Echoes of the Past: Moldova Marks the 74th Anniversary of Stalin’s Deportations
Weekly Roundup: July 7, 2023
Moldova Remembers Victims of Stalin’s Deportations
July 6th is recognized in Moldova as a day of remembrance for the victims of Stalin’s deportations of Moldovans to Siberia and Kazakhstan. This year marks the 74th anniversary of the second and largest wave of deportations which took place on July 5th and 6th 1949. In this wave 34,000 people were taken from their homes and beds and loaded into livestock cars for exile in Siberia. Many died in Stalin’s network of Gulag slave labor camps.
Flags were flown at half mast in memory of the victims and the government set up 2 livestock wagons in the central square that were used in the deportations. These served both as a monument and a mini-museum educating people on the crimes of the Stalin regime.
Speaking at an event marking the anniversary President Sandu said:
“Today marks 74 years since the second wave of deportations, when 34,270 people, including 11,245 children, were sent to Siberia and Kazakhstan in one day. Our grandparents and parents were loaded onto more than 1,500 livestock wagons and sent to certain death,” …
"Our parents, grandparents - people without any fault, without any right of appeal, were deported, starved, killed, based on lists. Deported people were not murderers, thieves or thugs. On the contrary, they were the foundation of the country: honest, intelligent and hardworking. There were mayors, teachers, priests, doctors. They were peasants with beautiful households obtained with a lot of hard work. They were children, who were declared enemies of the people, even if they didn't even go to school yet. "Enemies of the people" - that's what the regime called them,"
In total there were 3 waves of deportations in 1941, 1949 and 1951 where between 80,000 and 120,000 people were sent to the gulag.
New Polls Released Show PAS Support
New political and issue polls have been released by Watchdog and CBS-Research, traditionally a one of the highest quality polling partnerships in Moldova. The polls looked at political choices if elections were held tomorrow and public opinions on matters of foreign policy. These polls were conducted before the Constitutional Court outlawed the Shor Party so their support is reflected here. Here are the highlights:
If Parliamentary Elections were held tomorrow PAS would take 44.3% of the vote, the Socialist and Communist Block (BECS) 21.5% and Shor 13.6% (numbers excluding undecided voters). No other parties passed the threshold to make it into parliament. With smaller parties removed this puts PAS above 50% in the allocation of seats in parliament. PAS is up 8 points since the firm’s poll in January.
If Presidential Elections were held tomorrow President Sandu would receive 46.5% of the vote followed by Igor Dodon at 17.4%, Chisinau Mayor Ion Ceban at 7.6%, former Prime Minister Cicu at 6.1%, Marina Tauber at 4.2% and Ilan Shor at 3% (likely we can assume Tauber and Shor’s totals can be combined as they are from the same “party”).
If a referendum were held on joining the European Union or the Eurasian Economic Union (led by Russia) 53.3% would vote for the EU and 27.2% for the EEU. Others would not vote or were undecided.
If a referendum were held on joining NATO 52.6% would vote NO while 33.4% would vote YES.
If a referendum were held on Union with Romania 50.3% would vote NO while 40% would vote YES. This number is surprisingly high as previous polls usually saw support for Union capped at around 30%.
This polls did not survey residents of the Transnistria region or members of the Moldovan diaspora. Given past voting rates and trends this implies that these numbers underestimate support for President Sandu, PAS and EU membership. At the same time it highlights that the current President and government are maintaining fairly high public support among residents of Moldova.
Other Political Updates
Here is a rapid fire roundup of the other political stories driving the news this week:
Ilan Shor’s new “block” of parties called “Shor” announces that it has 2 member parties - “Nash” (“Ours”) and the “Alternative and Salvation Force of Moldova” party. Shor claims that eventually they will have up to 10 parties in their “block” where they will form a shadow government. He made this announcements speaking on Russian state television. Meanwhile, the leader of the Nash party Mihail Ahremtsev posted calling for Moldovan citizens to join the Russian army and “pick a side” by fighting in Ukraine. He promised payment and Russian citizenship in return. The Minister of Justice announced that under Moldovan law the “Shor” block cannot be registered legally as it closely resembles the name of a party that was outlawed. So for now this “block” exists as a shorthand for Shor’s political projects but not as a legal entity that people will be able to vote for.
Netanyahu to visit Moldova? Israeli television has reported that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu may visit Chisinau in conjunction with an upcoming planned visit to Kyiv. This potential visit has not been confirmed but would be very interesting given Moldova and Israel’s “disagreement” over Mr. Shor.
Farmers pause their protest but promise to resume August 1st unless their conditions are met. They continue to demand subsidies of 3000 lei / hectare, a moratorium on interest and penalties on their outstanding loans and a ban on bankruptcy proceedings until after the harvest. The Minister of Agriculture further alienated himself from the farmers after the government attempted to placate them with 200 million additional lei allocated in subsidies. The Minister stated that this money was "… taken from children, the elderly, from 2.5 million citizens of the Republic of Moldova." Farmers objected the this characterization noting that when the salaries of ministers were increased no one in the government was thinking of these children and elderly people. These protests have stopped for now but are likely to resume in August unless the 2 sides come to some agreement.
President Sandu hosted a meeting of Pro-European Parties with a goal of consolidating the cause of EU integration. Attendees included an unspecified number of extra-parliamentary parties including the Party of Change represented be leader Ştefan Gligor, the Power of the People party represented by Ruslan Codreanu, and the Dignity and Truth Platform (DA) represented by Liviu Vovk. Numerous other small parties attended. Ion Ceban’s MAN Party was not invited.
Former deputy mayor Victor Chironda has entered the race for Chisinau mayor representing the Dignity and Truth Platform (DA). Meanwhile the CEC set the date for local elections on November 5th of this year. Speaking of current mayor Ion Ceban, Chironda said:
"Everything that has been done in Chisinau over the past 4 years are my ideas promoted in the 2019 election campaign. These ideas were simply taken by Ion Ceban. He unsuccessfully implemented them, and somewhere even compromised"
The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly proposed the replacement of Russian “peacekeepers” in Transnistria with an international civilian mission. This is the first time that the OSCE, which is responsible for monitoring the conflict zone, has proposed removing the Russian Peacekeepers. Predictably, the Moldovan authorities supported the proposal while the Transnistria “authorities” did not.
Transnistrian Residents continue to get emails / telegram messages and online advertisements trying to convince them to join the Wagner Mercenary group even after the “events” of last month. It remains unclear what the future of Wagner will be but it appears their recruitment and outreach continues to try and lure people into the war in Ukraine.
Eight more countries join EU sanctions against Moldovan Oligarchs. Ukraine, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland have joined sanctions against individuals threatening to destabilize Moldova. These sanctions apply to Ilan Shor, Vladimir Plahotniuc, Marina Tauber, Gheorghe Cavcaliuc and Russian Oligarch Igor Ceaika.
President Sandu announced that Turkey claims Plahotniuc is not in the country. Speaking in an interview on TV8 the President did not agree with the statement of the Turkish government only noting that “that is their answer.” About the efforts to extradite Ilan Shor from Israel she noted that talks are ongoing.
Economic and Infrastructure News
The economic story of the last week that drove the most conversation was a fairly catastrophic “miscommunication” by the Minister of Energy Victor Parlicov. While speaking at a conference entitled “Fighting Energy Poverty in Europe: Challenges, Lessons Learned” Minister Parlicov spoke about Moldova’s energy consumption needs noting that because the country lacked almost any heavy industry around 50% of all energy consumed in Moldova goes towards lighting and heating buildings across the country. He also noted that Moldovan buildings are, on average, two times more inefficient than the European average. He concluded:
“Therefore, energy efficiency in buildings is our priority to reduce the cost of electricity bills for the population on the one hand, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the other. Now is the time to phase out tax subsidies for electricity and natural gas, which are subject to VAT at 0% and 8% respectively. If we collect these taxes, we can increase budgetary resources and offer targeted compensation to vulnerable consumers and invest in energy efficiency,
The Minister went on to propose a 20% VAT rate on electricity and a 12% rate on natural gas. Predictably, the proposal to increase electricity prices in the country by 20% after the most painful winter energy crisis in the nation’s history went down like a lead balloon across Moldovan news and social media. The Ministry of Energy was forced to quickly respond by saying that this idea was only the Minister’s “personal opinion” and not a policy that was actually under consideration. Minister Parlicov also spoke out clarifying that there are no actual plans for tax increases while trying to make the case that if there *were* to be tax increases like this it would only really affect the wealthy. So at the end of the day there will be no tax increases but everyone talked about how the government wanted to increase taxes on energy for a while and the Minister’s personal opinion is that they should.
Meanwhile, the national energy regulator announced that prices for electricity will fall by around 15% starting on July 7th. So in the end the Minister’s opinions clouded out what are some successes at bringing energy prices down in the country.
Other Economic News
Here is a rapid fire roundup of the other economic stories driving the news this week:
Moldova has signed a free trade agreement with the European Free Trade Association EFTA. The EFTA has 4 member countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The agreement must be ratified by the member country parliaments before it takes effect. According to the Ministry of Economy Moldova currently has a net positive balance of trade with the EFTA members at $66.7 million in exports last year compared to $56.1 million in imports.
Moldova recorded record alcohol exports in Q1 2023 with a 26.8% increase compared to 2022. Ukraine is now the largest importer of Moldovan alcohol products accounting for 17.6% of all Moldovan exports in this sector - a 6 fold increase from last year. Following Ukraine is Romania at 17.1% and Belarus at 14.5%. Georgia is at 4th place, in part because the country has become the number one supplier of ice wine to Russia. Much of this ice wine is imported Moldovan wine that is re-packaged and re-exported to Russia. Overall, wine accounts for 59.2% of Moldova’s alcohol exports and alcohol overall accounts for just 6% of all Moldovan exports.
On July 1st the retirement age for women in Moldova increased by 6 months to 60 years and 6 months. Men’s retirement age is unchanged at 63. The increase is part of a 2017 law that raises the retirement age for women by 6 months every year until the retirement age for men and women is the same.
The Ministry of Finance has shelved (for now) a plan to make banks report on incoming financial transfers received by individuals in Moldova. Minister Sirețeanu clarified that the plan was not to tax remittances but to give the tax service more tools in identifying “unexplained wealth.” Currently the tax service flags individuals whose yearly expenditures outpace their income significantly (by 200-300 thousand lei). In many cases the differences are explained by money earned abroad or sent back by family members as remittances. The Minister explained that the hope of the policy was to use data from banks to eliminate these people from suspicion so the tax services could focus on those actually engaged in large scale tax evasion or corruption. Pushback from banks was cited as the reason that the plan was scrapped… for now.
The EBRD has agreed to loan Moldova 23 million euros, alongside a grant from the EU Commission for 20 million euros, for the purpose of renovating Moldovan railways. The renovations will replace tracks and ties in critical areas to allow trains to move more quickly through the country. Moldova’s rail network was saved from bankruptcy last year due to the increase in traffic owing to the blockade of most Ukrainian ports. Investments like this are largely aimed at improving Moldova’s freight rail infrastructure to tie Moldova and Ukraine closer to the European network.
The Ministry of Infrastructure has clarified that the government will not put up the airport for private concession and will keep control of it. It appears that the Minister misspoke while she was talking about attracting investments aimed at convincing more airlines to fly to Moldova.
That’s it for this week’s roundup! If you haven’t, please consider subscribing to support the work that goes into Moldova Matters. It’s just $5/mo, less than the price of a fancy coffee!