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MoldovaCrime
Crime in Moldova, as everywhere in former Soviet
republics,
has risen dramatically since the demise of the Soviet
Union.
Economic and drug-related crimes, the most visible and
predictable results of the deteriorating economic
situations in
the newly independent countries, have simply overwhelmed
the
human and financial resources devoted to them. Often,
however,
the problem is more extensive than what is acknowledged:
many
crimes are not registered. For example, in mid-1995, the
Moldovan
government stated that overall crime in Moldova had risen
by 29
percent over the previous year. However, the number of
motorbikes
and motor vehicles "being searched for" was thirteen times
the
number of vehicles listed as "stolen." Illicit cultivation
of
opium poppies and cannabis is carried out in Moldova,
mainly for
consumption in CIS countries. In addition, Moldova is a
transshipment point for illegal drugs to Western Europe.
* * *
The best historical treatments of Moldova in the
pre-Soviet
period are still found in general treatments of Romania.
Particularly useful works include Vlad Georgescu's The
Romanians, R.W. Seton-Watson's A History of the
Roumanians, and Barbara Jelavich's History of the
Balkans:
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Older, yet still
useful,
works focusing on Bessarabia are Charles Upson Clark's
Bessarabia: Russia and Romania on the Black Sea and
Andrei
Popovici's The Political Status of Bessarabia.
Much of the available information on the Soviet period
is
found in general works on nationalities in the former
Soviet
Union, such as James H. Bater's The Soviet Scene: A
Geographical Perspective; Mikhail Bernstam's "The
Demography
of Soviet Ethnic Groups in World Perspective," in The
Last
Empire: Nationality and the Soviet Future, edited by
Robert
Conquest; Social Trends in the Soviet Union from
1950 by
Michael Ryan and Richard Prentice; and Viktor Kozlov's
The
Peoples of the Soviet Union. Sherman David Spector's
"The
Moldavian S.S.R., 1964-1974," in Nationalism in the
USSR and
Eastern Europe, edited by George W. Simmonds, provides
more
specific information concerning overall conditions in
Moldova.
Michael Bruchis's Nations, Nationalities, People: A
Study of
the Nationalities Policy of the Communist Party in Soviet
Moldavia is an interesting and useful account of the
implementation of the Soviet nationalities policy in
Moldova by
an intimate observer of the process. For the politics of
language
in Moldavia during the Soviet period, see The USSR:
Language
and Realities: Nations, Leaders, and Scholars and
One Step
Back, Two Steps Forward: On the Language Policy of the
Communist
Party of the Soviet Union in the National Republics,
both
also by Michael Bruchis.
The following are useful works on the transition period
and
current conditions (several also include sections on the
preSoviet and Soviet periods): William Crowther's "Romania
and
Moldavian Political Dynamics" in Romania after
Tyranny,
edited by Daniel Nelson; Nicholas Dima's From Moldavia
to
Moldova: The Soviet-Romanian Territorial Dispute; "The
Politics of Ethnonational Mobilization: Nationalism and
Reform in
Soviet Moldavia," also by Crowther, in Russian
Review;
Nicolas Dima's "The Soviet Political Upheaval of the
1980s: The
Case of Moldova" in Journal of Social, Political and
Economic
Studies; Dima's "Recent Changes in Soviet Moldavia,"
in the
East European Quarterly; Darya Fane's "Moldova:
Breaking
Loose From Moscow," in Nations and Politics in the
Soviet
Successor States; Jonathan Eyal's "Moldovans," in
The
Nationalities Question in the Soviet Union, edited by
Graham
Smith; and Charles King's "Moldova and the New Bessarabian
Question" in World Today. (For further information
and
complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of June 1995
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