“It is interesting to see how everyone here feels first as a representative of the linguistic group they belong to, Russian, Romanian, Gagauz or Ukrainian, and secondly as citizens of Moldova. But there is no doubt that Moldovans as a whole are patriots for their rodina [homeland].”
Cahul is the largest city in Southern Moldova. It sits in a privileged position, being just a few kilometres away from the Romania-Moldova border. Galați, an important Romanian city on the Danube, is only an hour’s drive away. This has made Cahul an important trading hub and the site of a university that attracts many people from all over the region, especially the villages nearby.
Moldova is part of the Bologna process, which aims to guarantee comparability in the standards of higher education qualifications in Europe, but the university system is still struggling to develop sufficiently to meet such standards and attracts very few students from abroad.
At the central market, old potato and pepper vendors sit side by side just outside an upmarket restaurant, one of the signs of increasing wealth coming into the region. In the suburbs, nondescript lines of high rise buildings stand on top of the hills surrounding one side of Cahul, from which the Romanian countryside is clearly visible.
Walking along the roads of the city, it is often possible to hear Russian, alongside Romanian. Cahul has a sizeable minority of Russian-speaking people, over 30% according to the 2004 census. Sergey Jernovoi is one of them. He is the executive director and photographer of a local paper called Cahul Express, publishing news and announcements mostly in Russian. Cahul Express is the oldest weekly paper in Cahul, the first issue being printed on the 20th of March, 2003. Sergey remembers how, some decades ago, the Russian language was more prominent in Cahul. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, things gradually changed and Sergey eagerly started to learn Romanian. “I am very proud to have learned this language that used to be foreign to me.”
Sergey is Ukrainian and his wife is Moldovan, but he declares that their children consider themselves Russian. He is convinced that the distinctive multitude of languages of Moldova within one single political-institutional frame is what makes the country unique and different. “Everyone in one nest!” he says, laughing. His paper is a good example of this fruitful coexistence of cultures: a Russian paper, printed in a Moldovan town at the border with Romania.
Fiodor Pascal, the chief editor of the paper, has similar opinions about Cahul. “Many things changed in the past few years. Many Romanian-speaking villagers came to live, work and study in Cahul. It is interesting to see how everyone here feels first as a representative of the linguistic group they belong to, Russian, Romanian, Gagauz or Ukrainian, and secondly as citizens of Moldova. But there is no doubt that Moldovans as a whole are patriots for their rodina (homeland). As for myself, I would say I am a Moldovan who thinks and speaks in Russian.” Fiodor lived for a long time in Kazakhstan, between Karaganda and Almaty, and sometimes he is nostalgic about this period of his life.
“Red October, The Way to Communism, The Light of October, The Flag: this is what I used to print. Now you can write whatever you want in a paper.”
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- Leonid Mihalas, typographer.
While exploring the offices of the paper, we arrive in the typography workshop just moments before a power cut. All the printing machines suddenly stop. Leonid Mihalas smiles shyly. He is the typographer of the Cahul Express. During this forced break, he is happy to show us all the printing machines he works with.
“This machine is made by German technology but it was assembled in India. This one is Soviet. That one is Czechoslovakian. I used to work here long before this paper existed. Some of the machines were brought here when the Olympic Games in Moscow started, in 1980. It was very different, back then.” He laughs: “Red October, The Way to Communism, The Light of October, The Flag. This is what I used to print. Now you can write whatever you want in a paper. Back then, everything was controlled, from Chisinau and Moscow. Even when you had information, you had to wait for their approval.”
Leonid was born in Orhei. He went to a school specialising in polygraphics in Chisinau. Then he came to work in Cahul. While explaining he comes from a Romanian-speaking family, he remarks: “To me, language is just a technical aspect of the work while I am composing the paper, nothing else.”
