What exactly was the missed opportunity? Above all, it was a chance for the E.U. to liberate itself from the heritage of the Cold War. Instead, Western Europe maintained the polarization by other means: now, instead of seeing them as the enemy, the E.U. viewed the countries that had freed themselves from the communist straight-jacket as poor relatives with unrealistic ambitions and a childish wish to imitate the West. To the extent that the Cold War was fought on the basis of competing ideological claims and belief systems—that is, in thinly veiled metaphysical terms—the E.U. has remained a willing prisoner of its own received wisdom. In this respect, it could do nothing but see itself as the site of a unique civilization representing the ultimate horizon of universal aspirations, a civilization of superior values and the ultimate guarantee of their survival.
For the political elites of the post-communist countries, crowding in the waiting room of this contradictory club, the understanding of the E.U. as a place of superior standards, norms, and values in all walks of life has undoubtedly possessed great mobilizing power. This was not a question of selective rational deliberation but, rather, a comprehensive idea that presented the E.U. as a promise of happiness and the alleviation of all tensions—an Arcadia from which the peoples of the East had been expelled at the onset of communism; after the revolutions of 1989, they could simply return to their “natural” habitat. It is thus no coincidence that the “return to Europe” represented one of the very few clearly identifiable rallying cries in Central and Eastern Europe in the nineties. This slogan was felt as genuine in various public circles and enjoyed wide support among the people in general, and not only among the post-communist elites, who, however, quickly discovered (regardless of whether they leaned left or right) that symbolism doesn’t get you very far. In countries where communism had preached only absolute dichotomies, “Europe” now meant the embodiment of beauty, truth, and justice. Before long, the public discourse of Eastern and Central Europe had placed “Europe” on a pedestal as a metaphysical idea, something sacred and beyond all doubt.
Europe, then, was a privilege. No privilege, however, can survive its practical universalization. From this particular point of view, it is not surprising—though it is unacceptable for me—that in contemporary debates about what privilege it is we are really talking about, the traditionally overlooked part of Europe is, in fact, omitted. The entire post-communist world is present in these debates only through its absence. Let me state this clearly: the post-communist world is not an active participant in these debates, i.e., it is excluded from any possibility of substantially influencing the outcome of negotiations on the emerging European political, cultural, and economic identity in the twenty-first century. Regardless of differences in the achieved forms of democratic order and market efficiency, the state of human rights, and the established institutions of the rule of law, as exhibited today by the countries aspiring to join the E.U., it is safe to say that the least common denominator they share is a consensus about the need to reduce the complex processes of integration. This means reduction to the instrumental-pragmatic dimension. The adoption of the huge corpus of the acquis communautaire and its integration into individual national legislation in post-communist countries is generally understood as a formal, technical obligation and less as a central political mechanism of rearranging the fundamental relations not only between the state and the civil society, but also between the state and existing cultural, ethnic, and historical identifications.
In this light, we need to consider possibilities for constructing a common template for an inclusive European identity that will have a wide public appeal. Here, too, Western Europe’s preconceived notions and excessive reliance on the integrating effects of “economism” and nothing else tend to undermine, rather than invite, the construction of a viable shared master narrative. Moreover, the dominance of the E.U.’s economic aspect continues exactly to the extent to which comprehensive and rationally organized attempts to formulate a “common mental framework” for the E.U. are doomed to failure. Such joint projects as the “Cultural Capital of Europe” program, which fosters mutual understanding between European nations; the Erasmus, Socrates, and Tempus scholarships, which are designed to encourage the sharing of scientific research; international human rights workshops; and support for efforts to build a democratic mentality in the public at large—all these and many other welcome forms of European cooperation will hang in a limbo of limited engagement if they are not anchored in a common grand narrative.
What, exactly, do I mean by this? What I have in mind is a substantial imaginative framework of general identification, material for “common dreams” that can give all the citizens of Europe a certain minimum of existential meaning and emotional density, through which we recognize a commitment to something that transcends us as individuals with particular identities. I realize, of course, that such a construction is idealistic, hinged as it is on a search for balance between ethnic and cultural traditions on the one hand, and loyalty to a supranational, overarching cultural habitus on the other. Yet I cannot bring myself to believe that the reciprocity of horizontal transactions that would give each member equal say in the affairs of the whole can be established without mutual acceptance of a publicly shared sphere within which such reciprocity can take place.
My own experience, however, along with a consideration of the genesis of national identification as the strongest form of modern collective allegiance, tells me that “Europeanism” cannot be an effective unifying narrative unless it consciously and systematically draws from the heritage of all European nations. As such, “Europeanism” would have to meet several demanding standards. It would have to include cross-generational continuity, perpetuated by a common cultural amalgamation of distinct ethnic traditions and reinforced by shared memory and the expectation of a common future, as Dominique Moisi points out in the essay “Dreaming of Europe.” In other words, “Europeanism” would need to provide a symbolic order wherein a centripetal force might be able to counteract—though by no means abolish—the centrifugal forces of primary identification that one feels as a Pole, German, Catalan, Croatian, Scot, or Italian. The emotional charge in these building blocks of “Europeanism” in statu nascendi is, of course, undeniable. The various kinds of totalitarian nationalist abuse, which in both nineteenth– and twentieth-century Europe have often afflicted the mobilizing power of collective emotional ties need not disqualify them from the equation. In fact, the dominant political currents in Europe’s “age of extremes” offer copious evidence that primary national identifications based on the shared self-perception of the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic heritage have almost always won the competition for popular allegiance, leaving other kinds of identifications, based on social class or the lofty ideals of abstract cosmopolitanism, as second-place options.
the art is inside
