Dear Readers:
Today I have some rather important news which is not getting much coverage, neither in Western, nor even in Russian, mainstream press. I had to turn to the Ukrainian newspaper STRANA to get the latest dope about Transnistrian affairs. Informed Readers will recall that there is a tiny Republic called Transnistria, and the name has nothing to do with Transgenders or Transsexuals, nor even the Planet of Transylvania [obscure shoutout to Rocky Horror cultists]. Rather, it is the Latin word for “Beyond the Dniester” River. The Dniester not to be confused with the Dnieper, even though they both start with the letters /Dn-/. Romans not being able to pronounce such a consonant cluster as /nsdn/ simplified Trans-Dnistria to Transnistria, and that’s how we got that name. Okay, here is a map for my geographically-challenged American readers [little inside joke there, please do not take offense]:
Now, the Russian word for this territory is Pri-Dnestrovie, which is a calque of Trans-Dnistria; and the locals call themselves the Pridnestrovian Peoples Republic or PMR. With its capital in Tiraspol.
Well-informed readers will also recall that Moldova (capital = Kishinev) claims this strip of land for itself, as one of its provinces. But the Transnistrians beg to disagree. They are pro-Russian by nature and would much prefer to be an autonomy of the Russian Federation, although that is not an easy proposition, given the swath of that giant thing called Ukraine which lies between the two.
A Very Rare Convocation
End of geography lesson, now we turn to the breaking news. The pro-Russian government of Transnistria very rarely invoke a convocation. In fact, the Deputies of their unrecognized Parliament have met only six times in the entire 33 years of the existence of their unrecognized Republic! Thus, all ears were abuzz when they called a special meeting for February 28.
The fact is, the Transnistrian Deputies are stuck in a Time Warp, they believe they are still living in the USSR, their flag has a hammer and sickle motif, they mostly engage in business and various rackets, and they only call meetings when something super-urgent is on the agenda. For example, their last session, which happened back in 2006, was for the purpose of calling a Referendum. The only question on the ballot: Whether the population wanted to join Russia. The population eagerly agreed, and 97% duly voted to join Russia. But nothing ever came of this. Because… as we mentioned before… the vast distances…
A bit more backstory, to explain the configuration of the current sitrep: Since Moldova considers Transnistria to be a rebel breakaway secession, then the Moldovan government naturally allies with Ukraine and NATO. Who would like to put an end to this secession and conquer this small, but strategically important, strip of land back for NATO. Over the years, Moldova/NATO have blockaded Transnistria mercilessly and placed every type of economic sanction, hoping to break the will of the Transnistrian people. Starting in January 2024 Moldova laid another set of even harsher tariffs upon the breakaway strip. It was this economic vise which pushed the Transnistrian Deputies into summoning this session on February 28. Rumors flew that they would declare themselves a Russian Republic and beg Russia to send troops to protect them against a possible Moldovan/Ukrainian invasion.
So, what actually happened on the 28th?
[to be continued]
Awful Avalanche 
TRANSSYLVANIA is predominantly HUNGARIAN . I KNOW because I have been there and because my oldest Friends Family originate from there … PUTIN mentioned these Hungarians in a speech as he could observe them travelling through the region
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Putin mentioned this during his interview with Tucker Carlson. This was in USSR times. He mentioned that he travelled through this region and noticed ethnic Hungarians wearing rather distinct clothing, including top hats. At first he thought they were members of a theater troupe!
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No comment about the articles content, but now have learned a completely new word to increase my vocabulary. My little Library. the majority collected during my years I spent in Canada, contains a substantial amount of works in english, from history, victorian lit., science etc., to newer US works.
But never before have I come across this little word: calque. Thanks for the gift. Google calls it a “loan translation”, so it is quite different from a “loan word”. And I have a hard time coming up with an example in the english language.
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I cannot wait to use the word at the next dinner party, that I so frequently never visit.
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Thanks, Peter, you are in for a treat! I learned the word “calque’ in Linguistics class. Calques are wonderful. Your native German actually has a lot of calques, because Germans patriotically decided to create their own versions of new words (using native roots) instead of borrowing words outright, as Russians tend to do. The most common example is German “Fernsehen” which is a calque of “tele-vision”. But there are tons of other examples.
Russians mostly don’t bother nowadays, they just lazily borrow the word outright, for example, “televizor”. However, in past centuries, Russians tended to “calque” words from the Greek and other languages. One random example: Greek συμπάθεια (“sympatheia” or “sympathy”) becomes Russian сотрадание (“so-stradanie”, literally “suffering together”).
here is an article I found giving lots of examples of calques into English.
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Thanks, although some calques refer only to a specific meaning.
There is the word “earworm”, meaning in its untranslated form as both a song that sticks in your mind and the insect, whereas in english it only describes the former. The insect is an earwig.
I am however astonished that a lot of calques, like “superman”, “standpoint”, “assault rifle” actually are from the German.
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Übermensch! Term invented by Nietzsche. Calqued into English “Superman” by George Bernard Shaw in 1903.
Somehow, I don’t think either of these great writers imagined a guy wearing tights and a cape.
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I seem to recall Transnistria is home to an absolutely huge Soviet-era arms and munition storage dump. And that the Ukies were going to invade Transnistria, what 18 months ago, and seize the “treasure”. Then there was the rumour that if they did, the entire cache would be blown up once the Ukies had gathered upon it slapping each other’s shoulderss in glee.. Is my recollection correct? Whatever, the Ukies never invaded Transnistria.
Meanwhile, pert little photogenic fascist prez of Moldova, Maia Samdu, and perennial Paris boutique shopper when not being serenaded by Moldova’s national military high school band as a genius, is the useful dolt wanting to return Transnistria to the Moldovan fold.
Meanwhile, Putin basically advised the West in his latest two hour speech in Russia, that if NATO attacks Russian soil, then expect nukes. That, according to Scott Ritter on Garland Nixon yesterday, is because the Balts are threatening the corridor to Kaliningrad with closure. No kid gloves as with Ukraine, Russia will regard an attack on its territory as an existential threat to its existence, according to Ritter. I’ve said the same thing myself.
I’m sure the neocons are deaf to anything Putin says, but this isn’t the first time Russia has threatened the West (NATO, US, EU and UK) to watch out, mind their p’s and q’s or else. Perhaps this is why Scholz grew a spine and said no German troops to Ukraine after Macron’s bullshit pronouncements about sending Frog troops to so Ukraine. Serious shit — here’s the link:
I suggest you get over your Nixon snit, yalensis, and have a watch/listen.
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Sigh… Okay, I’ll watch it. I can still watch Garland without necessarily forgiving him for his egregious past errata.
A family feud, more or less!
P.S. – you are absolutely right about the weapons hoard and storage dump. This is the main thing about Transnistria, and what makes it important. I probably should have mentioned that in my post. It’s like re-telling the story of the Niebelungenlied without mentioning the hoard of the Niebelungs which the hero Siegfried captured by slaying the dragon Fafner.
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To correct: Nibelungenlied.
Fafner is according to Wikipedia permitted, but as a German kid growing up in the fifties I only know it as Fafnir. It has to do with the emphasis of the “ir” vs. the “er”.
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Oops, thanks for the spelling correction, as a Wagnerite I definitely should have known better, duh!
In the Wagner version (“Der Ring des Nibelungen”), the (singular) Nibelung is, of course, the dwarf Alberich himself. And his brothers, the other Nibelungen are the race of dwarves who mine for gold and are also expert metal smiths and craftsmen.
But in the medieval epic poem “Nibelungenlied”, it is somewhat hazy (at least to me), exactly who exactly the Nibelungen are. Are they the same as the Burgundians? Or a different tribe? At a certain point it seems like Krimhilde and Atilla are just fighting against a series of German tribes, but her brothers used to be Burgundians, then suddenly they are referred to as Nibelungen. Is it because they stole the Nibelung hoard of gold and treasures from Siegfried?
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I guess this means the Russians will eventually try to take Odessa. Yalensis, I’m still not clear about how I should try to pronounce Dnieper or Dniester. D**n it! My mouth just won’t pronounce “dn.” It forces me to put a schwa or other vowel between d and n, as in “Dəniester”or “Deniester,” although this creates an extra syllable. Is there any trick for helping speakers of English traverse “dn” without unwillingly inserting a vowel?
By the way, Larry Johnson has a good explanation for why This Bud’s For You Budanov called out the US’s lie about Navalny recently. It’s at the end of this article by Larry: https://sonar21.com/ny-times-plays-cia-messenger-turn-off-the-lights-the-party-is-over/
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Interesting CCD, if there is any talent beyond Langley’s bread and butter of lies, thievery and cold-blooded murder of civilians it’s…covering-up their own seventy-years of OPERATIONAL blunders.
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A good approximation would be to pronounce the dn as jn (written another way, dzhn, like John without the oh).
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So, you can pronounce Dniepr as Jnyehpr. Your Russian passport will be in the mail!
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Like a native!
🙂
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Thanks for that link, cc. Quite interesting. Yeah, I think Russia will have to take Odessa one way or the other, assuming things go that way.
As for how to pronounce /dn/ consonant cluster. I suggest you make the /d/ very short and transition immediately to a kind of humming /nnnnnn/.
To pronounce the /d/ in the Russian manner, put your tongue behind your front teeth, as if you were about the pronounce the word “the”. Then transition seamlessly to the nasal /n/. You don’t need to move a thing, neither tongue nor teeth, all you have to do is unblock your air route and let the air flow through your nose!
That’s basically what a nasal consonant is, it’s just a consonant where you allow air to pass through your nose.
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Thanks.This will take a little work…. Btw, good luck with your Rus = reeds etymology. If it becomes famous, some Banderites will surely claim that the Ukrainian “race” is descended from Moses, he who floated among the reeds of the Nile not so long after the creation of the world. They are a bit slow, so it will take them a few weeks to realize the implications of their new McClaim.
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Oh, Ukrainians go back WAY further than Moses! They built the Tower of Babel and the pyramids.
Speaking of which, I just realized, the King who built the Tower of Babel, was named Nimrod the Great.
The root /-rod/ could be the same as the word for “reed”. Yeh yeh, I think I am onto something! So, his name in ancient Ukrainian “Nim-rod” would be translated as “I am not a reed.” And since reeds are used in clarinets and oboes, Nimrod was trying to say that he was not a woodwind player in the Babylonian orchestra.
Or maybe “I am not red,” because he was opposed to communism(?)
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I suspect the latter alternative. It may be related to the late great South Korean dictator Pak (aka Park) Chong-hee’s favorite mantra: “Beat the mad red dogs of the north with a big rod!” Re “nim,” the deity once confessed to me that it developed into “dim” by way of Old English dim, dimm (“dim, dark, gloomy; wretched, grievous, sad, unhappy, intellectually slow”), from Proto-West Germanic *dimm, from Proto-Germanic *dimmaz (“dark”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰem- (“to whisk, smoke; obscure”).
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This is all very plausible, and should be written up in a scholarly, peer-reviewed article for a reputable journal!
I would also add, as a footnote, that Park’s friends called him a big fat nimrod behind his back, which also adds to the plausibility of said etymologies.
🙂
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Again, as in all wars, time is a factor. Russia’s High Command has to put aside re-reading their father’s “Annals of Soviet Warfare” and come up with a plan of their very own that puts Ukrainia’s Galician Overlords, vassals of DC/London’s neocolonicons, to rout…Time is a factor.
—————–
“neocolonicons” I have been searching for a word to replace “neocon” because, there is nothing new or conservative with regard to meglomaniacs raiding the national treasury to fund war eternal…it is just the banal behavior of vain, entitled courtiers and courtesans bent on imploding an empire they have parasitically infected.
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All the preceding comments are excellent, on-target and instead of responding to one in particular, I’ll add… fluff? Anyway.
Transnistria came to my attention *only* because years ago a colleague was Moldovan and, being fond of maps, the little strip stood out. Makes sense: they didn’t want to be part of Moldova, so after some disagreement Russia parked troops there to ensure no one had nasty ideas similar to what we’ve seen in DPR/LDR.
Plus that enormous, moldering arms depot no one could imagine relocating. Which suddenly became a LOT more valuable to the West as all the old sources of Soviet-caliber ammo dried up. Right now? It’s probably not worth its weight in gold, but comparing to new shell pricing a 152mm round would be 90% the price of its weight in uranium! (or $5.67 USD per ounce)
So… *why now*. Cui bono? Transnistria has sat quietly for more than a year despite eyes of avarice on it far in excess of the value of the land or its 220k or so people. Or even its 10k Russian peacekeepers–whom we can assume Bankova would love to capture, geld, brand and swap to Russia for some of their brave fascists.
Transnistria has long made me nervous, as it (like Kaliningrad) can easily serve as a means to “force” Russian action that might not otherwise be supported by other facts. The strip sits on many, but not all, of the land links between Ukraine and Romania, where the 101st Airborne has been cooling its heels for a while, and to get to it you have to either secure and amphibiously support a landing at the mouth of the Dniester, or lunge from the Dnieper–in either case, strongly screening or securing Odessa. Otherwise, the strip gets supplied by air across hostile territory… we can only presume the peacekeepers there have been supported by the locals these past few years, as I doubt there’s any other link functioning.
So why now? Why summon a request for international assistance patterned off the SMO’s legal foundation? Is an Odessa thrust in the offing? Was the reorganization of the Kherson Military Zone also maskirovka for finally addressing the coast?
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Hmmm, these are all super-interesting questions. My spidey-sense tells me that something is up, so stayed tuned!
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It’s a big puzzle, and one for which some (but not all) of the pieces change over time. The ones that don’t change are… mostly around the Black Sea, interestingly enough. Keep in mind that what we are witnessing/experiencing could properly be called “Crimean War 2.0”, in that the core objective of the West (read: Anglos) has been to seize basing rights in Sevastopol and end forever the threat of seaborne Russia to control of the Med as the doorway to colonies of Africa, southern Asia and the Middle-East.
Thus, when the 101st sits in Romania and waits for something, or Macron talks about putting French troops in as “border guards”, you may rest assured they are thinking of Odessa and the coast. If *that* is lost to Russia, then nothing else matters and they may as well pick up their toys and go home. Poland and Galicia? What? –That’s a Polish problem….
So with this in mind, “activating” Transnistria either on purpose or by force of circumstances (Moldovan mobilization) means there are very, very consequential moves being made on the, uh, Stratego-board.
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Plausible analysis! This is indeed Crimean War 2.0.
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I just wanted to point out the importance of color schemes when you want to amp up what you consider an important statement. Matt Taibbi, as usual, does a good job. All drab official spokespeople and leaders should pay attention. Maybe the Transnistrian president should use this color scheme right about now. Watch it full screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHt5ZF9i8qg
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Sorry to post so much, but I wanted to share this review from a Notre Dame philosophy network I just came across. The reviewer appears to be having bad digestion, but the book seems interesting. If the plan for democratic dissolution of the US were actually put into practice, most of the wars and tension around the world would simply shut down. It would just stop. In some places you could even hear the sound of a frog jumping into an old pond. I suspect the rather biased reviewer believes that the author of the book has found a dangerous way to end the empire and is very afraid of that. What the book apparently describes may be one of the only ways available to dismember the empire and bring world peace without firing a shot. It would be ironic if the neocons’ perennial plan to use force to divide up Russia into many small countries ended up hastening the democratic dissolution of the US.
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Oops. Here’s the link to the review: https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/splitsville-usa-a-democratic-argument-for-breaking-up-the-united-states/
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Thanks, cc, you never need to apologize for “posting so much”, this is an intellectual forum so we discuss a lot of interesting ideas here!
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So, what actually happened on the 28th?
[to be continued]
That’s a cliffhanger if ever there was one 😉
Can’t wait to read the following.
On an unrelated point, and somewhat ironically, calque itself is not a calque, but a loanword from French (though it’s more polysemic in french) while loanword is a calque from German.
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Thanks, Jean! Well, I reckon you’ll have to wait until tomorrow, but, spoiler alert, you might be disappointed in the anti-climax! Personally, I think there is just a lot of posturing going on, for deterrence, obviously.
🙂
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Thierry Meyssan on Transnistria:
https://www.voltairenet.org/article220517.html
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Thanks! this gives some good background to the current situation.
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