There are a lot of remnants of the Soviet past here in Moldova and many challenges to living and working in a developing country. We are in the capital city, so while these challenges exist, they are nothing compared to the underdeveloped villages and towns throughout the country. Many places lack clean water (or running water), suitable infrastructure, access to healthcare, etc.
Another aspect of life here, which in part is due to the Soviet past, is the lack of trust among the people. This lack of trust is coupled with a very low income level (approximately $3,300 per capita in US dollars), and the result is that simple things that I take for granted in America take a lot of my time here.
Francis Fukuyama has written extensively on trust and the development of social capital, and it is very evident how important these concepts are for a stable and development economic system. Social capital arises out of strong horizontal relationships between people beginning with the family but extending beyond to the myriad relationships developed through various ties (friends, colleagues, associations, religion/church, etc.). In the Soviet system these relationships were undermined in favor of the vertical relationships of individual/party/and state. Consequently, trust beyond the family is still significantly lacking in post-Soviet economies.
An example of this from my teaching: my current course requires that I give three lectures each week to a large group of students and then I meet with four separate smaller groups twice a week each --all packed into three weeks. Each of these meetings is in a different classroom and often I have to move to different buildings. Some of the classrooms for the seminars and all of the lecture rooms have overhead projectors for displaying PowerPoint slides and thus are kept locked. OK…this is fine so far. The issue is that at the entrance of each building there is a desk staffed by different men (I would say most are in their 60s), and at this desk the professor must obtain the key to enter the classroom containing the projector. In the larger building (which is actually very new and quite nice) there is a set of seven books, one for each floor, where the professor must sign in and out the key each time they use a classroom. The students typically gather in the hallways waiting to enter the rooms as the professor must arrive key in hand.
After each class meeting, the professor must make sure every student has exited the room (and keep out all the students waiting for the next class period) and walk back down to the front desk to sign the key back in. In the meantime, the next professor is often there waiting to sign the key back out in order to conduct the next class. This all must happen, typically, in 10 minutes (the time between each class period), and it often requires walking down/up many flights of stairs due to very slow and very overcrowded elevators (no ADA in Moldova – or all of Europe for that matter).
I am often rushing up and down seven flights of stairs and between buildings in order to get and give keys and begin the process again. Of course the men guarding the keys don’t speak English.
An easy solution: how about use the same key for all the classrooms and give one to each professor? Or why not put key-code locks on the doors and give the professors the code?? Again, the trust factor simply has not been established here…professors are not trusted, students are not trusted, and there is no trust that one will not pay off the other to obtain access.
It is fascinating to live in a place that has so many evolving institutions -- both formal laws etc. and informal behaviors – like trust --especially compared to my experience back in America. We Americans take many things for granted which provide a certainty in our lives that many countries simply do not experience.
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