A few years ago, while I was enjoying a local dish at a restaurant in southern Moldova, I
heard a joke about the country. It started as the great leaders of the United States, Russia, and
Moldova found themselves unexpectedly in the underworld. The devil gave each leader a chance
to say goodbye to his loved ones, but in return for this gift, he charged them a number of extra
years in his realm, based on how long the conversations were and the standard of life in their
countries at the time they met their most unfortunate end. The American and Russian Presidents
made reasonably quick phone calls to their loved ones and were punished with an extra million
years each. The Moldovan President called his family, his friends, and everyone he knew. When
he hung up the phone, the American and Russian Presidents waited with big grins on their faces,
only to find the devil charging the Moldovan President with an extra week. The devil looked to
the confounded American and Russian, shook his shoulders, and stated that it was a local call.
I did not laugh. Moldova is the poorest country in Europe and, while history has not
favored the country, her people generally live peacefully with each other, struggling for a better
future. In fact, as this thesis will attempt to show, Moldova (specifically, southern Moldova)
stands to serve as a standard to the world when it comes to inter-ethnic and inter-national
relations. Moldova is far from a joke.
To the east of Romania and the west of Ukraine lies Moldova, a small country the size of
Belgium, but with a much smaller population: four million. From June of 2005 to July of 2007, I
served as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in southern Moldova. I taught university English at
Comrat State University (CSU) in an ethnically heterogeneous region called Gagauzia. 2
Gagauzia is a semi-autonomous region, populated by ethnic Russians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians,
and the Gagauz. Descendants of the ancient Thracians and Seljuk Turks, the Gagauz speak a
Turkic language and have remnants of Greek Orthodoxy in their church ceremonies. With such
an array of people and cultures, my work proved to be quite difficult. Yet it was a rewarding
experience because Comrat is a microcosm of the world we live in today: multilingual and
multicultural, at times xenophobic and withdrawn.
As I traveled around southern Moldova for conferences, events, and social gatherings
with other Peace Corps Volunteers, I learned that most of the regions in southern Moldova were
ethnically and nationally diverse, just like Gagauzia. What's more, the ethnicities and
nationalities in southern Moldova seemed to get along with one another.
Now, this is not to say that disdain for other cultures in southern Moldova does not exist.
On the contrary, it does indeed. As a Volunteer, I heard many derogatory stories and jokes
revolving around Roma (Gypsies), Jews, and Russians. As one can see from the opening
paragraphs of this thesis, even the Moldovans themselves were not safe from jokes. Yet,
considering where I was and the region's history with the Ottoman Turks, the Romanians, the
Soviets, and its own independence, I was surprised that I never experienced events or heard
stories regarding violent clashes between the different ethnicities or nationalities in my two years
in Moldova.
Given Moldova's history, its current economic and political strife, its ethnic
fragmentation, it is odd that southern Moldova does not suffer from the inter-ethnic, international,
and inter-ethnonational violence and conflict that plague many of its neighbors. While
researching World Values Survey statistics from 2006, I learned that southern Moldova has a 3
high population of people who trust people of another nationality (TPAN). In Table 1, we can
see these data (see Appendix for Figure 4: World TPAN comparison levels).