Post-Communist Postcards

Home from the East

I'm home again from an absolutely fascinating tour of post-communist Eastern Europe and can start writing about it as soon as I get my interviews transcribed.

After leaving Romania, I was supposed to visit Chernobyl and the apocalyptic ghost city of Pripyat outside Kiev, Ukraine, but the trip was cancelled at the last minute. The Chernobyl Administration wasn't letting anyone into the area for reasons that aren't clear to me and may never be – perhaps because of a radiation leak, or maybe for more mundane reasons.

So I went to Crimea instead, the part of Ukraine that may be lopped off and reattached to Russia if Vladimir Putin decides to go on another Georgian-style adventure.

Traveling from the eastern edge of the European Union into Ukraine is educational, to say the least. Romania, Hungary, Poland, and other formerly Eastern bloc countries have largely recovered from communism, but much of Ukraine outside Kiev is still ruined. It still hasn't fully recovered from Soviet collectivization, the genocidal terror-famine, the Stalinist purges, and dekulakization. Kiev is a magnificent city and Crimea is a jewel, but large parts of the countryside feel haunted and doomed.

Stand by for photos and stories.

In Ukraine

I have arrived in Ukraine, and I feel like I’ve slipped off the edge of Europe and into an alternate dimension.

I still have almost no time at all for writing or even photo editing, and for that I apologize. My schedule is absurdly demanding, and there isn’t even enough time to sleep. I don’t have a lot of time left, though, before I'll be home and my writing schedule returns to normal.

Thanks for your patience!

On the Road

My official itinerary is finished in the rough city of Bucharest, and I’m on the road in the beautiful Romanian countryside. I will post photos shortly, but right now I’m behind schedule. Stand by.

From Bucharest to Chernobyl

“The defeat of communism 20 years ago,” Matt Welch writes in Reason magazine, “was the most liberating moment in history. So why don't we talk about it more?”

That is an excellent question. I don’t talk about it, write about it, or even think about it much either, but that’s about to change.

I have just arrived in Bucharest, Romania. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited me and three other journalists to spend the week here, and they have us scheduled to meet some serious and interesting people.

Romania was in rough shape not long ago. Michael Yon told me it was “like hell,” as he put it, when he came here shortly after the Cold War ended. Now I’ll get an up close and personal look at how much the country has healed since its communist tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu and his Lady Macbeth of a wife Elena so thoroughly and violently ravaged it.

After I’m finished with the official program in Romania, my old friend Sean will join me on a road trip to Chernobyl and the radioactive ghost city of Pripyat in the Exclusion Zone of Northern Ukraine. We’ll pass through Moldova and Transnistria on the way.

You may recall that Sean and I drove from Istanbul to Iraq for lunch a few years ago. If you haven’t read that story, you’re in for a treat. (Am I supposed to say that about my own writing? I don’t know. Who cares? Just click here and read it.)

If you haven’t heard of Transnistria – and I’m almost certain you haven’t because hardly anyone has – you’ll be in for another treat (I hope) when I come home and write about that crazy place. It’s a quasi-communist breakaway province of Moldova that’s secured, if that’s the right word, by the Russian military as South Ossetia is in Georgia.

Modova’s Communist Party had a majority in parliament until – believe it or not – just this summer. Communists trashed a huge part of our world, and not every part of it has been free of them for the last 20 years. Some parts of it still aren’t completely free of them, not really, not even in Europe.

One of these days, when I have enough material, I just might write a book about my road trips with Sean. He and I have already driven to Kosovo and Iraq, we’re about to drive to Chernobyl, and we’re seriously thinking about road trips to Afghanistan and Somalia.

Despite my jam-packed itinerary, I won’t actually be gone very long. I can’t afford to be because I have a book to write. This trip, though, is a welcome break that should keep me from hitting the wall or flaming out. I’ll try to post some photographs from the road.

See you soon.