FW: Kundera article (cont.)

[Sergey Glebov]

Dear Alexandra,

Eurasianists would actually argue otherwise: they would say Russia-Eurasia
completely lacked Western notions of civilizing mission and was an organic
unity of Slavic and "Turanian" elements. In contrast, most Russian
historical writing, with minor exceptions, represented Russia as an outpost
of Christian Europe against Asia. Such was the famous view of Kliuchevsky,
for example: Muscovy created a powerful state, "thus saving the European
culture from the strikes by the Tatars. In this way we became the
arrière-garde of Europe, we guarded the rear of European civilization. But
the guard’s service is often forgotten, especially when it is well-done..." 
The Eurasianists, in fact, would say something similar to what Kundera
spelled out: there is a historical border between the Western Slavs and the
Eastern ones. It's actually interesting that Roman Jakobson referred to the
Czechs loosing "miagkost' soglasnykh" under the German influence as a sign
of their difference (recalling Jan Hus!) in his book on the Eurasian
language union. 

I fully subscribe to Andrey Scherbenok's view. What strikes me is how
essentialist is Kundera's perception of "East" and "West" and how much his
rhetoric of orientalizing the Russians (and by default Ukrainians and
Belarusians, I suppose) reminds one of a classic WestCiv narrative of 50
years ago or so.   
Having said that, I also do not see any point in claiming that there indeed
exists any common "Slavic culture." But there is also no point in denying
that Central AND Eastern Europe shared a lot of historical experiences:
belated modernization, late survival of serfdom, belonging to multiethnic
and dynastic empires of the Habsburgs, the Hohenzollerns, the Romanovs and
the Ottomans, often "incomplete" social structure of national movements,
common experiences of highly authoritarian regimes in the interwar period
(with the single exception of Czechoslovakia), and the most recent
experiences of Soviet-style Communism. Some of these are definitely tragic
historical experiences, to say the least, but it is naïve to deny them a
commonality in CEE... 

My apologies for this historical intervention into a philological and
linguistic debate.

Kind regards,

Sergey Glebov

-----Original Message-----
From: Alexandra Smith [mailto:Alexandra.Smith at ED.AC.UK] 
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 11:17 AM
Subject: Re: Kundera article (cont.)

Quoting Andrey Shcherbenok <avs2120 at COLUMBIA.EDU>:

Russia more often than not perceived
> itself as the essentially Western country protecting Europe from the
attacks
> of Mongolian hordes and exporting European civilization to Central Asia et
> al.

- Andrey,

My impression is that the view expressed above represents only a  
certain group of Russian intellectuals advocating Eurasian ideas...
I also think that Kundera's previously expressed views on European  
poetry and European novel help to understand his search for new  
identity conveyed in his recently published article... And if we view  
him as postmodern author, we could detect some polemical touches with  
Masaryk who was part of the modernist paradigm... In the end of the  
day, any writer of significance wants to mould his or her image in  
accordance with his/her creative needs... It seems to me that in this  
particular article Kundera fashions himself in the clothes of  
anti-Solzhenitsyn and/or anti-Havel...since Havel stressed the point  
that living in truth should be considered as integral part of the  
Czech literary tradition...perhaps, Kundera views his own works  in  
metanarrative terms?

All best,
Alexandra


=====================================
Alexandra Smith (PhD, University of London)
Lecturer in Russian
School of European Languages and Cultures
The University of Edinburgh
David Hume Tower
George Square
Edinburgh EX8 9JX
UK

tel. +44-(0)131-511381
fax: +44- (0) 650-3604
e-mail: Alexandra.Smith at ed.ac.uk

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