NEWS: Through its actions, the current Moldovan government is pushing its people to leave the country, hiding behind fine words about ‘reforms’ and a ‘bright future’.
This opinion was expressed by lawyer Viktor Marahovsky. He said that the authorities are unhappy that they cannot install the ‘Train of Pain’ in the centre of Chișinău. In their opinion, this is a monument that highlights the deportation of approximately 36,000 people from the Republic of Moldova during the Soviet Union, starting in 1949.
At the same time, Viktor Marahovsky wondered: ‘But how many people have left Moldova in the last three to four years of “reforms” by the current government?’
"I'm sure they won't like the answer: More than during the years of deportation. Tens of thousands every year. Entire villages are abandoned. Our young people are leaving never to return. Not in freight cars, of course, but in buses, planes or cars. They have all left their homeland, where there is simply no work, no hope or justice for them," the political analyst emphasized.
According to him, the real ‘Train of Pain’ today is the thousands of Moldovans who have left in recent years, not because of the dictatorship of the Soviet regime, but because of despair, because of the government, which alone is causing citizens to leave.
NARRATIVE: The contemporary mass economic migration is equivalent to the forced deportations during the Stalinist era
PURPOSE: To relativize the crimes of the Soviet regime, including deportations and organized famine; to induce the idea that the current democratic authorities or European integration are ‘worse’ than the totalitarian regime, thus encouraging pro-Soviet and pro-Russian nostalgia among the population.
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: Current migration is voluntary, not imposed by a repressive regime. Moldovans who leave the country are exercising their fundamental right to free movement in search of better-paid jobs or better living conditions.
There is no coercive force from the state on those who emigrate. No one is forcibly put on a train, separated from their family by administrative decisions, or taken to a hostile place for re-education.
Comparing the two phenomena is a form of emotional manipulation and an insult to the victims of the Soviet regime. Those deportations were acts of political terror, part of a totalitarian system. Today's migration, however painful it may be for those who leave or remain, is not repressive or ideological in nature.
LOCAL CONTEXT/ ETHOS: Soviet deportations from Bessarabia took place in three major waves: June 1941, July 1949 (Operation South), and April 1951 (Operation North). According to various sources, between approximately 70,000 and over 100,000 people were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan under inhumane conditions. The main targets were wealthy peasants (‘chiaburi’), intellectuals, former Romanian state officials, priests, and anyone perceived as an opponent of the communist regime. The deportations were carried out without trial, based on lists drawn up by the Securitate and the NKVD, and the wagons were for cattle, without food or water, in conditions that led to thousands of deaths.
The truth about deportations was concealed during the Soviet era, even though Stalinism was condemned. Today, nostalgia for the Soviet past is encouraged by the Kremlin regime. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has even stated that the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century was the collapse of the USSR. In this context, attempts have been made to exonerate the Soviets and relativize the crimes they committed, even those during the Stalinist regime, one of the most oppressive in history.
In the Republic of Moldova, nostalgia for the Soviet past is particularly characteristic of ethnic minorities who speak Russian, representing almost 20% of the total population, but also of the population born after the 1950s (after the war, famine and deportations) who were exposed to powerful propaganda, cut off from the outside world, and lived in conditions specific to Soviet realities, with guaranteed employment, free schooling and free healthcare.
It is not uncommon for Russian or pro-Russian propaganda to deny or downplay the effects of abuses committed during the Soviet era or to exaggerate the achievements and development of former USSR member countries within the former USSR. Veridica has debunked disinformation related to the denial of the famine organized in 1946-47.
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