First U.S. Ambassador To Moldova Says Expectations Too High

On August 31, RFE/RL spoke to Mary Pendleton, Washington’s first ambassador in Chisinau (1992-1995), on the sidelines of an event at the National Endowment for Democracy called "Moldova’s Transition: 20 Years of Challenges and Successes."

She told RFE/RL that the pace of democratic reform in the tiny country has fallen short of initial expectations, at least partially due to early Western hope for post-Soviet countries that outstripped reality.

"[Moldova] fell short of everybody's expectations because everybody's expectations were unreasonable -- unrealistic," she said.

"We all expected it to move along a lot faster than it did, for everything to be resolved quickly, and we never expected in 1992 that the Transnistria problem would still be there.

"We never expected that with all the work they did to get their legal system into place that there would be such serious problems with corruption and trafficking of people. The laws are there -- it’s just a matter of enforcing them and strengthening the system."

On August 31, 1989, Moldova’s Supreme Soviet passed a law allowing for the use of Latin script for the Romanian language -- a linguistic precursor of more profound changes to come.

But even this change, Pendleton recalls, came more slowly than she had expected.
As late as 1992, she says, the National Opera’s program used Cyrillic script.

“Even until 1993, I would get menus in Cyrillic -- but that was because many didn’t yet have typewriters with Latin letters,” says the ambassador.

www.speroforum.com

Comments (0)