Tag Archives: Culture

Models for an EU superstate?

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The United States of Europe?For those coming in late, the superstate series so far:
- The danger of Jean Monnet
- Why EU superstate conspiracy theories are nonsense
- Four points and a question for eurosceptics who believe in the advancing EU superstate
- EU competence creep, the spectre of the superstate, and how governments actually work

As I’ve set out several times, I don’t see an EU superstate as a realistic possibility at any point in the next hundred years – not even the next three hundred years. For me, this isn’t a problem. Our grandchilren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren are unlikely to have any of the same concerns that we do today – and as the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707 has proven nicely, national/cultural identities are more than capable of surviving political union (hell, in Scotland’s case the national identity has arguably got even stronger since the Acts of Union). As such, if – over the course of the next few centuries – it proves to be in the best economic interest of the peoples of Europe for a “superstate” of some description to emerge from the present EU, so what? We’ll all be long dead.

But if such a superstate were to emerge, what would it look like? On one of those previous superstate posts (all of which have got healthy discussions in the comments – despite various sidetracks into insane detail about trucking and jam), helpful contributor French Derek argues that

“a federal state of 27 nations, each with their own languages, cultures, economic models, etc would be impossible to govern”

However, there are two cases where something similar to this has come about – Russia and India. Could these provide us with a vision of a future European superstate and clues about a model to follow?

Where the EU is made up of 27 member states with 23 official languages (and a bunch of other, less widely-used ones ranging from Cornish in the UK and Frisian in Denmark/Germany through more widely-used unofficial languages like Russian, Ukrainian and Romani), the Russian Federation is made up of 21 semi-autonomous republics (plus various self-governing cities, oblasts, okrugs, etc. making up a total of 83 federal subjects) and has 27 official languages), while India is made up of 28 states (and a few additional semi-autonomous regions) with 29 languages spoken by more than a million people (and 122 spoken by more than 100,000). Neither country – much like the EU – could be considered to be ethnically or religiously homogenous.

But the fact remains that both federal states continue to function, despite insanely complex internal demographics (far more so than the United States of America – the federal model most often used as a point of comparison with any future EU superstate). Naturally, the size of their populations are not entirely comparable – Russia’s population is c.145 million (about a third of the EU’s 500 million) and India’s c.1.17 billion (about twice the EU’s population), while the US’ population of c.300 million is about two thirds that of the EU. But still – India’s size is similar at 1.3 million square miles as opposed to the EU’s 1.6 million (compared the the USA’s 3.6 million and Russia’s 6.7 million) – so who’s to say that either population or geographical area is a factor in the functioning of an effective federal state?

Of course, in the case of both Russia and India (as well as, arguably, that of the US), their current situation came about after centuries of war and conquest – unlike the EU’s entirely peaceful formation – and whether either Russia or India can be considered to be effectively governed is another matter entirely. But Russia, India and the US nonetheless are all examples of large federal states that manage to work – in India and the US with more or less effective democracies that have both seen minorities elected to the highest office in the land (Obama in the US, obviously, but also Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a Sikh). In both India and Russia (and arguably some parts of the US as well, with the various secessionist movements), the various federal states and regions have often retained a strong sense of identity and autonomy – just as have Scotland and Wales (among others) in the much smaller federal state that is the United Kingdom. Both India and Russia also retain some violent paramilitary nationalist/minority elements that occasionally cause trouble (much like in the federal state of Spain with ETA, or the UK with the various Irish republican groups of the last few decades).

So large federal states with complex demographics can exist and function with the constituent parts retaining their own national/cultural identites.

But can they hold together? India was far larger than it now is when under British rule – once the Raj left 60 years ago, Partition tore the country in three in a bloody horror the tensions of which remain to this day. With the end of the Cold War and fall of the Communist Party, various parts of the old USSR (Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, etc. etc.) broke away from Russia – and other regions, most notably Chechnya, have continued as part of the federation only under threat of force. The United States was torn apart by civil war less than a century after its formation.

Indeed, it’s arguable that Russia and India continue to hold together largely due to fear of “the other” – the perceived threat of the West in Russia (hence the rampant popularity of the nationalistic Putin and co), and the genuine threat of Pakistan in India (the threat of India in turn acting as a unifying device for the fragile federation of Pakistan). The United States originally came together thanks to the threat of Britain, while England emerged from the Heptarchy under the threat of the Vikings, France from the threat of England, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, modern federal Germany from a series of unifying wars with various neighbours under Bismark – and so on and so on.

In all cases, the sense of identity – “I am Russian”, “I am Indian”, “I am American”, “I am English”, “I am French”, “I am German” and all the rest – emerged due to a growing sense that another group of people were both somehow different and a threat. (Welsh national identity is a prime case in point – such a thing didn’t even exist until England started to invade what is now Wales, with the entire region made up of little more than warring tribes and principalities until they were given a unifying force, and existed as one kingdom only once – and then for just seven years – until the English conquest was completed and Wales in its current form was created. The same unifying, nationalising effect can also be seen in Scotland, where medieval English invasions likewise fostered a sense of Scottish national identity that helped bring the warring clans together.)

But what is the European Union’s threat? Who is “the other” for the EU that can foster a sense of European identity? With the current ongoing arguments over Turkish EU entry – not to mention the rise in tensions between Islam and the West of the last decade, the Islamist terror attacks in Madrid and London, and the perennial Europe-wide tensions over immigration – is “the other” for the EU going to be Islam? With the increasingly frequent stand-offs between the EU and Moscow over energy supplies and the autonomy of states on the European fringe, could it be Russia? For a while under the Bush administration and in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, it even looked like it might be America.

But whatever the “threat” – real or simply perceived – might turn out to be, it is hard to see a truly European identity begin to emerge without a greater sense of what being European is *not*. “We are American because we are not British”, “We are English because we are not Viking”, “We are Welsh/Scottish because we are not English” – this is how national identity has always begun.

So, while I disagree that the EU is too big and complex to form a superstate, I do maintain that such a thing remains unlikely. You can legislate to create political and economic integration, you can forge agreements between different territories and different cultures – but you cannot legislate or negotiate to build a sense of identity. Without that sense of identity – “I am American”, “I am Indian”, “I am Russian” – none of those three existing sprawling federations would be able to hold together. Of the EU’s 500 million citizens, how many really feel “European” to the extent that an American feels American, a Russian Russian or an Indian Indian? Hell – we can’t even agree on what Europe is – how can we know what it is to be European?

“Under the illusion that the borders are disappearing, they are actually rapidly growing”

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Interesting report over at Kosmopolito on a recent lecture by frequently controversial Slovenian lefty intellectual Slavoj Zizek. For followers of the post-Marxian philosopher, there’s probably not much new – but some of his ideas are well worth pondering at greater length, not least for those of us interested in the future of Europe. As Kosmopolito’s Tanchi notes Zizek as commenting,

“Under the illusion that the borders are disappearing, they are actually rapidly growing.”

These borders need not be the traditional lines on maps – they can be cultural as much as any kind of arbitrary physical boundary. Indeed, Zizek has much pondered the concept of multiculturalism, now gradually falling out of favour, as in this interview from back in August. Anti-multicultural right-wingers may be surprised at just how much they find themselves agreeing with this self-professed communist:

I think here we had enough of this multicultural ideology, which for me at least is often an inverted racism – namely for example when people come here – typically multiculturalists would say: “Oh I want to understand how you are different.” No… We need today codes of discretion, not more understanding. I think we should totally object to this liberal blackmail; we should understand each other – no the world is too complex we can not – I hate people, I don’t want to understand people. I want to have a certain code where I don’t understand your way of life and you don’t understand mine but we still can coexist.

Yet it’s not just a racial or national lack of understanding or rivalry that can be the problem – it can also be political. When the people become alienated from the political class, resentment can arise just as much (if not more so) than when fear or mistrust of “the other” leads to rising ethnic/cultural tensions. And it all stems from a lack of understanding on both sides – often coupled with a patronising tone from one or the other. The same tone that tells us that British National Party supporters join through resentment at lack of opportunity and personal failure is used to explain away the “No” votes to the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands (and subsequently the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland). As Zizek noted three years ago, after the French referendum,

The elite proposed to the people a choice that was effectively no choice at all. People were called to ratify the inevitable. Both the media and the political elite presented the choice as one between knowledge and ignorance, between expertise and ideology…

Patronise the people – even if they deserve it – and they will turn on you. Witness the recent kerfuffle in the UK on reality TV show Strictly Come Dancing, where the most useless contestant was repeatedly kept on by the public vote seemingly just to spite the expert judges.

Perhaps thanks to the weapons of mass destruction that never were, though the trend started long before that (Watergate, perhaps?) the world has become a more cynical, distrustful place – and politicians are among the least trusted of the lot. If a politician tells us that something is the case, we the people tend to believe the precise opposite. If a politician – sitting comfortably in their plush houses on their vast, taxpayer-funded salaries – tells us that they understand our concerns, our first reaction is to snort in derision.

And so the borders go up between the political elites and the people. Turnouts at elections drop year after year. More votes are cast for the winner of Big Brother than in general elections. Party membership tails off as even the most politically engaged lose faith and interest. Resentment grows along with populism, as politicians desperately try to re-engage with the public to the extent that Cabinet ministers feel the need to comment on The X Factor in parliament, or simply follow whatever mindless witch-hunt the tabloid press are up to this week.

If we’re alienated from our national politicians, what hope for those EU level politicians, about whom we know nothing?

And then, of course, there’s the psychological borders rising between the people themselves as opinions and resentments become entrenched and no amount of debate can change minds. Non-geographical borders along the purple America model, where resentment grows, and two ideologically wildly different nations live – literally – side by side in the same geographical territory.

Ignore the obvious race and religion based forms of multiculturalism – what happens when mutually-exclusive political cultures begin to arise within a democratic society?

But this post is already overlong and rambling, so perhaps that’s one for another day…

EU initiative in “overwhelmingly popular” shocker!

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Europeana holding pageThat’d be Europeana, the EU’s digital cultural history portal, whose purpose is “bringing you digitised books, films, paintings, newspapers, sounds and archives from Europe’s greatest collections” (with more info on the development site).

The project went live yesterday – and, as you’ll already know if you’ve clicked the first of those links, attracted so much interest that it immediately broke under the strain of visitors (the holding page on the site currently claiming “10 million visitors an hour”, which by my reckoning would either make it the most popular website launch in history, or be somewhat of an exaggeration…)

I’ve long been of the opinion that the EU’s best bet for getting people on board is to give them things they can actually appreciate – be it movies and film festivals via the little-known MEDIA Plus programme, music festivals or sporting events. To put it cynically, follow the old Roman tradition of giving the people circuses and spectacle to get their support. This should, in theory, be a relatively cost-effective alternative – and as such should be applauded (probably – it’s hard to tell as the site’s down…). The fact that it has apparently been so popular on its first day is a heartening sign – not least because projects with a focus on the arts rarely appear to attract that much attention these days. (But perhaps it’s because of all the porn?)

(The anti-EU alternate version of this post, by the way, is headed “EU so rubbish it can’t even launch a website” and goes on to rant about Brussels bureaucrats wasting our taxes on projects that are a) designed to culturally brainwash us all, and b) wouldn’t be able to survive commercially. There’s a surprisingly large cross-over between anti-EU types and those who argue that there should be no public funding for the arts, you’ll find. Which in my books means that there’s a surprisingly large cross-over between anti-EU types and philistines…)

The Russian Ozymandias

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (image leeched from Wikipedia)Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is dead, another of the giants of 20th century literature gone, his works already diminished from handy anti-Soviet conversation pieces for the dinner party set to dusty history source books.

The Gulag Archipelago remains his best-known book, though most people will only have read the expurgated version rather than as three chunky volumes. They may have tinkered with Cancer Ward. But, let’s face it, most people who’ve read any Solzhenitsyn will only have read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – an easy hundred or so pages of Soviet horror. Quick to read, quick to be forgotten.

While The Gulag Archipelago will be foisted on reluctant history students for decades, if not centuries to come, its catalogue of horrors becomes so vast as to be overwhelming, desensitising. This is why Ivan Denisovich is more familiar – the crimes committed by the likes of Stalin were just too vast to comprehend other than through the stories of individuals. Yes, all those mentioned in The Gulag Archipelago were individuals too, but by their sheer number they become faceless. Statistics. They blur into one, the easier to forget – as Robert Conquest noted in his (400+ page) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-famine, “We may perhaps put this in perspective… by saying that in the actions here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in this book.”

It’s something Martin Amis tried to get across in his stab at writing about the crimes of the Soviets in Koba the Dread (worth a read even if you don’t like Amis or his hectoring tone), having opened with the above quote from Conquest: “We cannot understand it… It takes a significant effort of imagination…”

The Soviet gulags, like their cousins the Nazi concentration camps, are indeed all but impossible to comprehend. Without Solzhenitsyn, we couldn’t have the first chance of even trying to imagine what they were like, let alone of understanding. And yet what he tried to describe in The Gulag Archipelago still remains impossible to comprehend – the sheer vastness and hostility of Siberia, for one, remains a struggle for me to grasp even now that I’ve endured the long flight gazing down on its featureless whiteness on several trips to Japan.

Meanwhile, his best book, the work that best shows off his literary genius – August 1914 – languishes largely unread, currently up for grabs on Amazon.co.uk for just 1p. Yes, that’s one English penny. It is at once the best book about the First World War I’ve ever read and the real perfect symbol of Solzhenitsyn – vast in size, detailed in its research, beautiful in its language, able somehow to bring to life events impossible to imagine in that first month of the war, yet also marred by early censorship (pick up Lenin in Zurich – also currently going for a penny – for some of the missing bits), more known of than read, and somehow incomplete. For August 1914, all 600+ pages of it (1000+ with the restoration of the missing bits) was but the first in an intended series – The Red Wheel – covering Russia’s road to revolution and its subsequent repression.

Of this series, he completed just four books over a twenty-year period, of which I believe only August 1914 and November 1916 has so far been translated into English. It’s a masterpiece, but a difficult and ultimately disappointing one – because now he is dead and it will never be completed, destined to become, in the memorable phrase of Nina Khrushcheva (writing in The Nation on Solzhenitsyn’s 80th birthday back in 1999),

“little more than a crank’s mausoleum within which his Nobel Prize-worthy talent has been interred.”

And so, thanks in part to the sheer length of time it took him to write them, in part thanks to his unshakable public image as the guy who writes about gulags, these works that Solzhenitsyn himself seemingly hoped to make his true literary legacy languish mostly unread and, in some cases, unpublished outside his native tongue. Where his books were once unread through censorship, they now gather dust through lack of interest – and with his death, Solzhenitsyn himself is doubtless destined to join Ozymandias – a symbol of something great, yet increasingly forgotten.

We cannot comprehend the horrors of the 20th century – not the slow march into death of the Somme, not the cattle-truck convoys to the gas chambers of Belsen, and not the icy nothingness of Siberian exile – but we also cannot forget them. Even if Solzhenitsyn did, in the last decades of his life, become obsolete with the fall of Communism – a symbol of rebellion and independence so powerful that he was quickly moulded by the canny Putin to be wheeled out as a propaganda tool – and even though his works may increasingly be unread these days, he is one of the few twentieth century writers whose works we already know are important enough to be taught as history.

Yet few want to read “important” books. Better, then, to remember Solzhenitsyn the man as something separate from his actual works. The Gulag Archipelago was “important” when it first came out – since the fall of the Soviet Union it is no longer, yet it remains a truly great work of history and of literature. August 1914 was overshadowed by the earlier, “important” works on life under the Soviets when it came out. Now, finally, it can perhaps emerge from the shadows. Solzhenitsyn himself will forever be associated with the Soviet era, but perhaps now we can finally start to read his books not just for their insight into incomprehensible times, but for the beauty of their language, the knife-edge sharpness of their descriptions, and the all-pervading feeling of muffled hope amid hopelessness that is, above all, the true legacy of the twentieth century. That his final masterpiece, the Red Wheel series, will now remain unfinished seems strangely apt for a man who has come to symbolise a period in which all too many lives were ended too soon.

And still, his books remain to remind us of the horrors of war and repression, hopefully to prevent future leaders making the same mistakes, though we all know such lessons are rarely learned:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Solzhenitsyn, I hope, would be in agreement:

SPIEGEL: Are you afraid of death?

Solzhenitsyn: No, I am not afraid of death any more. When I was young the early death of my father cast a shadow over me — he died at the age of 27 — and I was afraid to die before all my literary plans came true. But between 30 and 40 years of age my attitude to death became quite calm and balanced. I feel it is a natural, but no means the final, milestone of one’s existence.

SPIEGEL: Anyhow, we wish you many years of creative life.

Solzhenitsyn: No, no. Don’t. It’s enough.

A shift in focus: History and Culture

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You may have noticed that over the last few months the rate of posting here has declined. It’s a combination of over-work and lack of interest in the current political goings-on, and has inspired a slight shift in focus in an attempt to get me posting more frequently.

In the UK, we’re in that dull mud-slinging period prior to an election almost certain to see a change of government (that may not arrive for another two years), much like the interminable years of party fervour of 1990-97. The Labour v Tory rivalry always bores me – especially when everyone gets so het up about it all. But sadly the golden age of cross-party unity over a hatred of Tony Blair has ended, and petty squabbles are again on the rise.

When it comes to the EU, we’re in yet another period of stagnation caused by the rejection of yet another tedious and uninspiring treaty, much like the interminable last seven years (or more) since the Treaty of Nice singularly failed to achieve what it was meant to. I’ve already written so much on the Lisbon Treaty and Constitution that I’m not sure if I can handle churning out any more attempts at constructive criticism, soothsaying or analysis. At least, not for a while.

Elsewhere in Europe, there’s not a great deal of excitement among the domestic politics of the various states at the moment either, from what I can tell. Even Berlusconi’s being entirely predictable since his return to power (engineering a grant of immunity from prosecution and spurting out broad, brainless populist nonsense at every opportunity). The only thing that does spark an interest is the ongoing threat of Russian energy dominance, a new phase of which was hinted at over the weekend with suggestions that the Kremlin might be using oil supply to the Czech Republic to try and force the Czech government to backtrack over the proposed US missile defence shield.

But this is not meant to be one of those semi-regular “blogger announces he/she’s going to quit blogging in an attempt to garner praise from readers before swiftly posting more than ever” posts.

Clio, The Muse Of History And Song, 1758 - Francois BoucherInstead, I’ve decided to start writing about things that still interest me when the political goings on are getting tedious. Keeping in with the general theme of this place – and giving an excuse to make that little piece of paper with “MA Modern History (Dist.)” and those three years working on a history magazine seem worthwhile – what better than European history and culture? After all, I know my stuff moderately well, am always reading to find out more, and in recent months have most enjoyed writing posts like the Eurovision liveblog and overview of wannabe European states – the political ones have more often been a chore. Blogging should be fun, not dull.

I’ve been pondering this shift in focus ever since the last redesign, but decided for certain this weekend, while browsing through a couple of books. First, Tony Judt’s excellent Postwar, from the Preface:

“The whole of Europe (excluding Russia and Turkey) comprises just five and a half million square kilometers: less than two thirds the area of Brazil, not much more than half the size of China or the US. It is dwarfed by Russia, which covers seventeen million square kilometers. But in the intensity of its internal differences and contrasts, Europe is unique.”

Swiftly followed by this, from the Prologue to Geert Mak’s gloriously engaging In Europe:

“Do we Europeans have a common history? Of course, everyone can rattle their way down the list: Roman Empire, Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, 1914, 1945, 1989. But then one need only look at the enormous differences in the way that history has been experienced by individual Europeans: the older Polish truck driver I spoke to, who had been forced four times in his life to learn a new language; the German couple, bombed out of their home and then endlessly driven from place to place throughout Eastern Europe; the Basque family that fell apart one Christmas Eve arguing about the Spanish Civil War, and never spoke to each other again; the serene satisfaction of the Dutch, the Danes and the Swedes, who have usually avoided catching the full brunt of History. Put a group of Russians, Germans, Britons, Czechs and Spaniards at one table and have them recite their family histories: they are worlds unto themselves. Yet, even so, it is all Europe.”

Because, of course, though Europe has more than its fair share of diversity in history and culture it still has plenty of common ground – be it Saint George acting as patron saint of England, Moscow, Portugal and more, the similarities in old myths and legends (like Zeus and Odin, Tristan and Lancelot), or the flow of artistic motifs (from the use of the eagle in heraldry Europe-wide to the symbolism of the star in art, architecture and the EU flag). Perhaps by focussing more on these areas I’ll be able to track down that elusive, impossible to define quality of what it means to be “European” – the thing that unites us all, from Ulster to the Urals, Nordkapp to Nicosia.

It may turn out that Bismarck was right, and all we have in common is geography. But I prefer to turn to Churchill – a fine historian (if not so fine a politician), with a strong (if frequently misunderstood) idea of Europe:

“I wish to speak about the tragedy of Europe, this noble continent, the home of all the great parent races of the Western world, the foundation of Christian faith and ethics, the origin of most of the culture, arts, philosophy and science both of ancient and modern times. If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the happiness, prosperity and glory which its 300 million or 400 million people would enjoy.”

But the major reason is just to have fun with blogging again – so don’t expect a structure or a plan to emerge for a while. This will be more a miscellany. Slices of little-known or forgotten history. Profiles of persons of interest. The occasional book review. Overviews of key events and ideas. Quotations. In other words, random bits and pieces that interest me – sometimes tied to the overriding theme of European identity or current affairs, sometimes just curios. And all the while heeding Hegel:

“Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it… Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help. It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the Past.”

When it comes to politics, history is both ignored and useless. What could be a more perfect focus for a political blog, that most ignored and useless of all contributions to the public sphere?

If you’re in London tonight and at a loose end

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Then hie thee to the Plantaganet gothic splendour of Southwark Cathedral (by London Bridge), for 8pm.

Last night I caught a really rather excellent performance of the Ludus Danielis, a sung play (being pitched as a sort of proto-opera) dating from around 1230 with some of the finest early music you’re likely to find. I know this runs the risk of sounding insanely pretentious, but there’s something about the play of choral latin off gothic stone pillars, and the mingling of simple melodies from instruments so old you won’t even know their names (precursors to the violin, lute and bagpipe among them) that makes for one of those rare experiences where you come out of a performance and simply can’t stop smiling.

Nonetheless, yesterday and today are the only two performances at Southwark (although I believe they may be taking it to Kings, Cambridge later in the month), and last night there was a depressing number of empty seats. Tickets range from £10 to £30, can be bought via the Barbican or on the door. I’m no music critic, so won’t even attempt to give the thing a full review, but it really was superb.

(Back to politics in a bit, no doubt…)