Last Tuesday I finished the other two chapters on Lithuania and Belarus. I finally am taking time now to pass on a few thoughts.
You raise in the opening of the book and throughout the question of what is Eastern Europe. I began to scratch my head over this. Like the United States, not all regions of Europe define themselves specifically according to a compass direction. The one area of the United States so defined would be the South, a region dominated by its history of slavery, secession, segregation, and long-term development after the Civil War as this region caught up with the rest of the United States (and even surpassed it) in terms of living standards. This region lies south of the Ohio and Potomac Rivers, and can even include Maryland, although this state has become more of a Middle Atlantic state through the years as immigration from the north has increased. Texas and even Oklahoma, settled by many Southerners following the opening of the Indian territory in 1890, would fall into the South. Distinctive accents and conservative sociopolitical tendencies mark this region, although modern immigration in places like Virginia, Atlanta, North Carolina and Florida (largely a modern, postwar society created in state that through much of its history was lightly settled) has brought many non-Southerners into the region.
Then there is New England lying east of the Hudson River valley in New York. The Middle Atlantic states then contain New York and all the states down to the now more northerly border state of Maryland south of the Mason-Dixon line east of the Appalachian range.
Rounding out the Civil War-era "North" is the Midwest, a region that contains the Great Lakes states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan in the Old Northwest Frontier as well as the plains and farm states further west. This would include Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota (my home state), and the Dakotas. Missouri is, in many ways, a true border state surrounded by Midwestern states and influences on all sides.
Including the outlying states of Hawaii and Alaska, the rest of the country falls broadly into the West, with distinctions between the Pacific coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington, and the Rocky Mountain states, further subdivided, perhaps, between a northern (Montana and Idaho) and southern tier (New Mexico and Arizona, with perhaps Colorado, Utah, and Nevada thrown in with them).
In Europe, people often distinguish among the British Isles (in the West), the Low Countries (also in the West), the Iberian Peninsula (also in the West, but often considered laggards, with Europe ending at the Pyrenees), the Nordic countries of Scandinavia (and its Viking settlement, Iceland) and Finland (culturally distinct from its Scandinavian neighbors) (all in a Westernized Northern Europe) France, Italy, Switzerland and Austria in the Alps (all in the West), and Germany, a Western country but with considerable exposure to the east. After all, the Catholic Konrad Adenauer from the Rhineland spoke of Siberia beginning beyond the Elbe. You placement of Austria in the east is rather ambitious, as most people would consider this country sandwiched between Germany and Italy to be Western or, at most, Central European, given Austria's connection to its former imperial lands.
This brings us to regions not considered Western. There is the Balkans, encompassing the former Yugoslavia and Albania and Bulgaria, all South Slav lands except for the Albanians. Perhaps Romania could go in with the Balkans (along with Moldavia), but the Romanians are distinctive in the Latin-based language and Catholic faith. Central Europe or Mitteleuropa often refers to the former Hapsburg lands of Hungary, Czech- (Republic) Slovakia, and Poland, partially occupied by Austria throughout the centuries. All of these countries are Catholic, use the Latin alphabet, and are Slavic, except for the Magyars.
People usually refer to the Baltics as a separate entity. These countries have historically been a crossroads between Russians, Germans, and the Nordic.
Greece, like France or Italy, usually forms a class by itself. So does Turkey, although it might be associated with its Turkic neighbors to the east.
Perhaps the only truly East European countries in a strict sense of the word are the Russian lands of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. In making these distinctions, cultural allegiance plays a big role. Many of the people you meet might call themselves Central European because, on the one hand, they come from a largely Slavic area similar to the Russians, but, on the other hand, these Slavs are not Eastern Orthodox, but rather Catholic (or even Protestant) by faith and use a Latin alphabet. They thus have not historically had much affinity with the Russians, and have had far more contact in terms of investment from the West (mainly Germany) than Russia. The Estonians, related to the Lutheran Finns, would, in particular, have little commonality with the Russians.
Ukraine, in this analysis, is one of Samuel Huntington's "torn countries," as its western part in full communion with Rome in the Eastern rite of the Catholic Church (Uniate Churct) looks to Poland and the West, while the eastern part of Ukraine is more russified and eastern in orientation.
The West itself is rather amorphous, as it culturally encompasses a bundle of values originating in the varied places of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, with later developments such as the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.
I stayed for a weekend in Helsinki in January 1990 on my way with a Trinity College trip to the then Soviet Union. Like you, I remember Helsinki as a clean city, and enjoyed seeing the museum in town on the 1939-1940 Winter War and the later War of Continuation in co-belligerency with the Germans. I did not go to any saunas, though.
The Aland Islands came up in my recent international law moot court experience. Under an agreement mediated by the League of Nations, the Aland Islands are independent in everything except for ultimate sovereignty over the islands. Under the demilitarization of the islands, its inhabitants are free from any military service in Finland. Thus Finland could maintain its territorial claim over the islands while satisfying the inhabitants' wishes to remain Swedish. The Aland Islands stand for many as a model for creative solutions to ethnic conflict.
You speak of the Swedish-speaking population in Finland having its language recognized, but then again, this community is one of long-standing in Finland, even having a predominance in Finland given the Swedish control of the government for so long there.
On the same trip I made to the Soviet Union, I also went for a day in Vilnius, Lithuania. We stayed in some 1960s or 1970s construction of a hotel overlooking the city. I remember drinking with my Trinity College mates one night in the bar on the top floor and I got to talking to some Lithuanian women about independence for the Baltics. The next thing I knew, she kissed me, and then, apparently her husband or boyfriend or something grabbed by the neck and was about to start a fight with me. My friends broke it up, and nothing happened.
I did not go to Estonia or Latvia, so no saunas there.
On another trip in 1998, when I was studying in Berlin, I went with a group of Germans to visit World War II sites related to the Holocaust in Belarus. We took the train to Brest-Litovsk and visited the fortifications there in the afternoon. You might note that Belarussian wedding couples, as is common still today among many of the Russian peoples, have their photo taken in front of war memorials like the one in the fortress. I and the German tourists saw this on the day we were there.
You spoke of the cold during the siege of B-L, but the Germans attacked on June 22, 1941, and this fortress held out for a month during the summer.
My German trip to Belarus took the bus to Minsk. We stayed in a German-built conference center on the outskirts of Minsk, so if you are looking for a clean place to stay in the future, this is it. I remember all the stores in Belarus having candy and some fish. Why only these things?
I also remember all the Lukashenko posters on sale in the stores.
I also remember going to see Swan Lake once at the opera house in Minsk along with my German companions. During the intermission, I went to relieve my bladder in the men's room and discovered that the only toilet was an arrangement of cabins such that one could relieve themselves in a hole in tiled floor. Can you imagine defecating with a tuxedo on in there?
We went to some village, I forget the name, that the Germans had completely wiped out in some anti-partisan action conducted by the Derwilinger Brigade, a German military unit containing many ex-criminals. The Germans shot the men and put the women and children in a barn and burned it down. Only a few individuals escaped. The remains of the village are now a memorial, with a monument indicating that 1/3 of Belarus, 1/4 of Ukraine, and 1/10 of Russia died during the war.
We also Vitebsk, home of the painter Marc Chagall.
I did not realize that Belarus marked the liberation of Minsk on July 3, 1944, as independence day. The taking of Minsk was the culmination of the Soviet summer offensive (Operation Bagration) begun on June 22, 1944, the anniversary of the German attack in 1941. This operation basically destroyed the German Army Group Center on the Eastern Front and led to effective expulsion of Axis forces from the Soviet Union in by the end of 1944. Indeed, Soviet forces made their first incursion into East Prussia in early October 1944.
Soviet success in this and other offensives (at the same time that the Western Allies landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944) led the Polish Home Army to rise up on August 1, 1944 in Warsaw in an attempt to form a Polish government before the Soviets arrived. Stalin, of course, stalled the Soviet drive and let the Germans beat down the uprising, with the Home Army surrendering on October 1.
I did not see any saunas in Belarus. It is probably just as well.
When you get to Vienna, go to Cafe Sperrle. The Staub family owns this historic cafe in Vienna, and the son, Rainer Staub, went to the Fletcher School with me and Natalie Ishizuka.
That is all I have for now.
Your travels are interesting. For a book on the Hidden Eastern Europe, your writing sure tells all. I will have to keep couchsurfing in mind for the future.
Thank so much for your excellent feedback!
I agree 100% with your discussion of the myriad of ways we can divide the US and Europe. However, perhaps this paragraph in the Introduction of The Hidden Europe is worth re-reading:
If you’re European, it’s time to review Geography 101. Any territory can be divided a number of ways. For instance, you can divide it east-west and/or north-south. If you like, you can create a central region. To have even more granularity, you can create a northeast region, a southeast region, and so on. However, sometimes people don’t want all those options. They just want a simple binary division (thereby eliminating the concept of a central region). For example, if you want to divide the US with a north-south split, we usually use the old Civil War dividing lines. If you want a simple east-west split, we usually use the Mississippi River, even though it’s an imperfect split. Chicago boys may dislike being called an Eastern American just as a Hungarian might dislike being called an Eastern European. They both would yell, “We’re Central, not Eastern!” Similarly, someone from Montana might say, “I’m not in the Western US, I’m in the Northern US!” They would all have a good point. However, if central or northern are not options (and they are not, when you divide a territory with a simple east-west split), then you must choose a side. You may not like east-west splits, but there’s nothing evil about dividing any region that way. So get over it.
I just read What's so Eastern about Eastern Europe? The Slovenian author spends most of the book discussing the flaws of having a category called Eastern Europe. I won't bore you with his arguments because you're smart enough to imagine what they are.
My only objective is to write about a book that covers the region of EE. Since there's no objective, definitive answer of where that region lies, I have to define it in the Intro. I put 25 countries in it (including East Germany, which, technically, isn't a country).
Thanks for catching the error about the Brest siege. I'll fix that.
I appreciate your analysis.
