Vladimir Tismăneanu: Moldova’s Revolution Against Cynical And Cronyist Authoritarianism
April 13, 2009 (RFE/RL) — What we are currently witnessing in Chisinau is the beginning of a revolutionary movement. I wish to emphasize this, because revolutions are the only means of action against political systems that are defunct, but refuse to admit it. The political regime in the Republic of Moldova is indeed such a case. The country has been governed for many years by the Communist Party of Moldova (CPM), an unreformed, unrepentant party of the Leninist mold. I disagree with those analysts who consider this party communist only in name, on the grounds that it allegedly reconstructed itself as a political formation foreign to traditional communist principles. True, it would be absurd to assert that the CPM is communist in a classical sense, because things have changed radically in the past 20 years, since the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991. But if one takes into account the CPM’s motivation, its nostalgia for the Leninist past, and the way it rules the country, the CPM led by Vladimir Voronin is the clear genealogical successor to the Soviet-era Communist Party of Moldavia. This is a fact; Mr. Voronin himself has said it many times. He and his comrades have viciously and unswervingly opposed even the most anodyne decommunization initiatives. Moreover, on December 18, 2006, when Romanian President Traian Basescu condemned the communist regime in Romania as “illegitimate and criminal,” Voronin’s party issued an official denunciation of the Final Report of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania (which I chaired), the document on which Basescu’s statement was based.
