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 The European empires have been replaced by the European Union and Putin’s Russia.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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Dachau and the Nazi Terror: 1933–1945: Testimonies and Memoirs edited by Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (ISBN: 3-9808587-0-7) is a collection of memoirs written up by a variety of people who, in some way, experienced the Nazi concentration camps. The volume contains thoughts from a couple different German Jews, a member of the French resistance, American liberators, Jews from other parts of Europe, including Poland, what was then Czechoslovakia, and even the further-away Latvia. It was interesting to read the variety of experiences. The common denominators were that everyone, sooner or later, experienced the terror of the concentration camps and that the vast majority of those interred were there because of their ethnicity or because of their political beliefs. Other than the two short testimonies provided by American liberators, each of the former prisoners discussed the drudgery of prison life, the daily struggle for life that got harder and harder the longer the war dragged on, and extreme contrast between the brutality of so many and the kindness of a few soldiers and citizens who rose above the prevailing patterns of thought and behavior. It was interesting to read about the various commentators’ lives before and during the war, their varying degrees of commitment to their religious or political ideals, and their varied responses to life in the concentration camps.
Already eight years ago, Why Kosovo Still Matters by Denis MacShane (ISBN: 978-1-907822-39-1) was printed. At that time, Kosovo had only been independent for three short years, with many in the West wondering why this little country was such a focus for so many in government. The book gives a short history of Kosovo, but spends the bulk of its relatively few pages discussing the more modern history of the country from the fall of Yugoslavia to its troubled beginnings as an independent state. Kosovo faces a number of difficulties. Most are local, many having to do with the hostility of its neighbor and former overlord, Serbia. These are unlikely to subsist soon because of the large Serbian minority in Kosovo. Other problems exist because of the lack of support from the international community. In essence, Europe and the U.S. created the country, but the West has since then done what some perceive as a poor job at integrating the country into the West, which has left Serbia pretty free to meddle in the country it wishes had never been created. Serbia has a few allies in its efforts to keep Kosovo in a constant state of change. Some are more active than others in these efforts, but overall, only a little over half of UN members have recognized Kosovo’s independence. This situation makes it hard for the country to develop and for the people there to experience the benefits that independence and democracy are supposed to bring. The end of the book discusses a few ideas on how to move forward. Although it’s a little dated, some of the ideas being floated as ways to solve Kosovo’s troubles then are still being talked about, such as letting Serbia have the regions populated by a majority Serb population, but that is dismissed out of hand. The problems are best dealt with, according to MacShane, by accepting that both Kosovo and Serbia are going to be around and then moving forward with an eye to improving the lots of the people on both sides of the ethnic divide.
This Is Serbia Calling: Rock 'n' Roll Radio and Belgrade's Underground Resistance by Matthew Collin (ISBN: 1-85242-776-0), tells about a few of the people who tried to change the minds of Serbians during the war with Bosnia & Herzegovina. I found the very idea of someone going against what Serbia's ironically-named (his first named means free) despot, Slobodan Milošević, worth reading about. The book tells the story of how what is now Serbia's second-largest TV and radio station came to be, how it presented a constant message that went against the ultra-nationalist propaganda of the Serbian ruler. It was often a dangerous message, one that resulted in jail time, seized property, and the constant fear of death and beatings. Most of the radio station's personnel suffered only lightly, but others in the political opposition were murdered. B92 struggled to present a message that would galvanize the people of Serbia against the war, and once that was over, against the government that had brought so much trouble to their land. B92 was no great supporter of NATO or the West when they started bombing Serbia during the Serbian campaign in Kosovo, but mostly stayed on message as they continued to denounce the their corrupt president. They brought a message of hope and freedom to the people, which ultimately resulted in the people of Serbia taking to the streets and quickly, with minimal bloodshed, throwing Milošević out of power.
Blood and Vengeance: One Family’s Story of the War in Bosnia by Chuck Sudetic (ISBN: 978-0-393-33548-4) is, indeed, and incredible story. It follows one Bosniak (Muslim) family from the final few years of Yugoslavia through the end of the Bosnian War. The information about life in an obscure village on the border of Bosnia and Serbia serves a great purpos in the book; it sets up what life was like in so many places. Ethnic hatred simmered under the Communist cover of “brotherhood and unity.” When the lid provided by party was gone, it boiled over and escalated quickly. Based on personal interviews in the first few years after the war, the stories of fights, flights, bomb shelters, forced marches, and genocide are raw and personal. The Muslim villgers, chased from their homes, their neighbors floating face down in Bosnia’s famous Drina river, seek shelter in neighboring villages progressively farther and farther from the fields and dirt paths of their nativity before finally reaching Srebrenica, where many would meet their ultmate demise. Along the way, they face a very personal enemy, their former friends and neighbors. At Srebrenica, the Bosniaks think they have found relief since the UN has provided for them a safe zone. They soon find out that the realities of international policy are far from cut and dry, and the safe zone has little in common with the word “safe.” Here, Sudetic relies on articles, documents, and archive material, painting a picture of great power ineptitude. Eventually, the war comes to an end, but not without changing forever the lives of those involved, some, paradoxically, possibly for the better.
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.