russian colonialism 101. extra: why the west won't stand up for eastern europe.
and how to move on.
I was reminded of this Milan Kundera anti-colonial essay by Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina. She mentioned it as an inspiration in her own essay, published posthumously after Russia murdered her earlier this month (the most important piece about Ukraine written since the start of the genocide - amplify, please.)
One European war-time author (Ukrainian Amelina) battling a Russian invasion, gets inspired by another European author (Czech Kundera) who also battled a Russian invasion (even though the Ukrainian agency is so erased by Russian colonialism by that time that Kundera doesn’t acknowledge it in the essay, hinting that Russia starts at the eastern border of Central Europe.)
I found this both inspiring and unsettling. Inspiring because the victims of Russian tyranny can still empower each other for resistance and hope through generations. Unsettling because, generation after generation, the endless cycles of Russian colonial violence keep mutilating our region and our lives.
Still mourning the death of Amelina, yesterday the news went out in Prague that Kundera has also passed away. So I sat and re-read his ‘The Tragedy of Central Europe.’ Not everything fully vibes with me here — it is 40 years old, after all. But with depressing NATO news, this anti-colonial work strikes me as a timely and timeless. A good and inspiring reminder that Europe, as a value, is already within us - Ukrainians, Eastern and Central Europeans. We shall nurture and embrace it, but do not expect that the rest of Europe will automatically understand or vibe with it. And we don’t need the NATO or the EU or any other Western-led to validate that.
On most days, the West won’t stand up for Eastern Europeans fighting against Russian colonial empire. But fellow Eastern Europeans will always have each other’s backs. With time that will definitely inspire the rest of Europeans to get in touch with Europe as a value, too. I want to remember this during the most discouraging moments.
You can read the essay in full here, but I wanted to share couple of my favorite places:
“In November 1956, the director of the Hungarian News Agency, shortly before his office was flattened by artillery fire, sent a telex to the entire world with a desperate message announcing that the Russian attack against Budapest had begun. The dispatch ended with these words: "We are going to die for Hungary and for Europe."
What did this sentence mean? It certainly meant that the Russian tanks were endangering Hungary and with it Europe itself. But in what sense was Europe in danger? Were the Russian tanks about to push past the Hungarian borders and into the West? No. The director of the Hungarian News Agency meant that the Russians, in attacking Hungary, were attacking Europe itself. He was ready to die so that Hungary might remain Hungary and European.
Even if the sense of the sentence seems clear, it continues to intrigue us. Actually, in France, in America, one is accustomed to thinking that what was at stake during the invasion was neither Hungary nor Europe but a political regime. One would never have said that Hungary as such had been threatened; still less would one ever understand why a Hungarian, faced with his own death, addressed Europe. When Solzhenitsyn denounces communist oppression, does he invoke Europe as a fundamental value worth dying for? No. "To die for one's country and for Europe"--that is a phrase that could not be thought in Moscow or Leningrad; it is precisely the phrase that could be thought in Budapest or Warsaw.
… I feel that the error made by Central Europe was owing to what I call the "ideology of the Slavic world." I say "ideology" advisedly, for it is only a piece of political mystification invented in the nineteenth century. The Czechs (in spite of the severe warnings of their most respected leaders) loved to brandish naively their "Slavic ideology" as a defense against German aggressive-ness. The Russians, on the other hand, enjoyed making use of it to justify their own imperial ambitions. "The Russians like to label everything Russian as Slavic, so that later they can label everything Slavic as Kussian," the great Czech writer Karel Havlicek declared in 1844, trying to warn his compatriots against their silly and ignorant enthusiasm for Russia…
… With this in mind, I want to stress a significant circumstance: the Central European revolts were not nourished by the newspapers, radio, or television - that is, by the "media." They were prepared, shaped, realized by novels, poetry, theater, cinema, historiography, literary reviews, popular comedy and cabaret, philosophical discussions-that is, by culture." The mass media -which, for the French and Americans, are indistinguishable from whatever the West today is meant to be-played no part in these revolts (since the press and television were completely under state control). That's why, when the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia, they did everything possible to destroy Czech culture. ' This destruction had three meanings: first, it destroyed the center of the opposition; second, it undermined the identity of the nation, enabling it to be more easily swallowed up by Russian civilization; third, it put a violent end to the modern era, the era in which culture still represented the realization of supreme values…
The real tragedy for Central Europe, then, is not Russia but Europe: this Europe that represented a value so great that the director of the Hungarian News Agency was ready to die for it, and for which he did indeed die. Behind the iron curtain, he did not suspect that the times had changed and that in Europe itself Europe was no longer experienced as a value. He did not suspect that the sentence he was sending by telex beyond the borders of his flat country would seem outmoded and would not be understood.”
The tragedy of Central Europe.
The New York Review of Books. Apr 26, 1984.
Milan Kundera (1929-2023)