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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
74September/October 2015
INTERNATIONAL Ukraine
C
ROSSING from Slovakia into
Trans-Carpathian Ukraine at
the Çop junction, trains from
the West halt in deference to
the different rail gauges used
on the other side. Stalin contrived this
to prevent easy entry for invading
armies; or escape. Crossing the frontier
into the former Soviet Union might
instil a little trepidation even into a sea-
soned traveller.
An illuminating mural in the cavern-
ous train station depicts heroic scenes
of triumphant Socialism. Trains that
retain wooden benches recall another
age. I knew I had left a rapidly converg-
ing Europe when the conductor
smilingly declined payment after I pre-
sented too large a denomination.
I was among three other visitors to
Ukraine arriving by train from Slova-
kia, although a border guard told me
frequent car trips are made to avail of
cheap petrol. The frustration of waiting
on a windowless, stationary carriage
– akin to a panelled sardine tin – during
a heatwave was offset by the friendli-
ness of customs officials who simply
checked for contraband medicines. No
visa is required for EU visitors but the
continued low-level warfare in the fara-
way east is deterring visitors despite a
favourable Euro to Hryvnia exchange
rate.
Borders are often a legacy of ancient
battles or coincide with impassable
mountain ranges or rivers that deterred
conquest and absorption. A change in
topography often gives rise to socio-
economic boundaries; shifts from
upland, semi-nomadic pastoralism to
settled arable land bringing larger set-
tlements: different political regimes and
ethnic compositions may arise.
But twentieth-century Europe
brought more artificial borders imposed
by distant remote peace treaties or later
omnipotent Superpowers, and saw the
decline of multi-ethnic empires. Thus
Hungary was reduced from one part of a
dual empire (the Austro-Hungarian) to a
disgruntled rump that ruefully surveys
its over two million ethnic brethren in
neighbouring countries. The hated
Treaty of Trianon after World War I was
reflected in that country’s alignment
with Nazi Germany during World War
II. Revanchist Hungary remains a
potential source of instability.
There is no obvious difference in ter-
rain between Trans-Carpathian
Ukraine and eastern Slovakia, and the
region contains a sizeable Hungarian
minority. Yet as one travels into the sur-
rounding countryside a different
agriculture becomes apparent from the
ubiquitous cash crop of maize on the
Slovak side to traditional hay stacks in
Ukraine gathered as of old with scythe
and pitch fork. Since the twentieth cen-
tury, political frontiers have acted like
natural boundaries accentuating pat-
terns of development.
In Eastern Europe north of the Bal-
kans, the legacy of Soviet victory in
World War II remains largely intact.
Apart from the amicable separation of
Czech Republic from Slovakia in
the frontiers are unchanged. The recent
land grab by Russia of Crimea and
incursion of irregular troops into
Donetsk may herald a more turbulent
phase in European history. Borders
rarely shift without an accompanying
tide of blood, even more perilous in an
era of mutually assured destruction.
The most dramatic legacy of World
War II was Poland’s westward shift, for-
cibly ceding significant territory to the
Soviet Union in return for large swathes
of eastern Germany. Millions of Poles
were removed from their ancestral
homes and re-located in the west.
Among the territory lost was the his-
toric city of Lviv (Lvov to Poles) to
Ukraine. It contained an inter-war pop-
ulation two-thirds Polish. Lviv is now
almost entirely Ukrainian although
reminders of the Polish period include a
statue to their national poet Adam
Mickiewicz, who was actually born in
Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
Lvov was annexed by the Austrian
Hapsburg Empire (and re-named Lem-
berg) in , in the first Partition of
Poland, becoming capital of Galicia
which was the poorest province of the
Empire. But this period left a remarka-
ble architectural legacy that prompted
UNESCO to designate the historic centre
Where the EU is a force for division. By Frank Armstrong
Europe’s angry Ukranian frontier
The ubiquitous
cash crop of
maize on the
Slovak side
gave way to
traditional
hay stacks
in Ukraine,
gathered as
of old with
scythe and
pitch fork
“
lively, lovely Lviv
September/October 2015 75
as “World Heritage”.
Today Lvov is relatively prosperous,
drawing a large number of tourists from
neighbouring Poland. Predictably the
old city is fringed by a swathe of func-
tionalist Soviet-era apartment blocks,
but it retains an abundance of old world
charm and the hum of cafés that spill
onto carless streets.
There are nonetheless signs of a coun-
try at war with stands erected by the Far
Right Svoboda Party supporting the war
effort and offensive toilet roll featuring
a picture of Vladimir Putin available in
souvenir shops. I spoke to one women of
student age who railed against a terror-
ist, separatist threat to the integrity of
the state. She could have been mistaken
for someone referring to the existential
threat posed by ‘enemies of the people’
in Soviet times. The uncompromising
language of extremism is unmistakable.
The demise of the archaic, multina-
tional Hapsburg Empire after World
War I might be seen as the death knell
for so-called Mitteleuropa. Most succes-
sor states that emerged in the Versailles
settlement were inspired by a national-
ist vision promoting a single culture,
and hostile to diversity within the con-
fines of the state. In contrast during the
imperial era cities at least were a mosaic
of religious and linguistic groups.
The population of ethnically varie-
gated Mitteleuropa was particularly
unsuited to the identification of a nation
with a single state that reached a violent
apotheosis with the Nazi ideology of the
master race.
Transnational Jewry were the most
obvious victims but anti-Semitism was
not limited to the Nazis, continuing into
the Cold War-era: as late as the s
thousands of Jews fled Poland in the
wake of a number of purges.
Jews had flocked to Poland in great
numbers at the end of the Middle Ages
due to the tolerance shown there com-
pared with in the rest of Europe. It
became known as paradisus Iudaeorum
(paradise for the Jews) and contained
two thirds of the continent’s Jewish pop-
ulation. Great centres of learning were
establish in cities including Lvov, and
agrarian settlements known as shtetl
that contained many layers of Jewish life
dotted the countryside. There Yiddish, a
Germanic language written in Hebrew
script, found its highest expression.
The writings of Joseph Roth (-
) recall the extraordinary cultural
diversity of the Austro-Hungarian
Hapsburg Empire. Born a Jew in the city
of Brody near Lviv in the province of
Galicia, The Radetzky March is a paean
to the fallibility of that Empire; his jour-
nalistic account of Eastern European
Jews, ‘The Wandering Jews’, remains a
valuable insight into the remarkable
diversity and colour of the Jewish
populace.
Roth despised the numerous frontiers
erected in his lifetime, that impeded his
passage and that of many others
throughout Europe. He wrote “a human
life nowadays hangs from a passport as
it once used to hang by the fabled
thread. The scissors once wielded by the
Fates have come into the possession of
consulates, embassies and plain clothes
men”. The possession of a particular
passport at that time was indeed a
matter of life or death.
A melancholic alcoholic, Roth com-
mitted suicide in Paris in just
before the Europe he knew was con-
sumed by the fires of hatred.
The Versailles settlement also created
what now seems the curious state of
Czechoslovakia, stretching almost a
thousand miles from east to west, as a
homeland for Czechs, Slovaks and
Ukrainians (or Rusyns as they were then
known), but also containing large and
disgruntled German and Hungarian
minorities.
In the aftermath of the Munich Agree-
ment of which dismembered that
country, the far eastern province of
Ruthenia containing most of that
Ukrainian population was annexed by
Hungary, but was transferred to
Ukraine itself after the arrival of the
Red Army in .
The First Czechoslovak Republic was
a microcosm of the Hapsburg Empire
with republican institutions. Although
clearly dominated by its Czech constitu-
ent, many of its first leaders such as
Thomas Masaryk were socially progres-
sive, and eschewed narrow-minded
nationalism.
It is perhaps Europe’s tragedy that his
vision of a multi-ethnic democratic state
did not endure.
The Europe of Joseph Roth and
Thomas Masarky was torn asunder by
the twin hydras of Nazism and Stalin-
ism. Ironically one of the groups that
suffered most was the German popula-
tions who were forced out of their
ancestral lands across Eastern Europe,
many thousands perishing in the
process.
Europe is the poorer for the homoge-
neity of many states.
Perhaps the arrival of the idea of a
political and cultural Europe might gen-
erate a more accommodating reaction to
minorities, but unfortunately attitudes
in Ukraine suggest the idea of Europe
itself can be exclusionary, as if humans
feel the need to find an oppositional
Other.
This exclusionary idea of Europe is
not limited to Ukraine as vociferous
Hungary and several nearby states also
identify enemies within. The Romany
people remain a pitiable underclass in
most places they live.
Latterly migrants fleeing political
turmoil in the Middle East have been
greeted by barbed wire fences on the
Hungarian border.
We have yet to reach an epoch when
cultural diversity is seen as a boon. It
would be tragic if the political idea of a
Europe, a response to the conflagrations
of the early twentieth century could
become the case of further conict. •
The uncomp-
romising language
of extremism is
unmistakeable
“
Çop railway station
