APPEAL TO EUROPEANS

Serov's Abduction of Europe

 

 Let's Discuss together about our Future

Обсуждаем вместе наше будуще

Discutiamo insieme il nostro futuro

Discutons ensemble notre avenir

Diskutieren wir unsere Zukunft zusammen

After so many bad news, finally a good one: more than 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europeans are in a position to evaluate without prejudices the events which occurred to them since then:

-Contrary to what they expected, the fall of the communist system has not given rise to a better way of living or to more peace;

-On the contrary, the former communist states have suffered a huge loss in their standard of living, which they are recovering just now;

-Whilst Europeans had had no war during the last fifty years they have had about 10 wars, both in Europe and abroad, between 1989 and 2010 (Afganistan, Nagorno-Karabagh, Transnistria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kossovo, Macedonia, Chechnya, Irak);

-The economic situation of Western Europe has not become better, but, on the contrary, it has gone deteriorating from year to year, in the sense of the loss of economic perspectives, of individual rights, of investment opportunities, and, especially, of the certainty to be able to program a reasonable future for themselves and for one’s relatives. The last events, including financial crises, Middle eastern events and Japan’s catastrophe, are worsening and worsening the situation;

-The hopes to have a European Constitution, which could have transformed the present European Union into a full-fledged European Federation, have vanished after several tentatives to write a meaningful text of Constitution, and to have it approved by a popular referendum;

-The historical political and cultural leaderships seem to have exhausted their own creative capabilities, and have even given up to speak about Europe’s future, focussing on marginal technical emergency issues, like the salvage of Member State’s budgets;

.-New countries are emerging on the world’s economic and political scene. Europe becomes more and more irrelevant. Paradoxically, only Russia is proposing to Europe something concrete, i.e.:

-      to join forces in the economy, utilizing the huge resources and markets of Russia for maintaining a large amount of turnover, and allowing, in exchange, to Russia, to profit of Europe’s technology;

-    to join forces in politics, for solving the overdue problems of post-cold war Europe: new peace agreements limiting strategic forces; military cooperation; new legal instruments for association between the European and the Post-sovietic areas;

-     to mutually open one’s house  doors, in such a way that the peoples of Europe and of Russia can cooperate and know each other better, working and studying together.

This is a specially favorable moment, in which there is not any so dramatic emergency as to drain political resources in both areas, nor to create a partisan confrontation between “favorables” and “contrary” to Russia.

Creating a structural form of cooperation between Europe and Russia would amount, substantially, to the real completion of Europe’s unification.

This objective, which nobody had formulated seriously up to now, has been expressed formally by Russia’a Prime Minister in an article in Süddentsche Zeitung and repeated at the annual meeting of the Deutsche Führungs Kräfte. Mr. Putin has added that such an objective would have been considered as a dream until short time, but, on the contrary, it could not be considered any more as such, if all of us make an effort in this direction.

He cited also, as an example, the remarkable achievement of Chancellor Kohl, who succeeded in the reunification of Germany, which also many consider as just a dream.

The same objective has been expressed in other occasions by President Medvedev, when he has proposed, in particular at his meetings with NATO and EU, a completely new set of agreements for the European Security, in substitution of the ones of the times of the Cold War.

All of us are conscious of the difficulties implied in such objectives. However, we feel also that what is lacking in our time are, precisely, ambitious objectives which we can realistically pursue, so giving a meaning to our lives.

Personally, as the founder of Alpina Srl and of the Dialexis Cultural Association, I have aimed, since the beginning, at the objective to start a process of innovation  among Europeans,in order  lead to a stronger European Identity, to a stronger European Union and to the enlargement of Europe, in a form or in another, to all “European” peoples.

We would be happy to become the catalysts of a cultural, social and political movement of Europeans striving to enlarge, to Russia, the European Cultural Identity, and to support the political efforts  of Authorities for the association of Russia (together with other Post-Sovietic countries) to the European Union.

These objectives will be pursued through a multiplicity of instruments:

-      debates about Europe and Russia;

-      publications connected with this theme;

-     campaigns, for interesting both the public opinion, and the authorities, on a specific program in this direction.

We invite everybody, who is interested in this program, to enter in contact with us for this objective.

In the following posts, we will inform about the initiatives under way and comment the events which are going to occur in the meantime.

http://www.alpinasrl.com

http://www.dialexis.com 

http://www.torino2019.eu 

tel 00 39 011 6688758

E.mail: info@alpinasrl.com

RUSSIA, THE LAST EUROPEAN EMPIRE?

European Empires

  An Empire or a Commonwealth?

Империя или Содружество народов?

Un impero o una comunità di popoli?

 Un empire ou une communauté de Peuples?

Ein Kaiserreich oder eine Voelkergemeinschaft?

To the extent that Bolsheviks had resumed war against occupying foreign forces (Russia, German Army, Freikorps, Baltic, Polish, Ukrainian Asiatic, Czech nationalists, Anglo-Americans, Japanese), they gave the impression they were fighting for the salvation of the Russian Empire (irrespective from the monarchic or republican form of the same).

The same happened with World War II and even with the Cold War, where the strength of the Soviet empire seemed, under certain points of view, to vindicate the loss of the Russian Empire. And also, after so many years, it appears that the idea of a “Russian Empire”, something larger than Russian nationality, is still on the agenda (for instance, in the Russian Media). In fact, already present days Russian Federation (“Rossijskaja Federacija”) is larger that simply the Russian “Nation” (“Ruskaja Nacija”). The Russian People (“Ruskij Narod”) is larger than Russia Federation, and the so-called Sovietic citizens (“Sovietskie grazhdane”) are a further concept than the “Russian People”. Moreover, independently from any contrary political will, Russia still exerts a, direct or indirect, influence on the whole of a larger “post-Sovietic space”. So, we can say that, whilst Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, German and Italian empires have disappeared, the Russian still exists, even if in a different form.This situation is not very different from the British “Commonwealth” and the French “Francophonie”.

At the beginning, the connection between the new Bolshevik Russia and the Russian Empire was not clear at all. In fact, the “Trip in the Armored Train” of Lenin, as well as the Treaty of Brest-Litowsk, which are the founding events of the success of the Bolshevik movement, were based on a paradoxical deal with the German Empire, whereby Russia would have accepted the creation of new Republics (Finland, Poland more the Balts, Belarus’, Ukraine and Transcaucasia), in the areas occupied by the German Armies, where local nationalists had declared their independence under German sponsorship.

Secondly, it seemed ominous that, after about half a century of rhetoric of self-determination by nationalities, from the side of the socialist movement worldwide, precisely in the “Fatherland of Socialism” the nationalities would have been repressed. Thirdly, it was necessary to recover at least a part of those nationalist leaders which had exerted the power during German occupation, some of them being Marxist. Fourth, most of the Republics did not constitute a “nation” in the Western sense of the word, because they were inhabited by dispersed ethnic entities, including, inter alia, Russians, Germans and Jews.

So, in any case, it was necessary, for managing local administrations, to create a sufficiently consistent local interfaces in the Republics. According to Marxist rhetoric, to create local national bourgeoisies, which were conceived to be similar, from one side, to the Westerns national bourgeoisies, and, from another side, to what the fledging ruling classes of the Republics purported to be.

Stalin, also being himself a Transcaucasian Revolutionary (half Georgian, half Ossetian), was chosen to solve the “nationalities problem”. In reality, the implementation of the Treaty of Brest-Litowsk was not simple, and, for a certain period - corresponding, roughly speaking, to the Russian Civil War -, the Republics remained substantially independent, even if occupied, from time to time, by different, Russian and foreign, armies.

In all that period, the relationships of Russia with other Eastern European Countries (especially Baltic countries, Poland, Ukraine, Rumania, Georgia and Armenia) where heavily influenced by the different situations created in the new bundle of Republics, as well by their evolutions following to independence, civil war, Russian-Polish War, “Dekulakization”, Ukrainization, Russification, 2^nd World War, changes of administrative borders, end of the Soviet Union.

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.

NATIONAL COMMUNISM

The Republics of the Russian Federation

Today, very few things remain of USSR, outside the Republics structure

Сегодня, остайотся немного CCCP, кроме устройства республик

Oggi, poco resta dell'URSS, al di là della struttura delle Repubbliche

Aujourd'hui, peu reste de l'URSS, au delà de la structure des Républiques

Wenig bleibt heute von UdSR ,ausserhalb der Strukturen der Republiken, uebrig.

Although, de facto, the Leninist revolution and the Stalinist “Nationality Policy” strongly contributed to salvaging the Russian Empire, which survived the Austrian, the Ottoman, the German, the Italian, the Dutch, the British, the French and the Portuguese empires, they were not perceived by all Russians in this way. On the contrary, Russian nationalism was, at least initially, completely on the side of the Tsar and of the “White” Army, and was severely deceived both by the signature, by Lenin, of the Treaty of Brest-Litowsk and by the murder, by Bolsheviks, of the Royal Family. Of course, within the  framework of Bolshevik Russia, there were also nationalistic tendencies, like, for instance, National-Bolshevism, which interpreted Bolshevism as a national phenomenon.

In a first phase, the Brest-Litowsk Treaty, signed by Lenin, recognized the independence of many Republics, and this was considered a treasure by many Russians. Moreover, once the peace treaty signed within Germans and the Bolshevik power established in Russia, the Russian Government started supporting the Bolshevik Parties existing in the Republic, exerting pressures on the local governments, in order that the role of such parties was enhanced. The protection of the local parties led to military interventions, which strengthened the idea of a tight connection between “Communism” and “Russian Centralism”.

During this period, a very complex political, military and theoretical activitym  took places, aiming at defining an attitude, by the new Bolshevik power, towards the multinational character of the former Russian Empire.

From one side, it was difficult to tell the Republics, once become independent, that they should revert to be a part of Russia. From another side, Bolsheviks were, to a large extent, foreigners to Russia, such as the Georgian Stalin, the Jews Kaganovich and Berija, the Polish-Belorussian aristocrat Dzerzhinski, the Ukrainian Khruschev,the Georgian Ordzhonikidze,  the Kazakh Frunze, the Baltic Tarle. Also important foreign communist leaders, such as Gramsci, Tito, Togliatti, lived in Russia for a shorter or longer time. Moreover, the Soviet Union, whose official denomination made no reference to Russia, gave a huge role, in its Constitution, to the newly created Republics, so frustrating Russians, whose Republic did not even possess its own Communist Party. The Communist Party itself launched campaigns against “Great Russian Chauvinism” and in favor of “Ukrainization”.

Finally, there had long been a Russian prejudice, which has not ceased even today, whereby the Republics were under-developed countries, maintained by Russia, a highly develop country just for political reasons. This had been, i.a during Perestrojka, the position of Alexandr Solzhenitsin, who wrote an essay (“Kak nam obostruit’ Rossiju”) proposing the secession of Russia and the “Slavonic” Republics from the Soviet Union. By the way, this is an idea which was accepted by the latter republics, and is pursued still today, with uncertain outcomes, by the most extreme circles of Russian Nationalism..

At the end of the day, the relationships between the Russian “center” and the “national” minorities has always been partially conflicting, as in all large States, albeit if less conflicting as in others like, e.g, in the United States, where Native Americans and the preexisting French-speaking and Spanish-speaking populations were practically destroyed over 100 years of “American” occupation.

Even an “affirmative action” of the Soviet Union from the point of view if its “internal” nationalisms, including Russian Nationalism, became always more evident with the passing of time. The cultural motivations and rhetorics of the “Great Patriotic War” were largely mutuated from traditional Russian nationalism (the reference to heroes of the past, such as Alexandr’ Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, the identification of “Russia” with the “Soviet Union”, various practical privileges for people originating from the “core” East Slavonic peoples). As concerns other Republics, such as the Central Asiatic ones, they were practically “invented” by Bolsheviks, whilst, precedently, the idea was the one of a large Turkestan.

After World War II, in certain “pro-German” Republics, such as the Baltic States, Ukraine and Chechnya, the Russian language and Russian immigrants or minorities were inserted in order to avoid possible separatisms. Finally, when the Soviet Union became the center of a huge block of “socialist” countries all over the world, the fact of constituting the center of a huge alliance gave to Russian (if not also to other “central” nationalities) a great sense of power and of security.

Communism had taken 6 years for going to power and disappeared in 6 years.

The Russians could have become, with the time, the “national” core of a multicultural “empire”, like today’s Han for China and Hindustanis for India. On the contrary, with the crisis of the international credibility of the Soviet Union, following to the defeat in Afghanistan, a separate sense of identities of the different nationalities, including, in first instance, a Russian “national” identity, immediately reappeared. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russian nationalism rapidly emerged as a driving force, even subtracting to the Communist Party the role of leading oppositional trends.

We must remember that, in the Russian Parliament, there are, today, four Parties: the majority party (middle-of-the way) is Jedinaja Rossija; the left opposition parties being the Communist Party and Spravedlivaja Rossija; the right wing opposition party is the Liberal-Democratic (nationalist). Moreover, there are smaller movements which are not represented in Parliament, the most important being the radical nationalistic Association Against Illegal Immigration and National-Bolshevik Party. A practical opposition role is also exercized by pro-western leaders, such as Kasparov and Nemtsov, supported by foreign ONGs present in Russia (such as the Fund for an Open Society). However, road protests and underground popular culture are clearly on the side of Russian Nationalism, having, as its main targets, from one side, the West, and, from the other side, former Republics and their immigrants into Russia.

Thus, the problem of the relationship between the Russian nationality and the former USSR Republics is not overcome. On the contrary, it is a fundamental problem, as stressed by Russian authorities.But this has nothing more to do with communism.

A last question. People often ask themselves why, notwithstanding the horrors of the Civil War and of the Stalinist Repression and the “economic stagnation” of the Brezhnev period, as opposed to the present bonanza, many people in Russia are still nostalgic of Communism. A part the fact that it seems that the number of nostalgics of Tsarism is still higher, the answers could be numerous, but are often not pertinent. We would try to add here some words for a tentative explanation.

Summing up, one answer might be that, contrary to the usual rhetoric, there is no pre-determined reason according to which people who have experienced different socio-political systems must necessarily prefer Western style capitalistic democracy.

Specifically, the major achievement of Russian communism was to have been able to create, and to maintain alive for 70 years, a whole worldwide system able to compete, under all points of view, with the system created by worldwide capitalism. We are perfectly aware of the huge weakness of this system (contradictions with its premises; technological and military inferiority; rigidity) so that it could not help but to fall. And, yet, the existence of an alternative to the Western Capitalism was a conceptual need for all the world. Not because of a specific fault of Western Capitalism. But, just because the latter pretended, and still pretends, to be the only valid system for all the world. Now, whichever system, even the better, if imposed on all the world, would come out to be the harshest of tyrannies.

Today, many contend that it is impossible to create a system which constitutes a full-fledged alternative to Western Capitalism, because the latter would correspond to “the nature of man”, to the “natural selection principle”, an “intelligent design” of God, or, even, to a sort of “Destiny of Technique”. And this could even be the case. But nobody can take away, from human nature, the temptation of contradiction, the illusion of freedom, the taste of a struggle without any chance.

But, irrespective from the sort of Communism, Russia can still now constitute an element of hope, at least for Europeans, that some form of international coexistence different from the simple acceptance of American model is still possible.

CRIMEA: THE FIRST EAST-WEST CONFRONTATION

Crimean War

Deep-Rooted Reasons for Hostility

Глубоко засевшие причины враждебности

Profonde ragioni di ostilità

Des raisons d'hostilité profondement enracinées.

Tiefgreifende Feindlichkeitsgruende.

The cultural confrontation among Slavophiles and Westerners, can be utilized as a background scenario of Russia’s cultural and political life up to the Soviet Revolution. The reformist “Russian Thinking” around Černyševskij and Herzen, comes out of a Westerner background, whereby the reforms are seen as a partial imitation of Western Europe or of America. On the contrary, most of the literary, and/or musical, and/or pictorial productions (such as Dostojevsk’s, Tolstoj’s, Ciaikowsky’s, Serov’s, Nestorov’s, Rerih’s, Malevič’s, Strawinsky’s) are deeply rooted in the Slavonic tradition.

The strengthening of the hold of the Russian Empire on its Asiatic territories (Caucasus, but also Central Asia and the Artic Regions) had increased the interest of Russian intellectuals for the Asiatic Roots of Russia (the Scythians, the Tatars, the Finns, the Persians, the Turks), but also their sympathies for the subjected peoples, whose origins, histories, traditions, languages, were investigated at that time.

Russia was defined more and more as a “Eurasiatic” reality. “Asiatic” subjects enter into the repertory of artists, such as Shagané, Hadij Murat, the Fire Bird, Shahrazade, the Finnish folklore of the North.This attention is not much different from the praise of Mohicans by Fenimore Cooper, or the one of "strong men" of East and west by Kipling, and, fimnally, the participation of Ann Besant both to the induistic revival and to the independence struggle of India.

But also the idea of a community of destinies between Russia and Europe remained at that times strong, albeit Russia felt not be  well understood , and even to be rejected, by Europeans.

Many made an effort to become more European, for being better accepted, as in the case of the Occidentalist, or of social reformers like Caadajen. Others, like Ivanov-Razumnik (who converted to Catholicism as suggested by De Maistre), stressed that Europe needed Russia. He launched the idea of “Europe’s two lungs”, an idea which will achieve so large a resound after having been adopted by John Paul II himself.

The conflict between “Slavophiles” and “Occidentalists” will be synthesized, finally, after the October Revolution, by Blok, who, in his Panmongolizm, will submit, to Europeans, a dramatic alternative: either to accept, brotherly, the Russian as a part of the European family of people, or to find them hostiles, allied with “the Mongolic World” (now, we could think of China and of Islam).

During the XIX Century, Russia did not abandon the “Greek Project” (i Megàli Idèa”), albeit the independence of Greece was not achieved thanks to Russia (or, at least, not thanks to Russia alone); the newly independent Greece became open, besides Russian influences, also German and English connections.

The peak of anti-Russian feelings was reached between the 1848 Revolution and the Crimea War. Russia had intervened, upon request of the Austrian Emperor, in Hungary, for stopping the liberal and nationalistic unrests.Moreover, the Croatian Ban Jelacic, the Ruthenian  peasants and the Bohemian Pan-Slavists    had all supported the Emperor against the revolutionary, so causing all together the suppression of the revolts in the Austrian Empire. From this fact, Marx and Engels draw the pretext for a violent attack against the "peoples without history", responsible, first of all, to have supported the Russian and Austrian Emperors against the revolutionary movements. In 1853, there were not only the left-wing extremists, but also the bourgeois liberals governments of France and of England to be worried of the momentum gained by Imperial Russia by its presence in the Balkans  (including the occupation of Wallachia and Moldavia) and its support to Balkanic nationhoods.

The "Crimean War" consisted, in reality, in a vast encirclement of Russia by British, Franch, Austrians Turks and Sardinians, which took place along the Danube, in Ucraine, Crimea, Caucasus, the Baltic, the White Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The adhesion of the Kingdom of Sardinia was unequivocally motivated by the will of the liberal Cavour Government to join the liberal cohalition of Western constitutional monarchies, abandoning the traditional Russian friendship. The conservative opposition, led by Count Thaon de Ravel, refused to vote in favour of the war. The latter contributed heavily to the self-consciuosness of Russia, to the weakening of Austria, to the assertiveness of the Balkanic countries and to the strenthening of national feelings in Caucasian nationalities.

The Western alliance pretended from Russia the acceptance of some points, what Russia refused to do:

1. Russia was to give up its protectorate over the Danubian Principalities;
2. It was to abandon any claim granting it the right to interfere in Ottoman affairs on behalf of Orthodox Christians;
3. The Straits Convention of 1841 was to be revised;
4. All nations were to be granted access to the River Danube.

At the end of the war, these points were accepted by Russia only partially, and never fully complied with.

Wallachia and Moldavia, formerly under a strong Russian influence, united under the name of Romania, into a new state, where French and Italian influences are decisive, up to the point that the same Rumanian language is “purified” from many of the preceding Slavonic influences, so that the heritage of the Romans is put in the forefront.

Russia interests concentrated on the Slavonic peoples of the Balkans, such as Bulgarians and Serbians, which Russia helped in their efforts to become independent from the Turkish Empire. These efforts, which were at the origin of the “Balkanic Wars”, contributed to creating the background for World War I. 

Of course, not just Russia, but the whole system of powers of the Europe of that time, are equally responsible for the Balkan Wars and for the subsequent World War II. It has to be remarked that the Russian Tsars were active in the diplomatic scene, for fostering a movement for Peace and Disarmament (the Hague Congress for Peace was promoted by Tsar Nicolas II).

The policy of the Russian Empire in that period is rather contradictory. In fact, it had to manage too many contradictory tendencies. From one side, Russia was a very powerful, cultivated, and even rich, country, whose rates of growths were higher than the ones of Western Europe. From another point of view, riches was very unequally distributed, and this created strong social contrasts. The land reforms carried out at the end of the XIX Century, whilst fostering industrialization,also as a consequence of the Crimean War, had not solved the problem of a sound farming class.

The Tsar swinged between the tough defense of traditional autocracy and timid tentatives of reforms in the direction of a parliamentary monarchy, from avant-garde initiatives in the field of internationalism, such as the Hague  Congress, to military escalations, such as the ones in the Balkans.

The policy of Russia-bashing from the side of western goverments and intellectuasls went on. The fact that, contrary to what happened in France, Italy and Austria, liberal reforms had not been implemented during the largest part of the XIX Century were explained, as always, by the innate autocratic spirit of Russians. However, as always, many of the faults identified by polemists in Russia were, or false, a shared with many other European countries.

As an example, the myth, according to which the Russian Empire had to be considered as the main enemy of nationalities in Eastern Europe is not correct. It is true that a strong conflict arose since the beginning with Poles, who did not accept the partial autonomy role of the Kingdom of Poland. It is also true that the Empire forbade the Ukrainian language and the transliteration, into Latin characters, of Baltic languages. However, also Prussia and Austria had annexed large parts of Poland, where they had suppressed any form of autonomy, whilst Russia had been even helpful with Belorussian and Lithuanians, for asserting their own nationhood, after long centuries of dominance of the Polish language, aristocracy and clergy.Not to speak of the violent repression, by England, of Irish autonomy.

Plan twój gotycko-sarmacki Podoba się mi lepiej niż spór adwokacki (I like your Gothic and Sarmatic project better than a lawyer's lawsuit).

Roman-Sarmatian Draconarii

Sarmatism: a deeply  rooted tradition in Center-Estern Europe. Сармати́зм-коренная традиция средне-восточной Европы. Il sarmatismo, una tradizione radicata nell' Europa centrale e orientale. Le Sarmatisme, une tradition bien enraciné dans l'Europe Centre-Orientale. Sarmatismus, eine tief  gewuerzelte Tradition in Mittel-osteuropa.

That strong kinship, perceived by Herodotus, between the Greeks, from one part, and the Scythians, from the other, was still more visible for what concerns the Sarmatæ, or Sauromates, a people which should have been, to a certain extent, the “missing link” between the Greeks and the Scythians. In fact, according to the myths of Jason and the Argonauts and Theseus, the Sarmatæ had been generated by the intermarriage between the Greeks and the Amazons, a people of single women living among Scythians, although Jordanes traces a mythical descent from Goths. The Sarmatians are very similar, on the other side, to ancient Alans or Jasians (and today Ossetians), which have preserved the ancient traditions of Indo-Europeans peoples to such extent, that Georges Dumézil utilized their national epos for illustrating some of the permanent features of all Aryan civilizations.  The Sauromates and the Alans lived in an area, between Southern Ukraine, Crimea and Caucasus, which had been heavily colonized by the Greeks. An echo of such colonization is constituted by the myth of Iphigenia in Taurid, illustrated by Greek tragedies. According to Goethe and Adorno, Iphigenia constitutes the best personification of transcultural humanism, which overcomes hatred and violence.

The Regnum Bospori, created by Scythians/Sarmatians around Crimea and the Azov Sea (an area linked also to the myths of ancient German Gods, called Æsir –“Iasians”?- and Vanir, which, according to Norse Sagar, had migrated into Sweden from Asgard, in Scythia), after having been the stronghold of the arch-enemy Mitridates, was, for a long time, a satellite of the Roman and of the Byzantine Empires. According to ancient Russian historiography, already the Apostole Andrew and St. Clement should have reached in these territories (where Christendom is reported to be present already in very ancient times). Sarmatians have also been reported to have served with Roman Legions in Brittany along the Vallum Hadrianum, to have had, as their symbol, the Iranian and Chinese “drake”, similar to the one find in the Perm Gubernija in Siberia (“Draconarii”), and, finally, to be the ancestors of King Arthur.

As it is well known, also the Poles attributed a large interest to the cultural heritage of the Sarmatæ, being, the latter,  a warlike people of steppes, influenced by Greco-Roman civilization, and, hence, similar to the aristocracies of the “Republic” of Poland and Lithuania. During the XVI, XVII and XVIII Century, these Polish and Lithuanians aristocracies (“Szlachta”) vindicated their  origins from ancient Sarmatæ (“Sarmatizm”), so justifying the claim of the Kingdom of Poland to stretch eastwards, alongside the Northern bank of the Black Sea, which, at those times, was a Tatar Khanate under growing Turkish influence.

Together with "Golden Liberty" it formed a central aspect of the Commonwealth's culture. It is notv a case that the Polish officials of those times wore anachronistic neo-hellenistic weaponry, that they claimed to be Thraco-Sarmatian, together with flags fixed on the horsebacks, deived probably, by the tenure of old Han Chinese herals (probably imitated by steppes peoples like the Huns). In civil life, Szlachta wore a long coat, trimmed with fur, called a Zupan, and thigh-high boots, and carried a saber (szabla). Even in battle, they used tho wear the armor under the zupan. Mustaches, like the ones of Lech Walesa, were also popular (“oni z wlasami”), as well as varieties of plumage in the menfolk's headgear. Poland's "Sarmatians" strove for the status of a nobility on horseback, for equality among themselves, and for invincibility in the face of other peoples Sarmatism considerably influenced the noble cultures of other contemporary states — Moldova,Transylvania,Wallachia, Hungary,  Croatia, and even Muscovy- . 

     The term was first used  by Jan Dlugosz in his 15th century work on the history of Poland. Mickiewicz, in his “Pan Tadeusz”, in protraying Polish-Lithuanian aristocracy during Napoleon wars, utilizes ironically the words “ Gotycko-Sarmacki ”. Sarmatism enjoyed a triumphant comeback with The Tilogy  of Henryk Sienkiewicz, Poland's first Nobel Laureate(1905).