Europes's Eastern Borderlands

More should unite than divide the states of central and eastern Europe

The states of Central Europe – Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Czechia and Hungary have now been in the EU for just over a year. These states form a borderland strip which runs between the Baltic and Adriatic separating the Germanic world from Greater Russia.

Born of the demise of the Prussian, Austrian and Russian empires, the borderlands - with their patchwork of languages and ethnic identities - have been a site of external domination and of division since the founding of their nominal statehoods. The first two decades of their existence following the First World War saw them fall into dictatorship, divided into different imperial blocks before coming under the Nazi jackboot. The next forty years saw them hibernate in imposed unity under Soviet Stalinism, with only Slovenia under Tito’s grip slightly saved.

The reintroduction of capitalism in 1989 changed little in terms of building their unity or independence. Historic ethnic tensions and lack of language triumphed over what would seem to be their common interests. Each one competed with the others to play leading cipher to US imperialism by signing up in 2003 to the US led re-colonialisation of Iraq. The whole focus of EU membership has been their individual relationship to the West, rather than the relationship between themselves. Each state faces equal humiliation as their people are kept out of the West European labour market for seven years; and their farmers are given lower subsidies from Brussels.

The time has come for the countries of the borderlands to realise that there is more that unites them than divides them, that they have shared identity and values and they should hang together, if they are not to hang alone.