The history of the 20th century \u2013 especially since the start of the Second World War \u2013 is also the story of Eastern Europe\u2019s dissolution <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Albania\u2019s still religiously plural, but it\u2019s not very ethnically<\/em> plural. This process culminates in the 80s with the expulsion of Muslims from Bulgaria. And then the Yugoslav wars, which also separated out this diversity within Yugoslavia, within the Balkans and Kosovo.<\/p>\n
This old world of Eastern Europe has traces left, but it\u2019s not a lived reality the way it was in 1914. The distinctiveness that I saw growing up in the 80s and 90s \u2013 of going from west to east and kind of crossing some kind of barrier \u2013 isn\u2019t really there anymore. You used to land in East Germany \u2013 or Prague or Warsaw or Sofia \u2013 and feel like you were in a different world. Things worked differently. The way that all of society was arranged was different.<\/p>\n
You have to go deep into Eastern Europe to find a real sense of difference. You have to go into northern Romania, into the Albanian mountains, to feel like you can recapture some of that.<\/p>\n
Whereas if you\u2019re in downtown Warsaw, you could be in Belgium. Our architecture is different \u2013 and you have a different sense of people \u2013 but they are dressed the same and people are listening to the same music.<\/p>\n
The places that remain outside of that Europe-wide gradient are actually in direct physical peril. Ukraine is under Russian attack. Moldova is on a knife\u2019s edge, politically, and has a whole part of the country under Transnistria (so under quasi-Russian rule, or separatist rule). There is also the uneasy situation in Kosovo or the Republika Srpska in Bosnia; these kind of frozen conflicts that keep these places out of the European mainstream.<\/p>\n
I think when we think about the old world of Eastern Europe that much of it perished in the 20th century. And the newer world of Eastern Europe that was created by the settlement after the Second World War is also either vanishing \u2013 due to prosperity or directly imperilled through conflict.<\/p>\n
Jacob Mikanowski is the author of\u00a0Goodbye Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land<\/em>\u00a0(Oneworld, 2023)<\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
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