In Europe’s Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-year Journey through Romania and Beyond by Robert D. Kaplan (ISBN: 978-0-8129-8662-4) is a wide-ranging survey of Romanian history, focusing on the post-World War I XX century and the first decade or so of the XXI century. Kaplan has written and traveled widely, but is somewhat of a Romanian expert. He writes history as a travelogue, which provides an interesting narrative as he explains the history behind what is happening in modern-day Romania. Romania’s history, long intertwined with that of the European empires and the Ottoman Empire, plays a large role in what is happening today, especially because, according to Kaplan and many of the people he interviews, the same players are in the game. The European empires have been replaced by the European Union and Putin’s Russia. Romanians seem to recognize that they are still a borderland between these powerful entities. This is especially true because of Romania’s neighbors, Moldova, a place where there is a greater Russian influence and which is home to one of the many frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet sphere, and Ukraine, which recently became the latest casualty of Russia’s desire to keep things as unstable as possible on its periphery. Kaplan paints (and “paints” is the right word as he is a masterful writer, helping the reader see themselves there with him in dingy Communist hotels or on bright, lively Central European town squares) a picture of a Romania that has progressed a long way since the exciting fall of Communism in 1989, but still recognizes that there is room for further improvement. Kaplan’s Romania leans strongly to the West, but knows its past and is wary of the East, home to Russia, which is altogether too happy to meddle in Romanian affairs.
Although I had read Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts, I didn’t realize he was such a Romaniaphile. The Romnia-centric material in the book made it a little dry in places, but I found myself coming back to it again and again because I found it incredibly relevant to the current events of 2020, both in the U.S. and on the international stage. Early in the book, it was about the American experience and Kaplan’s defense of the individual. He had seen, up close and personal, how Communism destroys the individual in favor of a mass thinking alike. There is not room for dissent. As a borderland, Romania has long had struggles of an ethnic nature, and while that seems to be far from the case now, the lessons are worth learning: stifle the individual, enhance the groupthinking mass, and ethnic tension is almost a given. I also found his commentary on global culture reducing the importance of everything to be accurate. Finally, his take on Russia was brilliant: Putin seeks instability. Where this is instability and shadiness, Putin thrives, usually at the expense of the West. I have long posited that Russian foreign policy was simple: instability. He noted that although Russia used military power in Georgia and Ukraine, its political use of energy and great willingness to meddle in elections and politics made it a much greater threat, especially because those methods of fighting are harder to deal with in open, democratic societies. The book was well written and interesting, but one that is likely more appreciated by those interested in Romania first of all and Eastern Europe and Russia second.
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Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan (ISBN: 978-0-312-42493-0), is self-styled as a travelogue, but is more akin to a feature story in a national magazine on current affairs. Kaplan weaves his extensive travels and living experience in the region and the accompanying interviews and everyday events with historical perspective and the relevant biographical information pertaining to the important figures in the Balkans’ history, his “ghosts.” Kaplan’s definition of the Balkans is a bit wider than most Americans’, so not only the former Yugoslavia, but Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, too, are included in the discussion of this fascinating geographical region. Each country and each nation (ethnic group) has a few figures in its past who lived in such a way and made decisions in such a way as to continue to influence the way things are done and the way people think. With the exception of Greece, the Balkans also deal with a specter of a different type, the continued need to deal with the harsh consequences of communist dictatorships that broke people and destroyed countries immediately after the Nazis and fascism gave the same thing a whirl. It’s worth noting that the Nazis followed right on the heels of the Hapsburgs, who were, in most people’s estimation, better rulers than the succeeding ones, but on occasion no less ruthless. The great figures and great histories of the various peoples are presented with all the raw emotion that is associated with Balkanization, and Kaplan points out that since the histories are great, the people pick those moments when their histories were at an apex and claim that cultural, linguistic, and territorial summit as the way things should be now before any other discussions can be had. It puts them all in a hard place, but Kaplan argues that considering all the things these groups of people and these countries have been through, there’s really no way but up, although, as his reference to Shakespeare alludes to, it might be a painful process.