commenthere on Putin and his opposition to the missile shield, which gets a lot of sympathy. And gives me a chance to be nice and contarian abouyt the east bloc.
North: why did the Czechs avoid massacres and the Poles didn't? And why, if the Russians were so bad, did the Hungarians have considerable freedoms. Why, if Russia was so bad, could East Germany have had its liberty had only the west consented to a neutralised united Germany?
Thanks for persisting through my typing errors but really you don't have to give me the conventional wisdom, which is all about making the west feel uncomplicatedly better but doesn't do much to contribute to subtle understanding of the cold war or what really went on in the east bloc.
If the Americans had not had a simplistic view of the cold war and their supposed role in winning it they probably wouldn't have blundered into Iraq. The experience of the east European transformations taught them falslely that apply military pressure and bluff tough guy threats at one end, backed by military action to follow this through if necessary, to dictatorships, and democracy will emerge at the other end. Automatically.
That didn't prove to be the case.
Every culture, every system is different and the matter of whether threat of force really can change a system - the US is applying it now to Iran - ahas to be questioned.
Every time I meet an east European who whinges and whines about Soviet occupation I ask: what the fuck are you complaining about? You are here aren't you. Your languages, your cultures, even in countries of 1m people, survived. You are remarkably intelligent, secptical and well-educated. You use your brain more than the average American. You lived okay - it was like being a student all your life. Shabby, easy, bohemian. No car. No responsibilities.
Your oppression can't have been that bad if it taught you to think critically. (Or conversely if the system was as bad for your capacity for indeopendent thought as you say why are we listenting to you know complaining about Russia?)
Their towns had coal pollution but were free of the western garbage culture that now defaces their cities. They read a huge number of books and had access to good classical culture. I lived in a small Czech town in the immediate post communist period and they had decent, if dull lives. Is it better to work in a call centre in today's globalised UK? Not necessarily. I never met anyone who knew anyone who had been sent to a uranium mine.
The war and stalinism was hell but it was hell for all Europeans then - a psychopathology that affected everyone, who pulled the trigger was just a detail. But eastern Europe after teh fifties truly settled down. It was not Hell, and some of the more primitive countries came a long way in a short time.
As for their claim that post 1989 they have come a long way in a short time, democracy and hi tech economies (viz Estonia) the east Europeans breastbeat themselves and say: all this despite Russian occupation. Aren't we marvellous? Perhaps the socialist system created the basis on which subsequent success could be rapidly achieved.
Which is why this success story cannot necessarily be applied to other parts of the world.
Americans think, in their narcissistic way: oh look, we did this with eastern Europe. We'll do it with Iraq. No time.
Perhaps it was the particular conditions of eastern Europe, and their pasts, including the sociliaist system that did and the US was just an onlooker.
Another good thing about Russian occupation/socialism is that it kept the lid firmly crewed on native catholic/bigot tendencies - viz Poland today.
Very few east Europeans seem to have any insight whatsoever with perspective into their recent histories. They are too much part of it I suppose. Outsiders are beholden to have a broader view.
It's funny that the cold war was all supposed to be about the open way of thinking versus the monolithic one. Quite apart from the fact that some of the most subtle and flexible minds i have met have been Russian or east Europeans, I am amused by the fact that the very historiography of the cold war itself is monolithic - no alternative interpretations circulate.
North, I have been writing about east Europe for 15 years, and many, many east European have been coming to London and been shown around, or moved here. Their first reactions are so often disappointment, but then they learn to get with the narrative: the Russian period bad, freedom unalloyed good.
Zabka: I once climbed Zniezka, the mountains that straddles Czech and Poland. It was easy to tell the Poles apart. They were naked from the waist and twirled their moustaches, and shouted a lot. The Czechs were more controlled.
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