The social role of artists in Post-Soviet Moldova: Cultural policy, Europeanisation, and the state

Abstract

This article analyses documents and debates produced by the Council of Europe's review of cultural policy in Moldova. Whereas the Council of Europe encourages Moldova's cultural institutions, administrators, and artists to actively participate in building a democratic, capitalistic, and multiethnic society, these same individuals define their own professional activities as anti-political and anti-economic. The topics broached and avoided in Moldova's cultural policy review thus direct attention to the problems involved in rebuilding states in post-socialist societies, as artists seek to distance themselves from the motivations of policy-making in the socialist past.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the rich discussions and useful comments offered there by Robert Argenbright, Andrew Bickford, Lena Bogdonova, Costica Bradatan, Sheila Croucher, Karen Dawisha, Steven Deets, Venelin Ganev, George Georgiadis, Jeanne Hay, Scott Kenworthy, Stephen Norris, Susan Paulson, Douglas Rogers, Natalia Roudakova, John Scherpereel, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova and Jennifer Suchland.

Notes

Donnan and Wilson (1999, p. 15) indicate that the study of borders, including national and state borders, is increasing, presumably because borders and transgressions of them are becoming more politically, socially, and economically critical in many parts of the world. A similar observation regarding the intensification of political borders, even as the world moves toward more universal or global forms of governance, is made by Edward Said (1993, p. 229).

Trouillot (2001, p. 4) describes the ‘state’ as an institutional legacy of social science and university structures, such that our current expectations reflect the crystallisation and reification of nineteenth century conceptions of social, political, economic, and cultural life existing as distinguishable spheres of activity. The continued production of national cultures under new economic relations is discussed by Robert Foster (1991, pp. 235 – 60).

I adopt the definition of ‘cultural producers’ as ‘individuals and groups [who] produce music, video, film, visual arts, and theater’, provided by Maureen Mahon (2000, p. 467). This term covers the range of professionals involved in, and likely to be affected by, cultural policy in Moldova. I use the term ‘artist’ as well, however, to convey the more subjective perspective held by ‘cultural people’, that they do not simply ‘work’ in culture, but that they ‘live for culture’.

Between February and November 2001, I studied the role of local folklorists, educators, and performers in defining the cultural components of Moldova's national identity. At the debates, I counted 12 individuals whom I had met on previous occasions; of the 37 individuals interviewed by the Council of Europe, I had also spoken with nine. My research was made possible with the generous support of an Individual Advanced Research Opportunity (IARO) grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX). I bear full responsibility, however, for the information and interpretations below.

The Council of Europe's panel of experts was chaired by the Director of the Cultural Directory at the Ministry of the French Community in Belgium; other members were the President of Romania's Centre for Cultural Policy and Projects (and formerly the State Secretary for Culture), a researcher at the Utrecht School of the Arts, a lecturer in European Cultural Policy at the University of Northumbria, and a representative from the Council of Europe's MOSAIC project.

Legislation on citizenship, minority rights, and other human rights that the Republic of Moldova has adopted since 1991, for example, generally meets or exceeds European and international standards (Neukirch 1999, pp. 45 – 64). Unfortunately, much legislation that has been adopted to deliberately conform with European and international standards was incorporated directly from English-language versions of the laws, and thus adopted without an adequate understanding of their meaning, leaving Moldova with an internationally respectable legal code that may or may not reflect local legal opinions (Ludmila Ungureanu, talk given at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 28 October 2004).

‘Europeanisation’ can also occur through affiliations with ‘European’ institutions and projects such as NGOs, businesses, and citizens have regular access to ‘Europe’ through the activities of local branches of organisations such as the Council of Europe, OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), and TACIS; additional ‘European’ activities in the capital are sponsored by the French Alliance, German Cultural Centre, and European embassies which sponsor a variety of concerts and public events throughout the year.

‘National Cultural Policy Reviews’, available at: http://www.coe.int/T/E/Cultural_Co-operation/Culture/Policies/Reviews/_Summary.asp, last accessed 14 July 2007.

Available at: http://www.cultural policies.net/, last accessed 4 April 2006.

The report divides into five general sections: an introduction (Moldova's vital statistics and history); cultural policy and its relation to the state's general policies; primary branches of culture; position of state language; and the culture of ethnic minorities. The third section is largest and discusses the general status of each of several cultural domains: music and performing arts, theatre, cinema, plastic arts, folklore and folkart, cultural patrimony, libraries, and literature (Ministry of Culture, Republic of Moldova 2001).

I am using figures from the 1989 census. The census conducted in 2004 suggests that the country is less multi-ethnic: Moldovan (83.7%), Ukrainian (6.6%), Russian (1.7%), Gagauz (4.5%), Bulgarian (1.7%), Romanian (1.4%), other (0.4%) (available at: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5357.htm, last accessed 14 July 2007). The data drawn from the 2004 census, however, are generally considered to be incomplete for several reasons including difficulties collecting data in Transnistria, high rates of unofficial emigration, and the political stakes of an upcoming national election.

The Roma representative reacted when another speaker claimed that there were ‘no ethnic problems’ in the country. The Roma representative's argument that Romani culture was overlooked did not generate additional discussion.

By standard linguistic criteria, there is no Moldovan language distinguishable from Romanian. For extended discussions of how Moldovan and Romanian compare by linguistic as well as socio-linguistic features, see Dyer (1996, pp. 89 – 110) and King (1995).

The 1994 constitution suggests that Moldova is a ‘multiethnic Staatsvolk’, and a 1995 ‘foreign policy concept’ further established the country's official commitment to multiethnicity (Neukirch 1999, pp. 52 – 53; King 2000, p. 170).

The most nuanced and balanced account of the history of cultural politics in Moldova yet available is, Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture (2000). The emotional response and narrative style of ethnic Moldovans telling this history, is better captured in other histories, for example, Dima (1991) and Bruchis (1982).

Interview with Octavian, a watercolourist in his early 50s, at the artist's house in Chişinău, 30 July 2005.

Conversation during the evening at a welcome reception for the ensemble directors in the neighbouring village of Chişliţa Prut, 6 April 2001.

Conversation with Ion, Centru de Creaţie, Ciocan sector, Chişinău, 23 March 2001.

Conversation with Matei, village of Slobozia Mare, 6 April 2001.

Conversation with cultural administrator, village of Chişliţa Prut, 7 April 2001.

Conversation with Anatolii, en route to welcome reception for ensemble directors in the village of Chişliţa Prut, 6 April 2001.

The mistake was in highlighting ethnic differences instead of similarities of culture. Like his Romanian-speaking colleagues, Anatolii distinguishes the ideal of a state focused on ‘culture’ from the reality of a state focused on ‘ethnicity’.

Conversation with Anatolii; summary drawn from several conversations in the villages of Slobozia Mare and Chişliţa Prut, 6 – 8 April 2001.

Conversation with Ion, Centru de Creaţie, Ciocan sector, Chişinău, 25 April 2001; conversation with Matei, Chişinău, 29 October 2001.

An example of the relationship ‘expected in the West’ appears in Said (1994, p. 9). Said's definition of the intellectual also indicates why visual, literary, and performing artists are often treated as a common social type together with scholars. Individuals in each of these professions are ‘endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public’.

The phrase ‘live within the truth’ is from Havel (1985, p. 39).

‘The Disappearing Czech Intellectual’, The Economist, 352, 8133, 21 August 1999, p. 41; Tamas (1999, pp. 181 – 97).

See, for example, Cockcroft (1974, pp. 39 – 41) and Shay (2002).

The centrality of state interests in cultural policy is especially evident from the perspective of European integration. Analysing cultural policy in the European Economic Community, Bekemans finds that the rhetoric of a common European culture that ultimately justifies the boundaries of the EEC, and encourages states to join, is never elaborated, and thus ‘European culture’ means everything and nothing. Moreover, state interests and nationally-defined ‘culture’ often conflict with economic integration: economic integration encourages de-regulation of the importation and exportation of film and broadcast media, but countries currently place high controls on precisely these forms of ‘culture’ in order to maintain national linguistic and cultural purity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer R. Cash

An early version of this paper was presented at the Havighurst Center of Miami University, Ohio, in November 2004 as part of the Center's International Young Researchers Conference on ‘The Problems of the Post-Communist State’.