Princess Europe on the Next 5 Euro Banknotes.

Princess Europe on the Next 5 Euro Bills.  

La Princesse Europe sur le bancnotes de 5 Euros. 

Oни напечатали образ принцессы Европы на новой 5 евро  банкнот

 It was since a  time that also the European Central Bank should have  accepted the objective need to grant more space, on Europe’s official documents,  to cultural, emotional and mithic, elements.

In the new “Europa” series of Euro bills, the watermark will include the image of the mythic Europe,taken from a Campanian vase.

Among the “original sins” of Europe, we must account that “Elusion of culture”, which had been at the origin of the Diktat of the Ministries of Culture of the Council of Europe, issued in Blois, whereby they forbade member states to present, in ministerial programs, the birth of Europe as a long term phaenomenon, hence, a cultural one.

The "infamous" Huntington, who is known worldwide , unfortunately, only for his theory of the Clash of Civilisations, had criticized the critics of Identity, citing the case of a famous Jewish colleague, who, in a first time, published a book for criticizing the idea of Identity, and, later on, another book about Jewish Identity. On the comntray, a concrete reaction to the crisis of Europe could only take place via the re-discobvery of European Identity, to be understood as a “thick” cultural identity. 

Certainly, this “struggle against identity” has a “noble” background in the Millenaristic prophets of “the End of Man”. Identity is confused, according to these ideologues, with Original Sin. Thinking of myself as something different from the rest of the world would be, according to them,precisely that which has originated  Evil in the World. Only the sacrifice of Identity would allow to reconstitute the Paradise Lost, where neither scissure, nor contradiction, would survive.

Between these two apparently opposite points of view (from one side, the “black-and-white” view of those ideologues, and, from the other, actual reality), there are millenaries of historical experiences, who have tought us that, inasfar as we  give up our identity, we open the way to the most inacceptable violence from the side of Power.

As a consequence, “Identity” remains, for us, a bulwark of Liberty.

 

DE L'ATLANTIQUE AUX OURALS

 General De Gaulle

De Gaulle 's Heritage

Наследство Де Гол

L'eredità di De Gaulle

 L'héritage de De Gaulle

De Gaulles Erbe

The events occurred in Russia during the last ten years recall to us under several points of view the policies of late French president Charles de Gaulle.

This similarity attains to several facts:

-the need to restore the authority of the State after a period of internal disorders and of colonial uprisings;

-the ambition to maintain France at the height of its great power status;

-the need to balance, for this purpose, the alliance with the USA with a proactive role in Europe;

-the idea that Europe cannot be confined to its western parts, but must include all of its naations, up to Russia;

-the effort to achieve cutting edge technological advance mainly thanks to European  projects in aerospace, defence, transportation.

All of these policies may be summarised under the caption "Europe, from the Atlantic to Urals".

De Gaulles policies were opposed, partially openly, and partially in an indirect way, by may actors: America, anxious tha no challenger could strive to compete with it as a leader of the West; left wingers, wich considered his ambitions as outdated in an area of ideological and social conflicts; ultra-conservatives, who considered him an ambiguous nationalist, who, for his ambitions, had fought against Patainist France and was capable to ally with the leftand with the So viet Union.

For these reasons, De Gaulle was portrayed as a anti-European, as a ridiculous  anachronist, and, especially, as a dictator. These are the same attitudes of mainstream press and politics towards Putin's presidency, which, in fact, has deployed, as regards Russia, policies that recall the ones of De Gaulle in France.

Those European, and, especially, American, observers, who do not lack any occasion for attacking today’s Russia, insist, especially, on the fact that, under Putin’s presidency, Russia would have undergone a dramatical change, in the sense of an increasing authoritarianism, a stronger State intervention in the economy and a more aggressive stance towards the external world.

According to us, the most objective experts remark that these three attitudes correspond to long-term trends of the Russian politics, which were continued also during Eltzin period, with just some nuances, due to the different contexts in which specifics action have been undertaken. Especially in the mid-term of Eltzin’s presidency, and especially at the occasion of the Kosovo crisis, Elzin's Russia had undertaken a much harsher course towards the United States, contrasting in any way the latter tentative to expand eastwards and to destabilize Russia.

Later on, Putin tried to remedy what Eltzin had compromised by his imprudent attitudes during the first “romantic” period. We repeat that these remedial actions had already been started under Eltzin’s pperiod, but Eltzin had not enough strength,nor  enough credibility for completing them.

In a few words, how do we view the achievements of the Russian policies of the last ten years?  First of all, Russia  has restored the credibility of the  State, defeating the Wahhabites in the Caucasus and consolidating there the traditional leadership of the political and religious Sufi Qadīr dynasty, so to avoid the very concrete risk that Caucasus Islamic separatism would have spread also throughout the Ural region - so, in practice, destroying the territorial unity of Russia-. From a realistic point of view, the present status of Chechnya can be considered as the greatest victory possible for Chechen Islamists and separatists, without jeopardizing the interests of Russia, exactly as the independence of Algeria from France could be considered, at its time, as the greatest possible victory for Arab  nationalism. In fact, Chechnya is, today, exactly what separatists dreamed of since the beginning:  a mono-ethnic state, without Russians, organized alongside the model of a rich Middle-East Emirate. Shari’a is the law of the State, and the ruler is, at the same time, a religious and a political chief, as it happens to be in many Islamic  States (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iran) and as it was in Chechnya before its annexation to Russia-.

Secondly, it  has modernized the army and its military technology, so that Russia  is again in a position to withstand an hypothetical attack from any foreign power, what  is not at all unrealistic, as it has been shown by the events in  Southern Ossetia.This sound similar, even if at a larger scale, to the establishment of a French Force de Frappe and the merging of the aerospace industry into Aerospatiale, alongside the same path followed by Russia with Rostechnologia

Third, it  has rationalized thoroughly the main industry and source of revenues of the Country: gas and petroleum. Through a well calculated mix of re-nationalizations, international agreements and new pipelines, it has brought back to the Russian State the revenues that, during the Eltzin period and even  after,  oligarchs had been exporting into the US, the UK and Israel. Russia has also increased the supply capacity of gas to the outside world and has partially imposed, onto the Republics, worldwide gas prices.Also De Gaulle had carried out, during his first mandate, a large wave of nationalisations of strategic industries.

Fourth: it  has worked out and diffused, through the majority  Party, Edinaja Rossija,  a well balanced national ideology, based on the continuity with Russian history and on the idea of “Sovereign democracy”, without condoning to extreme Russian Chauvinism. Also De Gaulle founded a new party of national cohalition, initially called RPF.

Fifth: Russia has signed on an equal footing the renewal of the anti-proliferation Treaty , albeit renewing the stock of its own intercontinental ballistic rockets .De Gaulle had striven to achieve a nuclear status also thanks to a negotiated cooperation with the US.

The attitude of Europe towards the Ossetian war was astonishing, because of the differences between its different leaders. This led the Izvestija to publish, on its front page, a map of Europe, where European countries were distinguished among “Russia’s friends”, “Russian Lobbyists”, “Neutral” and “Anti-Russian”. In fact, whilst the Italian Prime Minister declared that it was the moment to stop to provoke Russia, and the French President Sarkozy flew to Moscow and Tbilisi for having a draft cease-fee agreement signed by Russians and Georgians, the leaders of Poland, Czechia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, flew to Tbilisi, but for participating in a rally in favor of the Georgian Government. Sarkozy, who was present for signing the close-fire with Saakashvili, refused even to meet in Tbilisi Poland’s President Kaczynski.

This division among Europeans is a clear symptom that Europe as such has no Common Foreign and Defense Policy. Paradoxically, we find positive that there are such political conflicts among Europeans, because, without them, no new political orientation would even arise, and a seious Common Foreign and Defense Policy would never materialize, as shown still recently by the positions assumed by UK Foreign Minister Hague. 
This division, again, reflects the different attitudes of European capitals towards De Gaulle, gong from the total hostility of UK, to the complete alignment of Germany and Belgium, passing  through the neutrality of Italy.

We have already stressed  many  striking similarities between France and Russia. Let's come to a laast  similarity: the one among the two constitutions. Whilst many observers in the West insist in affirming that Russia’s political structure is not democratic, nobody has remarked  that present days Russia’s “substantive constitution” reproduces, in broad lines, the same schemes of some of the most important West European States, and, in particular, the ones of France.Like in France, we have a very strong President, an important Prime Minister ("coabitation"), a Parliament, where only 4 or 5 major parties are represented, a very strong centralized State, with a powerful army and strong, State-controlled strategical industries.Also the Russian Regions" the private companies which are floated at the stock exchange cooperate tightly with the Administration, and are often governed by former civil servants ("Enarques").

In the cases where such structure  differs from the one of France (like in the case of the centralization of media, of corruption, of criminal and political violence), it shows characteristics which are very similar to the ones of other Western countries, and, in particular, Italy and/or the United States (conglomerates, secret services, tycoons, mafia, bribery, mass killings, special troops).

As it is known, East European and Third World politicians, which are accused without interruption to be undemocratic, are very  (and we add even, sometimes exceedingly) attentive to maintain in their own countries certain features of Western Constitutions, which, by the way, are unfavorable to the leaders themselves, but which are not essential to democracy, and which, on the contrary, derive from historical contingencies of other countries. One of these features is the duration of presidential mandate, which, in the US, is of 4 years, and is not renewable more than one time. Almost all of the constitutions of the former Soviet Union, as well as many developing countries, had introduced thes rules, and a certain type of polemics about this habit seemed to hint that changing this rules would amount to create a dictatorship (without considering that, in countries where the main powers stay with the Prime Minister, the latter has no limitation to his mandate) Let’s think of Italy, where  Berlusconi has been prime minister with broad powers, with short interruptions, since 1993).

So, whilst Belarus,Venezuela and Kazakhstan have abolished, by way of referendum, the limitation to 2 terms, Russia has kept alive this limitation, so that President Putin has successfully candidated to the role of Prime Minister for the last 4 years term. Also this seems, to Westerns commentators, to be an antidemocratic action, while, on the contrary, it has given rise to a certain power-sharing at the top of Russian State, again alongside the French example of “Coabitation”. Always foreign observers (showing, thus, in practice, which are the inconveniences, but also the advantages, of “coabitation”), take profit of any difference in political nuances between Russia’s President and Prime Minister for imagining of political struggle among the two and a future weakening of the Russian State.By the way, also the habit that a leaving leader chooses his successor is a Western use, which was applied, for instance, to Merkel, Rajoy, Brown and Alfano.

Finally, the overall image of Russia is the one of a large national consensus about very basic strategic goals, as the one to foster a multipolar system at world level, which is, historically,  precisely the aim of French "semi-presidentialism", as created by General De Gaulle for stabilizing France and making it again a powerful and independent State. During the last period (the Medvedev Presidency) new political slogans have been launched, which seem to hint to those new political trends which, according to many observators, would amount to a change of policy, and, hence, to different objectives, of the two Presidents.

Let’s examine them more carefully:

-“Perezagruzka”: this term means, in Russian, “Reset”. It was employed by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and by US State Secretary Hillary Clinton for indicating that, after the election of President Obama, the “frost” in the relationships between Russia and the USA culminating in the Georgian War, had been overcome, and new agreements (starting from the SALT III Agreement) could have been reached. Thanks to “Perezagruzka”, the UE-NATO partnership has been able to re-start its activities by the Lisbon NATO-Russia summit.

-“Evroremont” is a Russian jargon expression, utilized for designating the complete refurbishment of a flat /”European-style Refurbishing”). This was the first designation of “Modernizacija”, in the same way as “Glasnost” was the first designation of “Perestrojka”.

-“Modernisacija” is the slogan inaugurated by President Medvedev, which designate a re-orientation of Russia towards high technologies and legal reforms. This trend, announced by President Medvedev by his article “Rossija Vperiod” (“Russia, Forwards”) in the Nezavizimaja Gazeta, purported to reply to several types of critics which are usually addressed, especially by international observers, to today’s Russia:

-  to be only formally, but not substantively, a democracy, because the rules of law are not applied with the necessary transparency, and because oppositions are not sufficiently operational;

-  to be focused too much on the export of gas, instead of reinvesting in new technologies.

The launch of these campaign is something very similar to the cumbersome activities carried out, often with a long advance, by all candidates to the accession to the European Union, for “preparing to adhesion”. Even if former Premier Primakov has stated recently that "Russia could consider to enter the EU", there is no sign that it is really doing that now.

Up to now, Russia has offered two different answers to the objectionof its "insufficient democracy".

The first is: “Yes, we know that we are not sufficiently democratic, because of the traditions of Empire and of communism, but we are working for remedying to that”(Medvedev).

The second answer is: “We are more democratic than the US, because our President does not declare illegal wars, we are not occupying independent countries, we do not interfere in the internal policies of foreign States, we have no more torture, death penalty, secret prisons and concentration camps”(Putin).

Both answers are true, but both of them are, according to us,  "diplomatic answers", as it is required from politicians, which do not  address yet the core problem directly. 

In reality, what Americans call “Democracy” is not a clearcut political and legal principle, like in Europe: it’s a puritan religious dogma:"Democratic Individualism is a culture rather than a theory.For this reason, it prevails itself of arguments which are 'simpler' than the ones utilised by analytical philosophers.Its tenants are persuaded that the idea and the protection of individual rights cannot rely just on rational justifications.This not just because we are not obliged to justify everything, but first of all because the will to subordinate the democratic will to logical coherence risks to empty the value of human dignity, subordinated it to the success of its justification"(Nadia Urbinati, Individualismo democratico, Emerson, Dewey e la cultura politica americana, Donzelli, Roma, 1997, p.21)

What is important is to believe in the dogma, not to apply the principles. The dogma is that any “symbolical hierarchy” is sinful. Shmuel Eisenstadt, an American-Israeli scholar, has shown since a long time that the main difference between Americans and Israelis is that the former deny “symbolic hierarchy”, whilst the latter accept it. So, in Israel, a rabbi is more esteemed than a billionaire, because his function is, symbolically, more important. The contrary in the United States. The “lack of democracy” which Americans denounce in all other countries (including the European), is precisely the lack of pathos in denouncing “symbolic hierarchy”. 

So, you can adopt all reforms that you want, but Americans will always find that other peoples “are not sufficiently democratic”, even if their president has less powers than the American President, complies with all defense and privacy rights, refuses war, a.s.o..This attitude has  also to do with the "N.I.H.(Not Invented Here) Syndrome": all things which were not conceived in the States are not good.

The question is: are Europeans the same as the Americans? Do they really require all these acts of faith for accepting somebody as their peer?

RUSSIA IN THE EUROPEAN CIVIL WAR

 

From 1917 ,up to 1945, a Standing War

Oт 1917 до 1945, непрерывная война

Dal 1917 al 1945, una guerra ininterrotta.

A partir de 1917 et  jusqu'à 1945, une guerre sans cesse

Seit 1917 bis 1945, ein ununterbrochener Krieg

 1.The controversial role of Anticommunism

Another reason why Russia remains so strongly associated with communism is that, for a broadly shared (but, according to us, not so much sustainable) view, all main historical events which took place over the XX Century were originated by the very presence of communism. So,the fact  having Russia been the center of the communist movement for 70 years, would imply, according to many observers and citizens, a central role of communism for Russian identity still today.

Summarizing the above theory, the fear of Communism at the end of World War I would have been the origin of the trend toward the radical right, and in particular, of the birth of Fascisms, which, from one side, were fighting against communism openly, and, from the other side, imitated its paradigms with the aim to entice the “traditional” audience of the latter (workers and intellectuals). This interpretation of XX Century’s history has been defined, by Nolte, as “Europäischer Buergerkrieg” (“European Civil War”). In its broader reading, the “European Civil War” encompasses also World war I and World War II, as well as the civil wars and the revolutions occurred between the two wars and up to the Georgia war of 2010 (such as the Russian Civil War, the Fiume Republic, the March on Rome, the Spanish Civil War, the Anschluss, the Greek Civil War, the Berlin, Budapest, Poznan’, the Danzig Revolts, the Greek Coup, Solidarność, the “Velvet Revolutions”, the Post-Sovietic and Post-Yugoslav wars).

According to that theory, communism had been the real protagonist of all those events, so that nationalism and capitalistic democracy would have been mere co-starring antagonists.

We do not object to Nolte’s use of the idiom “Civil War”, which stands on the basis that Europe is indeed “one Fatherland”. We just observe that capitalistic democracy and nationalism were the driving factors of World War I, and communism arrived during the war as a consequence of it.

The strongest evidence that Nolte gives for this theory in the book having precisely this title is the complete parallelism among all aspects of Communism and Nazism(Chiliasm; Party Dictatorship; Führerprinzip; “general mobilization”; exaltation of the “people”; ritualism; persecution of opposants; lager/GuLag; expansionism; “satellites”). 

2.Priority of Fascism

According to our point of view, the precedence of communism as compared with Nazism is misleading, because Fascism was born in Italy with Mussolini, and followed the exact timing of the evolution of Lenin’s Bolshevism:

-      pre-war socialist maximalism (1905-1914);

-      democratic interventionism (1915-1917);

-      militant  revolutionarism of Trockij and D’Annunzio (1918-1922);

-      party coup-d’état (1917-1922);

-   first phase of “national consensum” (NEP, first Mussolini Government) (1922-1926);

-      later development of an own “dirigistic” policy (1927-1933);

-      militarization of the State (1934-1938);

-      intervention in World War II beside Germany (1939-1940);

-      change of alliance (1941-1943)

As a consequence, we do not believe that the deep cultural  motives which brought to fascism were very different from the ones of Bolshevism:

-      activism of the cultural vanguards;

-      hatred for bourgeois “Biedermeier”;

-      militarism and/or militantism;

-      wish, by intellectuals, workers and beuaureaucrats, to conquer new social positions;

-      quest for State interventionism;

-      new ways for rehabilitating  nationalism.

The first mass applications of science and technique, such as industrial organization of production, gas and electrical lighting, and railways transportation, the creation of the first “national” conglomerates, the first traces of democratization, such as enlarging voting rights, tolerating strikes, encouraging mobility, the diffusion, through elementary schools and military service, of a “national” ideology, where at the origins of centralized States, colonial adventures, economic competition and mass parties, a set of forces striving to quick change and self-affirmation.

World War I allowed these forces to acquire a stronger role at the expenses of the peasant civilization, of the Churches, of aristocracies.

Both Lenin and Mussolini understood this, and were therefore favorable to the war, which gave them the means to emerge as political leaders.

After the war, the capitalistic and democratic American army started its presence in European soil, whilst large and ancient conservative empires were substituted by smaller and weaker “bourgeois” republics, plagued by civil wars carried out by demobilized soldiers trained to years of fighting. Bourgeoisie had gained a place besides aristocracy, thanks to the huge war profits, and socialist parties were admitted in parliament for the first time.

Communism started just as a consequence of the above. Lenin arrived in Russia thanks to the German Army, and was allowed to operate because the weak socialist government of Kerenskij could not prevent the birth and the operation of party militias. The Red Army was made up of demobilized imperial soldiers and officers, and could win the Civil Was thanks to the disintegration of the Imperial Army itself. Also Fascism and Nazism were strengthened by industrialization, mass democracy, war and demobilization. Also they started their political careers as party militias.

2.General Mobilisation

According to Ernst Junger, the key concept for understanding World War I is “General Mobilization” (“Allgemeine Mobilmachung”), which is the quintessence of any kind of modernity. The latter, in its sake for unlimited progress of science and technique, cannot tolerate that the forces of mankind remain, as it happened to a large extent in pre-modernity and up to World War I, dispersed and not operational. It demands that everybody and everything is put at work at the best of its potential, at the service of the development of science and technique. As Manuel De Landa has observed, war is the most effective instrument for innovation. Thanks to World War I, we have now economic planning, female work. Thanks to World War II, we have present days space industry, radars, computers, Internet, television, international organisations.

After its creation, Communism and Fascism became driving forces of European Civil War, because they were powerful elements of “General Mobilization”. The idea itself of an organized force taking the lead of the progress of Mankind stays at the center of “General Mobilization”. The same concept is true for the organization of a militarized and industrialized powerful empire, as well as of a massive propaganda in favor of progress, work ethics and technique improvement. 
So,  Russian Bolshevism became a protagonist of the European Civil War.First of all, it prompted other revolutionary parties, both communist and non communist, to follow the revolutionary path, so rendering possible events like the Sovietic Republics in Budapest and Munich, but also the Fiume "Republic of Quarnaro", the March on Rome, the Putsch Kapp and the Hitler Government. 

3.The Communist Bloc

Then, it created a worldwide communist movement, in competition with other international movements. Such movement, starting from the works of Lenin, of Trotzkij and of Stalin, developed its own ideology (and/or, even, political theology), which, gradually, evolved away from “traditional” Marxist thinking, so that, already after World War II, most Marxist thinkers in the West considered themselves as supporter of a different ideology as the one of Eastern Block’s “DiaMat” (Dialektičeskij Materijalizm).

Later on, following to the Budapest Revolution and to the ’68 movement, also most of marxist and communist parties in the West started criticizing the Soviet Union. In the meantime, in China, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Cuba, other Communist Regimes expressed their own orthodoxies, conflicting with the Soviet one.

Finally, the development of Communism in the other parts of the Soviet Block, and even, to a certain extent, in some Sovietic Republics, revealed themselves different from the “Soviet” Mainstream. For instance, in Eastern Germany there has always been an apparent multipartitism, whereby all the political parties of Western Germany were present also in the Eastern Parliament (including the extreme right National Democratic Party). In Poland, the leading party was not a “party”, but a “Front”, whereby two or three catholic political movements, like Znak and Pax, were allowed. Moreover, the Church enjoyed a privileged role. From another point of view, it has to be remarked that some of the Republics, especially the ones at the borders of the Union, were allowed to enjoy a larger independence from the center, also because this would have been helped for a better image of the country abroad. For instance, a certain amount of economic independence was granted to Estonia and to Georgia, which allowed these small republics to become a center of local private trade, and to raise a sort of local “bourgeoisies”.

Finally, after World War II, it gave rise to one, and, later, to more than one, “socialist blocks”, in competition with the “Western World”, but also among themselves.

4.World War II

Similarly to what happens as concerns the interpretation of Bolshevism, so also the one of the origins of World War II has given rise to an infinity of discussions. Surely, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression agreement between Communist Russia and Nazi Germany, was one of the main causes, since the first effect of that pact was a “fourth partition” of Poland, between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, alongside the first three ones during XVIII Centuries.

This Pact is still now criticized by all sides, as a demonstration of the aggressive character of Russia, Germany, or both, and of the need, for Poland, to go on protecting itself with the help of the United States.

Surely, there is something true in this. However, a recent study has shown that, even now, there is clearcut cultural divide (expressed, e.g., in terms of election results), between the Polish Regions staying west, and the ones staying east of the former border of Russia. So, at the end of the day, it is not something unthinkable to imagine that many people were in good faith at that time thinking of a new form of partition, which corresponded to a real difference between the two part of Poland.

By the way, in Poland, between World War I and World War II, there was not even a sole legislation. In fact, in certain regions, German, Austrian, pre-war Russian, and, even, French/Napoleonic Law were applicable.

At the end of the day, thanks to World War II, Russia was able to recover that status of world power, that it had lost with World War I. Even after losing the Republics, present-days Russia has still maintained some element of that role.

In any case, the Pact has surely prejudiced very seriously the possibilities of good relationships among peoples in that part of Europe. This even more because, at the moment of restoring an independent Poland, the victorious powers maintained the “Curzon Line”, i.e. the partition line decided between Molotov and Ribbentrop, so setting free just the Western part of Poland, and just compensating the latter by the right of occupation of three formerly German regions, whilst the inhabitants of the Eastern Regions were transferred to these Regions (“Kresy” or “Lity”), and were given to Belarus and Ukraine (hence, to USSR and populations of these countries).

The trauma’s of World War II are not forgotten at all. Russia itself, albeit reneging completely the Soviet Heritage, considers the “Great Patriotic War” as one of the founding elements of its statehood In fact, it is thanks to the victory of Soviet Russia that the Soviet Union was accepted to be a part of the leading powers of the world, and, in particular, of the members of the Security Council of the United Nations. It is thanks to that victory that it has been able to develop an outstanding military technology which allows it to stand at pair with the US.

Recently, the myth of the “Great Patriotic War” has been revived, and President Medvedev has reaffirmed it at several occasions, albeit specifying that the victory has not to be considered as a victory of Stalin, but, on the contrary, as a victory of the Russian people.. Also in this theory, there is a part of truth. Apart from the fact that Stalin, albeit a tough dictator and a non-Russian Communist, was a theorist of “National Communism”, and, even involuntarily, succeeded to a liberation war which seemed lost, when Nazi tanks were at the doors of Leningrad and Moscow. So, the victory can be considered more a victory of the Russian people than of Communism.

6.Restless Eastern Nationalities

By the way, the questions of the Eastern regions of Poland had never been settled also before, because Poland, before the Partitions, was a multinational State, called “Rzeczpospolita”, and, especially in the Eastern part of it, lived, mixed the one with the other, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Poles, Russians, minor Slavonic peoples, Cossacks, Lithuanians, Jews and Tatars. The conflicts among those populations had been strong since the Cossack and peasant revolts, up to the fighting among Poles and Ukrainians, among the two World Wars, the exchange of populations after World War II and the persecutions of Jews starting from the late Tsarist Empire, up to the last “pogroms” in Communist Poland.

This also taking into account that many of the Republics (like, e.g., the Balts, Ukraine and Moldova), on the contrary, fought the war on the side of Germans. This last fact constitutes a further source of substantially unending disputes between Russia and the Republics. These are the only states in Europe where politicians and military, which had fought side by side together with the armies of the Axis, such as Bandera in Ukraine, are now considered national heroes.

This, of World War II, is a source of big contradiction in historical “orthodoxies”, not just for Russia and its neighbors, but for all countries of the World. It is clear that, because of its scope and its toughness, World War II could not have left the world unchanged. In fact, the main features of today’s world (American Hegemony, Europe’s division, resurgence of China, force of Russia), still depend on the outcomes of that war. Thus, no one of those who share the power in the world now has an interest to challenge the results of that war. Otherwise, America should give up hegemony, China its status, Russia its arms, and even the European elites their role as purported champions of western style freedom (whilst many, if not most of them, were, at the beginning, involved either in pro-communist, or in pro-fascist movements).

And, since symbolic power is stronger that military force, no one of the winners may give up to its own myths: not the war for democracy (when, in reality, the American war started with Pearl Harbour), not the cult of President Mao, not the one of the Great Patriotic War, not to the one of Résistance, a.s.o.. However, the interest of the Great Powers of today are often conflicting among them; so, some gaps open from time to time in the so-called “shared memory”: Bandera may become a national hero of Ukraine, and Stalin is a hero when he is seeming winning the war, but, therefore, the title may be withdraw, a tyrant when it is considered governing Russia.

We hope, now, that,65 years after the taking of the Reichstag,  20 years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and after the useful tentative to invade militarily Southern Ossetia, the “European Civil War” is really to an end.

7.A Useless Slaughtering 

Since, as we have seen, such “European Civil War” was started, not by communism, but by nationalisms and democracies, the end of communism would not mean, by itself, the end of such war. And, in fact, after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, we have still had post-Yugoslav and post-Sovietic wars, which have not been fought by communists.

From another point of view, Americans pretend that they have won the “European Civil War” with her victory on Communism.This historical interpretation constitutes in itself a further source of new conflicts. In fact, considering only the clash among ideologies, it negates the role and existence of the European nations, including Russia and Europe as a whole, and pretends to assert an overall “moral” authority which, in reality, is challenged by many.

According to us, in reality, plays are still open today, precisely as they were open at the beginning of the “European Civil War”. This is a very risky situation, but it is also what renders it worthwhile working for the future of Europe.

Still one general consideration. It is not always true that “History may not be made with ‘Ifs’”. If, starting from 1815, Europeans, instead of going through the path of wars and revolutions, would have followed the one set by the “Russian” version of the Holy Alliance (the “Christian Nation”, as well as the “Europe of the Peoples”), they would probably have reached in a much easier way, through treaties and reforms, the same point where they have arrived now after so many conflicts.