Timothy Snyder: The Nation-State and Europe, 1918 and 2018

[Music] it's my great pleasure to welcome you all here today on behalf of the Institute of International Relations to hear the lecture by Professor Timothy Snyder on the past and future of nation states and their role in shaping Europe's future history should not be just a matter of arcane discussions but should be effective effective in shaping our political life we need to know our history and her rhymes Tim Snyder places history in our sight too often they're owned by excessive dwelling on the present sometimes he does so brutally as in blood lands but always as a true public intellectual in a way that is accessible it far from banal or superficial his analysis is sober but it speaks to our own history as a political nation very modern as no doubt he will say if only we are willing to listen when he warns that most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given we know too well what he speaks about or we should when he invites us to take responsibility for our lives to prevent the modern authoritarians creeping ascent we may be reminded that the notions of care and responsibility are key to the fabric of our modern liberal thought it's therefore my great pleasure and privilege to welcome Tim Snyder here today and it is no less my privilege and pleasure to now invite to Marsha three Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic to deliver his opening remarks on this wonderful occasion [Applause] good evening ladies and gentlemen dear colleagues gasps Lubavitcher sham it is my great pleasure to welcome you all at the premises of the cheering palace the seat of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs on a very special occasion tonight we have a rare opportunity of hosting a lecture one of the leading historians and intellectuals of our time mr. Timothy Snyder his presence here today is both topical and symbolic as you know we are going through dynamic and turbulent developments in international relations and diplomacy the world is more connected more contested and more complex to use the walls of the new global strategy conventional ways of thinking about international relations are under strain we face when demands of global challenges to understand them and to design efficient responses understanding how all history is indispensable a few days ago we have commemorated the centenary of the end of the first world war and of the foundation of independent Czechoslovakia one of the consequences of the Great War was the emergence of nation-states in the Central and Eastern Europe for many nations of our region it represented the combination of their gas quest for seldom a determination liberation from water debuted as dominate domination and oppression by multinational empires it might also argue that it is succeeded countless grievances that were 20 years later resulted in the outbreak of the worst and bodies conflict that award has ever witnessed and paradoxically as if history repeated itself one of the crucial challenges to freedom and democracy nowadays is the danger of growing nationalism and populism around Europe Timothy Snyder is one of the few singers of today capable of understanding and explaining those issues in a very broad context of our civilization is also one of the few who can write that above them in an extremely attractive way it was very very human touch and I read with my breasts kept his books I really recommend to the Jews who hasn't to read them because this is the history we should never remember and never forget that is why we look forward to listening to his ideas that will surely provide us with the necessary food for thought in terms of thinking of our policy our actions our deeds ourselves I remain also hope for that professor Snyder will be able to answer your questions and react to your comments after his exposure on ready trigger the director of Internet institute of international relations in park and agreed to moderate the subsequent debate but before I give a floor to professor Snyder Snyder I would like to say a few words about institute of humanities in vienna also and then i would like to invite miss Selina Rand area a director of the Institute thanks to whom we have professor Snyder here with us today to say a few words of welcome as well Institute for human sciences is one of the most prestigious Institute in the field of human sciences in our region it buries in a unique role in Central Europe as in the intellectual hub as an intellectual hub where people discuss international issues I'm honored that the minute Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs belongs to one of the long-term partners of the Institute the lecture of professor Snyder today followed by his public debate at the chalice University tomorrow is only the first outcome of our collaboration I hope that the such collaboration will continue through equally remarkable events in the coming years now I have an honor to invite miss Selena thundara to the floor please Honorable Minister ladies and gentlemen it's a great pleasure to be here I'm going to extend a few words of welcome but more than words of welcome from Vienna on behalf of the IWM what I would like to do is to use the occasion to extend a few words of gratitude to several people who are in the room here because of whose untiring efforts and support to us this event and our program with you has been possible I'm very conscious of the fact I stand between you and Tim Schneider so this is going to be very brief but it's important for me to be able to express our gratitude on this occasion it's wonderful to be in the Chanin palace for the first time in my case and to admire this magnificent building I would like to just extend my thanks for a continuous support over many years to the ministry which we have intensified in 2017 with a new program which brings us fellowships fellowships from the Czech Republic for young and for senior scholars to come to Vienna and to continue their research with us but also to intensify the connections between the Czech Republic and the Institute through bringing some of our scholars here and I'm very happy that Tim Schneider has agreed to open this series of lectures which we hope to hold here annually so this intensifies the cooperation both with the foreign ministry and the between the foreign ministry and the IWM but we have had as an institution a very long history of relationships with the Czech Republic and let me just mention two or three things for those of you who don't know the Institute well but I do hope some of you will visit us in the near future and see the institute for yourselves d in the 35 years of its existence the Institute has not only had a number of Czech scholars visiting us here in Vienna who have been at our conferences workshops who have stayed with her as translators as scholars have conducted their research in our premises in our library but we have hosted for several years the pitaka archives which was established already as some of you may know in 1984 with the goal to preserve copies of young patacas writings and manuscripts which were smuggled out of your country at a time when his work was indexed in a communist Czechoslovakia this was the beginning of a cooperation then with what became the petrarca archives in Prague and which could only become official in 1989 here that framework in Vienna the Institute established the Pandorica Memorial Lecture it's our annual signature lecture at which we've had it almost 30 years now we started in 1987 and we've had jeredy there's a kholokov ski Nancy Fraser and most recently Chantal move giving this very prestigious lecture in Vienna in honoring the name of Ian Veronica my very personal warm thanks to Minister tomash pension check for having not only graced the occasion today but also for opening the event today and for your warm words of welcome to me personally and to my institution I would like to thank dr. David Crowell who is director of the Department for foreign policy analysis and planning and is in charge of the cooperation with us as well as dr. Ahn Shea Deathwish who is director of the Institute of International Relations and has also been a great support in organizing the program this evening but before I close a warm thanks to three people without whom this evening and our cooperation would not have been possible mr. Jersey cheats Katsuki who is deputy secretary Department Director of the Foreign Ministry who initiated the cooperation with us and it was with his support that we were able to sign the memorandum of agreement a very warm special thanks to his Excellency the former foreign minister mr. Lawrence sir lik who is also here with us this evening and who was crucial in cementing this intense program with us last but not least a very warm thanks to his Excellency Karl kanishka Schwarzenberg who served as a Czech foreign minister but for us equally importantly he has been a long-term friend of the Institute for human sciences right since it's very foundation so he is a bridge between us in Vienna as well thank you very much for coming this evening and I hope that we will see you on further occasions without much for ado let me give the word to Tim Schneider who is permanent fellow at the IWM and thank you very much for opening this lecture series I think this is the beginning of a very fruitful intellectual exchange that we begin this evening thank you so much Minister vucic ministers out of Tzadik Minister Schwarzenberg it's it's a pleasure to have all three of you lined up here in the front row I've we we owe a debt of gratitude to you and I mean that sincerely the relationship between the Institute for human sciences and Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic is one of I think of a profound philosophical and moral character without young Patoka the Institute does not exist the occasion for the creation of the Institute of human sciences was the preservation of the intellectual and ethical legacy of young Patoka the institutional way that we begin is with the fad ochika archive so it's symbolic but also quite touching for me for us to be able to return to Prague in this way 35 years later our founding director professor Geist Michalski was young patacas student in Warsaw in the early 1970s when there was no one to teach phenomenology in a house neither young Michalski turned to pitaka and they wrote to each other first in Polish and Czech and then later in German and thanks to pitaka me house key exists me house key becomes a philosopher me house key eventually founds this Institute so without Czech philosophy without the history of Czech thought without Czech dissidents we do not exist so when we express our thanks we're expressing not only our appreciation for the particular program of cooperation we're also acknowledging a debt which for us is profound and and which is real so it was very touching for me to see our rector of today professor Shalini von Daria returned to Prague to this place to speak to you so thank you very much for these warm words of welcome I look forward to the discussion with on JD today I'm going to spend the next 40 minutes or so speaking to you about the problem at hand which is the nation state and Europe let me start with the news of the day which is brexit what is actually happening with brexit what does brexit actually mean shift off Michalski when he remembered young potaka one of the things he liked to remember what was potaka says the thing about responsibility is that you carry it with you everywhere the most striking thing about the debate over brexit and indeed about discussions over the European Union is the Titanic absence of responsibility from a historians point of view an absence of responsibility about the most basic historical facts of the European 20th century what do I have in mind here's what I have in mind the debate about brexit and by extension the debate about the nation-state in Europe starts from a premise which is entirely false the debate about brexit began from the premise that there is such a thing as Great Britain that there is a nation-state called Great Britain and that this nation-state could either stay in the European Union or leave the European Union from a historians point of view the very odd thing about this debate is that there is obviously no nation state called Great Britain there has never been a nation state called Great Britain there was a British Empire and as that British Empire collapsed in the 1960s 70s that entity or the Metropole of the British Empire the islands in northwestern Europe join something which were then called the European communities in other words there is not a millisecond in the history of modern Europe in which there was a Great Britain that was neither Imperial nor European it simply never happened if brexit takes place then there will be a Great Britain which will be a nation state until it falls apart because here's the thing insofar as there is a history of the European nation state it is a history of fragility and that is often a history of failure let me think about this historically if you ask about the history of the nation-state from 1918 to 2018 you immediately run up against a problem which is that in Europe most of the important countries were not nation-states during that time if you want a history of the nation-state in Europe you actually have to go back another hundred years and you have to move south and a bit east of here into the Balkans the true history of the European nations day is a history of Greece and a history of Serbia and then a history of Romania history of Bulgaria these are the places which actually were nation-states but here's the interesting thing the whole idea of the nation-state as it emerged in the Balkans in the 19th century was a copy of a non-existent original so the idea of a Greece or a Serbia or a Bulgaria or Romania was that in the Balkans we are going to copy the nation-states that exist in the West but there were no nation-states in the West at the time there were empires and those empires when they looked at the balkan nation states of course did not see them as fully sovereign entities the empires looked at the balkan nation-states as parts of themselves from the point of view of London or Petersburg or later Berlin the nation-states of the Balkans were not fully sovereign they were not equal they were puppets they were clients they were parts of our Empire so how does that story proceed it proceeds in a very interesting way the nation states of Europe the true original authentic nation-states of Europe the Balkan nation-states react to this problem in a very interesting way they react to it with nationalism with nationalism of a reticular kind what they do is they say well we are small we're not fully sovereign we have agrarian economies how do we react what you do is you say if we could only have a bit more territory then we would be stronger and so the art the thing that we call ethnic nationalism emerges you argue that just on the other side of that River that hillside that mountain range there are more Serbs or more Romanians it doesn't matter which more Bulgarians more Macedonians more Montenegrins take your pick and therefore in order to restore our ethnic boundaries who must take that territory at the same time you are thinking if we can only take that territory our agrarian economy will be stronger we'll be able to raise more taxes and so the 19th century Balkan nation-states were created and emerged and in fact established the history of what we think of as militarism they spend a huge amount of their budgets on the military they borrowed huge amounts of money especially Serbia from France to fund the military and what did those nation-states do without military they destroyed the world order in the balkan war of 1912 these tiny european nation states which no-one took seriously drove the ottoman empire from europe something which was never supposed to happen more seriously in 1914 these tiny european nation states one of them in particular serbia provoked the war that we remember as the First World War the European nation-states destroyed the world order in 1914 to 1918 so this should give us pause when we think of this period that we're now describing because by the time this period even begins in 1918 we have about a century of the history of the European nations day the logical development of which was to destroy the world order as it was known in the 19th century which brings us to the interesting way that European history emerges in the 20th century what I think of as the accident of Europe the great accident of Europe is this the first world war destroys some empires and not others so remember Empire is still the relevant category until 1918 Europe is a Europe of empire and the world is a world empire the most the most important thing about world history in 1918 is that that is the moment by which time European power touches all the continents and basically every square kilometer of the entire face of the earth if you include America as a European power so in night what happened in 1918 is an accident some empires are destroyed and some empires remain and this accident is what forms the entire shape of the 20th century and which creates the opportunity for the next creation of nation states which empires win the maritime empires Britain France with some qualifications the United States which empires lose the land empires the Ottoman Empire Prussia the Habsburg monarchy and the Russian Empire also loses in the sense that it breaks apart during the war and so you have this enormous coincidence the the empires that lose are the ones that control territory in Europe and Asia contiguous territory the empires the win are the ones who have maritime Empire this means that in the history of Europe in the 20th century there are two parallel tracks of the history of decolonization which only meet up late in the century one track of decolonization is the history of Czechoslovakia Estonia Latvia Lithuania Poland the new nation states that are created in Europe after the first world war the other track of decolonization is slower and more distant it happens after the Second World War so this Imperial context is incredibly significant because it reminds us of what the real alternatives in European history are the real alternatives in European history as we know it our Empire and integration why do I say that I say that in but for reasons that you know very well and this is and this is my next point that the history of these new nation-states is very brief interwar Czechoslovakia lasted for two decades interwar Poland for two decades in - or Estonia Lithuania and Latvia two decades if you ask historians or just citizens of these countries why this happened they will give very special national answers check those Czechs and Slovaks will talk about Munich poles will talk about the multo of Ribbentrop pact Austrians I forgot Austrians will talk about an SH loose but isn't it interesting that every single new national state created by the Paris peace settlements of 1918 and thereafter every single one of them ceases to exist in two decades is that simply a coincidence can we really explain the fact that every single one of them was destroyed with these specific national stories I think the answer is no I think something much more systematic is at play here and to get to this I want to talk for a minute about the weaknesses of the interwar States that we that we could observe because these weaknesses are actually still with us today and if we can identify them in the 1920s and 1930s it helps us a bit to see what the European Union does now for the state so what were these weaknesses the first weakness was no big trade area whether you like empires or not you have to acknowledge that empires provide a big trade zone breaking up empires means very small zones of free trade this is extremely relevant for the second problem which is the peasant question with the exception of Bohemia the entirety of Eastern Europe was a zone of peasant populations and therefore peasant Papa peasant politics what do peasants care about the ability to sell it market when can they sell it market when their country has access to a big international trade zone which is precisely what the interwar East European states did not have which leads us directly to the third problem which is Germany in German power and Germany as an exporter Germany has an exporting power what did German export power mean in this part of the world in the 1930s it meant that Germany could extend a series of deals in Den ubian and bulk in Europe according to which East European states sold their grain to Germany peasants sold their agricultural production to Germany and Germany in exchange sold manufactured goods by way of this very simple economic mechanism Germany brought much of Eastern Europe into its orbit and under its power well before the Second World War began in that sense onsh Luce Munich and the molotov-ribbentrop pact are not the endless are not the beginning of the story they're the end of his story because by that time Hungary and much of the Balkans were in effect already under German economic control remember those three abstract problems peasant politics trade zones German power because those are still I would say if not the central major political problems of East European countries today so after these Statesville you know what happens they become part of the Soviet empire so it's a very interesting point it's a very interesting point to make not only do all of the new States formed after 1918 fail but the the entire territory of Eastern Europe governed by these treaties with the exception of Austria governed by these treaties then falls under Soviet domination which I would say is a sign not of the success of the nation-state but rather of the continuation of empire now Empire of a different form okay this brings us to Western Europe the history from the history of Europe from 1949 to 1989 can be seen in two different ways and what I want to suggest is two different ways come together in a fashion that we tend not to see one way to see the history of Europe from 1949 to 1989 is as the Cold War 1949 to 1989 means Soviet backed communist takeovers it means Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956 it means the Prague Spring in 1968 it means the normalization of the 1970s and then finally it means the Velvet Revolution the end of communism in 1989 that's one story that's the story of Eastern Europe but from the point of view of Western Europe something entirely different different different is taking place at least entirely different at first glance and that is decolonization remember those maritime empires those empires of the sea they also in the Second World War but after the Second World War they lose their colonies in Eastern Europe this is invisible in Eastern Europe who cares if you're in Hungary in 1956 you're concerned about Soviet tanks on the streets you're not concerned about British impotence in Egypt if you're if you're in Prague in 1968 you're concerned about Warsaw Pact or sawback tanks in the streets you're not concerned about the French loss of power in South East Asia but these things are happening at the same time what's happening in Western Europe is that the big maritime powers the French the Dutch the British the Portuguese and the Spanish over those very same four decades are losing their empires and what did they do when they lose their empires this is the magical thing when the big European empires lose their maritime possessions they have a place to come back to and that place that they come back to is called Europe this is how Europe is created Europe is created as a place for the metro poles of the former maritime empires to land Europe is where you go if you were a traditional West European maritime power and you've lost a whole series of colonial wars it's important to see that this is the origin and not the Second World War I know that you've been told a million times until you believe it that what happened in Europe was that Europeans learned from the Second World War that war was bad and therefore you started cooperating economically not true I can't stop you from hearing that another million times as you will probably from this very podium or I'm now standing but for the purposes of responsibility and truth I'm just going to tell you that that is a myth what happens in the Second World War is something different and special and it's the beginning of a very different trend the Second World War is the meaning the second world war is Europeans try to carry out colonial policies inside Europe itself that's the meaning of the Second World War as by the way observers from beyond Europe who were alert to global history people like France funnel or Mises eya noted at the time the this the meaning the second world war is that a great European power Germany brought colonial methods of war to Europe itself the German attack on Poland in the German attack on Soviet Union proceeded along very specific colonial lines we do not recognize that these are legally existing states we do not recognize that their peoples have any political or civil rights that was new in Europe but it was not new to Europeans it was traditional European colonial practice elsewhere in the world why am i stressing this fact is it to make the Germans feel worse than they already do that would be a perfectly acceptable side effect but I'm making the point for an intellectual reason the intellectual reason is this the Second World War is the first important example of Europeans losing a major colonial war when Germany loses the Second World War that is the beginning of the trend of Europeans losing colonial wars and by the way for the same reasons when when Hitler invades a Soviet Union he categorizes the Soviets as colonial peoples he imagines that the Germans will have huge institutional technological and intellectual advantages which they in fact don't have and that's how decolonization proceeds in the rest of the world as well peoples who had been controlled by Europeans coppy European institutions and technologies and the in the gaps in institutional and technological capacity which made Empire possible slowly disappear Europeans then lose colonial wars so the way to understand the Second World War is not as the time when Europeans learned that war was bad I can press this point further if you want I mean he if you if you still think it's true considering the consider the following the people who suffer during the Second World War were in this order the Jews the diella Russians the poles and the Russians ask yourself are those the four most peaceful nations you can think of right I'll leave it to you to sort out which order you prefer right but that those are the people's who actually suffer during the Second World War are they all pacifists now are your best polish friends the best pacifists you know are your best Russian friends the best pacifists you know so the notion of learning from the Second World War is a myth and it's connected to a bigger myth which I'm going to return to um so what it really is is the example of this larger trend European empires the maritime ones are now going to fall apart when Germany begins economic discussions with France and with Benelux this is the beginning of a trend because the Belgians and the French and later everyone else are going to lose their empires too and Europe is where they are all going to land so the history of the European Union is an annex to the history of decolonization no you're asking yourself why aren't we taught this at schools I know that's what you're asking yourself just humor me pretend that this is what you were asking yourself um there is one historian who made this argument very articulately and it was Toni jut a favorite of Ministers Oh Alec in his in his book in his book post war the reason that you're not taught this in school is because the European Union is an alibi if you tell the story of the European Union as a story of wise European nations learning form or in Europe that Europe they were as bad then you don't have to go into the history of European colonialism or Empire at all as you generally don't if you believe that there's something called a French nation state or a Dutch nation state or a British nation-state then you can tell the story of a nation-state which learns from events in Europe the whole fable of the wise nation this whole story that there were nation states that learned from war allows you to emerge from the 20th century with something like a clean conscience sure we had the most destructive war in the history of mankind but at least we learned the right lessons from it now you didn't know you didn't those lessons were never learned a different lesson was learned that lesson was when you lose your political and military hold on world markets returning to Europe is an existential necessity and that's what happened and that's your inheritance it's not as morally exciting but it's a very good inheritance to remember because it's that inheritance which is now at stake not a moral one but an existential one because think about it if the West European nation states were never nation states what is the debate about returning to the nation-state really about you can't return to something which has never existed this brings me to 1989 the remarkable thing about the history of the European Union in my view is that the European Union brings together two different kinds of post-imperial fragments it first brought together metropolitan fragments London The Hague Paris capitals of far-reaching empires then after 1989 and to be specific in 2004 2007 and 2013 the European Union brought together Imperial peripheral fragments East European countries which had been on the edges of European land empires Habsburg Russian Ottoman Soviet the remarkable thing about the European Union is it contains metropolitan and peripheral fragments of former empires I know that's not the most flattering descriptions of your States but I'm trying to follow patacas prescription to be responsible so that's the achievement of the European Union it provided a place to go not just for the Dutch the French the British the Spanish the Portuguese and so on it also provided the place to go for the checks the Slovak the Hungarians and the poles and the interesting thing for those of you who like me live through the 1980s or who studied the 1980s the interesting thing is that there was a time when the East Europeans understood all of this perfectly well in the 1980s Czech dissidence the most interesting and important of them but this was also a completely typical of you didn't talk about the return to the nation-state Czech dissidents talked to the point of cliche about the return to Europe right Navaho bear that's what they talked about return to Europe and there was a reason for that which was that in the 1980s the memories of 1968 and 1938 were fresh enough that every sensible Czech and Slovak was perfectly aware that the state was not going to be sufficient unto itself the state although it was a worthy goal and one worth sacrificing for and many people sacrificed quite courageously that the state could never be an end in itself that the state would need to be connected to some higher form of politics which leads to the very interesting spectacle of the early 1990s some of you took part in these discussions but I'll remind all of you of them because they have this very interesting character today we talk about the enlargement of the European Union that is a basically false way to think about things the European Union did not enlarge the European Union was dragged kicking and screaming into negotiations that it did not want with a whole series of East European countries including Czechoslovakia the European Union was not a being which was which was trying to get bigger on the contrary in 1991-1992 at the time of Maastricht what European diplomats in London doesn't the hague paris said was we're done history's over this is as far as it's ever going to go we have created our european union we're very pleased with ourselves and that's it those of you who took part in the East European negotiations of the time right this I know is shocking for those of you who have grown up and like married somebody from Erasmus but at the time oh it's more of you than I thought I guess that explains all the hand-holding and the Italians who were kind of looking off vaguely okay um as I talk about Eastern Europe daeum so at the time what happened was not that the European Union enlarged on the contrary the European Union made it very clear in the early 90s that it was not interested in the membership of Poland Hungary Czechoslovakia the European Union only after great pain was persuaded to enter into extremely unequal and protectionist association agreements in 1993 which did not even contain the promise of future membership the reason why the European Union enlarged was not that there was a European Union that wanted to enlarge the reason why the European Union and large was because there were sovereign states called Poland Czechoslovakia Hungary and so on where there was a consensus that joining the European Union is an existential necessity that it's a necessity for the existence of the nation in the state that in my view is was the correct historical understanding now that one is inside the European Union whether whether in Eastern Europe or in Western Europe it's very easy to forget what the European Union is for once you're inside whether it's west or east you forget that this was an existential decision once you're inside you start telling yourself the story about how your nation is old and how it's wise and how it learned from war and so on that's what everyone now says and thinks this is a myth that it's important to get over by the way this helps us to understand pretty clearly what happened in Ukraine so you are now all West Europeans in the sense that you now all take you know you can correct me in question and answer you now all take the European Union for granted you all think that the check the check nation is old and wise and learn lessons and things inside inside mean inside the European Union is being like inside any other relationship it's very hard to understand from the inside your friends on the outside can look at you and say hmm but when you're inside their relationship you don't know what you've got okay that's all you married couples out there so who understands the European Union the people who are just on the outside so in the early 1990s although your East European diplomats could not have recited a single line of the a key community they understood in their bones that the European Union was there to protect the state in 2013 and 2014 the crowds of students on the Maidan in Kiev also could not have recited a single paragraph of the ickey community ax but they knew in their bones and array that the purpose of the European Union is to protect the state is to make the state possible when you Europeans and the West Europeans and all the Europeans looked at Ukraine you saw many many things most of which weren't there but one of the things that we failed to see collectively was this basic lesson of European history which the Ukrainians themselves understood the purpose of the European Union is to shore up the statehood of Imperial fragments which Ukraine is which you are which all of Europe is the other people who understand this are another group of people who are on the edge of the European Union namely the government of the Russian Federation they understand that there is no history of the nation-state they understand that the alternatives are Empire and integration and that is why Russian foreign policy which is incredibly intelligent turning consistent takes the line that you should all be nation-states this is why Russian foreign policy poses as the liberators of East European nations because the Russians know perfectly well that the nation-state never existed this is why Russian foreign policy towards brexit was exactly what it was to encourage the British voter by way of Twitter RT and other media to think of Britain as a nation-state that can make it on its own this is why Russia supports ofte and Germany the flow national in France and Euroskeptics everywhere because the Russians are perfectly aware that in a world of nation-states they get to be the only Empire which brings me back to the history of Czechoslovakia and then to a final word about the about the European Union since we are since we're sitting where we're sitting and since the occasion for this lecture is what it is I'd like to say just a word about how Tomas Masaryk thought about Czechs and Slovaks and the sovereignty of the Czech or Slovak state in 1918 did Mazurek think that Czechoslovakia was an end in itself no of course not did Mazurek spend his whole life working for the creation of Czechoslovakia no of course not he spent a couple of years doing so why because ma zurich s-- goal as he said several times himself was to find the political form which was most suitable to the prosperity the decency and the democracy of the czech people for most of maas rick's lifetime what was that it was the Habsburg monarchy Maserati of course supported the Habsburg monarchy when did Mazurek stop supporting the Habsburg monarchy in the middle of the First World War why because by that point it was clear that the Habsburg monarchy would cease to exist and that the only thing that the risk for the Czechs was at that point that if the Germans win the war Bohemia becomes a German like right that's the risk and if the Germans lose the war and the Habsburg monarchy fragments what happens then did Mazurek then want an ethnically pure small Czech state no what did ma Zurich and Benesch and all of their fellows try to create they tried to recreate the Habsburg monarchy on as large a scale as possible interwar Czechoslovakia was not a nation state Czechoslovakia I'm not going to reveal any secrets now Czechoslovakia was not a nation Czechoslovakia there was no majority population in Czechoslovakia and that's how Mazurek intended it he was not trying to liberate an ethnic nation from a repressive Empire he was looking for the best political solution for the people that he cared about which were the Czechs right so what the nation's the purpose of the state serves depends on the geopolitics in which you find yourself if if you're if the create the situation which you find yourself is that an empire is falling apart then you might create a state the tragedy of interwar Europe of the period 1918 to 1938 is that there was then no place for Czechoslovakia to go there was no higher politics at a European level which would help Czechoslovakia you can you remember this as the Rada right that the French betray you the British betray you the Americans betray you fair enough but what was really absent was any level of European politics which would have made the state normal and because there was no such level of European politics as soon as the Germans start pushing and the Soviets start pushing the states go away so this is what I wanted to say and this is the conclusion of my lecture what is the point of the European Union is the European Union some foreign distant exotic collection of bureaucrats whose only dream is to suck away the authentic organic national life of the Czech people or Polish people or Hungarian people or Estonian people French people or is the European Union the result of a series of existential choices made by post-imperial States whose elites at least at a certain historical moment were aware that it was an existential choice let's consider again the three basic problems of interwar statehood big trade zone you didn't have it then the European Union solves that peasant politics the European Union solves that very specifically the European Union is that historical form in which Germany gets to be an exporting power without conquering anybody at the same time Germany is an exporting power now as it was an exporting power in the 1930s but it doesn't have to conquer anybody on the contrary its elites can dream of nothing more than preserving the economic arrangements that they have right now so what what the European Union what the European Union has done is to create the conditions in which the states which failed in the late 1930s don't have to fail now they still can of course can still fail this is what history of course is about I can do my best to explain to you what I think is actually happened in the last 100 years but the good thing and the frightening thing about history and again this is potaka who makes this point the good thing in the frightening thing about history is that a partly what happens in history partly depends on how we understand history and how we choose to take responsibility for the flow of history so we're at a moment now where it's very easy for Europeans to say Europe is something distant the nation is something good the nation can choose Europe or not that's an inauthentic and in my view entirely view of history but it's very tempting it's very tempting to say the nation is us in Europe is them it's very tempting to say we've always been a good nation it's very tempting we've always existed very tempting proposition but perhaps responsibility is on the side of doing something else perhaps responsibility is on the side of accepting a basic historical proposition which is that what Europe has actually done is keep the European state going and if we can start from there of course that's not enough but if we can start from there if we can start from acknowledging how imperfect our own histories are if we can start from acknowledging how needy the nation-state is if we can start from there then we have some chance of thinking about a European future because if we start from the position that the nation-state has always been there and it can choose Europe or not we don't actually see the stakes of the conversation if we understand that the nation-state has almost never been there and that the longest period of state durability in modern Europe has been precisely within the framework of integration then we can ask aha what can the state do for integration what can we do to make it look like Europe has a future that's where I'll leave you thanks thank you thank you for the inspiring lecture I will be a good moderator and I'll beus my right to a position to ask the first question now let's agree that the premise is that the nation state is historically speaking a modern fiction perhaps we can extend it even further and say that even the nation is modern fiction Dushyant estiga life check historian famously credited Frantisek Polanski a 19th century historian of inventing the Czech nation because he wrote the monumental history of the Czech people he wrote it in German by the way but if we agree on the premise then my question is how come that this fiction this utopia of the nation-state is successful it it is a compelling narrative for all of people today so perhaps the nation-state doesn't have a past as you suggest but for many people it has a future and I guess we ought to understand why so I would be curious to hear your thoughts on that so I mean let me start with with a couple of clarifications I don't actually think that the nation is a fiction I think nations are real like all relationships are real in all relationships there are stories that we tell to justify those relationships and find them that are in some sense wrong but the nation as a relate the nation as a set of relationships is certainly real the Czech nation is certainly real though with the way Neah nation is certainly real some would take it would take hours of clarification to say exactly what I mean but I am not denying that nations are socially real entities what I'm denying is that the nation-state has played an important role in European history what I'm trying to say is that part of what makes the nation real is the lie that it tells itself about statehood and much of the time the lies we tell ourselves are not dangerous but they're comin Porton points in every relationship including the national relationship where we can't tell ourselves lies anymore where we have to face the way that things actually are I happen to think that we're in such a moment right now so I'm agreeing with you I think because I think it's very important for people to have a story about the past which explains their relationships in which they find themselves I mean a Czech who's a Czech who was born today and educated in the in the Czech school system is at some point going to realize that he or she is Czech but did he or she have any choice about that you know not not really the Czech historical reality that Czech discourse was there so to speak awaiting that child before that child even came into being but is what the child learns in school going to be enough to keep the Czech nation going no right no nor and clearly what the British children learned in school was not enough to keep the British nation going what I what I think as a historian is that the stories that nations tell themselves have a tendency to become narcissistic rather than reflective they tend to leave out the very things that one needs to understand if we're going to keep ourselves going in the case of the European nations the what's left out is for the West Europeans the history of empire and for the East Europeans it's very often the weaknesses the internal weaknesses of the nation-state in the 1920s and the night in the 1930s so of course we're tempted by a story which says we've always been here and we always will be here that's natural I mean but I think as reasonable human beings who want to create institutions we also we can we can believe in the special character of our nation right with one part of our minds and yet with the other part of our minds think what does our special nation need to survive and to thrive and to prosper because the story isn't enough ok now let us go to the Q&A sighs I see thank you very much I tried directly to say question you said that European Union is something like this tential choice and this choice was made on both height on the West on the east but with different narratives the West made this decision that is only possibility to create something other than the same the similar it was made on the east side and differ a bit of different legends there are different narratives on both sides and the question is if we are able to live together East and the West because of this difference the differences are great it seems because it's this dis verse that is the history of colonial powers and impairing imperious and but now we see different stories in Balkan also in Central Europe and I'm asking this question because you mentioned this name Tony chat and I remember his book grand illusion it was well maybe in 90s and in this book if I am right he is making some prognosis that it can't work this I would like to ask you how do you see this prognosis of Tony chart that it's impossible to live together because probably these nerves are so different what do you think about it I think one way to clarify the premise of your question with which I completely agree is to add Russia so Russia has yet another narrative about the European Union and there the Russian narrative about the European Union is that we are going to reject this possibility we're going to remain an empire or we're going to become an empire and that's that's very interesting and clarifying because Russia is the first imperial successor state to an effect say we're going to keep being an empire I mean what we can debate you know whether Russia could or should join the European Union underway conditions and so on but the interesting thing about Russian policy since about 2012 is that it's the first European state to say no to the European empty or in European Union all the other former empires have said in effect rather than talking about our lost colonies we're gonna pretend that we were European the whole time Russia has made a different choice and that choice helps us to clarify what we're talking about then you're right the East European narrative is something different the Easter peon narrative is or at least was we were always good Europeans but we were prevented from being good Europeans by the Germans and by the Russians or by the Nazis or by in the Soviets and now the pre we're going to show there were good Europeans by returning to Europe whereas the West European narrative was something was was rather we learned from the Second World War that war was the war was bad but there is a similarity which is the notion that we were somehow we somehow learned from the horrors of the past but you're right there are differences and I think you're also right that narrative differences probably have to be reduced I would not propose doing that by let by adding fiction to fiction I mean I have a very simple conservative response which is that how about we have European history how about we have a 100 page book of European history which you all get taught throughout the European Union when you're in fourth grade how about that why is that why is that not possible why is it when I teach European students which I've been doing at Yale and also in Europe for a quarter century why is it that I have to deal with you know 35 different national narratives why is that exactly I mean it seems it seems kind of like a big mistake so I agree with you I think the only way over the long term though is to build a build a common European history which is true and we're by truth I mean including some of these larger issues like Empire and anti-colonialism and in Balkan history and things like this so I agree with you what's what I mean one of the tragedies I think in the last 25 years is that when we say history is over one of the things we mean is we don't really take history seriously and therefore as a European Union we leave it we leave the symbolic responsibilities to the nation-states to the Member States and I think that has real consequences because we then I mean I'm sorry a lot of you are very young which is nice but you so you can be angry at me after I say this but the problem with this is that you then rage it and raise a generation of Europeans who think trees not very important until there's some kind of crisis in Greece or in Ukraine and then suddenly they think history is important but what's activated in their minds are the various national myths that they learned along a long time ago and so then the past becomes a problem for European integration I agree with you I don't have any other answer than I think there really ought to be European history I think European history would be good you like Gandhi with Western civilization it'd be good I guess the problem may not be that we don't learn history in school but we don't learn how to use history critically and some people do it they mobilize history these legends myths fiction but they are they are very real in their effect right now I saw two hands over there and I can't reach that far but my colleague is going to give you the mic please ask them good evening together good evening i'm ahn jae host gospel asking of any newspaper here in prague you said that you created conditions in which states don't have to fail there is this notion of the of the european rescue of nation-state as is the title of an influential a very influential book but maybe some somewhat paradoxically you have both pro Europeans and entire Europeans in European Member States saying that you has to go through fundamental reforms and if not it cannot survive if it cannot work do you agree with this critique that the EU has to go through fundamental reforms or is it just say mates politicians and elites are repeating thinking that reminds me of Minister so ilex question the part that I didn't answer Tony jet wrote a book called grand illusion but then he later wrote a much larger book called post-war and as you know in post-war he's he's much more measured about an indeed positive about the European Union and I think his view on the European Union was fairly similar to the one that I expressed namely that it's it's it's imperfect but it's a kind of politics it's a kind of politics of last resort for Europe if if we want to have the Europe that were more or less familiar with something like the European Union it doesn't have to be this European Union that's why I'm coming to your question but something like the European Union is necessary to have a recognizable Europe after Empire is done because I mean we shouldn't we shouldn't delude ourselves the the the European history that's possible is possible largely because of Empire it's only it's only national education which occludes this basic reality right but you know the John Stewart mills and the Shakespeare's and you know the Milton's and all the wonderful stuff that we have in European history is and all of it is in some fairly direct way connected to one kind of imperialism or another and the only reason we don't see this is that we just choose to organize our history on national national lines and so the real question is how do you have a recognisable Europe when there's no Empire that for me is the real the real question and Tony Judd I think this is one of the brilliant things that he actually that he got right was that he wrote the history of decolonization and history of European integration together section section by section because I think this was his basic point but of course he's not the only one to make it in different ways Marc miss our Harold James have made this point which brings me to your to your question I don't I'm not going to propose I mean have ideas about how the European Union should change but I'm just gonna say in general yes of course the European Union has to reform but not because not because it's crushing the nation-state the European Union should before so that it can better support states societies human beings right but the you but but the if you start the European reform process from the false premise that it's suffocating the nation state then the reform that you get is not going to make any sense because you're starting from a place which is basically false I of course I think the European Union should change I think the European for just a few examples I think there should be AI think there should be a European officer Academy I think the European Parliament should be much much more important for that of course probably depends on European voters I think the European Union is doing a very good job with climate it's the only entity in the world that's doing a decent job with cyber and it should keep on with those things I mean but we so one way to argue about the European Union reforming would be to start with what is Europe doing better than the rest of the world start you could also start from there and say oh well we're doing better than the rest of the world with privacy we could be even better with privacy you know there there other there various ways of thinking about reform I agree with the idea that the Union has to change but I don't think that I don't think the discussions to start with blackmail right I think brexit II honestly shows the insanity of that but you know the the the idea that the European Union has to change because Britain is gonna leave otherwise is is a nightmare for everybody it frames the debate in exactly the wrong way because it tells the British that they have this veto and so the British are constantly unsatisfied even though the European Union has been bending over backward to appease the British for its entire existence and and so if this is the if the if the starting point is you must reform because otherwise you know otherwise we go back to our rooms and cry which is my definition of brexit if like that's that's where you start the reform discussion then you're gonna end up in a weird place but you might start the reform discussion with hey what is the European Union doing better the United States or how is the European Union a modernization alternative to China and how would we like to how would we like to keep that modernization alternative distinct let's not take the question at the back and then we will move to the second row thank you thank you yacouba's our Faculty of Arts Charles University you nicely described to Europe as a place where the post-colonial powers come back or come home and I just wondered what would be your answer to Mellon under us rather skeptical claim in his article tragedy of Central Europe that the Western Europe can hardly come back to itself and it basically lost itself exactly in the colonial wars and in the 60s and 70s that if I remember right his claim is that well Western Europe forgot about the central and eastern part mainly because it lost its identity so I wondered whether you have some kind of answer to the skeptical Kundera's claim how can it come back to itself and it lost itself thank you yeah I guess I'm skeptical about that skepticism you know I'm skeptical about the whole I'm very skeptical about the whole Kunda storytelling style of you know a middle Europe that once existed but then lost itself and then a Western Europe that once existed and then lost itself I don't I don't find that narrative arc very convincing and I much as I much as I admire him as a novelist I don't see any particular reason to see to take his diagnosis of French culture very seriously one way or another um but I mean it but to try to answer the question in a more positive way I think I think French culture is amazingly dynamic in 2018 I think French culture was amazingly dynamic when Kuhn dura first arrived in France I think I think you know the depth and richness of French culture is absolutely extraordinary I neither as a historian nor as a human being am i able to define the moment when front when France was right and therefore know when somehow friends France went wrong I mean from my perspective looking in 2018 backwards I just see this unbelievable richness and the same is true obviously for German culture or for polish culture for any number of other European cultures so I don't I don't I don't know what this I mean I I don't I don't know what it means to say that there was a coal that lost its way I don't know what that means I guess another thing I would say about this is that I think a lot of this this is where I was trying to end a lot of this discussion hangs on on whether Europeans find a language to talk about the future because if the discussion is about the past I mean I'm a historian they pay me to talk about the past this is what I do I like the past I like to try to understand the past and I think it's indispensable to understand the president of future but if the discussion about Europe is only about a kind of past which is mythical anyway in my view then I think Europe loses out to the net to the nation's then I think the nations come back and Europe suffers because the nations the nations are no good at talking about the future think about it what is the what is the future for Britain for example after brexit we've had a couple years to think about this now think of think of an example of the of an English intellectual when I say English for a reason think of an example of an English intellectual who's written a wonderful essay in The Guardian or the New Statesman whatever about the future of England after a brexit how it's gonna be great where is that vision right where is it it doesn't exist and it can't exist and that's not how that's not how the nationalists frame the argument the nationalists always going to frame the argument in terms of the British nation state which never existed right brexit is all about nostalgia for an empire which existed but is never coming back and which is treated as a nation-state which it never was that's what that's what the probe wrecks that argument is but nobody on the left or right as far as I can figure out has any kind of argument for what the future of Britain is going to look like so if the argument about the past everybody loses the Europe uses first and then the state loses second so I think a very important thing is for us to get beyond the kind of literary you know bildungsroman or you know these various literary arcs and think about how Europe will look in the future make arguments about how Europe provides a better future for Europeans then other possible alternatives would I mean this for me is interesting about world politics in general is the way that the future has just gone away and I tend to think that the entities who first find the language talked about the future again are going to be the ones who have some kind of advantage anyway that's a long riff on your question things let's let's now go to the second row and they're way too many hands but there was a question in the second row then on the other side and that we'll see how much time we have left okay thank you very much blow virtual University thank you so much for your analysis my question is about what should be changed in this theory for the 21st century given all the recent shifts is it still valid that the choice is between empires and European integration given that one of the consequences of these colonial losses of Europe is the peripheral ization of Europe right so the world history is no longer European history and there are many important players like former colonies outside of Europe and Asia and whatever and secondly after post-industrial revolution then now it's not about exchanging grain for manufactured goods but you know the economy structured differently and there is global ization as an alternative project of integration and erosion of nation-states and we can continue so what all these recent developments change in these theory thank you so my my point I'll answer your question but my point is that if we want to make sense of where Europe is right now we have to get the last century right and what we tend to do not just Europeans Americans love this too is we take these round anniversaries and we commemorate but the the every 10 years or every 25 years or every hundred years allows us to draw these beautiful circles but the circles are empty in the middle they don't contain the things that they need to contain for us to see the history the substance of the history as it really was and so I'm trying to work against that I'm trying to put into that circle the categories of analysis that I think are really important like for example Empire and like for example decolonization now this brings me to what I want to say about your question which is that the Europe that we have now is a post Imperial Europe if we get that straight we have some chance to create a post post Imperial Europe or some other kind of Europe but if we don't get it straight if we think that Europe is a matter of the free choices of already existing nation-states then we don't have any chance of dealing with precisely the kinds of problems that you're talking about so I I don't think that this logic is superseded by the fact we're in 2018 on the contrary I think there's a whole raft of issues and you name some of them which make a whole lot more sense if we're able to break the line between European and global history this is this is one of my personal obsessions is that we tell European history as though it's about Europe and then we took we teach we teach colonial history as though it's about the rest of the world which just doesn't make any sense I mean anti-colonialism at least as I see it begins in the Balkans in the early 19th century the history of empire has to include Ukraine which is one of the most thoroughly colonized bits of the world I mean in the history of the world one of the most intensely colonized parts however you want to define colonization and so my view is that if we can break down the barrier between European colonial history then European history makes sense and European problems also make more sense migration is the completely obvious example of all of this if we think of European history as happening in Europe then all these people of course are coming from other places that we don't know anything about you know we didn't have anything to do with the creation of Syria you know that and so the whole migration story you know it's not that it solves the migration problem but it makes the migration it makes the migration problem at least make a lot more sense now the other thing I wanted to say is that if we get straight what Europe what Europe is if we see it as a post Imperial political solution then we can ask post Imperial political solution for what because the way the debate is currently framed is Europe is a problem right Europe's a problem for me because because I want to be I want to be Czech or polish or Hungarian or English or whatever so the debate ly framed Europe's a problem but what if we started the debate from Europe was a solution because see Europe was a solution to the problem of globalization the problem of globalization in the 70s 80s and 90s from a European point of view was the problem of decolonization that was that was globalization the fact that other people had set up States too on what used to be your imperial territory that was globalization that you didn't get to set the terms of trade unilaterally anymore in the world I'm a British point of view that's globalization so Europe is an answer to globalization and now as globalization change this the question is how can europe continue to be an answer to pop challenge of globalization I mentioned some of these but on that I'll mention them again cyber we one of the biggest one of the most obvious examples of our 21st century globalization is the fact that the majority the world's population now uses the same information system and that we are now vulnerable to political signals coming from all over the world much of what people read and hear in the Czech Republic every day over the Internet is placed in front of them by foreign powers who are constant who are consciously trying to as you very well know influence debate in a certain direction in this country how do you deal with that nation-states are not gonna deal with that very well even a very big nation-state like the United States might have problems with that but interestingly Europe has done reasonably well I mean not perfectly well but Europe has done reasonably well what about climate climate is the globalization of the 20th century that it's the it's the hangover of 20th century globalization 20th century globalization was carbon-based so climate change is - hangover of that Europe is dealing with that it reasonably well so I mean I would just I would just what I would say is that if we see Europe as an answer as opposed to a problem then then we can ask can it keep answering challenges of globalization that's how I would see it Thanks let's have now the question here in the front Jamie Smith professor Charles University I guess I'm wondering about what the idea of Europe is that is being presupposed and all this conversation is it some shared past because you know the histories of Western Europe and Eastern Europe are very different versus some idea of the future I mean can you clarify what is your what's the notion of Europe that's leaving your thought so what I what I thank you for that question what I'm trying very hard to do is not propose an idea of Europe but reveal the current idea of Europe for what it is which is a misunderstanding so the current idea of Europe as I grasp it and I could be mistaken but the current idea of Europe is I grasp it is that Europe is a common narrative which assembles a certain lowest common denominator of essentially false national histories and the lowest common denominator is we all exist as nations we're all very old and we've all learned something from the recent past which has to do about violence and the fact that economics is an answer to violence that's that's the Europe that currently exists so that's the discourse of Europe that currently exists that's I make that as an observation could be correct could be incorrect I'm not using it as a tool of analysis right because for me um what we what we were actually looking at is a continent whose center of gravity was beyond itself for almost all of modern history and whose center of gravity economically politically only lands on itself after this three century or so interlude in the second half of the 20th century with this project of European integration so for me I mean there's a British Empire there's a Dutch there's a Dutch Empire French Empire Belgian Empire but it's not meaningful that's world history or something but it's not it's not really Europe it's not European history there isn't there isn't a Europe in the sense of a political unit you can draw a line zone which has something to do with geographical Europe until you know very late in the day until the second half of the 20th century so I'm not prom trying very hard not to presuppose anything I'm trying to observe a certain discourse I'm trying to say what the discourse has wrong you know in the service of trying to get the history right or at least conceptually to make it very possible and make political discussions more fruitful so I'm trying to do thank you unfortunately our time is up but before we continue this conversation over glass of wine served and the voyage which you all are cordially invited let me say a few words of thanks so first thanks mr. patchak for hosting us here today madam rector thank you for making this event possible and I truly hope on behalf of the Institute of International Relations that this is just the first step in a very productive cooperation that we will have in the future thank you Tim Snyder for your inspiring lecture and thank you all for being here today for your attention [Applause] 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Channel: IIR Prague

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Length: 84min 29sec (5069 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 23 2018