Slavonic and East European Review

SEER, 91, 4, OCTOBER 2013 938 of Orbán are often rebuked on the grounds that he and Fidesz are the surest bulwark against neo-Nazism, an argument that the European Union seems to take seriously. For an understanding of how Hungarian politics should have come to such a choice, Lendvai’s account is currently the best introduction. UCL SSEES Martyn Rady Johansson, Andreas. Dissenting Democrats: Nation and Democracy in the Republic of Moldova. Stockholm Studies in Politics, 142, Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2011. xx + 250 pp. Maps. Tables. Figures. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Price unknown. This reflective monograph brings an original contribution to the discussion of the manner in which the ideas of nation and democracy inform the analysis of states in transition. It reminds us, invoking the example of Moldova, that the options offered under democracy can complicate transition since they nurture the potential for dispute. At the same time, democracy, as the author states, also offers the prospect of finding common ground on which to negotiate, and this carries the seed of consolidation for democracy. However, the reader may well ask, in the light of Moldova’s post-1990 experience, whether democracy carries the seed of nation as well. The Moldovan parliament’s declaration of the republic’s sovereignty on 23 June 1990, representing as it did a declaration of national self-determination by the Moldovans, prompted secession by both the Russians east of the Dniester and the Gagauz in the south. In coordinated actions the Gagauz and left-bank leaders proclaimed republics independent of Moldova but within the structure of the still-extant USSR. In 1994, the Parliament of Moldova awarded to ‘the people of Gagauzia’ (through the adoption of the new Constitution of Moldova) the right of ‘external self-determination’. On 23 December 1994, the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova accepted the ‘Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia’ (Gagauz: Gagauz Yeri), resolving the dispute peacefully. The predominantly-Russian deputies representing the population on the left bank of the Dniester were less conciliatory. On 2 September 1990, the deputies held an extraordinary meeting in Tiraspol and announced their breakaway from Moldova by proclaiming the Moldovan Dniester Soviet Socialist Republic — now known in English as Trans-Dniester — and the town of Tiraspol its capital. The breakaway territory’s paramilitary forces took over Moldovan public institutions in the area in 1991. Fighting broke out and developed into a battle on the right bank of the Dniester in June 1992. It is estimated that some 700 people were killed in the conflict. A ceasefire was signed in July 1992, and a 10 km demilitarized security zone was established. The settlement was enforced by the Russian 14th Army forces already stationed in Trans-Dniester. REVIEWS 939 Following an introduction which outlines the author’s research questions and methods we move to chapter two for historical and socio-economic background to the territories that today constitute the Republic of Moldova. While the focus is on twentieth-century developments, the latter part of the chapter draws attention to the socio-economic situation from 1989 onwards, a period in which a push for market economic reforms was accompanied by economic crises and huge levels of emigration. The secession of the Transnistrian region, and later its de facto if not de jure statehood, is partly discussed here, but it is otherwise regarded as a political process and further addressed in chapter five. Chapter three, ‘Political Regime and Nation in Transition’, represents the main theoretical chapter and deals with the relationship between nation and democracy. The primary aim of this chapter is to derive the theoretical tools needed to structure the analysis of the empirical material. The different phases of transition are introduced here, beginning with the initial period of liberalization and democratization in post-1990 Moldova. The teleological approach of the transitology school is discussed and related to the debate on the general or particular nature of Eastern Europe’s transition. Consolidation is understood by the author as completed when democracy ‘has become the only game in town’ and after both the institutional mechanisms and substantive components are in place. State-building is discussed in relation to the institutions needed for the state...