Moldova

Moldova is presented as the setting for a conflict over sovereignty and the place where Eduard Limonov encountered the violent local power that drew him into the wars following the Soviet Union’s collapse. The account connects the country’s contested political status to the Russian separatist cause in Transnistria, and turns that landscape of raids, mines, and improvised rule into a formative episode in Limonov’s wartime experience.

Political Setting

In the book’s account, Moldova had been part of eastern Romania before the Soviet Union annexed it. Its largely Romanian population was described as impoverished, with some Moldovans hoping to reunite with Romania. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought a declaration of independence, but the new state’s status did not settle the question of who would rule the territory or protect its communities.

The Russians living there were described as settlers who had previously exercised authority over the local population. Facing harassment and reprisals from the newly independent state, they established the autonomous republic of Transnistria and took up arms to defend it. Moldova thus appears not as a settled national landscape but as a place where rival claims to belonging and political control became an armed conflict.

Limonov in the Conflict

Limonov travelled to the region on a reporting mission for Dyen and sympathized without reservation with the Russian separatists. He was eager to witness the wars breaking out across the former Soviet empire; in Moldova, that interest became direct participation. He joined a punitive raid against Romanians, crossed bomb-damaged buildings under sniper fire, and ran through fields strewn with mines. These details place him inside the danger of the conflict, not merely at a distance as a correspondent.

The account links his time in Moldova to his meeting with Kostenko, a battalion leader he encountered there. Kostenko had formerly commanded a paramilitary unit in Afghanistan and later opened a garage in Moldova. As the surrounding town descended into chaos, he became a warlord and its absolute master. His garage became a venue for dispensing justice, guarded by armed bodyguards; Limonov saw him condemn a man suspected of being a Romanian-paid traitor to death and approved of his decisiveness.

A Landscape of Personal Power

Moldova’s importance in this episode lies in the way state fragmentation gives way to local armed authority. Kostenko’s progression from mechanic to ruler of a town makes the conflict’s consequences concrete: in the breakdown of ordinary order, power rests with the commander who controls armed men and dispenses judgment. Limonov’s sympathy for the separatist cause and approval of Kostenko’s severity show how readily he is drawn to this forceful, violent form of authority.

The encounter also becomes a story told elsewhere. After learning that Kostenko’s mutilated remains had been found in a car, Limonov recounts the battalion leader’s life to Aleksandr Dugin. Moldova therefore remains present in the narrative through both the fighting Limonov experienced and the memory of the man whose obscure, violent fate he carries away from it.