Latest / UK Column Radio / Iurie Roșca, The Christian Optimist: Part 1

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Iurie Roșca, The Christian Optimist: Part 1 · UK Column Radio

• I am hosted today by Yuri Roshka, a Moldovan politician and latterly Christian campaigner and host of the Kishino Forum, which I, among others, participated in in September. First of all, Yuri Roshka, thank you very much for having me here in your home in rural Moldova. You are welcome, my friend. Alex You were born in nineteen sixty one, the year in which the Soviet Union launched Yuri Gagarin into space, and you were named after him. Yeah, because it was a sort of miracle for the generation of my Violens. That's why it was very useful for the generation to name the sands of Yuria like a false Synthia. Your mother was a school teacher and your father an agronomist, and in the Soviet system, certainly in the bresnef Era in which you grew up, both parents usually had to work. So this left you exposed quite a lot to the good influences of your grandmother, Alexandra. Would it be fair to say that it's through her influence that you became a Christian even during the bresnef Era persecution? Okay? In that video of the usually our parents, why did direct the religious education for ideological reasons. For they was they were a little bit afraid for represhals. And that's why our grandparents without teachers, without teachers in catechisation. That's why when I was a little child and my brother and my sister, we didn't practice as practiced the same way of praying every single day, but we saw it. The example of Grandma Alexandra was very important and she was she went every single Sunday on church and ah, it was the first period of my life when I discovered this way of living and thinking, and that only after many many years I remembered this period and became an active practitioner. Your grandmother also introduced you to the priests Soviet memory of your people. Historically, ethnically you are the Romanian people. You also use the name Moldovan, of course, because before the Second World War, Moldova was entirely within the territory of Greater Romania, and back before that, historically it was a medieval principality of Romanian language. Only later, from the end of the eighteenth century did the Russian start encroaching, first to the Dinjestre River. That plays a role later because Transnistria has become a pro Russian separatist region of your country against which you've campaigned hard in parliament. Then later on in the nineteenth century, eighteen twelve, they moved further west to the Prut River and that border between the Russian sphere, the Russian Empire and Romania, that the Ottoman Empire as it then was, was abolished for a time between the First and the Second World War exactly. And after that the Red Army invaded and once again split your homeland, so that you find yourself in the independent republic now Austorian Republic of the Lord of History. But not so long as for Russians. Was this tragedy and our first teacher in anti Soviet and anti communist way of thinking and acting was my grandma Alexandra for Hay. It was a personal tragedy because it was a state terrorism and expropriation and her husband was killed in twenty nineteen forty six by accident. It was very interesting, unusual story because my grandfather was a teacher in our village. His name was Jakob Alexa and in the territory of Psarabia, Soviet Bessarabia and for the views, bes Arabia is that part of historic Moldova which is east of the River Pruit exactly actively the modern territory of the post Soviet Republic of Moldova, partially because because during Krushovira, our southern part was cut and northern also was cut and now is part of the current Ukrainian state. So when you talk about bess Arabia here in your grandparents' day in the Second World War, you're talking about that part of inter war Romania which the Red Army occupied exactly. And you know there are groups of so called Bandera movement which are operated in the Ukrainian region and other regions. They are operated also in Bessarabia, and they usually killed the Soviet Communis, stativists and the Red Army officers. And my granded father was a strange person for that period because he was his clothes was like a very important boss. No, because he was teacher, a three piece suit, absolutely three piece suit, and a clock, this kind of cloak, a watch in his pocket, watching his pocket, and he was killed by accident. After several years, this group of terrorists was arrested and during the process it was asked but why you killed this person. We thought that he is communist, And after several years, my family was partially was deported in Siberia. So he would if he would survive, survived after three years, he would go to gulag. Why would the band the rights have assumed that a gentleman in a three piece suit with a pocket watch was a communist because peasants in that period had different style of clothes, So if you were dressed like a Western gentleman, you were probably a communist as far as they were concerned, because it was unusual for rural area of Moldova with Missabia at that time. Yeah, you also learned about the expropriations of land and goods from the best Arabians in this Soviet period. By Brezhnev's time, of course, rule had been consolidated. Even in western Ukraine. The band rights had been rooted out or imprisoned by then. So this was underground education. Yeah, it was the first, the first school of anti communism. My personal family bagro on my origins. Yeah in communist times, so we used to say social origins. Yeah. Ah, my ancestors was baisants and intellectuals. Let's see, that's the way during Soviet period, I grew up as normal Soviet but at the same time this tension internalention in our family, this special feeling with my grandmother, which who did not accept Soviet occupation never ever, she was permanently against permanent and she told about it loudly now home. That's why when I came to university, I was prepared to receive anti communist message from Free Europe or for clandestine some is that books pre Europe was Radio Free Europe, radio Liberty broadcasting from Munich in those days, nowadays a tool of Western global capitalism. Yeah, yea yeah, in that period it was a tool for decommunization. And when I came to university, I was prepared to talk to my colleagues, to my friends some ideas which were the early directly anti communist that they was under surveillance of. For Sigurd sivisis that they am. And it's worth pointing out that here in the western fringes of the then Soviet Union, the Christian conscientious opposition to communism was trans denominational. You are, of course yourself Eastern Orthodox like the majority of Moldovans and Romanians, but just north of here in western Ukraine that you had the Uniate church in Roman Catholics, more of whom were sent to the Gulag by Rushov Andrezhnev than any other denomination. And you also had maybe not president maybe the Stalin period than Khrushev periods especially, and you also had a large number of the evangelical Baptists, whom stalinforced into one denomination. During the Second World War, they wrote a very famous in my Christian circles anyway, very famous book of testimony called Vanya about an eighteen year old Moldovan Soviet conscript into the Red Army called Ivanne Moisiev, who was tortured in horrible ways to make him renounce his faith as late as the mid nineteen seventies, a well known story in the West. So, all of you dissidents, well, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but how what proportion of the teenagers coming to university in the late seventies were of work in background? Do you think? Not so many? Not so many, because before us other students were much more better prepared because they are memory was uh fresh, very fresh. To have this a real picture about Soviet invasion our generation grew up during bresne Viira with this so called stagnation, which was not so terroristic or so difficult period of time. It was a period of relaxed communism in Romania. It was a state theorism and secretly services very very strong and so on. Here in the Soviet Empire, only dissidents were persecuted. Normal people know very much the characteristic of the brezh nef era. If you were prepared to keep your mouth shot on certain topics like the contemporary West, then you could have a wonderful life jet setting and being a bureaucrat or an artist funded by the taxpayer. Yeah. Yeah, But the largest majority of population in Soviet period in period where totally brainwashed. They had no any feeling of foreign occupation or Soviet Communism restrictions. It was for them more or less normal life, normal life. Only intellectuals like myself had this kind of thought and preoccupations. Were you inspired by Andrei Sakharoff, by Alexander So? Of course we discovered these names once again thanks to three European Voice of America and BBC, which we followed here in the Republic of the Soviet Republic of Moldova and in Romania, and every normal family had this special radio station radio to receive this wave. Yeah, yes, yes, But when I became students among us started to circulate some colandestine literature soldiernids and the others, and you called it sish that if it was underground press in the Soviet Union, and tammish that if it was important. It's very funny that many of us didn't touch it, this kind of papers because it was dangerous and for me and many friends from Kitchener especially, it's very interesting phenomenon. Especially Russian speaking colleagues were much more courageous than Romanian speaking Why because we used to be a rural population, so much more obedient to all kinds of regimes in comparison with Russian speaking population, which had a more industrialized and intellectual background, and they were able to absorb new ideas much more quicker than we. They had a bigger mouth, we can say, yeah, and they were and I had very good real actions with my Russian speaking friends during my period in university. When I studied in University of Kisheno. As journalists, ah and all people make made many many jokes against the Breshnev and Communist system. And it was absolutely quite loudly only in official atmosphere during official meetings, Communist meeting or comes all orsch ideas. All people simulated seriously serious attitude and and but period seems me it's very similar to that then, like today's current Western collective mentality. All people know that it is false ideology, false dominant discourse. But anyhow, everybody simulate, simulates seriousness and the very a sort of obedience and avoid any direct conflict with regime. And you dissidents, had crystallized your worldview or your experience into three negative commands so that you would not be simulating obedience. And the slogan was nivier ne boisia niprassi. Don't believe anything they tell you, don't be afraid of anything they can do to you, and don't beg for anything from them. When I discovered this ground of Soviet empire with Google, Google Argen deportations and the expropriations and state terrorism and so on, I became so determined to fight against them. It was a personal choice because I was I grewed in a very normal Soviet family in Kisheno City, and it wasn't necessary to have this revolt against the system to obtain the position in society. It was quite well as a young Soviet journalist, but you were inside the bubble. You had it good, or you could have had it good if you had been prepared to the line. You know, here in the Republic of Moldova and the Soviet occupation, we were very special cultural terrorism because Soviets occupied this part of Romanian state. They prohibited Latin alphabet and the term Romanian. They invented so called Moldovan language and Moldovan nation only to justify this occupation, the separation of Romanians from the Republic of Moldova and Romanians from Romania. They caused your Romanian language for the first time in its history, to be written in the Cyrillic script, not the civic, directly Russian, directly Russian alphabet. It's not a war on all Cyrillic and Soviet Empire, which used to be a sort of Russian empire in communist style, tried to recify not only Moldovans, but many Muslim nations, to which they imposed Russian alphabet. In Kazakhstan and other countries, Kyrghyzstani and so on. And that's why our evolved was not only again against ideology of communism, Marxism and the state totalitarianism, but against national oppression under BRASHNV the three Baltic republics Estonia and Latvia and the Uan which had been absorbed into the Soviet Union. Contrary to Internet in the same year nineteen four nineteen forty, they never had their state religion Lutheranism or Roman Catholicism in the case of Lithuania threatened and nobody dared to suggest that they should start using the Cyrillic script. But Moldovan's you did have this imposed upon you. It's about the resistance of local elites. But another aspect is that Baltic states where in some sort of Vitrian howe to say it in English showcase, showcase for Soviet Empire, because before the Soviet occupation, after the paktivnthrop Molotov and the Soviet invasion, Baltic states used to see used to be independent states and very successful modern European state. I am talking about the difference because they kept their representatives in Western countries in the US especially and Bessarabian part of peace of land was part of another state, and we had any historical modern experience of independence. You could come straight from Turkish rule to a brief period of Romanian union and then the Soviet rule. That's why for Russians, probably Baltic States in their acceptance, could be a liberate in some geopolitical circumstances, not Bessarabia. That's why. And we can talk about national character because Baltic states where brave nations, and the military resistance against communists was much more active than he in Moldova. But unfortunately, we can make this parentes this remark. After thirty five years of independence, unfortunately Baltic states became total blind tools of Atlanticists of American Empire. We'll come back to that when you have a clash with an Estonian lady later in Strasbourg. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's for later on. Language politics, then, has always been a key issue in Romania, in your post Soviet struggles as well as your struggles under Brezhnev and then alter under Gorbachev as well. The policy as it came from the Kremlin was called rapprochement of nations, but as you correctly described it, a moment ago it was actually Russification. Yeah, of course, it's this scenario of melting port. This previous form of globalization in Soviet style was applied very effectively here in Soviet Empire. You never had a moment of language riots. The Georgians did in nineteen fifty six and again in seventy eight. They came out onto the streets and forced a change to the constitution because to them it was even more visceral. They have their own alphabet. Why you In Baltic states, in Georgia and in Armenia, local languages became state languages, or at least dominant languages. Here in the Republic of Moldova, rucification penetrated everywhere in state bodies. In that period of time where we used to say that the more or less correct the Romanian language you can find only in the writer unions union and the newspapers. And for the audience who don't recall this period, you were a blase in the Soviet model to be part of the official taxpayer funded writers union with its code of conduct not to opposet communism. Otherwise you couldn't live as a writer, of course, But anyhow, this unions of writers, even alver and in other Soviet republics became during pedistorical period the platform of anti communist and nationalist movement. They were so loud and so brave in that period, and I used to be among them as a young journalists and the but it was absolutely tragic for us. I started my professional work as journalist in nineteen seventeen nine, and this is only because you had missed out on one of the twenty five places per year that were going to join the course, and so you had to do something for a year. I was not so brilliant in my school period of firm because a I was a sort of hooligan. Is it not because the KGP had already marked your card as a Christiano? No, no, no, the communists because of my lack of knowledge sufficient and many brave young young people came from villages who were much more better prepared than myself. But this year, between nineteen seventy nine and nineteen eighty I started to work in one newspaper for a youth come from all newspaper But anyhow, it was a dissident atmosphere there. And in that year I discovered that it exists a list of words which is prohibited, which exists officially in our language, but which is prohibited because our academy, Soviet Academy of Science of Moldova, had this very place and mission to justify the existence of two different languages, Romanian and Moldovan. That's why they introduced Russian terms, artificial terms in our language and prohibited normal pronunciation of several words. It's very funny, I can I can show you just two examples. For example, for English world trust. In Romanian we are pronouncing trust trust, we are writing in English truth. In Moldovan local language, it was obligatory like Russian trust trust or trolley bus out of bus, trolleybus in Romania with z in modovi s like in the French. But even such a common word as the they are, which you in Moldova in Romanian inherited directly from Latin with the word sunt s unt. The Soviets forced you to spell it and people started even pronouncing it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a very special social engineering to use, this modern Thermia social engineering process which deformed very gravely our national identity. Because when we're talking about culture, about history, about collective identity, we have to divide these two complimentary but not unique process, the process of formation of one collectivity, one people, one nation, and the state. We could be Romanians here, we're in Ukraine, we're in Serbia or in other parts, but we are part of Romanian culture. Not necessarily. I am not Romanian citizen, but it is not a problem to me to know that I am Romanian ethnically and culturally. As a citizenship, I am Moldovan. This is a difference. I am remaining Moldovan loyal citizen and that who don't have any interest to serve Romanian bureaucracy. But I am Romanian as cultural identity, as collective identity, religious, cultural, linguistical, historical, we are all of us in this area are Romanians. It is not good or word, It is the fact. It is obvious reality unless we go with the contemporary transgender idea, which says that you can invent or reinvent your identity as you see fits. But you've been battling that for years, and you believe firmly that as you were born, so you will go through life as your identity. You know, you remember me. Now, very interesting conversation with one lady from State department, which happens during my first period of political activity. It was in nineteen eighty nine maybe or in nineteen ninety. She came to my office party officia an American diplomat, diplomatia and she American diplomatic, and she told me during our discussion, hmm, you are a strange person because for us, for Americans, she said, every new generation means a new country. So for us past doesn't exist, only present to continue. And I was shocked. It's a very telling remark. Yeah. Yeah. She was so selfish about her knowledge in ethno sociology and the collective identity. She told, why you are so strong fighter for your collective national identity, It is not so important you are another generation. Just reinvent yourself, remake. So you went from being molded into Homo Sovieticus. There is a whold story about optional identity. You are Georgian, but you consider yourself to be Armenian, where you are Russian and you are considered to be German. Guy. It's about the craziness, it's about fictional perception of reality. But it works now worse than a Soviet period. But because you can change your identity, I prefer to be Russian. And those examples you quoted are not taken at random. There are hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians in Georgia and they were told you are now a Soviet Georgian. There are millions of or were in Soviet period, millions of eighteenth century descendant Germans in the Vulgar region in Russia, and they were told you are now a Soviet Russian. So you weren't just arguing that for the shake of it. Absolutely, it happens in all kinds of empires which are trying to uniformize, to make a sort of uniformization and to shape collective identity of all people from this area which is controlled by the same empire. You quoted Reset because you are one of the few who study Klaus Schwab's books, The Great Reset, the greatly set of the Great Narrative. Yes, so the practical effect of this on you in Kishino or Kishinev as the Russians called it in the nineteen eighties, with your young family was that although you had been able to be educated in your native Romanian language as well as in your Christian faith, when you had children, you found it extremely difficult practically impossible to get a Romanian language kindergarten for them. Yeah, it was my first investigative journalism articles which we published never ever, because all newspapers refused to public public before it. I didn't know about it. But when my son, who is now thirty nine years old, Stefan was something like two years old, we were young, were little. I tried to find a kindergarten in Botanica Regional Kitcheno city and this is already one year into Glasnois and Prettystroica. It was in nineteen sixty eighty six. I think it wasn't possible to find a Moldovan language kindergarten, only Russian Russian Russian. And I used to work with that period as journalist in national TV station, Yeah, official television, and I tried to obtain as many as possible informations. Finally it was solved in favor of my son because my wife in that period worked for newspaper, which was newspaper of Minister for Education. That's why it was made an exception. It was making an exception in my son was accepted in the Romanian Moldovan kindergarten in the Botanica region in that period. I think it was only two or maybe free kindergarten. So you make steady progress as a dissident journalist, and we've already established in the first part of this interview at some length this was necessary the issues of identity, politics, language, and religion, which will be necessary for people to understand your life as a fighter against Moscow and the Western Empire later on. So you manage to get into university. On your second go you're moonlighting as a postman to supplement your income. In that year, you get into this dissident intellectual milieu, become a nationalist. You're schooled by a Romanian nationalist teacher who's been fired from his job for teaching impalatable truths. We get into the early eighties, you're bringing up your young family. You become a literary critic upon graduation in nineteen eighty five. You're basically editing the equivalent of costume dramas as we would call them in the West, these productions of pushkin or of your own Romanian writers for Soviet television, and improving the literary quality of the scripts. By nineteen eighty eight, you join the National Museum for Literature, a subsection of the Soviet Writers Guild Writers' Union, and on the third of June that year you become a political activist. You come out into the open. This is the year when from Estonia right down to Armenia, the western fringe of the Soviet Union is finding its voice to come out on the streets openly with flags, Christian or secular dissident slogans. And your contribution to this wave is that in summer eighty eight, in those heady days, you become the leader of the democratic movement in support of Peristroika, one of the leaders, not only one leader. I wasn't president in that moment, but I organized this meeting. Ah, we were about one hundred people in this room under the right there as a union protection because it happens in their building. And Kjbguis tried to stop us, and we said, we are not communists, we are not any more communists and go out. Even in East Germany they had understanding under Erik Honica, you don't openly invade the Writers Union building because we want to preserve the fiction that it's a safe place to speak. It's a controlled opposition. Do you use this cover? And we organized this Commity of National movement, which was this nick which was heard, which this official name of Pedistroica movement, because it was allowed by by the system. It was a garbage of official speeches which allowed to organize so called democratic movements in support of Pedestroica, but inside of communists official discuss Yeah, and step by step we developed developed openly our anti communist attitude, and so you weren't allowed to call openly for the independence of Moldova in that year. Initially not initially, it was the intention to obtain legal status of our organization and to have the right to have our own newspaper and to have right to practice freedom of association and freedom of assembly, which the Soviet Union had signed up to in nineteen seventy five as part of the Actually yeah, officially Abrigdum signed it. Although there were cases when dissidents Christian and secular told the Soviet police you can't beat us for free association because of the Helsinki Final Act, and the policeman said, who told you about that before resuming the beating. So yeah, yeah, yeah, And it was very important period because we started when the largest part of society was totally in Soviet style way of life. And hooligans. We professional protesters and the street fighters started our street protests and the anti communist slogans and so on, and inside of our movement it was a split between us because all generations who used to be Communists at that period of time tried to moderate, to moderate us and to determine us to be more cooperative with Communist Party and with the Perystroica and so on. And our young generation group was very radical against Soviet Union, and it was visible during our public events because all generations, all style writers and famous cultural personalities and so on, professor from universities, they were among us, our colleagues. But their moderation was funny for us because time is coming to speak loudly about everything about Communist Soviet invasion in this territory, about national identity of Romanians from this region, about the intention to destroy Communist system and to abandon Soviet Union. So by talking about the language demands, the scripts demands, the history, the openness of history, you could gradually bring this onto the agenda under the protection of the authorities. It wasn't on the protection, but the authorities were confused because official narrative from Moscow was in consonance without platform. That's why we used this opportunity. Ah, Our main political uh could we say ravindication claim claim? Our main political claim in that period of time was Moldovan language, so called Moldovan language as official state language and the recuperation of Latin alphabet for our language. It was a very strong fight against official authorities of republic Soviet Republic of Moldova, and it was very successful during two years. We obtained many of the two years one in several months. It was very successful because our street movement, our protests were so strong, so huge, that Communists were determined to renounced on their intention to maintain Russian domination as cultural domination. And that's why we were able to impose to the last Soviet Parliament Supreme Soviet a kind of Soviet parliament, and at the Republic of Moldova our option one state language, not too and the Latin alphabet. It was a cultural revolution for us. And you STUDI as a political candidate at this time, and you made an open platform, a manifesto of this language requirement. Yeah. Of course, our political resolutions and the platform of our national movement was directly in favor of this option. And after one year we had the first electoral campaign. In fact it was the second because the first democratic elections in Soviet Empire where they started in nineteen eighty eight for Soviet Supreme Soviet a so called like today European Parliament, a federation, yeah, the chamber with hundreds of people in aga Federation which has constituency constituencies in all Soviet republics, and we participated in this campaign which was finished in the spring of nineteen eighteen nine, and half of this delegation from Moldova to Moscow were our representatives and officially and directly because in each constituency we had famous enough people from this writer's media or cultural personalities something like that, not directly politicians, and that the period it doesn't existence didn't exist yet. And the second experience electoral experience was in nineteen ninety nineteen ninety for Moldovian Soviet Parliament, and it was not like in Soviet period. It was allowed to have many candidates in every single constituency. And it was my personal experience when I became candidate for an MP, so for the first time, the Communist candidate had to compete on the ballot paper with in your case Yuri Roshka, a non Communist candidate for one seat. And it was a very interesting experience because this model was imposed by Moscow. So we can say now that in that moment Gorbachov regim was in favor of this the appearance of his Soviet Empire. In fact, he was having to order the East Germans, for example, who were dragging their feet. Face it, guys, the game is up at a very deep level. If we understand the work of Christopher's story, Who's that was the non de plume for Edward Hall and Anatoly golitsyin the best KGB Defector ever, we understand that this is because the Communist International was going from its third phase, which had lasted from the nineteen sixties, into its fourth cycle, which was to mainstream itself in the West, to abandon the territorial hold on the Soviet Union and go to a global model. But perhaps you weren't quite aware of that back then. Yeah, yeah, we was not aware in that period of time of this kind of geopolitics, high level geopolitics. But then I how it was very interesting for us as because I was young enough. I was something like twenty eighth twenty nine, either so old when they became candidate for parliament. I lost the elections, but we were nine candidates. This is spring nineteen ninety. Exactly, you got into the second round in your single seat constituency. You lost out to a collective farm boss, but you did get into the second round. And that moment I was well known for a national movement at national level because I was very active during all street protests. And when we started to print our newspapers in Illness, you had to use the Lithuanian capital to print your flyers and your first underground Sami Stadt newspaper. Exactly, during nineteen eighty nine, we started to print our newspapers and films. And the guy who helped us in several years became Minister for foreignfls Piatras Vaetekunas. His name is Piatras Vite coolness. What else happens in the meantime? In January nineteen eighty nine and again in March nineteen eighty nine, you get summoned to the KGB office here in Kishino. The first time you met mister nice and the second time you met two mister nasties. Yeah, mister Nice said, I'm sure there's been a misunderstanding, and you managed to talk your way out of it by saying I don't know who it was at my rally who leaked details of a secret Politbureau meeting. The second time, the two hard guys said no, no, they divided their role. Excuse me to interrupt you. They divided this KGB officer divided when I was invited for the second time in KGB office, they divided their role. So one was mister nice and one was mister nasty, a bed guy and gulguy, and one of them who used to be colonel in that moment than another who used to be mayor that moment was nice. And Colonel was very aggressive and he menaced me, and he threatened to harm your son. He said me that I am a traitor and I will be in prison if I will will have the chance to not be killed, not killed executed by Soviety gym because I am a traitor and the Western spy, and that would have been firing squad because they can get that a military offense. They said that if we will not re know us, we will your son will disappear. It was said directly, and and I replied, I will kill you both of you here in this office. So they were they were surprised. You do you know where you are here? And now you are in KGB office and I replaced And do you know with whom you are talking? You are talking with a father. This exact experience happened to my father on the corrupt I and of Jersey, which is not part of the United Kingdom. I was a minor then and they threatened him with harming his wife and son in England if he didn't go along with their corruption. And he said exactly the same as you, because he had a street fighting youth as a Scottish working class boy. And he said, go ahead with your threats and be aware that I will come back and kill you. I'm prepared to do the time. Yeah, absolutely, It was absolutely spontaneous reaction. Not I didn't see about thought about I didn't think about it before it. But what this was determined to say this. And after that, many many years when by accident in Kisheno, Cit, I met these people there they went the around. It was they who were looking over their shoulders. Because I used to be not so bad sportsman. I used to practice box and I was aggressive enough to be to have the capacity to convince them that I am ready to do it. Also, in nineteen eighty nine you became the first vice president, and then a lot later twenty fourteen you became the Sorry nineteen ninety four you became the president of the Popular Front, which later became you changed the name, didn't you, the Christian Democratic People's Party exactly? But in fact I remained a key person among our colleagues because others came to parliament, became MPs in nineteen ninety and I remained in now office as a person who managed all our political activities. Yeah, street fight, street protests and newspapers, leaflets. The audience will understand this. Now you called the Christian Democrats, but you are necessitated to have a street fighting wing of the party, otherwise you would have been crushed. Of course, to impause to promote our position, we determined to organize every single Sunday protests during several years on a different scale in Britain and now around the world. Since the COVID phenomenon, we have had a Sunday event called stand in the Park. Personally, I believe in going to church on Sunday, but many people don't, and that was their act of dissidence. And you carried on this Sunday by Sunday rally and you manage to get the numbers out. So when you stay street fighters, people shouldn't necessarily picture thugs going out with knives and chains. No, no, no, It was very peaceful all our protests. It was my principle. And the many many times different people who were in fact police or OKGB sickret services persons tried to provoke artificial conflicts between US and police officers and so on. But I avoid it every single time when it was possible any kind of confrontations or violences violence. What key insight do you have for people in the West now who are concerned correctly that the authorities will put agent provocateur in their midst provocateur? Are you talking about that period now the phenomenon in general, if you are worried as a modern Western dissident, that an agent provocateur will be in your meeting and will be calling for violence, Yeah, it happens many many times. In my case, people were infiltrated inside of huge crowd. Yeah, but thanks to God, I was rapid and quick enough to stop any kind of provocations. And it was not so polite because I was determined to stop them without beating. But you have to make it appear as if you are prepared to use violence, because I was very efficient in these kind of activities, non political, and everybody knew that in that period uncation. No, it is better to be a friend of you. If not, you have the problem. You can be peaceful protester, but not provocator. And so commences the decade of the nineteen nineties. New independent Moldova is finding its feet. It's always been a majority left wing country because of its history. Your Christian Democrats, right of center and more traditionalists are a minority party. But you become a leader of that faction. You have four terms as a member of parliament. You're twice the deputy Speaker of Parliament because you're the leader of a faction in parliament. You are also chairman of an investigatory committee in parliament, which you used to establish your name as an anti corruption investigator. Combining that with your journalistic skills, so in that though, you start uncovering a lot of corruption in the nascent Republic of Moldova. Yeah, when I became for the first time Deputy Chairman of Parliament in nineteen ninety eight, I was elected as a head of this special parliamentarian committee which investigated the illegal privatization and the budgetary money and so on for previous governance. But some people remain in very strong position inside of our governance, in our alliance, and that's why in that period I was the enemy number one for all corrupt guy from state bodies. It was very spectacular period of my life and risky one, but nobody could stop me because I became efficient, mainly because people from Prosecutor office, from Ministry for Interior Affairs, from different from Kishener Airport, they offered me different papers with official secret or not secret but official papers which confirmed the cases of huge corruption and illegal privatization, and it was absolutely fantastic. We dominated the gendo of the Republic of Mondo, and that period is every single week parliamentarian scandals. I was a newsmaker and many people hate me even today after so many years because I was their killer. As public personalities, during the nineteen nineties, you also began to establish yourself as an author. You've always said that you don't consider you tell yourself to have literary talents, literary criticism, but not literary writing, so you become a non fiction writer and particularly a conspiracy investigator. Your first book in nineteen ninety five, published in both Romanian and Russian, I believe, was called Exit from Darkness, and you've written nearly a dozen books since then. The latest came out just this year, twenty two three, and it's called The Fall from Capitalism to Technocracy colon Notes of a Dissident under the New World Order Exactly. I was very active as a journalists during all my political career. It was the same activity for me. I used to be my wn speech writer when I was a dignitary in parliament or in government, and this is rare, of course, most people have their speeches ghostwriss. And that's why during all my political activity and after that, many people is asking me even today to write for them speeches in parliament. Not here in Moldova in current period in Romania mainly, but in that period I published permanently my articles in two newspapers. First newspaper was in fact the second the country the name of Tarah. The newspaper which was printed in Russian and Romani, Roman, Onion and Russian and another one f looks it means flow in English. And it was investigative journalism or political journalism. YA like our position, not as well as party leader, but as national interests of Moldova in very critical situations. And I decided in nineteen ninety five to publish several key articles and the essays and political analysis in the first book. And you know I discovered during our last Kitchener Forum, and I am doing the same thing now because my last final remarks in September twenty and twenty three, I thought about it after my intervention was the same message as in nineteen ninety four when I no. Nineteen ninety two when I published my article the Exodus or the Exit from Darkness. It's about it is about our Soviet past ah. And this message was for my colleagues from colleagues, not as parliamentarians, but as nationalist Christian movement. We were brave enough to confront Soviet empire and to confront post Soviet governance and so on. But we discovered during the way that the most important aspect of collective identities our Christian belief without direct alliance with Jesus Christ. Without church, it is impossible to be an efficient politician and to serve your country. And it was my regional contribution in that period of time. And I discovered that after so many years, after thirty years, my message remained the same. But now I am talking about our alternative media network, international network. Many of us are brilliant, but not so many Christian believers. The bookcase behind you, you called your christ Like leadership bookcase, so you do practice what you preach there. Yeah, it was very interesting. After I finished my political career in two thousand and nine, I started. I founded this People's University from Moldova, and I became a teacher or professor, Yeah, in my own school for leadership. And I discovered before it many many books which were written basically by Americans and British authors. And the first article program programmatic, we could say programmatic. The first article in this way of thinking and living, not only acting, but living as leader was written by an author whose name is Greenleaf, I forget his first name, green Leaf in the early seventies. And after that the school of thought started, especially among Protestants in America and in the UK. That's why christ Like Like leadership is very comfortable for any kind of leadership now not necessarily political in our Christian society. With out this model, you cannot be efficient just you just are destroying by your actions your ideals because in the contradictions it is a contradiction in terms, you cannot be a nationalist, a servant of your country, of your national interests without this foundation of Christian practice. It is not about philosophy or ideology. It's about way of living your life to serve others. It's an opposite. It's another extremity of selfish mass democracy spectacle and the leaders who are serving plutocracy. So your high crime, which strange as you from both the East and the West. You were the darling of the West at one point because they adopted you thinking that you would help be a battering ram against Russia. Your sin was twofold. First to discover that Romania and more particularly Moldova had its own national interests, Romania as a people and Moldova as your state absolutely, And second to discover christ like leadership, which is far from what the American patrons who adopted you when the EU patrons wanted to see. Yeah, it was very funny because you know I was so popular among American political establishment and the North American not only American, but European thanks to my permanent presence on VIEWA and Free Europe and BBC and so on, and my political activity here in Moldova was visible enough, popular and accepted and embraced by by hegemon American brothers, big brother. But when I started to promote actively and in more coherent way my Christian vision, ah, it was not so pleasant for my Western partners. I was, I was, I was so good for them when I fought against Soviet Empire, against communism, and I guess against Russian expansion after the Soviet period, and when I started to keep to to try to protect our national interests between this jee political fight Russia versus collective West, I discovered that for Russia and even for US, I became a person not so pleasant for them, not so comfortable for them. And you were figuratively persona non grata from that point in Washington and Brussels, and literally persona non grata until very recently in Romania, yours sister nation. You weren't able to cross the border until very recently only for my for my public speeches my articles, my books. That's it. I told the publicly to our Romanian authorities, if I am a criminal, if I committed something illegally Romania, in Romania, you have to arrest me and put me in jail. I am trying to enter in Romania and we are blocking me. Why. I have to know why. And after a long period of time, not so long, but two years for me, it was long enough. Juan, an excellent lawyer and very courageous man, accepted to be my to represent me in the court. Because many maybe eight or nine lawyers from Romania accepted enough that announcers renounced why because they were men as by regime. This is an EU member state we're talking about, with the whole American battalion in it on the border of Ukraine. So in your writing career, perhaps the moment at which your persuasion breaks through is twenty fourteen, when you write a book called Fall from the USSR to the EU. This is almost exactly the same time as both Gorbatchov and former Czech President Vatlav Klaus are both telling the European Parliament, and both of them got jeered and walked out on for saying it. They both said, goodness me, you seem to have recreated the Soviet presidium and politbureau here in Russe was in Strasbourg exactly. You know. This book, which was published in twenty and fourteen, contains my main articles which were written during two or three years, and my fight against LGBT ideology, the imposition in our legislation by so called europ commissars and the European Parliament and so on, the insistence of Western diplomacy and politicians to imposed us anti Christian, anti family values were so strong, and our political class used to be so obedient, so blind, so and capable to the exist that I was really shocked, and I fought back very very strongly, critically, and I confrom get also called UH commissioners, and I said, it is enough for us a rare commissioners, communists, Soviet commissioners. We don't need other commiss commissars, commissioners from Brassels or from US. That's why I became the enemy. After being during a long period of five time an enemy No Number one for Moscow, I became any number number one for one for Washington and Brassels and for all Western ambassador embassies which are here based in Noldova, and which can cannot communicate with me. It is prohibited. Even Romanian embassy Kennt communicated me. It is absolutely not allowed. You have discovered that the Eastern European new member states of the EU and of NATO have a strict line than the Western states in this regard. Particularly in your capacity as a parliamentary committee chairman, you participated in dialogue with the European Parliament, a committee of it. It was a giant committee EU Parliament and Moldovan Parliament, and you found that they failed to represent to respect the parity between the two. And it was an Estonian member who was trying to order you around, wasn't it. Yeah, it was very funny, storied because I became so nervous in Brussels. I forget now her name. It is easy to find an internet. She was born exactly like myself in nineteen sixty one. She used to be a journalists in Soviet period. But despite of myself, she used to be an correspondent of Koonsomereska Pravda, a Soviet newspaper in Estonia. So unlike you, she had gone the conformist. Yeah, absolutely absolutely, former communist journalist not dissident, and now she tried to impose as the head of this giant committee on behalf of European Parliament to change our constitution and our family code. Because of accordance to our constitution, family means for us traditional family. Romania doesn't have this, you do. We introduced it in nineteen ninety four with not with majority. We were used to being in opposition with unanimity because I explained to the president of ruling party at that period that we haven't write this sentence. Family means the three association between partners, not bit in partners, between men and women, and he asked me the meter most puner was his name. He passed away. Unfortunately we were opponents, but he understood my message. I asked him, excuse me for this unpolite word homosexual. He said, no, no, I am not. But why you are introducing because our project of draft of constitutions was received from Strasbourg, from Council of Europe and it was an European formula the free association between partners and our feeling our parliamentary group was able to discover it district and we wanted article by articles. When we adopted our constitution and this article article was introduced by unanimity, and it was a brave moment of our political recent history. And after so many years in two thousand, I think six, I think this lady, this young lady was so arrogent and hests. She insisted, you are anti European, you anti liberal, you are against Western values. We have to change this, and I provoked as usual, huge scandal in repeat parliament. It was a joint committee. We have to vote for this abandonment. It was it was a sort of official recommendation on behalf of European Parliament to a ki communitaire all govern the rule of EU law. Yeah, I had to harmonize our legislation to LGBT legislation of Western countries. And this is years before most EU member states, even Western ones, accepted homosexual partnership, but they were still already imposing it on you by facts. Fortunately for us, the some members of European Parliament abandoned now meeting because Republic of Hondobe is not so important geopolitically as normal, and in this room remained only four members of members of Parliament and the staffers and so on in Presidium and this room we were four Moldovan members of this delegation, but you still had a quorum to take it. Yeah. Yeah, And she insisted we have to vote for it, and I said, stop mother. In accordance with our rules, all decisions are adopted by consensus, not by vote majority. No insis, we have to vote, and fortunately for us we have. We had free votes and Europeans only two votes because the others had walked out. Among us was one a little bit and traditional oriented guy, an effeminate man, yeah yeah, who asked abstentions, please, abstentions please. It was funny, and I said, I will talk to your party boss that you wanted against I am not against am. I am just abstanption substantials the future ambassador to Paris. Okay, By the way, it was very serious confrontation because I discovered it wasn't for the first time, but I discovered step by step how arrogant, how violent, how aggressive could be Europeans against US, a sovereign country. They perceived ourselves as slaves, as subordinate country. That's why it was a long period of time of fight against LGBT network and Okay, in two thousand and night, I lost nine I lost the elections even because my because of my resistance against official European agenda, because dominant media, which is financed from Western foundations, killed me politically. Heir