Raves, refugees, and resilience Faced with Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine, Moldova’s techno community strikes a balance between hedonism and solidarity
Story by Dawid Romanowski for The Beet. Edited by Eilish Hart.
This story first appeared in The Beet, a weekly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Sign up here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.
Bar Pro Sănătate lies just off of Ștefan cel Mare Boulevard, the central artery of Moldova’s capital. Located below a beauty clinic, the heart of Chișinău’s underground scene beats here, but it’s an inconspicuous place at first glance. During the day, it operates as a canteen offering cheap business lunches. At night, it’s a mixture of a bar and a club: small, familiar, and casual, with low ceilings and toilet doors with poor locks.
Inside, bright green strobe lights flicker throughout the dim vaulted cellar, the bass roars through the speakers at 160 beats per minute, and the crowd dances itself into ecstasy. In the next room, someone is being serenaded with a birthday song and the bar staff are handing out free appetizers.
Since 2018, Bar Pro Sănătate has been an oasis of counterculture in a conservative country where nightlife is dominated by Romanian-language pop music and karaoke bars. Open to everything and everyone, Pro Sănătate offers a space for musical diversity and experimentation. For the country's small but thriving techno community, the venue is immensely important, because there are so few alternative spaces. In the absence of an established commercial club scene and professional booking agencies, local DJs and rave collectives simply throw their parties on their own.
Behind the DJ booth this weekend are the members of PODVAL, a techno collective that came together in early 2022, shortly before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine. PODVAL’s parties have since become a fixture in Chișinău’s nightlife: the sets are bursting with energy and the mood is euphoric. Music-wise, everything is allowed, as long as the number of beats per minute is high and the bass drum is set to riot.
“Since the beginning of the war, the demand for parties has been even stronger than before,” explains Florin, who joined the collective in its early days. “Everyone wanted to switch off [...]. Who knows, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow there could be war here too.” “I want to party. I want to live,” he adds.
Florin and his colleagues organize events about twice a month, often at Pro Sănătate. The collective thrives on the commitment and enthusiasm of its members. In a city where there are few opportunities to party to proper techno music and where international acts hardly ever visit, PODVAL and other local underground collectives create their own free spaces where the country’s youth can let off steam and escape from everyday worries.
‘Techno helps you to recover’
There’s no shortage of worries in Moldova these days. Caught between Moscow’s long arm and a government pursuing a slow but progressive rapprochement with the European Union, Moldova has been under increasing pressure since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. With barely 70 kilometers (43 miles) between Chișinău and the Ukrainian border, Moldova is closer to the targets of Russian attacks than any other European state.
Russia’s missiles, likely launched from occupied Crimea, have crossed through Moldovan airspace repeatedly. Debris from Russian missiles shot down by Ukrainian air defense has also landed in the country’s north. And last December, Moldova’s intelligence services warned that Russia could be aiming to “create a land corridor” through southern Ukraine to the Moscow-backed breakaway region of Transnistria.
Such reports, combined with threats from Russian officials, have sparked fears that Moldova could soon become the Kremlin’s next target. In this context, Chișinău’s techno parties have become an outlet for the youth, a way to cope, weekend after weekend, with the threat hovering over the country.
Sasha, who’s in his early twenties and deejays at PODVAL parties under the pseudonym doesnthaveanameyet, has stepped outside to get some fresh air after playing a sweaty, two-hour set at Pro Sănătate. Joining him is Lera, a.k.a. Lerica, a young woman in stylish sunglasses and a neon pink puffer jacket, who is scheduled to play the last set of the night in a few hours.
“We’ve been through almost three years of a pandemic, a very leaden and bleak time, when pretty much nothing was going on. We really wanted to get something going again,” Lera explains. “Then the war in Ukraine came and we discussed intensively whether it was okay to dance and have fun while a few kilometers away people were dying every day.”
“But this constant preoccupation with the war, this fear, worrying about whether we will also be attacked, tires you,” Sasha chimes in. “And techno helps you to recover and block out all the negativity.”
‘Make Borș Not War’
Despite the apparent escapism on the dancefloor, everyone here at Pro Sănătate takes the war and its consequences seriously. Chișinău’s techno community showed solidarity with Ukraine right from the start of the invasion. Members of PODVAL helped out as volunteers, collecting food and everyday goods to support refugees.
According to the UNHCR, more than 750,000 Ukrainians have crossed into Moldova since March 2022. For many of them, the small republic of just under 2.6 million inhabitants was only a transit country, but as of June 2023, more than 100,000 refugees have stayed.
Initiatives rooted in the techno scene began organizing community events for these newcomers right away, including free mixing workshops for Ukrainian women and girls led by local DJs Ceai de lalele and DJ Borș.
“Our goal is to create a community through music,” explains Ceai de lalele, who is also a member of PODVAL. “The most important thing is to have fun and for people who have been uprooted from their homes and had to leave their old lives behind to come together and build new relationships.”
DJ Borș was born in Moldova but spent 13 years living abroad. When the war started, she was in Brazil and spontaneously decided to return to the country of her childhood. “I came back because this is a key moment in our history and I felt that it was maybe the last chance to see Moldova. When I arrived here I was full of fear that the war would spill over to us, but the summer was very different from what I heard from the news,” she tells The Beet. “There were lots of parties. We had to celebrate more, maybe also as a reaction to the permanent pressure on us.”
In addition to organizing parties, DJ Borș quickly got involved in various aid projects for refugees, which took place under the slogan “Make Borș not War.” The mixing workshops she and Ceai de lalele conduct are organized with the help of Moldova for Peace, an initiative formed by several small groups and NGOs to support Ukrainians who fled the war.
Ceai de lalele has been engaged in the project since the beginning — and the kind of humanitarian work she and her colleagues have been doing has changed significantly over the last year. Although essential goods are still needed, the main focus of their work has switched from providing people with shelter, food, and medical aid, to helping those who have decided to stay to integrate into Moldovan society.
The first mixing workshop took place last summer and another one followed this March; new events are soon to come, the organizers say. Some of the former participants have already been able to play sets at PODVAL parties. Like Olga, who fled the war-torn city of Mykolaiv for Chișinău last year and has been living in a dormitory for Ukrainian women ever since. “Moldova has already become a part of my heart too now, you could say. But being away from my home country, I feel a strong craving for Ukrainian culture,” she explains. “I took part in the workshop because I want to express myself through music and introduce Ukrainian sounds to people in Moldova.”
Today, Olga’s home region is not only fending off Russian attacks, but also dealing with the consequences of flooding caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. Returning to Mykolaiv is a distant prospect for Olga and although she’s settled into her new life in Chișinău, she remains concerned about Russia’s threats towards her host country. “Sometimes it feels like the war is coming after you,” she admits. “But, thank god, everything is still calm here.”
‘Everything comes in waves’
Ukrainians who see their future in Moldova have been confronted with new rules since the spring. Initially, Moldova granted Ukrainian refugees permission to stay in the country, work, and access public services so long as the state of emergency — first introduced in February 2022 — remained in place. (Moldova’s parliament last extended the state of emergency in late May.)
But beginning in March 2023, the Moldovan government introduced temporary protection status for displaced Ukrainians, bringing its policies in line with E.U. legislation. Now, in order to stay in Moldova for more than 90 days, Ukrainians must apply for temporary protection, which is currently valid until March 2024. “The idea is good but in practice, this leads to many problems,” Ceai de lalele says. Most of her volunteer work now consists of helping people navigate bureaucracy, she explains.
Faced with dwindling donations and stretched budgets, initiatives like Moldova for Peace are well aware that integrating more than 100,00 refugees will be an immense challenge for Moldovan society in the long term. Especially as the country continues to face economic and political turmoil. Against the backdrop of the war, Russia cut gas supplies to Moldova in the fall of 2022, household energy costs rose six-fold, and annual inflation skyrocketed to 30 percent. A subsequent wave of anti-government protests (organized by the recently outlawed pro-Russian party of fugitive oligarch Ilan Șor) blamed pro-European President Maia Sandu for the steep rise in the cost of living.
For their part, underground collectives like PODVAL hope to contribute to the integration of refugees by using the unifying power of techno to create a sense of community on and off the dance floor. Their parties serve as a kind of group therapy, including for refugees from Ukraine; a way to recharge their batteries and to block out their sorrows at least for a few hours.
The night after the rave at Pro Sănătate, the party in Chișinău continues at Casa de Creație, a squat, two-storey, red-brick building that houses a private residence, a fashion studio, and a cultural center that hosts concerts and raves. Since November 2022, DJ Borș has organized a party series here called Aici Chișinău (“Chișinău Calling”).
The music is important, but Aici Chișinău is first and foremost about people coming together. The atmosphere is familial (in the kitchen, someone is cooking crêpes) and everyone is supposed to have the opportunity to get involved. “We want to create a space and show that techno is also about community, about just hanging out together,” DJ Borș explains.
A few hours later, the party is in full swing. As the sun slowly sets over Chișinău to the sounds of “Nude Photo,” a Detroit techno classic, the crowd relaxes and dances into Sunday evening. Some overtired party goers who were up all night at Pro Sănătate the day before are just swaying to the beat of the bass drum. “I’m incredibly inspired to be here and to experience the positive energy and initiative of the underground scene at a time when we can really use some optimism,” DJ Borș reflects. “When you hear that Russian missile debris fell somewhere in Moldova, panic automatically sets in. But the next day, the situation returns to normal.”
Indeed, Moldova’s young techno fans are celebrating life despite, or perhaps because of, the Russian threat and the unstable domestic situation. Not frantically as if the world will end tomorrow, but with a lot of inner peace and trust that everything will work out somehow. With people having grown accustomed to the constant uncertainty and proximity of the war, life goes on no matter how bad the headlines get. “Everything comes in waves,” DJ Borș concludes. “I have the feeling that our society is very resilient.”
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Story by Dawid Romanowski for The Beet
Edited by Eilish Hart