Last week, out of nowhere, the news appeared that a group of deputies from the PAS party (Mai Sandu) took the initiative to give the Bessarabian Metropolis the building of the historical building of the National Library of Moldova, the room where the collection of old books is kept. The Metropolitanate of Bessarabia (MB) is an entity established in the Republic of Moldova after the collapse of the USSR, owned by the Romanian Patriarchate, in rivalry with the Metropolitanate of Moldova (MM), subordinate to the Russian Patriarch Kirill, which still controls the majority of parishes in the country. In the interwar period, the MB was also active in Chisinau, but now it found itself there without suitable premises, because a pro-Russian church stands on top of everything.

The news predictably caused a stir, with many pro-European and PAS supporters, including pro-Romanian opinion leaders, saying that taking the country’s first library out of circulation was a bad idea, as Metropolis would have been. First, the procedure is legally and morally dubious: in Moldova, as in other former Soviet states (and unlike Romania), there was no general restitution of property to former owners before communism; given the conditions, it was difficult to do. Therefore, it cannot be a “return of MB property”, because there is no legal basis for this.

Second, if this transfer of ownership is legislated clearly, the barrier will be removed by creating a precedent, and it will be very difficult to deal with the avalanche of claims that will follow from other religious cults, associations or private individuals who are unclear. on what grounds would they be denied restitution of the old property they possessed before 1944. Romania spent a decade or more after 1990 still legislating and trying to untangle property chains through successive and clumsy laws that (imperfectly) returned agricultural land, urban properties, forests and industrial sites. The beginning of such a process in the Republic of Moldova even later, 30 years after the fall of communism, seems to me to be political suicide. And, by the way, we are talking about an old theological seminary, built back in tsarist times, so the claims to it from the BOR as the original owner (through the MB) are quite weak.

Thus, when the news became public, a group of PAS parliamentarians turned it around a bit and said that we are dealing not with actual restitution, but with a gesture of goodwill towards Romania, the state that has helped Moldova the most in recent years, including by restoring some historical buildings in Chisinau (Dadiani Palace, Opera House, etc.). Thus, the transfer of property to the church should not constitute a legal precedent. It’s just that the version about the “gift of the soul” runs into another dilemma: technically, the BOR is not a public institution of the Romanian state, so it is unclear why it should receive thanks for any help that came from Romania. budget, including from the taxes of Romanian citizens who are not Orthodox parishioners.

Much of the blame for this failed idea should be placed, as one would expect, also on this side of the Prut. During the last visit of the Moldovan leaders to Bucharest, it seems that Marcel Colacu, as the leader of the parliament, came upon them together with the Patriarch and twisted their hands behind their backs, forcing them to accept a “donation” for the BOR. This is plausible and corresponds to the nature of the PSD, a pro-clerical oppressed party, like all socialists in Orthodox countries. The situation is simply a blatant irony: as many years as they spent in boats with the previous regimes of oligarchs, with whom they did business and organized organized election companies, the governors from Bucharest could not arrange a headquarters for BOR. . These PAS little people were supposed to come to power, who in past campaigns they slandered and undermined, sometimes with the involvement of the church hierarchy, globalists and sexo-Marxists did not clean up, so that now they can solve their real estate debt with their own hands! What we were afraid to ask Plahotniuk, we get here thanks to the blackmail of Maja Sandu, that we found them in a tight spot with a war on the doorstep, an energy crisis and the urgency of negotiations with the EU.

The optics of this movement – we are removing the librarians and replacing them with the Patriarch of Romania – are terribly bad. Continue reading the article on Contributors.ro