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.

FEDERATION, UNION, MARKET,COMMUNITY

NATO and Warsaw Pact

 

Russian and  European Terminologies Overlapping

Русская и Европейская терминологии совпадают

Le terminologie russa ed Europea si sovrappongono

Les terminologies russe et européennes se juxtaposent 

Die russische und die Europaeische prallen zusammen 

 

 

1.Heritages of the blocks

Somebody  has pretended that the Communist block arisen in Europe after World War II (or the Soviet Union itself) constituted a sort of anticipation of present days European Union .In fact, Evgenij Primakov has called it “European Union n. I”. It is not a secret that Primakov is favourable to the accessoion of Russia into the European Union.We could say that institutions like the Warsaw Pact and the Comecon were created just for contradicting NATO and Common Market, but were based on the same idea of the latter, i.e. as an ideological, and non continental, block. From another point of view, albeit we maintain our persuasion that the very core of the European project is not an ideologic, but a geopolitical issue, we admit that somebody could suggest that also the European Union was an ideologic reality, arisen out of a “Western” agenda.Notwithstanding all of the foregoing, the fact so large parts of Europe have lived within for a so long period within the framework of the same system, and with the same - logical, theoretical, political - patterns, has contributed to the creation of a more widespread “common language”. It has also to be said that what is common of this language has been often also the one of nationalities and of conflicts, and that is used now for dividing Europeans (Republics against Russians, Albanians against Serbs, Armenians against Azeris). However, there is at least a common legal and organizational style and a common sociological typology, which is not completely useless in absolute, and could ever constitute a working tool for European politicians willing to really cope with problems like continental cooperation and curing the excess of national suprematisms. 

  Unfortunately, many of the positive aspects of the former East European sovrannational organizations, as, for instance, the attention to long lasting economic cooperation, are no more perceivable in the area. Another aspect of the former East Block States is, paradoxically, the loss influence of those movements of “dissent” which, for a certain period, seemed to be a common element for all Central and Eastern European societies. It is true that these movements were weak, without a common ground, and too much depending on foreign influence. So that it is easy to explain why, after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, they disappeared, leaving space to very Western-type parties and ideologies. Even intellectuals, like Kadaré or Havel, who had widespread, in the past, a culturalist, national and elitist message, changed dramatically their messages after the fall of the Wall, homologating it to the requirements of the West, and forgetting the national particularities which had rendered live the same messages. Only Sol’zenitzin did not rally with this trend and continued, also after the fall of Communism, to defend its own patriotic and Christian point of view.

 Paradoxically, only certain authors which, at the end, were, at least partially ,integrated into the system, like, for instance, Wajda, Lem,Zanussi,Sol'zhenitsin,Kusturica,Tarkovski, Kolakowski, Kieszlowski, succeeded, thanks to the gaps of the old system,  to create, in the Eastern Block,during  the transition period, "classical" works which denoted a total distance both from the Marxist ideology, and from the economicist Western world, especially in cinematography (Andrej Rubljov, Sol’aris, Stalker,Lotna, Kalwaria Polska, Dekalog, Otac je u delovim put, Slike ot zhivota udarnika) .

2. Europe, a Federation of Empires

Coming to the merits of Primakov’s contention, we cannot deny that both the Soviet Union and the European Union have been the heirs of the same political thinking, which, as the outcome of a century-old federalist tradition, had reclaimed the reconstruction of a general European order in substitution of the Roman Empire. The idea itself of the “Third Rome” was originated, in last instance, by the necessity of a succession to the Constantinian Tetrarchy, which had been the first case of general political organization of Christian Europe. This tradition went on through Bohemia, France and Germany during the 15^th, 16^th, 17^th and 18^th Centuries.

The best known of these project, the “Projet de Paix Perpetuelle” of St. Pierre, included Russia (and, initially,also  the Ottoman Empire) in the new European Organization, which should have guaranteed peace for two whole of Europe.

Also the “Greek Project” (for the Greeks, “i Megàli Idèa”) was intended, by Leibniz, as the unification of the whole of Europe, alongside the model of the Qin Empire in China. Then, the “Russian” version of the Holy Alliance spoke of a “Europe of the Peoples”.

Also at the moment of creating the Soviet Union, Bolsheviks took inspiration from the teaching of “Austro-Marxists”, who, in their turn, draw their inspiration from the constitutional traditions of the late Ottoman, Austrian and German Empires, which had known large forms of federalism, such as the one of the German States inside the 2^nd Reich, the “compromise” between Austria and Hungary, as well as the representation of Nationalities (Milletler) at the Ottoman Empire’s level.

But also Coudenhove-Kalergi, the Greek-Czech-Austrian founder of “Paneuropa” was inspired by the Austria’s constitutional tradition.

1.Federation/Federacija; Market/Rynok;Community/Soobscestvo; Union/Sojuz.

Even the terminologies utilized were similar: “Soviet Union” and “European Union”; “Common Market” and “Eurasiatic Market”; “European Communities” and “Community of Independent States”; “Russian Federation” and “European Federation”.

The matter is too complex for being dealt with here in a comprehensive manner. It may be sufficient to take note of some fundamental aspects.

First of all, all these terminologies cover very different realities, some of them being extinct, others still leaving, some having remained at the stage of a draft, others presently under completion. Some of them were centralized and despotic to the maximum extent, others were, or are, extremely loose.

Finally, all of these concepts and realities changed without interruption over the time: the Russian Sovietic Republic became the Soviet Union, which, at its turn, gave rise to the Russian Federation and to the Community of Independent States, where, today, some Republics, like Russia, Belarus and Kazakhistan, would like to create a Eurasiatic Common Market. Reversals, the European Communities have been transformed, present days, into European Union.

So, even taking into account the specificities of each institution and of each specific moment of time and political situation, all these similarities means that we are not just utilizing the same wordings, but we are confronted with the same type of problems. This will probably bring us again to face these problems with a common approach.