From a post I made at Skadi:

"Just a clarification here since it appears there are some people here who are misinterpreting my argument. As I said before, I do not consider Russia and the Balkans to be a part of Western Civilization. These countries have always been oriented towards the East, towards Byzantium (not Rome), as Orthodox Christians, or Istanbul after the Turkish conquest. These countries, by and large, have never identified themselves with the West or its culture. In fact, more often than not, they define themselves in opposition to the West. Now this is not to say that in some parts of the Balkans, such as, say, Romania, where there are provinces which contain large numbers of Protestants or Catholics (as the borders of Balkan states have shifted notoriously in the last century or so), but we are talking about states here, generally speaking, not provinces. I am also sure there are Russian nationalists on this board who would emphatically disagree with the notion that Russia is a Western nation. The same can be said of Serbs, Ukrainians, Greeks and so on. Take Alexander Dugin and the Eurasian movement for example. Whether or not Russia is even part of Europe is not really all that clear. Geographically speaking, the majority of Russia lies in Asia.

So this is why I dislike the term 'Eastern Europe'. There was never an 'Eastern Europe' in any sense of the word until the Cold War, when several Central European nations and part of Germany became satellites of the Soviet Union and tried to implement the Stalinist model of socialism. Historically speaking, this was an abberation. Now that the Cold War has ended, Germany has been reconstituted and the former Warsaw Pact members of Central Europe have rejoined the West. The experience of the Balkan nations has not been all that different from that of Turkey. There are also Orthodox communities strung throughout Asia and the Levant as well. For more on this, see Geoffrey and Nigel Swain's Eastern Europe Since 1945 (2003). Geoffrey and Nigel Swain also make the argument that 'Eastern Europe' as a construct in political science dissolved in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Furthermore, if we go back in history, we can clearly see why it can be argued that the Balkans are part of the Middle East as opposed to Europe. For centuries, these nations were culturally and economically part of a civilization that stretched well into Asia and Africa, as opposed to Catholic and Protestant Northern and Western Europe oriented towards Rome. This was as true of the Ottomon Era as it was when these regions were part of the Byzantine Empire (or within the cultural orbit of Byzantium). The Classical World was centered upon the Mediterranean. Athens had far more in common with Alexandria or Antioch in the Levant than it ever did with Scandinavia. There never was a Western Europe in the time of Plato. Greece has never been part of 'The West', although Westerners have naively come to believe this. The West only came into existence during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, when Diocletian first divided the Roman Empire and later in 395 when the split became permanant under Theodosius. The animosity between Latins and Greeks goes back even further and the different cultures they spawned still manifests itself today. This split only later solidified after Islam wiped out Catholicism in Africa and the Schism of 1054 when the Pope and the Patriach of Constantinople mutually excommunicated one another. The sack of Constantinople in the 4th Crusade did not help much either. And speaking of the Crusades, they were prompted by the plea of the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Kommnenos, to the West to help him recover the Levantine territories that had fallen to the Seljuk Turks.

This is why I will never be able to understand pan-Slavism, which corresponds to no culture whatsoever and has mostly been used by Russian propagandists to expand their influence into Europe. The West is, and has always been, comprised of Slavs, Germans, Celts, and Mediterraneans who historically have been Catholic and Protestant Christians. The Western Slavs have far more in common -- culturally speaking -- with other Western nations than they do with nations like Romania, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Likewise, Germans have more in common -- culturally speaking -- with Northern Italians than they do with Orthodox Russian Christians who might just happen to be Nordic.

Now this should not be interpreted as an 'attack' upon whites who may live in these areas, much less an endorsement of the divisions that Christianity has sown between whites (as I am hardly a fan of Christianity myself). Regardless, whether we like it or not, there are important cultural and historical divisions between whites and this should be taken into account. I like the Russians, Serbs, Ukrainians and so on. I just don't regard them as being part of Western Civilization. And I don't see why that should be a problem, because as I pointed out before, many of these people don't identify themselves with the West to begin with."

Germany never considerd itself as part of the "West" either. The thing Germany and Russia have (or better "had") in comon, was the "idealistic spirit". The "West" was already considered decadent and mercantile hedonistic in the 19th century. Allready Arndt and Fichte spoke out against it.

Just as the definition "Eastern Europe" was a synonym for Soviet-Stalinist Goverment, so is "Western Europe" nothing but a Colony of americanism.
I sure don't want my Germany to be asociated with "the West".

I disagree. Its quite obvious, whether you like it or not, that Germany and France are part of the same civilisation. For centuries, Germany and France considered themselves both to be part of Western Christendom, sharing the same religion and the same written language, Latin. Throughout the Middle Ages, Germany was thoroughly immersed in the West and its culture, from feudalism to knighthood, economically, socially, and politically. Furthermore, France did not industrialize until well into the 20th century. France was still largely a rural country until the aftermath of the Second World War, in fact. Germany industrialized much earlier, as did the United States and the Netherlands. You are also confusing mercantilism with capitalism. The Hanseatic cities of Northern Germany were mercantilism par excellence. The name Jakob Fugger is synonymous with merchantilism. The 19th century can hardly be described as a mercantile century. If anything, the 19th century was the repudiation of mercantilism and the triumph of an entirely different economic system. The notion that Germany and Russia are united by some sort of "idealistic spirit" is also a rather tenuous one. Take a look at German and Russian culture, respectively. There is simply no comparison. If anything, German nationalism (in modernity) itself was merely the echo of French nationalism and the Wars of Liberation. There is a vast gulf separating a Goethe from a Tolstoy as well. Western Europe existed long before the United States was ever created. And finally, the idea that Germany was somehow corrupted by the decadence of the West in the aftermath of WW2 is simply too ridiculous to believed. Not even Hitler himself would agree with you on that point, as the entire NS movement itself was, in large part, was a response to corruption and degeneracy that had already long been in existence in Germany, well into the Wilhelmine era. Even in Bismarck's time, Germany was afflicted by the same decadence affecting all Western nations. The class warriors had more success in Germany than they ever did Britain or France.

Romania is a mixt country: there are a lot of Protestants and Catholics, and there were much more before communism. The Western culture border passes through the country, which btw is a Latin one, not a Slavic one.

Welcome to The Phora, marius.

Thank you. Why wasn't I automatically subscribed to the thread I posted into? ANyway, perhaps a small beginning bug. :D

I wonder why people always see the West and its civilization as a monolithic entity. Fade is right if he says Germany and France belong to the same culture, but that culture itself, Western culture, is so vast and has so many different facets, that it is hard to see it as one single entity. If we look at the last 1000 years, we see in the same timespan a totally different evolution of feudalism in Germany, England and france, three different but equally western systems. Later on, we see at the very same time totally opposed epistemological systems rising at the same moment: rationalism and empirism, both very different and yet very western. And today too, we see a new separate aspect of our once great western culture or group of cultures, the negrified nonsensical garbage which is flooding us coming from the USA. It is not what I like to call my culture, but nevertheless it is part of western culture. Doc Brandt is right when he says this garbage isn't German, but it is part of the same cultural family, a bit like the retarded cousin who can't seem to stop harassing women is part of a family, despite all the other members who would love to ignore him.

From a post I made at Skadi:

"Just a clarification here since it appears there are some people here who are misinterpreting my argument. As I said before, I do not consider Russia and the Balkans to be a part of Western Civilization. These countries have always been oriented towards the East, towards Byzantium (not Rome), as Orthodox Christians, or Istanbul after the Turkish conquest. These countries, by and large, have never identified themselves with the West or its culture. In fact, more often than not, they define themselves in opposition to the West. Now this is not to say that in some parts of the Balkans, such as, say, Romania, where there are provinces which contain large numbers of Protestants or Catholics (as the borders of Balkan states have shifted notoriously in the last century or so), but we are talking about states here, generally speaking, not provinces. I am also sure there are Russian nationalists on this board who would emphatically disagree with the notion that Russia is a Western nation. The same can be said of Serbs, Ukrainians, Greeks and so on. Take Alexander Dugin and the Eurasian movement for example. Whether or not Russia is even part of Europe is not really all that clear. Geographically speaking, the majority of Russia lies in Asia.

So this is why I dislike the term 'Eastern Europe'. There was never an 'Eastern Europe' in any sense of the word until the Cold War, when several Central European nations and part of Germany became satellites of the Soviet Union and tried to implement the Stalinist model of socialism. Historically speaking, this was an abberation. Now that the Cold War has ended, Germany has been reconstituted and the former Warsaw Pact members of Central Europe have rejoined the West. The experience of the Balkan nations has not been all that different from that of Turkey. There are also Orthodox communities strung throughout Asia and the Levant as well. For more on this, see Geoffrey and Nigel Swain's Eastern Europe Since 1945 (2003). Geoffrey and Nigel Swain also make the argument that 'Eastern Europe' as a construct in political science dissolved in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Furthermore, if we go back in history, we can clearly see why it can be argued that the Balkans are part of the Middle East as opposed to Europe. For centuries, these nations were culturally and economically part of a civilization that stretched well into Asia and Africa, as opposed to Catholic and Protestant Northern and Western Europe oriented towards Rome. This was as true of the Ottomon Era as it was when these regions were part of the Byzantine Empire (or within the cultural orbit of Byzantium). The Classical World was centered upon the Mediterranean. Athens had far more in common with Alexandria or Antioch in the Levant than it ever did with Scandinavia. There never was a Western Europe in the time of Plato. Greece has never been part of 'The West', although Westerners have naively come to believe this. The West only came into existence during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, when Diocletian first divided the Roman Empire and later in 395 when the split became permanant under Theodosius. The animosity between Latins and Greeks goes back even further and the different cultures they spawned still manifests itself today. This split only later solidified after Islam wiped out Catholicism in Africa and the Schism of 1054 when the Pope and the Patriach of Constantinople mutually excommunicated one another. The sack of Constantinople in the 4th Crusade did not help much either. And speaking of the Crusades, they were prompted by the plea of the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Kommnenos, to the West to help him recover the Levantine territories that had fallen to the Seljuk Turks.

This is why I will never be able to understand pan-Slavism, which corresponds to no culture whatsoever and has mostly been used by Russian propagandists to expand their influence into Europe. The West is, and has always been, comprised of Slavs, Germans, Celts, and Mediterraneans who historically have been Catholic and Protestant Christians. The Western Slavs have far more in common -- culturally speaking -- with other Western nations than they do with nations like Romania, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Likewise, Germans have more in common -- culturally speaking -- with Northern Italians than they do with Orthodox Russian Christians who might just happen to be Nordic.

Now this should not be interpreted as an 'attack' upon whites who may live in these areas, much less an endorsement of the divisions that Christianity has sown between whites (as I am hardly a fan of Christianity myself). Regardless, whether we like it or not, there are important cultural and historical divisions between whites and this should be taken into account. I like the Russians, Serbs, Ukrainians and so on. I just don't regard them as being part of Western Civilization. And I don't see why that should be a problem, because as I pointed out before, many of these people don't identify themselves with the West to begin with."

An excellent observations Fade. I agree in every point.
The notion that Orthodox Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs ect. are not historically part of the Western culture, and not regarding them selves as Westerners is not intended to be an insult but a cultural classification.

Like Marius pointed out its true some individuals and small social groups from these countries can posses pro-western orientation, but its an exception, and not a rule. Orthodox Romania can hardly be described as the Western nation, and language / meta-ethnicity is of minor importance in this case. Fino-Ugric Hungarians and Western Slavs are culturally much closer to the Western institutions and the way of life. Some parts of Romania like Transylvania are historically part of the West because the large areas of Eastern Hungary (Erdély) was given to Romania after the breakdown of Habsburg Empire 1918.
Culture can change with time, like in the case of pre-Ottoman medieval Bosnia. In some hypothetical situation, assuming Bosnia was not exposed to Islam and Orthodoxy its general profile today would fit the description of West Slavic Catholic nation.
The Bosnian case confirms the importance of cultural identity. The incapability to constitute one nation out of 3 ethnic communities - each influenced by different cultural orientation is obvious.

I wouldn't go so far to identify Western culture with decadency, because if we do this, one could identify Orthodox culture with Communism - IMO also the expression of modernist decadence. In both cases it would be wrong thing to do.

constantinus, I would entirely agree that the West cannot be regarded as a homogenous entity. That should be apparent to anyone. But that is not my argument. We are trying to establish the relationship between the Balkans and the countries of 'Eastern Europe' to 'Western Europe' in this thread. I could write an entirely separate post (an essay, in fact) on the relationship between rationalism and empiricism but I will try to be brief here. The West inherited rationalism from the Classical World through the conduit of Christianity and Scholasticism. Empiricism, on the other hand (which is at the core of modern science), is a uniquely Western epistemological system that has its origins in Medieval Christianity. One final point needs to be made here. There is a popular myth in Europe that Europe has somehow been corrupted by the spread of American anti-culture (although there is some truth in this). In reality, if we go back and examine European culture from the Franco-Prussian War to the Great War, then we can easily see this is not the case. The origins of Europe's modern cultural decadence had long been established in fin-de-siècle Europe and have more to do with modernisation, secularisation, and capitalism than anything else. Adolf Hitler himself was well aware of this, especially of the art bolshevism that flourished during this era. The '68 riots, if anything, were more profound in Europe (France in particular) than they were in America. The consumer culture that now exists in Europe is the logical result of an overproductive capitalist economy.

Orthodox Romania can hardly be described as the Western nation, and language / meta-ethnicity is of minor importance in this case. Fino-Ugric Hungarians and Western Slavs are culturally much closer to the Western institutions and the way of life. Some parts of Romania like Transylvania are historically part of the West because the large areas of Eastern Hungary (Erdély) was given to Romania after the breakdown of Habsburg Empire 1918.

For your information, if you ignored it till now, the Romanian people was born in Transylvania. What you ignore once more is that the language used in old Romanian churches was Latin, prior to Bulgarian conquest, which imposed Slavonic. What you ignore again is that the Romanians used later on the Orthodoxy as a mean to resist the Hungarian conquerors in Transylvania is really a very interesting and historical fact: a Nation which uses imposed symbols and language to preserve identity before invaders. You know why it happened like that? Because the Hungarian invasion cut up the links Romanians had with Rome, imposing them this way to use the links with Constantinopole. I know that Hungarians were very tricky and becoming Catholics, from the savage barbarians, they obtained from the Pope the right to dominate Transylvania, a teritory which was not theirs'. Yes, I also know that Western Europe never forgot in almost 1000 years the fact, us, Romanians changed religious orientation (somehow by force) and allowed Hungarians to do what they did there.

Perhaps you also ignore the fact that the other two principates: Wallachia and Moldavia were and had a complete Western way of life, even if they were some times under Turkish vasality. The big change was imposed by Turks in XVIIth century, when they beheaded Constantin Brancoveanu, a Wallachian Rennaissance styled prince who refused passing to Islam. They imposed this way some princes elected by them, from the Greeks in the Fanar neighbourhood of Istanbul. 150 years of Eastern culture followed, which left a deep trace in the mentality of people.

The only case for which your observations are valid is Dobrogea, the extreme South-Eastern Romania, which first belonged to Greeks, then to Romans, then to Turks.

Anyway till the communism was imposed in 1948, the Big Romania which included all the principates: Transylvania, Bukovina, Moldavia, Wallachia and Dobrogea become a complete Western culture part, even if in Dobrogea, many Turks were exiled and Romanians were colonised.

During communism, since in Yalta was decided 90% Soviet influence, Romania was wiped out from the Western history manuals and all the bad things were thrown against it: Eastern, underdevelopped. So, you are just proving me once more the brainwashing executed by Western media against Romania, from 1950s since now.

During all this time, in the country, once more the culture and the mentality was oriented Eastwards, by the interdiction of the Greek-Catholic Church, the one who gave back Latinity to Romanians, back in 1700s. All the belongings of this Church were given to the Orthodox one and not even today, most of all are not returned.

For your information, if you ignored it till now, the Romanian people was born in Transylvania. What you ignore once more is that the language used in old Romanian churches was Latin, prior to Bulgarian conquest, which imposed Slavonic.

The use of Latin can prove Romanian bonds to the Classical Greek-Roman civilization, but not the Western civilization rooted in late Antique and early Middle Ages - in other words to the Western Roman Empire and the Empire of Charlemagne.

What you ignore again is that the Romanians used later on the Orthodoxy as a mean to resist the Hungarian conquerors in Transylvania is really a very interesting and historical fact: a Nation which uses imposed symbols and language to preserve identity before invaders.
You know why it happened like that? Because the Hungarian invasion cut up the links Romanians had with Rome, imposing them this way to use the links with Constantinopole

Nice to see we both agree that Hungary's ties with the West were defiantly confirmed 996 when St. Stephan adopted Catholicism, receiving the crown and legitimacy from the Pope.

I know that Hungarians were very tricky and becoming Catholics, from the savage barbarians

The most constitutive nations of the West, like Franks forinstance were "barbarians", before they started to accept gradually the heritage of late antique. Lets not confuse classical culture with western!

they obtained from the Pope the right to dominate Transylvania, a territory which was not theirs'.

This judgement is in obvious contradiction of Papal supreme authority, the most basic principle of medieval West. In the context of era we are debating, the Pope IS the West - de facto et de iure.

Yes, I also know that Western Europe never forgot in almost 1000 years the fact, us, Romanians changed religious orientation (somehow by force) and allowed Hungarians to do what they did there.

I don't think you had much choice. The medieval Hungarian state was the force respected even by the German Emperors. The Catholic Hungary resisted the Turks, something Romanians and other Orthodox nations of the Balkans failed to do.

Perhaps you also ignore the fact that the other two principates: Wallachia and Moldavia were and had a complete Western way of life, even if they were some times under Turkish vasality.

There is no West outside the Roman Catholicism. Romanian rulers recognized the authority of Hungarian rulers such as Janos Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus - that is the only Romanian link to the Western civilization.

big change was imposed by Turks in XVIIth century, when they beheaded Constantin Brancoveanu, a Wallachian Rennaissance styled prince who refused passing to Islam. They imposed this way some princes elected by them, from the Greeks in the Fanar neighbourhood of Istanbul. 150 years of Eastern culture followed, which left a deep trace in the mentality of people.

Orthodoxy contributed protecting Europe against the Ottomans and nobody is questioning this fact. Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia are European, but they belong to the Orthodoxy, not to the Catholic/Protestant West.

I agree with Tamino. The West did not exist until Late Antiquity/Early Middle Ages. The Classical World was centered on the Mediterranean. The West only gained awareness of its own identity and distinctiveness in relation to Islam, Orthodox Christianity, and the remaining pagan barbarians of Europe who were gradually drawn into the cultural orbit of Catholic Christendom. The first time 'Europe' was ever used to describe a distinctive civilisation/political entity was in the letters of Alcuin during the 8th century Carolingian Empire. More on the 'First Europe' here:

"The literary sources and documentary evidence for the Carolingian period are much more voluminous than they are for any era since the fourth century. Whereas our knowledge of sixth-century France is drawn heavily from the information supplied by Gregory of Tours, and the sources for the seventh-century Merovingian kingdom are extremely fragmentary, there survive from the period 750 to 900 hundreds of pages of chronicles, letters, government documents, and treatises. The improvement in literacy is indicative of the advance of civilisation, of the partial overcoming of the effects of the Germanic invasions and the expansion of Islam, and of the emergence of a new distinct culture and society in western Europe. In A.D. 400 western Europe was merely a geographic expression. Roman civilization was centered on the Mediterranean, and France, England, and the Rhine valley were mere adjuncts of the Mediterranean world. In 800 Europe signified a new civilization that was coextensive with the area of Latin Christianity and created by the confluence of German traditions and Latin-Christian culture. Compared to Byzantium and Islam, Europe was still poor and backward, but it had developed particular ideas and institutions of its own, had found leadership within its own ranks, and had become conscious of its own distinct existence and destiny.

The first Europe included France, England, western Germany, Ireland, central and northern Italy, and the mountain ranges of northern Spain. The vital areas of civilisation were not on the Mediterranean coast, but in the river valleys of northern France and the Rhineland. The culture of the first Europe was unified by the universal language of churchmen, kings, and aristocracy -- Latin. Latin was the language of both ecclesiastical and secular governments and the tongue in which all intellectual matters were discussed or written down. In all cases, whether on behalf of the monarchy, church, or duke, the Latin writing was actually executed by clerical scholars who were nearly all products of the flourishing monastic schools of the Carolingian empire.

Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages (New York: HarperPerennial, 1994), pp.185-186

The 'first Europe' was the Carolingian Empire and the areas within its cultural orbit. This nascent culture continued to expand throughout the Middle Ages, especially during the late 10th and early 11th centuries. Olaf Trygvesson converted Norway in between 999 and 1000 A.D. Iceland and Greenland were converted at around the same time. Harald Bluetooth converted Denmark in 974 A.D. Boreslav the Brave converted Poland in 999 A.D. Saint Stephen was coronated King of Hungary in 1000 A.D. Spain and Portugal were gradually brought within the orbit of the West during the reconquista. The Normans conquered Sicily and Southern Italy. The Northern Crusades resulted in the conversion of the much of the Baltic peoples to Catholicism.

The use of Latin can prove Romanian bonds to the Classical Greek-Roman civilization, but not the Western civilization rooted in late Antique and early Middle Ages - in other words to the Western Roman Empire and the Empire of Charlemagne.

The Eastern border of the empire of Charlemagne, his Eastern mark included something which is now in NW Romania.



Nice to see we both agree that Hungary's ties with the West were defiantly confirmed 996 when St. Stephan adopted Catholicism, receiving the crown and legitimacy from the Pope.

Should I remember you it was the Hungarians and their Hun ancestors who ravaged all Western Europe, like Tartars later did? Should I remember you the killing of St. Gérard (Géllert) because he wanted to impose Christianism to the savage nation of Hungarians of thos times? Why do you make as you would not see these problems?



The most constitutive nations of the West, like Franks forinstance were "barbarians", before they started to accept gradually the heritage of late antique. Lets not confuse classical culture with western!

France was Christianised not only by force, like the Germans were, for example. So please...



This judgement is in obvious contradiction of Papal supreme authority, the most basic principle of medieval West. In the context of era we are debating, the Pope IS the West - de facto et de iure.

This still doesn't say Hungarian leaders used this trick to gain teritory and Papal acceptance.



I don't think you had much choice. The medieval Hungarian state was the force respected even by the German Emperors. The Catholic Hungary resisted the Turks, something Romanians and other Orthodox nations of the Balkans failed to do.

Really? Don't make me laugh. Who ended up a "pashalak" after Mohacs? Wallachia? Moldavia? Transylvania? NOOOOO. Hungary. From where was the attack against Vienna launched? From Hungary? What can you find even today in Budapest? Turkish baths. What did the great gothic cathedral of Budapest become during the 150 years of Turkish invasion? A moskee... Don't tell me you did not know these details.

And second, if it would not have been the gray zone formed of Wallachia and Moldavia, against the Turks, I would doubt Western Europe would have been what it so proudly is right now. I already pointed out in the last message how the Wallachs and Moldavs faught against Turkish attackers. Do't confuse Romanian history with other near by countries' history, please.


There is no West outside the Roman Catholicism. Romanian rulers recognized the authority of Hungarian rulers such as Janos Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus - that is the only Romanian link to the Western civilization.

Well, this is the affirmation of the day. I should use it as a motto. :) Janos Hunyadi = Iancu de Hunedoara and Matthias Corvinus = Matei Corvin were of pure Romanian descent. And they admitted this. Of course, the Hungarian historians try to cover it up. Do you know that because Romanians in Transylvania were conquered, they have no right to become Nobles? So that they were forced to accept a form of Hungarisation in order to be accepted. The great leaders you speak about ARE ROMANIANS from the Corvinesti family. Now, you should more simply understand why the Wallachs and the Moldavs, much more simply accepted to become their vasals.



Orthodoxy contributed protecting Europe against the Ottomans and nobody is questioning this fact. Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia are European, but they belong to the Orthodoxy, not to the Catholic/Protestant West.

No. It is perhaps valid for the other countries you mentioned. But I do not blame you. The history of Romania is not well known, mainly because it changed fronts so often: sometimes East, sometimes West. So, we had to be punished fot this. As you prove it even now by what you wrote.

Please, try a deeper research over the Romanian history, before being so cathegorical.

The Eastern border of the empire of Charlemagne, his Eastern mark included something which is now in NW Romania.

Please provide some source for this.

http://www.culturalresources.com/images/maps/CharlemagneBig.jpg

Should I remember you it was the Hungarians and their Hun ancestors who ravaged all Western Europe, like Tartars later did?

Hungarians were Magyars, not Huns! Huns only left the name to the country, much like Romans left their name to Dacia/Romania

Should I remember you the killing of St. Gérard (Géllert) because he wanted to impose Christianism to the savage nation of Hungarians of thos times?

Christianization of Europe was not always a peaceful task. Like you noted your self: "France was Christianised not only by force, like the Germans were, for example."

Really? Don't make me laugh. Who ended up a "pashalak" after Mohacs? Wallachia? Moldavia? Transylvania? NOOOOO. Hungary. From where was the attack against Vienna launched? From Hungary? What can you find even today in Budapest? Turkish baths. What did the great gothic cathedral of Budapest become during the 150 years of Turkish invasion? A moskee... Don't tell me you did not know these details.

And second, if it would not have been the gray zone formed of Wallachia and Moldavia, against the Turks, I would doubt Western Europe would have been what it so proudly is right now. I already pointed out in the last message how the Wallachs and Moldavs faught against Turkish attackers. Do't confuse Romanian history with other near by countries' history, please.

Unlike conquered Walachia and Moldavia ruled by the Ottoman Empire for over 300 years, Royal Hungary was under the Habsburgs.

Janos Hunyadi = Iancu de Hunedoara and Matthias Corvinus = Matei Corvin were of pure Romanian descent. And they admitted this. Of course, the Hungarian historians try to cover it up. Do you know that because Romanians in Transylvania were conquered, they have no right to become Nobles? So that they were forced to accept a form of Hungarisation in order to be accepted. The great leaders you speak about ARE ROMANIANS from the Corvinesti family. Now, you should more simply understand why the Wallachs and the Moldavs, much more simply accepted to become their vasals.

Even if true, they were formally the HUNGARIAN rulers, not Romanian. Much like Catherine II of Russia is considered to be a Russian monarch even if she was German by birth.

No. It is perhaps valid for the other countries you mentioned. But I do not blame you. The history of Romania is not well known, mainly because it changed fronts so often: sometimes East, sometimes West. So, we had to be punished for this. As you prove it even now by what you wrote.

Please, try a deeper research over the Romanian history, before being so cathegorical.

You cannot rewrite the history only to fit your nation ignoring the facts.
Romania is deeply rooted in Orthodoxy, Hungary in Catholicism. Transylvania was never a part of Romania before 1918.

First of all, you seem to be Hungarian. Nice to know you. A half of my family is originating from Transylvania and there are strong Hungarian admixtures. Anyway, please don't mind on me, I will still comment your affirmations.

Please provide some soruce for this.

http://www.culturalresources.com/images/maps/CharlemagneBig.jpg


Yeah, yeah. The kingdom of Dacians established by Burebista and continued by Decebal and Dacian Tribes were bordering the Germanic tribes in the North West and they were occupying Pannonia, too.

http://www.fact-index.com/b/bu/burebista.html

So, we do not have reasons to believe that they were not Romanised too, being so near the Roman Empire limits. So, the people living there was Romanian, too, at their beginnings. So, during the Charlemagne Eastern mark, there were Romanians living there, too.



Hungarians were Magyars, not Huns! Huns only left the name to the country, much like Romans left their name to Dacia/Romania

Still, their "bravery" facts are known, throughout them the destruction of the Saint Gallen monastery, it was Arpad, isn't it? ;)




Christianization of Europe was not always a peaceful task. Like you noted your self: "France was Christianised not only by force, like the Germans were, for example."

Oh, come on, the Romanians were Christianised by Andrew, I think, so there was no need for force.




Unlike conquered Walachia and Moldavia where Ottoman Empire ruled for over 300 years, Royal Hungary was under the Habsburgs.

Ruled? Oh, come on. I can only say this for the Fanariote leadership I spoke about, which was 150 years. Besides that, there were periods of vasality, not colonisation.




Even if true, they were formally the HUNGARIAN rulers, not Romanian. Much like Catherine II of Russia is considered to be a Russian monarch even if she was German by birth.

Of course, they were part of conquered Nation, so that they could not affirm unless they accepted Hungarisation.




You cannot rewrite the history only to fit your nation ignoring the facts.
Romania is deeply rooted in Orthodoxy, Hungary in Catholicism. Transylvania was never a part of Romania before 1918.

Oh, this is valid for both sides, you know. And to be quite honest, there is not so much Catholicism throughout Hungarians, but rather Calvinism. Anyway, this religion was adopted prior to the Greek-Catholic Church, by many Romanians in Transylvania. It existed even a Calvinist Romanian super-intendent in Hunedoara (ok, Hunyadi, if you like).

My point was not that, anyway. What I struggled to point out is that the history of Romania has so many passings East-West, one cannot really say whether it is really Eastern or Western. Remember, even the imposed Orthodoxy (by Bulgarians, I repeat) is different: Romanian Orthodoxs celebrate Christmas with Catholics and the Western world and the Easter with the Eastern world.

I think the necessary conclusion is that Romania is a very mixed and diverse country, it's not at all like other countries to its East or South, perhaps more like the Western half of Ukraine (I intendly do not mention only Ruthenia).

Romania is what we know as "limes" (limit) of the Western civilisation. Of course, the limit regions pass often from one to another, but if you eliminate them from the specified region, another one will become the "limes" and will have the same fate. In time, if this politics would continue, the Western world will only diminish.

And yes, during 1 year (1600), during the leadership of Michael the Brave, Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia were reunited by him. Historical facts prove he did not act only on expansionist reasons, but he was aware of the fact all these regions were inhabited by the same people.

Romania has a bunch of Germanic/Saxon people too. It's a country hard to pin down into a convenient little box.

I disagree. Its quite obvious, whether you like it or not, that Germany and France are part of the same civilisation. For centuries, Germany and France considered themselves both to be part of Western Christendom, sharing the same religion and the same written language, Latin. Throughout the Middle Ages, Germany was thoroughly immersed in the West and its culture, from feudalism to knighthood, economically, socially, and politically.

Fade seems to make an argument similar to what Berdyaev said about the "East" and "West":


http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1930_353.html

When we use the terms "East" and "West", we are operating with very abstract and conditional concepts. There exist very varied Easts and very varied Wests. The more I get into the life of the West, the more I am convinced, that no sort of a single Western culture exists, it instead was contrived by the Russian Slavophils and Westernisers for clarifying their points of opposition. At the centre of Western Europe is first of all France and Germany. But between the French and the Latin culture generally in contrast to the German culture there exists an abyss quite greater, than exists between the German culture and the Russian culture or that of India, though here even the differences are colossal. Yet it would be groundless for the French to say, that the German culture, in having created great philosophy, mysticism and music, is on account of its not having inherited the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean culture, or that it is not in direct continuance from it. The Anglo-Saxon world likewise is an altogether unique world. And the American civilisation is of far greater difference from the civilisation of the French, than the French civilisation is from the Russian. The Russian civilisation has connections with the Greek, which America possesses not at all. One can speak only about a singular Western civilisation only if there be regarded abstractly the elements of science, technology, democracy, etc. In spirit, however, the differences are enormous, The same also mustneeds be said about the East. The Russian, the Orthodox Christian East, the Islamic East, the Indian East, the Chinese East -- all these are totally different worlds. There is very little affinity between Russia and India. Hinduism does not conceive of history, does not know the person, denies the Incarnation. Christian Russia is similar to ancient Israel in its orientation to the meaning of history and the experiencing of it, as a tragedy, it believes in the Divine incarnation, it awaits the second Coming, and it tormentedly experiences the problem of the human person and its fate.

Indeed here's Berdyave lecture on East and West in total for those interested.

http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1930_353.html

EAST AND WEST 1

(1930 - #353)
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It is possible to posit the existence of two inner emotional types of people -- the one shut in upon itself, seeking for perfection within itself and finding it in the end, whereas the other anguishes as regards a different and foreign world, and has need of a going out beyond itself and seeking perfection in the infinitude. The culture of the first type is self evident. One of the most refined Frenchmen of our time, a man of extraordinarily broad culture, Charles Du Bos says, that the French have not the anguish over other worlds, which so vexes the German Romantics, and a foreign world holds interest for them only as something exotic. I might term this type classical. Classicism also is a seeking out of the perfect form within its own self-sufficing world. Classicism has enjoyed great success in art, as well as in all spheres. And its greatest success, known to history, fell to the lot of Greece. It enjoyed another great success in the France of the XVII Century. But there exists a fundamental law of life, which serves as a warning for the classical feel for life and a calling to mind about the inevitable death of every culture. And this law proclaims: nothing, no sort of any manner of being can have its source of life only in itself, outside of God, Who is infinite life. Everything immanently shut in upon itself faces the threat of a withering and exhaustion of life. The Romanticism in the type of the Mediterranean, Graeco-Roman civilisation possesses a relative superiority over the classical, in that it conveys into its own feeling for life not only a love for life, but also a love for death, it anticipates a threatening fate. Creative life can continue on, if still there is endless potential, if there is still matter unconquered of form, a Dionysian element, to which there has not yet been set limits and boundaries. Even a most perfect culture is not destined to live an eternal life, for death inevitably threatens it. And in this is a source of sorrow for every very greatly refined culture. Exhaustion threatens every aristocracy. Classicism is an eternal principle of human culture, without which its perfection is unattainable. But Classicism is a love for the finite, a dislike for the infinite, of which the ancient Greeks were so afraid. The infinite is incommensurate with any sort of form, and everything, that is commensurate with perfect form, has to fear the infinite. Romanticism, however, not knowing success in form, is a love for the infinite, but without the power of penetrating into it and mastering it. Classicism, in the culture of Western Europe and foremost of all the very old, the very perfective and refined culture of France, so captivating by its sense of clarity, derives from the Classicism of Graeco-Roman civilisation, to which it desires to be faithful. The Mediterranean civilisation presents itself as universal and eternal, and all the rest of the world -- is a barbaric world. That ancient conceit, destroyed by the universalism of the Hellenistic era, has returned to the civilisation of western Europe in modern times. And this thus faces us with the problem of East and West.

The concepts of East and West are very fluid and indeterminate. And these concepts of East and West, such as obtain modernly, no wise stand up to criticism. The Graeco-Roman Mediterranean civilisation itself, which they want to set in opposition to the East, was in a multitude of ways subject to influences from the East. Without the interaction from the East, which always amidst this entailed a degree of struggle, it would not now itself exist. The Aegean culture was from the East. From outside it, from Thrace, there arrived in Greece the god Dionysos, and without this Eastern god there would not have been the greatest creation of the Greek genius -- Greek tragedy, there would not have been the greatest attainments of the Greek religion. Orphism was full of Eastern elements. It was very strong in Plato, whom certain regard as an Eastern philosopher. The Greek genius of Apollonian form mastered the stormy Dionysian element, but without this element it would have been able to accomplish nothing. And how great were the influences of Egypt! Modern humanistic Europe loves the Greek rationalism and positivism, which are regarded as Western, but not the Greece of mystery and tragedy, of Herakleitos and Plato, in any case not Plato the myth-maker, not that profound aspect of Greece, which revealed itself to Bachofen and Nietzsche. At a certain moment Greece was transformed into the East, in regard to the Roman West. The Hellenistic era, pervaded by a spirit of universalism, destroyed the boundaries of the Graeco-Roman civilisation, in it East and West arrived at an unprecedentedly close contact and the east proved to be of an overwhelming spiritual influence in the West. With this also is the beginning of worldwide history, it was created by Christianity. Rome, the West in its supremacy, was spiritually conquered by the East, by the Eastern cultures and the Eastern world-view, since Rome itself was bereft of all signs of religious and philosophical genius. Franz Cumont, in his book, "Les mysteres de Mithra", says: "jamais, peut-etre, pas meme a l'epoque des invasions musulmanes, l'Europe ne fut plus pres de devenir asiatique qu'au III siecla de notre ere, et il y eut un moment ou le caesarisme parut sur le point de transfer en un khalifat" ["never, perhaps, not even at the time of the Mussulman invasions, was Europe closer to becoming Asiatic, than at the III Century of our era, and there was a moment when Caesarism seemed at the point of becoming transformed into a caliphate"]. The asiaticisation of the West was an everywhere common phenomenon at the beginning of our era, which also was rendered possible by the triumph of Christianity. Jerusalem proved victorious over Athens and Rome. Light arrived from the Eastern wilderness, and not from the classical civilisation. This is something indisputable for anyone not a child of Voltaire. For the whole Medieval period, the Eastern world and the Western world were neither isolated nor closed off from each other. The final isolation happened only after railway lines were built and ready means of communication established. There was a time when Byzantium, within which Greece had become the East, was the summit of refined culture, and the West drew from it for its cultural influences. Through the Arabs, the West discovered Aristotle, who became a Western philosopher predominantly. Although for the modern humanistic and rationalistic Europe, even the Medieval period has to seem like something Eastern.

Only during the era of the Renaissance does there begin the shut-in isolation of the West, and as it were the East's falling to the wayside as regards historical dynamics. The Western humanistic culture tended to become crystalised, and to conceive of itself as having returned after "centuries of darkness" to the culture of antiquity, and that therefore it is the sole and universal culture. But during the modern era the West has least of all been universal, and within it everything stands under the standard of particularism. Amidst all this, it has been a time of religious weakening in the West, a time of the extinguishing of faith, of an apostacy from the Christian revelation. With the end of modern history there has to end also the isolation of the world of the West and the world of the East. And modern history is reaching an end point, it has outlived its possibilities. There has to begin an era analogous to the Hellenistic era. If we at present have something immanently facing us, then it is not at all the classical antiquity with its self-sufficing autarchies, but rather the time of the collapsing of the ancient world, when the soil had been broken up, when all the boundaries and divisions had fallen, and the world was ready to accept the influx of a powerful religious light. Back still at the beginning of the World War, I wrote in 1915 an article, "The End of Europe", in which I defended the thought, that the bloody devastation of the World War has to lead towards a coming together of the world, towards an unprecedented interaction of East and West, that Europe was ending in the sense that it would no longer hold an exclusive monopoly on culture, that the great values of European culture would pass over across the world expanse, with the peoples and cultures of the East entering anew into world history, as one of its determining powers. I think, that I was right. We have entered upon an era of unification and closeness of varied worlds, religious, intellectual, literary, political and social. And the enormous consequences are still not apparent. This is not at all a matter of simple internationalism, of something impersonal and empty. The revolt of cultures autarchic and particularistic against this universal momentum is a reaction of the dying modern times, it is a fear afront what is to come. And it has particularly to be emphasised, that Christians ought to welcome an universalistic era. Universalism, certainly, does not signify herein the negation of individual nationalities nor a renunciation of the positive values of national cultures. But the world of the West and the world of the East have to emerge from their isolation. Every world ****-in upon itself is doomed to death, if it does not receive an influx of powers from other worlds, if after its allotted ages of isolated existence it fails to breathe the breath of the world. When we use the terms "East" and "West", we are operating with very abstract and conditional concepts. There exist very varied Easts and very varied Wests. The more I get into the life of the West, the more I am convinced, that no sort of a single Western culture exists, it instead was contrived by the Russian Slavophils and Westernisers for clarifying their points of opposition. At the centre of Western Europe is first of all France and Germany. But between the French and the Latin culture generally in contrast to the German culture there exists an abyss quite greater, than exists between the German culture and the Russian culture or that of India, though here even the differences are colossal. Yet it would be groundless for the French to say, that the German culture, in having created great philosophy, mysticism and music, is on account of its not having inherited the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean culture, or that it is not in direct continuance from it. The Anglo-Saxon world likewise is an altogether unique world. And the American civilisation is of far greater difference from the civilisation of the French, than the French civilisation is from the Russian. The Russian civilisation has connections with the Greek, which America possesses not at all. One can speak only about a singular Western civilisation only if there be regarded abstractly the elements of science, technology, democracy, etc. In spirit, however, the differences are enormous, The same also mustneeds be said about the East. The Russian, the Orthodox Christian East, the Islamic East, the Indian East, the Chinese East -- all these are totally different worlds. There is very little affinity between Russia and India. Hinduism does not conceive of history, does not know the person, denies the Incarnation. Christian Russia is similar to ancient Israel in its orientation to the meaning of history and the experiencing of it, as a tragedy, it believes in the Divine incarnation, it awaits the second Coming, and it tormentedly experiences the problem of the human person and its fate.

Yet all the same, we can speak symbolically about the "East" and the "West". The West indisputably has had a great mission in world history and it has displayed exceptional gifts in fulfilling it. The mission of the West has been in the unfolding and development of the human principle within culture, with the increased complexity and refinement of the emotional world of man, the intensification of historical activity, and the working out of formal principles in thought and creativity. The humanism of the West has had world significance, with the living out of human destinies. And the world of the East should involve itself with the humanistic world of the West. But the civilisation of the West, having actualised too far the potentialities and in everything providing a predominance to the formal principle, has led to the closing off and hardening of the consciousness, everywhere establishing divisions, boundaries and limits. Being thus closed off did not allow for moreso a breadth of life. The perfection of form became a danger for the sustaining of life. I once happened to be told by one of the most remarkable Catholic theologians of the West, Guardini, a leader of the German youth movement, and a visible activist in the liturgical movement: only with you in Russia has been preserved still the Dionysian element of life, which with us in the West is no more, it has been extinguished, it has become weakened by the dominance of form, which has not taken hold with you Russians. The Russians understand differently the correspondence between form and matter, between act and potentiality, than obtains per Aristotle. Russian thinking is inclined to see activity in the very potentiality of life and not in the approach, wherein that form as it were from the outside is imposed upon matter. And hence the acute antipathy of the Russian spiritual type towards formalism and juridicism in culture, towards authoritative claims in religious life, towards rationalism in thought, towards a predominance of external settings of arrangement of the inner organic life. Hence also there is a different understanding of freedom, as indeterminism, as an irrational principle in life, as rooted in the potentialities of life. Hence also there is the antipathy towards individualism, as involving division, a closed-in condition, setting boundaries to the fullness of life, towards the Roman concept of possessions, towards having high walls around one's dwellings and bolting shut the gates, towards the delimitation of rights and the struggle for one's own rights against the rights of others. But this antipathy towards individualism has nothing in common with a denial of the person, as often it might seem to Western people. And hence also within literature there is the demand of Russians to express their soul and their search for the truth of life, yet amidst this a lack of confidence, that the mysteries of life, the authentic reality, can actually be expressed in word or in any sort of form. "Thought bespoken is a lie", says Tiutchev. With this is all bound up the constant doubt and reflection of Russians over the justification of culture, doubts that are religious, moral, social. Hence also the difficulty to reach the perfective in one's own creativity. The West has become so fond of civilisation, that in its name it consented to set boundaries to life and weaken its power, it believes terribly much in the word, in the concept, in form, in organisation, in rights, and to such it entirely subordinates both soul and life. In the West it is only the Romantics that have risen up against this. In Russia it was not needful to be a Romantic, in order to prevent the dominance of form over life. And with this are connected not only the positive, but also the negative and difficult sides in the Russian spiritual type.

The East is a land of revelation. There God spoke with man, person to person. All the religions have arisen in the East -- the Jewish religion and our Christian religion, as well as Mahometanism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, Parseeism. The West has created not a single religion, nor has it heard directly the voice of God. The West, true, has developed the Christian religion and has done much, but has developed it with the methods of civilisation. The West is the land of civilisation and the people of the West rarely doubt the absolute value and the absolute good of civilisation. The symbols of East and West tend to signify: Jerusalem or Athens, revelation or culture. We can desire not to have to make a choice and instead say -- both Jerusalem and Athens, both revelation and culture. The early teachers of the Church tended to unite Jerusalem with Athens. But it is necessary to make a distinction between these two world principles and establish between them an hierarchical correlation. The centre of world culture, certainly, is in the West, but the sources, in which this world comes into contact with the other world -- are in the East. East and West -- are not so much geographic nor historical spheres, always conditional and fluid, even not types of cultures, since there are no Western cultures, into which elements of the East have not entered, -- East and West, -- are symbols, the symbol of the rising of the sun, of revelation, and of the setting of the sun -- of civilisation. The East -- is the realm of genesis. It viewed the creation and the downfall of the world and in it remained still the primordial chaos. The world was created in the East, in the West was created civilisation and there too was awakened reason. The West is right in the middle of the historical path of the world and mankind, but it is not the beginning and it is not the end. In this middle point was created and developed great culture, the thought of man showed its strength. But the final fates of culture remain hidden and frequently to people in the West it seems endless. In order to uncover the final fates necessitates a turning towards the East, to the sources of things, similar to how the Apocalypse, the revelation of the end, relates to the beginning, to the book of Genesis. But where is Russia, which is of interest for these gatherings, -- is it East or West? Russian thought over the entire XIX Century was in torment over this question and it gave rise to two opposing currents -- Slavophilism and Westernism. Russia is not only a nationality, Russia -- is an entire world, almost a peculiar world. And indisputably within it has occurred the encounter of East and West, in it there are two elements, which both find unity and lead to struggle between them. Russia is an East-West and in this is a source of the complexity and torment of its fate, its sad history. In the soul of the cultural Russian man there also transpires the struggle of East and West. Russian man languishes for the West and dreams about it. He seeks to get beyond the Eastern enclosure and strives for fullness. Westernism is a purely Russian, an Eastern-Russian phenomenon. Russian people of culture have not only been fond of it, they became infatuated with it, they could not live without it. Russia has received endlessly much from the West. To Russians belong the most tender and penetrating words about the great culture of the West. The Slavophil Khomyakov called Western Europe "the land of holy miracles". The Byzantist, K. Leont'ev, was totally in love with the great past of Western culture. And finally, even Dostoevsky, who for many people in the West personifies in himself the mysterious, chaotic and repulsive East, spoke very moving words about the grandeur of Western Europe and termed Russian man as a patriot of Western Europe. The greatest Russian thinkers and writers tended to denounce not the West in general, not the Western culture in general, but rather the modern Western civilisation, godless and bourgeois, having forsaken its great past. Russia is not that East, which viewed the creation of the world and the beginning of things. In Russia the world does not begin, as it does for the genuine East, but rather ends. Russia as it were has sought to view the end of things, and in this is its religious pathos. Suchlike also it has to be with the Christian East.

Yet in its communion with culture, in the person of Russian people standing at the summits of culture, Russia is tormented with doubts on the justification of culture. Is culture authentic being and life? Is it not an unsuccessful failing of life? Is not the price for culture too dear, is it not a betrayal of God or the people? Ought not the creativity of cultural values pass over to the creativity of life itself, of a new transfigured life? These questions -- are purely Russian questionings, purely a Russian reflection over that cultural condition, in which the West lives, possessed of no doubts on its good and value. Russian people, and especially the most creative and cultured Russian people, have experienced what might be called a cultural apocalypse, a sort of Dread Last Judgement regarding culture. And this fully conforms to the eschatologicism of Russian Orthodoxy. The fate of three of the Russian great writers -- Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky -- witnesses to the tragedy of culture and creativity. In the fate of Tolstoy, who is more remarkable than his teachings, this became apparent throughout all the world. The Russian culture of the XIX Century and the Russian great literature was not endowed with any sort of a Renaissance character and it was not from a joyful exuberance, not from any free play of powers that the Russians created their works. Only in Pushkin was there the gleam of a Renaissance aspect, but this was merely only a brief moment of creative joy at the beginning XIX Century, in the Golden Age of Russian poetry. Russian literature, ever so sad, went other paths. The Russian creative writers were afflicted by the sufferings of the world and of man, they sought for salvation and a deliverance from the torments. Russian literature within its most remarkable works seeks the truth of life, seeks the religious meaning of life and desires to pass over into religious activity. At its summits it transcends the limits and has no desire to know of laws, which would restrain it within an enclosed and differentiated sphere. We as Russians tend to be lawless people in general and in everything we overstep the limits. Western European culture and literature tends to flow always within the categories of Classicism and Romanticism. And this testifies to its ancient Graeco-Roman origins. If it be said to a typical Western man, that some certain Russian writer is not classical, then he suspects of him, that he is a romantic. But in actuality, Classicism and Romanticism are nowise Russian categories. The elements of Classicism and Romanticism with us represent something affected and borrowed. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are nowise classical nor are they romantics, this is obvious for everyone. Should Rozanov however be set into the category of Classicism or of Romanticism? Romanticism correlates to Classicism and appears as the reaction to the oppression and tyranny of Classicism. Romanticism is a phenomenon totally Western and it developed upon the soil of Western humanism. Romanticism in Russia often has been only a languor for the West and an experiencing by the Russian soul of Western influences. The spirit of the East is not at all romantic, just as in general spirit is not romantic, -- only the soul tends to be romantic. Characteristic to the Russian spiritual type is neither Classicism, nor Romanticism, for characteristic to it is a special kind of religious realism. Russian creativity attempts to penetrate to the very depths of life, the depths of being, to reveal the truth about man, which also is the truth about God, and not about the reaching of perfected forms, such as obscure the truth abut life, about man and about God. Granted that this regards the East, since the West reveres form foremost of all and aspires towards perfection of form more than towards being itself. But this is an East, which tends to remember, that its deepest source is the Bible and Jerusalem. It was still not so long ago that you, as Frenchmen, had a remarkable writer, who was mindful of this truth and was close to Russian motifs, though he was also a typical Latin. I speak about a man of the Apocalypse, L. Bloy. He was not afraid of further risk, such as people tend to fear, all those chained fast to civilisation.

Western culture has too much forgotten, that it derives not only from Graeco-Roman civilisation, but also from Jerusalem. Even the Christian West often forgets this. In order to know primary sources it is necessary to resort to the book of Genesis. Narrated therein is the origin of East and West, of South and North, of the coming about of the world. And here it mustneeds be said, that the Bible is not at all a matter of Classicism, just as neither is it Romanticism, it is necessary to turn to the Bible, in order to comprehend the fate of the world apart from any matters of Classicism and Romanticism, of classical formations and the romantic inner reactions against these formations. There is no one that would assert, that the Prophets or the book of Job are either classical or romantic. A comparison of the book of Job with Greek tragedy, with the Oedipus of Sophokles makes clear the differences between the ancient Hebrew, the Biblical, and the type classical, the Greek. In the Oedipus what is striking is the submissive resignation to fate. The words and gestures of Oedipus are beautiful in their moderation and resignation, in them there is an aesthetic transformation of suffering. Oedipus in his blameless suffering has no one to appeal to, no one to fight against, Oedipus lives in an immanently enclosed world, and there is no power, upon which he can rely in his struggle against the world. The world is full of gods, but these gods are immanent to the world, over them likewise rules fate, which has sent Oedipus his tragic sufferings, blameless and inescapable. The way out is possible only aesthetically. Classical antiquity did not know of the struggle with God. Job experiences his tragedy altogether differently. In him there is no submission and resignation. Job cries out, and his outcry fills the history of the world, to the very present it sounds forth on our lips. In the outcry of Job we get a sense of the fate of man. For Job fate does not exist, as it did for Oedipus. He knows of a power, standing higher than the world, higher than fate, to appeal to in the sufferings of the world, he turns his outcry to God and this outcry passes over into a struggle with God. Only in the Bible is known the manifestation of God-struggle, the struggle with God face to face, the struggle of Jacob, the struggle of Job, the struggle of all Israel. The resignation to the tragic in a beauty of submissiveness to blameless and inescapable suffering, the amor fati is the grandest attainment of the tragic spirit of Greece. Higher than this the west has not risen. Nietzsche was captivated by this, and by it have been captivated people of Western culture, having forgotten the Bible, having forgotten Him, to Whom is possible to offer complaint against innocent suffering in the world. The amor fati is a romantic motif in the classical world and man can rise up no higher than it, with having lost faith in God uppermost beyond the world. Dostoevsky is Russian tragedy. And here it is more in the line of Job, than in the line of Greek tragedy. In Dostoevsky there is that selfsame God-struggle, that same outcry, that same irreconcilableness and non-submissiveness, in him there is that selfsame absence of surmounting the tragic through an aesthetic catharsis. It is remarkable, that in him is altogether no sorrow and melancholy, so characteristic of the romantic West, he is not so much a psychologist, as rather a pneumatologist, and by this is uncovered an authentically tragic element. All the whole of Russian great literature in the XIX Century was more Biblical, than Greek in its spirit. In it is heard that selfsame outcry about the suffering fate of man in the world, calling out to God and for seeking the Kingdom of God, in which would be wiped away the tears of the child. We, as Russians, have connections with Greece, and not with Rome, the connections with Greece are through our Church, through the Greek Patristics, through Platonism, through mystery. Close to us is the Greek cosmic sense. But even beyond all this, we as Russians are aware of our own connection with the Bible and with Jerusalem. Within Russian spiritual culture enters in the Greece of Plato, Neo-Platonism and mystery, and also Judaism: the Bible and the Apocalypse. The strong admixture of Tatar blood creates an unique element, in which are active spiritual principles, deriving from Jerusalem and Athens. And here is this unique East, distinct from the East of the Indian or the Mussulman, it entered into an interaction with the west, it experienced the influences of Western culture and in its own way transformed them over the course of the XIX Century. Russians love Athens, although they are not native to the Mediterranean Sea, and often they languish over Athens, since always they love to languish over some other world, they have likewise languished over Paris and over Goettingen, when they lived remote from such places (at present they languish over Moscow), but Jerusalem was for us more primary, more a bed-rock, than Athens, not only the old Jerusalem, but also the new Jerusalem, after which we seek.

The people of the Russian East or East-West, as I prefer to say, cannot be reconciled with those forms of the humanistic civilisation of the west, which ultimately have disdained the Bible and Jerusalem and have led to the forgetting of them. Foreign to us and impossible for us is not the love of the West in general, so great in its creativity, in the intensity of its thought, from which eternally there is much to learn, but it is rather the rationalistic and bourgeois West, a West conceited and of a repetitive spirit, a West impersonal with its worship of Mammon, in which form has made insignificant the content of life. Foreign to Russia is the European individualism, with its stifling isolation of persons, of families, of social groups, nationalities and different spheres of culture. The paradox of European individualism consists in this, that it not only isolates and shuts in the person within himself, not only that it invokes a cult of private property in everything, but also that it depersonalises the person, with his subordination to uniform social norms. It was not thus during the Middle Ages, it was not thus in the era of the Renaissance. The frightful thing in the mechanical civilisation of the West of the XIX and XX Centuries consists in this, that it both atomises and isolates the person, leaving him at the mercy of the whims of fate, and it also degrades every uniqueness of the person and in his distinctness from other persons, subordinating him to a mechanical collective. Social tyranny is the reverse side of this individualism. Peculiar to Russians is an unique kind of collectivism, unknown to the peoples of the West, it is rooted in the spiritual type of Orthodoxy. And totally mistaken indeed are the opinions of those Western people, who think, that the principle of the person is foreign to Russians, that Russia represents an impersonal East. The reading of Dostoevsky and other Russian writers should prove persuasive in this. Throughout the whole of the Russian culture of the XIX and XX Centuries there is an intense and tormentive experiencing of the problem of the person, of personal fate, as in the book of Job. It is Russians namely that have always risen up against bourgeois civilisation, against progress, against the absolute spirit of Hegel, against all social norms and laws in the name of the living human person, his joys and sufferings. This -- is a traditional Russian motif. But it remains an enigma, unsettling for the people of the West, why indeed the Russian people, having created a deep thought and literature, wholly taken up with the Christian idea of the person, having risen up against everything that would enslave and diminish the living person, why that such a people should have created the Communist order, in which ultimately the human person is crushed and brought low. In the West it would not be so easy for Communism to triumph over the effects of the individualism of Western people. This paradox of Russian fate is explicable by the twofold ambiguity of the Russian spiritual type, which was revealed with genius by Dostoevsky. The Russian people not only strives towards the New Jerusalem, towards the Kingdom of God, but also to an high degree it is capable of being tempted on its path, of falling into doubt, of getting confused and mistaking the kingdom of the Anti-Christ for the Kingdom of Christ. The Russian searching for social truth, and this always is for a maximum of social truth, can lead to opposite results. The verymost Russian of virtues can turn out as vices. What determines this, is that the structure of the Russian soul comprises within it a sort of polar opposition and it is possible only with difficulty to hold a middle ground. The hierarchicalisation of values proceeding by steps, which the West does with such genius, comes only with difficulty for Russians. An historical gradualness rests uneasily for Russian thought. But the question about East and West in Russian Communism is quite more complex, than is usually thought. There is active within it an Eastern element and it is an Asiatic Socialism, this is beyond dispute. But the ideology of Communism and militant atheism is taken from the West, And the Russian East has gone out of its mind from the Western draughts, bearable for a more moderate temperament. The experience of Russian Communism is something very instructive for the West. Russian Communism is nothing other than an evil-inducing apocalyptic caricature of the final limits of a godless Western civilisation, such as the West itself has not experienced. It shows, whither the paths lead out, those which for awhile had seemed safe and secure. Russian Communism is a phenomenon of a religious sort. The Russian East is on no middle path, but rather over beyond the limits. And in this is expressed an eschatological spirit.

Barbarisation threatens the world. It threatens Europe both from the outside and from within its own civilisation, not from the forest, but from the machine. Blows are being struck at the aristocratism of culture. But it would be folly to think, that it is possible to contend against the barbarisation by an East and West isolated and hostile. God cannot be only in the East or only in the West. The West has to leave off with the idea, that the East is for it only an object for material and spiritual influencing. The East is a subject, and in its capacity as an active subject it again is emerging into world history. The smugness and isolation of the East is intolerable, but so is the smugness and isolation of the West. There is necessary a mutual fulfilling and enrichment. And particularly unseemly for Christians is such an isolationism and smugness. Christianity is an universal revelation and it entered the world, as an universal truth. It arrived from the East, but it was alike for both the East and for the West. We want to breath a world breath and move on to a new universal epoch, in which will be overcome the shut-in isolationism of all the parts of the earth, just like with the shut-in isolationism of the earth itself, its disjunction from the heavens and from other worlds.

There is an impersonal and anti-Christian East. But it cannot be conquered by that civilisation of the West, which itself is anti-Christian and impersonal. The Far East and the Far West can combine into one and the same godless and inhuman civilisation. But the unity of East and West in the Name of God and of man, in the Name of Christ and of the person, has to be made both against an East and against a West, such as would kill God, and in killing God, would also kill man.

Nikolai Berdyaev. 1930

There is a popular myth in Europe that Europe has somehow been corrupted by the spread of American anti-culture (although there is some truth in this). In reality, if we go back and examine European culture from the Franco-Prussian War to the Great War, then we can easily see this is not the case. The origins of Europe's modern cultural decadence had long been established in fin-de-siècle Europe and have more to do with modernisation, secularisation, and capitalism than anything else. Adolf Hitler himself was well aware of this, especially of the art bolshevism that flourished during this era. The '68 riots, if anything, were more profound in Europe (France in particular) than they were in America. The consumer culture that now exists in Europe is the logical result of an overproductive capitalist economy.

The "cultural" anti-Americanism is to a certain degree right as America always was the exponent of this negative side of modern, late-western civilization, and worked - especially after the military defeat of the preservers of true Occidental spirit in WW2 - as a catalyst for the massive prevalence of it.

But I agree that one substancially can't just blame America for having seduced a virginal, spiritually intact continent. Spengler wrote during WW1 that this Germany which fights against the West (in the narrower sense) was not the Germany of Goethe, but a second America.
Nevertheless he believed that it was the war between two principles of western civilization and that the question of modern civilization was if the rulers of the world would be Capitalists, traders or servants with the ethos of "Prussian Socialism".

One could see for the entity of the West (in the broader sense; German: Abendland) a negative side: destructive, anti-culture, materialism, the "Ideas of 1789", in its character in many ways Jewified and thus perverted - and a new culture-political "movement", counterrevolutionary to negative modernity, but itself often with revolutionary and modern elements, the renewal of the eternal, traditional Occidental spirit.
The contrast may went through all countries, but the negative form of "modernity" had its motor in the "West" in the narrower sense: in the Anglo-Saxon world and France, while the positive-constructive answer to it was strongest in Germany and then found - through the genius of Adolf Hitler - its condensation in National Socialism.

ROFL, what inanity - 'the West' is a meaningless essentialist semantic construct that does not exist outside of one's personal mediated perceptions. We chose to give it our own arbitrary meanings and those are the only ones of any relevance. I define "the West" as anything West of of Olympia, Washington, and that definition is the only one that has any validity in the reality I create.

ROFL, what inanity - 'the West' is a meaningless essentialist semantic construct that does not exist outside of one's personal mediated perceptions. We chose to give it our own arbitrary meanings and those are the only ones of any relevance. I define "the West" as anything West of of Olympia, Washington, and that definition is the only one that has any validity in the reality I create.
ROFL, what are you talking about? Russia HAS ALWAYS existed, as the essence of Russianness biologically exists within all Russians themselves in the other world of objectivity, which we have access to by way of incanting certain phrases we make up out of thin air like, say, the Ladoganishnonon race. True Russians have red hair, short fingernails, squinty eyes, bad breath, and an IQ of 112, not 102 or brown hair. They are also much poorer than the Germans because they are of inferior Ladoganishnonon biological stock. :p