Algorithm Absentia: Transnistria
AJT — Visited Feb. 2024
As opposed to deleting my social media or buying a dumb-phone, I opted for a feed-detox of sorts. Anything political, even if I find myself in agreement, is returned with “not interested” and anything I don’t care for I keep scrolling (what’s changed?).
Of course, if my feed can’t make me angry, it can tempt my wallet. “Take a lad’s trip to Kyrgyzstan” one reel advertises, “Boys go to Barcelona, Men go to Mali”, says another, followed by ten reasons why I should run in the Pyongyang marathon.
Enter Transnistria, where one content creator claims “the Soviet Union never technically disappeared”, and another says is “like stepping into a Soviet time capsule”. Wielding a hammer & sickle on its flag, all the evidence points to Transnistria being the last holdout of a long defunct USSR.
All places interest me, I grew up on Google Maps and I have over one thousand places pinned as “want to go”. Both inevitably and irregularly this culminates in a holiday, so I visited Moldova & Transnistria in February 2024.
Not brave enough to visit Transnistria on my own I booked a tour, a decision I told myself would be an opportunity to meet some cool people, maybe make some friends. I can’t recall nor find any record of the guides name, though I do recall a discussion about Bulgaria after we both established that we had ancestors from the same area.
Otherwise I was joined only by an American couple in their sixties. I can remember that the husband worked in the recourses sector and made something like ten return trips to Moldova every year, this was the first time his wife had tagged along.
The road leading out of Chisinau is smooth, until it’s not. Our guide notes that Moldova is a recipient of EU development funds, which curiously only extend as far as the EU leadership will benefit. It’s no coincidence that the road becomes riddled with potholes once you pass a particular function centre.
You leave Moldova and enter a border checkpoint staffed by “Russian Peacekeepers” though I was disappointed to need not interact with them. Our guide took our passports and came back within five minutes, each with a small paper slip we were urged to keep hold of, an instruction I’ve followed literally, I still have it today.
Most of them conscripts, the Russian “peacekeepers” were stationed to monitor the border following the end of the Moldovan civil war in 1992. Previously being rotated in and out via Ukraine until 2014, the ones who were posted there prior remain stuck to this day.
The first stop is the Bender Fortress, a castle overlooking the Dniester River. Once historically marking the boundary between the Turkic & Russian spheres of influence, it now defines the border between Moldova and Transnistria.
After we stop at a shopping centre to exchange currency, a “Hypermart” owned by a company called Sheriff. Founded by Russian businessman and former KGB agent, Viktor Gushan, this organisation owns just about everything in Transnistria.
By default, Viktor Gushan yields considerable political influence. Travelling to Transnistria without making mention of Viktor, let alone Sheriff, is almost like travelling to North Korea and making no mention of the Kim regime. You can’t plead the presence of the company is hard to miss.
Soon after we arrive in Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria. Snaking around the outer suburbs we see buildings riddled with bullet holes from the 1992 civil war and a derelict train station before arriving at a soviet style workers canteen.
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Salad bars are not a communist concept (I cite Sizzler) and, to further evidence the point that Transnistria isn’t really a communist country, lunch wasn’t free. “Soviet style” in this case meant eating a meal in the company of a Lenin bust, red decor and world maps from the 1980s.
Sitting around the soviet salad bar I got to know my American company. “Do your parents know you’re here?” the husband asks, “I may have mentioned it to my Dad, my Mum didn’t like the thought of me visiting Uzbekistan so I don’t think I told her”, I reply. The wife later tells me “When our son your age went to Mexico we booked a trip there in secret, we were that worried for him”.
There’s a twisted sense of envy I have for my friends whose parents permit, sometimes even participate in, their travels, but it’s also affirming to find even more reasons to be content with my own.
Other places of note around Tiraspol include the administrative building (guarded by an all-too-common statue of Lenin), a memorial to soldiers who fought for Transnistria during the 1992 war, a cosmonaut mural and a memorial to victims of the Chernobyl disaster.
The final attraction is a drive-by of the former site of Sheriff’s primary competitor, a massive four-story building with windows alternating between boarded up and blown out. This building burnt down under suspicious circumstances the year prior to my visit, no investigation took place our guide says.
I had never heard of Sheriff, nor of Viktor, each omitted by the surface level travel content I had consulted prior to my trip. If I wanted to be especially disparaging I could reduce the country to being nothing more than a soviet-themed amusement park.
Yet there’s no reason to hold my expectations to a standard the jurisdiction didn’t set, from what I can gather the locals know full well that they’re not living under communism, the aesthetic preserved simply to remind those with a particular mindset of better times.
After sitting on these thoughts for two years, I really can’t say I disliked Transnistria for what it is. The attractions were genuinely interesting, and it was as fascinating to hear about the symbiosis of sorts that exists between Moldova and Transnistria today.
Moldova is the least visited country in Europe and, for the relatively few tourists who do visit, Transnistria is an obvious drawcard. It’s difficult to quantify, but there’s certainly a windfall the Moldovan government makes from tourists who wish to visit the airport-less Transnistria.
Inversely Transnistrian passports are as good as useless, yet the Moldovan government still recognises its residents as their own, extending the entitlement of Moldovan passports and social security to Transnistrians without caveat.
The only logical point of comparison I have is Chisinau, a city that I found in a state of disrepair with not much to see or do. Maybe I would have enjoyed the post-soviet aesthetic more if I hadn’t been to Tashkent, Uzbekistan the week before, where the novelty wore off and I decided it wasn’t for me.
Feel free to cite the contradictions above if you want to disregard my opinion, but to clarify, if the target for this piece was the residents, I would have addressed the place as ‘Pridnestrovie’, the local term for the nation.
I wouldn’t discourage people from travelling to Transnistria, only against visiting a version of a place in your mind, informed by every medium except reality.
