Szabłowski writes with an engaging journalistic style. The first half of the book, about the dancing bears, was interesting. There is certainly politics involved in rehoming the bears, but Szabłowski sticks to the story of the bears and those who used to own them and those who took them away to rehome at a bear sanctuary. (They can’t be released into the wild since they’ve mostly lived their entire lives in captivity.) The chapters in the second half of the book reprise the first half, but this time with people in various formerly communist/authoritarian countries. The chapter titles are the same as in the first half and open with pull-quotes from the corresponding bear chapter, and Szabłowski slyly draws parallels between the bears and the people. Unfortunately, I was severely handicapped by my ignorance of the geopolitics of the countries discussed. ( )

What struck me most about reading this was the structure, and the way Szabłowski comes at his themes sideways. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book like that, though it’s very reminiscent of long-form articles—lay out the facts, quote people, and let the readers draw their own conclusions. It’s a lovely mix of tragedy and hope and condemnation, with a very powerful analogy pinning it all together: the dancing bears.

The first half of this book focuses on the problem of the Balkans’ dancing bears. Szabłowski interviews some of the Roma who kept the bears, as well as the people devoted to taking the bears to a nature park, and in doing so exposes a lot of systemic flaws and racism and apathy, and poses some hard questions. What do you do when a traditional way of life is animal abuse? How do you help people transition from one way of life to another? Is the park the truly better option, and for whom?

In the second half, he takes the questions he’s asked (by which I mean invited the reader to ask through judicious reporting), and applies it to snapshots of people struggling to survive after the collapse of communism. How do you solve mass unemployment? Poverty and infrastructure problems? If people have lived their lives without needing to make major decisions, or learning about the glory of their government, how do they cope when that’s taken away? And again, there are flaws and racism and apathy, laid uncomfortably bare.

Szabłowski has a very fine and precise way of seeing and reporting things, whether he’s talking to a woman who chose homelessness in London over poverty in Poland, the hitchhikers he picks up in Cuba, the drivers who pick him up in Kosovo, or the Greeks protesting austerity. He has an equally light touch in his writing. This could’ve been a much darker or denser book, but he keeps the descriptions brief and sticks to dialogue more often than not.

So: this is an easy but very thought-provoking read. I think it might hit more for someone with Eastern European heritage than it did for me, but it still opened my eyes to truths and the questions it raised are going to stick with me. That said, I’m dithering on a rating for it. Content-wise, it’s clearly an 8, but my gut/quality gauge says it’s closer to a 7. Either way, it’s worth the read.
7.5/10

Contains: anti-Roma slurs from an author who really does know better*, reported racism towards Roma peoples, animal abuse, people with unsavory attitudes towards poverty and homelessness, the glory of Joseph Stalin

* or shoddy translation, but even so ( )

More depressing and obvious than incisive and heartbreaking, and for the first half, I was struck by the feeling that those being interviewed were not being truthful, or perhaps were reciting their particular brand of truth. I did not enjoy reading about people held captive with no power of any choices in their lives, who could not adapt to freedom once it was theirs. The bears I can understand, as they probably do not understand what has happened to them or why, but the people in this book at least believe that they know right from wrong, and that the world is a practical place while simultaneously honoring beliefs that clearly are not realistic or rewarding.

The Estonian Russians, victims of the policy to send Russians to live in all the areas they have taken, and stranded after the collapse of the USSR, are salt fish in pure water. They have lived there for ages, but do not belong. Not accepted as Estonian, and not wanting to be Russians. Lost their privilege after the collapse, and unable to cope.

Mainly, reading the first half just angered me. I feel like the author surveyed only people who were sulking about having to deal with the real world, or who could not understand that their lost privilege, which they had accepted as their due, was at the expense of others and not their natural born right.

*eARC Netaglley*

ATW 2018 Estonia ( )

There’s a fascinating premise behind this book by the Polish journalist Witold Szabłowski. Its first half is devoted to the tale of how Bulgaria’s entry into the EU obliged it to forbid the keeping of dancing bears, thereby destroying one of its cherished traditions. Following the ‘rescued’ bears in their new home, Szabłowski looks at how the animals are coping with their new ‘freedom’ and also follows the fate of their former keepers. In the second half of the book, the bears’ clumsy encounter with their new freedom forms the framework for a series of vignettes assembled in various Eastern and Central European countries, whose peoples are still struggling to define their identities and purpose in the aftermath of Communism. Unfortunately the second half doesn’t live up to the promise of the first part, but the book as a whole offers a glimpse of an unfamiliar world struggling in that gap between death-throes and birth-throes.

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2018/04/11/dancing-bears-witold-szablowski/ ( )

This was such an interesting story about a slice of recent history I feel few know about. Szablowski tells stories related to the dancing bears in the first part and former citizen’s opinions of the fall of the USSR in the second.

Dancing bears were a part of Bulgarian gypsy customs for a while, when the Soviet Union collapsed this cultural performance was no longer acceptable.

Their handlers would de-teeth these bears, get them addicted to alcohol, and many times abuse them. Sadly, this wasn’t even illegal. One man (or really a few) had bears as pets and attempted (and believed) they could domesticate them. Later, all of the bears get rounded up and sent to nature reserve to reacclimate them to the wild.

The second part of this novel takes a look st people who were previously under Soviet Russia rule. Some felt (and did) fair better under the USSR than in their new capitalist or democratic environments. Others were proud and glad for their new independent nations. It was interesting to hear both sides.

While I absolutely loved part one, part two wasn’t as engrossing to me, although it was still interesting to read about. ( )