By Anatol Țăranu
Recently, the Speaker of Moldova’s Parliament Igor Grosu, answering the question of the moderator in a national TV program, made a resonant statement, saying that when the war in Ukraine ends, the Moldovan authorities will need to consider whether the Republic of Moldova should remain part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) or not. As it was expected, the statement of the high-ranking politician caused an equivocal reaction in Moldovan society, contributing again to a profound split of Moldovan society as regards the choice of the country’s civilizational development model.
The well-known Moldovan secret consists in the existence of distinct dualism in our society as to the value orientation of the Moldovan citizens in determining their personal future and the future of their children and that in a simplified form amounts to the answer of the question: shall we form part of the Western civilization, which is together with Romania, or shall we be alongside Russia, which is in Eurasia?
CIS created under “inebriation” and initially baptized differently?
The CIS was founded by the heads of the Soviet republics of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine by signing on December 7-8, 1991, at the Soviet state residency in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the Agreement on the creation of the Union of States of Slavs, which was later renamed the Agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (known as the Belovezhskaya Agreement). The incipient confusion about the name of the interstate organization at the constitution stage, which claimed to be replacing the USSR that fell suddenly, revealed the absence in the founding fathers, who consumed an appreciable quantity of alcohol when signing the treaty, of a well-thought-out concept for organizing the post-Soviet space. Later, President Putin disclosed the mystery about the appearance of the CIS, saying the Commonwealth was created for the “civilized divorce” of the post-Soviet states and is “a political fib and prattle”.
Initially, the main reason that laid at the basis of the creation of the CIS was a banal struggle for power of the leaders of the three Slavic Soviet republics who, for personal political reasons, buried the Soviet Union without hesitation. Concomitantly, the appearance of the CIS was justified by the necessity of attenuating the feeling of frustration of the Soviet philistine who was astounded by the collapse of the colossal USSR. For the reason to be more justified, it was necessary to gather together more former Soviet republics into an organization that was intended to be a substitute. The new leaders of the young post-Soviet states, most of who came from the nomenclature of republican parties, swiftly realized that the CIS, as an interstate organization that brought together the old knowledge of the Communist nomenclature, could significantly strengthen their personal power in the republics. Consequently, in December 1991 already, the heads of 11 former Soviet republics: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Georgia were absent) on December 21, 1991 signed the Alma-Ata Declaration that marked the creation of the CIS. In a period, Georgia joined the CIS, but later withdrew from this together with Ukraine.
Principle 2.5 on attitude to CIS
This way, after the collapse of the USSR, the post-Soviet space was organized according to Principle 2.5. The first group of new independent states consisted mostly of former Soviet republics that became part of the CIS, recognizing this way the main role of Russia in this organization and, implicitly, all over the post-Soviet space. The second group comprised the Baltic republics that categorically refused to have any close political ties with the former metropolis, going towards the creation of a European national state. Georgia and Ukraine chose half of the road and in time switched over from flirtation with the CIS to the abandonment of this organization and to exposed opposition to Russia’s open dictatorship in the post-Soviet space.
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