[ARTICLE] More on the modern kresy
Dec. 7th, 2003 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldIn keeping with my previous post on the Polish east, an article from The Economist about that region's modern fate outside of the European Union.
Behind the crystal curtain
Oct 23rd 2003 | BREST, PSKOV AND UZHHOROD
From The Economist print edition
With the European Union opening its arms to ten new members, we look at the borderland that will remain just outside its embrace
IN THE fading daylight, the dumpy haystacks on the hillsides take on the look of an army of babushkas, brooding over the highway that rises from Uzhhorod into the Carpathians. As it winds up and over the gentle peaks, the air sharpens, and the grapevines and the lushness of the plains give way to the forests of birch that will run uninterrupted from there almost to the other side of the planet. It feels an appropriate place for Europe to end.
This has always been borderland. Trans-Carpathia has shifted between the clutches of half a dozen states. For a millennium, travellers from farther east have descended into Europe by this route. For a good part of the 20th century, when the Iron Curtain lay far to the west, the peoples of the region moved and mixed; in the towns near Ukraine's border, it is not unusual for a secretary in a local company to be fluent in Ukrainian, Russian, Hungarian and Slovak, as well as in English.
From next May, though, there will be a new hard line across the land (see map). When ten countries enter the European Union--Latvia, the last to hold a referendum, gave its nod on September 20th--the people in Ukrainian trans-Carpathia, along with those in the westernmost bits of Belarus and Russia, will find themselves once more on the wrong side of a border. And this time it will be one designed not to hold them in the grip of a regime, but to keep them out of the promised land that has welcomed erstwhile brother-nations. If these countries ever join the EU, it will not be for decades. Meanwhile, as if through a crystal curtain, they will see all too clearly how Europe sparkles compared with their own drab surroundings.
The rest of the article, plus a nice map.
Behind the crystal curtain
Oct 23rd 2003 | BREST, PSKOV AND UZHHOROD
From The Economist print edition
With the European Union opening its arms to ten new members, we look at the borderland that will remain just outside its embrace
IN THE fading daylight, the dumpy haystacks on the hillsides take on the look of an army of babushkas, brooding over the highway that rises from Uzhhorod into the Carpathians. As it winds up and over the gentle peaks, the air sharpens, and the grapevines and the lushness of the plains give way to the forests of birch that will run uninterrupted from there almost to the other side of the planet. It feels an appropriate place for Europe to end.
This has always been borderland. Trans-Carpathia has shifted between the clutches of half a dozen states. For a millennium, travellers from farther east have descended into Europe by this route. For a good part of the 20th century, when the Iron Curtain lay far to the west, the peoples of the region moved and mixed; in the towns near Ukraine's border, it is not unusual for a secretary in a local company to be fluent in Ukrainian, Russian, Hungarian and Slovak, as well as in English.
From next May, though, there will be a new hard line across the land (see map). When ten countries enter the European Union--Latvia, the last to hold a referendum, gave its nod on September 20th--the people in Ukrainian trans-Carpathia, along with those in the westernmost bits of Belarus and Russia, will find themselves once more on the wrong side of a border. And this time it will be one designed not to hold them in the grip of a regime, but to keep them out of the promised land that has welcomed erstwhile brother-nations. If these countries ever join the EU, it will not be for decades. Meanwhile, as if through a crystal curtain, they will see all too clearly how Europe sparkles compared with their own drab surroundings.
The rest of the article, plus a nice map.
