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No 1 | 2015
1 | 2015
Index: 287210
CENTRAL EUROPE
Aspen Institute Prague is supported by:
LEFT IS BACK
Frank Furedi, Ulrike Guérot, Ivan Krastev, John Psaropoulos, Martin Šimečka, José Ignacio Torreblanca
Nuclear Nationalism Has Only Brought Misery
An interview with Shirin Ebadi
Do Political Ideas Still Matter?
Jan-Werner Müller
W W W . A S P E N I N S T I T U T E . C Z
POLITICS Europe and Russia Dominique Moïsi | Europe in 1815 and 2015 B. Simms
ECONOMY Corruption, Romanian Style A. Mungiu | A Post-Imperial Federation Y. Zhuchkova
CULTURE Phenomenological Space Cadets to the Rescue A. Tucker | Masaryk and the Poles A. Kaczorowski
No 1 | 2015
Advisory Board
Walter Isaacson (co-chairman), Michael Žantovský (co­‑chairman),
Yuri Andrukhovych, Piotr Buras, Krzysztof Czyżewski, Josef Joffe, Kai­
‑Olaf Lang, Zbigniew Pełczyński, Petr Pithart, Jacques Rupnik, Mariusz
Szczygieł, Monika Sznajderman, Martin M. Šimečka, Michal Vašečka
Editorial Board
Tomáš Klvaňa (chairman), Luděk Bednář, Adam Černý, Martin Ehl,
Roman Joch, Jan Macháček, Kateřina Šafaříková, Tomáš Vrba
Editors
Aleksander Kaczorowski (editor-in-chief ), Maciej Nowicki (deputy
editor-in-chief ), Robert Schuster (managing director)
Tra n s l at o r s
Tomasz Bieroń, Julia Sherwood
Published by
Aspen Institute Prague o. p. s.
Palackého 1, CZ 110 00 Praha
e-mail: [email protected]
www.aspeninstitute.cz
Year IV
No 1/2015
ISSN 1805–6806
© Aspen Institute Prague
The ideas expressed in the articles are authors’ own and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board or of the Aspen
Institute Prague.
Contents
F O R E W O R D Radek Špicar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
E D I T O R I A L Aleksander Kaczorowski. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
C O V E R S T O R Y Left is Back
The Rise of Podemos—José Ignacio Torreblanca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Return of the Radical Left—Ivan Krastev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
How Syriza Came to Power—John Psaropoulos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Left—Ghost of the Past or the Progressive Left in Germany?—Ulrike Guérot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In Search of Meaning: 21st Century Leftist Imaginarium—Frank Furedi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
C O M M E N T Martin Šimečka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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THE INTERVIEW
Nuclear Nationalism Has Only Brought Misery. An interview with Shirin Ebadi by Maciej Nowicki . . . . . . . . . . 33
C O M M E N T Bogdan Góralczyk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
POLITICS
Do Political Ideas Still Matter?—Jan-Werner Müller. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Europe in 1815 and 2015—Brendan Simms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Europe and Russia—Dominique Moïsi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Elite in Russia Is Kept on a Leash by the Nation.
An Interview with Zakhar Prilepin by Filip Memches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Future of EU-Russia Relations—Michal Šimečka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A Post-Imperial Federation: Impossible or Inevitable?—Yulia Zhuchkova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
C O M M E N T Adam Černý. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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ECONOMY
The End of Equality—Jan Sowa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Corruption, Romanian Style—Alina Mungiu-Pippidi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Defending the Wrong Rule of Law—Maciej Kisilowski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Russia’s Non-Soviet Path—Vladislav Inozemtsev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Can Orbán Break Out of the Diplomatic Isolation?—Péter Krekó, Bulcsú Hunyadi, Krisztián Szabados. . . . . . .
C O M M E N T Martin Ehl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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C U LT U R E
Masaryk and the Poles—Aleksander Kaczorowski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Phenomenological Space Cadets to the Rescue—Aviezer Tucker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Two Germanies, Two Cultures—Robert Schuster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
The Animal Point of View—Patrycja Pustkowiak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Culture as a Source of Practice—Tomasz Stawiszyński. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
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Dear readers,
Let me present you the spring 2015
issue of the Aspen Review quarterly. “Left is
back” analyzes the dynamics behind recent
successes of leftist political parties in Europe.
It also reveals a dramatic shift between ideas
traditionally associated with leftist political
thought and the main features of the left
today.
After several years of tough austerity
measures, the left in Europe is gaining on
strength. The beginning of the year saw Syriza,
a radical left-wing party, win parliamentary
elections in Greece. Ivan Krastev argues that
this victory cannot only be explained by
the economic crisis, but shows that Greece
has a tradition of political radicalism and
leftist populism that goes back to resistance
against the Nazi occupation. In another text,
Martin Šimečka explores the paradox why the
Czech and Slovak left-of-center parties are
lured towards Kremlin. Although they claim
allegiance to the legacy of the 1968 Prague
Spring that was crushed by the Russian-lead
invasion, they present all sorts of justifications
for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The author
uncovers political and psychological explana-
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tions for this political behavior that earned the
Czech and Slovak governments a reputation as
the Kremlin’s Trojan horse in the EU.
Despite its revival in Europe, Frank Furedi
claims that for the first time in the modern era,
the left is falling short of providing a plausible political alternative. The example of the
Occupy Movement, which avoided formulating
political demands, proves that lack of vision
may sometimes be presented as a virtue. In
his article, Furedi explains that the struggle
of the left to produce a plan for the future is
caused by the erosion of almost all political
principles and values traditionally associated
with the movement. The author also points to
what appears as a reversal of roles between
the left and the right. Today’s left is risk-averse,
opposed to consumerism and weary of the
concept of economic growth and technological development.
This spring brings a lot in Aspen agenda.
In March, we organized the third edition of
the Aspen Young Leaders Program, with
the highest number of participants so far.
To get an idea of what it has to offer, please
have a look at our website. The next big
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of Reykjavik Jón Gnarr. Within our urban focus
we will also continue with debates on creative
placemaking, culminating during the second
Creative Placemaking Festival, organized in
cooperation with Pilsen 2015 this fall.
Finally, our office is busy with preparations
of a brand new concept for the Aspen Annual
Conference, our biggest event each year. The
conference will provide an opportunity for
renowned experts and personalities to present
and discuss their assessments of the state of
the Czech Republic in terms of several strategic
indicators.
Aspen event is already planned for April, when
our institute co-organizes several debates
during the European Economic Congress
in Katowice, Poland. We invited a number of
interesting speakers to the congress, one the
largest business events in Central Europe, which
convenes thousands of guests each year. In
the spirit of our Leadership Program, we also
support the EEC Leaders for Tomorrow, a new
initiative within the Congress promoting active
involvement of young people in discussions on
important public issues.
Meanwhile, our Institute continues implementing activities in policy areas—digital
agenda, creative palcemaking and urban
development. We will organize a series of
policy meetings with the aim to help Visegrad
countries discuss the potential of new technologies for economy and society. Despite considerable benefits and risks linked with the digital
economy and digitalization, which we analyzed
in the previous issue of the Aspen Review, the
topic has yet to make significant imprint in
public policy. In partnership with reSITE Festival
we will organize a debate on activism in local
politics with a truly special guest, former Mayor
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I wish you an enjoyable read during prolonging
spring days,
RADEK ŠPICAR
Executive Director
Aspen Institute Prague
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Photo: Aspen Institute Prague
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EDITORIAL
A Russian Phantasmagoria
Aleksander Kaczorowski
The plot of Vladimir Sorokin’s latest novel,
The Blizzard, can be summed up in three
sentences. Physician with a Bunin-like name
Platon Ilyich Garin travels to a village where an
epidemic broke out, carrying a vaccine. Days
go by and he is unable to reach his destination:
one day he breaks a sleigh runner, another
day he wanders off the trail, and then again he
succumbs to the charms of a beautiful miller’s
wife. And the eponymous blizzard is raging
around him.
As in Sorokin’s previous novel Day of the
Oprichnik, the plot of the book is set in a not
very distant future, probably in the second half
of the current century. Nevertheless the social
realities, as well as the deliberately archaic
Russian of the protagonists, call to mind
19th-century provincial Russia. Or perhaps even
the eternal and unchanging Muscovy, piled
with never melting snow. A country reached
by modern civilisation only in the form of
the newest technological gadgets: samovar
(19th century), phone (20th century) and
“scooter” (21st century).
Garin moves in just such a scooter, a kind
of sleigh pulled by fifty very small ponies. As
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ALEKSANDER KACZOROWSKI
Editor in Chief of Aspen Review
Photo: Jacek Herok
the coachman Perkhusha explains, the ponies
the size of partridges are much cheaper to
maintain than traditional horses, as they
can be fed clover. Hence their popularity in
the poor Russian countryside, where in the
late 21st century, just like 200 years ago, you
have to do everything almost with your bare
hands.
For the future Russia Sorokin’s style is
a country of total deindustrialisation—and
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Vladimir Sorokin (1955), a specialist in oil
and gas extraction by training, and a novelist,
painter and book illustrator by vocation, made
his debut—believe it or not—almost half
a century ago, in 1972. The Soviet Union was
then at the height of its power. Russians flew
into space more often than all the other inhabitants of the globe put together, and the scant
dissidents were locked in psychiatric wards—for
in a country of real socialism only loonies could
oppose the regime.
And today? The former conquerors of space
are reduced to digging holes in the permafrost
in search of remnants of oil and gas. If it goes on
like that, they will be left with biomass and in
vitro horses.
More seriously speaking, it is worth noting
that the plot of this, it would seem, quintessentially Russian novel is a pastiche of the classic
song cycle by Franz Schubert called “The Miller’s
Beautiful Wife” (Die Schöne Müllerin, 1823),
with lyrics by Wilhelm Müller. Sorokin shifts
the drama of an infatuated romantic wanderer
to the reality of snowy, post-industrial Russia.
The wanderings of a young man, haunted by
a presentiment of suicidal death, in painterly
scenery of Germanic meadows and flowers
turn into an insane Anabasis of a 42-year-old
Russian sawbones and his moronic coachman,
who needs three days to cover a distance
of just seventeen versts. At a pinch this can
be perceived as an allegory of the crippled
modernisation. Especially that the last word in
the book—as in the majority of catastrophic
visions by contemporary Russian writers—
belongs to the Chinese. It reads: “Guale!”. And it
means “he is dead and gone”.
advanced biotechnology. Since all natural
resources have been exhausted, living
organisms, humans and animals, are the only
renewable source of energy. Biomass is also
the basic raw material and tool. For example,
when you construct a house which is several
stories high, you do not use cranes, but huge
draft horses tailor-made in the laboratory.
Such horses also pull sleigh trains, consisting
of a number of wagons carrying both passengers and freight. Charged with felling trees
are men the size of three-storey houses. Of
course there are also people (and horses) of
traditional proportions, such as Garin, his
coachman and miller’s wife who is hosting
them (although her husband is a Lilliputian no
taller than a bottle of vodka).
It is not difficult to guess that against such
a range of human dimensions racial differences
fade. Russians, Kazakhs and Chinese (of the
same size) peacefully coexist in the country
ruled by a serene monarch. Existing on the
side-lines of the patriarchal society are only the
mysterious Vitaminese, forming a close circle of
producers, traders and consumers of so-called
products, allowing explorations of altered states
of consciousness.
Where did the giants and Lilliputians come
from? And why do the dead arise from permafrost and bite innocent villagers, infecting them
with a mysterious disease called Chernukha
(Blackie)? We never learn that, but we can guess
that the origin of the biopolitical system of this
old-new Russia reaches back to the “greatest
geopolitical disaster of the 20th century” (as
Vladimir Putin famously said), that is the
breakup of the Soviet Union.
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COVER STORY
The Rise of Podemos
José Ignacio Torreblanca
Podemos seeks to transcend traditional divisions between
left and right and to reframe politics as a struggle
between the people and the elite
In the European elections held in May 2014,
Podemos (We Can), a platform established just
five months before by a group of young university professors managed to mobilize more than
1,250,000 voters (8% of the electorate) and send
five representatives to the European Parliament.
Speaking to the crowd gathering at the Party’s
headquarters to celebrate their victory, its young
and charismatic leader, Pablo Iglesias, announced
that this had only been the beginning and that
he and his party aspired to make it to the government in 2015 general elections. “The process to
liberate the peoples of the South from German
colonization,” he announced, “has just begun.”
Podemos’ rise was a major surprise: polling
institutes had noted Spaniards’ dissatisfaction with the two main parties, PP and PSOE
(conservative and socialist, respectively) which
had been ruling Spain since 1982, but they had
not been able to anticipate that voters would
favor Podemos in a such a massive way. But what
happened afterwards was even more r­ emarkable:
over the following months, with every new
poll, Podemos would always double its share
of ­potential votes until they beat the two main
parties. In July, just one month after the elections,
a poll revealed that Podemos had almost doubled
its share to 15% of the potential vote. And in
November, two further polls showed another
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doubling of the potential vote, with Podemos
support spiking to 22% and 28%, putting them
on par with the Socialist Party (26.2%) and above
the Conservative Party (20.7%).
All of a sudden, a party formed just a few
months earlier had serious chance of making it
to the government of the country, overturning
the general consensus and bipartisan system
dominating Spain’s politics since the restoration
of democracy back in 1978. Observers described
the phenomenon as a “tsunami” threatening to
engulf the establishment parties, and investors
are worried that after thirty years or remarkable
stability, Spain might move into political instability, uncertainty and an entirely new partysystem.
What is Podemos and what does it stand
for? Ideologically, Podemos is a left-wing party
drawing its inspiration from both Latin American
national-popular movements (Chavez’s Venezuela, Correa’s Ecuador, Morales’ Bolivia and
Kirchner’s Argentina) and Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza
in Greece. In its origin, its leaders have shown
utter hostility to both neoliberalism, which they
describe as socially, democratically and environmentally devastating, and liberal democracy,
which they see as an intrinsically corrupt and
unfair system by which the upper classes legitimize their grip on all levels of social, political and
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economic life. Regarding foreign policy, Podemos’
leader has declared he would want Spain to pull
out of NATO, to invite American troops to leave the
country, repeal the Lisbon Treaty and have debtor
countries allying against Germany’s dominance.
Like many other new parties across Europe,
Podemos seeks to represent the losers from the
economic crisis and capitalize on people’s anger
about political corruption and social inequality.
Accordingly, their economic program speaks of
nationalizations of public utilities, the auditing
and eventual restructuring of national debt, the
setting of higher taxes for the rich, the increase in
minimum wages, the lowering of retirement age
and work hours and the rising of pensions, but
overall, empowering the disempowered to make
both the economy and the political system work for
the people and not the economic or political elites.
What it’s new about Podemos is that they seek
to transcend classical divisions between left and
right and reframe politics as a struggle between
the many (the people) and the few (the elite, or
as they call it, mimicking Beppo Grillo in Italy, “la
casta”). By interpreting all the ills of Spain in terms
of the elite having let the people down, they seek
to bring down what they describe as the “1978
regime,” i.e. the Constitutional package (monarchy,
liberal democracy and market economy) which
has ruled over Spaniards during the last 30 years.
Podemos thus reinterprets populism from the left
in order to reach hegemony (their preferred term,
owing to their idol, Antonio Gramsci, the Italian
Communist imprisoned by Mussolini).
What explains the meteoric rise of Podemos
and what will be the consequences? Their extraordinary success is due to the combined economic
and political crisis. With the emphasis of economic
policy placed on efficiency, flexibility and competitiveness, the government has forgotten the people.
While savings banks were injected with massive
amounts of money to cover their losses in the
real-estate market, people were mercilessly evicted
from their homes, unable to meet their mortgage
payments. The impact of structural reforms and
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austerity has therefore been uneven, with the gap
between the rich and the poor widening, public
services deteriorating and job insecurity spreading.
But the straw that has broken the camel’s back
is political corruption: while many have had to
endure salary devaluation, unemployment and
a deep sense of insecurity about the future, they
have witnessed the prosecution of one politician
after another on a daily basis (including the former
King’s daughter and son in law) under accusations
of corruption or mismanagement of public money.
To some political scientists, the combination of
extreme unfairness, inequality and political corruption and privileges for the elites means that the
underlying social contract reigning in post-Franco
Spain has been severely damaged, if not broken.
Polls show that a large number of people have
effectively stopped trusting in the established
political institutions or political parties and would
want to bring about a radical change, which is what
Podemos promises to deliver (a recent campaign
video released by Podemos just claims: “Out with
all!”). Podemos can thus be seen as the consequence of the lack of vision and mistakes of the
main two parties. The Socialists are both blamed
for not having detected the magnitude of the crisis
beforehand, and then—when the shock came—for
having too easily given up on social policy and too
hastily embracing austerity. At the other end, the
Conservatives are being blamed for not having
been firm on corruption, not having delivered on
the main electoral promises, and for not having
been able to create jobs and new opportunities.
As a result, in a very short span of time, Spaniards
have moved from proudly celebrating their best
thirty years in history (1978–2008) to a state of
profound dissatisfaction and pessimism about
the future.
While Podemos represents an extraordinary
phenomenon in Spain, it is not so unique in Europe.
In fact, the rise of Podemos answers the question which many have been posing about Spain
during the last four years. Ever since May 9, 2010,
international observers have been wondering
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why ­Spaniards are not revolting. On that day
the Spanish President, José Luis Rodríguez
Zapatero, under intense pressure from international debt markets and his European colleagues
(including also a tense late night call with Presi­
dent Obama), was forced to implement tough
austerity measures, extend retirement age and
relax lay-off conditions for workers.
With almost 27% unemployment at the peak
of the crisis, including 55% youth unemployment,
and the highest increase in inequality across the
European Union, Spain has undoubtedly been
among the hardest-hit countries by the crisis,
next probably only to Greece. Yet while all over
Europe we have witnessed radical parties—both
left and right—trying to capitalize on the impact
of the crisis to challenge mainstream political
forces (Syriza in Greece, the 5 Star Movement
in Italy, the Front National in France, the UKIP in
Britain), Spaniards have kept remarkably quiet.
A hint of revolt did take place on May 2011
when hundreds of thousands of Spaniards
captured the attention of international media
by taking to the streets and occupying the plazas
chanting “you don’t represent us” to the country’s
politicians. Yet the Puerta del Sol movement,
though it managed to replicate itself globally
(recall the Occupy Wall Street Movement and
the 99percent movement), dissolved without
effectively challenging the establishment. In fact,
rather than revolting, in the subsequent elections
held in October 2011, the Conservative Party of
Mariano Rajoy with its agenda of austerity and
structural reform was given an absolute majority.
Various forces combined to keep the Spaniards quiet. First, the Spanish far-right, still
suffering from its association with the Franco
regime, was unable to awaken Spanish nationalism by manipulating immigration issues or
anti-German sentiment. At the other end of the
spectrum, the Spanish far-left (i.e. the former
Communists), which had always been largely
pro-European, did not dare challenge the euro
as Spaniards still largely identified with Europe
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despite the crisis. As in Greece, Podemos’ first and
main victims have been the former Communists,
apparently unable to understand that 19th and
20th century class-struggles have been superseded and replaced by more horizontal societies
and new types of conflicts and cleavages.
One exception to the remarkable absence
of populism in Spain has been Catalonia, one of
Spain’s richest regions, both economically and
culturally. Here secessionists have been able
to exploit the euro crisis to excite anti-Spanish
sentiments by arguing that Catalans are being
milked by the rest of Spain and are not sufficiently reimbursed for it with recognition of their
language and culture. Still, except for Catalonia,
Spain had been largely void of populism, despite
the crisis. Until now.
Now, paradoxically, at a time when Spanish
structural reforms garner the praise of international observers and the German government
uses the Spanish case as a model for France and
others to follow, opinion polls suggest a rise in
discontent which could lead to the collapse of the
traditional two-party system which has dominated
Spanish politics over the last 30 years. If anything,
this shows that the economic reforms adopted by
the eurozone, even if successful economically, are
not politically sustainable and threaten to destroy
those who implement it.
JOSÉ IGNACIO
TORREBLANCA
is Professor of Politics at UNED
University and Head of the Madrid
Office of the European Council on
Foreign ­Relations.
Photo: Photo Archive European
Council on Foreign Relations
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The Return
of the Radical Left
Ivan Krastev
The decline of support for the mainstream parties both
left and right is the dominant trend in European politics.
It’s hard to judge whether the majority of Europeans
is shifting to the left or to the right, but what is obvious
is that almost nobody is left in the center.
On Sunday, January 25, 2015, on the seventh
year of the economic crisis in Europe, for the first
time since the end of the Cold War radical left
has won the parliamentary elections in an EU
member state. The next day Syriza’s leader Alexis
Tsipras has been sworn in as Greece’s next prime
minister by president Papoulias, whose term in
office will soon end.
How radical is the Greek left is one of the
most heatedly discussed questions these days
not only in Athens, but also in Brussels and Berlin.
Trying to figure the answer out, analysts, journalists and the like are looking into every bit of
detail they can get about the new naughty kid on
the block. Rather tellingly, Tsipras used to have
a picture of Che Guevara in his office. But this
has recently changed. Accidentally, or—as those
who know him somewhat would guess—in an
attempt to gain respectability, he decided to
renovate his office space and to replace the Che
Guevara portrait with a boldly colored painting
depicting two bulls facing off. Now, what is in
the mind of the bull on the left?
A less than century ago the left used to be
radical. It believed in the working class, nationa­
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lization and socialism. It sympathized with
Moscow and blamed Washington for the ills in
the world. The radical left believed in revolution
and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Today the
radical left strongly denounces the dictatorship
of the capital and the rising social inequality, but
not much more. “What we offer is a Keynesian
program with redistribution attached, with some
Marxist view of the world,” confesses one of the
economic advisers of Tsipras. But if you look
at Syriza’s economic program in a somewhat
historical perspective, and compare it with the
program of the François Mitterrand’s government of 1981, for example, it will begin to look
less radical than we thought. It stands for what
was the European consensus just 40 years ago.
It is simply that economic realities, perceptions, and orthodoxies have shifted in the last
decades, and the European Union of 2015 is not
the European Common Market of 1981. Political
observers are convinced that the survival of
the euro depends on narrowing the economic
choices of the national governments and respectively of the voters. Today, it seems, this bit of
the European economic orthodoxy is backfiring
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in Greece so far. Thus the key questions today
are whether Greece will stay an exception, or
whether will it inspire a leftist wave in the politics
of the European South, and how will the election
of a radical left government in Greece affect the
current policy consensus in the EU.
always unfamiliar to the Greek democracy born
out of a civil war and sustained through oscillation
between ugly clientelism and unashamed populism. The populist left is traditionally strong in the
country. It goes back to the resistance against the
Nazi occupation and the regime of the colonels of
the 1970s. The electoral victory of Andreas Papandreou’s Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASSOK)
in 1981 was among the very few successes of the
populist left in European politics in the days of
the Cold War. Many in Greece today tend to view
Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the Syriza, as the heir
to this ideological tradition.
Greek Left was always visible in the European
radical traditions. It is enough to walk through
the still surviving leftist second hand bookstores in Paris and London in order to remind
ourselves of the critical role played by Greeks
like Cornelius Castoriadis or Nicos Poulantzas
in articulating the positions of the radical left.
Alexis Tsipras and Syriza come from this milieu
that is openly anti-capitalist, vaguely Marxist
and vocally anti-American. Unlike the Podemos
leaders in Spain who were strongly influenced by
the successes and failures of the Latin-American
left in the last two decades, Greek radical left
stays in the tradition of the European leftism of
the 1970s. It hates not only the economics but
also the culture of neoliberalism with its excessive
individualism and consumerism. It echoes some
of the frustrations of the anti-colonial movements
on Europe’s periphery. And when it comes to the
European Union, Greek radical left cannot get
out of its profound ambiguity. They do not see
the EU as the project of the Left but at the same
time they are realists enough to understand that
Greece can only lose by leaving the Eurozone or
the European Union.
Syriza’s success, its transformation from
a marginal coalition in the beginning of the crisis
(its only ambition then was to get more than
3 percent of the votes and to enter the Parliament) into the biggest political party in Greece
is directly linked to Tsipras’s unconditional
The Greek Example or the Greek Exception
The decline of the support for the mainstream parties both left and right is the dominant
trend in European politics since the outset of the
economic crisis. It’s hard to judge whether the
majority of Europeans is shifting to the left or
to the right, but what is obvious is that almost
nobody is left in the center. While the crisis has
led to further Europeanization of the policy
making, the opposite process of nationalization
of political sentiments is observable all over the
continent. In Western Europe the scapegoats
are the immigrants, in Eastern Europe it is most
often the Roma and foreign investors. It is also
clear that while in the creditor countries of the
North (Germany, Austria, Netherland, Sweden) the
protest vote tends to benefit right wing populists,
in the debtor countries of the South (Greece,
Spain, Portugal) it is the left that mobilizes the
angry voters.
Greece is the ultimate victim of the crisis.
Greek economy has shrunk 25 percent since the
onset of the crisis, which is comparable to the
losses suffered by Russia after the dissolution of
the Soviet Union. Greece’s public debt today is
175 percent of the GDP and rising, which leads
to despair in people and to social disintegration.
In the last years the Troika composed of the IMF,
European Commission and ECB in fact governs
the country, thus adding national humiliation to
the economic pain. So how could we be surprised
by Syriza’s victory?
However, the success of the radical left in
Greece could not be explained by the economic
crisis only. What makes Greece different from most
of the other European countries is its tradition
of political radicalism. Consensual politics was
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support for all kind of anti-austerity protests that
swept the country in the last seven years. Syriza
succeeded to convince a lot of Greeks that its
electoral victory equals regaining the political
sovereignty of Greece and the resurrection of
Greek democracy. It is worth pointing out that
the Greek electoral system also makes it easier
for a radical left government to emerge, rather
than in Spain for example, because it allows the
winner of the elections to gain 50 premium seats
in the Parliament which makes it possible for
a party that wins around 38 percent of the votes
to end up with parliamentary majority.
What makes Syriza very different from any
other party of the radical left in Europe is that
it has succeeded for the moment to take on its
side all key constituencies of the traditional left—
the workers, the unemployed, and the radical
intelligentsia. Tsipras is the new leader of the
Greek political left, and not simply the leader
of the new left.
Fears and Hopes
Syriza is not calling for a dictatorship of the
proletariat. It does not come from years of underground activities. Its leaders did not spend their
best years in prison. Should the Europeans fear
its coming to power?
The reaction of the Greek middle class signals
fear. Regardless of the fact that for the first time
since the beginning of the crisis Greece has stepped
out of recession, in the week prior to the elections
Greek banks faced massive withdrawal of deposits.
Businesses not only fear that left populism will
destroy economy, but they also fear Syriza’s lack of
governing experience. The fact that the radical left
was never in power in the last 40 years convinced
many to vote for them, but it is also the reason why
the Greek middle class strongly mistrusts Syriza.
The return of intellectuals into electoral politics is
one of the distinctive contributions of the radical
left. What the radical left brings to government
when it comes to economic policies are some
passionate academics who wrote inspiring books,
but who are better at formulating problems than
solving them. What also bothers many middle class
Greeks is the lack of cohesion in Syriza—a difficult
coalition composed of different left wing groups
that have spent more of the last decades fighting
each other than working together. The fear is that
Syriza’s government will destroy recent achievements in terms of tax collection and efficiency,
made by the pro-austerity government of Samaras,
and it could additionally polarize Greek politics,
thus increasing the popularity of the fascist Golden
Dawn party. Analogies with Weimar Germany are
on everybody’s mind.
Syriza’s success, its
transformation from
a marginal coalition in
the beginning of the
crisis into the biggest
political party in Greece
is directly linked to
Tsipras’s unconditional
support for all kind of
anti-austerity protests
that swept the country
in the last seven years.
The way it frames the major political conflict
in the country prove that Syriza is a classical populist party. It sees the conflict as a clash between
the people (and here the Greek left includes also
immigrants and other underprivileged groups)
and the corrupt oligarchy that has been running
Greece in the last decades. Syriza resurrects two
of the distinctive features of the militant social
democracy of the pre-war period, namely belief
in the primacy of politics over economics and
communitarianism.
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But while Greek business community is in
panic, the attitudes in Europe towards the impact
of the political change in Greece are much more
nuanced. For different and even opposite reasons
European politicians see in Syriza’s victory a great
chance for moving the EU in the direction they
favor.
The critics of Merkel-inspired austerity paradigm hope that Syriza’s victory will be the turning
point in Brussels’ response to the economic crisis.
It will force Berlin to recognize the destructive
social and political consequences of the current
policies and will lead to more flexibility in implementing financial criteria adopted in the beginning of the crisis. In their view the EU is already
moving in this direction (the QE of the ECB being
the best example) but it will be the fear of success
of the far left or far right that could convince Berlin
to endorse the new reality without losing face.
Some European reformers are encouraged by
Syriza’s readiness to tax the Church, the shipping
industry and the oligarch’s owned media and in
their view the victory of the Radical Left is the best
chance for genuine reformation of Greek society.
The Merkel camp also sees an opportunity
in the Greek vote. They believe that if Syriza’s
government agrees to implement the conditions of the Bailout Memorandum of the Troika,
this will be the best proof that there really is
no alternative to the current economic policies.
Because if even the radical left realizes that the
alternative to Merkel equals committing a suicide,
then nobody could press for further softening
of the austerity measures. And if the new leftist
government decides to reject the memorandum,
this will be a godsent opportunity to expel Greece
from the Eurozone and to prove—the painful
way—that the alternative really is a suicide. Greek
economy would be hurt so bad that nobody in
their right mind would be interested in replicating
the experience. And what makes the situation
so different than the Greek exit crisis of 2012 is
that now the Greek exit would not threaten the
eurozone.
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What is now clear is that Syriza’s victory put
under pressure the core matrix of the EU architecture, namely “policy without politics in Brussels
and politics without policies on the national level,”
the unwritten law that European voters should
either accept the fact that in the framework of
the EU they could change governments but not
major economic policies, or they have to be ready
to leave the Union.
In the case of Greece it is the government of
the radical left that will have to make this difficult
choice and prove that it and it alone can dismantle
the oligarchical model of Greek politics. At this
stage Syriza insists to be the executor of the will
of the people, but the difficulty comes from the
fact that the majority of Greeks both want their
country to stay in the eurozone and reject the
very Memorandum that allows others to tolerate
Greece’s presence in the eurozone.
So here is another definition of the radical
left today: it is not radical because it comes with
new radical ideas, but because it is facing radical
questions and unlike some of the centrist parties,
for the left it will be more difficult not to answer
them. And when everybody is focused on Syriza’s economic policy, the question remains what
will be the foreign policy of the radical left. For
example, can sanctions against Russia survive
now that Tsipras is the new Prime Minister of
Greece? I VA N K R A S T E V
is a Bulgarian political scientist.
He is President of the Center
for Liberal Strategies in Sofia,
Permanent Fellow at the Institute
for Human Sciences in Vienna and
a member of the European Council
on Foreign Relations.
Photo: Center for Liberal Strategies
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How Syriza Came to Power
John Psaropoulos
Alexis Tsipras dared to read the crisis as an opportunity
to beat the two-party system
Syriza, the radical left coalition, came to
power on January 25 with 36.3 percent of the
vote. It rules in coalition with the right-wing Independent Greeks, with which it shares a populist,
anti-austerity agenda. It is Greece’s first predominantly left-wing government, and claims to be
the vanguard of a Europe-wide revolution against
austerity.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ central election
promise is simple: to restore Greek sovereignty
and growth. To do this, he wants to redirect the
country’s sliver of surplus wealth from overseas
creditors to the poor and battered middle class.
And to achieve that, he has to negotiate a new
treaty with Greece’s creditors—the European
Central Bank, the European Commission and the
International Monetary Fund.
Five years of government spending cuts
mandated by Greece’s creditors balanced the
budget in 2013 for the first time in decades. The fact
that the Greek state now lives within tax revenues
weakens the argument for further borrowing,
whose sole purpose is to pay off older debt.
Syriza argues that austerity has done its job
and cannot be a prescription for the growth
Greece now needs in order to pay off its EUR
321bn debt (175 percent of GDP). On the contrary,
it has deepened a recession that claimed a quarter
of the Greek economy and produced unemployment of 25 percent—something the IMF revealed
in a controversial paper in 2013.1
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“The biggest loan in human history was given
on condition that incomes would shrink, and
from these shrinking incomes debts both old
and new would have to be repaid,” said incoming
Finance Minister Yianis Varoufakis on his first day
on the job. “It didn’t take an economist to see
that… we’d repeatedly fail to graduate from this
process.”
Prime Minister Alexis
Tsipras’ central election
promise is simple:
to restore Greek
sovereignty and growth.
To do this, he wants to
redirect the country’s
sliver of surplus wealth
from overseas creditors
to the poor and battered
middle class.
Tsipras wants to provide food and electricity
to dispossessed households; extend healthcare
to those who have lost their coverage—an estimated quarter of the population; and restore
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pensions that have been reduced. He insists
that he does not aim to recreate deficits to
fund this.
But Greece remains precariously perched. Tax
revenues fell sharply in late 2014, producing a smaller-than-forecast primary surplus of EUR 1.8bn.
“I think that the government faces a very
difficult task because Greece has funding needs
of more than EUR 20bn this year,” says Miranda
Xafa, Greece’s former representative to the IMF.
“Syriza has chosen the path of confrontation that
could lead to an accident which would take the
form of a default on the payment of the external
debt. And the next step would be social unrest,
capital flight and eventually Grexit,” she says
using an abbreviated term for ‘Greek exit from
the eurozone.’
In 2008, he passed on the leadership to the
30-year-old Alexis Tsipras, a civil engineering
graduate who had already shown a talent for politics. As a member of the Communist Youth and
president of his school’s student body in 1991,
he had led school sit-ins in protest against the
conservative government’s education reforms,
helping to defeat them.
“[Tsipras] understood that people wanted
a change of political personnel, a new generation.
He had been [party] Secretary for Youth which
means he was more charismatic than the other
candidates,” says Alavanos.
Meteoric Rise, Ideological Drift
Under Tsipras, Syriza dared to read the crisis
as an opportunity to beat the two-party system.
Socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou
signed onto Greece’s first EUR 100bn facilitation
loan in May 2010. By November 2011 he had
resigned, after reaching an impasse with creditors
over a slew of austerity measures. An interim
techno­cratic government was installed under
former central banker Loukas Papademos. Its job
was to force austerity measures through parliament, negotiate the EUR 100bn discount of Greek
debt in private hands, sign onto a second EUR
140bn loan and declare elections.
Under pressure from European leaders,
conservative New Democracy leader Antonis
Samaras—a bailout denouncer—joined the socialists in supporting the Papademos government.
The May 2012 elections were a political
earthquake. New Democracy had suffered by
­abandoning its anti-bailout stance; but the s­ ocialists
had fallen from 44 percent of the popular vote in
2009 to just 13.18 percent. They had been replaced
as the leading center-left force by Syriza, which
rebounded from the brink of political extinction
to claim 16.78 percent, quadrupling its 2009 vote.
Greece’s two-party system was over: with
some 45 percent of the vote going to anti-bailout
parties, Greece had produced a hung parliament
and could not govern itself. In vain, Samaras and
Humble Beginnings
Syriza was founded as an electoral alliance
between the Moscow-oriented Greek Communist
Party (KKE) and the Eurocentric communists of
the Greek left. As the Coalition of the Left and of
Progress (Synaspismos), they took an impressive
13 percent of the vote in June 1989.
The fall of Communism the following year
split them between Stalinists and reformists.
The former retreated to the KKE. The r­ eformists
turned Synaspismos into a political party.
Throughout the 1990s, both groups fought for
political survival in low, single-digit figures.
It was not until 2006, when party leader Alekos
Alavanos campaigned against higher education
reform that Synaspismos, now renamed Syriza,
really saw a chance of appealing to an audience
outside the traditional left. It soared to 17 percent
approval ratings in some opinion polls, yet still
scored only five percent of the vote in the 2007
election.
“The party’s gains in 2007 may not have been
great, but Syriza was already beginning to exert
an influence on the more radical wing of Pasok,
which saw their party’s stagnation and dead end,”
says former Syriza leader Alekos Alavanos.
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new socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos tried to
convince Tsipras to join them in a pro-bailout
coalition. The week-long wooing of Tsipras only
cemented his status as the new political force to
be reckoned with.
In a rematch the following month, Greeks
voted their fear of default only marginally above
their loathing of austerity. New Democracy came
out ahead with 29.66 percent of the vote, but
Syriza leapt forward by ten points to become
the main opposition party.
The tectonic shift was now complete. New
Democracy had replaced the socialists as the
principal Europeanist party, and Syriza had
replaced New Democracy as the principal bailout
denouncers.
and June elections it took another step towards
the political center: the party did not oppose
the bailout loans that keep Greece afloat, it said,
merely the austerity memoranda that accompany them. In dropping the threat of a unilateral
default, Syriza crossed the line from pure bailout
denunciator to bailout renegotiator, seizing New
Democracy’s more nuanced electoral platform.
This shift was emphasized in this year’s
­election. “We belong to the European family and
we are going to find a solution together,” said
Syriza’s chief economist Yiannis Milios. “No one
wants to destroy the other. We will not default.
We will cooperate.”
Syriza has replaced the threat of unilateral
default with political correctness. “You’re worried
that if a Syriza government comes along… the
almighty Germans or whoever else will chop off
our head, stick it on a pike and carry it around
saying, ‘here’s what happens to people who vote
for Syriza’,” Deputy Prime Minister Yiannis Dragasakis recently told a panel of fellow economists.
“Does anyone believe that such a Europe has any
kind of future?”
Why Syriza?
“Syriza, did a very clever thing in 2012,” says
Alavanos. “It was the only party that talked about
an alternative government. The Greeks were
looking for an alternative.” Alavanos says the
Greek Communist Party (KKE) could have stepped
into the breach, “but the KKE doesn’t do politics;
it just wants to protect its ideological base.”
Less explicable to Alavanos is why the rightwing Popular Orthodox Congress (LAOS) didn’t
occupy that space. “It had more votes than Syriza
in 2009. It could have a populist, right-wing,
anti-capitalist rhetoric, and it could combine this
with an anti-immigration policy, which the left
cannot do. It could be a [Marine] Le Pen phenomenon.” LAOS instead joined the coalition backing
the austerity government of Papademos, and
Greek voters voted it out of parliament.
Syriza had come a long way not merely by
becoming the people’s voice against austerity;
what gave it its edge is that it distinguished
between pro-euro and pro-austerity politics.
An overwhelming majority of Greeks supported
Greece’s remaining within the eurozone but not
the austerity imposed by the creditors.
In May 2012, Syriza vowed never to jeopardize
Greece’s eurozone membership. Between the May
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Nuance and Omission
Syriza’s rise to a potential ruling party had
other, far-reaching effects on its message after
2012. A civil disobedience movement called
“den plirono” (“I won’t pay”) had burgeoned
during the crisis, as many Greeks started driving
through motorway toll posts without paying. The
campaign opposed extraordinary taxes levied
during the crisis and even utility bills.
Syriza actively encouraged it. When financial
fraud inspectors arrested a restaurateur on the
island of Hydra for failing to issue receipts in
August 2012, Syriza MPs applauded the local
population for besieging them in the local police
precinct. Theodoros Dritsas, now Minister of the
Merchant Marine, deplored the police “display of
authoritarianism.”2
In early November, however, Syriza held a party
congress to consolidate its positions and muffle
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Although it kept its 2012 manifesto for this
election, Syriza de-emphasized major commitments. It stopped talking about nationalizing the
banking system and handing it over to co-operatives, where it would be re-purposed to deliver
liquidity to small and medium-sized enterprises.
(Interviewed shortly before the election, Milios
said “the banks are stable nowadays. They have
passed the stress tests of Black Rock and the
European Central Bank. They belong to the
European system of banks and they are being
overlooked by the ECB.”)
Syriza also stopped talking about taxing the
rich at 75 percent, up from the current 45 percent,
fearing capital flight. It moved towards the middle
class and stopped talking about raising taxes on
businesses: more than 90 percent of employment
in Greece comes from some 400,000 small and
medium-sized enterprises. Gone, too, is talk of
renationalizing any privatized state companies.
Syriza, in short, has transitioned to a more
center-left position and taken over the socialist
party’s voter base. It is ideologically palatable
to the Greek mainstream. But voters are waiting
to see whether it wins its three big gambles: to
reach a new testament with creditors within the
European family; to achieve growth and create
jobs; and to spend up to EUR 11bn a year on
a social safety net.
many of its more extreme voices. It quickly dropped
its exhortations for civil disobedience, espousing
by November 22 “fair and proportional” toll charges
“with discounts for frequent users.” 3 This change
in stance helped the conservative government
create a EUR 2.9bn primary surplus in 2013, but
displeased many on the party’s left fringe.
“The point of the 2012 congress was to turn
a collection of components into a party and
[Tsipras] succeeded in that,” says Vasilis Karasmanis, a philosophy professor and political
observer at the Athens Polytechnic. “The components are an anachronism.”
The party’s rise to power also led it to quietly
drop its opposition to a 50-seat bonus the
current electoral law awards to the first party
in the 300-seat legislature. (The remaining 250
seats are awarded on a proportional basis to the
parties that clear a three percent threshold.) The
measure is designed to strengthen the chances
of a government being formed, but while Syriza
was a fringe party it demanded proportional
representation across the board—a traditional
leftwing mantra.
Syriza’s argument was that the bonus has
helped propagate the two-party system, enabling
the socialists and conservatives to rule Greece
alternately for the last 40 years. Syriza Euro-MP
Manolis Glezos, embarrassed the party last
October, when he repeated the traditional party
position: “We will try to persuade the Greek
people to elect us without the bonus. But if we
win with the bonus, as we’ve said before, we
will immediately abolish this electoral law and
declare repeat elections, which will be a simple
battle without deceit.”4 Karasmanis calls Syriza’s
silent acceptance of the 50 seat bonus now “an
ideological about-turn of the first order.”
JOHN PSAROPOULOS
is an independent journalist based
in Athens
Photo: Archive John Psaropoulos
1 http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2013/cr13156.pdf
2 http://www.tovima.gr/society/article/?aid=471306
3 https://denplirono.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/
4 http://www.protothema.gr/politics/article/421757/giati-o-suriza-leei-ohi-stin-protasi-glezou-kata-tou-bonous-ton-50-edron-/
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The Left—Ghost of the Past
or the Progressive Left
in Germany?
Ulrike Guérot
From the European perspective, it is a pity in a way that
the Left Party somehow deadlocks the left party spectrum
in Germany and keeps the German left forces away from
coming back to government power united.
The second and successful launch of
a red-red-green coalition in Thuringia, East­
‑Germany, on December 5 has created a political landmark in Germany. For the first time, Die
Linke provides a Minister-President to a German
state: Bodo Ramelow. The head of the conservative CSU in Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, announced
a new “calculation of time” for Germany and,
in a rather scaremongering way, saw Germany
nearly slipping into a new red dictatorship, as
if Ramelow was a former agent of the Stasi, the
state security service of the communist German
Democratic Republic (GDR). Seehofer’s secretary
spoke of “a day of shame” for the united Germany;
and the subsequent political fuss (or hysteria,
in the words of social democratic chief Sigmar
Gabriel) was amazingly loud. Weeks before the
election day, the positioning of Die Linke with
respect to the Unrechtsregime (“unjust regime”)
of former GDR and whether Die Linke would
clearly distance itself from it, had filled headlines,
leading to a hairsplitting semantic discussion
about how former GDR should—or must?—be
entitled.
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It didn’t help, as Thuringians were not scared:
the party came out second with 28% of vote,
second to the CDU with 33.5%. The SPD got only
12%, the Greens barely entered the Landtag (the
regional parliament); whereas the newcomer
AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) could proudly
announce 10.6% success. As the christian democratic CDU had committed itself to by no means
enter a coalition with AfD (tacitly regretted by
some politicians, who want to keep that gate
open for the party, after the natural CDU coalition party, the liberal FDP got only some 2% in
Thuringia), the only possible governing coalition
was red-red-green, meaning Die Linke, the social
democrats and the Greens, with a majority of one
seat only. This is not a real novelty in Germany
though, as it had been tested out already in some
minor local governments, and the senate of Berlin
had for a short time in 2001/2002 a red-green
minority government supported by the PDS, the
predecessor party of Die Linke. But never ever has
a politician from Die Linke governed a German
Bundesland, even if some have been fancying
this policy option for long—to move out of the
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a­ lternativlos-setting (“without alternative”) of
Merkel reign since 2005.
The 58-year-old protestant Bodo Ramelow,
is indeed the man to test out this red coalition.
Sympathetic and down-to-earth, he scarcely
resembles a red Revoluzzer. Bodo Ramelow is
from the West, not born in former GDR. He has
a worker’s family background, no academic
education, and has been engaged in trade union
for years, before joining very early—in 1994
already—the PDS, the succession party of the
communist SED, single political party of former
GDR. All these features may predestine him for
being a non-establishment politician, which feels
fresh for a lot of people in Germany. Ramelow is
not a wrangler, he represents the more moderate
aisle of Die Linke, in counterpart to Oskar
­Lafontaine. He is not the brilliant intellectual that
Gregor Gysi represents in the party; nor the social
conscience and mother figure that Die Linke has
in Sahra Wagenknecht; and neither is he the fresh
dynamism prototype Die Linke has found in its
new president, Katja Kipping. Bodo Ramelow is
just serious. And so he started nearly without
noise, just committed to do good work and to
change the country for the better.
issues that will make a red-red-green coalition
on the national level—a nightmare scenario
for many Germans—impossible for long. For
instance, the party is not abandoning its refusal
of all international institutions where Germany is
a member—NATO, EU. With this, the party goes
de facto against the constitutional and legal standards of the federal republic—and is thus barely
eligible. Further, the party is strongly against all
collective military missions the Bundeswehr could
be engaged in, even if there is an UN-mandate,
and it does not offer clear alternatives to dealing
with international conflicts.
The other reason why red-red-green seems
highly unlikely in the long run comes on the
national level from the social democrats. Sigmar
Gabriel has been missing a ‘red signature’ in most
policy topics, from energy policy (defending
carbon power stations) to trade policy (defending
TTIP and CETA) or wealth tax (which he cancelled),
much to the resistance of his own party. The
stance in energy policy is obviously due to inner
party tactics, where Sigmar Gabriel does not want
to harm Hannelore Kraft, Minister-President in
North-Rhine-Westphalia—a Bundesland, which
is traditionally enormously important for the SPD
and which (still) lives from coal and is dominated
by the old energy giants such as RWE. Furthermore, many people in the Berlin policy circle
were especially disappointed during a public
discussion Sigmar Gabriel prominently had with
Thomas Piketty, where he waved aside any idea
of wealth tax. In this respect, the SPD has ceased
to be a left party, and is not occupying the political space in a truly social-democratic way. The
only ‘left’ achievement the SPD can point to in
recent months is the introduction of a minimum
wage of EUR 8.50, after endless battles within
the great coalition and with the trade unions—
which are herewith losing their key sovereignty
to negotiate wages within the German system
of Tarifhoheit (the independent negotiation
system between employers association and trade
unions structured by industry branches, and
The party has kept
such stance on many
policy issues that will
make a red-red-green
coalition on the national
level impossible
for long.
In this respect, Bodo Ramelow is rather the
exception to the norm for Die Linke, in the sense
that he is far from being radical in his positions.
This stands nearly in contrast to the overall party,
which has kept such stance on many policy
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which is a traditional stand-alone feature in
German working relations): as much as trade
unions welcomed the minimum wage, as much
they do suffer from this de facto structural disempowerment.
In reaction, some SPD members have recently
started a “left platform” (Magdeburger Plattform)
against its own party head, in order to politically
conquer left territory again. It seems evident to
without needing AfD for the national elections
in 2017. It is a flirt based on mutuality from many
Greens, as the Greens are actually fiscally more
conservative than large parts of the SPD and,
this is a party of “better-earners” who have no
blue-collar, unemployed or precarious electorate
to cater to with redistribution or social policies.
In the middle of all these tactical games
shaping the run for the 2017 elections, Die Linke
can sit this out. Without coming close to (or even
denying) government responsibility except
Thuringia, it can use its clear left positioning and
profile to steal voters from the social democrats
in order to continuously disturb the left camp,
and in a way, keep it away from uniting precisely
in the Thuringia way: left-left-Green. In a way
The Left, being probably the only party of the
three which puts program before government,
has nothing to lose.
The real risk for the Left might, indeed, be to
loss of its place as the only real protest German
party to AfD, which is competing for this political
space too: les extremes se touchent… A shift of
votes, as bizarre as it may sound, can be observed
from The Left to AfD. It is also interesting that AfD
voters and voters of Die Linke tend to converge
in their opinion more than the other parties, e.g.
when it comes to opinions on Islam, migration etc.
The AfD may unfold as the more ‘hipster’ protest
party, which can also fit into the rather bourgeois
establishment of Germany, being a party run by
professors, such as its President Bernd Lucke,
former president of BDI, the prominent German
Industry Association. This gives the party a sort
of distinguished touch and make it salonfähig,
all the while keeping its anti-euro, anti-migration
and anti-establishment policy profile attractive
for the lowest quintal of German society.
The Left also displays populist features.
A recent opinion poll1 on whether or not Islam
belongs to Germany, found that for a majority of
voters of The Left (58%) Islam does not belong in
Germany, which is—although displaying a huge
discrepancy in the numbers—the second ranking
The real risk for the
Left might, indeed,
be to loss of its place
as the only real protest
German party to AfD,
which is competing
for this political space
too: les extremes
se touchent…
many social democrats that Die Linke is the winner
of Gabriel’s shift to the right, which also does
not correspond to the quite leftist campaigning
slogans (“more taxes for the wealthy”) the SPD
had in the national elections of 2013. The SPD
being locked in a great coalition and politically
squeezed in a position between the conservative
CDU and Die Linke might reveal as one of the
biggest political tragedies for the party, which
is losing contours—and votes. De facto, the SPD
sits in 14 out of 16 Landtage (in various constellations), without gaining any political visibility:
a tragedy not only for the party, but also for the
German left in total—the left participates in
barely any coalition and thus consequently has
no governing option in the near future; whereas
Angela Merkel, pragmatic as can be, is already
reaching out to the Greens to open up a possible
coalition option beyond great coalition and
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of all German parties after the AfD-voters (96%).
All other party voters do not display majorities
on this question, although the CDU comes very
close (for 49% of CDU voters believe that Islam
does not belong in Germany), whereas other
party voters only reach pluralities on this question
(SPD: 38%; Greens: 26%).
Similarly—and again despite a huge difference in the numbers—with 21% the Left ranks
second after AfD (70%) when it comes to sympathy
for Pegida, the new anti-Islam ­movement of
Germany, which is organizing demonstrations
every Monday, especially in Dresden. The Left thus
also seems to slightly move out of the German
mainstream on the question of Islam and migration and to flirt with right-wing populism; while,
on core economic and financial policy issues
such as the euro and on foreign and security
questions, it is placing itself at the extreme left
of the political spectrum.
From the European perspective, which
currently sees a growing left and anti-austerity
movements throughout the EU, it is a pity in
a way that the Left Party somehow deadlocks
the left party spectrum in Germany and keeps
the German left forces away from coming back
to government power united: by insisting on
irrational positions with respect to the EU, NATO
or the UN. As a matter of fact, during the eurocrisis, the Left was the party whose politicians
came closest to the reading and analysis many
non-Germans had of the political economy of
the eurozone: that Germany’s trade deficit is
a problem; that Germany would need to increase
its demand; that Germany is doing ‘beggar-thyneighbor-policy’ and wage-dumping, which are
all taboo-positions for the German political mainstream. It could probably help balancing out the
current German position on the euro-crisis and
austerity policy, had the Left more political weight
in Germany. The Left could accommodate the
political economy arguments of Germany’s neighbors and fellow European countries and serve as
an intellectual carrier for an aggregated European
view on how the political and social economy of
eurozone should be handled. Doing so, the Left
could demonstrate that Germany gives an ear
to the political concerns of its neighbors and
contribute to attenuate the current discussion
about the crude German hegemonic position
in Europe. But the Left is still kept out of policy
making in Germany—and this will last until the
party moves out of having its head-in-the-sand
attitude.
ULRIKE GUÉROT
Founder & Director, The European
Democracy Lab, Berlin
Photo: Private Ulrike Guérot
1 http://www.heute.de/islam-gehoert-zu-deutschland-nation-gespalten-nur-17-prozent-finden-pegida-gut-36757200.html
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In Search of Meaning:
21st Century Leftist
Imaginarium
Frank Furedi
Why are many of the ideas usually associated with the
right in the nineteenth century—fear of progress, of
science, of modernity and of collective action—today
closely linked with the outlook of left-wing thinkers?
The 21st century has already experienced
more than its share of economic crises. There is
nothing remarkable about periodic economic
recessions in the global capitalist economy.
What is remarkable is that for the first time in
the modern era there is no plausible articulate
left-wing alternative that can capture the imagination of the public. The irrelevance of ideals
traditionally associated with the left where forcefully stated by a British left wing commentator
Richard Seymour, who lamented: “How can it be
that more than six years since the credit crunch,
with austerity under way for more than three
years, the left has barely showed signs of life, let
alone scored a significant victory?”1 The answer
to this crie de coeur is devastatingly obvious.
In the 21st century the disintegration of the Left
has been underwritten by the erosion of almost
all the political principles and values that were
traditionally associated with this movement.
One of the most fascinating developments
in recent years has been the project of turning
the failure to articulate a left-wing vision of
the future into a positive virtue. The Occupy
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Movement self-consciously avoided espousing
political principles and values. Its refusal or
inability to formulate political demands is
regularly applauded by its supporters in the
media. Commentators praise them for “raising
questions,”“highlighting problems” and “serving
as the conscience of society.”
“Those who deride [Occupy] for its lack of
concrete demands simply don’t understand
its strategic function,” lectured Gary Younge of
the Guardian. His piece titled “Who knows where
the occupations are going—it’s just great to be
moving” expressed the depoliticized sensibility
of the 21st century leftist.2 Such attitudes communicate a disturbing acquiescence to failure and
irrelevance. The American political consultant
George Lakoff articulated this approach in unambiguous terms when he stated that “I think that
it is a good thing that the occupation movement
is not making specific policy demands.” Why?
Because, “If it did, the movement would become
about those demands” and if “the demands were
not met, the movement would be seen as having
failed,” he argued.3
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Lost for Words
Almost the entire vocabulary of 21st century
leftism has a meaning that is radically different
and often directly opposed to the way those
words were understood in in the 18th, 19th and
most of the 20th century.
Take the term anti-capitalism. The radical
critique of capitalism was founded on the premise
that this system of production could not syste­
matically develop the productive forces and
therefore could provide a decent standard of
living for all. The claim that capitalism was unable
to deliver the goods was frequently presented as
an argument for a radically different society by
many socialists and communists. The mainstream
left also believed that capitalism could not be
relied on to create the wealth necessary for the
maintenance of a prosperous society.
The term anti-capitalism today is rarely
­associated with the claim that this system of
­production lacks a thrust toward development. On
the contrary, the focus of criticism movements like
Occupy is that capitalism develops far too fast and
that this has destructive consequences for both
the environment and for people. The fear today is
that there is far too much development and that
capitalism produces too many things. “Today, with
its dysfunctional side effects, we are more aware
of the dangers; we now experience the inexorable
development of productive forces and the global
expansion of Western civilization more as threats,”
argues Jürgen Habermas, a leading German leftist
social theorist.4 If anything, for Habermas capitalism has become much too efficient.
In direct contrast to the traditions of the labor
movement of the past, those who define themselves as left-wing today are weary of economic
and technological development. Apprehension
about fast rates of economic growth and the
development of new technology is linked to
a sense of insecurity regarding change. In what
constitutes a dramatic reversal of roles, the left
appears to be more uncomfortable in dealing
with change than the right.
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Anxiety towards experimentation and
economic growth has been reinterpreted by
today’s cultural and political elites as a risk.
Human progress, once embraced as a wholly
desirable enterprise is today represented as a risk.
And a risk is invariably interpreted as a danger
to be avoided or minimized. Paradoxically, it is
those who call themselves left-wing who have
become most risk-averse and most vociferous
in denouncing the idea of progress. In the nineteenth century, the association of anti-capitalism with hostility to progress was confined
to the Luddites and the conservative reaction to
modernity. Radicals, liberals and socialists were
for progress. Today, the bitterest opponents of
progress are the radical anti-capitalist critics of
production and development.
In previous times radical opponents of
capitalism denounced the system for failing to
provide people with the material possessions
they required for a decent life. Today’s anti-capitalists believe that we (at least in the West) have
too many possessions and reject the “mindless
consumerism” perpetuated by the market.
An anti-modernist critique of mass society
often lurks behind the label of anti-capitalism.
In the first half of the twentieth century anti­
‑modernist sentiments tended to be linked to
the conservative reaction to change. In Europe,
conservative thinkers felt uncomfortable with
new forms of popular culture and regarded
Hollywood, jazz and the crass materialism of
the US with dread. Today a similar response is
frequently proclaimed by the lifestyle politics
of radical activists. Hating MTV, Nike, Coca-Cola,
McDonald’s or Starbucks has become an integral
feature of leftist identity.
Many of the ideas usually associated with the
right in the nineteenth century—fear of progress, of science, of modernity and of collective
action—are today closely linked with the outlook
of left-wing thinkers. Friedrich Nietzsche, the
philosopher of the right at the turn of the 20th
century is now fashionable among the cultural
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left and post-modernist intelligentsia. As Stephen
Bronner notes in his important study Reclaiming
the Enlightenment, “ideas long associated with
reactionary movements—the privileging of experience over reason, national or ethnic identity
over internationalism […] the community over
the individual, custom over innovation, myth
over science—have entered the thinking of
the American left.”5 The political scientist Brian
Barry agrees. He argues that “during most of
both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
attitudes to the Enlightenment marked the main
division between left and right.” But now the
right’s critique of the Enlightenment has “gained
currency among those who see themselves as
being on the left.”6 Hostility to universalist values
is most pronounced among the cultural left. Yet
once the left became disengaged from the traditions of the Enlightenment, it lost touch with the
political imagination that inspired the progressive
movement of the past two centuries.
about their lifestyles or along cultural, ethnic and
class lines it is rare to experience the kind of solidarity that binds 99 percent of people together.
Historically the claim to represent or to speak
on behalf of everyone is usually confined to charismatic religious leaders, political charlatans or
populist dictators. The embrace of the depoliticized fantasy of “We are 99 percent” is integral
to an imaginarium that has not only lost touch
with reality but also relies on the intellectual and
political resources usually associated with the
reactionary right.
Friedrich Nietzsche,
the philosopher
of the right at the turn
of the 20th century
is now fashionable
among the cultural left
and post­‑modernist
intelligentsia.
The Zombie Left
The cover of Time Magazine (24th October
2011) was titled “The Return of the Silent Majority.”
The title referred to the growth of Occupy movement. The title echoed the movement’s fantasy
claim that it represented the 99%. But its reference
to the ‘silent majority’ inadvertently acknowledged the powerful affinity that the supporters of
“We are 99 percent” had with the original formulator of the term silent majority. For it was Richard
Nixon, who in his famous November 1969 speech
referred to “forgotten Americans” as the “Silent
Majority.” So “The Return of the Silent Majority”
represents the return of the zombie version of
Nixon’s silent majority as the 99 percent.
It is essential to note that like Nixon’s
forgotten Americans, 99 percent encompasses
a very high proportion of the people. So when
protestors claim that “I am 99%” they refer to virtually everyone in society. It is about as close as you
can get to unanimity. In a world where communities are often divided into people squabbling
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Probably the most distinct and innovative
ideal that characterizes the contemporary leftist
imagination is that of social justice. In recent
years, the zombie version of leftism, particularly
in the Anglo-American context has become
closely linked with the idea of “social justice.”
Yet, the concept of social justice constitutes
a fundamental break from traditional progressive thought. It eschews the project of social
transformation, development and progress and
embraces the worldview of redistribution of
resources and privileges in society. In its current
usage social justice has in its focus redistribution
of resources and opportunity between different
cultural, ethnic and lifestyle-oriented groups. It is
at odds with redistributionist views of liberals,
which targeted individuals and of socialists who
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focused on classes. Adherents of social justice are
instinctively anti-universalists and celebrate the
politics of identity.
Social justice expresses a worldview
committed to avoiding uncertainty and risky
change through demanding that the state
provides us with economic and existential
­security. From this standpoint, progress is proportional to the expansion of legal and quasi-legal
oversight into everyday life. From the perspective
of those who demand social justice, the proliferation of ‘rights’ and redistribution of wealth are
the main markers of a progressive society.
Paradoxically the idea of social justice was
historically associated with movements that were
suspicious of and uncomfortable with progress.
The term was coined by the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in 1840. His aim was to reconstitute Catholic
theological ideals on a social foundation. In the
century that followed, ‘social justice’ was upheld
by movements that were fearful of the future and
which sought to contain the dynamic towards
progress. Probably one of the best-known advocates of social justice in the inter-war period was
Father Charles Edward Coughlin. This charismatic
American demagogue and populist xenophobe
set up the National Union of Social Justice in 1934.
Through his popular radio broadcasts, which
regularly attracted audiences of 30million, he
became one of the most influential political
figures in the United States. Coughlin praised
Hitler and Mussolini’s crusade against communism and denounced President Roosevelt for
being in the pocket of Jewish bankers. Here, ‘social
justice’ was about condemning crooked financiers
and putting forward a narrow, defensive appeal
for the redistribution of resources.
Today’s campaigners for social justice bear
little resemblance to their ideological ancestors.
The current Occupy movement would be horrified
by Coughlin’s racist ramblings, yet they would find
that some of the ideas expressed in his weekly
newspaper Social Justice were not a million miles
away from their own. Hiding behind the fantasy
of the 99 percent, today’s so-called leftist shares
the sensibility of classical reactionaries who are
wedded to the idea that the unsettling effects of
change need to be contained by a vision that is
entirely fixed on getting along with the present.
Like all anti-Enlightenment ideals, that of social
justice expresses the conservative impulse of
restraining change.
There was a time when attitude towards
the Enlightenment played an important role in
distinguishing the difference between left and
right. The left enthusiastically embraced the
Enlightenment ideals of reason, progress and
universalism, whilst the right tended to oppose
them. Today there is little that divides left from
right on this matter. In such circumstances the
left-wing imagination has become emptied of
any distinct meaning.
FRANK FUREDI
is the author of Authority:
A Sociological Introduction,
Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Photo: Matthias Haslauer
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/28/right-only-economic-solution-austerity.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/06/knows-occupations-going-great-moving.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/occupy-wall-street_b_1019448.html.
Jurgen Habermas ‘Popular Sovereignty as Procedure’ in Bohman, J. & Rehg, W. (1999) (eds) Deliberative Democracy: Essays On Reason
and Politics, MIT Press, p.37.
5 Bronner, S.E. (2004) Reclaiming The Enlightenment, Columbia University Press, p.1.
6 Barry, B (2001) Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism, Polity Press p.9.
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MARTIN M. ŠIMEČKA
The Incomprehensible Left
The pro-Russian attitude of the Czech and Slovak Left:
a betrayal of identity?
“
We would certainly not agree if, all of
a sudden, someone were to make a territorial claim against our country, as was the
case in Czechoslovakia in the previous century.”
These words, uttered by Slovakia’s President
Andrej Kiska in his New Year address, and
alluding to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, ought to be self-evident as
guidance for the geopolitical orientation of
the Czechs and Slovaks. Who else, if not these
two nations, given their historical experience,
should feel profound empathy when Ukraine is
invaded by Russia?
Nonetheless, this is not the case. Their criticism of the sanctions against Russia has earned
the Czech and Slovak governments a reputation
as the Kremlin’s Trojan horse in the EU. The Czech
President Miloš Zeman, whose close adviser is the
head of the Czech branch of Russian company
Lukoil, has advised the Ukrainians to accept
Russia’s proposal to transform the country into
a federation, while Slovakia’s Prime Minister
Robert Fico has publicly declared his opposition
to the sanctions against Moscow and suggested
that we should come to terms with the annexation of Crimea. There have been a number of
similarly shameful statements lately, and they
all have one thing in common: they reflect the
position of a considerable section of the Czech
and Slovak Left.
This is really quite surprising. After all, we are
talking of the same left-of-center parties that
claim allegiance to the legacy of the 1968 Prague
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MARTIN M. ŠIMEČKA
is editor of the Czech weekly Respekt
Photo: Archive Martin M. Šimečka
Spring, which for them represents a high point
in their history and core identity that had to be
laboriously restored after 1989 because, unlike
their Hungarian and Polish counterparts, these
parties could not build on their 1980s ideological
record. Yet, although the Prague Spring was
crushed by the Russian-led invasion, the present-day Czech and Slovak left have found all sorts
of justifications for the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, which seem to come right out of the
1968 playbook. This defies logic, particularly since
Putin’s Russia is a right-wing dictatorship that
has nothing whatsoever to do with left-wing
ideology. What is going on in the mind of the
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Czech and Slovak left? A possible explanation,
derived from depth psychology, comes to mind:
the Czech and Slovak left have succumbed to
Stockholm syndrome of the hostage who falls in
love with his captor. However, the real explanation
is likely to be less romantic even though emotions
and passions do play a key role in it.
and Slovakia‘s Smer—are still made up of many
rank-and-file members as well as party officials
who tied their early careers in the 1980s to
membership of the Communist Party. These are
people who have retained fond memories of the
normalization era under Gustáv Husák as well
as of Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, and who
consider Putin’s Russia its legitimate successor.
They can’t say this out aloud because both countries officially regard the normalization period as
a dark age but their nostalgia for the 1980s is an
open secret. They still hold key positions in both
parties of the left and neither Fico, nor his Czech
counterpart Bohuslav Sobotka, have any desire
to antagonize this constituency by being critical
of the Kremlin.
Another, equally pragmatic reason, is the
simple fact that the Czech and Slovak right
(with the notable exception of the former Czech
President Václav Klaus) has been traditionally
anti­‑Russian. They have established a kind of
ideological monopoly on opposition to Moscow,
using it to crush the left and accusing it of being
attached to Russia and thus betraying national
interests. In the absence of a convincing response
to these—not always fair—accusations, the left
has decided to turn this disadvantage into an
advantage, proudly adopting the label of Russophiles.
Both major political
parties on the left—
the Czech Social
Democratic Party,
ČSSD, and Slovakia‘s
Smer—are still made
up of many rank­‑and­
‑file members as well as
party officials who tied
their early careers in the
1980s to membership
of the Communist Party.
Party Functionaries
One would be hard pressed to detect any
rational political or economic reasoning in
this positive attitude to Moscow. Unlike other
(pro-Russian) countries such as Bulgaria, neither
the Czech nor the Slovak Republic is dependent
on the Russian economy, with exports to Russia no
more than some four percent of the total volume
of exports, the vast majority being headed for the
EU. And the opening of reverse-flow pipelines
has rendered the two countries less vulnerable
to disruptions in gas supplies.
That leaves political and psychological
reasons. A possible political reason might be
the fact that both major political parties on the
left—the Czech Social Democratic Party, ČSSD,
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It’s All America’s Fault
The two reasons mentioned above can be
explained by external pressure, which has forced
the left to adopt a position it would not necessarily have taken under normal circumstances.
More worryingly though, the pro-Russian orientation on the part of the Czech and Slovak Left is
quite possibly based on a voluntary decision and
genuine conviction, and may be a true reflection
of their frame of mind.
Petr Uhl, the left-wing intellectual who spent
nine years in communist prisons after 1968 and
a legendary member of the Czech dissidents
linked to Charter 77, praised Putin for allegedly
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having tamed Russia’s oligarchs (!), pointing
out that this is something Ukrainian politicians
have failed to do and adding that under Putin‘s
leadership “Russia has broken free of a 15-yearlong crisis, which is one of the reasons why
I hesitate to call Putin a dictator.” He criticizes
Europe for rushing to express its support for the
Kyiv government that came to power “thanks
to Molotov cocktails on the Maidan.” Another
left-wing intellectual heavyweight, the philosopher Václav Bělohradský, has wondered “why
the EU and the US consider the referendum in
the Crimean Autonomous Republic illegal and
illegitimate, while declaring legitimate and legal
the government (in Kyiv) installed by means of
violent demonstrations.”
Is there an explanation for this blindness?
The strongest and most genuine motivation for
defending Putin’s Russia seems to be the one that
is also prevalent among the Western left: obsessive
anti-Americanism. The Czech and Slovak left has
used their opposition to the American invasion of
Iraq as a key distinguishing factor in defining themselves against those on the right who supported
the invasion and who are proud to this day to
espouse this view even though it is no longer
fashionable. Anti-Americanism is thus ingrained in
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the ideological framework of the Czech and Slovak
left and the fact that its adherents refuse to change
their attitude despite the US being governed by
the Democrat Barack Obama only confirms that
the left has chosen to cultivate anti-Americanism
as part of their brand.
This, however, inevitably translates into
support for Putin, who in his fierce criticism of the
US makes the same arguments as the Czech and
Slovak left. The old adage—my enemy’s enemy
is my friend—has proven irresistible yet again.
Unfortunately, the pro-Russian orientation
of the Czech and Slovak left has seriously undermined both countries’ foreign relations as well as
their reputation, since these parties play a leading
role in the government of their respective countries, dictating their agendas. In Slovakia a certain
corrective is provided by President Kiska, whose
New Year address mentioned earlier is in line with
his clearly pro-Western orientation, while in the
Czech Republic Foreign Affairs Minister Lubomír
Zaorálek has somewhat helped to repair the
damage. However, the Czech and Slovak Republics won’t free themselves of Russia’s influence
unless and until the right wins power again. That,
however, may be some time coming. O
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Nuclear Nationalism
Has Only Brought Misery
The West should connect the problem of the Iranian
nuclear program with human rights issues. You need to
talk about them at the same time, in the same place—says
Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim Nobel Peace Prize laureate,
in an interview with Maciej Nowicki.
When President Rouhani assumed power, the
West expected a visible liberalization in Iran.
So far these hopes have come to nothing. Why?
Rouhani is different from Ahmadinejad. He
has always enjoyed a reputation of a moderate
reformer. He has a nicer smile. And speaks better.
In his campaign he offered many promises. But
these promises were beyond his power. The scale
of repression has not diminished at all. It started
with a series of public executions. A few political
prisoners were released as a symbolic gesture of
goodwill, but most are still serving their sentences,
often in appalling conditions. Persecution of religious minorities, Christians and Baha’is, and ethnic
minorities, Kurds and Baluchi, is in full swing. Iran
has chosen a softer line in nuclear negotiations
(because it wants the sanctions to be lifted), but
it in no way translates into internal reform.
Why is it so? Because real power is in the
hands of the Supreme Leader Khamenei, and the
president can do very little. Even Rouhani’s talks
with Obama required the consent of the Supreme
Leader… Khatami was a president with marked
democratic inclinations. He ruled for eight years.
But he was unable to implement his program. Why
would it be different today? Khamenei does not
have a shred of tolerance and listens to nobody.
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SHIRIN EBADI
an Iranian lawyer and former judge, won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 2003 for her pioneering efforts to promote democracy
and human rights, particularly for women and children. She
was the first person from Iran and the first Muslim woman to
receive the award.
Photo: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
So there is no hope for changes in Iran?
There is hope. But its source is not the government. It boils down to the fact that people will
pressurize the government. And at some point
the regime will have no other choice.
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It was like that in 2009. And very little came
out of it…
I see it differently. Iranians are still resisting.
Discontent is growing every day. Over 80%
of the population thinks the worst about the
government and about the direction Iran has
been taking. It means that one day change will
certainly come. I am sure of that. I only can’t say
how soon it will happen.
forces opposed to the agreement. There are
many people associated with the regime who
have made fortunes on the sanctions, some of
them acquired unimaginable wealth. And this is
the group promoting the ideology of “nuclear
nationalism,” which is good only from the point of
view of their interests. They are fiercely opposed
to the agreement, for it would damage their
interests. Also the American neoconservatives
don’t want it.
Where does your certainty come from?
It comes from the fact that Iran has a strong
civil society. The women’s movement in Iran is
one of the most thriving throughout the Middle
East. After the revolution many discriminatory
laws against women were introduced, but Iranian
women are highly educated. They form the
majority (over 60%) of university students (it is
in a sense a side-effect of discrimination—women
invaded universities in order to escape the social
restrictions imposed on them). Trade unions are
also strong, although many of the leaders are
in prison. We have a vigorous student movement, environmentalists, lawyers, human rights
activists and very brave journalists. All this is an
announcement of democratic change. Iranians
have been living in the shadow of the revolution
for 35 years and they also experienced a terrible,
eight-years-long war with Iraq. This is more than
enough for one generation. They don’t want to
live like that any longer. They are weary of war and
revolutionary violence. They want the changes
to take place in a peaceful manner.
Let us recall the Arab spring, it was successful
in Tunisia, for there had been a strong civil society
there.
We sometimes hear the following argument: “If
Iran decides not to acquire nuclear capabilities,
ultimately it will find itself at the mercy of the
US. In the mid-1990s the Ukraine abandoned
its nuclear arsenal, in return receiving guarantees of inviolability of its borders, and as
we know now, these guarantees were worth
nothing.”
Legitimacy of a regime requires something more than anti-Americanism and nuclear
weapons. The decisive factor is the way it treats its
own citizens. North Korea is fiercely anti-American
and possesses nuclear weapons. Does anybody
believe that North Korea has a good government?
Iran has been screaming for years: “Death to
America!” But its citizens are increasingly worse off.
Iran is a country of double standards. Ordinary
people cannot have access to social media like
Facebook, for supposedly it is evil. But ministers
use it. If a poor a man steals something, his hand
is amputated, but officials who stole millions from
the treasury are proudly strolling the streets.
But not only the hardliners are calling for the
continuation of the Iranian nuclear program.
Most ordinary Iranians want it too.
It was like that once, ordinary Iranians really
perceived the nuclear program as a source of
pride. Today they don’t care about it at all.
Negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program
are to end in June 2015. Do you think it will
come to an agreement?
I hope that the government will finally sign
this agreement. If only because of the fact that
the sanctions have driven millions of Iranians into
poverty. On the other hand there are powerful
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We usually hear a different story…
Yes, because discussing the nuclear program
in the media has not been allowed for ten years.
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You have always spoken against both military
intervention and sanctions. Why?
I am against sanctions in their current form,
for their only victims are the people of Iran. And
what about intervention? It seems obvious: a military attack on Iran would only result in human
rights being even less respected. We can see what
happened in Iraq—fundamentalists have been
hugely strengthened. Nobody is interested in
human rights or freedom of speech. People only
want security and nothing else.
Some time ago I initiated surveys in which I asked
ordinary people to express their opinion on that
matter. An overwhelming majority of the respondents were in favor of terminating the nuclear
program.
Iran should be
banned from access
to international
satellite platforms
as soon as possible.
For the programs
broadcast by Iran are
promoting hatred.
So what can be done?
First, the West should connect the problem of
the Iranian nuclear program with human rights
issues. You need to talk about them at the same
time, in the same place. Our government is
despicable when it organizes stamping on the
American flag and continues to celebrate the
“Day of Death to America.” But it is difficult to
resist the impression that America is interested
only in its own security. Human rights are not on
the agenda yet. By the way, all nondemocratic
regimes in the Middle East—Kuwait, Saudi Arabia,
United Arab Emirates—are friends with America.
If Washington stopped supporting these regimes,
we would very soon see their end. The West must
pay more attention to the principles it supposedly
wants to defend.
Second, I am in favor of sanctions, but more
precisely targeted. The abolition of death penalty
in Iran is unrealistic. I say that, although I am
against death penalty. What the West should
demand is abolition of public executions. It would
at least be a good start.
Iran should be banned from access to
international satellite platforms as soon as
possible. For the programs broadcast by Iran
are promoting hatred. The list of ministers who
violate human rights should be extended and
these people should be denied entry to EU
countries. Europe can be very rigorous when it
deals with ordinary Iranians—relatives of people
living in EU countries are often denied visas. But
The government officially claims that it
doesn’t want the bomb, but it is enriching
uranium, for the country needs more nuclear
energy. But this doesn’t make any sense. We
are spending incredible amounts of money on
enriching uranium—and the energy from that is
satisfying just 3% of the demand. Iranian economists and engineers have said repeatedly that
for the same money we could build much more
efficient solar power plants. In Iran there is plenty
of sunlight—but so far we haven’t spent a single
dollar on solar energy.
It is not a coincidence that Germany is closing
down its nuclear plants after what happened in
Fukushima. And Iran is in a much worse s­ ituation.
Because of strict censorship very few people
in my country realize that the location of the
nuclear power plant in Busher is very dangerous.
And that in 2013 there was an earthquake close
by. I don’t believe that Iranians want a repeat
of Fukushima. Meanwhile, contrary to common
sense the government plans to build another
nuclear power plant.
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Europe spreads a red carpet before representatives of the regime.
Finally, bank accounts of the people in power
in Iran should be frozen as soon as possible. It is
unacceptable that they are able to make use of
the dirty money made on sanctions. Dictators and
their people always have the same hope—that
when they retire or when the people overthrow
them, they will emigrate and live a wonderful
life for the money they have stolen. They have
to be deprived of this opportunity. Making their
world smaller is the most effective punishment.
denominations some condemn abortion, but
some accept it. There are Christians who oppose
same-sex marriages and those who would allow
them…
You are the only Nobel Prize laureate in the
history of Iran. How has it changed your life?
The government had never accepted what
I had been doing, and after the Nobel Prize my
life became even more difficult. In 2008 an NGO
founded by me was liquidated. In 2009 everything I had—including a house inherited from
my parents—was confiscated and auctioned off.
I was abroad at the time, so my husband and sister
were arrested. My husband was tortured. He was
ordered to repeat the false accusations against
me and it was filmed. He said there, among other
things, that I was a Western agent and that I was
awarded the Nobel Prize in order to overthrow the
government. This recording was shown on television. Such was the price I paid for my activities.
Since then I haven’t been to Iran. I am not
afraid of prison, I had been arrested before. But
I have come to the conclusion that in this way
I would be more useful to my country, because
only from abroad I can speak the truth about
Iran. So 10 months a year I travel all over the
word speaking about what is happening in my
country. Theoretically I live in London, but in fact
I spend more time at airports. The Iranian regime has been repeatedly
accused of violating human rights. When
answering the critics, it often invokes cultural
differences.
But Iran has signed the relevant international conventions. And since it’s signed them,
it must respect them. This is a universal code of
conduct and has nothing to do with the West
or the East, with Islam or Christianity. If Muslims
want to create a declaration of human rights
compatible with Islam, then a logical conclusion
would be to write separate declarations for each
religion, Christian, Judaic, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.
And dozens of others. That would mean that the
concept of human rights would cease to exist.
People who think that Islam and human rights
or Islam and democracy are incompatible with
each other, usually belong to one of two cate­
gories: representatives of the West who want war
or some Islamic governments who violate the
rights of the people and seek justification for that.
Just like all other religions, Islam allows
various interpretations. In most countries stoning
and cutting hands off have been abolished. But
in Iran and Saudi Arabia these punishments are
still in force. The Islamic veil is not mandatory
everywhere. In Saudi Arabia a woman can’t drive
a car, not to mention active presence in public life.
But in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Indonesia there
have been female prime ministers or presidents.
Let us compare it with Christianity. Among its
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MACIEJ NOWICKI
is Deputy Editor In Chief of Aspen
Review Central Europe.
Photo: Maciej Nowicki
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BOGDAN GÓRALCZYK
New Chinese Foreign
Policy Strategy
A
fter the collapse of the Soviet Union the
Chinese communists, who had been
taught in schools and party courses in
the 1950s that “the Soviet Union today is our
tomorrow,” realized that their fate also may have
been sealed. Concerned about the future and
the power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),
Deng Xiaoping, the visionary of pro-market
reforms and opening to the world, became active
again, for the last time in his long life. In his political will from early 1992, he proposed seeking
new solutions and development models among
the “four economic tigers” (Hong Kong, South
Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore) with a special
emphasis on Singapore. Since that time, despite
nominally preserving the system called “socialism
with Chinese characteristics,” the regime in Beijing
is building capitalism with Chinese characteristics,
making ample use of the blessings of open
markets and globalization.
However, Deng Xiaoping left another will to
his successors, called the strategy of 28 Chinese
characters. Using old terms fully comprehensible only to the educated native elites, he
ordered them, among other things, to “observe
and analyze developments calmly, deal which
changes patiently and confidently, but especially
- be good at keeping a low profile and never try
to be a leader.” Hovering above this program was
the slogan taoguang yanghui, i.e. conceal (our)
capabilities and avoid the limelight.
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BOGDAN J. GÓRALCZYK
is a political scientist and sinologist, professor at the Centre
for Europe, University of Warsaw, and former ambassador
in several countries of Asia.
Photo: Archive Bogdan Góralczyk
It was to be that way until the moment that
China gathered some strength, became a “relatively strong country, not a major global power
yet.” It was assumed that such a moment would
come in 2049, on the centenary of the proclamation of the PRC. Even in Bejing nobody had
predicted that China would overtake Germany
as the largest exporter on the planet as early
as 2009. That in 2010 it would overtake Japan
and become the second largest economy in the
world (with good prospects for becoming the
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first). And that its foreign-exchange reserves
would increase from $1 trillion in 2006 to $4
trillion by late 2014.
The so-called fifth generation of leaders,
under the command of party head and President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang, is
adapting to the new realities. Under the ongoing
lively debate a change in the Chinese development model (Zhongguo Moshi) is taking place
step-by-step. Xi Jinping named “two centenary
goals” as his priorities until the end of his (second)
five-year term. First, towards 2021 (which is one
century since the establishment of CCP) the
2010 GDP per capita of Chinese citizens will be
doubled. The idea is to build Xiaokang shehui,
“a society of moderate prosperity,” that is—to put
it in our terms—a middle-class and a consumer­
‑class end, so that consumption and domestic
market, rather than exports, serve as the engine of
further growth and development. And the second
centenary goal is nothing else than the fulfilment
of the Chinese Dream (Zhongguo Meng) of the
Great Renaissance of the Chinese Nation (Zhonghua minzu weida fuxing).
The message is more than clear—it is the
answer to the American Dream. Between the
lines: the last century belonged to America, this
one will belong to us. And the renaissance “of the
Chinese people” (Zhonghua minzu) applies not
only to the Chinese of the Han nationality, but
also to minorities living in China and overseas
Chinese (hua qiao). This challenge should be
combined with the course on consolidating all
Chinese lands introduced at the very beginning of
the “reform era” (that is as of January 1979). Hong
Kong returned under Chinese jurisdiction on
1 July 1997, and Macau/Aomen on 20 December
1999. The next item on the agenda, as the most
urgent strategic task, is a peaceful reunification
with Taiwan. Only then we will be dealing with
Great and Powerful China.
President Xi Jinping announced a new international strategy on November 29, 2014, at
a special conference of executives devoted to
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foreign policy. Such a conference had not taken
place for eight years. Although the Chinese propaganda, especially formulated in English for the
outside world, reassures us that this does not
constitute a major turn, not to mention a revolution, we are still dealing with a fundamental
change.
Xi Jinping named “two
centenary goals” as his
priorities until the end
of his (second) five-year
term. First, towards
2021 the 2010 GDP
per capita of Chinese
citizens will be doubled.
The second centenary
goal is nothing else than
the fulfilment of the
Chinese Dream of the
Great Renaissance of
the Chinese Nation.
China openly rejected the idea of taoguang
yanghui—of passivity and accumulating forces.
China is passing on to the phase of activity on
the international stage, always keeping the
core national interests in mind. It is more than
clear that today’s rulers of China are aiming
high and want to regain the great power status
enjoyed for centuries by the Middle Kingdom,
before it was cursed with the traumas of the
“Opium Wars” (1839–1860) and other plagues,
now called “the century of national humiliation”
(bainian guochi).
As part of the newly-proposed “diplomacy
with Chinese characteristics,” Beijing will seek
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to shape a multipolar world. Key elements in
this area will be, on the one hand, a new type of
great power relations (xin xing daguo guanxi),
with China being one of them (which is stated
openly), and simultaneously a new neighborhood
policy. China wants to enhance its influence in
shaping external environment, especially in the
immediate neighborhood. Special efforts in this
respect have been made to cultivate closer relations with neighboring countries, including the
initiatives of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the
21st Century Maritime Silk Road.
The PRC would aim at achieving an “amicable,
secure and prosperous neighborhood environment” through “win-win cooperation“ and
“connectivity.” These aims are to be executed
through new investments, mainly in infrastructure
(including the great contract on a Chinese railway
running through the almost entire territory of
Thailand, signed on December 19 and worth $10.5
billion), as well as boosting its naval power. By
means of the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”
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China want to be a maritime power as well, which
is a completely new strategy.
Although this is not openly stated in the
strategy, we know what this is all about. The biggest
threats emerge in maritime areas. There is the
unresolved dispute with Japan over the island
of Senkaku/Diayudao and nothing is clear in the
ongoing territorial disputes in the South China
Sea, over their archipelagos Spratley (Xisha) and
Paracel (Nansha). In this area tensions with the
Philippines and Vietnam are ever-growing, while
those with Malaysia and the sultanate of Brunei
have not been resolved either, which is in sharp
contrast to the stated objectives and strategy.
The new strategy suggests that in none of these
cases will China allow the tensions to escalate,
not to mention an open conflict. Which does not
mean that the world can sleep peacefully. On the
contrary, we have to prepare for a completely
new situation for the West when China starts to
put forward and even dictate its terms both to
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Do Political Ideas Still Matter
(Like They Used To, Supposedly)?
Jan-Werner Müller
Liberal democracy is under threat from two sides
simultaneously. And it is far from obvious that the
ideas which justify it are in good working order or that
its defenders are doing the best they can to make it
attractive.
I remember being invited to a conference
called “The Return of Weltanschauungen?” The
place was a well-known American university;
the year was 1999. Given that during the middle
of the nineties books with titles such as The
End of Ism’s? were pouring off the presses, one
has to wonder just when anybody ever really
thought that doctrines had somehow become
less important in politics, or that the proverbial
“end of ideology” had arrived. Perhaps just a few
years in the last decade of the twentieth century?
But when one recalls, especially from a Central
European perspective, that this period also saw
the Yugoslav wars—often understood as a “return
of nationalism”—it becomes almost impossible
to see anything like white areas on the canvas
of the recent history of political ideas. After all,
nationalism is also a political idea.
Yet many people intuitively share the sense
that political ideas matter less than they used to.
To be sure, there could never be a politics without
any doctrines at all, some pure pragmatism driven
solely by “what works.” As John Maynard Keynes
famously pointed out, those who think of themselves as being just pragmatists unconsciously
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follow the teachings of some long-dead economist (or long-forgotten political theorist, for
that matter). Or, in the words of the philosopher
Alasdair MacIntyre: “Every action is the bearer and
expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs
and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every
expression of belief is a political and moral action.”
So has nothing changed? I submit that there
are three important differences between our
present and the last century (often been dubbed
“the age of ideologies”): first, the end of a global
oppositional language through which the most
diverse parties and movements could articulate
their concerns and demands; second, a rather
astonishing refusal among rising powers around
the globe to create and promote doctrines for
export; and, finally, the emergence of a fateful
opposition between technocracy on the one
hand and populism on the other, a phenomenon
particularly pronounced in today’s Europe—but
not confined to it.
A Look Back at the Twentieth Century
There is little doubt that at first sight political
ideas seem to matter less than during the
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t­ wentieth century. Those who lived through the
interwar years, for instance, or the height of the
Cold War, did not need reminding that political
doctrines could literally become a matter of life
and death. Czesław Miłosz once pointed out that
during the mid-twentieth century “the inhabitants
of many European countries came, in general
unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate
could be influenced directly by intricate and
abstruse books of philosophy.” Around the same
time, Nikita Khrushchev remarked matter-of-factly
about the uprising against the Soviets in socialist
Hungary: “None of this would have happened if
a couple of writers had been shot in time.”
about Cuba, China, and, especially, Cambodia,
Michel Foucault had to concede in the late 1970s
that “for the first time […] this entire body of
thought of the European left, this revolutionary
European thought which had its points of reference in the entire world […], thus a thought that
was oriented toward things that were situated
outside itself, this thought has lost the historical
reference-points that it previously found in other
parts of the world.” It is tempting to think that
Marxism has been replaced by “human rights”
as a universal language (and global progressive
narrative), as the American historian Samuel Moyn
has argued. But human rights do not come with
political, social, economic, or any other kinds
of theories that explain why things happen the
way they do. The fact remains that we live in
a globalized world—but no longer have a global
oppositional language available.
This leads me to my second, related obser­
vation: as men and women in the twentieth
century also hardly needed reminding, the
struggle of political doctrines was global. This
did not mean that every kind of political thought
managed to have global reach—arguably only
Marxism really did so throughout the century.
But every set of ideas was meant to be for export,
and enormous intellectual and material resources
were expended on promoting such exports. Even
those ideologies founded on some irreducible
particularism—think of National Socialism and
Italian Fascism—were often reshaped to appeal
to those not part of the master race or heirs of
the glory of the Roman Empire (think of Nazi
conceptions of a united Europe).
Those who lived through
the interwar years, for
instance, or the height
of the Cold War, did not
need reminding that
political doctrines could
literally become a matter
of life and death.
So what has changed? Here’s one thing: up
until at least the 1970s, as Tony Judt once pointed
out, Marxism remained available as a global oppositional language. The most diverse intellectuals,
movements, and parties could put whatever they
thought they were doing into a larger theoretical context—and a seemingly universal story of
liberation. Europeans benefited from the sense
that even as the continent’s influence declined
globally, they remained part of a worldwide
struggle; those outside Europe at least occasionally could use some philosophical back-up from
Europe—and this was true even of anti-colonial
thinkers (think of Sartre’s preface to Frantz Fanon’s
Wretched of the Earth). Yet with disenchantment
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Ism’s In One Country
Attempts to transfer political models have not
entirely disappeared in our day. There is a global
democracy promotion business (which, by the
way, is no longer a monopoly of the West: as
Thomas Carothers in particular has been pointing
out, countries like Indonesia are now also in the
business—with considerable success). But the
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notion of doctrines without borders, where
potential adherents need to endorse a set of
codified political principles, has virtually disappeared from the scene (an exception might actually be the EU with its “Copenhagen Criteria” for
accession to membership—except that these are
so general and, as we’ve learnt the hard way in
the last ten years, so ineffective that they should
probably not be dignified with labels such as
“doctrine” or “theory”).
True, people around Vladimir Putin tried for
a brief moment to theorize a model of “sovereign
democracy.” Today, however, Putinism presents
itself only vaguely as some kind of antidote to
supposed Western liberal relativism, not a codified political model (which would actually limit
Putin’s room for maneuver and hence is actually
undesirable). Or think of the contrast between
Maoism—which really was for global export—and
the “Chinese Dream” propounded by Xi Jinping
today: the latter is for domestic consumption,
while the supposed Chinese ideal of meritocracy—in opposition to democracy—remains
more of academic interest.
On the other hand, both Russia and China
pursue a distinct combination of promoting
nationalism and projecting soft power. Nationalism has two meanings here: both Putin and Xi
Jinping stoke nationalist feelings and publicly
justify their regimes as properly defining and
defending the national interest. But nationalism is also a normative principle according
to which national sovereignty is a prime, and
in fact universal, political value—the most
important implication of which is the principle
of non-interference in countries’ domestic affairs.
In other words, there is a universal right to be
particular—and that, of course, includes a right
to be non-democratic and illiberal. As Andrew J.
Nathan has argued, China in particular does not
want to offer a global model, but be left alone,
while it pursues its material interests. The problem
with its ally North Korea is precisely that the latter
is far too ideological.
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Of course, this contrast between ideology­
‑promotion and pragmatism should not be overplayed. Both Russia and, especially, China today
project soft power in ways that would have been
virtually unimaginable in, let’s say, the early 1990s,
when the globe was a “CNN-world” (less so
a BBC-world). It’s hard to say how much influence
CCTV and Russia Today really have—but their
subtle and often not so subtle “what-aboutism”
is arguably more effective than anything the
Soviet Union did during the Cold War. Confucius
Institutes are being established across the West,
and Russia is at least trying to gain a foothold in
a Western media fixated on the idea of “balance”
by having its pro-Putin experts and pundits ready
in outfits such as the nicely named “Institute of
Democracy and C
­ ooperation.”
Russia and China pursue
a distinct combination of
promoting nationalism
and projecting soft
power. Both Putin and Xi
Jinping stoke nationalist
feelings and publicly
justify their regimes as
properly defining and
defending the national
interest.
Populism versus Technocracy
As is well-known, parts of the far right in
Europe are today supportive of Putin. What they
all share with the Russian regime is, very broadly
speaking, anti-Americanism, anti-Europeanism
(in the sense of being fundamentally opposed to
the European Union) and, philosophically most
important, anti-liberalism. Do these anti-attitudes
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leave anything like a positive program, though?
The answer is yes—and this leads me to my
third and final observation: they all subscribe to
what I would term an ideal of populism. Populist
reasoning, as I understand it, always goes something like this: the populists (and only they) are
the legitimate representatives of the people; all
others are illegitimate contenders or usurpers.
There is only one genuine popular will (or one
‘overwhelming majority’—one of Putin’s favorite
phrases) and solely populists can implement it.
Whoever disagrees must be part of immoral, selfserving elites or not properly belong to the people
at all. Elites (other than the elite constituted by
populists in power) are by definition corrupt and
cosmopolitan. Thus, populism is always a moralizing and exclusionary form of public argument.
It is fateful that this kind of populism can look
like democracy—and especially so in situations
where elites appear to be imposing one technically correct policy solution without debate,
let alone popular input, and where they are
doing so across borders. This is the particular
constellation in which Europe finds itself after
half a decade of Euro crisis. Technocrats—who of
course also adhere to “ideas,” usually neoliberalism
or its German variant, ordoliberalism—are set in
opposition to populists who claim to represent the
genuine common good as willed by the authentic
people. While the two sides look very different,
they actually share one trait: both have no need for
pluralism and, by implication, debate and political
party competition. For the technocrat, there is
only one rational policy; for the populist, there
is only one popular will. Neither side is terribly
interested in elaborate doctrines—but both still
need ideas: populism is parasitic on an ideal of
popular sovereignty; technocrats think they have
objective economic theories to back them up.
Liberal democracy, in short, is under threat
from two sides simultaneously. And it’s far from
obvious that the ideas which justify it are in
good working order or that its defenders are
doing the best they can to make it attractive.
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For many years after 1989 there seems to have
been an assumption that liberal democratic ideas
explain themselves and need no embedding in
particular contexts—no rational person could
really disagree with them. But for those tempted
by technocracy, chaotic real-world democracy
seems irrational; while, among populists, there
is a sense that citizens have been comprehensively disempowered as democratic actors. Those
willing to defend liberal democracy effectively
have to counter both trends. And the defense will
necessarily have to include a new articulation of
liberal democratic ideas.
JAN-WERNER MÜLLER
is a Professor of Politics at Princeton
University. His recent publications
include Contesting Democracy:
Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century
Europe (Yale, 2011).
Photo: Tor Birk Trads
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Europe in 1815 and 2015
Brendan Peter Simms
We do not know for sure what Mr. Putin’s ultimate
ambition is. But he has certainly found allies in Hungary,
Belarus, Czech Republic and, latterly, Greece.
Two hundred years ago, three events fundamentally shaped European and world history for
decades to come, and to some extent down to the
present day. The year began with the ratification
by the US Senate of the Treaty of Ghent, which
crowned the victory of the Americans over the
British in the War of 1812. This not only ensured
that the American experiment would survive, but
that the contest for supremacy in the west had
been won by Washington. At around the same
time, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from exile
in Elba and re-established himself as emperor
of France. Not long after, he was decisively
defeated by an allied army under the command
of the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blücher
at Waterloo. This was followed by the conclusion
of the Congress of Vienna, which determined the
internal order of Europe until the mid-nineteenth
revolutions, and the territorial dispensation until
the unifications of Italy and Germany.
The Vienna settlement was designed to keep
the British in, the Russians out and the French
down. France was forced to disgorge all lands
acquired between 1789 and 1792, and required
to pay a crippling indemnity. Poland remained
partitioned between Russia, Austria and Prussia.
The Tsar retained most of the massive gains of
the past decades, including Bessarabia, taken
from Turkey, and Finland, ceded by the Swedes.
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Piedmont-Sardinia recovered Savoy from France
and was enlarged with a view to blocking French
designs on Italy. Strategic depth in the peninsula
was provided by the Austrians, who were granted
Lombardy and Venetia, along with the Republic’s
coastal strip in Dalmatia.
The most profound changes, however, took
place in the lands of the former Holy Roman
Empire—that is in Germany. Austria ceded
Belgium to Holland to form the Kingdom of
the United Netherlands, intended as a bulwark
against French expansion into the Low Countries.
Prussia was awarded the Rhineland and Westphalia with the express intention, as Castlereagh
put it, of putting her “more in military contact with
France,” in order to “provide effectually against
the systematic views of France to possess herself
of the Low Countries and the territories on the
left bank of the Rhine.” It was only with some
difficulty that Potsdam managed to fend off the
British offer of a large slice of southern Belgium.
The myriad of smaller principalities which had
been such a feature of German politics before the
1790s were not restored for the most part: Bavaria,
Wuerttemberg, Baden, Hanover and a number of
other states survived the fall of Napoleon greatly
enlarged.
Of the great powers, only Britain made no
large-scale territorial gains, though she did retain
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her colonial booty (including Ceylon and the Cape
Colony) and a number of bases including Malta.
This restraint was deliberate. As Castlereagh
had argued in mid-April 1814, “Our reputation
on the continent as a feature of our strength,
power and confidence is of more real moment
than any acquisition.” He parlayed this standing
the Quadruple Alliance of 1815 between Russia,
Prussia, Austria and Britain. This was designed to
coordinate allied response to any future threat
to the state system, especially from a resurgent
France. Article six of this agreement pledged
the parties to “renew their meetings at fixed
periods, either under the immediate auspices
of the sovereign themselves, or by their respective
ministers, for the purpose of consulting upon
their common interest, and for consideration of
the measures which at each of those periods shall
be considered the most salutary for the repose
and prosperity of nations and the maintenance
of the peace of Europe.”
The Vienna settlement regulated not only
the borders but also the internal structure of
much of Europe. Both Britain and the Eastern
powers rejected republicanism in favor of the
“monarchical principle,” the former preferring
constitutional monarchies, the latter tending
more towards “corporate” or absolutist systems.
Many of the southern and western German states,
such as Bavaria and Württemberg, held onto
or were granted constitutions; and in Prussia
the promulgation of a constitution was much
discussed in 1814–1815. In France, an army of
occupation was deployed to keep an eye on
residual Bonapartism, and to ensure that the
indemnity was paid in full. The general intention
was to encourage governments which would be
both robust enough to withstand revolutionary
pressures from below, sufficiently effective to
deter external aggressors and yet not so strong
as to menace their neighbors.
At the heart of this new order was the
German Confederation—Deutscher Bund—
which replaced the defunct Holy Roman Empire.
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It was designed to maintain the European
balance by being strong enough to contain
Franco-Russian ambitions, yet not sufficiently
powerful to develop hegemonic ambitions of its
own. The preamble to the constitutive German
Federal Act therefore called for a “strong and
durable union for the independence of Germany
and the peace and equilibrium of Europe.” This
was envisaged as a commonwealth of parts
as well as the whole; sacrificing any individual
state for strategic reasons was expressly prohibited. The eleventh article of the Confederation
therefore bound members to provide mutual
assistance in the event of an invasion, not to
make separate peace with the aggressor and
not conclude agreements which threatened the
integrity of the Bund. To this end, the defense
of Germany was entrusted to federal military
contingents from Prussia, Austria and the rest
of Germany, Political coordination was to be
provided by the Diet at Frankfurt, under the
presidency of Austria.
All this amounted to a geopolitical revo­lution
in Europe. The inexorable eighteenth-century
Russian march westwards had been barely
contained: Congress Poland jutted perilously
into Prussia and the Habsburg Empire. Denmark
had been destroyed as a Baltic and Scandinavian power; her attention was once more turned
southwards. But the greatest shift had taken
place in Germany. Prussia, a power of increasingly Eastern orientation during the past hundred
years, now became the guardian of the gate
against France in the West. Austria, for centuries a Western power intimately involved in the
politics of the Rhineland, Burgundy and the Low
Countries, now acquired a largely Balkan, eastern
European and especially Italian focus. There was
also a fundamental transformation in the way the
great powers did business. They had learned the
virtues of cooperation and restraint during the
final stages of the struggle with Napoleon, and
this culture continued to permeate diplomacy
after 1815. At the same time, the great powers
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were agreed as never before that what happened
inside European states had profound implications
for relations between states.
The Treaty of Ghent, which brought the war
between Britain and the United States to a formal
close attracted much less contemporary attention
than the Congress of Vienna. Its implications were
to be no less revolutionary in the long run,
however. A stalemated Britain returned disputed
territory around the Great Lakes. The United
States had survived its first major trial of strength
with a major power since independence.
a new institutional departure with the inauguration of the Concert of Europe; today, there is no
new architecture—though one is sorely needed,
as we shall see below—and instead we are preoccupied with the health of existing instruments
such as NATO and the European Union.
There are also, however, very significant
similarities. Year 1815 was a start and an end
point: it marked the conclusion of a long period
of warfare, and the start of a durable peace
between the great powers, at least. The past
year, by contrast, has been marked by the end
of the post-Cold-War settlement with the Russian
annexation of the Ukraine. It represents the end of
a peace, rather than the end of a war, as in 1815.
Whether it also marks the start of a new struggle
is not clear. The likelihood is that the incipient
cold war will intensify, and prolonged armed
confrontation—if not actual war—along NATO
and the EU’s eastern flank cannot be ruled out.
That said, if we ask what began in 2014–2015,
the historian must answer glibly that it is too
early to tell. Only the perspective of time will
tell us which of the remarkable developments
we have seen over the past year—the Russian
assault on Ukraine, the rise of ISIS or the murder
of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists will shape our
futures. It may even be that some hitherto unobserved, or disregarded, event will appear decisive
in retrospect.
We do not know for sure what Mr. Putin’s
ultimate ambition is. His planned Eurasian Union
is certainly a fundamental challenge to the democratic order established in Europe and its wider
neighborhood after the fall of the Wall. Pessimists
see it as the harbinger of a prolonged standoff
between the Kremlin and the West. Optimists see
in Mr. Putin a new Alexander I, the Russian Tsar
who claimed a powerful role for Russia in the
new European Congress system after 1815. Are
Russia’s aims ideological or territorial or both?
For example, there are some signs that Mr. Putin
sees himself as the avatar of an alternative to
Western modernity based on nationalism and
Year 1815 was a start and
an end point: it marked
the conclusion of a long
period of warfare, and
the start of a durable
peace between the great
powers, at least. The
past year, by contrast,
has been marked by the
end of the post‑Cold‑War
settlement with the
Russian annexation
of the Ukraine.
Before we compare 1815 and 2015 a generic
warning is in order. They did things differently two
hundred years ago. Mental horizons were shaped
by the experiences of more than twenty years of
war with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France,
and much of what we take for granted today in
the way of social and political liberalism would
have seemed strange to protagonists. The two
scenarios are also conceptually far apart. 1815 saw
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a rejection of decadence. He has certainly found
allies in Hungary, Belarus, Czech Republic and,
latterly, Greece. In that case, the next decade may
resemble more the period after the concert of
Europe split in the 1830s into a Western constitutionalist camp, led by Great Britain and France,
and an Eastern autocratic camp, made up of
Prussia, Russia and Austria.
The legacy of 1815 for the European Union
is equally ambiguous, and depends on whether
we are comparing it to the Congress System or
the German Confederation. Napoleon’s failure
to mobilize the European continent he dominated for so long more effectively against his
remaining enemies, Great Britain and the Tsarist
Empire, graphically showed the limits of his
“hegemonic” integration project. Hitler fared no
better in 1940–1944, when he found that the
economic resources of Fortress Europe much
reduced from their pre-war potential on account
of the continent being unplugged from the global
system. Likewise—without in any way wishing
to compare Napoleon, Hitler and Chancellor
Merkel!—German coercive austerity politics is
depressing rather than raising the economies
of the periphery.
In this sense, the looser consensual bonds
of the Concert of Europe were better suited to
international harmony, which might suggest that
the EU would better row back on closer political and thus fiscal integration. That said, the
German Confederation did not work: rather like
the current EU, it showed itself unable to deal
with severe internal and external challenges, and
was eventually replaced by the more tightly organized Bismarckian Reich. In the present context it
would mean full political union of the continent
to mobilize it against Russian aggression.
The lessons of the battle of Waterloo for today,
on the other hand, are more straightforward,
and more helpful for the project of European
integration. It was fought as a coalition campaign
in which the Duke of Wellington operated in
concert with Prussia’s Marshal Blücher, and if
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they had failed to stop Napoleon, Austrian and
Russian armies were already hastening to the
scene from Central Europe. The Duke’s own
army was a multi-national microcosm made up
of Britons (that is English, Irish, Scots and Welsh)
as well as Belgians, Dutch, and various sorts of
Germans. No formation epitomized more than
the King’s German Legion, made up of George II’s
Hanoverian subjects who signed up in the British
army, using English as their principal language of
command, to fight Napoleonic tyranny. European
military integration within an English-speaking
coalition army which brings Germans to the front,
now isn’t that a legacy of 1815 that we could use
two hundred years later?
BRENDAN PETER SIMMS
is the author of Europe. The struggle
for supremacy, 1453 to the present
day (Penguin Press, 2013) and The
longest afternoon. The 400 men
who decided the battle of Waterloo
(Penguin Press, 2014), which is
about the King’s German Legion as
prototype for a future European army.
Photo: Ede and Ravenscroft
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Europe and Russia
Dominique Moïsi
Three key words should define our policy towards Russia,
if we want to act responsibly: firmness, clarity and
lucidity.
The weaker is the ruble—following the
spectacular fall of the price of oil—the more
the behavior of Russia towards Ukraine seems
aggressive. Has Putin come to the conclusion that
overplaying the nationalist card is the only way
for him to survive the growing mood of discontent that would otherwise prevail, at least in the
cities if not in the countryside? Or has Putin more
concrete ambitions such as carving a mini state
within the Ukrainian territory?
Unlike the former prime minister of France
under the reign of Louis-Philippe in the 1840’s,
François Guizot, Putin is no longer saying “be rich
and let me take care of the rest,” but “be proud of
Russia, and forget your own economic situation:
sacrifices are going to be for a short duration;
national greatness will be restored for ever. The
humiliation you suffered yesterday is not about to
return. And,” adds Putin, “the Russian Civilization
is much stronger, much purer. Consider the West,
it is in full decay and morally corrupt (think of the
marriage between homosexuals).”
Has Russia’s latest Tsar become irrational or
is he is shrewdly playing in a seemingly reckless
manner to deter Europe in particular and the West
in general, from opposing his revisionist ambitions? Putin seems to be sending a rather efficient
message, which seems to have convinced many
western luminaries and that can be summarized
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as follows: “Beware I am dangerous, and the men
who would replace me, if I were to fall, are even
more nationalistic and reckless than I am!”
Or is Putin’s exploiting the fact that Europeans are deeply divided on the subject of Russia
and do not give the same priority to Russian
“expansionist policies”? In fact Europeans may
share a common destiny, but they do not seem
to have the same nightmares. In the South, the
threat of Islamic fundamentalism, incarnated
by ISIS or Al-Qaeda, takes precedence over the
fear of Russian revisionism. In the East, Center
and North of Europe, the reverse is probably
true. Can Europe in this context find a common
language to confront Putin’s ambitions? Those
who defend Russia, and they are very numerous,
seem to combine the defense of very mercantile
interests with the expression of deep anti-American feelings that are still lingering.
The Union’s divisions and weaknesses have
been as encouraging for the Master of the
Kremlin as Washington’s hesitation over Syria.
To make things worse, some countries of the
South, like Italy in particular, simply consider
the Russian threat as a secondary and distant
one compared to the rising number of migrants
from the South that are risking their lives to take
refuge on their shores. But they deem the very
close economic links that exist between Rome
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and Moscow vital for their future. Rome cannot
at the same time try to implement fundamental
structural reforms inside and make agonizing
reappraisal of her foreign policy tradition. That
is at least the message Matteo Renzi seems to
be projecting. The only good news coming from
Europe has been the relative firmness of Germany
and the rising role within the European Union of
a successful Poland.
And yet, given the direction of Moscow’s
policy towards its “near abroad,” unity is vital if
Europe pretends to exert some kind of influence
in the world, starting with fixing limits to Putin’s
ambitions.
Three key words should define our policy
towards Russia, if we want to act responsibly:
firmness, clarity and lucidity.
Without firmness nothing is possible. We
certainly have made mistakes in the aftermath
of the collapse of the Soviet Union. America in
particular may have given in to a certain hubris
and arrogance in neglecting Russia’s feelings. Let’s
admit we have unnecessarily humiliated Moscow.
Nevertheless, the demise of the Soviet Union was
the result of a long string of failures, which began
in pre-Soviet Russia’s inability to come to terms
with modernity. And since the collapse of their
Empire, present-day Russian leaders have failed
to confront head-on the reasons that led to this
impasse. The gap between China and Russia today
has never been greater, either in terms of behavior
or results. The last G20 summit in Brisbane has
demonstrated this contrast in the most striking
manner. China has played her hand masterfully,
acting as a good will actor, particularly on the
issue of climate change. Russia instead appeared
self-isolated in a not-so-splendid manner, given
the results of her economy. Her stock exchange
is collapsing. Her currency has lost 30% of its
value, while the price of oil and gas has fallen
by more than 50%. Contrary to China, Russia
does not create wealth but simply exploits her
energy resources and finds herself therefore very
vulnerable regarding the downward evolution of
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the market. By choosing to adopt a revisionist
aggressive stance, Putin has made a dual historical
and strategic mistake. From the start, his ambition
should have been to anchor the future of Russia
to that of Europe. Putin’s model should have
remained Peter the Great. He instead turned to
Nicholas I, the most reactionary of recent Russia’s
Tsars. The modernization of Russia’s economy,
society, institutions and more globally her political culture presupposed a “rapprochement” with
Europe. Being China’s junior partner is for Russia
neither glorious nor realistic option in the long
term, even if in the short term it has contributed
to a renewal of Putin’s popularity at home. Putin’s
only true strength lies in our European weakness
and irresolution. Our goal must therefore be to set
clear limits to Putin’s ambitions, even if they are
perhaps not that clear in his own mind. What does
he want most: to weaken Ukraine or to enlarge
Russia’s territory? In any case, there is only one
answer, firmness. In the present context and
given Moscow’s ambiguous behavior if not the
deliberate policy of deceit, it seems obvious that
France should not deliver the warship Mistral she
had accepted to sell to Russia in a very imprudent
manner when Nicolas Sarkozy was president. It is
much better for Paris to appear as a problematic
purveyor of arms than to be perceived as an irresponsible strategic actor, only caring for its own
mercantile interests.
More than firmness is needed clarity, and
this implies realizing that Putin in 2015 is no
longer the equivalent of what he was in 2000
when he came to power, nor even Putin of 2008,
when he grabbed pieces of Georgia by force.
Under his increasingly centralized and authoritarian guidance, Russia has become a kind of
“Red Orthodoxy,” combining ultra-religious
nationalism with the tactics and the practices
of the former Soviet Union. This mixture is both
highly explosive and dangerous since it rests on
principles and methods that have already led
Russia and the Soviet Union to previous failure
and collapse. Putin, who seems to have cornered
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himself, is practicing an increasingly dangerous
“fast backward” race.
But if firmness and clarity are indispensable,
they do not suffice by themselves to constitute
a European policy. The goal cannot simply be to
contain Russia. But how can Europe suggest an
honorable compromise, when Russia seems so
intent on maintaining unacceptable solutions,
accompanied by barely disguised threats along
the lines of “don’t forget we are a great nuclear
power,” or unfounded reassuring remarks such as
“everything is going to be all right by the end”?
With a partner who is in bad faith, how can
you reconcile the two key principles of international law, which are the right of a people to
its self-determination and the intangibility of
borders? Any compromise raises of course the
issue of the future of Crimea, now solidly under
Russian domination. In fact the object of a real
negotiation could be formulated as follows:
how can we lead Putin to accept that by gaining
Crimea, he has lost Ukraine? Of course Ukraine
must commit herself not to enter NATO and has
to protect the rights of her Russian speaking
minorities. But Moscow in exchange has to accept
the principle of Ukraine’s right one day to enter
the European Union. The progressive removal
of sanctions would of course accompany the
conclusion of such an agreement, which would
allow all the actors to concentrate their energies
on other priorities, be they economic or strategic. Putin’s Russia does not have the means
for the policy she leads. But the Western world,
nevertheless, needs the cooperation and good
will of Moscow to confront with some chances
of success key middle-eastern problems such
as the Iranian nuclear deal, not to mention the
fight against ISIS in Syria in particular. A compromise with Moscow would be welcome, but not
on conditions that would translate the political
weakness of the stronger of the two protagonists,
i.e. Russia. If the best cards of Europe are poorly
played, then it is no wonder that the worst Russian
ones win the day. At the present stage, with an
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escalation of violence taking place in Ukraine,
sanctions have to be maintained and most likely
increased. And even more important, Ukraine has
to be helped financially as quickly as possible,
before it is too late.
Our ability to agree on a common policy
towards Russia, which will not be a “compromise
of weaknesses,” will play a central role in defining
Europe’s identity in the world. If Europe wants to
remain to be perceived as a model, she has to be
seen as an actor, and in particular in the security
field. Can it be done or is it a dream? One thing
is for sure, thanks to Putin (and ISIS), the need
for Europe is more obvious than ever. One day
maybe there will be busts to Putin on the squares
of many European cities. “A thankful Europe, to
one of its key founding fathers.” DOMINIQUE MOÏSI
a professor at L’Institut d’études
politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), is
Senior Adviser at the French Institute
for International Affairs (IFRI) and
a visiting professor at King’s College
London. He is the author of The
Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures
of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are
Reshaping the World.
Photo: Archive Dominique Moïsi
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The Elite in Russia
is Kept on a Leash
by the Nation
If Europeanism is preserved anywhere,
it will be in Russia—says the Russian writer
and National Bolshevik Party activist Zakhar Prilepin
in conversation with Filip Memches
Vladimir Putin is more and more often using
hardline right-wing rhetoric and his words
are followed by political decisions. For
example, in 2013 the Kremlin host signed
two laws which met with criticism of liberal opinion-making communities in the
West: the first banned “promoting non-traditional sexual relations among minors,”
and the second introduced punishments for
offending religious feeling and desecration
of churches. Are we witnessing a rejection
of modernity in Russia and a conservative
counterrevolution?
There is also such a term as “conservative
revolution” and it is more to my liking. So if Russia
really is going through a stage of a conservative
revolution, this is all right, for the concept of
“counterrevolution” has something degrading
in it. But I think that in our country we are not
dealing with a regression.
ZAKHAR PRILEPIN
is a leading Russian prose writer of the younger generation,
activist of the National Bolshevik Party. His novels Sankya
(2008), The Pathologies (2010) and Black Ape (2013) have
been published in Poland.
Photo: Archive Zakhar Prilepin
Very many misunderstandings in the world
are connected with the belief that humanity is
evolving, that it is moving along a path of progress. Meanwhile you should note that in Russian
literature this motif is completely absent, for the
more we are removed in time from the cruci-
But the term “conservative revolution”—
although it points back to the name of an intellectual movement in the Weimar ­Republic—
sounds like an oxymoron.
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fixion of Christ, the less we are able to follow this
road. I don’t think that the concept of progress is
crucial in the Russian national awareness. So in
Russia there is a revolution aimed at going back
to tradition. And thus, paradoxically, Russia is
moving forward.
agents—Russian democrats and enlightened
liberals—entered public life in the 1980s and
1990s by shouting about repressions against the
Orthodox Church, about Orthodox values being
forgotten, about the necessity of reinstating religion to its proper place. Today the same persons
turned out to be the most aggressive and active
critics of the presence of the Orthodox Church in
public life. And the defenders of the Church are
what they are, they can’t be different. Yes, they
are people raised in the Soviet Union, but where
would they come from? From Australia? My father
was a member of the Communist Party, but it did
not affect the fact that I was baptized as soon as
I was born in 1975. In our house there were icons,
religious books. And I do not recall that in those
times the tradition was being damaged in any way.
A Communist was not a man who demolished
churches and shot priests down all day long.
Except that this is a different tradition than
in the West…
Fortunately, Russia is not a European country,
but in many areas it adopted the European tradition, originating in Byzantium, including the law.
And Russia is preserving this heritage, preserving
its Christian identity. We can also see how today’s
Europe is convulsively parting with its heritage.
Russia is different. If Europeanism is preserved
anywhere, it will be in Russia.
There is a lingering myth
that the Russian nation
is characterized by
a slave or serf mentality,
passivity, lack of courage
in fighting for their
interests. It only appears
to be so. For in fact the
impact of the nation on
the political elite is huge.
You want to say that today’s Russian conservatives in power are sincere Christians? Perhaps they treat religion instrumentally—as an
instrument of consolidating the society they
rule over, the society to which they present,
just like in the Soviet times, the “rotten” West
as the main enemy?
Of course, there is a lot of hypocrisy and
mendacity in the behavior of these people. But they
are not the ones in charge of the return to tradition.
Putin and the KGB have nothing to do with it. It is
more than 90% of society who openly influence
the course of events. There is a lingering myth that
the Russian nation is characterized by a slave or
serf mentality, passivity, lack of courage in fighting
for their interests. It only appears to be so. For in
fact the impact of the nation on the political elite
is huge. It is not true that today the political elite
is imposing conservative values on society. The
reverse is true. The popular/national element is
pulling the elite behind it, and the composition
of this elite is to a large extent determined by
negative selection. The elite is not ruling the nation,
it is kept on a leash by it.
But at the moment this “conservative revolution” is pushed through by people who started
their careers as functionaries of the Communist regime and adapted themselves to the
new circumstances after the breakup of the
Soviet Empire. What do they have in common
with the Russian tradition? Don’t you notice
an irony of history in that?
The people who today are criticizing the
former Communist Party members or KGB
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Was it also like that in the 1990s, when the
Russian political establishment was implementing the transformation of the system and
the economy, which was painful and brutal for
many ordinary citizens?
Even Boris Yeltsin, still regarded as
a pro-Western politician, was forced to make decisions characteristic for traditionalists or conservatives. It was Yeltsin who sent Russian troops
to Transnistria and Chechnya, it was Yeltsin who
pushed away liberals from the throne and introduced conservatives to the corridors of power,
and finally it was Yeltsin who understood that
there was huge social demand for the existence
of nation. And with Putin this understanding is
more organic. But his retinue is in 50% or 80%
composed of liberals. These are not people with
Communist Party background, but persons who
entered adult life in the late 1980s and early
1990s. There is a generational change going on
and people who do not have anything in common
with communism find their way to the structures
of power. They have been shaped by Western
cultural patterns. Except that Putin will have to
part with these people, for the nation will demand
it from him. And thus it will lead to a renewal of
the political elite. But this has nothing to do with
the attitude to communism.
remind you that not everything was so simple
then. Events from the period of the Civil War
in Russia, when the Bolsheviks persecuted the
Orthodox Church, are illegitimately extended
onto the 70 years of the existence of the Soviet
Union. The Soviet era went through various
stages.
As recently as the 1990s the communists led
by Gennady Zyuganov played a significant
role in Russian politics. In 1996 their leader
was a serious rival to Yeltsin in the presidential
elections. Now he heads a party which plays
the role of a licensed opposition in the Duma.
What has happened?
They have simply become part of the ruling
establishment. They do put forward some ideas,
but they are part of the system. In fact, it has to
be said that in Russia the right-left division does
not correspond to the right-left division in the
West. Russian leftists are more traditionalist than
One Russia, which economically is a liberal party.
So its politicians are liberal conservatives. And politicians from Zyuganov’s party or other left-wing
communities are more similar to such politicians
as Marine le Pen or even American Republicans.
Sergei Udaltsov, who was jailed for speaking out
against the Putin regime, has voiced his support
for the actions of the New Russia fighters in the
Donbas. This shows that Russian leftists, in contrast
to Western left, identify themselves with the nation
and are remote from various marginal topics. In the
field of fighting against oligarchy, promoting the
issue of material redistribution, Russia will move
to the left. And this will favor the emergence of
some alternative for One Russia. So we are dealing
with a clash of two tendencies: the country is still
ruled by an oligarchy, but the nation aspires to
hold power in its own hands.
One gets an impression that you assumed the
role of an advocate of communists, trying to
reconcile fire with water. It can’t be denied that
the ideology which constituted the founding
myth and doctrine of the Soviet state, is for
some reason perceived as hostile to religion
and all kinds of tradition…
Certainly, besides the official ideology there
was also real life. It was the greatest tyrant of the
Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, who established
relations with the Orthodox Church. People from
the world of culture were friends with clergymen.
Yes, it was a difficult, painful, and sometimes
nightmarish coexistence. I am not an advocate
of the Soviet regime, but nevertheless I want to
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But One Russia can adopt the slogans of
anti-system parties.
It doesn’t seem to me that this grouping—this
liberal party of billionaires and millionaires—
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And it is more focused on the national community. For in the West individual freedoms
are the priority.
When Russian left considers some problem,
it starts from the assumption that the interests
of the nation—the majority—are important.
And Western left always acts on behalf of
various minorities. Today it deals with problems of sexual minorities. Tomorrow it may
take on something as politically irrelevant as
plant breeding. Yet Europe is faced with huge
economic problems. In Greece or in Italy there
are people who cannot afford to buy bread.
There is the serious issue of immigration. In this
situation fighting for legalization of same-sex
unions is completely absurd. can change its clothes and put on a new disguise.
One Russia will be what Putin orders it is to be.
This is an institution of the regime directed by
the Kremlin. And what Russia needs is changes.
Inflexible officials should be replaced with people
who are capable of taking risks, of heroic actions,
for example such as those who showed courage
in the Crimea or in the Donbas.
From the moment when the political crisis
in the Ukraine began, there grew tensions
between Russia and the West. There is a widespread opinion that the differences of opinion
between Russian and Western political classes
simply came to the surface, but perhaps it is
a question of different mentalities?
The elites are not homogeneous, and they
are changing. Yesterday’s elites are different
from today’s ones or those which will come
tomorrow. Additionally, in Russia there is also
the division of the elite into conservatives and
liberals. And of course Russians are different from
Westerners. Except that in today’s France, Italy or
Germany there are many people who like what is
happening in Russia. For they are very unhappy
about Europe’s rejection of tradition, including
Christianity.
FILIP MEMCHES
is a columnist of the Rzeczpospolita
daily
Photo: Archive Filip Memches
It is impossible not to mention the impact of
the events of 1968 on the development of
left-wing thought. In the West it gradually
started to move away from social issues to
cultural ones. In Russia you cannot see that.
What survived in Russia is only the heavy,
conservative current of the left, and today there
are also organizations which are ideologically
close to Western left, but they play a marginal
role. This has been conditioned by Russian history.
Peter the Great implemented Western patterns.
Putin came to power thanks to a supporter of
a pro-Western option, Boris Berezovsky. In opposition to such politicians Russian left is assuming
traditionalist forms.
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The Future
of EU-Russia Relations
Michal Šimečka
For parts of the European political and intellectual
elite, a non-democratic Russia will always represent an
existential threat: an archetypal enemy bent on exploiting
the weaknesses of open societies
In all likelihood, Russia’s aggression in eastern
Ukraine will eventually morph into a frozen
conflict, with occasional skirmishes, a modicum
of international supervision, and endless negotiations over the status of separatist republics. It is
also likely that, at some point down the road, the
EU will ease its sanctions against Russia’s battered
economy, perhaps in exchange for a stable ceasefire and partial withdrawal of Russian troops and
equipment. By itself, that outcome would be
something of a feat for European—and particularly German—diplomacy.
But once the acute phase of the conflict is
over, questions will arise over the future of EU’s
relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Building
a new equilibrium of EU-Russia relations—
without compromising our own principles, our
security, and our commitment to Kiev—will
become a defining test for European foreign
policy in the years ahead. If it succeeds, Europe
would have matured into a serious and self-confident geopolitical actor.
For the moment, however, that future drifts
in a strategic and intellectual limbo. A return to
the pre-2014 era of EU-Russian relations—to the
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meaningless yet expedient “strategic partnership”—is politically and practically impossible,
even if Russia withdraws all of its troops from
eastern Ukraine. But so is another Cold War.
To be sure, one can always nurture hopes of
another Gorbachev-style game-changer, or even
a Russian Maidan. The EU can even try to nudge
the Russian polity toward either direction with
a smart combination of external pressure and civil
society support. But it cannot build a strategy
around an unlikely scenario with uncertain
geopolitical consequences.
Yet any alternative mode of EU-Russia relations seems impossible to envision, let alone
conceptualize. Stable and peaceful co-existence
with an authoritarian and aggressive neighbor is
a notion that defies the imagination of European
diplomacy—its discourse, institutions and historical experience.
Elites Divided
For parts of the European political and intellectual elite, a non-democratic Russia will always
represent an existential threat: an archetypal
enemy bent on exploiting the weaknesses of
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open societies—with sinister precision—to
expand its sphere of influence. It follows that, in
any given situation, we should always opt for the
most muscular of all intelligible policy options.
Anything less betrays naiveté, Munich-like
cowardice or moral relativism, all of which would
come back to haunt us.
proven them right. But so can those who had
warned that Western integration of Ukraine would
precipitate strategic confrontation with Russia.
The Ukraine conflict all but vindicated and reinforced everyone’s prior convictions.
The upshot is a reproduction of the false
dichotomy that casts Russia as either a mortal
threat or as a would-be strategic partner. The
EU must move beyond it. If and once the armed
conflict in eastern Ukraine comes to an end, we
should envisage a future of EU-Russia relations
where Moscow is neither a partner nor a threat—
but where it could potentially be both at the same
time. And it needs to develop a set of discursive
and institutional tools to sustain this dialectical
equilibrium.
It is a future fraught with paradoxes. It would
require further investments into Europe’s military capabilities—especially in the framework
of NATO’s collective defense—and contain the
risk of Russia’s military incursion in the Baltic
states or Poland; yet it could also entail genuine
dialogue with Moscow over a new European
security architecture. It would necessitate the
bolstering of European intelligence agencies
to counter Russian espionage, propaganda and
other forms of hybrid warfare; but it should not
preclude the possibility of negotiations leading
toward a visa-free regime with Russia. It would
dictate that we never recognize the annexation
of Crimea (just as the EU never recognized the
independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia)
and vigorously defend the sovereign choice of
Ukraine and other Eastern partners to pursue
European integration; but also that we talk to
Russia about the political and trade implications
of these processes. We will have to push back
against Russian influence in the future member
states of the Western Balkans. We need to shed
our dependence on Russian gas and addiction
to dubious oligarch-linked oil. At the same time
however, EU should remain open to free trade
negotiations and sectoral cooperation with Russia
and the Eurasian Economic Union.
A return to the pre‑2014
era of EU-Russian
relations—to the
meaning­less yet
expedient “strategic
partnership”—
is politically and
practically impossible,
even if Russia withdraws
all of its troops from
eastern Ukraine.
On the other side of the divide are politicians and diplomats who will never tire of
working towards closer partnership with
Moscow. The motivation is not necessary one
of narrow economic interests, energy concerns,
or misguided anti-Americanism. Rather, they
perceive dialogue and compromise-seeking as
the innate purpose of diplomacy, and the most
effective vehicle toward the progressive modernization of Russia itself. Needless to say, such an
attitude entails a degree of understanding for
Kremlin’s view of the world.
Unfortunately, the two paradigms remain
locked in their own moral imperatives, causal
logic, and historical narratives—and all too often
insulated from empirical reality. Those who had
long been sounding alarm over Putin’s neo-imperialism can (rightfully) claim that history has
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Flexible management of paradoxes does not
imply weakness or abandonment of a principled
foreign policy. Rather, it is a mark of statecraft
and confidence in our own values. Ambiguity can
be a powerful asset, if deployed strategically, as
a means to a clearly-defined end.
It is worth recalling that the EU-Russia relationship is deeply asymmetrical. Even if it cannot
directly shape the nature of Russia’s domestic
regime, the EU will always be the stronger side.
What is more, the Kremlin desperately needs
Europe as an adversary—to support its nationalist
and ultra-conservative ideology. It also needs
Europe as a partner—to keep its primitively structured economy afloat.
All of this lends the EU considerable maneuvering space to dictate the terms of bilateral
relations in the future, provided, of course, that
it would no longer need Russia as a strategic
partner, and it would no longer fear it as an
enemy.
Achieving that balance will require the EU
to integrate diverse and seemingly contradictory initiatives into a coherent strategy. In other
words—to think and act in geopolitical terms.
And therein lies the problem. The EU has
a notoriously troubled relationship with geopolitics, and with power itself. It is encoded in its
DNA: after all, EU’s original raison d´être was to
tame the descriptive forces of European power
politics, and replace it with post-modern pooling
of sovereignty.
Today, despite the eurozone crisis, the EU
wields more power (both the hard and soft kind)
than any other international actor save for the US.
But it cannot figure out what do with it. It floats
in the waters of international relations as a giant
well-meaning whale, in perpetual astonishment
of its own power. Amid the December 2014 ruble
crisis, EU leaders watched in panic as the economic
sanctions they had adopted nearly brought down
the world’s eighth largest economy. Likewise, in
early 2014, it came as an utter shock to Brussels
that something as mundane as an Association
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and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with Ukraine could spark a revolution and
even war.
By contrast, Mr. Putin is well aware of the
magnitude of European power, even as he fails
to fully grasp its source. While publicly identifying
NATO as Russia’s main security threat, the Russian
president rightly suspects that it is the Union—
its democracy, prosperity and rule of law—that
poses a much greater challenge to his rule than
all the NATO nuclear warheads and tanks
combined. So does the common market: the
Kremlin has never forgotten that it took but a few
EU directives and regulations (the third energy
package) to upend Gazprom’s entire business
model.
Today, despite the
eurozone crisis, the
EU wields more power
(both the hard and soft
kind) than any other
international actor
save for the US. But it
cannot figure out what
do with it.
The EU’s inability to utilize its geopolitical
potential is often attributed to the cumbersome
mode of Brussels decision-making, contrasting
with Russia’s centralized and nimble execution
of security policy. The argument is not without
merit: for instance, EU’s practice of advance
signaling of any major decisions—be it signature
of agreements or adoption of sanctions—grants
Russia (and any other player) a significant tactical
advantage.
At root, however, Europe’s main geopolitical
liability lies not in process or institutions, but in
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the absence of commonly construed strategic
interests—the very purpose of power projection.
In eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin acts in full
awareness of its strategic interests (however
repugnant these may be) in obstructing the
European integration process of Ukraine and
other neighbors. By contrast, EU leaders have
little idea of the ultimate goals of the Eastern Partnership policy. It pains them to even discuss the
desired endpoint of EU’s relations with Ukraine
and other partners.
Notwithstanding all the institutional innovations of the Lisbon Treaty, EU Member States have
so far failed to devise an algorithm that would
translate their national interests into a meaningful definition of European strategic interests.
The anticipated revision of the 2003 European
Security Strategy, advocated by High Representative Frederica Mogherini, would be a step in
the right direction, but—judging by the political
relevance of the original document—probably
only a small one.
As a result, EU’s power remains amorphous
and diffused. Member States’ governments have
a hard time disciplining it: all too often, it acquires
a life of its own, spilling forth into the neighborhood and beyond, triggering political crises, social
commotion, waves of immigration, and all sorts
of other unintended consequences.
tactical victory. The long-term strategic challenge
is to fashion a workable paradigm to stabilize
relations with an authoritarian and nationalist
Russia, while safeguarding European security and
upholding our core values. The EU possesses all
the resources and instruments necessary. What
it lacks is a common understanding of its strategic interests vis-à-vis Russia and the Eastern
neighborhood. But the moment it formulates
them, Europe will turn into a geopolitical killer
whale.
MICHAL ŠIMEČKA
researcher, Institute of International
Relations, Prague
Photo: Archive Michal Šimečka
The Learning Curve
However, pressed by events—from Russia’s
aggression in Ukraine to the rise of the Islamic
State—Europe is being forced into a crash-course
in power politics. And not without success: the
way in which member states assembled a sanctions package and set the conditions for their
lifting—without severing dialogue with Moscow—
suggests a commendable learning curve, owing
largely to Berlin’s growing weight in EU foreign
and security affairs. By EU’s own standards, it was
a remarkable act of geopolitical power projection.
But even if sanctions deliver peace in Ukraine
(and that remains a big if ), it would still be a mere
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A Post-Imperial Federation:
Impossible or Inevitable?
Yulia Zhuchkova
The European Union differs from the post-Soviet space
not only because it professes a policy of deep integration
and the creation of a common economic and social space.
European countries are becoming de facto federations,
while in post-Soviet space one may witness all signs of
imperial revival.
Empires have always attracted great attention
of historians and political philosophers—but, in
practice, their ends were always sour. Being based
on the principle of a composite state brought
together by military force to a greater extent
than by economic and cultural ties, they crashed,
and the former imperial peripheries built their
identity for many decades on the simple and
fierce rejection of both the metropolis and the
imperial experience. But the upheaval of secessionist forces in contemporary world—both in
civilized and violent forms—makes us think once
again about what political forms could replace
the former empires.
any empire was that the conquest of a certain
territory was not enough. Much more significant was to integrate territories economically,
politically and culturally. However, it turned out
to be an unrealistic task. History has shown at
least two reasons for that.
The first one is what American sociologist
William Riker describes as “empires became
expensive to maintain,” while “federalism is the
main alternative to empire as a technique of
aggregating large areas under one government.”1
In other words it is economic and managerial
crises: technological and military development
made the retention of vast territories by means
of hard power impossible; at the same time the
technological development simplified political
organization and dissemination of information which resulted in the rising importance of
regional elites. Thus, to keep them loyal to the
metropolis, an empire had to pay too much.
The second reason concerned the process
of democratization. Since transit from an empire
to any other form of governance is closely
connected with this process, a great political will
I.
One of the problems of imperial structures
has always been the issue of self-government.
Empires were formed as a very powerful, authoritarian political entity having a multiple structure,
unifying numerous nations or tribes. To keep it
intact three factors were needed: greater financial
resources, territorial expansion and a constantly
growing military capacity. But the problem facing
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and a balanced economic approach are needed.
Otherwise it leads to a collapse of the system.
In all empires their constituent parts were
subjugated to imperial center, but seldom influenced the laws and principles of its functioning.
Therefore, democracy and freedom were the
slogans of all the modern anti-imperial movements—from the American Revolution to the
collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
To a large extent this anti-imperial struggle
created the modern concept of federalism: several
relatively weak proto-states united themselves
into a federation to resist the metropolis and/or
potential enemies. In fact, this way the United
States, Mexico and Brazil were formed, and later,
after World War I, Czechoslovakia emerged from
the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Federation of this kind also appeared in the
course of peoples’ liberation struggle in mid-20th
century: these include Nigeria, Malaysia and even
the United Arab Emirates. But empires stubbornly
resisted any devolution, and eventually provoked
revolutions, which put an end to most of the
imperial structures. British Empire—the only one
that disappeared relatively peacefully—also has
not turned into a federation, retaining instead
very loose contours of the British Commonwealth.
The fate of others was much more dramatic: that
were the fields of Dien Bien Phu and Algiers,
Bakongo and Niassa where the last European
empires, French and Portuguese, disgracefully
died.
However in the 20th century a new political
reality is appearing—which I would call “imperial federation” (in Russia, some authors call it
“expansionist federation.” In “imperial federation” as researchers rightly note2 the federal
principle is used to justify the expansion into to
the territories of neighboring states. It seems to
me that the concept of “expansionist” narrows
the range of what can be considered imperial
federation—for example, Yugoslavia, which
certainly was a Serbia-centered state, masked
by the federal principles, never embarked on
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an expansionist course. The Soviet Union was
more inclined to expansionist actions, but during
the Cold War clearly observed the division of
spheres of influence, cemented by the Realpolitik. Therefore it was the “imperial” and not
“expansionist” character that determined such
“federations” as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia,
In all empires their
constituent parts were
subjugated to imperial
center, but seldom
influenced the laws
and principles of its
functioning. Therefore,
democracy and freedom
were the slogans of all
the modern anti-imperial
movements—from the
American Revolution to
the collapse of the Soviet
Union and Yugoslavia.
or Ethiopia. The idea of inheriting the imperial
principles was often hidden in these countries
under socialist slogans praising the “friendship
between the peoples”—but should the dominant
role of the “state-building” nation be called into
question, the “imperial federation” came to the
point of collapse almost always accompanied
by a war. This process, triggered on the global
scale by the crisis of the Communist system in
late 1980s, has not yet been finished.
Why the fate of complex states in the 20th cen­tury
was so unenviable? In my opinion it was because
they haven’t overcome their imperial nature.
Although it was relatively skillfully concealed
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(as in the Soviet times), it was implicitly felt by
everybody—and today it is openly expressed by
political leaders. “What was the Soviet Union?”
asked Vladimir Putin three years ago, and also
answered that it was “the same Russia but only
named in a different way.”3 Because the leaders
of empires “renamed” into federations remained
prisoners of an imperial worldview, thirty years
after the collapse of the last European overseas
empire the European continental empires (the
Soviet one built around Russia, and Yugoslav one
formed around Serbia) also burst. Each of these
events caused tens of thousands of casualties, but
has taught very little the new elites of newborn
countries. Russia crushed its breakaway region
of Chechnya in an imperial style, while Serbia
was unable to stop the departure of Kosovo and
Montenegro. To sum it up, the empires were on
the losing side of the political spectrum: from the
end of the 18th century and till the beginning of
21st they only retreated, and their centers found
themselves in an unenviable (if not humiliating)
position.
means.4 Russia had never lost her settler colony—
and this was its fundamental difference from
Britain, Spain, Portugal or France. That is why the
notorious “Russian world,” in contrast to the civilization française, has a deeply etatist nature—
and in fact performs a protective function,
constantly creating the possibility of imperial
revival. It is significant that although the Russian
Each of the great
imperial nations,
before starting its
global expansion,
had conquered and
incorporated the
neighboring territories.
Empire collapsed at the same time the
Austro-Hungarian did, it was able to quickly resurface in almost the same borders as before—and
even became one of the most powerful states of
the 20 th century. In 1991, the Soviet Union
collapsed and Russia lost the territories that she
annexed during both 18th and 19th century, but
she retained her major settler colony, Siberia.
Even while declaring itself a federation, Russia
for the past twenty years gradually recreated
a unitary form of government, reducing the
powers of the regions and eliminating democratic
procedures on the local level. In other words,
after a brief “romance” with democratization,
Russia has again transformed into an imperial
federation—and, considering the way she is
doing this (both internally and in its relations
with its neighbors), I’m seriously concerned with
the fate of my country in the coming decades.
Modern political practices provide some
other, much more promising, options for going
forward. Problems caused by the desire of various
peoples to gain greater autonomy exist not only in
II.
However, even when losing, the empires had
not deserted the place they occupied in the public
mind for many generations. Enthusiasm for imperial rhetoric today remains incredibly strong—
and it is fueled, as I believe, by the growth of
secessionist movements which occur in many
regions and which resonate in different parts
of the world. The question of what can happen
to those countries whose leaders openly talk
about the necessity of “renaissance” and “getting
up from their knees,” seems so important to me
primarily because the largest empire—the history
of which is not yet completed—is the Russian
Federation.
Russia is definitely a unique empire. It is worth
noting that Russia developed as an empire
without overseas territories—where within one
state a metropolis coexisted with both the settler
colony and possessions controlled by military
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Russia. Each of the great imperial nations, before
starting its global expansion, had conquered and
incorporated the neighboring territories. In the
Russian case these were inhabited by the peoples
residing on the Volga shores, like Tatars, Mordovians, or Bashkirs; in the English one—by the
Welsh and the Scots, in the case of Spain—by the
heirs of the Moors in the south, and by Catalans
and Basques in the north. In Europe, where the
farewell to colonial past, although painful, was
not considered “the greatest catastrophe of the
past century,” the statesmen are now very attentive to any requirements of the regions claiming
greater autonomy.
Over the past thirty years, the Great Britain,
the country which is de jure a unitary state, de
facto became a “hybrid” political body. The Scottish Parliament, National Assemblies for Wales and
the Northern Ireland alongside with the Greater
London Assembly (as their executive bodies) have
no less authority than many regions in formally
federal states. The same applies to Catalonia in
Spain, Lombardy and Autonomous Region of
Bolzano in Italy. In fact, many European countries
have long started to turn into quasi-federations,
not even calling themselves as such.
Not so long ago, Fareed Zakaria pointed out
that for a society it is much easier to transform to
a liberal democracy from liberal autocracy than
from illiberal democracy.5 This is a very profound
remark, which indicates that it is much easier
to change some formal features if the essential
elements of society have already changed—
as opposed to the social basis, even if its forms
seem quite advanced. The same applies to the
policy system. A modern federation is much easier
to approach if one moves from formally unitary
society that had long ago accepted the principles
of devolution, than from a “federation,” where
in reality nothing federative could be found. In
my opinion, this is happening in Europe today.
We witness a formation of a completely new political form, which I call the post-imperial federation.
Its value in the future may be so great that it
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will become Europe’s second most important
contribution (after the transnational European
integration) to the modern non-violent world
of the 21st century.
The success of those voting for a unified
Britain, demonstrated in a democratic and free
referendum in Scotland on September 18, 2014,
the inevitability of a future referendum in Catalonia, the ability of the authorities of European
countries to go ahead of events, providing regions
with more rights than they are even willing to
claim—all this makes me optimistic about the
prospects of post-imperial federations. I would
say that if the empire wants to keep what was
left of it, it must turn into a post-imperial federation—otherwise one can be almost certain that
it has no future.
III.
Returning to the dichotomy of imperial and
post-imperial federations, I will note that the
preference to the first or to the second option
today distinguishes Russia (and former Soviet
countries in general) from the member-states
of the European Union. Inside the post-Soviet
space neither the former colonial power (Russia),
nor her former possessions (Georgia, Moldova,
Ukraine, Uzbekistan) are ready to start the “federalization from above” as it was done in the UK,
Spain and Italy. On the contrary, the abolition of
autonomous regions in Georgia—a fully meaningless move made in 1990—sparked a war that
ultimately led to the loss of both the country’s
regions neighboring with Russia. Stubborn unwillingness of the Ukrainian government to recognize
the Russian language (used in everyday life by
the majority of the country’s citizens) became the
pretext for Russia’s unprecedented intervention in
Ukraine’s internal affairs—masked as the defense
of its “Russian-speaking” population. “Romanization,” with which the first government of independent Moldova was really obsessed, fueled acute
protests among the residents of Transnistria,
which ultimately made that area a quasi-inde-
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pendent state. As a result the idea of “federalization” is perceived in Russia as a synonym to
separatism—the authorities welcome it where
they want to undermine the state institutions (in
particular, the Russian leaders stubbornly call for
“federalization” of Ukraine’s eastern regions), but
strongly oppose it where the process is considered dangerous for themselves (one can recall
with what sophisticated persistence the power
elite discredited and prohibited the “March for
the federalization of Siberia” planned by a group
of young activists in Novosibirsk for August 17,
2014). The post-Soviet space today does not
accept any genuine federalism—and this means
that the ongoing process of its disintegration
and restructuring is not finished. Unfortunately,
in 2014 we saw particularly numerous proofs
of this fact.
In contrast, in Europe the Scottish referendum
became, in my view, the turning point in the
perception of the new federalism. Voting to retain
a single country, the British proved that “there
are things more important than sovereignty”—
especially if the common space of freedom and
security, economic progress and common standards of human rights are at stake. In my view, the
Spanish government made a mistake prohibiting
not only the referendum, but also “popular poll” in
Catalonia, since it might show that the pro-independence forces were supported by much smaller
number of people than it was expected. In Europe
today, there are all the necessary frameworks for
organized devolution. It is better to recognize
the inevitable path of events and turn it to your
advantage than to try to resist the inevitable.
Thus, today the European Union differs
from the post-Soviet space not only because it
professes a policy of deep integration and the
creation of a common economic and social space,
while in the former Soviet Union many governments are fostering the strategy of “managed
instability.” But also because internally so many
European countries (even those that do not
formally recognize this fact) are becoming de
facto federations—while in post-Soviet space
one may witness all signs of imperial revival.
In Europe one may see the last act of overcoming
the imperial past of former metropolises—and
this allows us to hope that the EU will remain for
many decades a territory of peace and progress.
In contrast, regressive trends inside Russia and its
neighbors are gaining momentum so they may
lead to a rebirth of imperial federalism—although
in this case it will cause not so much a tragedy
than a farce.
Y U L I A Z H U C H KOVA
Junior research fellow
in international relations, Tomsk
State University (Tomsk, Russian
Federation)
Photo: Archive Yulia Zhuchkova
1 Riker, William. Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance, Boston: Little & Brown Publishers, 1964, p. 5.
2 Zakharov, Andrei. “Imperial federalism” in: Vedomosti, 2014, March 19, pp. 6–7 {in Russian}.
3 Putin, Vladimir. “Interview of the three all-Russian TV channels, 17 October 2011” (www.ria.ru/politics/2011 1017/462204254.html ,
site accessed in May 15, 2014)
4 See in greater detail: Inozemtsev, Vladislav. “Colonies versus Dependencies: Invitation to a Discourse “in: Russia in Global Affairs, vol 11,
No 2, May – June 2013, pp. 37–53.
5 Zakaria, Fafeed. The Future of Freedom. Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, New York, London: W.W.Norton & Co., 2003.
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ADAM ČERNÝ
Europe Has to Reckon
with an Aggressive Russia
A
nyone in Europe who believed, or at
least hoped, that the conflict with Russia
would be toned down or even resolved in
the near future, will have to accept an uncomfortable truth now, almost a year since the annexation
of Crimea. In all probability, the conflict is here
to stay. That means that in the coming months
the European Union will have to face a number
of problems, each of them quite considerable in
its own right: its relations with Russia; the impact
of the economic crisis; and the internal workings
of the EU, which will be on the agenda after the
UK elections. In terms of foreign relations, Europe
will continue to face Russia’s aggressive behavior,
symbolized by Ukraine and fostered by a sense
of uncertainty and the siege mentality stemming
from it. All this is further amplified by Russia’s
economic problems which escalated towards
the end of 2014 as a result of the plummeting
exchange rate of the ruble, and have been exacerbated by the falling oil and gas revenues.
Europe has few options for changing the
behavior of Russia under Vladimir Putin’s leadership. Most importantly, it must not accept
Moscow’s narrative, which blames the current
conflict on the West because it has integrated
parts of the former eastern communist bloc and,
to add insult to injury, has also held out the prospect of integration—albeit more on a theoretical
level—of the former Soviet Union successor
countries. Such an interpretation of the past
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ADAM ČERNÝ
Adam Černý is the chief of the Syndicate of the Journalists
of the Czech Republic and a member of the Editorial
Board of the Aspen Review.
Photo: Archive Adam Černý
quarter of a century is based solely on a power
perspective, as Moscow claims the right to assert
its own interests while denying the same to her
neighbors. What this policy inevitably brings to
mind regarding the former eastern bloc is the
notion of limited sovereignty with which the
Kremlin under Leonid Brezhnev used to justify
the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Vladimir Putin’s policy of asserting his special
rights in the “near abroad” is indicative of structural problems within the country which had
for centuries been known as Russia, for seventy
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years as the Soviet Union, and has once again
become Russia. It still is a world power with
a number of unresolved or suppressed internal
conflicts and frozen tensions. It is a country that,
like Tito’s Yugoslavia, is not held together by
the motto of Fraternity and Unity but rather by
a stern regime that suppresses opposition and
exercises strict control over the media.
France and Germany, two of the key players
in Western Europe, were able to reflect on their
past and to arrive at the basic consensus that they
wish to avoid destructive conflict in the future.
In Russia, on the other hand, past internal conflicts
and current tense relations with the “near abroad”
generate a sense of being under a threat. Russia
continues to be a (post)colonial power, considering
its conquered territories an integral part of itself,
in the same way as many French used to regard
Algeria as part of France. The current Russian
leadership encourages this kind of thinking, as
demonstrated by the ostentatious celebrations
of “Crimea’s return home.” With its present-day
foreign policy, Russia has vindicated Václav Havel’s
warning that one of Russia’s key problems is not
being aware of its own boundaries.
The imperialist behavior, which in Ukraine
has taken the form of a “hybrid war,” relies on
the effectiveness of a partially reformed army
as well as on effective propaganda. However,
present-day Russia suffers from a fundamental
weakness. It is its lack of so-called soft power, an
attractiveness created by a prosperous economy
in a country that runs its affairs in a way that
looks like a recipe for success that others might
be tempted to follow.
Another reason for Russia’s lack of stability
is its reliance on a rentier economy. Any growth
in the country’s economy under Vladimir Putin
was largely, if not entirely, due to the rising price
of oil and gas. The only visible modernization—
that of the army—was triggered by the tough
experience of the adventure in Georgia. No
comparable modernization has taken place in
the economy, in the scholarly, research and devel-
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opment sectors, in transport infrastructure or in
the extraction of oil and gas. The latter, being
export articles, are strategically critical for Russia,
as the events at the end of last year so dramatically demonstrated. The weaknesses listed above
inevitably point back to Europe since Europe, or
more precisely the West as a whole, could play
a key role in the modernization which Russia so
badly needs. However, the current conflict triggered by the annexation of Crimea and by Russia’s
support for the separatists in eastern Ukraine,
has severely reduced the chances for this kind
of strategic cooperation.
Vladimir Putin’s policy
of asserting his special
rights in the “near
abroad” is indicative
of structural problems
within the country
which had for centuries
been known as Russia,
for seventy years as
the Soviet Union, and
has once again become
Russia.
A way out of this situation would be difficult
even if it had not been for the current conflict.
This has to do with the notion of “respect,”
which Russian politicians in general and Vladimir Putin in particular have often invoked and
demanded. This attitude is nicely summed up
by an anecdote from a Moscow McDonald’s:
when a foreign tourist suggested to a grim-faced
assistant that it wouldn’t do any harm if she
smiled at her customers from time to time, she
replied: ‘’Why should I? We’re the ones who have
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the meat after all.” This episode illustrates more
than just the communist mentality of permanent shortages; it also has wider implications.
In recent years Russia has applied a policy based
on similar assumptions to its oil and gas trade,
since Moscow regards trade in energy resources
as a source of revenue while at the same time
using it as an instrument of exercising its power
in foreign policy. Last year’s slump in oil prices,
which resulted from the competition between
Arab oil producers and the US, exposed a fundamental flaw in this policy, revealing that it is
incapable of influencing the competition.
The results of this experience might be positive for the West, if only Moscow would draw
the conclusion that it could benefit more from
switching from confrontation to some form of
cooperation. However, it is highly unlikely that
having spent years at the apex of power, the
current Kremlin leadership (and Vladimir Putin in
particular) might be interested in this kind of shift.
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The shaken confidence and weakening
of present-day Russia is reminiscent of the
Soviet Union in the last decade of its existence,
when the then Communist Party leader Mikhail
Gorbachev decided to resolve the critical
situation by a deal. However, his policies are
nowadays regarded as high treason in Russia,
associated as they are with the Cold War defeat,
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the weakening of Russia as a world power. This only
increases the chance that Moscow will not
budge from its current confrontational course.
Europe and the West as a whole have no choice
but to reject this expansionist policy while
maintaining cooperation in areas of common
interest, such as the fight against radical Islamist terrorism. After all, it is an undeniable fact
that at 17 percent of the total, Russia’s Muslim
population is higher than that of any country
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The End of Equality
Jan Sowa
Citizens of developed societies have always regarded
themselves as the winners of globalization. But this is
not true—the capitalist revolution is devouring its own
children.
Perhaps in the nineteenth century there
were texts more affirmatively speaking about
capitalism than The Communist Manifesto, but
not many of them appeared. As paradoxical as it
sounds, The Manifesto is not only a frontal attack
on capitalism, but also its great apology. Marx
and Engels extensively and openly praised the
ability of capitalism to destroy the old, feudal
relations, melting everything that was solid. This
point of view is quite clear if you remember the
evident progressivism in Marx’s thinking—he
sees capitalism as terrible, but still better than
what went before: slavery and feudalism.
It is a pragmatic and technical superiority—
Marx was aware that at a certain stage of its
development capitalism was a factor positively
transforming society through accelerating the
pace of development of the means of production and through releasing the productive forces
from feudal shackles. Marx, who avoids an ahistorical approach and considers socio-economic
phenomena in their specific contexts, perceives
capitalism in a perspective similar to that in
which the French Revolution showed it (we must
remember that Marx was born only three decades
after this event and lived in an era which was
defined, among other things, by the bourgeois
revolution in France).
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The triumphant and dramatic appearance
of the bourgeoisie on the scene held equality
on its banners and there was no hypocrisy in
that. The third estate, celebrated by Emmanuel
Joseph Sieyès in his pamphlet from January
1789, called for a destruction of the traditional
system of privileges in the stratified society.
Equality was one of the sincere goals of the
French Revolution, this political operator of
maturing capitalism. Marx and Engels accept at
face value the progressive consequences of the
capitalist order, but they go beyond the dispute
between liberalism and conservatism, in which
this issue is usually framed. The authors of The
Communist Manifesto are relentless critics of the
modern social order, in which they are remindful
of conservatives. But in contrast to conservatives
they do not believe that the golden era has
already passed. On the contrary, they regard
previous historical epochs as more oppressive
and unjust, so the destruction of the old society
seems to be a step forward. This appreciation of
the progressive force of capitalism resembles the
position of the liberals. But unlike them, Marx
and Engels do not want to recognize it as the
last possible stage of development of human
societies. Capitalism, although in many respects
terrible, is better than everything that has gone
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before, but it also needs to be overcome in the
name of a new, better order.
One of the problems with capitalism that
haunts Marx and Engels is that progress achieved
by this system (through destroying feudalism)
comes at a very high price. Capitalist wealth
is generated at an enormous social cost. More
recently, researchers—mainly Fernand Braudel
and Immanuel Wallerstein—have shown that the
birth of the colonial system and the dawn of capitalism are two names of the same phenomenon.
Starting the engine of capitalist development
required above all primitive accumulation, which
always involved violence. Fencing and other
expropriations of the common good, the tragic
fate of urban proletariat during the Industrial
Revolution, slavery on the plantations (it is no
accident that Industrial Revolution in England
begins in the textile industry, with raw materials
delivered to English factories by slave-owning
cotton plantations from both Americas and the
Caribbean), colonial plunder and many other
negative developments are the price which has
to be paid to fulfill the conditions for capitalist
growth.
Today it is easy to claim that the winners of
this game, satiated citizens of rich societies in
the global North, owe their wealth to frugality
and hard work, but history shows that the roots
of contemporary well-being reach back to things
which were much darker and highly violent. This
is one of the reasons that in the 20th century
Marxism was to achieve such an incredible popularity among national independence activists
from many parts of the world, as illustrated by
such figures as Franz Fanon and Bhagat Singh.
It was by no means the result of Soviet machinations and intrigues, but rather of the belief,
widespread in the colonized countries, that
colonial domination was a part of capitalist development and served this system. It is easy for the
American patriots today to praise the American
Dream and stress that in their country everyone
has an open career path “from rags to riches,”
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but there would be no US success without extermination of the native population of North
America, stealing their land, and gigantic profits
once accumulated in the US economic system
thanks to slave labor. We may try not to remember
these events, which is made all the more simple
by the fact that “money does not stink,” but it
will not change the historical reality: American
capitalism, just as every other one, is built not
only on frugality and hard work, but also on
violence and crime. The oppressors and victims
are long dead, but the once accumulated wealth
is persistently circulating in the veins of the US
economy.
The basic problem is
that capitalism not only
uses, but also transforms
the areas with which
it comes in contact,
thereby eliminating
this external space.
A look at capitalism not anchored in an
ahistorical search for its essence, but rather
perceiving it as a specific historical phenomenon,
forces us to relativize its progressive potential.
Yes, capitalism held a great egalitarian promise of
destroying the old system of privileges. In 1788
access to virtually all major positions in the
French state and to all positions in the French
society was reserved for a narrow group of aristocrats, and what was even worse, it was sometimes
hereditary. In 1790 these functions and positions
were already open to anyone who could demonstrate appropriate talents and entrepreneurship.
Initially, this opening was purely theoretical and
we have still not seen a complete elimination of
such hereditary factors influencing the trajectories of individuals as cultural capital, but it has
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to be admitted, as Marx and Engels do, that the
bourgeoisie effectively destroyed old inequalities, establishing a new society which was free of
them. In fact, this process can be observed even
today in those parts of the world were modernity
is evolving in a slightly different way than in
Western Europe and were the mediaeval period
was put to its grave much later, as it was for
example in Poland. In these regions feudalism
ended as late as in the middle of the 20th century.
Józef Obrębski’s ethnographic research in Polesie
in the 1930s shows that the feudal order persisted
there in an almost undisturbed form. We must
remember that on the territory of the First
Republic serfdom only vanished in the second
half of the 19th century. It is no coincidence that
in Poland we have a lot of various privileges
and special status groups, which testifies to
our historical closeness to the ancien regime:
the highest number of closed professions in
Europe, extreme nepotism, numerous professional groups with special privileges (miners,
teachers, etc.), and even the highest percentage
of disability pensioners. Some of these groups
can organize themselves efficiently and defend
their privileged position. But as the discussion
about the privatization of coalmines in early
2015 showed, capitalism is destroying the system
of privileges with relentless consistency and
force. These privileges cannot be successfully
combined with free-market economy, because
privileges are costly, so they must mean—as
economists put it—an economic handicap.
While capitalism, historically speaking, had
a progressive and emancipatory potential (let us
also recall the change in the position of women,
enforced at least to the same extent by the
struggle of the feminists as by the material necessity of drawing women into the labor market)
and while it is still demonstrating this potential
in these places were the laws of the market are
confronted with the residues of the old order, it is
an ahistorical illusion to believe that it will always
exhibit this potential, thinking that freedom,
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equality and progress are somehow inscribed
in the essence of capitalism. During the century
and a half which has passed since the writing of
The Communist Manifesto, capitalism has been
in many aspects transformed from the main force
building the productive capacities of society into
a major obstacle on the way to further progress.
In order to survive, capitalism always needs some
kind of external space from which it can draw
everything it needs to function (cheap labor,
resources gathered during primary accumulation,
natural resources, etc.) and where it can dump
the negative consequences of its functioning
(inhuman labor conditions in the sewing plants
of Cambodia, poisoning the environment in the
Niger river delta, the price paid by Argentina and
Greece for the asymmetrical distribution of risk
in the global financial system, etc.).
The basic problem is that capitalism not only
uses, but also transforms the areas with which
it comes in contact, thereby eliminating this
external space. Delocalized factories dragged
behind them labor struggles, pushing up the
cost of labor on the peripheries and forcing the
system into further reconfiguration. It could go
on forever, if there always were something
outside which capitalism could overpower and
use. But our globe has a limited surface—due
to the shrinking of rural areas the reservoir of
cheap labor, which under capitalism—regardless
of time and place—was traditionally provided
by poor migrants from the countryside to the
cities, is slowly exhausting itself. Climate change
also indicates that the patience of our planet,
for centuries of capitalist development treated
as a bottomless thrash can, is at its end. To make
matters worse, due to the emergence of an integrated, global labor market inhabitants of the
developed countries of the North (the capitalist
core ) more and more often have to compete for
jobs with workers from the poor South (the
peripheries). And because of differences not only
in the costs of living, but also in habits and aspirations, the former are always doomed to some
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kind of failure in this competition: losing their
job or acceptance of deteriorating working
conditions (or both). The same process is behind
the fact that while the rich elites of societies in
the center, participating in the global turbo-capitalism, are accumulating unbelievable fortunes
at an accelerating pace (never before the top
1% has been making such big money and never
before the ranks of billionaires have been
growing so fast), the remaining members of
developed societies are nostalgically recalling
the golden era of the welfare state and high
earnings.
at halting the growth of inequalities through
creating an illusion of wealth. It becomes possible
thanks to a creative solution to one of the inner
contradictions of capitalism: produce cheaply,
sell dearly. Since wages are only a different name
for internal demand, in order to decrease wages
effectively and painlessly, you have to either find
buyers other than producers or to perpetrate
a miraculous multiplication of resources.
The first maneuver was carried out through
delocalization of production—Henry Ford once
believed that his factory worker should afford
to buy a car he made, for in a sense he was
producing it for himself and others like him,
while in today’s capitalism a seamstress from
Bangladesh may earn a monthly equivalent of
the price of a T-shirt she makes, for everybody
knows that she is not making these T-shirts for
poor workers from the Third World. This solution
is as smart as it is illusory, for it is remindful of
the Baron Munchausen’s efforts at pulling himself
up from a bog by his shoestrings. In the end
someone has to buy these T-shirts if profit is to
be made. But where does he get the money, if his
job was liquidated and transferred to a cheaper
country and the neoliberal attack on the welfare
state is destroying social protections and mechanisms of redistribution of wealth? It is simple—let
him borrow it!
This is the second trick of the capitalist magic,
a true creation ex nihilo, because the future is
something which does not yet exist. And what
if he is unable to pay the loan back? Then—and
this is the third component of the contemporary
turbo-capitalist idea for the world—we will use
public money to save the banks which recklessly
granted risky loans to the penniless. So we not
only abandoned the redistribution of wealth,
bringing taxes down and allowing for privatization of profit in this way, but we are even socializing the losses of capitalists, collectively bearing
the consequences of unwise investments. How
long can you go on like that? This is a political
rather than economic question. Political deve­
Debt, in recent decades
systematically growing
in virtually all economies
of the global North, is
an attempt at keeping
capitalism alive through
colonization of the
future. Redistribution of
income within societies
was replaced with
transfers from the future.
Can we somehow stop this process and save
equality while remaining within capitalism? We
can try. The world we live in has a spatial, but
also a temporal dimension. You can colonize
not only distant continents, but also external
space in the temporal sense, that is the future.
Debt, in recent decades systematically growing in
virtually all economies of the global North, is an
attempt at keeping capitalism alive through colonization of the future. Redistribution of income
within societies was replaced with transfers from
the future. So we are dealing with an attempt
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lopments in Greece, Spain and other countries
of Europe show that perhaps good weather for
the rich is slowly ending.
For many decades opponents of Marxism
accused the author of Das Kapital that he had
made a mistake in one crucial issue—capitalism
did not lead to growing social inequalities, but
on the contrary, it allowed for the emergence of
middle class based societies, thus implementing
freedom in a much broader meaning than the
liberal-capitalist one, which can virtually be
reduced to equality under the law and equal
opportunities as an expression of protest against
class society. This argument is doubly wrong.
First, capitalism can be meaningfully described
and interpreted only as a world or system, rather
than in a local or national perspective. Although
within a narrow group of Western/developed/
central/northern societies social inequalities
were indeed getting smaller, especially during
the three decades after World War II, in the global
scale are the recent centuries a period of growing
inequalities.
This results not only from the fact that the
West has made progress and other areas of the
world have not. Historians and economists such
as Mike Davis and Samir Amin have shown that
before the advent of the era of colonialism and
globalization people in many places of the world
were better off then than today and the participation in the global capitalist economy does not
mean a victory for everyone. And another very
important matter—the growth and the standard
of living in the countries of the center was to
a large extent the result of labor and social struggles in many countries of the world. Antonio Negri
and Michael Hardt once brilliantly showed that
Keynes did not only read Lenin and took a keen
interest in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, but
he also believed that his proposed reforms of
capitalism were the only way to stop the march
of communism in Western countries.1
The specter of revolution (for most of the
20th century much more real than today) and
the resistance of workers forced capital to some
kind of concessions. Such was the condition of
possibility and the main reason for the existence
of welfare states in highly developed countries
of the center. It wasn’t in the least degree an
automatic effect of the functioning of capitalism.
Once these conditions and possibilities ended,
the social achievements started to be dismantled,
which was followed by an evident growth of
inequalities. Citizens of developed societies have
always regarded themselves as the winners of
globalization. But this is not true—the capitalist
revolution is devouring its own children. J A N S OWA
sociologist, essayist, Associate Professor
at the Institute of Culture at the
Jagiellonian University, member
of the world anti-globalist movement
Photo: Iwona Bojadżijewa
1 See M. Hardt, A. Negri, Labor of Dionysus. A Critique of the State-Form, Minneapolis 1994, r. 2, Keynes and the Capitalist Theory
of the State, pp. 23–51.
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Corruption,
Romanian Style
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
What anti-corruption in Romania desperately needs
is politicians able to change the rules of the game
In winter 2012, Romanian protesters posted
in Bucharest’s University Square this message
to their political elites: “Sorry! We fail to produce
as much as you can steal.” The then Prime
Minister, right-winger Emil Boc, stepped down
in February. His successor from the same party,
Mihai Razvan Ungureanu barely lasted a few
weeks. He was brought down not only by his
own failings—a poorly explained EUR 160,000
from an energy company on his wife’s account1
and a huge protocol bill of luxury goods in just
a few weeks on the public payroll—but also by
his attempt to be virtuous, by denying local politicians their usual petty allocations alongside the
approved budget which are used to show off to
constituencies, church building and the like. Later
on in the year, a centrist coalition won elections
and a new young PM, Victor Ponta, was instated.
He was barely a few weeks in his office when he
was denounced as a plagiarist by Nature, possibly
the most prestigious science publication. Worse
still—as low quality degrees in Law are the rule,
not exception in Romania, and are cherished by all
local heads of police and Courts—he also proved
to have a soft spot for energy and companies,
whom he granted favors without mentioning that
his family’s businesses had had services contracts
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from them for many years.2 Meanwhile, President
Basescu finished his second term and had to leave
after ten years—a few weeks before his brother
was arrested for influence peddling—and he is
accused of taking money from some organized
crime pals of his to ease their sentence in a criminal court.
Romania has seen quite interesting times
between 2010 and 2015. Perhaps the most
interesting was that while the country’s judicial anti-corruption accelerated, pressed by the
European Commission (EC) and desperate to
rise to the challenge, using to an unprecedented
maximum the accession safeguard clause, which
is tied to progress on corruption in Romania
and Bulgaria, the population only complained
in surveys that corruption is getting worse and
is becoming more systematic. Global Integrity,
a good governance legislation watchdog also
recorded Romania, together with Bulgaria and
Macedonia, as top of the world when anti-corruption legislation is concerned, but on the
bottom when it comes to implementation.
EC highly appreciated the work of Romania’s
anti-corruption agency, and so did the public.
Starting 2013 the agency (DNA) became more and
more aggressive, encouraged by Brussels, whose
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monitoring reports regularly asked the Parliament to give up protecting its corrupt members
from prosecution, arresting former and current
minister, charging both the father-in-law of Mr.
Ponta and the son-in-law of Mr. Basescu, two
political archrivals, as well as many others. But
still corruption resisted. In December 2013 the
judicial committee of the Parliament spent an
evening after the press was gone erasing from
the legislation conflict of interest for politicians
altogether. It took a public rally and protests from
Brussels to have it reinstated. This explains the
paradox of tough anti-corruption and flourishing
corruption: political parties and politicians have
built a completely corrupt system where they
cannot stop even when danger is close, such is
the vicious circle of complicities.
A few examples are perhaps more telling.
Romania has the lowest tax collection rate and EU
funds absorption in the EU. Both these systemic
failings have systemic explanations. The World
Bank considers the Tax Authority in Romania
one of the most corrupt entities in the administration of the state—even though taxation
in Romania is roughly similar to the European
average, the actual collection rate is consistently
between 29–31% of GDP, a full 10–15% of GDP
lower than in most Central and Eastern European
countries. In a recent paper, I showed that tax
collection alone would return EUR 323 billion
(a double of EU’s 2013 budget), if all EU members
controlled corruption at the Danish level3. As the
most corrupt country in EU-28 Romania loses
a tremendous amount of money.
Mr. Sorin Blejnar, the head of tax office under
Mr. Basescu, who protected DNA and liked to show
himself as Godfather of anti-corruption, has been
indicted for selective enforcement in exchange
for bribes. His head of cabinet was running an
organized crime ring and has fled in 2012. He is
presumed killed so as not to reveal his accomplices:
he has been internationally searched without any
results. The other political camp, which won in
2012, appointed three key people in this area.
As Minister of Finance they appointed Mr. Daniel
Chitoiu, Mr. Dan Rusanu as head of the Financial
Services Authority and a Mr. Gelu Stefan Diaconu
to the positions of head of Tax Authority (ANAF),
successor of Mr. Blejnar, all three from the same
party. Mr. Rusanu, appointed by the Parliament
as head of a complex agency regulating EUR 10
billion worth of business in the stock market,
insurance and private pensions, is a typical Romanian successful businessman, who had amassed
a fortune from dealings with the public sector.
According to the Romanian media, he was at the
time of his appointment the godfather of both
Mr. Diaconu and Mr. Chitoiu, plus of the transportation Minister Relu Fenechiu. Establishment
of such parentage links is more than a hobby for
Romanian politicians and explains their close ties
Politics is not the only
field where corruption
is deep and where
anticorruption,
a combination of media
and watchdog disclosures
leading to prosecutorial
action has started to
unravel the rotten rules of
the game. In 2014, several
Romanian club owners
and former footballers
involved in transfers of
football players have
been sentenced to jail,
with charges of tax
evasion and money
laundering.
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with organized crime. No politicians would dare
refuse a Roma leader who asks him to become
godfather of a child and a network of such relationships connects the political world with the
underworld—if indeed a distinction can be made.
As I write, in January 2015, Mr Chitoiu, Rusanu and
Fenchiu are all in jail, some finally sentenced, others
waiting for their final sentence in a mix of fraudulent and corrupt acts. It is Mr. Diaconu only, who
still continues the reform of the tax office under
the benevolent patronage of the World Bank.
The European funds work no differently
than tax collection. Selectivity is the rule and the
party has to have a share. Funds are left unused
(explaining their lack of absorption) if they cannot
be directed to favorite companies. Favoritism is
rampant. Even in the EU funds for administration
prosecutors found that whole government agencies had to contribute, employee by employee,
in paying a bribe to some central office for the
matching funds from central budget—funds
which without bribes would never have arrived.
A variety of schemes exist, but the common model
is this: poorly funded parties and public offices
spoil to support themselves and their campaigns.
A slogan on the door of Social Democrats in the
poor town on Roman in Moldova says it all: Join us.
Invest in your future. Public sector is severely politicized (down to hospital managers and school
directors), top government agencies frequently
buy their offices, then recuperate their money
and pay the party share. Parties are like medieval
armies: they are not paid, they cater for themselves
from spoils, but also give a commission for the
joint interest. The edifice started to crumble only
in 2014, when the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) came to grips with a huge corruption
scandal that revealed deep-seated clientelistic
networks stretching over four subsequent governments. It concerned a large public procurement
contract that was signed by various governments,
and in which Microsoft software licenses were
purchased 30% to 40% above market prices
through an intermediate company. The DNA has
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started investigations against nine former ministers who supervised this rent-extracting scheme
throughout four subsequent governments.
Politics is not the only field where corruption
is deep and where anticorruption, a combination of media and watchdog disclosures leading
to prosecutorial action has started to unravel
the rotten rules of the game. In 2014, several
Romanian club owners and former footballers
involved in transfers of football players have been
sentenced to jail, with charges of tax evasion and
money laundering. The clubs involved are FC
Rapid, FC Dinamo and FC Steaua. The impresarios
Ioan Becali and Victor Becali, cousins of George
Becali, also received prison sentences. They have
all been selling and buying soccer players for
years in the amount of millions of euros declaring
only peanuts to the Tax Office. Former football star
and national coach Gica Popescu also received
a sentence of three years and one month in jail.
The other seriously afflicted area is media.
Only 10% of Romanian media published—and
90% declined to publish—its sources of financing
from owners and advertising, following an appeal
for a clean press by Alliance for Clean Romania,
a watchdog. In 2014 the Appeals Court finally gave
a ten year prison sentence in the corruption case
of Romanian media owner Dan Voiculescu related
to the privatization of the Food Research Institute (ICA).4 This was seen as a historical landmark
and comes after years of judicial delays, political
maneuvering and media attacks on the judiciary.
The case was started in 2008 and the previous
court had given a five year sentence in the same
case, but it was appealed. The Court also decided
on property seizures and penalties amounting to
about half Mr. Voiculescu’s fortune, raising doubts
on the ability of his media empire to go on. Twelve
other people also involved in this corruption case
received sentences of up to 8 years. The case also
exposed the fact that Mr. Voicuelscu’s fortune
was not only built on his ties with Ceausescu’s
Securitate, as previously thought, but also on plain
post-communist corruption and fraudulent privat-
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ization. In another trial he was accused that his
company, Grivco, bought electrical energy from
the state-controlled Rovinari complex, and sold
the energy back to Electrica, another state-controlled company, at a large profit. The journalists
of Voiculescu’s TV Antena 3 spent most of the last
years attacking prosecutors and the judiciary, even
the Constitutional Court, displaying on TV their
pictures and even home addresses accompanied
by hate speech.
What anti-corruption in Romania desperately
needs is politicians able to change the rules of
the game. A start was made by elections of Sibiu
Mayor Klaus Johannis against favorite Mr. Ponta,
with a clear anti-corruption mandate. Mr. Ponta
showed in his defeat clearer than ever why old
politics cannot work anymore. For instance, he
passed a decree at the end of summer 2014 called
“Government ordinance 55/2014 on regulating
some measures regarding the local public administration,” which targeted local mayors and county
and local council members and gave them 45
days to change—if they wished so and without
losing their mandate—their political affiliation
(only once) and join any other party than the
one through which they were elected in office
or become an independent. 5 The ordinance
exempted local officials from the provisions of
Law no. 393/2004 regarding the Status of locally
elected officials which states that local/county
councilors and mayors will lose their mandate
if they migrate to a party through which they
were not elected.6 Following the failure of the
Ombudsman to attack it, the ordinance was
enacted and hundreds of locally elected officials
switched party, followed by huge budgetary allocations to their constituencies which swallowed
the budget deficit. The Constitutional Court ruled
after second round of presidential elections at the
end of November that the law was not constitutional, as it could change the majority results
from elections, asked all councilors to resign
and left the Parliament to find a solution for the
mayors. Mr. Johannis’ party had lost over a third
of his locally elected officials during the electoral
campaign when the law was still active.
His first act as a president was to require the
Parliament to kill an amnesty law for corruption
which they had been breeding for a while, and
they promptly delivered. He then asked for electoral reforms and a prompt lifting of immunities
of MPs when prosecutors ask for it. On previous
elections the joke was that whoever lost elections
would go to jail. The feeling now is that everybody
is going to jail, and the President simply has to
wait patiently for the 2016 legislative elections to
bring in a new political class. His 6.5 million voters
who defeated the electoral bribing machine of
his opponents, many of them queuing for hours
to vote for him, gave him a strong mandate.
ALINA MUNGIU-PIPPIDI
chairs Romanian Academic Society
(www.sar.org.ro), a think-tank in
Bucharest and the Alliance for Clean
Romania, a civil society coalition.
This piece draws on reports of these
organizations.
Photo: Hertie School of Governance
Berlin
1 http://www.riseproject.ro/articol/afacerile-puterii-si-ale-opozitiei/
2 http://www.romaniacurata.ro/exclusiv-premierul-ponta-a-favorizat-petrom-si-rompetrol-doua-firme-de-pe-urma-carora-a-profitatfamilia-sa/
3 http://www.euractiv.com/general/eu-corruption-times-expected-323-news-518998
4 http://business-review.eu/featured/romanian-media-mogul-dan-voiculescu-sentenced-to-ten-years-in-prison-68412
5 GEO no. 55 of 28 August/2014 on regulating some measures regarding the local public administration, published in the Official Gazette
no. 646, 2 September 2014, http://lege5.ro/Gratuit/gqydimrsgq/ordonanta-de-urgenta-nr-55–2014-pentru-reglementarea-unor-masuriprivind-administratia-publica-locala
6 The restrictions on political migration in local public administration are present in Article 9, para. 2 (h) and Article 15, para. 2 (g) of
Law 393/2004.
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77
Defending
the Wrong Rule of Law
Maciej Kisilowski
Both liberal democracy and business environment
in Central Europe suffer from the extreme level
of formalism in making and implementing laws and
regulations—the approach, which has unfortunately
been eagerly promoted by the region’s legal elite.
mind that it was Poland that first encountered
the post-EU-accession brand of illiberal populism, with the 2005–2007 rule of the Kaczynski
twins. That political project faltered but the
lingering dissatisfaction of large segments of
the Polish society with the status quo continues,
reminding us about how short a distance separates the narratives of a “regional success story”
and a “young democracy in crisis.” This stubborn
socio-political volatility is precisely what should
prompt us to seriously examine aspects of the
liberal model promoted in the region.
What problem with the Polish version of the
rule of law has my research uncovered? The short
answer is “extreme, often grotesque, formalism.”
By that I mean the true obsession of the Polish
legal elite with what I call “the neatness of the
legal system”—up to and including the actual
tidiness of legal texts—at the expense of any
serious attention to laws’ real-life socio-economic consequences.
In Poland, this fixation with the formal aspect
of laws sometimes surfaces in the public debate
in the context of nonsensical decisions of our
administrators of justice. A good case in point
is the tale of Joanna W., a single mother and
Even though a quarter century has passed
since the fall of Communism, for many Western
commentators political stories that come from
Central Europe are still invariably viewed as
episodes of a grand struggle between wellminded (if often fallible) forces promoting
Western-style standards of democracy and the
assortment of bad guys—populists, xenophobes,
bribers. One unfortunate consequence of such
a mindset is that we rarely reflect on whether
the Western standards themselves, as applied
in the region, suffer from some design flaws. My
research over the last decade has been focused
precisely on such defects in the model of the
rule of law—or Rechtsstaat, as our lawyers like
to call it—promoted in Central Europe.
My broadest dataset comes from Poland,
where I have interviewed and surveyed hundreds
of public officials responsible for producing
and enforcing laws and regulations. This Polish
emphasis may, in a peculiar way, be timely given
the country’s current status as the poster child
of Western analysts. Today’s Poland is a place
where the model of liberal democratic transition is emphatically not under challenge by
politicians in power. But it is worth keeping in
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a micro-entrepreneur from the city of Opole,
who in 2012 was jailed (with her kids sent in
their pajamas to a foster care) for issuing a wrong
kind of invoice in her flower shop. Another is
a verdict against a director of a prison who paid
a 13 dollar fine for a schizophrenic inmate jailed
for stealing a 30 cent candy. The court found the
director guilty of paying a fine on behalf of an
unrelated person. Yet this senseless formalism
is even more harmful at the stage of drafting
new laws and regulations. Despite repeated
encouragements from the OECD, Poland (and
most other Central European countries) still
treats Regulatory Impact Assessments as essentially a window dressing. The laws are written
without any reflection on whether benefits of
a new regulation justify its costs. And by “costs”
I do not mean only budgetary expenses, but all
Business School, we even keep the dedicated
online Repository of Governmental Absurdities,
with executives from throughout the region
eagerly contributing examples. The list never
seems to end.
Behind these unfortunate outcomes stands
a growing institutional framework bolstering the
obsession with legal neatness and the concomitant neglect of serious policy analysis. In Poland,
this institutional environment includes the
increasingly powerful, uber-formalist Governmental Legislative Center that closely oversees
every piece of law and regulation introduced
by the Cabinet, the lawyers-heavy analytical
staff of the Parliament, and formalistic courts
and control institutions, particularly the Constitutional Tribunal and the Central Audit Office.
To be sure, the neatness-function tension is
inherent in any legal order. In the generally policy-oriented United States, the Supreme Court
has recently agreed to hear the challenge to
President Obama’s landmark healthcare reform,
based on an argument that a section of the
1.000-page Affordable Care Act mentions federal
tax credits for the insured only in the context of
insurance exchanges “established by the State.”
On a literal read, this would imply that residents of states which refused to organize such
exchanges, and where the federal government
stepped in to fill the void, would not be eligible
for the federal subsidy. But the case seems to
be a long shot and even the decision to hear it
was harshly criticized by most American legal
commentators. Compare it to Poland, where in
mid-2000s the Constitutional Tribunal stroke
down an important provision of a parliamentary
act because, in the court’s opinion, the provision
was placed in a wrong section of the text.
Some may argue that the problem of the
overly formalistic approach to law is not specific
to the post-Communist Central European states,
being rather a feature common to countries
which belong to the so-called Continental
legal culture. Indeed, some cross-country
In Poland, the fixation
with the formal aspect
of laws sometimes
surfaces in the public
debate in the context
of nonsensical decisions
of our administrators
of justice.
the burdens on the economy, and especially on
entrepreneurs. Business groups constantly bring
examples of these irrational burdens to light.
A recent comment in the business section of
Rzeczpospolita daily points out, for instance, that
after a string of amendments to various corporate laws, so many common business mistakes
have been criminalized in Poland that “the job
of a board member begins to resemble that of
a mine disposal specialist.” In my Initiative for
Regulatory Innovation research center at CEU
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studies suggest that economies based on the
more flexible, functionally-oriented common
law system enjoy certain institutional advantages over their Continental counterparts.
Yet there are important differences between
Central European and Western styles of “Continental” lawyering. A starting point here is
legal e
­ ducation. Although the United States
and Canada are rather unique in requiring
lawyers to finish a full undergraduate degree
in a non-legal discipline prior to pursuing legal
studies, Western European law schools still
generally offer more training in social sciences
and humanities than their Central European
counterparts. In Central Europe, lawyers are—to
put it bluntly—high school graduates who spent
a few years memorizing a lot of codes. Western
Europe benefits also from a more robust environment of policy-oriented centers of thinking,
such as the Grandes Ecoles system in France or
well-funded specialized research institutes in
Germany. In many Western European countries,
there is also a more developed culture of corporatist-style dialog that allows political decision­
‑makers to leverage real-life policy insights of
industry and civil-society actors. Finally, Western
Europe—and especially international institutions such as the European Commission or
OECD—has also been increasingly affected by
the American culture of policy analysis, partly
through the hiring of graduates of American
or American-style schools of public policy. In
Central Europe, the formalist zeal of narrowly
educated lawyers is not similarly balanced by
other sources of substantive policy expertise.
Even more fundamentally, there are important
historical reasons why Central European lawyers
are particularly unwilling to appreciate the
more functional, policy-oriented aspect of laws.
When the Communism fell in 1989, much of the
region’s legal elite—high court judges, influential commentators, notable prosecutors and
attorneys—was encumbered with a record of
at least some degree of accommodation toward
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the Communist regime. This “résumé problem”
made it exceedingly uncomfortable for lawyers
to embrace value-laden, functionalist positions in
the spirit of the new democratic order. Appearing
as non-political legal technicians was a much
safer option, especially since it was fully in line
with the relentless emphasis of Western advisors
on “strengthening the rule of law.” In addition,
the neatness-oriented perspective guaranteed
Yet there are important
differences between
Central European
and Western styles
of “Continental”
lawyering. A starting
point here is legal
education.
a rather impressive degree of intellectual continuity. As my and other authors’ research shows,
Central European legal professionals happened
to be rather formalistic also under communism—
the tendency, which (depending on one’s interpretation) may be regarded either as an effort
to limit communist excesses by subjecting the
regime to some legal rules or as an opportunistic
strategy to avoid taking a stance against glaring
human rights violations of the day. Reasons aside,
if one looks at the history of some of the most
extremely formalist legal institutions created in
the region—such as the Article 92 of the Polish
Constitution which severely limits the ability to
establish new regulatory agencies—the roots of
many of these institutions date back to discussions and postulates of the legal community from
the 1960s or 1970s.
Unfortunately, as I claimed at the outset, the
obsession with the formal aspect of law contri­
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butes in many ways to the underlying weakness of the liberal-democratic model of Central
European governance. Two groups of these
harmful effects are particularly worth emphasizing. On one hand, the lack of appreciation of
socio-economic consequences of laws increases
the likelihood of harmful policy mistakes.
In Hungary, it took the illiberal Orbán administration to solve the glaring social problem
of Swiss Franc mortgages, which brought
incredible hardship to hundreds of thousands
of Hungarians. A functional policy perspective
would immediately question the reasonableness
of these loans: Is an individual consumer really
best suited to bear the FX risk, especially if she
is sold the CHF mortgage precisely because her
credit rating would not allow her to get the same
amount in the local currency? How do these
mortgages account for the well-researched
phenomenon of bounded rationality? But the
formalist perspective focuses instead on esoteric
concepts such as “the sanctity of contracts.”
That is obviously not particularly convincing to
people suffering from disastrous consequences
of the policy, such as the Polish group of CHF
borrowers. These losers in the formalist jujitsu
are an ideal group to be targeted by populists.
In addition, the capriciousness of the formalist
system decreases the willingness of many other
groups, especially entrepreneurs, to defend that
system against populist encroachments. If the
life of a businessperson is already so unpredictable under the liberal rule of law, how much
worse can it get if populists take over?
On the other hand, the formalist focus
deeply undermines the public debate, often
to the advantage of populists. For in some
way, populists are the only ones who get it
right about the law—treating it not as a sacred
artifact of democracy but as a tool to achieve
certain socio-economic outcomes. Liberals
tie their hands if instead of bringing to light
potentially disastrous consequences of populist
policies—and, importantly, outlining attractive
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consequences of their own proposals—they
engage in their favorite talk about “standards of
democracy and the rule of law.” For most people,
standards and principles are simply too abstract
to outweigh immediate concerns over the future
of their family, business, or employment. Instead
of defending the hollow, and often genuinely
misguided, version of the rule of law, liberals
should focus on the admittedly more difficult
task of demonstrating why a liberal state will
be better to live and work in than a populist
one.
MACIE J KISILOWSKI
is the director of Initiative of
Regulatory Innovation and Assistant
Professor of Law and Public
Management at Central European
University Business School.
Photo: Central European
University Budapest
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Russia’s Non-Soviet Path
Vladislav L. Inozemtsev
Fortunately for the world, no matter how “Asian” the
Russian leadership may become, the Russians have been
and remain an inherently European people
During the most part of 2014, Russia’s leaders
tried to become (or to be considered) as ones
of the former Soviet Union—the intervention
into Crimea sought to be somewhat similar to
the behavior of the USSR in Czechoslovakia in
1968; increasing military spending was intended
to revive memories of the strong nuclear power,
while inside Russia’ borders a non-democratic
system, reminiscent of the Communist era, was
built and secured. Russian “politologists” begun
to label President Putin’s close circle as “Politburo,”
following the old Soviet habit. In the West, Russia’s
policy was increasingly described as imperial, and
the developments that followed the annexation
of Crimea were called a new Cold War.
However, today’s Russia is not the Soviet
Union, and its “imperial” course is rather an
attempt to simulate the past than to recreate
it. One can talk about Russia’s economy, whose
share in the gross global product is now 4–5 times
less significant than that of the Soviet Union, and
which critically depends on imports of goods
and technologies from abroad. One can argue
about the patterns of social behavior, completely
subordinated to the materialist motives. One
may recall the number of allies the Soviet Union
possessed, and the amount thereof, which the
current Russian Federation has still preserved. But
all this, in my opinion, is much less important than
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the fundamental difference, which now attracts
far less attention—both by the analysts and the
general public.
The times when the Soviet Union stood against
another great power—the United States, were
quite unique times. Although today it is widely
believed it was a period of greatest advances
of nation-states, small attention is paid to an
obvious fact the main competitors were not
nation-states in the full sense of the word. The
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United
States of America were—and I think it was by no
means a coincidence—the only major powers
being named in a way that rejected any national
or ethnic connotations. In some way, each of them
can even be called an ideological negation of the
nation-state. Of course, they had allies that have
been historical nations in the Herderian sense: on
the one hand there were Britain, France, Germany,
Japan; on the other—Poland, Hungary, Vietnam,
at some time China, but both superpowers were
largely the constructs that were designed to deny
history’s familiarity, and that was evident at every
point, starting even from the name of the country.
The United States were built as a “city upon a hill,”
as the indispensable nation, nurtured by the American Creed—by the idea that human freedom and
the pursuit of happiness are natural and essential
for each individual. Priority of the private over the
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public was considered here as an absolute principle—much more imperative than it was taken
even in Europe. The Soviet Union was created as
an ideological state on the basis of the communist concept of social equality; it was born with
the hope for the worldwide revolution and was
regarded as an instrument of liberating the world
from the domination of capitalists over the working
class. The underlying idea was the domination of
the collective over the private, the priority of the
common good over the individualistic incentives.
The clash of the superpowers during the Cold
War was a clash not of “civilizations,” but of ideologies—and even while one of them was defeated,
one should recognize that for many decades they
seemed to be almost equally attractive. No one
among the historians of the 20th century would say
that the opposing camps were motivated only by
their economic and geopolitical considerations.
The influence of messianic concepts at the time
was huge, if not decisive.
The collapse of the Soviet Union confirmed
that one of these ideologies, if not less attractive
than the other, at least proved to be less effective
in creating a viable society capable of delivering
high living standards to its citizens and becoming
competitive in the global economy. The period
that followed the Cold War, became for some
European and former Soviet countries a time to
rethink the previous guidelines and to choose
a new trends in their development.
The bigger part of the European countries
chose the path of incorporating into the European
Union. I would note it as one more polity, which
not only lacked a pronounced national identity
(the “European” union had the same connotation as the united states “of America”), but
also emerged as a means of suppression and
overcoming excessive nationalism that ravaged
Europe in the mid-20th century. The notion of
“Europeanness” in this project, of course, had
not assumed any universality comparable with
that presupposed by the founding fathers of the
United States or by Soviet revolutionaries, but
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it gave the system a high degree of flexibility in
a new globalized world—allowing it, in particular, to become the only one case of expansion
of a supranational polity in the past half-century. The European Union, in my view, is the first
ever example of a non-ideological negation of
the nation-state. United Europe doesn’t profess
neither individualism nor collectivism; it does not
seek to impose forcefully its own model as widely
as possible in the world—but it’s obvious that it
promotes the idea of a peaceful society, based
on the rule of law and social solidarity, seeking
to move away, as the two superpowers of the
20th century once did, from any national, ethnic,
historical, and (unlike the United States, but not
unlike the Soviet Union), even religious factors
which can distort the social fabric.
A smaller part of the European countries, as
well as many post-Soviet states chose a different
path—the path of relying on their “glorious” history
which presupposed a special look into the past
and rapture of the national pride and uniqueness. Nationalism has become a natural support
measure both for the new independent nations,
which faced at least some difficulties in recalling
their former significant achievements, and to the
old imperial ones who have tried to restore their
identity through an appeal to their former might
and influence. Very often this approach brought
conflicts and war—as it happened in Yugoslavia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova. Sometimes, it
became a prerequisite for imperial policies (in the
case of Yugoslavia they were not too successful,
in the case of Russia they are already quite costly,
but not yet realizing all its negative consequences).
But nowhere had nationalism spawned new
universal ideologies and nowhere had it opened
new horizons, nowhere had it become—and
was unable to become—a basis for international
integration. In recent history, nationalism has
always appealed to the primordial attributes of
an individual, but not to her or his conscience and
reason. Its opponents—sometimes intuitively, but
always powerfully, rejected its reasonable nature:
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it may be noted as an example that in the famous
Soviet song “Get Up, the Giant Country!”, written
a few days after Hitler’s invasion into the USSR,
the author appealed to repel the Nazi invaders,
describing them firstly as the “oppressors of all
the ardent thoughts” and only then as “rapists
and murderers.”
It this radical shift in emphasis one may see
a fundamental difference between the communist Soviet Union and the contemporary Russian
Federation. President Putin is deeply wrong,
arguing that “the Soviet Union was the same
Russia, but just called in another way.” A country
without any ideology and any set of common
ideas cannot become the heir to an ideological
empire, and vice versa—an ideological empire
cannot be regarded as the same kind of state as
a historical nation.
The Soviet Union was based on a global ideological paradigm that denied any elements, actually and even potentially dividing people (ethnic,
national and in the most radical way—religious
ones). “Empire” that the USSR has built, could not
always be based on voluntary accession to it by
other countries and peoples, but it has never been
based on exclusivity—on the contrary, its greatest
people, the Russians, was often deprived of the
attention it deserved being subjugated to the
means of a large multiethnic country. It was this
approach that allowed the Soviet Union—albeit
not for his own benefit—to dominate almost half
of the world, challenging its geopolitical and
ideological opponents.
Russia today seems to be something complete
opposite not only to the Soviet Union, but to
some extent even to the old Russian Empire. The
new center for Putin’s policies is now the idea of
the “Russian world”—an idea that looks not only
inherently nationalistic but deeply particularistic.
One may speak as long as he or she wants of the
“humanism” of the Russians, arguing that they
wish to bring to the world the ideals of “conciliarity”, “communalism” and collectivism—but all
this does not negate the main point: the fact
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that Russia had de facto recognized that it does
not produce any sympathy outside the lands
inhabited by the representatives of its “titular
nation.” Russia exists where the Russians are
present—and it disappears where they are not
at hand. Therefore the “Russian World” doctrine is
a clear step back not only from the Soviet univer-
Russia today seems to
be something complete
opposite not only to
the Soviet Union, but to
some extent even to the
old Russian Empire. The
new center for Putin’s
policies is now the idea
of the “Russian world”—
an idea that looks
not only inherently
nationalistic but deeply
particularistic.
salist ideology, but even from the 19th-Century
concept of Pan-Slavism shared at that time by
many Russian thinkers and politicians who tried
to find at least some way out from the narrow
world inherently limited by its “Russianness.” One
should also add to this an enhanced use of the
traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church by
Russia’s ruling class, a confession that remains
a marginal branch of Christianity, but over a thousand years turned from an independent moral
authority into a humble servant of the state—and
therefore being unable to produce any significant
universalist ideological “product.”
In empires based on the promotion of ideas,
the periphery may even benefit from formal
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subordination to the metropolis; in empires,
whose aim is to satisfy the request of the titular
nation for its own self-esteem, nothing like this
can occur (and therefore the Eurasian Union,
which Russia now plans to construct, will fail even
before it is formally announced). The history is
rich in proofs that nationalist empires are very
dangerous both for their neighbors and for themselves as well.
The contemporary Russia is a very “sick”
country. It is infected with its own past, which
in many ways was even more inspiring than the
story of the other great powers. While creating
the largest continental empire in the world from
the 16th to the 19th century, Russia found unique
historical recipes for unifying and governing
unimaginably huge landmasses. Being initially
a historically closed ethnic-national state, the
Russian Empire transformed itself into a relatively cosmopolitan one—and later turned into
a country that debunked all primordial prejudices to the maximum extent. However, after
finding itself at a great crossroads by the end
of the 20th century, Russia had not risked to try
the most successful social experiments, fearing
to turn into just one of the many “European” or
“Western” countries. At this crucial point particularism defeated universalism—and even if it
probably may give the country some additional
sources of vitality, this new particularism deprives
Russia of any prospect of becoming the center of
not only of an empire, but even of any successful
economic integration project.
Russia is by no means an heir to the Soviet
Union. It had lost not only many significant territories of the former superpower, but its ideology, its
spirit, and its principles. Today it’s a real fun to look
how fiercely the Kremlin leaders try to oppose
Russia to the US—and not so much because of
the incompatibility of the economic and technological capacities of both countries, but because
of their disproportionately different degrees of
attractiveness to the world. One may only laugh
seeing how Russian political elite, unable to settle
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dozens of quarrels even with Belarus, its closest
ally, speculates about the forthcoming “inevitable” collapse of the European Union which has
successfully expanded from 12 to 28 members
just in the time that passed between the separation of three Baltic countries from the Soviet
Union and the last re-election of Vladimir Putin as
the President of Russia. Today one may become
scared thinking about how many new military
adventures and how many deaths and sufferings
may the future “reunification” of Russia cause in
presumably “Russian” territories, allegedly illegally
pulled out from “the historical Russia” by Soviet
communists.
If Russia’s Federation Council is unable to
conform with the Constitution of the USSR the
transfer of Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet
Socialist Republic in 1954, why should Russia not
challenge the expansion of the Kazakh Soviet
Socialist Republic in the 1940s, or even the fact
of converting the status of Kazakh Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republic as a part of the RSFSR to
a “full” Soviet Socialist Republic that happened
back in 1936? Why shouldn’t be cancelled the
recognition of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia as
independent states proclaimed by the USSR’
Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People’s
Deputies of the Soviet Union in 1991? Would
this not be the next step following the actual
rehabilitation of the Soviet leadership in the
conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?
Appealing to the idea of the “Russian World,”
Russia objectively becomes the main source
of threats and instability in Europe; it forever
turns away from the West and looks to the East
with its largely monoethnic states, which—like
China—see in their diasporas a powerful tool of
economic mobilization and (quite probably) of
future political expansion.
Fortunately for the world, no matter how
“Asian” the Russian leadership may become, the
Russians have been and remain an inherently
European people. They can much better ­assimilate
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with other nations than Chinese. As many recent
developments show (e.g., the failure of efforts to
return a significant number of overseas Russian
compatriots to their homeland and the increasing
emigration of self-made educated young people
from Russia), “Russian world” becomes increasingly dividing into two parts—into the world of
“Russian professionals” who are able and willing to
realize themselves almost in any society, and into
the world of “professional Russians,” whose main
business is to obtain financial benefits and organizational support from the Russian authorities.1
The last of these “worlds” is limited in scope
and power, since there are not too many Russians
in the post-Soviet countries that have successfully
resisted any incorporation into their new states,
and because any repetition of events similar to
those that occurred in Crimea and in the Donbass
will lead to perception of the Russians living in the
post-Soviet states as a “fifth column” and to treating
them with increasing hostility and suspicion. The
consequence will be “squeezing” the Russians back
into Russia and, in the long term, the transformation of post-Soviet countries into the classic nationstates, reluctant to listen to any integration appeals
from Moscow. I would add that the first of the
“Russian worlds” is now estranged by the Russian
authorities who increase pressure on individuals
with dual citizenship, thereby preventing the
Russians potentially willing to return to Russia from
really returning. Therefore I’m confident that after
a few years (or even decades) of “empire-building,”
Russia will inevitably abandon them—perhaps
becoming somewhat bigger in territorial terms,
but being surrounded by states whose identity
will be built on the denial of everything that may
be regarded as Russian.
The Soviet Union was a typical 20th century
power, engaged in social and geopolitical experiments alongside with other great powers of its
times. It became a place of great achievements
and great tragedies—but in neither of them was
unique during its heyday. Russia, by a historical
chance living in the 21st century world , has done
and is doing everything it can to remain—with its
imperial authoritarianism, inherited nationalism,
and the Orthodox beliefs—a 19th century country.
Until now it succeeds to live in this “another
world”—and it means that the global community
should be beware not of Russia’s appeal, but of
Russia’s brutal force; but at the same time, it also
means that the period when Russia could claim
a truly global reach, has passed and never will be
back. Whether is this good or bad, both Russia’s
neighbors and other global political players need
to analyze with all possible seriousness. To analyze,
and to come to appropriate conclusions—the
sooner, the better…
V L A D I S L AV
L. INOZEMTSEV
Director of Centre for Post-Industrial
Studies (Moscow) and Senior nonResident Associate at Center for
Strategic and International Studies
(Washington)
Photo: Archive Vladislav Inozemtsev
1 Wladislaw Inosemzew. “Wer gehört zur ‘russischen Welt’?” in: Internationale Politik, 2014, № 6 (November-December), SS. 94–101.
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Can Orbán Break out
of the Diplomatic
Isolation?
Péter Krekó
Bulcsú Hunyadi
Krisztián Szabados
Hungary’s PM Viktor Orbán has been practicing seesaw politics between the East (Russia)
and the West (Germany) for years. His aim is to
exploit the relations with Russia and with Western
partners alike. His pragmatic approach has not
been without examples and predecessors in
Europe. However, he made two mistakes which
put him in a pariah status for Hungary’s allies in
the EU, NATO and in the CEE region. Firstly, he
talked about Eastern authoritarian regimes as his
models several times and expressed his aim to
transform Hungary into an “illiberal state.” Due
to the government’s “freedom fight” against the
EU and a series of “illiberal actions” since 2010,
Western partners had become suspicious about
the Hungarian government’s commitment to the
EE already before the crisis in Ukraine started. And
secondly, Mr. Orbán did not recognize that the
crisis in Ukraine created a completely new situation, and changed the rules of the game. With the
Cold War logic re-entering into Europe, everybody
has to take sides. When Mr. Orbán kept on with
his balancing messages and criticism of the sanctions, he fuelled the distrust of Hungary’s Western
allies. The “illiberal” image and the continuing
friendship with Russia represent the main obsta-
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cles of breaking out of the diplomatic isolation.
Orbán wanted to end this isolation through the
visit of the German chancellor at the beginning of
February, and then his visit to Ukraine and Poland.
However, his attempt completely failed, mainly
due to the Russian president’s visit to Hungary
just two weeks after Mrs. Merkel.
The main Hungarian
strategy to
counterbalance
the tarnished
American‑Hungarian
relations was the
reconciliation with
Germany.
After the relations with the US became frozen
cold following the US entry ban in October 2014
to some (mostly unknown) allies of the prime
minister due to corruption issues, and after
Orbán could obviously feel the disadvantages
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of his diplomatic isolation, he decided to launch
a diplomatic campaign in order to improve the
tarnished image of himself and his government.
The main Hungarian strategy to counterbalance
the tarnished American-Hungarian relations was
the reconciliation with Germany. There are two
main reasons to do this. First, Germany is practically Hungary’s main investor and export partner.
German and Hungarian growth figures are generally running in parallel. And the second reason is
that Orbán hoped that Germany, a country with
a long history of good economic and political
ties to Russia, will show more empathy towards
Orbán’s “Eurasian” economic extension plans, and
to the Eastern Opening in general. For Orbán, two
countries matter the most: Germany, because
it creates jobs, and Russia, because it provides
energy.
Hungarian diplomacy did its best to consolidate the German-Hungarian relations and
prepare a convenient ground for Mrs. Merkel’s
visit. Besides the fact that Mr. Orbán gave
several interviews to German media outlets
in order to improve the government’s image,
the government made several factual gestures
towards Germany (and generally, towards the
West) as well. First and foremost, on January 1,
2015, Hungary restarted its gas transfer towards
Ukraine which was suspended suddenly in late
September 2014, just three days after Gazprom
chief Aleksey Miller’s secret talks with Mr. Orbán
in Budapest. Mrs. Merkel praised this step during
her visit to Budapest several times. Secondly,
Hungarian government started negotiations
on the disputed advertisement tax with the
international media outlet RTL—and finally
promised to cut the tax that mostly punished
Bertelsmann’s RTL. Thirdly, Orbán acknowledged
the Hungarian state’s responsibility for the Holocaust in a speech on January 26. Hungary also
supported the extension of sanctions on Russia in
the European Union foreign minister meeting in
Brussels on January 29 (like it has every previous
decisions on this issue).
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Seemingly, the success of this strategy was
that Angela Merkel accepted the invitation of
the Hungarian side and came to Hungary at the
beginning of February. However, already before
Merkel’s arrival there have been signs of the icy
nature of German-Hungarian relations. A clear
signal was that German diplomacy has long postponed the visit whose preparation took a very
long time.
But while the Hungarian government
desperately tried to present Angela Merkel’s visit
as a great success, Mrs. Merkel’s visit to Hungary
proved to be rather a fiasco for Hungary’s PM
Viktor Orbán. Although Hungary’s government
had made huge efforts to meet German expectations, PM Orbán had to listen to the chancellor’s
diplomatic yet strong and determined criticism
during a joint press conference. Mrs. Merkel’s
visit revealed clear disagreements between
the chancellor and PM Orbán over the concept
of illiberal democracy, the treatment of NGOs
and the media, and the required policy towards
Russia. While Mr. Orbán took a permissive position by emphasizing Hungary’s dependence
on Russian energy supply and the necessity of
Russia’s inclusion in the European economy and
the joint economic space from the Atlantic to
Vladivostok, Mrs. Merkel underlined the necessity of the sanctions and considered Ukraine’s
territorial integrity and the settlement of the
crisis between Russia and Ukraine prerequisite
for normalizing the relations between Russia
and the EU. Following the political fiasco, the
government’s propaganda machine launched
a controversial PR stunt to shift the focus from
the political criticism to the successful business agreements made during the negotiations.
However, the leaked information about a new
BMW manufacturing plant and the expansion
of the existing Mercedes-Benz plant was soon
denied by both companies.
Although the fact that Mrs. Merkel’s visit
helped Mr. Orbán send a message to the
Hungarian public that he is not treated as a pariah
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in the West, his attempt to position himself as
a mediator between Russia and the EU clearly
failed. Furthermore, the visit made clear that there
is an agreement between Mrs. Merkel and
Mr. Orbán only in general questions and on the
surface regarding the policy towards Russia.
Thirdly, the leaked information on high-level
business agreements that proved to be false or
half-true just deteriorated the government’s
credibility both domestically and internationally.
Due to all this, Mrs. Merkel’s visit failed to prove
Hungary’s acceptance among the Western partners even though Mr. Orbán stressed many times
during Mrs. Merkel’s visit that Hungary is
committed to support Germany’s position on the
foreign policy.
the agreements to be signed during the visit
(e.g. agreement between the health and education ministries of the two countries, treaty on
the opening of a Hungarian general consulate
in Russian Kazan and a memorandum about
the diplomatic calendar for 2015). However,
in reality, none of the agreements would have
required Mr. Putin’s visit which was against the
EU consensus about freezing bilateral meetings
between Russia and EU member states since the
shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.
Nevertheless, the visit was a clear success
for the Russian president and a disaster for Mr.
Orbán’s appreciation among Western allies.
Through his visit to Hungary Mr. Putin was able
to declare that there are EU and NATO members
that are still highly supportive towards Russia and
give him a warm welcome even in times of tense
relations (he could express the same in Cyprus).
At the time when the fighting in Debaltseve intensified putting the fragile Minsk II agreement to
risk, Putin was able to send a message to the
European, American and Ukrainian leaders about
the conflict, with the prime minister of a member
state on his side.
The visits of Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Putin made
obvious that Mr. Orbán’s seesaw politics between
the East and the West had failed and that the
balance has toppled. The meeting and especially
the press conference between the Russian president and the Hungarian prime minister was much
friendlier than the rather frozen Merkel-Orbán
meeting.
The friendly relations with Russia might not
only be based on the acceptance of Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy supply or
certain ideological and practical commonalities
regarding the “illiberal tendencies.” Hungary is
going to receive a EUR 10 billion loan from Russia
to build two new nuclear reactors within the
next decades. However, the agreement is kept
secret and the conditions have not been made
public yet. Without publicity, the deal poses
a huge risk of corruption. On the other hand,
The visits of Mrs. Merkel
and Mr. Putin made
obvious that Mr. Orbán’s
seesaw politics between
the East and the West
had failed and that
the balance has toppled.
Just two weeks after such a half-hearted
reconciliation with Germany and the Western
partners, Mr. Putin’s visit to Budapest revealed the
full failure of Hungary’s foreign policy strategy.
Mr. Putin’s visit came at an inconvenient time
for Mr. Orbán since it demonstrated Hungary’s
dependence on Russia and that the country
is hemmed in between Russia and the West.
In order to change that image, the Hungarian
government tried to attribute major importance to Mr. Putin’s visit beforehand by listing
the issues (e.g. terms of a new long-term gas
treaty, Paks 2 nuclear plant, Minsk agreement,
possible purchase of Sberbank) that would be
discussed by Mr. Orbán and Mr. Putin as well as
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the “cheap energy” is a fundament of Orbán’s
domestic populist policies. He needs Russia to
provide his voter base with cheap gas which
was the main reason of his re-election in 2014
national elections.
The failure and Hungary’s isolation became
evident during Mr. Orbán’s visit to Warsaw just
two days after the friendly handshakes between
him and Mr. Putin. Besides being Hungary’s
traditional ally and closest partner in the CEE
region, Poland is a strong supporter of Ukraine
and committed to halt Russian aggression in
Europe. Based on this, it came as no surprise
that the Polish Prime Minister Kopacz criticized
Hungary’s stance towards Russia almost explicitly
underlining the crucial importance of a united
European position. Ms. Kopacz described the
talks between her and her Hungarian counterpart as hard and straightforward. While at the
joint press conference the Polish PM underlined
the duty of Poland and Hungary towards the
nations fighting for independence and described
the events in Ukraine as Russia’s aggression,
Mr. Orbán emphasized the necessity of Ukraine’s
constitutional reform and a common Eurasian
economic space between the EU and Russia—
in line with Mr. Putin’s rhetoric. Even Kaczinsky,
the biggest former fan of Orbán, declared his
disappointment and practically sent a message
that Orbán betrayed Europe.
The fiasco in Warsaw was a clear sign of the
isolation of Hungary due to the government’s
foreign policy strategy. Even though Orbán
would be ready to make further gestures towards
Western partners in order to reconcile them,
breaking out of the isolation would require
a clear turn which he is unlikely to be ready to
make due to domestic reasons and the benefits
he expects from the Russian relations. While we
cannot expect on the one side that Hungary
alone will be breaking the EU consensus over
sanctions in the future, Hungary can remain an
important member in the club of sanctions-critical EU member states along with Greece, Cyprus,
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Slovakia, Czech Republic and Austria. However,
the faith of Orbán’s foreign policy will depend
on the events in Ukraine. If the Minsk II agreement will not hold and the fighting intensifies
(e.g., Mariupol will be attacked by the rebels),
Germany and the EU will be forced to take
a harsher stance against Russia. In such
a scenario, Hungary’s balancing attempts will
not be tolerated anymore and Mr. Orbán will be
forced to take a clear stand.
P É T E R K R E K Ó , B U L C S Ú H U N YA D I ,
KRISZTIÁN SZABADOS
are members of Political Capital Institute
Photos: Archive Political Capital Institute
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MARTIN EHL
Has the Turnaround to Russia
Been Good for the Czech
Economy?
F
or all those who had staked their future—
be it political or economic—on cooperation with Russia, the second half of 2014
was a time of heart-searching. This was initially
sparked off by the outbreak of fighting in the
east of Ukraine and later by the imposition of
sanctions on Russia by Europe and the US,
followed by Russia’s counter-sanctions. Towards
the end of the year these unfavorable developments were further exacerbated by the plummeting price of oil and the ruble crisis.
This has put the Czech Republic in a rather
difficult position, particularly since recent
statements by the Czech president had already
given the country a political reputation among
European states as being something of a lobbyist
for Russia. These problems were amplified by
the actual nature of the economic cooperation
between the two countries: since the 2008–2009
economic crisis, the focus of the Czech economy
had been increasingly shifting to Eastern markets,
including Russia. This was because after the fall of
Communism and especially since the mid-1990s
the Czech Republic, along with other Central
European countries, had promoted cooperation
with eurozone countries that were particularly
hard hit by the crisis.
Another reason for the strengthening of
economic ties with Russia, many of which were
rooted in the days of Communism and have
remained intact ever since, is the fact that the
goods produced and services offered by many
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MARTIN EHL
is the head foreign editor of the Czech daily
Hospodářské noviny.
Photo: Archive Hospodářské noviny
Czech companies have no chance of succeeding
outside the Russian (Eastern) market. One such
example is the state airlines ČSA.
A further factor that has contributed to the
increased focus on Russia is the PPF investment
group run by the wealthiest Czech, Petr Kellner.
As the firm’s cooperation with Russia intensified, other companies followed suit. I remember
talking to an architect who, after the 1968 invasion, had vowed never to go to Russia again. But
an offer to take part in PPF’s Russian operations
made him change his mind.
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Until German Chancellor Angela Merkel
proclaimed the superiority of fundamental
international law over trade last year, a further
argument that was difficult to counter was the
extent of business interests German and other
Western companies had pursued in Russia. The
temptation of the Russian market outweighed
the risks involved.
However, particularly during the second half
of 2014, this became unsustainable for many
companies due to growing pressure on Western
partners and the introduction of sanctions. This
raises the question as to whether the Czech economy’s sharp pivot to Russia was a mistake.
Statistics provide part of the answer.
Following its accession to the EU the Czech
Republic shifted its interest away from Russia
somewhat, yet by 2009 Moscow was Prague’s
fifth largest trade partner. Between 2009 and
2013 Czech exports to Russia increased by 250%.
In 2014 the share of imports comprised 5.5% and
the share of exports 3.7%.
However, the growth of mutual trading began
to stagnate in 2013, and last year it began to
decrease slightly even before European sanctions
over Ukraine kicked in. This is a key factor, albeit
one that the proponents of close cooperation
with Russia tend to ignore.
The sanctions provided the conversation
with a new dynamic. The arguments in the Czech
discussion reflect those heard throughout Europe:
that imposing sanctions on Russia would harm
local factories which, in turn, would result in the
loss of jobs and trade opportunities. However,
a European Commission study at the end of 2014
demonstrated that the impact of sanctions and
counter-sanctions on Czech economy was much
less significant than what had been assumed. The
growth of GDP was likely to slow by 0.2 percentage
points in 2014 and by 0.4 percentage points in
2015. The study estimated that some 1000 jobs
may be at risk. For example, Czech farmers might
lose around CZK 300 million as a result of Russia’s
counter-sanctions, whereas their Polish colleagues
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are likely to incur much larger losses, in the region
of CZK 13.5 billion at the current exchange rate.
As for the potential ramifications of the state
of Russian economy for the Czech Republic, the
country is not considerably better or worse off
than other EU member states. Big players such
as PPF play a significant background role since
their consumer loans business will undoubtedly
be affected by the stagnation of the Russian
economy. However, in terms of jobs the politicians’ main argument is the engineering industry
and other manufacturing firms—or the skilful
Russian propaganda.
Another element of the turnaround to Russia
concerns new components for Czech nuclear
power stations. Russian companies that would like
to be involved in their construction have already
As for the potential
ramifications of the state
of Russian economy
for the Czech Republic,
the country is not
considerably better
or worse off than other
EU member states.
bought up traditional Czech firms. However, the
tender for two new units at the Temelín nuclear
power station has been postponed for the time
being and the leverage of these firms seems to be
rather limited precisely because they are Russianowned. In the neighboring Poland, for example,
local politicians and bosses of state companies
involved in the planned construction of the first
Polish nuclear power plant have made it clear
that Russian firms—and thus also their Czech
daughter companies—basically have no chance
of taking part in the project.
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Therefore, seen through 2015 optics, the pivot
to Russia does not appear to have been particularly
beneficial to the Czech economy although, in this
respect, the Czechs are not much different from the
rest of Europe. An extreme case is Hungary’s Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán whose economic policy—
partly due to the 2008 and 2009 crisis—included
far-reaching plans for expanding into new markets,
grandly referred to as “the policy of opening to the
East.” Now all that is left are cooperation contracts
with Russia, which include, among other things,
a loan to Budapest for the construction of two new
units of the Paks nuclear power station.
Other industrial European nations also
regarded Russia as a potentially very worthwhile
partner, especially during the crisis. A notable
example is the controversial French sale of two
Mistral amphibious assault ships, and numerous
German and Dutch business interests in Russia.
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The political developments of 2014 took
everyone by surprise. Russia’s role in Ukraine
and the way she has treated foreign investors
have confirmed what proponents of cooperation with Russia had long refused—and many
still refuse—to admit: that the risk involved in
this kind of cooperation is becoming disproportionately high.
The dramatic slump in the exchange rate
of the ruble at the end of 2014 has vindicated
financial markets which, unlike many politicians,
have taken a more rational view of the situation
in Russia.
While the European Union was in the throes
of crisis, an economic pivot to Russia seemed
quite rational and logical. In the wake of 2014,
however, it makes sense only to those who are
risk-takers or have a specific reason to take on
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Masaryk and the Poles
Aleksander Kaczorowski
No politician did more harm to the Polish-Czech relations
than Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. For him the “lordly” Poland
symbolized everything he hated.
On December 28, 1918, on the eve of the
expected annexation of the Zaolzie (Zaolší),
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk wrote to his trusted
colleague Edvard Beneš: ”It would do the Poles
no harm if they got punched in the mug, on the
contrary, it would be very useful, for it would
cool down the dangerous chauvinists.” At that
time the Czechoslovakian delegation in Paris
planned the demarcation of the future border
with Poland through Bielsko-Biała. “Our Poles
are on our side,” wrote Masaryk to Beneš, “they
are afraid to live in Poland, thinking that there
will be no order there. The Germans from Bilsko,
from Cieszyn, etc. ask us not to give them to the
Poles. They are afraid of the Polish mess.”
The founder and four-times president of the
Czechoslovakian Republic was convinced that the
reborn Poland was an anachronistic relic, that
the Second Republic was going to be a classic
seasonal state, torn by ethnic conflicts and having
no chance of survival between Germany and
Russia. In fact, such an opinion was widespread
among the Czechs, shared also by the National
Democrats leader Karel Kramář, to whom Masaryk
wrote in February 1919, “Poles: their tactics will
not save them. They face great internal problems: landed estates—the Jews—proliferation of
parties and orientations… Only an ethnographic
Poland can be stronger.”
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In fact, the percentage of minorities in the
Czechoslovakian state was similar to that in
Poland, and the majority of more than 3 million
local Germans never accepted their new state.
Despite this, Masaryk thought that he and the
group of his associates, commonly known as
the “Hrad,” had a ready solution for all future
crises: “It is the truest truth,” he wrote to Beneš,
his most loyal associate and future successor,
“that only we are prepared and we will manage
to bring and maintain order. Our example will
play a decisive role.”
Solidarity, Masaryk Style
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) is an
unquestioned authority in the Czech Republic
until this day. Wanting to express their admiration for President Václav Havel, people often
compared him to Masaryk, both at home and
abroad.
There is a lot to say in favor of this analogy.
Havel specialized in activities from the border
between literature and politics, in accordance with
the 19th century tradition of a small and disempowered nation, where culture was a substitute
for politics during a greater part of its history. Also
Masaryk was primarily a writer or, as we would say
today, an intellectual, willing to forward his opinion
on all possible topics: authenticity of artefacts of
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native literature, emancipation of women, alleged
ritual murders, conflicts in the Balkans, the future
of religion, global prospects of social revolution
and the post-war order in Europe.
What brought him worldwide acclaim was his
courageous protest against anti-Semitic hysteria
which broke out in Bohemia when a Jewish
apprentice Leopold Hilsner was accused of ritual
murder in 1899. Even before World War I Masaryk
was deservedly regarded as an eminent expert
on Russia, and in 1912 he helped to prevent
a conflict between Austria and Serbia (he was
even mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel
Peace Prize). But two years earlier the same
Masaryk, when asked for his opinion on the future
of the Habsburg Monarchy, said that the best
solution would be to blow it up with dynamite.
“It deserves nothing better.”
An opportunity for that arose in the summer
of 1914, when an Austrian heir to the throne was
killed by a Serbian terrorist in Sarajevo. Masaryk
expected the defeat of the Central Powers in
confrontation with the Entente. In the autumn
of that year he travelled to the West to persuade
the leaders of the democratic powers to create,
on the ruins of the Habsburg monarchy, a new
Czechoslovakian state—and he got his way.
After the war he became one of the key players
in the issue of new borders in Central Europe.
Unfortunately, both then and later this sincere
democrat and advocate of progress consistently
acted against the interests of Poland.
In April 1919 he wrote to Beneš: “Poles are
not a rampart against Bolshevism—they have
not yet learned the administrative alphabet”.
And in June of the same year, he added: “Restoration of historical Poland means renewing the
mistakes of old Poland and is the embryo of its
collapse.” Masaryk spread similar opinions in
the West, making use of his excellent relations
with owners and editors of major American,
French and English newspapers. In this way he
helped to create a negative stereotype of Poland
in the West.
In July 1920 he discouraged Western diplomats from providing any aid to Poland. He said:
“We should not organize any military help for
the Poles,” as the British diplomat Lord Edgar
d’Abernon recalled. Masaryk was convinced that
Polish troops would not be able to repel the
Bolsheviks, and the oppressed Polish workers
and peasants would welcome the red commissars
with bread and salt. And the Czech railwaymen,
in solidarity with the Soviets, were not allowing
transports of Western military aid for the “lordly”
Poland to pass through their territory.
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According to Masaryk’s
plans, the democratic
Czechoslovakia, with
the support of France
and the USA, was to be
the Central European
hegemon, in the strict
sense of the word. From
his perspective the
independent Poland
constituted the largest
obstacle to achieving
this goal.
A Son of a Peasant
The reasons for the universal dislike the Czechs
felt for the Poles in that period lay in the different
social structures of the two nations and different
models of modern nationalism. The Czechs
rejected their native tradition of the nobility, they
perceived themselves as an egalitarian, petit-bourgeois nation of peasant origin. The three most
prominent Czech politicians: President Masaryk,
Prime Minister Antonín Švehla and head of diplo-
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macy Beneš, were sons of peasants. From their
perspective, the Second Republic was a relic of
feudalism, and leading Polish politicians in them
generally elicited a (reciprocated) dislike.
“My father was a Slovak from Kopčany, he
was born a serf and remained a serf,” Masaryk
recalled in an interview with the writer Karel
Čapek. “When he visited us in Prague much later,
he was only interested in how the horses were
shod, in what shafts, housings and wheels the
carriages in Prague were equipped.”
The biography of Masaryk from when he was
about seven is slightly similar to the life of the
protagonist of the classic novella Antek by Boleslaw Prus. As little boys, they were both fascinated
with windmills and both were sent to the blacksmith as apprentices. But Masaryk had an intelligent mother, who earned a living as a servant, but
insisted on turning her sons into “lords.”
Thanks to his own perseverance, talents and
help of kind people, at the age of 26 Masaryk
obtained a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Vienna. In his youth he was keenly interested
in Polish culture, he learned the language and often
took the Polish side during university disputes
with his pro-Russian compatriots. At that time, he
perceived the Poles mostly as victims of Russian
imperialism, about the nature of which he never
had any illusions. When in the autumn of 1876
Czech students in Vienna welcomed him with the
Russian anthem, Masaryk intoned the Polish one.
With time, his attitude towards Poland
changed dramatically. This progressive philo­
sopher, advocate of universal suffrage, emancipation of women and separation of Church
and state, came to the conclusion that the Poles
were an inherently conservative and authoritarian
nation, which would be happy to turn from victim
to persecutor should an opportunity arise.
towards ethnic minorities. Masaryk believed that
a Polish-German and Polish-Soviet conflict was
only a matter of time and he did not intended to
“risk his neck” for the Poles. At the same time he
was convinced that the borders of Czechoslovakia
were permanently safeguarded thanks to the
alliance with France and Great Britain. A potential
alliance with Poland, which after the coup of May
1926 was consistently drifting towards authoritarianism, went against both his democratic tastes
and cold calculation.
According to Masaryk’s plans, the democratic Czechoslovakia, with the support of France
and the USA, was to be the Central European
hegemon, in the strict sense of the word. From
his perspective the independent Poland constituted the largest obstacle to achieving this goal.
Therefore Masaryk consistently thwarted any
proposals and attempts at establishing cooperation with Poland, initiated both by Warsaw, and
by Czechoslovakian military circles, who were
increasingly aware of the German threat.
In 1930, the president sparked off a diplomatic scandal, saying in an interview with
Risking His Neck
He was confirmed in this view by what he
perceived as excessive territorial acquisitions of
Poland in the east (and the west) and its policy
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a German journalist: “There are now two main
threats to peace in Europe. One of them is the
corridor [Gdańsk], the other is Hungary. As far as
the Polish corridor is concerned, in my opinion
Germany will never reconcile itself with the
current state of affairs, where East Prussia is cut
off from the Reich.”
Masaryk later withdrew that statement under
the pretext that it had been misinterpreted. In
fact, these words were an expression of his view
that Poland—for the sake of peace in Europe—
should agree to a revision of its borders with
Germany. This is why three years later, after Hitler
had come to power, he rejected a proposal of
a military alliance with Poland, and why Czech
diplomats warned Berlin at his command about
the “Polish intention to carry out military action
close to the eastern border of Germany,“ that is
about the so-called pre-emptive war planned
then by Marshal Piłsudski.
Instead of an alliance with Poland, Masaryk
agreed to the Pact of Four proposed by the
leader of fascist Italy Benito Mussolini, giving
the UK, France, Germany and Italy the right to
settle border disputes in Europe. Although the
pact never came into force, the Czechoslovakian
president sanctioned in this way the partition of
his country in Munich in the autumn of 1938.
Silesian up to the Vistula
We should give it to Masaryk that he had
a benevolent attitude towards the Polish population of the Zaolzie. He personally intervened on
their behalf. At the same time, it was Masaryk who
ordered the Czechoslovakian army to occupy this
disputed territory in the autumn of 1918 and then
he was against holding a plebiscite there, and
finally he sought the arbitrage of great powers
to demarcate the border, which occurred on July
28, 1920—that is in the least opportune moment
for the Polish side.
The dispute over the Zaolzie poisoned the
relations between the two nations throughout
the interwar period. Czech nationalists sought to
uproot local Poles, while Warsaw counted on a military solution of the problem. But it is a mistake to
assume, as many people do, that the Polish-Czech
antagonism in the interwar period started and
ended with the issue of the Zaolzie. In fact, this
was a matter of a powerful symbolic, but symbolic
only, importance. Especially for Poland.
The Czechs reached for the Zaolzie mainly
for one reason. They needed the local coal and
the railway line, at that time offering the only
connection between Bohemia and Slovakia.
For them the Zaolzie had a strategic importance.
For Poland—virtually none. In the autumn of 1919
the majority of Poles did not even know that some
of their compatriots lived across the Olza (if they
even had heard about the Olza river).
The biggest obstacle to Polish-Czech cooperation—not just in the interwar period—was
procrastination in Czech foreign policy, embodied
by Masaryk and Beneš and their—as Janusz
Gruchała put it in his excellent biography of the
Czech politician—“tendency to avoid risks and
fence-sitting”.1
So Masaryk’s critical (and often justified) attitude to Poland’s interwar social realities, as well
as towards exaggerated ambitions of its elites,
was not the reason for his reluctance to c­ o­‑operate
with Poland, but only a pretext. It would be
a mistake to perceive him as a son of a serf who
took revenge on the “lords” for the wrongs done
to his father, a simple coachman on the estates
of the Habsburgs.
ALEKSANDER KACZOROWSKI
Editor in Chief of Aspen Review
1 Janusz Gruchała, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Wroclaw, 1996.
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Aviezer Tucker
Phenomenological Space
Cadets to the Rescue
Michael Gubser, The Far Reaches:
Phenomenology, Ethics, and
Social Renewal in Central Europe.
(Stanford California: Stanford
University Press, 2014).
Some years ago, I ran into an acquaintance
who was interviewing candidates for a professorship in the philosophy of Kant. “How are the
candidates?” I asked. “One has a PhD in mathematics, another is religious, the rest are phenome­
nological space cadets,” he summed up. The association of Phenomenology, a philosophical school
that studies consciousness, with “space cadets”
is part of pop culture. In the late-nineties, the
British Sunday Times newspaper ran an article on
then Pope John Paul II. It attempted to claim that
the Pope was crazy, mostly because he was not
only religious but also clearly had faith. But the
clenching argument was philosophical: he was
a follower of an “arcane French (sic!) Philosophical
school, Phenomenology.”
If not “space cadets,” phenomenologists were
accused of being “storm troopers.” The most
influential phenomenological book has been
Being and Time, by the would-be Nazi, Martin
Heidegger. Recently, the first three volumes of his
“Black Notebooks,” a philosophical diary covering
1931–1941, were published. Several blunt anti­
‑Semitic statements there caused the resignation
of the chair of the German Martin Heidegger
Society. Heidegger could have suppressed or
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deleted the offensive passages, but he clearly
saw nothing to be ashamed of. His sole concern
was that the diary should be published only after
all his expository works. Much of Heidegger’s
nachlass remains unpublished and his family
denies scholarly access to it. Some suspect that
even worse revelations about Heidegger’s politics are hidden there. I doubt it. It is more likely
that the secrets in the nachlass that Heidegger
and his family found shameful are personal and
not political. Heidegger’s eldest son was not his
biological son. It is not likely that Hannah Arendt
was Heidegger’s first and last lover. The discoveries that await future researchers in the family
archive are likely to display the banality of sex
rather than of evil.
Heidegger’s politics were extreme within the
phenomenological milieu. But some of its other
luminaries are also politically embarrassing. Max
Scheler supported German Imperialism and the
First World War. Hildebrand was anti-Nazi, but
supported the authoritarian corporatism of the
Dollfuss regime in Austria. Even Husserl, in his
response to the crisis of the thirties in Europe,
The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology had particularly dumb
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things to say about the Roma (Gypsy) minority,
excluding them from being considered European
a few years before the Holocaust they shared with
the Jews. By contrast, the Logical-Positivists, the
main contemporary philosophical competitors to
Phenomenology, had a political record clean as
the driven snow. Though they had nothing to say
as philosophers about ethics or social and political
philosophy beyond “emotivism,” the thesis that
what we mean when we say that something is
right or wrong is just that we feel strongly positively or negatively about it, they were quick to
make academic capital from their political record.
Heidegger’s supporters, most notably
Arendt, promulgated in response a version of
the “space-cadets” thesis: Heidegger and others
were academic-village idiot-savants, bright in
abstract unworldly philosophy, but hopelessly
helpless about everyday life, including politics.
To downplay the significance of political choices,
academic phenomenologists tended to agree
with logical positivists about the philosophical
marginality of ethics and politics.
East European dissidents-phenomenologists were neither “space-cadets,” nor “storm
troopers.” Arguably, they were “Jedi-knights,”
virtuous fighters for human rights, truth and
liberty. But the political scientists who studied
the dissident movements did not have the background to understand the phenomenological
dimension and origin of their thought. Academic
phenomenologists had already committed
themselves to the “space cadets” thesis and to
the marginality of ethics and political philosophy, so they largely ignored the contradicting
evidence as it emerged from beyond the Iron
Curtain. When dissident Phenomenology
entered public discourse in the West, it was
in the service of a different political agenda:
In France in the seventies there was not much
to distinguish the Socialist from the Communist
parties ideologically. The Socialists (for example,
in the journal Esprit) endorsed the East European
dissidents and the phenomenological human
rights agenda to distinguish themselves from
the Soviet­‑oriented Communist Party.
Michael Gubser, an American intellectual
historian, challenges radically in his new book
the “space cadets” narrative of the history of
Phenomenology. He decenters the metaphysical aspects of the study of consciousness and
concentrates on Central European Phenomenological ethics and social and political philosophy
by retelling the history of Phenomenology from
its inception in Brentano’s teaching in Vienna
in the 19th century to contemporary Czech and
Polish Phenomenology. He mines the tradition for
texts that discuss ethics, morality, values, or even
politics. Standard histories of Phenomenology
focus on its core study of consciousness and are
devoted mostly to Husserl and Heidegger, and
their influences on Hermeneutics in Germany
and virtually all branches of French philosophy
after World War II. Gubser, by contrast, sticks with
a narrower understanding of the Phenomenological tradition that connects directly with the
philosophy of Edmund Husserl, ignores France,
and devotes half of his book to Czech and Polish
Phenomenology. Phenomenologists that are
often considered minor disciples of Husserl
receive more attention in Gubser’s book than
Heidegger, to whom Gubser devotes just three
pages. Most significantly, recent Czech and Polish
thinkers that are usually ignored in contemporary philosophy (with the exception of Roman
Ingarden) receive the detailed attention they
deserve in the second half of the book.
Gubser offers a sympathetic, sometimes
even forgiving, reading of the ethical and
social phenomenological tradition. He follows
the various roads taken from the study of pure
consciousness to the development of ethics and
philosophically grounded politics, if not political
philosophy. Brentano’s ethics was fairly rudimentary. Husserl attempted to transcend the study
of isolated consciousness through intersubjectivity and empathy that allow the emergence
of care for others and ethics, themes that later
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phenomenologists developed at greater length.
Husserl hoped that the practice of the phenomenological method of epoché, the suspension of
the distinction of “subjective” from “objective”
phenomena, would do more than allow the pristine pre-rational structure of consciousness to
manifest itself; he hoped it would generate social
renewal by uniting people who had undergone
this process of self-discovery and overcoming
of alienation. Scheler believed that as much
as everything our consciousness manifests is
imbued with intentionality, it is also imbued
with values that can be intuited and form the
basis of an ethics that is always already present,
rather than reasoned rationally and abstractly
on the basis of duty or utility as in Kant or Mill.
Gubser continues the story of Phenomenology
and morality in the thought of philosophers who
receive little attention today, the last generation
of phenomenologists who wrote primarily in
German, some in exile: Nicolai Hartman, Dietrich
von Hildebrand, Aurel Kolnai, Adolf Reinach, Edith
Stein (who was canonized by fellow phenomenologist Pope John Paul II), and Alfred Schutz.
Gubser devotes the second half of his book
to the Czech and Polish reception of Phenomenology. Under Communism, the phenomenological method of epoché acquired political
dimensions. Epoché became a method for
personal liberation from the totalitarian frame
of mind, from the instrumentalist objectification of humanity, a way to reconnect with the
lost natural world, or lifeworld, independent
of social or political impediments and circumstances. Phenomenology became a critique of
bureaucratization and the particularly brutal and
ugly Communist version of modernity.
The Czech phenomenologist Jan Patočka
(1907–1977), Husserl’s student, became a leader
of Charter 77 of human rights and a mentor to
the dissident movement. Gubser’s interpretation
of Patočka is influenced by a contemporary
Prague academic “orthodoxy” that runs counter
to his own ethical thesis and historical orientation.
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This orthodoxy considers Patočka‘s significance
to lie in his abstract phenomenological ideas
from the fifties, the “asubjective subject” and
“negative Platonism” that allegedly allow his
philosophy to claim equal significance to
­Heidegger and Husserl. From that perspective,
Patočka’s later political involvement is not very
important, and did not follow his philosophy,
though it was generally consistent with it. This
reading of Patočka is ahistorical. To generate
coherence, it lumps together texts that were
written over forty years without sensitivity to
revisions, changes, and reactions to historical
changes and intellectual currents, especially in
the last decade of Patočka’s life, leading to his
political engagement.
Gubser follows the
various roads taken
from the study of pure
consciousness to the
development of ethics
and philosophically
grounded politics,
if not political
philosophy.
Gubser associates Patočka with sixties
humanist Marxism. Clearly, Patočka survived the
fifties unharmed (he lost his academic position
but worked as an archivist) by presenting himself
as an apolitical “space cadet.” By the sixties he was
back in the academy of science. His political and
social statements from the period preceding the
1968 invasion appear to me studiously ambiguous. They could be interpreted as conforming
to the prevailing political winds of reformed
Communism, but with a bit of philosophical
context, they could also be interpreted as critical
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or deliberately superficial. Surely, any philosopher
with even mildly left of center political views,
would sympathize with the lower classes and
admire labor. Patočka considered labor less than
properly human, a movement of defense that we
share with other animals. Care for the soul and life
in truth that emerged only in the Greek polis were
properly human. In his later writings, Patočka
blamed the tragedy of 1938 and by implication
1948 and 1968, the failure of the Czechs to fight,
on their low social origins and the absence of
a nobility as in Poland and Hungary.
What I find to be a disappointing treatment
of Patočka stands out in comparison with the
following exposition of the ethics of Polish
phenomenologists. Gubser presents a convincing
narrative of the historical development of Karol
Wojtyła’s (the future Pope John Paull II) thought
from the early influence of Indgarden’s realism,
absolute values and responsibility, through early
criticisms of Scheler, the return to Schelerian
themes in discovering the immediacy of morality
in our consciousness, and the phenomenological
interpretation of personalism as an alternative to
liberal individualism and totalitarianism. Gubser
is sensitive to historical intellectual development
and true to the project of writing a history of
Phenomenology from a moral perspective in
Poland, but not in Prague.
Gubser is a charitable reader. He criticizes
Central European Phenomenology only for being
elitist. He is quick to dissociate the kind of traditional Catholic authoritarian conservatism of
some central European phenomenologists from
Heidegger’s totalitarianism. The problem he identifies is not specific to Phenomenology: If philosophers become involved in politics as ordinary
citizens, why should anybody listen to them?!
If they speak from the unique vantage point of
their special knowledge, they can be accused
of elitism. Are philosophers the wise “navigators” who can stir the ship of state according
to their knowledge of “the stars,” as in Plato’s
metaphor, or do they guess the right course
like everybody else but appear certain due to
elitist condescension and over-confidence? The
dark side of Platonic elitist politics emerges only
when philosophers obtain power. Philosophers
in politics who fulfil their duty to tell truth to
power can benefit from elitism if it gives them the
confidence and standing to confront authority,
as the dissidents did. Professional elitism and
condescension are not exclusively philosophical.
To take a vivid Czech example, economists can be
even more condescending and uncompromising
than philosophers.
In my opinion, the particular political weakness of Phenomenology in comparison with
other philosophical schools is also its main philosophical strength, its methodology. Epoché
promises liberation and authenticity, but it also
can turn easily into self-delusion about what
pure consciousness and authenticity are like.
A traditional Platonic analysis can explain some
of the self-delusions of phenomenologists like
Scheler by the intrusion of passions to bias the
results of intellectually precarious intuitions. One
need only compare the stark, dark and inhuman
results of Heidegger’s epoché with the morality
and responsibility that are the foundations of the
life-world of Tischner or Wojtyła. This is no reason
to reject the use of epoché; but it is reason to
treat it with caution and be aware that even when
we eliminate some inauthenticities, the result
may still be the dominance of other inauthentic
self-delusions that were overlooked, a point Havel
raised in one of his Letters to Olga.
Phenomenology’s self-understanding as un­co­
vering deep universal truths about consciousness
that have been hidden since Plato or obscured
since the scientific revolution of Copernicus,
Machiavelli and Galileo is anachronistic. As
anti-modern as it may have seemed to both its
adherents and critics, Phenomenology has been
a current within modern thought, romantic and
nostalgic, but also modern in its quest for individual authenticity and self-consciousness. In
reaction to the emergence of anonymous mass
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survive well its own victory. Politically, the challenges that President Havel and Pope John Paul
II faced following their victories were institutional:
Havel needed to build the institutions of the rule
of law and democracy; John Paul II needed to
clean up and reform the institutions of the
Church. As much as Phenomenology offered an
effective method and reasons for maintaining
personal integrity facing the totalitarian juggernaut, it had practically nothing to say about
institutional design, construction or reform; this
is the domain of liberal political theory. As higher
education is becoming increasingly technical
and vocational, encouraging young students to
become ever more alienated and inauthentic, as
under Communism, only under economic rather
than political pressure this time, I see promising
potential for a resurrection of the phenomenological tradition. Space cadets may return to
rescue the humanity, again. societies in the 19th century, Phenomenology
offered self-consciousness that was unthinkable in
the sort of rural societies that phenomenologists
sometimes fantasized about. Phenomenological
historical insensitivity manifested itself in East
Europe in conflations of instrumental rationality
with totalitarianism, science with pseudo-science,
and of mechanical engineering (technology) with
central planning that mistreated humans as cogs
in impersonal social machines.
Gubser rightly bemoans that as an intellectual
movement, the flowering of Phenomenology in
dissident circles in Central and Eastern Europe
from the sixties to the eighties, is all but over.
At the very moment that Phenomenology (it is
tempting to say “the space cadets”) won over
Marxism as a political philosophy and Communism as a form of government with a phenomenologist Pope (Wojtyła), a phenomenologist
president (Havel) and numerous other Phenomenology oriented thinkers moving into politics
and government (students of Patočka like Martin
Palouš, who held several key positions in the
Czech Foreign Service, or senator Daniel Kroupa),
it went into decline. Critical philosophy cannot
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is the author of The Legacies of Totalitarianism
forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2015.
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Robert Schuster
Two Germanies,
Two Cultures
Carsten Kretschmann: Zwischen
Spaltung und Gemeinsamkeit. Kultur
im geteilten Deutschland, be.bra
Verlag, Berlin-Brandenburg, 2012,
ISBN 978-3-89809-412-2
Austrian journalist and essayist Karl Kraus
once said that the Germans and Austrians were
two nations divided by a common language,
pointing out how very close and yet distant the
two nations were. This might have been an even
more apt description of East and West Germans
before 1989, while their country was divided.
As we now know, after forty years of enforced
separation certain linguistic and lexical differences
between the two parts of Germany still continue
to exist, sometimes painstakingly maintained by
some East Germans for whom the reunification
was a “hostile takeover.” Then there are the cultural
differences. Carsten Kretschmann’s book Between
Separation and Togetherness. Culture in Divided
Germany provides a comprehensive survey of the
cultural developments in Germany’s East and West.
The material is presented in chronological
order, covering the period from the post-war
“rubble culture” (Trümmerkultur), through the
modern period (1949–1965), politicization and
autonomy (1966–1982), right up to the final
period that preceded the Fall of the Berlin Wall
and the country’s reunification.
A major difference between cultural policies
of the two German states derived from the very
way they were organized internally after their
establishment in the wake of World War II. The
Federal Republic of Germany retained the German
tradition of federalism. Victorious Western powers
systematically built the new state’s institutional
framework from the bottom up, starting by
establishing bodies at the communal level,
followed by the regional and eventually the
national level. Furthermore, instead of choosing
a major cultural metropolis, such as Frankfurtam-Main or Hamburg as the country’s capital,
they picked the small town of Bonn that had,
over the following years, remained the country’s
primary political and administrative center. What
this meant in practice was that the country’s
culture was produced outside the formal metropolis, in several places simultaneously. In addition,
a kind of competition arose among the individual
regional cultural centers.
East Germany, on the other hand, chose the
path of concentrating all decision-making in
a single center, fully in keeping with the so-called
doctrine of “democratic centralism.” Moreover, the
country’s communist leadership regarded the
arts as an extension of politics by other means.
Arts as a sphere autonomous from politics was
inconceivable and it would, therefore, have been
unacceptable for culture—or at least a significant proportion of it—ever to be in opposition
to politics, as was increasingly the case in West
Germany, particularly after the 1960s.
Kretschmann notes that before the early
1950s no aspect of cultural policy had ever had
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a significant impact on politics, either within the
two German states or in their mutual relations.
A turning point which changed all this were the
events of June 17, 1953, when a wave of protests
against the raising of work targets swept the GDR,
soon turning into a revolt against the prevalent
political and social conditions and permanent
shortages. The Communists were only able to
get the situation under control with the help of
Soviet tanks.
Although the arts community in the West and
the East responded to these events differently, it
was generally taken aback by the brutal military
crackdown on discontented citizens. One striking
exception was the playwright Bertolt Brecht
who had settled in East Berlin after returning
to Germany in 1945. Brecht responded to the
crushing of the uprising by a show of support for
East German Communist leader Walter Ulbricht.
And not only that: in 1954 he travelled to Moscow
to accept the Stalin Prize. This led to fierce protests
in West Germany, culminating in the demand for
Brecht’s plays to be immediately removed from
West German theatre schedules.
On the other hand, Kretschmann points to
what he sees as an interesting parallel in the
area of the visual arts, where both West and
East Germany imposed considerable limits on
artistic pluralism. In East Germany, just as in other
communist countries, socialist realism was the
only acceptable artistic style, and everything that
did not conform to this doctrine was rejected,
mostly being labelled “formalism”. In West
Germany politics did not set such immediately
obvious limitations on what was acceptable and
what was not. However, that only made the influence of newspaper reviews—or, as the case may
be, of the interest of mass audiences or a lack
thereof—even more crucial to the success or
failure of a work of art.
Another similarity that could be observed
in the 1950s had to do with the fact that the
social conditions brought about by the consequences of the war were being whitewashed both
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in ­Germany’s West and the East. Much of life was
instead being presented in a more favorable light
than in reality. This trend found its most visible
expression in German cinema, in the genre known
as “Heimatfilm,” a term that might be translated as
“patriotic cinema.” Film studios literally churned
out films of this kind one after another. Their plots
were totally apolitical, often set in the “good old
days” of the 19th century and in the idyllic Alpine
setting. However, the ideal world depicted in
these films had precious little in common with
the social realities of the then West Germany,
with its vast numbers of single-parent families
whose fathers had either lost their lives in the
war or were still in Russian captivity or, where
they were physically present, still traumatized
by their wartime experience.
East Germany took a different approach to
dealing with the legacy of World War II in the
arts. Right from the start it labelled itself “the
better German state,” which meant in practice
that it rejected any responsibility for the consequences of Nazism. Given that the composition of
the population was very similar to that in the West,
the East German government had to rely on propaganda to convey to their fellow countrymen the
“correct progressive values” in line with the spirit
of Marxism-Leninism. This also involved an effort
to define and present the German Democratic
Republic as a “country of readers” (Leseland DDR)
whose citizens, unlike those in West Germany with
its consumerist lifestyle, were quite dependent
on quality literature. The fact is that the German
East produced large quantities of books, there
were lots of publishing houses and people sometimes queued up for new titles on publication.
On the other hand, Kretschmann believes the
great hunger for literature in East Germany also
resulted from the existing censorship and the
regime setting strict criteria as to which authors
conformed to the principles of socialist ideology
and could therefore be published.
One of the ways the communist regime
tried to formulate a new cultural policy was the
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so-called Bitterfeld Way (Bitterfelder Weg), meant
to bring about the birth of a “socialist national
culture.” The program was drawn up at a meeting
of artists’ unions held at the chemical plant in
Bitterfeld, one of the largest industrial complexes
on East German territory. It was supposed to
provide the working classes with access to culture,
not only as consumers but also as its creators,
under the motto: “Comrade, get hold of a pen!”
This approach was particularly aimed at overcoming the estrangement between artists and
workers, by making writers and artists spend
some time working in factories and getting to
know the life of the working classes. Not only
was this doctrine an abject failure, but it also
caused an increasing division between the regime
and prominent authors such as Christa Wolf and
Stefan Heym, about the critical function and social
role of art.
However, beginning in the 1960s the relative
amount of criticism of the ruling or social elites
that artists in both East and West Germany were
allowed to express began to grow. In the West
voices critical of the stale 1950s and the inadequate way the country had been coming to terms
with the Nazi period became louder, and protest
rallies against the war in Vietnam were held.
At the same time in East Germany the pressure
increased on artists who refused to conform to the
prevailing doctrine. The solution adopted by the
communist regime was to get rid of these artists.
They would be deprived of their East German
citizenship; allowed to travel to West Germany;
or—as in the case of the singer-songwriter Wolf
Biermann—banned from returning after touring
abroad. As the list of names grew, some areas
of the arts, notably the theatre, became visibly
affected by these gaps. On the other hand, of
course, most representatives of the progressive
East German theatre that ended up in the Federal
Republic made a significant contribution to West
Germany’s theatre life with their productions.
Theatre became the one area where the difference
between the East and the West was smallest.
The 1980s cultural life in both parts of
Germany was marked by many ironies. On the
one hand, the East German authorities’ reluctance to allow critical artists to leave the country
led to fierce arguments, even though it was
primarily motivated by an attempt to drive up
to the maximum the amount of money the West
German government was willing to pay for their
permission to leave. At the same time, there were
examples of surprisingly harmonious cooperation between the two countries, such as the
historical anniversary events relating to Prussia.
Part of the reason was that the East German
Communists desperately wanted to find a way
of legitimizing the existence of their state within
the wider context of German history.
While not voluminous, Kretschmann’s book
provides an excellent survey of the complex
issue of cultural life in East and West Germany.
Although this basic survey does not aspire to be
a scholarly work, it is, nevertheless, a pity that it
includes only an index of names while a subject
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ROBERT SCHUSTER
Managing Editor
Aspen Review Central Europe
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Patrycja Pustkowiak
The Animal Point of View
Eric Baratay, Le point de vue animal.
Une autre version de l’histoire
[“The animal point of view. Another
version of the story “], SEUIL Edition
Almost all “Others” already have their version
of history. Women took care of it themselves when
they started to write “herstory,” kept in a revisionist spirit, and there are many texts about the
victims of history’s mainstream told from a postcolonial perspective. Only animals do not yet have
anything like that. To wait until they make it with
their own, excuse le mot, paw, would be futile
(although who knows, humpback whales, for
example, have developed an intriguing system of
diversified songs, and in fact you can increasingly
often hear about a peculiar language of animals),
so it is just as well that the French historian and
essayist Eric Baratay did it for them. The Animal
Point of View is a comprehensive review, in which
the author takes upon himself the burden of
freeing history from the anthropocentric vision.
Becoming a spokesman for animals, he is trying
to look at watershed events through their eyes.
“A living animal,” says the author, “cannot
remain a blank spot of history.”The history of civilization, he argues, is after all also the story of living
creatures other than man, equally interesting and
complex, and often—importantly—more painful.
Baratay is absolutely convinced that animals have
to be inserted in history, for they are an inalienable part of it. “History, as construed by human
communities, is always told like an adventure
which involves exclusively humans. […] In fact
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also the animal side of history is epic, turbulent,
full of contrasts, often bloody, sometimes peaceful
and occasionally comical. It has been written
with flesh and blood, feelings and emotions, fear,
pain, pleasure, violence inflicted on them and
a sense of closeness. It directly affects humans
to such an extent that it is increasingly shaping
human history. So it is by no means anecdotal
or secondary, and fully deserves the attention of
those historians who care about history in all its
complexity and variety.”
Baratay does care. Therefore, he takes a close
look at special moments of history, where the
fate of humans was strongly intertwined with
the fate of animals, such as World War I or rapid
economic growth after World War II, resulting,
for example, in the development of industrial
methods of animal breeding. Baratay is of course
more interested in certain animal species due to
their involvement in human matters. Piranhas
and pygmy hedgehogs preoccupy him less than
cows, horses, bulls and dogs.
The author proposes an even broader categorization. He is after all a historian and it can
be felt in the book. His writing is systematic and
ordered. He breaks animals into five basic groups:
dairy cows, horses, animals recruited for war,
domesticated animals and those taking part in
corridas. All of them suffer, their fate is far from
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perfect; mainly due to the fact that it has been
designed by men.
Women cannot compare with Shakespeare
and cats do not go to heaven—claimed scholars
from the times of Virginia Woolf, lampooned by
the famous writer. Similarly-minded scholars in
various eras almost measure animals with a ruler,
deciding how they should look and what they
should do in order to please humans and serve
them well. Baratay describes, for example, how
dragging animals into human history resulted
in modifications of their size, weight and
morphology, meant at adapting the creatures
to specific wishes and functions ascribed to them.
For example, Norman dairy cows breed evolved
over the years from bony and angular through
fuller specimens to those achieving geometric
regularity, with the forehead squeezed between
protruding eye sockets and assuming the shape
of a rectangle—a feature of perfect beauty (!).
Corrida bulls have ever shorter legs and increasingly long necks, which of course finds its bullfighting justification—it makes the job of the
bullfighter easier and the spectacle more attractive. Companion dogs change with the vagaries
of fashion in a particular epoch—in some periods
box cord poodles are “produced” and in other eras
woolly ones are more in demand. Sheepdogs
are elevated and shortened depending on the
function ascribed to them. People interfere in
the appearance of horses depending on whether
they have to help humans in farming land or to
take part in races.
But appearance is a trifling matter (even
though wrongly “manufactured” animals experience pain, for example connected with lameness
or difficulties with breathing), according to the
French historian animals are the true “proletarians of history” due to the uses they have been
put to. Perhaps the most excruciating, as well
as the best-known publication describing the
terrible condition of animals reduced to the role
of slaves, which people use according to their
whims, was the work Animal Liberation of the
famous Australian ethical scholar Peter Singer,
published in the 1970s. Compared to it, Baratay’s
book is only a tart appetizer, but still necessary,
for it makes us aware yet another time that the
”Lord of Creation” is making a bold use of his
overlordship, disregarding the well-being of
the creatures under his power. Baratay writes
about the development of the dairy industry
and the centuries-long role played in it by cows,
the history of transport, and the participation of
horses in the process of industrialization or wars
generated by humans, who are more than happy
to use their animal pariahs on the battlefield.
In The Lives of Animals the literary Nobel
Prize winner J.M. Coetzee repeats the question
posed by the American philosopher Thomas
Nagel: “What is it like to be a bat?” The American
scholar claimed that it is impossible to penetrate
the mind of an animal. For Elizabeth Costello,
Coetzee’s protagonist, and also perhaps his alter
ego, the matter looks different. She scorns Nagel,
claiming that it is possible. For there are no limits
to sympathetic imagination, you can easily empathize with the bat, leopard or jaguar, it is enough
just to imagine their existence, to enter their
experience. But there are also theories saying that
the special emotional equipment which makes
it possible to empathize with other creatures
and care about their fate—whether they are
people or titmice—is simply contained in some
genetic packages and not in other ones. This
would explain why many of us are in fact helpless
when confronted with the question about being
a bat. Baratay himself perhaps knows what it is
like, and this is why he is not attempting to reach
philosophical heights, he is not trying to “be”
a dog or a horse, he is just trying to come closer.
Every time, when he describes the hardships
of animal life and the violence which has been
inflicted on them, he attempts to capture what
may be hiding behind their accelerated breath or
dilated pupils. He departs from the mechanical,
engineering approach contained in such words
as “efficiency,” “productivity,” and “task,” aiming
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towards a perspective full of compassion and
understanding.
What are the feelings of a cow separated from
its calf and enclosed in a small compartment?
Or, a more drastic example, what is bullfighting
like? From the human side it often is (!) an idea
of necessary violence perceived as a part of
human nature, a pleasure born from the alarming
beauty of death, a rejection of oppressive
morality. From the animal side it is pain and death,
void of any ”alarming beauty.” Unless we regard
view, stemming from Descartes, that animals are
automata devoid of feelings and ability to think.
Writing from the “animal point of view,” he focuses
on emotions, feelings and reactions of animals,
he shows a community—also of suffering.
A great merit of this book is that it does not
try to blackmail the reader, it does not raise the
specter of hell before those who do not want to
compose their menu only of tofu and lettuce leaf,
it does not incite us to attack laboratories were
experiments on animals are performed or some
other spectacular actions. Baratay’s proposition
is clear, but also comprehensive, profound and
demanding a much more serious ideological
rethink than just replacing hamburgers with beetroot burgers. According to Baratay we have to
stop looking and thinking from the perspective of
the navel of the world we regard ourselves as, we
must reject the caste approach and grant other
living creatures, from outside the human species,
the right to be actors in the world. In other words,
we must move away from anthropocentrism and
the obsession of building barricades between
man and animal. We must get rid of the discourse
of domination.
Does this vision have a chance of materializing? Baratay—and the author of this text
too—want to believe that it does. In a world
where—of course alongside with a number of
evils perpetrated against animals—a dolphin
becomes a “nonhuman person” in India, scientists and activists involved in the “Great Apes
Project” work on granting primates the rights
to life, liberty and prohibition of torture, and
developing a cheap method of producing artificial hamburgers is a matter of time—in such
a world a glimmer of optimism is warranted. “The
recent scientific re-evaluation of animals,” writes
Baratay, “their growing closeness with man which
this entails—to such an extent that the English
language magazine Man publishes articles about
the life of chimpanzees—must lead to granting
them, especially the species with which humans
interact with, a place among Others. This is, of
Perhaps unintentionally,
Baratay’s little book
illustrates how much
falsehood is hidden
in our language.
Animals are its great
historical victims.
as such the blade of a lance piercing the body,
broken ribs, lung punctures. Baratay of course
describes this “spectacle” from such a perspective.
And how does the military service of dogs look
like? When we look at it through the eyes of a dog,
as the Frenchman tries, we will have two drag
carts weighing as much as 150 kg, suffer from
serious diseases, feel fear, experience separation
from the owner and finally die from shrapnel or
from exhaustion.
Perhaps unintentionally, Baratay’s little book
illustrates how much falsehood is hidden in our
language. Animals are its great historical victims.
It is difficult to think in personal terms about
something which has been reduced to udders,
about the way of holding the tail or the necessity
of possessing a narrow snout complying with
the specifications for the “perfect breed.” The
Frenchman rejects this animal breeding gibberish.
He opposes the thankfully no longer very popular
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course, not to suggest that these groups have the
same nature, but to emphasize that their agency
was denied, that their abilities were diminished.”
In fact, life is constantly providing us with other
examples giving cause for enthusiasm. Baratay
cites them in his book as well. “I tell you, it is the
foulest wickedness that animals are dragged into
war,” wrote Erich Maria Remarque in his novel All
Quiet On the Western Front, but this war also
triggered in people the understanding of the
enormity of the sacrifices required of animals.
In 1916 a guard dog was awarded the badge of
a scout, in 1918 all military kennels posted a letter
praising messenger dogs, and also pigeons were
rewarded for their hard front-line work at transporting messages! Also horses serving in mines
have been paid the respects due to them. After
the last two were lifted to the surface—in 1969
and 1976—many articles on their history have
been written and funds are collected in order to
provide these animals with peaceful retirement.
Nevertheless, the effects of animal lives on
people are still poorly described. It is a great
shame that we do not have narratives written
by the interested parties and we will rather not
live to see them. On the other hand… in one
of his great texts J.M. Coetzee wrote that it was
not entirely true that animals could not speak.
In moments important for themselves they can
talk to humans in a peculiar and mysterious way.
Perhaps in this case they lent their a voice to
Baratay? 110
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PAT R YC J A P U S T K O W I A K
literary journalist and reviewer, author of the novel Night
Animals (2013), nominated for the most important Polish
literary award NIKE.
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Tomasz Stawiszyński
Culture as a Source
of Practice
Peter Sloterdijk, Musisz życie swe
odmienić [You must change your
life], trans. Jaroslaw Janiszewski,
PWN, Warsaw 2014
the foundation of a culture which for three thousand years is addressing an essentialist message
to man: do not live as you have lived until now.
And then, resorting to various means of camouflage, Sloterdijk suggests to people some more
or less subtle training techniques and systems
of practice—historically bearing various names
and variously justifying their existence—so that
they could successfully implement this message.
So the newest book of the German philosopher is also a work belonging to the tradition of
the philosophy of suspicion. And there is nothing
strange in that, since—both in this work and in
others (just recall the ground-breaking Critique
of Cynical Reason or Crystal Palace)—an obvious
source of inspiration for Sloterdijk is Friedrich
Nietzsche. It was Nietzsche’s reflections on asceticism and nutrition (which germinated in the
short essay Ecce Homo) which gave rise to the
science of a practicing live, although, as Sloterdijk
immediately observes, “they were misunderstood
by superficial readers as a retreat of philosophy to
the positions of pharmacy.” So Sloterdijk was the
first to undertake the task of developing these
intuitions—and in his basic argument he tries
to translate the “religious, spiritual and ethical
facts into the language and perspective of the
general theory of practice.” And he does it by
using the methodology most characteristic for the
hermeneutics of suspicion: “making explicit the
relations which in a whole mass of messages are
presented as ‘implicit,’ that is: hidden in the forms
which are folded inside and pressed together.”
1.
In his book You Must Change Your Life, Peter
Sloterdijk—one of the most interesting and
undoubtedly the most original of contemporary
philosophers—is trying his hand at an art which
seemed definitely abandoned in the humanities;
namely, a great synthesis, a historiosophical narrative which from the multiplicity of theoretical
tropes, categories and concepts extracts some
fundamental principle and then traces its more
or less visible dynamics in the course of history
of the entire human culture.
At the heart of this impressive project—an epic
which is erudite, lavish, smoothly moving between
ages and latitudes—is a radical reinterpretation
of religion and ethics, that is the principal spheres
of culture, the principal areas of human activity.
But they are not the only subjects of Sloterdijk’s
brilliant hermeneutics—for his ambitions are total.
“You must change your life”—this phrase, taken
from the famous poem by Rainer Maria Rilke,
expresses, after all, the fundamental rule valid
on virtually all planes of human culture.
“You must change your life,” says Sloterdijk, this is a metanoetic (from the Greek metanoia, that is a profound inner transformation,
a profound inner reorientation) arch-principle,
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2.
Sloterdijk begins his panoramic reinterpretation of the history of human culture—dating
back to ancient times, both to pre-Socratics, and
­Patañjali—by placing the category of “a practicing
live” in contemporary context. In our times, he
claims, there is a lot of talk about the return to
religion. Sociology and philosophy convince us at
every turn (often through the mouths and pens
of their finest exponents) that we are witnessing
a kind of renaissance of everything that the
Enlightenment tradition for long attempted to
consign irrevocably to the dump of history.
But, as Sloterdijk provocatively suggests,
we cannot speak about a return to religion, for
“a return to religion is as impossible as a return
of religion itself—for the simple reason that
there is no ’religion’ and ‘religions’ as such, but
only spiritual systems of practice misunderstood
as religions, exercised either in the collective/
traditional way: church, ordo, umma, sangha, or
individually—in a mutual game with ’your own
God,’ from Whom the citizens of modernity buy
a private insurance.”
By making this kind of assumption, with one
expansive gesture Sloterdijk invalidates not only
the ongoing disputes about the essence of religiosity and about the difference between religion and pseudo-religious humbug or a sect, but
also—in a pointedly mocking and ironic way—the
antireligious crusade of the new atheists, headed
by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. For
the latter completely miss the real meaning of the
phenomenon of religion, they fail to notice its essentially training character. To make matters worse, they
attempt to reduce complex systems of practices to
a set of absurd claims about the world, discredited
many times over within the thorough and conscientious process of verification by empirical science
going back at least to the times of Copernicus. Militant atheism, says Sloterdijk, is a waste of time,
a blind alley in the evolution of human thought,
a misreading of the fundamental message calling
for an existential transformation in us.
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Similar attacks by organized churches on
the so-called new religious movements betray
a fundamental misunderstanding. They are of
course an expression of competition on the free
market of ideas and training services, but in fact
the distinction between a sect and true faith,
which they persistently promote, does not exist.
This is why, when reconstructing the implicit
and explicit nature of practice systems called
religions, Sloterdijk does it on the example
of… Scientology. And this does not follow only
from his liking for controversial comparisons or
scandalmongering. Not at all. His dissection of
the founding of the Scientological Church, the
meanders of its teachings and, last but not least,
its complex structure of initiation and hierarchy,
allows Sloterdijk to fully disclose the main features
of religious anthropotechnics, its basic currents,
objectives and methods.
3.
So there is no religion, there is only anthropotechnics, a complex system of practices, aimed
at a fundamental existential transformation. But
what is the vector of this transformation? It is
defined by the opposition between the immanent
and the transcendent—and the metanoetic arrow
is always pointing upwards. So religious anthropotechnics is a verticalizing system, in one way
or another oriented towards transcending the
current condition (“You must change your life”
means: you cannot live as you have lived until
now) and, by its very essence, towards regularity
and repetitiveness.
Sloterdijk writes: “I define practice here as
any operation which preserves or increases the
qualifications of the agent to conduct the same
operation once again, regardless of whether
it is declared as practice or not.” The repetitive
character of religious anthropotechnics directs
the practicing agent upwards, while the ritual
ornamentation or the many-layered theological
reflections serve almost exclusively as factors
feeding this verticalizing impulse.
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Therefore when looking at the dynamics of
development and crisis of Western religiosity,
Sloterdijk carefully analyses the breakdown of
traditional metaphysical categories and their
replacement by other concepts and images—but
the aim of this replacement is that the structure of the original practicing energy would
not disperse. For example, Sloterdijk manages
to build a convincing analogy between ancient
and mediaeval ascetic practices on the one hand
and the contemporary cult of sport and fitness
on the other—the latter would in fact be a metamorphosis of the former, or rather its peculiar
degradation: namely emptied of an openly spiritual references.
So today’s cult of physical fitness practiced in
countless gyms is anthropotechnics reduced to
empty repetitiveness, stripped of transcendence,
but anthropotechnics all the same, strictly subordinated to implementing the call for a transformation of the current form of life.
­ roto-forms of the sense of transcendence: thanks
p
to the constant readiness of the immune system
to act and its effectiveness, a living being actively
confronts potential deadly threats and opposes
them with the ability of its own organism to overcome what is deadly.” And man, as the only one
in the universe of living creatures, may be said to
function in three immunological spheres, autonomous, although interconnected, and closely
cooperating immune systems.
The first one is simply biological, connected
with physical survival of an individual organism,
defense from microbes and direct threats which
could break the continuity of its biological existence. The second one is social, composed of
legal, mutual and military practices which a given
community uses to confront strangers which
pose a threat to it. And the third system, the
most important and complex, is symbolic immunization, thanks to which man (but also entire
communities, entire generations) attempts to
cope with his “own vulnerability to events brought
about by destiny, including death, assuming the
form of imagined anticipations and mental armor.”
And it is in the broad context of the immune
system that the whole argument put forward by
Sloterdijk is played out.
4.
The general theory of practice—as disclosure and systematization of what earlier was
implicitly contained in the forms of structures
of particular cultural spheres—at last becomes
possible thanks to the development of empirical
science, and more precisely, of medical biology.
The late 19th century brings a discovery of Ilya
Mechnikov and Paul Ehrlich, which is difficult
to overestimate, namely: the immune system.
“[Since this discovery] in the sciences studying
integral entities—animal organisms, species,
‘societies’ cultures—nothing can remain the
same,” writes Sloterdijk. For it is only from that
moment on that we are becoming aware of
a number of processes shaping the functioning
of complex, self-organizing, viable and self-reproducing systems, which are the objects of
the philosopher’s interest: individual organisms,
communities and ultimately cultures or civilizations. “This kind of immunological systems,” adds
Sloterdijk, “might as well be described as organic
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5.
Producing the above characteristics and
adopting the above assumptions, Sloterdijk
tracks—on the pages of his book which overwhelms with details and facts—the fate of the
constantly practicing homo immunologicus,
from antiquity to the present time, from the
Far East to the erstwhile centers of civilization
of the white man. As befits a self-pronounced
conservatist, in the description of modernity his
tone assumes a somewhat bitter note—especially in those moments where he complains
about contemporary education and art. In his
opinion, both are devoid of the awareness of the
proper structure and direction of a successful
immunization process. Both are bogged down
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in a sterile self-referentiality, they lose from sight
the primacy of self-improvement or at least of
transcending the achievements of earlier generations. Paradoxically,as we are dealing with an
essentially degenerated form, this awareness has
not vanished in the current forms of athleticism.
But transcending the achievements of previous
generations is realized here only through multiplying monstrosity—through consumption of
more and more sophisticated and intense performance-enhancing drugs and crossing barriers
insurmountable for human biology.
But the ultimate goal of Sloterdijk is not to
formulate some kind of memento for his contemporaries or to lay bare the decadence of today’s
state of the world. His book—a fountain of erudition and a composition of sophisticated sentences
exhibiting a rare beauty—probably wants to be
above all a source of inspiring insight, so that
we can see the fundamental institutions of our
culture in a completely different light. In a light,
let us add, which is equally present in cultures
which seem radically different from ours.
So Sloterdijk really comes with a message
of a new, radical universalism. Perhaps the most
profound among all which have been proclaimed
so far. In fact, he says, all cultural differences are
merely contingent. What unites us is our common
participation in the imperative of continuous
practice. We must change our life, and we must
understand how important consequences it
entails. 114
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TO M A S Z S TAW I S Z Y Ń S K I
is a philosopher, essayist and literary critic, author
of Clashes with Freud. Myths, pitfalls and temptations
of psychotherapy (2013).
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No 1 | 2015
1 | 2015
Index: 287210
CENTRAL EUROPE
Aspen Institute Prague is supported by:
LEFT IS BACK
Frank Furedi, Ulrike Guérot, Ivan Krastev, John Psaropoulos, Martin Šimečka, José Ignacio Torreblanca
Nuclear Nationalism Has Only Brought Misery
An interview with Shirin Ebadi
Do Political Ideas Still Matter?
Jan-Werner Müller
W W W . A S P E N I N S T I T U T E . C Z
POLITICS Europe and Russia Dominique Moïsi | Europe in 1815 and 2015 B. Simms
ECONOMY Corruption, Romanian Style A. Mungiu | A Post-Imperial Federation Y. Zhuchkova
CULTURE Phenomenological Space Cadets to the Rescue A. Tucker | Masaryk and the Poles A. Kaczorowski