Chiara Dazi

Transnistria is currently broadly known for its status of unrecognised independent state and unique Sovietstyle-pickeled daily life. But what is holding this place afloat and what is keeping its people together? In the Priednestrovian Moldavian Republic landscape is smooth and verdant, cities are neat and spare; celebrations are sumptuous and ostentatious. The Victory Day is here one of the most important commemorations: it underlies which memory and which history is honoured, it serves the function of gathering all people with their different origins and trajectories together under one common past, and raises consciousnesss by cultivating the sense of duty for the motherland and its heroes. The 9th of May 2015 counted as the 70th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War. For the occasion Moscow had the biggest military parade on display on Red Square which Tiraspol re-aired on its gigantic screen on the 25th October Street. As a matter of fact, the squares and avenues of Tiraspol on the Victory Day are full. Full of Ukrainian Veterans, Bulgarian nurses, Transnistrian children, unemployed workmen, Russian English teachers, half Russian half Moldovan enterprising youth. There is hardly a family here I met, not directly affected by WWII, the rest of their stories is a thousend piece puzzle.

Chiara Dazi, 2015