Back to Non-Fiction
So, after my review of Lolita, I decided it was time for two things: a long shower to clean the grime off of me after reading that, and a return to works of non-fiction. And considering I have ALWAYS loved reading any particular country's political and economic theories about themselves, when I saw this little collection of studies on economic and infrastructural development possibilities along the Poland/Ukraine border in a bookstore in Warsaw (can't remember the name), I picked it up immediately. The current world environment (with almost as many Ukrainian flags as Polish ones flying in Warsaw due to Putin's ongoing attempts to exterminate Ukraine's population) made it not seem the slightest bit out of place, and I knew it was likely to fly off the shelf if I didn't grab it. I won't say I regret that decision, but... it didn't provide as much information as I had hoped.
Belongs In the Reference Section
So, weighing in at a scant 146 pages in large font, the book is not daunting in size or scope. Quite the opposite. It is precisely what its authors (various graduate and doctoral students at John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin) claim it is: a series of thesis papers on how to integrate Ukraine and Poland more extensively; economically, politically, and (to a lesser extent) culturally. It's interesting to note that the issue of strategic (i.e, military or intelligence) integration is never once even approached, and I have to wonder about the reasons for that, but I digress.
And of course, I am no economist nor statistician (if I understood anything about economics I'd be doing something that pays decently instead of wasting my life teaching) so there are two sections I will not pretend I understood: namely, Nataliia Vavdiiuk's "Correlation-Regression Analysis of Economic Security in Ukraine" (p. 71 - 78) and Olena Kovalchuk & Olga Sazonets's "Challenges for Small and Medium Business in Ukraine in Entering the Polish Market" (p. 79 - 90). Essentially, if you are a businessman, city planner, or work for the Ministry of Transportation (in either of these two countries), this book is going to be a frequent go-to for facts and data.
For the rest of us, well...
Not Useless, Per Se
For the layman, the most important thing about this book is not so much its contents as the fact that it was deemed worth publishing for common readers at all. The publication date of this book is 2019, WELL before the Russian invasion of Ukraine (well, except for Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk). This was not published as a way to lure in money from Ukrainian refugees or Polish youths who are gnashing their teeth thinking (probably rightly) that Russia's aggression gives Poland an excuse to give Russia some well-deserved payback for a few centuries of bullying.
No, this was published before Russia even started their troop buildup early in the Biden Administration. And it gives an interesting chronicle on the lead-up to the Russian invasion, from the religious persecution described by Jews and Muslims fleeing Crimea after the 2014 Russian takeover (p. 19), to the Moscow Patriarch's state-ordered declaration that the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church (created after the Russian takeover of Crimea for the purpose of giving Ukraine's Orthodox believers a way to not be spiritually subordinate to an official of an enemy state) was heretical (p. 21), to the Kerch Strait incident's obvious timing as a "retaliatory" action for this (p. 22), which, coincidentally, buggers any doubt that the Russian Orthodox Church is a mere arm of the Russian State.
As has been hinted here, one of the largest studies in this book relates to the way Russia has used Ukraine's Orthodox believers (and their liturgical mandate of subordination to the Patriarch of Moscow) as a political tool in their quest to annex Ukraine, as well as the way Ukraine has used the creation of a State Orthodox Church not beholden to Moscow, to counter this. I found this to be the most interesting of the studies within its pages, but that is purely my opinion.
Of more importance though, is the attitude displayed by the writers. The writers seem to take it as a matter of course that Ukraine (as well as the Baltic States) seek to tie themselves together into a kind of "Intermarium Union," a bloc functioning a bit like a smaller EU and a smaller NATO at the same time, dedicated to resisting Russia's (and, by occasional implication, Western Europe's) inevitable attempts to dominate them, as they have in the past. They also seem to take it as an axiom that Poland will be the leader of such a bloc, and they show the economic trends that led these two assumptions to seem likely.
This is what I found the most telling.
Proof of Friedman's Point
In a book I reviewed earlier, George Friedmans' The Next Decade, the author asserts that some time around 2020, Poland, threatened by a burgeoning alliance between a resurgent Russia and their long-time enemy, Germany, would rise to become the dominant power in Eastern Europe, defying both and asserting itself as a regional leader. Now, when The Next Decade was written (2012) this seemed laughable. But now, with Volodomoyr Zelensky being viewed as "Eastern Europe's Modern Churchill," and Poland standing up to add its considerable economic muscle to the Baltic States' claims of "hey Germany, France, I don't think you guys are taking Russia seriously enough," the notion of a Poland/Ukraine economic and strategic bloc, as the backbone of an Intermarium Bloc, doesn't seem nearly so far-fetched. And this little pamphlet, which, I remind the reader, was written in 2019, shows that this is not a Black Swan event but has in fact been foreseeable for quite some time, even for those of us who don't have Friedman's prescience.
So Who Should Read It
Umm... Poles and Ukrainians? But more seriously, I'd say the sections entitled "Ukrainian Inter-Faith Relations after 2014" and "Ukraine-Russia. Analysis of Selected Trends in Economic Cooperation" are useful for anyone who wants to understand a little more about the road that led us from Russia's partial invasion of Ukraine (2014) to Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine (2022). And of course, the accounts of Jews fleeing from persecution in Russian-occupied Crimea and seeking safety in Ukraine's mainland will put paid to anyone who is still buying into the moronic "Neo-Nazis in Ukraine" myth put forth by the Kremlin.
All-in-all, if the Ukraine Crisis hits home for you directly and not just at the gas pump, it's worth a read.
