The Long and Winding Road through Inner and Outer Trenches of Post-Soviet Europe

Two books, one by an Iranian-born German philosopher writer, another by a Polish reporter, create travelogues that shed a meaningful light on Poland and more or less adjacent countries and territories heavily tried by history and the present. Navid Kermani actually travels through Poland on his circuitous route through post-Soviet countries to the land of his birth, leaving us a thoughtful and quite readable travel diary, as the English publishers—the book is a translation from German—call it. Tomasz Grzywaczewski, the Polish journalist, specializes primarily in reportage travelogues, but more recently also in war correspondence.1 The book under review records his travels along the former, prewar border of the Second Polish Republic to meet the people who within their long lives recall something from that not so distant historical past, and the transformation of those lives and their environs from that time to the present. This naturally includes cutting through a part of contemporary Poland together with a number of its nearest neighboring countries.Navid Kermani is a writer of some renown and an Islamic scholar who lives in Cologne, Germany. Among his books are a novel that forms a frame for Along the Trenches: A Journey Through Eastern Europe to Isfahan, several books on religion, focusing primarily on Islam and both remaining major monotheistic religions, and a couple of books of reportage. Seven of his books have been translated into English by the reputable Polity Press, the book under review his latest one. He is certainly absorbed by the human condition and by humans themselves. It is difficult to keep track of all the people he talks to on his journey. They represent all walks of life: from the virtually anonymous to those with international reputations, like the poet Adam Zagajewski in Poland. He is also a writer who demonstrates a good deal of courage: among the countries he visits several are in the Caucasus, which as he informs the reader "is probably the only region in the world where you can drive through three different wars in two hours" (p. 164). Earlier along his route is also the Donbas with its ongoing hybrid war where he goes practically up to the front. These belong to the more contemporary quite open trenches he explores in his journey. On the other hand, he is a family man, ending the book with, among other matters, impressions from the four-week visit of his wife and daughter in Iran where they join him.In his acknowledgements for Along the Trenches he informs the reader that the idea for the journey was worked out together with an editor at Der Spiegel where a good many reports from the several trips that are sutured together in the book were originally published. Although over two thirds of the book is original, the funds he received for his reports made it possible to carry out the full journey. And what a journey it is. Unsurprisingly, despite his being an attentive traveler, the Iranian part is the most moving overall and proportionately takes up the most space. Concerning his daughter, he is nearly ecstatic her visit went so well, concluding she will now realize she has two countries. One can sense this partly pertains to Kermani himself. The question is when he was making his journey in the other countries, which of the two countries that form a good part of his consciousness was uppermost to a greater or lesser degree in affecting the perception of those he was visiting and attempting to understand?No doubt the readers from each of the different countries would make a slightly different assessment. Perhaps because it was the first country he visited, in Poland it would seem his perception was more that of a German than of an Iranian. This affected even his trip to Auschwitz. He made the point that despite coming initially from Iran, as a German writer the very language he encountered at the camp gave him a sense of complicity in what went on there. Activating this side of the sensitivity is, of course, to be commended.In various parts of Poland that different side of that same sensitivity could be a hindrance to attaining a deeper perspective of the country. Among other matters, a reader can perceive a particular "European" sensibility. Frank Furedi points out the patronizing stance of the EU toward East Central Europeans.2 This stance is undoubtedly present to no small extent in Germany, where undoubtedly for historical reasons many feel quite close to the transnational nature of the union, and look down at those who feel differently about it, such as the not uncommon perspective in Poland of a Europe of nations: also for historical reasons. Furedi sees this attitude of paternalism among others in the perception of the Law and Justice party, which had relatively recently formed the government in Poland when Kermani visited the country.3 This attitude is partly present in the author and leads him to attribute much he is critical of to the new government. For instance, Kermani seems not to understand the threat the Nord Stream 2 pipeline treaty Germany signed with a revanchist Russia poses to the country and attributes the comparison of the deal to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 to the Law and Justice Party, when it was labeled as such before the party came to power by Radosław Sikorski.4 Not to mention this accusation has gained substance with the Russian invasion of Ukraine not so long after Kermani's book was published.5To his credit Kermani does give supporters of the government some voice. Part of the more general problem is his not understanding that contemporary nationalism is not necessarily ethno-exclusive. And this is not just a question that concerns Poland in the region and caused him misunderstandings further on. In Poland this is the perspective on nationalism that can be glossed from some of the writings of Andrzej Walicki on the topic.6 The view even has its liberal supporters abroad like the Israeli scholar Yael Tamir, who points this out, stressing that "liberal nationalism does not ignore the role of identity and membership; hence it is inherently attentive to . . . the disadvantages with being a minority and seeks ways of ameliorating them."7 She optimistically adds that this project can overcome some of the failings of contemporary liberalism. Tamir has not received the attention she deserves for this stance.One of the more stirring parts of the journey is Kermani's stay in Sevastopol where he meets and reflects upon the fate of the Crimean Tatars as a minority under the new circumstances of Russian rule. Here one might say the Iranian in the author comes slightly to the fore. The Tatars in Poland are an even smaller minority. Among the public faces of the group is Selim Chazbijewicz, in the past an imam for Muslims in Gdańsk. In politics he sympathizes with the Law and Justice party because of its support for family values. Since 2017 he has been serving as an ambassador to Kazakhstan. He stresses the ability which the Tatars exhibited for centuries to enter into close relations with the Christian majority and develop internally.8 The above provides evidence that nationalism in Poland has an inclusive strain—even for some of those in "conservative" parties.Asked in an interview for a Catholic journal more or less at the time of Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe if he thought that the Islam that the Tatars in Poland practice is fairly moderate, Chazbijewicz went beyond the common assurances of the pacific nature of genuine Islam and admitted that Islam was in need of reform to be able to cope with the modern world, especially in the case of its fundamentalist strains.9 This is not so far from Kermani's attitude toward his faith that is implicit in his discussion of the situation in Iran. What apparently separates them most is their attitude toward nationalism. Chazbijewicz is certainly a patriot of his country.Kermani mentions Polish refugees in Iran during World War II, some of whom stayed in the country, including orphans in Isfahan, the city where he lived as a child and where he concludes his book. These refugees were largely from among the vast multitude of Poles who had been deported to the distant gulags from their homes under the Soviet occupation and were liberated by a treaty with the Polish government-in-exile after the Germans foolishly attacked their erstwhile ally.10 Not a few of the refugees who arrived in Iran must have been the civilians—approximately forty thousand by some counts11—who left the Soviet Union with General Władysław Anders' Army that had been allowed to form at the time, but was barely tolerated. This deportation was something of a prelude to the population transfers that occurred shortly after the war and among other things, as Kermani aptly notes, resulted in Wrocław, Lviv, and Vilnius becoming radically different cities.Travel reportage in Poland has a rich, arguably literary tradition going back most notably to Ryszard Kapuściński.12 Tomasz Grzywaczewski is an award-winning journalist specializing in this field. Among his books is Granice marzeń: O państwach nieuznawanych Dream borders: On unrecognized nation-states, 2018, which covers some of the same territory as Kermani's journeys, starting from Donbas during the ongoing hybrid war, and especially the Caucasus. He also included an account of his sojourn into Turkish Kurdistan, the Kurds being a people the Poles have considerable sympathy for, reminding them of where they were, for instance, during the Partitions in the nineteenth century. Thus, Wymazana granica: Śladami II Rzeczpospolitej Erased border: Traces of the Second Polish Republic is a thematic continuation of sorts, this time with the focus on a border that no longer exists. Instead of the largely current trenches of Kermani's book the author explores the buried trenches of memory: for Grzywaczewski the cultural aspect of borders people make and experience interests him most.In the European Union, borders are largely looked down upon by the Eurocrats and meritocracy. The French intellectual Pascal Bruckner defends them, stressing "the border is the condition for the exercise of democracy, it establishes a durable link between those sheltered within it and gives them a feeling of belonging to a common world."13 Things were not quite so simple in the Second Polish Republic where the border was drawn following a number of armed struggles once the country regained independence after World War I and was hardly ideal in a number of places. But it nevertheless did gain internal recognition for many—one of the reasons it was defended so valiantly if futilely by ethnic Poles and national or religious minorities in the country at the outbreak of the war. This, among other matters, makes Grzywaczewski's exploration of the oral history of the lands it divided and united so fecund.The borders of the independent Polish state bordered with Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the Soviet Union, Lithuania, and Latvia—for a time even with Hungary. After World War II and now after the Cold War, that same, now non-existing border runs through Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania up to the Latvian border, making its way back into Poland, finishing not all that far from Gdańsk, close to where it started, and near to where Grzywaczewski starts and ends his journey. At its onset, in a smaller center not too far from that major city he speaks with a Kaszub who remembers the Germans who lived in the vicinity before the war. Thus, the German population transfer is touched upon almost immediately. The same interlocutor speaks of the Poles from the Kresy who took their place and their initially bewildered state.In all of the countries, the towns and villages close to the former border are mostly small or not so significant, so the people the author speaks with are rarely known, such as is the case with at least some of Kermani's interlocutors. The only larger center on his route, where both authors visited, is Vilnius. Grzywaczewski does speak with a member of the small Polish community in the city, but he is more interested in the Polish pilgrims that annually visit the city to its renowned Marian shrine. If in the urban center most of the large population of Polish speakers were transferred to cities within the altered borders of the resultant Poland shortly after the war, that was not true of the countryside. The pilgrims are quite warmly welcomed by the Polish residents of the small villages along the way.Unsurprisingly there are individual Poles along the route where population transfers removed most of them, such as in Ukraine. Grzywaczewski meets with some of these, but he is not solely interested in them, often speaking with inhabitants who are now in their own countries. A Ukrainian he interviews who lived close to the border of the Soviet Union before the war remembers the difficulties in Poland but also acknowledges how much better their situation was than for their brethren on the other side of the border who suffered through the Holodomor, among other things. A Belorussian he speaks with was initially happy with the post-war communist regime but during his military service ended up in a tank that invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, and he quickly became disillusioned with the system upon discovering the falsity of the propaganda behind the invasion. A Lithuanian engineer who was involved with constructing a nuclear power station in the 1980s complains that the EU forced his country to dismantle it as part of the accession agreement. This was because of the Chernobyl disaster; the Union did not trust reactors built in the Soviet Union, but the engineer insists it had been modernized by that time and was quite safe.The interviews are generally provided with some manner of regional historical context, usually creating both a solid report and an engaging story. A good example is the Hutsul region in Ukraine. Grzywaczewski starts the pertinent chapter with a longer interview with an elderly Hutsul woman who has some Polish blood; she is actually a distant relative of Stanisław Vincenz, the author of the four volume saga, Na wysokiej połoninie: Obrazy, dumy i gawędy z Wierzchowiny Huculskiej On the High Uplands, the first volume of which was published before the war, the remaining ones in exile where he settled after he escaped from the then Soviet-occupied territory during the early part of the war.14 She warmly reminisces about the author and the interwar period, decrying how Polish-Ukrainian relations went sour during the war, and how terrible the post-war Soviet period was. The reader then meets a couple of other Hutsuls and, among other things, learns how the region was transformed and its tourist center slightly shifted from the popular mountain resort region before the war to a further off skiing and mountain hiking region at present. The chapter ends with a visit to a former observatory from before the war on a mountain in the region where currently mountain guides and rescuers stay or relax when they are on duty. We learn from one of them that the region was quite unprepared for all the tourists in the 1990s together with the rescue operations that were often required there, especially since the weather could suddenly change for the worse. The rescuer informs the Pole that his countrymen had helped considerably in preparing them for their mission and work. At the end of his stay at the station one of the rescuers there took Grzywaczewski to a nearby precipice. On its top was a small post marked "PL" with the date 1923. The post was one of the numerous Polish interwar border posts in the area. He informs the author that the post had at some point been cast down in the precipice, either during the war or perhaps afterwards. But when the mountain rescuers found it a while ago, they decided to put it back on top as a reminder of the history of the area. The Hutsul woman reported that Vincenz had often told them that they should love what is theirs but honor what belongs to others (p. 136). At this juncture at the edge of the precipice the Ukrainian mountain rescuers had honored a symbol of the Polish history that was a part of their region. That same honor for the "others" permeates Grzywaczewski's book.The various trenches recounted in Along the Trenches and Erased Border are quite deep in some places, offering little hope. Others, however, are fortunately slowly being bridged, as was evident after Russia invaded Ukraine which deeply affected Polish-Ukrainian relations. In either case the reports heighten our awareness of the trenches, for which the authors certainly deserve our gratitude.