At the Fence of Metternich's Garden. Mykola Riabchuk
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like many other European cultural projects, twists between the apparent task—to support the political integration of the EU (ostensibly represented as ‘Europe’) by a cultural and spiritual pillar, and the hidden desire—to represent this particular goal as universalistic and inclusive. ‘Fortress Europe’ is a reality, which will not be dismantled in the foreseeable future since it corresponds to how the world (world-economy) is arranged. People within the fortress will certainly benefit from political integration, and the fortress itself will be certainly more competitive and secure against internal and external challenges. And common culture and spirituality would indeed be of some help, both internally and externally. This does not mean, however, that without all these cultural and spiritual extras the solidarity within the fortress would perish, because the economy, as the Euro-idealists contend, is not able alone to keep the necessary social cohesion. It looks more likely that the barbecue in the backyard and the hungry faces behind the fence would facilitate the social cohesion and solidarity of the barbecue-makers fairy well. Of course, a good politics is desirable to make the backyard more secure; and a good culture would undoubtedly improve the internal climate and international PR.
But the whole story seems to be primarily about the barbecue in a cozy garden and throngs of aliens forcing their way in. At least, this is how the majority of outsiders would interpret the ambiguous notion of ‘European solidarity’: “This solidarity must be stronger than the universal solidarity, which human beings (should) feel for other human beings, for example when they give humanitarian aid”. Eurocentrism looms large in these words of the rapporteurs and there is probably nothing wrong with that—as long as we recognize that all peoples are equal but values are not, and as far as Europeans themselves are firmly committed to their professed values.
Whatever nice words intellectuals may say about cultural interaction along the borders, for the majority of Europeans their external borders are primarily a source of security threats rather than of cultural exchange and enrichment. The reason for this is simple: “The existence of a social security system implies that there is a defined space in which people can earn benefits … Many people express the idea that migrants are essentially coming to profit from the social security system to which they have not contributed and have no right; these people conclude therefore that they should be excluded by strongly defended clearly demarcated frontiers” [Hübner 2001: 28–29].
Three years ago [in 2004], on the eve of the “big-bang” EU enlargement, I happened to look through international newspapers that covered the forthcoming historic event. Virtually every second report resembled a war communiqué—a direct report from the frontline:
Dorohusk, Poland—The message here at this gleaming border post overlooking the thickly forest banks of the Bug River is that Poland is ready.
Inside a spotless weapon room is a rack of snub-nosed Glauberyt automatic pistols, a Polish version of the famous Uzi. There are 9-millimeter pistols, boxes of bullets, two submachine guns and night vision goggles inside green canvas kits.
Outside is a Land Rover, motorcycles and two dogs trained to follow tracks in the woods. Not seen, but also available to protect this stretch of the 327-mile border between Poland and Ukraine, are snowmobiles, a helicopter and a patrol plane (…)
“There was a belief that hordes of illegal migrants are waiting outside our borders and that our controls were inefficient,” said Jan Truszczyński, Poland’s chief European Union negotiator (The New York Times, 25 April 2004).
The sample comes from the respectable New York Times read throughout the world, and it represents rather a typical than an exceptional way of addressing the issue—here is, for comparison, a twin-article from the British Observer cooked apparently by the same recipe:
Come May Day, the edge of the edge of Europe … Here [at the little village of Horodlo] is the easternmost point of a new 2,400-mile frontier of the European Union …
Springtime is stirring in the little park in Horodlo and in the Sparrow pub, to which Darek and Monika have returned from Warsaw, hoping the frontier will mean new business. “They’re bringing in 40 extra policemen just for our little village,” says Monika, “to add to the two we have at the moment. And that’s in addition to the border guards.”
“They’ve been chasing out the Ukrainians,” says Janusz who keeps the mini-market, “because the Ukrainians bring in smuggled cigarettes to sell for two zlotys (28p), while we have to sell them for five. Now people will have to come to us for a smoke.”
The border of the new EU is both porous and harsh. Upriver, what they call the new ‘Velvet Curtain’ is being drawn, on Brussels insistence—a necklace of new guard posts manned by thousands of newly recruited armed men (Observer, 18 April 2004).
From such reporting, very few readers would ever guess that the above-mentioned “edge of the edge of Europe” is located in fact a hundred kilometers east of Europe’s geographic center, and that the eastern border of Europe is located some three thousand kilometers east of this mythical “edge of the edge”—a bit further than the western border in Portugal. But geography is not the main victim of this reporting. Who are the people who inhabit that empty space—three thousand kilometers of the ‘Wild East’? Would the reader ever imagine that the human beings on the other side of the border, behind the “edge of the edge” live quite a normal life and have many businesses besides smuggling cigarettes and challenging European Land Rovers, helicopters and snowmobiles, let alone a Polish version of the Uzi and Central East European dogs trained to follow tracks in the woods? Some of those easterners, one wouldn’t believe, build aircraft and teach students, translate European poetry and conduct symphonic orchestras, and most of them have typically one head and two eyes, and move mostly vertically on their two legs. All of them, however, are treated as underdogs, an inferior East European race of smugglers and prostitutes eager to sneak into the European garden for a free barbecue. Just try to enter any West European consulate with a Ukrainian passport and you will feel the superiority of the pettiest official who knows in advance that you are not a writer, not a scholar, not a journalist but just human trash like everybody else in this land, just one more trickster striving to blunt the officials’ vigilance and bypass the fence.
Honest journalism would certainly try to present the other side of the coin, however catchy and marketable the first, outer side might be. So far, only the Polish mass media care about balanced reporting on the ‘new neighborhood’ and, not surprisingly, it is primarily Polish politicians who treat their eastern neighbors, in most cases, honestly and coherently. They never avoid hot issues (and there are quite a few hot issues between Poland and Ukraine, many more than elsewhere in Europe). But they do not refrain from good words about the diligence of Ukrainian agricultural workers—even if they work illegally; they do not blame Ukrainian teachers in remote Polish villages for the country’s high unemployment; and they do not reduce eastern aliens to the caricature images of The New York Times—perhaps because they know that the neighborhood is not just about a chasing Ukrainians out with Polish versions of the Uzi and smart dogs trained to follow tracks in the woods:
The Ukrainian tourist is a guest who is very much awaited in Poland [Polish radio quotes a government official]. Today we have almost 2m tourists from Ukraine, tourists who come to our country above all for rest. This is a prosperous tourist, a tourist who spends relatively a lot of money in Poland. Zakopane [leading southern mountain resort] and the south of Poland today in great measure live from Ukrainian tourists. But Ukrainian tourists ever more frequently come to the Polish coast, to the Tri-City (Polish Radio 1, 30 June 2005).
As a matter of fact, serious studies reveal today [2007] that only 6% of Ukrainians express intention to emigrate, and only 13% have valid international passports—a far cry from a mass exodus from an impoverished country [Konieczna 2004: 3–5].1 Again, the poverty in Ukraine is a very relative notion (if compared with Africa or South Asia). A nominal average salary in Ukraine of $112 a month is in fact—in adjusted purchasing capacity—five times higher. In practical terms it means that an inhabitant of Kyiv, where the average salary is $400–$600 a month, can afford more or less the same standard set of goods and services as an inhabitant