I ought to like to start with a poem. It’s by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa and is the primary poem in his assortment Message (Mensagem), printed in 1934 – at a degree when fascist actions had prevailed right here and there in Europe, and a state primarily based on this mannequin was additionally rising in Portugal: the Estado Novo, an authoritarian dictatorship The motto of the cycle was Bellum sine bello, that’s, battle with out battle.
Europe is mendacity propped upon her elbows: / From East to West she lies and stares, / Face framed with billows of romantic hair, / In Greek eyes the reminiscence glows. / The left elbow is ready again behind; / The fitting is at an angle forged. / That one says Italy the place it rests, / This one put aside says England, / and holds the hand that helps her face. / Her gaze, like a sphinx, darkish and deadly,/ In the direction of the West, the way forward for the previous. / The face with which she stares is Portugal.
The pointe might sound stunning for readers from different European nations, with different native languages. Portugal, of all locations, positioned on the far southwestern fringe of the continent, is supposed to furnish the lady’s face. In time-honoured custom, Europa is depicted right here as a legendary determine, as an allegorical girl hailing from Phoenicia, immediately’s North Africa, a princess kidnapped by Zeus, a defenceless creature: in reality, little greater than a gorgeous silent physique, uncovered to the whim of the male gaze.
The chair of the Russian Safety Council, Dmitry Medvedev, set out a fairly totally different imaginative and prescient of the continent in an announcement on the civilians killed in Bucha, shortly after his nation’s invasion of Ukraine. The person had a imaginative and prescient: Russia’s objective was to ‘build an open Eurasia – from Lisbon to Vladivostok’. To European ears, particularly these of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, but additionally Poland, this sounded much less like a proposal than a horrible risk.
Berlin 1961. Picture: Library of Congress / Supply: Wikimedia Commons
Now that Europe has rejected the beneficiant supply and resolved to face by Ukraine on this battle of annihilation, it’s pressured to face by and see itself criticised as a hotbed of Nazism. Moscow’s new enemy is the European Union, and we should always take that significantly each as a result of it serves as a motivation to kill but additionally as a result of it reveals the true phobia: the Russian drawback shouldn’t be China, not even America. Europe as an affiliation of roughly democratically constituted states is the bastion that must be razed, from exterior in addition to from inside, by affect, a battle of disinformation, cyberwarfare. Ukraine’s crime was its flip to the West, no extra, no much less.
As an alternative, the fantasy of a Europe within the clutches of the present Russian police state. All of the extra so since, in an unprecedented escalation, its chief of workers threatened the West with nuclear strikes if the European Union persevered too far with its assist for the ailing Ukraine. The risk particularly focused cities corresponding to Berlin, Strasbourg, Paris or Brussels – a declaration of battle towards the European group or what they over there have since taken to calling the ‘collective West’.
For the primary time, I grew to become acutely aware once more of the fragility of Europe, the hazard through which this valuable continent finds itself. Europe, which is dearer to me (even because the bearer of a German passport) – exactly on account of the disaster attributable to Germans, supporters of Hitler and his Nazi motion, a world battle accompanied by the homicide of Jewish individuals from throughout Europe – than the successes or failures of the nation whose mom tongue I name my very own. In different phrases, I really feel extra like a European than a German. I may think about dying for Europe, I might not go to battle for Germany, ought to that be mandatory sooner or later.
Because the starting of the battle waged towards Ukraine, I’ve felt complicit. I usually take into consideration the Spanish Civil Struggle, which was the beginning of the marketing campaign of metropolis bombardments, which then grew to become the norm within the Second World Struggle with the air raids on Warsaw, Coventry, London, Rotterdam, till it was lastly visited again on Germany and cities like Hamburg or Dresden had been destroyed. Simply as Kharkiv and Kyiv are immediately topic to relentless volleys of missiles. I ask myself what I might have finished within the Spanish Struggle, when the Worldwide Brigades had been being fashioned. How I might have behaved as a soldier within the German Wehrmacht – what I might have finished when the German military marched into Kiev or besieged Leningrad.
I ask myself this and in doing so attempt to uncover the place I stand immediately, eighty years after the top of the Second World Struggle and at a time when the Russian bid to annexe Ukraine rages unabated, a battle that for us is hardly greater than the each day ritual of disposing of one other web page from the tear-off calendar. The bystanders who learn the newspaper each day to learn the way individuals there are dying, are distant, nonetheless protected against the rocket barrages, and have their very own opinions. I converse as a European in taking these occasions – that are and stay monstrous – significantly. Ought to I faux that none of that is taking place, this each day homicide ‘in Ukraine far away’ (to paraphrase a line from Goethe)?
No, not a day goes by that I’m not shaken by the assaults, but additionally by the deaths on either side of the entrance. As a result of battle is above all a machine for producing loyalty, on the Russian facet for cementing energy, for colonizing its personal inhabitants together with that of Belarus: re-education within the spirit of lethal patriotism. The eyewitness account of an American who was deployed in one of many volunteer battalions preventing for Ukraine: ‘The Russians are using their own people as cannon fodder. They are shooting prisoners of war. These people will not hesitate to eat up their own for political reasons.’
A younger Russian historian described it as one of the crucial mindless wars on the very begin. An expression of helplessness, since we all know that this ‘special operation’ is a part of a calculation by the ruling caste as to how they’ll maintain on to energy by the utmost means – and for all times. And we’re not speaking about President Zelensky. The distinction is free elections, which haven’t existed in Russia for a very long time. To be clear: that is now not a battle between programs as within the days of the Chilly Struggle, however one about types of rule. It’s about an imperialist declare to international territory, which even a ceasefire wouldn’t change – aside from a return to enterprise as ordinary, America’s, within the type of President Trump’s chief concern, within the title of financial spheres of curiosity.
All the pieces that presents itself by the use of rationalization (geostrategic rationale), or historic background (the collapse of the Soviet Union, the legend of Russia’s isolation, plus all of the myths of a 3rd Rome, Byzantium, or the fantasies of a powerful Eurasia) fails to know this truth. At a second when 1000’s upon 1000’s are being sacrificed for a brand new tsar, my concern is the irrecuperable tragedy of the Ukrainian individuals, whom the worst destiny has befallen: a destiny, furthermore, that has no finish in sight and can traumatize them for generations.
A phrase concerning the preconditions of this battle, which the few Ukrainians and Poles I do know, poet associates, have seen on the horizon for a very long time. Two dates from the depths of current German historical past belong right here, and with them I’m again to Europe and its current malaise. One is what I wish to name the Curse of Yalta. It befell Germany – this monster that needed to be defeated – and its division as the results of the top of the battle. Nevertheless it additionally affected the Baltic States, which went to rack and break below the wheels – or somewhat the armoured tank tracks – of this choice. I used to be studying within the work of an Estonian writer how Churchill allowed himself to be exploited by Stalin and made far-reaching concessions to him in February 1945 relating to the enlargement of the Soviet sphere of affect. The battle was over, however on the Potsdam Convention not solely the Baltic States, however all of Central Europe was deserted.
The opposite date was the Hitler-Stalin-Pact, the that means of which continues to be contentious immediately, additionally amongst historians. On the one hand, this had created sure realities that proceed to have an impact immediately. On the time, because the writer Jüri Reinvere explains, the western Allies merely gave their blessing to the spoils that fell to Stalin in consequence. Half of Europe was thus handed over to a mass assassin. However, may it not be the case, and I feel it’s, that on 23 August 1939, two dictatorships sought to shut ranks in pursuit of a joint extinction of liberal Europe?
The truth that Hitler’s Germany lastly invaded the Soviet Union and that each one this had been a very long time within the planning is an objection, to make certain. However that two totalitarian states solely grew to become allies for strategic causes stays a fantasy, informed in a different way on either side. It doesn’t change the destiny of the Jews in all of the occupied nations, together with the Soviet Union. The homicide of the Jews in each single nation below German army rule is and stays an open wound so long as we’re discussing Europe. That’s the reason the query of antisemitism is so central and mustn’t ever be forgotten within the commemoration of the wars of yesterday and immediately. No, we is not going to escape of the second of absolute photo voltaic eclipse so rapidly, and because it seems, its shadow stays with us immediately.
It has develop into colder in Europe, the areas are closing once more, Europe is presently within the means of rearranging itself. It’s comprehensible that Finland and Sweden have now joined NATO, below stress from the risk from the East, which is at the very least a ray of hope. Neutrality shouldn’t be an choice in instances when human rights are as soon as extra being trampled underfoot. As soon as it was the order of the day to hitch a basically European transatlantic alliance which was focussed on defence, the one one with out an ideology of assault. Finland particularly has realized a lesson from the implications of the infamous Hitler-Stalin-Pact. It has an vital story to inform about its modified place after the armistice of 1944, the one nation to be wrested from Stalin’s grasp.
Additionally, about the way it got here to be the venue for the Convention on Safety and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) in 1973, which ushered in a thaw between the icebound blocs. The well-known Last Act of 1975, which dealt primarily with human rights points, a very powerful side for these of us trapped behind the Wall – rather more so than the re-definition of these false borders which remained ours to problem. I definitely felt the wind blowing from Helsinki within the final years of SED rule. There was a sort of juridification of the state of affairs; and dissenters, those that needed to depart the nation, may instantly level to a authorized treaty to which the GDR was additionally a signatory. I bear in mind the delight of the nation, which had scarcely been acknowledged on the worldwide stage earlier than then, to have been in Helsinki. Even when the obligations that had been entered into as a part of the Accords hardly had any impact on the inhabitants.
And with that: again to the lady, the kidnapped determine of Europa within the poem, who has been the topic from the start. The beginning place nonetheless appears to be the identical. On the one facet, the western democracies, altering of their formations, rising and falling, as they at all times have. And on the opposite facet, dinosaur-like counter-projections, types of rule that have a tendency in direction of imperialism and the devouring of all sources and the individuals of their sphere of affect.
In Russia, that is the particular case of a regime that’s making an attempt to regain its previous stature and energy primarily based on its sacrifices within the ‘Great Patriotic War’. Any discuss of the risk to Russia from the West is just a diversionary tactic; in actuality, the objective is to curb grassroots democratic actions in Russia itself in addition to in neighbouring nations. Putin’s mannequin of a secret service state feels itself threatened, from exterior in addition to from inside, a state of affairs that would maybe be solved by the psychoanalytic remedy of these concerned, however sadly Freud by no means made it so far as Moscow. A state through which all of the forces of the left and proper are actually forcibly welded collectively right into a bloc that excludes any opposition via terror and perversion of justice (the homicide of Nemtsov, the poisoning of Navalny, the expulsion of the feminine opposition, Pussy Riot). A state that’s now waging battle as a way to nip any potential drift in direction of the West within the bud. For this, battle is the final resort to power regime change in spite of everything different types of affect have failed. An indication of poverty, a mark of backwardness.
Europe has renounced waging battle, therein lies its inside peace, its modernity. And this was mirrored not least within the Budapest Memorandum, which even the Russian Federation agreed to when it joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1994. A golden decade of de-escalation – from immediately’s perspective, the happiest time of my life. For the primary time, Europe was now not merely that girl kidnapped and fought over by all sides, however a continent that had freed itself from its previous myths and the cursed ideologies of the 20th century as a way to look ahead to a future with out wars and with out violence. After Russia’s regression into the previous, I can solely hope for all our sakes that Europe will seize its alternative for cohesion in a approach that has not earlier than been attainable and use it for the longer term.
The article relies on a speech Durs Grünbein delivered on the Helsinki Debate on Europe, 16 Might 2025
