The conflict between the NATO alliance, led by the United States, and the Warsaw Pact, headed by the Soviet Union, has by and large been discussed in ideological, economic, political and military terms. It had seldom been debated in religious and cultural, that is, civilizational terms.
This nature of the debate is essentially the product of the almost universal belief that the European man’s life and outlook have become increasingly secularised since the beginning of the renaissance in the 16th century, and more especially since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 18th century, that ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism, humanism, socialism, Fascism and Marxism of different varieties have replaced God for him and that instead of seeking the kingdom of God within or in heaven, he is seeking to establish it on earth.
There is merit in this proposition. The European man’s conduct at the conscious level is largely governed by secular considerations even in Roman Catholic countries where the hold of the church remain stronger than elsewhere in view of the strength of its organisation and the continuity of its tradition. But the past can never be completely discarded. Even if it does not erupt as it has in the case of Muslims all over the world, it continues to inform and influence our lives. Indeed it does not erupt mainly, if not only, in cases where its influence is not deliberately sought to be suppressed and excluded. The Hindus, indeed even the Muslims in India, are a case in point. It is precisely because no one has sought to push the Indian Muslims forcibly into modern (read European) mores that they have not throw up a powerful fundamentalist movement of their own.
Renaissance did not mark a brand new beginning in Europe. Nothing ever does, not even so fundamental a change as the arrival of agriculture which laid the foundation of civilization as we have known it in much of the world. The past is never wholly superseded. In India we can still trace the remnants of pre-agriculture cultural influences. Renaissance did involve the resurfacing of the Graeco-Roman approach to life and therefore resumption of the old interaction between it and Christianity which the church had centuries earlier managed to suppress. But the Graeco-Roman heritage had not disappeared. It had only been overlaid. In the case of the renaissance, the church was not even overlaid. On the contrary, in a sense it became more effective as a result of the challenge hurled at it by renaissance men on the one hand and Martin Luther and Calvin on the other.
Fusion Of Traditions
This is not the place to go into the history of these fabulous developments. I shall content myself with three observations. First, the authority of the organised church was challenged and the faithful were invited to read and interpret the teachings and life of Jesus Christ and the apostles for themselves, individual conscience came to be emphasised at the cost of the church hierarchy and ritual. Thus the two traditions – the Greek one with its central concept of men being the measure of all things and the Christian one with its emphasis on morality based on the ten commandments – got fused together as never before. This fusion can be said to be the foundation on which Europe has rested since.
Secondly, as a result of the twin philosophical and puritanical challenges, the church was obliged to raise its own moral standards and the level of its concern for the common people. This process got reinforced in the 19th century which witnessed a new explosion in scientific knowledge, the spread of mass education, the rise of political consciousness and attempts even if often unsuccessful, at the overthrow of monarchy and autocracy in Europe and the establishment of democratic order.
Finally, all 19th century ideologies were the products of the interaction between the two principal European heritages and the forces resulting from it. The 20th century has not given rise to any new ideology. For Nazism, Fascism and Leninism do not represent new ideologies but a perversion and aggravation of existing 19th century trends.
Thus from whatever point of view we may look at developments in Europe in the past five centuries, we cannot but reach the conclusion that the Roman Catholic church has played a critical role. The church provided the unifying principle in the European continent after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. Indeed, it shaped itself after the empire in order to be able to fill the vacuum resulting from the collapse of the empire. And in the post-renaissance modern rimes it has served as one essential component of the dialectical process which has produced the European civilization of our era. It is impossible to think of Europe without the Roman Catholic church.
Russia’s Special Choice
I have laboured this point in order to make another which is that Russia got divorced from Europe is it were forever when in the 10th century AD it opted for the Greek Orthodox church when the whole of Europe, including Eastern Europe now part of the Soviet bloc, had chosen or was choosing the Roman Catholic mainstream. This Russian choice has been explained in terms of the accident of a particular Kiev prince favouring the Greek Orthodox church. But such developments of such historic dimensions are the result of deeper forces. Perhaps Russia was asserting its semi-Asian identity when it chose the eastern church. Perhaps it was European enough to wish to go in for Christianity but not European enough to go in for the mainstream church.
But whether or not the choice reflected an existing divide between Russia and the rest of Europe, there cannot be any doubt that it greatly widened the divide. No subsequent attempt to bridge it has succeeded.
As we know, Peter the Great tried to drag Russia into Europe in the 18th century as it were by its hair. St. Petersburg now known as Leningrad is a monument to that extremely violent, painful and costly but vain venture. He built this apparently most European of all Russian cities on the marshes of the Neva in a gigantic demonstration of the will to defeat nature as if in the process he could reverse and even abolish history, the history of the great divide between Russia and Europe. But his great work only helped underscore the size of the divide. The worst kind of despotism and inhumanity which characterised his reign showed how different Russia was from much of Europe.
Once again in the 20th century Russia looked for a bridge with Europe. Once again it first opted for a minority, if not a deviant and messianic ideology (Marxism) which did violence to the essential European spirit of free and continuous inquiry and tolerance for all viewpoints, and then modified it to drain it of its humanist content. Leninism might not represent a total break with Marxism. But it does represent accentuation of the autocratic aspect of Marxism at the cost of its romantic and therefore humanist face.
Communist Regimes
It is not for me to say whether or not Marxism-Leninism has suited Russia’s national personality. There are sharp differences of opinion on this question. While one school of thought has it that Marxism-Leninism at once continues and reinforces Russia’s autocratic tradition, the other argues that Marxism-Leninism is basically a-national and that if anything its votaries have suppressed and crushed the Russian people more than they have suppressed and crushed other peoples in the Soviet Union. The pertinent point for me is that the superficially European ideology of Marxism has in its Leninist form served to widen the gap between Russia and Europe, including Eastern Europe over which the Russians have imposed Communist regimes cast more or less in their own mould.
The Communist rule, as we know only too well, has survived in Eastern Europe on the strength of the Soviet bayonet. It was bound to be unpopular regardless of whether or not the Soviet Union exploited them economically. And it was unpopular. As it happened, Moscow under Stalin exploited them ruthlessly and thus aggravated the problem. He, for instance, paid for the Polish coal a price which did not cover even the cost of mining it. As a result the fellow feelings produced by the 19th century concept of Slav brotherhood and fear of Germany too were undermined. Since then Russia has sat on the countries almost wholly on the strength of its military prowess. The Warsaw Pact is thus not an alliance system. It is an extension of the Russian empire.
Most European and American thinkers have not seen the so-called West-East divide in these terms and have, therefore, been looking foe means to bridge it. To put it plainly, they have been trying to devise policies – ostpolitik in different shapes, economic cooperation through increased credit, technology transfers and access to their markets – which would help modify the Soviet system sufficiently to make a degree of cooperation possible. All these efforts have been half-hearted because the planners have also lived in fear of Soviet “expansionism”. And they have failed but not only because they have been half-hearted. Russia is a different world and its evolution will follow its own logic. What that logic is, I do not know. But it can, I think, be said that the categories which the Westerners apply – such as the inefficiency of the Soviet economic system or the harshness of the Soviet political system – are not as relevant as they believe.
This article is based on a talk to the National Defence College, New Delhi.
The Times of India, 9 May 1984