Prominent French Slavicist on united Europe, nationalism, and oblivion

“Prof. Nivat, what is your vision of Europe in the immediate future?”

“I am absolutely convinced that if you asked this of President Chirac or Prime Minister Blair, who are far more knowledgeable in politics, they too would not know what to answer. Europe is something in the making, and absolutely no one knows where it is going. Some answers were possible when the image of Europe was associated with the alliance of six countries. But now that expansion crosses such natural cultural boundaries, nobody knows the answer. What Brussels mostly brings into focus is the economic criterion. By this criterion, Europe will be homogeneous for decades to come. Other criteria, such as cultural ones, although being occasionally mentioned, simply do not exist. Europe is a very vague notion. Suffice it to recall the eternal problem of whether Russia is part of Europe or not. The phrase ‘we are European’ sounds differently in Kyiv and Moscow. Londoners will hardly say ‘we are European’ because they prefer saying that they are English. In France and Germany, we say ‘yes, we are European.’ But this does not mean at all that we know what we mean by this. Do we think much about, say, the Danish, our European brothers? Not very much. Nor do we think very much about our Ukrainian, or Swedish, or Finnish brothers. We know a lot about the Nokia but very little about their culture.

“I think the expansion of Europe is something absolutely inevitable. Once you’ve decided to gather a family, you must gather the whole family – including Kyiv (this is understood), Saint Petersburg (who can deny this?), and Moscow. Perhaps Vladivostok as well? I don’t know. This is Eurasia, a European culture in a somewhat different shape. On the other hand, our French Antilles are also part of Europe because they are French. There, a gendarme looks the same as in France. Everything has been standardized. Still, this is a different manner of living, working, joking, or loving music. So we will never find an all-embracing definition of Europe except for the past – somebody, like Kyiv in the Middle Ages, was part of Europe – or the future if there is the desire. It seems to me that the desire plays here the decisive role. So when somebody in Eastern Europe thinks about ‘Europe,’ one must also think about reciprocal desire. Leaders feel that the Western European public, whatever that is, wants fraternity, but only to some extent. But if the question is of true solidarity, just look at the barriers set up to the candidate countries: they have been asked to wait in the first, second, third room... The candidates may be hurt if told to wait for five years in each room. In the final analysis, this could provoke, and quite naturally, counteractions by these countries’ populations. So I think nobody knows now where we are going. Even I, a citizen of France and observer of European affairs, cannot answer the question of whether France really wants Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine to enter Europe. President Chirac told the Romanians, ‘We want you very much.’ But the facts do not confirm this.”

“Why is it still impossible to put the equal mark between the Eastern and Western Christian churches almost 950 years after the schism?”

“I remember speaking to Cardinal Lustiger about the developments in Serbia and the Balkans. I said then, ‘Still, this is a religious war...’ He reacted very emotionally, ‘You are wrong, this is by no means a religious war. It has nothing to do with religion.’ I said to this, ‘Your Reverence, you must be speaking from the viewpoint of the Gospel, not religion...’ Religious wars played a tremendous role in the making of Europe. Pope John Paul II spelt out quite a long time ago an idea that has gained wide currency, ‘Europe should breathe with both, eastern and western, lungs.’ At this moment, this is being done only to a small degree. As we know, interdenominational relations – for example, between Moscow and Rome or the Vatican – are very bad and tense. The multiplicity of denominations forces Ukraine to live more tolerantly. In any case, the cardinal spoke from the viewpoint of the Gospel and Christ, but religion is an entirely different thing. This is the shape that faith assumes.

“There is a boundary. We can say that, on the one hand, this is the heritage of St. Benedict and the good organization of monasteries, factories, lands, etc., and, on the other hand, the mystical Sergei of Radonezh. These things help us a bit to understand the general outlines of history. But why does this history arouse such intense feeling now? Why, when I pronounce the word ecumenism in a Russian monastery, do I hear in the words and see in the eyes the word Satanism? It is just the contrary in the West: a great many people of good think in terms of ecumenism. On the other hand, Europe has been de-Christianized very much, and many things are being treated in political, rather than religious, terms. This is the worst possible application of Christianity, but it still exists.”

“How could you define Europe?”

“It is a process of eternal metamorphosis. Everything began when Greece was translated into the language of Rome. Although all philosophy was coming from Greece, Rome invented the Roman road. And these roads set up a huge network, the Mediterranean Europe of those days. There was citizenship, the law, and religious tolerance on the territory of primordial Europe... It should be noted that Christianity was very scandalous in the first centuries because it rejected this tolerance until Constantine won. Then came paganism, Germanic tribes, such a country as France... These are the eternal processes of translation. Compared to China, this is a mainland in uninterrupted transformation, It translates from one language to another, from one civilization to another. It is a proven fact that the Arabs played a key role in forming not only Spain but all of medieval Europe. Eastern Europe is the same. It also had to get used to these ways, roads and translations. But in the nineteenth century everybody suddenly wanted to have his own roots and genealogy. This brought about nationalism – including Ukrainian, Irish, and many others. This is the romanticism of a nation, and we still live by this romanticism. But if a certain nation identified its national form a long time ago, this romanticism took a more moderate shape, for instance, in England: England does not doubt that it exists as a nation and does not need any nationalist ideology. France had a bit more of the latter, while Germany and Italy, still younger nations, needed still more of it. Poland, which had disappeared from the map, needed none other than a messiah like Mickiewicz. Russia is a country that has maximally ideologized the national problem. And Ukraine, which had long had its own romantic idea and partly implemented it in the twentieth century, should, of course, work out a mythologeme of its own. But do not forget this is just a mythologeme, although the myth itself does not belong to things definable as true or untrue.”

“All modern European states emerged out of nationalist movements, when nations found their own sense of identity. How can we draw the line which nationalism should not overstep?”

“In today’s conditions, this can be solved by means of school textbooks. Can Poland and Ukraine have the same history school textbooks (with certain variations, for these are different countries, after all)? What about France and Germany, Denmark and Germany? If these texts put across certain information of, for example, ultra-nationalist nature, then we will never get rid of xenophobia.”

“But what about the nationalist based powerful separatist movements, for example, in Russia, Turkey, and Spain: when a nation just does not want to live within the limits of a certain state?”

“Armed nationalism is a different thing. I don’t know. Thomas Aquinas says that, given a certain dose of tyranny, a Christian has the right to tyrannicide, i.e., the killing of a tyrant. But I do not remember the way he explains the circumstances. Nor should the right to tyrannicide be given to all who clamor about tyranny. The Europe of the Strasbourg Parliament is a Europe that tries to find a compromise between nations and regions and demands that all states recognize and furnish maximum autonomy to the regions. Strasbourg plays the role of a morality teacher. People, in their turn, have memory. While Western countries have begun to forget more than remember, people in the East, from the Balkans on, tend to remember more than forget. It strikes me when I speak to people who recall, for example, the Polish invasion of Russia in the early seventeenth century, as if this had touched on them and they had personally suffered from this. I say, ‘Look, this is not a living memory! It is not your father, grandfather, or even great grandfather who suffered. You don’t know who suffered at that time...’ I have come across people who still suffer from that invasion. Our European train will not run very far down this track.”

“In other words, Europe is not yet prepared today to learn from the same textbooks?”

“It is trying. The West is doing this, and I think this should also be done here. What I teach is not oblivion but a certain type of a living memory, which might contain some oblivion but, first and foremost, takes account of the future.”

“The government of Ukraine intends to celebrate an anniversary of the Pereyaslav Rada (the ‘reunification’ of Ukraine and Russia —Ed. ), although today’s public attitude toward this event and its consequences is extremely contradictory. Your point of view?”

“One should exercise great caution when commemorating something in the shape of a public holiday. Does Ukraine have too few holidays? Then this decision is logical.”

“Why did such a mighty industrial country as France surrender to Germany in World War II almost without resistance, while, say, Poland, the country of a much lower potential, fought to the last soldier and its government signed no act of capitulation?”

“When I was a high school pupil, we were taught the only mythologeme: French Resistance, General de Gaulle. Indeed, we are greatly obliged to General de Gaulle. As you see, one person can change the course of history. In this respect, Lev Tolstoi was wrong because he tried to prove the opposite. This is what we lived with, but now there is a different period, the period of the pathology of our memory. We are marching in the opposite direction and overemphasizing the instances of collaboration with the occupier. For example, there was a trial of Prefect Maurice Papon: this very instructive event compelled one to think over what memory and history is. In fact, history and memory are different things. When a new holiday is being instituted, this is an attempt to instill a new memory. But this trial showed that clarification of history is a conversation of deaf mutes. Everybody remained displeased. Or take the Algeria War: there were instances of torture, and the government was aware of this by the grapevine. Then came an overall amnesty from both sides: the law flatly bans reporting on any crimes committed at that time. Those who print such information are subject to prosecution.”

“You speak about memory and forgetting. Then what about the very definition of a nation, for most scholars regard the common historical memory (along with the language, faith, traditions, and territory) as one of the fundamental elements of this notion?”

“Memory is the first condition. And the second condition, as defined by Ernest Renan, is the overall desire to live with the future. We cannot understand what a nation is without this dimension. We talked about Russia and Chechnya. Of course, if it is proven in the course of time that the Chechens did not absolutely want to live within the limits of the Russian Federation, then there will be a deadlock, i.e., an everlasting war. Let us not forget Palestine: this is a showpiece tragic impasse.”

“Why are the Orthodox states Europe’s poorest countries? Does faith have anything to do with this?”

“I am sure the situation in the medieval Kyiv or Novgorod was different. Then something changed. In all probability, the first Western communes – in Lombardy, Flanders, and France – were an important element in the emergence of the new democracy. The individual was given rights and the idea that his home was his castle: the state cannot set its foot in his house, especially at night. There was no such an idea in the Russian Empire. Small business developed in Western Europe better than in Eastern Europe. Orthodoxy has a more pronounced mystical attitude, though it would also be wrong to claim there is no mysticism in the West. Besides, Western man likes agreements: if there is business, let’s sign a contract. Eastern man does not like agreements, doing most of things in words. We remember only too well the Russian merchants who made verbal deals. Even our religious faith was based on a contractual principle. The Reformation wanted to break Catholicism free of these contracts: I am doing good, and God bestows His grace on me. And, as you know, the Protestant, now free of this contract with God, began to do his mundane affairs so well that he got richer.”

“In an interview with Mr. Finberg, when comparing the new times of Ukraine and Russia, you noted that modern Russia has more ebullient energy and Ukraine has more political tolerance. What did you mean exactly by energy and tolerance?”

“Modern Russia’s energy strikes me every time I visit: economic energy, the energy of the human enterprising spirit, not only in the center but also in the provinces. I think they have changed more than you have. The new generation has become one of entrepreneurs with all pluses and minuses from that. They are literally immersed in this and, as Yury Lotman says, have lost some of their outgoing qualities. But here also there are some remarkable examples: the Dukh i Litera (Spirit and Letter —Ed. ) publishers have put out so many works of Western, especially French, thought!.. The most complex thought that is now accessible to the Ukrainian reader. But, as far as I can judge, this is an island, while Moscow and Petersburg are experiencing a virtual publishing boom. On the other hand, if I am not mistaken, life is more tender here. This must be a feature of the Ukrainian psyche. Moscow life now evokes stress, as is the case in large Western metropolises. This will breed depression at a certain stage. The depressed Russians are not yet running in droves to psychoanalysts, as in America, but we must keep this in mind. The West is afflicted with stress and depression: we are approaching the line when one half of people will be psychiatrists and the other half their patients. So we need people who remind us that it is good not to hurry.”