Tim Judah has another longer
piece on the Ukrainian conflict in the NYRB (“Ukraine: Inside the Deadlock”). A
most seasoned war reporter, he this time asks a somewhat naïve question: “It is baffling … why the Ukrainian government has not sought to win over the
easterners by trying to send them its own aid convoys, even if the rebels
prevented them from crossing into their territory. To ordinary people in the
east it looks like Kiev does not care much about them and considers them the
enemy.” Could it be that the volksgeist
on both sides includes such communally biased attributions? In any case, this
is a predisposition which will forever mystify cosmopolitan intellectuals – who
can hardly understand how “weird” their own perspective may seem. Ironically,
100 years ago British observers had no problem understanding such mutual
animosities among the squabbling “races” of the Balkans – and Eastern Europe in
general.
