Memories Of Another Day

The country is struggling to dismantle the remnants of socialist utopia, which de-stroyed their literary traditions and linkages with their Romanian forebears. But the dissolution process is as painful as the forced submergence in a proletarian state. The hammer and sickle has given way to the crowned eagle as a new nations symbol and the capital, a Russian sounding Kishinev, has become the Romanian sounding Chisinau. And yet the change is just symbolic despite all that the nascent democracy is striving to achieve. Russian tutelage has been thrown out, but not Russian presence. The Russians, 12 per cent of its population, have carved out a state within a state. The Trasnistra region of the country the left bank of the Dnister River is under seige with the presence of 14th Russian army.

 

The Russians stubbornly resist being forgotten. The most admired, and loved is a Russian, Pushkin, the great poet. Among the ruins of the fallen statues of the communist apparatchiks, Pushkin stands serenely in the central square of Chisinau. Moldovians embra-ced Pushkin who came to their region as an exile during the Zsarist regime. Moldovians br-eathe and live literature with Romanian roots. Pushkin em-belished and adorned it, with Russian historicity. Though Pushkin belonged to the ruling class, he became one of the folk heroes in Moldovia and continues to be so after the communists have faded. But the old system of opaque statism lumbers on. Privatisation is in the air the privatisation of the collective far-ms, state enterprises, houses and apartments. The patrimonial bonds, freely distributed to the population in proportion to the length of their employment with the state, entitle them to stake their ownership claims. There is thus a withering away of the state. Privatism, a new nomenclature for capitalism, has become heir apparent to socialism. But the transition to the new era is facing road blocks. For privatisation req-uires a market, a market needs institutions, and institutions require a civil society with its rights and obligations. They see the lode star of new opportunities, new world. But reaching for it is a struggle of the past against the future; a battle of an individual against collectivity; a conflict between change and inertia and a bout between interests and institutions.

Chisinau is strewn with the myriad monuments to the communist regime. There is a gigantic building with granite, stern in appearance like the countenances of the communists, but with all the appurtenances for luxurious living. From there commands used to go from the communist party, to all the functionaries of the Republic. It has long corridors, stretching as if to infinity, a typical kafkasque setting. Now this palace has become home for a parliamentary commission a revenge taken by time on proletarian dictatorship. The communists too have changed. The former first secretary of the party is a Chairman of the Parliament, and a former second secretary is now the president of the country.

Though change is pervasive, there is one constant in the equation of change. Cricova-Moidovas famous winery ensconsed snugly at some 130 meters under the ground has been producing wines, come revolution or war, with velvety taste, the flavour of black current and cherry stones. This winery may be a metaphor for the regime that is bygone. And yet it is not a metaphor as wine ages to taste velvety, whereas the regime aged to be hated. The memory however succeeds in its struggle against forgetting. A stack of wine bottles awaiting export still bears the label The soviet socialist Republic of Moldovia of USSR.