THE ROLE OF CENTRAL POWER BODIES OF THE USSR
IN ESCALATION OF CONFLICT ON THE DNIESTER.
The period from August 1989 till August 1991 is characterized by total
removal of the central power from necessity of localizing and settling conflict
between nationalists and interethnic movement in the Moldavian SSR.
The policy of Mikhail S. Gorbachiov directed to revision of the whole
socialism-building era in the USSR, exaggeration of negative periods of the
Soviet history, refusal of ideology in general, and of internationalism as its
component particularly, caused vacuum in people’s consciousness. That vacuum
was not filled by any other ideological objective. In fact, the Central
Committee of the CPSU, the Government let people reconstruct their political
activity by themselves, their intention to take part in the state’s life.
Vacant places of directing forces were occupied by nationalist movements
– in the MSSR as well as in other Soviet republics. Being born in 1987-1988,
they initially represented themselves as “literary” and “cultural-ethnographic”
groups, which quickly passed the stage of intellectual conversations and came
to understanding of importance of transformation into political force. Active
demonstrations and crowded meetings, pickets at government and parties’
buildings – all those events were legibly coordinated and organized by
authority of the PFM (People’s Front of Moldova), which had an objective of
organizing a bourgeois-nationalist coup d’etat and liquidation of the socialist
system by all means. Security bodies, power bodies, which – for tens years –
had forgotten how to act in such extreme situation, frightened by rate of
occurring events, preferred to wait motivating their inactivity by necessity of
receiving commands from the Center. And the Center, appeared in a whole block
of paramount problems in the external arena (including disintegration of the
socialist system in Europe, Asia, disintegration of the military union, refusal
of previous defense doctrines), was unable to observe events taking place
within the USSR. Moreover that republican governments by all means intended to
keep silent and conceal what was happening there, because divulgence of such
information did not improve their influence and authority in the central
bodies’ opinion. In fact, the Center reacted only at extraordinary and
exceptional incidents acting like a fire-brigade: to extinguish what is burning
if there are no means for systematic preventive measures. Respectively, those
measures also caused violent actions which did not improve the image of the
Central Committee of the CPSU and the Supreme Council of the USSR. Events in
Baku, Tbilisi, Fergana, Nagorno (Mount) Karabakh formed the image of the Center
as of a bloody fierce beast.
The total inability of the Center to forecast and foresee results of its
actions manifested also in situation in the MSSR. In fact, the Center did not
notice inactivity and evident double-dealing of Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Moldavia towards nationalists, and its connivance to
deceptive reports and assurance about calm in republic let the situation in
Moldavia come to its absolute escalation. And only after some Trans-Dniestrian
enterprises began striking, it took attempts of action which actually were
compromise decisions and could not understand the reasons of workers’ movements.
Events of August-September 1989, caused by adoption of anti-people laws
about the language, reflected the depths of crisis in the MSSR, but central
bodies took only inconsiderable measures of influence, mainly of forced
character: creating a group of Internal Troops in the MSSR and redislocation of
some military formations outside of
republic. And actions of the political authority, its incompetence, were not
appreciated as usual. The only result was dismissal of the First Secretary of
Constitution of the CPM S. C. Grossu and appointment of P. K. Luchinski. But
those actions were the result of mass violation of public order in November. Before
that time any information from the MSSR was met with silence. First reports
about events in the MSSR and reaction of the Supreme Council of the USSR at
those events were presented in mass media on September,4, 1989 by information
that, by requests of striking committee, a commission had been sent to republic
in order to study its social, economic and political situation.
Within all next months up till August 1989, the same tactics was kept: event
– commission – conclusion – decree and no action. In fact, the Center’s policy
may be interpreted as conniving, having no clear coordination and plan. The
Government of the RM, headed by nationalists, moved the Central Committee of
the CPM aside from real power and taken upon itself the deal of declaring
independence, hoping that afterwards, with the help of Romania, it would
suppress the rebellious Left Bank by military means. In fact, it manifested
after the disintegration of the USSR when in chaos of post-putsch events the RM
took first steps on that way, having arrested the deputies of the Supreme
Council of the MSSR from Trans-Dniestria and members of the Government of
unrecognized Trans-Dniestrian Moldavian Republic.