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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN November 28, 2004 Issue 
Wild East: Stories from the Last Frontier A collection of short stories edited by Boris Fishman Random House Trade Paperback, 2004 
Counting
Our Blessings It seems it was only yesterday that we watched on television the dramatic dissolution of communism - one moment invincible and the next moment dissolving into nothingness. We watched people dancing on the Berlin Wall where just weeks before those trying to escape were gunned down; we watched the candlelight protests in the squares of Prague, Sofia, and Bucharest and waited for the Soviet tanks to come. But there were no tanks. Within a short time communism lay in ruins and spirits ran high with thoughts of democracy for Eastern Europe. Professors, musicians, philosophers and writers- in short, the intellectuals who had been the leading dissidents - found themselves now heads of newly democratic states. But once the euphoria of the epic moment wore off, even the greatest optimists began to suspect that the cynics doubting the success of democracy in Eastern Europe might be right. Today, almost fifteen years later, we know with a certainty that democracy in the former communist states is still, at best, clouded in ambiguity. Why? Because Eastern Europe has no democratic foundation. East European democracy is built on a vacuum and on the East Europeans' misconception of Western democracy. For these people who had lived their entire lives in tyranny, democracy means simply the freedom to do anything. Today Eastern Europe is overrun with its own Mafia, with corruption, lawlessness, wanton excess, sybaritic self-satisfaction and cultural decay. East European democracy simply mirrors all the vices of the American criminal subculture. But thankfully, as it has often happened in the past, bold young writers from every corner of what once was the land behind the Iron Curtain, are writing brilliant exposes. Such is the newly released trade paperback collection of short stories "Wild East: Stories from the Last Frontier," edited by Boris Fishman. Each one of the stories zeroes in on some aspect of this dubious East European democracy. These young writers - some American, others East European or Soviet émigrés now living in the U.S. and almost all writing in English - have resurrected the East European belief in the moral role of literature. They do not mince words or observe political correctness. They are ruthlessly honest. They are by far the most talented group of young writers today churning out meaningful fiction. In “Shylock on the Neva,” Gary Shteyngart, author of the best selling “The Russian Debutante’s Notebook” leads us into the dissipated world of Russia’s new capitalists. In “Wenceslas Square,” Arthur Phillips, author of the highly acclaimed novel “Prague,” writes about the twisted ironies of chance turning Czech communist secret agents into leaders of the Velvet Revolution. In “Fatherland,” Aleksandar Hemon describes the August 1991 moment when the stygian old commies of the Soviet Union made one last and feeble effort to stop the disintegration of communism by whisking Gorbachev off to a secret place. I found "Babylon Revisited Redux" by John Beckman to be the funniest and most remarkable of the stories. In it, young American venture capitalists-investors, also Dan Quayle's fraternity brothers, go to Krakow, Poland to exploit the East European "free market" economy. They lure simple-minded Quayle into their scam to rip off East Europeans. They get him to pitch to two groups of buyers the same local properties of fabulous but run down mansions and palaces they have bought. The theme running through the stories is the same - very little has changed after the fall of communism. The same corruption and arbitrary lawlessness as before exist, only now all of it is done openly because for East Europeans democracy is a ticket to do everything that once was hidden. Thus, only the masters and appearances have changed. In the "Introduction," editor Boris Fishman warns America's current leadership not to repeat in the Middle East the mistakes made in Eastern Europe. It took centuries for America and the Western world to arrive to today's brand of democracy. It took the Renaissance and the Reformation, the Age of Reason and secular humanism, it took a complete change in the ethos of society before it could practice democracy. If Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union, who are of the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian civilization, could not establish democracies, what chances do nations - totally outside the historical experience that leads to democracy, such as Iraq - have? Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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