40 years ago today in on a street corner in Vienna in the middle of the Cold War, Chernenko recently installed as General Secretary of the CPSU, I had my first glimmer of light hinting that the future might be different from what I had known my whole life: the Russian occupation of Eastern Europe.
It was a moment when the angle of the afternoon sunlight glinted off a quoin just above street level near Petersplatz. What otherwise to the naked eye and in direct light looked like a stone surface, revealed in the the slightest of shadows a stenciled streetname.
In Cyrillic. Something indecipherable and Гассе, or Gasse or Gaße, “alleyway”. Leftover from when Austria was partitioned into four Allied zones.
Yes. Russian occupations can indeed end. Some crude remnants will remain as sloppy, typically Sov stencils on an elegant Fin-de-siecle facade. As they do today across Central and Eastern Europe on facades and occasionally in minds as well.
But they can end.

[2024-04-30 11:07 UTC]