GENEVA

TO GET TO the former Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, now a rebel stepchild of Moldova, I flew to Bucharest, boarded a steamy night train to Chisinau (the Moldovan capital), and then hired a car and driver to cross the Dniester River, where the oddest European “country” is wedged between the east bank of the river and the border with Ukraine.

Previously Transnistria, to use one of its more modern names, was a region of Moldova, part of what the history books used to call Bessarabia. By the time that Moldova seceded from the Soviet Union, in 1991, the largely Russian-speaking population (about 500,000) had declared its independence from Chisinau.

Moldova, which culturally and linguistically is closer to Romania, objected to this regional emancipation, and a short border war followed in 1992. In response, Russian troops sealed the river crossings on the Dniester, and Transnistria has evolved into one of the Soviet Union’s last model showrooms.

Seen today, the border crossing is a flashback to the Cold War. Russian tanks and soldiers guard the bridges, and local border guards search cars, ask probing questions and otherwise give the impression of looking for spies coming in from the cold.

In explaining my own presence at the frontier, I checked a box marked “Tourism,” which a succession of border guards accepted as plausible — although anyone who has been to the Transnistria capital, Tiraspol, would find that a flight of fancy. It’s a bit like heading to Pyongyang for wine tasting.

Transnistria’s evolution from Bessarabian borderlands to Soviet socialist republic owes much to the legacy of World War I. Greater Romania, a product of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, stretched to the Dniester River and incorporated what is now Moldova. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points were no match for Queen Marie’s boudoir diplomacy. (The writer Margaret MacMillan describes the Romanian queen as “vivacious and adulterous.”)

Across the river, the emergent Soviet Union set up the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Region as part of the Ukraine. Stalin launched Transnistria as a workers’ paradise, complete with animal farms and steel mills, not to mention Russian immigrants, until the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact cynically carved up Romania, and much of Eastern Europe, between Germany and the Soviet Union.

Following the 1939 non-aggression treaty, Hungary, a Nazi German satellite, annexed Romanian Transylvania, and Russia “liberated” Bessarabia. During the ebb and flow of armies in the next five years, Bessarabia took turns hosting Russian pogroms and Nazi holocausts.

Fearing further dismemberment, Romania forced its king to abdicate and installed a Nazi-puppet regime, that of Gen. Ion Antonescu. He let German troops into Romania. In June 1941 Romania gleefully joined Germany’s Russian invasion, which restored Bessarabia to Romanian rule until 1944.

While under German tutelage, Romania used Transnistria as a killing zone, deporting Jews to concentration camps scattered across the autonomous region.

During the invasion of Russia, the Romanian army was bloodied before Odessa and cut to ribbons at Stalingrad. When the tide turned on the Eastern Front, the Soviet army rolled back into Bessarabia and occupied much of Romania.

In one of the stranger diplomatic twists of World War II, as the Russians entered Romania in 1944, a coup removed Antonescu’s fascists, and the new government, including a restored monarch, threw Romania’s depleted armies against Hungary and Germany, hoping finally to back a winner.

When the war ended, Bessarabia, including Transnistria, was established as the Soviet republic of Moldova, which stood until the 1991 communist divestiture.

As a tourist, I found much of the countryside beautiful. The Dniester River meanders against its western border, as if in a still-life painting, and the plateau that embraces most of the narrow nation recalls the black earth of the Russian steppe.

Only in name, however, is Tiraspol a capital. Otherwise, it is a communist backwater, with tired buses, crumbling apartment blocks, and the skeletal remains of various five-year plans.

Diplomatically, Transnistria remains in no-man’s land, a ward of the Russian army and a peer of the realm that includes Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. But it’s a satellite far from any suns.

Across the river, Moldova looks west to Romania — although the April “Twitter” riots in Chisinau, over the country’s poverty and post-Soviet isolation, touched off a backlash against Bucharest. By contrast, Transnistria looks northeast to Moscow for its inspiration. Indeed, the script it uses is Cyrillic, unlike Moldova’s Latin alphabet.

I had it in mind to buy Transnistrian postage stamps, to add to my son’s collection. An exhaustive search failed to turn up either a post office or a kiosk catering to “tourists.” I did find the Turkish fortress at Bender, a key objective in the 1770 Russo-Turkish war. Now, behind its moats and high walls, it hosts elements of the Russian 14th army, which looks like it is preparing for a crusade.

As I was leaving Transnistria, my U.S. passport attracted the attention of one of the many border guards. Clearly, he wasn’t amused with the idea that the breakaway republic was attractive to Western tourists. He waved his arms — I was reminded of Khrushchev and his shoe at the United Nations — and denounced (I guess) revisionism, capitalism, decadence, etc., until even he tired of the histrionics and gave me back my passport.

Except as a model village for a Soviet risorgimento, Transnistria would not seem to have much of a future. The country is landlocked, and hostage to its suspicions of Ukraine and Moldova. It lives off its collective farms and heavy industries, not to mention a grab bag of black-market profiteering. In exchange, it stands as proof that the sun has yet to set on the Soviet empire.

Matthew Stevenson, an occasional contributor, is the Geneva-based author of, among other books, Letters of Transit: Essays on Travel, History, Politics, and Family Life Abroad ( matthewstevenson@sunrise.ch).