Just before the Berlin Wall came down I was working in Hungary - teaching English to students from The Technical University of Budapest. One evening, I was walking through the city with Ferenc - one of the students. We came to a small marketplace and I noticed twenty or so people in a row holding various items in their hands - batteries, combs, bottles of shampoo, hair slides, screwdrivers etc.. Their arms were extended and they were calling out. It was clear that they were trying to sell these items. It was like a market without tables or stalls.
I asked Ferenc what was going on and he said, "Oh, they are Poles!" Later he explained that they were very used to seeing Poles in Hungary - rather desperate people trying to get their feet on the economic ladder in Budapest. A couple of weeks later, near the southern border of the country I came across a similar "market" but here the sellers were Romanian.
These experiences illustrated that, in terms of identity and belonging, central Europe is not at all like England. As history has marched on, the borders of central Europe have been pretty fluid. There are ethnic Hungarians living in Romania and ethnic Romanians and Poles living in Hungary. It is a complex web of languages and cultures, not necessarily defined by the borders we find in modern atlases
It might be convenient to see a cartoon picture in our minds in which the evil tyrant Putin marches into Ukraine to steal land on behalf of his renewed version of The Soviet Union but maybe it's not quite as simple as that. I'm just sayin'.
I have just finished reading 'The Beekeeper of Aleppo'. such a beautiful book, had me in tears a couple of times. All about a couple from Aleppo trying to get to England. It has changed my view of asylum seekers.
ReplyDeleteBriony
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I bought that book for my older brother's girlfriend last Christmas. Sounds like I would enjoy it myself. Thanks for calling by again Briony.
DeleteOur view of Ukraine from the west is rather superficial but war is not the way to correct problem areas. And now Poland...
ReplyDeleteJaw-Jaw not War-War.
DeletePeople in the US and Canada, mostly speak English, but we have very distinct cultures. Language is only part of the equation but Putin is too stupid to understand that, or else he prefers to use stupid analogies to convince others and spare them the work of thinking for themselves. Two Russian rockets landed in Poland today. Now what?
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point. Language isn't everything. Identity is more subtle than that. Two rockets in Poland. It's very provocative indeed. Russia should have been keeping its targets well away from N.A.T.O. territory.
DeleteTravel widens one's knowledge. You seem to have traveled quite a bit in your teaching career. I relish your knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could have travelled more but I did okay.
DeleteNone of this is simple. You start with people selling things on the street. They are trying to better their lives. What happens when a large group wants to benefit themselves and they beat up on another group? My ancestors came from Russia, Ukraine and Poland. In the 100 years they lived in that area the borders often changed. Then they got the idea to go to North America!
ReplyDeletePart of their reason for leaving was surely to escape all that bitterness and complexity and start a new life on a blank page.
DeleteMy partners late grandmother died not long ago at a very advanced age. She was originally from Kiev, as she said it. The last conversation I had with her was about the ethnic makeup of her family. She told me they were either Slavs or Poles. The Slavs and the Poles got on well but the Slavs hated the Russ. The Poles got on with the Russ okay, but for the most part, hated the Slaves. It created problems within the family when a couple of the sisters, and an aunt, married Slavic lads. They got past the dissent by immigrating to Canada.
ReplyDeleteThis illustrates perfectly the tangled nature of the social and ethnic web that is central Europe.
DeleteI take it "Oblast" means the same as County or District, similar to suburbs within a city. Ukraine is quite a bit larger than I first imagined when the war broke out, before that I never gave it much thought.
ReplyDeleteNor me. It was far away but now it seems very close.
DeleteMy favourite physio therapist is Hungarian. Eszter and her husband have been living in Germany for many years now, and she is fluent in German. When the Ukraine war started, she told me that she couldn't bear how the German media portrayed Ukraine almost as a country made of saints, of people who could do no wrong, and how refugees from there were given extra special treatment and were made very welcome. She said that Hungarians (and other foreigners) who went to Ukraine for work were often mistreated and made anything but welcome.
ReplyDeletePeople are people everywhere, and where feelings of patriotism take over the general humane-ness, things can get really nasty.
Of course Germany knows the truth of that better than most.
DeleteDid Vladimir Putin pay you for this post?
ReplyDelete(Just kidding. I think.)
Seriously, I struggle with borders and identities in general. It seems like an awful lot of the world's strife could be solved if we could stop thinking in terms of "us" and "them." It's hard-wired into our biology but aren't we smart enough to overcome it? (John Lennon said it before me.)
I was sitting by a campfire at The Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. There was a somewhat older fellow there. I asked him, "Where are you from?" and I have always remembered his reply... "I am an Earthling".
Delete"I am an Earthling" I am adopting that right now.
DeleteWe have a distinct advantage, unfortunately Brexiteers have grabbed this one, is that we are independent of the great land mass that is Europe. Territorial manoeuvring is as old as history. Russia wants to increase its power, Europe is in a devil of a position in having to defend. The rockets that killed two people in Poland may have been an error on either side of the war lines.
ReplyDeleteWe have our moat...
DeleteThis precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands
I often think of our post World War II divisions of land and how much trouble that has brought the world over the years. Most of the turmoil since has been due to different cultures stuck within the same artificial boundary.
ReplyDeleteI've been pondering a bit in recent days as Ukrainian soldiers make their way east into those regions with dominate Russian language. The video clips make it seem as if they are very elated to be back under Ukrainian control but I wonder if those are only the minority who speak Ukrainian. Regardless of the answer, it is their problem to figure out.
While most in the US speak English, not all of us sound the same; region to region we say things in a different way and pronounce words differently.
ReplyDeleteI have been told I sound "New York" and have yet to figure that out.
A lot of the land locked countries have changed their boundaries over the years. Bratislava was once in Hungary for example.
ReplyDelete