This was a very good read, thanks. For some reason Moldova seems to suffer more than most other states from misrepresentation of how it really is. I found it really frustrating that bloggers and Instagram people focus on hotel Chisinău and soviet buildings when the city is colourful, and I thought very cosy and friendly.
Thanks Charlotte! I agree, vey disappointing at times. I think at least part of the blame lands in Moldova where people (and the government) aren't good at telling the country's story. But the Soviet Kitsch thing really is tiring...
This is a very good point, but I think there is another aspect to it. I think the obsessive focus on Hotelul Național and Hotel Cosmos are frankly offensive at times, but I do like the way a lot of sovietic buildings (housing blocks primarily) are well integrated into the younger, more modern feel that the city is taking on - and I think this dynamic is under appreciated (as in much of CEE)
I’d agree, a lot of chisinău mixes the old and the new very well, and there is no escaping the derelict buildings downtown side by side with new businesses. But it’s undeniably a modern and advancing city, and I really enjoyed my few weeks there.
I think chisinău is just misrepresented, it’s really not a wasteland of Khrushchevkas, which is what I think a lot of westerners expect when they come. It’s part of the urban landscape like it is from Berlin to Tashkent.
There’s a new flight from London to Moldova which I hope brings the right kind of tourist to visit. I really hope I’ll be back soon!
100% - every time I see a travel documentary or similar I tend to get quite frustrated. Also hearing from tourists who go there - as you say, they are there to look for a Soviet wasteland but they miss everything that’s in front of them, and go home disappointed that they didn’t get the war stories they were looking for.
I don’t think people go to the Baltics or the Caucasus with such expectations
They dont at all. I lived in Estonia for a long time and now spend about half my time in Georgia, so I sort of see this. In Georgia people do want to go to Gori and see the Stalin museum, but beyond that there’s no soviet tourism there, apart from the few who make it to the sanatoria in Tskaltubo. In Estonia the soviet blocks aren’t really integrated into the cities at all and NO tourists go there.
I think one of the issues is that this lady specialises in stories on a specific subject. She says on her About page on her website https://frankiemills.co.uk/9/ that she specialises in stories about displacement. The issue is then for the New York Times to pick this up as a general story about Moldova or for you to see it this way. When I look at her Instagram and her website, I have to say that it is not just Moldova that looks grey.
Yes, I agree that this fits closely with her work. I mentioned that in the article under the heading "working backwards" - her website pretty clearly states what her interests are.
But this is not a general story about Moldova from the Times. This is a story under their series “The New World Disorder” - a “series exploring the disintegration of the postwar international system and how countries are adjusting as America steps aside.”
That puts a lot of the blame with editors. But also with Mills. The fact that she submitted this piece under that heading does not give a lot of respect either to Moldovans (who apparently have no agency in the new world disorder) or to readers.
This immediately made me think of how foreign journalists and travel bloggers write about the Transnistrian region. They often call it “Europe’s last Soviet state” and present it as an exotic country frozen in time.
But it is not a state. It is part of the Republic of Moldova, controlled by a Russian-backed separatist regime. When that context is left out, the coverage does more than romanticise Soviet symbols. It repeats the separatist narrative and gives the region a legitimacy it does not have.
Ugh. Of course they went to the Soviet Open Air Museum and then filled the article with those oversized photos of the Lenin statues.
I share your frustrations. This article posits Moldova's path as 'russia vs. the EU', one or the other, and in my opinion clearly nods towards appeasing russia as the 'secure' option.
Thanks! Honestly, less frustrated and more "furious" :) I hate articles like this that lean on the soft bigotry of low expectations to give the readers just what they want - helpless, hopeless and backward Eastern Europeans (or "fill in the blank with some other far off place"). Agency is reserved for those who read the NY Times and actually shape the world.
Ok, getting angry again (and I love the NYT - but drop-in coverage like this infuriates me).
Right! Furious! Yeah exactly, the hopeless post-soviet Eastern Europeans, known to the American reader by the Lenin statues, Adidas tracksuits, and poor rural communities. Of course even as the U.S. steps aside, there's some compulsion to comment from a position of power on how the Eastern Europeans are faring under our grey skies without America.
Thank you for this very interesting analysis. The persistence of "orientalism" in Western journalism on Central and Eastern Europe is of great concern to Promeuraz, and we frequently take note of such stories in our weekly Promethean Reports.
Moldova is gray? I just came back from Moldova, a country I've been visiting for 20 years, and it has changed so much.
The roads are clean, with no potholes. Chisinau is full of new construction. Small shops line the roads out to the countryside. Every classroom has a digital whiteboard, and the children's soccer field has been rebuilt. The country is growing fast, and young people have hope for the future.
There's delicious fruit everywhere, the flowers are beautiful, and the grapes and wine are wonderful. The dances are joyful, and the traditional clothes are colorful. And of course, my wife is beautiful.
Either he's color-blind or, as you said, he's painting it gray on purpose to mislead people or to sell subscriptions. That's disgusting. It's not honest journalism.
I live in Odesa and I’ve been to Moldova many times. Chisenau is one of my favorite cities. I usually stay near the Embassy. When I walk from there to the city center I walk through streets with dance and music academies on them. Classical music and aspiring ballerinas. Then into the center for the food and coffee. The young people are not grey and many of them speak English. Chisinau hosts one of the largest wine festivals in the world. Every time I visit I’m invited to someone’s private winery. Moldovan wine is on par if not better than French wine.
Moldova is an eclectic place full of beauty and intricacy. I would say it is a budding flower in the east.
That’s the problem in taking The New York Times on face value. The NYT has an agenda, and too bad about you if you have a different one. Moldova is NOT grey! There are HUGE areas that are not pro-Soviet! Moldova is fiercely independent! That does not get enough play in this article!
Thank you, David, for this thorough and analytical commentary on the article. I also felt incredibly frustrated by how Mills chose to portray Moldova. I read NYT religiously and it seems that their articles on Moldova follow a pattern of depicting the country quite backwards and stuck in the Soviet era.
Hi Cristina, I'm really glad you liked my piece. This NYT essay infuriated me in how insulting and "othering" it was - casting the entire country as part of a backward and hopeless far off land where people have neither aspirations nor agency. I am honestly angry writing this comment haha. I hope that anger didn't come through too aggressively in my response.
That’s a great analysis. Chisinau has some beautiful historical architecture and is such a southern city it takes real effort to show it in a particular way. I think in this case it is worth looking into the figure of the photo essay’s author, or wait for the next piece and see if that is a systemic bias.
Thanks Viktoriia! I think it is a systemic way of looking at the world, but not necessarily bias against Moldova. She has done good photo essays on Ukrainian refugees, etc. I think the lens of dislocated people just did a huge disservice to a look at the whole country.
I agree with you that the article isn’t representative of Moldova today and the political choices it faces.
But Frankie Mills isn’t a political journalist - she is primarily a photographer who tells stories about people who are faced with displacement - physically, culturally or both. And the reality is there is a large segment of the Moldovan population (by no means the majority) who feel politically abandoned (rightly or wrongly) and I think it’s important for their stories to be told, and I think that Mills is possibly the right person to tell those stories.
However, the headline - which I suspect Mills didn’t write (social media is full of journalists defending themselves from criticisms of badly written headline) and the positioning as part of this series by the NY Times is poor. This shouldn’t be an article about Moldova per se, but a photo essay about *some* Moldovans, and I think the overreach is where it goes wrong.
The fact that Frankie Mills is focused on other topics is just an argument that she is manifestly unqualified to publish an essay in a series titled “The New World Disorder” which is a “series exploring the disintegration of the postwar international system and how countries are adjusting as America steps aside.”
I agree that she chose her lens for this project, my argument is that by doing so she created a misleading piece (at best). If you are suggesting that NYT should never have published such a piece from such a person, I agree. But I also have some respect for Mills and believe that she could have done this piece well should she have chosen to do so.
Yes that’s right. They should not have published it under the guise of being political analysis. It could have had value in another forum, as a photographic essay with narrow social commentary, and I suspect Mills would have done a better job of getting it right with that framing - unfortunately it ended up doing a bad job, but it could have served a purpose elsewhere and now that value is lost.
As a more general point, confusing personal stories (which I find extremely interesting) with political reality is the mistake that seems to lead to vibes based analysis, and this is exceedingly common in low trust societies like Moldova, and getting more common in Western societies across Europe and North America. The NY times should know better than to promote this.
This was a very good read, thanks. For some reason Moldova seems to suffer more than most other states from misrepresentation of how it really is. I found it really frustrating that bloggers and Instagram people focus on hotel Chisinău and soviet buildings when the city is colourful, and I thought very cosy and friendly.
Thanks Charlotte! I agree, vey disappointing at times. I think at least part of the blame lands in Moldova where people (and the government) aren't good at telling the country's story. But the Soviet Kitsch thing really is tiring...
This is a very good point, but I think there is another aspect to it. I think the obsessive focus on Hotelul Național and Hotel Cosmos are frankly offensive at times, but I do like the way a lot of sovietic buildings (housing blocks primarily) are well integrated into the younger, more modern feel that the city is taking on - and I think this dynamic is under appreciated (as in much of CEE)
I’d agree, a lot of chisinău mixes the old and the new very well, and there is no escaping the derelict buildings downtown side by side with new businesses. But it’s undeniably a modern and advancing city, and I really enjoyed my few weeks there.
I think chisinău is just misrepresented, it’s really not a wasteland of Khrushchevkas, which is what I think a lot of westerners expect when they come. It’s part of the urban landscape like it is from Berlin to Tashkent.
There’s a new flight from London to Moldova which I hope brings the right kind of tourist to visit. I really hope I’ll be back soon!
100% - every time I see a travel documentary or similar I tend to get quite frustrated. Also hearing from tourists who go there - as you say, they are there to look for a Soviet wasteland but they miss everything that’s in front of them, and go home disappointed that they didn’t get the war stories they were looking for.
I don’t think people go to the Baltics or the Caucasus with such expectations
They dont at all. I lived in Estonia for a long time and now spend about half my time in Georgia, so I sort of see this. In Georgia people do want to go to Gori and see the Stalin museum, but beyond that there’s no soviet tourism there, apart from the few who make it to the sanatoria in Tskaltubo. In Estonia the soviet blocks aren’t really integrated into the cities at all and NO tourists go there.
I think one of the issues is that this lady specialises in stories on a specific subject. She says on her About page on her website https://frankiemills.co.uk/9/ that she specialises in stories about displacement. The issue is then for the New York Times to pick this up as a general story about Moldova or for you to see it this way. When I look at her Instagram and her website, I have to say that it is not just Moldova that looks grey.
Hi Michael,
Yes, I agree that this fits closely with her work. I mentioned that in the article under the heading "working backwards" - her website pretty clearly states what her interests are.
But this is not a general story about Moldova from the Times. This is a story under their series “The New World Disorder” - a “series exploring the disintegration of the postwar international system and how countries are adjusting as America steps aside.”
That puts a lot of the blame with editors. But also with Mills. The fact that she submitted this piece under that heading does not give a lot of respect either to Moldovans (who apparently have no agency in the new world disorder) or to readers.
This immediately made me think of how foreign journalists and travel bloggers write about the Transnistrian region. They often call it “Europe’s last Soviet state” and present it as an exotic country frozen in time.
But it is not a state. It is part of the Republic of Moldova, controlled by a Russian-backed separatist regime. When that context is left out, the coverage does more than romanticise Soviet symbols. It repeats the separatist narrative and gives the region a legitimacy it does not have.
Great piece, David.
Thanks Ana!!
Hi David - really appreciated your article a few months back on the Shor/Abramovitch money movement. I assume you caught the FT article this week, which reminded me of this? https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/05fd9a3e-091f-407b-8fc5-e26f6ce0362c
Thanks for sharing! the NYTimes just followed up as well. Mr. Shor is getting global scrutiny now :)
Ugh. Of course they went to the Soviet Open Air Museum and then filled the article with those oversized photos of the Lenin statues.
I share your frustrations. This article posits Moldova's path as 'russia vs. the EU', one or the other, and in my opinion clearly nods towards appeasing russia as the 'secure' option.
Thanks! Honestly, less frustrated and more "furious" :) I hate articles like this that lean on the soft bigotry of low expectations to give the readers just what they want - helpless, hopeless and backward Eastern Europeans (or "fill in the blank with some other far off place"). Agency is reserved for those who read the NY Times and actually shape the world.
Ok, getting angry again (and I love the NYT - but drop-in coverage like this infuriates me).
Right! Furious! Yeah exactly, the hopeless post-soviet Eastern Europeans, known to the American reader by the Lenin statues, Adidas tracksuits, and poor rural communities. Of course even as the U.S. steps aside, there's some compulsion to comment from a position of power on how the Eastern Europeans are faring under our grey skies without America.
Thank you for this very interesting analysis. The persistence of "orientalism" in Western journalism on Central and Eastern Europe is of great concern to Promeuraz, and we frequently take note of such stories in our weekly Promethean Reports.
Moldova is gray? I just came back from Moldova, a country I've been visiting for 20 years, and it has changed so much.
The roads are clean, with no potholes. Chisinau is full of new construction. Small shops line the roads out to the countryside. Every classroom has a digital whiteboard, and the children's soccer field has been rebuilt. The country is growing fast, and young people have hope for the future.
There's delicious fruit everywhere, the flowers are beautiful, and the grapes and wine are wonderful. The dances are joyful, and the traditional clothes are colorful. And of course, my wife is beautiful.
Either he's color-blind or, as you said, he's painting it gray on purpose to mislead people or to sell subscriptions. That's disgusting. It's not honest journalism.
I live in Odesa and I’ve been to Moldova many times. Chisenau is one of my favorite cities. I usually stay near the Embassy. When I walk from there to the city center I walk through streets with dance and music academies on them. Classical music and aspiring ballerinas. Then into the center for the food and coffee. The young people are not grey and many of them speak English. Chisinau hosts one of the largest wine festivals in the world. Every time I visit I’m invited to someone’s private winery. Moldovan wine is on par if not better than French wine.
Moldova is an eclectic place full of beauty and intricacy. I would say it is a budding flower in the east.
That’s the problem in taking The New York Times on face value. The NYT has an agenda, and too bad about you if you have a different one. Moldova is NOT grey! There are HUGE areas that are not pro-Soviet! Moldova is fiercely independent! That does not get enough play in this article!
Thank you, David, for this thorough and analytical commentary on the article. I also felt incredibly frustrated by how Mills chose to portray Moldova. I read NYT religiously and it seems that their articles on Moldova follow a pattern of depicting the country quite backwards and stuck in the Soviet era.
Hi Cristina, I'm really glad you liked my piece. This NYT essay infuriated me in how insulting and "othering" it was - casting the entire country as part of a backward and hopeless far off land where people have neither aspirations nor agency. I am honestly angry writing this comment haha. I hope that anger didn't come through too aggressively in my response.
That’s a great analysis. Chisinau has some beautiful historical architecture and is such a southern city it takes real effort to show it in a particular way. I think in this case it is worth looking into the figure of the photo essay’s author, or wait for the next piece and see if that is a systemic bias.
Thanks Viktoriia! I think it is a systemic way of looking at the world, but not necessarily bias against Moldova. She has done good photo essays on Ukrainian refugees, etc. I think the lens of dislocated people just did a huge disservice to a look at the whole country.
I have mixed feelings here.
I agree with you that the article isn’t representative of Moldova today and the political choices it faces.
But Frankie Mills isn’t a political journalist - she is primarily a photographer who tells stories about people who are faced with displacement - physically, culturally or both. And the reality is there is a large segment of the Moldovan population (by no means the majority) who feel politically abandoned (rightly or wrongly) and I think it’s important for their stories to be told, and I think that Mills is possibly the right person to tell those stories.
However, the headline - which I suspect Mills didn’t write (social media is full of journalists defending themselves from criticisms of badly written headline) and the positioning as part of this series by the NY Times is poor. This shouldn’t be an article about Moldova per se, but a photo essay about *some* Moldovans, and I think the overreach is where it goes wrong.
Hi Chaitanya,
The fact that Frankie Mills is focused on other topics is just an argument that she is manifestly unqualified to publish an essay in a series titled “The New World Disorder” which is a “series exploring the disintegration of the postwar international system and how countries are adjusting as America steps aside.”
I agree that she chose her lens for this project, my argument is that by doing so she created a misleading piece (at best). If you are suggesting that NYT should never have published such a piece from such a person, I agree. But I also have some respect for Mills and believe that she could have done this piece well should she have chosen to do so.
Yes that’s right. They should not have published it under the guise of being political analysis. It could have had value in another forum, as a photographic essay with narrow social commentary, and I suspect Mills would have done a better job of getting it right with that framing - unfortunately it ended up doing a bad job, but it could have served a purpose elsewhere and now that value is lost.
As a more general point, confusing personal stories (which I find extremely interesting) with political reality is the mistake that seems to lead to vibes based analysis, and this is exceedingly common in low trust societies like Moldova, and getting more common in Western societies across Europe and North America. The NY times should know better than to promote this.