Very good analysis, thank you! As for Russian elites - yes, they are in a funk, but you are missing a two major difference to EE elites. A) they aren’t parochial b) they are pragmatic, I e don’t have any ideology whatsoever, opposite to EE elites that are limited by their nationalism. Thus Russian elites are very opportunistic, which in current set isn’t a bad thing and gives some hope to the rest of us that we won’t end up deep fried .
Let's hope so. But I see them in a deep trouble. When they try to be as liberal as possible, they are derided and not believed. I agree that pragmatism is what is needed. Otherwise...
They are now basically throwing everything at the wall, observing what sticks. Oh, and it’s. It for the west, it’s for internal audience. So far it’s a weird mix, what definitely pleases people are anti corruption processes (1937 was widely popular , except for those in the receiving end), social spending, social conservatism (Russia is not lgbt tolerant from the ground up) , efficiency.
The result is a very curious mix of liberalism in one end (in the form of leaving people alone for the most part) and social conservatism on the other. Liberal conservatism :)
It’s all work in progress really, very interssting to observe. Oh, and no chance to read anything about it in the west, here only the party line is allowed
Nearing the end of soviet union, Russian elites were disillusioned by idea to rediscover themselves like America. Russian elites were impressed by capitalistic achievements and its material prosperity which was in contrast to Soviet scarcity of goods. Russian elites were inclined towards liberal freedoms, popular democracy and freedom of expression which they saw in America which was in contrast to soviet purges and oppression. The end of USSR was coming and Russian elites, just like eastern European elites, wanted to rediscover or reinvent their national identities for stability. America and Eurogarchs invited eastern European states into their vision. Russians were left astray and they didn't expect that America have no place for them even after the decisive end of cold war & dissolution of soviet empire.
Interesting to note that, China was not disillusioned by American stereotypical models. China charted it's own course with great pragmatism and political & economic experiments for reformation.
The practical experience of Russia with liberalism under Yeltsin was that 1) economic neoliberalism amounts to looting 2) somehow it is okay for Yeltsin violate an explicit order of the Constitutional Court, send the army againts Duma (Parliament) and act exactly like a dictator and still somehow be friends with Western liberals.
The problem was the same as in the Soviet times: "he is a sonofabitch, but he is OUR sonofabitch".
In other words, it was not clear if you took that perspective that principled liberalism even exists? It looked a lot like what they were doing in Soviet times, presenting an image of peace and democracy, and the reality was something very different.
From a strictly historical point of view, the origin of what we know and feel today as nationalism is very clear-cut: Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon did some reforms in the French Army that initiated a cascade effect that transformed French society as a whole, but, long story short, France had no money left after the French Revolution and was besieged from all sides by the recently founded (July 1707) British Empire. Without money to pay for the soldiers, Napoleon did a number of reforms that essentially converted the French Army from an army of de facto mercenaries (as was the rule in the history of humanity up to then) to an army of patriots (which is what we perceive armies as they are today). So, for example, the invention of medals for feats on the battlefield is a Napoleonic invention.
Such reforms required people in France to be educated centrally, according to a single narrative woven by the State. One thing was that everyone (male) was a potential soldier, so they had to speak the same language: French (which was not the most spoken language in France by then, there were a lot of dialects). Another thing was the universal teaching of a single French History, and so on.
In Eastern Europe, the pattern is even clearer because the process was late. Edward H. Carr was decisive when he correctly identified that the most likely nations to not enter the newly founded Soviet Union were the ones that had the strongest bourgeoisie, therefore the ones with the strongest nationalist feeling among their peoples. That's why the USSR's western nations (relative to Russia, the cradle of the Revolution) were more problematic than its eastern nations, and, the more western, the more problematic, because the strongest the national bourgeoisie (e.g. Finland and Poland).
But yes, the origin of nationalism is very clear: it is an invention of the bourgeoisie when it finally took political (it already had the economic) power.
I think it was an important ingredient as a speech to the masses by the local bourgeoisies.
The big difference, in my opinion, is that the national bourgeoisies of these 1989 counter-revolutions already had a strong comprador mentality, linked to a will to submit or annex themselves to the world bourgeoisie of the USA.
But, for the masses, nationalism undoubtedly played a crucial role.
EE elites are so dangerous they threaten the existence of the world. They lack clear ethnic inclusion criteria, their language often doesn’t even dominate the land they live in (Riga), and they lack an inspiring history or native high culture… so they claim to belong to “the west” while antagonising their east. Same goes for Finland, where nationalism is not liberal at all
I join others here hoping that you write more on this topic. It is such an interesting theme and hardly anyone writes on it.
Nationalist dogma got established in all these countries, and it is easy to forget how iffy the roots of nationalist ideologies are. History, poetry, legends and narratives got augmented, sometimes even invented from scratch, and then glorified and beaten into school curricula...
You didn't mention the first and probably the most significant such movement, the Hungarian. You could see even then how iffy the idea of ethnic homogeneity is. Kosuth - the ideologue who argued for Hungarian purity - was half Slovak. The legendary nationalist poet, Sandor Petofi, was half-Slovak half-Serb, born Alexander Petrovics...
Indeed a good analysis, that only a honest intelligence with healthy distance and insight can do. True in aspects for its 19th and 20th century formation, to post communist explosion and its neofascist/neonazi presence, which is a bit sad for e.g. Slavs.
Supporting facts is that e g. Balkan nationalisms share sane feats in its own etnos, but clash so much over "blood and soil". But sometimes, like in balkan war 2, they can unite against common enemy, abeit temporary. Reminds me of Marcus Garvey and KKK agreeing on Back to Africa movement for short :)
I can testify that since many pro western Russians fled to Serbia, they are indeed on no mans land. Seen as traitors back home, shunnee by Putinism here, rejected by west for having Russian papers.
But as with Yugoslavs in immigration, Ukrainians and Russians quite get along here, when away from propaganda and conflict.
So much parochialism in the world. West European, US and Canadian elites seem awfully parochial as well. At least with East European elites, their parochialism is limited to their own countries, whereas the West Europeans and N Americans want to impose their parochial attitudes on others.
There are honourable exceptions - eg Jeff Sachs. Why can’t we try to look at the world through the eyes of other societies?
Very illuminating. Of course, Eastern European share many characteristics of nationalisms everywhere. The shrill supremacist rhetoric is always accompanied by abject subordination to whatever great power the nationalists end up choosing as their protector. Consider the current neo-fascist government of Italy, in its total submission to NATO and the neoliberal order. In this sense, the European Union is a natural haven for Eastern European newcomers: there they can strut their feathers as needed for their domestic audiences, while underwriting the austerity program that will keep them in business as guardians. Even Putin had Europe and the West as his first choice; and it was only the truly astonishing stupidity of the neoconservatives that sent Russia into the orbit of Eurasianism. Small-nation nationalism becomes truly dangerous when great powers use it for their own ends; this is as true of the outbreak of World War I as it is of the war in Ukraine. After the ignition, however, history unfolds according to its dynamics, usually contrary to any plan. We will never know what an alliance between Russia and the West would have produced. Russia as the enemy of the West has rekindled Russophobia (not that it needed much stimulation) and fascisms of all kinds and there lies the danger of a truly disastrous outcome.
"Small-nation nationalism becomes truly dangerous when great powers use it for their own ends;." Fully agree. Small nation nationalisms produce consequences that are far beyond the size of such nations or global importance of their issues (grievances. complaints etc).
“Prometheism or Prometheanism (Polish: Prometeizm) was a political project initiated by Józef Piłsudski, a principal statesman of the Second Polish Republic from 1918 to 1935. Its aim was to weaken the Russian Empire and its successor states, including the Soviet Union, by supporting nationalist independence movements among the major non-Russian peoples that lived within the borders of Russia and the Soviet Union.
[...] Marshal Piłsudski, who as early as 1904, in a memorandum to the Japanese government, pointed out the need to employ, in the struggle against Russia, the numerous non-Russian nations that inhabited the basins of the Baltic, Black and Caspian Seas”
Interesting detail from the same page:
“Aufbau's chief political allies were Erich Ludendorff and Adolf Hitler as the leaders of the incipient Nazi movement. Aufbau sought to overthrow the Bolshevik government through military intervention and to break up Bolshevik Russia into a number of National Socialist successor states, including the Ukraine-led Black Sea League, similar entities in the Baltic and Siberia, and a rump Russia.[9] The Ukrainian representative in Aufbau was Ivan Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia, former chancellor of the anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian State, head of the Ukrainian National Cossack Organization. In 1921 Aufbau secured two million marks of funding for Vasyl Vyshyvanyi's army in return for trading and industrial concessions to Germany in the future Ukrainian state and recruitment began, while Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia joined Vyshyvanyi's Supreme Council in Vienna. An offensive in Ukraine was to be combined with a new undertaking in the Baltics along the lines of the 1919 Latvian Intervention by the West Russian Volunteer Army of Pavel Bermondt-Avalov. A Russian nationalist coup against the "Jews" (i.e. the Bolsheviks) to establish a "Russian national farmers' dictatorship" was planned for the summer of 1923 under the leadership of Vasily Biskupsky and Pyotr Krasnov. By 1923, the Munich leader of the Military Organization of Eastern Galicia, Bohdan Hustevych, was receiving military training from Ernst Röhm, and Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia proclaimed that the "time of a productive National Socialist revolution ... has drawn near". [...] in 1933 Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia moved to Berlin at Hitler's invitation and his collaboration with Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg intensified again. He supported Rosenberg's plans for a semi-colonial Ukrainian satellite state and pledged the German-trained Ukrainian Cossack forces fully to the Nazi project. Rosenberg himself was in charge of aiding the Ukrainian independence movement in Soviet Ukraine in its propaganda and terrorist activities.”
We should also consider that nationalism in Eastern Europe was also fostered by the US, quasi as a counter design to a Soviet internationalism. This aided not only in the breakup of the Soviet Union, but also of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia - and led to more recent developments in Ukraine. Thus, the outcome of Washington's "Better Printing for a Great American Comeback" project may also play a role in future. Western Europe's economies seem to b e already entering a hardly controllable sinking pattern, and caravans seem to bee gravitating towards oases.
On top of this come considerable demographic problems caused by low birthrates (check median ages! Poland youngest with 42.), and nationalism makes the concept of mass immigration quite unpopular in Eastern Europe. Migration patterns might favour an increasingly Asian outlook of Russia
I pulled off the shelf Huntington's 'The Clash of Civilizations ...' to find I'd (long ago) trawled through it for mentions of "enemy". So, on p20 "For peoples seeking identity and reinventing ethnicity, enemies are essential ..." and on p130 "It is human to hate."
So, without a well-formed enemy it hardly seems likely that Russian elites can conjure a kernel of belief that provides a well-spring of potent opposition to Putinism, especially if it has to build on a "fiction of Euro-Asianism". Even less hopeful is a "universal civilisation" (or culture) based on Love as the antidote to Hate.
Huntington anticipated & at least partially explains SO MUCH of what's happened internationally & even within counties: culture has become way more salient politically than economics. Specifically: old 1-dimensional "left-right" economic axis now becomes 2-dimensional with a new "traditional-inclusivist" axis
I greatly appreciate your contributions on Substack, but I believe that, at least regarding Serbia, a more nuanced approach is needed, particularly when it comes to relying on Western powers (there was also reliance on Austria and Russia, and later on France and partly England, then Germany, etc.). It is also not true that all national elites were inclined towards fascism: for Serbia and Greece, this can only be partially true for some segments of the elite, but generally not. I also think that you do not highlight the very important role of religion in shaping and influencing the behavior of national elites.
I agree w/ you in part, although Metaxas was pretty reactionary, but clearly could not become a full fascist because Italian Fascists invaded Greece. This is what I meant by saying that the elites that were directly attacked by Fascists or Nazis (Greek, Serbian, Polish), despite their right-wing sympathies, could not embrace Nazism. Others, of course, could.
Not all elites, but etnofascism exist e.g. Ljotic and small neonazi groups in Serbia. Not a true elite, but someone could argue that Seselj was in power and was bordering most elements of fascism/nazin on Greater Serbia iredentism ground, in theory and more in practice
This is an interesting article but when it comes to Russian elites, it is way off mark. Russian elites, until the beginning of SVO, were really former Soviet elites, drawn from all of the former Soviet republics, thus very explicitly, non-Russian, often some exotic mix of different nationalities. Their outlook was not nationalistic but rather paternalistic to the other republics, where often they came from. "Soviet internationalism" at its best. Thus until 2022 there was little response to the growing nationalism fervor in Ukraine, Baltics, Central Asia, it was all met with indifference. As long as money could be made with the help of the locals, everything was fine. They definitely wanted to be accepted in the West as equals, all these grandchildren of NKVD captains and "red professors" who replaced old cadres. Russian spring and Novorossia was mocked and ignored. Only with the SVO when many of these elites decided to break away and move to Israel or Britain, there began some semblance of a presence of Russian nationalism on national level but it will never be allowed to become a policy - old Soviet habits preclude that.
Agree. In the original draft, I mentioned that. but did not want open another can of worms. However. China cannot fulfill this function of having somebody less 'cultural'' than you
to hate because it has an ancient civilization equal to the West and is a major economic and technologic power today. So they can be anti-China, but cannot feel superior to it.
I think you got that wrong. A lot of people have a need to feel superior, so they will come up with a rational explanation of some kind.
Being more 'cultural' is just one of the possible bullshit explanations. If that one cannot stick, then some other can be found.
(That was a general remark about people. I have no idea what russians today actually think or don't think.)
But, since the west does not want to accept Russia as a respectable country, there's no point in trying to suck up to them by trying to be more 'cultural' than the eastern neighbors.
Why would Russians need approval from Eastern lunatics to be succesful and happy? Can't they simply bypass them? After all, that's what the Nord Stream pipeline was about.
Very interesting thanks! I'm actually reading Barrington Moore's classic "Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy" at the moment and was just wondering what Moore would say about Eastern Europe had he lived to see the fall of the iron curtain.
I think he would say something like this- the initial conditions for a reactionary conservative path to capitalist development were there in Eastern Europe, but this was aborted by the Soviet occupation. Is history now getting back on track?
Very good analysis, thank you! As for Russian elites - yes, they are in a funk, but you are missing a two major difference to EE elites. A) they aren’t parochial b) they are pragmatic, I e don’t have any ideology whatsoever, opposite to EE elites that are limited by their nationalism. Thus Russian elites are very opportunistic, which in current set isn’t a bad thing and gives some hope to the rest of us that we won’t end up deep fried .
Let's hope so. But I see them in a deep trouble. When they try to be as liberal as possible, they are derided and not believed. I agree that pragmatism is what is needed. Otherwise...
They are now basically throwing everything at the wall, observing what sticks. Oh, and it’s. It for the west, it’s for internal audience. So far it’s a weird mix, what definitely pleases people are anti corruption processes (1937 was widely popular , except for those in the receiving end), social spending, social conservatism (Russia is not lgbt tolerant from the ground up) , efficiency.
The result is a very curious mix of liberalism in one end (in the form of leaving people alone for the most part) and social conservatism on the other. Liberal conservatism :)
It’s all work in progress really, very interssting to observe. Oh, and no chance to read anything about it in the west, here only the party line is allowed
Nearing the end of soviet union, Russian elites were disillusioned by idea to rediscover themselves like America. Russian elites were impressed by capitalistic achievements and its material prosperity which was in contrast to Soviet scarcity of goods. Russian elites were inclined towards liberal freedoms, popular democracy and freedom of expression which they saw in America which was in contrast to soviet purges and oppression. The end of USSR was coming and Russian elites, just like eastern European elites, wanted to rediscover or reinvent their national identities for stability. America and Eurogarchs invited eastern European states into their vision. Russians were left astray and they didn't expect that America have no place for them even after the decisive end of cold war & dissolution of soviet empire.
Interesting to note that, China was not disillusioned by American stereotypical models. China charted it's own course with great pragmatism and political & economic experiments for reformation.
Agree, Perhaps the Chinese communist elites were just smarter.
Wang Huning saved them.
The practical experience of Russia with liberalism under Yeltsin was that 1) economic neoliberalism amounts to looting 2) somehow it is okay for Yeltsin violate an explicit order of the Constitutional Court, send the army againts Duma (Parliament) and act exactly like a dictator and still somehow be friends with Western liberals.
The problem was the same as in the Soviet times: "he is a sonofabitch, but he is OUR sonofabitch".
In other words, it was not clear if you took that perspective that principled liberalism even exists? It looked a lot like what they were doing in Soviet times, presenting an image of peace and democracy, and the reality was something very different.
Scarcity of goods is due to disrupting policies of gorbhachev since 1987
From a strictly historical point of view, the origin of what we know and feel today as nationalism is very clear-cut: Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon did some reforms in the French Army that initiated a cascade effect that transformed French society as a whole, but, long story short, France had no money left after the French Revolution and was besieged from all sides by the recently founded (July 1707) British Empire. Without money to pay for the soldiers, Napoleon did a number of reforms that essentially converted the French Army from an army of de facto mercenaries (as was the rule in the history of humanity up to then) to an army of patriots (which is what we perceive armies as they are today). So, for example, the invention of medals for feats on the battlefield is a Napoleonic invention.
Such reforms required people in France to be educated centrally, according to a single narrative woven by the State. One thing was that everyone (male) was a potential soldier, so they had to speak the same language: French (which was not the most spoken language in France by then, there were a lot of dialects). Another thing was the universal teaching of a single French History, and so on.
In Eastern Europe, the pattern is even clearer because the process was late. Edward H. Carr was decisive when he correctly identified that the most likely nations to not enter the newly founded Soviet Union were the ones that had the strongest bourgeoisie, therefore the ones with the strongest nationalist feeling among their peoples. That's why the USSR's western nations (relative to Russia, the cradle of the Revolution) were more problematic than its eastern nations, and, the more western, the more problematic, because the strongest the national bourgeoisie (e.g. Finland and Poland).
But yes, the origin of nationalism is very clear: it is an invention of the bourgeoisie when it finally took political (it already had the economic) power.
Do you think 1989 counter revolutions were based on nationalism? Me thinks no
I think it was an important ingredient as a speech to the masses by the local bourgeoisies.
The big difference, in my opinion, is that the national bourgeoisies of these 1989 counter-revolutions already had a strong comprador mentality, linked to a will to submit or annex themselves to the world bourgeoisie of the USA.
But, for the masses, nationalism undoubtedly played a crucial role.
Finland was created by Russia after napoleonic defeat, entirely artificial nation
EE elites are so dangerous they threaten the existence of the world. They lack clear ethnic inclusion criteria, their language often doesn’t even dominate the land they live in (Riga), and they lack an inspiring history or native high culture… so they claim to belong to “the west” while antagonising their east. Same goes for Finland, where nationalism is not liberal at all
Prof. Milanovic,
I join others here hoping that you write more on this topic. It is such an interesting theme and hardly anyone writes on it.
Nationalist dogma got established in all these countries, and it is easy to forget how iffy the roots of nationalist ideologies are. History, poetry, legends and narratives got augmented, sometimes even invented from scratch, and then glorified and beaten into school curricula...
You didn't mention the first and probably the most significant such movement, the Hungarian. You could see even then how iffy the idea of ethnic homogeneity is. Kosuth - the ideologue who argued for Hungarian purity - was half Slovak. The legendary nationalist poet, Sandor Petofi, was half-Slovak half-Serb, born Alexander Petrovics...
Thak you very much. Very good points.
Indeed a good analysis, that only a honest intelligence with healthy distance and insight can do. True in aspects for its 19th and 20th century formation, to post communist explosion and its neofascist/neonazi presence, which is a bit sad for e.g. Slavs.
Supporting facts is that e g. Balkan nationalisms share sane feats in its own etnos, but clash so much over "blood and soil". But sometimes, like in balkan war 2, they can unite against common enemy, abeit temporary. Reminds me of Marcus Garvey and KKK agreeing on Back to Africa movement for short :)
I can testify that since many pro western Russians fled to Serbia, they are indeed on no mans land. Seen as traitors back home, shunnee by Putinism here, rejected by west for having Russian papers.
But as with Yugoslavs in immigration, Ukrainians and Russians quite get along here, when away from propaganda and conflict.
Very true! Thak you for super kind comment, Vojin!
So much parochialism in the world. West European, US and Canadian elites seem awfully parochial as well. At least with East European elites, their parochialism is limited to their own countries, whereas the West Europeans and N Americans want to impose their parochial attitudes on others.
There are honourable exceptions - eg Jeff Sachs. Why can’t we try to look at the world through the eyes of other societies?
Very illuminating. Of course, Eastern European share many characteristics of nationalisms everywhere. The shrill supremacist rhetoric is always accompanied by abject subordination to whatever great power the nationalists end up choosing as their protector. Consider the current neo-fascist government of Italy, in its total submission to NATO and the neoliberal order. In this sense, the European Union is a natural haven for Eastern European newcomers: there they can strut their feathers as needed for their domestic audiences, while underwriting the austerity program that will keep them in business as guardians. Even Putin had Europe and the West as his first choice; and it was only the truly astonishing stupidity of the neoconservatives that sent Russia into the orbit of Eurasianism. Small-nation nationalism becomes truly dangerous when great powers use it for their own ends; this is as true of the outbreak of World War I as it is of the war in Ukraine. After the ignition, however, history unfolds according to its dynamics, usually contrary to any plan. We will never know what an alliance between Russia and the West would have produced. Russia as the enemy of the West has rekindled Russophobia (not that it needed much stimulation) and fascisms of all kinds and there lies the danger of a truly disastrous outcome.
"Small-nation nationalism becomes truly dangerous when great powers use it for their own ends;." Fully agree. Small nation nationalisms produce consequences that are far beyond the size of such nations or global importance of their issues (grievances. complaints etc).
«Small-nation nationalism becomes truly dangerous when great powers use it for their own ends»
The ruling classes of small powers use it to "justidy" their rule and also *against* the great powers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheism
“Prometheism or Prometheanism (Polish: Prometeizm) was a political project initiated by Józef Piłsudski, a principal statesman of the Second Polish Republic from 1918 to 1935. Its aim was to weaken the Russian Empire and its successor states, including the Soviet Union, by supporting nationalist independence movements among the major non-Russian peoples that lived within the borders of Russia and the Soviet Union.
[...] Marshal Piłsudski, who as early as 1904, in a memorandum to the Japanese government, pointed out the need to employ, in the struggle against Russia, the numerous non-Russian nations that inhabited the basins of the Baltic, Black and Caspian Seas”
Interesting detail from the same page:
“Aufbau's chief political allies were Erich Ludendorff and Adolf Hitler as the leaders of the incipient Nazi movement. Aufbau sought to overthrow the Bolshevik government through military intervention and to break up Bolshevik Russia into a number of National Socialist successor states, including the Ukraine-led Black Sea League, similar entities in the Baltic and Siberia, and a rump Russia.[9] The Ukrainian representative in Aufbau was Ivan Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia, former chancellor of the anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian State, head of the Ukrainian National Cossack Organization. In 1921 Aufbau secured two million marks of funding for Vasyl Vyshyvanyi's army in return for trading and industrial concessions to Germany in the future Ukrainian state and recruitment began, while Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia joined Vyshyvanyi's Supreme Council in Vienna. An offensive in Ukraine was to be combined with a new undertaking in the Baltics along the lines of the 1919 Latvian Intervention by the West Russian Volunteer Army of Pavel Bermondt-Avalov. A Russian nationalist coup against the "Jews" (i.e. the Bolsheviks) to establish a "Russian national farmers' dictatorship" was planned for the summer of 1923 under the leadership of Vasily Biskupsky and Pyotr Krasnov. By 1923, the Munich leader of the Military Organization of Eastern Galicia, Bohdan Hustevych, was receiving military training from Ernst Röhm, and Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia proclaimed that the "time of a productive National Socialist revolution ... has drawn near". [...] in 1933 Poltavets'-Ostrianytsia moved to Berlin at Hitler's invitation and his collaboration with Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg intensified again. He supported Rosenberg's plans for a semi-colonial Ukrainian satellite state and pledged the German-trained Ukrainian Cossack forces fully to the Nazi project. Rosenberg himself was in charge of aiding the Ukrainian independence movement in Soviet Ukraine in its propaganda and terrorist activities.”
We should also consider that nationalism in Eastern Europe was also fostered by the US, quasi as a counter design to a Soviet internationalism. This aided not only in the breakup of the Soviet Union, but also of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia - and led to more recent developments in Ukraine. Thus, the outcome of Washington's "Better Printing for a Great American Comeback" project may also play a role in future. Western Europe's economies seem to b e already entering a hardly controllable sinking pattern, and caravans seem to bee gravitating towards oases.
On top of this come considerable demographic problems caused by low birthrates (check median ages! Poland youngest with 42.), and nationalism makes the concept of mass immigration quite unpopular in Eastern Europe. Migration patterns might favour an increasingly Asian outlook of Russia
I pulled off the shelf Huntington's 'The Clash of Civilizations ...' to find I'd (long ago) trawled through it for mentions of "enemy". So, on p20 "For peoples seeking identity and reinventing ethnicity, enemies are essential ..." and on p130 "It is human to hate."
So, without a well-formed enemy it hardly seems likely that Russian elites can conjure a kernel of belief that provides a well-spring of potent opposition to Putinism, especially if it has to build on a "fiction of Euro-Asianism". Even less hopeful is a "universal civilisation" (or culture) based on Love as the antidote to Hate.
Huntington anticipated & at least partially explains SO MUCH of what's happened internationally & even within counties: culture has become way more salient politically than economics. Specifically: old 1-dimensional "left-right" economic axis now becomes 2-dimensional with a new "traditional-inclusivist" axis
That article reminded me of Milan Kundera's pamphlet "A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe".
I greatly appreciate your contributions on Substack, but I believe that, at least regarding Serbia, a more nuanced approach is needed, particularly when it comes to relying on Western powers (there was also reliance on Austria and Russia, and later on France and partly England, then Germany, etc.). It is also not true that all national elites were inclined towards fascism: for Serbia and Greece, this can only be partially true for some segments of the elite, but generally not. I also think that you do not highlight the very important role of religion in shaping and influencing the behavior of national elites.
I agree w/ you in part, although Metaxas was pretty reactionary, but clearly could not become a full fascist because Italian Fascists invaded Greece. This is what I meant by saying that the elites that were directly attacked by Fascists or Nazis (Greek, Serbian, Polish), despite their right-wing sympathies, could not embrace Nazism. Others, of course, could.
You are right, but Prince Paul and a large part of the Serbian elite were quite reactionary, though they were not inclined toward fascism.
Not all elites, but etnofascism exist e.g. Ljotic and small neonazi groups in Serbia. Not a true elite, but someone could argue that Seselj was in power and was bordering most elements of fascism/nazin on Greater Serbia iredentism ground, in theory and more in practice
I don't understand what you are trying to say
Essentialy that you are tight, except WW2 and minor neonazis
This is an interesting article but when it comes to Russian elites, it is way off mark. Russian elites, until the beginning of SVO, were really former Soviet elites, drawn from all of the former Soviet republics, thus very explicitly, non-Russian, often some exotic mix of different nationalities. Their outlook was not nationalistic but rather paternalistic to the other republics, where often they came from. "Soviet internationalism" at its best. Thus until 2022 there was little response to the growing nationalism fervor in Ukraine, Baltics, Central Asia, it was all met with indifference. As long as money could be made with the help of the locals, everything was fine. They definitely wanted to be accepted in the West as equals, all these grandchildren of NKVD captains and "red professors" who replaced old cadres. Russian spring and Novorossia was mocked and ignored. Only with the SVO when many of these elites decided to break away and move to Israel or Britain, there began some semblance of a presence of Russian nationalism on national level but it will never be allowed to become a policy - old Soviet habits preclude that.
"The only way for the Russian liberal elite to be accepted as “western” lies in hating somebody more East than themselves, There is no such."
??? China?
Agree. In the original draft, I mentioned that. but did not want open another can of worms. However. China cannot fulfill this function of having somebody less 'cultural'' than you
to hate because it has an ancient civilization equal to the West and is a major economic and technologic power today. So they can be anti-China, but cannot feel superior to it.
I think you got that wrong. A lot of people have a need to feel superior, so they will come up with a rational explanation of some kind.
Being more 'cultural' is just one of the possible bullshit explanations. If that one cannot stick, then some other can be found.
(That was a general remark about people. I have no idea what russians today actually think or don't think.)
But, since the west does not want to accept Russia as a respectable country, there's no point in trying to suck up to them by trying to be more 'cultural' than the eastern neighbors.
Why would Russians need approval from Eastern lunatics to be succesful and happy? Can't they simply bypass them? After all, that's what the Nord Stream pipeline was about.
Very interesting thanks! I'm actually reading Barrington Moore's classic "Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy" at the moment and was just wondering what Moore would say about Eastern Europe had he lived to see the fall of the iron curtain.
I think he would say something like this- the initial conditions for a reactionary conservative path to capitalist development were there in Eastern Europe, but this was aborted by the Soviet occupation. Is history now getting back on track?
Yes, it is a good point.