Russia and Western intellectuals

Peter Kopa, Prague, 19.5.2022 – English version follows below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3fy0RYpU8Q&t=3s

The vision of Western thinkers

Russia and Western intellectuals is a topic addressed these days by Stephen Twardoch, a Polish writer of great prestige. ((https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szczepan_Twardoch).

When Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February, a number of dogmas of European political understanding fell to the ground, revealing the paternalistic attitude of these intellectuals towards Eastern Europe. This way of thinking is by no means new. The concept ‘Eastern Europe’ appeared in the public sphere in the middle of the 18th century, when “East” and “West” replaced the previous division into North and South in the mental map of Europe.

When the French diplomat Louis-Philippe de Ségur was appointed ambassador extraordinary at the court of Catherine II in 1784, he set out for Petersburg, having the impression, on entering what was then Poland, of having been “transported back ten centuries, finding himself among Huns, Scythians, Slavs and Sarmatians”.  This is what he wrote in his memoirs.

His retinue thus left the redoubt of “civilization” (this 18th century neologism was more easily defined in opposition to the supposed “barbarism” of Eastern Europe) and set course for the savage East, in his view uncivilized, which had no identity in itself, but was merely a link between Europe and Asia, a gradual and spectral transition from civilization to barbarism.

Intellectual naivety in the West

It has been 250 years since the conceptual creation of Eastern Europe, and Western European and US intellectuals, or also called Euro-Atlanticists, continue to see it in a similar way to Ségur. Thus, the well-known American intellectual Noam Chomsky tells us that he deplores “Russia’s security concerns”, which Putin, according to Chomsky, has been pointing out to the West for thirty years.

Russia’s concerns about its own security cannot be taken seriously because they have no rational basis whatsoever. Does anyone in Europe have the will, the means, the plans or the intentions to attack Russia? No, and everyone in Eastern Europe knows it. Russia’s “concern for its own security” is a cloud of smoke and a pretext used solely to justify Russian aggression. And so, the issue of Russia and Western intellectuals is an issue that eventually demands clarification from the side of factual history.´(https://Rusia y los intelectuales occidentales

Therefore, for intellectuals like Chomsky, Bennis or Klein, the society in Ukraine and its desire to be part of the West do not count. Those who arrogate to themselves the right to judge are therefore the West and Russia, disregarding Ukraine as if it were a no-man’s land in the middle, populated by people incapable of self-determination and whose “security needs” would not interest European intellectuals at all.

Why is that? A psychoanalytic interpretation would be needed here, an explanation of the mythical fascination that Russia exerts on Western intellectuals of the left, starting with Voltaire and his speeches full of devotion to Catherine II, all the way to Sartre and, unfortunately, even beyond. But what seems most important to me today is that the analysis ends with a clear conclusion: this must end.

After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the naivety of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock surprised everyone by saying that Putin is lying. If the situation were not so tragic, this would have earned a big laugh from Tallinn to Bucharest. Realizing after 2014 that Putin is lying is like discovering that Britain is an island.  It is well known in Eastern Europe that Russia lies whenever it suits it, as it is built on lying, because untruthfulness is part of its nature. (https://Rusia y los intelectuales occidentales

Comments

The big question under debate is the real fact that since the dawn of history and in all parts of the world there have been groups that were higher and others in a lower situation, both from the political, civilizational, cultural, technical, military etc. point of view. I was able to observe this during so many years of my life in South America, then in Italy, Spain, Switzerland and in the Czech Republic, where I have been for 30 years now. Before Christianity, this stratification was inhuman, iron and implacable, in the sense that almost always those at the top mistreated those at the bottom. Manifestations of this attitude in history, which constitute structural lies, were the slavery of blacks in the USA and Latin America, racism, nationalism, social exploitation, unjust oppression of any kind, political or economic manipulation, etc.

Esteban Twardoch has dealt well with the subject of Russia and Western intellectuals, highlighting precisely the so frequent blindness in the perception of reality, which occurs when a thinker locks himself, together with the thinkers who agree with his ideas, in his glass tower. Intellectuals in general have the tendency not to have both feet firmly on the ground, because they usually lack a solid training in classical philosophy and often have not even worked hard in a company. And so they begin to float amidst the vaporous clouds formed by their own thoughts and the thoughts of those who are akin to their ‘Weltanschauung’ (worldview).

The materialistic view, so widespread today, makes it understandable – without justifying it – that Russia and Western intellectuals are not in a harmonious relationship. In the Genesis of prejudices everything depends on who has more means to impose his opinion on the world. In the matter of lying in politics, it is not only Russia that lies, but all Western countries lie as well, with their pluses and minuses. By way of example, we have been lied to in the pandemic, in the media and, in addition, we are treated badly by official bodies with regard to inflation, the crisis, corruption, justice, etc. etc. etc.

Moreover, it is a great mistake, comparable to the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis in Germany, that every Russian is persecuted in the West just for the fact of being Russian and having some wealth. Only a small minority have fortunes of billions of euros, and even in this case the presumption of innocence cannot be set aside.

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Source: Stephen Twardoch, a Polish writer of much prestige) who wrote an article for the Swiss daily NZZ, 6.4.22. Our recension we have expanded with supplementary comments of our own.