In light of Russia's aggressive 2022 invasion of Ukraine Goodbye Eastern Europe is a crucial
elucidative read a sweeping epic chronicling a thousand years of strife war and bloodshed
from pre-Christianity to the fall of Communism—illuminating the remarkable cultural
significance and richness of a place perpetually lost to the margins of history. Eastern Europe
the moniker has gone out of fashion since the fall of the Soviet Union. Ask someone now and
they might tell you that Estonia is in the Baltics or Scandinavia that Slovakia is in Central
Europe and Croatia is in the Eastern Adriatic or the Balkans. In fact Eastern Europe is a
place that barely exists at all except in cultural memory. Yet it remains a powerful marker of
identity for many with a fragmented and wide history defined by texts myths and memories of
centuries of hardship and suffering. Goodbye Eastern Europe is a masterful narrative about a
place that has survived the brink of being forgotten. Beginning with long-lost accounts of
early pagan life Mikanowski offers a kaleidoscopic tour recounting the rise and fall of the
great empires—Ottoman Hapsburg and Russian—the dawn of the modern era the ravages of Fascism
and Communism as well as Capitalism the birth of the modern nation-state and more. A student
of literature history and the ghosts of his own family’s past Mikanowski paints a
magisterial portrait of a place united by diversity and eclecticism and a people with the
shared story of being the dominated rather than the dominating. The result is a loving and
ebullient celebration of the distinctive and vibrant cultures that stubbornly persisted at the
margins of Western Europe and a powerful corrective that re-centers our understanding of how
the modern Western world took shape.
