Isaiah Berlin Memorial Lecture 2017: Timothy Snyder

[Music] there's no so and now I'm happy to give the floor to madam whereof 80 freiburger who is going to introduce or tonight's guest professor Timothy Snyder miss Rita freiburger the floor is yours [Applause] your excellency mr. President of the Republic madam ambassador distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen it's a truly a pleasure to see how from year to year they're saya Berlin yearly lecture attracts more and more listeners I'm looking around here and I hardly see an empty seat and I think that that is a sign of the both the importance that people understand Riga as his birthplace affords to a Cyberman as a unique philosopher and a fascinating personality but as well to the attractiveness of the speakers that year to year we invite in honor of aasaiya Berlin's birthday which is how it all started tonight were truly privileged in having among us a person who is so busy travelling around the world and giving widely attended lectures that one wonders when and how he manages to produce his writings of which there are a great many I'm talking about our guest for today dr. Timothy Snyder who officially is professor of history at Yale but who in practice is a citizen of the world traveling from one country to another I think he we see him here in Riga after at least two other countries immediately preceding and at least two other ones following where he will be giving lectures before returning home we have seen a charming film about aasaiya Berlin I think which captures the in a way the mystery and the magnetism of this personality who was stunning speaker whom you might say it did not have the perfect diction of that conservatories or schools of theater teach their students but as nevertheless a remarkable oral performer as well as of course an immortal writer philosopher but more than that a man interested in the history of ideas and over the impact of ideas on society on the importance of understanding ideas because ideas lead to action an actions lead either to happiness or to suffering to life or to death the construction or the destruction ideas are where it all stands and stops his fascination was liberty freedom what does it mean how to define it in a positive or in a negative way our guest this evening professor Timothy Snyder is fascinated by the same topics but from a point of view of a historian rather than a philosopher and his emphasis there is on events and on documentation and then trying to understand the ideas that were the driving force behind them he is one of these unusual I would say very rare phenomenon in the modern world a polyglot in the academic world were so many scholars are content with their native language and maybe one or two others he is not only competent to speak you know I would say the major languages of the Western world but able to read and understand a great many others a remarkable capacity that has opened up for him sources historical sources sources about political events that are not available to every english-speaking historian his specialty has been Eastern Europe and us being where we are clearly we fall within the purview of his fields of interests and his books have been translated already into Latvian as they have been into numerous to numerous other languages to be mentioned particularly the book bloodlines which touches on Eastern Europe between both Stan leanest and Hitlerian tyranny I believe has been translated in some near 30 languages has received the Hara Hannah Arendt prize for political thought the Leipzig Book Prize and numerous other prizes from prestigious institutions his book on tyranny is a best-seller and translated in many languages black earth and others his work about the Holocaust has been epic making studies of how these things happened how ever seen and how they were interpreted both in Europe and elsewhere he's particularly I think important in the sense that the Iron Curtain for too long kept intellectuals divided into two camps ones in the West who were free in in every sense of the word that they saya Berlin would have given to that word they were free but they did not have access to a great many sources and then the eastern part of Europe which was for a long time under two tyrannies and so as in Latvia periods of them both with equally grave and bloody circumstances and consequences we're looking forward to this evenings presentation by Professor Schneider who is approaching the subjects dear to aasaiya billions heart you might say from the other end he is looking at unfreedom he is looking at tyranny he is looking at the contrary of liberty in order to understand it better it's a sort of chiaroscuro approach to the subject he is showing us the shallow side of things so that we might be enlightened about their essential meaning it is my great honor and privilege to introduce professor Timothy Snyder dear guests the floor is yours [Applause] mr. president madam president madam ambassador excellencies friends colleagues there are many good things to say about the rise of women to high positions of authority and one of them is that it means you're less likely to be introduced by someone wearing a tie which in turn liberate cyou as a speaker not to wear a tie and against the heavy matters of freedom and unfreedom that I'm about to discuss I'm going to begin by stressing this tiny bit of freedom which this introduction affords me the freedom around my neck thank you I acknowledge the introduction in this way because in other all in every other respect it was it was far too generous what I would like to do in the time that we have here together is to ask a question about where we are to ask a question about what our historical moment is to seek after some terms to seek after some concepts that will help us to explain to grasp to get some traction on what must seem to be this very slippery time that we find ourselves in a time when the things that we took for granted are clearly under challenge a time when reassurances from the West if you happen to be in the East are no longer so assuring and a time when ideas coming from the east if you're in the West are no longer so familiar but have the air of novelty and and the air of challenge the way that I'd like to proceed is by talking about time by talking about how we experience time what I want to suggest is that in our day there are two basic ways that we experience time that we move through time and that what is happening to us is that we are shifting from one to the other from what I'm going to call the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity now in this argument I am seeking to pay a debt to Sora's aya Berlin who was was one of my teachers and who shared with me although for me it's a much more modest interest he who shared with me this idea that philosophy or the history of ideas also includes how we move through time and that time is not a constant time is not just something in the background time actually changes and when it changes it changes us and once the change has happened it seems so final so definite so natural that we forget what things were like before so my thesis to give it to you at the beginning is that we were shifting from one idea of time to another and that if this shift completes itself if we move from inevitability to eternity all of the institutions that we take for granted and these values of freedom which we hold dear will no longer apply will will no longer function they will seek to make sense even to us and therefore that if we wish to hold on to freedom we have to notice this shift while it's happening and find a way to stop it so what is this shift what is happening first of all what do I mean by the politics of inevitability now as I discussed the politics of inevitability what I'm going to seek to do is to take something which seems natural or seemed natural take something within which we were living or many of us who are living and try to help us to see it as an idea try to help us to see it as something which is not natural which which can change so what do I mean by the politics of inevitability by the politics of inevitability I mean a view of time an experience of time in which everything is moving forward in which there's nothing really new in which there's only more of the good things that we already have the politics of inevitability is the idea of progress where the word progress leaves open the question or takes for granted the question of what that good thing actually is that we're getting more of in the politics of inevitability time is a line that moves from past to present and future there's only one road and we're on that road the only question is where we are or perhaps time is like an avenue which opens up it's going in one direction but as you go forward there's more and more of whatever that good thing might be freedom prosperity you name it now in this version of time and of course my claim is that we have been inhabiting this version of time or many of us have been in this version of time the present is not that interesting the only things that are in the present are the same things that are going to be in the future and the only things that are in the future are really the same things that are that are in the present just just more of them and in in this version of time the past is also not so interesting because whatever detail whatever facts we might find in the past we know where they're going to lead they're going to lead to the present they're going to lead to the future so there's no particular reason for us to bother ourselves about knowing lots of difficult names and dates or there's no reason to visit faraway countries of which we know little no particular reason to learn to learn languages or see things from other points of view because the facts the facts don't really matter so in this in this view of time there is only one good thing maybe that good thing is democracy maybe that good thing is socialism but there's only one good thing now one version of the politics of eternity one that no longer functions so well was Marxism Marxism had the idea that nature gives rise to technology technology gives rise to social conflict social conflict gives rise to revolution and revolution gives rise to a socialist utopia a politics of inevitability when I say it like that it doesn't sound very appealing or very plausible but let us remember many tens of millions of people lived within that many of them believed in it for a very long time when that version of the politics of inevitably came to a crash in 1989 how did we in the West react the way that we and the rest West reacted especially those of us in America reacted was to say that story is wrong we have a better story our story goes like this nature leads to technology technology leads to competition competition leads to freedom freedom leads to democracy and therefore in 1989 we could simply declare history is over there are no new things there are no alternatives we will must we will and we must now all move toward forward together towards liberal democracy because that's the only thing left in history history is over now when I put it that way it probably sounds unconvincing I would suggest that with every day that goes by it sounds less convincing but let us remember that many tens of millions or indeed hundreds of millions of people lived in that view of time and many of us still do what went wrong with that what could possibly be wrong with such a healthy sounding chain of associations well in the quarter century since the end of communism there were a few warning signs that this view of history was perhaps not adequate we might have learned and now I mean we Americans so you you can feel good about yourselves for a moment if you like what we might have learned from let's say Russia after 1991 was that the removal of some institutions doesn't automatically lead to markets freedom democracy and so on we might have learned the same lesson from Iraq in 2003 where one might have seen that destroying institutions does not automatically clear the way for markets freedom democracy and so on we we might have learned from the financial crisis of 2008 that more capitalism or freer capitalism or less restrained capitalism doesn't automatically lead to a healthy democratic society we might have learned that but we clearly didn't because in 2010 in the United States of America we took the decision to allow as much money as possible into political campaigns we took the decision that there would be no rules about how much money you could contribute to a political campaign we might have learned something from that but we did not and the latest moment from which we might have learned was the Year 2016 when an extraordinary thing happened when a candidate who no one thought had a chance won the office of President United States aided by a very active and effective cyber war from a foreign power wishing us ill that is to say the Russian Federation who expected that who expected such a new thing and yet and yet and yet if one was not trapped within the politics of inevitability all of those things would have made more sense none of them would have seen so surprising now your Europeans most of you and as Europeans when I talk and I can tell which ones are Americans by when you smile I can tell I can tell um I can tell which ones ones of you were raised in America but born news Becca ston I can also pick you out of a crowd um the the the so when I say these things about the United States it's very easy for you to nod your head and say oh yes of course those Americans with their faith in the market and their tendency to oversimplify and they're ignorant and in some sense they deserve what's coming to them all right the politics of inevitability has a European version as well and this is going to be a little bit harder to understand and when you do understand it it's going to hit home with a greater degree of pain so let's let's give it a try what is the politics of inevitability for Europeans the politics of inevitability for Europeans is something that I would call the fable of the wise nation the fable of the wise nation is a view which is held almost universally by Europeans it's at least it's held almost universally by Europeans who believe that the European Union is a good thing or who believe that European integration is is a good thing it's a view that's helped by most Europeans who had called themselves Europeans what does this view say the fable of the wise nation says we Europeans belong to nations our nations have an old history our nations were nation-states and then we Europeans fought a war it was called the Second World War it was a terrible war it included atrocities and from this war we learned we Europeans our nations are wise nations learned that war was a bad thing and as a result of this learning we decided to carry out European integration in order to pursue peace no does that sound familiar because it is essentially page 1 of every briefing book ever published in Brussels it's essentially the first few sentence of every speech given in Europe since about 1970 and not a single word of it is true not a single word of it is true nothing about that is true right now what's wrong with it let's consider this will take longer than in America when I'm in America I have to spend longer on the American politics of inevitability the European when I can do in 10 seconds when I'm in Europe I had to spend longer on the European so what's wrong with that well everything first of all first of all did Europeans learn from the Second World War that war was a bad thing let's consider that which Europeans suffered most in the Second World War which let's I'll stay with nations that are familiar to me where I know the languages where I've studied where I've spent time Jews yellow Russians Ukrainians and Russians so if you learn from the Second World War that war was a bad thing then we would expect that Israel Belarus Ukraine and Russia would be four of the most peace-loving nations in the world we don't need to pause and debate the individual qualities of each of these nations I think to agree that these are not the four most peace-loving nations in the world so that immediately calls into question the assumption that Europeans learned from the suffering of war that war was a bad thing from what did Europeans actually learn Europeans learned from something else Oh what by the way why is the idea of learning from the Second World War so attractive because it sets you off from Americans you can say we had a Second World War and we learned that war was a bad thing but those silly Americans didn't learn that or was a bad thing they keep fighting these wars they never learn they keep fighting these colonial wars okay let's pause on that what did Europeans actually learn from Europeans did not learn from the Second World War that war was a bad thing Europeans learned from losing colonial wars all around the world that war was a bad thing this begins with the Federal Republic of Germany the Second World War from the point of view of Germany was a colonial war having exhausted the rest of the world European powers turned to colonizing Europe itself the Second World War was above all things before all things a colonial war for control of Ukraine and Eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union Germany lost the Second World War but what's important is that Germany lost a colonial war an imperial war it was the first major European power to lose decisively to lose completely categorically a colonial war and so the way that Germany responded or the Federal Republic of Germany responded was to begin along with France Netherlands Belgium Luxembourg and Italy the project of European integration after Germany all of the other major European powers the former maritime empires also lost colonial wars France the Netherlands Italy later Britain Portugal Spain and as all of the major maritime powers lost colonial wars they joined in the process of European integration which was no coincidence you're the European community as it was then known was the soft landing that was available after Empire slipped away that was its historical purpose that remains its historical purpose as these nations did this they told themselves a little story and the little story went like this we have always been a nation state and now our nation state is choosing to join Europe no no no no no that is the fable of the wise nation none of these places were ever nation-states they never existed as nation-states there is not a moment when they were nation states France is an empire Britain is an empire Portugal Spain empires there's not a moment there's not a blink of an eye in modern history when these places are nation states when I'm talking in Britain I I always give a 15-second moment of silence no because this is I mean that's how long it takes the British usually to sort of let this sink in there's never there's never a moment well you see what implication this has we're going to talk about that there's never a moment when these places or nation states in Eastern Europe the story is very much the same to be sure there were East European nation states Estonia Latvia Lithuania Poland Czechoslovakia these were nation-states the problem is they only lasted for about 18 or 19 years aside from that their modern history of nation as nation-states is also short to non-existent and the experience of nation-states in the 1920s and 1930s does not convince one that nation-states can survive for very long on their own the problem with East European points of view is that each East European nation looks upon its own history as exceptional the Ukrainians say well we only had a nation-state for a few months how exceptional the the Estonians Allowance and Lithuanians say we had we had our nation-state for 22 years how exceptional Poland says we had her nation-state for 21 years how exceptional Austrians in Czechoslovakia we had our nation state for 20 years how exceptional at a certain point it's not an exception at a certain point it's a rule and the rule is without some larger level or some higher level of European politics the European nation state has never proven that it can exist this is the fable of the wise nation the fable of the wise nation says we were always here as nation-states no you weren't and then it says we nation-states learn from our experience in the Second World War and therefore built Europe no you didn't these are fables which might be harmless in better times that's your politics of inevitability but in a moment like the one which we face in which the politics of inevitability are suddenly challenged and the politics of eternity are emerging around us within our societies within ourselves at this moment we can no longer afford to believe the fables because you see one of the things the politics of inevitability does is that it opens the way for the politics of eternity okay what then is the politics of eternity if the politics of inevitability is the idea that time always moves forwards if the politics of inevitability is the notion that that there's there's one good thing and we're going to get more of it over time the politics of an of eternity is something else the politics of eternity is not progress but doom the politics of eternity says there's only one good thing and that one good thing is us us our nation history is not a line moving forward history as a cycle things the said things happen over and over and over again in fact the same thing happens over and over and over again in fact only one thing really ever happen and that is that malicious foreigners attack our national innocence this happens over and over and over again and this is the only thing that we need to know about the past this is the time scape of what we call populism it's also the time scape of what we call fascism no the politics of inevitability in the politics of eternity have some things in common one of them which I'll talk about in the conclusion is that both of them destroy history and thereby destroy freedom but there are other things they have in common one of them is the way that they handle the idea of reform if you believe in the politics of inevitability there's never really any reason for reform because good things happen on their own history is moving in a certain direction if you believe in the politics of eternity there's never the right moment for reform because the nation is always constantly under threat and how can you even talk about reform when the enemy is at the gate another similarity between the two of them is how they handle responsibilities or how they handle ethics if you believe in the politics of inevitability there's never any particular reason why you or you or you need to do anything because what regardless of what you do things are basically going in the right direction if you believe in the politics of eternity it also doesn't matter what you do because as members of the nation you're always naturally innocent and good so the question of morality is taken care of before before it ever arises the politics of inevitability in the politics of eternity are also both prone to propaganda but they have different propaganda styles so in the politics of inevitability you recognize that there are facts and you spin the facts into a story about how everything is going very well so for example if Russia invades Ukraine and you're the president the United States you might say well Russia's just a regional power and this is not in his economic interests and therefore this doesn't mean very much right because in the end it will all come out in the wash things will be fine if you were in the politics of eternity you might say something like Russia did not invade Ukraine at all and if it did it impeded Ukraine because it was full of fascists and also because it was full of gays but we didn't invade but if we did it was the gay fascists so the politics of eternity has a different propaganda style which is complete and utter disregard for the world of factuality it doesn't spin facts it it's contemptuous of them and seeks to destroy them now our problem and problem it is is that eternity tends to prepare sorry inevitability tends to prepare the way for eternity for one thing if we say history is over right as politicians of inevitability say if we say history is over we don't notice the history happening around us if we say there are no alternatives we don't recognize those alternatives until it's too late if we say the past doesn't really matter or the facts for the past or just details which are going to form themselves into a future we already know so why should we care about the specifics of the past if we say that the fact the facts of the past don't matter it makes us very hard to recognize traditional forms of tyranny or traditional forms of of what I'm going to call unfreedom if if we're within the politics of inevitability what happens is that we spend years in this case 25 years we spend 25 years clearing out the details of the past forgetting many of the things we once knew and thereby we create an open space even of a vacuum for the past to come rushing back in no longer in the form of history but in the warm of the thing we call memory an idea that all that ever happened had to do with us and it had to do with our innocence another thing that another way that inevitability leads to eternity at least in the United States of America has to do with economic policy if you believe a capitalist version of inevitability then you believe that we just have to let things go and the market will automatically bring us democracy what the market brought the United States in the last 25 years our stupefying levels of economic inequality levels of economic inequality inequality interestingly enough that are very similar to levels of economic inequality in the Russian Federation when you allow economic inequality to grow for more and more people a story of progress becomes implausible of course you might not notice those people at first you might not notice them until they elect your president but in general if you allow inequality to grow stories of progress will break down they'll break down family by family town by town valley by valley region by region state by state until you realize that your story of inevitability no longer works in other words in in Tsar's ayahs terms if you concentrate only on negative Liberty only on freedom as freedom from things as freedom from the state and you don't give people enough positive Liberty that they feel like they're in control of their own lives it's unlikely that they're going to believe in progress they're likely to believe in something entirely different and of course if you believe too much in the politics of inevitability if you talk too much about how the state can't do things or shouldn't you end up with a weak dysfunctional state a state that doesn't provide people with elementary things like health insurance or pensions and in that situation is very hard to turn the situation around and so here in the United States and it can happen in other places a story of progress becomes a story of doom slowly but eventually um quite quite powerfully now how does these the politics of eternity look in practice I promise you I won't speak very long about contemporary American politics but there are actually interesting lessons to be drawn here about how the politics of eternity looks the way that the politics of eternity deals with policy is to only address fictional problems what do I mean well let me start from mr. Trump's campaign slogan make America great again what could be wrong with making America great again let me tell you if you ask Americans when America was great and we now have we now have social science research on this what do Americans say Americans generally say America was great when I was young now we can agree or disagree about just how much government can and should do those are legitimate discussions but I think we can also we can agree in general that one thing that government cannot do is make us young again I mean sometimes mr. Trump makes me feel young but that's something entirely different now now consider in this Anisa what's the point about this there's something fictional about this right there's a fictional element now let me give you a harder example in a more painful example most of the white Americans who voted for mr. Trump in fact a very high majority of the white Americans who voted for mr. Trump believe that racism against White's is a greater problem in the u.s. than racism against blacks that is a problem that government cannot solve because it is a fictional problem if you tell people if you inform people that they have problems that are fictional that changes the character of government government is then no longer about solving problems government is about confirming you in your beliefs about what is troubling you and that is of course how mr. Trump has governed there is no legislation passed in the United States of America in the last nine months have any significance the only attempted legislation involves tax regression that is moving money from the poor to the rich which is the last thing we need and the removal of health care from about 20 million Americans that is not policy in a conventional sense if anything those both of those policies were they passed would make the average life of the average American much more difficult what we do have is the constant generation of artificial crisis day after day week after week each time attempting to convince us as Americans or very often as white Americans which is worse that we are the victims that we've never done anything wrong that it's entirely someone else's fault whether it's the way mr. Trump deals with Iran or way it's whether it's the way mr. Trump deals with a hurricane in Puerto Rico we always immediately go to identity politics government is no longer in the politics of eternity about doing government is entirely about being how does this look in Europe you've probably already anticipated this how does the politics of eternity work in Europe well let's say you believe the fable of the wise nation right let's say you believe that you once had a nation-state and that a nation-state was functional it learned over time it made choices if you believe in that then you can also believe we can make another choice we different information now we as a nation-state can leave the European Union and that of course is the essence of the essential political debates going on in the European Union now whether it was brexit whether it was the fullness canal in France whether it's the brinksmanship of Hungary and Poland whether it's the open aggression towards the European Union of the Russian Federation the big discussion in the European Union is something like in or out and the assumption always is this is what's interesting the assumption always is that there is a nation state that the nation-state went in and therefore the nation-state can go back out again and that of course is entirely wrong or it's a huge historical gamble what populist nationalist s' fascists and so on say is that leaving Europe is returning home leaving Europe is walking over a cliff you've never been there before unless you're Finland in which case you have my apologies in general you have never been there before you're not going back to some warm cozy home ish that's not an English word Hainish there that you're not going back to a home you're walking into an abyss it's something entirely new and the interesting thing about the whole debate in Europe is that no one ever says this people debate the plusses and minuses of being in the European Union or leaving the European Union but no one ever says we can't one reason we shouldn't leave the European Union is that we've never been a nation-state before no one ever says that the fable of the wise nation your politics of inevitability is so deeply sunk in that the question of whether to be in Europe or not cannot even be correctly posed and the fable of the wise nation gives the populist s-- the Euroskeptics or the people who are simply trying to destroy the European Union a huge rhetorical and political advantage because you think history has to move in a certain way that there have to be nations and they have to learn you've created the condition where some kind of collapse is much much much more likely know how how then and this is my this will be my closing word how does Russia fit in to all of this Russia fits into all of this in a very special way Russia is ahead of the rest of us in that the Russian Federation has already reached the politics of eternity and is exporting them so what is special about Russia is that Russia has achieved a kind of mature state of the kind of politics that I'm talking about I think in part this is because the the men who rule Russia are children of the 1970s people who pass through Brezhnev's era of stagnation now why is that interesting what is interesting about Brezhnev's era of stagnation which I know is a terrible period in many ways what happened intellectually is that Brezhnev took the Soviet story and said it's no longer about the future it's about the past when we think of the Soviet Union now we think of the great fatherland war the story about the Soviet Union that has survived is not one of revolution they're not even commemorating the revolution the story about the Soviet Union that has survived is a story of nostalgia for the Second World War it's a story about the past it's a story about a war against an eternal enemy because the fascist in that war is no longer the capitalist who one day will have a revolution and improve and be our brother the fascist in that war as it's recalled now in the Soviet Union in the 70s and in Russia today the fascist in that war is the incorrigible fastest the person from the West who is against us simply because he is from the West and always will be so Brezhnev in begins the politics of eternity then consider what Soviet citizens pass through in the 1990s there I won't I won't go into the question of how much this is whose fault but let us let us agree that capitalism in the 1990s and the Russian Federation did not magically produce social justice and democracy let us let us accept at least provisionally that the experience of capitalism in the 1990s in Russia was a very quick end for the politic the capitalist version of the politics of inevitability the result of all of this is that what's special about the men who rule Russia is that their whole life has been in education against the politics of inevitability and the way that they have consolidated power especially after the year 2012 when mr. Putin returned the office of President is to make the politics of eternity official they have the conditions of it they have the massive the massive wealth inequality which cannot be fixed because if the state are the same people who have the money where the rule of law and reform have to become literally unthinkable the way that these things become unthinkable is that you locate all talk of improvement or progress or democracy somewhere else you make it into an alternative civilization a foreign civilization a civilization which always threatened threatens Russia and perhaps most importantly you transform domestic policy into foreign policy what mr. Trump does with hyperactivity and an experience mr. Putin and the Russian leads do with a good deal more experience and control that is they transform discussions of domestic improvement into the spectacle of something that's happening abroad whether that's the idea of eternal American hostility and the problem with eternal American hostility is of course that we don't have the attention span for it but the idea of eternal American hostage or a war in Ukraine which in September of 1915 over the course of 36 hours in the Russian press shifted to a war in Syria with basically the same headlines only replacing Ukraine with Syria and if you don't believe me go back and look at the last weekend of September 2015 in the Russian press a spectacle of foreign war which is meant to show that Russia is always virtuous Russia is always on the defensive and it's the other side which is encouraging terrorism or fascism or what have you or perhaps more seriously consider Russian foreign policy towards the European Union there is a pattern here the idea is that if we in Russia can't achieve certain things if we can no longer see a future that's better than the present we can take those things away from you we can encourage the Scots to secede we can encourage the British to succeed we can fund the fullness mal we can support the far-right wherever it might be we can take actions on the Internet to dissuade Czechs Hungarians slovak s-- and other central Europeans that the European European Union makes sense we can take all of these actions which are designed to show that all of these things that you believe in Europe the future law truth it's all nonsense it's all nonsense why believe in anything why do anything who knows really why don't we all just sit at home and of course that is the face of modern freedom that is what it feels like that sense that I don't really know anything I don't know who to trust I wouldn't know how to organize and it's not really my responsibility anyway this is the politics of eternity and and the new one freedom the sense that were not sure what the world is around us there for we can't transform it which brings us to the Russian role in the American presidential elections which is of course if one weren't an American or a Russian would be spectacularly interesting as a matter of historical precedent after all this is the first major cyber war right the United States was categorically defeated in a cyber war that's where we are that's why it feels so strange to be an American in in the professional discourse about cyber war there's this idea of cyber to physical where you do something in the digital world and then something in the physical world changes usually the idea is that you blow up a power station or you blow up a dam or something like this in the case of the American presidential elections the physical weapon is Donald Trump you do things in the digital world which change the physical world you do things in the digital world which actually lead to a different person being president that is a form of warfare and it's a form of warfare which led to an astonishing success um even if one is simply measuring it on the traditional notion of American power and I say this with all appropriate qualifications bowels of respect nods and smiles to people who work for the civil services of the United States American power has crashed as a result of the election of Donald Trump however and this is the other bad news this doesn't help Russia the result of this kind of cyber war is that everyone is worse off because now mr. Putin is no longer the most unpredictable person on the world stage and unpredictability which was Russia's major asset has now been ceded to this other fellow and at the end of the day I don't actually think and maybe historians in 60 years will correct me I don't actually think that Moscow thought that this was going to work and I think in some sense they're just as shocked as we are because I think deep down they were counting on America to help make the world a less chaotic place and that's not what we're doing now with the exception of course of the diplomatic personnel present in this room who are doing nothing but bringing order in virtue so in some in some sense this cyber war is very interesting I think it's a I think it's a turning point and it's in some way like as an American I'm astonished to watch us flaunt our fighter planes and in flaunt you know what is in effect antiquated military technology when we can't do the basics of defending ourselves from from a cyber campaign but it is very easy so if you're an American it's very easy to blame Russia it's very easy to point out well mr. Trump was a completely failed businessman he was rescued by very weird Russian investors it's very easy to point out mr. Trump didn't even run a campaign his campaign was essentially run by either people who weren't American or people who just returned from let us say Kiev um it's very easy to say hmm it wasn't fair that they placed all of these ads in our media on behalf of mr. Trump it's very easy to say it's not fair that they had all these robots trying to organize American opinion we can say all of these things and of course they're all perfectly true but there is the larger question of why it worked so well the larger question of why Russian tactics fit the United States so well and I'm afraid the answer to that is that we have become without realizing it mmm very much like the Russian Federation in the centralization of our media in our social inequality I think that's why the Russian tactics the United States worked even better than the Russians themselves expected that they were going to work I think mr. poo I think mr. Trump was surprised when he won there's good reason to think that he wasn't the only one who was surprised that he won and so what this what this brings us to is the question of of what to do about all of this or at the very least how to think about all of this because you see now the United States is making this turn towards the politics of eternity mr. Obama who had many virtues was a inevitability politician mr. Obama was someone who believed that things are tending towards the good we've now shifted to a present United States who is very much the opposite an eternity politician someone who actively refers back to the 1930s as the good times someone who's very presidential slogan president of America first is you know Deutschland uber alles in English that's not a joke that is actually what it is historically America first was the idea that Americans and Nazis have more in common than divide us so why go to war against Nazi Germany he's a president who rather than talking about policy generates this constant era constant constant constant crisis daily weekly daily even even hourly we've made a very clear shift and there will be no policies there will be no policies I'm happy to make this prediction I'm happy to make a bet at the reception afterwards there will be no policies which aid the average American voter there will be more fear there will be more anxiety there will be more of this cycle in which that fear and anxiety is directed against the other whether it's the other beyond our borders or the other within our borders it's not it's not it's not a pretty picture so what then do we do about this or how then do we think about this my modest answer is that history is the one thing which stands between these two ideas of inevitability and on end and eternity why do I say that because for one thing these ideas they're masquerades of history they seem to be about the past the present in the future but they're not their stories their narratives their ways of making facts Bend or making them disappear but they're not a way of seriously attending to the past in fact they're they're excuses for not seriously attending to the past if the politics of eternity is right and we were all as a nation always innocent in the past what else do we really need to know if the politics of inevitability is right and everything in the past is just channeling us towards a better future what need is there to know we feel like we are thinking historically when we live in those two mental worlds but in fact what we've done is we've taken part in the annihilation of history what can history do and now I say this in the spirit of house our Isaiah practice history what history can do is that it can help us to see these two things eternity inevitability not as natural not as these things that are just around us not these not habits of thought it can help us to see these things as ideas and if they're ideas then they are some ideas among others and if we can see them as ideas if we can break them down and see them as ideas among other ideas see them as things among other things in our historical moment then we have taken the first step towards freeing ourselves because that's what history is history is the attempt to see the structures it's the attempt to see the real things in the world how they come from the past and move in to the present as soon as you see them you you see how they work but you also see where you are and what you can do and that I think is my answer my very modest answer to this new unfreedom the way to be free at the beginning of the way to be free is to see where you are and in the history of ideas what this requires is that you see the ideas for what they are and in the case of these two very bad ideas one bad idea leading to a worse idea this is a very good historical moment to stop to see what's happening and to choose something else thank you very much [Applause] okay Thank You professor Schneider for that really enlightening and thought-provoking talk let me break the ice was asking a couple of conceptual questions about your framework about politics of inevitability and politics of eternity it seems to me it's it's just some kind of reformulations in the contemporary situation about this distinction between a linear time of modernity and getting back to the circular time of mythological era and in that sense I mean you are still trying to show the deficiencies on both sides and then supporting this idea of human agency historical experience historical research in that way so the question whether you agree was that and the second one I wouldn't be a Latvian if I didn't ask the question about the non viability of the nation-states yeah yeah you're completely true with this 22 years of the interwar era are we really holds an extremely dear without any doubt at the same time someone might say but I wouldn't say that they are to say we're doomed in an any can it's metaphysical or historical sense also is Central European states were just extinguished by a conflict of two totalitarian power so I still would like to have a some kind of explanation in what way are these innate nation-states non-viable especially because we are experiencing a revival of that experience after the Cold War and from that perspective this distinction between Empire and the imperial past of the West and the nation-state past of our region is extremely thought-provoking and interesting so so thank you for those questions let me start with the second question about how one thinks about the national past and let me move from a general observation down to the specifics the the first thing is to consider whether the nation is in fact self-sufficient so there's a tendency especially if one is from a an East European nation to think that the nation is both necessary and sufficient that is to say the nation is necessary in the sense that it reflects truth about ourselves the nation is necessary in the sense that it bears culture the nation is necessary in the sense that it permits communication I understand all of this but I think the mistake is made intellectually too thick to believe that because this that the nation is necessary it's therefore sufficient the way that national history was written in the 19th century was to imagine that the nation was going through a kind of process the nation had been harmed as you say with respect to the 20th century the nation had been harmed by outside powers others had come in and taken our statehood away we are now going through a process of rebirth rediscovery and at the end of that story there is the state now the problem with that way of thinking is that there is no end of the story there there is a it's a kind of end of history in a way that when the nation regains a state then everything will be fine that's the mistake that's the problem I mean one can wish that it were true but it's simply not true it's not even clear that for I'm gonna move the conversation from Latvia so that we can like but it's not clear that for most people who lived on the territory of Poland 1925 was automatically better than 1905 just because there was a Polish state right I promise I'll say the same thing in Warsaw tomorrow I promise it's it's not it's not it's simple it's not clear to go a little bit further away that for the average peasant in in Serbia life was better after 1820 or that for the average the Bulgarian life was better after independence in 1908 that so the point is that there are other things in life besides culture and the in politics it's somewhere between culture and economics and to answer your question in its simplest form the main thing that the nation cannot provide for itself is a huge market and sources of raw materials at one time that's what empires were for and if you think about the history of the new East European states is actually quite striking how all all of them are almost all of them I don't know about Latvia but all of them at the beginning struggled with this idea of leaving a big a big economic space when Serbia when Greece and Serbia and then later Romania Bulgaria leave the Ottoman Empire yeah you can tell a story about how it was foreign occupation and and how it was all dreadful but they were leaving a big economic space and they reacted to that by fighting wars with one another to try to increase the size of their own states they reacted to that by the balkan wars they reacted to that by beginning the first world war maybe not such a good thing after all when Poland no the biggest of the new nation-states emerges in 1918 one of the immediate preoccupations is that we should have an empire which is a thought which is so strange that it's very hard to recover but polls right into the 1930s were very concerned about having an overseas Empire they didn't have a navy or anything but they wanted to have an overseas Empire so that they would have some place to send their excess population and some place to extract raw materials they wanted the British to give them something in Africa it sounds very strange they wanted the mandate for Palestine they would have settled for the mandate for Syria right that all set right that sounds exotic and weird doesn't it but the reason why people thought like this was because in the time and place it was quite clear that the nation-state was not economically sufficient Austria right Austria where I just came from what could possibly be wrong with Austria the majority of people in Austria after it became a nation-state in 1918 probably wanted forth and joined Germany the prevailing idea was that Austria was Laban soon fayek it was an incapable of life and therefore had to be part of some larger unit right so this is I mean I mean this is the answer to your question and then if we assume that nations are likely to join some larger economic unit then we can ask what are the nicer and the less nice forms of that larger economic unit the the the places that you're describing Nazi Germany in the Soviet Union I certainly agree about the horrors that occupation from both of those sides brought I mean that's been the work of my life at the same time if one wants to think really hard about this and ask what the real options in the real world might be another way of making that same statement would be that would be to say look there are better and worse forms of being in a larger economic unit being destroyed by the Soviet Union and then being occupied by Nazi Germany is perhaps the worst being part of the European Union is perhaps the best it's unlikely let me put it this way that another nicer one is going to present itself should the European Union ceased to exist while we're carrying out our conversation Latvia will at some point become part of some other larger unit will that be nicer than the European Union so this is this is this is what I you know this is what I think I understand national politics I understand the feeling that nations are necessary what history says is that they're not sufficient they're not sufficient to build States if you want to build a state in Europe it looks like you need the European Union not just if you're Latvia also if you're Britain right and this is so we can see how this plays out I personally don't think brexit can happen logically because if there's exit there's no Britney and if there's Britain there's no exit so I think the word Breck's that's actually senseless but we can see what happens if the country known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland actually leaves the European Union god forfend but should it happen we can then see whether Britain remains as a solver and strong integral prosperous nation state I've had a pretty strong opinion about which way that's actually going to go now on your first question about time of course you're right I mean I'm concerned with a version of linear time and a version of cyclical time the only thing that I'm adding to this is is a some contemporary factual observation that we had a particular version of linear time after 99 and that there there now seems to be a particular verse a new version of circular time which is which is returning I think any effort to make these things visible whether it's in my terms or in your terms is very helpful because once we see them then we can react to them okay thank you very much I know we could proceed the questions and answers and that will take because I'm in bunches of three if you don't mind because that would the audience is quite large we have one here one there and and the lady please because we have to keep the gender balance please so there are no ladies and your discussion might be the first diverse Snider's and he goes no yeah let's start with artists thank you please introduce yourselves and say where are you from arts Fetzer university from latvia which is in latvia that's because these are good times you mentioned European Union has started this breakup of colony colonial empires and of course there are different reasons and many reasons why European Union appeared but how do you think whether this history somehow determines its determines its character and nature and should be and whether it's important for us now because of course let's leave Brits that they have to deal with their problems on their own but let's say for us Latvians French Swedes is it important that the beginning of European Union is somehow related as you say to the loss in the colonial wars Thank You Judith Arthur yeah I'll bring your mind because it will go faster yeah my name is Ernest kasha I'm a journalist freelance journalist here in Latvia and I sort of have sort of won one foot in in each side of the world here because I am also a dual citizen in the United States and I have a son attending University in New York so I am just wondering how you see things playing out in the US I also have family over there a brother living there and his family how can think and things I think is going to get worse so what do you see the scenarios here can we sort of get the u.s. back on a kind of semi politics of the inevitable track or is the inevitable something else he goes yeah in the rattle and journalist so after your brilliant lecture we have idea about two policies inevitability and eternity both not very smart but now I understand that those are mere ideas and we're ready to percept whether you see any alternative the third the fourth the fifth way to those two mentioned thank you thank you yep that was it I think so the first question was about whether the post imperial origins of the European Union matter in general or matter in particular for places like Latvia I would make two remarks here the first has to do with legalism the complaint about the European Union is that it's very legalistic it's very boring that is of course it's great virtue the reason why the European Union is so legalistic and boring is because European powers even during the could be of the long Imperial period usually regarded one another as subjects of law they didn't regard others as subjects of law that's the different that's the fundamental difference between Empire and integration so when European powers Desai came back as it were to Europe I mean that's a it's a silly way of putting it that when the European European integration project began it was taken for granted in 1951 that all of its subjects were subjects of law and so when East Europeans complain as they do all the time about how this is so legalistic and there are all these forms to fill out and sure they give me lots of money but I had to send three copies you have to remember that that's the good version of European history because in the in the Imperial version they don't recognize you as a subject of law right I mean which I don't have to tell Latvians because that is what happened to Latvia in 1940 is that Latvia was treated much the way that European colonial powers treated political entities in Asia Africa and the Americas the Soviet Union said that the Latvian state does not exist which is a radical position it has radical consequences but it is the same thing that other European powers did in other parts of the world it's also the same yeah Americans have done it too so the the legalism is a kind of happy outcome because it means that you're being include you're being included in the best thing that Europe ever had to offer which is the mutual recognition of one European subject by another as as legal so that's that's one thing to think about a second way to think about is in terms of economics so the wind when West Germany along with France Benelux in Italy begin European integration it's primarily an economic project and there's a story about this the story is that economic cooperation will prevent us from fighting another Second World War okay but in fact economics is predominant I think because what's needed is another very big economic zone the complementarity of steel and coal in France and in Germany is part of a much larger story about how the nation even a big nation like Germany or a big nation like France needs something bigger than itself if it's all if it's even if it's only even only in order to realize itself and so the the story that the heck of the European Union told about itself generally was economic cooperation has political consequences and then as you moved into the 1980s it became something like economic cooperation plus a modicum of administrative unification a common border common currency that will have political consequences or spiritual consequences in other words the way the European Union always worked was economics will become politics and the politics will become it will be the politics of reconciliation and unity and I think that was true up to a point but only up to that point this bears on your question about what comes next because if the European Union is going to continue now after there really aren't any more thresholds to cross you're already as economically integrated as you can be in general it's going to have to come from somewhere else it's going to have to come from a notion of positive projects about what Europe is supposed to be formulated by young people probably young people who have been forced by various policies to move around Europe while they're still vulnerable and their minds can still be you know opened up so that's that that's part of the answer that because it's economic therefore one of the weaknesses is the assumption that economic integration will solve the political problems whereas now we've reached the point where in order to solve political problems you have to have political answers you're passed out there has to be some kind of political notion of a near future for for Europe okay America there was a question about America scenarios yeah okay so my answer here is is is rather similar so I've written I was going to say I've written this whole book called on tyranny but it's not a whole book it's like a really small book so I've written this very small book called on tyranny and what on tyranny is about are ways to preserve the Republic basically ways to tread water ways to defend oneself against the challenges that we face I think where we are in the United States right now is that we're very much in an open moment where there are things that are drastically wrong there are things that are drastically wrong we've already taken for granted like for example the end of the legislative the check of the legislature on the executive which is which exists but which is stupid only week there are things that have gone wrong like for example you know the checks and balances that we're now counting on I always feel embarrassed talking the ambassador's right here but I'm going to anyway the beaut the checks and balances we now count on are the FBI is gonna check the Army and the Army is gonna check the oligarchs and the oligarchs is going to check the president so I went back and I read the Constitution really closely and there was just nothing about how the FBI was gonna check the Army in the arm is gonna check the oligarchs niala guard come check the president the article 1 says something completely different but we've already taken that for granted like that's the good story now on the other hand there are things in America that are going really well like investigative journalism as in Russia and Ukraine by the way it's this is like this is a really heroic moment for investigative journalism I think the heroes of 2000 and that heroes since 2010 have been the investigative journalists without them we would be completely lost at this point and basically everything we know about our current presidential administration we know thanks to thanks to investigative reporters otherwise we would know we were no less than nothing there's a fair amount of civil society organization not enough but but still very very encouraging I didn't so you know what I think we need to be able to do is to tread water for the next couple of years and then two things has to happen one is that a political party has to emerge which has an idea of what a better America would look like because again I mean the the I will address your question directly but the only way to get out to stop this notion to stop this flip from inevitability to eternity is to have some historically plausible idea of how things could get better right not that they have to but how they could and what you have to do to get there so there has to be a political party which has that kind of view right I mean one of the problems with mrs. Clinton's campaign with secretary Clinton's campaign was that there was a bit too much of the America's already great right statistically as it were America is great on average America is great there wasn't enough of the scene of where things had gone terribly wrong for I mean I know that she she had good policies for people but the story that we were telling was too much about how things kind of you know they're getting they're getting better they're getting better anyway right so there has to be a political party I'm different about which political party it is I'd be happy for a new political party I don't care but there has to be a political party which has a story about near and medium-term how America how America gets how America gets better so like what we need to tread water now and then we also have to learn how to swim basically we have to have an idea about how America gets better where we're slipping you know the danger is we slip to the we slip to this idea of how we're innocent because the others are so bad right because the Muslims are so bad because whatever the Chinese are so bad the Muslims are so bad the blacks are so bad the danger is that we slip to there and what's the challenge of the present situation as I see it is that we have horrifyingly bad moral leadership we have horrifyingly bad moral leadership the president is saying an example unlike that set by any president in memory and that means that the civil society has to has to work against it this is a challenge that I don't think we've really faced before America has been lucky in a lot of ways one of though I mean it one of the ways America has been lucky is that in the most difficult times we've tended to have good leaders and the Revolutionary War we had good leadership in the Civil War we had good leadership and the great depression we had good leadership and now you know 70 more years on it's debatable whether we have good leadership and that's a challenge for us but maybe in the end of the day will be a refreshing challenge I mean maybe we needed to think about what it would be for our country to look like it was good so I've been edging around your question and of course the answer to your question is that there isn't an answer in that form it's not that there's one idea of time which is wrong and another idea of time which is wrong and therefore we need the right idea of time it's more like we have to you know do what I'm calling think historically that is we have to have a sense of we have to have a sense that we are in history and we can't get out right there's no exit therefore we bear respondent of responsibility not all responsibilities but also not zero and that we had and that what we have to be able to do is think our way to a future without the aid of these machines right these thinking machines one goes like this we have to be able to think our way to an immediate future without the aid of those machines that that's the answer it's so the answer is to break out of you know these kind of these these these forms of assistance which actually are you know taking us in very bad places and to have a kind of politics which has to do with novelty with plausible novelty I mean and I think about this especially with the relationship to people in their 20s and 30s one of the things which happened with brexit and Trump is that my notion that grandparents love their grandchildren was called into question right because I mean in brexit the grandparents voted a certain future for their grandchildren the same happened with Trump a future which they're you know not going to see or at least not for as long as their grandchildren but the grandchildren didn't vote at all and therefore allowed it to happen so one of the things that I'm concerned about is that people who are young be able to see a future and spend less time saying I can't really do anything and it doesn't really it's not really my concern and it's all just kind of funny and it doesn't make any difference one thing or the other which is where a lot of a lot of young people none of you have in this room of course because if you thought those things you wouldn't be here but I think you'll agree with me that this is where a lot of young people are right now so novelty plausible novelty on the basis of a little bit of historical reflection Lolita is a question bulbous and the lady if you permit me can I ask three questions or should I just yes or no questions my name is Lolita Saguna a member of parliament and my first question would be about the expectation of a new leadership emerging in the US that same goes for the UK actually there is a general expectation that there would be a new leader or new person who would be capable of leadership but is it possible in given electoral systems and very divided bipolar electoral systems this is my first question the second question is about the European Union you beautifully described that this is by far the best bigger institution or bigger project that small nation states like Latvia can belong to unfortunately we we find it very difficult to communicate that to our population because unfortunately only the negative motivation very often works and we were analyzing the attitudes of our society towards the European Union and we realized that it was 2014 that was a very distinct turning point in our society becoming more enthusiastic about the European Union and I was naively thinking that this is connected to introduction of Euro but no of course it was Crimea's annexation so having our society motivated by negative events how can we possibly explain the positive nature of the European project and the last one about politics of innovative inevitable basically if we look at the scenarios of Latvia and Ukraine if he wouldn't have believed that future has something in store of us we wouldn't have ever been able to make so much effort to join the European Union we compare ourselves to Ukraine and we see that probably the belief was not so strong there we managed they didn't so how do you how would you like to comment on this thank you thank you Boulder's thank you my name is Val de slippin I'm a transparency international Latvia down a chairman of the board I would like to counterbalance la litres taking so much time and actually reduced my question to a very straightforward question what role do you see the NGOs the international NGOs playing in this if you like conflict between the the two politics that you outlined and I'm thinking in particular of Amnesty International obviously transparents International and the writers union pen thank you my name is Agnes Lata I work for a think tank called Brava deuce here my questions I are I guess a little bit more philosophical there has been a lot of talk about the demise of the modern state or the nation-state in political science and whatnot but we are still talking about it so even if it's not sufficient it is it seems that it's still necessary we also expect a lot from institutions of the modern state and so forth so if they don't cease to exist what is the transformation expected or if they do cease to exist what comes in their place and to move away a little bit of the Western centrism I'm also thinking about the larger economic units that states for example in Africa or South Asia exist what is it if it's European Union here then what is it in other regions of the world okay new leadership in the US I'm hopeful I'm hopeful I'm also hopeful about the UK there are lots of people who are running for office in 2018 in the u.s. who've never run for office before I suspect a lot of them have never even voted before I think this is a very good development much of the United States as you suggested by your point about poll polarization in much the United States the Democrats don't even field candidates that's now going to end I think they may lose but they're at least going to field candidates which is a good thing you're entirely right about about our electoral system we spent a lot of time explain to other people how to be democratic and like you I think that was probably a good thing we spent after 1945 we helped a lot of people in Western Europe establish voting systems which were much more progressive than our own and now in a way we're paying the price for all of that because ours is so old that it's very hard for us not to see it as sacred and yet there are these weird things in it like voting on Tuesdays when it's not a holiday I mean you don't have to be a Marxist to realize that that is quite literally oppressing the working-class because people who have to go to work can't have trouble voting having to register to vote the the what we call gerrymandering which is the kind of thing we criticize when other people do it where we we arrange the electoral districts so they're not competitive there are all these things in the American system which are not which which really need to be improved and one of the funny things about Americans is that if you look at opinion polls our preferences on things like health care for example are not that different from Europeans but those preferences don't get translated up through the system because of the way because of the way the electoral system works so in the long run I agree that probably has to be fixed does it mean that progress is not possible in a short run no I think the Democrats could win many more States than they than they control now the Democrats could win lots of local elections that's all possible and then can start to make these unfair rules work work for them I think that's all possible and by the way I say the Democrats because they're the ones who are out of power right now not because I imagine that the Democrats coming to power automatically makes things better it's just because I believe in a two-party system and and we're currently on the edge of not having one but I know I think in the present setup it'll be hard but but we but people people could could get back no I'm happy to hear that Latvians reacted to Crimea by finding the European Union more attractive because frankly that's rational there are plenty of other people who reacted to Crimea in other ways like for example claiming that you know the European Union invaded first or the European Union forced all the Ukrainians to you know marry men even you know like there are plenty of other reactions to that event which were less rational and in today's world I'm always happy to see some kind of relationship between cause and effect because it seems like that is like that's an ever rarer experience you know the cause-effect makes sense so I'm glad about that um I mean why I take the essence your question to be is something else the politics of one of our problems is the politics of fear we spend a lot of time talking about how things will be bad if you don't do this that is you know that is one of the problems that Hillary Clinton had in her campaign much of it it was about how it will be awful if mr. Trump wins and she was completely right it's awful but that doesn't necessarily vote get people to vote for you that was part of the problem with brexit is that a lot of the campaign was it'll be a complete disaster for for England if Britain leaves the European Union which I happen to think is completely correct but people are motivated by that people very soon start to see the politics of fear as part of the system and then they want to show the system you know that they're independent by by disregarding the politics of fear so we so what that means is that you know that there have to be visions of Europe that day-to-day are positive right and it has to go and because one of the toughest things in politics is that the greatest human capacity is the capacity to take things for granted so let the thing which is a miraculous achievement one day the next day we just Street is totally normal which means that you know the European Union has to be even though it does these remarkable things it has to be presented as being able to do other things like there's a lot of intellectual labor that has to happen it has to happen there in order to make the European Union seem seem new know when inevitability and the Latvians trying harder than the Ukrainians and so on I mean they're the Ukrainians had some problems that that that you didn't have I'm not gonna go into the differences but what I am gonna say is that when you talk about the Latvians trying to achieve goals you're not talking about inevitability you're talking about you're talking about novelty from the point of view of Latvia before 2004 the European Union was new it made sense to try to struggle to get there right that's not inevitability at all that's people reacting to a possible future from the point of view of 1993 or 2001 joining the European Union was something new it was something in the future once you're in then the question it becomes what's the next thing and the danger is that you we know what you then you slip into the politics and have ability and say oh the European Union will always be here and things will always be fine which is not true so the challenge for the European Union is the only new thing it has it has the only new thing it can do is enlarge which I'm all in favor of by the way in general but if it doesn't enlarge it will contract and so it has to think if it's not going to enlarge there has to be some other form of novelty some other form of novelty and that that hasn't been thought up yet okay NGOs that I forget part of your question okay on NGOs non-governmental organizations are extremely important in all of this because non-governmental organizations allow people not to help people not to fall into the politics of eternity in the politics of eternity euro is the victim non-governmental organisations you the nation non-governmental organisations like the ones you describe help us to see the plight of other people in other countries it sounds simple but it's actually I think very important non-governmental organizations also introduce concepts like the concept of Human Rights which because they're universal allow us to think our way out of our own nations they also can become at certain points ways of criticizing our own nation so if I went if I say for example America could be more democratic I need some kind of universal standard by which to judge that and fortunately such standards are are available so the civil civil society non-governmental organizations are extremely important in in in all of this and it goes back to the gentleman's question the the dual citizen I'm gonna call you that until they take your passport away that about no no I mean I slice it these guys in the front when you said that they were like making notes yeah and then this guy took a cell phone picture of you I'm sorry but it goes to your question because one of the things that Americans are you know realizing or learning again and it's one of the points I make a non tyranny on the basis of anti-communist dissidents of the 1970s is that it's not so much freedom of assembly its freedom through assembly it's very hard to feel free when you're all on your own it's just I mean it that there in America there's this you know romantic notion that you get in our movies where at the very end of the story there's one lone person and he's faced off against the entire government or he's faced off against the entire alien fleet and or both because the alien fleet is here as a result of a government conspiracy and he wins miraculously in freedom is rescued that's not how freedom really is your only free when you have when you have friends when you have colleagues when you have people who you can have some kind of reciprocal relationship with the civil society builds up that honeycomb or it builds up that space between the lonely individual and the unpredictable government and so that's that's that's something that one sees in the in the u.s. now fortunately a lot of people meeting in each other's homes and talking about things and doing modest things and it's what in principle I mean this is the political theory of the 1970s in the Soviet world from the dissidents it says civil society is not something which is done by the citizens for the government civil society is the formation of that space between the individual and the government which is necessary for for freedom okay so we have still time for the final round of questions I see Mike alia at the lady here and Lolita yeah which one okay yeah thank you thank you so on the state I'm gonna start here in a slightly different place I'm gonna start with your idea of how we keep talking about the dissolution of the state so to be clear I'm not one of the people who's talking about the dissolution of the state I'm I'm my whole point and this is at the end of black earth it's one of the conclusions of black earth is that the state is much more important than we think it is I think one of the things which happened inside what I'm calling the politics of inevitability is that people on both the right and the left learn to devalue the state because if you think that time is just going right you don't realize that you you need the state this is gonna sound weird but it's true you need the state to produce a kind of predictable time if you don't have the state things get very weird very fast time becomes a matter how becomes unpredictable there are all kinds of surprises it's very if you don't have this date or if the state is very weak it's very hard to think in terms of past present and future right but when you do have the state and take it for granted then you can indulge in fantasies about how it's not very important and within the cocoon the politics of inevitability in the last 25 years both the right and the left did this on on the right the idea was the state should be weak because all that matters is individual economic initiative and that individual economic initiative will somehow magically assemble itself into political virtues so we don't need the state right you know there's an invisible hand invisible hand to saying I'm good I'm good you know then on the Left you're left on the left the idea was politics is all personal it's about who we it's about who we are you're you I'm me and we don't need the state because the state homogenizes and uniform eise's and it gives us passports or to in some cases and and and it forces us to be it forces us to be something right so we don't like the state because the state homogenizes we want to be fragmented we want to be on the margin right yada yada and so what happened then is that the right and the left although that they thought they were against each other we're in the fundamental issue of the importance of the state United right I mean like the this idea that political good emerges out of fragmentation is very similar to this political idea that political good emerges out of individual economic initiative because both of them are contemptuous of of the state itself so for the last 25 years no one I'm talking more about America but these tendencies are also present here no one was really saying that the state was good where we need the state or it should be functional and now we've reached a point in the US where this is totally up for grabs right I mean we have a big powerful state that when it wakes in the morning is having a good day it can do all kinds of things but most of the time you know we're talking about whether it can do anything or whether it should do anything or you know in the case of mr. bannon whether it should even exist or not so anyway I just say that because the point of my talk was not to say that the state isn't real I think the state is very real the thing that I think that so so the thing that I think that we get wrong when we think in terms of the nation is to believe that the nation can form a state which i think is not usually true the nation needs good luck and it needs help right so I mean 1991 is the result of a lot of work and devotion and it gives meaning to a lot of suffering but there's also a certain amount of luck it's Gorbachev right there's a certain amount of historical chance there if you know if somebody besides Yeltsin if Yeltsin you know Yeltsin took his vacation in September of 1991 if he'd taken his vacation in August no he did I mean this is like one of these little things if he'd taken his vacation in August and nobody in Moscow had rallied people against the coup and the coup had continued for two or three years what would the history of Latvia look like now it'd probably be a little bit different right what if that what if the leaders of the coup had decided that invading a Baltic state would be the right way to deter other people so there's there's a lot there's chance you know there's chance and there's chance in history and there's the nation in history and then there's the higher institution so my view about the EU is that it is a producer of sovereignty that it doesn't that the nation can try to make a state but that it needs help unless you're very big manure maybe China right but otherwise you need someone to help you produce sovereignty and the thing about that uu is not that it dissolves the state I don't believe that at all right I'm not one of those people who thinks like we're moving towards some kind of European super-state I think what the EU does is that it helps the states to exist it makes them stronger okay now you had a question though which I bet I haven't gotten to what would say what what was your question Oh about the rest of the world yeah I mean this is I think this all applies to the rest of the world I think I think that Europe is fortunate in the Europe has a number of states that are relatively wealthy which are contiguous who can undertake this form of cooperation the the the nation states of Africa and Asia with some exceptions have a lot of trouble being sovereign entities in a way that Europeans would recognize as normal right I mean they are they are sovereign of course in a legal sense and their States and you know I'm not trying to not trying to undermine you know their legal status but they're not functionally sovereign in lots of the ways that Europeans would take for granted and and and what I'm suggesting a little bit is that if you take the European Union away then Europe European states will start to look more like Central American states or more like African states not exactly but probably more than Europeans suspect thank you so Mike and please don't ask Mario Cart I don't worry it's gonna be a quick one my name is Mike Collier I'm a writer and I'm afraid of journalists as well I was interested in what you were saying about these simultaneous feelings of sort of superiority and inadequacy and it seemed that to me that this was not entirely new in that during the Imperial phase people were constantly comparing themselves to Rome and Greece and so on so I I guess my question would be what was it that prevented this fulcrum point from politics of inevitability to politics of eternity what prevented it happening sooner thank you for the interesting discussion I'm honored to be a student here high school student at RIT a gymnasium number one and I was meaning to ask as a young person myself who still has a full life to lead ahead in this crazy world wars I was wondering how can the public awareness be encouraged for us to find these idea alternatives they were talking about in your speech thank you thank you Lolita Thompson director of Janice Lipka memorial that you kindly mentioned and black earth my question is our reaction to things are very reactive you know breaks that happens you know Trump is elected and we are like oh disgusting things in Latvia and it's very kind of a kind of in slow motion your educator you teach in Yale you work with people that probably will create the future world for us so what are those things that we lack in the education in universities to create that civil society you just described or talk about because it's very hard we talk about freedom of mind we see how each side Berlin was talking to his students you know these thoughts kind of whirlpool he got people in you know thinking and we are now afraid that the non thinking is actually one of these very easy options we have thank you okay so the the the question about inevitability and eternity and why we didn't get there faster I really like that question because it for one thing it accepts the premise of my talk that that's what you know that's what's happening it accepts my categories I appreciate that and and it also you know it and it's what I'm thinking about like why is this happening now and if we think we have an answer to why it's happening now then that should also explain why it did or didn't happen at other places I'm just gonna I'm going to talk about I'm a talking about the u.s. because it's where I might where I've been paying attention the last little while and I'm gonna say something a little bit surprising one of the things which happened to the u.s. is that we lost our point of comparison which made it much easier for us to just believe in our own story I mean in 1989 what we should have done was to say the Marxist story is wrong there are no inevitability stories that true and what we did instead was to say the Marxist story is wrong our inevitability story is true which was human and understandable but it had it had real consequences and then with this the Soviet Union I mean please don't misunderstand me I'm not trying to now make an apology for the Soviet Union but the Soviet Union its existence and this thing which we called the Cold War did force Americans to reflect upon some of their own institutions and values because the Soviets said that we were a racist country that was one reason why we had civil rights legislation not the only one but one reason because the Soviet Union talked about the horrors of capitalist exploitation that was one reason why there was a consensus for welfare state among both Republicans and Democrats through Gerald Ford right up up until Reagan basically through the Cold War's what I'm trying to say the existence of the Soviet Union forced us to think beyond our own story and one sees what happens when we get trapped in our own story and we think things are just going to happen the way that we think they're going to we we we end up making choices which are which are community destructive the other thing that I would say is that I'm masuren amount of agency to Russia here there's another version of this talk of course where you start with Russia and you spend a lot of time talking about Russia specific policies towards an European Union member states and a specific policies towards the United States what I've been trying to do is suggest that Russian leaders have very intelligently made the most of where they are and what they're doing is they're spinning the ball their tendencies within the US and the EU to go from inevitability to Eternity and what the Russians are doing is they're spinning things they're making them go faster than they would otherwise and that you know that that has a certain that has a certain effect effect as well on the question of of of young people no no no you tell me the answer to that question you see that's the whole point is that you you tell me the answer to that question because the only way that we are going to make it and I mean you and us old people too and your children and grandchildren or the children grandchildren of your friends the only way that we're gonna make it is if new things come out of young people now that's the only way we're gonna make it I don't know what those things are that's part of the point I don't know what they are but there have to be new things now where can they come from someplace this goes to the other question someplace which is not the Internet is where they're going to come from I mean what many things made Isaiah Berlin possible but one of them was the absence of the internet that we I mean I use the Internet it's people use it it has purposes but what I'm trying to suggest is that the Internet has a way of playing into the politics of eternity because it keeps us in a kind of eternal present where we're constantly stimulated by things that are important or less important but it's very hard for us to step back get distance and think about the way the world ought to be and that question of the way the world ought to be you know just you know just the books of Isaiah Berlin alone right just those alone contain so many thoughts about how the world might be a different place than it is if we can devote the time just to that we already have a lot to work with so I have two answers the first is it's gonna be new and it really does depend on you and I don't say that like as a pep-talk I kind of wish it didn't depend on you so much as it does right but I'm convinced that it's the case and I'm convinced that our big mistake as educators or one of our big mistakes as educators these last 25 years has been not to take history and civics seriously enough to take to imagine that things were going to go on the way they were and now I think we've done something which is a little bit unfair to young people which is I mean I'm simplifying a little bit but we said nothing bad can never really happen and then we said oops and now we're saying oh well it's up to you to fix it right and it's very unfair but I'm afraid that's I'm afraid that's where we are that's the first thing I'm saying and the second thing I'm saying is that I'm so glad that this day exists and it's commemoration of Isaiah Berlin exists because Isaiah Berlin is the best example of how one can look into the past and find ideas about how the present can be changed these ideas are there you have to then process them move them around and and make them and make them and make them your own and it's not really it's not as hard as it sounds one trick is to remember and this is a kind of liberating thing about this gentleman's question we don't have to replace the politics of inevitability with your idea of how to change everything all that you need to do or any of us needs to do is to find the one little thing that we think is good define that thing and then fight for it if everyone's and this is again a very Isaiah Berlin idea there are many different good things in the world if we all say it doesn't matter to me it's all the same to me it doesn't matter who wins and who loses then what we're saying is they're basically no good things in the world it's all just kind of gray but if we can say if we can be sincere enough and open enough and a little naive enough to say no clean water is a really good thing or the right to marry is a really good thing or theater education for very young children is a really good thing if we can find this thing which we honestly think is good lots of us then that that's the thing that will make a difference that will really matter but we have to be able to recognize like ah there's a good and my little bit actually matters because it it really does okay on education I mean I I had the good fortune you know to be I mean III listen to isaiah berlin i reaiiy read isaiah berlin i read him all the time i've been for some reason I've been reading the one about you know the enemies of what is it is it enemies of freedom earnings of liberty freedom in his betrayal thank you I've been reading freedom its betrayal for some reason lately but what what's clear about that world is that it's a world into which you can retreat with with books and it's a very simple thing but we don't have to spend so much time getting beaten up by the internet we don't have to spend so much time getting beaten up by bad news that's our choice right we're choosing to imbibe politics in this way we can spend more time reading newspapers and books we could we're not I mean many of us are not doing it but we we we could and and realize it's a very simple thing but it's I think actually incredibly important at least it's very important for my idea that the only thing that stops the swing from a Devitt ability to eternity is history because the only way that we get history is stopping and thinking and reading and and teaching right I love what I do I'm very happy that I get to spend time having my students read and talking to them about what we read I think this is this is a marvelous thing and I sincerely believe that as we do this we're necessarily acting politically because if you think the past makes sense the past happened it made sense I can see the connection between past and present you're already changing the way about that you think about the future because you're seeing this is possible this is not possible I can do this I can't do this and if you're educated in that way if you see yourself in history that way then you become a person who bears responsibility to use again a word that's that's I think very important in the discussion of Isaiah Berlin so I'm gonna let that be my be my last word Thanks so I'm not sure about the politics of eternity but there is still a certain eternal level of intellectual brilliance since this is what you made us to experience tonight so thank you very much professor Snyder for giving this nice talk thank you for all to all of you coming to this tonight's lecture especially I would like to thank our great sponsors which this year is a representation of the European Commission and miss Riveter Stein Booker and the US Embassy represented by the Ambassador Madame potat so thank you very much and probably see you next year [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Fonds DOTS

Views: 16,677

Rating: 4.5983262 out of 5

Keywords: isaiah berlin, jesaja berlins, jesajas berlina diena rīgā, jesajas berlina piemiņas lekcija, timotijs snaiders, timothy snyder, liberty, fonds dots, atvērta sabiedrība, open society, fonds atvērtai sab iedrībai DOTS, foundation for an Open Society DOTS, Ivars Ījabs, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, philosophy, riga, rīga, splendid palace, filozofija, vēsture, history, negative libery, positive liberty, megative freedom, positive freedom, unfreedom, freedom, brīvība, brīvības filozofs

Id: AC0ITS4WaTE

Length: 120min 26sec (7226 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 18 2017