Nearaway Latvia

What are the names of the capitals of Estonia, of Lithuania, of Latvia? – I didn’t know either.

I was born in 1952. When I was growing up, I learned about London. Knew the names of the squares, the monuments and the museums. Pictures from there were impressed on my mind. I knew the streetscapes of Paris from French films. I knew the atmosphere of New York from television series. I read books written in Berlin. I saw paintings exhibited in Amsterdam. I drank wine made in Italy. The music I listened to was progressive pop from England and the US. My cultural landscape was the West.

 

And I was so concerned with the world. With the vile ways of the West. With the injustice in the US. With the war in Vietnam. With apartheid in South Africa. I shouted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh", I demonstrated against the deployment of US missiles in Europe.

 

The people of Prague must have looked on in wonder.

Eastern Europe was so close, bud we did not see it. It was not on our minds. Existed only in reality. East of imagination.

I didn’t know the first thing about nearly neighbouring Latvia and what lay beyond. I was too busy being ignorant and arrogant, too busy trying to make the world a better place.

And the world became a better place. Not everyone was blind.

Please accept my apology.

NB!

Postscript added April 2013: I have just finished reading The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt. Chapter XIV (Revolutionaries) is very pertinent to this blog entry.