A GLIMMER OF SUCCESS IN MISERABLE MOLOOVA.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: MOLDOVA

IF YOU HAVE ever heard of Moldova and you are not Romanian or Russian, chances are near certain that it was as the country of origin of an earwormy 2004 Eurodance global No. 1 song whose Romanian-language chorus, made most famous by a viral, fishmouthed lip-synching YouTuber, sounded something like "numa numa yay."

If you think you've heard of Moldova, but maybe not quite with that spelling, you might well be remembering the fictional post-communist country of Molvania, whose motto in pre-Borat guidebooks and a comical Web 1.0 website was "a land untouched by modern dentistry."

Alas for the really-existing post-Soviet republic, Moldova has been no laughing matter these past three decades. A landlocked clump between troubled Romania and Ukraine, it suffers from the historical subjugations all too common among small East-Central European nations. Independent Moldova was confronted from the get-go with a deadly skirmish over the breakaway pro-Soviet republic of Transnistria, a region that retains some sovereignty to this day.

With a per-capita income of under $5,000 per year, Moldova is the secondpoorest country in Europe, behind miserable Belarus and just ahead of war-torn Ukraine. Corruption has been epic even by Balkan levels. Population since the fall of the USSR has shrunk by one-third, to 3.5 million, the worst demographic decline on the continent. Russian meddling in this "near abroad" has been so extensive that the Council of Europe for most of the past decade referred to Moldova as a "captive state."

Yet somehow, miraculously, Moldova might have a shot at being the belle of the ball rather than the butt of the joke.

On July...