TRANSNISTRIASoviet Architecture · Frozen in Time

Transnistria — the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic — declared independence from Moldova in 1990 and fought a short war for it in 1992. No United Nations member state recognises it. For its architecture this has meant a kind of preservation by isolation: the Soviet urban landscape of Tiraspol and Bender was never subjected to the demolition, privatisation and rebranding that swept the rest of the former USSR after 1991.

Lenin still stands in front of the Dom Sovetov. The hammer and sickle remains on the state emblem. Soviet-era housing blocks, the Palace of the Republic, the Green Market, the war memorial — all remain in use and largely in original form. Tiraspol is not a museum of the Soviet Union. It is a working city that simply never stopped being one.

Transnistria has become a fixture on dark tourism itineraries, and it is a strange place to be a tourist in: a functioning state that most of the world says does not exist. Everything photographed here was reached on a day trip from Chișinău, by marshrutka and on foot.