 AP Photo Twenty years on, a large swath of the world remains locked behind the Iron Curtain. In many places, the Berlin Wall never went away. From the Caucasus to the 'stans of Central Asia, wherever Moscow's corrupting and brutish influence hasn't faded, nothing much has changed. For still others, those Eastern Europeans who perforce learned to love their decades of captivity and felt lost without it, the Wall's memory has become a kind inner shrine to prelapsarian longings. It's amazing how indiscriminately the mind will idealize the past--against all evidence. No doubt cargo cults regret the day they discovered that airplanes were not messengers of the gods.
Some five years ago I embarked on a book about Eastern Europe. For upward of a year I trekked from Tbilisi to Sofia to Kiev and... TAGGED: Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Moscow, Berlin, Tbilisi, Central Asia, Caucasus, Viktor Yushchenko, Kiev, Bulgaria, Sofia, Michael Meyer, Miklos NemethRECOMMENDED ARTICLES| When the eight states that now constitute Central Asia and the Caucasus freed themselves from the grip of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was perhaps inevitable that outside powers would rush to fill the vacuum. Of the eight at... more ›› |
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