PRAGUE, September 15, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The problem of Transdniester came into being in 1924, when the then-Soviet authorities created the so-called Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on the left bank of the Dniester (Nistru) River, alongside the eastern border of Romania. The Soviet "autonomous Moldavia," carved out of the Ukrainian SSR, had an area of 8,300 square kilometers and a population of some 500,000.
