No Different Track
Famously, the Russian Empire employed a railway gauge different from that adopted in Western Europe. The laborious process of changing the bogies of trains travelling east has created the notion that a hop is involved from one tectonic plate to another, from a European World to a Russian World. This image has been used, and abused, in rhetoric to justify the war of aggression against Ukraine. To take the train from Przemyśl to Kyiv is not, though, to leave one universe for another. The continuities are obvious. Kyiv is a modern, European city whose resilience in keeping ordinary life going is impressive. The parks are in order; there are tulips everywhere; the chestnuts trees are in bloom. The city’s inhabitants refuse to be brutalised. Soul-strength finds expression in this attitude. Naturally the strain of war is great, the trauma real. But the city breathes the conviction that injustice will not, cannot, have the last word. And so the visitor comes away feeling strangely buoyed up, encouraged.
