Europe and Russia. History Repeats Itself

This is not necessarily due to Divine Providence, as Giambattista Vico suggested three hundred years ago. But the Neapolitan philosopher’s intuition about the Courses and Recourses of History encourages us not to think of our present as necessarily original or unique. Take the current relationship between the West and Russia. Has there ever been so much distrust associated with the risk of conflict? Of course, and immediately the Cold War comes to mind. But it’s a small step back in time. It is far more intriguing to go back, say, two centuries. We get right into shocking European events centered over a couple decades: The French Revolution, the libertine unrest emanating from it, and then Napoleon’s military defeats, his exile, the Cossacks in Paris, the Restoration…

After the victorious tsar passed under the Arc de Triomphe, it took Chateaubriand’s diplomatic prudence to restore relations between France and Russia in a logic that today we would define as win-win. The establishment of contacts began during the Congress of Verona in autumn of 1822, where the authorities of the time set the principles to be respected and observed in a phase aimed at thwarting any new revolutionary aspirations.

In this context, admiration for all things Russian exploded in Paris. Study trips to and from St. Petersburg have increased. Trade missions followed. In cultural salons, innovations from this cold and distant world were triumphantly celebrated. The French historian Pierre Nora recalls that the key word exchanged between nobles and intellectuals at the French court when talking about Russia was “progress.” The January 1825 encyclopedic Review states that “in Russia, not only the number of inhabitants, but also their wealth, their knowledge, their moral feelings, as well as their rights are growing with astonishing pace.”

In the “spirit of Verona,” Paris and St. Petersburg found themselves side by side rather than against each other. As was the case with the French expedition to Algeria in the early summer of 1830, encouraged by the tsar.

Three weeks later, things started to change again. The glorious revolutionary days of late July blew out the big picture. France is shocked again. The liberal desire of the bourgeoisie to undermine the power of the aristocracy becomes contagious. Belgium, Germany, Italy: where the squares aren’t in flames, revolutionary fires are lit. In Poland, the insurgency wave wants to turn into a war of liberation. From Russia. Nationalist inspiration in Warsaw is combined with statements against the principles of the Holy Alliance. The uprisings of the Second French Revolution set a precedent, and France, with its nobility and intellectuals, sided with the troops fighting against the tsarist soldiers.

“Nothing can explain the excessive enthusiasm, with which the Polish uprising was greeted, the delirium of militant solidarity with ‘Northern France,’ with which the French felt bound by centuries of friendship.” Brilliant articles, parliamentary storms, streams of pamphlets, oratorical avalanches: ‘War to the Russians! Death to the Russians!’” Nora, historian of the French Academy, brings together elements of the new attitude toward Russia in chronological order. “All the arguments put forward yesterday by the aristocracy in its defense, that is, historical traditions and political attachments, taste for culture and common religion, suddenly all of liberal France is using them to justify its friendship with Poland. The Polish crisis of 1831 forced the French public opinion to choose between Poland and Russia as two incompatible value systems. Moreover, the Poles were so clever that they gave their struggle a symbolic and sacral character.” Also: “A stream of exiles was able to confirm the choice of sudden passion. Their activities and propaganda took advantage of French resentment and gave their claims the authority of inalienable rights, their odyssey the aura of martyrdom, and the concessions of the French government the appearance of scandalous treachery. Until about 1835, the agenda will contain nothing but stories of fugitives from Siberia, the cruelty of the Cossacks, and bravura articles on the diplomacy of the whip.”

Two centuries later, without sacrificing context, it will become possible to appreciate the interesting analogies that put Putin in the place of Nicholas I and Ukraine in the role of Poland. Also interesting is the time period separating us from writing a historical analysis of Nora: half a century. Giscard d’Estaing was at the Elysee Palace, Brezhnev was in the Kremlin. Just for the record.

Nora in the mid-seventies quoted King Louis-Philippe’s ambassador, Baron de Bourgoin, regarding those whom the Anglo-Saxons call opinion-makers: “The skill of our writers makes us masters of European opinion.” It was August 1830.

Today it’s the turn of another distinguished historian, this time American John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. Hillary Clinton called Tucker Carlson a “useful idiot” and Putin a liar after the interview he gave in the Kremlin on an exclusive basis to the American journalist formerly of Fox News. And here’s Mearsheimer’s comment: “There is so much Russophobia and so much hysteria about Putin that just the thought of Tucker Carlson interviewing Vladimir Putin drives a lot of people crazy and makes them act stupid. And that’s what happened to Hillary Clinton.”