101, or about 27 percent. The internationalists had a strong showing as well, capturing almost 80 seats—21 percent. However, while both sides claimed the support of those not formally tied to their organizations, the Popular Front had considerably more allies. The Communist Party had a more disappointing if not insignificant showing, with 53 of the parliamentary seats going to members of the party apparatus and with its members comprising 83 percent of those elected. However, what is of interest to this chapter is that in 1990 as the republic polarized to the point of schism in September, those apparatus workers that were elected quickly aligned themselves with either the Popular Front and the parliamentary leadership, or with the OSTK-led opposition. There was no significant correlation between apparatus work and either movement. In Transnistria, the OSTK was extremely successful, particularly in Tiraspol. Looking at the electoral ads run in the Tiraspol Dnestrovskaia Pravda reveals that of the 40 people who ran ads in that newspaper between January and March 1990, 22 (55 percent) mentioned membership of the OSTK, 21 (95 percent) of which won their seats. Of the 18 that did not mention the OSTK in their ads, only 3 (16 percent) won their seats. Moreover, in this election Igor Smirnov, (later to become in December 1991 the first president of the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic), first successfully ran for public office. To illustrate the point that the election signalled the change in city leadership from that of the Communist Party to that of the OSTK, it is important to note that Smirnov ran for the position of chairman of the city Soviet (head of local government) against the secretary of the city Communist Party committee; in the March 23rd session that decided the issue Smirnov took the chairmanship with 86 of the 134 votes, defeating Leonid Turcan with 64% of the vote. Events in Tighina and Rîbnița were similar, with OSTK leaders taking control of local government. The OSTK had only a tenuous hold, however, on the city government of Dubasari and was a minority in some of the more rural districts. Creation of the Dniester State Throughout 1990, OSTK-controlled soviets in Transnistria battled with republican authorities in Chișinău, many of the latter also elected in 1990 and that on a platform of Moldovian national awakening. On 27 April 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Moldova took the symbolic step of adopting