Country of the week.

Moldova is a country tucked away in the heart of Eastern Europe. In some ways it is like Switzerland or Poland. At the crossroads between other countries and great powers. But unlike those countries Moldova doesn’t have a distinctive geography or culture or language. Yet.

Moldova has been ruled by many different cultures, from ancient slavs, to the Turks in the 16th century, to the Romanians and the Russians. It has been a power struggle between the Russians ans the Romanians for the last two hundred years. In the early 1800s the Russians annexed the area and re-named it Bessarabia. It was returned to Romania in 1856 and united with Walachia to form the Kingdom of Romania. That didn’t last long and the Russians re-annexed it and held it until the Russian Revolution.
The people of Bessarabia tried to re-unite with Romania, but the Soviets would not have it and turned it into an ASSR (like the Ukraine) with it’s capital in the Ukrainian town of Balta. The capital was moved to Tiraspol later.
The Romanians tried again to re-claim the area during WWII, but the Russians pushed them out and held it until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The capital was moved to Kichenev, which is now (according to the CIA site) named Chisinau.

Since independence there has been non-stop conflict caused by the conflicting cultures of the slavs and the romanians. There has been civil war. The official language has been Romanian, and then a few years ago even that was recinded.

The government is set up in a democracy, with a President, Prime Minister, a parliament and a court system of sorts. The president is elected by the parliament for a 4 year term. The Prime Minister is chosen by the President with consent of the parliament. The Parliament (just one house) is chosen by popular vote of the people. Interestingly, the Communist party has 50% of parliament and just elected a communist president for the first time since independence from the Soviet bloc.

The economy is heavily weighted toward agriculture, as they have no mineral wealth, but lots of farmable land. Most of their industry is centered around agriculture as well. The unit of currency is the Moldovan Leu, which is worth about 1/13th of a dollar.

President Vladimir Voronin has proposed a pact to be signed by the EU, Russia and the United States stating, among other things, to:
support Moldova's territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders; support the search for guarantees of democracy for the entire country; recognize Moldova's cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity as a fundamental asset of the country and support ethnic dialogue and efforts to build an atmosphere of tolerance; recognize and guarantee Moldova's permanent neutrality.

They insist on the nutrality, and seem to have turned down entry into NATO.

Moldova and Bulgaria have signed a free trade agreement.

Here’s a great article from the BBC summing up the state of life in Moldova, one of the poorest countries in the world. You can really understand why they were lured into voting an unreformed communist government back in to power considering prospects for making it on your own there are so dim. Article states that 50% of working age people have emmigrated to other countries to find work. Sometimes leaving their kids to do it.