Nun, da ihr wisst wie alles enden kann, vergesst es nie, wie es begann.¹

MEMORIE. In 1998 I visited a former DDR artists’ colony on the beautiful island of Usedom on the Polish border. I had been invited by a prosperous couple from Berlin. They had only recently taken over a home/studio with everything in it, from an elderly female artist who had passed away. They used the house as a weekend cottage and, out of piety or nostalgia, tried to keep it in its original state as much as possible. In the study there was a socialist realist painting she had done of Lenin, amicably reading a newspaper in a leather armchair with a cat in his lap. At the top of the paper, at first unnoticed, there was a slight tear, right through the name PRAVDA...

GONE. I’ve lived in the former Soviet Republic of Moldova since April 2001. It is now an independent state and unchallenged at the top of the ‘list of least known countries in Europe’. A letter from my sister Ammie in the Netherlands, for instance, arrived 9 weeks after it had been posted. Judging by the postmarks it had travelled via the Maldives. Return to sender, address unknown. If the world were flat, this country would be on the edge of the pancake. Remove it from the map and not a single soul would notice. It now lies east of Rumania and is enclosed by the Ukraine and it is a big as the Netherlands without Friesland. Since the independence and the end of communism, Rumanian is the official language, but in the capital Chişinău Russian is more commonly spoken. The old, but now reformed communists have governed the country since the elections of May 2001. Last winter nationalists and students protested outside the parliament building: “No to the communists!” A lot of flags: blue-yellow-red, a lot of populist speakers with lengthy texts and the inevitable calls to the chanting of communal slogans: “Unirii!” and “Jos Communiştii!!” I sometimes wandered through the crowd but was never struck by their unity. A protester asked me which newspaper I worked for: ‘Holland Pravda’ I answered. The Boulevard used to be called ‘Prospekt Lenina’ or ‘Lenin’s View’ When spring came the protests stopped.

HISTORY. Moldavia was once a great and mighty kingdom, which, over the last centuries, was repeatedly distributed amongst its neighbours: Tsars and Ottomans. It bore the name Bessarabia. In 1939 Molotov and Ribbentrop divided the country between Rumania and the Soviet Union, in the sixties Khrushchev gave the part on the Black Sea to the Ukraine and in 1992 an area east of the river Dniester seceded. After a bloody war it declared its independence and it is now ruled by a ‘Sheriff’ from the city of Tiraspol. The Trans-Dniester Republic, only officially recognized by Chechnya, is a kind of mafia state, built on more than just the smuggling of cigarettes and weapons. Meanwhile Lenin is still quietly standing there on his pedestal. “The emperor left, the generals stayed...” ²

HOUSE. The capital Chişinău (Kishinev) is rather big, built like Rome: on seven hills populated by villagers. Many people are leaving the country: the Jews to Israel and Germany, artists and intellectuals to cities across the world and the ‘rest’ to Western Europe. The men work as seasonal workers wherever they can and the women, especially girls, into the arms of lonely western men. The money these people send home to their families amounts to a sum one and a half times that of the government budget. Women, like wine, have become important export commodities. The villagers, meanwhile, have flocked to the cities where at least some money can be made. Nobody knows precisely how many people inhabit the country; the last census was taken in 1989. The estimate is 3.5 million. Somehow it is still the former Soviet Union and according to statistics it is also the poorest country in Europe. A place of survival or migration.

HOME. My girlfriend Irina and I are looking after a beautiful old mud cottage with a communal yard and its own garden. A small paradise with apricots, cherries and a walnut tree. It’s a three-minute walk from the main street, Bulevardul Ştefan cel Mare, formerly ‘Prospekt Lenina’, like I mentioned. The house belongs to a Jewish artist couple that, forced by the poor economic situation, are looking for a future in Nuremberg. Should they ever return they won’t have burnt their boats.

WORK. For the book I mainly photographed with old and simple Agfa Click and Agfa Clack cameras. The former sites of Lenin statues – most of them have been removed – served as a starting point. Irina and I took the bus to a city or a village and asked around where Lenin used to stand. The answer was often the same: in front of the town hall or on a spot with a clear view. The current squares and parks have often been re-named after Ştefan cel Mare (Stefan the Great), the king of centuries ago. Sometimes there were remnants of a pedestal but in most of the cases it was a flowerbed under construction. On the east bank of the river Dniester the Lenins are still proudly staring ahead. In order to visit them I needed a ‘talon’ (coupon), it gave me the right to spend three hours in Trans-Dniester. I gradually got to see the complete edge of the pancake.

ETERNALLY. What is wrong with this country? Wasn’t this place once the paradise of the USSR? Are those long and beautiful autumns and springs all there is left? The fertile wine grounds and its beautiful harvests? The lack of fast-food restaurants and the fact that they’ve never heard of Tin Tin? What the heck, I’ll stay here a bit longer. After all, not everything is born out of beauty. A reporter told me about a Lenin statue somewhere on the site of an army barracks in the south of the city. The soldiers have repainted it to the likeness of Ştefan cel Mare: the pedestal now reads ‘Lenin cel Mare’. I have yet to obtain permission to photograph it.

NOW. While I’m writing this, the hostage-taking at the Dubrovka theatre in Moscow has just been bloodily brought to an end. Radio ‘Echo of Moskva’ is on and reports. Russian NTV was allowed access to the theatre yesterday and interviewed rebel leader Baraev. The authorities only allowed the images to be broadcast, not the sound.

THE TRUTH. Beloved people of Moldova, forgive me my harsh words because my truth also has a slight tear running through it.