Tiraspol. Transnistria through my eyes. Moldova

I love countries and territories with uncertain geopolitical status, dwarf countries, unrecognized states, and virtual ones. This is one of my weaknesses. My interest in the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic, an unrecognized state recognized only by the same unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia, arose after reading articles about this republic in the blog of puerrtto (in the world – Alexander Lapshin).

I was very interested in the fact that I could be arrested for taking a photo of a trolleybus 😂. So, being in Odessa at the end of August 2012, I woke up one fine morning in my hotel and decided to visit Transnistria. Having quickly found information on the Internet about how to get to Tiraspol from Odessa cheaply, I ran in for breakfast at Puzata Hata, after which I left my big bags for storage at the hotel, took my backpack, and went in search of adventure.

There were several ways to get to Tiraspol. The easiest ones: a direct bus from Odessa bus station to Chisinau or a diesel train from Odessa to Tiraspol. But I was not looking for easy and expensive ways, so I decided to go as locals who regularly travel to Ukraine for work do. Especially since it is faster than taking a direct bus. To do this, you need to take the 201 or 280 bus that leaves from the train station. Tell the driver or passengers to tell you to get off near the two pillars. “Two Poles” is one such stop.

Cross the street at the two poles. Almost everyone who gets off at this stop goes there. There is a small roadside cafe and a parking lot for shuttle buses. From there we take a minibus to Kuchurgan. This is the border. We get off here and cross both cordons on foot. Be prepared for problems. I have a separate article about how I was not allowed to enter the PMR – “About my adventures on the Transnistrian border”. The most important thing to remember is that when you enter, you fill out a migration card and keep half of it with you. Do not lose it or you will be charged with “fines”.

After crossing the border, we change some money into local Transdniestrian roubles. We should not forget to exchange the rest later, because this monetary unit is not recognized by any state or bank in the world, i.e. they are valid only in the TMR. And we take a minibus to Tiraspol. That’s it, it’s as easy as it gets 😎.

When I got off the shuttle bus, I suddenly realized what the USSR would have looked like if it had lived to this day. It is not for nothing that Transnistria is said to be frozen in time. They even have a coat of arms from Soviet times.

In general, Transnistria was established as a Soviet republic within the USSR in September 1990 by the Second Extraordinary Congress of Deputies of All Levels of Transnistria, and on December 22, Gorbachev signed a decree annulling the decision of this congress. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the PMR declared independence from Moldova, which led to a six-month military conflict in 1992. Now the military conflict is over and security is provided by peacekeepers from Russia, Moldova, Transdniestria and military observers from Ukraine.

By the way, the question of DMR joining Ukraine as an autonomy has been raised repeatedly, and you can read about it on WikiLeaks. However, I did not dare to delve too deeply into these nuances, especially since everything is clear – neither Russia nor Ukraine would benefit from recognizing the independence of the DMR. This decision could lead to another division of the post-Soviet space, which is undesirable for anyone. So Transnistria remains – unrecognized by anyone, a small but proud country.

When I arrived here on August 29, the city was preparing for the main holiday – Republic Day, celebrated on September 2 since 1991. Everything was in the best traditions of the Soviet Union – flags at every step, colorful pieces of cloth… But that was not what caught my eye. It was the cleanliness of the streets and the politeness of the people. People were pleasant, easy to talk to, and many people, when they recognized that I was a tourist from Ukraine, started to speak Ukrainian with me (the fact is that Ukrainian is one of the official languages of the DMR, and most people go to work in Moldova and Ukraine).

I liked the wide crosswalks and the politeness of the drivers, who stopped and gave me the right of way before I even stepped on the crosswalk. In the background are the marshrutkas, which are also actively used here as urban and intercity public transportation.

Recently, elections were held here, which resulted in the ouster of the first president of the PMR, Igor Smirnov. He was replaced by Yevgeny Shevchuk.

Talking to locals, I realized a few things: Shevchuk won not because they voted for him, but because they voted against Smirnov. So he needed serious support, which Russia kindly provided by starting to build its ABMs here.

People like living in the TMR, and few people want to join Moldova, but this does not prevent them from having several passports (Moldovan, in case of joining the EU; Ukrainian, for work and in case of visa-free regime; and Russian, for love of Russia). At the same time, the internal passport of Transnistria itself has no legal force outside Transnistria.

They also have their own license plates. Just a year ago I saw a car with such plates in Zaporizhzhya and I wondered who they belonged to. However, since the state is not recognized, I could not find any information on the description on the Internet. now I knew. that these are PMR license plates. They are made with a white background, with the flag of the Transdniestrian Republic (red-green-red) on the left side, with a hologram under it. You can drive around Ukraine, Russia, Moldova and Belarus with such plates. Many people use them to get PMR citizenship, which allows them to import cars without customs clearance. It is quite difficult to punish for the presence of a second citizenship, even if you know about its existence, because de jure Ukraine, for example, which does not recognize dual citizenship, has not recognized the PMR, and therefore cannot recognize the passport of a Transnistrian citizen as a document.

By the way, in the photo above, next to the car, there is an uncle who wanted to earn money and did not want to go to Odessa empty-handed. When I arrived at the stop where I was going to take the shuttle bus (it was on the way back, a day later), he began to persuade everyone waiting to go with him. I refused, people began to wonder why, I answered honestly – I don’t know how he drives. The uncle began to shout aggressively and indignantly, only calming down after the magic word “police”. So what the hell, the man just wanted to earn a lot of money, I did not want to offend him in any way.

I was lucky enough not to have lived under the Soviet occupation, but those who did live under the USSR (and some even liked it) should definitely go here. For some reason I find it atmospheric. There was something like that, wasn’t there? Red colors, honor boards… I can say that when I drove from Transnistria to Moldova, I understood why people shed their blood. Who knows, but if I had to choose between these two countries, I would stay in Transnistria, but again, my impressions are formed from one day, and there is a big problem among the locals – lack of work.

The houses have the usual post-Soviet masonry in the form of pictures with happy faces of ordinary workers who are happy that everything they grow and produce will be taken away from them and shared equally with those who have done nothing.

By the way, this is where I felt a huge advantage of my point-and-shoot camera over DSLRs. According to Lapshin, he was regularly harassed by the police for taking photos. With my soapbox I was like a normal, cheerful tourist who brazenly photographed not only trolleybuses, but also the House of Soviets, the main building of the PBR. Then he got brazen and photographed the police and the military. No one touched him.

The Soviet Union left a lot of incredible monuments to Lenin. Honestly, from a distance I thought it was a monument to some Batman. No, it was Grandpa Lenin.

The monument stands on a large pedestal near the building of the PMR government and the House of Soviets. This “masterpiece” was screwed here, by the way, only in 1987. In order for it not to be too lonely, a bust of it was placed in front of the House of Soviets.

The House of Soviets looks quite interesting, built in the style of Stalin’s Empire. It became one of the symbols of the struggle for Transnistria’s independence. Since 1990, the self-government bodies of the republic have been sitting here. Many times different groups tried to raise the Moldovan tricolor over the building.

It had been a busy day, but I was tired and decided to make myself a light snack and book a hostel in Chisinau, where I was heading closer to nightfall. So I ran into a local pizzeria. It was lucky that I had local money. It is difficult to use credit cards in the country, they have ATMs, but almost all of them use only their own, internal system and do not work with the usual Visa, MasterCard, AE, etc.

I didn’t feel like eating pizza, but ordered some good pancakes with bananas, chocolate and tea. It was tasty enough, but as always the pancakes were not fried. The only place in the world where the pancakes were properly fried is the Oberhausen cafe in Zaporozhye.

If you are thinking about where to eat in Tiraspol, you can look at Andy’s Pizza (Karla Libknekhta Street). And I, having paid and received the coveted 50 Transnistrian rubles, on which the famous Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko is depicted, went for a walk.

My path lay to the Memorial of Glory. It’s very beautiful here. In the Soviet style, but beautiful. On the left stands the traditional T-34 tank, which was massively erected in all cities of the USSR. Children climb on it with pleasure and people take pictures of it.

This is a T-34-85, which reached Hungary in 1945. A capsule with earth from Volgograd is kept under the tank.

The Memorial of Glory was begun in 1970. Here are buried remains and monuments to participants of the civil war, World War II, Afghan conflict and participants of the defense of Transnistria during the Transnistrian conflict. Near it there is an honor guard of cadets. Unfortunately, the photo of the whole complex was not possible – the sun shone, here soapbox could not cope… As I did not try to pull out, it turned out the hell knows what….

Local residents, like any adequate people, remember their defenders. And people who shed blood for the independence of this small Republic are not turned into criminals here, as in Ukraine. Here they are spoken of with love. They fought for ideals. Unfortunately, those ideals required great sacrifices. As of 1992, several thousand people have died on both sides, and over 5,000 have been wounded. At least 1,000 of the dead were civilians.

An interesting fact: Ukrainians from UNA-UNSO (right-wing radical party) were also on the side of Transnistria, many of whom were presented with state awards such as the Order of the Republic, the Order “For Personal Courage”, the badge “For the Defense of Transnistria” and others. Again, it is not for us to judge whether they did the right thing or not. But this is our history and we cannot turn away from it. We must accept it as a fact.

This photo was taken in the Museum of Local History, two halls of which are dedicated to the Transnistrian military conflict. The museum is part of this complex. The ticket is 3 local rubles.

This museum and memorial has an interesting history. The pioneers and the local military commissariat, during the construction, were very diligently searching for the names of those who died during the World War II to carve on the slabs. And now, recently, the staff of this museum decided to work, writing more than 900 letters to relatives of the dead, whose names were carved on the memorial. In response came a letter from the head of the Department of Psychology at Poltava University, Anatoliy Shulga, who was listed as dead.

There are several other monuments and commemorative plaques on the memorial of glory. For example: a bas-relief in honor of the election of Mikhail Frunze as honorary deputy at the Congress of Soviets of the Tiraspol district in 1921.

Nearby is school number 6, where five heroes of the Soviet Union studied. It was its students who were the first to take watch at the monument after its unveiling.

Shortly before my arrival, in October 2011, the chapel of St. George the Victorious was part of the complex. Small, but quiet and cozy inside. I recommend a visit. Unfortunately, I am very superstitious, so I did not take pictures inside. When I was in a monastery in Western Ukraine, I was told by a monk that it is not allowed to take photos in the church “without blessing”. A priest I know recently told me very well on this subject, which changed my views, but then I decided not to do it.

This is a view of part of the memorial and the entrance to the museum itself, across the street. The only photo that more or less turned out. I recommend you to visit this place and, if possible, to go to the museum. There is a lot of interesting stuff there, especially if you are interested in history like me.

But it was time to go in the opposite direction, and I was going to spend the night in Chisinau. On the way I stopped at the Sheriff supermarket. Well yes, like everything in this country, it’s Sheriff, or under Sheriff’s control. Gas stations, supermarkets, stadiums… It’s like Akhmetov’s SCM in Ukraine, only on an even more embedded scale. Almost all products are Ukrainian-made. I bought my usual bio-kefir, a bun, bananas, a candy bar, and water. At the drugstore across the street I bought throat lozenges, and at the same time got a bag of change for the collection.

I went to the railway station, where buses to Chisinau run from. The way lay through Suvorov Square, where there is a monument to him. This is the main square of Tiraspol.

In 1979, this monument to the commander was erected here, which is still considered one of the best monuments to Alexander Suvorov.

The presence of this monument here is due to the fact that Alexander Suvorov is considered the founder of the city. By his decree, in 1792, the fortress of Sredinnaya was laid, at which the city of Tiraspol was founded. He is also depicted on the Transnistrian rubles, which have been in circulation since 2007, in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 25 rubles.

I must admit that the monument is really beautiful and powerful. As much as I do not like the monument of “uncles on a horse”, but this one impressed me, I even photographed it.

On the way I also noticed the Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ, which I didn’t have time to see from inside, but I took some photos from outside. It was built from 1998 to 2000 on the money of the same Sheriff. This cathedral is now depicted on 100 ruble banknotes.

Oh, by the way, I almost forgot. I took one look at the local parks. Here is one of them. I was struck, again, by the cleanliness (not like in Georgia), greenery and… Man, the right benches! Guys – fellow public figures, I’m going to show you what benches should look like. No ponts and no fucking design that you can’t sit on. Simple, practical. Here is a bench, it is conveniently located, you can sit opposite each other and see your interlocutor, you can sit next to each other and hug your interlocutor. The benches have a backrest, which, despite its appearance, is very comfortable. And the main thing – awnings. You can sit down in the rain, and it protects you from the sun.

We have so many benches in Zaporozhye, there are even whole ones. But where can you rest? Yesterday I went to the Rainbow, sat down and felt like on a frying pan. No shade!

Next to each pair of these benches is a trash can. And lights so you can walk around in the evening. Study up.

I couldn’t help taking a picture of the name of the park. It turned out to be de Wollan Square, in honor of the first architect of Tiraspol, Franz de Wollan, a Dutch engineer. However, I had associations with Harry Potter, or the Master and Margarita.

This was the end of my first visit to Tiraspol. To be honest, it left a pleasant impression. It is quite possible to live here. The people here are nice. Some of the most beautiful girls I have met are here. There’s cool and creative social advertising here, after all 😍.

Discreetly, looking at the residential neighborhoods, came to the train station. The railroad station, which appeared here back in 1870, is empty. Because of the isolation from Moldova, only a diesel train from Ukraine Odessa – Chisinau and a train of Russian Railways Moscow – Chisinau come here now. Sometimes, in summer time, the train Saratov – Varna passes through here.

At the bus ticket office, which is located here, I bought a ticket to Chisinau and went on my way. I had an unpleasant night with a fever and a chance to spend the night on a bench, but I knew nothing about it. I will tell you about it next time.