Back on the bloc
A Polish writer finds poignant tales in places where locals pine for the days of communist rule.
My local paper has a columnist who regularly laments the passing of the Good Old Days. He actually uses the phrase; I want to smack his leg.
I suspect the GODs seem G partly because they represent the Ds before we
were O. They also represent the times that we helped shape. Naturally, we want that shaping to be approved, so any subsequent change to it is a jolt and an implied reproach.
In eastern, once-communist Europe, the Good Old Days haven’t just passed. They’ve been dismissed, mocked, demonised. In this pithy, often poignant set of close-ups, Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski examines the effect of such tectonic upheavals on people who served and even worshipped a god that failed.
Not just people. His title isn’t only metaphorical. The book’s first section is a singular study of the bears that, in Bulgaria especially, were trained as street performers by gypsies and/or workers on state collectives who found themselves unemployed when such farms went
under. The animals were taught to imitate gymnasts, weightlifters and footballers faking an injury and were rewarded with candy and fruit brandy.
When ex-communist states sought admission to the EU, the practice was abruptly banned. Bears were disposed of in the woods or sent to wildlife refuges. Suddenly, they were free. Many became depressed and bewildered, purposeless and resentful. So, as Szabłowski segues neatly enough into the second part of his story, did a lot of humans in associated lands.
Hitchhiking through Kosovo, smuggling in Ukraine, talking to everyone everywhere, the thirtysomething assembles transcripts, analyses attitudes, withholds judgments. In Albania, he meets Djoni, who blows up the old regime’s bunkers as a second job.
In the author’s native country, a shoddy mock-Hobbit village is one place to make a semi-living. (Gollum smokes Marlboros.) Georgia brings Tatiana’s anguish at how people “badmouth our darling Stalin”. Belgrade means a tour group following the route of fleeing war criminal Radovan Karadžić while locals shout at them. We’re even whisked to Cuba, where the faithful fear a decline into capitalist frivolity and “McRevolution”.
There’s a lot of such fear. Unemployment is a constant drumbeat; meet the real precariat. Democracy is dangerous: “empty promises are made, wrapped in shiny paper”. People see themselves as living in a “freedom research lab”, where change unsettles and threatens. It’s not only the shock of the new – it’s the contemptuous insult of the new.
Szabłowski makes you feel for these unhappy, confused, essentially decent people, even as you and he sometimes struggle to comprehend them. But I still want to smack the leg of that columnist. DANCING BEARS: True Stories About Longing for the Old Days, by Witold Szabłowski (Text, $38)