Nations Without Borders

Nations Without Borders

We like to think that borders are neat, rational things, that they tidily separate one nation from another, prudently tracing the line of an ancient river or the frontiers of tribal hunting grounds.

But borders are the furthest thing from rational, they are certainly not neat, and they are notoriously awful at separating one nation or people from another. Borders are merely the geographic counterpart to the hour markings on a clockface: human inventions that help us define our world, deceiving ourselves with a semblance of order. Even the stone border walls of China, Berlin and now Jerusalem are just temporary affects that flout an ever-changing reality.

The borders of Muscovy, Rus’, Russia and the Soviet Union have never been firmly set. Their undulations and contractions in the 1990s were merely the most recent fluctuation in a millenium of changes. How this reality has affected the lives of Russians, Ukrainians, Turks, Georgians, Uzbeks and even Americans is a major theme running through all of the features in this issue.

In two of those features, we visit a pair of very Russian cities – Vitebsk and Sevastopol. Neither are within the borders of present-day Russia, yet both are very “Russian” and have had huge impacts on the course of Russian history. In a third feature, we learn of the plight of the Meskhetian Turks. Exiled in 1944 from Soviet Georgia (where they were already semi-exiles from Turkey), they are still unable to return home. Many have now arrived on America’s shores.

In the remaining two features, we learn of the challenges of breaching linguistic borders (how one tries to make a German, speaking English, sound like a Russian), and hear the story of a remarkable American who fought in both the American and Soviet armies during World War II. This American returned home to raise a son who would become the U.S. Ambassador to Russia.

This brings us around to the second theme that runs through all the stories in this issue: the Second World War in Europe, which drew to a close 65 years ago this May. Vitebsk and Sevastopol were both decimated and occupied by Nazi Germany during the war, the Meskhetians have the war (and of course Stalin) to thank for their exile, and the two remaining features are even more explicitly tied to the war, cinematically or otherwise.

It is of course not surprising that these two themes should wind through all our stories. Wars are most often fought over borders, physical or otherwise. And those who live at the intersections of nation states tend to suffer in greater measure than the rest of us. Certainly more than those safely cosseted in government bureaus, methodically erecting economic, social and political borders against the outside world.

Enjoy the issue.