Reconfiguring
The European Identity
In
the fourth section of Tony Judt’s Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945,
we see Europe’s development from 1985 through 2005. Although in the postwar
years European leaders made attempts to conjoin the continent together by
forming a supranational trade entity, the effort did not really take off until
the 1990s. The European Union that we see today is a much more complex and
integrated system than any of its member states could have imagined; not only
is it a massive trade institution, but it also heads a humanitarian aid
program, a financial auditory administration, and rural development.
While
the European Union has been able to offer its member citizens a wide range of
social and economic benefits, it has hugely disrupted conventional beliefs
about the citizen, the nation, and their respective roles on a global scale. This
essay will use examples from Judt to demonstrate the challenges that Europeans
face today in adjusting to their new and continually changing identities. The three
political changes that help to underscore these challenges include Germany’s
collective amnesia of their recent history, the ambivalent independence of
Soviet Russia’s satellite states, and the European Union’s expansion.
The
first point of discussion looks at how Germany has dealt with its ugly history
of the past twentieth century. Until the fall of communism, the capitalist and
militarily occupied West Germany dealt with their history by shifting their
attention from its political past—although it was not altogether forgotten—to
its economic future. After 1989, the issue of fortifying a clear and tarnish-free
German national identity reemerged as the country underwent reunification.
“Rather
than engage the GDR’s troubled history, in other words, its former subjects
were encouraged to forget it—an ironic replay of West Germany’s own age of
forgetting in the Fifties. And as in the early years of the Federal Republic,
so after 1989: prosperity was to be the answer. Germany would buy its way out
of history. To be sure, the GDR was a decidedly suitable case for treatment” (Judt,
p.642-643).
In
order to compensate for the economic differences between the former East and
West
Germanys and to prevent domestic
political unrest, the German government chose to funnel capital into the former
East. Although these redistribution programs were conducted successfully, “many
‘Ossies’ were actually put off by the patronizing triumphalism of their Western
cousins” (Judt, p.643). This was in part due to the new economic challenges faced
by the ‘Ossies,’ but much more of their apathy to join the West came from
decades of Communist indoctrination: this “inculcated misperception [of the
West]…was part of the GDR’s core identity and did nothing to ease its
disoriented former citizens’ transition ‘back’ into Germany” (Judt, p.642). The
challenge of once again unifying German nationalism became particularly problematic
as “‘their’ Germany was systematically excised from the official record” (Judt,
p.642).
In
order to alleviate the political anxiety of Western Europe over the unanticipated
fall of Communism and fears of a potential resurgence, German leaders
implemented rushed assimilation programs. This could be seen in how “the names
of towns, streets, buildings and counties were changed, often reverting to
pre-1933 usage” and the restoration of rituals and memorials (Judt, p.642). But
mere name changes could not overcome the long-term stigmas that came with the
“ethnic-national categories” ascribed to them by the Soviet constitution (Judt,
p.649). As seen in the resurgence of the Communist party in German politics
during the 1980s, German re-assimilation “was not the recovery of history…but
rather its erasure—it was though the GDR had never been” (Judt, p.642). While
these processes served to mediate whatever potential political unrest that was
seething among Soviet loyalists, it did little to resolve the problem of finding a national identity:
the Eastern European history was plagued by demagogues and the imposition of the
values of imperialist Russia.
Another
significant event that has a similar tone is the disintegration of another
former satellite state, Yugoslavia. Like many other former Soviet states, Yugoslavia
struggled with its transition to democracy. For many, independence from the
Soviet Union “was not so much about self-determination as self-preservation—a
sound basis for state-making, as it turned out, but a poor foundation for
democracy” (Judt, p.659). This attitude is largely due to the widespread
skepticism and suspicion of the Soviet bloc’s political culture, as evidenced
in its black market operations and the nepotism among the underground and
political elites. Indeed, after enduring so many years of perverted
authoritarianism, Eastern Europeans were striped of any remote experiences as
how to establish an “individual or collective initiative and lacking any basis
on which to make informed public choices” (Judt, p.692).
On
more than one occasion, history has shown us the dangerous consequences of
allowing national leaders exploit their minorities, and the fate of Yugoslavia
was no different. Although Judt suggests that the “‘ethnic’ fault-lines within
Yugoslavia were never very well defined,” he does recognize the negative role
that imperial manipulators had in exacerbating these differences (Judt, p.666-668).
After
the atrocious wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, the region is still
struggling to mend its fragmented society. If World War II was ever was a
lesson about the dangers of extreme nationalism, the point was not missed in
Yugoslavia, but rather deliberately exploited for the benefit of the Soviet
tyrant, Milo Milunovic. This relapse of an entire European region into civil war over
ethno-nationalist lines dissolved any remaining confidence that Western
Europeans may have had about being able to maintain continental peace under the
auspices of the traditional
nation-state system. Clearly, the continent would have to extra precautions in
reconfiguring their governing structures if there was to be any hope of ensuring
long term political stability. While the European Union offered a nice outlet
for resolving nation-state antagonisms, its expansion during these decades
served to further obscure the national identities that were recovered since
World War II.
In
most Western European states, the challenges of recovering national identities was
generally much easier than it had been in the Soviet bloc not only because of
the less damage that was wrought on them during and after the war, but also
because the region found common ground in its resolution to never allow
themselves to enter into war with one another. Outside of this post-nationalist
resolution, however, the future character of the region remained imprecise (Judt,
p.733).
Uniting
the continent through economic treaties helped to make the EU’s member nations
“so intertwined and interdependent that armed conflict, while never impossible,
had become somehow inconceivable” (Judt, p.734). This was a positive change in
continental governance in that the EU’s policies now facilitated “education,
research and investment,” but these changes have done little to aid in people’s
understanding of their relationship with both their supranational and national
governing structures (Judt, p.796). Today, the relevance of the EU’s member
nations seems to rely only on their capacity to raise armies and to limitedly
adjudicate laws within their own borders, albeit under the supervision of EU
administrators. Under such regulations, a majority of member
citizens have been hesitant to place ‘European’ ahead of their national
identities, unsure of the precise meaning behind its tag.
Taken
together, we can see that these three events aptly capture the unprecedented
challenges Europeans are facing to elucidate the transcendental meaning behind
their changing political institutions. With the continued steady expansion of
the European Union’s political authority, the struggle to assert an identity
that both honors the continent’s difficult past and its move away from the
faults of their traditional ideologies will continue to be a challenge for
generations to come. The best option for Europeans at this point in time is to
forge ahead with developing their “‘European values,’” and continue to be a
beacon of democracy and interstate cooperation to which the world can aspire
(Judt, p.788). For all anybody knows, the solution to resolving Europe’s
identity crisis may be as simple as the passage of time.
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