Tiraspol

Tyras (Τύρας), also spelled Tiras, was a colony of the Greek city Miletus, probably founded about 600 BC, situated some 10 kilometres (6 miles) from the mouth of the Tiras River (Dniester). Of no great importance in early times, in the 2nd century BC it fell under the dominion of indigenous kings whose names appear on its coins. It was destroyed by the Thracian Getae about 50 BC.

In 56 AD, the Romans restored the city and made it part of the colonial province of Lower Moesia. A series of its coins exist that feature heads of Roman emperors from Domitian to Severus Alexander. Soon after the time of the latter, the city was destroyed again, this time by the invasion of the Goths. Its government was in the hands of five archons, a senate, a popular assembly and a registrar. The images on its coins from this period suggest a trade in wheat, wine and fish. The few inscriptions extant are mostly concerned with trade.

Such ancient archeological remains are scanty, as the city site was built over by the great medieval fortress of Monocastro or Akkerman.[7] During the Middle Ages, the area around Tiraspol was a buffer zone between the Tatars and the Moldavians, and inhabited by both ethnic groups.

The Russian Empire conquered its way to the Dniester River, taking territory from the Ottoman Empire. In 1792 the Russian army built fortifications to guard the western border near a Moldavian village named Sucleia. Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov is considered the founder of modern Tiraspol; his statue is the city's most distinctive landmark. The city took its name from Tyras, the Greek name of the Dniester River on which it stands.

In 1828, the Russian government established a customs house in Tiraspol to try to suppress smuggling. The customs house was subordinated to the chief of the Odesa customs region. It began operations with 14 employees. They inspected shipments of bread, paper, oil, wine, sugar, fruits and other goods.

Transnistria parliament building in Tiraspol. In front is a statue of Vladimir Lenin.

After the Russian Revolution, the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created in Ukraine in 1924, with Balta as its capital. The republic had Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian as its official languages. Its capital was moved in 1929 to Tiraspol, which remained the capital of the Moldavian ASSR until 1940.[8]

In 1940, following the secret provisions of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the USSR forced Romania to cede Bessarabia. It integrated Tiraspol, until then part of the Ukrainian SSR, into the newly formed Moldavian SSR. On 7 August 1941, following the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, the city was taken over by Romanian troops. Later that month, on 19 August, the Tiraspol Agreement establishing the Transnistria Governorate was signed. During the occupation, Tiraspol was under Romanian administration. During that period almost all of its Jewish population died: they were slain in situ or deported to German Nazi death camps, and killed there.

Soviet MiG-19 monument in Tiraspol

In 1941, before the occupation, the newspaper Dnestrovskaya Pravda was founded by the Tiraspol City Council of popular deputies. This is the oldest periodical publication in the region. On 12 April 1944, the city was retaken by the Red Army and became again part of the Moldavian SSR.

Heroes memorial in Tiraspol (2012)

On 27 January 1990, the citizens in Tiraspol passed a referendum declaring the city as an independent territory. The nearby city of Bendery also declared its independence from Moldova. As the Russian-speaking independence movement gained momentum, some local governments banded together to resist pressure from the Moldovan government for nationalization.

A trolleybus in Tiraspol painted in the colours of the Transnistrian flag

On 2 September 1990, Tiraspol was proclaimed the capital of the new Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. The new republic was not officially recognized by Soviet authorities; however, it received support from some important Soviet leaders, such as Anatoly Lukyanov. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the territory east of the Dniester River declared independence as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), with Tiraspol as its capital. It was not recognized by the international community.

On 1 July 2005, the Lucian Blaga Lyceum, a high school with Romanian as its language of instruction, was registered as a Transnistrian non-governmental establishment. The registration of six Romanian language schools has been the subject of negotiations with the government since 2000. The tension increased in the summer of 2004, when the Transnistrian authorities forcibly closed the schools that taught using the Latin script. According to the official PMR view, this is considered as Romanian. "Moldovan", written in the Cyrillic script, is one of the three official languages in the PMR; Romanian is not. Some economic measures and counter-measures were taken on both banks of the Dniester.

Tensions have been seen in terrorist incidents. On 6 July 2006, an explosion, believed to be caused by a bomb, killed at least eight people in a minibus.[9] Later on 13 August, a grenade exploded in a trolleybus, killing two and injuring ten.[10][11][12] The 2022 Tiraspol bombing happened on the 25 April 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine when several explosions were reported near the Ministry of State Security (Transnistria) in Tiraspol. Firefighters were on the scene but there were no casualties.[13]

The population of the city was about 190,000 in 1989 and about 203,000 in 1992. 41% were Russians, 32% Ukrainians (both Eastern Slavic) and 18% were Moldovans (Romanians).

As result of the political and economic situation that followed the proclamation of the independent (unrecognized) Transnistria, as well as large Jewish emigration in the early 1990s, the population of the city fell below its 1989 number and the 2004 Transnistrian census put its population at 158,069.[15]

In 1926, 29,700 people lived in the city of Tiraspol who were classified, by ethnicity, as follows:

According to the Soviet census of 1939, the city's population was 43,676 inhabitants, distributed as follows:[16]

2004

According to the unofficial census, 90.4% of the city's residents hold Transnistrian "citizenship", but some of them also have a second citizenship: the Republic of Moldova - 16.2%, the Russian Federation - 16.1%.

The Latin Catholic minority was served by its own Roman Catholic Diocese of Tiraspol (originally called Cherson), which at times also covered part of neighbouring Romania and Russia, until its 2002 suppression and merger into the Russian Diocese of Saint Clement at Saratov.

• Serhiy Kivalov (born 1954 in Tiraspol) Ukrainian politician, jurist, parliamentarian, head of Central Election Commission
• Vladimir Mikhailovich Belyaev (born 18 March 1965 in Tiraspol) the minister of information and telecommunications
• Maya Parnas (born 1974 in Tiraspol) politician and was the former acting Prime Minister of Transnistria
• Nina Shtanski (born 1977 in Tiraspol) former Transnistrian state politician, the Minister of Foreign Affairs 2012 to 2015
• Roman Khudyakov (born 1977 in Tiraspol) a Transnistrian-born Russian politician, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Transnistria
• Vladimir Yastrebchak (born 1979 in Tiraspol) the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Transnistria from 2008 to 2012.
• Olga Paterova (born in 1984 in Tiraspol) a politician, the press secretary for the political youth organization Breakthrough
• Yury Cheban, Transnistrian Minister of Natural Resources and Ecological Control

• Constantin Nour (1906 or 1907 in Tiraspol – 1986) a Romanian champion middleweight boxer and national team trainer
• Larisa Popova (born 1957 in Tiraspol) Moldovan rower who competed for the Soviet Union in the 1976 Summer Olympics
• Igor Samoilenco (born 1977 in Tiraspol) retired male boxer from Moldova
• Andrei Mihailov (born 1980 in Tiraspol) former backstroke swimmer, competed in the 2000 and the 2004 Summer Olympics
• Andrei Corneencov (born 1982 in Tiraspol) former Moldovan international footballer.
• Stanislau Tsivonchyk (born 1985 in Tiraspol) a Belarusian pole vaulter, competed in the pole vault at the 2012 Summer Olympics
• Vitalie Bulat (born 1987 in Tiraspol) Moldovan footballer
• Oleksandr Kolchenko (born 1988 in Tiraspol) a Ukrainian basketball player for Cherkaski Mavpy and the Ukraine national team
• Dănilă Artiomov (born 1994 in Tiraspol) a Moldovan breaststroke swimmer
• Artur Dalaloyan (born 1996 in Tiraspol) a Russian artistic gymnast of Armenian origin

• Tiraspol, Moldova at JewishGen
• Tyraspol (Tiraspol) in the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland (1892)(in Polish)

• Tiraspol.info (in Russian)