Tiraspol
                                                      

Name
The toponym consists of two words: Tiras — the ancient Greek name for the Dniester River, and polis, i.e., a city.


Monuments
The statue of Alexander Suvorov was erected in the central square in 1979 in commemoration of his 250th anniversary. In front of the Transnistrian Government building there is a statue of Lenin. On the opposite side of the central square, a monument plaza features a Soviet T-34 tank, commemorating the Soviet victory in World War II, an eternal flame to those who fell defending and recapturing the city in 1941, resp. 1944, and several monuments dedicated to more recent conflicts, including the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the War of Transnistria.


Demographics
In 1989 the city had a population of about 190,000 people. 41% were Russians, 32% Ukrainians and 18% were Moldavians. As result of the political and economic situation that followed the proclamation of the independent (unrecognized) Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, as well as large Jewish emigration in the early 1990s, the population of the city fell below its 1989 number and the 2004 Census in Transnistria puts its current population at 158,069.

Timeline

Tyras, or Tiras, a colony of Miletus, probably founded about 600 BC, situated some 10 m. from the mouth of the Tiras River (Dniester). Of no great importance in early times, in the 2nd century BC it fell under the dominion of native kings whose names appear on its coins, and it was destroyed by the Getae about 50 BC. In AD 56 it seems to have been restored by the Romans and henceforth formed part of the province of Lower Moesia. There exists a series of its coins with heads of emperors from Domitian to Alexander Severus. Soon after the time of the latter it was destroyed by the Goths. Its government was in the hands of five archons, a senate, a popular assembly and a registrar. The types of its coins suggest a trade in wheat, wine and fish. The few inscriptions are also mostly concerned with trade. Its remains are scanty, as its site has been covered by the great medieval fortress of Monocastro or Akkerman.[5]
Middle Ages: The area around Tiraspol was a buffer zone between the Tatars and the Moldavians, inhabited by both ethnicities.
1792: After the Russian Empire conquered its way to the Nistru (Dniester) river from Turks, the Russian army built some fortifications to guard the western border near a Moldavian village named Sucleia. The name was given after the Latin name of the Dniester river ("Tyras") on which it was built.
1812: By this year, Russia had already conquered the eastern half of Moldova (Bessarabia) and was colonizing Russian and ethnic Ukrainians in and around Tiraspol.
June 15, 1828: The Customs house in Tiraspol was established. The purpose of its creation became suppression of smuggling. This Customs house submitted to the chief of Odessa customs region. It began operations with 14 employees. They inspected shipments of bread, paper, oil, wine, sugar, fruits and other goods.
After World War I: Romania gained Bessarabia.
1924: A Moldavian ASSR (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) was created in Ukraine, with Balta as its capital. The republic had Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian as its official languages.
1929: Tiraspol became the capital of the Moldavian ASSR (until 1940).
1932: Latin script for Moldovan language is officialized in Moldavian ASSR.
1938: Cyrillic script is reimposed in Moldavian ASSR.
1940: Following the secret provisions of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the USSR forces Romania to cede Bessarabia and integrates Tiraspol, until then part of Ukrainian SSR, into the newly-formed Moldavian SSR.
August 7, 1941: The city was taken by Romanian troops. During the occupation, Tiraspol was under Romanian administration. During that period almost all its Jewish population perished. This same year (before the occupation), the newspaper “Dnestrovskaya pravda” was founded by the Tiraspol City Council of popular deputies. This is the oldest periodical publication in the region.
April 12, 1944: The city was retaken by the Red Army and became again part of Moldavian SSR.
January 27, 1990: A referendum declared that Tiraspol was an independent territory. The nearby city of Bendery also declared its independence. As the Russian-speaking independence movement gained momentum, the local governments banded together to resist pressure from the Moldovan government.
September 2, 1990: Tiraspol was proclaimed the capital of the new Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. The new republic was not officially recognized by Soviet authorities, however it received support from some important Soviet leaders, like Anatoly Lukianov. After the dissolution of Soviet Union, the territory east of the Dniestr river declared independence as Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, with Tiraspol as its capital. However, this is not internationally recognized.
May 6, 2004: A Molotov Cocktail was thrown at the Tiraspol Synagogue, according to a report by AEN. The attacker also poured flammable liquid on the front door of the synagogue, right near a gas pipe. Thanks to the quick reaction of witnesses, the fire was extinguished before it set off the gas.
July 1, 2005: The Lucian Blaga Lyceum, a high school with Romanian as its language of instruction, was registered as a Transnistrian non-governmental establishment. The registration of six Romanian language schools was subject of negotiations since 2000. The tension increased in the summer of 2004, when the Transnistrian authorities forcibly closed the schools that used the Moldavian language in the Latin script, which according to the official PMR view is considered as Romanian. Moldavian, written in the Cyrillic script, is one of the three official languages in the PMR. Romanian, however, is not. Some economic measures and counter-measures were taken on both banks of the Dniester.
July 6, 2006: An explosion, believed to be caused by a bomb, killed at least eight people in a minibus.
August 13, 2006: A grenade explosion in a trolleybus kills two, injures ten.