On the fringes of the former USSR, entire ‘countries’ exist that pay little
heed to official borders. But what is life really like in these unlikely
relics of Soviet history?
The Independent – United Kingdom; Aug 19, 2006
Jonas Bendiksen
Transdniester
History has moved on without Transdniester, a 1,500-square-mile sliver
of land between the Dniester River, in Moldova, and the border with
Ukraine.
Moldova became an independent country following the collapse of the
Soviet Union.
Consequently, its culture began to reemerge after years of
Russification, and the country inched closer politically to its
neighbour to the west, Romania, whose language is virtually identical
to Moldovan. But the peripheral region of Transdniester, which is
inhabited by a higher percentage of ethnic Russians, refused to be
part of the new order.
Separatists in Transdniester unilaterally declared independence. Then,
in 1992, they won a short, bloody civil war. Since then, the
self-styled republic has quietly staked a claim as eastern Europe’s
newest fully fledged country, with its own constitution, president,
army, flag, passports and currency. Most other countries have not paid
much attention, however’ in fact, no country has officially recognised
Transdniester as an independent state. But that hasn’t stopped it from
acting like one. Why would it, sitting as it does on one of Europe’s
largest stockpiles of weapons and ammunition? Part of Transdniester’s
ability to hold its own lies in the 50,000 weapons and 40,000 tons
of ammunition that the Russians neglected to take home with them. In
fact, Russia still keeps a contingent of its troops there.
Transdniester is founded on a curious blend of Soviet political theory
and dubious business ethics. Its economy is said to be heavily grounded
in its role as a major hub for the smuggling of weapons, drugs, oil,
alcohol, cigarettes, and human beings. Its massive arms stockpile
functions as a depot for illicit arms-smuggling operations around
the globe.
Nostalgia for the USSR runs high among the people and a gloomy feeling
of mildewed stagnation clung to me throughout my stay. I spent one
evening sitting around and taking photographs in a bar called Krasnaya
Zhara, or "Red Heat".
Soviet decor hung on the walls’ Marx, Engels and Lenin scowled at
the patrons drinking warm beer below them. After only a few clicks
of the shutter the barmaid began to yell at me. "Why are you taking
pictures? We are proud of all this! … To you this means nothing,
but we’re proud of it. Our life was better then."
I sat down and finished my beer. The bar slowly came to life, and
I observed the hullabaloo of the middle-aged crowd as it danced to
the tunes of Soviet-era pop crooners. Above the windows shrouded
by curtains, loud red banners proclaimed a proletarian bliss that
never quite arrived. As I got up to leave, I realised that, for the
residents of Transdniester, the break with Moldova was a matter not
just of territory, but of seceding from the present and laying claim
to the past.
Abkhazia
Before the Soviet empire crumbled, Abkhazia ranked as one of the
premier Soviet beach resorts, attracting the most well-connected
apparatchiks and fortunate workers to its waterfronts, spas and
hotels. Located in the north-west corner of the former Soviet republic
of Georgia, it offered a stunning contrast of pristine, snow-topped
mountains and palmlined beaches. Its allure extended to all levels of
society: Josef Stalin and his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, kept dachas,
or villas, of their own here.
Abkhazia is anything but bustling these days. In fact, it has
hardly stirred since 1993, after the end of a 13-month-long war with
neighbouring Georgia.
Ten thousand people died, and two-thirds of the population fled. Today,
in the Abkhaz capital of Sukhum, empty shells of buildings stand
wearily – burned down, bombed out and partially decomposed from heat,
salt and disuse.
The war started just a year after Georgia seceded from the Soviet Union
in 1991. Abkhazia, in turn, sought independence from Georgia. The
Abkhaz, a separate ethnic group with their own language, were still
stinging from the Soviet policy of forcibly moving people from Georgia
proper into Abkhazia. The war, although brief, raged with Chechnya-like
ferocity. In the end, the Abkhaz fighters beat back the Georgians with
help from an odd set of partners: Russia secretly contributed artillery
and air power, and Shamil Basayev, the now infamous Chechen leader, was
part of a ferocious band of volunteer fighters. As the Georgian army
retreated, terrified ethnic Georgians followed, many on foot. Their
departure drained Abkhazia’s cities and left the country half empty.
A UN-monitored embargo keeps it that way. Abkhazia’s only viable
economic hope today is a revival of tourism, and its Black Sea beach
resorts attract a motley crew of holidaying Russians. For two months
a year, the country’s roads brim with red tour buses from the north,
breathing life into its silent cities. Some visitors are drawn
by nostalgia for the place where they spent the summers of their
childhoods. Most, though, are drawn by the bargains that come with
vacationing in a cash-strapped country that doesn’t officially exist,
and turn their tan-lined backs to the ruins of war behind them to
face the warm, cleansing waters of the sea.
The Ferghana Valley
Each time I crossed the 13,000-foot-high mountain passes on my way
into the lush Ferghana Valley, the sudden change from Central Asia’s
standard tan and gray palette jolted my eyes into observance. The
valley’s verdant fields make i t both the most fertile and most
densely populated part of Central Asia. In centuries past, the valley
had been a crucial segment of the great Silk Road, an ancient trade
conduit for precious materials and spices, as well as knowledge and
culture. Today, after the Soviet Union’s collapse, it is a transit
point for much of the enormous quantity of heroin bound for Russia
and Europe from Afghanistan.
Another consequence of the fall of the USSR was the relaxation,
after 70 years, of religious oppression by the government. As a
result, many of the valley’s Muslims emerged from underground to
worship publicly. Others rediscovered their religious heritage and
traditions. Both trends gave local governments pause. Fearing the rise
of a politicised brand of Islamic extremism, leaders of the three newly
independent countries that share the valley – Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan
and Tajikistan – cracked down on what they viewed as fundamentalist
Islam. In the largest and most repressive of the three, Uzbekistan,
all unsanctioned religious expression is brutally repressed. Western
human-rights observers put the number of men imprisoned for religious
activity at 7,000.
Ordinary Muslim behaviour – praying in public, wearing beards, studying
the Koran, or dressing in traditional Islamic clothing – can result
in arrest and criminal charges of extremism. Prison sentences of up
to 18 years are common.
Torture is rampant.
Not surprisingly, this repression has forced Islam underground and
into the hands of organisations like Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which calls
for the creation of a Muslim caliphate, governed by Shariah law. One
balmy evening in 2002, I attended prayers in an underground mosque
in Margilan, one of the valley’s main Uzbek cities. My guide knocked
on an unmarked door identical to dozens of others nearby. Inside,
the courtyard looked like countless others I had seen, with children
playing and young women preparing supper. But here, in one corner,
about two dozen men and boys removed their slippers and entered one
of the dwellings. I joined the crowd, and sat down on a silk pillow.
My eyes slowly adjusted to the dim interior of the
living-room-cum-mosque, as the group recited verses from the Koran,
teaching their sons the suras and speaking to one another in hushed
voices. In this secret room, the government’s persecution seemed far
away, and the dream of an Islamic state in the Ferghana Valley seemed
as real as the carpet upon which we were sitting. Nobody spoke of
violent overthrow, or civil war, but the sound of each verse felt
like a blow against the godless and violent men who dominated the
worshippers.
Birobidzhan
In 1928, two decades before the creation of Israel, Josef Stalin
established the Jewish Autonomous Region as the first modern homeland
for the Jews.
Occupying an area the size of Belgium, the region is located in
far eastern Siberia on Russia’s border with northern China. Before
Stalin came along, the region had nothing whatsoever to do with Jews,
or Judaism.
Having a "Zion" on the USSR’s eastern flank offered several advantages
to Soviet authorities in the 1920s. For one, the Zionist movement
was gaining momentum worldwide, creating a potentially dangerous
intellectual ferment among the Soviet Union’s 2.5 million Jews. What
better way to deflate the movement than to lure activists 5,000 miles
away to a vast, largely uninhabited swampland? Communist leaders
were also looking to populate the long, vulnerable border with China,
an area damned by harsh Siberian winters and hot, mosquito-infested
summers.
Fleeing persecution and famine in western Russia and Ukraine, many of
the region’s first settlers needed little convincing to go. Between
1928 and 1938, more than 40,000 Jews made the journey. They arrived
with few supplies and little preparation for the extreme cold and
severe isolation.
Despite the harsh realities they encountered, by the mid-1930s,
for a short period, the Jewish Autonomous Region’s capital city of
Birobidzhan thrived: a Yiddish theatre flourished, and local writers
produced Yiddish literature and newspapers. The region even attracted
foreign Jews from as far away as the United States, Argentina and
France. However, this was all doomed. In 1936, Stalin unleashed the
Great Terror nationwide, the first of a series of nightmarish purges
that effectively eliminated Jewish culture in the region. By 1948,
all Jewish institutions were shut down, and most of the local Jewish
leaders had been killed.
By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, the Jews of Birobidzhan
had faced decades of isolation, economic hardship, and religious
persecution. The result was the highest rate of Jewish exodus in
post-Soviet Russia. During just one month during my stay in 1998,
six charter jets full of emigrating Jews departed for Israel. The
resettlements were sponsored by the Jewish Agency, an Israeli
organisation, and were open to anyone – along with a spouse and
children – who could prove they had a Jewish grandparent.
Thus, barely half a century after their parents had built their Soviet
"promised land", most members of the next generation departed in
search of a better place. By the end of the 1990s, the vast majority
of Birobidzhani Jews had traded in the Siberian winter for the heat
of the Middle East.
The region even attracted foreign Jews from as far away as France,
the US and Argentina
Nagorno-Karabakh
Nagorno-Karabakh is the site of one of the bloodiest wars to follow
the collapse of the Soviet Union. The fertile, mountainous land
is inhabited largely by ethnic Armenians, yet situated within the
borders of Azerbaijan. Armenians and Azeris battled over Nagorno-
Karabakh from 1990 to 1994, another episode in the long, complex
history of a place that looms large in the identities of both ethnic
groups: Armenians view it as the cradle of their Christian culture,
the home of medieval monasteries and churches’ Azeris, too, view it as
the native soil of their ancient culture, yet as an outpost for Islam.
The war ultimately claimed the lives of at least 25,000 people and
created some 600,000 refugees. Nagorno-Karabakh was emptied of its
entire population of Azeris, who either fled or were killed. The
Karabakh Armenians then attempted to establish an independent country
with indissoluble ties to Armenia, albeit fully encircled by Azeri
territory. More than a decade after the ceasefire, Nagorno-Karabakh
remains at the centre of an unresolved dispute that continues to
bring ethnic and economic blight to the south Caucasus.
I arrived in Stepanakert, the sleepy capital of the self-styled
republic a few days after Christmas. While I was registering at the
foreign ministry, the deputy minister invited me to travel wherever I
wanted, with one exception: the eastern frontier, near the border with
Azerbaijan. "What about Aghdam?"- the town once inhabited by 50,000
Azeris and only 15 miles from Stepanakert – I asked. "No, you can’t go
there. It’s impossible, forbidden," he replied curtly. I understood
that I risked the loss of his goodwill if I enquired further. So I
did as I was told, and went sightseeing.
Still, I was equally curious to learn the Azeri story. As I navigated
the small territory, I asked my various drivers if they would take
me to see Aghdam.
My question was not well received’ most were quick to change the
subject. At last I befriended a policeman-turned-taxi driver who
had fought in the Aghdam area. Mellowed by a decade of wary peace,
he agreed to take me.
We sped eastward down the empty road. Only later would I understand
that he had taken me there so that I could see what would have happened
to the Armenians if they had lost the war. After about 20 minutes we
reached Aghdam – or, more precisely, what was left of it. We drove past
the skeletons of thousands of concrete houses and I saw the towering
minarets of the city’s mosque, which appeared to be the only building
still standing. In a curiously awkward hearts-and-minds operation,
this one mosque had been left largely intact by the Armenians in
order to show some degree of respect for their Muslim enemy.
We stopped, and I went inside. I clambered up a spiral staircase to
the top of one of the minarets, and gazed over the desolation. It was
then that I realised that I had seen pieces of Aghdam countless times
during my stay. After the Armenians captured the town, they carted
away its bricks, windows, wiring, plumbing, floor tiles and roofs
for use in the reconstruction of Stepanakert, and elsewhere. Now,
all that was left of Aghdam was a mini- Hiroshima of a landscape,
the starkest war memorial I had ever seen.
‘Satellites: Photographs from the Fringes of the Former Soviet Union’,
by Jonas Bendiksen, is published by Aperture, pounds 19.50.To order
the book at a special price (with free p&p) call Independent Books
Direct on 08700 798897