Children carry Soviet flags and portraits of their relatives who fought in World War II during a rally in Leningradsky Garden in Moscow, Russia, on May 5, 2022. (Contributor/Getty Images)
“You can’t build democracy at home unless you dispense with empire and nostalgia for its loss. Until you do this, your politics will be consumed by deluded dreams.”
Spanish historians have told me that the final defeat of the Spanish empire with the loss of Cuba and the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth century fostered the authoritarian turn that delivered Spain to Franco and delayed the transition to democracy for two generations. Empire in Africa prevented a democratic transition in Portugal until 1974. Marine Le Pen’s right-wing movement in France began with her father’s fury at the loss of Algeria and his contempt for the democratic institutions Charles de Gaulle put in place after he withdrew France from North Africa.
When societies face up to their past, they create the possibility of a politics based in reality, not fantasy. In Britain, the Labour government of 1945 understood that it could not build democracy at home unless it abandoned India and Palestine. Germany had to be unconditionally defeated before it gave up its fantasy of an imperium across Europe and Asia.
Opinion: Anti-money laundering watchdog FATF needs to blacklist Russia
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meets tomorrow, Oct. 22, and is expected to once again debate Russia’s blacklisting. That Russia, a clear state sponsor of terrorism, hasn’t been ousted from an intergovernmental body that sets global standards to combat terrorist financing, money laundering, a…
Russia remains the one European society that has never honestly faced up to its imperial past. In refusing to acknowledge the legacy of Stalin, in failing to face up to his crimes in Ukraine, in the other “captive nations,” and in Russia itself, Russia closed off any path to its own democratic future. Its people have laid themselves open to the perpetual tyranny of a man who can only turn their sons into cannon fodder.
“Its (Russia’s) people have laid themselves open to the perpetual tyranny of a man who can only turn their sons into cannon fodder.”
This is the lethal pathology that Ukraine is fighting in our name. When Ukraine’s citizens say they want to join Europe, what they mean is that they want to rip empire out of their souls and live as free people, liberated from a past whose memory made an old woman howl in pain.
All imperial nostalgias are best laid to rest, even benign ones like hers and mine for the sweet days of the ancien régime when my Russian ancestors kept the kitchen door open for peasant girls and gave them dollops of blackberry jam. A free Ukraine will have to make its own peace with the remnants of old Russia, like the churchyard where my ancestors are buried.
For now, Ukrainians are pulling Tolstoy off their shelves, and toppling Catherine the Great from her plinth in Odesa. Later, a more complex reckoning will fall due. You have to own all of your history, not just the parts that fit your mythologies.
Once Ukrainians have won a peace they can live with, a free Ukraine will have to own the imprint of the Russian past on its soul, and then wrestle free of that past. Only then can it begin to make a new history beyond terror, violence, and fear.
Editor’s Note: Copyright, Project Syndicate. This article was published by Project Syndicate on Oct. 22, 2024, and has been republished by the Kyiv Independent with permission. The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent.
Michael Ignatieff
Former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada
Michael Ignatieff, a former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, is a history professor and the rector emeritus of Central European University in Vienna, Austria. Read more
Source link : https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-ukraines-war-is-the-reckoning-with-empire-europe-can-no-longer-avoid/
Author :
Publish date : 2024-10-23 13:03:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.