Roundup of English-language media reports

A ditty from the protests (most likely the ones in Chisinau but possibly
from the demonstrations of support in Bucharest) which reads,

"Three women went to vote
Two of them dead and one of them living
How many votes does that make?"

Not an idle question these days in Chisinau, apparently.
[image source]

There is now so much Moldova-related content on the interwebs that it's impossible to keep up. Below is an attempt at a roundup of some of the English-language coverage from Wednesday.

ITAR-TASS ran a story with some alarming remarks from Voronin:

The Moldovan authorities “may resort to force, if unrest is resumed in Chisinau,” President Vladimir Voronin said here on Wednesday. Speaking at a meeting of Moldovan leaders, he stressed that he had warned the opposition of such a possibility.

“There is limit to our patience. Yesterday I was on the verge of giving the order. The authorities have every reason to resort to force in accordance with the law. I warned the opposition that they could be put not to the parliament, but to some other place. They should learn to lose with dignity,” Voronin stressed.

RFE/RL has had a number of articles on this week's events in Chisinau: "Moldovan President Accuses Romania as Protests Continue"; "Moldovan President Vows to Repel 'Coup' After Protests Turn Violent"; and (although I am a bit weary of the "Twitter Revolution" meme) "The Revolution Will Be Tweeted - Moldovan Protesters Exploit Social Networking Sites."

An AP story reporting the status quo as of Wednesday morning.

Reuters reports on the Russian Foreign Ministry's reaction to the events in Chisinau, covers the opposition's reaction to the Central Election Committee's apparent refusal to abide by the agreement reached with Voronin to conduct a recount, and - in a most interesting story that I haven't seen elsewhere - reports that ratings agency Fitch has warned Moldova's sovereign credit rating will be at risk of being downgraded if the unrest persists.

Moldovan news portal Azi.md has some photos from inside the heavily damaged Parliament building and, on their English-language page, an article quoting one of the OSCE election observers as follows:

"Our report was much too warm and friendly towards that vote. The problem is that it was an OSCE report. The OSCE includes the Russ ians. And the Russians' view was quite substantially different from my own, for example."

The BBC has some audio from an interview with the same observer, discussing her "grave misgivings" about the results. This could be an important bit of ammo for the opposition in the rhetorical (hopefully) battles to come - if they can't at least show substantial reason to believe that there was substantial falsification of election results, they will not get traction with many within Moldova or with the Western countries and organizations they may be hoping to rely on for moral support.

The Economist's coverage is headlined "Moldova Burning" but does a good job of stepping back from the flames and focusing on the roles of Russia, Romania and the EU in the turmoil and its possible resolution:

The political upheavals cry out for attention from the EU, which has failed to get to grips with Moldova’s ills. As with Ukraine’s orange revolution five years ago, it may take a heavyweight outsider to get talks going between entrenched but discredited authorities and an enthusiastic but incoherent opposition. If Europe cannot solve Moldova’s problems, it is hard to see much future for the trumpeted “Eastern Partnership” which is meant to reinvigorate EU policies towards the six ex-Soviet countries on its eastern borders.

An op-ed in the Kyiv Post chronicles some of the more unsavory remarks made by certain Moldovan opposition figures in the past but probably paints with too broad a brush in suggesting that the country is "Torn Between the Communists and the Far Right." One of those who comes in for criticism in the piece is Iurie Rosca, whose party didn't make it into parliament this time but who has been outspoken about his suspicion that the situation in Chisinau has unfolded according to Moscow's plans, in part as punishment for Voronin's refusal in 2003 to sign the Kozak Memorandum, a Russia-backed plan for settling the conflict over Transnistria.

Russia Profile has two pieces worth checking out - one discussing the the cleavages in Moldovan society which drove the protesters to feel sufficiently "insulted and humiliated" to take to the streets, and another, which seems to have been written before the protests but provides good background on the campaign, the elections and the Moldovan political scene:

Voronin has openly stated that he would pursue a Den Xiaoping outcome, allowing him to continue to determine the country's trajectory while not holding the highest office. This lent the Communist Party a powerful motive to force through an unchallengeable electoral result, similar to that achieved by United Russia in the 2007 Duma elections in Russia, intended as a future power base for then President Vladimir Putin. [...]

Moldova is not only anomalous in terms of its constitution and its geography (it counts as a Black Sea littoral state although it is landlocked). It is also one of the few countries to be both attempting to reintegrate a secessionist region -- the tiny self-proclaimed Transdnestr republic--while staving off attempts to be absorbed by the neighboring big brother Romania, with which it shares history and language.

Its foreign policy is equally anomalous: in the 1990s, Moldova strove to reunify with Russia within the Russia-Belarus union, until Russia's refusal to play ball caused the same Communist Party to make a smooth shift in 2005, and aim at EU membership and cooperation with NATO instead. Experts see the elections as having paradoxically strengthened the Communists in negotiations with the EU, and thus given new impulses to Moldova’s integration with the union.

Independent political analyst Ion Marandici said that "the Moldovan Communists have declared very often that their goal is to join the European Union. That is why, paradoxically, they will go on with the economic reforms while continuing to infringe on media freedom, freedom of expression and more generally on human rights, in order to combat their political competitors."

The Moldovan government has cranked up its rather creaky English-language online outlet, the website of state-run wire agency Moldpres, so you can read about the opposition's bad acts there. And here's the official text of the Moldovan MFA's statement declaring the Romanian ambassador persona non grata.

And if you're looking for a very long and thorough recap of Tuesday's events laced with commentary, check out "Chronicles of a Post-Electoral Day" on Moldova.org (which also has lots of video clips, even one from a demonstration of support in Dublin, Ireland). The piece suggests that Western representatives in Moldova misread the situation after the elections (although to be fair the protests took many Moldovans by surprise as well):

A few days ago, ahead of the protests, the author of these lines was invited to speak in front of the EU Ambassadors in Moldova – they were told that the liberals might have three options – accept the election results that they believe were long-frauded, attempt a protest scenario as in “orange revolution” in Ukraine or protest and slowly fade away, like in Belarus. A good number of Ambassadors laughed when they’ve heard about Moldovan opposition organising protests like in Ukraine, diplomats basically showing there will be no support for such a scenario. Many of them, probably, are rethinking this scenario now – one thing is clear, they were far behind the events.

The signals of lack of support that the West is now giving to Moldovan liberals are read by the Communists in one simple manner – they feel their impunity to orchestrate any scenario and get away with it. Just like in the times when the West left the Belarus opposition alone.

The liberals are now feeling somehow abandoned, maybe even afraid. They want a rule of law Moldova, they do not want destruction and they wish no connection with it. However, they need to take a final decision and they understand that they are left with no way back. Its “[either] – or”. Its: Europe or Belarus.

Let’s hope that Europe will not be far behind the events at least this time.

Roundup of Russian - and other - MSM coverage

[Click to expand, or go to the original source to see the image at full size]

First, for all you English-only types, here's the NYT's latest report on the goings-on in Chisinau.

The following is just a selection of the Russian-language media's coverage of the situation in Moldova. For more coverage, visit Yandex's news aggregator or Russian-language Google News.

Above is RIA Novosti's map of the protests which unfolded on Monday and Tuesday. All of their coverage of the story can be found here.

RIA Novosti also has some stories about the events in English, reporting most recently that President Voronin has blamed Romania for the demonstrations, which he referred to as an attempted coup, he has expelled the Romanian ambassador and established a visa regime with Moldova's neighbor.

The BBC's Russian Service reports that Voronin also accused "the wealthiest sponsors" of the unrest of having already fled the country. Presumably he is referring to the Moldovan opposition's local backers in the business community. There's an active debate underway in the BBC's forum on the subject.

Lenta.ru's coverage of the story can be found here, I'll highlight this article as worth checking out for its bizarreness - the Eurasian Youth Union has apparently criticized Voronin for being unable to contain the protests and suggested that he should have used Vlad-the-Impaler-type methods instead.

Kommersant also reports on the introduction of a visa regime with Romania and has a story on the protests headlined "The First Anti-Communist [War]." Kommersant also has some video posted:

Vedomosti reports that the Russian Duma will be discussing the situation in Moldova today - not that they're likely to be of much use.

Gazeta.ru has a story suggesting things have quieted down in Chisinau and an interview with opposition leader Mihai Ghimpu in which he blames the authorities for yesterday's violence, disavows the seizure of government buildings and claims that the police "opened the door" and let protesters in.

Ezhednevnyi Zhurnal's Sergei Buntman has a commentary piece that compares the Moldovan protesters unfavorably to Ukraine's Orange Revolutionaries and suggests that their actions more closely resemble the riots in Moscow in 2002 which were occasioned by Russia's loss to Japan in a soccer match. He also draws a parallel to the violent overthrow of Ceausescu in 1989, remarking that the protests in Chisinau are "fanatical and very Romanian" in more ways than one.

NTV reports protesters downtown again on Wednesday (see here for the text of their report):

Further updates and some food for thought

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin in happier times - in Sochi last August with Russian President Medvedev
[image source]

Our friend in Chisinau reported in another email that as of 11am things were fairly peaceful downtown:

[T]he parliament, presidency and government buildings...are currently
being protected by the police. The entries into Chisinau are supposedly
blocked so that the citizens from the rest of the country could [not]
reach the city center and join the protesters.

The opposition leaders have proofs that the elections were frauded en
masse. But they also call for PEACEFUL demonstrations and try to
control the masses.

As of now the president has only offered derogatory comments to the
crowds and seems to have been in an advanced state of drunkenness when
giving interviews to the reporters last night.

That's it for now. The crowds are gathering in the center slowly.
Today's protests are likely to be even more powerful in terms of
number of people on the streets.

Unimedia's English-language page is being updated again and reports 4,000 protesters downtown as of 12:25pm local time.

One of our Moldovan friends in London reports that some of her friends - Moldovans living in Romania - chartered a minibus for a journey to Chisinau but were turned away at the border, so apparently reports of strict controls at the national border are true, in addition to the restrictions on people getting from rural areas or other cities to the capital.

Below is a long article which is worth reading if you want to understand why many in Moldova did actually vote for the Communists and might be opposed to these protests. It was written before things got out of hand yesterday but provides very useful background on the political scene in the country, although obviously colored by the author's own opinions.

Ten Reasons Why the Communist Party Won Moldova's Elections Again

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 66

April 7, 2009 01:43 PM Age: 17 hrs

Category: Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vlad’s Corner, Home Page, Domestic/Social, Moldova

By: Vladimir Socor

As anticipated (see EDM, March 13, 16) the Communist Party has won Moldova's parliamentary elections on April 5, far outdistancing the parties that ran on anti-communist platforms. On paper at least--and every fourth year in real practice--Moldova is a parliamentary republic. The new parliament will approve the country's government and elect a new president in place of the incumbent Vladimir Voronin, who has served out his second and final term of office.

The International Election Observation Mission--consisting of delegations from the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, OSCE's Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), and the European Parliament--evaluated the elections positively on the whole, with some reservations not affecting the outcome or the overall initial assessment. More detailed observations and recommendations for further improvements are to be presented in several months' time (OSCE press release, April 6).

Within 24 hours of the polls' closure and more than 98 percent of the votes counted, the Communists received 49.95 percent of the votes cast, the Liberal Party almost 13 percent, the Liberal-Democrat Party more than 12 percent, and Our Moldova Alliance (also claiming a liberal mantle), 10 percent. The voter turnout was 59.5 percent. The communist and liberal labels are merely nominal in these cases.

These four parties (out of a dozen parties competing in these elections) have passed the 6 percent threshold for entering the parliament. Thanks to redistribution of votes at the expense of losing parties under the proportional system, the Communists will hold 60 or 61 seats in the 101-seat parliament. The Liberals, Liberal-Democrats, and Our Moldova will most probably hold 15, 14, and 11 seats, respectively, according to the Central Electoral Commission's announcement (Moldpres, April 6).

Uniquely in Europe and the post-Soviet world, Moldova's Communists not only returned to power, but won it three consecutive times. Already in 1998 the party had won a plurality of 30 percent of the votes and 40 percent of parliamentary seats, but chose to remain in opposition at that time. The Communists proceeded to win 50.1 percent of the votes and 71 percent of parliamentary seats in 2001; 46 percent of the votes and 56 percent of the seats in 2005; and went on to improve on that performance in the 2009 elections.

Opposition parties had confidently expected to reverse that trend this time. Opinion surveys and many other indices from the field, however, presaged another Communist success, the only uncertainty being the victory margin. The margin is a critical factor, given the constitutional requirements to confirm the government by an absolute majority of parliamentary votes and elect the new head of state with the votes of at least 61 deputies. If that falls short, the parliament dissolves and new elections must be held. In this sense, the election's outcome was uncertain all along; and may still hang in the balance with regard to the election of the head of state.

The Communist Party's electoral performance rests on distinct local circumstances, often underappreciated by outsiders:

[click "Read More..." below for the full article]


1) The Communist brand remains attractive to a critical mass of Moldovan voters. These compare (as do many Russian voters) the 1990s unfavorably both with the Soviet period and with the post-2001 period (when the Moldovan Communists returned to power).

2) The president and government used the incumbency advantage to the hilt, appearing in TV newscasts to open gas lines, agricultural machinery stations, and construction projects in the presence of appreciative voters during the electoral campaign. They also resorted to populist measures, from lowering the bread price to donating to charities during the campaign.

3) The incumbent government, predominantly of technical experts, is unquestionably Moldova's most competent and convincing to voters since independence, contrasting with previous governments that were formed on a political basis. Prime Minister Zinaida Grecianai, one year in that post, enjoys a high popularity rating. The current government includes only two communist ministers, out of nineteen. Half of the ministers, however, ran for parliament on the Communist Party's list, adding to the party's "administrative resources" in this campaign.

4) The Communist Party is the only major party with a multi-ethnic electorate. Most opposition parties (including all three that have now entered the parliament) rely entirely on ethnic Moldovan voters (a minority of whom define themselves as Romanians) and have not seriously attempted to reach out to "Russian-speaking" voters. Many "Russian-speakers," who defected from the Europe-oriented Communist Party in recent years, crossed over to small pro-Moscow groups or declined to vote, rather than joining Moldovan opposition parties. The Communist Party was able to offset that loss by increasing its share of the ethnic Moldovan vote.

5)Exit polls, conducted by Western-funded NGOs, showed that the Communist Party made significant inroads into young age cohorts for the first time in these elections. As the poll coordinator, sociologist Arcadie Barbarosie (head of the Soros Foundation's local affiliate) observes, the Communist Party can no longer be stereotyped as a "pensioners'" or Soviet-nostalgics' party (Moldpres, Imedia, April 6).

6) Still communist, nevertheless, in its disciplined style of operating, the party has developed an effective style of door-to-door campaigning in towns and villages. Although it fully (if informally) controls public television, and less fully public radio, the party gave up some of its public airtime during the final phase of the campaign, reflecting its confidence in door-to-door activity.

7) The Communist Party ran a sophisticated campaign under the direction of presidential adviser Marc Tcaciuc, long reputed as the "grey eminence," and who has now earned the sobriquet of the party's "grey matter" in this campaign (NewsIn, April 6). Apart from the public TV and radio company, the party controls two other television channels and one other country-wide radio channel.

8) While committed to European integration--a matter of national consensus above party lines--the Communist Party also advertised itself as Russia's favored political partner in Moldova during this campaign. Voronin's photo opportunity with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on March 18 (see EDM, March 20, 25) helped to prevent Moldova's pro-Russia parties from gaining enough votes to enter the parliament. Voronin's move also undoubtedly played well with mainstream Moldovan voters, among whom Medvedev and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold the top two places in the popularity ratings. Voronin a distant third overall, but is a distant first among domestic political figures.

9) The opposition-dominated Chisinau Municipal Council, a scene of chaos and nepotism, has played into the Communist Party's hands. The party constantly compared that scene with the situation in the pre-2001 parliament, which had helped discredit the multi-party system in Moldova. Certain Liberal-Democrat and Our Moldova leaders are also associated in the public memory with that parliament, making it possible for the Communists to campaign once again against "the 1990s" in these elections.

10) Half a dozen parties with theoretical chances to pass the 6 percent threshold campaigned ineffectively, competing against each other as well as against the Communists. Anti-communist slogans proved once again ineffective and largely irrelevant in Moldova. Inasmuch as the Communist Party today is a far cry from its pre-1991 predecessor, mere anti-communism is yesteryear's battle in Moldova. No fewer than four opposition parties advertised themselves as Liberal, in a country completely devoid of a bourgeoisie. Both programatically and organizationally, the opposition failed to present a credible alternative to the incumbent majority party.

The morning after, or the dawn of a revolution?

Perevorot?
[image source]

Protesters planned to reassemble in downtown Chisinau at 10am local time today (that is, about an hour ago). The latest news I have is from an email sent around by a friend of ours in Chisinau a few hours ago:

It is 7am in Chisinau and a fresh day is about to start.

A quick update on the night's events:

1. Parliament building is no longer in flames

2. The night in Chisinau's center was peaceful

3. The major local news networks either are not allowed to work by the Communist party or are actually getting some rest until the later in the morning

Thank you for sending me updates and news on Moldova from the international press. I find that the Western press has been very professional at capturing the reality on the ground and the reasons for why the youth are on the streets. As NY times put it - it is a generational clash - the youth (who voted mostly anti-communist, for lack of job opportunities in Moldova or even abroad this year in the context of the global crisis) and the older generation nostalgic after the "stability" offered by the current and former Communist governments.

Some notable articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/world/europe/08moldova.html?_r=1&hp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7988893.stm

Some pics and videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDu_-RQdprU
http://unimedia.info/?mod=foto&id=4
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7988028.stm

One last note for this early morning - this is the FIRST Even large scale protest that turned into violence in Moldova since 1989, when the first large-scale meetings were taking place to support Moldova's independence and union with Romania.

Moldovans on the whole are a very peaceful nation, and would rather sit at the table with you over a home-made glass of wine [...] than take to the streets. [...] The opposition promised to continue the peaceful protests in the main square and have been asking now for families to join in in a sign of solidarity. The lady in the Parliament who was thought dead is actually well. So it seems that in spite of all the damage inflicted on the Parliament and the Presidency, thankfully no one has lost his/her life.

And a further update from 10:50am Chisinau time:

Just got back home in Chisinau. All well. The violence continues to be
localized in the center.

The leaders of the opposition party as well as Voronin and Greceanii
are in talks now. They are all calling for a restoration of calm.

It could be that the protesters go and take over the public TV,
Moldova 1, which all day has been showing images from ballet shows and
other nonsense but nothing about the major protests.

The country on the whole is safe and calm, but there are some protests
in Balti, the second-largest city in Moldova.

There are 3 victims already [presumably injured], one of them being
a 13-year old.

And a message from 10 minutes later:

Unfortunately it's getting worse by the minute. There are injured and
potential deceased already because of the violence on the streets. It
is very worrying indeed as there is innocent blood being shed for no
reason or purpose. No leader of the crowds has emerged yet.

Dumitru Minzarari reposts some of the pictures showing what appears to have been looting of the parliament building (these are making the rounds and provide very good ammo to those who wish to discredit the opposition) and continues to be concerned about the "ugly face" of yesterday's protests:

I have already mentioned earlier that I was somehow upset by some radicalized youth, which mixed their anger for stolen elections with their personal political preferences. The protest is about elections, and not about unification with Romania. There is more than a half of the population that does not share these views. By shouting “united with Romania” they have offended and rebuffed many other young people which are also not happy with the Communist government, and which are Russian-speaking.

One netizen has posted photos from yesterday's protests with the caption, "Oh gosh, rednecks take over =(" - this I found via the md_community page on LiveJournal, which has at least one eyewitness account of the protests and seems to be aggregating anti-protester rumors and commentary. For instance, one poster there is alleging that some of the protesters were paid for their participation (a common allegation about any mass protest in the post-Soviet space) and bused in from rural areas and is soliciting any first-hand accounts of this. I also read there that apparently the Russian government has dispatched a plane with emergency aid to Moldova, not sure if that's true or not - no time this morning to check the Russian news sites to see how this is all playing in Moscow.

According to Unimedia, the Moldovan government has closed the border with Romania, at least to journalists and to Moldovan students attempting to return home.

In other coverage I missed yesterday, Siberian Light had a post covering the situation.

I think that's all for now - I suggest following the situation on Twitter, which is continuing to provide updates and links to other online content (like this).

Overnight updates from Chisinau

source - unimedia.info

If you're looking to follow developments in Chisinau, some of the pages I've linked to in previous posts are still being updated on an ongoing basis. This post is to provide an update on things I missed earlier or which have just been posted in the couple of hours since my last post.

First, although it's not perfect, Technorati is not a bad way to follow blog coverage of the situation in Moldova.

Next, I should highlight a couple of reports that there has been gunfire in the city center - one from Dumitru Minzarari (who has also posted a number of further updates including photos and questions about who actually instigated the violence, as well as a further post linking to other coverage elsewhere) and another from curaj.net.

The NYT's blog The Lede has a post focused around the role of Twitter in the protests, which features an interview with Moldovan blogger Mihai Moscovici. And the online NYT headlines its story on Tuesday's events "Violent Protests Erupt in Moldova."

Kosmopolito has the second installation of its Moldovan correspondent's report from Chisinau.

And, last but not least, reminding us that Americans are great at jumping into other people's battles armed with all of the necessary informational technology but sometimes bereft of elementary information, is a post on Foreign Policy's Passport blog, which rather shockingly observes that "In fact, since Moldova declared independence in 1990 the PCRM [Moldovan Communist Party] has never relinquished power." This is, um, totally wrong.

Apparently the author of the post has not consulted Dmitry Furman's outstanding article, "Surprising Moldova," which notes that the country has transferred power peacefully
multiple times in the post-Soviet period, not to mention Wikipedia, which also points this out. Just a little reminder that we should all exercise humility when making pronouncements about issues on which we might not be fully informed.

Chisinau at night - a roundup

Unimedia has posted new photos from the evening's events:

[source for both - unimedia.info]

In addition, Unimedia's blow-by-blow account of events gives us the following quotes (translated by a non-native English speaker, apparently) from opposition figures:

Vlad Filat, president of Liberal Democrat Party: "The Communists want to put the accent from fake elections to violent actions, because the police, which was in a small number at the protest, could not assure the public order."

Dorin Chirtoacă, vice-president of the Liberal Party says that there were provocateurs among the young people that have thrown first with stones and made that a peaceful action become violence.

It has been quite a day - and apparently quite an evening - in Chisinau.

drugoi posted this photo by Reuters photog Gleb Garanich of a young protester apparently after looting some high-tech gear from the Parliament building.

It's interesting to follow reactions from around the Internet. One website from Moldova's secessionist region, Transnistria, has a post up in which the author talks about the "indescribable sense of pleasure and schaudenfreude" he experienced while watching the rather tragic events of Tuesday unfold in Chisinau. A couple of commenters on the post have taken the author to task for such sentiments, but in general its not surprising that folks in Transnistria, which has for many years existed in de facto separation from Moldova, would have different impressions of the events in Chisinau, especially as the nationalistic overtones of some of the Moldovan protesters reinforce one of the reasons that Transnistria initially sought to split from Moldova. The condescension of Transnistrians regarding their right-bank (de jure) compatriots, though, is a bit too much at times - witness this post dubbing today's events the "Mamaliga Revolution," after the polenta-like Moldovan national dish.

A commenter on sholademi's LJ blog this evening reported peaceful demonstrations in the largest city in Moldova's north, Balti, and noted that there were a lot of police in the streets and that "land line phones are not working, nor is [local] TV - we're watching the Romanian channels."

Georgian blogger cyxymu posts a set of Reuters photos and adds the sympathetic title, "I wouldn't wish this even on an enemy."

Blogger Julien Frisch has a post about the protests with a number of links to coverage from around the web.

Yandex's Russian-language blog aggregator now has a dedicated page titled "'Color Revolution' in Moldova," collecting on-topic posts. I haven't read too many of the reactions from the Russian blogosphere, but it's fair to assume that a substantial percentage will fall back on negative opinions of "color revolutions" formed during the events in Ukraine and Georgia years ago.

I've taken a bit of time to translate one last nugget I found on the web - a comment on one of Natalia Morari's posts about the protests - because I think it articulates what many older and more level-headed (or perhaps passive) Moldovans might have thought about the election results and protests initially [ellipsis as in original]:

...so who voted for the Communists? A bunch of grandmas and old ladies...and? Riiiiight, lots of our parents... if the people who are now shouting out in the main square could have convinced their parents not to vote for the Communists, then maybe they wouldn't have won?

But this raises two questions:

1) Who should they have voted for?
2) How can they be convinced otherwise? Yesterday I was talking with my mother, she is retired and receives a pension, just like my father... but he still goes to work, he teaches at a university, so he's a state employee... anyway, I asked her, "Why did you vote for the Communists?"

She answered, "They increased my pension."

I told her, that this was at the expense of the youth, and let's imagine that she told me she didn't care, her own children are overseas and she's in Moldova, she has to think about herself.

"In years past part of our heating bill was paid by the city government, but now Chirtoaca [a prominent opposition politician and Mayor of Chisinau] fell out with the heating utility company, and we have to pay the whole amount."

Even though I know that the Communists were also involved in this conflict, it's hard to argue with the much higher heating bills...

"Before the Communists came to power I was afraid to go outside, but now things are stable in the country, there is less crime..."

I have to agree with this, although I can't say I'd let my kids outside alone even now...

"A bunch of other reasons..."

And it's not so important why they voted for the Communists, what matters is that no one was able to convince them otherwise and no one gave them another worthy choice instead...

And now, when parents see their children out on the square, they will be even more firmly on the side of the Communists, I won't bother to write why, it's obvious...

Moldovan election observation - in London

The last time Moldova held national elections, in 2005, we were in Moscow and weren't yet fortunate enough to have a small child to take along to the voting. That year, I posted a photo report covering the voting by Moldovan citizens in Moscow and especially Lorina's experience in line. Interestingly, the Russian authorities' slant that year was against Voronin's Communist Party, which is the opposite of their preference this year.

This year, we're in London and decided on Sunday to make our way to the Moldovan Embassy in Chiswick so that she could fulfill her civic duty and vote. As it turns out, the Embassy here is not as centrally located as the one in Moscow. That was no trouble, though, as once we made it to the proper Tube stop and boarded the bus, we were practically surrounded by Moldovans on their way to vote, which made it easy to get off at the right stop.

There was a small but very slow-moving line at the Embassy when we arrived, and a lot of people were taking pictures - some of them, no doubt, have posted them online, although I'm not sure where to find them (suggestions posted in the comments section would be welcome).




There were also a number of observers, duly wearing nametags, who seemed to be doing a thorough job. Tonight, as emails were making the rounds of the Moldovan community in London to organize a protest at the Embassy in solidarity with the people in the streets in Chisinau, one of the observers pointed out that they hadn't noticed anything untoward in the way the voting was conducted here at the Embassy in London.



Indeed, the place for voting was clearly marked, and the line moved steadily - albeit slowly - forward. Inside, there was even (instant) coffee and tea as well as some cookies, which came in handy to placate our very own little Moldo-American, who was attending his first national election.


Once the line made its way inside, there was a room with a few tables, each of which had an election official verifying people's identities - Lorina thought it strange that they demanded both a Moldovan address and a local London address - and explaining how to use the ballot. The bottleneck of a line seemed to be created not only by people's excessively long conversations with the elections officials - like the one guy who tried to start an argument over why the ballot was available in Russian when Romanian is the state language - as well as the fact that there was only one voting booth.

But for patient citizens, it was not an excessive wait to exercise the sacred right to vote. In the event, Alexander proved to be an excellent helper for his mother - and got the ballot into the box on the very first try.




We can only hope that all of the ballots from London - and no extras - made their way back to Moldova. As we left, there was still a line of people waiting to vote.

News from Chisinau

The following account is from an email circulated by a Moldovan friend of mine who has been trying to keep everyone up to date on the developments in Chisinau:

So today's street protests have resulted in 100 victims at the emergency rooms (half of which were policemen). Not sure yet if there are any dead - the news are contradictory.

The situation is getting worse because:

1. The authorities in power are not doing anything to stop the fire at the Parliament. The firefighters are not even there even if the mayor has requested for their immediate intervention at the Parliament as well as for the police to protect our common assets and put an end to vandalism and pillaging.

2. The teenagers in the centre have started drinking heavily and are not under anyone's control.

3. The Communist party does not want to go for a recount of the ballots, which is further infuriating the masses.

4. The army has been asked to intervene in full - but I am not sure what this means. The night is here, so the army could take advantage of the protesters' tiredness and/or drunkenness to use violence against them and try to disperse the crowds (a potential scenario, given that something like this has been done in the past).

The good news is that the opposition leaders (mainly FIlat and Chirtoaca) are speaking the same language and are asking the masses to maintain their calm and protest peacefully. Unfortunately they are not allowed to express their views and call to peaceful protests on the Main Public TV station (which is still an arm of the Communist party and all throughout the election campaign has promoted only the views and "achievements" of the Communist party).

Most of the Moldovan news outlets have been closed down by the ruling communist party. The Moldova 1 news channel (public TV station) is now featuring a football game, while all the Romanian TV stations (main one being Realitatea TV) plus the Moldovan independent news media (TV7 and PRO TV, as well as news.yam.ro) are continuously streaming news from the centre.

Listening to Vocea Basarabiei now and the protesters are shouting:
- "Freedom"
- "Down with the communists"
- "We are not leaving from here"

Its 11pm in Chisinau. I am going to keep on monitoring the situation from the safety of my parents' apartment. It will be important to get some rest tonight and get a better idea of what the best course of action is in this very difficult situation, when one's civic duty calls for one to be on the streets supporting democracy, rule of law and fairness in this very poor but promising society that has endured a lot from from the various communist regimes since 1945.

The situation does not look promising, although I suppose we can hope that some good might yet come of it.

"Chisinau burning"? *

Downtown Chisinau, April 6 - I have to say I'd prefer to see fewer Romanian flags and more Moldovan flags, but maybe that's just me.
[image source]

It looks like the democracy is hitting the fan in the capital of Moldova today. Sunday's elections resulted in a victory for the ruling Communist Party, and a protest planned for Tuesday morning has now turned violent. Apparently military units are now arriving in downtown Chisinau and protests are being planned or taking place in other cities as well (I have read about Balti and Ungheni so far).

A number of bloggers are covering events, mostly in Romanian (the language spoken by most of the population in Moldova, where Russian is also spoken by many), and according to the Telegraph, Twitter was a key organizing tool for the protesters today.

Here is a link to what seems to be the most active Twitter feed for following events in Chisinau,** although according to this post (which also has some videos and is being regularly updated), there are rumors that Twitter has been blocked in Moldova - not sure if they would actually be able to do that. Another report is that internet access from the country has been blocked, although I'm not sure that's accurate. According to one Twitter-er following the feed, the service has become the "new CNN."

Natalia Morari, a Moldovan journalist and activist who was famously barred from entering Russia last year, has been involved in organizing some of the protests and has posted photos from a peaceful protest by some 15,000 people on Monday and an account of how it was initially organized - by six people, organizing everything using only tools available on the internet, under the slogan "I'm not a Communist!"

According to her post, even on Monday, the organizers asked everyone to disperse and planned to reassemble on Wednesday, but "everything began unfolding rather chaotically." Tuesday's protests, for which the Liberal Democratic Party (PLDM) had official permission, apparently became even more chaotic. It's possible, though, that the chaos could have been provoked by the authorities in a bid to get the peaceful majority of the population on their side by portraying the opposition as thuggish rabble-rousers.

Now, apparently, the organizers of Monday's demonstration may be facing criminal charges and are consulting with attorneys. Further developments to follow, no doubt, at Morari's blog.

Another Moldovan blogger, Nicu Popescu, has lamented the end of Moldova's history of non-violent protests in a long and interesting post which I unfortunately haven't time to translate, and has posted a call for EU High Representative for Foreign Policy to come to Chisinau and mediate:

My suggestion is that the EU should promote a “new deal” between the government and the opposition that could include some of the following elements.

• recount of the votes with strong international monitoring, and the recognition of the re-counted votes by the opposition.
• the dismissal of the the minister of interior who has been central to many pre-electoral abuses and harrassment of the opposition and the media. the new minister of interior should be appointed by after consensus between the government and the opposition.
• initiating a process of police reform under the supervision of EU advisors, possibly extending the mandate of the EU Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine.
• Vladimir Voronin, the incumbent president (at the end of his second term) should respect the Moldovan constitution and retire from politics after his second term with guarantees for future immunity from prosecution. The Communist party elects a new leader, who might enjoy a majority in the parliament. There might be a Communist government (if the recount confirms their victory), but without Voronin.
  
• The broadcasting licenses of existing independent media, particulaly PRO TV (the only TV channel independent from the government) should be extended. A decision on that is pending.

One can only hope that cooler heads will prevail.

Some fairly alarming photos from today have been posted here and here - below is one from the latter photoset, titled "Moldova has Awakened."

Downtown Chisinau, April 7
[image source]

I'm sure this is not the kind of awakening many Moldovans would have preferred, although it is easy to understand why so many people have lost patience with the government.

Here is one comprehensive post which is being updated as events develop and has links to photos and even to the official Ministry of Internal Affairs statement (in Romanian), just released, which states that the authorities will take "all necessary actions...to restore public order."

Romanian ProTV is running a live feed (for the moment) from downtown Chisinau here. BBC News coverage is here. RIA Novosti coverage is here.

Russia Today has video and also has a story up quoting Voronin's top adviser, Mark Tcaciuk / Tkachuk as referring to the protests as "an attempt to launch a street riot coup d’etat [sic]." It also quotes Vlad Filat, leader of the PLDM, which made it into the parliament with 12+% of the vote, as stating that his party and the Our Moldova Alliance (AMN), which also made it into the parliament with just under 10% of the vote, have signed a statement calling for the election results to be annulled. According to Morari, this proves that the protesters are not just "a bunch of losers who didn't make it into parliament."

Actually, Morari has just posted a statement on her blog calling for all opposition leaders to stop trying to take advantage of the youth protests for "political games" and to show up tonight at 7pm (that would be noon in NY and 5pm in London) to have a "dialogue between the young people who took to the streets [on Monday] and those who are trying to get into power by using that protest." She's thrown down a gauntlet of sorts: "Those parties which do not come to the National Assembly Square at 19:00 tonight will show that they may as well spit on us - on those for whom they claimed to speak [when addressing the protesters] today."

She's also posted another statement detailing today's events and disavowing the violence which began on Monday night with the overturning of some commuter minibuses and escalated today into the burning of the parliament building - the latter was "a planned provocation directed against those who took to the streets peacefully."

If the protesters manage to hold out and dig in downtown, we'll be searching for a name - perhaps it could be the Grape Revolution, or the Wine Revolution, in a nod to Moldova's most famous non-human export.

I think that's all for now. Let's all spare a thought for everyone in Chisinau and hope that things there are resolved peacefully. Here is BNE's summary of today's events and background, sent out this afternoon in a "flash" email:

Moldova: Protestors storm parliament, demand new elections
bne
April 7, 2009

A crowd of around 20,000 people has stormed the Moldovan parliament, demanding an end to the Communist Party’s rule.

Moldovan opposition leaders say the Sunday April 5 parliamentary elections which returned the Communists to power were rigged.

Angry protestors have entered the Moldovan parliament building in central Chisinau and set fire to furniture, documents and equipment from the parliament. Computers and other equipment were hurled from the building.

Other demonstrators have thrown eggs, stones and bottles at the presidency, Interfax reports.

At least 20 people are reported to be injured in clashes between police and demonstrators, and one protestor is feared to be dead. Police are now using tear gas to try and disperse the crowd.

The demonstration started peacefully with around 10,000 mainly young people calling for the end of the Communist government, and for closer ties with the EU and Romania.

As the crowd swelled, protestors carrying Moldovan, EU and Romanian flags breached the police cordon around the parliament and attacked the building

Opposition activists are demanding a repeat of Sunday’s election, which they say was rigged.

Liberal Democratic Party leader Vlad Filat told Interfax, "We have information about abuses and falsifications. Thee are many cases that citizens who are dead and Moldovan national's who are abroad "took part" in the election.”

With almost 99% of votes counted, the Communist Party had 49.96% of the vote, and is expected to pass the 50% threshold which will allow it to form a government and select the president. The Liberal Party had gained 12.78% of the vote, the Liberal Democratic Party 12.26%, and Our Moldova Alliance 9.81%.

The protest come after the OSCE declared the elections at the weekend largely “free and fair,” but admitted there were some abuses.

“Yesterday's parliamentary elections in Moldova met many international standards and commitments, but further improvements are required to ensure an electoral process free from undue administrative interference and to increase public confidence,” the OSCE said in a press release on Monday.

*The title of this post is hardly original. It's been used (already) by a couple of Romanian media outlets and at least one blogger.
** Note that the tag to search on Twitter, #pman, is the abbreviation of "National Great Assembly Square" - where the protests are taking place - Piata Marii Adunari Nationale in Romanian. Thanks to Mihai Moscovici for pointing this out (and a hat tip to GVO).


[Update 16:25GMT]

As the US is waking up and the English-language world is taking a bit of notice of what's happening in Chisinau, which is generally ignored by the Western media, there are a couple of on-point English-language posts.

Evgeny Morozov has a very well-written and thorough post about the role of social networking websites in the protests and suggesting that the unrest be dubbed the "Twitter Revolution." He links to a website that's aggregating all of the Twitter posts flagged #pman, which makes it easier to interpret the flow of news.

Nosemonkey's EUtopia also has a post with several videos and links to other online coverage. He notes that

with both internet and phone networks down in Moldova itself, reliable information is hard to come by. The major Western television news networks are - so far - silent on events in this small, largely ignored country, and so (as so often) Google News is your best source for press reports. It’s all strangely reminiscent of the early stages of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution four and a half years ago, where the attention of the Western press was similarly slow to turn to the East, and information was similarly confused and confusing. All that is certain is that this is already turning nasty - and could yet turn nastier.

[Update 19:30 GMT]

Voronin has met with the leaders of the three main opposition parties and has agreed to a recount. It's unclear, though, if this will appease the protesters. There looks to be at least one effort to organize some sort of people's security force to maintain order downtown, which can't be a good sign. A couple of Twitter-ers are reporting that some of the Russian tanks based in Transnistria (as "peacekeeping forces," natch) are moving towards Chisinau, and while I would be surprised if those reports turned out to be true, the scale of today's protests took a lot of people by surprise as well.

Some reports suggest the violence has been and will be confined to the two-block area where the major government buildings are located; others are forecasting that opportunists will use the protests as a cover for looting shops in the downtown area.

Youth gone wild next to the old Ministry of Agriculture building, where the NGO that organized my
summer study program in Moldova had its offices when I first spent time there way back in 1999.
Source - unimedia.info

[source - unimedia.info]

Local online media portal Unimedia now has a page in English covering the situation in Chisinau - titled "Big protestes in Chisinau, the capital of Republic of Moldova" - lots of videos, several photo galleries, and frequent updates. According to Unimedia, as of 9pm local time everything was quiet on the main square, with protests expected to resume tomorrow. Another page providing a running commentary, albeit in Romanian, is here. Another report from the scene (in English) was posted earlier today at Kosmopolito.

The Washington Post is running a lengthy AP story about the protests on its website, which has a slideshow. Pictures from the day's events have also been posted by LJ bloggers drugoi (here and here - the second one is a shot of an injured policeman, captioned with a line from an old Russian anekdot to which I only remember the punch line - "a crowd will f*ck you up, even if you're a lion") and snail-md (who has uploaded them to a slightly ungainly interface where you have to click to view the individual photos), as well as Moldovan blogger Denis Graur.

Russian news website Novyi Region 2 also has an article with a number of photos which I haven't seen elsewhere, showing the extreme destruction visited on the center of Moldovan power (such as it is).

Russian online newspaper Gazeta.ru has a long and generally well-written story, which however lost a bit of credibility by misspelling the names of a couple of opposition leaders in the next-to-last paragraph.

Other Russian reaction has been interesting - Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of Russia's Communist Party, has alleged that the protests are all a Western-organized plot. I wouldn't be surprised to hear similar sentiments from Putin if and when he speaks up on the developments in Moldova.

And Russian President Medvedev seems to have been the only foreign leader who managed to congratulate Voronin on his party's victory before all hell broke loose in Chisinau. This bears an unnerving similarity to what happened in the early stages of Ukraine's Orange Revolution - then-President Putin congratulating Yanukovych multiple times on his "victory" in the elections.

In case this collection of links is not sufficient, here is another collection (with not too much duplication) put together by a Moldovan blogging from Bratislava.

[Update 22:30 GMT]

This post has reached a length where it's become unwieldy to edit and probably unwieldy to read. Therefore, further updates (tonight or tomorrow, as time permits and the circumstances merit) will be in new posts - check the "Grape Revolution" tag.

For now, I leave you with some thoughts from two Moldovan bloggers (both of whom are also professional analysts and often blog in English) to whose writings I turn regularly for help in understanding events there. First, Nicu Popescu has some running commentary on the goings-on in downtown Chisinau earlier today. Nicu's second post of the day provides some background on the situation and suggests an action plan for the EU.

Second, Dumitru Minzarari has broken the two-month hiatus of his Political Moldova blog with three insightful posts today. The most recent one of them struck a chord with me, because I share the sentiments expressed whole-heartedly:

As I was afraid, the massive youth anti-communist protests are turning into something… not really good. What I mean, is that anti-communists protests should not turn into nationalist ones. We are a multinational country, and any citizen has the right to be heared, regardless of the language she speaks. Those ugly dwarves that slept for years, are trying to exploit the momentum.

Earlier in the day, Minzarari had expounded on the censorship which prevented accurate accounts of the protests from being broadcast and on the youth - tired of being "treated like scum, being humiliated, and their votes being stolen" - who participated in the protest, which according to him was caused at least in part by the authorities' "Soviet-style behavior." He also pointed out

[o]ne more hilarious thing – Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has just published on its official site, that “the results of the Parliament elections in Moldova are in line with the interests of Moldovan and Russian people”…. . Now how is that????

And here is Minzarari's third post of the day, an update which by now - given the rapidity of developments in Chisinau - is probably already out-of-date, but is still worth a read.

Just now, Dumitru has posted another update - apparently Voronin addressed the country (in Russian, strangely) - calling for the people to not support a violent putsch; however, the violence of the day's protests may have been initiated not by students but by thugs planted in the crowd to provoke violence and turn public opinion against the opposition.

On the other hand, a couple of Moldovans I've spoken with were surprised at the protests and don't understand why there should be such ardent opposition to election results which do not seem outrageously falsified (although if it's true that, as some reports have stated, 200,000 dead people voted...) and which set up a continuation of the rule of a Communist Party which, while it has continued and entrenched the national tradition of corrupt governance, has at least provided a modicum of stability to the country. Granted, these are Moldovans who don't live in Moldova at the moment. I think it's possible that some people had planned for this protest to take place regardless of the result, but it's hard to tell from afar so I am trying to refrain from wild-eyed speculation.

At the very least, the government's response to the protests - stonewalling and media censorship - shows that the protesters had legitimate reasons for taking to the streets in the first place. Moreover, Moldova has maintained a surprising level of stability up to now during the "global economic crisis," or whatever we're calling it nowadays. My suspicion even before these violent events occurred had been that the post-election period would see a devaluation of the local currency (this is not a particularly unique opinion - see, e.g. here and here - although a devaluation hasn't yet occurred, despite substantial devaluations in neighboring Ukraine and in Russia, which has a strong influence on the Moldovan economy) and a deflation of the property bubble which has blown up in Chisinau in recent years.

The fact is that in recent years the dramatic growth in remittances sent home by migrant laborers has contributed greatly to a stability which may prove to have been illusory, much as soaring oil prices contributed to a sense of stability in Russia which the financial crisis has called into question. While I certainly hope, for the sake of my Moldovan friends and relatives, that the country can maintain at least a sense of stability, it looks as though it may be headed for more uncertain times.

Hiatus, interrupted

Buster has helped me realize it's OK to talk about blogging dry spells. I hope to put a couple of things up today / tonight but then may go back into hibernation for a bit.

Here's a story about a wonderfully human experience - so elusive in Moscow - by an old banya buddy (no jokes!) of mine.

A Gift for Reading Hall No. 1
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 3, 2009
By BRYON MACWILLIAMS

Moscow

I walk past the long line of people waiting to check their coats in the grandiose atrium of the Russian State Library. I stop next to the first person in line, a young woman. I smile, shed my wool overcoat, lay it across the counter.

An elderly woman in a dark blue smock approaches. I hand her my coat. "I'm in the first hall," I say.

"So what?" she says. "That doesn't make a difference anymore. We're all equal now."


I look at the young woman next to me. She looks down. I had not meant it that way, as if I were somehow exceptional. I was merely following the rules: Veterans of World War II do not need to wait in line, nor do those like me, those in Reading Hall No. 1.

Engraved into a brass plate on the tall, heavy wooden doors of the reading hall are the words, "For Professors, Academicians, and Doctors of Science." I am none of those. To the pensioners who work the coat check, it is apparent. Sometimes they glance at my library card to verify that I am telling the truth. Sometimes they look at me as if I were crashing a party — or, rather, the elite club as intended by the Communist Party.

I was placed in the first reading hall in the mid-1990s, when the Russian government still honored Soviet traditions of granting certain privileges to certain foreigners. Today the government is not enamored of foreigners, especially foreign journalists. Today I would be put in a reading hall that is less exclusive, and more crowded. I am a holdover from another time. And I am grateful.

For me, Reading Hall No. 1 is a retreat from the grim energy of this megalopolis, and from the things I do to avoid sitting still and working — sleeping, snacking, surfing the Internet, talking to friends, and chatting up women. Here in the first hall, the rules are different. I can request as many books as I want. I can keep books without renewing them for five days, not three. I can hold them for two months, not two weeks. I can also use a laptop for long periods; it is the only hall with electrical outlets. Most importantly, though — for a guy without a girlfriend, kids, or even a roommate — the reading hall is a place where I can labor at a solitary task, among people. Usually the people at the reading tables are much older men, in down-at-the-heel shoes and threadbare suits, who, one librarian told me, have been coming to the library for 50 years, "who come here for themselves, for the soul."

"It was conceived as a place for our very best specialists — those who love to read, and love the library. A special level, a very special level, was necessary, because important scientists sit here. They need quiet, they need comfort," Lyudmila Koval, head of the Museum of Library History, told me. "Of course it is splendid for a reader to walk in and, all around him, there is a kind of aura that is uncommon, extraordinary."

The reading hall is extraordinary. The ceiling is some three stories high, as are the banks of windows that overlook the crenelated walls of the Kremlin across the street, and, within, the golden domes of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. In late morning the daylight drifts cool through gauzy white curtains that hang like crepe, accenting the faux-marble swirls of the imperious columns, and the grain of the shellacked wood of the reading tables. In early evening the muted light of the chandelier and the brass lamps with green lampshades bestow a cozy atmosphere, like that in a study at home.

For me, though, the uncommon aura of the reading hall is composed less of notions of grandeur and more of elements that are without pretense. The librarians, all women, are attentive, patient, helpful; sometimes they cut corners to get me a book. Moreover, they have introduced to the hall a dimension that was not envisioned by the architects in the early 1900s: In Reading Hall No. 1, there always are more plants than people.

Recently I counted 76 plants on the parquet floor, on the recessed window sills, and on bookshelves that serve as privacy screens on the reading tables. There are split-leaf philodendrons, creeping vines native to tropical rainforests in Central America. There are spider plants and tubular white arum lilies, natives of Africa. There are jade plants and Christmas cacti. There are ferns and ivies. There are hoyas in bloom, and begonias and hibiscuses that are not. All were brought from home, by the librarians.

There is an orange tree. There are lemon trees, and young date palms with spindly leaves. All of them were grown from seeds of fruit eaten by the librarians, and their families, at home. None of the trees actually bears fruit; this is the 55th parallel, after all. But the leaves of the plants are lush and, like all the surfaces in the reading hall, without dust.

When I moved to Russia, in 1996, I did not expect to see tropical plants. I expected gray skies, scarce sunlight, and long, cold, dark winters. Snow and vodka, yes. Split-leaf philodendrons, no. Yet just about everywhere I have reported, diverse places in each of the country's 11 time zones, I have seen exotic plants in public buildings, primarily universities and scientific institutes. They are tactile expressions of the human spirit, a devotion to beauty, and life, in dilapidated surroundings.

Everywhere, perhaps without exception, the caretakers of the plants are women. In Reading Hall No. 1 they are Oksana Sakharova and Natalya Lionova, librarians who arrive at 8 a.m., an hour before the library opens, and fill a half-dozen five-liter jugs with water from the private lavatory of the library's director. They transport the jugs in a stainless steel tub, on wheels. They let the water sit for a day, to allow chemicals to evaporate. Then they water the plants, together, over the course of about an hour.

Other librarians from other reading halls "come in and steal them," Ms. Sakharova told me, smiling. "I even have had to hide plants." The pilfering has less to do with avarice, she said, and more to do with the popular belief that one cannot rely on the health of plants purchased in stores, that "for a plant to live, it's best ... not to pass up a chance to break off a piece."

Some of the plants were donated by readers. "This palm tree was shipped to us by a reader from the Crimea," Ms. Sakharova said. "The coffee plant — see the tall one with the red fruit? — was given to us by a reader from Sochi," also on the Black Sea.

Others — more than a dozen — were donated by me: a tall palm grown from a coconut brought back from Sri Lanka; another palm, smaller, that was given to me by a friend. I've donated plants, native to regions from South Africa to South America, that I grew in the seven apartments I have rented over the past decade. I gave them to the hall because I am leaving the country soon. I am working here for possibly the last time. I am researching a book, my first.

I donated the plants because I wanted to give something back, something living. If my book is published, I will mail a copy to the librarians, who will place it in bookcase 43 N. 1, beneath the sign "Gifts from Readers," on a shelf near Soviet-era books like The Arithmetic of Infinity and Cosmonautics and Rocket Building, and more recent titles like From Where, and Toward What, Goes Russia?

The other day I asked a pensioner at the coat check what will happen after I leave, after my library card expires. If I come back, can I still work in the Reading Hall No. 1?

"Of course," said the woman in the blue smock. "Why couldn't you? Just stand here, and you'll always get a special place. Just come right here, and we'll take care of you."

Bryon MacWilliams reported from the former Soviet Union for more than a decade. He is writing a book about Russia through the culture of the banya, the Russian steam bath.
http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 55, Issue 30, Page B20