Some of the cables that I received in response to my FOIA request for cables dealing with the post-Soviet conflicts highlight other interesting events from the time of the Soviet breakup. This was a time when the U.S. had to open a whole bunch of new embassies, including one in the newly independent Republic of Moldova. The report on the opening of the Embassy in Chisinau included a discussion of the situation in Transdniester and its impact on the Moldovan government:
The deterioration of the situation in the Trans-Dniester is occupying almost all the time of this very small, neophyte government. While Moldovan officials have the understandable tendency to inflate the importance of their own republic, Embassy Chisinau finds many of their concerns well-founded.
And what sort of environment would U.S. diplomats posted to Chisinau find in the capital of newly independent Moldova? This "Preliminary Post Report" from April 13 details a bygone era of wine for 80 rubles a bottle (at an exchange rate of 125 rubles to the dollar) and when travelers using Air Moldova had to be reassured that the airline "to date has a worse reputation than it actually deserves. The stories of standing passengers, four-legged passengers and other non-FAA approved behavior have so far not been witnessed on Air Moldova."
As the Soviet Union formally fell apart, Moldovan President Mircea Snegur had his leadership validated an uncontested election in December 1991. It was an eventful month, with the election preceded by independence referendums in Transdniester and Gagauzia on December 1 and followed by renewed violence in Transdniester and then Moldova's signing of the Alma-Ata Protocols under which it joined the Commonwealth of Independent States. This post summarizes seven newly State Department cables newly declassified and released through the FOIA process, which I have made available on Scribd - read more about the Conflict Cables series here.
The stage is set by a November 5 cable from U.S. Embassy Moscow assessing the "Moldovan Political Scene as Foreign Minister Tiu Visits U.S.," in which the "principal political issue in Moldova" was described as "whether to unify with Romania or set out on the path of full independence."
On December 8th, as three men signed away the USSR in a forest outside of Minsk, Moldova held elections. Embassy Moscow had sent officials to observe, and they sent a brief cable on the 9th reporting Snegur's unsurprising victory which concluded with the following comment:
The vote appeared to be more a mandate for Moldovan independence and national unity than a reflection of support for Snegur as an individual. While many Moldovan officials encountered had high expectations that Snegur would somehow be able to solve the separatist problem once he had a popular mandate, the task looks to be a hard one. Trans-Dniester and Gagauz officials appear remarkably rigid, and, according to Moldovan government officials, the Trans-Dniester "government" is backed by Soviet military arms provided by forces based in Tiraspol.
This cable reported on the Embassy observers' visits to Comrat and to Tiraspol, where they learned about "the difficulties and discrimination faced by [ethnic] Moldovans in everyday life in the Trans-Dniester," and noted the following:
In both the Gagauz and Trans-Dniester regions, poloffs heard repeated claims of fraud during the previous week's [December 1] independence referendums and presidential elections. There were numerous reports of attempts to force people to vote, including the use of armed militia who attempted to force villagers into mobile "bus polls" which went from village to village. Some said they were threatened with loss of jobs if they did not vote.
Shortly after the elections, a December 13 cable summarized increasing Moldovan concern with alleged Soviet military support for the secessionists in Transdniester, including charges that Soviet troops were participating directly in the conflict, that military equipment being withdrawn from Eastern Europe was being diverted to the region, and in general that the secessionists were "receiving material and political support from mainline Soviet military forces...with the knowledge and perhaps approval of military and political leaders in Moscow."
The December 13 cable also described Moldovan allegations that Moscow was also already beginning to deploy its potent media weapon:
Moldovan officials also claim to see a pattern of bias in official statements and media reporting from Moscow which focuses excessively on Moldovan ethnic and economic problems. They contend this is an attempt to portray Moldova as a hotbed of ethnic strife with massive economic problems; such an image could later be used to justify interference in Moldova under the guise of protecting ethnic Russians or preventing economic chaos. On December 2, the presidium of the Moldovan Parliament issued an official statement charging Moscow-based news organizations with a prejudiced attitude toward Moldova. One Moldovan official cited a November 30 TASS report of electrical shortages in Moldova as an example of inaccurate reporting. The report claimed Moldova was short of fuel for electrical generation and was therefore alloting only four hours per day of electricity to residences. The official said this was completely false; during their December 6-9 visit poloffs observed no unusual electricity problems and heard no one mention any such problems.
A "late development" - renewed violence on Dec. 13 in the city of Dubossary - was described in the last paragraph of the cable, including details about Transdniestrian authorities' accusations that the fighting was provoked by the Moldovan Popular Front and involved "Romanian weapons."
A subsequent cable on December 17th went into more detail about the flare-up in Dubossary and related Chisinau's side of the story - that "the fighting was an intentional provocation by the Trans-Dniester leadership designed to sabotage impending Russian recognition of Moldovan independence." The diplomats in Moscow, however, concluded that the violence so soon after elections in both Transdniester and right-bank Moldova "may also have been the result of a new assertiveness on the part of the leaderships of both areas, anxious to exercise their new mandate." Shying away from assigning blame, the cable concludes with the possibility that this was "simply a case of two increasingly assertive forces finally colliding, with both sides equally at fault." Violence in Trans-Dniester: Complications for Moldovan-Russian Relationship (Dec. 17, 1991)
Also on December 17th, Moscow relayed to Washington that the Moldovan Foreign Minister had urgently requested a meeting to discuss the Transdniester issue with Secretary of State James Baker during the latter's scheduled visit to Kiev, and again summarized Moldovan concerns that the situation could turn into an "inter-republic" confrontation with Russia.
A third December 17 cable from Moscow describes a conversation with a Moldovan official in Moscow "as the Moldovan delegate to the Bilateral Relations Committee" (name redacted in the version released by the State Department, but they didn't redact his position which should make him easy to identify). This one is perhaps the most interesting of this batch as it summarizes a the candid views (in a conversation at an embassy reception) of a high-level Moldovan at the time about the country's aspirations for reunification with Romania, discussing things like potential territory swaps with Ukraine and the fact one of the factors slowing down reunification is that Snegur "enjoys being 'President' of a separate country and is not eager to give up that role." The source also trash-talks Moldovan Foreign Minister Tiu toward the end of the cable - see for yourself:
As this challenging month of a challenging year came to a close, Moldova after all signed up to join the new Commonwealth of Independent States. The cable below is interesting because it describes Russian and Central Asian reactions to the Alma Ata agreement as well as Moldovan reactions and is worth reading in full for any student of the Soviet collapse:
As a postscript, I can't resist sharing this photo from a later moment in President Snegur's career (presumably some time in 1992), mainly because I can't resist sharing something that shows our current Secretary of State in her previous life as an Arkansas political wife.
Unfortunately, I do not have too many cables on Abkhazia to share (read more about the "conflict cables" series here). I'm still awaiting a response on my FOIA request covering the years of the actual conflict; therefore the Abkhazia-related material I'll be uploading for now is from 1989-90, when people were still trying to figure out what was going to happen to the USSR.
In the aftermath of April 9, the Soviet government attempted to demonstrate its openness by conducting a public investigation - above is a clip from Vremya in 1989 in which a the country's deputy general prosecutor is interviewed about the progress of the investigation, and here is the final report of the "Sobchak Commission" - constituted by the Congress of People's Deputies and headed by Anatoly Sobchak, who later became better known as the mayor of St. Petersburg and as a supporter of his former subordinate and protege, Vladimir Putin (Sobchak's name has lived on after his untimely death in 2000 as his daughter, TV personality and Paris-Hilton-like waste of space Ksenia Sobchak, has grown ever more infamous).
But I digress. The six cables I've uploaded today are dated between April 6 and 13, 1989, and contain descriptions of the events in Abkhazia that motivated the Tbilisi demonstration and of the aftermath of the April 9 violence.
They also show the difficulties U.S. diplomats based in Moscow faced in monitoring rapidly developing situations in far-flung republics and the degree to which they were forced to rely on potentially unreliable sources in informing Washington, as well as the surprising fact that aspirations on the part of some Georgians to join "NATO" were causing problems in Tbilisi's relationship with Moscow as far back as 1989. Click on the titles below to view scans of the full cables (I decided to experiment with not embedding them from Scribd, as I think doing so may make the page load slower).
Political Turmoil in Georgia over Abkhazia (April 6, 1989)
ACADEMICIAN SAKHAROV (PROTECT) TOLD A NATO AMBASSADOR APRIL 3 THAT GEORGIAN SOURCES HE CONSIDERED RELIABLE REPORTED THAT TROOPS FROM TBILISI WERE DEPLOYED TO ABKHAZIA OVER THE APRIL 1 WEEKEND TO FORESTALL POSSIBLE ETHNIC DISTURBANCES AS A RESULT OF RISING ETHNIC TENSION THERE. GEORGIAN DISSIDENT SOURCES REPORTED THE SAME. SAKHAROV ALSO REPORTED HE HAD HEARD THERE WERE ANTI-GEORGIAN DEONSTRATIONS IN SUKHUMI MARCH 31, AND HE DREW A PARELLEL WITH THE SITUATION IN ABKHAZIA AND THAT IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH IN LATE 1987, I.E., BEFORE THE KARABAKH CRISIS BLEW UP.
Abkhazia First Secretary Removed; Tbilisi Demonstrations Continue (April 10, 1989)
DEMONSTRATION ORGANIZERS HAVE SPLIT OVER THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF GEORGIAN INDEPENDENCE AND THE ABKHAZIA ISSUE. MODERATES IN THE IL'YA CHAVCHAVADZE SOCIETY AND RUSTAVELLI [SIC] SOCIETY, AS WELL AS RADICALS IN THE SAINT IL'YA SOCIETY, HAVE SOUGHT TO FOCUS PUBLIC ATTENTION ON ABKHAZIA. WHEREAS RADICALS IN THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY (NDP) AND NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE PARTY (NIM) INVOLVED IN ORGANIZING THE DEMONSTRATIONS HAVE REJECTED CALLS FOR A MASS INFLUX OF GEORGIANS TO ABKHAZIA AND HAVE EMPHASIZED THE GOAL OF GEORGIAN INDEPENDENCE FROM THE USSR. MODERATE GEORGIAN NATIONALIST ZURAB CHAVCHAVADZE, ADDRESSING DEMONSTRATORS APRIL 5, REPORTEDLY CALLED FOR ADLEYBA'S REMOVAL. HUNGER STRIKERS IN FRONT OF THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE NUMBERED 170 ON THE EVENING OF APRIL 7, ACCORDING TO GEORGIAN DISSIDENT SOURCES.
ACCORDING TO AN AM[ERICAN] CIT[IZEN] (PROTECT) IN TBILISI, THE CROWD WAS DEMONSTRATING PEACEFULLY WHEN THE TROOPS MOVED IN. ONE GEORGIAN WOMAN REPORTEDLY THREW HERSELF IN FRONT OF AN APPROACHING TANK AND WAS CRUSHED. AN APRIL 9 TASS STATEMENT PUT THE DEATH TOLL AT 16 AND CLAIMED THEIR DEATHS RESULTED FROM BEING TRAMPLED BY THE CROWD WHEN SECURITY FORCES CLASHED WITH THE DEMONSTRATORS. [...]
WE HOPE TO GET SEVERAL EMB[ASSY] OFF[ICIAL]S TO GEORGIA BY THE END OF THE WEEK TO TRY TO GET A CLEARER PICTURE OF WHAT APPEARS TO BE QUITE A TENSE SITUATION
Georgian Update: Situation April 11 (April 11, 1989)
SEVERAL GEORGIAN DISSIDENT SOURCES AND AM[ERICAN] CIT[IZEN] OBSERVERS HAVE SHARED WITH US THEIR VIEW THAT THE DECISION TO SEND IN TROOPS STEMMED FROM CONCERN THAT THE DEMONSTRATION, WHICH HAD BEGUN IN PROTEST AGAINST CALLS FOR ABKHAZIA'S SECESSION FROM GEORGIA, HAD TAKEN AN ANTI-SOVIET AND ANTI-RUSSIAN TURN.
DEMONSTRATION LEADERS DEMANDING GEORGIAN INDEPENDENCE AND BANNERS CALLING FOR REMOVAL OF RUSSIANS FROM GEORGIA HAD TOUCHED A RAW NERVE IN MOSCOW. IN THESE SOURCES' VIEW, CALLS BY DEMONSTRATION SPEAKERS FOR AN INDEPENDENT GEORGIAN REPUBLIC'S ADMISSION INTO THE "UN" AND "NATO" MUST HAVE PROVOKED THE SOVIET LEADERSHIP TO AGREE TO USE TROOPS TO DISPERSE THE DEMONSTRATORS.
Georgia Update: April 13 (April 13, 1989)
GEORGIAN INTELLECTUALS WERE CONCERNED OVER THE GROWING DISPARITY BETWEEN THE COVERAGE OF THE SOVIET CENTRAL MEDIA AND THE GEORGIAN MEDIA. FOR EXAMPLE, AN APRIL 12 ARTICLE IN "KOMMUNIST", AN ORGAN OF THE GEORGIAN CC, DESCRIBED THE APRIL 9 DEMONSTRATION AS "PEACEFUL AND NO THREAT TO PUBLIC SECURITY," WHILE THE CENTRAL PRESS (SEE TASS APRIL 12) ACCUSED DEMONSTRATION LEADERS OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE TRAGIC DEATHS, STATED OUR SOURCE. [...]
THE QUESTION OF INDEPENDENCE FOR NON-RUSSIAN REPUBLICS IS A SENSITIVE ONE FOR SOVIET LEADERS. GORBACHEV MADE CLEAR IN HIS APRIL 12 APPEAL TO THE GEORGIAN PEOPLE THAT HE REJECTS CALLS FOR GEORGIA INDEPENDENCE. SO FAR, HOWEVER, THE SOVIET MEDIA HAS REFRAINED FROM PUBLICLY ACCUSING WESTERN STATES OF FOMENTING NATIONALIST UNREST IN GEORGIA.
Abkhazian Accusations Against Georgians (April 13, 1989)
EMBASSY HAS RECEIVED FROM A DISSIDENT SOURCE A COPY OF WHAT PURPORTS TO BE THE TEXT OF A STATEMENT NOW CIRCULATING IN ABKHAZIA ACCUSING GEORGIANS OF VIOLATING THE RIGHTS OF THE ABKHAZIAN PEOPLE. THE STATEMENT HAS REPORTEDLY BEEN SIGNED BY OVER 30,000 PERSONS, INCLUDING B.V. ADLEYBA, A DEPUTY TO THE CONGRESS OF PEOPLE'S DEPUTIES WHO WAS OUSTED AS ABKHAZIA OBKOM FIRST SECRETARY APRIL 6. [Text of statement follows].
