By Arpad Szakolczai
There are many wars currently going on in our allegedly Kantian-Hegelian world, supposed realm of eternal peace at the end of history. Three of them are threatening to become permanent.
One of these, the war in Gaza waged by Israel, extended to Lebanon, is not new, as it is going on practically since 1947, intensified in some key moments like 1967, 1973, 1982,and so on. The second, in and around Iran, also centrally involving Israel, similarly has very old historical roots, which I cannot possibly even evoke in a blog. The third, however, directly between Russia and Ukraine, is something absolutely unprecedented; would have been even unthinkable, and for many reasons, up to a few decades ago. It is this war that I would like to tentatively comment upon – from a particular angle. Given the prominent role played by Israel in two of our three current permanent wars, one might wonder about its role in the third – but I leave this for others to explore.
For many decades, the Soviet Union was an icon of the radical avantgarde. Such an appreciation had its ups and downs, due to the show trials of the 1930s, the events of 1956 in Hungary and 1968 in Prague, and so on, but a strong fascination with the Soviet “experiment” remained. Even a decade or less ago one could hear in the centre of Florence the Soviet hymn being played, from recording, in certain leftist manifestations.
The central point, for me here, is that such an appreciation had no basis in any genuine knowledge about the reality of the Soviet Union, or Russian culture, including their differences. It was based on a ridiculous, absurd idealism, whose only “real” source was a hatred of capitalism, which was extended to a wholesale rejection of classical European society and culture and its central values. We should not forget that the drive for the Revolution did not stop by changing the economic system, but was forcefully extended to every social, political and cultural tradition – whether because these were thought to have been the background moving forces or at least supports of capitalism, or whether because these were thought obsolete and backward in themselves. Here we should note that there was always a perplexing affinity between the anti-capitalist revolutionaries and the modern “capitalist” economy itself, as this latter was also always and explicitly an anti-traditionalist and, in this sense, a “revolutionary” force. The “permanent revolution” idea of Schumpeter, so much the driving force behind neoliberal business schools, and explicitly relying on the work of Marx, makes such a connection crystal clear.
Times certainly have changed. In our days, the Soviet Union does not exist, so it cannot be conflated with Russia. However, the result was not a better understanding of Russia, rather a radical shift to the opposite position: instead of holding it up as the bright future, by the “progressive” forces of Europe, it rather has become demonised. And the war in Ukraine is the clearest example of such demonisation.
Dissenters to this claim, justifying what I have called “demonisation”, would argue that in the war Russia was the aggressor. However, and without justifying the actions of Russia, or trying to come up with a “right” position about the origins of the war, for which I’m clearly not qualified, though hardly anyone is, unfortunately it is exactly such clearcut assessments which are impossible to make in our media-fuelled reality, in which things of all kinds are going on, unknown and unseen, behind the surface, shrewd intellectual manipulations. Thus simplistic, seemingly straightforward positions are definitely wrong and untenable; we need to attempt a more serious, in-depth understanding. And it is exactly such an understanding about Russia that the dominant European “progressive” and “avantgarde” intellectual forces are systematically incapable of, in the present just as in the past.
So let me bring in, from personal experience, a few relevant details; mere anecdotes, but as I have repeatedly emphasised, such anecdotes occasionally offer more insights that libraries of professional work.
I start with an episode going back to about 1992. In a departmental meeting at the EUI, in the context of discussions about the possible future extension on the EU, a major political scientist (in the sense of traditional political science, not political theory or philosophy) claimed that such Eastern extension has a “natural” limit in the Ukraine, as Ukraine belongs to the Russian zone of influence, and there can be no question of the EU ever incorporating Ukraine. I must stress that this was not a partisan opinion, simply the taken for granted, realistic commonsense knowledge then shared by political scientists. So what exactly changed since then? And why? And what sense does it make?
Let me continue with another EUI anecdote, most relevant for many reasons. In about autumn 1991, Richard Sakwa, who has just then published a book on Gorbachev, gave a talk there. It was one of the most highly attended and appreciated talks around that time, in my memory, as the room was extra full, and the response to the talk was extremely and univocally positive. A few years later, around autumn 1994, I invited him to give a follow-up talk. The talk, in my view, was just as fascinating and relevant. Richard did not change, though the situation did, and he gave a most informed and intriguing talk. Yet, the response was at best lukewarm.
I just could not understand what was going on, as such a negative view was expressed by the same people who were completely taken up by his talk three years before, congratulating me personally that I brought such an important and informed person to their attention. It made no sense whatsoever. However, by now, I understand what was going on. These people, major intellectual and academic powerbrokers and influencers, lost interest in understanding what was really going on in Russia. They gained a new ideological perspective and aim, and from this a genuine knowledge about what is going on in Russia was not simply irrelevant, but positively damaging, dangerous.
To the best of my memory and knowledge, Ukraine did not play a role, then, either in the talks or their assessment. It certainly was not a major issue for me – I accepted as self-evident the position of my colleague. It was brought to my attention obliquely, through the events in the former Yugoslavia, as there Krajina was one of the most important areas of the war; and through my knowledge of Russian, and my growing interest in liminality, as Krajina means a border area, or a liminal zone, just as Ukraine is.
My next acquaintance with Ukraine came in a 2002 conference in Regensburg, when Thomas Grob gave a fascinating paper on the Mazeppa myth. In my memory, Mazeppa was presented as a rather trickster-like character, moving continuously through the rather porous borderlines between Russia, Poland, Finland and Sweden. I was looking forward to reading the full version of the paper, eventually published in 2008 by Routledge, but in this published version I did not manage to find what I found most fascinating in the talk. This recalled me a similar occasion, when in a 2004 conference in Essen Jan Retsö gave an absolutely fascinating account about the connection between the rise of Islam and Yemen, focusing on the prehistory of a certain prophetic tradition in Yemen, but this paper was not included, for some reason, in the published book. These were two central episodes leading to my growing conviction that very influential forces in the academic world do not want that certain political or ideological dogmas be questioned – and not just about Russia.
Concerning Russia, a crucial episode in my knowledge, and problematisation of received wisdom, was my reading of René Girard’s first book, about novels, which ended on Dostoevsky, discussed after Proust, so clearly out of chronological order. This, however, was not accidental or erroneous, as Girard justified his choice by claiming that Dostoevsky offered the most advanced description of metaphysical mimetic desire, especially in Demons, but this was not due to something like the peculiarities of the Russian soul, rather to the way this developed in Russia, due to its peculiar, imitative relationship to the West. What this intimated for me is that, after all, there is something in the idea that Russia, in the form of the Soviet Union, is in a way in the “avantgarde” of “progress” – though of course not in the original sense it was intended, rather in being in the forefront of a certain decay and nihilism – which however can and must be reversed.
This belief was reinforced for me by a most different source, the May 13 – October 13, 1917, revelations of the Madonna in Fatima. The apparitions of the Madonna are not supposed to be taken seriously by academics, but in my view, this rather shows the at once methodological and ideological shortsightedness of current academic life. Declaring the 1917 apparitions of the Madonna in Fatima as cases of mass delusion is only possible if one ignores the “facts” – or, rather, the verified truth of the events, which indeed happened, and were not “made”, or “socially constructed”. Now, part of the revelations concerned Russia, calling for the conversion of Russia, and warning about the errors that Russia will spread around the world otherwise. Given that the Great October Revolution took place very shortly after the last apparition, there can be no doubt about the target of the message. This is only underlined by another “fact”, or rather data, as given, that Lenin returned to Russia on 16 April 1917, making the sequence 16 April – 13 May – 13 October – 7 November a perfectly closed and most meaningful series.
Note that the message, as it is always the case with such revelations, leaves open several interpretations, as current friends of Ukraine can interpret it as Russia continuing to spread his errors in the world.
The possible significance of the Fatima message, and the centrality of Russia, or the East of Europe for it, is only underlined by the conditions of the other most influential 20thcentury Marian apparition, which started in Medjugorje, thus in a Communist country, on 24 June 1981, thus on Midsummer Night, and under the papacy of John Paul II, the first not-Italian (and specifically Polish) pope in half a millennia, who had a major role in dismantling Communism. But note again that this apparition has not been accepted yet as authentic by the Vatican – though it has not been declared as false either, so is still fully open, or liminal.
All this implies that knowledge about Russia, true knowledge, genuine understanding, is vital, but it is not forthcoming; rather, and already long decades ago (here I can only allude to the criminal ignoring by avantgarde intellectuals of any genuine knowledge about Stalinist and other atrocities in so far as that was possible), the pursuit of such knowledge was rather actively discouraged by academic powerbrokers.
Let me now shift back to Ukraine, still combining anecdotes with interpretations of broader events. Concerning the latter, Ukraine over the past decades made itself famous by her repeated “liberations”. By this I mean that liberation from Communism in most countries was rather a single event, taking place in 1989 and 1991. Already the original event, as we with Agnes realised on the spot, was somewhat puzzling – not because we had any lingering doubts about the changes, as Communism clearly had no saving grace whatsoever, but because they were all-too easy, as if somebody directed the scenario from the background. When in 1956 Hungary fought against communism, there was widespread hope and enthusiasm, and if the regime had collapsed even a decade or so later, the relief and enthusiasm would have been tremendous. But in 1989, in Hungary and mostly elsewhere, the collapse of Communism was only celebrated as if in a spleen (Péter Esterházy, the greatest Hungarian novelist of the last half century claimed that if in 1956 Hungary shook off the Communist regime as a dog shakes off water, in 1989 it was not clear who was the dog, and what was water) – of course, outside the Western media which, as always, was carried by its own fake enthusiasm, having no understanding whatsoever of what is really taking place. Still, in Ukraine, there were repeated celebrations: first of the collapse of Communism, then of independence from Russia, then of liberation from corrupt politicians, then again, the Maidan protest in February 2014 – as if liberation, from an event, had turned into a permanent act.
Such perplexities received a definite confirmation when in 2019 Vladimir Zelensky, a comedian, was elected as president of Ukraine. In my 2013 book Comedy and the Public Sphere I identified the commedification of social and political life as a main feature, and danger, of modernity, going on, based on Byzantine influence, since the late Renaissance, already alluding to several comedians gaining political office (Al Franken in Minnesota, Jon Gnarr inReykjavik, or Beppe Grillo’s party in Italy). But the election of Zelensky went way beyond these cases, by the increasing significance of the country, and especially in the evident prospect of it soon going to war. Electing a comedian to such a position at such a place and in such times bode disaster, and in my reading Zelensky’s conduct fully conformed such fears – in the worst possible manner. His election would be followed by an all-out war, which by now has the definite tendency of turning permanent.
All this would require a thorough chronological study, starting with the question of how he could win by a landslide after winning only 30% in the first round. As this cannot be offered here, I will continue by a few anecdotes, from personal experience. Again, while according to “scientific methodology” this is questionable, these go into the very heart of reality, eliminating the increasingly unreliable mediators like official and unofficial media.
Anecdote 1 relays how some Ukrainian refugees reacted, about 3-4 years ago, to their assignment to a mountain village in the Apennines. They refused this, being much offended, as they were promised a seaside resort. It requires no long argumentation to show that genuine refugees would have been absolutely pleased by living in a mountain area in Central Italy. So who exactly were these Ukrainian refugees?
Anecdote 2 is based on a conversation I had with a Ukrainian student who was part of a group to which I introduced by Political Anthropological concepts, like liminality, trickster, and schismogenesis. He was listening with rare attention, and after told me that the framework applies without a gap to the Ukrainian case, which he knew well, as before becoming a student in the West he worked there and in an official capacity. In his interpretation in the last 15 years or so, going back to about 2008, all respected politicians in Ukraine were systematically eliminated, in several cases simply murdered, and the winner of these struggles, Zelensky, was the worst trickster of all.
Anecdote 3 offers a very recent confirmation of the previous points. In one of our moves, we hired a van which, accidentally, came just back from Ukraine. The drivers conveyed to us that anybody they met considered the war as an utter disaster that should immediately end, but which is not ending as it is bringing fame and wealth personally to Zelensky and his cronies.
I must add that in my personal experiences, I have never encountered episodes that support the current mainstream European narrative. However, I have other anecdotes that I could add, centrally involving Brussels, but which I’m under legal obligation not to mention.
These are not “facts” that circulate in the world media. But they should, as they are parts of lived experience. Mainstream Western media fakes to offer first-hand eyewitness experiences, but as we all know, such “experiences” are handpicked by those who want to suggest to all of us their ideological perspective, both directly and subliminally. Which is a problem. A real, terrible problem.
We need the real truth about the war in Ukraine, as well as the other wars now turning permanent. We need the real truth about Russia, so that we could get an understanding – not the ideological fabrications about it that dominate world opinion since 1917 – continuing the widespread misinformation and propaganda that was spread, by all sides, in WWI and which is largely the source and model of our permanent misinformation – among others, about the absurd, ongoing, permanent wars.
The pax hegeliana is a formidably thin mask of war.