Lewis Baston > Quotes

“Chernivtsi's history renders foolish the idea that multiculturalism was new to European history; the ethnically cleansed straight-line borders such as the Oder-Neisse Line or the Curzon Line were the real innovations. They were there because of the escalation in hatred and violence in mid 20th-century Europe that had resulted in catastrophe. Different peoples have lived together - not always comfortably, of course - for longer than they have lived apart. A living continent is constantly changing, as Friedrich Naumann imagined his Mitteleuropa pullulating with life; the rigid, sterile classifications that Hitler and Stalin imposed on Europe and with which we lived for decades are deadly as well as boring.”
― Lewis Baston, Borderlines: A History of Europe, Told from the Edges