Bloodlines: A Journey into Eastern Europe

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University and
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom.

Between 1982 and 1988, Myrna Kostash, whose grandparents came from
Ukraine, traveled extensively and frequently through Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, Poland, and Ukraine. Unaware that major political changes
were imminent, she described what she observed before and during the
Gorbachev era.

Kostash speaks and reads English, French, Russian, and Ukrainian. Most
of her printed sources are in English, although some are translations
from Slavic originals. She had networks of contacts, many of them
political dissidents, and in Ukraine many of the contacts were
relatives.

The book, divided into four sections (one for each country), is
presented as a diary, with each entry appearing under the name of a
community and a date. The information will interest historians (both
political and social) and travelers who wonder about the local sights
and attractions. She describes the intense animosities of the area
(Serbs vs. ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Serbs vs. Croats, Poles vs.
Ukrainians), and, despite her Ukrainian roots, displays superb
objectivity.

In recounting her Yugoslavia sojourn, Kostash describes the pressures
applied by authorities to control their people. In the case of
pre-Gorbachev Ukraine, she found the atmosphere so oppressive that she
did not write her diary until she was back in Poland (even under
military government, that country seemed liberal by comparison). She
lamented the degree of russification in Ukraine and found the corruption
and indifference of authorities and workers disgusting.

In Poland, Kostash observed the power of the Roman Catholic Church. A
feminist, Kostash discusses abortion in Poland, and, despite her own
agnosticism, devotes several pages in each section to discussion of
organized religion, its impact on believers, and past atrocities
committed in its name.

As a travelogue, the book reports some idiosyncrasies of the Soviet
bloc. Trains passing from Poland through U.S.S.R. to Romania were sealed
so that nobody could exit while on Soviet territory. Until 1987, one
adult Polish contact had never met a Soviet citizen. In her travels,
Kostash discovered that she was a Canadian, not an Eastern European
exile.

An index would have been useful for reference purposes.