Neil MacFarlane

We may be living post-historically. Russia is not.

Russia Today

Opposition candidates will get the right to lose elections.

Mark Danner

If Everybody Knew, Who’s To Blame?

Timothy Garton Ash

Europe is nice, boring and irrelevant. In many ways this is a great achievement. (…) The whole of Europe today is Greater Switzerland.

Horst Schlämmer

HSP is conservative, liberal, left-wing and a bit ecological.

“Every state needs its own Balkan”

With this words philosopher Slavoj Žižek started his lecture on ideology and the fall of state borders. The lecture was given in Italian Gorizia which was until 2007 a border town with Slovenia and is a well known habitat of Italians and Slovenes. From this point of view, the place for discussing such a topic could not be better. Žižek, “the superstar” appeared in front of the fully packed theatre in his typical, a bit nervous manner and made us think about today’s presence of borders. Having in mind a Europe without boundaries, he pointed towards the difference between the physical and mental presence of borders. The latter is more difficult to remove and is usually transferred from one generation to another in a process known as mental mapping . ‘Balkan’ in the European mental perception presents ‘the other’. However, ‘Balkan’ is nowhere, if we approach it from the position that no one wants to belong to it. But at the same time every state needs its own ‘Balkan’ for dividing itself from the others.

The geographical category has been even more intensively labeled as a scapegoat after the last conflicts, often wrongly presented as perpetual, unforgettable clashes between different ethnic groups. The situation was in a false way presented in Kusturica’s Underground, where the former state is shown as a place of passions, alcohol and sexual desires. The place where memories rule and ancient hatreds exist. Žižek negates this with the idea that people that were involved in a conflict were also able to forget about past events and continue to trade and exchange goods regardless of the crimes committed. He claims that the reasons for the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia should be sought in a crisis of legitimacy of leading party nomenclature after the death of Tito and not in a hypocritical apolitical plot of the Underground and its picturesque simplifications of the carnival state. However, the time for the carnival arose latter, with the rule of Milošević which, under a totalitarian surface established a situation in which everything was allowed.

Slavoj Žižek

Žižek claims: “What we need today is not more understanding, but more distance.” Physical borders fell too fast and societies have not been culturally prepared for such a proximity which can result in clashes and reactions. In this sense, he negates a liberal idea of multiculturalism and he rather advocated his position with the image of “the house with many floors in which people live together but not necessarily interact”.

The lecture was concluded in a rather worrying tone. Under the illusion that the borders are disappearing, they are actually rapidly growing. State of emergencies keep appearing in political discourses (e.g. Italy in July 2008) and this should be taken into consideration very carefully. The globe is more dangerous than ever before. Not in a typical old way, but with the presence of biotechnology, ecological catastrophies and similar issues, more sensibility is needed if we don’t want to live in a total misery in the next 30 or 50 years.

But now the French really exaggerated it. Following a translation mistake a while ago, it seems that Maurice Druon (a member of the Academie Francaise who was also awarded with a K.B.E!) is heading an emergency task force to save French as the universal language in the EU (which is to a certain extent English). And his arguments are really convincing:

“The Italian language is the language of song, German is good for philosophy and English for poetry, French is best at precision, it has a rigour to it. It is the safest language for legal purposes.” He argued that French should be “the authoritative” language as it is both related to Latin – in which Roman law was written – as well as the language of the Napoleonic code.

Obviously, there is quite an extensive list of songs, poetry, philosophy and literature written in all languages and it is really disgrace if such an educated man like Mr. Druon makes such a simplistic statement. Indeed, French is routed in Latin but this is also true for Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian. And besides Roman law and the Napoleonic code we have (fortunately) other legal traditions as well….

So, here is some food for thought from Michel Godet via eurotopics:

If we are not careful, participatory democracy may consecrate the triumph of self-interest in the short-term (the only unfair inequalities are those that we do not benefit from!) at the expense of long-term collective interest. The courageous decisions to be taken regarding the future are rarely consensual and if forecasting needs be participatory, the strategy that it inspires is up to the elected members of Parliament. It is up to them to demonstrate will power and courage in order to avoid participatory demagogy.

Here the link to the original article in French: Démocratie ou démagogie?

Economically, the country is run by a handful of oligarchs. Energy is used as a political weapon with a little help of the dubious state controlled Gazprom. Putin is constructing a kind of authoritarian “managed democracy” with a high level of corruption and nepotism. Restrictions on NGOs were imposed and freedom of speech seems to exist only on paper. Large scale human rights abuses in Chechnya as well as in the Russian army are not even mentioned in the press anymore. Also, Russia’s’ neo-imperial foreign policy approach towards its neighbors has become normal. Relations with the EU and in particular with Poland are not good at all. Critics of the government such as Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko were assassinated.

In order to understand all these things it might be helpful to have a look into current debates of political philosophy in Russia. Both, Ivan Krastev and Nicu Popescu analyse the ideological battle that is going on. For Ivan Krastev the concept of sovereignty is central:

For the Kremlin, sovereignty is a capacity. It implies economic independence, military strength and cultural identity. The other key element of the sovereign state is a “nationally-minded” elite. (…) The creation of the nationally-minded elite is the primarily task of the sovereign democracy as a project. Moreover, the need for a nationally-minded elite requires a nationally-minded democratic theory.

Quite logically, the Russian elite is trying to construct a new political theory since “Russia should break its ideological dependence on western theories”. Interestingly, the French political rationalism of Francois Guizot and Carl Schmitt’s “decisionism” are the main pillars of this theory of a Russian style “sovereign democracy”.

Nicu Popescu links this approach with Joseph Nye’s soft power concept which traditionally is used to explain the power of the EU or the behaviour of the USA in the 1990s.

The idea of ‘sovereign democracy’ has a number of functions. The first is to provide Putin’s authoritarianism with respectable ‘democratic’ clothes in order to strengthen it internally and insulate it from international criticism. The second is to challenge the West’s idea of democracy and human rights as a set of universal values and practices. As a result of the ‘colour revolutions’ in Ukraine and Georgia, Russia’s leaders learned that crude manipulation might not be enough to remain in power, that ideas matter and that NGOs can make revolutions. They have also learned that a ‘legitimacy deficit’ can undermine the elites. Thus the Kremlin had to develop its tools for ideological manipulation, enhance control of the circulation of ideas and the NGOs in a more proactive manner.

Therefore, Russia promotes its very own concept of “Eastern Democracy” also abroad.

Russia invests in the development of NGO infrastructure, and enhancing its channels to bring across the Kremlin’s message at all levels. Various Kremlin supported organisations are mushrooming. The scope of their activity is truly all-encompassing. Russia-friendly and Russia-financed NGOs and think-tanks have emerged in many CIS states and even in the secessionist entities.

Interesting examples of this policy can be found here. (The article also contains very interesting quotations of members of the Russian elite!) According to Nicu Popescu these soft power instruments

are designed to create an intellectual milieu of sophisticated, though tricked, ideological support for the current Russian authorities. They also serve as a source of ideology for the Kremlin’s pragmatists. The latter are driven by financial and power interests, not ideas or norms. But they seek to strengthen further their power by complementing it with a ‘soft’ dimension. It is the new face of ‘smart authoritarianism’ that speaks the language of Western norms and is very flexible, but has very little to do with the values of democracy, Eastern- or Western-style.

And if you are now thinking: Why are they doing all these efforts? Is it not easier to use the well-known energy weapon? Well, quite wrong, because What if Russian gas runs low?