The recent visit by Russia’s Foreign Minister Ihor Ivanov to Bucharest resulted in an arrangement for the future visit by Romania’s President Ion Iliescu to Moscow. However, it will not be a pleasure junket for Iliescu. He intends to sign an agreement on friendship and cooperation between Russia and Romania with his Russian counterpart. Neither leftist nor rightist Romanian governments had managed to draft a similar document for a decade. And now, a year before Romania joins NATO and on the eve of its possible EU membership, such a major breakthrough has been achieved. What does all this mean?
The answer is quite simple. Russia’s relations with East Central European states have been of late influenced by economic interests. Put plainly, for the sake of the interests of the monopolies it is made of, Russia is ready to make political concessions. Meanwhile, Romania has its own skeletons in the closet. Bucharest has been long demanding that Moscow denounce the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and decide the issue of Romania’s gold removed to Russia in the wake of World War II.
Gold is a material thing and is not worth much compared to gas. And Russia’s Gazprom has declared its wish to gain a foothold in Romania’s market. Meanwhile, the pact is a category of an exclusively historical nature. It would seem a minor thing that Russia denounce this far from commendable document, the more so in its part affected territories now belonging to third countries. Besarabia is the major part of today’s Republic of Moldova (the unannexed part, Transnistria, up to 1941 was the Autonomous Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic {AMSSR} within the Ukrainian SSR). Bukovyna is now Ukraine’s Chernivtsi oblast. Ostensibly, what they are negotiating is an exclusively political condemnation that will be recorded not in the main body of the document, but in an additional joint statement. What a little thing!
But for Romania the establishment of this fact has a special historical meaning. Although Bucharest does not make any territorial claims on its neighbors (perhaps, except for the small disputed Zmiyiny Island), it is important for Romania to stress the very fact of the wrongful annexation of its territories. And that is where opinions differ. The question of Besarabia is rather an issue of inter-Romanian relations and of who the citizens of the present Republic of Moldova consider themselves to be. Meanwhile, in the case of Bukovyna versions are differing. For Romanians, all of Bukovyna — and not only its part with the center in Suceava now in Romania — is the historical cradle of the Romanian people, the heart of its civilization. For Ukrainians, Bukovyna (its Ukrainian part) is a no less important component of national identity that had been unfairly seized and returned naturally not so much as a result of the aggressive policies of Stalin and Hitler as because of its predominantly Ukrainian population. And this is where demographers, historians, ethnographers, and statisticians are brought into play. Of course, it would be far better to simply say that Bukovyna is one of the most interesting regions in Central Europe and that it does not matter what borders separate it but what traditions unite it. This is how the Austrians and Italians solved the problem of Tyrol, their eternal apple of discord. But Central Europe must still mature to see things this way. Meanwhile, Kyiv will hardly applaud the Russo-Romanian agreement, understanding that after the signing of the joint statement of Putin and Iliescu Bucharest might well propose the Ukrainian president sign a similar statement, referring to Russia’s example. But for President Kuchma this is completely unacceptable for the reasons cited. In the best case he will decide that, in signing the statement with the Romanian president, his Russian counterpart simply overlooked the implications this statement will have for Ukraine. In the worst case he will think that Moscow decided to set him up. Neither will be new to him.
