This year I read intriguing texts from a Canadian academic with a Czech background, Ivan Kalmar. He looks at what I regard as the under-studied reality of discrimination against Eastern Europeans. The title of his 2022 book, White but not quite: Central Europe’s Illiberal Revolt, introduces the concept of the ambiguity of Eastern European people in the Global North: they are treated as superior to People of Colour, but inferior to people who are ‘the right kind of white’.
Kalmar argues that Eastern Europeans are associated with non-democratic regimes such as the region-wide Communism that fell in 1989, or the fascism of a modern-day Russia or Hungary. Nevermind that Italy, Austria and Sweden have far-right governments at the moment, or that Germany’s Neo-Nazis are expected to lead the country in one of the next elections. When Western Europe or the United States upholds ‘illiberal tendencies’ nobody accuses them of having insufficient moral integrity. However, the Global North accuses Eastern Europeans as having a flawed character, some sort of inherent inadequacy, and this racism has a real impact on the rights, opportunities and Life Chances of this group.
Ivan Kalmar’s groundbreaking and formative work has been affirming to me, and I have only discussed the aspects of his work which most resonate. I sometimes think about paying him a visit at the University of Toronto, or at least sending an email of solidarity.
Another Toronto-based writer who has influenced me is Margaret Atwood. I shared some thoughts on her book of essays, Burning Questions, a while ago, on my blog. I still haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, but a recent interview on Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club educated me on the extreme structural misogyny of Romanian Communism. (Content Warning for the paragraph below: Forced Pregnancy, humiliating gynaecological examinations, degrading conditions of orphanages.)
The Handmaid’s Tale made a point of only drawing inspiration from already existing injustices around the world. Margaret Atwood turned her eye to Ceausescu’s regime, where married women were required to have four children. This law was enforced by monthly gynaecological ‘examinations’ - under the supervision of the police. There is a popular Romanian saying, something about “the women were undressed in public.” Quite aside from the psychological damage to the women affected, which I imagine is a generational trauma, the economic burden of bringing up four kids was commonly experienced as unbearable. Mothers turned to their doctors in distress, and were told that if they put their offspring in an orphanage, they would be well looked after. This was well-meaning but far from the truth: the orphanages had so many children and so little funding that the conditions were unsanitary and not enough attention could be given to the individuals by the staff.
(Romania and Bulgaria share a border, and are often mentioned in the same breath by nationals of immigrant-receiving countries in Europe. My travels have not included this Northern neighbour, but in the future it’s possible I could visit. It would be in part a gesture of pan-European solidarity, and more specifically a mission to discover what the Balkan region has to offer. I want to know more and see the beauty I imagine waits for me there.)
Anyway, the clear advantage of the world’s most successful multicultural country is that its people tend to be informed about what happens beyond its borders. Canada is not geographically isolated in the way that Australia is, with shorter flights to Europe and Asia, similar time zones to Latin America (which makes visiting more attractive on a practical level), and that long land border with the United States. Kalmar and Atwood are the beneficiaries of this interconnectedness, and have, in turn, expanded my international imagination for the better.
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