The King of Romania Podcast

Well, the truth is rather complicated, so I understand why a lot of people get confused about this, but the short answer is no.

The long answer is that this is a map of PMR:

As you can see, there’s the Republic of Moldova to the west and Ukraine to the east. In the “old days,” all three were part of the Soviet Union’s power grid, specifically what is now called the IPS in English or the Единая энергетическая система in Russian.

What this effectively means is that all three countries’ energy systems (both natural gas and electricity) are still hooked up together although operated separately.

Therefore, when Russian gas passes through Ukraine (yep) and enters Pridnestrovie (Transnistria), it becomes the responsibility of Moldovagaz.

Now, Moldovagaz used to be the state-run gas company (as I’m sure you guessed), but today, it’s a public company with shareholders.

And the government of Pridnestrovie owns about 14% of Moldovagaz’s shares.

Probably not what you expected.

The gas from Russia enters PMR from Ukraine, and some of it is diverted for PMR’s internal use, and the rest goes on to transit into the Republic of Moldova.

The gas that’s used inside of PMR is sold by Tiraspolgaz (actually, there are four other companies, but let’s not get too off track). And Tiraspolgaz keeps that revenue.

Currently, Moldovagaz owes Gazprom (aka the government of Russia) around $5 billion in gas used by PMR. Therefore, the claim is that PMR takes gas and doesn’t pay Moldovagaz (and therefore Russia via Gazprom) for it, and is, therefore, getting “free” gas (from Russia).

Yet Pridnestrovie is a part owner of Moldovagaz, so, in effect, if they’re “stealing” gas, they’re (partly) “stealing” from themselves.

And if all of the above weren’t weird enough, you also need to know that the largest shareholder in Moldovagaz is Gazprom, so half of Russia’s Moldovagaz debt is owed, in effect, to itself.

Of course it does! On top of the gas issue, there’s also an electricity issue because Pridnestrovie uses natural gas to power some of its electrical plants.

PMR produces a lot of electricity, way more than it needs. And one of its biggest customers is the Republic of Moldova. In fact, around 80% of Moldova’s electricity comes from the PMR.

Therefore, when you flip on a light switch in Chisinau, it’s being powered by Tiraspol.

Nobody is “stealing” gas or getting it completely for free.

The actual situation is that a for-profit company, Moldovagaz, is using the in-between status of Pridnestrovie to quasi-legally avoid paying Gazprom for (some) gas, and the whole arrangement is a three-way complex political and financial arrangement between Russia, Moldova, and Pridnestrovie with beneficiaries on all sides.

AND NOW YOU KNOW!

You’d be surprised how often you hear that Transnistria is a super dangerous country to visit, especially if you’re an American.

Even when my wife and I first visited Tiraspol, we were told lots of scary shit, including that we’d be immediately arrested and thrown in jail if we dared take any pictures of the border crossing.

The truth is that visiting Pridnestrovie is like riding a roller coaster. You’ll get plenty of thrills, but there’s not really any danger.

Your biggest (real) risks when visiting Pridnestrovie involve doing stupid things like drinking too much, fighting, and drugs (narcotics).

If you’re a tourist and you can manage to avoid those three things, I promise that you’ll be all right ;)

Of course, if you’re a Western European or American academic or a Western media news crew, you are not allowed to say anything good about Pridnestrovie. Not once, and not ever. And if you’re Romanian, that goes double true for you.

But many tourists somehow make their way to Pridnestrovie without any expectations, and they nearly universally love it.

I certainly like Pridnestrovie. But maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m weird. Maybe I’m a total idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Fair enough.

But if you listen to what other people have to say, you can see that I’m not alone. There are many travelers who have visited the country and been blown away by what they saw and experienced.

I personally met a lovely German woman who came to Pridnestrovie three years ago as a tourist, and she befriended a family in a village near Tiraspol, and every year, she comes back to visit them.

Here’s one of my all-time favorite images from Pridnestrovie – a police officer (traffic division) helping out a motorist last week when we had some really wintry weather:

In 20 years of living in Romania and the Republic of Moldova, I’ve never once seen or heard of a cop helping change a tire. Never.

For those of you who refuse to believe there could ever be anything good about Pridnestrovie, well, you’re going to believe what you want to ;)

Well, yes and no.

Let’s call this one partially mythologized.

While it is technically true that Pridnestrovie has money that’s made out of plastic, what they’ve created is actually pretty amazing.

The Pridnestrovian next-gen ruble “coin” is a true technological marvel. These rubles are made out of an advanced polycarbonate material that is virtually unbreakable.

They’re only 1.2 millimeters thick, and yet I cannot bend one, not even slightly. That’s how strong these things are. And they weigh almost nothing.

Besides just being all-around cool, there’s also a really interesting back story to these “coins.”

Each one has a strikingly different color. There are four denominations, and each one is a different basic shape (triangle, square, hexagon, and pentagon).

They were intentionally designed so that visually impaired and blind people can easily use them. And I think that was a really kind and thoughtful thing to do.

Pridnestrovie is a pretty hilarious country, and the funny thing is that most of the senior citizens hate the plastic money. Even though it was designed primarily for their convenience.

The “plastic coins” were issued in 2014 and are still in circulation, but newer notes were printed in the old style paper “bill” way.

If you visit Pridnestrovie, be sure to get some of these amazingly cool polycarbonate rubles!

Nope, not Communist at all. Sorry!

In fact, the Communist Party is the opposition party in Pridnestrovie. They won just one seat in the 43-seat parliament during the last election. And their deputy is currently in jail (check out #17!)

The Pridnestrovian economy is completely non-Communist and quite capitalist. There is no state planning or widespread state control over the economy. The country’s constitution enshrines a multi-party democracy, and Pridnestrovie has never once even thought about returning to communism as state policy.

In contrast, it’s actually the Republic of Moldova which is the Communist country.

Hopa!

Unlike what the propaganda outlet Balkan Insight regularly claims, there are plenty of Lenin and Communist statues still standing quite proudly across the Republic of Moldova.

The Communist Party in Moldova is the only Communist party to have ever won control of a democratic government in any country after the fall of the Soviet Union.

From 2001 until 2009, the Moldovan parliament was controlled by the Communist Party. The Communist Party leader Vladimir Voronin was president of the country for eight years.

Even today, the Communist Party is quite popular in the Republic of Moldova. The northern third of the country is called the “Red District” because the Communist Party wins a lot of elections and controls the majority of local government positions.

Folks, if you’re looking for some real-deal Communism, head on over to the Republic of Moldova ;)

Utter hogwash. Not only have I heard many, many people speaking Romanian in public in Pridnestrovie, I’ve also done it myself.

At least one-third of the people who live in Pridnestrovie speak the language, so I don’t know where this rumor came from, but it is a rather persistent one.

However, during the late 1990s right after the war, tensions were quite high. I have heard of stories of some (extremely minor) harassment of Romanian speakers during this time, but that’s all long in the past.

For goodness’ sakes, the government of Pridnestrovie organizes and finances folklore groups that sing traditional Moldovan songs. State-run television also runs Romanian-language news every single day.

And while there might be some differences in terms of how the language is written (Cyrillic vs. the Latin alphabet), when it’s spoken aloud, no one can tell the difference between Romanian and “Moldovan.”

Long story short? Anyone who tells you that you can’t speak Romanian in public in the Pridnestrovie is either lying or working for an EU/US-funded organization.

I see so much negative and misinformed reporting on the republic that I simply felt compelled to try and clear up some of the myths surrounding the “country that does not exist.”

Over the past 1,000 years, the area now known as Transnistria has had a lot of names, but none of them were ever “Transnistria” except for a brief period of time during World War 2 when it was under fascist occupation.

Starting on August 19, 1941, fascist soldiers renamed the region the Transnistrian Governorate or Guvernamantul Transnistriei in Romanian. That’s because, from Romania’s perspective, the country is “trans” (beyond) the Dniester River (“Nistru” in Romanian). But for the people living there, it is ludicrous to say they live “beyond” the river when they live right beside it.

In Russian, the name of the country is Приднестровская Молдавская Республика, and in Ukrainian it is Придністровська Молдавська Республіка. The word “Приднестровская” means “by the Dniestr River” (logical) rather than “beyond the Dniestr River” (absurd).

The transliteration of the Russian/Ukrainian to English is “The Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic” or “Pridnestrovie” for short. This is the correct name for the country in English and the one that is used in all official documents.

How the fascist invention “Transnistria” got to become the universal name for the country is something that I will never understand especially because the fascist occupation of Transnistria was extremely brutal. Jews were rounded up and executed en masse as part of the Holocaust. And other (non-Jewish) civilians were slaughtered. Even some graves were dug up and bodies dumped in the street.

It truly was a dark chapter of World War 2 in Eastern Europe.

Note: The correct name of the country in Romanian is Republica Moldovenească Nistreană. A literal translation of this into English would be the “Moldovan Nistrean Republic.”