Checking in with the Georgians and Russians with the help of Robert Frost

I don’t know how many erstwhile English majors and poetry gurus read these posts, but the recent editorials and articles covering the Georgia/Russia border debacle put me in mind of one of Robert Frost’s longer, less well-known poems, “Mending Wall.” I’ll quote a couple lines – you can find the whole thing here.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

Now, I’m not a big fan of allegory, but making allegory retroactively is fun. I mean, it seems that a lot of the imagery of this poem relates to just about any breakdown of borders.

What tears apart the wall in the poem? A couple forces – the natural action of nature, the careless destruction of hunters, the searching noses of their dogs – are responsible for the wall being torn apart. The two neighbors that come together to mend the wall aren’t friends, and barely even friendly, if you continue to read the poem. The divide the work totally arbitrarily, as acquaintances would – you fix the boulders on your side, and I’ll do mine.

Perhaps it shows something about my turn of mind that I use poetry critique to understand international politics. For me, this poem seems almost custom made to talking about the relationship between Georgia and Russia.

The editorial I was referring to is over at Transitions Online, and here’s the link. A Latvian analyst gives his take on the degradation of the border’s fidelity. He argues for the EU and NATO to take a larger, more visible hand in support of Georgia’s sovereign territory. I agree that it’s Georgia’s problem to deal with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Granting them recognition would do nothing to protect them from falling under Russia’s control and influence. They would be as independent as the Tatar Republic or any other ‘republic’ in the Russian Federation.

I don’t feel that Russia is bad, evil, or naturally a bully. But I do think that the current regime is at least as antagonistic to the weaker powers of the world as the United States’ own. A strong state isn’t necessarily a ‘good’ state, by the rubric of civil society, civil rights, and cultural freedoms. I think it would behoove the EU to actually take a stance in support of Georgia’s actions, with the understanding that changes must be made in the country’s management of Autonomous Republics. Maintaining sovereign integrity is far more important for preventing a future war in the Caucasus, I think, than placating the Russian bear.

Who knows? Maybe this seesaw of political struggle will continue indefinitely into the future. Some analysts have been expecting conflict for years – doing Google searches for articles on the conflict is just as likely to net you stories from two or three years ago as something current.

Blogs like La Russophobe, which as the title suggests, expects only the worst from Russia, would probably warn that Medvedev-and-his-puppeteer will need a new, easy-to-handle military action to gain the people’s trust, like the Chechen terrorists did for Putin. 9/11 wasn’t quite as good to Bush, as it has proven anything but ‘easy-to-handle,’ though that might be just because you and I hear more from Iraq and Afghanistan than those unfortunate souls under the thumb of Russia in Chechnya. I do read La Russophobe regularly, but I’m not afraid of Russia starting World War III. I’m more optimistic, and I don’t think that everything in Russia is as dark as some fear. However, I also don’t think war or similar troubles are entirely out of the question.

This post was written by...

Michael Hancock-Parmer – author of 153 posts on Registan.net.

Michael earned an MA in Central Eurasian Studies in 2011 and remains a student at Indiana University pursuing a dual PhD in Russian History and Central Eurasian Studies. He served 6 months in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan in 2005. After the events in Andijan and the subsequent closure of the program, he served 2 years in southern Kazakhstan, returning to the Midwest in 2007. His general area of interest is on post-Timur Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, centered on the Syr Darya river valley.