The Devil Had None of the Best Lines

Stalin and his successors have not gone down in history as men of sparkling wit. Can anybody remember a single bon mot by any of them? For that and a thousand other reasons we have no reason to look back on the Soviet decades with nostalgia. But we must admit that in the days of the Cold War it was satisfying to follow the day’s news in an atmosphere of moral certitudes – they are bad and we are good.

We have had no such luck since the fall of the Soviet Empire. It has therefore become extremely difficult to persuade the public to take an interest in Eastern Europe, especially since the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the war in the Balkans. But during that war, the Serbs, in pursuit of their dreams of a Greater Serbia, behaved so atrociously that NATO had to intervene. That was interesting.

It is in that connection that the presidential election in Croatia last week deserves attention. In its capital, Zagreb, the pro-European left represented by the social democrat Ivo Josipović, has emerged victorious from the battle against the historic and all-powerful (conservative) Croat Democratic Union.

Croatia, with a population of a mere six million people, was among the victims of Serb expansionism, and for that reason deserves our sympathy. But in WW2 it was a Nazi puppet that pursued Nazi objectives with singular brutality. These include warfare against the Serbs.

The new president, the humanist academic Ivo Josipović, went into politics only recently, having spent his time up to now as a university professor of law. At the same time, he is a composer of note. He has written some fifty compositions for different instruments, for chamber and symphony orchestras. In 1985, he received a first prize from the European Broadcasting Union for his composition Samba da Camera.

Who would have thought that – in Croatia, of all countries?

The news from the Ukraine – a country of forty-six million – is not as unambiguously good. The second round of the presidential election is now entering its final week of campaigning. In the first round the leader of the Orange Revolution five years ago, Yuliya Tymoshenko, suffered a crushing defeat. Viktor Yanukovych, the man whom the Russians backed at the time against serious charges of attempts at election-rigging, is now very likely to emerge as the winner. A majority of Ukrainians appears resigned to going back to the future with a Yanukovych presidency.

The Orange Revolution turned out to be a grave disappointment. Yuliya fatigue appears to have set in as a result of what one senior Ukrainian official described as “a serious disconnect between her rhetoric and her actions.”

The good news is that the campaign is being fought by both sides according to the standards of western democracy.

It is no secret that both Croatia and the Ukraine hope to be admitted to the European Union.