Abstract
Since independence, nationalism has been at the front of politics in the Republic of Moldova in the context of a persisting political struggle about the very definition of the Moldovan nation. Looking at campaign video clips produced in 2009 by Moldovan political parties and using a methodology inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis, the article gives a better understanding of nationalism in Moldova nowadays. The article demonstrates that the focus of political parties on the nation is purely symbolic. They adapt their discourse to the context in which they evolve (audience of the videos and targeted voters). Pursuing the objective of gaining or holding on to power, parties construct an ad hoc nation whose content they fill with the needs of the moment, using mirroring arguments to win the elections over competing parties seen as enemies of an endangered country.
In the Republic of Moldova, nationalism has been very much at the front of local politics since becoming independent in 1991. 1 Indeed, twenty years after its independence was proclaimed, Moldova still appears to be an “un-realized” nation-state, where “different organizations, parties, movements, or individual figures within and around the state” are “competing to inflect state policy in a particular direction, and seeking, in various and often mutually antagonistic ways, to make the state a ‘real’ nation-state, the state of and for a particular nation.” 2 The Moldovan Communist Party (Partidul Comunistilor din Republica Moldova [PCRM]), which held power between 2001 and 2009, and their opponents from the Alliance for European Integration (Alianta pentru Integrare Europeana [AIE] followed in 2013 by the Pro-European Coalition), which has been in power since 2009, constantly seem to be struggling over what the Moldovan nation is, and who constitutes ethnically the core nation of the republic. Between 2001 and 2009, the communist vision of the nation, called Moldovanism, prevailed. Boasting the existence of a Moldovan people different from neighboring Romanians, it was put into practice via several policies (re-writing of history textbooks, language and cultural policies, etc.). This Moldovan nationalism, originating in a Soviet justification for the inclusion of Moldova in the Soviet Union, has been fervently contested by some of the AIE parties, which can be seen as “Romanianist” and consider Moldovans to be Romanians who were separated artificially by the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union.
In light of the developments of these two oppositional visions of the same nation, 3 Moldova can be seen as a “nationalizing state,” 4 in which parties in power intend to implement policies aimed at strengthening either a “Moldovanist” or a “Romanianist” nation. This struggle is the main focus of the present article, which analyzes the internal “arena of struggle” 5 at a given time. In 2009, Moldova was host to two legislative elections: the first on 5 April and the second on 29 July. After eight years of communist rule, the 5 April elections marked a new victory for the PCRM. Nevertheless, after violent demonstrations in Chişinău (the capital city of the country) on 7 April, political tensions between the communists and the opposition parties grew to the point of institutional impasse. While the elected communists held a parliamentary majority of 60 seats out of a total 101, they lacked the 1 seat needed to proceed with the election of the president. The oppositions’ deputies under the then-established AIE coalition categorically refused to cede this one vote to the communist candidate, and boycotted the voting session. Thus, early elections were called on 29 July. A new electoral campaign began in the aftermath of the April demonstrations, with all the electoral candidates positioning themselves around what have generally been referred to as “the Events” or the “Revolution.” This particularly polarizing campaign is the departure point of the present article. It serves as a fruitful locus for analysis of competing Moldovanist and Romanianist nationalisms, since in their campaigns all of the electoral candidates invoked the protection of the country, the preservation of its sovereignty, and its statehood against internal or external enemies. Following Greenfeld, Calhoun, Özkırımlı, or Wimmer, for whom the nationalist discourse is the ultimate framework of explanation and legitimation of the present world, 6 the aim of this article is to decipher the discourse of the competing parties during a campaign which focused on the Moldovan nation. Nationalism is seen here as a discourse, a social practice which assumes a dialectical relationship with its context: the context shapes and impacts discourse, while discourse impacts political and social realities. 7 The aim of the article is thus twofold: firstly, analyzing the way competing parties construct discursively a nation in the context of the 2009 early elections campaign; secondly, relating their discursive constructions to the particular context of these elections in particular and of independent Moldova in general.
On the basis of this definition of nationalism as discourse and on the basis of the double objective of the research, the analysis is based on the 28 parties’ electoral campaign videos, which came right after the “Events.” 8 These videos were produced by each political party at the beginning of the campaign to be broadcast on television and/or online. All of the videos produced were taken into account for the analysis: nine in the case of PCRM, eighteen in the case of the AIE coalition (five in the case of the “Our Moldova” Alliance [Alianţă “Moldova Noastră,” AMN], seven in the case of the Liberal-Democrat Party of Moldova [Partidul Liberal-Democrat din Moldova, PLDM], three in the case of the Liberal Party [Partidul Liberal, PL], and three in the case of the Democratic Party of Moldova [Partidul Democrat din Moldova, PDM]. These videos are mostly available in Romanian and/or Russian, the two versions usually completely overlapping. On the basis of these videos, the methodology was deployed in three steps, drawn from the Vienna school of critical discourse analysis (CDA). 9 The first step has consisted in the identification of the content or topics that the political actors tackle in their videos. The second step has consisted in a comparative analysis of the discourses and the ways those topics were tackled by the parties in the videos. Therefore, besides the depiction of what is being said and shown in the clips, the article gives account of how it is being said and played out by political actors during the campaign. Indeed, specific usages of language and images play an important role in the construction of subjects, categories, and identities. Different categories of lexical units, syntactic devices, and discursive strategies were looked after in the videos. 10 The last step has been to relate the findings to the context in which the discourses evolve. Indeed, the approach is “discourse-historical,” meaning that the “context” is an inherent part of the analysis. 11
The “Events” of April 2009
Before proceeding to the analysis, we shall introduce a few contextual elements related to the outburst of violent demonstrations following the 2009 Moldovan legislative elections. This will allow us to understand how and why the discursive constructions of the parties matter in 2009 and in contemporary Moldova in general.
The Republic of Moldova gains independence in 1991, on the ruins of the Soviet Union. In King’s terms, the Moldovan history tells something unconventional: Unlike the other constituents of the Soviet Union, Moldova was the only union republic whose majority population was culturally bound to a nation-state across the border and therefore the potential object of irredentism, a situation that simply replayed within the socialist camp an older confrontation between the Romanian kingdom and the Russian empire. For this reason, the Moldovans have long been the object of intense nation-building projects, designed either to convince them of their separateness from the Romanians or, when under Romanian rule, to convince them that their purported separateness was a fiction of Russian propaganda.
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Powers ruling Moldova implemented respectively their own assimilation policies, transforming, or at least trying to transform, the Moldovan society according to their own plans: the Tsarist Empire between 1812 and World War I, Greater Romania in the inter-war period, and the Soviet Union from World War II to 1991.
At the end of the 1980s, Moldova can be seen, according to King, as a “populist dream”: it shows an economy based mainly on agriculture, a largely rural society where the countryside is predominantly inhabited by members of an indigenous ethnic group, and urban centers where a mass of newcomers from the countryside are in competition with people seen as “foreign” who have traditionally held the reins of economic and political power. 13 Relying on this “dream” and following Gorbachev’s reforms, the Moldovan independence movement, led by the Popular Front of Moldova (FPM), takes a strongly Romanianist stance pushing for the reaffirmation of the historical links between Moldovans and Romanians. Nevertheless, a fracture line emerges slowly among the FPM, between its more radical Romanianist members, who advocate the destruction of the Union and unification with Romania, and its more moderate members, who seem satisfied with local control of cultural and economic resources in a new Soviet federation. As relations with Romania culminate, the multiethnic coalition that supported a general restructuring of the republic implodes. Gagauzi and Transnistrians leave the movement, the first against the importance assumed by a new generation of leaders and the second against laws raising fears of a forced cultural assimilation.
Independence is gained in 1991, and the newly independent Republic of Moldova emerges as a case of “pluralism by default” 14 in which the elites have benefited from the weak networks from Soviet times. These elites are characterized by a strong individualism, in the context of political polarization on the issue of identity. Moldovan elites indeed engaged in identity politics after independence in 1991 and all through the 1990s and the 2000s mainly because of three factors: the conflict between Moldova and Transnistria, which polarized the cleavage between communists and anticommunists in a context of new elites, all of whom came from the old regime 15 ; the electoral system of proportional representation in a single constituency, which discourages the creation of strong and stable parties; and the sequence of electoral events, which forced parties to be permanently campaigning and prevented any major reform. 16 Identity has remained a “safe haven” for politicians 17 and the elites in power have been permanently “Moldovanist,” building “legitimacy by history, by values used to define a Moldovan specificity significant enough to justify, beyond the geopolitical circumstances, a distinctive statehood.” 18 At the turn of the year 2000, in the context of a deep economic crisis and political instability, the Party of the Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) uses a discourse of struggle against poverty and regaining dignity. The PCRM obtains just over 50 per cent in 2001 and comes to power with a majority of 71 seats in the 101-member parliament. During their period in power from 2001 to 2009, the party advocates for a Soviet-based version of the Moldovan nation. The PCRM and Vladimir Voronin, leader of the party and president of the Republic from 2001 to 2009, emphasize the existence of a Moldovan nation.
After eight years of neo-communist rule in Moldova,
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legislative elections are called for 5 April 2009. Before the elections, party campaigns are marked by multiple violations of the country’s electoral legislation: there are problems with the use of public resources, pressure and influence on the voters and runners of the election, partisan news programs, etc.
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After a quiet election day, preliminary official results are made public by the Central Electoral Commission on 5 April: 59.52 per cent of the 2.5 million Moldovans with the right to vote take part in the elections and give 49.91 per cent of their votes to the PCRM, making the party victorious for the third consecutive time. Together, the opposition parties obtain about 35 per cent.
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Following these preliminary results, a demonstration is held in Chişinău’s main square, challenging the election outcome. The protestors declare 6 April 2009 “a day of national mourning” and another protest is held on 7 April. On the morning of 7 April, approximately fifteen thousand young people gather in downtown Chişinău in order to protest against what they call “rigged elections.” At about 12:00
Ratifying the official reports confirming the communists’ victory, monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) declare the elections democratic and fair. 25 Because of the limited nature of the evidence presented by the opposition parties, the Moldovan constitutional court chooses not to investigate allegations of electoral fraud. The election is declared legal, and its mandates are validated. Nevertheless, the newly elected parliament fails to elect the new president in two attempts, on 20 May and 3 June. The parliament is dissolved and new elections are called for July 2009. The Moldovan communist authorities allege that these developments are a cover-up for an attempted coup d’état involving foreign special services, and during a TV interview on 29 April, Vladimir Voronin calls it a “chromatic revolution” attempt. On their part, opposition parties condemn “the actions of the communist authorities” and invite “president Voronin not to seek the guilty in other places, but to look in the mirror and realize that he is responsible for the events of 7 April.” 26 These allegations set forth the incentives that guide the campaigns leading up to the July elections, which will be now analyzed.
Analysis of the Electoral Campaign
Compared to the campaign preceding the April elections, the July election campaign proves to be even “tougher” and is considered by Moldovan experts to be a “historical moment.” According to Igor Munteanu, a Moldovan political analyst, “for the first time after the dissolution of the Soviet state, preconditions for a real political guerilla war [are] created in Moldova, [with] the authorities acting as instigators of this war.” 27 The PCRM is playing for a third victory in a row and proves to be setting the tone of the campaign, emphasizing the risks of Moldova disappearing if the “opposition parties” were to be elected. The discourse of the parties described as “opposition parties” by the communists is structurally similar to that of the communists. 28 Both present two main ideas that can be related to the topics identified after a first analysis of the videos: first, they suggest the historic character of the current elections and the need for unity, and second, they emphasize a dichotomy between the sides of democracy and of tyranny.
Variations on the “Moldova” Which Needs to Be Defended
The focus of the campaign is on the preservation of Moldova as a country in danger and the first topic that we identified after a preliminary analysis of the data is “unity.” This section will show how parties discursively construct this country which has to be saved through unity and will ultimately demonstrate that “Moldova” is actually a void concept that is used only for the sake of winning over the other camp and is filled in with different content depending on the audience that parties are trying to reach.
Looking first at the PCRM, it is striking that throughout the campaign, the party is setting the tone of the campaign. Besides the argument that the voters’ decision will be historical, the PCRM insists on depicting the Moldovan nation as being threatened by a war. Moldova must therefore be defended against the chaos which would result from a victory of the opposition parties. This is exactly the message in one of the videos, 29 which shows metaphorically Moldova being threatened by two men dressed in black and trying to break down the door of an administrative building during the protest of April (Figure 1).
Moldova is “threatened” by two men trying to break down the door of an administrative building
Therefore, the country faces destruction in the context of fear and a constant threat that, for example, is put forward in another video.
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The latter is made of a long sequence establishing the link between the past, present, and future of Moldova and introduces the following message: Here your children will live, but you are their memory. It is time that you bow before the ancestors who preserved for you this small but great country. Your time has come. You’re young; you have all your strength. Your heart beats in unison with the pulse of the country, and your blood is part of the blood of the ancestors of this region. So come defend your martyred homeland. Do not waste your youth in the destruction and degradation of your own “self.” You alone decide today what will happen to your country and your region: ruin, poverty, or economic development and prosperity. Those close to you have fought, they have created, they have made discoveries, they have fallen, they have risen, and they went ahead for you, for you to live in peace and they, they have built this country. In your dreams, you always have to leave room for your fatherland.
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This text shows how the link is constructed between the past and the present, as well as the future: following the struggles of their ancestors, the young Moldovans today must bow and make every effort to defend the homeland which had suffered so much. Belonging to the nation is therefore anchored in the past and in the great ancestors of the nation. Images of the video show either the territory which needs to be defended, the present-day Republic of Moldova, or the great figures of the nation, such as Stephen the Great, Dimitrie Cantemir, and Mihai Eminescu. 32 But in both the videos, it is interesting to analyze what images are shown when Moldova is being presented and, therefore, what elements seem to be constitutive of Moldova as a nation. Looking at the images associated with this besieged Moldova, one can observe that for the PCRM, Moldova is mainly a peasant and rustic country. Nevertheless, it is also urban as shown in the images of buildings which were erected in Soviet times. Interestingly enough, Moldova is constructed as primarily religious: three of the six images shown in the sequence contain cult buildings.
Looking at the profile of the communist voters makes clear that the party adapts its discourse not only to the direct target audience of a video but also to the party’s average voters: according to an exit poll in July 2009, communist voters were mainly older than 60, with a low level of education and earnings in the lowest category of wages. The party was also mainly popular among members of ethnic minorities and among ethnic Moldovans living in rural areas. 33 These figures could explain why the emphasis is put on the construction of the nation along the elements described above.
In this framework of showing the defining elements of Moldova as a nation, one of the videos 34 is even more explicit and contains aerial images showing the countryside, a church and a monastery, under the voiceover “This is our land.” Then, Chişinău’s main boulevard is shown with bystanders, followed by a man and a woman in their sixties walking on the same boulevard, newlyweds on whom rice is thrown, a child outside a store, under the voiceover “It is our people.” Then come the images of a passing train at full speed in the countryside and of the triumphal arch and Chişinău’s cathedral—again, under the voiceover “This is our country.” Moldova is therefore sketched once again as a rural and religious country, but also modern and urban, where all the people are called upon to live together: children, young adults and grandparents, who come together to dance the “hora” 35 in Chişinău’s main square, as shown in another image of the video (Figure 2). In this last series of images, the age of the images is striking: the newlyweds and the child seem indeed to have been photographed in the 1970s while the “hora” appears to have been filmed in the 1980s. The “Soviet” impression is then reinforced, and becomes even stronger in the Russian variant of the video, which, instead of the “hora,” which could be interpreted as a “Romanian” rather than “Moldovan” dance, shows a folk dance group representation in the central square of the capital (Figure 3). The quality and colors of that image again appear to indicate that the scene was filmed in the Soviet era. The difference between these two images is striking: it seems to demonstrate that the Russian variant, for an audience made of minorities, avoids showing an overly “Romanian” nation, conjuring the image of a folklorized polyethnic nation as it existed in Soviet times.
The “Soviet” hora
The “Soviet” folk dance
Put together, the main strategy used in the videos of the PCRM is of unification against the risks of chaos, for the preservation of a Moldova which is understood as a quiet and peaceful nation. The nation has a past of Moldovan historical figures and its members dance the “hora” when it is time for celebrating. However, the “hora” is depicted in a Romanian variant, while the Russian variant shows a more “Soviet” vision of the national body. This last element is interesting as it shows a variation in the content of Moldova as a nation. The message differs also depending on the audience: ethnic division needs to be overcome only in the Russian variant of the video. Indeed, when insisting on a Soviet-type folklorized nation, the PCRM shows that Moldova is “our common home” and that everybody is invited to struggle for the preservation of such a nation. In the Romanian variant of the videos, the impression is that minorities are completely absent from the discourse, the Moldovan nation is purely “Moldovan,” and minorities do not have a say in its present-day project.
Going back to the average communist voter, the emphasis on a soviet-based folklorized version of the national body seems in line with the fact that in 2009, ethnic Moldovans were less and less voting for the PCRM (from 68 per cent in 2003 to 31.5 per cent in 2009) while minorities were voting for the party in approximately the same proportion (from 72.2 per cent to 73 per cent for the Gagauz or from 89.1 to 81.3 for the Russians). 36
Looking at opposition parties, secondly, it is interesting to note that they use the same strategies of unification around a threatened Moldova. Indeed, the AMN and the PLDM put forward the same defining elements of the Moldovan nation but in a more modern way. The AMN presents mainly the same kind of Moldovan “self,” made of a modern and prosperous country which has not lost its roots and traditions. Nevertheless, the agricultural and peasant elements of this identity are much more marked, as in a particular video
37
which shows the poverty of the countryside, where houses are in ruins. Moldova is seen as an agricultural country in which farmers are subjected to the yoke of the communists. However, this Moldova can also be modern and prosperous, as the images of a sunflower field and of a meat factory come right at the end of the video to show how the future can be with the AMN. The PLDM introduces images of monasteries, which give a religious and traditional dimension to the country’s identity. One of the videos
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is more interesting, for it traces the day of a Moldovan man in his thirties, taking his daughter to the countryside on elections day: I am a simple man. I have a family, a child. I constantly think of them: how to guarantee them a better future? We have a beautiful country, intelligent and hardworking people. All that remains is to unite to make our lives better.
The images of the man’s journey are interesting: the video opens with a sunny view of buildings in Chişinău. The man goes then to his car in a courtyard of buildings, taking his daughter dressed all in green, the color of the PLDM. He sits her in the back seat and takes Chişinău’s main boulevard. The video then shows a PLDM folder left on a seat. He leaves the city and passes through the countryside, comprising a lake and hills. His family lives in a typical country house with a beautiful garden. The grandmother greets them and they all three go to the village and the polling station. Consequently, constitutive elements of what is Moldova are an urban life that has not forgotten its roots. The little girl is dressed in green, the color of the party, but while the father is dressed in jeans and short-sleeved shirt, the grandmother is dressed like a traditional Moldovan grandmother. The video says nothing about the child’s mother or grandfather, but the “Moldovan” is presented as belonging to his family and loved ones, in a clean and prosperous Moldova, where even the local administration building has been repainted. The video conveys the message that unity is the only feature that lacks at the moment for present-day Moldova, which is depicted along three main very conventional elements: modernity but traditions and family.
In this way, the party follows the PCRM when a strategy of inclusion of all the citizens is used. Another video, 39 for example, introduces representative citizens who explain their expectations of a change of power: an educated woman of a certain age, a simple man and worker, a young urban woman, and a pensioner. More importantly, the video introduces a “Russian” character, or at least “Russian-speaking,” and thus demonstrates that the PLDM is open to all, regardless of ethnicity (Figure 4). In the Romanian variant of the video, the words of the “Russian” are not translated or subtitled: “Russian” citizens will therefore maintain their own identity and culture, without the need for assimilation into the majority population of Moldovans.
The “Russian.”
As for the PCRM, the PLDM therefore uses a strong strategy of inclusion of all, and adapts to the content of its nation to the audience. While the PLDM uses generally a strong Romanianist vision of the nation with little consideration for minorities, 40 the videos can be seen by all on television and on the Internet, and the party has consequently to address the whole population, regardless of ethnicity and language. But the video of the man’s journey to the country is in line with the profile of the PLDM voters: mainly ethnic Moldovans, urban, young professionals under forty with higher education and higher wages. 41 This holds particularly true for another video 42 in which young university students are enjoining their grandparents not to vote for the communists.
Looking at the examples from the PCRM and the PLDM, one can conclude that campaigning parties are adapting the content of the Moldovan nation to the very context in which they are playing—general audience of the media and average voters. Mainly, the Moldovan nation is constructed through clichés about what is Moldova. And this conclusion applies to all competing parties, with minor differences that can be explained by taking into account the voters which the parties are trying to appeal to. Interestingly, as old Soviet-like images are present in the PCRM’s communication, the PDM mocks the party’s videos and even makes use of a parody. One of the PDM videos 43 starts with a sequence showing the countryside and some young girls and a child in traditional dress playing around a swing. The images are accompanied by a melody played on a panpipe, deliberately corny. It ends abruptly with a red flag that is torn and the sound of a scratched disc. The PDM then wonders: “Protecting the Homeland?” or “protecting their party?” in which the “p” in “Party” is written in Cyrillic. Mocking the Soviet clichés used by the PCRM in their campaign, the PDM considers that their national stereotypes are just an excuse to hold on to power. The PDM then concludes: “Their party is not our homeland” and “Political war must be stopped.” The party places itself above the fray and considers itself to be the sole “correct solution” for the country’s problems. The most emblematic video of the party, 44 for example, focuses on the election of Marian Lupu as leader of the party: Moldova is his “true” national interest and the politician is the “correct solution” to end the ethnic war. This is also the case in another video 45 in which the leader, speaking on a neutral background, explains that the “national interest” is not to “plunge the country into crisis” but rather concerns “the lives of all our country’s citizens.”
The War of Good Against Evil
The last section showed that parties make a recurrent use of the Moldovan nation in their videos. Nevertheless, the concept seems to be void and the general impression when looking at the discourse is that most of it is actually devoted to the destruction of other competing parties, seen as enemies. This could be explained by the fact that “Moldova” as a discursive construct is filled with the same clichés by all competing parties: in order to make a difference, each camp has to blame the other one for what is presented as chaos. Interestingly, the arguments raised by the various parties are mirroring in an utterly Manichean manner. This can be best seen when looking at the second topic that we identified after a first analysis of the data, “democracy/tyranny.” Indeed, besides unity, the main concern of the PCRM is to preserve “democracy,” and they promise “stability.” On the contrary, opposition parties intend to fight against what appears as a communist dictatorship. The PLDM intends to bring Moldova back to “normal” —presenting a “nation” unwilling to accept the current situation of the (“our”) country; the AMN wants Moldovans to be again “masters in their own home”—because communist leaders are considered “foreign” to Moldovan interests; the PL wants to bring back “freedom.”
The PCRM shows, for example, the opposition between the advocates of “good” and the defenders of “evil.” According to the party, the voters have a choice between “stability” and “chaos,” “justice” and “illegality,” “liberty of choice” and “treason,” “trust,” and “hope” or “despair.” 46 Choosing “good” seems natural, and the images seem to oblige the audience to opt for the “defense of the homeland” against opposition parties: stability is represented by a young woman who serenely holds her child, while confidence and hope for a better Moldova are represented by children. Opposition parties are presented as being responsible for the outbreak of the 7 April events, because they were allegedly willing to sell out the country to neighboring Romanians. Opposition parties are thus accused of treason. They are the main subject of a video 47 in which pictures of their leaders appear in the foreground with the mention of “lies,” “treason,” and “aggression.” These charges are then joined in an image incorporating each of the leaders: “They have united against you!” (Figure 5).
“They have united against you!”
A specific video 48 then shows the communists’ answer: “No, it’s too high a price!” with an image showing the broken coat of arms of the republic dropped against a tree (Figure 6). The opposition therefore is portrayed as wanting power for the sake of power and as having premeditated the consequent damage. Opposition parties allegedly betray the interests of Moldova and its people, leading them to fall as symbolized by the broken coat of arms.
“No! It is too much a price!”
For opposition parties, the opposition between “us” and “them” is as Manichean as in the PCRM case. For the AMN, for example, a video 49 analyzes History and sketches the opposition between “us” made up of “patriots” and a “them” comprising communists who prove to be against Moldova as a state and a nation when they collude with separatist authorities in Transnistria. While betrayal for the PCRM was based on the intention to sell Moldova to Romania, this video shows that “betrayal” here means conspiring with Transnistria. Continuing to blame the communists, another video, 50 looking like a thriller movie, holds the PCRM responsible for the “great diversion” of April because “Voronin wanted chaos and disunity to lay the blame on others.” For this reason, the “Homeland” should be “saved” from the communists, and citizens should be “masters” in their own home. Responsibility of the communists is again clear. Collusion is clearly established between the PCRM, the police and the secret police, which aims to show that “Voronin wants to create terror and fear to stay in power and to continue to loot the country.” 51
In the same vein, the essence of the PL’s argument lies in ending the communist “dictatorship” and restoring “good” in the country. Thus, the party’s main strategy is one of portraying the situation in black and white. The PL promotes a view in which “we” refers to a Moldova that is democratic and “good,” and in which “they”—composed of the communists—is bad and synonymous with malevolent dictatorship, like in a video 52 which shows how the PCRM stands for “criminal power” and a “liar regime” in a reinterpretation of the party’s initials in red on black (Figure 7).
PCRM for Criminal Power and Liar Regime
Then, as in the case of the AMN and the PLDM, according to the PL, the communist terror is explained in a historical continuity between the Soviet regime and the PCRM. This link is the subject of a particular video. 53 It first presents a sequence of vintage images and videos in black and white: two dead bodies in a desolate countryside, someone on a train behind a barred window, a column of civilians running under the supervision of officers, a poor woman and a child, a mass grave, an officer who shoots a man, Stalin applauding at the podium. These pictures are supposedly representative of the “communist terror” killing, “270,000 people” who were deported to Siberia, “hundreds of thousands of people who starved to death,” and “800,000 people who were exterminated.” According to the PL, it is the “same life” today in Moldova under the yoke of the “new PCRM,” “hundreds of young beaten and tortured.” The voiceover is accompanied by pictures showing a clash between police and demonstrators on 7 April, injuries and swollen eyes, a youth on his deathbed, or another in a coffin. This is “terror” and it must be “stopped.” Consequently, Vladimir Voronin who seems to personify it, like Stalin personified it before him, must be stopped as well.
The PLDM portrays the PCRM in the same way but does so by means of either documentaries or short sketches. A video, 54 on the one hand, focuses on what is presented as a real situation where “PLDM lawyers” defend “two innocent men wrongfully arrested in Chişinău.” The party accuses that Moldovan citizens are not entitled to a fair trial and that they are beaten and tortured. No mention is made of the ruling party, but the collusion between police and the ruling power is implicit. Once again, the party stands in opposition to communism and the Party of the Communists. Here, “being patriotic” means to desire the good of the country, and thus not voting for the communists. Another video 55 shows, on the other hand, a sketch in which two friends are talking in a bar. The first is unshaven and looks exhausted. He explains loudly that times are difficult, because of the communists in power. The other then warns him: “Shut up! Do you want someone to hear us?” One video 56 goes further and shows that “those in power . . . took everything” and that the only solution left to a family is to leave the country. The video focuses on a couple who are seemingly urban and relatively comfortable: the husband comes home from the office and sits down next to his wife while their child is drawing. The conversation is stopped by the mother: “Calm down! Do you want someone to hear us?” (Figure 8). Again, one cannot criticize “them,” not even in the private sphere, because the neighbors might overhear the conversation and denounce the family.
Going back home after a hard day’s work
Conclusion
The objective of this article was first to analyze how Moldovan parties construct discursively a nation at a particular moment and secondly to relate their constructions to the context of independent Moldova. The analysis took as its focus the electoral campaign that took place during the institutional impasse following the April 2009 legislative elections in Moldova and the “Events” that occurred in its aftermath. The article showed that the struggle in the Moldovan political arena was particularly tough, and parties centered on the need to preserve a country in danger using arguments evolving mainly around the two topics of unity and democracy/tyranny.
If we try to draw conclusions from the parties’ discursive construction of the Moldovan nation, two main issues need to be raised. Firstly, in the Moldovan political arena, the analysis of the discourse that emerges from the campaign video clips produced by competing political parties shows that these parties are engaged to a great extent in a kind of “mirror” discourse: communist and opposition parties are struggling for what they both consider to be a “historical” moment, with Moldovan statehood seen as being in danger after the chaos of the April elections. On both sides, the arguments prove very similar, as are the issues addressed and the strategies used—namely, the portrayal of the situation in black and white, and attempts to unify voters under the banner of “real” democracy. Arguments—such as the argument of betrayal—are sometimes exactly the same on both sides, with the only difference being who was seen to be responsible or at fault. Even if the preservation of statehood is at the very center of everyone’s argumentation, on both sides, the most important discourse element rests on identifying who is responsible for this threat, and who has the moral duty to preserve the nation against it. In the same way that the April elections were highly polarized, so too were the April events, and so is the electoral campaign for early July elections. From this analysis, one can argue that attributing guilt, or responsibility, is much more important to the political parties’ discourse than the notion of the preservation of the state of Moldova itself. The parties blame each other, insulting each other in what Lupu calls a “political war,” while scarcely referring to what Moldova is and who belongs to it. The “nation” seems less important here than dragging the competing party’s name through the mud. “Ending the ethnic war” is therefore just a way of being appealing to voters, while in the majority of the videos, representatives of minorities are not taken into account. The use of “nation” here is thus a tool, employed to legitimize a party’s position within the context of an important and turbulent electoral contest.
Secondly, if we relate these mirroring discourses to the general context of independent Moldova, it needs to be mentioned that the PCRM, which was in power until 2009, has generally strongly emphasized huge differences between Moldovans and Romanians, thereby legitimizing the Republic of Moldova as an independent state. Indeed, asserting a unique Moldovan people separate from neighboring Romanians has been the only way to justify the independence of a country that was expected to join Romania when the USSR collapsed. 57 During the campaign, but also on other various occasions, the party nevertheless emphasized a “poly-ethnic” status, in the hope of garnering the electoral support of minorities. For their part, the opposition parties did not actually talk about the nation in meaningful terms, but rather used it to put forward a “democratic” opposition—a force serving as the sole champion of peace in the country. In this manner, they strove to attain power as defenders of an independent republic, without advocating unification with a neighbor. Indeed, doing so would be politically unwise: advocating strong Romanianist elements, such as promoting a Romanian identity for Moldovans, would implicitly call for unification and would therefore render meaningless the existence of Moldova as a state. It would also go against the will of the voters: in 1994, almost 75 per cent of voters and 95 per cent of ethnic Moldovans voted for the preservation of an independent Moldova in a referendum initiated by the then-president Mircea Snegur. 58 Nevertheless, the article shows here that the ‘nation’ is constructed discursively along exactly the same line: modernity, traditions, and family. This conclusion goes along with other comparative analyses of Moldovanism and Romanianism which showed that, despite significantly different points of departure, both nationalisms and discourses were converging, notably on the issue of the exclusion of all minorities. 59
Subsequent developments in the Moldovan political environment are in line with this analysis. A new AIE government was appointed, but no president could be elected since the new majority did not hold the mandatory number of seats (61 out of 101). The AIE candidate, Marian Lupu, was called a “traitor” by Vladimir Ţurcan, a Party of the Communists leader, and denounced for promoting a “radical nationalist policy.” 60 Since the Constitution does not allow for more than two elections in a year, new elections were not held until 28 November 2010. The AIE coalition was formed again, and a president was only elected in March 2012. And even though Romanianist nationalizing reforms have been present on the agenda—including measures aimed at revising the communist history textbooks, commemorating the victims of the Soviet occupation, and reconsidering the status of the official language, among other things—the parties of the ruling coalition have not promoted the end of the Moldovan state and have not tried to unify with Romania, even though diplomatic relations between the two states have warmed since the AIE has taken power.
Thus, one can conclude that in Brubaker’s “arena” in the nationalizing state of Moldova, electoral candidates are struggling virulently. Nevertheless, on the occasion of the early July elections, it is not clear whether they intend to “make the state a ‘real’ nation-state—that is, a state of and for a particular ‘nation’.” Looking at the aftermath of the April events, statehood and nationhood appear to be essential in the discourse—but only for the force of attraction of the word itself. One may comfortably assume that the preservation of the nation served largely as a tool for mobilizing the voters during this campaign—and not as something greater. Ultimately, these circumstances seem to attest to the notion that—in a fraught political context—the most important thing is to reach power, by any means necessary. This relates to Breuilly’s conception of nationalism. In his view, nationalism is primarily “a form of politics,” a political doctrine built upon three basic assertions: (1) that there exists a nation with an explicit and peculiar character; (2) that the interests and values of this nation take priority over all other interests and values; and (3) that the nation must be as independent as possible. 61 In this way, nationalism can be seen as an ideology that is not an expression of national identity, nor an arbitrary invention of nationalists, but as a force that arises out of a need to make sense of complex social and political arrangements. The need is itself shaped by the kinds of intellectual traditions and patterns that any intellectual scheme evokes when it is activated. Nationalists have the same characteristics: they operate from a stable set of assumptions about an intellectual society and its organization, which they relate to their own political projects. They then argue that these claims speak for the nation even though their projects and their implementation are products of a certain situation, rather than an expression of national needs. 62 Nationalism thus depends on a structural change—but the way nationalism is used by players influences it in crucial ways. Following this logic, one can say that actors maintain and legitimize their power via an ad hoc design of their nation.
This conclusion seems meaningful beyond the 2009 context in Moldova and is particularly relevant for understanding nationalism in Moldova in general. Indeed, Moldovan political life has always been focused on issues of identity since independence and identity has remained this “safe heaven” when harsh economic and social reforms were needed. Parties have been occupying the niches of Romanianism and Moldovanism, and some politicians changed even radically their discourse on the nation from one election to another, such as the first president of the Republic, Mircea Snegur, a member of the FPM who changed from Romanianism to Moldovanism at independence and back to Romanianism in 1995 when he understood that his main opponent for the 1996 presidential elections was more convincing on the Moldovanist niche. In this regard, the most interesting idea apparent from the analysis of the 2009 early elections campaign is perhaps that the parties blame each other for the emphasis on reaching power by any means while saying that they themselves are the ones truly fighting for the citizens and for the preservation of the country. While the authorities focused on identity politics, they did not really implement the much needed economic reforms after independence and the country is now in a deep social and economic crisis. The country is often labelled as the poorest in Europe and emigration is massive, sometimes qualified as “total.” 63 In the context of the recent events in Ukraine and the new Association Agreement signed between Moldova and the European Union, it would be interesting to study the November 2014 elections campaign in Moldova with a focus on the construction of the unity and the stability of a nation which has to be oriented towards Europe or Russia.