No congratulations

No congratulations
Editor's Column


Date of publication: September 19, 2001

We continue the topic that circumstances imposed on us. After all, it's not every day that a new era begins. I would like to put aside, if possible, the questions “Who is to blame?” and "What should I do?" - not into the shadows, but into the background, subordinating them to the main question: “What happened?” Perhaps the 21st century has begun (in the cultural sense). Perhaps the now banal expansion of Islam (or some heretical version of it) continues. But maybe this is an action of European anti-globalists? Then there is no fundamental difference between the terrorist attack, the riot in Genoa, a similar riot in Paris in 1968, the first festival in Woodstock, the “Beer Hall Putsch” in Germany and all Russian revolutions: the 20th century “safely” continues.

A new era always begins with a disaster, so congratulations (“Happy new century!”) are never appropriate. If we talk about Europe, then the First European Epoch began with the Great Migration of Peoples: crowds of savages descended on the world of “antiquity,” already undermined by Christianity and natural old age. The transition to the Second Age began with the Reformation and was “varnished” by bourgeois revolutions. The onset of the Third Age was marked by the sinking of the Titanic and the First World War. It is a disaster that leads to massive changes in the perception of the world... One can, however, say that because of these changes, disasters arise. One way or another, a catastrophe is a necessary milestone, and the catastrophe is not only “quantitative”, but also qualitative. When a chemical plant blew up in Bhopal and killed many Indians, no one thought of the “Apocalypse.” Likewise, our Chernobyl, and even our house explosions, did not evoke such thoughts. America is another matter: after all, it is not only the Americans themselves who consider their country the center of the world. This opinion is shared today by literally everyone, including those suicide bombers who were on the ill-fated planes. There are different ways of assessing the fact that today’s world revolves (was spinning?) around America. Pluralism of assessments does not in any way affect the inviolability of the fact itself.

And in order to answer the question whether the 21st century has arrived, we must first understand how we now, Europeans, residents of the Middle East, residents of the Far East, relate to America and Americans? With gloating? Regretfully? With fear (for America or in front of it)? Then the new century had not yet arrived. When everyone suddenly doesn’t give a damn about America - when we, feeling obvious pity for the dead people, cannot answer the question of whether we feel sorry for America as a kind of virtual, ideological whole - then it will be possible to state the advent of a new era.

Kirill Yakimets