This was the first of two books I read by American conservative journalist Robert Kaplan. It is far and away a superior piece of work than “Soldiers of God” his account of 1980s Afghanistan. Kaplan himself later admitted that he lost his senses of balance, such was his identification with the mujahadeen. His strong anti-communist beliefs coloured his view of the conflict in Afghanistan.
His 1993 book “Balkan Ghosts” which examines another part of the “Evil Empire” is however much more nuanced, refusing to submit to stereotypes of good guys and bad guys. Kaplan also deserves great credit for realising that he, as an outsider, can’t understand everything. Once, while arguing with an elderly Croat monsignor about the church’s collaboration with the Nazis, he imagines the old man’s thoughts:
“You have no idea what it was like here during World War 2. It is so easy for you to come from America, where nothing bad ever happens, and to judge us. But you are not superior. Beware of your judgments!”
We don’t know if this is actually what the priest is thinking. Nevertheless it shows that Kaplan is aware that he, as an American baby-boomer, has had a much easier life than the monsignor who has lived under tyrannies of both left and right in his time.
The book describes his travels as an ambitious young journalist through Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece in the 1980s. It’s easy to forget now, when places like Sarajevo, Belgrade and Pristina are known throughout the world, just how overlooked this part of the world once was. If the west cared about the world beyond the Iron Curtain at all then it was Poland, in the heyday of Solidarity, which took the lion’s share of attention.
The world Kaplan observes is best described as being on the brink of the brink of collapse. There seems little sense of imminent catastrophe in the Balkans of the 1980s but there is a feeling that change is coming and that, when it does, it won’t be pretty. In what was not yet “the former Yugoslavia” Kaplan bravely avoids the complacency of the time about the prospects for the country. Long before other outsiders realised, Kaplan sees the old ethnic hatreds re-emerging from 40 years of deep freeze. In late 1989, as the rest of the world looks on agog at the revolution in Berlin, Kaplan has a front row seat for the real future of Europe. As he sits on his hotel balcony in Pristina he watches Serb police and Albanian protestors do battle. One day of course, fists and truncheons will give way to tanks and planes.
Kaplan, like all good travel writers, is a fine observer of the human subject. This is what makes the section on Bulgaria so interesting. On his first visit to Sofia in 1981 he meets journalist Guillermo:
“He wore a black beret, a shapeless overcoat, and sneakers. I remember how he sweated around his lips and his eyes. He was in late middle age but had the hungry, ambitious look of a young man.”
Guillermo immediately takes the young Kaplan under his wing. He is an engaging character; well-travelled and well read, an unconvincing communist, a half-hearted Bulgarian nationalist.
At first Guillermo defends the communist party to the sceptical Reaganite but eventually he trusts him enough to tell him the truth. In 1964 his best friend was sent into internal exile on trumped up charges. Guillermo’s refusal to condemn him at a Party meeting costs him any chance of promotion. It is only years later that he is “forgiven” for defending his friend. This is why in 1981 Guillermo “had the hungry, ambitious young man”. He is making up for lost time.
This is a wonderfully evocative story. Guillermo’s suffering is trivial compared to those marched off to the gulags or executed by the secret police. However, there is something about his treatment, something in its pettiness, which is typical of authoritarian regimes all over the world.
The sections on endangered communities are particularly resonant given the ethnic cleansing which was soon to follow. In Kosovo Kaplan meets bitter and determined Serbs spitting out hatred of the surrounding Albanians. Even the nuns are not immune: “I’m a good Christian, but I’ll not turn the other cheek if some Albanian plucks out the eye of a fellow Serb” says one. War is in the air and the Serb attitude seems to be, kill or be killed.
Meanwhile in Romania the German-speaking Saxon community feels much less attachment to their land. The young have given up on life in Romania and look forward to the day when they can leave for a better life in Germany:
“Just Gypsies here now…But you know, in Germany, the Germans will call me a Gypsy because I am from here. I don’t care. I just want to work, to make real money, to have a car, a washer, a video, yes…”
In this part of the world where land and territory are so important, one is struck by the lack of sentimentality in this quote. Kaplan laments the death of the Saxon community in Romania. Hard-working, educated and bourgeois, they are an American conservative’s dream. Yet, just when they are most needed to help Romania become a modern country, they leave.
I can’t really think of a satisfactory way to end what I’ll admit has been a rambling review so I’ll just quote from C L Sulzberger’s “A Long Row of Candles” as quoted at the start of Kaplan’s book:
“The Balkans, which in Turkish means “mountains” run roughly from the Danube to the Dardanelles, from Istria to Istanbul, and is a term for the little lands of Hungary, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and part of Turkey, although neither Hungarian nor Greek welcomes inclusion in the label. It is, or was, a gay peninsula filled with sprightly people who ate peppered foods, drank strong liquors, wore flamboyant clothes, loved and murdered easily and had a splendid talent for starting wars. Less imaginative westerners looked down on them with secret envy, sniffing at their royalty, scoffing at their pretensions, and fearing their savage terrorists. Karl Marx called them “ethnic trash.” I, as a footloose youngster in my twenties, adored them.”