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Abstract: This article examines how a mix of grassroots socioeconomic and transnational factors perpetuate Transnistria's de facto separation from right-bank Moldova. The authors seek to push past the scholarly divide in the study of stalemates, which privileges either intergovernmental and nation-state elite power factors or observable, bottom-up elements in explanations of deadlocked conflicts. An interdisciplinary approach is used to demonstrate Russia's range of soft-power activities in Transnistria: the acquisition of industrial assets, debts and citizens, all of which have bearing on Russian-disposed public sentiment inside the secessionist region. The article ends by suggesting ways in which Russian influence and that of the European Union and Chisinau can pull Transnistria closer toward Moldova for conflict settlement within a territorially integral, sovereign Republic of Moldova.
Keywords: citizenship, Moldova, Russia, de facto states, Transnistria
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In August 2008, the world saw that unresolved conflicts and little-known, unrecognized entities can threaten regional security and potentially shift global power relations. South Ossetia1 and Abkhazia were two of four so-called "frozen conflicts" resulting from the breakup of the Soviet Union. Another frozen conflict close to Europe's doorstep is Moldova's secessionist region of Transnistria.2 Nestled along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine, this small sliver of land is home to over 100,000 Russian citizens, Russian military units, heavy armament and Russian big business.3
Transnistria fought a short war with Russian military backing amid its push for independence from Moldova during the early 1990s. Sporadic armed skirmishes over this period made for a less intense and low casualty conflict compared with the other Eurasian conflicts-in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Chechnya.4 The loss of roughly 1,000 lives in Transnistria occurred mainly in the most violent stage of the conflict, during the period of Russian militarized intervention in the summer of 1992. Russia's military presence effectively ended violence and forced a ceasefire (in July of that year) between Moldovan and Transnistrian combatants, but did not resolve the larger dispute over Transnistria's independence and Russia's influence in the region. Despite ongoing negotiations between the Transnistrian de facto authorities and the recognized Moldovan government-mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Russia, and Ukraine, and later joined by the United States and the European Union as "observers" (known...