IDEES, revista de temes contemporanis

A complicated birth

Brought up under the Communist regime, Mircea Ion Snegur was firmly committed to the independence of Moldavia from the USSR, and although he achieved it the secession process and consolidation of the new republic was not easy. Snegur will speak in Barcelona in the conference “Architects of the new Europe”.

Moldavia was a small Soviet republic, bordering on the Ukraine and Romania, which proclaimed its independence during the process of disintegration of the USSR. Its foundational President was Mircea Ion Snegur (Trifanesti, 1940), an agricultural engineer who reached the highest position in the Moldavian Community Party and who was brought up within the structure of the regime, coming to chair the Supreme Soviet of Moldavia.

Snegur was elected President in the first democratic elections, in 1991. With him Moldavia became an independent state, but the institutional and territorial consolidation was not at all easy. He was against the union with Romania and had to confront the pressures of Russia, justified by the violent conflict with the separatist region of Transnistria, mainly inhabited by Russians.

Mircea Ion Snegur will explain his experience at the conference “Architects of the new Europe”, organized by the Centre d’Estudis de Temes Contemporanis in Barcelona, on the 7 and 8 October.