‘Edge of Europe’ thirty years later – revisiting Applebaum’s East to West
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Shelling several kilometres outside Zolote villages in Luhansk region, Ukraine, March 2020 / B. Gerdžiūnas/LRT
Around the same time as Lithuania declared independence, US journalist and writer Anne Applebaum began her journey across the east. What did she witness then and what would she find on the edge of Europe some 30 years later? This isolation [in Eastern Europe] and the accompanying desolation, were the result of decades of war, ethnic cleansing and totalitarian rule,” she writes, drawing close parallels with the satirical (and fictional) East European country Slaka that was wrecked by every tribe “specialist in pillage and rape”.
The criminal political trial of Ukrainian historian and dissident Valentyn Moroz was taking place on November 17, 1970. Several dissidents were called by the Soviet government to testify for the prosecution against the defendant. Among them was the dissident Shestydesiatnyk artist Alla Horska. Alla refused to testify, as did the others. Nevertheless, with no evidence, which was not a problem in Soviet trials, Valentyn Moroz was convicted of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda and sentenced to 14 years.
On November 28, 1970, Alla traveled to the village of Vasylkiv in the Kyiv region near the city of Fastiv to the home of her father-in-law to pick up a sewing machine. She did not return home. Her husband Viktor Zaretsky panicked and went after her the following day. The house in Vasylkiv was locked. The police declined to allow forcible entry. That same day, Mr. Zaretsky’s father was found decapitated near the tracks at the nearby Fastiv train station. Three days later the polic