The complexity of Moldavian society. A conversation with Vitalie Sprînceană

Vitalie Sprinceana (Telenesti, 1982), is a Moldovan sociologist. He has studied Political Science in “Sveti Kliment Ohridski”, Sofia Bulgaria, he has a Master in Philosophy in Moldovan State University and a PhD in Sociology at George Mason University (USA). Journalist, activist, amateur photographer and blog author, he has his own blog (http://www.spranceana.com/) where he writes about immigration, religion, anthropology, Internet, politics, BBQ and women. He is project coordinator at Oberliht (association which fights for open spaces in Chisinau, www.oberliht.com/), collaborator at CriticAttac (http://www.criticatac.ro/) and Platzforma (http://www.platzforma.md/). Vitalie gave us a broad frame of the Moldovan society from his point of view.

 

 

Interview by Francesco Brusa and Teresa Morán

We would like to focus about some topics we think are pivotal in Moldavian society, at least from an external perspective such as our one. Let's begin with the search for a national identity. Do you think a Moldavian national identity already exists or rather it is necessary to build up a new one?

First of all, lots of questions and problems lie in the issue of identity itself. On the one hand, identity is a social trend, a willing we cannot avoid to confront. It is something beyond us, something characteristic of this world to search identities, to attach identities to the people, to localities, to countries, to continents. Discussions about 'who am I' are not specific only to Moldavian society, they concern lots of communities. I would say they are typical of the capitalist mode of production. So, the question of identity as such rises up many problems. On the other hand, thinking about Moldova, I disagree at a certain degree that Moldova needs an identity. Debates about it are misguided, poorly informed, they impose or they are trying to complain about the lack of an identity but somehow it something you don't need it. Identity is something archaic and, even though I'm not saying that everything new is good, I think we passed the era of “building nation”. We know already that building a nation is a very violent process: besides the claim about a metaphysical unity or brotherhood, there is a real violence imposed over people, both symbolical and physical. So, my question is: to what extent do we need it? I don't think Moldova needs a national identity and I think discussions about Moldavian identity should be understood in a broader context. Maybe they don't indicate exactly that Moldova need an identity but rather they indicate that there is a problem in terms of distrust by Moldavians towards how society and the political institutions function. It's kind of complaining for a lack of something that you can attach your hopes, something stable that could hold when everything doesn't work. So, I think the search for Moldavian identity is basically this.

So, my aim (and I know it could be very tricky) is to have a Moldavian civic nation. A nation, or a community - maybe it's a better word - that gathers individuals who are committed to certain rules of the game, to certain trust in some institution, to some values rather than to ethnics-related collective imagination. I think that at a very fundamental level the ethnonationalism, the idea you are someone because there is something beyond your control and in a way everything you are is predicted, enter into collision with the idea that you're responsible and you're free to choose. Here a crucial conflict lies and I go for the part of the equation that says that you have the right to choose. The sad part is that also the Moldavian left is speaking this language of identity and for me it's one of the cause of its defiance: it indicates lack of imagination and ideas. I think that we should switch the focus and abandoned this question, especially because it is very divisive. On the contrary, we should build some community and not unity, something that is built consciously and not imposed from above.

So, what do you think about the discussion of European integration, considering that it is usually seen as a mean to fight corruption while there are some research that refute this point (http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014)? Besides that, what is in your opinion the “real core” of corruption? Is it mentality, the economical system, etc...?

Again, I think the discussion about joining European Union is by no means complete, complex and realistic. It's a “quasi-religious” discussion, wherein European Union is seen as the savior and it also looks at it as a whole, while part of the European Union itself is called into question (just think about the Greek issue). When people talk about European Union as a way to fight corruption they don't have in mind the real European Union, the real kind of the European justice or the real judiciary systems, because there's a lot of countries with a lot of systems that function differently. Europe is seen as a kind of imaginary entity that will start to finally make justice in Moldova. 

     

As for corruption, it's a complex question that doesn't deal only with mentality. Mentality could be a partial explanation but maybe it's the effect of corruption rather than the cause. If we take a look to recent history of Moldova, we see that mentality can change very quickly and very easily: 20 years ago 80 percent and something of the population was atheist and now is 90 percent and something is religious. I would say that the problem lies more in the institutional setting of Moldavian society, in the way we as a society build our institutions and in the way we are hijacked by powerful interests. Partially it spreads because the inefficiency of the institutions: when the institutions are not efficient people always try to find quicker ways. Usually, in order to make anything you have to ask to many institutions for different approvals for your projects or requests and all this process takes a lot of time and effort. So I guess lots of people try to cut somewhere this chain by paying money or bribing. So corruption is both in a way a mentality caused by the inefficiency of the institutions and also is a result from official structure of the political system. In a super-centralized system like the Moldavian one, people who are aside the center of power know they should bribe some politicians in order to obtain something. I'll give you an example: a mayor of a small village knows that in order to realize a project in his village he should go to political parties in Chisinau and exchange something with them. So I would say corruption is a very complex problem. Part of it could be solved by fixing the institutional setting and by making institutions more efficient.

Related to your example, we know there are lots of differences between the capital and the rest of the country. How all of these differences work at a political level?

There are several points. First of all, decentralization process isn't working at all. Everything is concentrated in Chisinau that is the center of the decision making. There is actually a law about decentralization but its implementation is always postponed. Of course, differences between Chisinau and the rest of the country are concrete so mere decentralization without a proper strategy on how to develop rural areas will not work because it'll end up with Chisinau getting richer and the other part poorer. Also, another problem on the local level is that the institutions of the political system are structured in a way that they privileged big parties and politicians located in Chisinau while they disadvantage the local politics. Let's take the rules for getting into the Parliament: the actual system is proportional that means deputies are elected basing on party's lists and they're not representatives of district areas they will take care of. Therefore, what you get in the end are deputies who live in Chisinau, that are close to the headquarters of the Party and you have less and less people from the provinces and also as a regular citizen you don't have any mechanism to ensure a control over this deputies once they are elected. So I would say – and that's my opinion- we need at least a system half and half that could facilitate the advancement of people from ground level who will be more responsible to their specific area. At this point, you have a dead end in politic: you have the same people in power and from the ground you don't have the feeling that your decisions somehow matter. The only way to engage people in politics is by voting and this is a huge problem.

Let's switch to another issue: homophobia. In the aftermath of the gay pride on 18^th of May, you wrote: “intolerance towards gay people is one of the most visible phenomena in Moldovan public space” (http://www.platzforma.md/fascistii-sunt-intotdeauna-ceilalti/). Do you think the opponents of LGBT march acted out of pure homophobia or there are other issues at stake?

I think I should start by making a disclaimer: my position of an observer is that of a heterosexual man. So when I speak about this topic my point of view is in a way limited, because I see only the surface of the phenomena: I'm not facing everyday forms of discriminations that are going on in Moldavian society. But, let's put it clear: here there is a very high degree of intolerance towards homosexuals in daily life's issues. It's hard to say which is the real cause of this intolerance and I wouldn't go for like an explanation that takes 'either...or'. On one hand, there are surveys that show people are intolerant towards homosexuals on a everyday basis. The 2008 European Values survey is maybe the most reliable and it was asking people questions like “do you like having homosexuals as neighbors?” and people were having a very negative attitude. So, generally, there is a real homophobia in Moldavian population. On the other hand, we cannot deny that there is an all conscious political effort that treat homosexuals as something as a threat for the society and the country. This effort has been done consciously by part of the Moldavian society and with the very active participation by the Orthodox Church. There are many reasons why church is doing that: they want to mobilize people against modernity, against processes that they perceive as dangerous to them, like democratization of religious life (giving right to others religious community) or as a distance to the European integration political project which is a project wherein Moldova is kind of being engaged. Also, there are several groups around the church that are participating in this process of “prompting homophobia” and they're using anti-homosexuals rhetoric in order to gain some advantages, to begging or to gain some positions inside church hierarchy... Plus, there is also a lot of frustration in Moldavian society because of the so-called “failed transition” and the failed attempts to reform the society, because of the economic problems, etc. Therefore, part of the politicians is also using the homophobic rhetoric in order to gather voters and “channel” this frustration. You can see there are several ways in which a real and concrete homophobia that do exists in the country is exploited for different purposes, political ones or theological ones. Unfortunately I think at the moment the homosexual community is constructed like the “Other”, the radically different other that somehow is imposing a threat to the community itself. It's ridiculous to think that 30-40 homosexual are posing such a threat to the 'old traditional society' but this anti-homosexuals rhetoric is being used to express discontent to modernity, to the actual state of things. This is why I'm saying it's a very complex issue and we don't gain anything by saying that this is a total artificial issue or it is a real homophobia: it's both.

You're part of Oberlhit association which deals with urban spaces and which aims at prompting a different use of the public space. Can you describe how 'urban space' was conceived during Soviet times and what changed after Soviet Union collapse?

I think I should start from acknowledging my relation to public space, which I guess it's a very important issue in the society's development. The way in which public space functions is crucial to understand the way society works as a whole. So, thinking about URSS, I would say that “public space” functioned in a very specific way: it was an oxymoron or, to put it more correctly, a combination of two oxymoron, because “public” as we know it nowadays didn't exist back then. For “public space” I mean a space where you come as you are and you try to act or express something. In URSS the public space was more prescribed: it had the function to represent, to show, to model, to behavior, to emphasize the grandeur of that society. On the one hand, what happened after 1991 was a process of democratization of the public space because now you can use it without any constraint. But still it doesn't allow you to come as you are and build a society. You cannot go as a LGTB; you cannot go as a representative of a minority religion, for instance. Plus, there is an illogical commercialization of the public space. So, what is going on now is actually a process of constant disappearing and erosion of public spaces that contains public infrastructure and the emerging of other public spaces where you do not go just as a human being, but you go as someone, mainly as a shopper.

So our struggle as association is to have a kind of public space that allows you to come as you are and wherein you can therefore see the inner contradictions of the society (richest people allow to come as well as homeless ones, for ex.). We started by trying to reactivate a small park (Zaiki park) wherein a company wants to build parkings. Of course, we are trying to involve inhabitants of the area surrounding the park; we are listening to their needs and try to create something together in that place. We want to create a “precedent” that can hopefully work as a trigger for other similar processes.

So switching back to the idea of a “civic nation” you expressed, can you define it more in details? What are you exactly thinking about? Empowering already existing institutions or creating new ones?

I think we need both. We need the improvement of current institutions that totally do not work. But also we have to invent new institutions because the current ones, even if we improve them at their best, will still have some problems because of the changing nature of society. What we have to deal with is solidarity; we need alternative institutions out of which organizing people's solidarity. That means being able to invent new sources of economy that differs from the importation/exportation related capitalistic system and that don't take profit as their main goal.

And I add that this project should be as comprehensive as possible. I think one of the biggest problem of the left trough history is that it invested hopes in a specific category of people, usually the proletarian classes, and I would avoid to take any privileged social locus to “plant the seed” of changing. We are supposed to act everywhere trough the society but of course it's very difficult as well as very challenging. In a way, I'm pessimistic because I think the process, if it will succeed, it will be very slow and in the current situation it's not possible at all. What we have to do right now is building networks; try to think in a more trans-national way.

Would you say there are some “taboos” in Moldavian public discourse; either they are event from the past or topics from the present?

I would say we don't have any “big elephant” but we do have small taboos, lots of topic we should investigate more that are not present in the public discourse. Our whole history is in a way very problematic, under-discussed and under-understood. Our official history is written form the point of view of political institutions. So, first of all, we need a different way to look at it, we should focus more on regular people, other institutions, family units. From my very subjective perception, we didn't yet discuss for real the topic of Transnistrian war. I mean, there is an overall simplification about: we just read the event in the framework of aggressors and defenders while we forget that people died and bad decisions were taken, etc. Also, a very sensitive topic is how Moldavian State and we Moldavians as people treated minorities which leads us into the present times. The dominant narrative is that the Moldavians have built this country on their own but this means ignoring the contribution of every small groups of people. It is like our present came out all of sudden: like if we had the democratization of the society overnight and the country started to be more closed and interacting more with European societies. So, in general, the “transition” is not clear yet, it's kind of erased and it is because we committed lots of atrocities we maybe would like to forget.

Related to the LGBT issue we discussed previously, sexuality is another taboo as well as family. So, as you can see, we have lots of small taboos spread in the public discourse and into society.    

Another important term that is often used in discourses about Moldova is “value” (European values, traditional Moldavian values...). Don't you think it's a problematic concept to which lots of discourses are referring to in a simplistic way? What are the dynamics that actually create values?

On one hand, I'm very uncomfortable with the concept of value, because especially in Moldavian society discourses that refer to values are often used to justify negative actions and decisions. On the other hand, every society has to produce big narratives trying to rationalize, explain and formulate plans for development. Values in a way are created exactly for that.

Maybe we could say that there is a sort of schizophrenia in the Moldavian society, a huge split between values that have been preached and ones that directly come out from everyday interactions.  On one hand we are in a society that claims to respect “high values” like God belief, tolerance and stuff but on the other hand/one, we face lots of problems such as corruption, discriminations, etc. Above all this, many processes of “values copy-pasting” are going on but in my opinion will never work. To give a classical example, even values from French Revolution are supported by the whole history and struggles that brought to them. But, there is a very tiny and dangerous line between the “copy-pasting” process and the fact to look at other values and being inspired by them. The latter is something different that can be positive. So, I would go for values that are not built from above but values that go from below and that have been to some extent consciously constructed. I do believe in the importance and in the relevance of values in the societies making but they should be built and created from below.

Switching back to the specific situation of Moldova, I think there is a huge and interesting potential in our society. Individualism related to the Capital has come late so, if you deeply dig into our society, you'll find lots of values and habits related with solidarity. I would say Moldavian people, I mean the way they interact with each other, are very connected to collectivism. Therefore, you can certainly borrow something from this let's call it “tradition” in order to create something new. But, of course, at the same time, there is a privileged class of values producers who are the politicians. What we need is a democratization of values-making process that can change the way we are constructing our reality.