Ethnic Ukrainians living in Transdniester want citizenship
Tiraspol, TRANSDNIESTER – Volodymyr Bodnar occassionally likes to break into an old Soviet song that is still popular in these parts.
“My address is not a street or a house, it is the Soviet Union,” the melody goes. In some ways, the tune symbolizes Bodnar’s life.
Born in the western Ukrainian oblast of Khmelnytsky, Bodnar has spent most of his adult life – almost 40 years – in Transdniester, Moldova’s breakaway region. While he considers the area home, Bodnar said he believes his motherland should look after him and the 195,000 or so ethnic Ukrainians who live within Transdniester’s borders.
When it comes down to it, Bodnar just wants things to be as they were before the Soviet Union broke up. While that may never happen, Bodnar is spearheading efforts to bring Transdniester closer to Ukraine.
A small man with a quick gait and droopy mustache, Bodnar is Transdniester’s head of security and defense. His most recent demand to officials in Kyiv is that they grant citizenship to 10,000 ethnic Ukrainians living in Transdniester.
As chairman of Transdniester’s Ukrainian Union, he keeps a list of those who want Ukrainian citizenship.
Whether Ukraine likes it or not, Bodnar said, his motherland cannot ignore what happens to its tiny neighbor. History, ethnicity, and politics continue to pull the two together.
“Historically this land is part of Ukraine,” Bodnar said.
Transdniester, a 4,000-square-kilometer sliver of land wedged between Ukraine and Moldova, was created after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Many of the region’s residents consider themselves culturally and linguistically closer to Ukraine than Moldova. Ethnic Slavs outnumber Moldovans two-to-one in the territory, which boasts a population of 750,000.
As official Moldovan citizens, Bodnar and his disciples could easily obtain Moldovan passports. But they want no part of Moldova, a land from which they feel separated geographically, culturally and ideologically.
Throughout history, Moldova and the Transdniester region have been pulled in different directions. Separated by the Dniester River, Moldova has leaned toward Romania in the west, while Transdniester has looked east to Russia and Ukraine.
Transdniester was ceded to Moldova with the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but that union crumbled when the Soviet Union disintegrated. In 1990, Transdniester declared itself an independent state.
Two years later, as the Moldovan government tried to keep its tiny country intact, civil war erupted. The ensuing bloodshed, however, didn’t achieve what Transdniester residents wanted – international recognition as an independent country. The best the region could do was to establish a Soviet-style government that continues to function to this day.
Although Ukraine remained neutral during the civil war, not all Ukrainians were content to stand on the sidelines.
Dmytro Korchynsky, a Kyiv-based political activist who was head of the Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian National Self Defense (UNA-UNSO) during the civil war, took part in the fighting along with 200 other Ukrainians. It was a formidable force, considering the scope and size of the civil war, which by some estimates resulted in up to 1,000 deaths.
Korchynsky said he and his comrades fought for Transdniester’s independence and those Ukrainians who call the region home. They also fought for a greater Ukraine that would include Transdniester, even if they had to unite it by force.
For its part, the Ukrainian government had no intention of incorporating the area.
Not all members who fought in the civil war were as idealistic as Korchynsky.
Serhy, a 38-year-old Kyiv resident who would not give his last name, went to Transdniester in 1992 to “disappear.” A bald, red-faced man draped in a long black coat, Serhy said he was running from the law. Just what he was running from he wouldn’t say.
Like his comrades, Serhy also had visions of Transdniester uniting with Ukraine.
“We want the whole world to be Ukraine,” said Serhy, an ultra-nationalist.
Ukrainian deputy Eduard Gurvits, the former mayor of Odessa, had no such illusions. He didn’t want to get involved in the conflict, but he got pulled into it anyway.
As then-chairman of Odessa’s Oktyaborska city district, 600 Transdniester refugees showed up on Gurvits’ doorstep in 1992. He couldn’t turn his back on the hundreds of Transdniester residents seeking safety in Odessa, he said.
In addition to finding shelter and food for the refugees, Gurvits invited self-declared Transdniester President Igor Smirnov to visit Odessa and discuss what could be done to help the refugees.
Gurvits’ reasons for extending the welcome were purely humanitarian, he said. As mayor between
| Volodymyr Bondar |
1994 and 1998, he continued to maintain close ties with Moldovan authorities, even arranging a sister-city relationship between Odessa and a Moldovan city.
Gurvits became entangled in the conflict. As one of the few Ukrainian officials who met Smirnov, Gurvits played an important role in the negotiations that followed the war.
As a member of the Ukrainian contingent, which served both as a guarantor and observer country in the negotiations, his role was more as a neutralizing presence than anything else.
Beginning in 1992, delegations from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Russia and Ukraine participated in negotiations between Transdniester and Moldova.
The result was a truce of sorts, which until recently has allowed Transdniester to do much as it pleases. The region established its own government, small army, and trade systems and went about as if it was a legitimate country.
One of the reasons the conflict has dragged on so long is because none of the parties involved seem genuinely interested in finding a solution, said Gurvits, who stopped participating in negotiations in 1998.
Russia, whose 14th army has been stationed in the area since Soviet times, has also played a role in the ongoing deliberations. At the beginning of the civil war, Russian troops fought along side Transdniester forces and liberally distributed weapons to residents of the breakaway republic.
After the war ended, Russia tried to remain neutral and agreed to remove the rest of its troops, which now number around 1,500, and military equipment from the area by the end of 2002.
For its part, Ukraine still hasn’t been able to decide what type of relationship it wants to have with Transdniester, although it is beginning to clarify what it should be.
Nov. 17 Ukrainian Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh announced that Ukraine plans to increase the number of custom control points on its Moldovan border.
This plan is in direct response to a request made by Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin to help tighten control of Transdniester. One of the reasons to bring the republic into line is to stop the wide-scale smuggling that Moldova alleges goes on in the area.
Ukrainian fan club
In Transdniester people still haven’t given up dreams of independence. Leaders would like to have a close relationship with Ukraine – without becoming part of it.
To achieve that, Bodnar and 5,000 active members of the Transdniester Ukrainian Union are embarking on what they call a Ukrainian renaissance.
The national university was named after Ukraine’s bard, Taras Shevchenko, in 1997.
The group has also begun a crusade to revive the Ukrainian language. Under Soviet rule, all the region’s Ukrainian language schools were closed, and now Bodnar’s group is trying to bring back some language instruction. But it hasn’t been easy.
In the 1990s, there were few teachers in the region who could speak Ukrainian. Bodnar set up special teacher training classes for Ukrainian speakers. He then campaigned to have Ukrainian offered as a subject in the region’s Russian and Moldovan schools.
The final step was opening schools where all classes were held in Ukrainian.
Today, Transdniester boasts three Ukrainian schools and a Ukrainian department at the university.
The group’s most recent campaign is obtaining Ukrainian citizenship for all the ethnic Ukrainians who want it. Most carry so-called Transdniester passports – which aren’t recognized anywhere in the world. Under the region’s constitution, residents are allowed to have citizenship in one country outside Transdniester.
Moldova says Transdniester residents are Moldovan citizens.
Most have no intention of emigrating, nor do they want Transdniester to become part of Ukraine. Bodnar said Ukrainian citizenship is a birthright for every ethnic Ukrainian.
Still their message hasn’t been conveyed to the proper Ukrainian officals.
Serhy Borodynkov, head of the press office at Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, said he has never heard of Transdniester’s hopeful Ukrainian citizens. Nor does he know anything about the Ukrainian embassy that Bodnar wants to see opened in Tiraspol.
Bodnar’s request is not the most absurd appeal originating in Transdniester.
In September, Oleksandr Semeniuk, the head of a Transdniester parliamentary group called Zubr, held a press conference in Kyiv at which he suggested Transdniester become a part of Ukraine. Few took him seriously.
That’s because Zubr is a parliament faction that still dreams of uniting Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
Grigory Maracutsa, chairman of Transdniester’s parliament, said Zubr’s proposal lacks wide backing.
“Maybe tomorrow one of our deputies will say they want to join England,” Maracutsa said.
