From 2004 to 2011, I worked with many Moldovans in the U.K. on building sites. A Moldovian forman had bused about two dozen labours from Moldova. He took a third of their meagre pay each day plus their rent, and kept them all in the same house. He was a very violent fellow. I always wondered why his "workers" put up with him and didn't throw him off the 10th floor. The kickbacks weren't just a Moldova thing. English bosses extorted the English workers. Irish bosses the Irish workers, Albanian the Albanians, the Romanians, Polish, Chinese and Africans did the same to their own . Forget about racism, I have found that people are harmed, robbed, extorted and killed mostly by people from their own country, race, religion, colour, community or family.
True there are arseholes everywhere. But lets face it ... the Americans have the blackest most murderous rap sheet by a country mile for the last 70 years. And I'm kindly leaving out slavery and the genocide of the 100 million natives.
As a Romanian that emigrated to the West, "Not working for Romanians" was one of my principles. Nobody ever condemned me, actually when I say this, people tell me a story about a bad experience of such (not limited to my people).
A principle that holds very much true to most racism is that usually the most racist people are found among the affected group itself. Among the discriminated there's always a need to differentiate yourself from that group, sometimes by pushing down on your own, a lot of people end up hating their own groups like that. It's tragic but very human.
I am from Moldova and still living here. I had participated on some protests against plahotniuc. And at it's peak, his influence was so obvious, that he would make announcements at their party HQ, about policies, laws, decisions... which only later would be approved by the Parliament and Government. He had a corrupt majority in Parliament (his party got twentyish mandates out of 101, but later, through bribery or threatening (e.g. with criminal prosecution) he got more than 50 deputies, so they could have full control over Government, and also adopt almost any organic law. But what was really pissing of - when there were protests in the center of the capital city, a lot of policemen were not watching over the protests, there were only few (the protests were peaceful), but instead were staying in the courtyard of the party HQ, in case the protests turned violent and decided to storm it (which never happened). But it shows his cowardliness from one side, and depressing from other side, that lots of people who should protect the citizens - were protecting him. Strangely enough, right after they lost power, they gave up their HQ office, as they "didn't have funds"... which again raises question - what happened guys? from where were you getting money before, not by stealing from us, by chance?
Wow, as Ukrainian I thought our country is pretty stereotypical oligarchy. But meeeen was I wrong. Like, we have many pretty overinfluential people, but they often disagree and piss off each other. But having one person control the country with such an obvious demonstration of power ... That's wild
@@happyelephant5384at least in Ukraine the oligarchs compete against each other and most of the time inject themselves in support of popular issues to gain the approval of the citizenry. The Moldovan situation is bonkers!
Moldovans have been ruled by outsiders for many centuries, so they will need quite a lot of time to learn to organize themselves and have good governance. Checks and balances will take centuries to form properly.
Move over the border to the Romanian Moldova where it's a somewhat better. At least they speak the same Romania language. It wasn't mentioned in this video that actually there are two Moldovas, one in Romania and the other adjacent independent Republic of Moldova.
Moldovan here, very good analyses, but there is no such language as “Moldovan”. we and Romanians understand each other absolutely well. So saying it’s different languages it’s like saying that the language they speak in Austria is Austrian. No, it’s not. There is just a dialect. That’s it. Btw I have to mention I am not Romanian nationalist, my first language is Russian, my parents are ethnical Russians and identify themselves as such. But they were smart enough to make me learn the national language and by knowing it very well I can say that there are no differences between the language they speak in Moldova and Romania. Just dialects and regionalisms, which all languages have.
@@divelea chill man. Foreigners don’t know about it. It’s obviously a foreigner. I live in Portugal for example and people just don’t know about it, it’s a surprise when they at least know the capital of Chișinău. There are still a lot of people in this world that don’t know that Portuguese and Spanish are different languages, so not everything is Propaganda. It’s a difficult world, you can make a good research, but miss some essential things. But the author just told what was happening during last 30 years of Independency, and he summarized it very well. His theme of research wasn’t nor cultural things nor language issues in Romanian speaking countries. It was about politics and corruption.
If somebody were to say that someone spoke "Austrian" I would just assume, that this person was speaking with a noticeable Austrian Accent because his native language was one of the Austrian "dialects". Of course there is no "Austrian" but some quite different (and for most Germans mostly unintelligible) "dialects". Standard-Austrian-German and Standard-German is very simmilar and very easy to understand. The various (unfortunately in most of Germany almost exctinct) "dialects" on the other hand are NOT and can be as far apart as Dutch, Danish, English and German are to each other. But since there is a common German identity there is also a common German language. The terms "dialect" and "language" are all highly political of course and could be (and of course were) used for political reasons. I guess it's very simmilar with the tongues spoken in this region and, if somebody wanted, he could create a few highly unintelligible languages, based on the local "dialects", but a majority of the people living there wouldn't agree. Am I right to assume this?
Only 70%? I'm sure 95% of Europeans have little idea of how to pronounce Romanian names... or anything that's not their own native language and some mediocre English (myself included, mind you).
As a Romanian, I can only say that it is quite surprising how accurate were the information from somebody who lives in a such far away part of the world from Moldova, but that was to be expected from you. However, I should point out some things which you might have overlooked. First of all, there is no such thing as Romanian language and Moldovian language, they are both the same thing, maybe the accent differs, but that's all, I mean, they are more similar between themselves than Cantonese and Mandarin, for example. Secondly, I think you could have pointed out the links between the businesspeople and politicians and secret services, which is a very common practice in former soviet countries, like Russia and Romania. The businesspeople get heads ups from the secret services, they make profitable business and split the profit with the secret services and this goes too for the politicians. They make a pact with secret services and they get helped to be elected. Many say, for example, that the April revolution from 2009 was a secret blow from the Romanian secret services and for a while Plahotniuc was Romania's guy. Anyway, a very good video from you and many thanks for that!
As a Romanian having visited Chisinau and listening to Moldovan TV, I can definitely say that the differences in language are comparable to American vs. British English
@@The_Ballo Yeah, he tried to make a point. If you google the official language of Moldova you'll see is Romanian, international standards don't view Moldovan as a language. Is like saying people in USA speak American, they speak English same as Brits speak English, there are differences of course, but in the end is the same language.
@@The_Ballo I know they are not, that it is what I am pointing. Romanian and Moldovian languages are basically the same, they should not be representend as something different
Great episode! The sad part is that this is to some degree or another, the story of probably all of the ex-soviet/Warsaw Pact countries. Mine (Bulgaria) has its own version of each of those "characters".
at least we managed to squeeze in to the EU, which provided SOME governance bracket, SOME re-invogiration of the economy and, most importantly, an OPTION for Bulgarians to improve their lives individually (by immigration), if not as a nation on its own land... Moldova is a small, poor and unaffiliated country with already a strong divide in its population. They have a lot to chew on!
It's the story of almost every country with Capitalists in power. But some of them had Oligarchy *and* managed to obtain colonies (and slaves) so ordinary people in them had a better life. But colonies are stopping being colonies now...
@@Daniel1341-t2p - I would not describe the Roman Empire as "European", rather "Mediterranean". Rome failed to conquer Germania and thus half of non-Eastern Europe remained at large from their imperialism (3/4 of Europe were never under the Roman Empire, if we include Eastern Europe, as we should). On the other side it did conquer all the Mediterranean region and integrated it in a single political, social and economic entity. Could this have happened under a non-European power? Probably not, although Carthage had a shot at it. Why? Because Europe is a peninsula of many peninsulas and some, like Italy, manage to provide for a large number of people (in Roman times, when non-Mediterranean agriculture was still limited, and even today). Maybe if the Lydians decided to go naval instead of trying to invade Persia, maybe if Egypt was not already a Greek colony... but probably not: the geography of Italy was uniquely optimal for such endeavor and the context in which Rome expanded was uniquely favorable for them: sufficiently but not excessively influenced by Greeks and Phoenicians, as well as the often forgotten Etruscans, who also came from the East (Asia Minor surely, Troy-related). As for considering it "the greatest civilization", I beg to disagree: it was a very powerful and extremely influential one, comparable to China or India in their day, or Parthia/Persia, their eternal rival, as well. China actually accidentally triggered Rome's downfall by defeating the Huns (Turkics almost certainly) and sending them packing to the west, which in turn, as you surely know, gained control over most of the rest of Europe, sending many Germanic tribes packing to the Roman Empire. They were anyhow, especially as the Empire consolidated, a civilization of lazy oligarchs living on slave labor, who considered work something bad. They shine at military prowess at the beginning but gradually they become relatively poor even at that. IMO the ultimate cause of their deep crisis and downfall was that oligarchic lazy avarice, which sent all the precious metals to Asia in exchange of stupid luxuries like silk and cinnamon. Once the slave-manned Iberian and Dacian mines got exhausted, they got into a most serious economic crisis, which turned socio-political and weakened the state until the barbarians kicked down their rotten doors. I would rather think that other civilizations like Perikles' Athens or modern Switzerland are much much greater than Rome. Persia even was much greater in many aspects like not relying on slavery...
@@Daniel1341-t2pIt was neither in terms of population (many chinese dynasty were, and achamenids too), nor share of world gdp (many chinese dynasties were) or area (mongols)
Great episode, as usual. Just one point: Moldovans also speak a dialect of Romanian. Classifying Moldovan as a separate language was part of the Soviet playbook, to culturally separate Moldova from Romania.
There is no "moldovan dialect". The same dialect is spoken in Romania and Moldova - North Danubian. Dialects of the Romanian language exist only south of the Danube
definitely not a dialect of romanian. the romanian language is taught and spoken in moldova. if you wanted to refer to some differences in the pronunciation, you might want to check the definition of an accent. i do understand that there are some region specific words used in moldova but that is not enough to make it a dialect.
Moldavians have always spoken Romanian, not a dialect, (unless you believe the russian propaganda) Same language & different province = specific accent. Think Louisiana vs New York for example.
hi from moldova! brief and very accurate depiction of what moldova is! some small remark though: moldova and romania have exactly the same literary language. also half of moldova's population are also romanian citiziens (even many of those who don't like romania :)
It all goes back to the ol' father of nations himself Stalin and his policy of resettling Russian nationals within the SSRs and other distinct ethnic regions of the union. This has been a source of discord between the various ethnicities ever since.
@@GabrielRotar Stalin was not ethically Russian (he was Georgian), so he had no any reason to resettle Russians to SSRs, so, he never did that specifically. Russians had been living on lands which then became Moldavia for centuries.
@@maximmaslov3569 if "for centuries", you mean since the Russian Empire annexed Basarabia, then you're right. But no, before that, it was predominantly Moldovan (Romanian), with some Ruthenians (Ukrainians) and Turkic people. Even after 100 years of Russian Imperial rule, only about 10% of the population was Russian (in the 1930 census), despite very clear policies aiming to assimilate Romanian-speakers. If you read any documents from the 1600s or so, Russians were not even close to existing in that region (it was a mix of, again, predominantly Romanians, Ukrainians, Poles and Tatars). Until about 1850, there were only about 1% of Russians in Bessarabia.
It is obscene that a poor country with a population of under 3 million had 70 billionaires! I've written to NPR's Planet Money a few times over the years to do a story on this as it deserves to be more widely known. I'll try again and link to this.
For Russia the corruption is a feature, not a bug. Russia is happy for it's former colonies to be nominally independent as long as they are very corrupt. The corrupt money can flow up to Russian oligarchs as indirect 'tribute' which satisfies them.
@xenialove2032 Romania has its problems but jailed vast numbers of corrupt politicians since joining the EU ruclips.net/video/IqZWApreqoM/видео.htmlsi=BOK-5iDRoxeYKjUf It's why Russia would never join as it's run by gangsters who'd lose power in the EU.
Same thing happened in Croatia. The then ruling political party implemented "privatization" while the war for independence from Yugoslavia was still going on. The majority of the population left their workplaces for the battlefield, and during that time a few (today the creme-de-la-creme of the Croatian political and economic scene) bought and sold the most valuable companies and factories, when the people returned from the battlefield, everything was over and there were no more jobs to return to. Croatia, together with Yugoslavia (although Yugoslavia was not evenly developed, but Slovenia and Croatia stood out) used to be a term in the dictionary for well-being, for Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians, while Romanians and Bulgarians were a term for us for poverty and underdevelopment, and today Croatia is economically at the very bottom of the EU (Croatia is today in the EU what Kosovo was in Yugoslavia), and all those listed above, except Bulgaria, are economically much stronger than us. We used to comment with a sneer when in the 70s and 80s they came to the sea with their burned-out Škodas, Trabants and Polish Fiats, carrying even food with them, so we called them tomato-tourists, and now they come in Škoda Superbs and with a sneer buy real estate from the locals for cash all along the Adriatic coast. And yet, we still vote for that same party from the beginning of the story.
I admit IDK what is going on in Croatia. But if what you say is true, and as we see in Moldova, not even mass distrust and anger form the population result in any overthrow attempts or mass popular upheaval. It means that here too in the West we are doomed if this continues on this path. Central banks creating mass inflation by design, restrictions, censorship, the coming digital currency and identity etc.
@@davidjma7226The Iranian people are wonderful people. I can’t stand their government but the people are great. I’ve met quite a few in the USA. As a matter of fact my female doctor was from Iran. She not only treated her regular patients. She also treated the poor people in our community.
@@laikanbarth Yes, I lived in Iran for two years until recently. They are the most generous, hospitable people you will find anywhere on the planet. The first thing they will tell you is that they are not the Government of Iran! OK, I am biased, I have a Persian wife......but she is the epitome of the kind of generosity you refer to. Always thinks of the other person and people less fortunate. She makes me feel quite humble, god bless her.
Magnificent work, as always. This process is probably at work in every country, to a greater or lesser extent, but here we can see it under the microscope. Thank you for the clarity.
you are right, this is how most systems of governance work around the world. the consequences are starkly visible in moldova because of its tiny size and unstable political landscape.
its not that unlikely. Its delusional to think that other former soviet countries that landed in thr eu didnt have any of those problems, they just mananged to get in before the eternal series of crises started and eu decided to become a closed club. Actually moldova, urkraine and georgia are simultanioisly trying to acess eu and only the former one doesnt have progress as of late
4:09 no such thing as 'the Moldovan language' they speak romanian. Imagine saying austrians speak austrian instead of german, just because the country has a different name
Probably dialect would have been a better word. America and England both speak English, but have many words and phrases that are unique in meaning to them. A couple generations ago they spoke such different forms that US troops in England complained they couldn't understand their British counterparts though both believed they were speaking proper English.
Well there's also Dutch and Flemish languages which are... identical save for pronunciation. Nobody should really care whether you should consider them languages or dalects of each other. Technically a dialect is a way of speech that isn't formalised and evolves wildly, while a language is one that has an official governing body. So indeed British English and American English should be considered languages, not dialects. In turn Bavarian (Boarisch) is not understood by most Germans, but is a dialect, since there isn't somebody formalising it and teaching it at schools in that form. Declaring that something is a dialect can have a bit of imperialistic stink to it especially if the carriers of that way of speech happen to disagree.
Indeed, they've been under many influences like the Ottoman Empire, Romania, Russia, till they finally became the independent Republic of Moldova. Yet to this day there are still skirmishes along the border with the contested Trans-Dnienstria region with a majority of Russian speaking population.
@@BillAnt stop saying moldovans are other nation than romanians, we are the same NATION!!! SAME LANGUAGE, TRADITIONS ETC! russian propaganda alienate moldovans TO THINK THEY ARE OTHERS than romanians , stop bullshit! even Maia Sandu recently fixed this ,officially, that the language of moldovans is romanian ,not anything else "moldovan" (russian propaganda)
Botched land reform? Economy controlled by landed elites? Remittances being a huge part of the economy? Poverty? Even a trafficking problem? A huge and belligerent neighbor trying to exert authority and influence? Intensely corrupt society? That sounds so familliar. My goodness I feel for my Moldovian brothers. Cheers from the Philippines. Lord knows we got the shitty hands in life. We hope we can get through this and experience a democracy that actually serves the people.
While reading this, I was getting more and more confident about our shared nationality. But, I was wrong, luckily or sadly? Not sure what would be worst
as a person from ukraine who studied political science in germany i have always thought that studying mostly eu is a waste of time for ppl who specialize in estern europe and that SEA is a better alternative for comparative studies
Philippines; not a great example of democracy. You got rid of the murdering thug and voted in the son of the dictator. Philippine politics is so depressingly corrupt. ,,, and i can't even blame the Russians for this.
Phillipines is another country which has been under foreign rule for more than 500 years. This means that the people will take time to learn how to handle power and have checks and balances. It is natural to not know what and how to do when you are suddenly free after being a slave since birth.
Businessmen whose business expertise is all just being in the right place to grab things, becoming the political power? Politicians shooting people on a hunting trip and trying to cover it up? "Inflation" for the ordinary folks, record quarterly profits for the rich? Cheers from the USA. I wish this wasn't so familiar.
Thanks for the video! Correction: 4:01 / 8:26 Romanian language and "moldovan" languages are actually one and the same language, the title "moldovan language" was invented by the soviets
Thanks for this insight into this country. American media rarely ventures outside the US except to dwell on how good/bad the US is doing on whatever, so learning about nations like these and their struggles offers a new perspective. Thank you.
You forgot to mention that the Republic of Moldova was caught in between two trading blocks, EU and CSI, and each of those trading blocks limited Moldovan's access to their markets and the access of the Moldovans to work ... the only way out was through Romania. Even for the Russians of Moldova moving to Russia was more difficult and more unpleasant than moving to Romania, getting citizenship then moving further West.
Incorrect, Moldova has always wanted to be part of the EU however they cannot join because they have Russian military stationed illegally in their territory. Also there are some trade facilitation accords from the EU. So no the EU it's their biggest partner with 50 percent of their export going to the EU, and If it wasn't for Russia imperialism they would be in the European Union (63% percent of Moldovan want that)
@@EmilNicolaiePerhinschi I mean, pretty much no country that was part of the soviet union had any choice before 1991 (dissolution of the soviet union), but people even then wanted to be part of the west. Also moldova was part of greater Romania and wasn't really happy when it got invaded by the ussr. So yes, we can say always
@@Hey-uj3eeJoining the EU would have been national suicide as we have seen in Bulgaria, completely sucking up all the work force leaving behind only old people, only subsisting EU grants until dying off.
Not "close similarities" between Romanian and "Moldovan" language, they are the same language. Even the Republic of Moldova's Academy declared that the national language is Romanian language. The "moldovan" language was a politically one to convince people they are not the same people as the moldovans (Romanians) on the other half of the former Principality divided in 1812 for the first time. The naming of the country can be confusing, it is like the North Macedonia issue, as the former antique entity (and Greek speaking) called Macedonia was divided and became part of multiple countries, much of it being in Greece. For many Romanians, the Republic of Moldova has a special meaning: we were the same country, we speak the same language, but we were separated and most likely the only "unification" can happen under a common roof, European Union; but there are many problems there caused by the separatists regions, under heavy (or total) Russian influence.
*caused by the greed for money and ways to own more and more. Any neighboring power has, is, and will use this feat. Countries in such a half baked state joining a half baked multinational organization (eg the UE) will make such organization shift towards their oligarchy's standards rather than being helped by it any day.
@@TukozAki It is way more complicated. In order to adhere, one must satisfy lots of criteria, including corruption fighting, fixing teritorial disputes etc. The last part means that the Transnistrian (probably also Gagauzia) problem has to find a solution before. A simpler one would be for the Russians in Transnistria to attack Ukraine and for Ukraine to finally "close" those Russian military bases, after which, the Russian influence will degrade by itself as it cannot be enforced.
@@ContraVsGigi First, sorry if my pov feels excessively detached to any people in or from Moldova. Question please: Are those 4k Russian troops in Transnistria the main and first cause for the actions presented in this Asianometry's synthesis of the last 30 years? In case not, please why are you focusing on them? Am French btw; as the Roman used to say, « Rome didn't build itself in a week ». Nor did Romania, Spain, Italy, France, Hungary, Germany, Korea or any of the past and present nations on planet Earth.
@@TukozAki No they are not the sole reason, but the one that is a stopper for any change more consistent regarding Transnistria. When half of the historical Moldova principality/region was taken by Russia (or the Tzarist/Russian Empire, but for keeping it simple I will call it Russia) (the other half became a founding principality of the Romanian Kingdom in the XIXth century) the administration had all sorts of decisions to russify the population: deporting some to far away parts of Russia and bringing russians in their place, banning Romanian language in schools in the second part of the XIXth century, changing the name of the country (to Basarabia, which was only the name of the much smaller region in the south now part of Ukraine) and the name of the spoken language (into "Moldovan" language) to try establishing a new identity, changing the alphabet from the latin one to the slavic with cyrilics, inventing a new history to cut it from the other Romanian provinces etc. From this point of view, this clip is either too short to cover these complex things or too simplistic (the subject is correctly presented which is the main thing). To get to the point, one of the Russian tactics applied also in Ukraine, Georgia etc. is to have some russified population or moved russians in those countries and whenever Russia felt things getting out of their influence, interfere. See the invasion in Georgia, to "protect" the russian population. Or in the east part of Ukraine. The ones that escaped this vicious cycle are the Baltic countries because despite having just like Republic of Moldova maybe about 20-30% pro-russians or russians, they had a strong pro-weatern movement, joined NATO and EU, otherwise they would have been invaded a long time ago. Russia helped powerful anyi-western parties in Moldova and, of course, corruption. A strong country, with strong institutions cannot be controlled. The stealing of those billions was made with some Russian help for sure, too. And very corrupt people from Rep. of Moldova usually run in Russia when things get bad for them. The guy with the televisions & political party (some, banned now) is one of them, but he continues to sponsor protests, political movements etc. One of the lasts protests tried to overthrow the current leadership, but failed; see how during a protest they had militarized men in front of the crowd. And this is just a part, the story os longer. Greeting from France, too.
@@TukozAki Forgot to also say that Rep. Moldova does not have a regular army and is a neutral country, this was set in the cease fire agreement in 1991/1992. So at this point in time, they don't have an army to kick the Russians out and set the rule of law in Transnistria. PS2: that Șor guy, the one involved in stealing the billion and trying to overthrow the power, now hiding in Russia, was discovered with another illegality: running the main airport in the country. A company he made in early August 2013 was somehow given the management of the airport in late August 2013. Sure, the corruption chain is way longer, but look who was the beneficiary, the same Șor guy. Btw, that company had 2 Russian companies as owners, fronts for Șor. About 9 years later, a dedicated government undid this in justice (in 2022, I think) and took back control over the capital 's airport. It is truly amazing how powerful that guy became some years ago.
19:15 a very similar thing happened in "the West" in 2007 and 2008. somehow it was necessarry to give the tax payer's money to the richest people in the world. I still don't understand how that benefited us, "the little guys" except nobody got arrested
What many youtubers fail to mention about the past of Transnistria is that it had been founded way back in 1920s by Lenin as a autonomous region within Ukrainian SSR (Moldavian ASSR) to build up tentions between Romania and USSR in hopes of snatching back Bessarabia through revolutionary means (look up Tatarbunary Uprising, Khotyn Uprising and Bender Uprising) The territory it had was double it is today because back then they included a 'triangle' towards Balta which wasn't even a quarter Romanian but was incorporated as a economical capital. But after the successful 1940 ultimatum towards Romania, Stalin, on the recommendation of Khruschev (The same guy who would later give Crimea to Ukraine) stripped Moldova of its coastline (Budjak, Cetatea Alba) and Hotin (Khotyn) region from the newly conquered territory and gave it to Ukrainian SSR in exchange for modern day Transnistria minus Balta region. The official excuse for the "exchange" of territories was to create a more homogeneous population within Soviet SRs. but in reality its because they wanted to create a more secure protected region around Odessa in case things go south and Moldova reunites with Romania hence why also aforementioned in the video that Transnistria had the most infrastructure and supplied the country with electricity, they built it specifically in Transnistria for exactly the same reason, in case of Independence/Reunification, the country remains paralyzed and without infrastructure. The same goes for Cernauti.
bruh are you high? chetnivtsi is a ukrainian city. I am from there, this is not some moldovan territory glued onto ukraine lol Also since when is odesa romanian or moldovan lol? jfc
@@lenas6246 Cernauti fell under Russian control in 1940 after Romania ceded it after the ultimatum (and then assigned to Ukrainian SSR). Before that it was Romanian and before that it was Austro-Hungarian, it didnt say it was "Moldovan" nor did i say that about Odessa. I said that they took Budjak to make a more "secure" region AROUND Odessa.
@@lenas6246як будь яка інша прикордонна територія, це не завжди було Україною. Просто на даний момент всі змирилися з українізацією Чернівців, і це ок.
The Lei is pronounced "lay" It means lion. Mircea is "Mir-Cha" Its my fathers name, he is Romanian Moldovan(the neighboring Provence in Romania, and other half of the region). It is a weird language that requires switching from very latin pronunciation to very slavic. Thanks for showing time for my peoples rarely discussed history.
20:38 Until this point, the story is terrifyingly similar to Hungary's, with Viktor Orban. Down to land privatization, shorter first and longer second terms (still in thia), election law "reforms", the ousted ally (who ran the economy), albeit, it didn't end with prison. The only significant difference is that in Hungary, there wasnt such heist, which had to be paid over 25years, the EU membership of course and the fact that Orban came a decade later (this is actually a big difference). But Hungary "enjoys" the 15 years (and ongoing), complete theft, grab, of private and public sector: first the media, banks, agriculture (as in Moldova), then energy sector, tourism, telecom/internet sector, finally basically everything profitable. No ending of cronies who can look to the mirror after stealing from the public. Today, he is on the peak of his power, owning at least third of the country thru his obvious frontmans, and having total influence on even more share of the private sector. He has the same changing identity what actually keeps him in power (Putin style). They are also looking to Russia, China as ally (even from within the EU), despite their obvious predatory nature (they might get well paid for it). Also similarly, people getting really pissed off and waking up. Don't know if Hungary will go down the same path as Moldova, we will see. A very similar election and power transfer attempt is likely. We can learn from this for sure.
I admire your ability to make informed videos on subjects as diverse as Moldova, Philippines and Taiwan. What is your secret? Are you researching all that by yourself 🙂?
I have visited Moldova and feel bad for its people. There are street dogs attacking pedestrians, Gypsy children begging and the infrastructure is in dire need of repair. At the same time you see some of the most expensive sports cars in the capital Chisinau. The corruption is evident no matter where you are.
When visiting Florida, my family were enchanted by a bright and beautiful young Moldovan woman, who was working at a restaurant. She told us that she was much happier in the US. We hope she's doing well.
Yeah but the mainstream media doesn't report on the many poor European nations. They prefer to be fixated on poor African nations that are RICH in natural resources. There are no abundance of rich natural resources in these armpit nations in Europe. Hence those nations will remain poor unless they latch onto an African nation like France. Speaking of France they too would be just as poor as any Eastern European nation had it not been for them holding on to so called Francophone nations, but their time is coming to an end.
As a Moldovan I say nice work , you cannot change a nation in just such a short time , we had our freedoms since 90s , democracy in England took centuries
Democracy has little to do with freedom and is probably opposed What freedom requires is common law - the same law applies to poor & rich, popular & unpopular, etc If you really want to be free arm the common folk & use only precious metal as money (this should ensure something resembling common law, at least for a while)
@@anonymousAJ Good people to unite. No uniting based on race, skin color, nation, etc, no unitiy with Satan. Only good with the good and take all what is good because it belongs to them. If the satans try to impose on the good people then the good must destroy them. The elections are not only rigged like one of their actors, Trump, says, but its completely fake, its a TV show.
England....you mean commoners subjects and peasants. I just see oligarchs in the West and East... Using technocratic Socialism and consumerist materialism to soothe the masses into a state of comfortable amnesia. Even many Americans are perfectly happy being subjects and pissants today.
@@MrReymoclif714 More like the DC swamp, controlled at the moment by democrats, with rino's taking the helm from time to time to keep up the appearance of a functioning representative republic.
That guy getting shot during that hunting trip reminds me of the death of Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler. He was on a hunting trip with as the aide de camp to Kaiser Wilhelm II. He was giving the Kaiser a dance in a tutu, and during his bows, dropped dead of a heart attack. They rushed to him, trying to remove the shame, but dude had sewn himself into his lady costume. It was a huge scandal. The Kaiser's whole crew were fired, and the people they were replaced with quickly started WWI.
DW had an interview with Ilan Shor a few months back. Interesting piece. The interviewer was pushing Shor a good bit about his connection when the Sor party but he claimed he wasn't actually running it. He's on the lam in Israel BTW.
A small addition at the start of the video. The separatists in Transnistria were helped by the Russian 14th Guards Army to keep control of the region which stayed there afterwards for years. Even now, 30 years later, Russia maintains around 2000 "peacekeepers" in the area, and the tensions were really high at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine since the plan of the "Special Military Operation" called for the South of Ukraine to be taken, creating a contiguous "Little Russia" (Malorussia) all the way to Transnistria.
So what? What will happen if Russia withdraw the peacekeepers from there? Transnistria will immediately decide to get back under Moldova's control? Moldova will start its own military operation?
@@ilyaorlovskiy “PMR”’s reunification with Moldova has already kinda started as a slow process. Tons of people who live there are moving elsewhere. In addition, russian occupation forces who keep the status quo are in a more vulnerable position… It remains unknown what happens next, but a few things can indeed speed up the dissolution of “PMR”
@@naturalnonsense "It remains unknown what happens next" You can easy imagine this. Just look to Georgia. Georgia took control back on Adjaria in a peaceful way in 2004, after long negotiations between Adjaria and Georgia. Russian military base there really helped to stay calm for both sides. By 2007, russian troops were withdrawn. In 2008, Georgia decided to "speed up" and attacked russian peacekeepers in Osetia. You know the result. Believe me, there is no need "to speed up" for Moldova, unless you want to enter EU and NATO ASAP at all costs. The cost may be really high.
I have been told that a distant cousin of mine was appointed US ambassador to Moldova. I think it is Dereck Hogan, but I was told on facebook and I don't feel like going back and looking at my timeline. When I heard the news it was more or less the first time I had heard of Moldova. Since the war, we here more and more about Moldova. At the time I remember thinking that Moldova was in eastern Europe, and I hope he survives.
Derek Hogan play the significant part to remove Plahotniuc from power during the wekk were there was a duality of power Derek Hogan had visited with Plahotniuc and i am not sure what kinda off threats were given but it was within hours that his popet government had resigned and he fled
Dereck Hogan was called in Moldovan politics "The black overlord" due to the fact that he managed to remove Plahotniuc from power by uniting Maia Sandu and Igor dodon
14:01 what exactly is hidden behind "pushback from abroad" phrase? russia didn't agree? us didn't approve? eu tried to influence? ukraine/romania protested? seems too vague
@HaartieeTRUE when he staged a coup - all of them (eu, russia and the us) told him to leave. there are some memes with the us ambassador paying him a visit
It's a natural state of Capitalism. Only if a country has (neo)colonies *and* threat of Communists/Socialists exists Capitalists share some of their wealth with lower classes. Since USSR fell even richest country in the world (USA) becomes a country of poor people and rich oligarchs.
@@weirdshibainuIt’s not about bullying. It’s more that Moldova being a small country, it serves as a Petri dish for Corporatocracy where you can see it’s fast growth more easily.
The geographical consequences of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact should finally be reversed. It's such a shame that Hitler and Stalin's agreement still defines the boundaries of states in Europe. The effects of this pact need to be undone, while keeping the rest of borders inside Europe unchanged. Look at how much Finland, Poland, and Romania lost. Russia has already done enough bad to Europe. The ultimate victory over Stalin will occour, when the nullification of the consequences of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact will take place.
Well, and of course Russia brutally invaded Moldova in 1992 (because that's about as much a civil war as WW2 was one), occupied a significant chunk of it and spends significant effort each year since, sabotaging Moldova from within.
No, it was pretty gentle invasion by Russian standards, you don't need to demonize us, and by "significant" you mean "absolutely minuscule". Where do you live, Latvia? You need to expand your horizons, sir.
You left out the most important player in this equation. After the fall of USSR and the independence, the main trading partner of Moldova was of course Russia. The first show of pro western sentiments led Russia to embargo all Moldova's exports towards Russia and we saw the gas pipe game leverage, from Russia again of course . So, every time Moldova expressed its true fillings it was coerced into unconditional love towards Russia. Guess what Russian did that. Ah yes, and you left out the war in 1992 which was a preamble of what we see today in Ukraine.
Under Soviet “occupation” Moldova was one of the best places to live.. Perhaps, you are too young to know how in the late 80s thousands of Jews and Russians were pushed out from the universities and jobs and were forced to immigrate, leaving this now shit hole to rot in its own inadequates and corruption
It's almost as if Russia doesn't own you it's gas or it's trade, why would they want to make business with someone who is openly hostile? Go beg West for handouts then.
You make a big deal about Russian coercion, but it also left a big opportunity for Western governments to fill in the trade void with Russia and be their new BFF. Did they manage to fill it in? Did they brought the promised wealth and prosperity? Did they stay away from privatization of the nation’s assets? No, they didn’t, right?
Hopefully you will do a similar piece on the various corruptions of Taiwanese, parties both the KMT and DPP. If there were a straits crisis, most of the leaders would leave for their homes in California, leaving the people to fend for themselves.
9:25 - - That statue represents Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldova from 1457 to 1504. During his reign, Moldova defeated one by one all of its neighbors, each of these neighbors being more powerful than Moldova: the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Kingdom of Poland, the Crimean Khanate of the Tartars. With the last it was quite a feat, the Moldovans invaded Crimea and Stephen replaced the Crimean khan with a friendly one - soon to be overthrown, after the Moldovans left, and replaced with an Ottoman-friendly khan, which was the usual status. The Ottomans esteemed Stephen and wanted to have his sword as trophy. This was not possible during the reign of the great prince, but 3 generations later, his grandson being ruler of a much weaker Moldova, he offered grandfather's sword as a gift. Today, in the museum of the Topkapi Palace (a must see in Istanbul), Stephen's sword is the only such exhibit belonging to a Christian, alongside few swords used by Prophet Muhammad and the first rulers of the Arab Caliphate.
this is what moldovans replaced Lenin with. as with Lenin - it's everywhere :) aside of that, he was a feudal from the late middle ages. a bit successful feudal
Great work! Indeed, it is quite commonplace for Eastern European countries' dominant politicians to change allegiance on a whim. The major players of the communist parties during USSR become leaders of the radical nationalist parties after independence. It really puzzles me how damaged these people are. With so much power in their hands, the only thing they can think of is accumulating more wealth as opposed to following through with some sort of vision for the country. I don't even care which vision any more, just commit to something. A very similar situation to the Moldovan bank scandal happened in Latvia which you mentioned. A Latvian bank gave money to a shady Russian businessman, then the bank got sold to the government for 1$, government used the pension fund to cover losses (of that one deal), and then split the bank into two banks: one with good assets, and one with bad assets. Quite a few people got poorer that day I imagine.
Very well presented material as always. But as already mentioned by many, with exception of language. Since independence, all the schools in Moldova teach Romanian language. So nobody speaks "Moldovan language" in Moldova. There is still a minority of people that think that Romanian language should be named Moldovan though. Markedly, in Transnistria, Romanian language is still written in cyrillic and called "Moldovan language".
Known fact, neighbor Romania trying to assimilate Moldova and doing that intentionally and with big effort and applause of EU (Declaring that Moldova is just bad weak part of Great Romania with perverted "true" Romanian language, etc, etc.) Nothing new.
in transnistria neither romanian nor moldovan is written. "moldovan" it's there only to allow them to brag about 3 state languages. otherwise it's a complete mockery, it's not used at all.
@@AABB-px8lcyou are using russian propaganda. We do not want to assimilate romanians from Moldova because we are the same nation from centuries. The language is the same, we can understand each over. Trust me, i was spoken with romanians from Moldova and they are our brothers.
@@kedi1923 as i said above, great Romania, part of it occupited by evil communists and named Moldavia, poor tortured Moldavia ppl keep trying to get rid of avbsolute evil toward drugs-sex-rocknroll-HDTV-LGBT, but being by definition less strong as Real Romanian only achievement is renaming Moldavia to Moldova. But you keep trying, gogo make all Soviet Moldavia to famous Borat abortionist-welder glory. And free weapon to all, btw.
you should know TLDR news is a terrible news source. Their analysis is usually subpar, sometimes terrible. Their analysis of the recent bank collapses were the worst I remember.
I am from Moldova and I consider this land to be cursed for some reason, like all the Balkans region. Probably our forefathers made a great mistake for which many generations should suffer a lot. I don't have another reasonable explanation for all this suffering, oh or probably we are too stupid and just can't figure out how to stop all that nonsense.
What this video doesn't tell you is the effort Romania makes in turning Moldova into a functional democracy since the early 2000, it's sad as a Romanian to see how R. Moldova exists in a perpetual state of poverty and misery.
Great stuff as usual. Perhaps look into a pop filter for your mic or apply a 120hz high pass filter on the narration audio track to avoid low frequency thumps on P's and other plosives.
As a Romanian that has been watching your articles on technology for quite some time, I can only thank you for sharing this bit of history with the rest of your audience, myself included. Sadly, most of the effects of the Soviet period can still be felt in Romania, and even more in Moldova.
lol The so called "Romanian dictator" had just paid off all of your countries debts, and he was conveniently overthrown right before Romania was going to become prosperous.
Partea amuzanta este ca sovietici au fost doar capitalisti de stat, comunismul definit de Karl Marx, o societate fara banii(gen Star Trek ), fara clase sociale si fara stat (anarcho-sinidcalist) nu a existat niciodata
@@obrokbobama6203 - I am no communist, however the Soviets did raise the standard of living and modernized many places. Corruption was not tolerated as much under the soviet system but it was the only way to obtain some goods. Ukraine, Latvia, and Belarus have similar stories, however Belarus is still under a very powerful dictator and a puppet state of Putin.
At first, I was sceptical since Moldova is far from Asia (which I supposed to be your area of expertise). I'm delighted to be proved wrong! Great video! As other Eastern Europeans have noted, the similarities between Moldova's story and other CIS countries are quite-quite sad.
I clicked on the video out of curiosity as I am Romanian, but I just cannot finish it man.. I feel like Moldova is and always will be part of Romania and I hope that I'll get to see my brothers and sisters across the Prut coming home one day and become the one country we should've been this entire time. And it will happen, one day
@@maximmaslov3569 It will. Once Russia realizes it has zero power to protect its failed sphere of influence puppet states, they'll all break off and we'll be happy free people. The infection that is Russia will be cured, eventually.
We all suffer with this in the Balkans. Half of Bosnia and a quarter or today’s Croatia was and is inhabited by Serbs. North Macedonia is inhabited by Bulgarians. Montenegro is inhabited by Serbs. Moldova is inhabited by Romanians. Instead of being properly formed and developed countries we are a hodgepodge of Mickey Mouse states with identity disorders and hatred for our neighbours. Luckily Romania itself is of a decent territorial size and has experienced 3 decades of stability and is on the up.
@asianometry I just need to point out that Romanian and Moldovan aren't two separate languages. Linguistically and now legally as well there is only one language, Romanian.
As a romanian I can tell you is the same language. We can understand each over. The "moldovan" language was invented by russians occupiers to divide the romanian nation. Divide and imperia!
I was not expecting from you a video about my country. I love your videos about microelectronics and is a contrast with Moldova but I truly hope that this contrast will be smaller in future and there will be possible in future to make a video about Moldovian microelectronics 😊
I had no idea about Moldova before. But this is heart breaking. this is what happens distrust in democracy, inefficient government run up to "informal structures". it becomes a vicious cycle of overselling populists and voters in rage by unfulfilled promises and over expectations.
min. 10:10. Name me please one "clan", that you are speaking about? Clan is defined as "A group of people all descended from a common ancestor, in fact or belief, ...". We never had clans, we are idividalists. But you are right about criminal partnerships.
Really great work, I enjoyed the video as a first-time viewer to your channel, but I have one question: How did you go a whole episode about Moldovan ethnic and ideological conflict without mentioning Gagauzia? It seems like a pretty important thing to mention. Maybe worth a follow-up?
That's a communistic statement btw. If we agree to equate those sufficiently rich with immoral oligarchs and thieves, then we admit that we really want to have systematic wealth control, be it progressive taxation or other means of capping the allowed individual/family wealth. I personally would agree that there are certain levels of rich which are very unlikely to acquire by hard work alone, and certainly more can be done towards improving wealth inequality by forcing those excessively privileged to share some of their wealth with those excessively underprivileged (within reason of course, no revolution required). However, I am quite surprised that Asianometry used this title. I get the feeling he is more of a free market supporter, although my intuition may be wrong.
@@ArgumentumAdHominem Aisianometry uses tropes such as "How the rich ate Moldova" and "How Malaysia(or Japan)ate the rich" as headers for discussing economic development in his videos.
To clarify: 1) Moldovan is a dialect of Romanian language. Name issue was finally solved in constitution in 2022. 2) What happened in Transnistria is exactly what Russia did to eastern Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia 2008. Whenever some post soviet country wants to do something of its own(in our case unify with Romania), there's always some pro russian rebellion backed by weapons and people coming from Russia. Been watching this channel for a few years and I'm very amazed that you choose my country to talk about. So cool that there are some moldovans here in the comments, greetings to our whole tribe :)
@@JohnSmith-ez7ip makes sense, so russian is a dialect of chinese ? Let's say your comment is real so here's a real response. Me as a russian speaker, sometimes I'm able to understand a lot from ukrainian, polish or slovak but still unable to fully understand and speak in those 3. But as a speaker of romanian from Moldova(even with heavy russian accent in my case), I am able to easily speak with romanians by making some slight adjustments in pronunciation.
@@JohnSmith-ez7ipukranian at the very least has enough distinctions to be considered its own language. 'Moldovan' is just weirdly sounding romanian. And most moldovans speak normal romanian (without the moldovan accent) in the first place
@@HaartieeTRUE yeah, "ukranian" language has ""distinctions"", simply a polonized dialect. Weirdly sounding Russian basically, and most ukranians speak normal Russian (without the ukranian accent) in the first place.
The common theme in all failed post-block countries (russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova) is: privatisation executed poorly, making only few richest or smartest benefit from it. One regime was replaced with another, often even worse.
Thank you very much for taking an objective outsiders look at Europes most obscure (non-microstate) counzty. Extremely neutral and objective assessment. Funny that you decided to stop right short of the strange situation the country find itself in during the Russian-Ukrainian war. But this is probably for another channel to pick up.
I don't think it's funny Jon decided to stop there. I mean his work here is resuming history, not commenting on the actual situation. And this historian take is what he does most of the time. He probably found this topic because of the role of Transnistria in the actual conflict. If your familiar with this channel, by the time you should have noticed that he sometimes gives some insights in a journalistic/analytic way on the news he is familiar with (mostly located around Taiwan and hightech related), sometimes giving some subjective thoughts and a more personal conclusion, but he never does that on subjects he only knows from a distance. So yeah it's definitively for another channel, written by someone who has his pan-out objectivity but also possesses more than a grasp of the culture and the everyday life of Moldova as well as the conflict itself. A person who can be a source for a future Asianometry video.
@@michaelrenper796 well, next time you should emphasis on the irony because it was far from obvious. Nonetheless, I am amazed but not really amused by thinking the ongoing war is just motivated by a broader imperialism that was carefully orchestrated even before the fall of the USSR.
@@PainterVierax in which part of the world do you live? In Europe we are disappointed, but certainly not surprised by Russian Imperialism. It has been going on for centuries. We hoped and made offers, all in vain, to persuade Russia to become part of the European idea after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The polytechnic university of Chișinău ( or moldova i am not sure) holds a microelectronics contest for students. I think they will be at the 12th edition next year. If moldova would join romania that would make it part of EU and russian wouldnt like to have an EU country next door.
Well Russians shouldn't have a say in which political/economic (or indeed defence etc) alliances nearby nations join. Not to speak of the fact that Finland and Baltics are EU and adjoining Russia and Poland is adjoining Kaliningrad, while Moldova does not share a border with Russia. So like that ship has long sailed; and if you want an alliance, you can't just do it by force, you have to offer something better than another alliance in return. If Russia doesn't have much to offer besides blackmail and passing stinky gas well it only has itself to blame for lack of economic political cultural and scientific development.
A close family member married a Moldovan woman. I went there with them once, nice country, good food, cheap tasty alcohol, strong weed (some cannabis was growing literaly right outside the hotel), friendly people. But even back then in 2014 the capital was full of half-finished and abandoned building projects. All the young people I spoke to had dreams of leaving Moldova for the EU or Russia. If Germany is the "sick man of Europe", what is Moldova...
My dad visited Moldovan SSR...in 1970s he remembers it as if its heaven on earth ...a grown man cried after watching this video...almost . Infact in his entire stay in caucasian republics of USSR he never never saw animosity between any ethnicities....he said peopel were very very aware educated and mature about life in USSR and west..and many of them are still his friends.
@@onupirat they were like that during ussr, nothing changed after capitalism came. that is in fact the problem, the capitalism came upon people that were quite corrupt, lacking initiative and proper legislation
@@onupiratduring commies we were poor as fuck. My family owned a shitty house and a life where they couldn't become anything else because they were farmers. As much as you shit on capitalism, it's still much better than during commies. Better deas that Communist.
Some short remarks: There is "Moldovan" language and Romania didn't invade Moldova in 1941; USSR did it in 1940 as a direct result of their imperial aggression towards all neighboring countries and Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. These seems to be part of soviet history playbook.
The problem is that we have ethnic based voting. We can't choose a political color. It's either pro or anti Russian parties. We are russified romanians plus russian, ukranian and a few other ethnicities. But Russians refuse to speak our language. If challenged on that they cry discrimination. Soviet occupation plan still working I guess...
The geopolitical model of analysis gives another, perhaps grander, explanation of what happened to Moldova: As Russia's Soviet empire was collapsing and its armies were retreating 1000km to the East from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and were soon to retreat from GDR, when everything was crumbling in the Caucasus - the Russians felt the need to salvage as much as they could and ignited several military conflicts, which they themselves later claimed to have helped to put an end to by bringing occupation troops, which they called "peace keepers". The hypocrisy holds to this day, as all the great powers and international organizations still refer to those occupation armies as "peace keepers". Moldova had a brief war with Russia in 1992, which it lost - it couldn't expect to receive the support Ukraine receives today. After the war, Moldova fell for good under Russia's influence. Pro-Russian politicians - corrupt to the marrow - were openly and covertly supported by Russia, the old soviet propaganda narrative of a distinct from Romanians ethnicity was reinforced, even though there were something like 7 million Moldovans living in Romania, and those 7 million knew they were Romanians and not a distinct ethnic group. Coupled with their influence as the main trading partner, their control of energy prices (gas, natural gas, electricity) and a pervasive culture of corruption - the Russians managed to maintain Moldova weak, poor, governed by corrupt politicians, unable to mobilize and grow an economy that would naturally gravitate towards the EU and Romania. But why? Here comes the geopolitical factor: Russia needs - they feel this need - to control key geographical access points to their territories. To the North-West - it's the Baltic States, to the West - Belarus and Ukraine with the gap of North European Plain that stretches from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian mountains, to South-West - the Republic of Moldova, where it can block an army invading from the Wallachian Plain, which is between the Carpathians and the Black Sea. Russians always knew that Moldovans were Romanians, despite their list of successes in sowing confusion in the minds of many Moldovans (propaganda works). So the Russian objective in the region was to do whatever it takes to avoid a unification of Moldova with Romania, which in turn would bring NATO to the river Nistru / Dniestr, close to Odessa (once the jewel of the Russian Empire) and with the ability to push Russia away from accessing the Danube. (Despite having no geographical contact with the Danube, Russia still holds a chair in the Danube Commission, which it inherited from the USSR.) Such development would have been perceived by Russians as a great security crisis. In this bigger picture, whoever was supported in his endeavors to rob Moldova comes as one of many details of how a geopolitical vision was enforced by a geopolitical actor - Russia.
russia has nukes and the west wanted to integrate it in theyr economyes and societies, russia could have become a second america on the globe promoting freedom and democracy, and keeping in check the americas exceses , theyr formal empire would have naturally gravitated twards them , but in a democratically and non predatorial fashion, just like with germany and the eu and japan with south east asia, but noooo, russia didnt want to help the world, it wants absolute power to enforce its power based culture on everyone it can and steal its neighbours land resources and counciosness, instead of actually building something. thank god china isn't tempted to promote separatism movements in siberia and engulf all of central asia into its sphere, well played russia. not to mention the accidentl risk of human anihilation, all in the name of a bunch of power hungry gangster maniacs supported by a bunch of sadistic distorted cowards
We have a great example of Canada where the significant French minority co-exists with the English speaking majority and not have their customs, culture and language suppressed. Unfortunately these National Fronts of the former USSR republics were built on extreme majority nationalism which left the minorities little choice but to rebel. In Transnistria both Russians and Ukrainians joined forces and fought together against the Romanization.
@@vladimirrodionov5391 Ah, good old evil Russian propaganda. You slipped in a few untruths, or as we, extremists, call them - "lies": Romania has absolutely no problem with its minorities - they have their own MPs, they have ethnic political parties with a say in the country's political course. There was no ongoing "romanization" in a Romanian country - which Moldova was and is. Whoever denies that Moldova is inhabited by an overwhelming majority of Romanians - is a propagandist, a wannabe propagandist, a liar, or a fanatic. As I said - something close to 6 or 7 million Moldovans lived in Romania as Romanian citizens, and they all knew they were Romanians. It is only in Moldova, where the Russians conducted their dehumanizing mass psychological experiments, that a Romanian can consider himself something distinct from a Romanian. Regarding the 1992 war - that war was, as I explained above, artificially ignited by Russia with the purpose of maintaining a military presence in the Nistru / Dniestr region in a time when its entire security architecture was crumbling. I remind you: Russia's armies were retreating east more than 1000km - that is a military disaster, they felt something had to be done. And as you always have to frame a war as a just war - Russians made out of nowhere the narrative that the Romanians were fascists, that they intended to conduct ethnic cleansings - do you sincerely have any precedent for anything like that in Moldova and Romania? Or are you going to lie again? Consider the post-war period: have there been any ethnic tensions in Moldova? Are you going to lie that Russians are discriminated against in Moldova when they can't speak Romanian after 32 years of independence? Moldovans usually still switch to Russian. Also consider the absolutely bogus pretext under which Russia invaded Ukraine - would you deny and lie that the pretext was legitimate? The Moldo-Russian war of 1992 and the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine were done under similar concocted pretexts: that the Russians were being murdered by nationalists, whereas the real reason was securing control over strategic territories. I suggest you drop you lies, forget about Russian greatness, stop being an enemy to you own fellow countrymen and tell you friends and relatives that the reunification with Romania is the right thing to do. Moldova has already lost half its population - it's demographically dead, it's time to think of what can be saved.
One of the rare historically accurate posts in Moldovan history. The same inhuman governance was applied in Romania, but with the country being somewhat richer and larger we were partially saved by EU membership. I feel the pain of our Moldovan neighbours. I wish them well in a world that limits justice to just a fiew.
Quite literally none of this is applicable to romania. Romania was always a successful nation, it had its bad leaders but so did France and Germany...romania is quite literally the 4th largest eu power by both strength and richness...I don't think they're similar in that context at all, Moldova is literally one of the poorest countries in Europe, romania is one of the richest, and this has stood true for decades, centuries for romania, even during its switch from "communism" the economy was still impressive.
@@tortellinifettuccine he was referring to the psychology of the people in the 2 countries Beeing similar manipulated by former communist secret service cunts that turned politicians, with both countries having a severe lack of civic education in theyr population that prevent them from achieving theyr full potential but with moldova Beeing a far worse manifestation of this because most politicians were former russian kgb or kgb native traitor collaborators and russian hindering at every step of the way any chance of development through war, the threat of war , propaganda and a lot of agents running the economy and politics . And it is true what he said, the eu helped romania a lot psychologically to stabilize and keep romania on a right course, given the abusive self harming, self loathing somewhat vicious and ptsd plagued psychy of the romanians and Moldovans that suffered under 2 of the most brutal authoritarian genocidal regimes in modern european history. If ro wasn't in the eu, romania would have been worse than ukraine with a similar chance of breaking up like yougoslavia due to a lot of external intervention by hungarians, russians and lack of competent leadership and general hostility in Europe's public eyes due to a lot of targeted denigrating smearing of romanians by foreign aholes with an agenda . Given the industry we had and lack of debt, if we had half as shitty treatorous politicians that we had and have, romania with smart rrtechnologyzing of the industry, now romania should have been industrially self sufficient in all aspects with a standard of living of that of germany at least if not higher, but hey, at least we got to own our apartments that we built during the communist era, and we managed to build new houses by degrading ourself as near slave labourers to hedonistic infatuated western dks that bribed our politicians into selling our industry for scrap value and not building nothing in return. So yeah, good part we still have our future that it's up to us to build for ourselfs, this time having hopefully a better foundation, at least if we wake up that is from the mental laziness that this shitty modern world induces.
From 2004 to 2011, I worked with many Moldovans in the U.K. on building sites. A Moldovian forman had bused about two dozen labours from Moldova. He took a third of their meagre pay each day plus their rent, and kept them all in the same house. He was a very violent fellow. I always wondered why his "workers" put up with him and didn't throw him off the 10th floor.
The kickbacks weren't just a Moldova thing. English bosses extorted the English workers.
Irish bosses the Irish workers, Albanian the Albanians, the Romanians, Polish, Chinese and Africans did the same to their own .
Forget about racism, I have found that people are harmed, robbed, extorted and killed mostly by people from their own country, race, religion, colour, community or family.
Yep most crime against black people is committed by other black people.
Nope not religion
True there are arseholes everywhere. But lets face it ... the Americans have the blackest most murderous rap sheet by a country mile for the last 70 years. And I'm kindly leaving out slavery and the genocide of the 100 million natives.
As a Romanian that emigrated to the West, "Not working for Romanians" was one of my principles. Nobody ever condemned me, actually when I say this, people tell me a story about a bad experience of such (not limited to my people).
A principle that holds very much true to most racism is that usually the most racist people are found among the affected group itself. Among the discriminated there's always a need to differentiate yourself from that group, sometimes by pushing down on your own, a lot of people end up hating their own groups like that. It's tragic but very human.
I am from Moldova and still living here. I had participated on some protests against plahotniuc. And at it's peak, his influence was so obvious, that he would make announcements at their party HQ, about policies, laws, decisions... which only later would be approved by the Parliament and Government. He had a corrupt majority in Parliament (his party got twentyish mandates out of 101, but later, through bribery or threatening (e.g. with criminal prosecution) he got more than 50 deputies, so they could have full control over Government, and also adopt almost any organic law. But what was really pissing of - when there were protests in the center of the capital city, a lot of policemen were not watching over the protests, there were only few (the protests were peaceful), but instead were staying in the courtyard of the party HQ, in case the protests turned violent and decided to storm it (which never happened). But it shows his cowardliness from one side, and depressing from other side, that lots of people who should protect the citizens - were protecting him.
Strangely enough, right after they lost power, they gave up their HQ office, as they "didn't have funds"... which again raises question - what happened guys? from where were you getting money before, not by stealing from us, by chance?
Wow, as Ukrainian I thought our country is pretty stereotypical oligarchy. But meeeen was I wrong. Like, we have many pretty overinfluential people, but they often disagree and piss off each other. But having one person control the country with such an obvious demonstration of power ... That's wild
@@happyelephant5384at least in Ukraine the oligarchs compete against each other and most of the time inject themselves in support of popular issues to gain the approval of the citizenry. The Moldovan situation is bonkers!
Moldovans have been ruled by outsiders for many centuries, so they will need quite a lot of time to learn to organize themselves and have good governance. Checks and balances will take centuries to form properly.
@@hydrolifetech7911so who is the main guy running things in Moldova right now ?
Voi ati vrut asta, cum zici tu, sunt doar cativa la proteste. Asa cum e si in Romania de altfel.
As a Moldovan I can say that I hate my life
O sa vina si vreme mai buna.
@@ecoandrei328 Sper, frate :(
I feel for you..
At least have great song all time 😊
Move over the border to the Romanian Moldova where it's a somewhat better. At least they speak the same Romania language.
It wasn't mentioned in this video that actually there are two Moldovas, one in Romania and the other adjacent independent Republic of Moldova.
Moldovan here, very good analyses, but there is no such language as “Moldovan”. we and Romanians understand each other absolutely well. So saying it’s different languages it’s like saying that the language they speak in Austria is Austrian. No, it’s not. There is just a dialect. That’s it. Btw I have to mention I am not Romanian nationalist, my first language is Russian, my parents are ethnical Russians and identify themselves as such. But they were smart enough to make me learn the national language and by knowing it very well I can say that there are no differences between the language they speak in Moldova and Romania. Just dialects and regionalisms, which all languages have.
as a romanian ,i would like to thank you for speaking out the truth even though you could be seen as going against russia's external policies.
🥹🥹 God bless your family
I started to read the comments before watching. If it says moldovan language in the video, this video is crap and propaganda. It's 2023 ffs.
@@divelea chill man. Foreigners don’t know about it. It’s obviously a foreigner. I live in Portugal for example and people just don’t know about it, it’s a surprise when they at least know the capital of Chișinău. There are still a lot of people in this world that don’t know that Portuguese and Spanish are different languages, so not everything is Propaganda. It’s a difficult world, you can make a good research, but miss some essential things. But the author just told what was happening during last 30 years of Independency, and he summarized it very well. His theme of research wasn’t nor cultural things nor language issues in Romanian speaking countries. It was about politics and corruption.
If somebody were to say that someone spoke "Austrian" I would just assume, that this person was speaking with a noticeable Austrian Accent because his native language was one of the Austrian "dialects".
Of course there is no "Austrian" but some quite different (and for most Germans mostly unintelligible) "dialects". Standard-Austrian-German and Standard-German is very simmilar and very easy to understand. The various (unfortunately in most of Germany almost exctinct) "dialects" on the other hand are NOT and can be as far apart as Dutch, Danish, English and German are to each other. But since there is a common German identity there is also a common German language.
The terms "dialect" and "language" are all highly political of course and could be (and of course were) used for political reasons.
I guess it's very simmilar with the tongues spoken in this region and, if somebody wanted, he could create a few highly unintelligible languages, based on the local "dialects", but a majority of the people living there wouldn't agree. Am I right to assume this?
your pronounciation of "Plahotniuc" probably puts >70% of Europe to shame! Respect!
Less than 70 but more than how many?
Only 70%? I'm sure 95% of Europeans have little idea of how to pronounce Romanian names... or anything that's not their own native language and some mediocre English (myself included, mind you).
Grammar Nazi. Look at the bigger picture and remember - it is easier to criticise than create.
@@amosmoses5630 alright, that was stupid! :)
@@LuisAldamiz i would say there are eastern europeans who should know..
As a Romanian, I can only say that it is quite surprising how accurate were the information from somebody who lives in a such far away part of the world from Moldova, but that was to be expected from you.
However, I should point out some things which you might have overlooked. First of all, there is no such thing as Romanian language and Moldovian language, they are both the same thing, maybe the accent differs, but that's all, I mean, they are more similar between themselves than Cantonese and Mandarin, for example. Secondly, I think you could have pointed out the links between the businesspeople and politicians and secret services, which is a very common practice in former soviet countries, like Russia and Romania. The businesspeople get heads ups from the secret services, they make profitable business and split the profit with the secret services and this goes too for the politicians. They make a pact with secret services and they get helped to be elected. Many say, for example, that the April revolution from 2009 was a secret blow from the Romanian secret services and for a while Plahotniuc was Romania's guy.
Anyway, a very good video from you and many thanks for that!
Cantonese and Mandarin aren't that similar, though.
As a Romanian having visited Chisinau and listening to Moldovan TV, I can definitely say that the differences in language are comparable to American vs. British English
@@The_Ballo Yeah, he tried to make a point. If you google the official language of Moldova you'll see is Romanian, international standards don't view Moldovan as a language. Is like saying people in USA speak American, they speak English same as Brits speak English, there are differences of course, but in the end is the same language.
@@The_Ballo I know they are not, that it is what I am pointing. Romanian and Moldovian languages are basically the same, they should not be representend as something different
@@subotai-m3e A better analogy might be Latin American castellano vs Spanish castellano
Great episode! The sad part is that this is to some degree or another, the story of probably all of the ex-soviet/Warsaw Pact countries. Mine (Bulgaria) has its own version of each of those "characters".
at least we managed to squeeze in to the EU, which provided SOME governance bracket, SOME re-invogiration of the economy and, most importantly, an OPTION for Bulgarians to improve their lives individually (by immigration), if not as a nation on its own land...
Moldova is a small, poor and unaffiliated country with already a strong divide in its population.
They have a lot to chew on!
well you opted for capitalism, that's it!
it's really not the story of all Warsaw Pact countries, not anymore at least
@@JohnSmith-ez7ipso did every other former soviet Republic so what's your point
It's the story of almost every country with Capitalists in power. But some of them had Oligarchy *and* managed to obtain colonies (and slaves) so ordinary people in them had a better life.
But colonies are stopping being colonies now...
You are expanding into Europeanometry!
Europe is a mere peninsula of Asia.
Eurasianometry😄
@@LuisAldamiz Rome, a European civilization, was the greatest civilization of all time.
@@Daniel1341-t2p - I would not describe the Roman Empire as "European", rather "Mediterranean". Rome failed to conquer Germania and thus half of non-Eastern Europe remained at large from their imperialism (3/4 of Europe were never under the Roman Empire, if we include Eastern Europe, as we should). On the other side it did conquer all the Mediterranean region and integrated it in a single political, social and economic entity.
Could this have happened under a non-European power? Probably not, although Carthage had a shot at it. Why? Because Europe is a peninsula of many peninsulas and some, like Italy, manage to provide for a large number of people (in Roman times, when non-Mediterranean agriculture was still limited, and even today). Maybe if the Lydians decided to go naval instead of trying to invade Persia, maybe if Egypt was not already a Greek colony... but probably not: the geography of Italy was uniquely optimal for such endeavor and the context in which Rome expanded was uniquely favorable for them: sufficiently but not excessively influenced by Greeks and Phoenicians, as well as the often forgotten Etruscans, who also came from the East (Asia Minor surely, Troy-related).
As for considering it "the greatest civilization", I beg to disagree: it was a very powerful and extremely influential one, comparable to China or India in their day, or Parthia/Persia, their eternal rival, as well. China actually accidentally triggered Rome's downfall by defeating the Huns (Turkics almost certainly) and sending them packing to the west, which in turn, as you surely know, gained control over most of the rest of Europe, sending many Germanic tribes packing to the Roman Empire.
They were anyhow, especially as the Empire consolidated, a civilization of lazy oligarchs living on slave labor, who considered work something bad. They shine at military prowess at the beginning but gradually they become relatively poor even at that.
IMO the ultimate cause of their deep crisis and downfall was that oligarchic lazy avarice, which sent all the precious metals to Asia in exchange of stupid luxuries like silk and cinnamon. Once the slave-manned Iberian and Dacian mines got exhausted, they got into a most serious economic crisis, which turned socio-political and weakened the state until the barbarians kicked down their rotten doors.
I would rather think that other civilizations like Perikles' Athens or modern Switzerland are much much greater than Rome. Persia even was much greater in many aspects like not relying on slavery...
@@Daniel1341-t2pIt was neither in terms of population (many chinese dynasty were, and achamenids too), nor share of world gdp (many chinese dynasties were) or area (mongols)
Great episode, as usual.
Just one point: Moldovans also speak a dialect of Romanian.
Classifying Moldovan as a separate language was part of the Soviet playbook, to culturally separate Moldova from Romania.
Not a dialect, we learn the 'Romanian', not Moldovan language in all schools, it is as close to Romanian as the Romanian from Transylvania.
Moldovan doesn't exist, not even as dialect...what a stupidy😂
There is no "moldovan dialect". The same dialect is spoken in Romania and Moldova - North Danubian. Dialects of the Romanian language exist only south of the Danube
definitely not a dialect of romanian. the romanian language is taught and spoken in moldova. if you wanted to refer to some differences in the pronunciation, you might want to check the definition of an accent. i do understand that there are some region specific words used in moldova but that is not enough to make it a dialect.
Moldavians have always spoken Romanian, not a dialect, (unless you believe the russian propaganda) Same language & different province = specific accent. Think Louisiana vs New York for example.
This channel and rare earth are all ive ever needed on YT.
This channel and microprocessors are all I need
Sending love to our Moldovan brothers from Romania 🇷🇴 Thanks for the video! The world needs to hear about their struggles.
hi from moldova! brief and very accurate depiction of what moldova is!
some small remark though: moldova and romania have exactly the same literary language. also half of moldova's population are also romanian citiziens (even many of those who don't like romania :)
Pleaase explain why they hate Romanians? Is it about class?
It all goes back to the ol' father of nations himself Stalin and his policy of resettling Russian nationals within the SSRs and other distinct ethnic regions of the union. This has been a source of discord between the various ethnicities ever since.
@@GabrielRotar Stalin was not ethically Russian (he was Georgian), so he had no any reason to resettle Russians to SSRs, so, he never did that specifically. Russians had been living on lands which then became Moldavia for centuries.
@@jparsit It's devided state. Roughly, 50/50 pro-Romanian/pro-Russian. It's a long story how it happened
@@maximmaslov3569 if "for centuries", you mean since the Russian Empire annexed Basarabia, then you're right. But no, before that, it was predominantly Moldovan (Romanian), with some Ruthenians (Ukrainians) and Turkic people. Even after 100 years of Russian Imperial rule, only about 10% of the population was Russian (in the 1930 census), despite very clear policies aiming to assimilate Romanian-speakers. If you read any documents from the 1600s or so, Russians were not even close to existing in that region (it was a mix of, again, predominantly Romanians, Ukrainians, Poles and Tatars). Until about 1850, there were only about 1% of Russians in Bessarabia.
It is obscene that a poor country with a population of under 3 million had 70 billionaires!
I've written to NPR's Planet Money a few times over the years to do a story on this as it deserves to be more widely known. I'll try again and link to this.
For Russia the corruption is a feature, not a bug. Russia is happy for it's former colonies to be nominally independent as long as they are very corrupt. The corrupt money can flow up to Russian oligarchs as indirect 'tribute' which satisfies them.
@@noonecaresaboutgoogle3219will you blame Russia for Romanian corruption too?
@xenialove2032 Romania has its problems but jailed vast numbers of corrupt politicians since joining the EU
ruclips.net/video/IqZWApreqoM/видео.htmlsi=BOK-5iDRoxeYKjUf
It's why Russia would never join as it's run by gangsters who'd lose power in the EU.
@@xenialove2032 russia is a get out of jail card for them, its been 30+ years the current state is their own making
@@xenialove2032of course. These things go hand in hand
Your history content is some of the most informative on RUclips. Thank you for these
Same thing happened in Croatia. The then ruling political party implemented "privatization" while the war for independence from Yugoslavia was still going on. The majority of the population left their workplaces for the battlefield, and during that time a few (today the creme-de-la-creme of the Croatian political and economic scene) bought and sold the most valuable companies and factories, when the people returned from the battlefield, everything was over and there were no more jobs to return to. Croatia, together with Yugoslavia (although Yugoslavia was not evenly developed, but Slovenia and Croatia stood out) used to be a term in the dictionary for well-being, for Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians, while Romanians and Bulgarians were a term for us for poverty and underdevelopment, and today Croatia is economically at the very bottom of the EU (Croatia is today in the EU what Kosovo was in Yugoslavia), and all those listed above, except Bulgaria, are economically much stronger than us. We used to comment with a sneer when in the 70s and 80s they came to the sea with their burned-out Škodas, Trabants and Polish Fiats, carrying even food with them, so we called them tomato-tourists, and now they come in Škoda Superbs and with a sneer buy real estate from the locals for cash all along the Adriatic coast. And yet, we still vote for that same party from the beginning of the story.
I admit IDK what is going on in Croatia. But if what you say is true, and as we see in Moldova, not even mass distrust and anger form the population result in any overthrow attempts or mass popular upheaval. It means that here too in the West we are doomed if this continues on this path. Central banks creating mass inflation by design, restrictions, censorship, the coming digital currency and identity etc.
That is what happens if you betray your own people. Maybe the croatians learned for the future
I was in Moldova, and it was a beautiful country, and the people were so friendly! Wish better for them!🇲🇩❤️
That's often the case in the poorest and most oppressed countries. Iran is another example.
Maybe the war in Ukraine helps to oust all the Russian mobsters.
@@davidjma7226The Iranian people are wonderful people. I can’t stand their government but the people are great. I’ve met quite a few in the USA. As a matter of fact my female doctor was from Iran. She not only treated her regular patients. She also treated the poor people in our community.
@@laikanbarth Yes, I lived in Iran for two years until recently. They are the most generous, hospitable people you will find anywhere on the planet. The first thing they will tell you is that they are not the Government of Iran! OK, I am biased, I have a Persian wife......but she is the epitome of the kind of generosity you refer to. Always thinks of the other person and people less fortunate. She makes me feel quite humble, god bless her.
Magnificent work, as always.
This process is probably at work in every country, to a greater or lesser extent, but here we can see it under the microscope. Thank you for the clarity.
you are right, this is how most systems of governance work around the world. the consequences are starkly visible in moldova because of its tiny size and unstable political landscape.
"Moldova back then had about as much chance at EU membership as I have at Taylor Swift."
This left me cracking up for a while! Good one!
its not that unlikely. Its delusional to think that other former soviet countries that landed in thr eu didnt have any of those problems, they just mananged to get in before the eternal series of crises started and eu decided to become a closed club. Actually moldova, urkraine and georgia are simultanioisly trying to acess eu and only the former one doesnt have progress as of late
@@lenas6246 These days, Georgia is the one that is problematic, while Moldova under Sandu has good prospects.
Dude shouldn't sell himself short. I've heard that Taylor throws herself at anyone after a couple of tequila shots...
🍹🍹🍹
4:09 no such thing as 'the Moldovan language' they speak romanian. Imagine saying austrians speak austrian instead of german, just because the country has a different name
Probably dialect would have been a better word. America and England both speak English, but have many words and phrases that are unique in meaning to them.
A couple generations ago they spoke such different forms that US troops in England complained they couldn't understand their British counterparts though both believed they were speaking proper English.
As a person that lived in the UK it will have been the regional accents that made them confused lol@@christopherconard2831
Well there's also Dutch and Flemish languages which are... identical save for pronunciation. Nobody should really care whether you should consider them languages or dalects of each other.
Technically a dialect is a way of speech that isn't formalised and evolves wildly, while a language is one that has an official governing body. So indeed British English and American English should be considered languages, not dialects. In turn Bavarian (Boarisch) is not understood by most Germans, but is a dialect, since there isn't somebody formalising it and teaching it at schools in that form.
Declaring that something is a dialect can have a bit of imperialistic stink to it especially if the carriers of that way of speech happen to disagree.
@@christopherconard2831it's not an dialect because the 4 dialects of romanian are very diferent
Imagine Ukrainian and Belarussian not being dialects of Russian. 😂 Imagine Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan being real nations. 😂
Sorry for the people of Moldova, they have suffered a lot
Indeed, they've been under many influences like the Ottoman Empire, Romania, Russia, till they finally became the independent Republic of Moldova. Yet to this day there are still skirmishes along the border with the contested Trans-Dnienstria region with a majority of Russian speaking population.
@@BillAnt Return to Translyvannia; ascend to godhood.
And they will suffer more. Because they are weak and feeble and need to be enslaved and exploited. Serfs they are, and serfs they will remain!
Be sorry for yourself perhaps.
@@BillAnt stop saying moldovans are other nation than romanians, we are the same NATION!!! SAME LANGUAGE, TRADITIONS ETC! russian propaganda alienate moldovans TO THINK THEY ARE OTHERS than romanians , stop bullshit! even Maia Sandu recently fixed this ,officially, that the language of moldovans is romanian ,not anything else "moldovan" (russian propaganda)
Botched land reform? Economy controlled by landed elites? Remittances being a huge part of the economy? Poverty? Even a trafficking problem? A huge and belligerent neighbor trying to exert authority and influence? Intensely corrupt society?
That sounds so familliar.
My goodness I feel for my Moldovian brothers. Cheers from the Philippines. Lord knows we got the shitty hands in life. We hope we can get through this and experience a democracy that actually serves the people.
While reading this, I was getting more and more confident about our shared nationality. But, I was wrong, luckily or sadly? Not sure what would be worst
as a person from ukraine who studied political science in germany i have always thought that studying mostly eu is a waste of time for ppl who specialize in estern europe and that SEA is a better alternative for comparative studies
Philippines; not a great example of democracy. You got rid of the murdering thug and voted in the son of the dictator. Philippine politics is so depressingly corrupt. ,,, and i can't even blame the Russians for this.
Phillipines is another country which has been under foreign rule for more than 500 years. This means that the people will take time to learn how to handle power and have checks and balances. It is natural to not know what and how to do when you are suddenly free after being a slave since birth.
Businessmen whose business expertise is all just being in the right place to grab things, becoming the political power? Politicians shooting people on a hunting trip and trying to cover it up? "Inflation" for the ordinary folks, record quarterly profits for the rich?
Cheers from the USA. I wish this wasn't so familiar.
Thanks for the video! Correction: 4:01 / 8:26 Romanian language and "moldovan" languages are actually one and the same language, the title "moldovan language" was invented by the soviets
Thanks for this insight into this country. American media rarely ventures outside the US except to dwell on how good/bad the US is doing on whatever, so learning about nations like these and their struggles offers a new perspective. Thank you.
The US seems to be following this path
You forgot to mention that the Republic of Moldova was caught in between two trading blocks, EU and CSI, and each of those trading blocks limited Moldovan's access to their markets and the access of the Moldovans to work ... the only way out was through Romania. Even for the Russians of Moldova moving to Russia was more difficult and more unpleasant than moving to Romania, getting citizenship then moving further West.
Also known as Haiti-syndrome. 😉
Shutting out the world or getting shut out by the world, never works.
Incorrect, Moldova has always wanted to be part of the EU however they cannot join because they have Russian military stationed illegally in their territory. Also there are some trade facilitation accords from the EU. So no the EU it's their biggest partner with 50 percent of their export going to the EU, and If it wasn't for Russia imperialism they would be in the European Union (63% percent of Moldovan want that)
@@Hey-uj3ee Moldova became independent in 1991 and EU was created in 1993, so Moldova could not "always" want to be part of the EU :-)
@@EmilNicolaiePerhinschi I mean, pretty much no country that was part of the soviet union had any choice before 1991 (dissolution of the soviet union), but people even then wanted to be part of the west. Also moldova was part of greater Romania and wasn't really happy when it got invaded by the ussr. So yes, we can say always
@@Hey-uj3eeJoining the EU would have been national suicide as we have seen in Bulgaria, completely sucking up all the work force leaving behind only old people, only subsisting EU grants until dying off.
You would be a step up for Taylor.
That's what I'm saying😂
She dated a racist lately, time for her to date a philosopher lol
Not "close similarities" between Romanian and "Moldovan" language, they are the same language. Even the Republic of Moldova's Academy declared that the national language is Romanian language. The "moldovan" language was a politically one to convince people they are not the same people as the moldovans (Romanians) on the other half of the former Principality divided in 1812 for the first time. The naming of the country can be confusing, it is like the North Macedonia issue, as the former antique entity (and Greek speaking) called Macedonia was divided and became part of multiple countries, much of it being in Greece. For many Romanians, the Republic of Moldova has a special meaning: we were the same country, we speak the same language, but we were separated and most likely the only "unification" can happen under a common roof, European Union; but there are many problems there caused by the separatists regions, under heavy (or total) Russian influence.
*caused by the greed for money and ways to own more and more. Any neighboring power has, is, and will use this feat. Countries in such a half baked state joining a half baked multinational organization (eg the UE) will make such organization shift towards their oligarchy's standards rather than being helped by it any day.
@@TukozAki It is way more complicated. In order to adhere, one must satisfy lots of criteria, including corruption fighting, fixing teritorial disputes etc. The last part means that the Transnistrian (probably also Gagauzia) problem has to find a solution before. A simpler one would be for the Russians in Transnistria to attack Ukraine and for Ukraine to finally "close" those Russian military bases, after which, the Russian influence will degrade by itself as it cannot be enforced.
@@ContraVsGigi First, sorry if my pov feels excessively detached to any people in or from Moldova.
Question please: Are those 4k Russian troops in Transnistria the main and first cause for the actions presented in this Asianometry's synthesis of the last 30 years? In case not, please why are you focusing on them?
Am French btw; as the Roman used to say, « Rome didn't build itself in a week ». Nor did Romania, Spain, Italy, France, Hungary, Germany, Korea or any of the past and present nations on planet Earth.
@@TukozAki No they are not the sole reason, but the one that is a stopper for any change more consistent regarding Transnistria. When half of the historical Moldova principality/region was taken by Russia (or the Tzarist/Russian Empire, but for keeping it simple I will call it Russia) (the other half became a founding principality of the Romanian Kingdom in the XIXth century) the administration had all sorts of decisions to russify the population: deporting some to far away parts of Russia and bringing russians in their place, banning Romanian language in schools in the second part of the XIXth century, changing the name of the country (to Basarabia, which was only the name of the much smaller region in the south now part of Ukraine) and the name of the spoken language (into "Moldovan" language) to try establishing a new identity, changing the alphabet from the latin one to the slavic with cyrilics, inventing a new history to cut it from the other Romanian provinces etc. From this point of view, this clip is either too short to cover these complex things or too simplistic (the subject is correctly presented which is the main thing). To get to the point, one of the Russian tactics applied also in Ukraine, Georgia etc. is to have some russified population or moved russians in those countries and whenever Russia felt things getting out of their influence, interfere. See the invasion in Georgia, to "protect" the russian population. Or in the east part of Ukraine. The ones that escaped this vicious cycle are the Baltic countries because despite having just like Republic of Moldova maybe about 20-30% pro-russians or russians, they had a strong pro-weatern movement, joined NATO and EU, otherwise they would have been invaded a long time ago. Russia helped powerful anyi-western parties in Moldova and, of course, corruption. A strong country, with strong institutions cannot be controlled. The stealing of those billions was made with some Russian help for sure, too. And very corrupt people from Rep. of Moldova usually run in Russia when things get bad for them. The guy with the televisions & political party (some, banned now) is one of them, but he continues to sponsor protests, political movements etc. One of the lasts protests tried to overthrow the current leadership, but failed; see how during a protest they had militarized men in front of the crowd. And this is just a part, the story os longer. Greeting from France, too.
@@TukozAki Forgot to also say that Rep. Moldova does not have a regular army and is a neutral country, this was set in the cease fire agreement in 1991/1992. So at this point in time, they don't have an army to kick the Russians out and set the rule of law in Transnistria.
PS2: that Șor guy, the one involved in stealing the billion and trying to overthrow the power, now hiding in Russia, was discovered with another illegality: running the main airport in the country. A company he made in early August 2013 was somehow given the management of the airport in late August 2013. Sure, the corruption chain is way longer, but look who was the beneficiary, the same Șor guy. Btw, that company had 2 Russian companies as owners, fronts for Șor. About 9 years later, a dedicated government undid this in justice (in 2022, I think) and took back control over the capital 's airport. It is truly amazing how powerful that guy became some years ago.
19:15 a very similar thing happened in "the West" in 2007 and 2008. somehow it was necessarry to give the tax payer's money to the richest people in the world. I still don't understand how that benefited us, "the little guys"
except nobody got arrested
What many youtubers fail to mention about the past of Transnistria is that it had been founded way back in 1920s by Lenin as a autonomous region within Ukrainian SSR (Moldavian ASSR) to build up tentions between Romania and USSR in hopes of snatching back Bessarabia through revolutionary means (look up Tatarbunary Uprising, Khotyn Uprising and Bender Uprising) The territory it had was double it is today because back then they included a 'triangle' towards Balta which wasn't even a quarter Romanian but was incorporated as a economical capital. But after the successful 1940 ultimatum towards Romania, Stalin, on the recommendation of Khruschev (The same guy who would later give Crimea to Ukraine) stripped Moldova of its coastline (Budjak, Cetatea Alba) and Hotin (Khotyn) region from the newly conquered territory and gave it to Ukrainian SSR in exchange for modern day Transnistria minus Balta region. The official excuse for the "exchange" of territories was to create a more homogeneous population within Soviet SRs. but in reality its because they wanted to create a more secure protected region around Odessa in case things go south and Moldova reunites with Romania hence why also aforementioned in the video that Transnistria had the most infrastructure and supplied the country with electricity, they built it specifically in Transnistria for exactly the same reason, in case of Independence/Reunification, the country remains paralyzed and without infrastructure. The same goes for Cernauti.
bruh are you high? chetnivtsi is a ukrainian city. I am from there, this is not some moldovan territory glued onto ukraine lol Also since when is odesa romanian or moldovan lol? jfc
@@lenas6246 Cernauti fell under Russian control in 1940 after Romania ceded it after the ultimatum (and then assigned to Ukrainian SSR). Before that it was Romanian and before that it was Austro-Hungarian, it didnt say it was "Moldovan" nor did i say that about Odessa. I said that they took Budjak to make a more "secure" region AROUND Odessa.
@@lenas6246Cernauti was romanian teritory. You do not know the history of your town.
@@lenas6246як будь яка інша прикордонна територія, це не завжди було Україною. Просто на даний момент всі змирилися з українізацією Чернівців, і це ок.
@@lenas6246since when? Read a little more than your government propaganda
Your friend in Seattle Thanks!
The Lei is pronounced "lay" It means lion. Mircea is "Mir-Cha" Its my fathers name, he is Romanian Moldovan(the neighboring Provence in Romania, and other half of the region). It is a weird language that requires switching from very latin pronunciation to very slavic. Thanks for showing time for my peoples rarely discussed history.
Great channel! Much effort from a smart man makes for very high quality videos!
20:38 Until this point, the story is terrifyingly similar to Hungary's, with Viktor Orban. Down to land privatization, shorter first and longer second terms (still in thia), election law "reforms", the ousted ally (who ran the economy), albeit, it didn't end with prison. The only significant difference is that in Hungary, there wasnt such heist, which had to be paid over 25years, the EU membership of course and the fact that Orban came a decade later (this is actually a big difference). But Hungary "enjoys" the 15 years (and ongoing), complete theft, grab, of private and public sector: first the media, banks, agriculture (as in Moldova), then energy sector, tourism, telecom/internet sector, finally basically everything profitable. No ending of cronies who can look to the mirror after stealing from the public. Today, he is on the peak of his power, owning at least third of the country thru his obvious frontmans, and having total influence on even more share of the private sector. He has the same changing identity what actually keeps him in power (Putin style). They are also looking to Russia, China as ally (even from within the EU), despite their obvious predatory nature (they might get well paid for it). Also similarly, people getting really pissed off and waking up. Don't know if Hungary will go down the same path as Moldova, we will see. A very similar election and power transfer attempt is likely. We can learn from this for sure.
I admire your ability to make informed videos on subjects as diverse as Moldova, Philippines and Taiwan. What is your secret? Are you researching all that by yourself 🙂?
he's BS ing... at least about Moldova i know well because i live there...
@@havencat9337Oof, sounds like life could be a lot better. Feel for you bro
i bet moldova is actually so nice, romania wants to join them and create the great moldova@@havencat9337
@@havencat9337What about Moldova is he BS'ing about?
@@havencat9337 i also live in moldova and i can say he's spot on
I have visited Moldova and feel bad for its people. There are street dogs attacking pedestrians, Gypsy children begging and the infrastructure is in dire need of repair. At the same time you see some of the most expensive sports cars in the capital Chisinau. The corruption is evident no matter where you are.
When visiting Florida, my family were enchanted by a bright and beautiful young Moldovan woman, who was working at a restaurant. She told us that she was much happier in the US. We hope she's doing well.
Insanely sad how so many people suffer in poverty because of greed from just few individuals.
Yeah but the mainstream media doesn't report on the many poor European nations. They prefer to be fixated on poor African nations that are RICH in natural resources. There are no abundance of rich natural resources in these armpit nations in Europe. Hence those nations will remain poor unless they latch onto an African nation like France. Speaking of France they too would be just as poor as any Eastern European nation had it not been for them holding on to so called Francophone nations, but their time is coming to an end.
Weak intitutions are play things for psychopaths
As a Moldovan I say nice work , you cannot change a nation in just such a short time , we had our freedoms since 90s , democracy in England took centuries
Democracy is fake. There is no freedom there.
Democracy has little to do with freedom and is probably opposed
What freedom requires is common law - the same law applies to poor & rich, popular & unpopular, etc
If you really want to be free arm the common folk & use only precious metal as money (this should ensure something resembling common law, at least for a while)
@@anonymousAJ Good people to unite. No uniting based on race, skin color, nation, etc, no unitiy with Satan. Only good with the good and take all what is good because it belongs to them. If the satans try to impose on the good people then the good must destroy them.
The elections are not only rigged like one of their actors, Trump, says, but its completely fake, its a TV show.
there is no democracy in England my friend. the people there are all subjects who had been broken to their knees centuries ago.
England....you mean commoners subjects and peasants. I just see oligarchs in the West and East... Using technocratic Socialism and consumerist materialism to soothe the masses into a state of comfortable amnesia. Even many Americans are perfectly happy being subjects and pissants today.
New break - Asianometry is currently dating Taylor Swift.
What a mess, corruption never sleeps.
Like republicans.
@@MrReymoclif714 More like the DC swamp, controlled at the moment by democrats, with rino's taking the helm from time to time to keep up the appearance of a functioning representative republic.
That guy getting shot during that hunting trip reminds me of the death of Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler. He was on a hunting trip with as the aide de camp to Kaiser Wilhelm II. He was giving the Kaiser a dance in a tutu, and during his bows, dropped dead of a heart attack. They rushed to him, trying to remove the shame, but dude had sewn himself into his lady costume.
It was a huge scandal. The Kaiser's whole crew were fired, and the people they were replaced with quickly started WWI.
DW had an interview with Ilan Shor a few months back. Interesting piece. The interviewer was pushing Shor a good bit about his connection when the Sor party but he claimed he wasn't actually running it. He's on the lam in Israel BTW.
Ofc he wasn't running it. He is a Capitalist! He hired managers for that.
That scum is a real piece of work, I tell you that.
Just moved to Moldova 2 months ago, what a timing!
Is it much like Moldova 1?
@@transportabelle I prefer Moldova 3, everything is bigger in Moldova 3 as they say😂👍
unless your Ukrainian......why?
@@jub21 l think it's called work. Or retirement.
What was your motivation to do so?
A small addition at the start of the video. The separatists in Transnistria were helped by the Russian 14th Guards Army to keep control of the region which stayed there afterwards for years. Even now, 30 years later, Russia maintains around 2000 "peacekeepers" in the area, and the tensions were really high at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine since the plan of the "Special Military Operation" called for the South of Ukraine to be taken, creating a contiguous "Little Russia" (Malorussia) all the way to Transnistria.
So what? What will happen if Russia withdraw the peacekeepers from there? Transnistria will immediately decide to get back under Moldova's control? Moldova will start its own military operation?
@@ilyaorlovskiy “PMR”’s reunification with Moldova has already kinda started as a slow process. Tons of people who live there are moving elsewhere. In addition, russian occupation forces who keep the status quo are in a more vulnerable position… It remains unknown what happens next, but a few things can indeed speed up the dissolution of “PMR”
@@naturalnonsense "It remains unknown what happens next" You can easy imagine this. Just look to Georgia. Georgia took control back on Adjaria in a peaceful way in 2004, after long negotiations between Adjaria and Georgia. Russian military base there really helped to stay calm for both sides. By 2007, russian troops were withdrawn. In 2008, Georgia decided to "speed up" and attacked russian peacekeepers in Osetia. You know the result. Believe me, there is no need "to speed up" for Moldova, unless you want to enter EU and NATO ASAP at all costs. The cost may be really high.
Maybe New Russia/Novorossiya? "Little Russia" is the name given to the northern half of Ukraine.
Similar stories had happened in Ukraine too. I remember a lot of scandals there after termination of USSR. Same stories, different names.
I have been told that a distant cousin of mine was appointed US ambassador to Moldova. I think it is Dereck Hogan, but I was told on facebook and I don't feel like going back and looking at my timeline. When I heard the news it was more or less the first time I had heard of Moldova. Since the war, we here more and more about Moldova. At the time I remember thinking that Moldova was in eastern Europe, and I hope he survives.
Derek Hogan play the significant part to remove Plahotniuc from power during the wekk were there was a duality of power Derek Hogan had visited with Plahotniuc and i am not sure what kinda off threats were given but it was within hours that his popet government had resigned and he fled
Dereck Hogan was called in Moldovan politics "The black overlord" due to the fact that he managed to remove Plahotniuc from power by uniting Maia Sandu and Igor dodon
hes probably working with Victoria Nuland rn to bring war to Moldova in order to get back at Russia.
survives what? There is no combat in that region even in ukraine
The rich ate Moldova?
Correction: the rich ate the entire planet.
#BaldAndBankrupt.
Great video, thanks! I see so many parallels with Bulgaria's transition, it's incredible.
14:01 what exactly is hidden behind "pushback from abroad" phrase?
russia didn't agree?
us didn't approve?
eu tried to influence?
ukraine/romania protested?
seems too vague
Everyone except russia didn't agree. Mainly romania, duh
@HaartieeTRUE when he staged a coup - all of them (eu, russia and the us) told him to leave. there are some memes with the us ambassador paying him a visit
@@zarzavattzarzavatt9309 you talk about wrong part of the video
@@NoNameAtAll2 oops :).
It's not Moldova, per se. Corporatocracy is a sign of this times, for any country.
Nice work, as always. Like.
It's a natural state of Capitalism. Only if a country has (neo)colonies *and* threat of Communists/Socialists exists Capitalists share some of their wealth with lower classes. Since USSR fell even richest country in the world (USA) becomes a country of poor people and rich oligarchs.
Yeah, but it's easy to bully small countries
@@weirdshibainu easier still to bully unsophisticated peasants
@@weirdshibainuIt’s not about bullying. It’s more that Moldova being a small country, it serves as a Petri dish for Corporatocracy where you can see it’s fast growth more easily.
@@weirdshibainulike singapore eh?
The geographical consequences of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact should finally be reversed. It's such a shame that Hitler and Stalin's agreement still defines the boundaries of states in Europe. The effects of this pact need to be undone, while keeping the rest of borders inside Europe unchanged. Look at how much Finland, Poland, and Romania lost. Russia has already done enough bad to Europe. The ultimate victory over Stalin will occour, when the nullification of the consequences of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact will take place.
Well, and of course Russia brutally invaded Moldova in 1992 (because that's about as much a civil war as WW2 was one), occupied a significant chunk of it and spends significant effort each year since, sabotaging Moldova from within.
No, it was pretty gentle invasion by Russian standards, you don't need to demonize us, and by "significant" you mean "absolutely minuscule". Where do you live, Latvia? You need to expand your horizons, sir.
@@Big_Sloppa
Yes, Russia seems to think murder and enslavement is 'gentle'.
Occupied Moldova lost 50% of its population since 1992.
@@nvelsen1975and the epic based free and democratic moldova didnt??????? COPE lil bro
You left out the most important player in this equation. After the fall of USSR and the independence, the main trading partner of Moldova was of course Russia. The first show of pro western sentiments led Russia to embargo all Moldova's exports towards Russia and we saw the gas pipe game leverage, from Russia again of course . So, every time Moldova expressed its true fillings it was coerced into unconditional love towards Russia. Guess what Russian did that.
Ah yes, and you left out the war in 1992 which was a preamble of what we see today in Ukraine.
Under Soviet “occupation” Moldova was one of the best places to live.. Perhaps, you are too young to know how in the late 80s thousands of Jews and Russians were pushed out from the universities and jobs and were forced to immigrate, leaving this now shit hole to rot in its own inadequates and corruption
It's almost as if Russia doesn't own you it's gas or it's trade, why would they want to make business with someone who is openly hostile? Go beg West for handouts then.
You make a big deal about Russian coercion, but it also left a big opportunity for Western governments to fill in the trade void with Russia and be their new BFF. Did they manage to fill it in? Did they brought the promised wealth and prosperity? Did they stay away from privatization of the nation’s assets? No, they didn’t, right?
Moldovan identity is often the butt of political satire in the MeediaFeedia. Red+Red2?
@@alexanderchristopher6237 Who is they?
Hopefully you will do a similar piece on the various corruptions of Taiwanese, parties both the KMT and DPP. If there were a straits crisis, most of the leaders would leave for their homes in California, leaving the people to fend for themselves.
9:25 - - That statue represents Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldova from 1457 to 1504. During his reign, Moldova defeated one by one all of its neighbors, each of these neighbors being more powerful than Moldova: the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Kingdom of Poland, the Crimean Khanate of the Tartars. With the last it was quite a feat, the Moldovans invaded Crimea and Stephen replaced the Crimean khan with a friendly one - soon to be overthrown, after the Moldovans left, and replaced with an Ottoman-friendly khan, which was the usual status.
The Ottomans esteemed Stephen and wanted to have his sword as trophy. This was not possible during the reign of the great prince, but 3 generations later, his grandson being ruler of a much weaker Moldova, he offered grandfather's sword as a gift. Today, in the museum of the Topkapi Palace (a must see in Istanbul), Stephen's sword is the only such exhibit belonging to a Christian, alongside few swords used by Prophet Muhammad and the first rulers of the Arab Caliphate.
this is what moldovans replaced Lenin with. as with Lenin - it's everywhere :)
aside of that, he was a feudal from the late middle ages. a bit successful feudal
Do like the Turks : just steal it back from them.
Great work! Indeed, it is quite commonplace for Eastern European countries' dominant politicians to change allegiance on a whim. The major players of the communist parties during USSR become leaders of the radical nationalist parties after independence. It really puzzles me how damaged these people are. With so much power in their hands, the only thing they can think of is accumulating more wealth as opposed to following through with some sort of vision for the country. I don't even care which vision any more, just commit to something.
A very similar situation to the Moldovan bank scandal happened in Latvia which you mentioned. A Latvian bank gave money to a shady Russian businessman, then the bank got sold to the government for 1$, government used the pension fund to cover losses (of that one deal), and then split the bank into two banks: one with good assets, and one with bad assets. Quite a few people got poorer that day I imagine.
Great video as always!
Very well presented material as always.
But as already mentioned by many, with exception of language.
Since independence, all the schools in Moldova teach Romanian language. So nobody speaks "Moldovan language" in Moldova. There is still a minority of people that think that Romanian language should be named Moldovan though. Markedly, in Transnistria, Romanian language is still written in cyrillic and called "Moldovan language".
Known fact, neighbor Romania trying to assimilate Moldova and doing that intentionally and with big effort and applause of EU (Declaring that Moldova is just bad weak part of Great Romania with perverted "true" Romanian language, etc, etc.) Nothing new.
@@AABB-px8lc It does not really matter how one calls the language as long as they don't claim that they are two different languages
in transnistria neither romanian nor moldovan is written. "moldovan" it's there only to allow them to brag about 3 state languages. otherwise it's a complete mockery, it's not used at all.
@@AABB-px8lcyou are using russian propaganda. We do not want to assimilate romanians from Moldova because we are the same nation from centuries. The language is the same, we can understand each over. Trust me, i was spoken with romanians from Moldova and they are our brothers.
@@kedi1923 as i said above, great Romania, part of it occupited by evil communists and named Moldavia, poor tortured Moldavia ppl keep trying to get rid of avbsolute evil toward drugs-sex-rocknroll-HDTV-LGBT, but being by definition less strong as Real Romanian only achievement is renaming Moldavia to Moldova. But you keep trying, gogo make all Soviet Moldavia to famous Borat abortionist-welder glory. And free weapon to all, btw.
you should know TLDR news is a terrible news source. Their analysis is usually subpar, sometimes terrible. Their analysis of the recent bank collapses were the worst I remember.
They are doing news. Not much analysis. And in comparison to many many other channels their effort is appreciated.
Mexico needs one of these episodes too
I am from Moldova and I consider this land to be cursed for some reason, like all the Balkans region.
Probably our forefathers made a great mistake for which many generations should suffer a lot.
I don't have another reasonable explanation for all this suffering, oh or probably we are too stupid and just can't figure out how to stop all that nonsense.
i would bet on "we are too stupid " version
Any land is cursed when it located between empires, let's called it borderlands
@@Big_Sloppa there is a name for such land - Limitrophe state, avoid leaving and investing in such kind of regions, if possible.
Si Balcanii in istorie au avut influenta ruseasca. De aici explicatia.
@@kedi1923 Astăi explicație pentru cei care nu au nici creier, nici educație.
What this video doesn't tell you is the effort Romania makes in turning Moldova into a functional democracy since the early 2000, it's sad as a Romanian to see how R. Moldova exists in a perpetual state of poverty and misery.
So how many moneys are pomping Romania in Moldova to develop the contry, isn't it?
Great stuff as usual.
Perhaps look into a pop filter for your mic or apply a 120hz high pass filter on the narration audio track to avoid low frequency thumps on P's and other plosives.
As a Romanian that has been watching your articles on technology for quite some time, I can only thank you for sharing this bit of history with the rest of your audience, myself included.
Sadly, most of the effects of the Soviet period can still be felt in Romania, and even more in Moldova.
Kinda funny as standard of living peaked during the Soviet period and it’s only been downhill since
lol The so called "Romanian dictator" had just paid off all of your countries debts, and he was conveniently overthrown right before Romania was going to become prosperous.
Partea amuzanta este ca sovietici au fost doar capitalisti de stat, comunismul definit de Karl Marx, o societate fara banii(gen Star Trek ), fara clase sociale si fara stat (anarcho-sinidcalist) nu a existat niciodata
@@obrokbobama6203 - I am no communist, however the Soviets did raise the standard of living and modernized many places. Corruption was not tolerated as much under the soviet system but it was the only way to obtain some goods. Ukraine, Latvia, and Belarus have similar stories, however Belarus is still under a very powerful dictator and a puppet state of Putin.
During the period 1932-1939 the German standard of living doubled, something other countries in Europe could not match. It came at a high cost.
Good luck Moldova
At first, I was sceptical since Moldova is far from Asia (which I supposed to be your area of expertise). I'm delighted to be proved wrong! Great video!
As other Eastern Europeans have noted, the similarities between Moldova's story and other CIS countries are quite-quite sad.
Check out his videos on East Germany, Soviet computers, etc - fascinating stuff (fascinating to me, a Brit)
as a nigerian even i'm shocked by the moldovan corruption, that bank robbery is crazy.
I clicked on the video out of curiosity as I am Romanian, but I just cannot finish it man..
I feel like Moldova is and always will be part of Romania and I hope that I'll get to see my brothers and sisters across the Prut coming home one day and become the one country we should've been this entire time.
And it will happen, one day
No, it will not happen
@@maximmaslov3569 It will. Once Russia realizes it has zero power to protect its failed sphere of influence puppet states, they'll all break off and we'll be happy free people.
The infection that is Russia will be cured, eventually.
two more weeks
We all suffer with this in the Balkans. Half of Bosnia and a quarter or today’s Croatia was and is inhabited by Serbs. North Macedonia is inhabited by Bulgarians. Montenegro is inhabited by Serbs. Moldova is inhabited by Romanians. Instead of being properly formed and developed countries we are a hodgepodge of Mickey Mouse states with identity disorders and hatred for our neighbours. Luckily Romania itself is of a decent territorial size and has experienced 3 decades of stability and is on the up.
@asianometry I just need to point out that Romanian and Moldovan aren't two separate languages. Linguistically and now legally as well there is only one language, Romanian.
As a romanian I can tell you is the same language. We can understand each over. The "moldovan" language was invented by russians occupiers to divide the romanian nation. Divide and imperia!
@@kedi1923 correct!
When the going is good, every oligarch is vibing, but when shit hits the fan, it's game theory time - every man for themselves.
Your research is impeccable!
Researched really well. You did a cracking job.
I was not expecting from you a video about my country. I love your videos about microelectronics and is a contrast with Moldova but I truly hope that this contrast will be smaller in future and there will be possible in future to make a video about Moldovian microelectronics 😊
EU URĂSC MOLDOVA
I had no idea about Moldova before. But this is heart breaking. this is what happens distrust in democracy, inefficient government run up to "informal structures". it becomes a vicious cycle of overselling populists and voters in rage by unfulfilled promises and over expectations.
Serbia next !
Cause i love saying the word salad
Slobodan Milosovic out loud 😂😂
Chow Chess Kew?
min. 10:10. Name me please one "clan", that you are speaking about? Clan is defined as "A group of people all descended from a common ancestor, in fact or belief, ...". We never had clans, we are idividalists. But you are right about criminal partnerships.
When the EU, US and Russia are all on the same page and telling you to chill, you know you’ve messed up big time 😂
Really great work, I enjoyed the video as a first-time viewer to your channel, but I have one question: How did you go a whole episode about Moldovan ethnic and ideological conflict without mentioning Gagauzia? It seems like a pretty important thing to mention. Maybe worth a follow-up?
Based on my experience I agree with you entirely. I wonder if the parasites are just more comfortable exploiting their own?
Yes
The pace of the essay and cadance of the essayist are perfect
You forgot the famous Moldavian macadamia nuts.
Well but that would be a lot of people eating, wouldn't it?
are you sure there is such?
whaaat??? 😮😂
Please make a video titled "How the rich ate the world" next. It's about time we discussed the elephant in the room.
how the rich ate the world
Invest in pitchforks!
They cult of money is worse than covid
Elon Musk could buy Moldova and rename it.
That's a communistic statement btw. If we agree to equate those sufficiently rich with immoral oligarchs and thieves, then we admit that we really want to have systematic wealth control, be it progressive taxation or other means of capping the allowed individual/family wealth. I personally would agree that there are certain levels of rich which are very unlikely to acquire by hard work alone, and certainly more can be done towards improving wealth inequality by forcing those excessively privileged to share some of their wealth with those excessively underprivileged (within reason of course, no revolution required). However, I am quite surprised that Asianometry used this title. I get the feeling he is more of a free market supporter, although my intuition may be wrong.
@@ArgumentumAdHominem
Aisianometry uses tropes such as "How the rich ate Moldova" and "How Malaysia(or Japan)ate the rich" as headers for discussing economic development in his videos.
To clarify: 1) Moldovan is a dialect of Romanian language. Name issue was finally solved in constitution in 2022. 2) What happened in Transnistria is exactly what Russia did to eastern Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia 2008. Whenever some post soviet country wants to do something of its own(in our case unify with Romania), there's always some pro russian rebellion backed by weapons and people coming from Russia. Been watching this channel for a few years and I'm very amazed that you choose my country to talk about. So cool that there are some moldovans here in the comments, greetings to our whole tribe :)
1) Moldovan is a dialect of Romanian language. --- so Ukranian is a dialect of Russian language?
@@JohnSmith-ez7ip makes sense, so russian is a dialect of chinese ? Let's say your comment is real so here's a real response. Me as a russian speaker, sometimes I'm able to understand a lot from ukrainian, polish or slovak but still unable to fully understand and speak in those 3. But as a speaker of romanian from Moldova(even with heavy russian accent in my case), I am able to easily speak with romanians by making some slight adjustments in pronunciation.
@@vadimen181 so ukranians are chinese?
@@JohnSmith-ez7ipukranian at the very least has enough distinctions to be considered its own language. 'Moldovan' is just weirdly sounding romanian. And most moldovans speak normal romanian (without the moldovan accent) in the first place
@@HaartieeTRUE yeah, "ukranian" language has ""distinctions"", simply a polonized dialect. Weirdly sounding Russian basically, and most ukranians speak normal Russian (without the ukranian accent) in the first place.
Love your videos- keep making content please.
The common theme in all failed post-block countries (russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova) is: privatisation executed poorly, making only few richest or smartest benefit from it. One regime was replaced with another, often even worse.
Namely ex-members, descendants and beneficiaries of the old regime.
Thank you very much for taking an objective outsiders look at Europes most obscure (non-microstate) counzty. Extremely neutral and objective assessment. Funny that you decided to stop right short of the strange situation the country find itself in during the Russian-Ukrainian war. But this is probably for another channel to pick up.
Do keep in mind that this vid exceeds the target word count in spite of already being very dense and to the point.
I don't think it's funny Jon decided to stop there. I mean his work here is resuming history, not commenting on the actual situation. And this historian take is what he does most of the time. He probably found this topic because of the role of Transnistria in the actual conflict.
If your familiar with this channel, by the time you should have noticed that he sometimes gives some insights in a journalistic/analytic way on the news he is familiar with (mostly located around Taiwan and hightech related), sometimes giving some subjective thoughts and a more personal conclusion, but he never does that on subjects he only knows from a distance.
So yeah it's definitively for another channel, written by someone who has his pan-out objectivity but also possesses more than a grasp of the culture and the everyday life of Moldova as well as the conflict itself. A person who can be a source for a future Asianometry video.
@@PainterVierax It's funny in an ironic way, not a derogative one.
@@michaelrenper796 well, next time you should emphasis on the irony because it was far from obvious.
Nonetheless, I am amazed but not really amused by thinking the ongoing war is just motivated by a broader imperialism that was carefully orchestrated even before the fall of the USSR.
@@PainterVierax in which part of the world do you live? In Europe we are disappointed, but certainly not surprised by Russian Imperialism. It has been going on for centuries.
We hoped and made offers, all in vain, to persuade Russia to become part of the European idea after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Stumbled across this, absolutely excellent, great piece well executed.
Eurasianometry🤩
Thank you for the effort that went into this, it's very much appreciated.
The polytechnic university of Chișinău ( or moldova i am not sure) holds a microelectronics contest for students. I think they will be at the 12th edition next year.
If moldova would join romania that would make it part of EU and russian wouldnt like to have an EU country next door.
Well Russians shouldn't have a say in which political/economic (or indeed defence etc) alliances nearby nations join.
Not to speak of the fact that Finland and Baltics are EU and adjoining Russia and Poland is adjoining Kaliningrad, while Moldova does not share a border with Russia. So like that ship has long sailed; and if you want an alliance, you can't just do it by force, you have to offer something better than another alliance in return. If Russia doesn't have much to offer besides blackmail and passing stinky gas well it only has itself to blame for lack of economic political cultural and scientific development.
A close family member married a Moldovan woman. I went there with them once, nice country, good food, cheap tasty alcohol, strong weed (some cannabis was growing literaly right outside the hotel), friendly people. But even back then in 2014 the capital was full of half-finished and abandoned building projects. All the young people I spoke to had dreams of leaving Moldova for the EU or Russia. If Germany is the "sick man of Europe", what is Moldova...
My dad visited Moldovan SSR...in 1970s he remembers it as if its heaven on earth ...a grown man cried after watching this video...almost .
Infact in his entire stay in caucasian republics of USSR he never never saw animosity between any ethnicities....he said peopel were very very aware educated and mature about life in USSR and west..and many of them are still his friends.
this is not quite true. there was animosity especially between those who are culturally very different
your dad is right, Moldova used to be a very comfy place back in the days. Sadly people have changed dramatically after capitalism came.
@@onupirat they were like that during ussr, nothing changed after capitalism came. that is in fact the problem, the capitalism came upon people that were quite corrupt, lacking initiative and proper legislation
@@onupiratduring commies we were poor as fuck. My family owned a shitty house and a life where they couldn't become anything else because they were farmers. As much as you shit on capitalism, it's still much better than during commies. Better deas that Communist.
just remember as a rule of thumb - all experiences of westerners in ussr have little to do with reality. You saw a show put on for you deliberately.
Some short remarks: There is "Moldovan" language and Romania didn't invade Moldova in 1941; USSR did it in 1940 as a direct result of their imperial aggression towards all neighboring countries and Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. These seems to be part of soviet history playbook.
Astia sunt cu propaganda ruseasca. Asian.
There is no Moldovan language, it is Romanian language.
His point is Romania was Maldova. However, I understand your gripe
The problem is that we have ethnic based voting. We can't choose a political color. It's either pro or anti Russian parties.
We are russified romanians plus russian, ukranian and a few other ethnicities. But Russians refuse to speak our language. If challenged on that they cry discrimination.
Soviet occupation plan still working I guess...
The geopolitical model of analysis gives another, perhaps grander, explanation of what happened to Moldova:
As Russia's Soviet empire was collapsing and its armies were retreating 1000km to the East from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and were soon to retreat from GDR, when everything was crumbling in the Caucasus - the Russians felt the need to salvage as much as they could and ignited several military conflicts, which they themselves later claimed to have helped to put an end to by bringing occupation troops, which they called "peace keepers". The hypocrisy holds to this day, as all the great powers and international organizations still refer to those occupation armies as "peace keepers". Moldova had a brief war with Russia in 1992, which it lost - it couldn't expect to receive the support Ukraine receives today. After the war, Moldova fell for good under Russia's influence. Pro-Russian politicians - corrupt to the marrow - were openly and covertly supported by Russia, the old soviet propaganda narrative of a distinct from Romanians ethnicity was reinforced, even though there were something like 7 million Moldovans living in Romania, and those 7 million knew they were Romanians and not a distinct ethnic group. Coupled with their influence as the main trading partner, their control of energy prices (gas, natural gas, electricity) and a pervasive culture of corruption - the Russians managed to maintain Moldova weak, poor, governed by corrupt politicians, unable to mobilize and grow an economy that would naturally gravitate towards the EU and Romania.
But why?
Here comes the geopolitical factor: Russia needs - they feel this need - to control key geographical access points to their territories. To the North-West - it's the Baltic States, to the West - Belarus and Ukraine with the gap of North European Plain that stretches from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian mountains, to South-West - the Republic of Moldova, where it can block an army invading from the Wallachian Plain, which is between the Carpathians and the Black Sea. Russians always knew that Moldovans were Romanians, despite their list of successes in sowing confusion in the minds of many Moldovans (propaganda works). So the Russian objective in the region was to do whatever it takes to avoid a unification of Moldova with Romania, which in turn would bring NATO to the river Nistru / Dniestr, close to Odessa (once the jewel of the Russian Empire) and with the ability to push Russia away from accessing the Danube. (Despite having no geographical contact with the Danube, Russia still holds a chair in the Danube Commission, which it inherited from the USSR.) Such development would have been perceived by Russians as a great security crisis.
In this bigger picture, whoever was supported in his endeavors to rob Moldova comes as one of many details of how a geopolitical vision was enforced by a geopolitical actor - Russia.
russia has nukes and the west wanted to integrate it in theyr economyes and societies, russia could have become a second america on the globe promoting freedom and democracy, and keeping in check the americas exceses , theyr formal empire would have naturally gravitated twards them , but in a democratically and non predatorial fashion, just like with germany and the eu and japan with south east asia, but noooo, russia didnt want to help the world, it wants absolute power to enforce its power based culture on everyone it can and steal its neighbours land resources and counciosness, instead of actually building something. thank god china isn't tempted to promote separatism movements in siberia and engulf all of central asia into its sphere, well played russia. not to mention the accidentl risk of human anihilation, all in the name of a bunch of power hungry gangster maniacs supported by a bunch of sadistic distorted cowards
We have a great example of Canada where the significant French minority co-exists with the English speaking majority and not have their customs, culture and language suppressed. Unfortunately these National Fronts of the former USSR republics were built on extreme majority nationalism which left the minorities little choice but to rebel. In Transnistria both Russians and Ukrainians joined forces and fought together against the Romanization.
@@vladimirrodionov5391 Ah, good old evil Russian propaganda.
You slipped in a few untruths, or as we, extremists, call them - "lies":
Romania has absolutely no problem with its minorities - they have their own MPs, they have ethnic political parties with a say in the country's political course.
There was no ongoing "romanization" in a Romanian country - which Moldova was and is. Whoever denies that Moldova is inhabited by an overwhelming majority of Romanians - is a propagandist, a wannabe propagandist, a liar, or a fanatic. As I said - something close to 6 or 7 million Moldovans lived in Romania as Romanian citizens, and they all knew they were Romanians. It is only in Moldova, where the Russians conducted their dehumanizing mass psychological experiments, that a Romanian can consider himself something distinct from a Romanian.
Regarding the 1992 war - that war was, as I explained above, artificially ignited by Russia with the purpose of maintaining a military presence in the Nistru / Dniestr region in a time when its entire security architecture was crumbling. I remind you: Russia's armies were retreating east more than 1000km - that is a military disaster, they felt something had to be done. And as you always have to frame a war as a just war - Russians made out of nowhere the narrative that the Romanians were fascists, that they intended to conduct ethnic cleansings - do you sincerely have any precedent for anything like that in Moldova and Romania? Or are you going to lie again? Consider the post-war period: have there been any ethnic tensions in Moldova? Are you going to lie that Russians are discriminated against in Moldova when they can't speak Romanian after 32 years of independence? Moldovans usually still switch to Russian.
Also consider the absolutely bogus pretext under which Russia invaded Ukraine - would you deny and lie that the pretext was legitimate? The Moldo-Russian war of 1992 and the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine were done under similar concocted pretexts: that the Russians were being murdered by nationalists, whereas the real reason was securing control over strategic territories.
I suggest you drop you lies, forget about Russian greatness, stop being an enemy to you own fellow countrymen and tell you friends and relatives that the reunification with Romania is the right thing to do. Moldova has already lost half its population - it's demographically dead, it's time to think of what can be saved.
Nice episode! Moldova reminds me Argentina, don’t know why …😢
Btw, you’re pretty far away from Asia in this one but I-love the idea
Success!
Its the same everywhere. Moldova is just poor so there's less to be looted and feudal tragedy is more obvious.
Very informative! Can you do a video analysis of Croatia?
One of the rare historically accurate posts in Moldovan history. The same inhuman governance was applied in Romania, but with the country being somewhat richer and larger we were partially saved by EU membership. I feel the pain of our Moldovan neighbours. I wish them well in a world that limits justice to just a fiew.
Quite literally none of this is applicable to romania. Romania was always a successful nation, it had its bad leaders but so did France and Germany...romania is quite literally the 4th largest eu power by both strength and richness...I don't think they're similar in that context at all, Moldova is literally one of the poorest countries in Europe, romania is one of the richest, and this has stood true for decades, centuries for romania, even during its switch from "communism" the economy was still impressive.
@@tortellinifettuccine he was referring to the psychology of the people in the 2 countries Beeing similar manipulated by former communist secret service cunts that turned politicians, with both countries having a severe lack of civic education in theyr population that prevent them from achieving theyr full potential but with moldova Beeing a far worse manifestation of this because most politicians were former russian kgb or kgb native traitor collaborators and russian hindering at every step of the way any chance of development through war, the threat of war , propaganda and a lot of agents running the economy and politics . And it is true what he said, the eu helped romania a lot psychologically to stabilize and keep romania on a right course, given the abusive self harming, self loathing somewhat vicious and ptsd plagued psychy of the romanians and Moldovans that suffered under 2 of the most brutal authoritarian genocidal regimes in modern european history. If ro wasn't in the eu, romania would have been worse than ukraine with a similar chance of breaking up like yougoslavia due to a lot of external intervention by hungarians, russians and lack of competent leadership and general hostility in Europe's public eyes due to a lot of targeted denigrating smearing of romanians by foreign aholes with an agenda . Given the industry we had and lack of debt, if we had half as shitty treatorous politicians that we had and have, romania with smart rrtechnologyzing of the industry, now romania should have been industrially self sufficient in all aspects with a standard of living of that of germany at least if not higher, but hey, at least we got to own our apartments that we built during the communist era, and we managed to build new houses by degrading ourself as near slave labourers to hedonistic infatuated western dks that bribed our politicians into selling our industry for scrap value and not building nothing in return. So yeah, good part we still have our future that it's up to us to build for ourselfs, this time having hopefully a better foundation, at least if we wake up that is from the mental laziness that this shitty modern world induces.