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Dispossession:
Anthropological Perspectives on Russia’s War Against Ukraine 1st Edition Catherine Wanner
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This volume examines Russia’s war on Ukraine. Scholars who have lived through the Russian invasion or who have conducted ethnographic research in the region for decades provide timely analysis of a war that will leave a lasting mark on the twenty-first century.
Using the concept of dispossession, this volume showcases some of the novel ways violence operates in the Russian–Ukrainian war and the multiple means by which civilians, within the conflict zone and beyond, have become active participants in the war effort. Anthropological perspectives on war provide onthe-ground insight, historically informed analysis, and theoretical engagement to depict the experiences of dispossession by war and the motivations that drive the responses of the dispossessed. Such perspectives humanize the victims even as they depict the very inhumanity of war.
Dispossession is geared toward upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and the general reader who seeks to have a deeper understanding of the Russian–Ukrainian war as it continues to impact geopolitics more broadly.
Catherine Wanner is Professor of Anthropology, History, and Religious Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, USA. Using ethnographic and archival methods, her research centers on the politics of religion, conflict mediation, and trauma healing. In 2020, she was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Prize from the Association for the Study of Eastern Christianity. She is the convener of the Working Group on Lived Religion in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. She is the author or editor of six books on Ukraine, most recently Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine (2022).
Anthropology of Now
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The Anthropology of Donald Trump Culture and the Exceptional Moment
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Dispossession
Anthropological Perspectives on Russia’s War Against Ukraine
The right of Catherine Wanner to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
This Open Access title was funded by The Pennsylvania State University.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wanner, Catherine, 1960– editor.
Title: Dispossession : anthropological perspectives on Russia’s war against Ukraine / edited by Catherine Wanner.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2024. |
Series: Anthropology of now | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023037855 (print) | LCCN 2023037856 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032466248 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032466224 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003382607 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ukraine Conflict, 2014—-Social aspects. | Civilians in war—Ukraine. | War victims—Ukraine. | Anthropology and history. | Ukraine—History—Russian Invasion, 2022—-Social aspects.
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023037855
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023037856
ISBN: 978-1-032-46624-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-46622-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-38260-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003382607
Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra
This book is dedicated to all who have lost their lives or experienced dispossession as a result of this war.
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii Note on transliteration and translation xv Introduction: War and dispossession 1 Catherine Wanner
Experiencing loss through dispossession and displacement
1 The time that was taken from us: Temporal experiences after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine 25 Natalia Otrishchenko
2 The emotional and behavioral consequences after the Russian invasion of Ukraine for the civilian population of Ukraine 45 Valentyna Pavlenko
3 Population displacement and the Russian occupation of Crimea: “Never again” becomes “again and again” 63 Greta Uehling
4 No longer a citizen: Dispossession in Eastern Ukraine 82 Oleksandra Tarkhanova
5 Fragmented lives and fragmented histories in Odesa 100 Marina Sapritsky-Nahum
6 Faith and war: Grassroots Ukrainian Protestantism in the context of the Russian invasion 121 Tatiana Vagramenko
II Radical openness and responding to dispossession 141
7 Memes as antibodies: Creativity and resilience in the face of Russia’s war 143 Laada Bilaniuk
8 “Russian Warship, Go F*ck Yourself”: Circulating social media discourses in the Russia–Ukraine War 167
Bridget Goodman
9 Responses to dispossession: Self-organization and the state 188 Emily Channell-Justice
10 Women and gender equality in the Ukrainian Armed Forces 208 Tamara Martsenyuk
11 Meeting the other: Peacebuilding and religious actors in a time of war 225 Tetiana Kalenychenko
FIGURES
5.1 Crowds of Odesa residents waiting to board evacuation buses
5.2 Ukrainian flag in place of a statue of Catherine the Great removed in 2022 from the center of Odesa
5.3 Four men in prayer mocking Putin’s rhetoric as they refer to themselves jokingly as Ukrainian neo-Nazis
7.1 “Good evening, we are from Ukraine!” postage stamp
7.2 Artist Volodymyr Kazanevsky’s vision of how the word palianytsia (“loaf of bread”) can be a weapon, as it allows the detection of Russian sabotage and reconnaissance groups
7.3 Ukrainian postage stamp from 2013 depicting a loaf of bread, with the addition of the phrase ne mozhem povtorit’ (“we can’t do it again”). (Recreated by the author from an image reposted by Alexej Zaika on Facebook, 1 April 2022.)
7.4 Ï against Z. Poster proclaiming “Ï always wins,” showing the letters falling like bombs over the Kremlin. The words Zlo (“Evil,” written with the Roman letter Z, emblem of the Russian forces) and Smert’ (“Death”) appear lower right on the poster
7.5 Letter ï flyer posted in the Russian-occupied city of Heniches’k (Rubryka 2022)
110
111
117
149
151
152
153
154
7.6 Roadside billboard in the city of Ternopil stating, “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” (in Russian but using Ukrainian orthography), with the word idi (go) stylized to look like a warship head-on, and to evoke the Ukrainian state emblem. Photo by Mykola Vasylechko 157
x Figures
7.7 “Russian warship … DONE!” postage stamp 158
7.8 Folk art rooster pitcher perched atop a kitchen cabinet on a wall of a bombed building in Borodianka, Kyiv oblast. Photo by Yelyzaveta Servatynska, taken on 6 April 2022, after the city was de-occupied (Suspil’ne 2022) 160
7.9 Maksym Burlaka in a yoga pose in central Kharkiv. Photograph by Stanislav Ostrous 161
8.1 Meme: “Things You Can See from Space.” Screenshot by the author of Twitter feed 170
8.2 “New Road Signs in Ukraine!” Screenshot by the author of Facebook news feed 172
8.3 Ukrainian Soldier and Russian Warship Stamp Image. Screenshot by the author of Facebook news feed 173
8.4 “Daily Military Schedule.” Screenshot by the author of Facebook news feed 174
8.5 Russia as a Nutcracker, Ukraine as an Unbroken Nut. Screenshot by the author of Facebook news feed 175
TABLES
10.1 The number of women in military service in the AFU by year 215
10.2 Women should be granted equal opportunities with men to work in the armed forces of Ukraine and other military formations. Please say whether you agree or disagree with the following statements 217
10.3 Attitudes to the statement that the army should be a professional field where both women and men can fulfill their potential on a voluntary basis (of their own free will)
217
10.4 In your opinion, what kind of army should Ukraine introduce? 218
10.5 Are you personally ready or not ready to put up armed resistance to stop the Russian occupation of Ukraine? (Info Sapiens, N = 1000, January 2023) 219
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Although the circumstances were wrenching that prompted this collection of articles on dispossession to come into being, it was a true pleasure to work with the contributors to this volume. As a group, we workshopped each of the chapters, which inevitably led to many stimulating and thoughtful discussions. It was a delight to meet on a regular basis in spite of the 13-hour difference in time zones. I am thankful to each scholar participating here for their commitment to this book and to conducting research often under very difficult and trying circumstances.
Several people played a key role in bringing this book to fruition. I wish to thank David Eller, the editor of the Anthropology of Now series, for his early interest in this book as well as Kate Dudley, Bruce Grant, and David Henig. Meagan Simpson of Routledge lent her expertise and professionalism to make the production process go smoothly. Patty Gray generously shared her expertise and keen eye as a copyeditor, which improved many aspects of this text. I am grateful for her early enthusiasm, her scholarship, and her participation in this project. I am also grateful to my home institution, Penn State University, for its support of this volume, which has allowed the book to be made available in open access.
Lastly, as anthropologists, we would have nothing to write if not for the numerous interlocutors who so willingly share their time, thoughts, and experiences with us, often about intensely emotional subjects. We acknowledge their generosity, bravery, and openness and hope that they recognize themselves on these pages.
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION
We have followed the standard system for transliterating Cyrillic, modified Library of Congress. Speech was translated and transliterated from the language in which it was spoken or written. Some names used in this book are pseudonyms. In those instances, we have used names transliterated from the language the person generally uses. When an individual is a public figure or a published author, we have used their actual name. Place names are rendered in Ukrainian if the place is in Ukraine (Kyiv, not Kiev; Donbas, not Donbass; Odesa, not Odessa). All translations have been done by the authors unless otherwise noted.
INTRODUCTION
War and dispossession
Catherine Wanner
War is an act of dispossession. One side tries to take things from the other, be it land, wealth, resources, culture, dignity, or anything else that will make domination, manipulation, and exploitation easier. And the other side (or sides) respond in kind. Although war is inextricably linked to dispossession, surprisingly little attention has been given to analyzing this connection. Rather, especially since the 2007–2008 global financial crisis, a great deal has been written about dispossession in terms of economic displacement. The focus of these works has generally been on how the dynamics propelling economic development produce economic growth at the expense of driving people from their land, turning them into wage laborers, and fostering dispossession leading to migration, which ultimately serves to magnify inequalities globally. More recently, attention has shifted to climate change and how environmental factors can render land unlivable, which can also force relocation.1 Far less attention has been paid to the role of war in yielding dispossession and the interlocking consequences it produces, namely, displacement and disenfranchisement. The chapters in this book focus on the dispossession triggered by the hybrid war in Eastern Ukraine that began in 2014 and vastly accelerated after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The ethnographic data presented here address material forms of dispossession and their reverberations that result in immaterial loss and cultural dispossession. These chapters offer analyses of recent, transformative attempts to re-possess political and cultural autonomy as a response to the destructive dispossession produced by war.
There are many motivations to go to war. The historical encounter between Ukrainians and Russians has left an imperial legacy in its wake. This shared imperial legacy as of late has been divergently interpreted among Russians and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003382607-1
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
Ukrainians, leading to vastly different—and contradictory—political visions and aspirations for each country’s future political development. This legacy has also kept alive an imperial impulse that has been used to license acts of dispossession on two levels. An imperial impulse finds expression in actions designed to dominate other peoples and in a logic that renders those acts appropriate and even necessary (An-Na’im 2011, 50). Among the factors that keep this imperial impulse alive for some and position it as normative in a Russian–Ukrainian context are a sacralized politics of history and a melding of patriotism with piety that infuse historical and political narratives with justifications for taking or retaining possession of certain lands, peoples, and attributes of social and political life. As such, dispossession both enables and constrains the ability to narrate events that have contributed to the dispossessive disenfranchisement in the first place (McGranahan 2010, 769).
The beginning of Russian-backed armed separatism in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 was evidence of this enduring imperial impulse. Ostensibly the goal of armed intervention in Ukraine was to protect the rights of Russian speakers. It also served to rebuke Russia’s own perceived dispossession of its rightful imperial heritage and global standing as a feared superpower. However, the hybrid forms of warfare that ensued after 2014 unleashed new consequences. Ukrainians became increasingly committed to disrupting the normative expectations of historic patterns of imperial subjugation through violence, established cultural and ethnic hierarchies, and entrenched patterns of authoritarian governance. As violence accelerated over the years, culminating in the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, dispossession and the cascading series of consequences that inevitably followed sharply intensified. The chain of interlocking events, set in motion initially by the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the occupation of two regions in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, inevitably led to the displacement and impoverishment of indigenous and local populations. The import of these developments was compounded by the growing resolve and mass mobilization of civilian populations in Ukraine to reverse this dispossession in all its guises.
The brutality of war among “fraternal peoples,” as Soviet and Putinist rhetoric characterizes the relationship between Ukrainians and Russians, provides a springboard to offer a theoretical and conceptual framework to analyze the violence of war in terms of dispossession and the range of transformative responses to it. The essence of dispossession, I suggest, is that it compromises a person’s or a group’s autonomy by creating interdependencies that make them vulnerable to subjugation. Although there are multiple means by which to dispossess a person or group, there are essentially three types of dispossession: cultural, economic, and eliminatory. The residents of Ukraine have been subject to all three types. The peoples of the Russian Empire and former Soviet Union, including Ukrainians, have experienced cultural dispossession thanks to prolonged state-sponsored Russification, Sovietization, and other assimilatory pressures
that have erased cultural and local specificities. Certainly, for some, the creation of the Soviet command administrative economic system involved massive economic dispossession. Land and other forms of private property were confiscated by the state and nationalized. Especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when massive economic and fiscal reforms to unmake Soviet socialism were quickly or haphazardly implemented, the majority of the population experienced extreme economic dispossession as possibilities for reliable employment constricted and state services collapsed. The result was precarious impoverishment throughout the region. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, has unleashed eliminatory forms of dispossession, the focus here, which compounds previously ongoing cultural and economic dispossession.
Processes of dispossession have unfolded in two tempos, episodically in vastly hastened, usually violent modes, and gradually over the longue durée. Dispossession occurs via the episodic taking of land and other forms of property, leading to disempowerment, impoverishment, and displacement. It also occurs through processes of gradual, ongoing assimilatory pressures that can occur in waves over time and form layers. Successive waves of incremental dispossession dislodge pillars of autonomy and stability until they finally culminate in full dispossessive loss. Russification, Sovietization, and neoliberal reforms after 1991 are all examples of waves of cultural and economic dispossession that occurred before the full-scale invasion, each leaving traces on the layers of traces.
A dual temporal perspective, episodic and gradual, allows us to conceive of dispossession not as a state that is the product of other acts but as a part of a process that involves a chain of interlocking events that can even depart from already being dispossessed. Even when a person or group has rights, thanks to a certain form of citizenship, actually possessing those rights remains dependent on a legal regime and forms of governance that respect and protect those rights. If that is not the case, those citizens are already dispossessed. As Judith Butler writes, “We are interdependent beings whose pleasure and suffering depend from the start on a sustained social world, a sustaining environment” (Butler and Athanasiou 2021, 4). Without a sustained social world and its recognizable traits, the prospects for dispossession find fertile ground. War, of course, shatters recognizable traits of a sustaining environment and creates a profound rupture to predictable patterns of everyday life. Repeated aggression does this repeatedly, facilitating ever greater degrees of dispossession over time.
So far I have noted three types of dispossession, cultural, economic, and eliminatory, and the dual tempos, episodic and gradual, in which they have unfolded. Mostly, however, dispossession has been analyzed in economic or monetary terms as the loss, forfeiture, or deprivation of land, through a variety of means, but often through market mechanisms. The loss of land becomes dispossessive when it leads to additional losses of property, livelihood, and belonging. A consequence of such dispossession is often forced migration, exile, and the
loss of citizenship and rights, which destroys, or at least vastly complicates, the lives of individuals and the communities to which they belong and derive meaning in their lives. Above all, the combined effect of these losses is disempowerment and the inability to refute the legitimacy of dispossession and forced displacement in the first place. Most anthropological studies of dispossession, especially those set in post-Soviet societies of the 1990s, have focused on the loss of property and land through market transfers (Gotfredsen 2016; Humphrey 2002; Khalvashi 2018; Nazpary 2001). In doing so, these studies have considered property a commodity within a neoliberal capitalist order and therefore have analytically connected dispossession to inequality. There is surely much merit to such approaches.
However, I propose a somewhat different framing that is reflected in the following chapters. Some forms of material property have value beyond the economic and monetary. It is specifically these immaterial forms of loss that accompany dispossession that we explore in this book. For example, property establishes boundaries in which interpersonal and community engagement occur and in which membership and rights are granted or denied; a home places a person in relation to others and creates status and feelings of rootedness and belonging in particular places; and property in the form of wedding rings, family heirlooms, and mundane objects, such as keys, form the symbolic bedrock of lifeworlds, memories, and identities.
In short, the loss of land, a home, and material objects has destructive reverberations for a person’s sense of self, the sustainability of communities, and national solidarities with consequences on two temporal levels, episodic (loss) and gradually over time (loss of meaning). The sentimental attachments embedded in property give it important political, social, and cultural values that allow people to orient themselves and relate to others meaningfully. When dispossession occurs through involuntary property loss, and especially through the destruction of war, the multiple layers of meaning embedded in property become particularly apparent and the extent of losses is magnified. Here, we seek to explore the full ramifications of what has been lost through processes of dispossession brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Take as an example the experiences of the writer Volodymyr Rafeyenko. He had lived in Donetsk for 45 years when Russian-backed armed separatism started. After several months of living under attack, as a Russian-language writer and a specialist in Russian literature, he was forced to leave Donetsk for Kyiv, before he was displaced yet again. After years of war, much has changed for him. He no longer writes and publishes in Russian, and he even refuses to speak Russian to anyone, including his wife. When I asked him what he missed most about life in Donetsk, he said, “I miss myself. Donetsk is the place of my childhood, my youth, where my alma mater is, where I began to write. That is all gone. I miss myself.”2
He noted that anyone with a conscience is not alone. There is always something to mull over, to think about, and to discuss. But what if that former conversation partner no longer exists or has been transformed into someone else by events that have overtaken the direction of life? This is what war can take away from a person. Additionally, he mentioned that, although Kyiv is a beautiful city with hills and rolling landscapes, he misses the steppe. On the steppe, it was possible to see the sunrise and the sunset. The vista was unbroken. How to restore the possibility of being able to converse with oneself and see the sunrise? These are some of the forms of dispossession that have beset the approximately 7 million Ukrainians who have been internally displaced and the additional 8.2 million who had left for Europe by May 2023.3
Displacement involves not just people moving across borders. During war, borders move across people, incorporating them into new political entities and groups where they are often (unwanted) minorities. This is another index of dispossession. Experiences of being regarded as suspicious outsiders by the new majority group, alien to its version of history and to the body politic it has forged to protect the same, reaffirm that the dispossessed belong elsewhere, not here (Tambar 2016).
Beyond the loss of land and property and the ways these material forms orient social relations and patterns of everyday life, Russia’s war against Ukraine illustrates additional dimensions of eliminatory forms of dispossession. Athena Athanasiou suggests that “the politically induced condition in which certain people and groups of people become differentially exposed to injury, violence, poverty, indebtedness, and death” creates forms of vulnerability that can lead to situating the dispossessed in a state of “non-being” (Butler and Athanasiou 2021, 19). Based on research in post-apartheid South Africa, she uses the term “dignity taking” to refer to dispossession that is designed to produce not only impoverishment and displacement but also dehumanization by thrusting the dispossessed into “non-being.” In other words, once a people is subject to cultural and economic dispossession—that is to say, no longer fully possesses their own histories, languages, belief systems, traditions, and the land and communities that sustain them—the final phase, eliminatory dispossession, takes away dignity and sometimes life itself. With that, a new state of “non-being” of a former people is born through eliminatory dispossession.
Within the context of war, the means by which individuals or groups can be subject to “dignity taking” and “non-being” are abundant. War recasts dispossession as a processual politicized chain of events that allows economic, cultural, and eliminatory forms of dispossession to coalesce, not just to reduce the autonomy of the other but to crush it. A framework that recalibrates the weight of the political against the economic and monetary reveals the consequences of politically motivated dispossession, in which economic dynamics that are insidious, deleterious, and long-lasting take structural form. When we consider the
multidirectional and multiplex aspects of dispossession that result from war, we gain a perspective that allows us to sketch out the degree of difficulty we will encounter in making restitution for dispossession in terms of restorative justice and eventual reconciliation in the long aftermath of this war.
To illustrate the logic and motivations for implementing eliminatory forms of dispossession operative in this war, consider a speech that Vladimir Putin gave on the eve of the Russian invasion. He articulates an envisioned state of “nonbeing” via “dignity taking” and the eliminatory means he plans to use to achieve it. In a televised address, he said:
It is a historical fact. As I have already said, Soviet Ukraine is the result of Bolshevik policy, and even today it can be rightfully called “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine.” He is its author and architect. This is fully corroborated by archival documents … And now his “grateful descendants” have demolished monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. This is what they call decommunization.4 You want decommunization? Well, that suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show you what real decommunization means for Ukraine.5
Putin makes clear in this speech his view that if Ukrainians want to remove Soviet-era symbols, tropes, and concepts from public space and thereby distinguish Ukrainians from Russians and Ukraine from Russia, then “non-being” awaits them. He will obliterate Ukrainian state sovereignty and a sense of Ukrainian nationhood by returning Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians to their common historical–spiritual space.
The entanglements of the Ukrainian–Russian historical experience previously included efforts to govern using state-led initiatives to culturally dispossess people of their heritage and distinct cultural attributes. They also now include a political relationship that dispossesses people of their land and rights to peace, protection, and dignity, with the intention of delivering a state that no longer includes autonomy or the right to self-determination. (Dunn and Bobick 2014) These are the dynamics that have long made Ukrainian state sovereignty vulnerable to Russian state leaders’ desire to re-possess imperial power. The full-scale invasion that began on 24 February 2022 is simply a forceful iteration of this stark position.
To connect the processes of dispossession to war, Peter Wolfe’s (1999) landmark study, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology, is helpful to further understand eliminatory forms of dispossession. Given the long-standing anthropological interest in indigenous societies and the colonial encounter, this study has been highly influential. Wolfe argues that settler colonial societies represent a qualitatively different form of colonialism that helps us see how dispossession could be achieved over time. As an Australian, Wolfe
is particularly sensitive to the treatment of Aboriginal peoples at the hands of white European settlers. Anthropologists and other scholars who have studied the history and current challenges of indigenous communities in the Americas have also found a settler colonialist analytical perspective insightful. Moreover, settler colonialism reaffirmed the work of earlier scholars, such as Edward Said (1994), who made similar arguments that linked the dispossession of Palestinians under occupation to alternative, colonial-like tactics of domination used by the Israeli state.
According to Wolfe, settler colonialism distinguishes itself from other forms of colonialism, such as extractive and franchise colonialism, in that it becomes an ongoing colonizing structure, not simply an event or a series of events in the past. It is centered on a winner-take-all battle over land, a denial of the Other’s sovereignty, and the granting of authorship to the settler population to narrate their own normative supremacy and entitlements to the very land the settlers occupy.6 This narrative sustains a settler colonial structure and begins to distinguish the differences between a settler colonial society, where the colonizers remain, from a postcolonial one, where the ongoing effects of colonial rule endure even without imperial state structures. Wolfe succinctly writes, “settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event” (Wolfe 2006, 388).
Settler colonialism suggests how dispossession can operate on two levels in tandem: it centers on land, not on labor, and on forging narratives that naturalize the possession of land for some and normativize the eviction of others. Therefore, the “logic of elimination” is access to land. Precisely because the forms of settler colonialism include both eliminatory dispossession through land and cultural dispossession through narrative, Wolfe is careful to distinguish the logic of elimination of settler colonialism from genocide. “Settler colonialism is inherently eliminatory but not invariably genocidal,” he writes (Wolfe 2006, 387). The two often converge but they are not synonymous. The difference is that settler colonialism aims to replace indigenous communities with settler societies using a variety of means that could, but doesn’t necessarily have to, include genocide.
Russian President Vladimir Putin explains his own logic of elimination by asserting that Ukrainians as a separate people do not exist. By looking at centuries of settler colonialism and cultural dispossession that delivered Russians and Russian culture to Ukraine, he argues that Ukrainians have no history, religion, or language independent of Russia.7 Ukrainian state sovereignty amounts to nothing more than a Leninist creation of a sub-state structure that gains its relevance through interdependence on Russian state power.
The Native American response in the United States to settler colonialism challenges the logic of settler colonial domination. “We are still here” is their retort to sustained settler colonial efforts to eliminate indigenous peoples through dispossession, forced displacement and relocation, assimilation, disease, and murder. Indigenous resistance to colonial power to “still be here” has proven
more resilient than the structures and processes of elimination that tried to dispossess them into a state of “non-being” (O’Brien 2017, 254; Speed 2017).8
The same could be said of the Ukrainian response to repel war-inspired dispossession in all its forms: cultural, economic, and eliminatory. The use of a full-scale invasion to forcefully incorporate Ukraine into a Russian realm by dispossessing Ukrainians of their state sovereignty as a final push into a nonautonomous state of interdependency has triggered broad reactions of resistance and defiance. Outmanned and outgunned, Ukrainians have responded by all means possible, including the weaponization of language, religion, and social media and the activation of transnational networks in which they are all embedded. The range of responses to this war to reassert that “We are still here” is in proportion to the intensity and duration of dispossessive episodic and gradual efforts to which Ukrainians have been subject over time through cultural, economic, and eliminatory means.
Transformative responses to dispossession
When dispossession is viewed as embedded in a chain of events and as part of a process—and not a static state of being dispossessed—its transformative potential is more readily visible. Much like Victor Turner’s (1970) discussion of a liminal phase in ritual performance, dispossession has a “betwixt and between” phase too. This phase is critically important in that the void this phase offers is what allows for sweeping and rapid change to take hold. In other words, during the process of becoming dispossessed, within the chain of dispossessive events, much like in a ritual process, this liminal, transitional phase is characterized by no longer possessing what was lost or taken (land, property, dignity, for example). It is also characterized by not yet possessing what is desired. The goal is not always re-possessing what was lost or taken, because that is often impossible and sometimes not even desirable. With cultural norms and structural impediments to change destroyed by war, in essence, a multitude of possibilities for invention and innovation open up during this transitional phase and this is what makes dispossession so profoundly transformative. The key difference between processes of ritual and dispossession is that, in a ritual context, the outcome is clearly envisioned and usually even scripted. The point of using ritual to bring about a desired transformation is precisely to capitalize on the structured, scripted nature of ritual to break down a previous status and secure the transition to a new, specific status. In contrast, in the case of dispossession, while there is a sense as to what has been lost, what could or should emerge in its place after this liminal phase is often not entirely clear and sometimes not even imaginable. This gives this transitory phase of dispossessive processes an open-ended nature that is pregnant with possibilities and begins to explain the intense creativity and resourcefulness that characterized the early stages of the invasion.
Within the context of wartime violence and destruction, a radical openness to re-formulating a sustaining lifeworld in response to dispossession is the spark to conceive of new possibilities as to what one could possess or re-possess in the future. As these possibilities are innumerable, this means that dispossession, as unenviable an experience as it is, nonetheless has the potential via its very liminality to lead to significant and swift transformation when radical openness allows for imaginative resilience, regeneration, and reinvention. Property, communities, habits, and many other aspects of daily life might have been lost, as the first set of chapters illustrate, but so too have the many barriers to all forms of change.
What is distinctive about this war is the range of transformative reactions that have been unleashed by broad sectors of the Ukrainian population as a response to renewed efforts to render them dispossessed of their autonomy and to enhance their interdependency on the Russian state. At its core, the extent of radical openness to change is a direct outgrowth of and proportional to perceived threats of dispossession. Reactions to dispossession are driven by a conviction that the imperial impulse emerging as a policy in the Putin regime that fed the conditions leading to war in the first place must be tamed once and for all to allow Ukrainians to chart their own political future unencumbered. This chain of events—an imperial impulse, acts of dispossessive loss, and transformative responses informed by radical openness during a transition phase—has culminated in an almost total civilian mobilization in response to the Russian invasion. This unprecedented situation has already yielded extensive transformation in the form of institutional innovation and revised cultural norms in Ukrainian society, which are analyzed in the second set of chapters.
Radical openness can lead to a concordant radical intentionality to reverse dispossession by reclaiming aspects of history, forms of expression, and modes of belonging. The sheer determination to resist dispossession and an even greater reduction in autonomy and capacity for self-determination have transformed the everyday lives of Ukrainians under conditions of war. Therefore, I consider dispossession not just as part of a chain of occurrences that includes loss in a material sense (land, citizenship, livelihood) but also in an ontological sense (rootedness, belonging, communal ties). These immaterial forms of loss are connected to efforts to resist dispossession by transforming what is already possessed. This begins, for example, to explain the vast uptick in the use of the Ukrainian language in public spaces across the country; the motivation to create and claim to support a Ukrainian, independent, self-governing Orthodox Church; and the variety of other forms of institutional innovation and revised norms of behavior that now include humor, new citizenship regimes, and women in active combat positions in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Confronted by dispossession since armed aggression began in 2014 that increasingly has eliminatory dimensions that rest on layers of previous cultural and economic
dispossession, the radical openness to find solutions to reverse these dispossessive losses and other attempts to compromise Ukrainian autonomy have prompted sweeping and transformative institutional and cultural changes. This makes the Russian invasion of Ukraine a watershed event for Ukrainian society and for NATO, the European Union, and geopolitics more broadly.
Dispossession since the 1990s
The connections proposed here between war, dispossession, and responses to dispossession leading to transformation in the post-Soviet space are new. Earlier forms of dispossession experienced in the region were largely driven by Soviet “high modernist” projects of socialist economic development, such as sprawling collective farms and hyper rationalist, monoindustrial urban planning (Brown 1995; Scott 1999). Authoritarian forms of governance largely silenced collective responses to reverse that dispossession. At the same time, cultural dispossession was an ongoing source of discontent throughout the region among the educated elite, and especially among members of the creative class, who had long chafed under Sovietization campaigns and the unique form of Soviet colonial relations that Adeeb Khalid characterizes as “the activist, interventionist, mobilizational state that seeks to sculpt its citizenry in an ideal image” (Khalid 2006, 232).
After the fall of the Soviet regime in 1991, and before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, most studies of dispossession in the region moved beyond cultural forms of dispossession to focus on economic ones. Having disenfranchised citizens from post-Soviet political domains, neoliberalism was posited by most scholars as the main factor driving dispossession in the region. Along with the well-developed ethnographic record of documented dispossession of indigenous peoples (Bloch 2003; Grant 1995; Gray 2005), many anthropological studies conducted in the turbulent decade of the 1990s focused on economic dispossession (Gotfredsen 2016; Humphrey 2002; Khalvashi 2018; Nazpary 2001; Wanner 2005). These studies illustrate the expansion of mechanisms capable of dispossessing ever broader sectors of populations through regressive taxation, crony capitalism, and other forms of neoliberal, capitalist-driven disempowerment and disenfranchisement.
Across the region, “market Bolsheviks,” enabled by state manipulation, promoted individual enrichment for themselves and “trickle-down economics” for others. Resentment grew quickly as state policies became engines for social suffering, downward mobility, and dispossession for some. In contrast, for a new elite, mounting wealth, status, and privilege crystallized into an oligarchic class with favorable relations to state authorities that secured sustained structural privilege. Many anthropologists studying post-Soviet forms of dispossession took inspiration from David Harvey (2005) to explain why some people were able to amass fantastic wealth after 1991, whereas the overwhelming majority
of citizens fell into deep poverty. Solving this puzzle fueled many earlier studies that engaged the concept of dispossession. Harvey recasts Marx’s primitive accumulation, or the proletarianization of labor via wage labor, into “accumulation by dispossession” to explain the general rise of sharp inequality globally. Accumulation by dispossession refers to the dynamics inherent in capitalism to propel over-accumulation in the form of immobile capital (land, factories, and commercial hubs), which depends for its growth on dispossessing others of their access to the same. This propels uneven development and inequalities, which are particularly manifest in societies that transitioned from a planned economy to a market-driven economy. According to Harvey, the main goals of “accumulation by dispossession” are the restoration and consolidation of class power in postcolonial countries via the privatization of state assets, the redistribution of state assets disproportionately to upper-class elites, the financialization of the economy, and the management and manipulation of the social tensions that inevitably result (Harvey 2005, 159–165).9
Caroline Humphrey, drawing on long-term fieldwork in Siberia, detailed the processes by which accumulation and lavish consumption came at the expense of dispossessing others by making them “unemployment positive,” either through forced displacement or by a lack of access to employment (Humphrey 2002). She notes the double sense of dispossession that was emerging in the 1990s and writes:
The dispossessed are people who have been deprived of property, work and entitlements, but in a second sense we can understand them as people who are themselves no longer possessed. That is, they are no longer inside the quasifeudal corporations, the collective “domains,” which confer a social status on their members and which in practice are until today the key units disposing of property and people in Russia.
(Humphrey 1996/1997, 70)
When state services collapsed in the 1990s, unemployment led to extreme dispossession in the form of impoverishment and political disenfranchisement throughout the region. Joma Nazpary (2001), building on Humphrey’s earlier work, suggests that the loss of a paternalistic state led to the deprivation of rights, the loss of social stability, and a flourishing of often contradictory microstrategies among the dispossessed to make ends meet in 1990s Kazakhstan.10 The ultimate consequence of these haphazard responses to economic and cultural disorientation, Nazpary argues, was “chaos.” Precisely because it is not possible for societies to exist in a prolonged state of chaotic transition, subsequent studies of dispossession include attempts to explain these reversals of fortune and the incomprehensibility that came to characterize everyday life. Gotfredsen (2016) argues that Georgians, who were dispossessed of 20 percent of their
territory in a war with Russia in 2008, appeal to conspiracy theories to make sense of economic dispossession and to explain who has power over wealth. These conspiracy theories, like the mythological cosmologies of Medea and their multiple manifestations in Georgian society that Tamta Khalvashi (2018) analyzes, are “good to think” because they offer flexible explanations for economic dispossession, postsocialist transformation, and political unrest. However, because these affective narratives are fueled by imagination, they often introduce ambiguity and provide a means to accommodate unwanted political transformations and economic dispossession without providing a response that could effectively begin to reverse or transform the sources of that dispossession (Khalvashi 2018, 821).
Some have criticized studies of economic dispossession for placing an overemphasis on the power of capital flows to mobilize labor in service of a global capitalist economy as a generator of dispossession, which has contributed to discounting the agency of the dispossessed, which we see so vividly in the response to this war. Glassman (2006) makes the important intervention that in an era of neoliberal transnationalism, accumulation by dispossession increasingly yields the formation of new solidarities among similarly affected groups. These groups join together to rectify the emerging forms of inequality and dispossession they are forced to confront by embedding activism on a vastly expanded global scale, allowing local movements to be operative on a global stage. Indeed, as many of the chapters in this book illustrate, local experiences of dispossession can now be projected into cyberspace and calls for activist reaction and even retribution for dispossession can reach far beyond national borders. These new forms of solidarity that emerge are often based on a relational interdependency that has strategic and instrumental value. Historical context is essential to gauge the depth and extent of dispossession and the ability to analyze the will—versus the absolute need—to confront dispossession. This is key to understanding the agency of the dispossessed and the type of dispossession we see operative in this war.
Ethnographic states of emergency
Allen Feldman (1995) coined the term “ethnographic states of emergency” to connote the experience of conducting ethnographic research in sites subject to political violence. Such research carries the burden of communicating the perils of living through the terror of being subject to random violence. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (1992) argue quite persuasively that the very definition of a traumatized person is someone who cannot articulate what they have experienced. They came to this conclusion after working with the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. They understood Holocaust survivors to be “impossible witnesses” of what they had endured. This has long-term ramifications for how war is recalled, understood, and narrated(Roccu and Salem 2019).
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Before going to our room, we went to see that Jerry was all right. The man who took him on board piloted us to his stall, and on the way back showed us the furnaces and the machinery. He interested us with his appreciation of the mighty silent power. He said he often went in alone, and watched it, and felt awed by the wonderful working of each part, the perfect action of even the minutest being essential to the whole.
We were obliged to take an inside stateroom, but found it very comfortable, and there was an opening heavenward just large enough for us to see one star, which told us the rain was over. We arose soon after three to be sure of the sunrise, and were out on deck as we stopped at Popham Beach, at the mouth of the Kennebec River. The apples we bought on Atlantic avenue were a timely refreshment, and the sail up the river, with the sunrise, was ample compensation for our effort. At five o’clock we landed at Bath, and Jerry’s friend harnessed him for us, saying courteously, as he handed us the reins, “Whenever you come this way again call for the second mate.”
The drive through the main street of Bath at that early hour was a decided contrast to our drive to the boat in Boston. It seemed as if the morning was half spent, and we could hardly realize that our waiting in the parlor of the hotel was for a six o’clock breakfast. At our table we recognized the faces of the bride and bridegroom, whose path we crossed four times on our Bar Harbor trip two years ago.
After doing justice to that early feast, we went out once more for a hand mirror, as we were tired of looking cracked. Next door to the hotel we found one that just suited us, and several other little things as well, among them a penholder, which we purchased in memory of the one we lost in Bath two years ago.
At eight o’clock all was ready for the thirty-four miles drive up the Kennebec to Augusta. The day was lovely and cool, and we need not say the scenery was fine. We dined at Richmond, and spent the night at the Augusta House.
Thirty-two miles the next day, still following the river, taking dinner at Waterville, brought us to Norridgewock, which was full of interest to us, from descriptions so often given us by friends, of the old-time beauty. It is one of the few places where we would like to stay, had we time to delay. The Kennebec runs close by the main street, and the large covered bridge is opposite the hotel. We walked to the middle of the bridge to watch the sunset clouds, and feast our eyes on the view up the river. As the light faded we strolled down the main street, which is overarched by old willows. We measured the largest, walking around it with a handkerchief, just twenty-four lengths, twenty-three feet and four inches, a grand old trunk.
The wife of the proprietor brought some pictures of the town to our room in the evening, and promised us a drive in the morning.
We rested well in our pretty blue room, and were ready for the drive, after leaving Jerry with the blacksmith. We were taken to the river’s edge for one view, and to Sunset Rock for another. All the places we wished to see, and others we did not know of were pointed out to us, and we were sure if people only knew about it, the Quinnebassett House would be full of those who like a quiet, comfortable resting place.
We spend only one night in a place, and are usually ready to go on, but we left Norridgewock reluctantly, and were only consoled for turning away from the lovely Kennebec, by promising ourselves to drive to Norridgewock again some time, and follow still farther up the river. Maine cannot be exhausted in many trips, and we have some fine ones growing in our mind. Every journey makes a better one possible.
We must now face about for this time, and we aimed next for the Androscoggin, driving first to Farmington, then turning south, crossing the Androscoggin on one of those scow ferries run along a wire, that old Charlie disliked so much. He was not a good sailor, like Jerry, who can hardly wait for the scow to touch the shore, before he leaps on.
We should have told you, before crossing the ferry, about our quiet Sunday at a farm house. The man was reading his paper as we
drove up, and it seemed almost too bad to disturb their Sunday rest, but his wife said we could stay if we would take them “as they were.” We were soon settled in a cosy parlor with bedroom adjoining, away from all sights and sounds of the busy world. We felt as if we were miles from everywhere, and you can imagine our surprise when the man said that he came down from Boston on the boat with us, and recognized us when we drove to the door.
Monday morning we left our kind host and hostess, with directions for Strickland’s ferry. We have already taken you across, but we did not mention our ferryman. We do not remember now just what he said, but we set him down for a philosopher. All that ride and philosophy for ten cents! We thought it worth twenty-five at least, but he said some grumbled at ten.
Now we renewed our acquaintance with the Androscoggin, which we followed so many miles on one journey farther north. We wondered where all the logs were, and found out all about it from a boy who brought us milk, and entertained us while we had our first and only wayside camp at noon day. Our Sunday hostess had put up luncheon for us, as we were not to pass through any village on our way to Lewiston. Our boy friend took us down to a little beach on the river, and showed us where the river drivers had been for a week, but they were then at work half a mile below. We had often seen a river full of logs, and heard much about the river drivers, when in Maine and northern New Hampshire, but this was our first opportunity to see them at work. They were just coming from their tents after dinner, as we drove along. One of them tied Jerry for us, and conducted us to a nice place on the rocks. We watched them nearly an hour, and concluded it took brains to untangle the snarls of logs. It was quite exciting to see them jump from log to log with their spiked boots, and when the last of a snarl was started, leap into a boat and paddle off for another tangle. The river was low, and it was slow work getting them over the rocks.
The drive to Lewiston was over a sandy road. We met two boys puffing along on their wheels, who asked us if it was sandy all the way up. We were sorry we could not cheer their hearts, by telling them the road was level and hard before them. We spent the night at
Auburn, across the river from Lewiston, as the Elm House looked attractive. At the suggestion of the proprietor we took a horse car ride in the evening around the figure 8, one loop being in Lewiston and the other in Auburn. The horses must have been electrified, for we never rode so fast except by electricity, and we returned to our room quite refreshed.
Poland Springs was our next point of interest, and we were well repaid for our drive to the top of the hill, where the immense hotel when filled must be a little world in itself, for all sorts and conditions of men are attracted there. We met Boston friends who invited us to the morning concert, in the music room. After dinner we climbed to the cupola for the view, then ordered Jerry and were off again. Sabbath Day Pond, which lay along our way, is fittingly named. It has no look of a weekday pond, but is a crystal, clear, peaceful perfection, that is indescribable. The Parker House at Gray Corner afforded us every needful comfort, even to a hammock in the side yard through the twilight.
Now we began to lay aside—not forget—the things that were behind, and to strain our eyes for the first glimpse of the ocean. Portland was only sixteen miles away, and as we had left the sand, it did not seem long before we drove to the Portland post office and got home letters, always so welcome, then to the Preble House for dinner.
There was one place on the coast, that we skipped before, and now we proposed to explore Prouts Neck—nine miles from Portland; but we did not leave the city until we had seen the good friends who entertained us so hospitably when we attended a meeting there. A storm cloud was over us, but we got only the last drops of a shower, that laid the dust all the way to Prouts Neck.
We were glad this lovely spot had been reserved for us until then, for we could not have seen it under a finer sky. We walked to the Rocks, piloted by a young lady, who knew all the paths through the woods, and we were fascinated with the path near the Rocks, over which the wild roses and low evergreens closed as soon as we passed through. We sat on the piazza watching Mt. Washington in the
distance until the sunset sky grew gray, and finished up the pleasant evening in the cosy room of friends from Boston.
We saw them off in the morning for a day at Old Orchard, and then went on our way, through Saco and Biddeford to Kennebunkport, which also has its Rocks and many attractions. Spouting Rock was not spouting, but we saw where it would spout sixty feet in the air, when spouting time came.
The next morning we saw once again the friends we never pass by, at Kennebunk, and visited the old elm under which Lafayette is said to have taken lunch, when on a visit here after the Revolution. Night found us at another favorite resort, York Harbor, and the charms and comforts of the Albracca made us forget the heat and dust which a land breeze had made very oppressive during the day.
While we were at dinner at the Rockingham, Portsmouth, the next day, a black cloud spent its wild fury in a few terrific gusts of wind. All was over when we started on our afternoon drive, but when half way to Hampton, the clouds grew black again, and we had barely time to drop the back curtain, put on the sides and unfasten the boot, before a tempest was upon us; a tempest of wind and rain—not a common rain, but pelting drops with thunder and lightning. We read afterwards that a buggy was blown over not many miles from us, but ours withstood the gale, and Jerry did well, although it seemed almost impossible at times for him to go on against the storm. We drove away from the shower and all was calm when we got to the Whittier House, Hampton, one of our homelike stopping places.
We followed along the coast to Newburyport, and then the Merrimac River enticed us inland. The experience of the afternoon previous was repeated on our way from Haverhill to Andover. We were scarcely prepared, before another tempest burst upon us, the rain this time driving straight in our faces. It was soon over, however, and we reached Andover unharmed.
We were now only a day’s drive from home, but Boston is only twenty miles from Andover and as our mail reported all well, we could not resist going the longest way round to do another errand or
two in Boston, and call on our friends in Reading and Maplewood on the way.
The drive from Malden to Boston is distracting, with little that is pleasant to offset the turmoil of the streets. We thought we could leave Jerry at the old stable in Mason street, while we went shopping, but like everything else in these days, the stable had “moved on.” When we found a place for him it was late. We did not idle this time, for it was so near five o’clock that gates were half closed, and a man stood at every door as if to say, “You can come out, but you cannot go in.”
The drive next morning was very fine. We went out on Beacon street to Chestnut Hill Reservoir, then drove on the new Commonwealth avenue as far as we could on our way to Allston. Whatever Scripture may say about the “broad way,” we shall surely risk our lives on that one as often as we have opportunity.
From Allston we retraced our first two days’ driving, making our journey like a circle with a handle. We called on the same friends along the way, spent the night at Wayland Inn, dined with the same friends at the Lancaster House, and called on the campers at Spectacle Pond. There was a slight variation in the return trip, however, in the form of a tornado, which passed over South Lancaster. We might have been “in it” if we had not stopped twenty minutes or more to sketch a very peculiar tree trunk, between Sudbury and Stow. There were nine huge oaks in a row, and every one showed signs of having been strangely perverted in its early growth, as if bent down to make a fence, perhaps; but later in life showed its innate goodness by growing an upright and shapely tree out of its horizontal trunk.
We called one journey a cemetery journey because we visited so many cemeteries, and another a ministerial journey because we met so many ministers. Trees were a marked feature of this journey. We saw many beautiful trees beside the big willow in Norridgewock, the Lafayette Elm in Kennebunk, and now sketching the curious oak had possibly saved us harm from a beautiful maple, for we had not driven many miles before we struck the track of the gale, where large trees
were torn apart, or uprooted. We had driven through the thunder shower, or rather it seemed to sweep quickly past us, the pelting rain lasting only a few moments, but as our direction turned we found a large maple across the road. We were obliged to go two miles farther round to reach the Lancaster House, and we had not driven far before the road was obstructed by another large tree. This time we could drive round through a field, and a third time, a large fallen branch had been cut and the way cleared. We rejoiced that the Great Elm stood unharmed, though mutilated trees were on each side of it.
Giant willows, historic elms, upright oaks from horizontal trunks, glorious maples and elms laid low, and scores of noble though not distinguished trees, that we admired and shall remember as we do pleasant people we meet, together with the fact that the greater part of our driving was in the grand old Pine Tree state, warrants us in calling this most delightful journey our Tree Journey.
CHAPTER XV.
ON HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 1894 to 1904.
In response to many requests to share this journey with our friends as we used, the spirit has moved us to give you first an inkling of our annual trips for the ten years since our last report.
This is easily done, for we have a book in which is recorded the name given to each journey, the name of every town we pass through, with distance from place to place, and the sum total of time, distance and expense of each journey. This goes with us, and is a valuable book of reference. The revolver still goes with us, too, the one thing we take but never use. Our electric hand-lamp, on the contrary, is very useful. The Kennebec journey was followed by our first visit to Nantucket, leaving our horse at New Bedford, and once again prolonging the return trip to Leominster by driving to Boston. This journey had a memorable postscript: We drove to Boston for a day or two in the autumn and were detained eleven days by that terrific November snow storm, and even then the last thirty miles of the return trip it was good sleighing!
A September mountain trip, “The Figure 8” we named it, comes next in order, followed by a Jefferson and Jackson trip, and then a Massachusetts journey, which is always delightful.
The three ranges of the Green Mountains, with their “gulf” roads, was a journey unsurpassed, and from Cape Ann to Mt. Tom was another interesting journey in our own state, followed by a Cape Cod trip, which completed the coast for us from New Haven to Bar Harbor.
By this time we were ready for another journey to Lake George, Saratoga, and the Berkshires, and the next trip through the mountains was exceptionally fine, as we returned via Sebago Lake, Portland and the coast, being just in time for the September surf.
The following journey “capped the climax,” seemingly, when we crossed the Green Mountains, ferried Lake Champlain to Ticonderoga, and drove to Eagle, Paradox and Schroon Lakes in the Adirondack region, returning to Lake George, thence to the Berkshire towns and as far south as Hartford, Connecticut, a superb drive of five hundred miles.
Most of our journeys have covered more than four hundred miles, and we are frequently asked if we have done all this with one horse. No, there was handsome black Charlie, Old Nick, who liked to lie down in harness now and then, bay Charlie, who had the longest record—ten years—and was best loved and least trusted, faithful, serious Jerry, whose long strides took us so easily through the country, saucy and exasperatingly lazy Bess, who could do so well, and altogether worthy Nan, whose two journeys have not revealed a fault.
“Do you plan your journeys?” is another question often asked. Never, except the Cape Cod trip, and we observed the innovation by having a letter party. Imagine the pleasure of receiving thirty or more letters at the tip end of Cape Cod, and of mailing an answer to the last one at Plymouth on the way home! We have many times driven from home to the post office packed for a three or four weeks’ journey, without the faintest idea where we should go, and even sat there in the buggy fifteen or twenty minutes trying to decide which way we would leave town.
Our journeys make themselves and we thought this summer’s journey was not going to be worthy of mention, but would simply preserve the record unbroken. We could spare but two weeks, and we were never more at a loss what to do with it. Maine came to mind most frequently, and we finally faced in that direction, spending the first night at the Groton Inn. Of course, facing Maineward the Isles of Shoals lay in our way as a side attraction, and as it was many years since we had been there, we left our horse at Portsmouth, and took the boat to Appledore, where we found the friends we hoped to meet. After dinner and a walk to Celia Thaxter’s resting place, we returned on the afternoon boat to Portsmouth. Our horse was waiting
for us at the wharf, and we drove on to Eliot, Me., where Green-Acre attracted us.
A visit to Green-Acre alone would be enough for a summer’s outing, even if one were limited to the exoteric interests of life—this beautiful acre of green on the banks of the Piscataqua River, the finely located Inn, with its hospitality, and the glorious sunsets—what more could one desire? But if you have chanced to be, or wish to be, initiated into the esoteric mysteries, what a feast!
Unfortunately Miss Farmer, the organizer and secretary of GreenAcre, was away for a few days, but we had a brief sunset meeting sitting on the river bank, a very fine reading in the parlor in the evening, from Longfellow and Lowell, an early morning gathering on the piazza of the Eirenion—House of Peace—when Browning and Emerson were beautifully read and interpreted, and a later session under Lysekloster Pines, a half mile away through the fields, where the meetings of the Monsalvat School are held. This was a novel experience, sitting on the dry brown needles, under the low, broadspreading branches of a mammoth pine, listening to the wisdom of an Indian teacher
We were loth to leave the tempting program, “The Oneness of Mankind,” by Mirza Abul Fazl, and Mirza Ali Kuli Khan, next morning in the Pines, and later “Man, the Master of His Own Destiny,” by Swami Rami; in truth a whole summer’s feast of reason and music, but our journey was waiting.
We had scarcely left the Inn after dinner, before muttering thunder gave us warning, and a shower came up so quickly we barely had time to drive under a shed back of the village church before the floods came down. The shower was violent, but did not last very long, and when the rain was over, we drove on. We were utterly in doubt where we were being led until at the first glimpse of a distant mountain peak our entire journey was revealed to us—a trip through Sebago Lake, then on to Jefferson Highlands, and home through Crawford Notch and Lake Winnipiseogee! We had not a doubt or misgiving after the revelation. We had at last struck our trail!
According to the revelation, Sebago Lake was the first point of note, but the incidents along the way, the pretty woodsy roads, the ponds and brooks, the camping near a farmhouse at noon, and the small country hotels, with their hospitable hosts, make up by far the larger part of a carriage journey. When we answered our host, who asked where we had driven from that day, he said, “Green-Acre? That’s the place where Buddhists confirm people in their error,” adding “there’s only one kind of good people—good Christian men and women.”
We were packing up wraps and waterproofs after a shower, when a white-haired farmer came from the field and asked if we were in trouble. We told him we were “clearing up” so as to look better. “Oh, pride, is it?” he said, and asked where we came from. He seemed so much interested that we also told him where we were going—it was just after the “revelation.” He was very appreciative and wished us a hearty Godspeed. The incident was suggestive of the universal brotherhood to be, in the millennium. At a point on the Saco we saw logs leaping a dam like a lot of jubilant divers—singly, and by twos and threes.
We had an early drive of eight miles to meet the boat at Sebago Lake, and on the way there was a slight break in the harness. We drove back a short distance, hoping to find the rosette lost from the head band, and finally tied it up with a string. This delayed us more than we realized and when we drove to a hotel near the wharf and were waiting for the proprietor, we asked a guest of the house what time the boat was to leave. He answered quickly, “Now! run! I will take care of your horse!” We ran, and not until we were fairly on board did it occur to us that we had not told him who we were, where we came from, or when we should return. It did not matter, however, as the names on whip and writing tablet would give all that was needful in case of necessity or curiosity.
The day was perfect, there was a pleasant company on board the Longfellow, Sebago Lake was all one could wish for a morning’s sail, and the Songo River, with its twenty-seven turns in six miles, although only two and a half miles “as the bird flies,” fascinating beyond all anticipation. Passing through the locks was a novelty and the Bay of Naples as lovely as its name suggests. Then came the
sail through Long Lake to Harrison, the terminus, where the boat stayed long enough for us to stroll up the street and go to the post office, and then we had all this over again, enjoying the afternoon sail even more than that of the morning.
This was a round trip of seventy miles, and it was too late when we returned to drive farther, as we had planned, but we were off early next morning, the buggy scrupulously clean, and with a new head band and rosette. We hoped Nan’s pride was not hurt by wearing a plain A on one side of her head, and an old English S on the other!
We drove up the east side of Sebago Lake, passed the Bay of Naples, and on through the various towns on Long Lake, and at night found ourselves at the Songo House, North Bridgton, just a mile and a half across the end of the lake from Harrison, where we posted cards the day before at noon.
The following day we turned our thoughts from lakes, bays and rivers, and faced the mountains, which are never more enjoyable than when approaching them. We retraced our route of two years ago, but there is a great difference between driving towards the mountains and away from them. As we drove on through the Waterfords, Albany, West Bethel and Gilead, the views were finer every hour, and at Shelburne we had a most beautiful sunset, and watched the after-glow a long time from a high bluff.
The rain clouds of the night vanished after a few sprinkles, leaving only delicate misty caps on the highest peaks, and the day was perfect for the famous drive from Gorham to Jefferson, so close to the mountains of the Presidential range, along through Randolph. The afternoon drive over Cherry Mountain to Fabyan’s was never more lovely. We feasted on wild strawberries as we walked up and down the long hills through the woods.
That this was the tenth time we had driven through the White Mountains did not in the least diminish their charm for us. On the contrary, they have become like old friends. To walk up and down the steep pitches through Crawford Notch, leading the horse, listening at every turnout for mountain wagons, and this year for automobiles, would be a delight every year. Our youthful impression of a notch as
a level pass between two mountains was so strong, the steep pitches are a lovely surprise every time.
The old Willey House was one of our favorite resting places. We are glad the driveway and barn were spared when the house was burned, and we still stop there to give our horse her noon rest.
After the “pitches,” the rest at old Willey, and a snap shot at the ruins, come the miles and miles of driving through the dense woods, with high mountains on either side, the way made cheery by the sunlight glimmering through the treetops, and the music of the babbling brooks.
At Bartlett we received a large forwarded mail, the first for ten days, which we read as we drove on to North Conway, and we were grateful for the good news which came from every direction.
After leaving North Conway and getting our first glimpse of Chocorua’s rugged peak, there was no more regretful looking backward. Chocorua in its lofty loneliness is all-absorbing. We had an ideal mid-day camp on the shores of the beautiful Chocorua lake at the base of the mountain.
After two hours of concentrated admiration of the rocky peak, what wonder we were hypnotized, and that on leaving the lake with one mind we confidently took the turn that would have led us to the summit in time! Having driven a distance which we knew should have brought us to the next village, we began to suspect something was wrong. There was nothing to do but to go on, for there was not a turn to right or left, and not a house in sight. We were surely on a main road to somewhere, so we kept on, until we met a farmer driving, who brought us to our senses. We were miles out of our way, but by following his directions in the course of the afternoon we arrived safely at our destination for the night.
Immediately we took our books and writing-tablet, and climbed to a summer house on a knoll just above the hotel, commanding a magnificent view of Chocorua, also Passaconaway, White Face, Sandwich Dome, and several others of the range. After supper we returned to the knoll for the sunset, and later were interested in what
was thought to be a bonfire at the Appalachian camp on the summit of Passaconaway, lingering until the outlines were lost in the darkness.
We were up before six o’clock and went to the hammock in the summer house before breakfast, and if it had not been such a beautiful day for the sail through Lake Winnipiseogee, we would have been strongly tempted to stay over at this homelike place, the Swift River House, Tamworth Village, New Hampshire, opened only last year, and already attracting lovers of fishing and hunting.
A drive of seventeen miles with Chocorua in the background, and raspberries in abundance by the wayside, brought us to Centre Harbor, where we took the boat for Alton Bay. A trip through Lake Winnipiseogee sitting in the buggy in the bow of the Mt. Washington, is an indescribable pleasure, and even our horse seemed to enjoy it, after she became accustomed to the new experience. On the way we had our parting glimpses of Mt. Washington and Chocorua.
With this glorious sail the “revelation” was fulfilled, and the one hundred miles—or nearly that—between us and home was like the quiet evening after an eventful day.
For more than two hundred and fifty miles we had been away from the trolleys, and the busy world, among the mountains and lakes, and recreation lovers everywhere, from the tent on the river bank to the large mountain houses. Now came the familiar ways through the country towns and villages, the gathering and pressing wild flowers for Christmas cards, catching a pretty picture with the camera, and a drive along the Merrimac in the cool of the morning, the atmosphere clear as crystal after another dry shower, when clouds threatened but gave no rain.
Then there were the lovely camping places at noon, the hospitable farmers, and the pleasant chats in the kitchen while our spoons were being washed—the souvenir spoons that were presented to us with a poem after our twenty-fifth journey. One bright young woman discovered the silver we left when we returned the milk pitcher and glasses, and came after us, forcing it into our hands, telling us not to dare leave it, but come again and she would give us a gallon. At
another place where we asked permission to stop in a little grove, the farmer came out and set up a table for us, and gave us use of a hammock. We prolonged our stay to the utmost limit—nearly three hours—reading in the buggy and hammock under the fragrant pines, our horse tied close by, nodding and “swishing” the flies. We have an amusing reminder of that camp, for we had posed Nan for the camera, and just as it snapped she dashed her nose into one of the paper bags on the table.
A notable experience in the latter part of every journey is a visit to the blacksmith, and it came, as often before, unexpectedly on the way. The chatting that goes with the shoeing would be good material for Mary Wilkins.
At last came a rainy day, without which no journey is quite complete. We had a leisure morning with our books, and after an early dinner enjoyed an easy, comfortable drive in the rain, which ended our journey of more than four hundred miles in two weeks and two days.
CHAPTER XVI.
LAKE MEMPHREMAGOG.
We did not think to give you a report of this journey, but the day before we left home little books called Wheeling Notes were given us, with pages for day, route, time, distance and expense, and pages opposite for remarks.
These little books we packed in our writing tablet, and Friday afternoon, June 30th, we began our journey. Besides the note-books we had an odometer and a carriage clock, in addition to our usual equipment. Naturally we were much absorbed in our new possessions, and the remarks, in diary form have become so interesting to us that we gladly share them.
July 2—Rainy. Dropped in a back seat in a village church; only nineteen present. The little minister is a Bulgarian, and inquired for two classmates in Leominster. We practiced all day on pronouncing his name, and could say it quite glibly by time for evening service. He is very loyal to his adopted country, and urged all to make as much noise as possible all day on the Fourth. Not a boy or girl was there to hear such welcome advice, and we wondered if the parents would tell them.
July 3—Drove all day. Mr. Radoslavoff’s advice must have sped on wings, for the noise began early, and kept up all night. Three huge bonfires in front of the hotel at midnight made our room look as if on fire.
July 4—Somewhere between the southern and northern boundary of New Hampshire there is a park, the fame of which reached us several years ago, and we have had in mind to visit it some time. This year seemed to be the time, as, by our map, it was right on our way north. On making inquiries, we found it would give us five or six miles extra driving to go through the park, and the day being hot it
took considerable wise arguing to make the vote unanimous. Importunity, however, will sometimes bring about at least acquiescent unanimity.
Suffice to say, we went through the park and now we are truly unanimous, and will give you the benefit of our experience. There is probably no town in New England that has not attractions enough, within reach of a walk or short drive, to last all summer for those who go to one place for recreation and change. But if you are driving the length of New Hampshire, Vermont or any other state, do not be beguiled by accounts of pretty by-roads, cascades, water-falls, whirlpools or parks, even one of 30,000 acres, with 26 miles of wire fence, 180 buffaloes, 200 elks, 1000 wild hogs, moose, and deer beyond counting. You may do as we did, drive miles by the park before and after driving five miles inside, and see only twelve buffaloes, one fox, a tiny squirrel and a bird—yes, and drive over a mountain beside, the park trip having turned us from the main highway. For a few miles the grass-grown road was very fascinating, but when we found we were actually crossing a mountain spur and the road was mainly rocks, with deep mud holes filled in with bushes, we began to realize the folly of leaving our good main road for a park. To be sure, we might not see buffaloes, but we do see partridge, woodchucks, wild rabbits, snakes, golden robins and crows, and once, three deer were right in our path! And really we think we would prefer meeting a drove of cattle on the main road, to having a big moose follow us through the park, as has occurred, and might have again, if it had not been at mid-day, when they go into the woods.
Finally, our advice is, in extended driving, keep to the main highway, with miles of woodsy driving every day, as fascinating as any Lovers’ Lane, with ponds and lakes innumerable, and occasional cascades so near that the roaring keeps one awake all night. Then we have a day’s drive, perhaps, of unsurpassed beauty, which no wire fence can enclose, as along the Connecticut River valley on the Vermont side with an unbroken view of New Hampshire hills, Moosilauke in full view, and the tip of Lafayette in the distance, the silvery, leisurely Connecticut dividing the two states and the green and yellow fields in
the foreground completing the picture. No State Reservation or Park System can compete with it.
July 5—We were in a small country hotel, kept by an elderly couple, without much “help,” and our hostess served us at supper. When she came in with a cup of tea in each hand, we expressed our regret that we did not tell her neither of us drink tea. She looked surprised and said she supposed she was the only old lady who did not take tea.
“O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!”
July 6—Received our first mail at Wells River, Vt., and as all was well at home, we began to plan our journey. For a week we had simply faced north day after day. If we kept right on we would come to Newport and Lake Memphremagog, which to us means the Barrows camp, but we need a month for that trip. A bright idea solved the problem. We drove north until we reached St. Johnsbury, left our horse there and took a morning train for Newport, where we connect with the Lady of the Lake for Georgeville, P. Q.
At the boat landing at Newport we met Mr. and Mrs. Barrows just starting for Europe. They insisted that we must go on to Cedar Lodge for the night, and make a wedding call on their daughter, recently married in camp, and forthwith put us in the charge of camp friends, who were there to see them off. The sail to Georgeville was very delightful. We were then driven two miles to the camp in the forest of cedars, and presented to the hostess, a niece of Mrs. Barrows, who gave us a friendly welcome.
The attractions of Cedar Lodge are bewildering. The one small log cabin we reveled in a few years ago is supplanted by a cabin which must be sixty or seventy feet in length, with a broad piazza still wearing the wedding decorations of cedar. Near the center is a wide entrance to a hallway, with a fireplace, bookcase, and hand loom, the fruits of which are on the floors, tables, couches, and in the doorways. At the right is the camp parlor, called the Flag room,
draped with colors of all nations. It is spacious, with a fireplace, center reading table, book shelves, pictures, writing desk, typewriter, comfortable chairs, and a seat with cushions, the entire length of the glass front facing the piazza and lake.
On the left is the Blue China or dining room. Here is a very large round table, the center of which revolves for convenience in serving, a fireplace with cranes and kettles, and a hospitable inscription on a large wooden panel above. The telephone, too, has found its way to camp since we were there.
Not least in interest, by any means, is the culinary department. Instead of a cooking tent, where Mrs. Barrows used to read Greek or Spanish while preparing the cereal for breakfast, and a brook running through the camp for a refrigerator, there is a piazza partially enclosed back of the Blue China room, with tables, shelves, kerosene stoves, and three large tanks filled with cold spring water, continually running, one of which served as refrigerator, tin pails being suspended in it. The waste water is conveyed in a rustic trough some distance from the cabin and drips twenty feet or more into a mossy dell, where forget-me-nots grow in abundance.
Just outside the end door of the Flag room are flights of stairs to the Lookout on the roof. This stairway separates the main cabin from a row of smaller cabins, designated Faith, Hope, and Charity, in rustic letters. (We were assigned to Hope, and hope we can go again some time.)
These cabins are connected by piazzas with several others, one being Mrs. Barrows’ Wee-bit-housie. A winding path through the woods leads to Mr. Barrows’ Hermitage, or study, close by the lake, and another path up the slope back of the cabins leads to a group of tents called The Elfin Circle.
We went to the bath wharf, followed the brook walk through the cedars, strolled to the hill-top cabin to see the friends who escorted us from Newport, and then we all met at supper, on the broad piazza, seventeen of us. The last of the wedding guests had left that morning. After supper we descended the steps to the boat landing, and our hostess and the best man rowed us to Birchbay for the
wedding call. Though unexpected we were most cordially received, served with ice cream, and shown the many improvements in the camp we first visited years ago. We walked to the tennis court and garden, where the college professor and manager of Greek plays were working when no response came from the repeated telephone calls to tell them we were coming. We rowed back by moonlight. We cannot half tell you of the charms of Cedar Lodge, but when we were driven from Georgeville a bundle of papers was tucked under the seat, which proved to be Boston Transcripts, containing an account of the wedding. A copy was given us and it is such an exquisite pen picture we pass it along to you:
_From the Transcript, July 6, 1905._
A CAMP WEDDING.
On the last Wednesday of June Miss Mabel Hay Barrows, the daughter of Hon. Samuel J. Barrows and Mrs. Isabel C Barrows, two very well-known figures in the intellectual life of Boston and New York, was married to Mr. Henry Raymond Mussey, a young professor at Bryn Mawr. And the ceremony, which took place at Cedar Lodge, her mother’s summer camp, was one of the most original and picturesque which it is possible to imagine. Miss Barrows herself is a girl with a refreshingly individual outlook upon life, and with a great variety of interests, as well as a strong dramatic instinct, and every one who knew her well looked forward to this wedding as promising to be an occasion at once unique and beautiful. And they were not disappointed, those eighty odd guests, who traveled so far, from east, west, north and south, to the little camp snuggled away among the sympathetic trees bordering the Indian Lake, beyond the Canadian border.
Cedar Lodge, the Barrows’ camp, crowns a beautiful wooded slope above the lake, a steep climb by a winding path bringing one to the log cabin, with its broad piazza facing the sunset and overlooking the lake, through misty tree tops which still wear the tender freshness of hymeneal June. At either end of this ample balcony the guests were
