Timothy Snyder: Ukrainian History as World History 1917-2017

[Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen it's a great pleasure to welcome you to tonight's lecture by Timothy Snyder who actually needs no introduction but I would be really not playing my role as a host properly if I were to fail to say a few words about him before I do that and before Tim's own lecture on Ukrainian history as world history 1917 and 20 to 27 I just want to give you information and so that you know that there is a program of which this lecture is apart and that after Tim's lecture there are some other things goodies in the house that we would like to welcome you to the lecture opens the conference revolutionary Ukraine a reflection on 1917 and it's aftermath organized by the austrian ukrainian historians commission whose members i would like to welcome here with us i think it's your second meeting here with us and a very warm welcome to all of you and it's organized under the auspices of the ukraine in european dialogue program at the IWM which tim has initiated here two years ago many of you have traveled a long distance to take part in the conference and be very pleased to host you here the conference is accompanied by a cultural program on ukrainian avant-garde films entitled filming the revolution it's curated by Konstantin akansha whom I would also like to thank for this the work put into the curation of the cultural programme because it consists not only of the film retrospective and you are cordially invited to see the films as well I'll say a word about it in a moment but also of an art exhibition and this exhibition is housed at the moment at the IWM I would like to extend a warm welcome to all three protagonists of this program dr. Kynn Shah who is an art historian journalist and curator as well as the founding director and chair of the Russian avant-garde research project in the UK even cos lenko an expert in film and cultural studies and director of the Ukrainian national cinematic Centre in give and claudius LAN are also not historian and a writer who is the creator of the bleakie Kino after Tim Snyder's lecture this evening I will request Constantine I can sure to give a very brief introduction to the in-house exhibition on Ukrainian our God film posters which are here at the Institute on display I was told something which I didn't understand quite at the last moment on the staircase but if i understood right for those of you who are not great fans of going up and down the staircase many times there is a possibility to view the posters in the room next door what that possibility I don't quite understand but I know that there is a possibility so you have an easy way of watching or viewing the posters and you have a more arduous way if you decide to take our staircase I would also like to welcome here very special warm welcome to you Maria fresh luck rector of the Ukrainian free University in Munich who is our cooperation partner since two years since we established the Ukraine program at the Institute the second part as I said of the program filming the revolution takes place at the black Akino at Islands francica house it's on Sunday 15 dock Tauber and also incoming wetness day October 18th with screenings of Ukrainian avogadro 1920s as well as of course conversations with the three protagonists whom I've just mentioned so I would like to extend you a warm welcome to to visit the film evenings the screenings as well very quickly of really really warm welcome to Tim Schneider again and we hope we're going to see much more of him and of Marci next year because they're going to be coming back to the IWM as most of you know he is a permanent fellow of the Institute many of his most important books in the recent years have been partly written at the Institute and we have had occasion to present many of these books here as well he's not only among the leading American historians of Europe but he's also a well known public intellectual well known for his groundbreaking work on the history of Central and Eastern Europe and especially on the Holocaust and totalitarianism in Europe but more recently his interest has shifted to questions of contemporary politics many of you may have seen his last book on tyranny and he the new book he tells me is also about the decline of the West but he doesn't want to call it the West so I'm not going to give you the title because it's a secret but that'll be the next talk we will feature here by Tim he teaches history at Yale where he has the Byrd white who's in professorship of history in 2017 that is this year he won the Guggenheim Fellowship a very very prestigious fellowship in the u.s. in the course of which he will work on another new book project this time titled brother lands and for those of you who know blood lands you will realize that there's a resonance here but brother lens is a family history of the modern nation the landmark book 2010 bloodlines Europe between Hitler and Stalin as I just mentioned briefly I'm very very proud was written partly at the IWM black hurt the Holocaust is history and warning published in 2015 as well and as I said his last book on tyranny 20 lessons from the 20th century has already been translated within the year into 35 languages and received as much critical acclaim as both bloodlines and black earth so Tim welcome back and we hope to see you for much much longer next year so we are not going to let you fly in and out so quickly okay thank you very much is the microphone on is it all me okay thank you very much it's such it's such a pleasure to visit my home it's nice to visit it's nice to have a home it's even nicer to visit your home which is something that the um allows me to do and such a pleasure to be here with you in this library where you don't know yeah I think it's um okay so you should feel free to yeah you have a great stroke my motor neurons are making me struggle with you you're welcome to come up here and fix it if you want I'm gonna talk about it so it's such a pleasure to be here thank you very much so VD thank you to all of you for allowing me to do this thank you it's been particularly to ukrainian and austrian colleagues who are beginning this important work in the austrian ukrainian historical commission which of course were we and he would be the ukrainian austrian Historical Commission one of the nice things about these Commission's that you have to learn to be a diplomat I want to thank in particular Wolfgang mola for taking up the Austrian side of this work for those who do not know him Wolfgang Bhullar is a leading historian of Austrian and Russian history I was once reading a long book by Wolfgang fuller and my parents house outside in in the hot tub and my brother who was German speaking walked out of the house look up gave me one look and said ah vadhu das nicht and Wolfgang Mullen jacuzzi lazy and that is precisely the kind of historian that Wolfgang Muller is he's not the kind of historian that you should be reading in in in the hot tub he's a leading historian who were very happy to have and thank you Wolfgang for joining this initiative which is a small part of what Kate younger and Tonya George Inco have been doing here in the UM within the framework of our Ukraine in European dialogue program which I'm very happy to be a part my little role in this weekend's events is to give you a brief talk about Ukrainian history as global history with general reference to the Revolution of 1917 and which general reference to the present day the claim that I'd like to make is that global history makes much more sense with Ukrainian history inside it what I have found in my own work is that Ukrainian history is a kind of gift to global history that Ukrainian history in many ways is a missing link that makes certain trends in global history make more sense let me start with the Revolution of 1917 there's a wonderful quote about about the Revolution the French Revolution from Chiang kai-shek that Chinese revolutionary when asked whether the the French Revolution had been a good thing or a bad thing Chiang kai-shek said almost 200 years afterwards it's too soon to say right now like almost every famous quotation in history that one is probably false just so you know like the percentage of epigraphs in books which never no one actually ever said is very high Chiang kai-shek actually never said that it's too soon to say but nevertheless that falsehood contains an important truth the history of revolutions comes around and around and around and around again what I'd like to do with 1917 this evening is considered the way it thought about history with the way that we think about history what I'd like to do is begin with what the revolutionaries of 1917 thought they were doing with history and then end trying to make sense of the century in a way which is different from how they would have made sense with it although it has some commonalities so what did the revolutionaries of 1917 think about history what did they think they were doing with history so this is one of the ways that the Revolution of 1917 is alien to us because we are in a culture of nostalgia and commemoration right we are in a culture of superstitious reverence for years of round numbers we are in a culture where anniversaries are so important they actually affect the real world and if you don't believe this consider the war in Ukraine in 2014 the way that the West reacted to the war in Ukraine in 2014 was materially affected by the fact that it was the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the first world war and hence the metaphorical the metaphorical force of the beginning of the first world war was applied to how we were acted to 1914 we said let us be cautious let us make sure we know what is happening let us not hasten to act let us not be the first to fire the guns of August and so on if the war in Ukraine had been in the anniversary of Munich presumably would have reacted an entirely different way because we have this note because our culture has become such a culture of commemoration memory memory has displaced history to such an extent I'll go so far as to say the superstition the pagan superstition of round numbers has replaced historical enlightenment to such an extent that it actually affects the choices that we make in in the real world so that I just say that by way of introducing the point I want to make which is that in 1917 the revolutionaries were not saying what does 1817 mean for us in 1917 the revolutionaries the Bolshevik revolutionaries we're thinking about history or something that moved forward according to certain rules which were understandable and which they perhaps understood better than others and which perhaps they understood well enough to move history along further that history was known if had laws they were at scientists and perhaps also its technicians in this being able to turn those gears a little bit faster than they would have otherwise if that's true where does Ukraine fit into a history scene in that way these are subjects which my colleagues will talk about in greater length of course I'll just talk about them very briefly but if you think about history that way Ukraine becomes central to the making of a Soviet state after the Revolution of 1917 the civil wars in plural fought on the territory of the old Russian Empire were fought centrally in Ukraine whether it's the red whites of a war or or whether it's wars involving Ukrainian Army's again in the plural whether it's the war involving Poland centrally fought in Ukraine if you're a Soviet state builder Ukraine is the major national let's call it problem which you are confronting in the 1920s if you are Stalin and you're completing the political revolution in 1927 with the economic and social revolution of 1928 with the first five-year plan Ukraine is also a critical if not the critical place of revolution it is where collectivization will fail or or where it will succeed this is how one thinks about Ukraine if one thinks about history is something which moves forward as being accelerated what might we say today I want to suggest a different view I want to suggest a view which is neither history as commemoration which I think it's not nor history as acceleration or technique which I also think it's not what I want to try to do today is suggest more gently a way that Ukraine in 1917 or Ukraine today Ukraine in the last century helps us to make sense of of modern history or global history as we see it and the suggestion that I'm going to try to make is that is is that Ukraine is not exceptional I mean this is sorry I'm just picking out Ukrainians in the crowd now I didn't I I don't have to pick them out because I could just look to see how they reacted to that sentence it's not that I knew them personally it's that I could tell um not that Ukraine is and then they're the Ukrainian Cosmopolitan's who were like oh whatever right like for us yeah of course you know I'm fine so the that Ukraine is the point that the way one oppresses argument is by saying Ukraine is hyper typical that Ukraine is is is so is so typical of major trends that it gets buried by or buried in these trends and if we can pull it up and see it for what it was then these trends begin to make more sense so the claim is that Ukraine is hyper typical of of three basic moments in the in the last hundred years or so of history and those moment and I'll go through them in order but those those moments are first the encounter of nation with Empire second the creation of what the creation stop it with the shrugging it's very distracting the creation the creation so when something goes wrong you just have to smile calmly like nothing's wrong yeah like when you get married it's really good like no matter what happens just smile like it's all good it's just great okay so um I've just changed your life so the first is nation an empire the second is the creation of what I'm going to call neo empires are new empires in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s European imperialism in Europe itself and the third moment is the encounter of the European Union with States I'm going to take those as mean three moments so nations and empires new empires in Europe and the European Union and States and again my my idea here is that Ukraine is so typical of these moments that if we look carefully at Ukraine then we see the moments and then and then the whole history starts to fall into place okay so first example nations and empires know the first move that I need to make here or the first claim that I want to suggest to help it all make sense is that we have to bring the two ways that we see the two different ways that we see imperial history together they're the first way that we see imperial history is that we see it as Europe everybody else right so if I say global history most people would think okay that's Europe as it were against everyone else that's colonialism coming out from Europe and then anti-colonialism kept coming back into Europe from Africa or from Asia or from Latin America that's one way to think about empire a nation the global way and then there's another way which is seemingly completely different which is the national way where your polish or your cranium or your Serbian and you think well nation Empire means my nation one nation and a local Empire right and unconsciously we use nation and Empire in both of those ways in a global way and in a local way and we unconsciously I think separate those out into two completely different histories and what I want to try to suggest in this lecture in various ways is the exactly that's actually one history and the Ukraine is the place which can help us to see it as as as one history okay so let me begin to try to make that case let me begin and by talking about the Revolution in 1917 so the Bolshevik Revolution presents itself as anti colonial and of course the Soviet Union presents itself as anti colonial in what sense in what material sense was the Bolshevik Revolution anti colonial and what way did the Bolshevik Revolution actually bring down empires in its own in its own time I'm gonna make us I'm gonna make a suggestion that it does so in a very straightforward and in almost banal way which we can overlook and that is that before we even think about how the the Soviets worked against the British in India or how they worked against the poles in in in Western Ukraine before we even get to that we have to think of the moment of 1917 itself as a moment when land empires fell apart that the revolution so I'm not thinking about it in their terms I'm thinking about it in mind that in 1917 is the beginning of a moment in 1917 to 1918 when the land empires of Europe fall apart that the Russian Empire is of course the land Empire par excellence a Muscovy you know started in 1410 moved south through some of Europe in in Asia then moves Eastern - we eat to the Pacific Ocean then and finally moves West Kiev 300 Silvo partitions of Poland in the in the 18th century Catherine the Great bit before that down to the Black Sea that this is the world land Empire it's the biggest land empire in the history of the world it's the land Empire par excellence when that Empire Falls whatever the Bolsheviks say about it right that's the beginning of a trend because what happens after that when the revolution begins the Hapsburgs and the Germans I'm gonna now do this tricky chronology thing that historians times do okay so after the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917 the Hapsburgs and the Germans rush in right to fill the void they jointly occupy Ukraine they have big ideas especially the Germans about how they're going to apply the notion of self-determination the Eastern Europe to create a bunch of client states and what's now the Baltics Belarus and and Ukraine they they come rushing in early 2000 in early 1918 they signed treaties at brest-litovsk who - to formalize this state of affairs they send in people let's go to pots key and and you in the in a nice Habsburg case Vasily Shivani lest we forget they have their own ideas of how to be Ukraine which are of course different you're getting better which are different the camera is gonna wonder like who I'm talking to this whole time right the different ideas of how will you paint so for example I once spent a couple of days reading the German and the Austrian diplomatic traffic coming from Ukraine in early 1918 and the Austrian had come up with this very characteristic idea that they were going to find all the Ukrainian officers and usually write fresh clean very stylish new uniforms and so the German diplomats were reporting back to Berlin on this and one of my favorite sentences ever in German diplomatic histories and last times among these Telegraph's and it says why don't we ever think of things like that which so so beautifully like distinguish the Austria and the German policies like then and forever so this is early 1918 but while this is playing out so nicely in early 1918 in Ukraine of a bad thing is happening from the point of view of the hapsburgs and the Germans in France which is that hundreds of thousands of American soldiers are arriving in France and the war is going to be fought won and lost not in Eastern Europe but in in France and Western Europe the the Americans for every German soldier who dies there's a period of weeks where for every German soldier who dies he's not replaced by a German soldier but by an American soldier right the German soldiers are dying by the tens of thousands and the Americans are arriving but almost exactly the same rate so the Germans lose the war on on the Western Front which means that the end of the Russian Empire is followed very closely by the end of the German Empire right it was a hike it followed very closely by the end of the Habsburg Empire and of course and of course the end of the Ottoman Empire as well so the way that this is an NT an anti imperial moment is is different from the way the Bolsheviks presented what they do is they set off a cascade of events which leads to the end of territorial empires in Europe as such and this distinction now I want to make for me this is the great accident of European history like history one thing the history is about is about accidents and noticing that they're accidents and being accepting that they're accidents so if you write novels they're never accidents right if you're Chekhov and there's a gun in the drawer it's because you put the gun in the drawer that's not an accident that doesn't count as an accident if you're a social scientist there are no accidents right there's only data and if it doesn't fit your model you just like push it completely off the scene completely social scientists smile and some of them do but if you're a historian you sort of you say yes there are engine FAQs there are accidents and I think for me the most important contingent fact or accident of of European history in the 20th century is this the land empires go first the land empires go after the First World War the maritime empires go after the Second World War and that is a coincidence it didn't have to be that way it just was right so in the First World War the Americans a maritime by that point a maritime Empire the Americans come in rescue the British in the French and so the British the greatest maritime Empire in the history of the world they survived the French also big maritime Empire they survived the Portuguese the Spanish the Dutch maritime empires all survived right the empires that go are the land empires why is this so important um it's so important because it means that we're now going to see an experiment with a nation-state in Europe okay and here's the first place part when I say Ukraine is hyper typical if you look at the West Ukrainian national Republic if you look at the Ukrainian national Republic you will just you just see a blip right a very brief moment of political activity between you know let's say 1918 and 1922 and then it's over before you know it and if you're Ukrainian this can just this can seem like a tragic moment if you're a historian of the nation-state you can look at this in a different way you can say that is actually typical because all of these attempts at forming nation-states after nineteen failed fast they all failed fast right none of them lasted for more than two decades and I mean from the point of view I'm just going to say from the point of view of like a whole era the difference between lasting for a year and lasting for 20 years is not that great so that Ukraine as a state doesn't last for very long is also true of Austria Czechoslovakia Lithuania Latvia Estonia it's true of all of the new states that are formed after the first world war they're all done by 1940 at the latest it's also true by the way of the nation's - of many of the nation states that had to come to being in the 19th century they're not going to last until until the Second World War the experiment with the nation-state is not going to work out now I'm just gonna take a step back and dwell on that for a moment because it's a very important point this point the point is that Ukraine as a nation-state that doesn't work is hyper typical right it's actually it's not an exception it's actually the rule the rule performed at its logical extreme so let me just take a step back and consider the logic of this a bit longer let me just take a step back to the 19th century for a moment and consider the nation-state as such so when I say nation-state okay this is like a like a call-and-response rap so when I say nation-state you say France you don't have to actually say France but when I say nation-state you say France we've all been trained to say France when we say I mean there are other things like if I say Eclair you know all you if I say love you know you'll say France we have all these associations with France none of which are true except Eclair so the know I'll give them that although I'll give them a lot of pastries but that but the nation state they have nothing to do with France was never a nation state I mean it's fun to say it on osceola right and then you say isn't it interesting how the French say state nation instead of nation state and then you say again it Tom nación great but they've never been a nation state before 1789 they were an empire and after 79 they're an empire with slightly different regimes in the middle of the empire they've never they haven't been a nation state they made that up it never happened this is typical by the way no it didn't right they were never a nation state this is typical those all the West Europeans have this issue basically like they they teach their children that they were nation-states which is a total fable it didn't happen ever never happened in the East Europeans at least it happened for a few weeks like in Ukraine but for the West Europeans it never happened at all which makes it a fable okay so if you want to look for the nation-state the nation-state happens where it happens in vols Greece Serbia those are nation-states Romania will get Romania 1878 Bulgaria 1908 these are these are nation-states that is the that is where the nation-state comes from it comes from the anti-colonial notice the word the anti-colonial movements of the balkans against the ottoman empire in the first part of the 19th century which anti-colonial movements lead to I got a watch I should use it with which anti-colonial movements lead to a challenged Empire right so nation-states and challenged empires they even they can even bring them nap they can even bring them down but what they can't do is provide an automatic replacement to them so if we look a logic of the nation-state if we if you look at the logic of the nation-state in them in the Balkans than an Eastern Europe you see an overall pattern which is this these nation-states at a first formed Greece Serbia Serbian history is actually I mean in my view the key to all of this Greece Serbia Romania Bulgaria Montenegro Albania the pattern is the nation-states are not sufficient into themselves the the nation-states create huge armies they fight wars for more territory and in the early 20th century what they managed is actually bringing down not one but two empires the first Balkan war of 1912 is these new nation-states proving themselves to be fully sovereign by driving the Ottoman Empire out of Europe which is a world historical event right um empires are not supposed to lose Wars to these small nation-states we're not when I say nation-state you think sovereign but that's not what the powers thought the powers thought these new nation-states are just our clients it's just imperialism with a different label basically when the nation-states of the Balkans fought a war and drove the Ottoman Empire out of Europe they were proving themselves to be sovereign they were proving that they could do things on their own similarly and even more disastrously the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the beginning of the First World War is an exercise in balkan sovereignty right so the the First World War is actually the third Balkan war and it follows the logic of creating the nation-state so nation-states can create problems for empires what they can't do is solve those problems hence the irony of the outcome of the First World War so the first world war is started by nation-states Serbia admittedly a lot happens in the intervening four years but puzzlingly it's still a bit of a puzzle that at the end of the First World War Serbia is a victor its war aims are fulfilled and not only that the Serbia's political philosophy spreads across much of Europe so the nation-state which forms in the Balkans against the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century is then extended after 1918 to much of Eastern Europe so new states are created Poland Czechoslovakia Romania Latvia Estonia Austria is a nation-state all of which as I say are gonna fail disastrously very soon and and what's what's typical of all this what's typical of all this and this is the point that I'm trying to make is that um they're without a system these nation states don't have a chance now if you look at it from the point of view of Czech history or Ukrainian history or Macedonian history or whatever it all seems like an individual tragedy the poles are the best about this right I mean the poles are the best at presenting what happened in the 20s and 30s as being a very specific tragedy which to which no one else's tragedy could possibly be compared and the way they do it is by not studying the period but the but but that's the magical history the magical national history is it your collapse looks looks unlike everybody else's collapse but in fact these nation states were basically doomed by the lack of a higher European level of politics in the 1920s in 1930s right that's that's what they that's what they have that's later common and what I'm trying to say is that Ukraine here is very typical Ukraine is not really unlike these other places in 19th century it too has its grand romantic poet right Shevchenko it too has its populist historian who you know is probably better in another language but nevertheless manages to write the whole national history as a social history and an impossible labor right they all have that Ukraine has that too it too has the songs right it too has this story about how we've been divided among empires which by the way is a good thing if you want to have I mean the poles do this too they say we're divided in three you know that's terrible if you want to have a national movement partition is a good thing not be no it is not being partitioned retards a national movement that's not what they teach you in school I know but it's actually the case if you're think about why why is the Russian national movement still in 2017 entangled with the Imperial idea why is there no Yeller why is the Belarusian national idea so weak this is this is why you having a gallaecia separated from the rest of Ukraine is an advantage not a disadvantage because it means that in the 1860s and 1870s when ukrainian politics becomes hard on the russian empire you can then go to Laville Lemberg in poland it's the same story when things get hot in the russian empire you go to polls 9:00 and you write some books and when things get bad there you go to krakow and you drink some coffee and then you just repeat the whole thing right that was used at Pilsudski biography by the way that I just gave you so you you have been partitioned is actually typical it's actually a favorable condition it's not some kind of unique tragedy so up until 1918 Ukraine is actually typical and then when it doesn't get a nation state what I'm trying to say is that's also not exceptional that's hyper typical when we move into the next moment we see how Ukraine is typical and indifferent and in a more tragic moment which is the moment of neo Empire I'll spend less time on this because the argument will be familiar to those of you who have red blood lands or black earth but the argument is that in the 1930s and 1940s what both the Nazis and the Soviets tried to do can only be understood if you see how they are looking at world empire we can say well we're just going to look at German sources or whatever holding myself back or we can say we're just gonna look at Russian sources and but and this is something that Kotkin has right you know the way that they see the world is by way of world history so Hitler is not saying you know I'm gonna build a German nation or anything like that what what Hitler is saying is that we don't seem to be able to build a maritime Empire around the world the oldest is in mind Kampf the only thing that is left for us to do is to conquer Eurasia right Stalin is not saying socials in one country because I like the one country Stalin is saying is his 1928 the time of the beginning the first five-year plans Stalin is saying we need a policy of quoting now of internal colonization I'm quoting still because unlike the great colonial powers we don't have maritime territories to exploit all right that is the logic of the first five-year plan in a nutshell if you don't have a far-flung colonial empire youyou colonize yourself you colonize yourself so the ideologies are very different in the goal of the goal of colonization was was very different but where these two neo imperial powers focus their energy overlaps overlaps where it overlaps in Ukraine in the first five-year plan which of course affects the entire Soviet Union and is painful all over the Soviet Union but in the first five-year plan in 1928 to 1933 one of the major goals is the control of Ukrainian black earth and Ukrainian grain stocks and because that is central dekulakization in Ukraine is particularly harsh requisitions targets are particularly high and when collectivization doesn't work out very well Stalin moves in the second half of 1932 to a political account of why this is failing this is an argument first made by Terry Martin and that political explanation of the failure of grain requisitions leads to a much greater famine in the boundaries of Soviet Ukraine than would have happened otherwise somewhere between 3 & 4 million deaths when Hitler is thinking about building a German Empire he is also thinking predominantly of Ukraine controlling the Black Earth of Ukraine his idea in this respect he is like Stalin is that the only way to rival the British who are the world superpower at the time the only way to rival the British is for us the Germans to be autarkic to be self-sufficient the only way to do that is to control enough rich territory by which we mean above all things Ukraine and so again the idea of how this is going to be done is different although there are certain interesting overlaps because Hitler is aware for example and his planners are aware of the collective farms so the idea is that they're going to use the collective farms in order to extract even more grain that doesn't work by the way because the Germans just have an occupation apparatus they don't have the party it's one of many places where our stereotype of German efficiency completely breaks down the Stalinist apparatus was much better extract much better and comparably better at extracting grain from Ukraine than the German apparatus was at the end of the day the Germans get less grain from Ukraine than they get from Belgium in a Second World War which is a sign of how things don't work but they do succeed in starving people not as many as they planned they plan to starve tens dozens of millions of Soviet citizens in this in this winter of 1941 alone they don't starve that many but they do starve people they starve almost a million people in Leningrad during the siege they starve they starve tens of thousands of people in how to Kiev and Kiev and above all they starve or kill as a result of malnutrition around three million Soviet prisoners of war so um there is the the point here is that you have this encounter of what I'm calling new empires and the result in Ukraine is particularly deadly roughly three to four million people starved in 1932-33 another three million Ukrainian inhabitants of so Ukraine killed by German occupation of whom more than half were Jews another 3 million or so inhabitants of so V you crane die as Red Army soldiers so there is no event of this scale in any other country in the world and the reason that we have it the reason that we see it or can see it the way that we can see this whole phenomenon of the neo Empire ire or the double neo Empire is to look at it from the point of view of Ukraine if you look at it from Berlin or from Moscow you don't see it no it's a terrible it's a terrible terrible price right and it just suggests to me that we should at least try to understand ok Third Point which is Europe and and the state so the first the first historical moment was the nation and the Empire and my point was Ukraine is Ukrainian failure to establish a nation state is actually typical in revealing second point was the new empires the new empires Europeans colonizing Europeans and that and my point was from the perspective of Ukraine the aspirations in the concept of neo Imperial policy comes clearest my third moment is Europe or the European Union and and the states okay so here again I'm going to repeat a very important tendon a very important connection in this argument which is that we have to be able to connect Empire in the sense of Europeans and the world with Europe itself because the whole deception in contemporary European history is to break that right the whole the way that Europeans tell history West Europeans mostly tell themselves history is to break off the Imperial history and to tell themselves a story of of national history which means that no one understands I think some of the most important things ok let me know try it now try to make this connection let me make it by way of let's say think about Stalingrad and think about bond right think about think about the siege of leningrad and think about v's baden think about think about think about partisan warfare in belarus and then think about nice nice journalists in hamburg you know it the images are very hard to hold together in the same in one's mind the it's very hard to put together the nice image that we have of the Federal Republic of Germany West Germany the history of West Germany right if I say that history of West Germany what do you think about right the the selection of associations that we have of the history of West Germany is very hard to get together with the selection of images we have with the Holocaust starvation seizures mass shootings in Eastern Europe the interesting thing is that it's the same people right it's the same men who achieve both things it's the same people there are more Nazis in the German Foreign Service in the late 1940s and there were during the Second World War it's I mean former Nazis of course at that point it's the same people it's the same history right and if we can establish that then we can start to think about the relationship between an empire and a state or what a state chooses to do I don't say any of this too harness the origins of the European Union but only to make it more realistic what's what's interesting and characteristic about the Germans is not that they lost the Second World War that's not so important what's important is that they lost a colonial war and they did so early and they knew it they knew it as of 1939 the German idea is Empire cannot be established in the broader world but we can establish it in Europe as of 1945 the conclusion is Empire cannot be established anywhere what shall we do what shall we do and the answer is beginning in 1951 we have a nice set of economic agreements with the French with the Italians with with the Luxembourg voix with the Belgians with the Dutch we have this thing called European integration the history of European integration is integrally linked to the history of empire it is not so closely linked to the history of the Second World War okay that's a European fable it's what Europeans tell themselves they say we learn is a good movie censored actually um we learned from the Second World War that war was a bad thing hence we started this process of European integration okay you must have heard this because it is the standard West European propaganda and it is not it has no relationship to reality at all if Europeans learn from the Second World War that war is a bad thing then the centres of world pacifism would be Russia yellows Ukraine and Israel right because those are the Europeans who suffered the most from the Second World War if he if suffering in war made you a pacifist in Europe then these would be the Centers of world pacifism I ask not for your particular judgments about Russia Belarus Israel and Ukraine but can we agree that they are not the Centers of world pacifism right they're not what Europeans learned okay and why is it so much fun to say we learned from the Second World War that war was a bad thing because the next move you make is and the stupid Americans didn't learn not right that's then that's why it feels so good like many things that are completely like you know that's that's why we accept things that are not true because they feel good so what Europeans actually learned was that losing colonial wars could not be done indefinitely the Germans were ahead of everyone else they lost the colonial war in a definitive way but as other Europeans the French the Dutch the Portuguese the Spanish the British lose their colonial wars they land in Europe right Europe is the salt the European Union the European the European project the European Community and the near opinion is the soft landing after Empire that's what it is but you don't say that to yourself because you never tell history to yourself what you say to yourself is the fable of the wise nation the fable of the wise nation says we were always a nation then we got to the Second World War and we learned that war was a bad thing and said we started economic cooperation that's the fable of the wise nation right it said there's no relationship to reality um and in the reason why I'm not just saying this to make me feel good and you feel bad because it doesn't make me feel that good I'm saying it because the important thing is that if we get this piece right we begin to see how the European Union matters and again how Ukraine is hyper typical because if the European Union is the safe place to land after the end of empire that gives us a different way of thinking about the West European state which is very important especially at this time of national populism because the whole premise of national populism is hey let's go back to the nation-state and interestingly no one ever responds we can't do that because we never had a nation-state right there are many reactions to national populism in the European Union but as far as I know that's not one of them and the reason why is that all Europeans right left center whatever are under the view that at some point back there there was a nation snake but there wasn't right and this is relevant because it means that the contour example Britain is very relevant to brexit there cannot be brexit if there's exit no Britain if there's Britain no exit but there won't be both there is no reason to think that you can go back to a British state when there's never been one there's been an empire and then there's been a collapsing Empire which was bailed out by an integration project but there has never been a Britain as such there's never been a France in this sense there was a French Empire which fell apart and which was rescued by European integration project there has never been a France in the sense of LexA gone right LexA gone this one he's alive rephrase that something which never happened so it has major implications for highly difficult populism in Western Europe but it also has major implications for how you think about Eastern Europe in Poland and here in Hungary and Russia there is also this idea that perhaps the 1930s were not such a not such a bad time and in Eastern Europe of course there were nation-states they just didn't last very long and if you look at it only from your when you view you don't draw a general lesson you say well we didn't last very long because the outsiders were evil okay um but if nobody lasts for very long it can't just be that the outsiders are evil it has to me that there's a systemic problem but East Europeans by not considering this in a systemic way or making a big mistake but I wanted to talk about Ukraine so so the EU is assault landing after a fire in two senses if you were a big maritime Empire the Dutch the Portuguese Spanish the British the French then the EU is where you land when you lose your maritime Empire if you were a Soviet periphery Lithuania Latvia Estonia Poland Hungary Czechoslovakia Bulgaria 2013 Croatia the last enlargement the EU is where you go for a soft landing after Empire in a different way after in somebody else's empire and the very interesting thing about the European Union I think I think it's most interesting achievement is that it manages to bring together post-imperial states of both kinds and in that sense the European Union is not really a settle into a second world war the European Union is to the first world war if anything because what the European Union does is it brings together the the doomed nation-states created after the first world war with the places that were still maritime empires after the first world war in other words if we look back a hundred years from today if we consider the European Union from the point of view of 1917 really 1918 what it has done is it has brought together the doomed nations days of Eastern Europe with the places that back then were still empires and seem like they would always be empires that's its historical achievement it's the peace settlement of the first world war that's what the European Union is which slowly brings me to Ukraine and how Ukraine is in particular if it is correct that the use of the purpose of the European Union is the rescue of the European state then the protests on the Maidan made perfect sense because the logic of the protests on the Maidan was something like Ukraine has a problem with the rule of law that is the essential problem of state building it could use a little help from the outside or more than a little we're hopeful that the association agreement of the European Union will be a push in the right direction which know that if you are right if you are Ukrainian I can juggle them if you if I did the if you were Ukrainian revolutionary your situation seems specific and understandably I understand that but it's part of a more general political trend the European Union rescued all of these states after it rescued them the nation's take it for granted and they keep telling themselves the fable of the wise nation the fable of the wise nation is that the nation was always there and it made good choices any story about how something is always there and made good choices should be suspicious by the way but but um I'm talking about relationships but you don't have to laugh at the joke um thank you for bailing me out Wolfgang Muller the the the the the point is that Ukraine is a specific example maybe an extreme one but of a general situation the EU also bailed out the French it also bailed out the German state that's what it did it made the European state possible so Ukrainians if the Ukrainians on the Maidan seemed like they were doing something exotic by campaign for the rule of law that is only because the rest of us had forgotten the entire point of the European integration process which I'm afraid is what happened so you see where this argument is going Ukraine in 2014 is also hyper typical because Ukraine faced greater costs or did more things for the same basic gains that everyone else was getting namely namely the rescue of of the state so I'll just I'll just say one word in conclusion and then and then we can talk um I said that I talked about revolutionary history and commemorative history in just history so the argument in this in his talk has been not about commemoration right I'm gonna try very hard in this year never to talk about commemoration because I think it does bad things to us and we talked about commemoration unless it's with art in which case it's fine it's it's not a work about our history is a science that can be accelerated right that's not what I'm talking about either I'm talking about history as a kind of horizontal process in which there are connections that we see if we look Horace on telly we look to the side rather than just looking down a national narrative I'm talking about how global history only makes sense if we're able to look both at Europe and Beyond Europe at the same time and that the division with the convenient division between Europe and Beyond Europe actually prevents us from seeing the things that are essential to Europe itself I think to Europe's great peril at this particular moment and my point is that Ukraine in particular is the place which allows us if we look at it closely to because it's so typical because it's so intensely typical is a place that allows us to see the general the general phenomenon whether it's nations are empires whether it's the creation of new empires in Europe or whether it's the European rescue of the nation-state that's been my case thank you for listening to it so if anyone has questions raise your hand and I can pass the mic my name is Artem I'm visiting fellow at IWM and I'm also a Ukrainian so I'd like to ask you a question about about in what sense you understand Ukraine modern I mean modern Ukraine as a nation-state is it enough to say Ukraine is not Russia is it enough to say Ukraine is Europe and to conclude that Ukraine is an National State in in in in in according to notion you use nation state thank you very much well I guess one of the points I was trying to make is that the discourse of the nation is a radically different from the reality of the state so the the when the state is achieved when the state is achieved a discourse of the nation appears which is radically at odds of the actual history of the nation this is something that I'm just convinced of the European Union is just an example of that when the European Union rescues the European states it also rescues the myth of the nation the only reason why Portuguese and polish schoolchildren and Estonian and Greek school children and even German and French school children can learn national history in state schools is because Europe rescued their states you see and so the the the the the fables that were able to tell ourselves go almost a hundred and eighty degrees against reality they don't acknowledge their own nests Cerie conditions so if you're asking me why you know at what point I would say that Ukraine is a state or and I was using nation-state to kind of let me go back and forth between stories of the nation and the political reality of the state I wasn't trying to say that like you know only ethnicities can make a state or anything like that um if you're asking me under what conditions Ukraine is a Ukraine would be a state um the the historical evidence is very strong I think that the European state depends upon some larger level of politics in practice not the Yuri right but de-facto that of course you know Ukraine was a state before Russian invaded it but the Russian invasion is harder to conceive of had Ukraine at that time been in some larger European unit of politics um you know you it's there's a reason why it's hard to think of war between Germany and France now even though for the previous six hundred years it had been totally normal so de facto I think the way that European states achieve statehood is by performing a kind of trick where they get more they give up sovereignty and get a lot more back right pull it like there's a magic trick with pooling of sovereignty so what Europeans complain about is oh we gave up sovereignty and now we have less that's what everyone says and it's it's interesting how similar that is to the period of glass toast like when Gorbachev said when Gorbachev you know made this mistake that communists always make when they try to reform and they allow free speech he he wouldn't with glass most everybody in the Soviet Union use glass knows to say we've got a secret that we just have to share and that is that we on the periphery were exploited the whole time by the center-right everybody said that including the Russians everybody always is of the view that your part is exploited by but by the center so I mean it's just a kind of historical rhyme but now in the European Union everyone is of the view that well yes we're of course we're giving more than we get and everyone is wrong literally everyone is wrong because what everyone is getting the sovereignty so you may be giving more money or less money or a little sovereignty or more but you're what you're getting is the state that goes totally totally unacknowledged so anyway I mean I think of the way I think of the your Ukrainian state is that European state needs a higher level of politics in that sense you know I think certain Ukrainians figured this out and I'm trying to learn from them rather than the other way around I can't define an abstract condition like not Russia or Europe right because it it's a historical process which is yeah I'm happy when the conversation goes to Finland because no because I think it's I think I think you're right I think it's an exception I think it's an anomaly I mean there are other ones like Iceland you know there there are exceptions to this but my the core of my argument is that almost all of the new nation-states veil which is a pretty I mean it's a pretty interesting general rule that we're we don't notice because of the national history there's a particularly with Iranian tragedy or Polish tragedy or what-have-you but we don't usually say huh the Western peace settlement was to establish nation-states and every single new nation-state that we helped to establish was killed within two decades that's you know we don't like to think of it that way but that's what happened but there are exceptions I point and the second part of my claim is that all of the major maritime empires Lou then joined the European Union which I also think is interesting I mean how it isn't it interesting that you know there are various kinds of arguments about that at the time but they all did it and I also find it interesting that Britain can only leave I but which I don't things gonna happen by the way but Britain can only consider leaving after it no longer remembers it was to be an empire when you're losing the Empire you know perfectly well that you need a huge trade zone right because you're used to having one once you've been in the ER that the interesting thing about the European Union is that it motivates our strongest human capacity which is the capacity to take things for granted my name is Annika vitamin I work for the European Union not anymore on Eastern Europe or Western Balkans or anything I'm working on Iran which is bad enough but assuming I would go back to Eastern Europe and maybe Ukraine now your theory that you just played basically that the state the state cannot be a state without the overarching umbrella somehow I think that is it's an interesting point and might be true I have to think about it more and maybe the Ukrainians in 2004 and 2014 felt this and that's why they demonstrated to be closely associated or be a member of the EU however the EU didn't really react in the way they maybe should have reacted so in a situation where there was no willingness on the EU side to invite them and allow them to be a sovereign state inside the European Union in such a situation where we have on the eastern to the east of Ukraine a country that has a different agenda now what is your advice for for us for the you I mean you're coming awfully fast from I mean you're saying okay you have this historical analysis now solve the world's problems whereas yeah yeah whereas some right or as I mean I'll comment on that but I just I want to say that much as it's enjoyable to comment on contemporary things I think it's really important to actually have a kind of orderly notion of the past right because I mean let's say that I'm actually correct and I think I am neither did in a way these are just simple empirical claims the interwar nation-states didn't make it the maritime empires and I lost their maritime empires join Europe right I'm just I'm telling the story in a very different way but the empirical claims are not really controversial I knew and I you know when when I give this talk just to West Europeans and I say the thing about how you never had a nation estate I always give them 15 seconds to think about it like I just stopped because that's how long it takes for to realize oh yeah we I actually never had a nation state but it's interesting that you all I mean that West Europeans think that they did until you actually confront the proposition directly you know I was yeah I did this in London and I'd you know i did the 15 seconds and they were like oh yeah right because they never did but they all think that they did and that and that i'm trying to say like that itself has political significance and i think you know the most that historians can really do or artists actually or all of us who are trying to like show things to pursue truth I'll say it naively the thing that we can sometimes do is make certain political mistakes less likely so you say you know Europe didn't react to you crying the way that it the way that it should have I mean I just I personally think that if Europeans had had a different understanding of how the European Union came about they would have been more sympathetic and that's that's as far as I can that's it probably more helpful and that's as far as I can really go because the the way the the way that the Europeans reacted to Ukraine displayed no understanding I think of how their own of how their own union came about right the European Union has a way of consuming its own history as a way of only thinking about the future of telling a certain story and then the nations the member states are all locked into national histories right there isn't Europe I mean this is there isn't really European history it's not taught in schools right I mean in America European history is a legend like because it's the thing that American Historians I'm being recorded [Music] can't do sorry like for us like European history is this thing it's this challenge you know Americans have this chip on about Europe we've got to learn the French and figure out the Enlightenment and the Renaissance and the Italian but in Europe there is no such thing you're not taught European history in schools really I mean no not that well it's different from country to country Poland's actually better than a lot of countries but and and then you know which European historians write like simple accessible histories of Europe you know there aren't really that many of them yeah it's another one like you can think for 15 seconds there just aren't that many so there isn't European history and that in that sense it's that there's this there's a story of the future of ever closer Union and then there there's they're these fables of the past which are basically incoherent and then there's this missing ground that I'm just I'm the my modest claim is that if that more that missing ground were full then some of the politics would would take care of itself but okay I will say this about about the European Union which is that I think the European Union goes forward or it disappears the logic of the European Union is the logic of rescuing States once it stops rescuing States it will also stop rescuing the states that are its members right either goes forward or doesn't exist Dardis McNamee Metropole I learned something very important from you and your earlier book about the red prince couldn't gain from God because there you spell out the detailed planning that the Habsburgs made in the years approaching the end of World War one where they had a system of little kingdoms that they were going to set up as subsets of the Empire of the Habsburg Empire and that would have been a confederation of some sort formed to be decided along the lines of Hungary maybe or related and in parallel to that you sort of have Churchill's comments in his memoirs about how the taking a part of the austro-hungarian Empire was the cardinal tragedy at the end of World War one I'm just interested and then just one small tidbit which was that Bob's burger on his 95th birthday told an assembled group in Vienna when he was asked about how he felt about the expansion of the EU he said well that's what we had in mind all along and with all those things in mind what the parallels that you must understand much better than the rest of us between that plan that they had and what we now have and what implications there may be for how we should understand the problems were going to be facing in view of that history I'll just I'll say too I don't want to get I don't want to get down into the details of Archduke Karl Stefan and how he was raising his children to be members of different nations although it is I mean it is it is fascinating but what it's a it's an example of the interesting proposition that Empire and nation can go together and when I look at the work of my Habsburg colleagues right whether it's Peter you know the brilliant Peter Jetsons recent synthetic history the Habsburg monarchy which summarizes the work of people like like Tara Zara and Ben Fromer and Eagle glass Haim Jeremy King a bunch of other great historians of the Hapsburgs in the post Habsburg period though the the whole way that the field has tilted has been to say that the Habsburg Empire was actually pretty functional by the standards of its time and doing a pretty good job with the National question before the great war that's the way that the field has basically gone as as the historians of the field I think of gotten more sophisticated and I find that really interesting because the the lesson that many of us in the West drew from the First World War was something like nations and empires can't go together and that you know the British and the Americans and the French were doing something Liberatore by wiping the Habsburg monarchy off the face of the earth because it was a prison house of nations and of course things were going to go better after that and then we don't really come to grips with I mean some of the consequences of that we don't you know we don't like to think well okay we had we had we had Wilson and self-determination and then none of those states survived for more than two decades and they were all either destroyed or they became Nazi allies or they became Nazi allies and then Soviet satellites within a few years we don't face it that way right we throw the Cold War's about things Soviet is a bad thing the Nazis are bad but we don't think well our creations you know collapsed amidst that we don't tell the story that way and so it's not that you know I don't want to make this opposition between like bad France and America and a good Habsburg monarchy but I do think there's something like a Republican paradigm I don't mean Republicans are political party I mean like Republican in the sense of republics where the French and the Americans considering themselves as republics as secular as modern define the Hapsburgs as being backwards and doomed to die right the so the war was not the war was just destiny it wasn't action by people or by us it was just it was just destiny and yet you know when you know when Wilson gave his famous speech about the fourteen points as you'll probably know or be able to deduce there were an you know obviously there were no women but there were no blacks we had already like the the Jim Crow and and Jim Crow had already proceeded so far and the southern states had already cooked their electoral processes to such an extent that there were no blacks in the US House of Representatives and yet there we were telling that the Hapsburgs were so discriminatory to their nationalities right so there is something strange about the way we've received the second over the first world war and it's almost as though in order to justify ourselves we have to say empires and nations can't go together and then we forget all the interesting ways that the hapsburgs we're trying to make them go the way you mentioned is one but there were others there were all kinds of legal reforms there were all kinds of efforts at cultural toleration much of the Austrian Left unohana and bow WA were thinking about ways to have some kind of nationally just Empire so that whole tradition was what it was was cast away now it's not just like the EU you know of course of course Altaf own Habsburg is exaggerating a little bit but but there is something about the need for two levels of politics where you know where what happens you know some things happen some things happen in one place and some things happen in another place and how that's strengthening rather than rather than weakening you can see that as a kind of lesson of the of the Habsburg monarchy which again by world standards in 1914 was a pretty wealthy country with with with economic growth and was rather increasing then [Music] [Music] [Music] that's a really good question because on my own premises no one is outside the argument right everyone has to be inside the argument in one form or another so I take it the question is about you're talking about the contemporary Russian Federation yeah so the contemporary Russian Federation is I think the state whose actions make all of this clearer I mean you can I talk is to talk about Ukraine but one could give a very similar lecture about Russia where instead of protests on the Maidan you would end up by talking about the formulation of Eurasia as a policy in in 2000 in 2013 where the what what the Eurasian policy reveals I think is that the leaders of the Russian Federation had understood uniquely that they were a former Empire which was not going to find a soft landing in Europe now we can debate about whose fault that is right we can say the Europeans could have been more sophisticated in how they approached Moscow you know we can say that the Russians should have been more realistic about what integration means you know I as I see it you know in different ways Putin and Yanukovych had this period in their careers where for years they told themselves you could have it both ways you know you could you could both be a kind of oligarchical clan leader and you could move your country to Europe there's a very interesting editorial that Putin wrote I think it was four I developed a German newspaper thing about in 2010 where he basically says that he says let's have it both ways we can't quite make Russia like Europe the way that you expect but underhand we're like we're a really important country so why don't we just integrate without Russia doing any of the things that are necessary to integrate he put in a slightly different way but that was the idea right and that's in a way like that's the kind of turning point because if we think about the scheme in terms of Russia Russia is the only POTUS that is the first European post-imperial state to actively reject Europe as a soft landing that's what's for me that's what's historically interesting about the current Putin presidency is that if you read if you there were three important articles that mr. Putin wrote one in late 2011 and then two in early 2012 where he actually sketches this out explicitly where he says that we no longer think that Europe as a is a goal we're not going to try to reform ourselves according to European models we're going to redefine integration not as the rule of law but integration as civilization this is the same time he starts talking about Russia as a civilization state and what's meant by civilization is not achievement you know not meeting the standards of the European Union but just achieve it's not doing anymore it's just it's being it's it's a kind of ineffable notion of like of Russian virtue which in practice you know means heterosexuality or something but the idea is that we're not going to do things because integration isn't about achievement integration is about virtue and you know he says this very explicitly and then interestingly at the end of the third article he that he ends the third article with this war cry about Ukraine where he says and not everyone understands that Ukraine is part of the same civilization that I'm talking about and anyone who doesn't understand that you know let them know that we will never be separated Ukrainian Russia which I you know I thought was pretty interesting at the time and I think turned out to be pretty important so the way to understand as I see it Russia Ukraine and Europe is to understand Russia in Europe that the war on Ukraine is just a part of a larger anti-european turn because and this is all very logical if you're if you're Moscow and you've drawn the conclusion that you can't join Europe then it follows immediately from that it's the next heartbeat that Europe can't be allowed to exist in its present form if you're rescues other nation states so that they are richer and freer than your state that cannot be allowed to continue so the moment that you realize Europe it's the same thing I said in response the question about about Ukraine the moment that you realize you can't join Europe is also the moment you have to do away with Europe and so it's it's not as you know as Russians used to say it's no accident that that you then get in 2013 the the the turn against Europe or Europe is defined as decadent the the conference organized by Malafaia for the fall NASA now comes and they say the problem with the problem with Europe is it's decadent is homosexuality everything is redefined in terms of values rather in terms of of achievement and then you know likewise again going back to you know when you when you see Russia going into Ukraine or when you see that when you follow the Russian media coverage of the Maidan which I did quite closely the way that what they did with them ID on was that they they said this is an example of Western decadence on the first day of the Maidan when there were only students protested on the first day day one of Russian media coverage talked about a homosexual crisis in Ukraine day one right it was just students on the street at that point they were already talking about a homosexual crisis in Ukraine and it just goes on like that through November and December it gets more colorful as they have more time to think of stuff but they so it Ukraine is phrased in terms in these civilizational terms and the civilizational terms are underfunded about how the European Union has no right to exist so it's for me it's all one story the interesting so when I say that what's interesting about Ukrainians is in the protestors on the Maidan understood history in roughly the same way that I do you see that's also true about Russians in the Kremlin they also understand history more or less the same way I do they're just in a very different position and they have different instruments of power and they're deploying them in these ways right they understand that Europe either rescue States or it doesn't exist at all they understand that I think that's axiomatic to them if you're Europe not rescuing Ukraine is the same thing as Europe not existing and the policy against Ukraine is the same as the policy against against Europe it's all it's all one thing in this game I'm not a historian a Missouri scholar that's very modest pressure on my question is this you mentioned that for state to survive it needs a higher level of politics and I I grasp that I understand that as far as Eastern Europe is concerned as far as the Ukraine is concerned but I'm wondering certainly Britain and France had a high level of politics could they not have survived states without being rescued by Europe by the you idea but the important thing in your question has already been answered by your question which is that we've known I mean the important you've shifted to a counterfactual which for me is the important thing right so we've already agreed that that's not what happened and that is a huge advance over the consensus understanding of European history the consensus understanding of European history is what I call the fable of the wise nation where there really were nations and they made choices you're I'm just I know I'm sorry I'm belaboring your questioned yeah I know you understand you're in question I'm just trying to suggest why it's important what you're saying is maybe they could have right it's a it's a conditional it's a counterfactual and so my answer is going to be extremely conservative right because actually my whole argument my whole argument has been very very conservative it straight so try to stay very close to the ground of what the facts actually as opposed to like the narrative gravitation which makes them otherwise than than they seem and the facts as they are are that the thing called France and the thing called Britain did survive inside the European Union right and I so therefore for me I can't I'm not going to answer your question definitively but therefore for me the burden I'll just put it this way the burden of proof was upon those who would like to show that Britain and France could survive without some higher level of politics and if we can go that far going back to your question about like how what Europeans should do today that makes the whole brexit debate totally or would have made the whole brexit debate totally different because the people who are doing for brexit did not feel burden exists as a state nobody felt that way everyone on both sides the argument assume that this one does exist as a nation-state but I think you know it once we see history correctly then the burden of proof is on you to show that you could do it without everyone else and I think that's a useful I think word of caution also you know if your Warsaw or Budapest and you think that there's no way that the European Union can leave you which i think is not true at all okay so as massive the clock and holder of the microphone I am going to jump in my name is Kate younger I'm the research associate with the Ukraine and European dialogue program here a bit of entertainment and also enlightening insight [Applause] thank you we're going to shift gears ever so slightly to the artistic aspect of our program and before I hand the microphone over to dr. akansha I'd just like to say that you should have on your seat a little flyer that lists the film screenings that are going to be taking place on Sunday and then again on Wednesday you are very very warmly welcome to join us for those it's going to be a great program on Wednesday in particular these are films that have never been screened in Austria before and so we'd be very excited to have you join us for those the last thing I would like to say is that if constantine's now wets your appetite for more on Monday even kostenko will be giving a seminar at 4:00 p.m. here in the library on similar subject and it's a great opportunity to hear from the director of the division for Center who were really honored to have here so thank you and now I will pass it over to Constantine indifference to Professor Schneider I hear very very short time and I just want to introduce our project you know in a sense a few years ago I could say that Ukraine it's a country without history now it's a country with history but still the country without art history there are reasons for this you know we are starting to research the history of Ukrainian avant-garde Ukrainian modernism Ukrainian art of the first half of the 20th century on the uran last years it's very understandable because indifference to Russia we lost probably 40 50 years of research of the modernist tradition because Ukrainian modernism fail was facing two burdens during the Soviet Union it was treated as formalism but Russian avant-garde was treated as formalism to however since the 60s in Russia researchers were finding tweaks an excuse is talking about our keys devoted to the revolution and try to partly rehabilitate some of them in Ukraine unfortunately this bargain had another side they were not only formally they were treated as a bourgeois nationalist because of this research of Ukrainian our tradition of the 20 societies started basically only after the independence and our knowledge still is very very limited we try to make a little exhibition it's probably let's say the first project of this type on Ukrainian film poster if Russian film poster of the same period is perfectly known collected sold the boat represented in the biggest Museum of Europe Ukrainian film posters is by - the illness and succeeded to publish the first and the only book on Ukrainian film poster of the period many of these artists are not known to you they were not even known to me despite I am dealing with art history for quite a long time an especially focused on Ukrainian art history in some cases no even the first names of the artists you know like for example in again of you know his initial a and there is no one document so far found mentioned in his first name it's a very interesting material because it's a really developed culture of graphic design especially developed during late 1920s and during 1930 because after this it's basically interrupted like Ukrainian film culture in general of course it's provocative and Croatian and provoking very often fires debates for example in the film presentation which we organ is organizing in Belvedere 21 house we're showing films by de Guevara tub and Kaufman and of course our Russian colleagues will say no no no no it's not Ukrainian avant-garde it's Russian avant-garde so we were talking about the guevara term who was born not in Russia not in Ukraine let's say in the graduates of Poland it's very difficult to find these labels and plus to this he was real avant-garde film director and quite internationalist but why we count in this is Ukrainian film culture these people came to key-in 28 29 1913 practically in the same very time when kazimir Malevich found refuge in the kiev Art Institute when the Merton had to go to Ukraine to teach in the same art institute only because of one reason censorship in Ukraine was much softer then in Russian Federation what was possible in Kiev was already impossible in Moscow or Leningrad so Ukraine is becoming the last with huge for avant-garde a last for very very short time this time was emitted basically by three years because after nineteen Russians begin and Ukrainian avant-garde culture was basically destroyed this severity which was not even typical for repressions in Russia because multi Rollag of Ukrainian art is basically endless quantities of artists poets film directors who basically shoot during the repressions is stunning so what we introducing to you with film poster is the first teaser I really hope that research will be continued I really hope that documents will be found and the practice of the branch Art Center is proof unbelievable surprises unbelievable discoveries are possible even today I don't want to mention the famous quote from bull Gockel which became quite stereotypical by it now the mark ribs don't burn the nose it manuscripts burn and burn very well but sometimes surprises awaken for us for example the Branca film centre succeeded to find and we have to be grateful to a one pancake who was leading this operation they disappear with film as if campaign for more than 50 years was counted as a lot nobody believes that it's exist we knew only few film stills which were published in newspapers but the materials were found in Ukrainian archives the film was restored this year was the premiere of this film in London and next week it will be shown for the first time in Austria which will be continental premiere of the film of Kaufman which was counted disappear it so we still have hope that something could be possible to find want to repeat that it's a very very long road and many many scenes have to be done enjoy the exhibition look at the poster some of these artists are artists of high international quality like for example Ibrahim the Blitz key there are artists with unbelievable personal stories it's very interesting material but again in the first efforts to make this materials public and long glog of work is awaiting for us thank you very much [Applause] the big green it them and there's wine and cheese in the cab but show real posters in this building we have represents but we try to that make them as realistic as possible [Applause] [Music]

Channel: IWMVienna

Views: 30,636

Rating: 4.6595745 out of 5

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Id: _Glhke6e2Io

Length: 90min 42sec (5442 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 16 2017