A young friend of mine, who despairs of modern England, just sent me this message:
'I have realised that Eastern Europe is the future. You were ahead of the curve.'Yes it is and yes I was. I repeated her words to an American friend who has been here 25 years and he said,
I think she articulates well our raison d'être en Europe d'est. l went there looking to the past and now find myself facing the future.
I always imagined in the Cold War years that Eastern Europe would be much more congenial in almost every way than Western Europe and when I got here in 1990 (why did I delay?) I found that it was so, especially in Romania.
Lesley Chamberlain in her enjoyable 1990 book In the Communist Mirror said that she had always wanted to escape from conventional life but had no attraction to the counter-culture. In the last year or two of Communist Eastern Europe she found the escape she sought. For saying this she was roundly attacked by Norman Stone but I shared and share her attitude completely.
But now Romania, after being here 20 years, seems to me not only a much nicer and in many ways more civilised place to live than Western Europe but a very much more civilised place, a place with decent values, where people still think like human beings.
At university I chose at random Hungarian history to study (Eastern European history wasn't on the syllabus except one tenth of a question on the 1848 revolutions). A Romanian gypsy friend recently pointed out that I chose the only boring country in Eastern Europe. I have many Hungarian friends so I offer no gloss on this.
I shall say only that Romania is the most interesting country in Eastern Europe - or was. Perhaps now, thanks to rising living standards, membership of the EU, and the influence of Romanians who studied arts subjects in Western countries, it is less attractive than it was. Ukraine and Albania have probably overtaken Romania.
The future of Eastern Europe will be to lose many or even most of its best young people, who will emigrate to the West, while attracting in return emigrants from the West. This latter process has already began, although Hungary receives many more emigrants.
I called this blog 'A Political Refugee from the Global Village' as a sort of joke but I am not sure it is a joke any more, if it ever was.
Lesley Chamberlain in her enjoyable 1990 book In the Communist Mirror said that she had always wanted to escape from conventional life but had no attraction to the counter-culture. In the last year or two of Communist Eastern Europe she found the escape she sought. For saying this she was roundly attacked by Norman Stone but I shared and share her attitude completely.
But now Romania, after being here 20 years, seems to me not only a much nicer and in many ways more civilised place to live than Western Europe but a very much more civilised place, a place with decent values, where people still think like human beings.
At university I chose at random Hungarian history to study (Eastern European history wasn't on the syllabus except one tenth of a question on the 1848 revolutions). A Romanian gypsy friend recently pointed out that I chose the only boring country in Eastern Europe. I have many Hungarian friends so I offer no gloss on this.
I shall say only that Romania is the most interesting country in Eastern Europe - or was. Perhaps now, thanks to rising living standards, membership of the EU, and the influence of Romanians who studied arts subjects in Western countries, it is less attractive than it was. Ukraine and Albania have probably overtaken Romania.
The future of Eastern Europe will be to lose many or even most of its best young people, who will emigrate to the West, while attracting in return emigrants from the West. This latter process has already began, although Hungary receives many more emigrants.
I called this blog 'A Political Refugee from the Global Village' as a sort of joke but I am not sure it is a joke any more, if it ever was.
'I have realised that Eastern Europe is the future. You were ahead of the curve.'
ReplyDeleteUnless they leave the EU there’s no future for countries like Hungary, Czechia, Poland or Romania. The EU only have to keep up the pressure, wait for those soft nationalist governments to slip up, as all governments do, and a compliant opposition party is elected in. It’s just a waiting game for them. Then its back to the business plan: Soros allowed back in, gender studies courses re-opened, refugee rapers welcome back!
Russia as a non-member of the EU is an exception and has a freedom to forge a better path. But the other EU countries are sitting ducks. The priority is to mongrelise and Western Europe first but the rest are still on the conveyer. The EU thinks in the long term.
Russia has the freedom to forge a better path, with political assassinations, rampant corruption, widespread poverty despite the unrelenting materialism, military aggression, and of course, staunch atheist values. A true paradise! I assume you must be from the Republic of Moldova?
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