Alexander Dolitsky: Europeans cope with unprecedented diversity

By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY

The “new European cultural and ethnic landscape” is, metaphorically, characterized by a state of “cultural and ethnic chaos”— a blend of rapid social change, intense geopolitical tensions and conflicting cultural values. In the last 40 years, Europe has been undergoing a rapid and transformative evolution, characterized by increased diversity driven by massive migration from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Thus, driven by migration, Europe’s population is becoming more diverse, challenging traditional identities and cultural values.

I am wondering if the evolving European cultural and ethnic landscape is a sustainable and realistic shift, or merely a form of collective self-deception in the face of an uncomfortable reality.

In the early 1970s, as a student of history at the Kiev Pedagogical Institute, I participated in the archaeological excavation in Trans-Carpathia, an eastern part of the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine.

The Carpathian Mountains form about a 1,000-mile-long range in Central and Eastern Europe. They stretch from west to east in an arc from the Czechia to Romania via Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Ukraine.

It is an ethnically diverse region in the center of Europe, inhabited mostly by people who regard themselves as ethnic Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks, and Poles. It also has small communities of Jewish and Romani minorities.

Trans-Carpathia had reverted from Austro-Hungarian Empire to Hungary because of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, then reverted from Hungary to Czechoslovakia in 1944 because of liberation of Czechoslovakia from the Nazi occupation and later was ceded to Soviet Ukraine in 1945 by a Czech-Soviet government agreement.

That year, in 1972, we excavated approximately 20-25,000 years-old Late Paleolithic cave in the vicinity of the remote Uglyanka village. One of the frequent visitors to our archaeological camp in Uglyanka was a local naturalist and historian Peter Sova. He was in his mid-80s; and he knew everything and everyone about this region.

At one point, I asked Peter Sova, “Comrade Sova, what is your nationality?” “I am Trans-Carpathian,” replied Peter Sova with pride and without any hesitation.

“How can that be?” I questioned. “There is no such nationality, Trans-Carpathian.”

Peter Sova raised his eyebrows, looking at me with a mischievous smile.

“I was born and raised in the Austria-Hungarian Empire, in my youth years I lived under Hungarian and Czechoslovakian ruling and now it is the Soviet Ukraine; and all my life I lived in the same place—Trans-Carpathia,” he explained. “So, you tell me, young man, what is my nationality?” he asked.

I was silent; truly, Peter Sova changed his citizenry four times during his life, while never relocating to any of the countries that took control over his homeland. Indeed, Peter Sova’s tragic life experiences are not uncommon in Europe, a continent, despite its great accomplishments in science, economic and industrial development, literature and arts, has been notorious for never-ending wars, regional conflicts, bloody socialist revolutions and murderous Holocaust.

In short, today’s European multiculturalism could be metaphorically described as “far-left cultural and racial chaos.”

In 1978, prior to my departure from Europe to the United States, the French lived in France, Italians in Italy, Austrians in Austria, and other nations, for the most part, in their own native countries. In the last 40 years, however, European countries, apart from a few (e.g., Poland, Hungary, Slovakia), have experienced and allowed massive immigration from deeply religious Muslim countries. As a result, it has created cultural chaos, degradation of Judeo-Christian traditions, and incited regional conflicts in Europe.

In contrast to today’s Europe, the United States is a historically immigrant-seeking Constitutional Republic that managed to form a unique cultural landscape. In our Judeo-Christian country, many different types of cultures, ethnicities and races coexist and strive within one nation and one constitution. On our national coinage is the inscription in Latin E pluribus Unum—“ from many to one.”

The author was born and raised in the former Soviet Union before settling in the U.S. in 1978. He moved to Juneau in 1986 where he taught Russian studies and Archaeology at the University of Alaska Southeast, and Social Studies Teacher at the Alyeska Central School of the Alaska Department of Education. From 1990 to 2022, he served as a director and president of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center, publishing in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology and ethnography. Find him on Amazon.com.

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