soviet possession, though, they were basically forced to give up that project, write standard Romanian in Cyrillic, and pretend it was a different language.  See also: all the Central Asian languages, corresponding to previously nonexistent ethnic divisions.)

[ag]

Why are you collating the Ukrainian portion of Bukovina (itself an artificial country created by the Austrians from a thinly settled portion of then-Turkish dominated, Romanian-inhabited Moldova that they annexed in the 18th century, and then peopled with Ukrainians, Jews and a few Germans; the Germans and most of the Jews now having disappeared of course) with Transcarpathia (which was a part of Hungary since its boundaries were first fixed until 1918, then of Czechoslovakia until 1945, but whose population is highly mixed but majority Ruthenian) - just because they are both outside core Ukraine but on the west side? They don't even border on each other!

You are right: my mistake, for some reason I thought that a bit of Bukovina was incorporated into Transcarpathia, but it seems all to be in Chernivtsy. Transcarpathia, obviously, is the part annexed from Slovakia post WWII - I, for some reason, thought the provincial boundary went further east. They are pretty close, though ) Of course, my mistake, mainly, shows that this is the part I am not personally familiar with - Lviv I've been to, but my personal acquaintance w/ those parts is largely limited to having my hair cut for a while by a barber from Chernivtsy )

[batmacumba]

Aren't all transnistrian/pridniestroviean politicians at least somewhat linked to eurasianism?