The diaspora has come home again – it’s August. One can see hundreds of cars with Italian, U.K., German and Irish plates on the roads of Moldova. Relaxed families are strolling along Chișinău streets, speaking in all the languages of Europe. Soon, all these families will have great fun, attending a concert organized by Moldova’s President, Igor Dodon. The concert’s cost has yet to be disclosed, but probably it will never be, considering Dodon’s black box accounting habits. But let’s see if this concert unites all citizens for a common celebration.

This weekend, Moldova will have a lot of festivities celebrating 75 years of victory over fascism. It’s an important date. But it raises a number of questions, the answer to which should justify the  grand concerts. If fascism was defeated at the cost of millions of lives, is it worth spending millions on dances, cheering and merriment?

If after the defeat of fascism, we got into the trap of a totalitarian regime that caused the starvation and deportation to Siberia of millions more, should we call it a celebration? If the condemnation of fascism was not followed by the condemnation of Stalinism and totalitarianism, isn’t it a kind of selective commemoration? If not all regimes are condemned, who decides which particular regime should be celebrated and which one should be condemned? In encyclopedias and history textbooks, communism, Nazism and fascism are qualified as totalitarian regimes. Therefore, all should be condemned.

Igor Dodon has never been able to look at things independently and impartially. All his decisions favor his relationship with Moscow. The Russian authorities, as the initiators and lawful successors of the USSR, have always wanted to demonstrate their role as winners and in this they have always been supported by Igor Dodon. Since Moscow never wanted to acknowledge the atrocities of communism – the organized famine, the deportations, the exterminating of the elites, the genocide against ethnic minorities – Igor Dodon did nothing to commemorate these victims in Moldova.

Admittedly, the USSR defeated German and Italian fascism in the 1940s. Looking back, 75 years later, the great victory over fascism belongs to the Germans, the Italians and all their former allies. After that defeat, Germany and all European states reinvented, rebuilt and re-aligned in the name of common values that led to a real victory over fascism, totalitarianism and other criminal regimes.

In Moldova, the victory over fascism gave birth to a criminal class, which can be generically described by a fictional character in one of Aureliu Busuioc’s books. The soldier who defeated fascism, later deported his parents to Siberia and condemned his friends and neighbors to death. This metamorphosis from anti-fascist to anti-humanist is also reflected by his name change, as the peasant Ion Tărăbonțu becomes KGB agent Ivan Verdikurov.

Igor Dodon recently met with Moldovan emigrants at the inauguration of the Diaspora Days. He could meet them again and talk specifically about the concert on August 24. Could he talk to the diaspora in Germany or Italy and find out how the victory over fascism is celebrated in these countries? With concerts paid for with public money and singers who receive their wages under the table? Or by commemorating all the victims and, more importantly, by protecting the rights of all citizens? Do we have to mention that nowadays the citizens of Moldova feel much more respected and fulfilled abroad than at home? That the rights of Romanians, Jew and Roma people from Moldova are better respected in Italy, Germany, France or Canada?

Selective holidays and commemorations harm. They create antagonisms and radicalize society. This cannot be the goal of a president. Moreover, such “holidays” should not be paid for with public money. And singers, in no case, should get their wages under the table. It’s illegal, incorrect and unfair.

Alina RADU, alina.radu@zdg.md