WHERE THE SOVIET UNION STILL EXISTS

Tiraspol, Transnistria.  Lenin lives.  At least he still does here in the strangest country in Europe, as it insists on pretending it is a part of the Soviet Union.

We are in a landlocked and isolated sliver of Moldova that wanted no part of the breakup of the USSR in the wake of Berlin Wall falling in November 1989.

In March 1990, four months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lithuania and Estonia seceded from the Soviet Union and declared their independence as sovereign states.  This was quickly followed by Georgia in April and Latvia in May.  What almost everyone thought they would never see (there were, ahem, exceptions…), the Soviet Union was falling apart.

As the rest of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic prepared to declare its independence as Moldova, the commanding officer of the 14^th Soviet Army, General G. I. Yakovlev, based here in Tiraspol, working with the KGB, organized the secession of “Transnistria” – the part of Moldova east of or beyond (trans-) the Dniester River – back into the Soviet Union.

On September 2, 1990 Yakovlev had his henchmen declare the existence of the Transnistrian[1] Soviet Socialist Republic.  Gorbachev annulled the declaration by presidential decree two months later.  He was trying to keep his country intact, including Moldova, but it was too late.

When the August 1991 Soviet coup attempt against Gorby failed, the USSR collapsed.  Within days of the coup attempt, Moldova was gone along with Ukraine and Belarus.  Within a month, so were Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.  By October, it was Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.  By December, Kazakhstan and finally Russia itself.  All 15 Soviet Socialist Republics were no more as such.

On Christmas Day, December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union, declaring his office and his country extinct.  He turned over the Soviet nuclear launch codes to Russian President Boris Yeltsin.  At 7:52pm Moscow time next day, December 26, the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin and replaced by the pre-revolutionary flag of Russia.

Yakovlev wanted no part of this.  He had hundreds of tanks and APCs, and several thousand soldiers.  The brand new country of independent Moldova had nothing to match it.  War broke out anyway in June 1992, which the outgunned Moldovans began to win.  Yeltsin replaced Yakovlev with a general far more ruthless, Alexander Lebed, who quickly crushed the Moldovan attempt to keep their fledgling country intact.

To this day, there remains a heavily-armed army of Russian “peacekeeping” soldiers in Transnistria – and a government that endlessly propagandizes its people about its “glorious Soviet history” and being blood brothers with Russia.  The Hammer & Sickle are even on the Transnistrian coat of arms and flag:

Transnistria is one of Putin’s “frozen conflicts” which he uses to acquire a colony of Russia – as he has done in Georgia by seizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, most lately in Ukraine’s Crimea and Donbass.  Another is Nagorno-Karabakh, seized by Armenia from Azerbaijan with Russian help.

The situations are “frozen” because Putin evinces no attempt to solve the situations whatever.

One example is that while Transnistria claims it is a wholly independent sovereign nation with its own government, military, currency, etc., it is not recognized by a single UN member state – including Russia!

Meanwhile, Transnistria’s economy is doing well thanks to bountiful Kremlin subsidies and as a haven for the Russian mob.  I saw Beemers, Rolls-Royce Bentleys, and even a Corvette Sting Ray cruising the streets.  Restaurants and bars are packed.  Here’s a menu displayed outside one:

Kids are well-dressed.  Here’s a gaggle of them playing on a Russian tank:

Moldova, on the other hand, is Europe’s poorest country now, stifled by Russian sanctions.  Moldovans are also among Europe’s unhappiest people.  They desperately want to join the European Union and NATO.  The ruling party in Parliament is even named Alliance for European Integration.  Both NATO and the EU have assistance programs to help Moldova join.

Now with Brexit and the Moslem Flood into Europe, they see the EU disintegrating.  Moreover, everyone I talked to in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, is freaking out over Trump – who they see as Putin’s friend and ally.

“Trump is on Putin’s side,” they’ll say.  “We are lost if he’s elected.”  Most Moldovans have friends or work with people in Ukraine.  “Ukrainians feel as we do about Trump,” I was informed many times.

As I had no hard facts with which to counter their fears, I just listened.  I did the same when people in Tiraspol told me how much they loved Trump.  “He’s Putin’s friend, which means he will be ours too!” is what they said.

The irony of people caught in a time warp of the last remnant of the Soviet Union hailing one of America’s icons of capitalism because they think he’s best buds with the KGB thug who runs the Kremlin left me speechless.

We won’t be out of the woods with Trump winning in November.  We’ll just be out of the deepest, darkest, most swamp-ridden part of the woods that we’d be in with Hillary.

It’s critical that Trump comes to understand the malignant reality of Putin, the same as he needs to with Turkey’s Erdogan.  Putin dreams of recreating the Soviet Empire, Erdogan the Ottoman Empire.  Trump needs to acquire a foreign policy designed to disabuse them of these fantasies.  Let’s hope he does so, for the world does not need any place where the Soviet Union still exists.

And okay – here I am where that does, in Tiraspol right under the huge statue of the midget Lenin.  Yes, he was actually five-foot-three.

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[1]   Alternative transliterations from Russian Cyrillic:  Transdnietsrian and Pridnestrovian.