Café Europa – Life After Communism

Title: Café Europa – Life After Communism

Author: Slavenka Drakulic

Publisher: Abacus 2008 (First published 1996)

ISBN: 978-0-349-10729-5

Pages: 213

Slavenka Drakulic is a Croatian writer and journalist born in 1949, who writes novels and non-fiction books. Her works are translated into many languages. As she had lived most of her life under a totalitarian communist regime, most of her works are based on the theme, as her non-fiction title How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed duly attests. Café Europa is a collection of tales – true experiences, if you will – which brings out the differences existing at every conceivable level, be it cultural, social, economic or political between the East and West Europeans. She brings out in stark detail how much the erstwhile communist nations have to move forward to be truly assimilated in a united Europe in a seamless way. The author has travelled extensively in other countries and her first-hand knowledge in assessing the conditions peculiar to her own and foreign nations are succinctly put in this collection of 24 chapters ranging on a diverse assortment of subjects.

The people in eastern Europe are eager to be reckoned as true Europeans and this is made evident by the naming of a lot of public places like restaurants and pubs with western-sounding appellations. The title of the book, Café Europa is the name of a pub in Croatia which tries to emit an eponymous outfit in Vienna. However much they try, there is an invisible wall between the east and the west. This is amply made clear by the attitude of border guards on western nations who treat the easterners with suspicion mixed with a bit of hostility. The author herself was subjected to body checks while her Swedish husband could easily pass through without even so much as waving his passport! Though bitten by the travel bug, she has not visited Russia so far because of the unpleasantness it might provoke as her own country, the erstwhile Yugoslavia was literally ruled by the Russians till Tito separated from them. The grinding of lives under the communist yoke was more prominent in Russia.

The author has extensively travelled in the east European states and her writings concern each and every one of them except perhaps, Poland and the three Baltic states. The dictatorial communist regime under Nikolae Ceceauscu in Romania caused mass migration of peasants into cities under the guise of rapid industrialization. The urban infrastructure was pathetic in relation to transport, accommodation and hygiene, with the resulting disasters to people destined to live in them. The state of affairs was complicated by the union of peculiarities like low wages, impossibility to fire lazy workers and the collective ownership of property. In fact, what the communists shared was poverty and not property. There were no jobs in the east to speak of, and the Yugoslavians were better off than others, as Tito made it a point to open up his country a bit after breaking off with the Soviets. They were allowed to travel to western countries, especially Germany and send the money back home.

Things have changed since the collapse of communist regimes, with many industries now privatized. Even though the ownership has changed, the attitude of workers is still the same, who still refuse even to smile at the guests in a hotel or shop. Reared in an ideology which viewed work as the exploitation of labour by the capitalists, it is no wonder the attitude is hard to change. Also any semblance to smiling while at work was frowned upon by the party commissars. Smiling is a sign of happiness and why one should be happy, when everyone was poor? Foreign tourists are fleeced everywhere in eastern Europe and people go by the You Have, I Need motto. Hotel  and taxi rates are invariably double for the westerners. The people don’t understand the concept of value for money, the work they have to perform to earn the cash they extort from the tourists or employers coming from the west. This may be a new turn in the life of the people as the communist regimes were nothing more than forced labour camps.

The eastern Europeans are now more insecure as the social security measures guaranteed by the fallen governments were effective, however meagre. They had pensions, medical care including dental which even some of the western democracies didn’t have. Due to this precarious condition people are unwilling to spend too much on articles as the author says that her favourite was clearance sale. The new generation is however, free from this affliction. The uniformed class always demonstrated undue power in the running of the country as they were the defenders of communism against their own citizens. Even in the post-communist era, matters are little changed. Now the surge of nationalism in these countries has wreaked havoc in the form of several internal battles between nationalities and religions.

Communism was a continuation of the pre-existing despotic monarchies who had no interest in developing the political process in the kingdom. Such a thing was unheard of under the communists. As a result, people are ignorant of their rights and duties which are exploited by the ruling classes. After the fall of communists, instead of nourishing democratic institutions, a large section of the society is only interested in bringing the exiled monarchs back to give the reins of power to them in a platter, as if they are afraid to run the show by themselves. Attempts to erase the totalitarian past are taking on ridiculous dimensions in the form of renaming streets, squares, parks and even destroying the graves of former leaders. Tito is now practically forgotten and Nazi puppets like Ante Pavelic, who was the head of the German puppet state of Croatia during 1941-45 is resurrected back to life. This is wrong as the people are denied their history which was just what the communists did too. Jasenovac, the Croatian concentration camp in which 17,000 Jews perished during World War II, is simply pushed under the carpet in an attempt to negate history.

The author’s style is simply superb and graceful. We feel the sadness prevailing throughout the text get out of the pages and enter our hearts. The cast of characters and incidents show the trademarks of an accomplished novelist. We Indians identify many similarities between those states and our own country. Communism has created more wounds in our industrial psyche than it did in the former communist countries, as they are lucky enough to cast them out, while our polity is replete with them in the guise of intelligentsia, trade unionists, human rights activists and pseudo-secularists.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star