culture in moldova essay

• Countries and Their Cultures
• Culture of Moldova

Culture Name

Alternative names.

Moldavian, Romanian, Bessarabian. Moldavia is the Anglicized version of the Russian Moldavija and is not used by Moldovans. Many Moldovans consider themselves, their culture, and their language Romanian. Moldovans/Romanians in the region between the rivers Prut and Dniestr sometimes call themselves Bessarabians.

Orientation

Identification. The principality of Moldova was founded around 1352 by the Transylvanian ruler ( voievod ) Dragoş in what today is the Romanian region of Bucovina. According to one legend, Dragoş successfully hunted a wild ox on the banks of the river Moldova and then chose to stay in the land, which he named after the river. The name "Moldova" probably derives from the German Mulde , "a deep river valley with high banks."

Location and Geography. The Republic of Moldova is a landlocked country between Romania and Ukraine that covers 13,199 square miles (33,845 square kilometers). It includes the Gagauz Autonomous Region in the south and the disputed Transdniestrian region in the east. The latter region separated from Moldova in 1991–1992 but did not gain official recognition. The capital, Chişinău, is in the center of the country and has 740,000 inhabitants. Chişinău was first mentioned in 1436 and was the capital of the Russian province of Bessarabia in the nineteenth century.

Moldova is on a fertile plain with small areas of hill country in the center and north. Only 9 percent of its territory is covered by forest, mostly in the middle. In the northern part, fertile black soil prevails and the primary crop is sugar beet. In the central and southern zones, wine making and tobacco growing are widespread. The temperate continental climate in the center of the country, with long warm summers, relatively mild winters, and high rainfall, is favorable for agriculture. The semiarid Budjak steppe in the south has drought problems. The main rivers are the Dniestr in the east and the Prut in the west. Both originate in the Carpathians; whereas the Dniestr flows directly into the Black Sea, the Prut joins the Danube at the southern tip of the country.

Demography. Moldova has 4.32 million inhabitants. In the 1989 census, 64.5 percent of the population was Moldovan, 13.8 percent Ukrainian, 13 percent Russian, 3.5 percent Gagauz (a Christian Orthodox Turkic people), 2 percent Bulgarian, 1.5 percent Jewish, and 1.7 percent other nationalities, mainly Belarussians, Poles, Greeks, Germans, and Rom (Gypsies). Although the official number of Rom is only 11,600, the real number probably is 100,000. There are few concentrated Rom settlements in Moldova, and the degree of linguistic assimilation (Russian or Moldovan) is high. The Ukrainian population traditionally settled in the north and east. Gagauz and Bulgarians have concentrated settlements in the southern Budjak region. The Russian population, for the most part workers and professionals brought to Moldova after World War II, is concentrated in Chişinău, Bălţi, and the industrial zones of Transdniestria. Jews have lived in Moldovan cities in great numbers since the early nineteenth century, but many have left. Between 1990 and 1996, Moldova experienced a total migration loss of 105,000 persons. Jews, Ukrainians, and Russians were the most likely to leave. Consequently, the Moldovan portion of the population was believed to have increased to 67 percent by 1998. The population density is the highest in the territory of the former Soviet Union.

Symbolism. The national symbols represent over six hundred years of history as well as a close connection to Romania. The state flag is composed of the traditional Romanian colors of blue, yellow, and red. In the center is the republic's seal, consisting of the Romanian eagle with the historical Moldovan seal on its breast. Since the fourteenth century, the seal has consisted of an ox's head with a star between its horns, a rose to the right, and a crescent to the left. The national anthem was the same as that of Romania in the early years of independence but was changed to "Our Language" ( Limba noastră ), which is also the name of the second most important secular holiday. Its name has a special integrating power in two respects: Language is the most important national symbol for Moldovans, and it evades the answer to the question of how this language should be labeled: Romanian or Moldovan. All these symbols, however, do not appeal to other ethnic groups and thus confine the idea of an "imagined community" to the titular nation.

In regard to the conflict over symbols between "Romanians" and "Moldovans," the ballad Mioriţa plays a crucial role. It tells the story of a Moldovan shepherd who is betrayed and murdered by two Romanian colleagues: For the Romanian side, this story is about an "incident in the family," while for the Moldovan side, it reproduces the distinction between the good, diligent, and peaceful Moldovan and the mean and criminal Romanian. Next to hospitality, diligence and peacefulness are the national characteristics Moldovans associate with themselves. When Moldovans want to show pride in their country, they refer mostly to the qualities of its wine and food and the beauty of its women. Wine is an especially powerful symbol, associated with quality, purity, and healing. The cellars of Cricova with their extensive collection of old wines are considered the state treasure. Moldovans are also eager to underscore their Latin heritage, expressed by the statue of a wolf feeding Romulus and Remus in front of the Museum of National History in Chiţinău.

History and Ethnic Relations

Emergence of the Nation. According to official historiography, the Republic of Moldova derives directly from the Moldovan principality that was founded by Dragoş and gained independence from the Hungarian kingdom under the Valachian voievod Bogdan I in 1359. The government thus celebrated the 640th anniversary of statehood in 1999. However, what is today the Republic of Moldova consists only of the central and eastern parts of the original principality. The Transdniestrian region was never part of the principality, but Moldovan colonists settled on the left bank of the Dniestr in the fifteenth century. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the principality extended from the Carpathians to the Dniestr. Under Stephen the Great (1457–1504), who defended the principality successfully against the Ottoman Empire, Moldova flourished. Many churches and monasteries were built under his regency. Stephen is regarded as the main national hero of contemporary Moldova. His statue stands in the city center of Chişinău, the main boulevard is named for him, and his picture is printed on every banknote. However, soon after Stephen died, Moldova lost its independence and became, like the neighboring principality of Valachia, a vassal state of Constantinople.

In the Treaty of Bucharest of 1812, the Ottoman Empire was forced to cede the area between the Prut and the Dniestr to the Russian Empire under the name Bessarabia. In 1859, western Moldova and Valachia formed the united principality of Romania, which gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. Thus, the Moldovans in Bessarabia were excluded from the Romanian nation-building process and remained in an underdeveloped, remote, agricultural province of the Russian Empire. Only with the upheavals of the World War I and the October Revolution did the Moldovans of Bessarabia join the Romanian nation-state. The Moldovan parliament, the Sfatul Ţării, declared the independence of the "Democratic Republic of Moldova" on 24 January 1918 but then voted for union with Romania on 27 March 1918. The unification was mostly due to the desperate circumstances the young, unstable republic faced and was not applauded by all sections of the population. The following twenty-two years of Romanian rule are considered by many Moldovans and non-Moldovans as a period of colonization and exploitation. The subsequent period of Sovietization and Russification, however, is regarded as the darkest period in the national history. Stalin annexed Bessarabia in June 1940 and again in 1944, when the Soviet Union reconquered the area after temporary Romanian occupation. The northern and southern parts of Bessarabia were transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), and in exchange the western part of what since 1924 had been the Moldovan Autonomous Socialist Republic on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR was given to the newly created Moldovan Socialist Soviet Republic. Having been ruled by foreign powers since the sixteenth century, Moldova declared its independence on 27 August 1991.

National Identity. After sentiments ran high in favor of unification with Romania at the beginning of the 1990s, the tide turned, and in a 1994 referendum 95 percent of the voters elected to retain independence. As a result of their close historical, linguistic, and cultural ties with Romania, many Moldovans see themselves as Romanian. At the same time, the one hundred eighty years of separation from Romania and the different influences Bessarabia has experienced since the early nineteenth century have preserved and reinforced a distinctive Moldovan identity east of the Prut. Unlike Romanians, a high percentage of Moldovans have an ethnically mixed family background. Consequently, probably less than 5 percent of the people consider themselves to have a pure Romanian identity, whereas another 5 to 10 percent would identify themselves as Moldovan in the sense of being outspokenly non-Romanian. The existence of these two groups is reflected in a fierce debate between "Unionists" and "Moldovanists." Most inhabitants of the titular nation consider their Moldovan identity as their central political one but their Romanian identity as culturally essential. Since discussions on unification with Romania have disappeared from the public agenda, the question of how to form a multi-ethnic nation-state is growing in importance.

Ethnic Relations. Bessarabia has always been a multiethnic region, and ethnic relations generally are considered good. Especially in the north, Moldovans and Ukrainians have lived together peacefully for centuries and share cultural features. In recent history, Moldova has rarely experienced ethnic violence; in April 1903, for example, 49 Jews were killed and several hundred injured during the Chişinău pogrom, but mainly by Russians rather than Moldovans. In the late 1980s, when support for the national movement began to grow, ethnic tension between Moldovans and non-Moldovans increased, initially in Transdniestria and Gagauzia and later in Chişinău and Bălţi. Whereas the conflict between Gagauz and Moldovans was kept below the level of large-scale violence, the Transdniestrian conflict escalated into a full-fledged civil war in spring 1992. More than a thousand people were said to have been killed, and over a hundred thousand had to leave their homes. Although this conflict had a strong ethnic component, it was not ethnic by nature; it was fought mainly between the new independence-minded political elite in Chişinău and conservative pro-Soviet forces in Tiraspol. Moldovans and non-Moldovans could be found on both sides. On the right bank of the Dniestr, where the majority of the Russian-speaking community lives, no violent clashes took place. Since the war, additional efforts have been made to include non-Moldovans in the nation-building process. The 1994 constitution and subsequent legislation safeguarded the rights of minorities, and in the same year broad autonomous powers were granted to the Gagauz.

Urbanism, Architecture, and the Use of Space

Chişinău's city center was constructed in the nineteenth century by Russians. Official buildings and those erected by the early bourgeoisie are in a neoclassical style of architecture; there are also many small one-story houses in the center, and the outskirts are dominated by typical Soviet-style residential buildings. Small towns (mainly enlarged villages) also have examples of Soviet-style administration buildings and apartment blocks. Depending on their original inhabitants, villages have typical Moldovan, Ukrainian, Gagauz, Bulgarian, or German houses and a Soviet-style infrastructure (cultural center, school, local council buildings). Houses have their own gardens and usually their own vineyards and are surrounded by low metal ornamented bars. Interaction differs in urban and rural areas. In the villages, people are open and greet passersby without prior acquaintance; in the cities, there is a greater anonymity, although people interact with strangers in certain situations, for example, on public transportation.

Food and Economy

Food Customs at Ceremonial Occasions. Orthodox Christian baptisms, funerals, and weddings are accompanied by large gatherings where several meat and vegetable dishes, desserts, and cakes as well as wine are served. Homemade vodka and brandy also are offered. At Easter, a special bread, pasca , is baked in every household, and eggs are painted in various colors. Families go to the graveyard to celebrate their dead kin; they eat food at the graves while drinking wine and offering it to each other as they remember the dead.

Basic Economy. The national currency is the leu (100 bani ). Besides gypsum and very small gas and oil reserves, the country has no natural resources and is totally dependent on energy imports, mainly from Russia. Moldova has experienced a sharp downturn in its economy in the last ten years. In 1998, the gross domestic product (GDP) was 35 percent of the 1989 level, and the state is unable to pay pensions and salaries on time. As a result, more people produce food and other necessities for themselves now than in the 1980s. This includes virtually the entire rural population and many city dwellers who own small gardens in the countryside. The parallel economy is estimated to account for 20 to 40 percent of the GDP.

Land Tenure and Property. During the Soviet period, there was no private land, only state-owned collective farms. Since 1990, as part of the transition to a market economy, privatization of land as well as houses and apartments has taken place. However, the process is still under way and has faced fierce resistance from so-called agroindustrial complexes.

Commercial Activities. Moldova in general and Chişinău in particular have many traditional Balkan-style markets. There are mixed as well as specialized markets for food, flowers, spare parts, and construction materials. This "market economy" clearly outsells the regular shops. Besides foodstuffs, which are partially home-grown, all products are imported. These types of commercial activities are flourishing because of market liberalization and the economic downturn. Many educated specialists find it easier to earn money through commercial activities than by practicing their professions.

Major Industries. Industry is concentrated in the food-processing sector, wine making, and tobacco. Other fields include electronic equipment, machinery, textiles, and shoes. The small heavy industry sector includes a metallurgical plant in Transdniestria that produces high-quality steel.

Trade. The main trade partners are Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, and Germany. Russia and other Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries accounted for 69 percent of exports and 58 percent of imports in 1998. Exports are mainly agroindustrial products (72 percent), especially wine, but also include shoes and textiles (12 percent). The main import goods are mineral products (31 percent), machinery and electronic equipment (19 percent), and chemical products (12 percent). To realign foreign trade away from Russia and toward Western European and other countries, Moldova has constructed an oil terminal on the Danube and is seeking closer economic ties with Romania and the European Union. It is expected to join the World Trade Organization.

Social Stratification

Symbols of Social Stratification. Newly built ornamented houses and villas, cars (especially Western cars with tinted windows), cellular telephones, and fashionable clothes are the most distinguishing symbols of wealth. Consumer goods brought from abroad (Turkey, Romania, Germany) function as status symbols in cities and rural areas.

Political Life

Government. Moldova is a democratic and unitary republic. Since the territorial-administrative reform of 1999, it has been divided into ten districts ( judeţe ) and the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia. A special status is envisaged for the Transdniestrian region. The political system is mixed parliamentary-presidential, with the parliament (one hundred one representatives) and president both directly elected for a four-year period. The prime minister is appointed by the president only after the minister and his or her cabinet have received a vote of confidence from the parliamentary majority. The rights of the president to dissolve the parliament are very restricted. Some executive powers are vested in the president's hands: he or she can issue decrees and has special powers in defense and foreign policy. The delicate balance of power between parliament, government, and president is held to be responsible for the relatively high level of democracy as well as the blocking of important reform projects. Consequently, there have been discussions aimed at strengthening the powers of the president. Judicial powers are vested in the courts.

Leadership and Political Officials. Patrimonial structures and the Orthodox tradition of godfatherhood have strong political implications. Personal networks established over the years help people gain political posts, but such contacts also make them responsible for redistributing resources to the people who have backed them. Although kinship has a certain influence on these personal networks, relationships established in other ways during education and earlier work may be more important. Today's political forces have their roots either in the Moldovan Communist Party or in the national movement of the 1980s. The national movement started with the creation of the Alexe Mateevici Cultural Club in 1988 as an intellectual opposition group. In less than a year, it evolved into a broad mass movement known as the Popular Front of Moldova. Although the party system has experienced striking fluctuations in the last ten years, the main political forces have in essence remained the same. The Communist Party, whose place was taken temporarily by the Agrarian Democratic Party, is still one of the strongest political players. It has a mixed ethnic background and is backed mainly by the agroindustrial complexes. It is opposed to privatization and other reforms and strongly favors the idea of "Moldovanism." At the opposite end of the political spectrum are the Christian Democratic Popular Front and the Party of Democratic Forces. Both derive directly from the Moldovan national movement and have no former communists in their ranks. The Front favors unification with Romania and advocates liberal market reforms and democratization. The Party of Democratic Forces also favors stronger ties with Romania and the West but has abandoned the idea of unification; it too blends market reforms with social democratic ideas. The former president, Mircea Snegur (1992–1996), a previous Communist Party secretary and the "father" of Moldovan independence, has been joined in his Party for Rebirth and Reconciliation by other former communists who switched to the national movement early on. Petru Lucinschi, who was elected president in 1996, held high posts in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and has extensive, well-established connections among the social-democrat-oriented former political elite. Unlike Snegur, he and the parties associated with him are widely trusted by non-Moldovan voters. In Moldovan politics everybody knows each other and personal interests, sympathies, and antipathies as well as tactical reshuffles play an important role.

Social Problems and Control. The economic crisis resulted in an increase in poverty, theft, and petty and large-scale racketeering. Illegal cultivation of opium poppies and cannabis takes place on a limited basis, with both being trafficked to other CIS countries and Western Europe. In the villages, where people relate to one another in a less anonymous way, hearsay and gossip are effective tools of social control.

Military Activity. The army consists of 8,500 ground and air defense troops and has no tanks. As a landlocked country, Moldova has no navy, and after it sold nearly its entire fleet of MIG-29 fighters to the United States in 1997, it was left practically without an air force. The 1999 budget allocated only $5 million to defense spending, 2 percent of the total budget. The Republic of Moldova takes part in the NATO Partnership for Peace Program but has no plans to join either NATO or the CIS military structure. Although it is a neutral country and the constitution rules out the stationing of foreign military forces on Moldovan soil, Russian troops are still stationed in Transdniestria.

Social Welfare and Change Programs

A system of social security covering unemployment benefits, health care, and pensions for the elderly and the disabled as well as assistance for low-income families has been set up. However, the level of social benefits is very low, and they are not paid in time because of the socioeconomic crisis. National and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) aid orphans and street children.

Nongovernmental Organizations and Other Associations

Several international NGOs are active, especially in the fields of human rights and development. There are several local NGOs, most of which are small and inefficient. A Contact Center tries to coordinate the activities of the Moldovan NGO community. NGOs are frequently politically biased and get involved in political campaigns. Many NGO activists often see their organizations principally as vehicles for the pursuit of their own interests.

Gender Roles and Statuses

Division of Labor by Gender. Women in both urban and rural areas carry the burden of domestic duties and child care in addition to working outside the home. As a result of tradition and economic necessity, women engage in domestic food-processing activities in the summer to provide home-canned food for the winter months.

Marriage, Family, and Kinship

Marriage. When a young couple decides to marry, it is not unusual for the girl to go to her boyfriend's house and stay there. The next day her parents are informed about this, and the families come together to agree on the marriage. It can take a couple of months before the civil and religious wedding ceremonies are held. Divorce is common, and many women have to earn a living on their own after being abandoned by their husbands without the marriage being officially dissolved.

Domestic Unit. Newlyweds usually live together with the groom's parents until they can build a house in the village or rent an apartment in town. In the villages, there is a general rule of ultimogeniture (the youngest son and his family live with the parents, and he inherits the contents of the household).

Inheritance. Inheritance is regulated by law. Children inherit equally from their parents, although males may inherit the house of their parents if they live in the same household.

Kin Groups. Relatives support each other in performing agricultural and other tasks as well as ceremonial obligations. The godparenthood system regulates the mutual obligations between the parties. Godparents are responsible for the children they baptize throughout life-cycle rituals, especially marriage and the building of a house. Godparenthood is inherited between generations; however, it is also common for this role to be negotiated independently of previous ties.

Socialization

Infant Care. Babies are taken care of by their mothers and grandmothers. In villages, babies are wrapped in blankets during the very early months, and cloth diapers are used. Toddlers walk around freely, and their clothes are changed when they wet themselves.

Child Rearing and Education. Children generally grow up close to their grandparents, who teach them songs and fairy tales. Girls are expected to help their mothers from an early age and also take care of smaller siblings. A good child is expected to be God-fearing and shy and does not participate in adult conversations without being asked to do so.

Higher Education. A few universities remain from the Soviet period, together with about fifty technical and vocational schools. As a result of economic difficulties, people sometimes complete higher education in their late thirties, after establishing a family. The College of Wine Culture is a popular educational institution that offers high-quality training.

It is proper to drink at least a symbolic amount of wine during a meal or in a ritual context to honor the host and toast the health of the people present. Occasionally in villages, toasting with the left hand may not be regarded as proper. It is improper to blow one's nose at the table. Smoking in private homes is an uncommon practice; both hosts and guests usually go outside or onto the balcony to smoke. In villages, it is highly improper for women to smoke in public. People usually acknowledge passersby in the villages irrespective of previous acquaintance.

Religious Beliefs. The majority of the population, including non-Moldovans, are Orthodox Christians (about 98 percent). There are a small number of Uniates, Seventh-Day Adventists, Baptists, Pentecostalists, Armenian Apostolics, and Molokans. Jews have engaged in religious activities after independence with a newly opened synagogue and educational institutions.

Religious Practitioners. During the interwar period, Moldovans belonged to the Romanian Orthodox Church, but they now belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. There is an ongoing debate about returning to the Bucharest Patriarchate. Priests play an important role in the performance of ritual activities. In the villages, there are female healers who use Christian symbols and practices to treat the sick.

Rituals and Holy Places. The Orthodox calendar dictates rules and celebrations throughout the year, such as Christmas, Easter, and several saints' days. Some of the rules include fasting or avoiding meat and meat fat as well as restrictions on washing, bathing, and working at particular times. Baptisms, weddings, and funerals are the most important life-cycle rituals and are combined with church attendance and social gatherings. Easter is celebrated in the church and by visiting the graveyards of kin. Candles are an inseparable part of rituals; people buy candles when they enter the church and light them in front of the icons or during rituals.

Death and the Afterlife. The dead are dressed in their best clothes. Ideally, the corpse is watched over for three days and visited by relatives and friends. A mixture of cooked wheat and sugar called colivă is prepared and offered to the guests. If possible, the ninth, twentieth, and fortieth days; the third, sixth, and ninth months; and the year after the death are commemorated. However, this usually depends on the religiosity and financial resources of the people concerned. Graveyards are visited often, wine is poured on the graves, and food and colivă are distributed in memory of the dead.

Medicine and Health Care

Modern medicine is widely used. Health care is poor because of the state of the economy.

Secular Celebrations

The Arts and Humanities

Support for the Arts. In the Soviet period, state funds provided workshops for painters and other artists, who were guaranteed a regular income. This practice has ceased, and funds for workshops and other financial support are very limited. However, artists have better opportunities to sell to foreigners and the new business elites. National and international sponsors provide more encouragement for artistic activity than does the state.

Literature. The most important work of early literature is the ballad Mioriţa . Oral literature and folklore were prevalent until the nineteenth century. This and the classical Moldovan literature of the nineteenth century can hardly be distinguished from Romanian literature. The greatest Romanian writer, Mihai Eminescu, was born in the western part of Moldova and is perceived by Moldovans as part of their national heritage. Other renowned Moldovan writers include Alexei Mateevici, the author of the poem " Limba noastră ;" the playwright Vasile Alecsandri; the novelist Ion Creangă and the historian Alexandru Hâjdeu. Ion Druţa, Nicolae Dabija, Leonida Lari, Dumitru Matcovschi, and Grigorie Vieru are regarded as the greatest contemporary writers and poets.

Graphic Arts. Besides the painted monasteries around Suceava (Romania), sixteenth-century icons are the oldest examples of Moldovan graphic arts. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the sculptor Alexandru Plămădeală and the architect A. Şciusev added their work to the heritage of Bessarabian arts. Bessarabian painters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries concentrated on landscapes and rural themes as well as typical motifs of Soviet realism. Since the recent changes, however, young modern artists such as Valeriu Jabinski, Iuri Matei, Andrei Negur, and Gennadi Teciuc have demonstrated the potential and quality of Moldovan art.

The State of the Physical and Social Sciences

The Academy of Science was the traditional place for research in Soviet Moldova. In an agricultural country, particular stress was placed on agriculture-related sciences, and a special Agricultural University was established for the education of specialists and for research in that field. After the political transition, the State University was reorganized and private universities, focusing mainly on economic subjects, were established.

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—H ÜLYA D EMIRDIREK AND C LAUS N EUKIRCH

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• The Culture Of Moldova

The landlocked Eastern European country of Moldova hosts a population of around 3,437,720 inhabitants. Ethnic Moldovans comprise 75.1% of the total population of the country. Romanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, and others constitute the rest of the country’s population. 90.1% of the population adhere to Orthodox Christianity.

5. Cuisine in Moldova

The country's cuisine mainly features traditional European foods like pork, beef, cabbage, cereals, and potatoes. Vast tracts of fertile soil also allow the cultivation of a number of fruits and vegetables that find their way into the Moldovan cuisine.

The mămăligă (a type of porridge) is a staple of the cuisine and is usually served with meat dishes or stews. Sour cream, cheese, or pork rind are used to garnish it. Other popular food items include the ghiveci (a goat or lamb stew) and brânză (brined cheese), beef meatballs, grilled pork, stuffed cabbage rolls, noodles, chicken, etc.

Cuisines of the ethnic minorities are predominant in certain areas of the country where the respective minority communities live in large numbers. For example, meat-filled dumplings called pelmeni are eaten by the Russian community, and a mutton soup called shorpa is consumed by the Gagauz peoples.

Beer, Moldovan brandy, and local wine are popular alcoholic beverages. Fruit juice and stewed-fruit compotes are widely consumed non-alcoholic beverages.

4. Literature and Graphic Arts in Moldova

Prior to the development of written literature, oral literature was prevalent in the country in the form of folk legends, fairy tales, historical songs, heroic epics, ballads, lyrical songs, etc. The first written records in the form of historical and sacred texts appeared in the country in the Old Church Slavonic language. Secular literature developed in Moldova at around the end of the 17th century. The Romanian and Moldovan literature of this time exhibits significant overlap.

Paintings in monasteries and 16th-century icons are the oldest examples of Moldovan art. Bessarabian arts flourished in the 19th and 20th centuries. Such art concentrated on rural themes and landscapes. Today, Moldovan artists explore various genres of art. The presence of art galleries and art schools throughout Moldova encourage young artists to pursue their career in art.

3. Performing Arts in Moldova

The music tradition of Moldova is closely related to that of its neighbor, Romania . Folk and classical music are popular in the country while jazz is also widely performed. The folk music of the country is associated with syncopation, complex and swift rhythms, and melodic ornamentation. O-Zone is a popular Moldovan pop band. Folk music and dance performances are held during cultural festivals and ceremonies. Rock and pop concerts are held in urban areas and are popular among the Moldovan youth.

2. Sports in Moldova

Football is the most popular sports in Moldova. The Zimbru Stadium in Chișinău serves as the home ground of the country’s national football team. Moldova also performs well in basketball and its national team has earned some success in the FIBA European Championship for Small Countries. Cycling is also an important sport in Moldova. The Moldova President's Cup is a prestigious annual cycling race held in the country. Moldovan sportsmen in the fields of boxing, canoeing, shooting, and wrestling have won some Olympic medals for the country.

1. Life in a Moldovan Society

The Moldovan law provides men and women equal rights and freedoms. Members of both genders work outside the home. However, women are usually expected to manage the household chores and children in addition to their jobs. While men have higher decision-making power than women, the latter act as organizers in daily life.

Marriages are generally based on romantic relationships. Once the couple decides to marry, families are usually involved to agree on the marriage. Divorces are not uncommon in a Moldovan society.

Residences are primarily patrilocal in nature. The newlyweds live with the family of the groom. Later, they might move out if they build a home elsewhere. In the rural areas, the traditional society maintains the rule that the youngest son inherits the paternal home but he has to take care of his elderly parents.

Mothers and other female members of the family take care of the children. Grandparent-grandchildren relationships are highly valued in Moldovan society.

While the urban Moldovan society closely resembles that in many parts of the Western world, more traditional ways of life are visible in the rural areas of the country. In villages, the sight of women smoking in public is frowned upon. Men refrain from smoking inside the home and consider it polite to go outside to smoke. People in villages greet each other with respect and politeness.

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Exploring Moldovan Culture: Traditions, Customs, Language, and Etiquette

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Moldova — History and Culture

As with many newly-independent countries, Moldova has a long history and fascinating culture which are a source of real pride for its people. The country is still struggling to rid itself of remnants of the Soviet era and to evolve with modern Europe while retaining its traditional values and unique identity.

As with the rest of the Balkan region, Moldova has a history that stretches back to the original Neolithic settlers of the vast area between Ukraine’s Dniester River and beyond Romania’s Carpathian Mountains. Between the 1st and 7th centuries AD, the Romans arrived and departed several times, and numerous invasions of Goths, Avars, Huns, Bulgarians, Magyars, Mongols, and Tartars took place up until the early Middle Ages. The Principality of Moldavia was established in the mid-14th century, bound by the Black Sea and the River Danube in the south, the Carpathian Mountains in the west and the River Dneister to the east.

Crimean Tartars continued their invasions until the 15th century arrival of Ottoman forces and by 1538, the country was a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire while retaining internal autonomy. The Treaty of Bucharest in 1812 saw the Ottoman Empire cede the eastern region of the principality to Russia and its renaming to the Oblast of Moldavia and Bessarabia. The Oblast was initially granted a great degree of autonomy, but between 1828 and 1871, the region saw more and more restrictions as Russification took over.

The 19th century saw Russian-encouraged colonization by Cossacks, Ukrainians and other nationals and just before WWI, thousands of citizens were drafted into the Russian Army. The 1917 Russian Revolution saw the creation of the Moldavian Democratic Republic as part of a federal Russian state, but a year later, a combination of the Romanian and French armies saw independence proclaimed and Moldova united with Romania. Newly communist Russia rejected the changes, seizing power again by 1924 and forming the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, recognized by Nazi Germany in 1930.

By 1941, the Axis invasions resulted in cooperation with the Germans, including the extermination or deportation of almost a million Jewish residents and the drafting of over 250,000 Moldovans into the Soviet Army. The Stalin period from 1940 saw massive deportations of Moldovan nationals, severe persecution, and forced migration of Russians to urban areas. After Stalin’s death, patriot leaders were imprisoned or murdered. The Russian Glasnost and Perestroika movements of the 1980s saw a rise in Moldovan nationalistic fervor, resulting in demands for independence, a mass rally in Chisinau in 1989, and continuing riots.

By 1990, democratic elections were underway, and a Declaration of Sovereignty was signed. Despite an attempted Soviet coup in 1991, Moldova finally declared its independence and a year later was recognized by the United Nations. Although the Communist Party has struggled to retain its hold over the country, Moldova is governed by a coalition of Democratic and Liberal parties. Communism is still the leading influence in the breakaway region of Transnistria.

Moldova’s rich culture goes back to Roman times, with the ancient overlay colored by Byzantine, Magyar, Serbian, Ottoman, Russian, and Soviet influences. From the 19th century onwards, European and French elements were added, forming a varied, lively and resilient lifestyle expressed in traditions, festivals, the arts, music, dance, and literature. Elements of folk culture, such as wood carving and embroidery, are shared with other Balkan countries, but many aspects, such as pottery decoration and the 2,000-year old Doina lyrical songs, are unique to Moldova.

The country’s folk traditions and costumes are highly valued at a national level, and preserved in the capital’s museums, its Republic Dance Company and its choir, Doina, as well as forming part of every Moldovan celebration. The Colinda Christmas tradition of masked and costumed singers, musicians and dancers going from door to door to give performances and receive gifts bears a resemblance to the Christian tradition of carolling, but is rooted in pre-Christian pagan practices.

Wine is deeply rooted in Moldovan culture, with the vineyards some of the oldest in the world, known and appreciated by the Romans and a major source of export revenue during the Middle Ages. The Moldovan Roma community has contributed to the field of music, although it is still regarded as a disadvantaged group. Most traditional cultural events relate to agriculture, religion, folklore, or mythology, and are celebrated with joy and feasting.

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Why I love Moldova?

My story  (by Ana Castrasan)

Why I love Moldova ?

Once upon a time in Europe , a beautiful country has born. It was founded around 1352 by the Transilvanian ruler (voievod) Dragoș, who hunted a wild ox on the banks of the river Moldova. According to one legend, he chose to stay in the land which he named after the river – Moldova.

During the time, Moldova became more beautiful and wanted by big powers as Ottoman Empire , Russian Empire and URSS. That ’s why it’s destiny, history and culture was strongly influenced by them. Although Moldova passed through harsh times, it faced with dignity all the difficulties, and preserved rich traditions and culture for future generations.

Nowadays Moldova boasts a proud history, rich in culture and diversity. Since regaining independence in 1991, Moldova has again shown its individuality and cultural richness. The culture of Moldova represents a large range of cultural activities: literature, theatre, music, fine arts, architecture, cinematography, broadcasting and television, photographic art, design, circus, folk art, archives and libraries, books editing, scientific research, cultural tourism and so on. The cultural heritage of Moldova is abundant with traditions and customs. The traditions in Moldova are primarily related to national music, dances, songs, and food, wine, as well as ornamentation arts and crafts.

There are many reasons why I love this small and beautiful country:

* People * – even if you are at the limit and face the difficult moments you ever had in your life, there you’ll find in any situation someone who will give you a helping hand. People from Moldova are very open and hospitable. They like to have many friends and holidays.

*Traditional cuisine* – Moldova food has a delicious taste and is known for a wide variety of dishes. Once you will taste traditional food, you will never forget savory of zama (chicken noodle soup), sarmale (cabbage rolls) or mamaliga cu brinza (polenta with cheese).

*Wines* – Moldova keeps the old traditions of winemaking. With over 140 wineries, beautiful vineyards and underground wine cellars (some that are as long as 200 km), here you will find a real diversity of red, white and sparkling wine. The wine cellars from Cricova and Milestii Mici offers the possibility to walk in the underground towns of wine.

*Moldovan talents* – Moldova is also known for talented and creative people. Amazing beautiful melodies of Eugen Doga fascinate listeners from all around the world. The waltz which made him famous was selected by Russians last winter in the ceremony of Olympic Games inauguration in Sochi. Eugen Doga’s talent is admitted by UNESCO, as the waltz included as music in the movie “My Sweet and Tender Beast” is called the 4th music masterpiece of the XX-th century.

*Places to visit* – beautiful landscapes created by Mother Nature makes Moldova unique. The hills like people are different in shape and size. The archaeological complex from Orheiul Vechi combines the natural landscape and vestiges of ancient civilizations. The panoramic valley of Orheiul Vechi was nominated for the UNESCO world heritage list.  

My country has a soul which is full of people’s kindness and God’s love, that’s why I love Moldova!

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Understanding Moldova’s ethnic dynamics: Minority rights, external influence, and pathways to unity

Elena Cirmizi

This work derives from a final report produced for the Middle East Institute’s Black Sea Program as part of a U.S. State Department Title VIII fellowship.

Moldova is a country with a rich tapestry of multiple ethnic identities and linguistic traditions, where policymakers have long grappled with the complexities of preserving minority rights, fostering national unity, and addressing regional autonomy through engagement with the Gagauz minority (Tudoroiu, 2013, p. 375; Ciobanu, 2013; Deen & Zweers, 2022). The following analysis aims to view these issues from the perspective of the minority’s susceptibility to external political influence. Within the frame of the study, I interviewed 20 local Gagauz and Moldovan experts, including journalists, political activists, educators, and university students. Based on the data obtained during those in-depth interviews, I offer insight into the primary tension points between the Gagauz community and the central Moldovan government that are being exploited by Russian state-sponsored propaganda; based on my conclusions, I aim to influence the local political landscape and offer a range of policy solutions that can bridge the gaps in the country’s ethnic makeup while building resistance to external influence and propaganda. These solutions are centered around supporting educational initiatives, enhancing the quality of local media, and encouraging inter-community dialogue that recognizes the inherent value of linguistic and cultural diversity while also nurturing a shared national identity that transcends ethnic differences.

Gagauzia’s historical legacy

Gagauz-Yeri (Gagauzia) is an autonomous region in the south of Moldova with a predominantly Gagauz (a Turkic ethnic group), Christian Orthodox, but heavily russified population. The region gained its autonomous status in 1994 as a result of negotiations between the Moldovan government and the Gagauz leadership following tensions and conflicts between the two sides in the early 1990s. However, for the past 30 years, the implementation of autonomy has been fraught with legal and social challenges, with debates over the distribution of powers and competencies between the central government and the autonomous region (Thompson, 1998, pp. 128-147; Wöber, 2013, p. 14; Deen & Zweers, 2022, pp. 32-33 ). The majority of the Gagauz community perceives the central government’s actions as a continuous assault on their autonomy rights, eroding them through a range of executive and legislative actions that affect tax, penal, and security policies (Nitup, 2018; Garciu, 2022; Monitorul Official, 2023; Parlament.md, 2023; Yarovaya, 2023), and where the central government raises concerns about preserving national unity and preventing separatist inclinations (RFE, 2014; Yarovaya, 2023). Within this context, the role of Russian media propaganda and the susceptibility of the Gagauz community to its influence is frequently discussed. (Deen & Zweers, 2022, pp 32-33; Title VIII of the MEI Black Sea Program interviews, Chișinău, Comrat, June-July 2023).

Gagauz-Yeri, shaped by its historical, cultural, and linguistic journey, has traditionally maintained a strong alignment with the Russian Federation, translating into Russian influence over societal, political, and economic trajectories in the region. Rooted in cultural and historical foundations, Gagauz identity is linked to memories of being embraced by the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union, in contrast to a history of enforced assimilation during the Romanian kingdom. This perceived historical context has engendered the Gagauz’s connection with the “Russian world” — a concept actively popularized by Russian propaganda that claims the existence of a shared transborder identity held together by usage of the Russian language or common culture (Kosienkowski, 2021). Within this context, the vast majority of the interviewees in my study expressed concerns about the negative impact that rebroadcasted Russian state media has on Gagauz internal affairs. According to the 2022 Ethnobarometer survey, 73% of local respondents who identify as ethnic Gagauz and 47% who identify as Moldovans consume Russian state-controlled media (Ethnobarometer, 2020). Russian media influence extends to public opinion within Moldova, intensifying existing tensions, framing issues in a way that serve Moscow’s political interests, and fostering favorable sentiments among the population by advocating for closer ties with Russia that allegedly will offer greater benefits for the Gagauz community and Moldova as a whole (McGrath & Jardan, 2022). Most respondents noted that specific tactics encompass discrediting the Moldovan government by depicting it as ineffective, corrupt, overly liberal, or indifferent to minority language rights (Haines, 2015; Perevozkina, 2023, Title VIII of the MEI Black Sea Program interviews, Chișinău, Comrat, June-July 2023). Such portrayals reportedly generate skepticism among Gagauz regarding the government’s policies and add complexity to the existing challenges, making it even more important for the central government to engage in careful, informed dialogue and decision-making rather than ignoring the tensions or acting in a heavy-handed manner (Deen & Zweers, 2022, p. 32).

Relations with the Moldovan state

The discourse concerning language use in the region stands as a pivotal point in the relationship between the Gagauz minority and the Moldovan state and is a key defense against external influence. On the surface, the issue revolves around the acknowledgment, utilization, and advancement of the Gagauz language, encompassing its standing in official contexts and educational institutions. Moldova recognized the Gagauz language as a minority language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ratified in 2001), taking on the obligation to protect and promote the Gagauz language’s usage and visibility in public life. However, according to a 2010 UNESCO study, the Gagauz language has been identified as “potentially vulnerable” (Garciu, 2023). All Gagauz experts and students interviewed in the course of this research project directly linked their ethnic identity with the language and expressed apprehension about their language’s potential erosion. When queried about potential solutions, Gagauz interviewees grappled with identifying the optimal equilibrium between utilizing Russian as a lingua franca, the state language, and fostering the development of their native tongue, blaming the vulnerability of Gagauz on a lack of educational and media resources, russification, and its limited economic viability beyond the region. They also noted the Moldovan state’s lack of action and interest in supporting autonomy across these domains (see also European Commission, 2022). These concerns are intricately connected in their responses to the simultaneous decades of inaction in supporting state language education in Gagauzia. The lack of Romanian as a second language curriculum, the absence of language teachers, and the dismissal of the appeals from the community for additional support in establishing alternative education channels for the Romanian language led to the proliferation of the Russian language within the region, consequently providing fertile ground for the unprecedented domination of Russian state propaganda within the community.

Recommendations

To contribute to the ongoing dialogue surrounding language usage in Gagauz-Yeri while countering external propaganda efforts, I present several policy initiatives that seek to illuminate a path toward constructive cooperation and the preservation of minority rights within the larger framework of national unity. These programs include a multilingual curriculum, summer language institutes, and in-state and foreign cultural exchange initiatives, and will represent proactive efforts to bridge the linguistic divide, encourage cross-cultural understanding, and build up community resilience.

Multilingual primary education as an implemented education strategy could allow students to receive primary education in dual Romanian and Gagauz (and other local minority languages) to establish appropriate communication patterns during preschool, kindergarten, and elementary school. This approach acknowledges the importance of both languages while ensuring that students from both communities have access to education in their native language. It is necessary to emphasize multilingualism in education instead of bilingualism, and provide Russian- and English-language education as second-language subjects, to ensure that Russian speakers among the regional population do not reject the initiative. This initiative will necessitate dedicated staffing in schools, which would enhance employment opportunities for Gagauz speakers and can be achieved by cooperation between the local and central government, building upon the vast experience of Moldovan-Turkish lyceums in Moldova (Moldpress, 2022).

Language summer institutes could serve as stress-free, immersive environments where children from diverse backgrounds can come together to learn and practice each other’s languages. These initiatives could offer a dynamic learning experience that goes beyond linguistic skills, fostering interpersonal exchange while building relationships and breaking down stereotypes. Similarly, exchange professional programs for youth and educators, such as librarians and school teachers, can facilitate interactions and create opportunities for shared experiences, cultural immersion, and the formation of lasting bonds. Having vast experience with a multilingual population, organizations from the United States could provide valuable resources, expertise, and scholarships for students and teachers.

Promoting cultural and linguistic heritage through the recognition of different minority identities is foundational to developing resilience to external propaganda. A comprehensive historical acknowledgment of traumas and reconciliation initiatives is essential for addressing grievances and fostering empathy. By establishing educational programs, seminars, research, and exhibitions as well as modifying school and university curricula that offer accurate historical representations of minorities, including Gagauz, as an essential part of society, state agencies along with local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can facilitate and popularize a nuanced understanding of minorities’ complex pasts. The integration of such narratives into education curricula can effectively build a bridge between the communities, breaking through their divide and making them less vulnerable to propaganda. The U.S., through its educational institutions and local NGOs, could encourage such initiatives and provide financial support for cultural exchange programs. Scholarships, grants, and partnerships with U.S. universities will facilitate the development of inclusive history, language curricula, and research projects. Furthermore, U.S. cultural diplomacy initiatives, such as art exhibitions, performances, and educational events, could be organized in collaboration with local communities to celebrate their uniqueness and emphasize the importance of historical acknowledgment and reconciliation.

Promoting balanced media coverage and ensuring the visibility of the Gagauz community requires a concerted effort to address linguistic, cultural, and regional diversity. Encouraging media organizations to have diverse editorial and journalist teams that include representatives from different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, including Gagauz, will contribute to fostering more inclusive and impartial news coverage, leading to ethical reporting that actively combats biases and prevents the exploitation of stereotypes. Moreover, supporting the establishment of multiple local news desks in Gagauzia that focus on covering regional news, events, and minority cultural stories will ensure regular coverage of the local activities and human interest stories from the Gagauz community and will give a platform for representation, increase visibility nationally, and help foster a sense of community and pride. Publishing multilingual materials that include both Romanian and Gagauz languages as well as providing subtitles for TV and YouTube content will ensure that Moldovan and Gagauz news segments are available to the entire population while catering to the linguistic needs of the minority community — providing a viable alternative to Russian media outlets. International organizations and the state can provide grants and financial support for local actors to own such initiatives. By implementing these diverse methods, local journalists can be enabled to generate content with the potential to counter Russian propaganda, contributing to the cultivation of an informed and resilient society.

Elena Cirmizi is a Title VIII Black Sea Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute and a Ph.D. candidate at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University.

Andrei Pungovschi/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Bibliography

Ciobanu, V. (2013). “Tendințe separatiste printre găgăuzi.” [Separatist trends among the Gagauz]. Europa Libera. http://www.europalibera.org/content/article/25069011.html

Deen, B. and W. Zweers. (2022). Walking the tightrope towards the EU. Clingendael Report. Netherlands Institute of International Relations.

Ethnobarometer Moldova – 2020. (2020). CIVIS Centre. OSCE. pp. 59-61. https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/0/7/505306_0.pdf

European Commission. (2022). “Opinion on Moldova’s application for membership of the European Union,” from June 16. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/enlargement/moldova/

Garciu, P. (2022). “Russian Propaganda Dominates Moldova’s Gagauzia.” Institute for War & Peace Reporting. https://iwpr.net/global-voices/russian-propaganda-dominates-moldovas-ga… .

Garciu, P. (2023). “Moldova: Gagauz language lags behind Russian.” Institute for War & Peace Reporting. https://iwpr.net/global-voices/moldova-gagauz-language-lags-behind-russ…

Haines, J.R. (2015). “A quarrel in a faraway country: the rise of a Budzhak People’s Republic.” Foreign Policy Research Institute. https://www.fpri.org/article/2015/04/a-quarrel-in-a-far-away-country-th…

Kosienkowski, M. (2021). The Russian World as a legitimation strategy outside Russia: the case of Gagauzia. Eurasian Geography and Economics 62. No. 3.

Moldpress. (2022). PM visits Moldovan-Turkish theoretical lyceum from Congaz settlement of Gagauzia. https://www.moldpres.md/en/news/2022/10/21/22007943

Monitorul Oficial. (2023). No. 53-56, pp. 11-12.

MsGrath, S. and C. Jardan. (2022). “Moldova suspends 6 TV channels over alleged misinformation.” AP News . https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-public-opinion-moldova-741940…

Nitup, R. (2018). “Gagauzia: Moldavskie oligarhi protiv “russkih tankov” [Gaguzia: Moldovan oligarchs against Russian tanks.]. New Day News. https://newdaynews.ru/kishinev/627636.html . Accessed 04.02.2018.

Parlament.md. (2023). Proiectul de lege pentru modificarea art. 6 din Codul fiscal nr. 1163/1997. https://www.parlament.md/ProcesulLegislativ/Proiectedeactelegislative/t…

Perevozkina, M. (2023). “Politolog Soin otsenil veroyatnost’ otdeleniya Gagauzii ot Moldovy.” [Political scientist Soin assessed the likelihood of Gagauzia secession from Moldova]. Moskovskij Komsomolets.

Radio Free Europe. (2014). “Gagauzia voters reject closer EU ties for Moldova.” Radio Liberty. Moldovan Service. https://www.rferl.org/a/moldova-gagauz-referendum-counting/25251251.html

Thompson, P. (1998). “The Gagauz in Moldova and their road to autonomy.” In Managing diversity in plurar societies – minorities, migration and nation-building in post-Communist Europe. M. Opalski. (Ed.) Nepean Forum Eastern Europe. 128-147.

Tudoroiu, T. (2013). Unfreezing failed frozen conflicts: A post-Soviet case study. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 24 (3), 375-396.

Wöber, S. (2013). Making or breaking the Republic of Moldova? The autonomy of Gagauzia. European Diversity and Autonomy Papers. p.14.

Yarovaya, G. (2024). “Subject to the criminal code of the Republic of Moldova: Konstantinov filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office for separatist statements.” Rupor.md. https://rupor.md/podpadaet-pod-uk-rm-na-konstantinova-podali-zhalobu-v-…

The Middle East Institute (MEI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-for-profit, educational organization. It does not engage in advocacy and its scholars’ opinions are their own. MEI welcomes financial donations, but retains sole editorial control over its work and its publications reflect only the authors’ views. For a listing of MEI donors, please click her e .

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In the Republic of Moldova there are many ethno-cultural associations. 18 minorities – the Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Gagauzians, Jews, Byelorussians, Poles, Germans, Gypsies, Greeks, Lithuanians, Armenians, Azerbaijanians, Tatars, Chuvashs, Italians, Koreans, Uzbeks – have associations which operate under the form of communities, societies, unions, centers, cultural foundations etc. By virtue of the principle of equality and universality of cultural legislation, the ethnic minorities have the possibility to develop their traditional culture and national art. In Chisinau there is the Russian Dramatic Theatre „A.P.Cehov”; in Ceadir-Lunga (ATU Gagauzia) – the Gagauzian Dramatic Theatre „Mihail Cekir”; in Taraclia – the Theater of the Bulgarians from Bessarabia „Olimpii Panov”.

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Examining the foreign policy attitudes in Moldova

Monica Răileanu Szeles

Institute for Economic Forecasting, Transilvania University of Brasov, Brasov, Romania

Associated Data

All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting information files.

This paper aims to examine the correlates of foreign policy attitudes in Moldova by a multilevel analysis, and to also reveal some characteristics of the Moldova’s difficult geopolitical and economic context, such as the ethnical conflicts and poverty. A set of four foreign policy attitudes are explained upon individual- and regional level socio-economic and demographic correlates, of which poverty is the main focus, being represented here by several objective, subjective, uni- and multidimensional indicators. An indicator of deprivation is derived from a group of poverty indicators by the method Item Response Theory. Deprivation, subjective poverty, ethnicity and the Russian media influence are found to be associated with negative attitudes toward all foreign policies, while satisfaction with economic conditions in the country and a positive attitude toward refugees are both associated with positive attitudes toward all foreign policies.

Introduction

The Republic of Moldova is situated in South-Eastern Europe, being at the confluence of Central Europe, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Balkans. The geographical position and the ethnical conflict embracing multiple forms has posed serious threats for this small multi-nation country, which had to face complex geopolitical challenges after the failure of the communist regime. In addition, the “multi-vector” external policy, permanently oscillating between East (European Union) and West (CIS countries), often characterized as “ambiguous, inconsistent and dual” [ 1 ], was not able to manage over time the ethnical and political conflicts.

The collapse of the former Soviet Union, Moldova’s independence, the language law recognizing Romanian as the official language since 2013, the conflicts in Transnistria and Gagauzia, the perspective of unification with Romania, the Russia’s influence and more recently the alternative of European Union membership are just few of the major political milestones that Moldova has encountered in the last 30 years.

The Moldova’s perspective to join the EU could open a new chapter into its long term economic development. But the paradox is that Moldova is the only European country where European integration has progressively become less popular despite the pro-European government [ 2 ].

The closeness of Moldova to the European Union has historically been associated with the Moldova’s fluctuant political regime. However, the struggle between the pro-European and pro-Russian parties has stacked for a long time Moldova between its neighbours, Romania and Ukraine. The European Union enlargement to the East, together with the emergence and development of Moldovan pro-European forces and opinions, should have been accelerated the EU membership. This hasn’t happened, and moreover, the public support for the European integration has continuously declined after 2009. The failure of authorities to combat corruption, to increase the standard of living, and to prevent the exodus of the working age population explain the decline of the EU popularity because the population associates the pro-European government with the European integration process [ 2 ].

In Moldova, the ethnic identity has risen serious debates, as well as an overwhelming and ethno-political conflict, whose main actors are the Moldovans, Gagauzians and Romanians sharing one common country. According to the 2014 Census, the most important ethnic groups in Moldova are Romanians (7%), Ukrainians (6.6%), Gagauz (4.6%), Russians (4.1%) and Bulgarians (1.9%). After the Soviet Union disintegration, the largest group of Gagauzians form the Autonomous Territorial Unit (ATU) in Southern Moldova. Apart from other ethnic minorities in Moldova, Gagauz people have no other country bearing their name. The 1994 ATU autonomy law ensured that ATU will not become a part of Romania in case that Moldova will merge with Romania. This has quieted down Gagauzians for a while, but still ethnical and political tensions fuel fears of losing their autonomy.

The inconsistent foreign policy, the low public interest for current political issues, and the economic, social and political problems that Moldova encountered in the transition from communism to democracy [ 3 ], have downturned the long term economic development of Moldova, and have also deteriorated the strategic partnerships with neighbouring countries. To a much higher extent than other countries, the economic development of Moldova is significantly influenced by geopolitical forces and strategic partnerships, so that the foreign policy represents a fundamental pillar of Moldova’s long term sustainable development.

Despite the rapid pro-poor economic growth of 5 percent annually since 2000, which resulted in a significant progress of poverty reduction from 68 to 11.4 percent between 2000 and 2014, Moldova remains one of the poorest countries in the region with 41% of population living below the threshold of 5 USD a day (2005 PPP) in 2014. I mention at this step that in the framework of economic theory the economic growth rate is considered to be pro-poor if it’s the result of national policies aimed to use it for the benefit of poor people. This is the case here, as it resulted in the reduction of poverty. Moreover, the social disequilibria significantly inflate the negative impact of political instability and ethnical conflicts on economic development, which is strongly related to foreign policy in the case of Moldova. In this broad context, understanding what really lies behind the foreign policy attitudes, and in particular finding to what extent they are also influenced by poverty, ethnic tensions and regional patterns, allows enhancing the connection between public opinion and foreign policy, which could be ultimately regarded as an important assessment tool in measuring political commitment.

This paper intends to fill a gap in the literature by examining the foreign policy attitudes in Moldova, from a regional perspective. To capture not only the impact of individual-level characteristics on the foreign policy attitudes, but also the influence of geographical peculiarities, a multilevel model is used in the empirical section with individuals nested in districts. This multilevel approach reflects the regional perspective of our study.

The paper adds new empirical evidence to the literature which relies almost exclusively on studies of American foreign policy opinions [ 4 ], but it also contributes to the literature in other ways. First, it provides a regional perspective to the analysis of foreign policy attitudes, which perfectly fits the challenging Moldova’s ethno-geopolitical context. Second, it relates public opinions on foreign policy to poverty by a multidimensional approach, as to also address the social issues in Moldova—one of the poorest countries in Europe. Upon our knowledge, the link between foreign policy attitudes and poverty has not been explored so far. To accommodate the regional dimension of the dataset, random intercept logit models are used in the empirical section, where the regional foreign policy attitudes are explained upon regional- and individual level characteristics. In addition, the Item Response Theory is used to construct a scale of deprivation.

The paper is structured as follows: After “Introduction”, the “Literature Review” underlines the most important contributions to the literature. The section of “Methodology” presents the two methods used in the empirical analysis, while “Data” provides the description of the data and the economic and social context in Moldova. The “Empirical analysis” includes the construction of the multidimensional scale of deprivation, and the analysis of foreign policy attitudes. The last section concludes and formulates policy recommendations.

Literature review

The earliest strand of approaches to foreign policy attitudes emerged in the ‘50s as an echo of the American public opinion on both economic and military issues [ 5 ]. The Almond’s seminal paper (1950) stating that “the foreign policy attitudes among most Americans lack intellectual structure and factual content” has been subsequently explored by most papers studying the foreign policy attitudes. This strand of literature commonly place all sets of attitudes on an internationalist-isolationist continuum [ 6 – 8 ]. In the context of the Vietnam War [ 9 ], identified for the first time internationalism as being the main vector of the American public opinion toward foreign policy. He explained that two faces of internationalism prevailed that time: the militant internationalism and the cooperative internationalism. The same approach was also explored by other papers, i.e. [ 8 ].

Cooperative internationalism focuses on achieving common goals through collaborative and non-military actions, as well as on being concerned about other countries and international issues [ 10 ]. In contrast with the Chittick’s view [ 10 , 11 ] analyzes cooperative internationalism as emerging from global solidarity and from the “obligation to the broader international community”. Compared to cooperative internationalism, militant internationalism uses military strength and force in achieving foreign policy objectives [ 12 ], or simply as a consequence of self-defeating strategies. Isolationism is described as not overlapping with cooperative and militant internationalism, and it was often associated to nationalist unilateralism, e.g. [ 13 ].

As suggested above, the literature on foreign policy attitudes focuses almost exclusively on the US case study, and most conclusions and considerations are derived from the specific peculiarities of the US political context. For instance [ 14 ], explains that in general the foreign policy attitudes result from the perceptions of threat in relation with the Soviet Union military actions and intentions, given that the Soviet Union is generally perceived as a nation willing to expand its influence. An important strand of literature historically analyses the Soviet Union’s image and perception in US compared to Europe, and most findings confirm that the US hostility is higher than that of European countries, even though the latter have stronger objective reasons to motivate it [ 15 , 16 ]. Militant internationalism is therefore widely associated to the necessity to protect the American interests from the USSR in the past, and more recently from Islamic [ 17 ]. In the light of these aspects, when studying the foreign policy attitudes of a small country like Moldova that once was part of the Soviet Union, the literature mainly focusing on the US perspective could be irrelevant, and it might not fit the citizen profiles, thoughts and experiences. Despite the in-depth analysis of Americans’ foreign policy attitudes, the literature lacks the empirical research support of attitudes expressed by other citizens toward their national foreign policy.

Earlier and recent studies exploring foreign policy attitudes are all concerned with finding whether they are structured or not, and in case they are structured, what are their most important drivers, either political or core-values, or other kind of underlying factors. In the literature, the empirical evidence indicate mixed results. For instance [ 12 ], advance the idea that policy attitudes are structured upon core political values. More recent papers discuss the role of core political values in explaining the difference between policy preferences and opinions on the internationalism—isolationist dimensions, such as [ 18 ] and [ 19 ]. Given that they have “hidden organizing principles” [ 20 ], in empirical research values are not directly observable, so that they are measured as latent values by the factor loadings of the factor analysis. The foreign policy attitudes are also found to be connected to the “moral traditionalism” [ 21 ] in the sense that people who can be defined as being conservative on the moral traditionalism scale are more prone to be “militant anti-communist”, and therefore to have an anti-Soviet sentiment.

Apart from the values driven attitudes discussed above, the analysis of the determinants of foreign policy attitudes is considered to be a difficult exercise because they are generally not based on information, are unstructured [ 22 ] and unstable [ 5 ], being therefore irrelevant for policy-making. In addition [ 23 ], argues that the quality, structure and coherence of public opinion on foreign policy depend on the level of knowledge. When analyzing the attitudes to issues in the area of European common foreign and security policy, he finds that their structure is low even at a relatively high level of knowledge.

As [ 12 ] emphasize, the foreign policy attitudes rely on postures or abstract believes about the international policy line that governments should follow, and to a lesser extent on the fully understanding of world politics. However [ 24 ], find that material and political considerations drive the Muslim citizens’ attitudes toward the EU, and [ 25 ] explain the necessity of combining objective and subjective measures when studying the attitudes toward the EU.

When analysing the structure and drivers of votes and attitudes, the geographical polarisation should be also considered, and the traditional approach is the centre-periphery theory. The modern interpretation is provided by [ 26 ] who explain the difference between the citizens located in areas which are more connected to the global world, and those who are not, and the divide between the agglomerated urban centres with emerging knowledge economies, and the suburban economies or post-industrialized communities.

In the framework of the centre-periphery theory, the foreign policy attitudes have been also studied in relation with social position, and the seminal work belongs to [ 27 ], who developed the centre-periphery index—a summative measure of eight dichotomous items, such as sex, age, education, income, religion, sector of employment, occupational status, and urban-rural location. When analysing the foreign policy opinions in Norway upon the differences between the centre and the periphery of the society, he finds that the “periphery” will “either favour the status-quo, or sudden and complete changes”. His influential idea was used to also prove that opposition to the EU increases linearly when moving from the centre to the periphery. In contrast with Galtung [ 28 ], proves the difference in attitudes between the centre and the periphery of society, but he doesn’t identify the pattern of the difference [ 29 ]. explains the formation of political systems in Europe by the centre-periphery tension between the capital region and periphery regions, tension that was enhanced by the nation building process. The centre-periphery tensions also explain the formation of regional identities.

Apart from the foreign policy attitudes which are of interest for all countries in the world, the attitudes on unification and federalization are particularly significant only for a small number of countries, of which Korea and Germany are the most popular case studies. One of the most prominent group of theories providing a consistent theoretical background for explaining the attitudes on unification is usually referred to as “generational theories”. According to them, political values are formed in early adulthood based on the most important historical experiences [ 30 – 32 ], but the generational factors become “silent” during turbulent times, as advanced by [ 33 , 34 ].

As discussed in this section, most papers studying foreign policy attitudes rely on the US case, and to a lesser extent on the study of other countries. Some kind of attitudes toward EU have been largely studies in the context of different referendums that were held over time on the topic of the EU or EMU (European Monetary Union) membership, and the findings generally exhibit a high degree of heterogeneity across the EU countries [ 35 ]. For example, the membership to EU is perceived as being economically beneficial for British people in the context of the Brexit referendum [ 25 , 36 ]. Explain that the England’s electorate attitudes toward the EU depend on the objective and subjective experiences of diversity and immigration, and therefore they conclude that objective and subjective measures should be combined when analysing political motivation.

The foreign policy attitudes of Moldovans have not been addressed in the literature so far, upon our knowledge, but few papers characterize the Moldova’s foreign policy as “soft balancing” between Russia and European Union. More specifically [ 37 ], state that Moldova switched to the European Union using a light balancing strategy, but only when the EU has created the framework for such an attitude [ 38 ]. examine the similarities of the EU and Russia policies developed by them in Moldova, and they find that both aim attracting the local elites to be therefore able to indirectly influence the internal policy areas.

The multilevel (hierarchical) analysis represents the principal methodology used in our empirical study, but subsequently the Item Response Theory will be used as well, as an alternative to the simple sum-score approach. In the empirical section of our paper the multilevel analysis allows us explaining a set of foreign policy attitudes upon a set of common individual- and regional level explanatory variables, of which the group of poverty variables are our main focus. In addition, the Item Response Theory (IRT) is used to aggregate a number of deprivation variables into a deprivation index which becomes one of the poverty variables.

The multilevel models are specifically designed for hierarchical data because they take into account the clustering of data upon different categories (Levels). Even though our data have a multilevel design (individuals at Level 1 nested in Districts at Level 2), in the first step of our empirical analysis we have to check the appropriateness of using multilevel models by running several specific tests that examine the degree of clustering for each level of our analysis. If our data are found to exhibit a significant degree of clustering, then the use of multilevel models becomes totally justified [ 39 ].

The two-level design of our data requests first examining the Interclass Correlation (ICC), and second, if the correlation is found to be reasonably high and justifies the use of multilevel models, examining what kind of multilevel models better fit our data. Ignoring that observations could be correlated at some Levels could lead to biased standard errors and incorrect results. The ICC is the most popular diagnostic-test for deciding on the appropriateness of the multilevel model. The fact that certain individuals live in the same district could cause their attitudes to foreign policy to be similar one from another, and to differ from those living in other districts. The ICC therefore measures the proportion of the total variation that is accounted for by the clustering of data, i.e. by between-districts variation.

The two-level variance components model is the simplest possible two-level model, so that it should be the first applied in our analysis. It is also referred to as the “empty model” because it has no covariates. The model is estimated by the maximum likelihood method.

Where, y ij is the attitude of individual i living in district j , β 0 denotes the intercept (the average across all individuals and districts), u j is the district level residual and e ij is the individual residual.

The district random intercept effects are assumed to be normally distributed with zero mean and between-district variance σ u 2 , and the individual’ residuals also are normally distributed with zero mean and within-district variance σ e 2 .

Likelihood ratio (LR) tests are generally used when moving from a simple model to a more complex one, being indicative for the “badness of fit”. The test also suggests whether it is worthy introducing a set of determinants, or whether the random-intercept model should be used instead of the variance components model. In our case the test allows us checking whether the “district random intercept effects” would be “value added” effects.

Another model that is used in the empirical section is the two level random-intercept model. The presentation of the two-level random intercept model, random-intercept logit model and random-intercept cumulative logit model is based on Steele (2010). As the model specified in Eq (1) , this model has a fixed and a random part.

Where, x ij represent an individual level explanatory variable whose regression coefficient is β ij . The model could easily incorporate more explanatory variables. The sum β 0 + β 1 x ij is the fixed part that could be extended by adding new explanatory variables, while the sum u j + e ij is the random part.

However, in our analysis the dependent variables are ordinal and binary variables, so our specific multilevel models take the form of random intercept cumulative logit models and random intercept logit model, respectively.

The random intercept cumulative logit models can be written as in Eq (3) .

In Eq (3) , the group level residual u j , the cumulative response probabilities and the response probabilities allow the intercepts to vary across groups (in our case, districts). The parameter σ k is the overall intercept and it represents the log-odds that a person with x = 0 and u = 0 has a response of value equal to k or lower than k .

The random intercept logit model accommodates binary response variables.

Where, β 0 is the overall intercept and it represents the log-odds that y ij = 1, when x ij = 0 and u j = 0. Consequently, the sum β 0 + u j is the intercept for the group j . The parameter u j is the random effect or Level2 residual. β 1 is the effect of the explanatory variable x when holding constant the group effect, and it is also known as the cluster-specific effect.

The second method that we use here is the Item Response Theory, a measurement method traditionally and extensively used in psychometrics and educational sciences in the ‘60 and ‘70, but which has recently gained increased attention and was extended to all social sciences fields, as a group of mixed-effects multivariate generalized linear models. Compared to the Classical Test Theory, which simply calculate the mean of the item response scores, the IRT scores describe the relationship between (1) the probability to give a certain response to an item and (2) the latent trait (summative score) and items characteristics (e.g. the difficulty and discrimination parameters), through a link function.

The IRT method is used here to assess the validity of the deprivation measurement scale that will be developed from a number of deprivation items available in our working dataset. The choice of this technique comes from considering deprivation as a latent trait, which is in line with the IRT method. Even though factorial analysis and test reliability have been advanced as alternative methods in the construction of latent traits based on a set of items, the IRT presents a number of advantages. For instance, with the IRT the conclusions are unveiled not solely based on the total scores, but rather on considering each item individually [ 40 ]. Other advantages are given by the IRT principles, such as the invariance of item parameters and individual’s parameters, which allows comparing latent traits of persons of different populations. Another characteristic of this method is that it places both individuals and items on the same metric [ 41 ]. This helps selecting in the empirical section a group of deprivation items that are able to differentiate between individuals differently located on the deprivation scale.

In social sciences the one and two parameter- logit/ probit IRT models are the most popular IRT models [ 42 ]. We apply here the one parameter probit IRT model, which allows us analyzing the scale items upon their difficulty parameter, as well as calculating the individual deprivation scores. According to the notation used in mixed-effects regression models, the model can be written as:

In the equation above, βi denotes the difficulty parameter for the item i , Dj * is the latent score of deprivation for individual j and Vij * represents the response of individual j to the item i . Vij is a normally distributed error term with mean zero and fixed variance. If we treat Dj * as random individual effects, then the standard maximum likelihood provides estimates of both the parameter β i and the deprivation score Dj *.

Ethno-geopolitical context and data

The substance of foreign policy attitudes in moldova.

The geopolitical deadlock between Russia and the EU, the unresolved conflicts over Transnistria, and the ethnic divide are the main coordinates on the Moldova’s foreign policy agenda. The downward spiral of these drawbacks has unsystematically channelled an increasing wave of discontent toward the main actors of the Moldova’s foreign policy, who are differently perceived by population either as catalysts or as opponents of the long term well-being and economic development.

In Moldova, the ethnic identity slides between Moldovanism and Romanianism which are different with regard to values, believes, political agendas and political goals [ 43 ]. Moldovanism advances the idea that Moldovans are different from Romanians, Romania being considered as a threat to Moldova’s independence. Romanianism regards Moldova as a regional variation of the Romanian history and culture, the complementarity being in their view the link between Romania and Moldova. The debates emerging at every level of society around the Moldova’s national identity have also fed the political conflict, with deep implications for the foreign policy too.

The foreign policy attitudes in Moldova should be therefore analysed in the context of the ethnical conflict and geopolitical context, which could in turn distort the population real attitudes prevailing in the absence of the above-mentioned tensions. The foreign policies examined in the empirical section will be shortly described below, just to provide a better understanding of their meaning, in the context underlined above.

Transnistria is a part of the Republic of Moldova officially recognized by Moldova as the Transnistria autonomous territorial unit with special legal status. In fact, Transnistria is a post-soviet frown conflict area, having an unresolved territory’s political status in the sense that it is an unrecognised but de facto independent semi-presidential republic. The Transnistria war (1990–1992) emerged after the dissolution of Soviet Union between pro-Transnistria and pro-Moldova forces. Even though a ceasefire was declared in 1992, ethnic and political tensions have gradually accumulated over time. At present, a three-party (Russia, Moldova, Transnistria) Joint Control Commission supervises the security in the demilitarised zone, which is formed of twenty localities on both sides of the river.

Federalisation represents for Moldova more than an alternative form of local government. In the context of ethnic conflicts spread all over the country, federalisation can be rather considered a pro-Russian foreign policy measure that would weaken the country and would threaten the prospects of EU membership. This is so because federalisation would give Transnistria a bigger political power, which may tip the political balance to Moscow. In the framework of federalisation, the strengthening of district competences would facilitate international powers to influence and control the Moldovan districts.

In the light of the above considerations, the federalisation policy measure would be regarded as being in opposition with both the EU membership and the unification with Romania.

The NATO membership is a controversial project that is differently perceived in Moldova. Alienating with NATO, with or without joining it, could be a step toward the EU membership, but in the same time the NATO membership could violate the country’s neutral status stated by Constitution. Due to the trustworthy information and the low quality of local media in Moldova, the opportunity and the “meaning” of NATO membership are insufficiently understood by population. As officially stated, NATO supports the Moldova’s EU membership, and the NATO membership is not a precondition for the EU membership. From this consideration, the two policy measures are not in opposition one with another.

The empirical analysis uses data drawn from the 2017 wave of the Barometer of Public opinion in Moldova. This public opinion poll is a research program developed by the Moldovan Institute for Public Policy, on an annual basis, since 1998. The data collected by the Barometer cover areas like political choices, quality of life, and perception of economic, social and political measures adopted by the Moldovan government. The poll also represents an in-depth exploration of the attitudes toward (1) economic issues, (2) quality of life, (3) politics, (4) external relations, and (5) daily issues. The survey collects data on a number of 1103 adult individuals from all Moldovan districts, which represent the first-tier administrative- territorial units of Moldova. Although the first-tier administrative territorial units of Moldova include a number of 32 districts, only 31 are included in our analysis. Dubasari district is excluded, given that it is partially controlled by Transnistria, which is not considered in the current analysis. In addition, two municipalities (Chisinau and Balti), as well as the Autonomous Territorial Unit Gagauzia, are included in the working dataset.

The main focus of this paper is to explain the Moldovans regional foreign policy attitudes, so that four variables represent our main variables of interest, of which three are suggestive for the foreign policy, and another one for the domestic policy, the latter being taken as a reference model. The three foreign policies have been selected according to the literature, as to be representative for “militant internationalism”, “cooperative internationalism”, and “isolationism”:

• Attitudes toward EU membership (abbr. “EU membership”), as an indicator of the cooperative internationalism
• Attitudes toward unification with Romania (abbr. “Unification with Romania”), as a “domestic” policy indicator
• Attitudes toward federalization (abbr. “Federalization”), as an indicator of the isolationism
• Attitudes toward the NATO membership (abbr. “NATO membership”), as an indicator of the militant internationalism

According to the Poll, 17% of the voting-age population would vote for federalization, 46% for the EU membership, 21% for the NATO membership, and 23% for the unification with Romania. A proportion of 25% are completely against federalization, 36% against the EU membership, 55% against the NATO membership, and 58% against the unification with Romania. It therefore results that the question about federalization has the highest number of undecided voters. The federalization question also exhibits the highest degree of dispersion among individuals, i.e. a value of 0.91, compared to 0.45 (Unification) and 0.50 (EU membership). Federalization is a categorical variable with three categories (pro-Federalization, against Federalization, and undecided), while the other two variables on the foreign policy attitudes are binary variables.

Our main variables of interest described above are explained in our paper upon a set of explanatory variables which includes both district- and individual- level variables, as follows:

• 1. Individual level variables
• • Socio-demographic: age, age square, Moldovan, Gagauz, Working female, Education, Experience of living abroad (abbreviated “Abroad”)
• • Poverty: Income poverty, Deprivation, and Subjective poverty
• • Information, attitudes and perceptions: Satisfaction with the current economic situation of Moldova (abbreviated “Satisfaction economy”), Satisfaction with Moldova foreign policy (abbreviated “Satisfaction foreign policy”), Communication with family, peers, friends and neighbors as the most trusty information source (abbreviated as “Social network”), Trust in Russian communication channels (abbreviated “Russian channels”), Information sources, Attitudes toward refugees, and Social trust
• 2. District level variables
• • Rural-urban area of residence (dummy variables abbreviated “Urban”)
• • Region (three dummies—North, Centre and South)

Some of the explanatory variables were chosen according to the literature, while others have not been connected to the foreign policy attitudes so far, the latter reflecting thus the innovative contribution of this paper. The decision to introduce district level variables into our empirical analysis relies on the work of [ 26 , 29 ], who find that geographical polarisation and the divide between urban and rural localities are drivers of attitudes and votes. Most of the individual-level correlates we consider here (age, gender-related variables, education, income, occupation, urban-rural location, social position) have been advanced by [ 27 ], in his seminal paper, as items of the center-periphery index explaining the differences in attitudes toward foreign policy attitudes. In line with [ 25 ], we include subjective variables in the set of explanatory variables to reveal both objective and subjective experiences of diversity and immigration, which could be of a particular interest in a multi-ethnic country as Moldova. This justifies not only the use of subjective variables in the area of “Satisfaction” and “Poverty”, but also of the variable “Experience of living abroad”. As [ 24 ], we explain foreign policy attitudes upon material considerations (as reflected by the variable “Material deprivation”), and not only upon values and beliefs. The level of knowledge has been largely found to be a driver of attitudes [ 23 ], so that we examine here the attitudes toward foreign policy by education as well.

Most variables used to explain the Moldovans’ attitudes toward different political issues have been recoded in variables of 2–4 categories. After recoding, “Education” is a categorical variable of three categories, “Income poverty” is a categorical variable comprising 12 income brackets, while Subjective poverty is a five category- variable giving insights into the level of satisfaction with the family income. Social trust is recoded as a dummy variable identifying the individuals who consider communication family, peers, friends and neighbors as being the most reliable source of information. The dummy variable “Satisfaction foreign policy” unveils the degree of satisfaction with the Moldova’s foreign policy, while the dummy “Attitudes toward refugees” reflects the Moldovans’ opinion about whether Moldova should provide or not protection to refugees. “Information sources” is a categorical variable of 7 categories: (1) Romanian TELEPHONE (considered as reference categories in the empirical section), (2) Russian TELEPHONE, (3) Moldovan newspapers, (4) Internet websites, (5) Social network (e.g. Facebook), (6) Announcements, posters, and (7) Communication with family, peers, friends and neighbors.

As explained in the empirical section, the latent variable “Deprivation” has been derived from a number of seven deprivation items, by using the Item Response Theory. The items are: Refrigerator (item 1), TELEPHONE (item 2), Computer (item 3), Car (item 4), Washing machine (item 5), Current water (item 6) and Gas (item 7). All items belong to the areas of durable goods and utilities. The means and standard deviations reported in Table 1 reflect a high heterogeneity across population with regard to the deprivation rates corresponding to the scale items.

Given that the regional dimension represents a primary focus here, the variables of interest will be represented by regional maps. They are plotted on Moldova’s map, using district level data. Different shades of grey describe the Moldovan’ attitudes toward the external relations of Moldova by districts. The white coloured districts indicate a higher concentration of those who are against that political measure, while a black area is suggestive for a high proportion of population who is in favour of that political issue.

As shown in Fig 1 , the maps of the territorial distribution of votes exhibit some degree of similarity. In particular, the lower half of Fig 1(1.1) and 1(1.2) are very similar. The South-Eastern half of Moldova tends to be more reluctant to all foreign policy solutions (and to a lower extent to the domestic policy measure of federalization). However, the perspectives of federalization and NATO membership seem to raise more negative votes than the EU membership and Unification with Romania. Surprisingly, the Moldova’s Western border with Romania is not characterized by a higher concentration of pro-unification and pro-EU membership votes. Only the South-Eastern part of Moldova appear to be “darker”, which means a higher proportion of votes for the unification with Romania and EU membership. Moreover, the four maps indicate some regional patterns, and this will be analysed in the next section.

Notes . (1) The maps were realized by author in Stata using the GIS mapping; (2) Transnistria is excluded from our analysis.

Empirical analysis

The empirical analysis is conducted in two steps. First, a score of deprivation is calculated based on a group of deprivation variables by the IRT method. Second, the deprivation score, along with other poverty indicators and other covariates, will explain a set of foreign and domestic policy measures, in order to firstly reveal whether poverty, and subsequently what kind of poverty, influence the citizen’ attitudes toward foreign policy measures. The IRT is therefore used in the first part of the empirical analysis, and two-level random-intercept cumulative logit models in the second part.

Deriving a latent score of material deprivation by the Item Response Theory

The central objective of the paper is to examine the impact of poverty on the Moldovans’ foreign-policy attitudes. As widely debated in the literature, poverty is a broad concept that has been largely addressed by various approaches, such as the uni- versus multidimensional, and the objective versus subjective ones. Given the comprehensive area of poverty, three indicators are used here to operationalize this broad concept. “Income poverty” and “Subjective poverty” are directly taken from the dataset, while the third, “Deprivation” will be calculated in this section. “Income poverty” measures the monetary unidimensional poverty, while “Deprivation” represents the multidimensional poverty. Both indicators reflect the objective nature of poverty, which is in contrast with “Subjective poverty”. These three indicators allows us incorporating a multifaceted representation of poverty in our empirical analysis.

As a latent measure, “Deprivation” will be derived from a set of indicators reflecting the economic strain. The method used at this step is the Item Response Theory (IRT) because it justifies a rigorous selection of deprivation items, and it also allows calculating a latent score of deprivation.

The variables used to operationalize deprivation reflect two dimensions of material deprivation: Housing dimension and Durable goods dimension, as denoted in the Eurostat database (Eurostat, 2018).

• Durable goods dimension: Refrigerator (item 1), Telephone (item 2), Computer (item 3), Car (item 4), and Washing machine (item 5);
• Housing facilities dimension: Current water (item 6) and Gas (item 7).

We choose here the one-parameter probit IRT model to construct the scale of deprivation and to calculate the individual deprivation scores. The selection of items is done according to the item difficulty parameters, as the item discrimination parameters are fixed in this model. A broad range of item difficulty parameters would be an indication of a comprehensive scale. The item parameter invariance is the key-feature of the IRT and makes the distinction between the IRT and CTT. For our analysis this propriety means that the item estimates do not depend on person samples and persons estimates do not depend of item samples. It therefore ensure the consistency of the individual scores of deprivation.

In a first step, the Cronbach’s Alpha test is applied as to check the internal reliability of the deprivation scale. Even though several sets of items have been tested and analysed using the Cronbach’s Alpha and the IRT, only the final selected one is reported here. The value of 0.69 denotes an acceptable internal consistency and it also proves that the items included in the scale measure the same latent phenomenon—material deprivation.

In Table 2 the material deprivation items are ranked upon their difficulty parameters. According to our data, the refrigerator and telephone are the most difficult or severe items which suggests that a person who has no refrigerator or telephone has a high probability (higher than 0.5) to be also deprived of other items. In fact, the item difficulty parameter is the value along the “material deprivation” continuum at which an individual has 0.5 probability of being deprived.

Notes. Estimates from the one-parameter probit IRT;

*** p<0.01,

** p<0.05,

* p<0.1.

The Item Characteristic Curve (ICC) in Fig 2 describes the probability of being deprived upon a certain deprivation item conditional on specific values of the deprivation distribution. The difficulty of a deprivation item, as a location index, describes where the item functions along the deprivation scale. Given that all items have the same discrimination power, their ICC do not intersect as it would be in the two-parameter model.

The ICC graphical representation indicates a balanced selection of deprivation items in terms of their difficulty. Beside the item difficulty parameters, the IRT method allows calculating the latent scores of material deprivation. The individuals’ scores of material deprivation enter as explanatory variables in the second part of the empirical analysis, but they also allow analyzing the regional distribution of deprivation scores, as shown in Fig 3 .

Source. The map was realized by author in Stata using the GIS mapping. In Fig 3, the darker areas reflect the most deprived districts, while the lighter ones are associated to a lower material deprivation. Apparently, the Northern part of Moldova has more deprived districts compared to the Southern part. However, the regional heterogeneity seems to be an essential characteristic when examining the regional material deprivation in Moldova.

Under the IRT theory, the left-hand curves represent “easy” items, the centre-curves represent items of medium difficulty, while right-hand curves represent “difficult” items. For instance, “Refrigerator” and “Telephone” are “difficult” items because the probability to be deprived on these items is generally low even for the deprived individuals, while “car” is a “the least difficult” item because the probability of being deprived on this item is high for most deprived individuals.

Examining the correlates of foreign policy attitudes and the impact of poverty. Analysis and discussion

The empirical analysis is intended to exploit the two-level structure of the data by using the multilevel analysis with individuals at Level 1 nested in districts at Level 2. This allows us using both individual- and district- level variables while also considering the correlation at each level of analysis.

In the first part of this section we check whether this technique is appropriate and fits our data by the variance components model. Although this “preliminary analysis” is separately performed on each of our four variables on foreign/domestic policy attitudes, the results from the variance components model are extensively reported and analyzed here just for the variable “EU membership”. However, the conclusions of this part will regard the whole set of four variables.

The core of the preliminary analysis is the identification of the variation at each Level of analysis with the Variation Partition Coefficient (also called “Interclass Correlation Coefficient”). The Variance Partition Coefficient (VPC) is the proportion of the total residual variance (Level 1 + Level 2) that is due to between-group variation. The VPC for the variable “EU membership” is analyzed by the two-level logit model with district random effects, but no explanatory variables. This is a ‘null’ model, which is also referred to in the literature as a variance components model. The output generated by this model can be synthetically presented as follows: The log-odds of voting Moldova’s accession to EU for an ‘average’ locality (with u 0 = 0) is estimated as 0.30. The intercept for locality j is 0.30+u 0j , where the variance of u 0j is estimated as 1.728. The likelihood ratio statistic for testing the null hypothesis is 85.46 with a corresponding p-value of less than 0.00005, and so there is strong evidence that the between-district variance is non-zero.

When plotting the estimated residuals for districts, we get that, for a substantial number of communities, the 95% confidence interval does not overlap the horizontal line at zero, indicating that the votes of Moldova’s accession to EU in these districts is significantly above average (above the zero line) or below average (below the zero line). This also indicates the significance of district effects from the null model.

In the “null” variance components model presented above, which estimates the grand mean of the votes for the Moldova’s accession to EU, the between-district variance is estimated as 1.72. For a logit model, the Level 1 residuals are assumed to follow a standard logistic distribution which has a variance of π 2 /3 ≈ 3.29. This implies a VPC of the district level for the Moldova’s accession to EU votes equal to 1.72/ (1.72 + 3.29) = 0.3433. This value allows us concluding that 34.33% of the variation in the Moldova’s accession to EU votes is due to between-district variation. Similarly, we get that the VPC for the pro-unification with Romania votes is 30%, the VPC for the NATO membership votes is 16%, while the VPC in the pro-federalization votes is 15%.

To sum up the preliminary analysis undertaken in this section, we conclude that the size of variation at Level 2, which is higher than 10%, justify the use of mixed models instead of linear ones for all our variables of foreign/domestic policy attitudes.

In Table 3 the two-level random intercept (cumulative) logit model has been used to explain the four variables of foreign/domestic policy attitudes upon a common set of individual- and regional level explanatory variables, of which a group of three poverty variables represents our main focus.

Notes. Random intercept models; The estimation uses a mean-variance adaptive Gauss-Hermite quadrature with 7 integration points for each set of random effects; The estimation procedure is the maximum likelihood estimation using adaptive quadrature with 7 integration points; The standard errors are reported in brackets; Reference category for Region is North;

According models ( 1 ), ( 2 ) and ( 4 ), younger Moldovan people seem to be more in favour of foreign policies involving international cooperation and openness, as those examined here. Although the results in the literature are rather mixed, our findings confirm the general consideration that intellectuals and the younger generation of leaders questioned the concept of a distinct Moldovan nation, and reemphasized the Romanian identity, in contrast to older generations that are rather Russian-born [ 44 ]. In general, age is associated in the literature with increasing political knowledge even when considering the differences in the educational attainments [ 45 – 47 ]. But according to the generation effect theory, in (former) transitional economies the political preferences are usually influenced by the periods of dissatisfaction with a certain political regime, so that younger people are more progressive than older ones in terms of values [ 48 ]. Our findings are therefore in line [ 48 ], in the sense that in Moldova (a former transitional country) younger people are more supportive of international cooperation in comparison with older generations. Interestingly, age is not significantly associated to federalization—the domestic policy measure considered here as a reference one, for comparative purpose. The significance of the quadratic term of age (age square) suggests a nonlinear relationship between age and the dependent variables in Models ( 1 ), ( 2 ), and ( 4 ). The positive coefficients in quadratic term indicates in fact that the relationship between age and the variables of interest is of a convex form.

In comparison with women outside the labour market, working women are significantly found to be more open to both foreign policies (EU membership and unification with Romania), as well as to the federalization policy measure, but against the NATO membership. This clearly suggest their positive attitude toward “cooperative internationalism” with EU and Romania (the Western neighbours), and the rejection of “militant internationalism” (reflected here by the NATO membership). Our finding is supported by previous papers, such as [ 49 ].

In comparison with lower levels of educational attainments, individuals with higher levels are found to be more supportive for the “cooperative internationalism” and federalization, but not for “militant internationalism” as well. The result is largely confirmed by the empirical evidence collected over time from US. Different channels have been advanced in the literature as mechanisms explaining the relationship between education and (foreign) policy attitudes or political trust.

Higher educated people have been found to generally support internationalist policies, while the less educated have been identified as supporting the isolationist policies [ 50 ]. Despite the rich empirical evidence suggesting that the highly educated were in favour of militant internationalism in the 1970s, this association has weakened over time. Still, some evidence confirms that education is directly associated to the militant internationalism, and indirectly related to cooperative internationalism. In contrast [ 51 ], shows that those having college educational attainments support the cooperative internationalism stronger than the militant internationalism. Other papers suggest that education experience help the development of political interest that is generally shaped by the class differences [ 52 ]. Education is also found to be the most important predictor of political knowledge, even after accounting for personality traits and intelligence [ 53 ].

The positive impact of education in Models ( 1 )–( 3 ) can be also explained by the strong correlation between education and political trust [ 54 ]. From a different perspective, our results are in line with the “centre-periphery theory” [ 27 ] according to which a low level of education indicates a “periphery” position which is associated to the opposition to the EU, as also indicated by our results.

Despite our expectation that people who have lived abroad for a while are more open to internationalization, or at least have stronger beliefs in the area of foreign policy, being influenced by the EU or Russia political spectrums, the EU and Russia being the most popular destinations for Moldovan immigrants, this hypothesis was not confirmed by the data analysis.

The Gagauz people are a Turkic people living mostly in a Sothern autonomous region of Moldova, officially called the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia. In the framework of the 2014 referendum that took place in Gagauzia, 98.4% of voters chose to join the Eurasian Union, supported and promoted by Russia, instead of the EU. The regression coefficients indicate that Gagauz people, who represent a small ethnic minority in Moldova, have significant and strong negative attitudes toward all four policy measures considered in our model. This is according to our expectations, and it relies on the regional political conflicts running for decades in the ATU, as well as on the fear that the Moldovan Gagauz will end up in “a new version of greater Romania” [ 44 ]. Nevertheless, the specific political context in which Gagauz people have lived over time under the influence of surrounding countries, justifies their opposition to any significant political change in Moldova that directly or indirectly could threaten their autonomy as well. The literature also confirms the opposition of “distinctive ethnic identities” to the militant internationalism [ 49 ], which supports our finding in Model 3 .

According to our results, in spite of Moldova’s oscillation between the Russia way and European Union path, Moldovans are found to be in favour of the Moldova’s EU membership. However, the NATO membership is not a seen as an appropriate foreign policy measure for Moldova, not by Moldovans, and nor by Gagauz people, and one explanation could be the strong Russian opposition [ 55 ].

For a comprehensive conceptual delimitation, the influence of poverty is analysed by three variables which are indicative for both the objective and subjective poverty. Objective poverty is reflected by two indicators, i.e. income poverty and deprivation, and subjective poverty is reflected by a categorical variable. While income poverty is found to have no significant effect on our policy measures, deprivation is found to be a significant correlate of all foreign policy attitudes in the sense that the deprived people are more likely to be against all three foreign policies, even though the policies do not overlap each other. In turn, deprivation has no significant impact on federalization—the reference domestic policy measure. The relationship between deprivation and foreign policy attitudes has not been addressed so far in the literature upon our knowledge, but the links between material stratification and political consciousness have been assessed as fragile and variable [ 47 ].

People who perceive themselves as being income poor are against the EU membership and also against the unification with Romania, but they would agree on the Moldova’s federalization. In fact our results suggest that, in contrast with the people objectively identified as income poor, those suffering from deprivation and subjective poverty are in opposition with all policy measures involving openness and internationalization. Even though the relationship between poverty and foreign policy attitudes has not been addressed so far in the literature, our empirical findings could rely on the “centre-periphery theory” [ 27 ] which states that periphery is “parochial” and “sceptical” on issues reaching beyond national concern.

Another category of explanatory variables are from the area of satisfaction. People satisfied with the Moldova’s economic situation are more likely to agree with all policy measures, excepting the NATO membership. It is interesting to note that those who declare to be satisfied with the foreign policy in general, would vote for the Moldova’s unification with Romania and NATO membership, but against federalization. The level of social trust, represented here by the variable “Trust in people”, is found to be negatively correlated with the votes for the EU membership and unification with Romania. This is in contrast with the literature which considers social trust as being associated with social participation and engagement in the society, and therefore as a driver for democratic and efficient governments [ 56 ]. However, our finding should be interpreted in the context of the interpersonal trust in Moldova being among the lowest in Europe, i.e. 3.7 times lower compared to that of Sweden, and the lowest of the post-communist countries [ 57 ].

Despite the fact that Moldova is a country of mass emigration, to Russia and Ukraine for short-term periods and to the EU for long term staying, it is interesting to capture the Moldovan’s attitudes toward refugees and to see whether it is related to the attitudes toward foreign policies. We expect to find that people who are in favour of the right for people to seek refuge should also support the Moldova’s EU membership, as the EU is an effective actor for peace and democracy. In a broader perspective we expect to get a strong relationship between a positive attitude toward refugees and o positive attitude to all types of internationalisation foreign policies. The empirical results confirm that our expectations are met. The attitudes toward refugees also reflect the Moldovans’ opinion about whether Moldova should provide or not protection to refugees. Our results show that those who support the idea that Moldova should help refugees, also support all political measures, i.e. the both types of cooperative and militant internationalism policies. This empirical finding relies in the social trust theory mentioned above [ 56 ], being therefore in line with the literature.

The Russia’s political influence on the Moldova’s foreign policy attitudes is transmitted inter alia by the Russian communication channels, and this is clearly confirmed by the negative sign of all coefficients which are significant in all four models. People trusting the Russian communication channels strongly reject all political measures which however are rejected by the Russia governments as well [ 37 ]. The exception at this point could be the measure of federalization.

The level-2 explanatory variables are less significant in our models compared to the Level-1 variables, but are important for our analysis because they allow also considering the geographical dimension, which would be in line with a large strand of literature on foreign policy attitudes [ 58 ]. At the regional Level, the centre-periphery theory frames our results which adds new empirical evidence over the body of papers emphasizing that the “periphery” will “either favour the status-quo, or sudden and complete changes” [ 27 ] resulting therefore in a difference in attitudes between the centre and the periphery of the society, as also underlined by [ 28 ]. In contrast with the central districts which support the unification with Romania, the South Moldovan districts are found to be in opposition with the EU membership and in favour of federalization.

According to [ 59 ], the rural-urban divide, the distance of rural areas from the capital, and the loss of influence in politics in many rural areas have both leaded to different levels of trust and attitudes of population living in rural areas. In our paper, the rural districts have been found agree on the unification with Romania, which is a very sensitive issue on the Chișinău political agenda. The findings at the regional level also reflect the internal political tensions and the spatial dimension of the foreign policy attitudes in Moldova.

Conclusions and policy recommendations

The aim of the paper was to provide a better understanding of foreign policy attitudes in Moldova, with a focus on their relation with different indicators of poverty, ethnicity and other individual- and regional level characteristics. The multilevel analysis enabled us to provide a regional picture of foreign policy attitudes which fits the specific peculiarities of a country divided by ethnic, regional and political conflicts.

As already explained, the paper contributes to the literature twofold. First, it addresses for the first time the issue of foreign policy attitudes in Moldova, and moreover it frames the analysis in a regional dimension. The existing strand of literature on foreign policy attitudes mainly explores the militant and cooperative internationalism having the US as case-study. Extending the analysis of foreign policy attitudes across other contexts and countries, but on the same axe of cooperative internationalism- militant internationalism- isolationism, facilitates the international comparability of results, interpretation and policies. In this regard, our study follows the line of research developed by [ 18 , 19 ], and it adds empirical evidence over issues previously formulated by [ 4 ]. Secondly, our paper introduces for the first time poverty in the study of public opinions on foreign policy, which allows considering the impact of a prevailing social issue in Moldova.

The most important findings will be resumed here, but an extensive analysis of all empirical results is done in the previous section. Some policy recommendations will be formulated at the end of the section.

Although the unification with Romania and the EU membership represent two distinct foreign policy measures, the impact and significance of their individual level- correlates are almost similar, which proves that becoming member of the EU or a part of Romania are similarly perceived by Moldovans. One explanation is that Romania is an EU member. However, it is interesting to note at this point that Romania is not seen as a big “grabbing” country, but rather as a step toward the EU membership.

In comparison with the other foreign policy measures analysed here, the NATO membership appears as a difficult policy decision for Moldova, given the lack of significance of most of its correlates. Nevertheless, individuals who are satisfied with Moldova’s foreign policy are found to also agree with the NATO membership, which might suggest that the supporters of NATO membership perceive this policy measure as an extension of the current foreign policy.

The empirical results reflect a number of common patterns behind all foreign policy measures analysed here. The Russian media influence, being Gagauz, and the opposition to the government decision to eventually help refugees, are found to be all strongly associated with the disapproval of all foreign policy measures. The ethnic identity plays an important role in explaining foreign policy attitudes because, beside Gagauzians who strongly reject all foreign policies, Moldovans agree with the EU membership. The ethnic dimension is even further deepened by the regional dimension, which reflects the geographical perspective. This analysis unveils that rural population supports the idea of unification with Romania, as well as the Centre region which is “more rural” compared to the other regions, while the Southern districts, which concentrate a higher proportion of Gagauzians, disagree with the EU membership and support the idea of federalization.

The relationship between foreign policy attitudes and poverty was at the core of empirical investigation. Different types of poverty indicators have been comparatively analysed, and to facilitate a broader conceptualisation of poverty, a score of deprivation (multidimensional poverty) has been derived from a number of seven deprivation items. Compared to the other poverty measures, deprivation is found to be the only one being significantly related with negative foreign policy attitudes in three models (excepting federalisation). We place this finding in the framework of the “centre-periphery theory” [ 27 ], interpreted under the umbrella of peripheralization, which emphasizes the political scepticism of the “social” periphery, represented here by the deprived population.

Although our paper is not primarily aimed to examine whether the foreign policy attitudes in Moldova are structured or not, the overall empirical results, and especially the similarity in the impact that most correlates have on all foreign policy attitudes models, indicate their lack of structure and consistency. This is in line with most findings in the literature on foreign policy attitudes [ 5 , 12 , 22 ].

The usefulness of the paper results go beyond the area of the domestic policy design. In the last decades, the role of public opinion in the structuring of EU foreign policy has increased and has become more complex, as a consequence of the growing role of the European foreign and security policy facing more and more challenges without and within the EU borders. Moldova is a potential new candidate for EU membership. In this light, understanding the foreign policy attitudes in Moldova could provide valuable insights for the EU policy makers, analysts and strategists. Equally, exploring a new dataset on a non-EU country oscillating between Russia and the EU could provide new insights over a small country, insufficiently explored in the international literature.

The links between foreign policy attitudes, ethnicity, regionalism and poverty in Moldova could be further examined in more details, and one theory allowing to capture all these issues into a unitary framework could be the “centre-periphery” theory. This could be a future direction in the analysis of foreign policy attitudes in Moldova that can bring additional empirical insights with useful implications in the economic and social policy area.

Supporting information

Funding statement.

The study is funded by the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Chair programme. Jean Monnet Chair: Monica Raileanu Szeles Grant nr. 609500-EPP-1-2019-1-RO-EPPJMO-CHAIR. Funder: European Commission https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/erasmus-plus/actions/jean-monnet_en . The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Data Availability

• PLoS One. 2021; 16(1): e0245322.

Decision Letter 0

PONE-D-20-29273

A regional approach to foreign policy attitudes, poverty and ethnicity in Moldova

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: General Comments

The paper titled “A regional approach to foreign policy attitudes, poverty and ethnicity in Moldova” deals with an interesting topic, focused on a well-centred perspective. It is under the scope of the Journal and, in my view, it provides a better understanding of foreign policy attitudes in Moldova, with a focus on their relation with different indicators of poverty, ethnicity and other individual- and regional level characteristics. It constitutes an interesting focus for reflection.

This work is well written and easily understandable. The structure of the paper, the revision of the literature and the method are well designed. Results and conclusions are very well supported by the literature as well as the empirical analysis.

I give some pieces of advice to the authors to improve the paper, particularly for providing a more detailed explanation in some sections. I think that this more comprehensive explanation will contribute to the fluency of reading as well as to the understanding of the econometric modelling.

Specific Comments

When the two-level variance components model is explained in section 3. Methods, the authors provide a description of all components of equation (1), except the component referred to the group level residual. Although this becomes perfectly clear when you continue reading the work, it is convenient to specify it the first time it is cited.

In the paragraph in which the main variables of interest are described (section 4. Ethno-geopolitical context and Data, in the section dedicated to data), it would be interesting to directly justify the variables chosen according to the academic literature referred to in the previous sections.

I want to point out a minor format matter in the last paragraph of the third section (Methods) since there is a different font format to the rest of the paper.

Reviewer #2: The flow of information throughout the paper is well structured. Very informative piece of work

The main contributions of the submitted article are:

(1) It provides a clear analysis of public opinion on foreign policy for Moldova. It adds an alternative view to the literature in its field since most of the studies are US-based.

(2) It also connects regional patterns and socio-economics issues such as poverty and ethnicities with public perception on various foreign policies currently present in the Moldovan society.

Additional Comments:

- The title of the paper is misleading based on the scope of the article.

- Abstract is hard to read. It does not provide a clear path of what the paper wants to achieve.

- Please, provide more details regarding data availability within the manuscripts and supporting information files. This is not clear at all.

- Kindly, provide a brief context on the Transnistria conflict within your article. Why the conflict was not briefly described in the paper?

- Page 8: Attention to details. References used in the preparation of the paper were not found in the references section. For instance, See Baltag (2013)

- Page 8: It is not clear to readers, what is the pro-poor economic growth of 5%. Please, clarify or add more details.

- Page 8: What do you mean by regional perspective? At this stage, It is not very clear to readers. Please, provide more details.

- Typo on page 8: "the most important ethnic groups in Moldova ae Romanians"

- Page 10: "but rather as latent values explaining the factor loadings according to the factor analysis". Kindly, provide more details, since it is not clear to readers.

- Page 12: " then the use of multilevel models becomes totally justified" Add references to support your approach.

- Page 14: " In the equation below". Shouldn't be in the equation above?

- Page 16. Provide some context/details about the use of Age square in your analysis.

- Typo on page 17: "patters"

- Typo on page 19: "detoted"

- Page 19: Please, provide clarification, details for CTT

- Page 21: is TV missing from Fig 2? If so, there is inconsistency with comments and table 2 on Page 20.

- Page 25: By reading the following "However, the NATO membership is not a seen as an appropriate foreign policy measure for Moldova, not by Moldovans, and nor by Gagauz people, and one explanation could be the strong Russian opposition (Schelegel, 2018).

Aren't Gagauz people Moldovan citizens? The paragraph could imply a different interpretation. Please, clarify.

- Typo on page 25: "are in opposition with the all policy" Please, remove 'the'

- Page 26: The information provided about attitudes toward refugees is almost negligible. Add more text regarding refugees in Moldova.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Author response to Decision Letter 0

Response to reviewers

Reviewer #1: General Comments

1.1 When the two-level variance components model is explained in section 3. Methods, the authors provide a description of all components of equation (1), except the component referred to the group level residual. Although this becomes perfectly clear when you continue reading the work, it is convenient to specify it the first time it is cited.

R. I introduced a short explanation about the group level error (eq.1, section 3)

1.2 In the paragraph in which the main variables of interest are described (section 4. Ethno-geopolitical context and Data, in the section dedicated to data), it would be interesting to directly justify the variables chosen according to the academic literature referred to in the previous sections.

R. I introduced a new paragraph (p.10) to justify the selection of variables according to the literature. The selection of the four dependent variables as vectors of foreign policy is extensively motivated in several sections as Introduction and the first sub-section of section 4 (entitled The substance of foreign policy attitudes in Moldova).

I checked the last paragraph of the third section (Methods) and I didn’t find a different font format to the rest of the paper (TNR12).

Reviewer #2:

R. I reformulated the title of the paper.

R. I reformulated some parts of the Abstract.

R. A large paragraph about the data availability and dataset description is the first one at the beginning of section Data (p.9). The dataset is freely provided online by the Institute for Public Policies in Moldova (as also mentioned in the paper).

R. I included a brief presentation of the Transnistria conflict at p.9 of the section “The substance of foreign policy attitudes in Moldova”.

R. Yes, I corrected.

R. A footnote was added to provide an additional explanation in this regard.

R. An additional explanation was added in Introduction at p.3.

R. I made the correction.

R. I reformulated a little bit for more clarity.

R. I added a reference in this regard.

R. Yes, thank you! I made the correction.

R. I added an explanation in this regard at p.19 (at the point where explaining the effect of age).

R. The ICC is described at p.15 (just above Fig.2).

R. I introduced a new paragraph providing more information about the Gaguz people, just above the paragraph cited by reviewer.

R. I added more text regarding refugees in Moldova.

Submitted filename: Response to reviewers November 2020.docx

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Commended Entry: "Moldova" by Luca Ciripitca from the UK

This article was submitted in the Kids World Travel Guide Essay Competition 2020 in the Senior Category 12-15 years.

As the plane descends, a spectacular sight comes into view. For miles in all directions, fields and vineyards stretch out between the green rolling hills. Then, as the plane lands, all the passengers burst into applause, praising the pilot’s smooth landing. You have arrived at Chisinau Airport.

As you leave the airport, you drive between two towering white buildings, each one getting taller and taller until the road passes between them. These are the Gates of the City. After passing them, you enter Chisinau – a city characterised by its wide streets, large apartment blocks, and massive green spaces and parks. Moldova.  Though it may be small and have little tourism, there is lots to see, taste and do.

Moldova has a population of about 4 million people, and is located in south east Europe, sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine. The main language spoken is Romanian, however many people speak other languages too, such as English or Russian. The capital city of Moldova, Chisinau, is home to lots of beautiful parks and grand museums. The National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History was the first museum in the city, and is a great place to go if you want to learn about the natural history, background and culture of Moldova. The Museum of Art features traditional and modern paintings and artworks. All of the museums and many of the other buildings around central Chisinau have a beautiful and grand style and architecture, which I really like.

However, there is more to Moldova then just its capital city. Only 30 miles north of Chisinau, in a place called Orheiul Vechi (Old Orhei), you can experience a place of incredible natural beauty and historical essence. You can experience a more traditional side of the country by staying in a traditional Moldovan-style house or resort, eating the delicious food and drinking their wine. During the day, there are many things to see – old ruins and artefacts from ancient tribes, beautiful churches and monasteries, or even simply a walk along its massive rocky ridges.  Orheiul Vechi has lots of ancient history behind it, but it also is a place of stunning natural beauty where people can go to relax.

One of my favourite things about Moldova is the food. People in Moldova are very hospitable, and they usually welcome their guests with lots of food and wine.

There is a huge variety of different foods in Moldova, and each one is unique and different from the rest. For example, there is mamaliga , which is polenta; placinte , which are a type of pastries; sarmale , which are stuffed cabbages or leaves; coltunasi , which are similar to dumplings, and many more. Much of Moldova’s food is inspired by other countries, such as Italy, Russia and the Middle East, and they all have a kind of history behind them as these are the countries that had empires in Moldova at some point – such as the Roman Empire, the Turkish Empire and the Soviet Union.

In my opinion, Moldova would be a great place to visit, especially if you’re interested in learning new things and seeing a different, unexplored part of the world. Though it has little tourism, there are still lots of things to do to get great new experiences. I think that once people have visited Moldova, seen the cities, seen the countryside, tasted the food and drank the wine, they will be very glad they came.

To many people, it will seem like a new and different land, but to me and to my family, it is home.

Thank you for the wonderful essay "Moldova", Luca. We learned a lot about your home country - and have put your beautiful country right on our bucket list! Thanks for sharing your insights with us! Well done!

Luca attends Sutton Grammar School in the UK.

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Author Interviews

A conversation with the author of 'there's always this year'.

NPR's Scott Detrow speaks to Hanif Abdurraqib about the new book There's Always This Year . It's a mix of memoir, essays, and poems, looking at the role basketball played in Abdurraqib's life.

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

The new book "There's Always This Year" opens with an invitation. Here's a quote - "if you please imagine with me, you are putting your hand into my open palm, and I am resting one free hand atop yours. And I am saying to you that I would like to commiserate here and now about our enemies. We know our enemies by how foolishly they trample upon what we know as affection, how quickly they find another language for what they cannot translate as love." And what follows from that is a lyrical book about basketball but also about geography, luck, fate and many other things, too. It's also about how the career arc of basketball great LeBron James is woven through the life of the book's author, Hanif Abdurraqib, who joins us now. Welcome back to the show.

HANIF ABDURRAQIB: Thank you for having me again, Scott. It's really wonderful to be here.

DETROW: You know, I love this book so much, but I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. It's part memoir, part meditation, part poetry collection, part essay collection. How do you think about this book?

ABDURRAQIB: You know, it's funny. I've been running into that too early on in the process and now - still, when I'm asked to kind of give an elevator pitch. And I think really, if I'm being honest, that feels like an achievement to me because so much of...

DETROW: Yeah.

ABDURRAQIB: ...My intent with the book was working against a singular aboutness (ph) or positioning the book as something that could be operating against neat description because I think I was trying to tie together multiple ideas, sure, through the single - singular and single lens of basketball. But I kind of wanted to make basketball almost a - just a canvas atop which I was laying a lot of other concerns, be it mortality or place or fatherhood and sonhood (ph) in my case. I think mostly it's a book about mortality. It's a book about the passage of time and attempting to be honest with myself about the realities of time's passing.

DETROW: Yeah, it seems to me like it could also be a book about geography, about being shaped by the place you grew up in and that moment where you choose to stay or leave, or maybe leave and come back. And I was hoping you could read a passage that that deals directly with that for us.

ABDURRAQIB: Of course. Yeah. This is from the third quarter or the third act of the of the book.

(Reading) It bears mentioning that I come from a place people leave. Yes, when LeBron left, the reactions made enough sense to me, I suppose. But there was a part of me that felt entirely unsurprised. People leave this place. There are Midwestern states that are far less discernible on a blank map, sure. Even with an understanding of direction, I am known to mess up the order of the Dakotas. I've been known to point at a great many square-like landscapes while weakly mumbling Nebraska. And so I get it. We don't have it too bad. People at least claim to know that Ohio is shaped like a heart - a jagged heart, a heart with sharp edges, a heart as a weapon. That's why so many people make their way elsewhere.

DETROW: What does Ohio, and specifically, what does Columbus mean to you and who you are?

ABDURRAQIB: I think at this stage in my life, it's the one constant that keeps me tethered to a version of myself that is most recognizable. You know, you don't choose place. Place is something that happens to you. Place is maybe the second choice that is made for you after the choice of who your parents are. But if you have the means and ability, there are those of us who at some point in our lives get to choose a place back. And I think choosing that place back doesn't happen once. I mean, it happens several times. It's like any other relationship. You are choosing to love a place or a person as they are, and then checking in with if you are capable of continuing to love that place or person as they evolve, sometimes as they evolve without you or sometimes as you evolve without them. And so it's a real - a math problem that is always unfolding, someone asking the question of - what have I left behind in my growth, or what has left me behind in a growth that I don't recognize?

So, you know, Columbus doesn't look the way - just from an architectural standpoint - does not look the way it looked when I was young. It doesn't even look the way it looked when I moved back in 2017. And I have to kind of keep asking myself what I can live with. Now that, for me, often means that I turn more inward to the people. And I began to think of the people I love as their own architecture, a much more reliable and much more sturdy architecture than the architecture that is constantly under the siege of gentrification. And that has been grounding for me. It's been grounding for me to say, OK, I can't trust that this building will stay. I can't trust that this basketball court will stay. I can't trust that this mural or any of it will stay. But what I do know is that for now, in a corner of the city or in many corners of the city, there are people who know me in a very specific way, and we have a language that is only ours. And through that language, we render each other as full cities unto ourselves.

DETROW: Yeah. Can you tell me how you thought about basketball more broadly, and LeBron James specifically, weaving in and out of these big questions you're asking? - because in the first - I guess the second and third quarter, really, of the book - and I should say, you organize the book like a basketball game in quarters. You know, you're being really - you're writing these evocative, sad scenes of how, like you said, your life was not unfolding the way you wanted it in a variety of ways. And it's almost like LeBron James is kind of floating through as a specter on the TV screen in the background, keeping you company in a moment where it seems to me like you really needed company. Like, how did you think about your relationship with basketball and the broader moments and the broader thoughts in those moments?

ABDURRAQIB: Oh, man, that's not only such a good question, but that's actually - that's such a good image of LeBron James on the TV in the background because it was that. In a way, it was that in a very plainly material, realistic, literal sense because when I was, say, unhoused - right? - I...

ABDURRAQIB: ...Would kind of - you know, sometimes at night you kind of just wander. You find a place, and you walk through downtown. And I remember very clearly walking through downtown Columbus and just hearing the Cavs games blaring out of open doors to bars or restaurants and things like that, and not having - you know, I couldn't go in there because I had no money to buy anything, and I would eventually get thrown out of those places.

So, you know, I think playing and watching basketball - you know, even though this book is not, like, a heavy, in-depth basketball biography or a basketball memoir, I did spend a lot of time watching old - gosh, so much of the research for this book was me watching clips from the early - mid-2000s of...

ABDURRAQIB: ...LeBron James playing basketball because my headspace while living through that was entirely different. It's like you said, like LeBron was on a screen in the background of a life that was unsatisfying to me. So they were almost, like, being watched through static. And now when I watch them, the static clears, and they're a little bit more pleasureful (ph). And that was really joyful.

DETROW: LeBron James, of course, left the Cavs for a while. He took his talents to South Beach, went to the Miami Heat. You write - and I was a little surprised - that you have a really special place in your heart for, as you call them, the LeBronless (ph) years and the way that you...

ABDURRAQIB: Oh, yeah.

DETROW: ...Interacted with the team. What do you think that says? And why do you think you felt that way and feel that way about the LeBronless Cavs?

ABDURRAQIB: I - you know, I'm trying to think of a softer word than awful. But you know what? They were awful.

DETROW: (Laughter).

ABDURRAQIB: I mean they were (laughter) - but that did not stop them from playing this kind of strange level of hard, at times, because I think it hit a point, particularly in the late season, where it was clear they were giving in and tanking. But some of those guys were, like, old professionals. There's, like, an older Baron Davis on that team. You know, some of these guys, like, did not want to be embarrassed. And...

ABDURRAQIB: ...That, to me, was miraculous to watch where - because they're still professionals. They're still NBA players. And to know that these guys were playing on a team that just could not win games - they just didn't have the talent - but they individually did not want to - at least did not want to give up the appearance that they weren't fighting, there's something beautiful and romantic about that to me.

DETROW: It makes a lot of sense why you end the book around 2016 when the Cavs triumph and bring the championship to Cleveland. But when it comes to the passage of time - and I'll say I'm the exact same age as you, and we're both about the same age as LeBron. When it comes to the passage of time, how do you present-day feel about LeBron James watching the graying LeBron James who's paying so much attention to his lower back? - because I don't have anywhere near the intense relationship with him that you do. But, I mean, I remember reading that Sports Illustrated when it came out. I remember watching him in high school on ESPN, and I feel like going on this - my entire adult life journey with him. And I feel like weirdly protective of LeBron James now, right? Like, you be careful with him.

ABDURRAQIB: Yeah.

DETROW: And I'm wondering how you think about him today and what that leads your brain to, given this long, long, long relationship you have with him.

ABDURRAQIB: I find myself mostly anxious now about LeBron James, even though he is still - I think he's still playing at a high level. I mean, I - you know, I think that's not a controversial statement. But I - while he is still playing at a high level, I do - I'm like everyone else. So I'm kind of aware that it does seem like parts of him - or at least he's paying a bit more attention to the aches that just come with aging, right?

ABDURRAQIB: I have great empathy and sympathy for an athlete who's dedicated their life to a sport, who is maybe even aware that their skills are not what they once were, but still are playing because that's just what they've done. And they are...

ABDURRAQIB: ...In some cases, maybe still in pursuit of one more ring or one more legacy-building exploit that they can attach to their career before moving on to whatever is next. And so I don't know. And I don't think LeBron is at risk of a sharp and brutal decline, but I do worry a bit about him playing past his prime, only because I've never seen him be anything but miraculous on the court. And to witness that, I think, would be devastating in some ways.

And selfishly, I think it would signal some things to me personally about the limits of my own miracle making, not as a basketball player, of course, but as - you know, because a big conceit of the book is LeBron and I are similar in age, and we have - you know, around the same age and all this. And I think a deep flaw is that I've perhaps attached a part of his kind of miraculous playing beyond what people thought to my own idea about what miracle is as you age.

And so, you know, to be witness to a decline, a sharp decline would be fascinating and strange and a bit disorienting. But I hope it doesn't get there. You know, I hope - I would like to see him get one more ring. I don't know when it's going to come or how it's going to come, but I would like to see him get one more. I really would. My dream, selfishly, is that it happens again in Cleveland. He'll come back here and team up with, you know, some good young players and get one more ring for Cleveland because I think Cavs fans, you know, deserve that to the degree that anyone deserves anything in sports. That would be a great storybook ending.

DETROW: The last thing I want to ask about are these vignettes and poems that dot the book in praise of legendary Ohio aviators. Can you tell me what you were trying to do there? And then I'd love to end with you reading a few of them for me.

ABDURRAQIB: Yeah. I'm so glad you asked about that. I haven't gotten to talk about that as much, and that - those were the first things I wrote for the book. I wrote 30 of them...

DETROW: Really?

ABDURRAQIB: ...I think. And of course, they all didn't make it. But that was kind of an exercise, like a brain exercise. And I was trying to play with this idea of starting out with folks who were literally aviators. So it begins with John Glenn and Lonnie Carmen, and then working further and further away from aviation in a literal sense, much like the book is working further and further away from, say, basketball in this concrete sense - because ascension in my mind isn't just moving upward, it is expansion, too. It is, I think, any directional movement away from where your position is. And so I got to be kind of flexible with ideas of ascent and growth and moving upward.

DETROW: And the last aviator you did this for was you. And I'm hoping you can read what you wrote about yourself to end this.

ABDURRAQIB: Oh, gosh. OK, yeah. This is Hanif Abdurraqib, Columbus, Ohio, 1983 to present. (Reading) Never dies in his dreams. In his dreams, he is infinite, has wings, feathers that block the sun. And yet in the real living world, the kid has seen every apocalypse before it arrives, has been the architect of a few bad ones. Still wants to be alive most days. Been resurrected so many damn times, no one is surprised by the magic trick anymore.

DETROW: That's Hanif Abdurraqib, author of the new book "There's Always This Year: On Basketball And Ascension." Thank you so much.

ABDURRAQIB: Thank you, Scott. I really appreciate it.

(SOUNDBITE OF FLEETWOOD MAC SONG, "ALBATROSS")

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What’s the Quickest Path to World War III?

In “The Return of Great Powers” and “Up in Arms,” Jim Sciutto and Adam E. Casey consider modern-day superpower conflict through the lens of the past.

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By Scott Anderson

Scott Anderson’s most recent book is “The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War — A Tragedy in Three Acts.”

THE RETURN OF GREAT POWERS: Russia, China, and the Next World War, by Jim Sciutto

UP IN ARMS: How Military Aid Stabilizes — and Destabilizes — Foreign Autocrats, by Adam E. Casey

Every few months in the years that Donald J. Trump was president, Iran made a show of its ballistic missiles — the powerful rockets that can deliver nuclear warheads from one nation to another — and set off a small panic in Washington. The tests went like this: A missile flew up from one part of Iran, traveled through the country’s airspace and, ideally, blew up harmlessly in another part of Iran, hundreds of miles away.

The former White House political adviser John Kelly remembers that, on one such occasion, after intelligence of an impending missile launch came in, Trump said he wanted to shoot the weapon down. “Well, sir, that’s an act of war,” Kelly recalls telling him. “You really need to go over to Congress and get at least an authorization.”

“They’ll never go along with it,” Trump apparently replied.

“Well, I know,” Kelly said. “But that’s our system.”

This anecdote and many other alarming scenes appear in Jim Sciutto’s “The Return of Great Powers,” an absorbing account of 21st-century brinkmanship. Sciutto has interviewed several of Trump’s former advisers, including Kelly, who explains that he managed to talk his old boss out of some of his worst ideas only by suggesting they would hurt his standing in public opinion. “Americans, generally speaking by polling, think that we should be involved in the world,” he recalls telling Trump when the president threatened to pull the United States out of NATO .

The former national security adviser John Bolton is even more blunt about this episode. “Honest to God,” Bolton says, “it was frightening because we didn’t know what he was going to do up until the last minute.”

That such political figures would speak so candidly can be partly credited to Sciutto’s standing as CNN’s chief national security analyst and his earlier stint with the State Department under Barack Obama. He’s the kind of well-connected reporter who, as we learn in this book, gets a call at 3 a.m., in February 2022, from an unnamed Congress member to warn him that a war in Ukraine is imminent.

It also reflects the unbridled horror that insiders like Kelly and Bolton feel at the prospect of a second Trump administration taking charge amid a perilous superpower chess game. “The Return of Great Powers” argues that we are living through a Cold War redux that once again pits the United States against Russia and China. The battle is being waged on every imaginable front, from undersea communication cables to satellites in outer space and the growing frontiers of artificial intelligence .

Sciutto begins with cinematic jumps between an eclectic assortment of personalities — American generals and congressional leaders, Finnish diplomats and Taiwanese naval captains — in the days and hours leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In later sections, the white-knuckle tension he experiences as Russian warplanes close in on a NATO fleet conducting exercises near the Baltic Sea is eerily echoed by Chinese jets operating in the Taiwan Strait.

One great difference between this cold war and the last, Sciutto contends, is that the guardrails erected to prevent superpower rivalries from sliding into catastrophe have been steadily dismantled. Over the past quarter-century, both the United States and Russia have abandoned one arms control treaty after another and lines of communication between all three powers have been purposely reduced. As one unnamed State Department official tells Sciutto, when a mysterious Chinese balloon drifted across North America last fall, the Chinese military “ refused to pick up the phone .”

Add to this precarity those proxy mischief-makers — North Korea, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to name a few — that might see advantage in provoking a superpower showdown. It’s enough to send those with a front-row view into the old basement bomb shelter.

Or to cause them to share their fears with a reputable journalist. Virtually all of Sciutto’s interlocutors are aligned: A defeated Ukraine will embolden Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to attack one of the other countries, perhaps Estonia or Moldova, that have already caught his covetous eye. It might also encourage an impatient Xi Jinping of China to force a military solution to “ the Taiwan question ,” an event that some observers see as a precursor to global war .

Having identified the peril, Sciutto’s panelists also agree on the solutions: unwavering commitment to the defense of Ukraine; greater integration of NATO forces; much closer cooperation between the European and Asian blocs of democratic nations. Ironically, many of these recommendations are now being enacted thanks to the Russian invasion and Chinese encroachments — long-neutral Sweden and Finland have joined NATO , and East Asian nations have strengthened their mutual defense pacts .

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t cause for concern. Trump, once again his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, has fought against U.S. military aid to Ukraine and urged Russia “ to do whatever the hell ” it wants to NATO members who fail to meet their financial obligations. The litany of international dangers Sciutto describes, set alongside the recollections of some of Trump’s closest former advisers, is the stuff of unholy nightmares.

For all its strengths, “The Return of Great Powers” sometimes displays a peculiar awkwardness in conveying others’ views. Sciutto can let his subjects meander around points that are not particularly interesting or original — or, at times, even comprehensible. On the matter of standing up to Russia, for example, he quotes a senior Western diplomat as stating: “The idea that we can’t do this is completely false, but the problem is also economically and physically we have that capability. But then, do we have it politically? It’s going to be a different game. But am I concerned? Yes.”

I suppose I’d be concerned, too, if only I could grasp what he’s talking about. Still, these are mere quibbles when set against the import of Sciutto’s book, one that should be read by every legislator or presidential nominee sufficiently deluded to think that returning America to its isolationist past or making chummy with Putin is a viable option in today’s world.

The ideal way forward for a great power like the United States has always been fraught, and looking back at the mistakes and successes of the Cold War is often instructive, but not always. Adam E. Casey’s “Up in Arms” is well written and clearly the product of prodigious research; it also shows how Cold War comparisons can sometimes go too far.

Casey, a former academic who is now a national security analyst for a curiously unspecified branch of the U.S. government, sets out to re-examine the accepted wisdom that U.S. aid to totalitarian regimes served to maintain and prolong those dictatorships during the latter half of the 20th century. In rebutting this thesis, he sets out some statistics that are initially eye-catching. According to his examination of hundreds of Cold War authoritarian regimes, Soviet-supported rulers survived, on average, twice as long as American-supported ones. Most startling, in any given year, U.S.-backed dictators were about seven times more likely to fall than their Soviet counterparts.

As he points out, though, the Soviets exported their own military model to client states, which meant an armed forces thoroughly infiltrated by Communist Party commissars, and counterintelligence officers whose primary focus was keeping watch over the ideological steadfastness of their own rank and file. The result was an army wholly subordinate to the party and the state, drastically reducing the odds of a military coup.

By contrast, the U.S.-military model called for building out an anti-communist army independent of whatever tyrant happened to be in power at the time, often leading to the creation of a parallel power base that might ultimately challenge said tyrant. The American method was less durable, because it often yielded a round robin of military coups led by anti-communist officers against other anti-communist officers.

How did these different approaches alter the global chessboard? Remarkably, hardly at all. While Casey astutely points out that the American model was a perfect breeding ground for corruption, human rights abuses and governmental instability, he also notes that over the entire half-century span of the Cold War, only one military coup — Laos in 1960 — led to an actual ideological realignment of a U.S.-backed regime, and then only briefly. This is why, Casey explains, American cold warriors weren’t inclined to change course, despite their awareness of the chaos they had wrought.

Casey gamely suggests his findings might have currency as the planet enters another period of superpower jockeying, but it is hard to see precisely how this military-proxy dynamic of yore replicates itself. China has never shown much interest in extending its martial reach to countries beyond Asia, and Russian military tutelage is surely trading at a deep discount after its dismal Ukrainian outing.

As for the United States, while displaying little reservation about cozying up to despots when convenient — witness some of the grotesqueries it has climbed into bed with for the so-called “war on terror” — it’s hard to imagine any eagerness to go back to the days of army-building in the wake of America’s Iraq and Afghanistan war hangovers.

That being said, the last Cold War went on for decades. In 10 or 20 years, the hangovers could fade. China’s economic ties to countries like Uganda and Ethiopia , Russia’s support of Cuba and Venezuela and American entanglements in Southeast Asia and the Middle East all have the potential to turn from cold to warm, or from warm to boiling hot. Giving up on democracy is all the rage these days. The leaders of the great powers could start eyeing Cold War-inspired playbooks like Casey’s, with dire results for everyone caught in between.

THE RETURN OF GREAT POWERS : Russia, China, and the Next World War | By Jim Sciutto | Dutton | 353 pp. | $30

UP IN ARMS : How Military Aid Stabilizes — and Destabilizes — Foreign Autocrats | By Adam E. Casey | Basic Books | 323 pp. | $32

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