"Around this time, in 1992, there was a war in Transnistria. After the fall of the USSR, Transnistria stayed outside the Russian Federation and no longer belonged to anybody. The neighbouring countries, Moldova and Ukraine, had designs on it. But the Ukrainians already had difficulties of their own, because of the massive corruption in the government and the ruling administration. The Moldovans, meanwhile, despite the catastrophic situation in their country – the predominantly rural population lived in abject poverty, not so say squalor – made a pact with the Romanians, and tried to occupy Transnistrian territory by military force. According to the agreement with the Romanians, Transnistria would be divided up in a special way: the Moldovan government would control the land, leaving the Romanian industrialists the job of running the numerous munitions factories, which had been built by the Russians in the days of the USSR and afterwards had remained completely under the control of the criminals, who had turned the Transnistrian territory into a kind of weapons supermarket. Without any warning the Moldovan military swung into action. On 22nd June a division of Moldovan tanks, accompanying ten military brigades, including one of infantry, one of special infantry and two of Romanian soldiers, reached Bender, our town on the right bank of the River Dniester, on the Moldovan border. In response, the inhabitants of Bender formed defence squads – after all, they were not short of weapons. A brief but very bloody war broke out, which lasted one summer, and ended with the criminals of Transnistria driving the Moldovan soldiers out of their land. Then they began to occupy Moldovan territory. At that point Ukraine, fearing that the criminals, if they won the war, would bring turmoil to their territory too, asked the Russians to intervene. Russia, recognizing the inhabitants of Transnistria as its own citizens, arrived with an army to 'assist the peace process'. This army set up a military regime, reinforced the police stations and declared Transnistria an 'area of extreme danger'. Russian soldiers patrolled the streets in armoured vehicles and imposed a curfew from eight in the evening to seven in the morning. Many people began to disappear without trace; the bodies of the tortured dead were found in the river. This period, which my grandfather called a 'return to the Thirties', lasted a long time. My Uncle Sergey was killed in prison by his guards: many people, to save themselves, were forced to abandon their land and take refuge in various other parts of the world."