Suicide of Europe

Arnold Toynbee in memoirs, written already in the 60s, in a completely different world, recalling youth-the first, it seems, summer spent after the university, talked about how he went on a trip to Europe-where a ferry, where on foot, where the third grade of train. This was immediately before the First World War. And Toynbee writes - even when the EEC developed in full and were already fashionable discussions on the topic of “European unity” - that those who did not live before 1914 do not know that Europe was already unified - precisely before the world war.

Of course, “unity” is always “unity for someone”: so, saying that “the world has become one”, in this world we do not place any forgotten corners that do not need to be sought especially far away and in exotic places-some Russian village is quite suitable-and we mean that it has become relatively “one” for us, quickly enough to realize this change. So the “unity of Europe” was a unity for the highest part of the middle class - but for it it meant the opportunity to wander along it, in principle, without documents - the supervision was vigilant to “suspicious” and “lower classes”, trying to tie them to the place, but the “decent” man could not take care of this (with the exception of the Russian Empire - it is enough to recall the numerous memes of foreigners about the intersection of the Russian border, Where they were struck by the inspection and the requirement of documents). The state - who was afraid of Spencer, in apocalyptic tones describing the government authority, under various pretexts of climbing into more and more spheres of human life - from education to health care - it was almost absent in our modern opinion: even information about where and who was born, it (with the exception of France) continued to receive the parishes, and because the possibilities were also reliable. There were no possibilities to find out about the income level of their citizens in order to collect the due percentage to the treasury. A single currency, which many of the post-war Europeans have been dreaming of for a long time-and which now looks no longer so unambiguous-attractive idea-existed in practice, because the gold standard has acted-and the British traveler, if he did not want to contact banking offices, should only take the tickets of the English bank, but stock up on the Guineas. True, the experiences associated with the exchange rate could partially cause some concern - for the reason that some countries adhered to the gold and other silver, and the others were confident in the fidelity of the bimetallic standard, the price ratio of two precious metals hesitated - however, with such leisurely that we can hardly evaluate their anxiety.

The Earth was still considered the most reliable investment of money-and, which, perhaps more importantly, remained very significant in terms of acquiring social prestige. A person who achieved strong success was supposed to be a landowner: the power was motionless, moving from place to place was the lot of the lower. In this respect, industrial civilization left many things unchanged - as Sigmund Bauman expressively resembles, it is enough to recall the appearance of factories and factories at the beginning of the 20th century: the owner erected them, holding knightly castles in his head, spent on architecture and decor, nearby with the factory administration and his mansion, and often in the same building. He grew into the ground - and thought of himself with a “factory baron”, “knight of capital” - acquiring his fortification, around which they were placed - how in the old days they were molded to the castle of the construction of the peasants - the dwellings of his workers, who could not count on such durability.

If the new aristocracy imitated the old one, then the old one has not gone anywhere - she showed a sufficient ability to learn change, maintaining her position: not so much she “fell” as others grew faster. Everyone remembers the literature textbook stories about how the daughters of the count went beyond the bankers, and the sons of the dukes married the daughters of the manufacturers-but this is precisely demonstrating the “good shape” in which the old aristocracy was met by the 20th century, finding herself capable of importing into themselves and transforming more and more generations of “successful” people, including them into existing networks and into existing networks and into existing networks and in existing networks and hierarchy and thereby turning possible opponents into allies or those who hope to become them over time. This aristocracy almost most of all made Europe really unified - the United Kingdom, France (first the empire and then the republic), the Russian, German and Austro -Hungarian empires - all these and other, relatively small, political entities could be in the most difficult relations with each other, but their aristocracy were not only “national” or “imperial” - first of all they were a single European Aristocracy, associated with kinship, property, neighborhood, general culture - a way to spend time and see the world.

The world of Europe until 1914 was monarchical-only France stood out against this background, but they reconciled with it and got used to it-after all the shocks from 1789, the neighbors accepted the “French Republic” without delight, but with understanding, as a strange exception, but which it should be tolerated, since it managed to somehow achieve the inner world in an infinitely disturbing country. Actually, the aristocracy can live without a monarchy, but no monarchy without aristocracy - no, and the “good health” of the European aristocracy demonstrates a good position of the monarchies - more or less they managed to integrate into the changing world, increasing more and more from momentary political activity (providing it with the parties and clicks) and taking the role of an arbiter (the strength of which, in addition to the other,, in addition to the other. It was provided with traditional control over the army).

All this Europe was aware of itself as a single world - separating itself from the rest of the space - the world where international law acts, the subjects of which are individual powers. Other lands are an object, it can be done with it that it is possible and desirable, but the Contracting parties are European powers: how can you or cannot be done with China or what Russia may require from Turkey in 1878 - it was determined not only and not so much in negotiations with China or Turkey, but by the European powers among themselves - as a “family concert” and there was that “united Europe” where everyone was supposed to be “united”, where everyone was supposed to be. To take into account the other, and although the war was preserved as Ultima Ratio, but this argument was decisive in a specific dispute - it was a presumption that the very existence of another was not subject to question. True, this world began to collapse until 1914-not only through the entry of the North American states into affairs, which were previously “exclusively European”, but also through the erosion of the circle of the one who is the subject-and through the less clarity, which is the “right war” (as Karl Schmitt wrote, the struggle against the “war as such”, the moral demand to recognize the unlawful war, leads to the fact that the war loses that the war loses that the war loses that the war loses that the war is losing The enemy is no longer right, and, therefore, on the one hand, everything is allowed against him - and, on the other, there is no more war - there are “police operations”, “measures to protect order”, etc.). But the fact that progresses went in the foundation of the European world - it became obvious only many years later, when the building has already collapsed.

1914 and became this collapse, a date, after which every European could rightfully say that “the world will never be the same”: it was enough to compare the world in 1914 and in 1918 - over the four years of the war, there were no three European empires (or four, if the port, for which there are a lot of convincing arguments), the former half -season society began, the era of ideologies began. Post Factum most of all I would like to assume the “inevitability of a disaster” - already because asserting the “logic” of what happened, we thereby returning the mind to history and thereby gaining at least the peace of “understanding”. But, perhaps, the irony of history is that the chain of accidents and by no means necessary for the disaster of 1914-from the Sarajevsky shot and ending with a misunderstanding of the positions of each side in the triangle of Vienna-Berlin-Petersburg. The European world before the disaster was fragile - in this sense we can agree with the “logical” of what happened, since accidents accumulated, and the system was not able to cope with them - as a very elderly person whose death was an ordinary cold, it is difficult to say that his death was accidental, although there was no need for a cold. But the story is still not biology-and, having passed the 1914 fork well, the European world was by no means doomed to get a world on a year or two later-it changed and changed significantly differently than the direction that received after the summer of 1914.

The twentieth century, which began in 1914, and which could hardly be considered the end of the and now, was obsessed with the desire to “restore order”, “return” or “rediscover the norm”, the memory of which supplied the remaining in the past - but real as a memory - the 19th century.