Goodbye, Eastern Europe, Mikanowski - B-

                     "This is a history of a place that doesn't exist." That is because no one identifies as East European, but rather as Poles, Bulgarians, etc. It is a region once defined by communism, and long ago, as a religious borderland. Paganism lasted longer there before it was replaced by Latin and Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Religious pluralism dominated the region. It was a world of "incredible variety." It was  like "a multicolored tapestry" but one ruled by people far away in Vienna, Istanbul, and St. Petersburg. "The storms of the twentieth century destroyed the age-old fabric of Eastern European life."

                      "As far as the Romans were concerned, these cold and rather frightening lands were the sources of two things and two things alone: inexhaustible hordes of enemies, and a lightweight precious stone called amber." History only arrived with Christianity. We know virtually nothing of the first millennium in the east. "In what is now Estonia, Latvia, northern Poland, and the former East Prussia, Christianity was imposed by force." Lithuania held out until 1387. However, pieces of paganism beliefs and rituals survived in the local cultures. Jews came to the east after their expulsions from the Mediterranean area and Western Europe. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth welcomed all to its wide open spaces. By 1600, it was considered the "Paradise of the Jews." Many Jews also found a home in the Ottoman Empire after Spain expelled them in 1492. Jews dominated, and prospered in the small towns of the east. By the closing decades of the 19th century, there were 5 million Jews in Russia's Pale of Settlement. The 14th century Ottoman invasion of the Balkans brought Islam to Eastern Europe. At the Ottomans high water mark, the Balkans were Muslim, as was most of Hungary and parts of Romania and Ukraine. 

                 "It was a region defined by being part-but never at the center-of empires." The Ottoman domination of the Balkans was a function of their superbly organized army and civic bureaucracy. They were "unrivaled masters of supply-chain logistics." They built magnificent roads and bridges, maintained meticulous records, efficiently collected taxes, and recruited for their army and bureaucracy. Another dominating empire was the Russians. Part of its Orthodox inheritance and experience as a victim of the Mongols was unitary rule. The Czar was in charge and did not have to deal with the many intermediaries that Western Europe considered normal. Moscow expanded east to Siberia, west to the Baltic, and as far south as they could against the Ottomans. They eventually dominated the Black Sea. By the time of the third partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, the empire stretched across the entire Eurasian landmass. The third empire was the Hapsburgs. Its realms were varied and diverse. It was once characterized as a "mildly centripetal agglutination of bewilderingly heterogenous elements." The ruling family was its only common thread, as it had no "shared language, religion or history."

               Eastern Europe was racially and linguistically diverse. In the west, states ensured that everyone spoke the same language and identified with their homeland. In the east, it was exactly the opposite. This hodgepodge of peoples also saw travelers criss crossing it because of wars on its periphery and its many transient groups, particularly the Roma. All of these complexities led to revolts in the 19th century as nationalism became a force in Eastern Europe. The Poles, Serbs, Greeks, Wallachians, Moldavians, Bosnians, Hungarians, and Bulgarians all tried to free themselves. What constituted a people deserving of independence was a common language. "Eastern European nationalists worshipped language." The nationalism within the Ottoman, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires would be the catalyst for the cataclysms of the twentieth century.

             Europe's Indian summer of peace and prosperity ended dramatically on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo. "For all of Eastern Europe's empires, regardless of which side they fought on, the war proved a death blow." The postwar years were "a time of profound crisis in Eastern Europe." In Ukraine and Poland, the war continued for another three years. The disparate peoples of the Balkans were put together in the conglomeration of Yugoslavia. Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria, losers in the war, lost vast amounts of territory. There was little if any political stability after the war. And soon the forces of fascism and communism were butting heads. Germany not only slaughtered Europe's Jews but also empowered local fascist allies to indiscriminately kill their enemies as well. Eastern Europe was the scene of endless death, deprivation and destruction. War's end, however, brought more sorrow as Stalinism descended over the region. "By 1950, all of Eastern Europe belonged to a single integrated social, political, and economic system." Communism rebuilt, albeit shabbily, the region. The housing, roads, city centers and factories were substandard. Stalin's 1953 death led to a somewhat lighter form of socialism throughout the east. It meant the end of feudalism and the concept of equality for all people. Of course, the total lack of freedom, the constant shortages of food, inadequate housing and cars, etc. led to the end of communism in Europe. When it collapsed, there was nothing that Gorbachev's USSR could do to save it. A few years later, Yugoslavia, cobbled together at Paris and held in place by Tito for decades, collapsed in civil war. "The shift from socialism to capitalism left deep scars across Eastern Europe." It took decades for easterners to be happy about their lives.  Eastern Europe was kind of a "ramshackle topic" where people coexisted, and today's Europe should "not lose sight of its promise."