Identity....

Today, our multinational group took part in a tour of Chisinau made by the organizers. Time to take funny photos ( as in the flamboyant declamative "Republica Moldova e patria mea" sign, adorned with smiling suns and defiant tricolour flags), look at ( a lot of) socialist-realist architecture in the city center, deconstruct discourses, and see Spanish guys flirting en gros with Polish dziewczyny...

The story is simple: Chisinau was created in 1436. The venerable age ( forgetting probably that at that age Frankfurt or even Kronstadt-Brasov were rather old settlements) appears systematically at every entrance to the city, put in bold letters and colorful symbols. At one point, I asked myself if this was not in fact the postal code of the city or simply the new, second half of the name "Chisinau-1436", like " 2 Mai" or "Talmaciu 2" in Romania. But no, it the year when the little village on the swampy Bac river was first mentions. The way Zoia talked about Chisinau was if this was the eternal capital of Moldova, leaving aside the fact that C. was just a small insignifiant market town until the Russians came in 1812 and made it the provincial capital. No mentions of the real capitals, Suceava or Iasi, now Romanian cities.

Then, the "Moldovan poets alley", where "Romanian-Moldovan" poets' statues were displayed, dominated by Eminescu. No mentions of the fact that almost all these guys never actually set foot on the territory of the present Republic, but lived in Romania.

The story may go on. The city is full of national symbols that are actually borrowed once from Romanian history. Zoia talked about Stefan cel Mare as the greatest king (?) of Moldova , who made Moldova independent from the Turks ( false: Moldova was never under the Turks until Stefan). She mentioned how Stefan built a church after every victory :" this is how we have so many churches". Whatever... The churches Stefan built are to be found in the Romanian province of Moldavia. Most churches from the Republic are built in the Ukrainian style and date to less than 200 years.

Zoia just presented the history of Moldova the way it is protrayed in official discourse. It is probably the way she has been taught. She is a very nice, smart girl, whose parents came to Moldova from Russia in the 1960s, but she is thinking of getting her master's in Romania. The identity game of who is Moldovan gets more and more fascinating.