On February 28, the day the Ukrainian President was humiliated by the American president in the White House, I was reading an old issue of the literary magazine, Granta, which I had picked up in one of Bengaluru’s wonderful second-hand bookstores. Published in Spring 1990, the issue was entitled New Europe! The adjective new and the exclamation mark both nodded to the epochal events of the previous year, which included the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first free elections in Poland for decades, and the collapse of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe more generally.
To assess what these events of 1989 meant for the future of the Continent and the world, the editor of Granta had commissioned essays by 15 writers of European descent, some based in the nations in which they had been born, with others living in exile. Inevitably, several contributors were pleased, even exultant, with the happenings of the past few months.
They included the East German priest Werner Krätschell, who saluted the struggle for “freedom and dignity” that brought down the Wall, as well as the celebrated Czech novelist Ivan Klima, who thought that the dissenters who had helped end authoritarianism had it “in their power to realize the idea of a democratic Europe, a Europe for the next millennium, a Europe of nations living in mutual domestic peace”.
‘The end of enslavement’
Among those who saw the changes in Europe in a positive light was the political theorist Isaiah Berlin, who was the oldest contributor to the symposium as well as (in the English-speaking world) the best known. Born in Tsarist Russia, Berlin had fled with his family to England as a young boy. Though he became very British in his ways, occupying a chair at Oxford and founding an Oxford college, appearing often on the BBC and serving as President of the British Academy, he had retained a strong interest in Russia and an especial fondness for Russian writers and thinkers of the past.
Isaiah Berlin now saw, in the events of 1989, a revival of the liberal traditions of an older intelligentsia crushed by Communism. “The Russians are a great people”, he wrote in Granta, “their creative powers are immense, and, once set free, there is no telling what they may give to the world. A new barbarism is always possible, but I see little prospect of it at present. That evil can, after all, be conquered, that the end of enslavement is in progress, are things of which men can be reasonably proud.”
Other contributors to the symposium, while welcoming the fall of the Soviet puppet regimes in Eastern Europe, were less sanguine about the future. The Czech-born writer Josef Škvorecký, who had lived for many years in Canada, wrote: “The days of the totalitarians may be numbered in most of Europe. Elsewhere they evidently are not; in some places they are just beginning.”
The polymathic critic, George Steiner, commented that “everywhere, we are witnessing an almost mad race between resurgent nationalism, ethnic hatreds and the counter-force of potential prosperity and free exchange”. Steiner, in passing, made this other observation: “The US appears to be becoming a provincial colossus, ignorant of, indifferent towards, Europe…Europe is again on its own.”
Suppressed sentiment
What had happened across Eastern Europe was, in part, an articulation of suppressed nationalist sentiments by Poles, Czechs, Magyars and Germans rebelling against a totalising Soviet yoke. While some contributors celebrated the renewal of these smaller European nations, in his piece in Granta Andrei Sinyavsky warned that nationalism could have reactionary as well as liberatory outcomes. The former were most likely in Russia, which was now bereft of its Empire but not of its pride.
“Nationalism in itself is not a serious threat”, wrote Sinyavsky, “It can, on occasion, actually be of value to a nation – until it starts to produce, without any substantive grounds, that venomous by-product: ‘the enemy.’” He added: “In the past, the Soviet Union had the ‘class enemy’…And now the Russian nationalists, who call themselves ‘patriots’, have summoned up ‘Russophobia’, a modification of the Leninist-Stalinist idea of ‘bourgeois encirclement’ and ‘bourgeois penetration’. The ‘Russophobe’ is a variant of those terrible Stalinist inventions ‘enemy of the people’ and ‘ideological saboteur’.”
In a symposium of this sort, the editor normally writes to each contributor separately. No doubt Isaiah Berlin and Andrei Sinyavsky had no idea of what the other would say. Yet, reading their remarks side by side, 35 years after they were printed, the contrast between the optimism of the one and the scepticism of the other is striking. The reason for this may be their varying biographical trajectories.
Whereas Berlin had no real direct experience of life in Russia and with Russians, Sinyavsky certainly did. Born in Moscow in 1925, he left the Soviet Union only in 1973. He therefore knew from first-hand knowledge, acquired over several decades, how Russian nationalism had decidedly xenophobic and chauvinistic tendencies.
Imperial ambition
At least with regard to their native Russia, Sinyavsky has turned out to be more accurate than Berlin. For, in his decades in power, Vladimir Putin has first ensured the enslavement of his own people before seeking to enslave the people of countries which got their independence once the Soviet Union had collapsed. This broader imperial ambition is most starkly manifest in the invasion of Ukraine, though Putin also has some smaller European nations in his sights. Critics of the authoritarian and expansionist form of Russian nationalism, whether at home or abroad, are dismissed by Putinistas as “Russophobes”.
The events of the past couple of weeks suggest that, among the contributors to the Granta symposium, George Steiner was also farsighted in thinking that the United States might, over time, become indifferent to Europe. Though Donald Trump’s admiration for Putin was known before, few thought that he would so quickly turn on Ukraine so soon after beginning his second term in office.
The public mocking of Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the hands of Trump and his Vice President, JD Vance was widely welcomed by Russian politicians and propagandists, who have seen in it a vindication of their own desire to subdue and dominate Ukraine.
What Trump may not have anticipated, however, is that Ukraine’s European allies would rally around so quickly to the help of that beleaguered country. Within hours of the fractious White House exchange being televised live, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Kaja Kallas, posted on social media: “Ukraine is Europe! We stand by Ukraine. We will step up our support to Ukraine so that they can continue to fight back the aggressor.” She further remarked: “Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”
Before assuming her present assignment, Kallas had been prime minister of Estonia, one of the tiny, yet self-respecting, Baltic republics that had once been under Soviet rule and over which Putin and his henchmen still cast their covetous eyes. However, more significant than her defiant posting was the public show of solidarity with Ukraine expressed by the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, who invited Zelenskyy to his official residence and offered him the respect denied to him in the White House, and along with some substantial material aid too. This was followed by a larger meeting of European leaders, that reaffirmed their support for Ukraine’s sovereignty.
For all their brave posturing, European politicians know they lack the military heft to save Ukraine from Russian aggression. They still hope that Trump will reconsider his abrupt withdrawal of military aid to Ukraine, perhaps with the inducement of an invitation to American companies to profit from the exploitation of that country’s valuable mineral resources.
Mood of buoyancy
On Friday, Trump appeared to harden his stance on Russia, by chastising it for “pounding” Ukraine and threatening further sanctions on the country. Whether this was because of European pressure or merely a sign of his mercurial and unpredictable character is hard to say. The United States and Ukraine are scheduled to hold talks in Saudi Arabia soon, where the position might become clearer.
Reading the Granta issue of 1990 in light of the present was an interesting and intriguing exercise. A broader mood of buoyancy and optimism was tempered by the occasional warning about Russian irredentism and American isolationism.
Let me end this column, however, with one remark from that symposium that was even more prescient than those by Steiner and Sinyavsky. It came from the East German dissident writer Jurek Becker, and it said: “Here in the West, we live in societies that have no particular goal or objective. If there is any guiding principle, it’s consumerism. In theory, we can increase our consumption until the planet lies about us in ruins and, given current trends, that’s precisely what will happen.”
A version of this article first appeared in The Telegraph.
Ramachandra Guha’s new book, Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism, is now in stores. His email address is ramachandraguha@yahoo.in.
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