Understanding Europe (The Works of Christopher Dawson)

V. Eastern Europe and Russia

69 v Eastern Europe and Russia In the past, the European, society of nations extended far beyond the limit of what is generally known as Western Europe. It included : a number of kingdoms and nationalities which shared the intellectual and religious traditions of the West and made their contribution to the common stock of European culture. The political situation of these countries has been precarious for centuries, ever since the Turkish conquest of the Balkans and the rise of the military empires of Russia and Prussia, but their cultural community with Western Europe survived: It was not until the Second World War that this community was threatened , and it is the cultural separation of Eastern Europe from the West which is the most disastrous feature of the post-war world. For the new system of intercontinental power blocs cuts Europe asunder like a knife—and not Europe alone, for the division runs through the middle of Germany and Austria, so that Eastern Germany belongs to the same political bloc as North China, and Western Germany goes with North America, Australia and Japan. Now in theory this division follows the lines of political ideology and party allegiance. The peoples and fragments of peoples east of the line are supposed to be convinced adherents of Communism, while those to the west accept the principles of constitutional democracy. In reality, however, it is essentially a matter of political and military power. It is a military frontier between two empires, or between an empire and the states and territories that remain independent of it. A military frontier of this kind does not necessarily correspond to a line of division between different forms of culture: indeed, it seldom does so. But in this case there is no doubt that behind the conflict in 70 Understanding Europe power politics there is a deeper ideological conflict between rival systems , and this ideological conflict tends to make the older cultural divergences between Eastern and Western Europe serve its purposes. In the past these divergences did not prevent the existence of a common European culture and a considerable amount of social and intellectual intercourse. But under the new political conditions cultural relations are becoming increasingly difficult; so that we are faced with the danger of the two rival power systems becoming two hostile spiritual worlds with no bridge between them. Hence it is our duty as Europeans to do all in our power to understand what is happening in Eastern Europe and not to accept the crude, oversimplified versions of history which are so characteristic of the modern political ideologies. Unfortunately this is by no means easy for us in this country. Few of us know Eastern Europe, fewer still can read or speak its many languages, and still fewer are those who have any wide knowledge of its history and its cultural and religious traditions . We have always been well aware of the importance of Russia, and we know something of the inner history of Russian culture owing to the riches of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian literature which has been so widely translated. But between Russia and Germany and Turkey there are nearly a dozen European peoples of whom we know hardly anything, and whose whole history has been left out of the ordinary Western education. Consequently, when in 1917 the new Russia suddenly forced itself on the attention of the Western world, the mind of the English-speaking public was virgin soil prepared to receive any seed that was sown in it. Public opinion veered between the naive anti-Bolshevism of the post-1917 period and the equally naive acceptance of Communist propaganda in the later thirties and the war years. Although the period between the wars saw the re-emergence of the suppressed nationalities of Eastern Europe , the only one of them which attracted much public attention was Czechoslovakia, thanks to the leadership of President Masaryk, whose ideas had so much in common with Western Liberalism. Throughout the whole time our main attention was focused on Russia, and we never Eastern Europe and Russia 71 made full use of our opportunities during this period to become acquainted with the history and culture of the other states of Eastern Europe , which have been traditionally a part of Catholic Europe and which have had far more in common with the West than Russia herself. I do not wish to minimize the importance of Russia...