Jehovah’sWitnesses and Post-SovietReligious Policy in Moldova and theTransnistrian Moldovan Republic

[Guest Kurt]

Emily B. Baran is Assistant Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011. She has recently published her first monograph: Dissent on the Margins: How Soviet Jehovah's Witnesses Defied Communism and Lived to Preach About It (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Emily B. Baran

Jehovah’s Witnesses represent a relatively new phenomenon formany, if not most communities in the post-Soviet states. The major-ity of Soviet Witnesses lived in a limited number of provincial loca-tions far from political centers. This was not largely the case,however, for Moldova, which had some longstanding Witness com-munities in major areas, and particularly high concentrations of members in its northern districts dating back as far as the early 1920s under Romanian control. Following the wartime annexation of Bessarabia by the Soviet Union, the Witnesses’ refusal to servein the military, vote, or participate in civic life, coupled with a belief that the Soviet Union was controlled by Satan, made them an immediate and enduring target of state persecution. In 1949and 1951, the state exiled Witnesses en masse to Siberia, and didnot allow them to return until 1965.
Even after this, Witnessesfaced the constant threat of arrest and imprisonment until thelate 1980s. Soviet propaganda portrayed the Witnesses as religiousfanatics, political subversives with ties to the United States, and dangerous criminals, denying them legal registration until 1991.

After 1991, the former Soviet Union experienced a rapid increasein Witnesses, but there were still far more Witnesses in Moldova(and Ukraine) than anywhere else in the region. In 2009, only oneout of 903 Russians was a Witness, compared to one in 202 forMoldova.

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought Moldova independence, but not territorial integrity. In fall 1990, separatists proclaimed thecreation of an independent state, the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic (abbreviated in Russian as PMR), over territory east of the Dniester River. This fledgling attempt at self-determination escalated into a more serious concern once Moldova received inde-pendence and international recognition in 1991. The PMR refusedto accept Moldovan control over its territory, fueled in large part by fears of a Romanian annexation of the nascent republic.A small war broke out between the PMR and Moldova, resulting in a few hundred casualties and a cease-fire in July 1992.

Talks between the two parties and the Organization for Security andCooperation in Europe failed to produce any movement towardreunification. Instead, the PMR and Moldova pursued separatecourses of state-building, making reintegration increasingly prob-lematic and undermining Moldova’s strategy of closer ties with Europe.

This essay uses the Witnesses to examine religious freedom in post-Soviet Moldova and offers a comparison between the religiouspolicies of Moldova and the breakaway republic within its borders.It also provides a glimpse into the transformation of one formerly underground religious community into a legally registered organi-zation. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Moldova and the PMRpursued significantly different courses of action in regard to reli-gious affairs. Both struggled to create some measure of religiousfreedom while satisfying the demands of a resurgent Orthodox Church andcommunity.Atthe same time, Moldova, like many post-Sovietstates, setthe goalofgreater integrationwith Europe.Admis-sion into and cooperation with European institutions required conformity to certain democratic standards and limited the extentto which Moldova could enact restrictive legislation against minor-ity religions.

The PMR, in contrast, with no recognition from Euro-pean states, had little reason to conform to external dictates. Itsonly ally, Russia, had peacekeeping troops on its soil and by themid-1990shadbegunagradualshifttowardmoreexclusionaryreli-gious policies. Thus, Moldova and the PMR developed distinct reli-gious policies in response to differing international concerns andinternal dynamics. The result has been a relatively stable and inclu-sive religious policy in Moldova and a more arbitrary and uneven religious policy in Transnistria. I will first explore the post-Soviet situation for Witnesses in Moldova and the nexamine the challenges faced by Witnesses in the PMR.
The Republic of Moldova

How Soviet Jehovah's Witnesses Defied Communism and Lived to Preach About It

Contested Victims: Jehovah's Witnesses and the Russian Orthodox Church, 1990-2004

 

Jehovah´s witnesses