Customer Reviews

Cafe Europa: Life After Communism

5 star:		(8)
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2 star:		(1)
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Drakulic delivers another series of short essays, in the style of her earlier "How We Survived Communism". In "Café Europa", the reader is carried from Croatia across western Europe during the few short years since Croatia emerged from war as an independent state, caught somewhere between its Balkan history and its European ambitions. She ruminates on subjects as far afield as her distaste for the word "we" because of its communist overtones, which leads to the verdict that the western concept of "I", of self-reliance and modernity in a civil state, is a notion still to be embraced in eastern Europe. It is for precisely the same reason that she admires Americans their fetish for perfect teeth, because they represent self-respect and independence from shoddy state-sponsored dental care.

Many of the essays in the book deal with the peculiar talent in eastern Europe for hiding and forgetting the past, thereby evading responsibility and missing the opportunity to learn from it. This flair for forgetfulness causes Drakulic's mother to fear for the sanctity of her husband's grave, marked by a communist star vulnerable to those who would destroy symbols of forty years of communism. It is this same talent that allows fascist "Ustasha" symbols from the 1940s to be revived in the 1990s under the guise of nationalism. The same phenomenon that impels each generation of politicians to rename streets and plazas in order to avoid any public recognition of historical figures whose views place them, at least temporarily, on the wrong side of today's political fences. It is this same failure of history that forces a Croatian journalist to mince words and ask facile questions during an exclusive interview with Dinko Sakic, the notorious concentration camp commander.

Drakulic is a bit exasperated when, on a visit to Israel, she is barraged with questions about Croatia's fascist role during World War II. "To grow up under communism means to live forever in the present. Once the final social order had been established, there was no need to look backwards - or forwards, for that matter.... Perhaps this is the reason why we are now, with this recent war, sentenced to live in the past. Sometimes I ask myself whether this is the punishment for our lack of interest in history, for our fear, silence and irresponsibility towards ourselves. For our ingnorance." She realizes that Croatia as a society has failed to examine and integrate the lessons of its fascist period, and this failure, this willful forgetfulness, is itself a type of evil complicity perpetually spawning new crises, including the high-tension ethnic conflicts that yielded the 1991-1995 wars.

The only jarring note is the essay titled "Why I Never Visited Moscow", in which Drakulic bemoans the fact that she has been categorized as an eastern European writer. This seems a bit hypocritical given that all of "Café Europa" including the very cover blurbs, much like her previous books, is premised on the fact that she is a particularly talented eastern European writer and astute social critic who has interesting and insightful things to say about the region. Perhaps Drakulic, who has won awards, fame, and money with her admirable accounts of eastern Europe, is being a bit self-righteous when she complains about being viewed as an eastern European writer.

Slavenka Drakulic is unquestionably a perceptive and keen observer of what is happening in Easter Europe today. However, in my opinion, she is an even better observer of the human condition in general. In fact, for me, this book went beyond the scope of the topic of Easter Europe and its people and, in a way, felt like a more general philosophical analysis of people and history.

With her detailed examination of the discourteous behavior of an Easter European hotel receptionist towards Westerners, or the ingratiation with which a Croatian journalist interviews an alleged concentration camp commander or even the true meaning behind an American "hello, how are you," Drakulic exhibits an uncanny ability to read people and cultures and to understand human nature thereby enabling us to better understand ourselves.

If you're wondering about the impact of revolutions, falling dictotatorial regimes and the end of Communism in Eastern Europe, Cafe Europa will answer your questions. I've read third-person reportage and scholarly works on the Balkans, the region's history, and the political issues, but the daily life of those who live here has rarely been presented to me in such a personal and descriptive way. Slavenka Drakulic makes powerful associations and draws connections that allow the reader more opportunities for insights about how the people have in many ways stayed the same, and yet how the changes in government impact daily life in the tiniest and most intimate ways.

The book is easy to pick up and put down, as it has topical chapters that stand beautifully as separate pieces, but that culminate powerfully in the final chapters for a strong overall effect.

...which still applicable today, several years since the original publishing of Drakulic's amazing book.

For someone such as myself who's spent a great deal of time in the post-Communist former Bloc, I indentified very strongly with the views put forth by this author. I hasten to add that such identification was instantaneous.

I also learned a heck of a lot; a great deal more, in fact than I thought I knew at the outset, and especially about Croatia and its storied past (the author is Croatian -- Istrian, in fact -- and quite impressively knows the history of her nation and of the former Yugoslavia more generally, like the back of her hand). I wish I had that kind of accessible knowledge. I'm humbled...

Were I able to speak to the author today, I'd probe her for her latest reflections on several of the ideas she put forth almost a decade ago. I'd even attempt to cajole her to pen a sequel...so much has changed, and the instability (sometimes constructive, though more often explosive) has continued to pummel and plague and thereby radically alter the identities of many of these newly democratic states. I'm sure what was the case in 1995 is no longer extant in many of these nations...

Drakulic is deliciously bold in this compact non-fictional winner. She refuses to accept Croatia's latter day nationalistic dogmas and the 'superiority slogans' bandied about by her patriotic peers. Within Cafe Europa's pages, she refuses to accept anything glibly declared by her compatriots 'for granted,' and there remain no sacred cows, and no stones unturned: everything is up for discussion, every so-called truth is up for grabs. For that reason alone, I'd personally have to say her credibility is unassailable.

You might wonder whether what awards someone such 'instant credibility' is in their willingness to lambaste the conventional wisdom of their relevant societies -- to wit, if Drakulic wasn't as willing to chisel away at what Croatians think makes them tick, would she be any less credible? I don't know. That wasn't the tack she took, therefore hard to judge her work on that basis...I suppose what I'm really trying to say in a roundabout way is that I don't have anything against Croatians, and just because she was willing to bash her compatriots doesn't make her any more credible in my eyes. It's not a prerequisite for credibility...having that said that, her candour is yet quite impressive.

Fascinating how so many inspiring factoids were contained in this short and spirited read.

It ended way too soon, Cafe Europa did...now that another decade's passed, I think the time's come for perhaps a revisiting of this theme?

Five-stars all the way.

Excellent book, Slavenka Drakulic is very perceptive and understands Balkan mentality better than anybody. I really enjoyed reading this book, and other books from Drakulic as well. Sometimes, it seems like Drakulic is balancing between two worlds-one of reality and the other of fantasy. Very good reading and it will give you an insight into the minds of people living in parts of Southeast Europe.

i just finished this book. i found it interesting and somewhat enlightening, but i also felt like many of drakulic's arguments were based on assumptions that she did not really prove to me to be true. i think that i would like to read another book on this topic, but by another author, i want more concrete details and less analysis and interpretation. there were parts of the book where i just started thinking that drakulic was making things up. there is not a single footnote in the entire book and she quotes no sources. she mentions talking to various friends and families but she does not drop any names. i have only ever read a little bit of her other works (communism and how we laughed about it or something like that) and i don't really like her style. i recently read a book called neighbors, it was about poland and jews there, that author of that book says where all his info comes from and he does an amazing job of documenting his information. drakulic is the polar opposite. i would not recomment this book, unless you are interested in viewing someone's opinion on post-communist eastern block states.

Slavenka does a magnificent job in briefing the Western public on what exhisted in Yugo. before the 1990 Balkan wars. Not the physical, but the mentality of the townspeople as well as the leaders. She sheds light on what a typical Eastern European feels and thinks while living in the West. She also correctly remarks on the difficulties of being an easterner in the west and how for the rest of her generation, that "easterner" stygmatism will not change. In conclusion, some of Slavenka's comments may seem absolutly unbelievable to the typical Western European, but for a native Eastern European, they are sadly realistic.

I'm just now finishing reading the last essay in this book. A friend from eastern Germany passed "How We Survived Communism And Even Laughed" on to me last year. I have to say that I found both books hard to put down, though I sometimes felt that Ms. Drakulic's characterizations of ordinary life under communism -and of attitudes and motives of people living in post-communist Europe- seemed very broadly drawn.

While my own experience in post-communist Europe was limited to a year-long 'visit', my suspicions that Ms. Drakulic may sometimes go overboard in the connections she draws between the social psychology of poverty and attitudes toward civic responsibility in this context were somewhat supported by the reactions (to these two books) of friends who had been raised under European communism. The conversations we had about these books were at least, if not more, interesting than the books themselves.

Ms. Drakulic's message is an engaging one, accessible in style and intensely personal (which she openly states in her introduction to this book). Her open and direct approach was very valuable to me as a reader, even when I felt I couldn't really follow her arguments to the bigger conclusions about life (in post-communist countries and in general) that she seems to want to persuade her readers of in "Cafe Europa".

The once unimaginable became reality in 1989, and for many people what was a large problem was seemingly solved. Almost a decade later, however, the freedom and hope that the end of Communism in Europe had proven itself to be a shallow Western ideal that has little relevance to Eastern Europe. Slavenka Drakulic, a Croatian-born novelist and journalist, discusses the tribulations of a "freed" Eastern Europe, and the legacy that its sordid past has left for the new Europe to deal with.

The post-Communist Europe has shaped up to be nothing close to what many people, especially the Eastern Europeans, expected it to be. The allure of the West, with its wealth and Capitalist spirit, were stark contrasts for most to what their reality was. Under the rule of Communism, Eastern Europeans lived day-to-day with shortages and lower quality technology.

For Drakulic, her situation was a little better than the rest. Tito, the former ruler of Yugoslavia, had shirked Communism for his own style of dictatorship, one that allowed for contact with the West. But, as Drakulic explains, Yugoslavia and the West were still worlds apart.

When the Iron Curtain fell, the Eastern Europeans began to integrate the Western way of life into their own. But this transition was not easy or desired; the end of Communist rule did not mean the end of Communist thinking, not did it change the general worldview of many who did not easily renounce their Communist past. Mixed with the re-emergence of decades old animosities, Eastern Europe began to diverge from the path it was expected to take. Within a few years, it became evident that prosperity was not to be had for all. And now, with a decade having past, the truth remains: the East and West are still worlds apart.

This is a dichotomy that has troubled Europe and, more recently, the entire Western world. As has been evident in the continued tension over NATO's expansion, the perspectives of these two halves of Europe are significantly different and essentially incompatible. Throughout her essays, Drakulic makes this evident, discussing in detail the culture-shock she experienced those first few years. Now having lived and worked in Western Europe, she sees the fundamental differences between the two Europes and reflects on the causes and effects of this dichotomy. In the process, she reveals and explains the situation currently facing Europe.

One of the most noticeable aspects of the post-Communist era is the re-emergence of old hatreds and rivalries. And this is no more evident than in the Balkans, where a number of brutal ethnic conflicts have taken place. On occasion, Drakulic delves into the absurdity and pointlessness of these wars, but never fails to mention the circumstances that surrounded them, and the roots they had in recent history--an aspect which is sometimes overlooked in the West.

With such circumstances, another theme becomes evident. In the Balkans and most other parts of Europe, identity is a significant aspect of everyday life. In the essay "People from the Three Borders," Drakulic talks about a neighbour of hers in Isteria who at any given moment with claim to either be a Croat or an Italian. And there is another friend who holds three passports so as to get around more easily in the national patchwork of the Balkans. "'It is a matter of survival,' he says, 'one never knows what will happen here.'"

Another important aspect of Eastern Europe which Drakulic discusses from time to time is the haunting effect that Communism has on the present day. In "A Nostalgic Party at the Graveyard," she recounts a time in Rumania when she came across a gathering of about 150 people conducting a surreal ceremony at the grave of Nicolae Ceausescu, the country's former Communist dictator. A more personal account is discussed in "My Father's Guilt," in which she discusses her own father's role in the Communist hierarchy. Both essays are powerful and insightful, and reveal much about the current situation in Eastern Europe.

There is, of course, much more to Cafe Europa than this, and on the whole the book maintains a high degree of interest and insight. Drakulic's writing style is light, descriptive and concise. She has an astounding ability to make her stories down-to-earth and easy to grasp while not compromising the seriousness of some of the topics. Cafe Europa is a work of great significance and very much worth reading.

I've seen movies, documentals and I have read articles and history books about life under communism. I read this book while I was traveling in the Czech Republic. I took part in a study abroad program in Prague and Brno, so I attended lectures about the history of the Czech Republic and about East Europe in general. When I was reading this book I couldn't imagine how people were leaving in East Europe. The way this book is written, in its direct and simple language, shows you the desperation and sadness of the people, the way they were oppressed and the means they got around the authorities. It's just well written and at the end it leaves a wound in your heart.