OUR COMMON MISTAKES (1979-2008)

The Shelling of Belgrade

Europe has Lost 30 Years 

Европа потеряла 30 лет 

L'Europa ha sprecato 30 anni

L'Europe a perdu 30 ans

Europa hat 30 Jahre verpasst

The path towards European Identity is unbelievably slow. Moreover, it seems to progress not by way of a consistent and conscious path, but, on the contrary, mainly  via a process of trial and error. Also the way  toward a new  self-consciousness of Russia is proceeding  slowly and in a contradictory way.

For Europeans at the time of World War II and of Cold War, “Russia” was just a synonym for “Communism” - what was false also then (see: “White Guards”, Vlassov Army, the “patriotic” character impressed, to the War, by Stalin himself). Because of this wrong characterization, most Europeans conceived their attitude towards Russia, at that time, just alongside their own ideological preferences or refusals.

At a later stage, let say during the period of Khruschev’s “Peaceful Coexistence”period, in the Sixties, Europeans were interested to Russia especially for business (see the Lada plant of Togliatti) , and, also, for some, rare, cultural products which arrived to us: some novels, like Doctor Zivago, or some films, like Cistoe Nebo.

“Russia-Bashing” was becoming general in the Seventies: from the side of anti-communists, but also of the left, which denounced a “Treason of Socialism”. In Eastern Europe, Russians were identified with the Soviet Union, and, also there, for this reason, they were submerged by general suspicion.

At the moment of Perestrojka, Europeans were not inclined to a rational attitude towards the proposals expressed by Gorbatschev, whom they did not understand. They could not even have imagined that Russians loved Europeans and would have been happy to coordinate with them their future destinies.

Therefore, there was no real enthusiasm for Gorbatschev. Even the events in Eastern Europe were not so clearcut as they are described, retrospectively, now. The struggle was not between communists and anti-communists, but, on the contrary, between different fractions of the former establishment, with a weak contribution of dissidents which, by and large, could not be defined as “anti-communists”.

Finally, one of the most powerful drivers of the change has been precisely Russia, which at the end supported Gorbatschev  and Eltzin in their choice to overcome Communism.

Only when plays were over without its contribution, the West started to intervene with its rhetoric of “the re-conquered freedom”and its pretension to impose its choices. And, paradoxically, West Europeans were not in a hurry to welcome East Europeans in general among them. This is true both for peoples of Central-Eastern Europe, and for the ones of the Former Soviet Union.

The population in the West did not know anything about Eastern Europeans, but one fact: "they are poor, they need money". What West Europeans did not perceive then, and has not yet perceived now, is that, beyond the contingency of financial aids, Perestrojka was opening up, to Western Europe, an extraordinary opportunity, both in economics, and in politics. It was, and is,  precisely the opportunity to achieve the necessary complementarities and economies of scale, and to become strong enough to become a  real player  on the world scene.

Thus, Western Europe committed three major mistakes: submitting the countries of Central-Eastern Europe to  bothersome membership procedures, so alienating the sympathies of Eastern Europeans and giving time to all Euroskeptical tendencies (small nationalisms, American lobbies, even jihadism), to organize and to gain momentum, precisely thanks to the absence of Europe. This is the explanation of Nagorno-Karabagh, of Transnistria, of former Yugoslavia. Allowing Enlargement of NATO before the one od European Union. Excluding Russia and Turkey.

Europeans were persuaded that, making Europe with  the East meant undertaking huge responsibilities and the need to engage themselves much more in depth. Understanding that would have disturbed their comfortable way of life life,  they preferred to ignore the problem.

The US,  at the times of George Bush Senior, had been very cautious towards the new developments in the East, being afraid to open a space to new phenomena which they considered more dangerous, for them,  than Communism itself, (like for instance  German and Russian nationalisms)  saw , at the end of the day, that neither nationalism had materialized.Then, they felt free to follow an  agenda,  of cultural, political, military and economic “annexation” of Central Europe and of Russia to their tighter sphere of influence. Europe did not show any sign of concern  about that.

Also the Roman Catholic Church, which, at least in theory, had interpreted the evolutions in the East not just as a revolt against communism, but also as a revolt against saecularization, did not draw from that point  its  correct consequences, which woul have implied to continue, in another form,  the old struggle of Solidarność, in the same direction, but, this time, not against Communism, but against the dictature of economy, proper to the West. Pope John Paul II often preached that concept, but did not implement it.

Also the East made several mistakes. Gorbatschev pretended to transform communism into social-democracy without neither any effort to draw the of the consequences from a marxist point of view, nor any program of ideological change, nor any written guarantees from the West. Also Eltzin showed a  blindfolded confidence in the West, giving to foreigners free access to the most precious Russian resources.

Yugoslav leaders started a suicidal war of all against all, without understanding that this would have ruined all the Republics for many decades at the same time.

The Polish Leadership and the Catholic Church forgot every  point of Solidarnosc program, and, instead of  complying with Walesa's promise "to build up a society which would have been better than East and West", simply copied the Western, if not the American, standards.

All other East Europeans took that occasion for starting a mutual and generalised conflict without any serious  objective, a conflict which, in many case, has not ceased up to now. Above all, they had not understood that Europe should be an opportunity for counting more all together, not to spoil each one's neighbours.

Now, Europe is shaken, also because of those mistakes, by a series new crises: the financial, but also a political one, created by xenofoby, separatism and lack of vision, a social one, with the lack of motivation of the youth, and a spiritual one, with the abandonment of any kind of serious engagement. 

The past mistakes should have teached  us what we shall not absolutely repeat. 

According to us, the first lesson  to be learnt is that we need much more culture and much more political debate about these themes.

Just culture shall allow us to understand the historical moment in which we live, our most dramatical problems, the possible solutions, the role of Europe in the world.

East-West cultural exchange is the focal point of this required culture. For this reason we are insisting on this concept.

The initiative "Starting Again, from Culture", and the manifesto "The World of Culture against the Jettison of European Ideal", initiated by the associations of the City of Torino,  are aimed at this goal. Following to the launching of thisd blog, we will launch parallel initiatives specifically devoted to the East-West dialogue.

RUSSIA DISAPPOINTED BY EUROPE

Perestrojka: an Exceptional Occasion Miserably Missed

Перестрoйка - чрезвычайный, презренно  не использованны, йшанс

La Perestrojka: un'occasione eccezionale persa miseramente.

Péréstroyka: un'occasion exceptionnelle perdue misérablement.

Perestrojka: eine aussergewoehnliche, miserabel verpasste , Chance

Recent polemic declaration of former USSR President Gorbatschev against the policies of Edinaja Rossija has brought back to the interest of the political world and of the general public for a retrospective discussion about the faults and the benefits of Perestrojka.

We try hereby to express a  balanced point of view
.

Within all  confusion of Perestrojka, all major European players were not, according to us, up to requirements of their roles: Gorbatschev, the dissidents, the Church, Eltzin, but, especially, Europe. Nobody, in the European Union, even considered the fact that, since all these things were happening in Europe, they fell within the primary responsibility of all Europeans.

On top of that, an unbelievable theory of European Law, which is not written in the Treaties, prescribed that, before being able to enter the European Union, any European State must undergo a huge amount of changes and examinations, for becoming “apt” to become a member of the Union.

This principle starts from the wrong idea that the  Union is an ideological organization, which selects the ones who are homogeneous to its ideology. On the contrary, the Treaties foresee just that any European State has the right to become a member with the sole conditions to have a democratic constitution and a market economy. Even if this should change the political balance within the Union.

This discrimination has hurted very much many East European States, like the Poles, who are very proud of their nation, and that, therefore, do not like anybody to teach them how they have to be. Therefore, they are now very critical of the Union and pursue their own interests without a lot of attention for the others.This hurts still yet very heavily especially Turkey. Keeping many States, for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, years outside the European Union, the EU  encouraged any type of nationalistic reactions, including separate dealings with America, a hostile attitude with neighbors, local wars, and so on.

If this attitude is hurting for Poles and for Turks, or even for smaller nations, it goes without saying that it is absolutely unacceptable for Russia. Nobody recalls any more that, when President Eltzin came to Strasburg for addressing the European Parliament with a proposal whereby Russia could have joined the European Union, he was even barred from speaking by the then President of the  European  Parliament.

Eltzin was the most “Pro-Western” President that Europeans could have expected. In reality, European politicians were not interested at all for an accession, but not even to an association,  of Russia, even under the very unbalanced conditions of that time. How could they expect that Russia would  not have been hurted by that attitude? We are keen to think that, at the end of the day, Russians have been interested to participate in the European Union since the beginning of Perestrojka. Primakov has confirmed that recently. But how could they dare to propose this again, if they risk to be treated like Eltzin?

In fact, Russia would likely be, as suggested by Hélène Carrière d' Encausse,  more interested in a partnership between Russia as a whole (or the Eurasiatic Economic Community) and the European Union. This could apply also to Turkey.

THE EUROPEAN COMMON HOUSE: A POPE'S IDEA

Pius II

Gorbachev's Slogan picked up from a speach of Pius II

 Девиз Горбачева - цитата Пия II

 Lo slogan di Gorbaciov ripreso da Pio II

 Le slogan de Gorbatschev repis de Pius II

Der Slogan von Gorbatschev stammt aus einer Rede von Pius II

1.From "Socialism in One State" to "Stagnation"

Once rejected the idea of a worldwide revolution, the only solution, at the end, remained to the Soviet Union was the one of the “Pacific Coexistence” launched by Khrusciov. Notwithstanding the efforts made by the Party, at those time, it seemed that all the efforts for reaching Communism, considered as a higher economic and social phase, had achieved  only meager results. That period was called, by Soviets, the one of “Stagnation”.

“A posteriori”,this definition is understandable because the very high levels of growth of the Soviet economics, which had characterized the country during the Stalinistic period, could no more be achieved.It is astonishing that the great economic achievements of UdSSR are normally forgotten, whilst the procapite income in Russia has just recently recovered the 1991 level, after a dramatical fall in the 90ies.  Unfortunately, later on, during the Gorbačev and Eltzin periods, people understood that the situation could had become even worse.

 2.From Perestroika to the Great Recession

It is difficult to speak in a few word on those events, because there are neither objective points of reference, nor similar experiences with which to compare them.

Military force of the USSR remained unattained. But an army which does not fight a “real” war for 35 years cannot sustain the hardships of a present days “uneven war”, like the one in Afghanistan. This is something that also Westerners are experiencing at the end. When Soviets understood that they were defeated in their first “real” war  after World War, against a few, badly equipped guerrillas, they lost any residual  confidence towards their system.

So, Gorbatchev was chosen for trying a change of route. At the beginning, he had a good intuition: there were no more good reasons for disputes between Russians and Europeans, so that a wide-ranging cooperation would have been possible. However, he had no clearcut strategy: he did not understand that, in particular, without party dictatorship or someway of authoritarian rule, Socialism could not have resisted the overall pressures of western capitalism.

The typical slogan of Gorbachev, “A Common European House” had been invented, 500 years before, by a Pope: Pius II, that became Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who, as a geographer, had inserted, for the first time, Muscovy and Greater Lithuania, up to the Azov Sea and to the Don, into geographical Europe. It is not astonishing that this Slogan has been accepted and backed by Pope John Paul II. However, such an important t understanding between Russia and the catholic Church could have been effective only  if the policy of integration of both, Russia and Europe, into the “Common European House” had been sustained strongly, since the beginning, from one side, by the Christian Democratic forces who had a leading role in the largest part of Western Europe, and, from another side, by the catholic nations of churches, which were very strong at least in Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Czechia and Croatia. What, according to us, did not happen.

In the absence, from one side, of the maintainment of the strength of the Soviet State at home and abroad, and, from another side, of a genuine alliance with strong cultural and spiritual forces all over Europe, the centrifugal trends, which the system itself (Stalin’s “Nationalities Policy” and its consistent application) had generated, but that the Communist Party had held under control in the past, were unlashed, becoming free to destroy the “Eastern system”.  The idea of a “European Common House” was too vague: it did not materialize into a State, into a Treaty, into an ideology, into a military alliance, into an economic system. Also the forces which were starting to operate throughout the whole Empire lacked a clearcut strategy.

The first to act in this context had been the Ayatollah Khomeini, with his well-known Letter to Gorbatschev, announcing that Islam would have overcome communism, and would have even substituted it as the true revolutionary force of the future. He was right, but also the Schi^ca was too weak in the former Soviet Union for aggregating forces; so, the leading role passed to Talibans. Who, at their turn, had not the ambition to create a State, but just to be left free to cultivate their religion according to their own fundamentalistic interpretation, without any secularistic ingerence from abroad. Osama Bin Laden had that ambition, but he had too many enemies for being able to create anything, and he was soon engaged in another, much broader, struggle.

From the other side of the Empire, the Poles have always been happy to surge against Russians. For a certain period, they succeeded to stay, when they had had an opportunity, united beyond Solidarność, which was promising extraordinary changes, including, as Lech Wałesa was saying, “a system which would be better both of Communism and of Capitalism”. However, not a long time after the “Round Table”, everybody saw that there was no “Polish Way”, but just a neo-liberal policy, to which the Church did not oppose any effective resistance, especially thanks to the extraordinary positive attitude of Gorbatschev. According to us, the interview which was released, not long time ago, by former Polish President Jaruzelski to a German newspaper, are of  the utmost significance. Jaruzelsky said that both Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterand had asked the Russian to intervene in order to impede German reunification, whilst  just Russia was favorable. also Walesa hoped that the Soviets would have intervened. What shows that there was more “European Solidarity” between Germans and Russians than between France, Germany and, even, Poland.

The absence of an adequate strategy by Gorbatschev caused a huge amount of troubles to Russia: an extraordinary fall in GNP, which has been recovered just recently; the civil war in Nagorno,-Karabagh, Chechnya, Ossetia, Abkhasia, Transnistria, but also Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, the coup in Romania; the selloff of Russian natural resources for several years; overall poverty and corruption. From that moment on, general trends were set by the first precedents: to apply existing constitutions as well as an interpretation of existing laws in such a way as to allow the introduction of democracy. In Islamic countries, like Chechnya, a precedent was constituted also by the example of Itan, talibans, al-Qaida, and, then, by the implementation of Shari’a.

3.The Recovery

For about one decade, Eastern Europe and Russia were submerged by these contradictions.

What is paradoxical because, precisely in the same period, China arose as one of the most formidable players in the World. In the same time, the events of these two decades are a practical demonstration of the tremendous interaction that always has existed, and which exists still now, between Russia and Europe. At the beginning, he lack of a clearcut proposal, from either Gorbatschev  or Eltzin, lead to an insufficient response from Europe. Russia went on weakening  itself too much. A political gap arose. East European countries fell into the chaos. In front of this chaos, Western Europe couldn’t identify its own identity, strategies and policies. Thus, Russia was obliged to reconsider its own policies. Europe was not able to finalise its own integration in a rerasonable way .

A situation which is deceiving for all of us, and that we can solve only together.

As we can see, the mutual attitudes in that period have deeply influenced our societies in the last twenty years. For Western Europe, the progressive lack of capability to organize their own strategiers. For Russia, the necessity to rely primarily on itself. And, for both parties,at the end,  the need to find finally a common way of understanding.

We hope  that the efforts that we are doing here will be helpful for all Europeans and all Russians who are sincerely interested to rebuild this common path.