That is the argument put forward by Jacob Mikanowski in his insightful chronicle, “Goodbye, Eastern Europe”
One of the merits of “Goodbye, Eastern Europe” by Jacob Mikanowski, an American writer and scholar brought up partly in Poland, is that it challenges this glib view from several angles, some of them unexpected. Distilling more than a decade of research, he carefully argues that if something marks out Europe’s eastern half, it is not homogeneity but wild, glorious diversity, including the long presence of Judaism, Islam and religious practices that blended Christianity and paganism.
Both his Polish grandfathers, Mr Mikanowski notes, became communists after considering a narrow range of other options, including Zionism, emigration and staying in a traditional Jewish community, or. With disarming openness, he shares the story of one of them, a partisan fighter with an impressive war record—he helped free several hundred fellow Jews from a camp in Belarus—who in the 1950s assisted in a communist sting that embarrassed Poland’s underground opposition and its Western friends.
Readers might wonder how the author’s emphasis on cultural and ideological variety squares with his title, which seems to suggest that the east of Europe was in the past a distinct, coherent region. His answer is implied rather than spelled out. In describing pre-industrial history, he stresses how diversity and bouts of sectarian hostility co-existed with fusions and overlaps.
In this way—and for all the power of dynasties, emperors and 20th-century tyrants—the region spawned distinctive grassroots cultures and hosted an ingenious interplay between groups and ideologies. That talent was not entirely eliminated by the, nor by Soviet-led communism, but may now be threatened by globalisation. Such, broadly, is the author’s view .
He yearns for the survival of an east European world in which people react unpredictably to their geopolitical or economic masters. In practice, though, the line between downward pressure and local ingenuity is harder to draw than he allows.
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