It
was a long, slow train journey from Bucharest to Bucovina, in the north-east of
Romania, close to the border with Ukraine. I arrived late in the evening at the
little railway station at Gura Humorului, to the west of the county capital,
Suceava. My main purpose in coming to Gura Humorului was to visit a couple of
the famous medieval painted monasteries nearby. Bucovina had been part of the
principality of Moldavia since the 14th century, but in 1775 it was
annexed to the Hapsburg Empire. The name Bucovina, or Buchenland in German,
meant beech land, a reference to its rolling forested hills. In 1918, Bucovina
was incorporated into the newly united Romanian state. However, in the second
world war, the Soviet Union annexed the northern half of the region to the
Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Northern Bucovina, officially known as Chernivtsi
Region in Ukraine, remains part of Ukraine.
I set off in the morning under a hot sun to walk to the monastery of Voroneț (pronounced Voronets), about 3 or 4 kilometres south of the town. Founded in1488, its church is one of eight in the area that are now UN World Heritage sites. The idea of covering the exterior walls as well as the interior with frecoes is credited to the mid-16th century Orthodox Metropolitan of Moldavia, Grigore Roşca, to illustrate biblical stories for the benefit of the illiterate peasantry. Sitting amid wooded hills and protected by a walled stockade, it is a beautiful, peaceful place. The colours of the frescoes are in remarkably good condition given the passage of time, and the faces and features of the saints are still clear. From Voroneț, I headed back to Gura Humorului, and decided that, rather than walk, I would take the local bus to the Humor Monastery, about five kilometres away.
Built
in 1530, the Humor Monastery church is architecturally similar to that at Voroneț, but it lacks a spire. There is,
however, a tower a few metres away from the church. The frescoes at Humor have
suffered more from weathering than those at Voroneț, especially on the side that is more
exposed to direct sunlight. In the frecoes at the Humor monastery, the colouring
is different from that at Voroneț. At Voroneț, a particulalrly vivid blue stands
out, known as Voroneț blue. But the biblical stories they
depict are much the same. I was particularly drawn to the depiction of the Last
Judgement that covers the back walls of both monastery churches. As the figure
of Christ presides, with the saints seated to either side, the dead rise from
their graves, summoned by Angels blowing horns, while wild animals offer up the
bones of those they have devoured, and a ship rises from the depths of the sea.
While the righteous press to enter the garden of heaven, the damned are pushed
by demons, themselves prodded by Angels with their lances, into a flaming river
that takes them down to Hell. It is a very vivid scene, no doubt intended to be
instructive and frightening to sinful believers.
The next morning I set off by minibus to the city of Iaşi (pronounced Yash), close to the border with the Republic of Moldova. Iaşi had been the capital of the principality of Moldavia from 1564 until 1859, and then of the United principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia until 1862, when Bucharest became the capital of the new, united Romanian state. Historic Moldavia had been much larger before the eastern half of the principality, Bessarabia, was ceded to Imperial Russia in 1812 by the Ottoman Empire, of which Moldavia was a vassal state. After the First World War, the Romanian state expanded to include Bessarabia, as well as Bucovina. But during the World War II, the Soviet Union took back Bessarabia, the majority of which today forms the independent Republic of Moldova, while southern Bessarabia was incorporated into Ukraine.
Iaşi
is known as an important cultural centre in Romania, and is home to the oldest
Romanian university and theatre. It is an attractive town, with numerous fine
churches and monasteries, as well as civic buildings and gardens which I found
were generally better maintained than is the case in Bucharest. The historic
theatre is especially beautiful, as is the remarkable Church of the Three
Hierarchs. The church was built by one of Moldavia’s most famous rulers, Vasile
Lupu (Basil the Wolf), who was of Albanian origin and ruled the principality for
nearly 20 years in the 17th century. The outside of the building is decorated
from top to bottom with strikingly original intricate stone lacery. Vasile Lupu
also introduced Moldavia’s first printing press and its first codified law. He
was a noted champion of Orthodox Christianity, hosting the Synod of Iaşi, which
was convened by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 1642 to counter
what were seen as Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrinal errors. The spirit of
Vasile Lupu appears to live on. Apart from numerous churches, I don’t think I
had ever before visited a town whose streets were so full of people in priestly
garb. I visited the monasteries of Barboi and Golia, tranquil walled refuges in
the heart of the city. There is also an Armenian church, indicating the
widespread influence of the Armenian diaspora over centuries.
From Iaşi, I travelled by minibus across the border to Chişinău, capital city of the present-day independent Republic of Moldova. Chişinău was a small town when Bessarabia was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812, but as the capital of Bessarabia province it was developed over the following decades, with broad avenues, a cathedral and a triumphal arch to mark the Russian victory in the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-29. Following Bessarabia’s unification with Romania after the First World War, in the 1920s a statue of Stephen the Great, medieval Moldavia’s most notable ruler, who reigned for nearly half a century from 1457-1504, was erected in the city centre. The statue has had an unsettled history, reflecting the shifting borders in the region. In 1940, it was moved to Vasliu, in Romania, days before the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia, then back to Chişinău in 1942, when Romania, allied with Nazi Germany, had recovered not only Bessarabia and northern Bucovina, but had expanded into Odessa region in Ukraine. In 1944, as Bessarabia was again occupied by the Soviets, it was moved back again to Romania, and then in 1945, as ordered by the Soviet authorities, it was returned to Chişinău. Finally, in 1989, it was restored to its original place in the city.
When
I visited, in the summer of 2022, Chişinău still had some of its Soviet-era
monuments, among them an equestrian statue of Grigory Kotovsky, a notorious gangster
turned Red Army commander during the civil war that followed the Bolshevik
Revolution. He had a town named after him, Kotovsk, just across the border in
Odessa region, in Ukraine. I had stayed there a few years previously. Kotovsky,
who was murdered in 1925, was interred in a mausoleum in a Kotovsk park, and there
was also a statue of him in front of the railway station, in a heroic pose with
his sword pointing to the sky. In 2016, the town was renamed Podilsk, in line
with a Ukrainian law forbidding place names or monuments commemorating
communist figures.
Although Kotovsky was from Bessarabia, in today’s Moldova, he was of mixed Polish-Russian parentage, typical of the multi-ethnic makeup of the region. Like Odessa to the south, Chişinău had a significant Jewish population, nearly 50 per cent by the end of the 19th century. And like Odessa, the city’s Jews experienced murderous pogroms in the first years of the 20th century. During World War II, the Romanian regime of Ion Antonescu carried out the holocaust against the Jewish population in the territories it annexed from the Soviet Union, including Bessarabia.
In the early period of Soviet rule, Moldovans suffered the same trauma as other territories newly incorporated into the Soviet Union, in the Baltic states and western Ukraine, of mass executions and deportations. Despite that, and despite three decades of independence and the ongoing Russian occupation of a part of Moldova’s territory, Transnistria, a part of the population has maintained a pro-Russian stance, voting for pro-Russian parties. Moldova’s Soviet rulers attempted to separate a Moldovan identity from Romania, with its own language written in Cyrillic, unlike Romanian, which is written in the Latin script. Following independence, the country reverted to the Latin alphabet, and the declaration of independence referred to the country’s language as Romanian. However, the question of the country’s identity and language continued to be contentious. The 1994 constitution referred to the official language as Moldovan, while in 2013 the Constitutional Court ruled that the independence declaration took precedence, and that the country’s language was thus Romanian. My confusion during this, my first visit to Moldova, was compounded by the fact that Russian continued to be spoken by many in Chişinău. In the family-run hotel where I stayed, my hostess spoke Russian with her family members, although she informed me that she was Moldovan and could speak Moldovan.
Away from the avenues and squares, the park with its well-tended flower beds, Chişinău is a scrappy, uncared for city. The minibus I arrived on dropped me in the central market area, a mess of dirty streets, rubbish, greasy, broken pavements and evident poverty. By early evening these streets were largely deserted. Chişinău is certainly a far less impressive capital than Iaşi.
Moldova has had more than its share of troubles in recent years. Its development stunted by persistent meddling from Russia. Abused as a money-laundering centre by corrupt Russian and Ukrainian state officials and organised crime groups, a banking scandal in 2014 underlined the corruption and dysfunction of a state that has singly failed to meet the expectations of its citizens since independence. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a big impact on Moldova. Whether it can find a way to shake off the debilitating burden of Russian interference and affirm its identity as a European country, either independently, or reunified with Romania, remains to be seen. The opportunity is surely there.
