The E U R O P E A N

CONSERVATIVE
Issue 15 • Summer/Fall 2018 €10 / $10
 Contents
Guest Commentary: The Legacy of ‘68
Anthony Daniels 3

On True (and False) Conservatism

Andreas Kinneging 4

A Sea of Trouble in Europe: An Interview with Ryszard Legutko

Kai Weiss 8

The Migration Crisis & the Culture of Europe

Balázs M. Mezei 12

Choosing Our Battles

Darragh McDonagh 20

The Weakness of the West: An Interview with Martin van Creveld

Stefan Beig 21

Burke, Prophet of Peace

Mark Dooley 26

A Parable for the Fall of the West: A review of Le Camp des Saints by Jean Raspail
François La Choüe 30

The Brilliance of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

André P. DeBattista 34

Natural Law, Social Justice & the Crisis of the West

Ryan T. Anderson 41

Krakow: The City that Remembers

Carrie Gress 46

Communist Terror in Modern Film: Reviews of After Image and Bitter Harvest
Filip Mazurczak 52

Miłowit Kuniński, RIP

Ryszard Legutko 58

Editor-in-Chief: Alvino-Mario Fantini

Assistant Editor: Filip Mazurczak
US Correspondent: Gerald J. Russello
Editorial Board: Stjepo Bartulica, Matthew Edwards, Ellen Kryger Fantini, Roman Joch, Felix James Miller, Lorenzo
Montanari, G. K. Montrose, Alexandre Pesey, Matthew Tyrmand, Pr. Edmund Waldstein
Advisory Council: Rémi Brague, Robin Harris, Mark C. Henrie, Annette Kirk, Sir Roger Scruton
Contact: editor@europeanconservative.com

2 Summer/Fall 2018
Issue 15 Summer/Fall 2018
GUES T COMMENTARY

The Legacy of ‘68

Anthony Daniels admire had caused the deaths of more than a million
people, their attitude would have changed much). For

I n France, every eighth year of every decade,

there is an outpouring of histories, memoirs and
picture-books of the 1968 Parisian ‘events’, as they
were and still are known. This will continue until the
last bourgeois geriatric trying to relive the joys of his
adolescence dies.
1968 was probably the only revolution in history,
or attempted revolution, by spoilt brats. That they
were spoilt brats is evident from the photographs
of the times and films of their meetings, where it is
evident that none of them ever forgot to pose. “Would
they look well?” was a question that was never far from
their minds.
These were no downtrodden peasants groaning
under the yoke of heavy taxes that relieved them of too
much of the product of their own hard physical labour.
On the contrary, they were the privileged children of
the elite of a country in full economic expansion —
and those students who were not of this class were
destined soon to join it.
So what were they rebelling against? The answer is
simple: self-restraint, particularly in the sexual sphere.
“It is forbidden to forbid” — them, at any rate.
For all their supposed concern for the poor and
oppressed of the world, it was obvious that they had no
interest in the poor and oppressed of the world. Though
one of their slogans was “Imagination in power”, they
were totally lacking in imagination because they were
interested only in themselves. Who but people utterly
without imagination or historical curiosity could have
equated de Gaulle with Hitler, as was frequently done
during the protests? Who but people utterly without
imagination or historical curiosity could have equated
the CRS (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité) with
the SS? And this in a country that had been occupied
by the Nazis less than a quarter of a century before!
Nor was their Mao worship and Castrophilia
anything deeper than a posture. They knew nothing
of the real conditions existing in China and Cuba at
the time and didn’t even think it necessary to know
anything about them (not that, if they had known
that the Cultural Revolution that they claimed to so
The European Conservative is a non-profit pan-European conservative magazine founded by the Center for European Renewal (CER).
Written, edited, and designed by volunteers, it seeks to make available articles, essays, and reviews representing the different varieties
of ‘respectable conservatism’ across Europe. We welcome unsolicited manuscripts and submissions. Back issues are available in PDF
format at: www.europeanconservative.com. For information about the CER, please contact us.
what are the deaths of a million Chinese to set against
the applause of their peers in the usurped halls of the
Sorbonne?
French society was in a weak position to call them
to order. The Second World War was not a period
that many of their elders and betters wished to recall,
and the even more recent war in Algeria was still an
open wound (which has not completely healed even
now). Former French President François Mitterand,
for example, had been a great signer of death warrants
during the efforts to keep Algeria française, quite
apart from his Vichyite past. Few were the cupboards
that had no skeletons, and it is difficult for adults to
reprehend youth when their own moral past has been
sufficiently ambiguous for them not want it too closely
examined.
It is, of course, difficult to say what are the
long-lasting effects of the events of 1968. Would
the world have been much different from what it is
now if they had never taken place? Counterfactual
arguments are impossible to avoid in historical
assessment, but they are likewise impossible to
prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
But it seems to me that the effects were to reinforce
if not to originate certain tendencies. The first is the
belief in adolescence and young adulthood as periods
in life of generosity, selflessness, and idealism, rather
than of ignorance, unwisdom, and self-obsession.
Closely tied to this is the tendency to believe that to
be young is very heaven, and therefore it is a worthy
aim never to grow up or to change one’s tastes. Life
for many is now precocity followed by arrested
development. In a sense, the pathetic 70 year-old rock
stars who comport themselves as if they were still 19
are the true children of Paris, 1968.
In addition, 1968 in Paris helped to inaugurate the
cult of the present moment and an attitude to the past
as nothing but an immemorial waste-paper basket of
useless customs, traditions, and pedantry. But how far
1968 was a cause and how far an effect no one will
ever finally be able to say. Perhaps the relationship was
dialectical.

About the cover: A partial view of “The Ipatiev House: The Morning After”, part of a triptych entitled “Imperial Golgotha”
(2004) painted by the late Russian painter, Pavel Viktorovich Ryzhenko (1970-2014). It depicts the cellar in the house in which the
Romanov family and four members of the staff were massacred on the night of 16-17 July 1918. Image courtesy of the ‘Ipatiev House’
virtual museum. More information at: www.romanov-memorial.com.

The European Conservative 3

On True (and False) Conservatism
Andreas Kinneging
E verywhere in Europe and the US, the popularity of
so-called ‘populist’ politicians and parties — many of
which call themselves conservative — is growing. So, at
first sight, conservatism seems to be on the rise and doing
well. But that is a misconception. Calling populist parties
‘conservative’ is like calling a cat a ‘dog’: There are some
superficial resemblances, but in reality these are two very
different animals. Most apparently, populist parties are
in favour of more direct democracy — they believe that
the populus is virtuous and must stop the corrupt elite.
Conservatism on the other hand, is sceptical of the political
acuteness of the common man and believes that the populus
needs to be guided by a virtuous elite.
Isn’t that the conservative position? What, if anything,
is conservatism, really? Let us go back in time and remind
ourselves where exactly conservatism comes from, how it
developed, and where it stands now.
On origins
The word ‘conservatism’ goes back no further than about
one hundred years. It was first used, to my knowledge,
by Lord Hugh Cecil, who in 1912 published a book
with the title Conservatism. The famous eleventh
edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which dates
from 1911-12, has no lemma for the word. (It does
for socialism and liberalism.) With the exception of
Britain, however, the word initially did not gain wide
currency, either on the European continent or in the
US. And if it was used, it was as a term of abuse. It was
only after Barry Goldwater and his followers began to
use it as a self-description in the 1960s, that it gradually
gained currency in the US.
On the European continent, on the other hand, it is
still in the process of becoming ordinary and respectable.
As yet, it has not become as normal and accepted a word
as ‘socialism’ and ‘liberalism’. The lineage of the word
‘conservatism’ is hence quite modest. And if words and
things are connected, one would have to conclude that
conservatism is something of the post-1960s era — and
as far as the eastern part of Europe is concerned, even
of the post-1989 era. But let’s be generous and say that
conservatism as we know it is a post-war phenomenon that
began with the publication of Quentin Hogg’s The Case for
Conservatism in 1947 and Russell Kirk’s The Conservative
Mind in 1953.
Of course, like many people with modest roots,
4 Summer/Fall 2018
The counter-revolutionary ‘Banner of the Holy Wounds’, used
in 1536 during the English uprising — the ‘Pilgrimage of
Grace’ — against the supression of the monasteries.
contemporary conservatives traverse the past, looking for
relatives that might make their lineage more respectable.
The opinions of these genealogists differ somewhat but
all agree that Edmund Burke is the founding father of
conservatism, and his Reflections on the Revolution in
France (1790) its Gospel. So the general picture, which has
acquired wide currency, is that there is one conservative
tradition, running from Burke to the present.
However, such general pictures with wide currency
often have one thing in common: They are usually not true.
In reality, Burke’s views have little or nothing in common
with contemporary, post-war conservatism. If we aspire to a
true understanding of the history of conservatism, we have
to start making a few distinctions. Even if we limit ourselves
to the last two centuries, which is anything but self-evident,
we encounter not one but three types of conservatism that
differ greatly — so greatly in fact, that the question arises if
including them all under the same denominator isn’t (self-)
deceit.
First, there is the counter-revolutionary tradition,
which reached its zenith in the period from 1790 (Burke)
to the 1830s. Second, there is a liberal-conservative, or
conservative-liberal, tradition that came into existence after
World War II and is still with us. And, finally, there is a type
of conservatism in which the ideas of the counter-revolution
are aufgehoben in the Hegelian sense — i.e. annulled,
preserved, and brought to a higher level. ‘Philosophic’ or
‘Platonic’ conservatism would be an appropriate name for
this type. It predominated in the period from the 1830s to
World War II, but there are several precursory figures and
it is still around. It is sometimes called ‘traditionalism’, or
‘anti-modernism’. This, in my view, is the true or the best
type of conservatism. Its ideas are more acute than ever in
the present time.
George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress
Lord Hugh Cecil (1869-1956) Lord Quintin Hogg (1907-2001)
The counter-revolutionary tradition
The counter-revolution is the exact antipode of the
French and American revolutionary ideas. Politically, the
revolution stood for a (more or less) democratic republic
of free and equal citizens. The counter-revolution
stood for a traditional mixed regime (regimen mixtum)
of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy — i.e. king,
nobility, and commoners. Socially, the revolution stood
for a society of individuals who are equal before the law,
while the counter-revolution stood for a
société des orders — i.e. a ranked society
of hierarchical families, communities,
and orders.
Economically, the revolution
stood for a free market system, with
full ownership rights and freedom of
contract, while the counter-revolution
stood for a corporatist system, based on
guilds, with limited ownership rights
and freedom of contract. Religiously,
the revolution stood for secularism
— i.e. religion as a private matter,
separated from the government, or, in
its extreme variety, for atheism (that
is, a total rejection of Christianity),
while the counter-revolution stood
for the fusion of church and state
and the ‘establishment’ of (one type
of ) Christianity as the official creed,
preferably shared by everyone.
In short, the counter-revolution wanted to restore the
antediluvium and go back to the ancien régime or to the
Middle Ages. This was also Burke’s position. But there
are evidently very few conservatives in the world today
who share these ideas, notwithstanding Burke’s aura as a
founding father of conservatism.
The European Conservative 5
CCA-SA 3.0 Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Russell Kirk (1918-1994)
Liberal-conservatism (or conservative-liberalism)
Most conservatives today are liberals of a kind. Hence
the name liberal-conservatism or conservative-liberalism.
This type of conservatism came into existence after World
War II. Politically, it embraces the idea of a democratic
republic of free and equal citizens. Socially, it stands for
a society of individuals who are equal before the law.
Economically, it favours a free market system with full
rights of ownership and freedom of contract. And, finally,
religiously, it approves of the principle of
the separation of church and state. That
is to say, it regards religion as a private
matter.
Hence, if we compare the positions
it takes with those of the counter-
revolution and the revolution in the
early 19th century, the verdict is clear.
Contemporary conservatism is a child
of the revolution, not of the counter-
revolution. Its founding father was not
Burke but rather Burke’s opponent,
Tom Paine. To associate contemporary
conservatism in any way with Burke and
the counter-revolution is preposterous. Its
closest historical ancestor is the classical
liberalism of the period from the late 18th
to the early 20th century — the tradition
that runs from Adam Smith to Friedrich
Hayek. Contemporary conservatism is
really a kind of liberalism.
Why then the fuzzy terms liberal-conservatism or
conservative-liberalism? For the single reason that there is
a different social philosophy around — it’s the dominant
ideology at the moment, at least in the West — that also
lays a claim to the name liberalism but is of quite another
nature: progressive-liberalism or liberal-progressivism.
 Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Louis de Bonald (1754-1840)
Contemporary conservatism and progressivism are
both children of the revolution. They both embrace the
revolutionary principles of liberty and equality as the highest
principles there are, which makes them both liberal. But they
rank these principles differently. For progressives, equality is
more important than liberty. For conservatives, it is the other
way round.
Equality usually does not come naturally. It has to be
enforced. For that the government is necessary, enforcing the
laws that make people more equal. Such laws by definition
reduce individual liberty. Moreover, if true equality is to rule,
the laws need to be the same for everyone — i.e. general
laws, made by the central government. Hence, the quest for
equality also leads to an ever increasing centralization. Liberal-
progressives are in favour of big, centralized government,
whereas liberal-conservatives prefer small, decentralized
government.
Take human rights (or, in America, civil rights). Based
on a conservative interpretation, these are rights against the
government, preserving the liberty of the individual, groups,
and organizations in society. However, based on a progressive
interpretation, they are the rights of the individual vis-à-
vis other individuals, groups, and organizations in society,
guarding their equality — rights that need to be enforced by
the government.
The difference between the ‘liberal progressives’ and the
‘liberal conservatives’ involves not only the ranking of liberty
and equality. It is also the result of different interpretation of
each. In general, equality and liberty to liberal-conservatives
means what it meant to the classical liberals of the 19th
century: equality before the law and (principally) freedom
from government interference and surveillance. Limited
government is sufficient. Liberal-progressives, on the other
hand, see equality and liberty as something much broader: the
first including (a degree of ) social and economic equality, the
6 Summer/Fall 2018
Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821)
second including the freedom from want, fear, social pressure,
and religious ‘indoctrination’. Obviously, to establish equality
and liberty in such a broad sense, massive government
interference and surveillance is needed.
In sum: The differences between liberal-progressivism
and liberal-conservatism are big and real enough. But they
are similar to the differences between de Girondin and the
Jacobin Party, or between Adams and Jefferson during,
respectively, the French Revolution and the American
Revolution. On the level of fundamental principles they are
at one. For both of them, liberty and equality are the highest
values. Anything that goes counter to these is ultimately
regarded as indefensible and must go. This is bound to result
in some serious blind spots.
Philosophic conservatism
What about the third type of conservatism that came into
existence in the 1830s and dominated the Right until World
War II? It is the heir of the counter-revolution, the essence
of which is opposition to the revolutionary principles of
freedom and equality. Instead of equality it upheld hierarchy
as a fundamental principle — in the cosmos, in society, and in
the soul. Equality it held to be unnatural, and so is a hierarchy
in which what ought to obey, rules; and what ought to rule,
obeys. Both are unstable and bound to disintegrate.
Instead of standing for liberty, the counter-revolution
stood for discipline and duty towards God, the community,
family, and oneself. Liberty in the sense extolled by the
revolution was called licence (licentia) and regarded as a vice.
The idea was that a society where licence ruled, and discipline
and duty had a bad name, is bound to crumble and fall apart,
or be destroyed from the outside.
The third type of conservatism is the heir of these
counter-revolutionary principles of hierarchy, discipline, and
duty. But this conservatism is more abstract and
philosophical than its predecessor. It points out
the need, not for a return to the mixed regime
of old but for a political order that is a balance
between the various elements of society: rich
and poor, educated and uneducated, town and
country, etc. Instead of defending the société des
ordres, it vindicates the necessity and usefulness
of virtuous elites in society. Instead of defending
corporatism and the feudal order, it stresses the
need for cooperation alongside of competition, and
market regulation not from above, by the central
government, but from below, by the stakeholders
themselves. Instead of the clergy and the established
church, it defends the indispensability of religion
in general and Christianity in particular, not as a
private matter but as a mainstay of public peace,
order, and happiness.
In opposition to the revolution, it argues
that a good society is not a collection of atomic
individuals but of organic communities —
and, first and foremost, (traditional) families.
In opposition to ‘cosmopolitical’ ideas (the
counterpart of individualism) it stresses the
importance of neighbourhood, locality, region, Real Academia de la Historia

nation. In opposition to the idea that the purpose

Spanish philosopher and politician, Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853),
of life is to satisfy as many desires as possible or to and philosopher and theologian, Jaime Balmes (1810-1848), in a 19th
seek and ‘be oneself ’, it highlights the importance of century painting by Luis Brocheton.
sacrifice, duty, discipline, virtue, self-renunciation,
etc. Seeking a renewed tradition
All of this is inherent in the counter-revolution, of
course. But the counter-revolution presented these ideas in The conclusion: What contemporary conservatism needs,
a way that had become wholly unconvincing, if not utterly most of all, is a renewed consideration of the ideas of
incomprehensible to most people. What the philosophic the conservatism of the period from the 1830s until the
conservatism of the period from the 1830s to Word War II 1930s. For, even in the unlikely case that contemporary
did was to detach what was essential and of timeless value in conservatism were to vanquish liberal-progressivism, the
the counter-revolutionary tradition from what was secondary resulting world would still not be to our liking. It would
and historically contingent. still be a liberal world of sorts — and thus be, so to speak,
In doing that, philosophic conservatism did something contra naturam, a valley of tears, since some of the most
that had been done before — most importantly by Plato in his important preconditions for happiness and fulfilment,
struggle against the democratic revolution of Athens, which peace and joy would still not be met.
had also extolled liberty and equality — namely, to think You want names? I will give you some: Thomas
through the case against these principles, to think through Carlyle, Alexis de Tocqueville, G.W.F. Hegel,
what principles a society really needs to function well, and John Henry Newman, Wilhelm Röpke, Matthew
to serve the bonum commune. Hence, it is fitting to call this Arnold, G.K. Chesterton, Irving Babbitt, T.S. Eliot,
philosophic conservatism ‘Platonic’ conservatism. Romano Guardini, Denis de Rougemont, Otto
Whatever name we give it, this third type of conservatism Friedrich Bollnow, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Nicolai
is the most important of the three. It calls attention to a Hartmann, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin. But this
whole range of things that are crucial for a good society, many is just the tip of the iceberg. Seek and you will find.
of which have been forgotten and disregarded in the post-
war era, especially in the last decades. Liberal-conservatism Andreas Kinneging is a professor at the Law School of the
certainly does not draw attention to them. It isn’t even aware University of Leiden in The Netherlands. He is a founder
of them, which is hardly surprising, in view of the fact that and board member of the Center for European Renewal, and
it shares the revolutionary principles of equality and liberty. former president of the Vanenburg Society.

The European Conservative 7

 A Sea of Trouble in Europe
Kai Weiss
An Interview with
Ryszard Legutko
Y ou fought against Communism, and when the Soviet
Union fell, there was a lot of hope with liberal
democracy coming into Eastern Europe. But, as you explain
in your latest book, you soon realized that it was not actually
that different from the previous system. Could you explain
how it has become surprisingly similar?

Of course there are differences because, as I write in my

book, I wouldn’t have had the political position I have
now under Communism for obvious reasons. But there are
some similarities and my feeling is that these similarities are
becoming greater.
I come from a staunchly anti-communist family, so
I never had a moment in my life where I sort of flirted
with communist parties or with Marxian and communist
ideology. It was obvious to me from the very beginning
— from the day I was born, from when I could start
thinking — that the communist system was bad and evil.
I was active in opposing the system. And at the same
time, as a university professor, I was interested in what
liberalism is, what democracy is, and I was working on
the political philosophy of antiquity and modernity. I
had, I would say, a good general overview of political
thought.
When the older regime was falling to pieces, I had this
idea that the new system would be exactly the opposite
of the one we had, that there would be a lot of freedom,
diversity, an exchange of ideas, and that there would be Katarzyna Czerwinska / CCA-SA 3.0 Poland

a plurality of points of view and a certain seriousness in

talking about important issues. And it wasn’t the case. Of
course, I didn’t see it clearly at the very beginning.
It is difficult to see things as they are because there are
lots of prejudices and judgements through which you see
things. But at a certain moment in my life I was starting
to think: “There is no plurality.” There is a monopoly,
and there is one point of view that has a monopoly. And
there is this mendacity of language. There are many people
who use words such as ‘plurality’, ‘tolerance’, ‘democracy’.
They are the most autocratic. So I thought: “Maybe there’s
something wrong with it.” So I came to this notion that
there is a certain similarity which goes back to some ideas
in early modernity.
Both liberal democracy and Communism tend to
politicize the entire society. You have to be political. There
is no space, no area, no family, no religion which is discrete
from politics. Everything had to be communist — and now,
everything has to be liberal democratic.
Ryszard Legutko is a Member of the European
Parliament, a member of the Foreign
Affairs Committee, and Deputy Chairman
of the Parliamentary Group of European
Conservatives and Reformists. He is also a
professor of philosophy at Jagellonian University
in Krakow, Poland. He has served as Minister of
Education, Secretary of State in the Chancellery
of the late President Lech Kaczynski, and Deputy
Speaker of the Senate. His most recent English-
language book is The Demon in Democracy:
Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
(Encounter Books, 2016).

8 Summer/Fall 2018

The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, seated next to Ryszard Legutko and Geoffrey Van Orden,
during a meeting with members of the European Conservatives and Reformists parliamentary grouping.
In which specific way are you using the term liberal
democracy? Is it the politically correct, social justice culture,
or are there already problems in libertarian, classical liberal
thoughts?
My point is that it’s not just political correctness. See,
political correctness is the consequence of a long process,
and it’s a legitimate consequence. It’s not like, “Let’s get rid
of political correctness” and then we will have the world or
the system as it should be, with open space and a serious
discourse of opinions. My argument, which I put forward
in the book, is that from the very beginning liberalism was
a very restrictive, authoritarian theory.
The word ‘liberalism’ comes from ‘liberty’, so
etymologically people tend to think that whoever is liberal
must be for liberty. No, whoever is liberal is supportive of a
certain theory which is called ‘liberalism’. This is an entirely
different thing. Now, what I object to in liberalism — and
it starts with John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and John Stuart
Mill — is that from the very beginning liberalism was
conceived as a theory which considers itself to be superior
to all others. That is: “We are better than you are, so we will
organize a life for you where each of you will have an equal
amount of liberty.”
This promise may or may not be true, but by the
very idea, liberals position themselves above all other
orientations. They say, for example: “You conservatives are
one-sided, you Christians represent one particular religion.
We liberals, we represent everybody. And since we represent
everybody, we will take control in terms of ideology, in
The European Conservative 9
CC BY 2.0
terms of politics.” In fact, they become monopolists.
About three to five decades ago, when you looked at
political theory, there were several political orientations,
both in the real world and in the academic world. Now it’s
all gone. There is liberalism. It is a monopoly. Liberalism is,
in fact, the only legitimate philosophy out there. If you are
not a liberal, then what are you? Either a fascist or simply
crazy — because every rational, well-educated person has
to be a liberal.
Now, when it comes to democracy, some people
somehow think democracy is a system of freedom, a
system that is ‘open’. Well, that’s not the case. It was the
ancient democracy that was very autocratic. But what was
eye-opening to me was reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s
Democracy in America. The first part of the book is almost
entirely enthusiastic about American society because there
are so many NGOs — what he called associations, civic
organizations. He loves that and is very much impressed by
it — and quite rightly.
However, the closer you get to the end of Tocqueville’s
book, you see that he is very much concerned. He sees that
there is a tendency in democracy to homogenize. Democracy
is not about plurality. Democracy is about homogeneity,
the rule of the majority. And one of the sentences from
Democracy in America that I quote in my book is: “I know
of no other country in the world in which there is less
freedom of thought.”
We have been living under the spell of a word — that
‘democracy’ is a good thing. But look at how it works: look
at the institution in which I work, the European Parliament.
This is a typical majoritarian institution, where the power have to use the arguments of John Locke. Edmund Burke
is in the hand of the majority which has the monopoly — was a better defender of freedom, he is more persuasive.
and whoever does not belong to the majority and does not Or you have Hegel, who was a better defender of freedom
conform to mainstream politics is marginalized. than Thomas Hobbes. For some reasons, liberals reserve for
More and more people are trying to convince us that themselves this role of the defenders of freedom.
liberal democracy is a perfect invention. It isn’t. There are
a lot of dangerous consequences, and we have to be aware Does liberal democracy in general lead to these ‘totalitarian
of those consequences, and try to either improve — or temptations’ or can some parts be sustainably retained?
eliminate — them.
We have to be very critical. The word ‘critique’ or There is no inevitability. Of course, you can change the
‘critical’ has become one of those favourite notions of system. My idea was that a better solution is a kind of
modern discourse, but this is also mendacious language. mixed regime, a mixed constitution system. Believe me,
There is the typical politician, and he is not critical at all the final months of Communism, and the first months of
because he’s not criticizing anything. He’s an apologist of liberal democracy, was the period when we had the greatest
the system. freedom. Before it was bad, and afterwards things have
Going back to your question: No, it’s not just the become worse and worse. I believe we can somehow change
recent developments in liberal democracy. Of course, the the system, we can somehow reform it if we diagnose the
recent developments in liberal democracy are particularly problems and influences.
acute, that’s why we can see them. But Tocqueville saw it Certainly, the system that we live in has become very
almost two hundred years ago — and then John Stuart Mill constraining. There are fewer and fewer things you can do,
saw it 150 years ago. It has been there, at various degrees there are fewer and fewer things that you can say, or that
of intensity, but it’s one of the problems of our times. The you can publish. This is ridiculous. Even private life and
same civilization that produced Marxism and Communism family life have been permeated by politics. Once you have
also produced liberalism and liberal democracy. made this diagnosis, you see that things are going wrong.
We are more and more trapped by this politics and by this
But aren’t those liberal values such as freedom of speech, ideology, but I can see a possibility that we can change the
natural rights, and human dignity — often derived from system.
Christianity — in and of themselves still correct, and have
simply been abused? When it comes to changing the system, do you have any
concrete solution at hand? Is it perhaps to strengthen civil
Natural right is a very bizarre concept — the whole idea society and the intermediary institutions again?
of a state-of-nature, which you can find in Hobbes, Locke,
and Rousseau, too, even though he was no liberal himself. I long ago gave up on the intermediary NGOs. Just two
This is a very strange notion. It is a purely fictitious picture hours ago, I was at a conference where a special fund
of human beings living in a very strange place. This is a for giving money to NGOs that are supportive of liberal
pure theoretical construction. You cannot say that it is democracy was discussed. That kills the entire concept of
natural. It is artificial. It’s a world of fiction. It’s a creation
of human imagination. There is nothing really natural
about a Hobbesian or Lockean state of nature. You cannot
defend freedom on the argument that in the state of nature
we were all free, because at the same time you can envisage
a different picture of society, where you say in the state
of nature we were all deprived of freedom, we were all in
shackles. Freedom is to be defended on different grounds.
If we look at Thomas Hobbes, he had this notion of
the state of nature in which all people were equal, people
were free, but at the same time everybody was endangered.
Then, in order to reduce this danger and increase security,
you had to build a big bureaucratic state, for the creation
of which you had to give up your freedom. The Hobbesian
people aren’t really free people. If you look at Locke, his
society is also a society ruled by a majoritarian government,
so it’s not a very free society either.
I don’t really believe that if you cherish freedom, you

10 Summer/Fall 2018
non-governmental institutions. They are governmental
institutions and they are subsidized by the European
Commission, which is a kind of government. I appreciate
all civic initiatives; I take part in several of them myself.
But let us forget about those myths. Most NGOs, and
especially the most powerful ones, have been subsidized by
international organizations, indirectly by the government
or the European Commission, and they are part of this
system.
When it comes to a concrete solution, look at my
country. My country has been treated viciously by the
international community, but this is a country which has
in many ways preserved a kind of plurality. There are things
you can say and do in my country which you cannot do here
[in Brussels]. There has to be some kind of institutional
plurality, and the thing to do is to break the monopoly
of the mainstream. My concern is that conservatives have
capitulated in most European countries and even in the
United States. Of course, there have been some movements
in the opposite direction, which is good. But my overall
perception is still that many have capitulated. Even the
Catholic Church seems to have a tendency to capitulate.
“But once we become part of the mainstream, maybe things
will get better”, they say. No! It’s the other way around.
Make the society genuinely plural. There are liberals, there
are libertarians, there are all sorts of people, but there are
also conservatives. They are not painted, beautified liberals;
they are conservative. Maybe they are Catholics — they are
not ‘open’ Catholics. I don’t want the Catholics to be open Palace of Versailles

as long as I do not see the liberals open. I haven’t met an Alexis de Tocqueville in a portrait (1850) by Théodore
open liberal in my entire life. They are so damn closed. Chassériau (1819-1856).

Since we are sitting here in the European Parliament, part
of probably the most liberal democratic project in the post-
war era, what do you see as the future of the European
Union?
I speak from a position of a representative of a medium-size
country, from the eastern part of Europe, the majority of
whose population has supported the European Union. I
see some value in institutionalized cooperation. But things
have gone wrong. Today, the union is in conflict with
what the Polish society really wants. This creates a tension.
People in both Eastern and Western Europe are dissatisfied,
and the answer from the EU is always ‘more of the same’.
If that continues, the EU will be in trouble. For me, it is
a very saddening experience in the European Parliament.
I’m trying to make a difference, but it is a very saddening
experience. And this is a parliament that has been in the
hands of the same politicians for many, many years.
The whole idea of democracy is that there is a
pendulum, that the government can change its position.
One party is in power one term, but with each swing of
the pendulum, another comes in. But not here! This is the
same coalition. It’s like the infamous Mexican Institutional
Revolutionary Party [PRI] which was in power for over 70
years. When the same group of people is in power for such
a long time, it has to become pathological because they are
no longer used to the idea that they may lose. If you look
at national politics [in Poland], one always has the feeling
that in the next election, one can be ‘sent packing’, that one
could be in the opposition. Not here [in Brussels]! This is
hubris. If the EU doesn’t change, it will sink deeper and
deeper into a sea of trouble.
Well, that’s one negative ending …
That’s a negative ending — but things could get better,
though probably not at the next elections. But who knows?
For many years, I was living in a system, and everybody
was telling me that Communism was inevitable and that it
would win, that it would conquer the entire world. Well, it
didn’t. History always has some surprises for us.
Kai Weiss is a research fellow at the Austrian Economics Center
and a board member of the Hayek Institute, both in Vienna.

The European Conservative 11

 The Migration Crisis
& the Culture of Europe
Balázs M. Mezei
So spake he, and as if Aeolus unchained the winds
so he, breaking their bonds, let loose the nations,
clearing the way for war; and, that no land should
be free therefrom, apportioned ruin throughout
the world, parcelling out destruction.
— Claudian, Against Rufinus (II, 22-26)
T he European crisis of mass migration is a crisis of
culture. A crisis, that is to say, which deeply influences
the present and the future of a continent still recognized as
the cradle of Western history, the origin of Christianity in
its various denominations, and the source of good and evil
which affect our contemporary world. Today the question
is how Europe as the origin of our culture can not just
survive the current migration crisis, but how the continent
can reclaim its earlier importance. My answer, quite simply,
is this: Europe can reclaim its cultural mission if and only
if it understands, accepts, and develops its two thousand
years of Christian heritage.
The concept that the West is in decline has been
commonplace for about a century. The 1926 work of
Oswald Spengler was the first important reflection on a
crisis which was much more than just a military or political
change after the First World War. Spengler’s book attained
fame and influence not because of its unchallengeable
views on technical details of Western cultural history, but
rather because of its overall evaluation of the collapse of
European culture in the midst of the Great War and as a
consequence of it. In Spengler’s view, the decline of the
West was unavoidable, because a certain rhythm of rise and
fall coordinates the life of all great cultures. The emergence
of Nazi Germany and the total collapse of the European
powers in the Second World War have been seen in fact as
the fulfilment of the downfall of Europe as the powerhouse
of culture and development. The tragedy of the Holocaust
is perhaps the most dreadful expression of that collapse,
and the fall of the Soviet Union some decades later fits
seamlessly in with the previous events of this epochal
change. For the disintegration of the Soviet Empire meant
at the same time the failure of the most influential vision of
a new order of European origin, the Marxist utopia.
But what, you may ask, does this have to do with our
own time? In the events unfolding before our eyes today,
12 Summer/Fall 2018
the torrent of immigrants and asylum seekers leaving
their homes in Africa and the Near East and invading
many European countries, we witness a continuation, and
perhaps the fulfilment, of the downfall of Europe in the
last century. Europe castrated itself in the First World War
and proved to be unable to maintain its common Christian
heritage; in the Second World War, the self-annihilation
of the European powers and the destruction of the Third
Reich — together with the attempt to annihilate the Jews
of Europe — led to the partition of Europe between the
two world powers of the United States and the Soviet
Union. The fall of the latter initially appeared to some
as an opportunity to reconstruct Europe, an idea deeply
inspiring to my generation. This reconstruction, however,
has not taken place. Among the reasons for this failure we
find various economic and political interests intersecting
each other and interfering with a promising perspective, or
the emergence of a new threat from the East embodied in
the figure of the strong man of Russia, or, as we see today,
the waves of immigration from Africa and the Near East,
waves which are already transforming Europe’s future. The
arrival of hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions,
in rich European countries appears to accomplish a long
process of disintegration and failure and the beginning of a
new era in which Europe changes its fundamental historical
and cultural identities. If the collapse of the Soviet Union
was the expression of the breakdown of the Marxist utopia,
the migration crisis is the expression of the failure of the
liberal utopia of unrestrained peace and development, a
utopia already overwritten by the rise of global terrorism
and the war on terror.
Three questions
In this essay, I focus on three key questions emerging from
the crisis of migration: What is the cultural significance
of the changes expressed by the recent mass migration to
Europe? How are traditional European values, especially
their common expression in Christianity, being affected by
these changes? And how can European Christianity survive
the present crisis?
Mass migration is, of course, not an invention of
Angela Merkel or the European Union. It has been a global
phenomenon for many decades. Before the fall of the Soviet
Empire, Western Europe had already received thousands
of guest workers from places including India, Turkey, and
the countries of North Africa. The flux of peoples leaving
Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion, the
migrations due to the disintegration of the
Soviet bloc after 1990, asylum seekers fleeing
the aftermath of the Iraqi war and the civil
war in Syria, the flight from North-African
countries after the failure of the Arab Spring
— all these events added to the present crisis
affecting the countries of the European Union.
The cultural significance of the recent
waves of migration to Europe is that masses
of people who are predominantly of Islamic
background are leaving their ancestral
homelands and entering countries with very
different cultural and religious traditions. Even
if European Christianity has acquired a certain
cultural flexibility and openness throughout
the decades of the twentieth century, the
underlying psychological, sociological and
cultural structures have maintained the original
teachings inherited from Christ. Without these
structures we cannot understand the nature
of the Western world from Poland to Spain
or from Hungary to Canada. Secularization
could not overwrite the predominance of such
structures in everyday life even if secularization
made these structures more complicated.
European culture, defined by Christianity,
faces in its everyday life the presence
of millions belonging to non-Christian
cultures. And these non-Christian cultures,
represented by those fleeing from their
homeland, now penetrate the traditionally
Christian West, a world already globalized Prado National Museum
and secularized to a great extent. What we
“Immaculate Conception” by Peter Paul Reubens (1577-1640).
witness here recalls the notion of “the clash of
civilizations” of Samuel P. Huntington. But is
this really a clash? Or is it something deeper? It may in new homes and, at the same time, are themselves changed.
fact be the change of all cultures involved in the process. Disregarding now the possibility of the emergence of
“The clash of civilizations” is a political thesis arguing militant movements among the immigrants, the cultural
that there is an inevitable conflict between Western-style, impact of the sheer presence of untold numbers of people
Christian-rooted countries and countries with other with a deeply different cultural background living in
cultural identities. This thesis, originally advocated by Western societies will be enormous. Not only will the
Samuel P. Huntington in 1996, has been illustrated by surrounding culture be changed but so will the language,
the rise of Al-Qaida and the Islamic State. However, the and the psychological and sociological structures — that is,
majority of the migrants entering Europe do not belong to the entire worldview of the West.
terrorist organizations; most often, they are not motivated Such a change will not reinforce traditional Christian
politically but are simply hoping to find a new life. All they patterns of life and belief. It is questionable that an
want is a secure life in a peaceful society existing on a higher influx of immigrants can lead to the emergence of a new
technological and economic level than their homelands. cultural pattern. The more probable outcome is rather
The significance of the migration crisis comes to the fore mixed: In the better case scenario, Western societies will
at this point: even if it happens that the immigrants give change into a mosaic of cultural identities held together
up their original faith (most often the Muslim credo) and by law and order of an ever stronger organized state.
accommodate themselves to the European way of life in The worst possible scenario is rather dim: a mosaic that
as many ways as possible, they still inevitably impact their cannot be arranged symmetrically or maintained orderly

The European Conservative 13

 situation during the 20th and at the
beginning of the 21st centuries. The situation
is beyond any “clash of civilizations”; rather,
it is about the loss of culture on each side
and the challenge of a cultureless (perhaps
even a civilizationless) situation that may
endanger the conditions of good order.
Without good order, however, the good life
becomes impossible.

Tradition and innovation

Christianity has always shown a delicate
balance of tradition and innovation in
its concrete manifestations in religious
practice. Beyond the doctrinal issues it is
worth taking a look at the development
of Christian art: painting, sculpture,
architecture, music, and literature show
not only an unparalleled richness, but
also express a continuous search for ever
newer forms in which the central tenets
of Christianity have been expressed. One
of the striking examples of this search for
conservation and renewal is the Basilica
di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. The
building today is the result of a more than
1,500 years of effort to hold fast to tradition
while developing it in accordance with both
the truths of revelation and the requirements
Nicholas of Cusa in a portrait (ca. 1480) by Meister des Marienlebens, and spirit of a given age. Beginning with
located in St. Nikolaus-Hospital in Bernkastel-Kues, Germany.
the early Byzantine style and developing
in any meaningful sense — with an ensuing chaos that through medieval Gothic, Renaissance Classicism and
endangers even the possibility of a technocratic order. Baroque structures the basilica today contains additions
The direct consequence of either situation is the and alterations from the eighteenth and nineteenth
radical transformation of societies derived from Christian centuries. Indeed, the church was under construction, as
traditions into societies of a kaleidoscopic cultural it were, from the beginning of Roman Christianity to the
pattern or, what is more probable, no cultural pattern at emergence of modern secularization. It is the process of
all. The ensuing situation is foreign to all that has come unity and diversity, identity and change that is uniquely
before. It is foreign to Christian traditions; foreign to represented in that building. If we take into consideration
the Enlightenment project; and foreign even to the post- the similarity and difference between a Byzantine and
Christian and post-secular structures described by such a twentieth century church building, or the Gregorian
authors as Giovanni Vattimo, Slavoj Žižek, or Jürgen music and the church music of Johann Sebastian Bach, we
Habermas. If the worst scenario becomes reality, it will be cannot but recognize the exceptionally dynamic character
very difficult, and perhaps impossible, to stop the ensuing of Christian art throughout the centuries. Of course, it is
cultural and political chaos. A France that is 30% foreign- not only Christian art that shows such dynamism. The
born, an Italy with masses of inhabitants from North development of Christian art is only the expression of a
Africa, a Germany with many millions of Iraqi, Syrian, and deeper characteristic of Christianity itself, a characteristic
Afghani refugees will have to face the immense task of a that connects Tertullian’s rhetoric to Newman’s sermons,
cultural and political redefinition, a task which must be or Augustinian mysticism to the thought of a Jacques
completed under enormous social and political pressure. Maritain.
The significance of the migration crisis, then, consists It is in the context of such a continuous identity
of the crisis of all existing patterns that Christian-based and change that we can properly understand the
cultures have developed as interpretations of their historical development of the doctrinal contents of Christianity.

14 Summer/Fall 2018
These contents are such that throughout
the centuries, and as the result of the work
of exceptional personalities, we gain a
deeper understanding of many doctrines.
What occurs is never change — it is the
appropriate understanding of eternal
truths in a given age and a deeper grasp
of the world-saving message contained in
those doctrines. The development of the
Marian dogmas provides a helpful example
of this reality. The fact of the Immaculate
Conception — not to be confused with the
Virgin Birth — has always been implicit in
Marian piety. Yet before the dogma, which
was declared in Ineffabilis Deus in 1854,
the notion of the immaculate conception
of Our Lady had not been officially
recognized. The apparitions in Lourdes
in 1858, where the Holy Virgin named
herself immaculada concepciou, confirmed
the dogma unequivocally. In 1950, Pope
Pius XII issued the definition of the bodily
assumption of the Virgin Mary as the
fourth Marian dogma in Christian history.
It is not impossible that further dogmatic
proclamations about Mary may follow .
This example suffices to show that
doctrinal development often displays
a gradual deepening of traditional
knowledge, a deepening which leads
to new understandings and practices
in a community always on the way to
transcendent fulfilment. The essential
point here is that there exists a dynamic
balance between tradition and renewal in First page of the 15th century manuscript, De docta ignoratia, by Nicholas of
which the old is maintained and the new Cusa, located in St. Nikolaus-Hospital, founded in 1458.
is organically developed. Western culture,
in the sense of the Christian heritage, is precisely the superficially misunderstood as something which does
dynamic and organic unity of old and new. If we follow not permit any disruption. In truth, disruption belongs
Kant’s famous distinction between civilization and culture to continuity when it is properly understood. This is so
— in which the latter has the moral emphasis, while the because it is only through such disturbances that man is
former is about the technical details — we can stress the able to focus his attention and gain new understandings
importance of culture in the historical and moral sense; that can lead to right action. On the one hand, culture is
and we can insist that Christianity is a unique expression a continuous growth, a process of emerging complexity;
of culture in that sense, that is, in the sense not distorted on the other hand, cultural development is triggered
into mere traditionalism or superficial modernism. In by disruptions. This means that culturally continuity is
other words, secularization is important for Christianity, best conceived not just as allowing for disruptions, but
as for instance Pope Benedict XVI variously expressed, presuming them.
since it helped Christians to relearn their traditions in the This understanding has always been present in Western
light of contemporary developments. Culture is always Christianity. The first Sack of Rome by Alaric in 410
about learning and relearning of traditions in various and led to the creation of Augustine’s City of God; the great
changing settings so that the meaning of a tradition can be challenge of Arabic interpretations of Aristotle triggered
grasped and developed into a more complex understanding. the reinterpretation of Aristotle in a new light by Thomas
Culture requires continuity. Continuity is often Aquinas; the tragic fall of Constantinople helped the

The European Conservative 15

emergence of a new understanding of ‘religion’ in Nicolas
of Cusa’s On the Peace of Faith. The epochal occurrence of
the Holocaust prompted reflections in Christianity which
reshaped earlier interpretations of the relationship between
Jews and Christians. This line of examples can be easily
continued, because if we carefully look at the background
of epochal works in the Western tradition we discover the
unique convergence of personal and historical occurrences
which make these works possible.
What is taking place in such convergences is the creation
of culture. Culture is always the result of the interplay of
objective and subjective factors, but these factors do not fully
determine the birth and life of a culture. There is more to a
culture than just a mechanical continuity. Epochal breaks,
collapses, and disruptions belong to the core of a culture.
That being said, it can often be difficult to recognize what
organic unity exists between past and present in times of
crisis. When Aeneas fled Troy carrying his father Anchises
on his shoulders and leading his son Ascanius by hand, he
did not know that the destruction of his ancient hometown
was the beginning of something far greater: the rise of
Rome. We needed the genius of Vergil to show us this
connection. And we needed artists like Raphael, Bernini,
or Barocci to elevate the scene of a desperate flight to the
level of an eternal archetype of collapse and rebirth. Yet this
connection is clearly displayed by many other examples
of the history of Western culture, such as the death of
Socrates and the beginning of the Platonic Academy.
Even the death of Christ, whose disciples were scattered in
town and countryside, was just the prelude to something
immeasurably greater: the Resurrection and the birth of the
Church. Disruptions, thus, are seen always from the point
of view of culture as an organic whole, and culture in the
genuine sense cannot be anything other than an organic
whole that succeeds in integrating its own failures.
The crisis of immigration
If all this is true, it may initially seem simple to survive the
present crisis of immigration in Europe and Christianity:
Europeans have only to follow the path of culture and
maintain its organic character so that we may reach a higher
level of synthesis in due course of time. Many believe that
to be the case. Others are satisfied with the more realistic
outcome of the total loss of culture in the Christian sense
and are inclined even to except the complete loss of any
Western culture in the traditional sense. After all, Marxism
of the Soviet type did something very similar: it swept aside
the main achievements of Christian culture and tried to
introduce something like a ‘communist’ or ‘socialist’ culture.
The result is too well known: not only was Marxism unable
to create anything like a socialist culture, but the attempt to
obliterate Christianity proved to be self-destructive to the
nations of the former Soviet Bloc. This destruction’s after-
16 Summer/Fall 2018
effects are visibly present even today in these countries.
That is to say, disruptions in the process of culture are to
be taken seriously; there is no automatism upholding the
development of a culture as though it behaved according
to universal laws . Moral, intellectual, and religious efforts,
sometimes astonishingly heroic efforts, are needed for the
survival and renewal of culture.
The liberal attitude concerning the influx of immigrants
relies on an understanding of the effects of an invisible hand
of cultural history. To make integration a reality, Europeans
need only show solidarity and charity, receive and assist
asylum seekers, and provide them with shelter and work.
Now, it is of course beyond question that solidarity and
charity are of principal importance when we face people
in need, as Pope Francis (among others) has repeatedly
argued. Since it is about human persons, our attitude to
migrants must be defined by such principles. That is a
moral imperative. On the other hand, we Europeans need
to think about the ways our culture and its Christian roots
may be maintained and reinforced while overwhelmed
by masses of people with a different cultural identity. As
previously mentioned, what is at stake is not only the loss of
our culture. It is also the loss of their culture, their religious
background, that is at stake. If a group of people wants to
maintain their traditions in circumstances different from
those that originally birthed them, those traditions often
become different as well. It is perhaps more important that,
as examples show, the followers of “the clash of civilization”
thesis may gain influence among the younger generation
and trigger acts violently opposed to the idea of social and
political order. Since these migrants seek their new home
in our societies, it is our responsibility to offer possibilities
to them to understand the nature of culture and share
our experience of this understanding. For this to happen,
we need to understand our traditions in the light of the
present situation, that is, in the light of the epochal changes
activated by the crisis of migration.
It is my conviction that Christianity is not dead; it is
my even deeper conviction that the story of the Gospel
is the only true story ever and that its morals, teachings,
and consequences are fundamental to the thriving of any
society in any age. It would be trivial to say that every
genuine human life is a life of sacrifice, or that it is only by
sacrifice of some sort that life becomes fruitful not only in
the moral, intellectual, or social sense, not only historically,
but even more importantly in a meta-historical sense, that
is, sub specie aeternitatis. If this truth was just a moral truth,
it would be trivial; but since it was performed really and
transcendentally at the same time — in the deeds of Christ
— it goes beyond triviality and becomes fundamental. The
history of the New Testament is the genuine history of
culture; together with the Book of Revelation we possess in
the books of the New Testament an overarching description
of truth that needs to be properly understood. It needs to

Irish Naval personnel from the patrol vessel LÉ Eithne (P31) rescuing migrants as part of ‘Operation Triton’.
be understood not only in itself but also in its historical
significance, which has produced what we call today the
globalized world. Gospel and Church belong together,
and it is the Catholic Church which especially shows the
capability of learning and relearning her own traditions.
That is not to say that other confessions are of lesser value
for the political rejuvenation of the West; they all belong
to the one body of Christianity and beyond the differences
they share the fundamentals. These fundamentals have to
be maintained in such a way that the cultural disruptions
caused by the present influx of migrants may be used as a
new possibility to learn and relearn our traditions.
The focus of theological and philosophical efforts must
concern the mystery of the Trinity. This central doctrine is
the greatest power and the greatest mystery of Christianity.
In an important sense, Christianity is expressed in the
doctrine of the Trinity in such an essential way that after
an imagined disappearance of Christianity its entire
content could be reconstructed merely from the notion
of the Trinity. Because the doctrine of the Trinity has a
mysterious character, Christians are obligated to make
an effort to understand ever more fully the truth of the
unity of Being and plurality of Persons in the divine, so
that our understanding is not opposed to any monotheism.
The doctrine of the Trinity, nevertheless, is not only the
doctrine of monotheism; it is the doctrine of the solidarity
of the Creator with its creation, a solidarity expressed in the
act of the Incarnation. The thesis of Athanasius — “God
became man so that man may become God” — is absolutely
fundamental to Christianity; it points out not only the
fact of the Incarnation as an act of divine freedom, but
The European Conservative 17
Irish Defence Forces / CCA 2.0 Generic
also the purpose of that act, human elevation, which can
be realized by our freedom. Without an emphasis on the
mystery of Incarnation it is almost impossible to avoid the
trap of Hegel’s “bad infinity”. Infinity, indeed, is so much
infinite that it imbues the finite and, as it were, embraces it.
The notion of the analogy of being avoids the trap of bad
infinity; in the doctrine of analogy it is noteworthy that
“the always greater dissimilarity” between the Creator and
the creature is recognized in the context of a transcendental
similarity.
The last Roman poet
Claudian, whose Against Rufinus serves as the epigraph of
this essay, was not only “the last Roman poet” but also one
of the most skilful of the Latin authors with an imagination
and poetic power comparable to Ovid. His descriptions
of the military battles and political career of Stilicho, the
last Roman general successfully defending Rome against
Alaric, are striking for their power and artistry even
today. Claudian’s poems are not only worthwhile for their
descriptions of the last days of Rome before 410, but they
also provide invaluable insight into the barbarian Germanic
tribes invading the Empire in the fourth century. Claudian
was a close friend of Stilicho the general; he followed him
into most of his battles. The arrest and murder of Stilicho in
408 proved to be fatal to the Western Empire; while earlier
the work of this great general helped alleviate the problems
of German immigration and invasion — sometimes
through deals, sometimes with military force — after his
death Alaric and his Visigoths did not meet any resistance
during their invasion. Rome was taken, tens of thousands
killed, and centuries-old buildings were plundered, burnt,
and destroyed. The entire Roman world was deeply shaken,
including the Christians. Pagan Romans claimed that
Christianity was responsible for the destruction of Rome
because the Christian Empire forbade the worship of the
old gods, including the cult of Victoria, the defending
goddess of Rome.
As we know, Augustine forcefully rebutted these
charges in his monumental The City of God. He pointed
out that many Romans, both Christian and pagan, who
took refuge in Christian churches survived the destruction.
This temporary refuge in the churches, he argued, is
nothing in comparison to the eternal refuge that is offered
by God in His Church. It follows, then, that it is far more
important to be a true Christian, a citizen of the City of
God, than to survive a barbaric invasion. By meditating
upon this theme over the course of the work, Augustine
developed theological and philosophical positions that are
fundamental to life in the West today, not least of which
was the fleshing out of the Biblical distinction between the
city of God and the city of man. Augustine wrote his work
to all Christians of whatever background, since he himself
had Punic as his mother tongue; thus he also wrote to the
barbaric tribes that occupied Italy after the fall of Rome.
This fall did not begin as a military campaign. In
December 406, the Rhine was fully frozen so that the tribes
could easily cross with horse-drawn wagons, tents, weapons
and all kinds of military instruments. On the wagons there
sat their wives and children, mothers and fathers of a new
civilization in Gallia and Italy. Even if Stilicho was a mighty
general, he could not fight off weather, not to say history;
he could not hinder the mass migration that led to the
overflow of Gallia. Had Stilicho survived the coup d’état
that led to his murder two years after the Great Crossing,
he may have been able to find a way to settle peacefully the
invaders and help them to become part of the Christian
Roman world. After his murder — which might have been
instigated by his rivals in Rome and Constantinople —
there was no chance to find a solution. Germanic tribes
overwhelmed farms and towns, killed or drove away the
Roman inhabitants, took over houses, castles and temples,
destroyed aqueducts, baths, theatres, and libraries. Their
initial life among the smoky ruins could not foretell that
along the weedy Roman roads, abandoned by the last
members of the Western legions, a new world was born
leading to the re-establishment of the Western Empire just
some hundred years later.
Yet even through this and similar occurrences, history
was effective; and even through the political machinations
that led to our migration crisis today, history appears to
be effective . It is not the secondary or tertiary causes we
have to focus on in order to understand the present crisis,
but rather the primary ones. Among the primary causes
18 Summer/Fall 2018
we find the sudden growth of population in Africa and
the Middle East, the collapse of totalitarian regimes, and
the failure to create new and stable states in their place.
Most importantly, the primary causes point to an epochal
challenge to European culture that is derived from the
West’s embrace of Christianity, a challenge to which we
must find our response. In my view, this response must
be of a cultural and, on a deeper level, a religious nature.
Christianity has to keep its organic character and further
develop its reality through the disruptions we face today.
Christianity is not one among cultures but, analogically, it
is the culture of cultures. Without its central message, no
culture is capable of maintaining itself on a historical scale.
More importantly, nevertheless, we have to repeat the
lesson Augustine taught us: Christianity is meta-historical
and its real aim is transcendent. This meta-historical and
transcendent character is that which ensures the spirit of
Christianity . Inasmuch as Christianity is embodied in the
Christians, that is, in us, it is our task to propose, develop
and realize the ways and means by which the meta-historical
and transcendent nature of Christianity can be realized in
our concrete cultural settings: that is, in settings which are
radically challenged by the migration crisis today, a crisis
not unparalleled in our known history.
Christianity as fulfilment
Our historical and meta-historical considerations may
be concluded with the following remark. The idea that
history is a meaningful process leading to a transcendental
fulfilment is of Christian origin. Christianity emerged as
the real fulfilment of Old Testament promises found in
the person of Jesus Christ. Christianity has been from
its beginnings fundamentally eschatological; it always
considered itself as “apocalypse”, that is, the “revelation”
of divine reality in our historical dimension. This
understanding of Christianity does not and, properly
understood, cannot lead to the notion of a worldly
fulfilment in the sense proposed by various ideologies of
Gnostic origin. Yet Christianity maintains that history
is a meaningful reality. Meta-historical questions really
do matter, as they bring man to recognize that there
is a fulfilment whose reality is approximated by and
forshadowed in our earthly situations. That is why
for Christianity it is important to strive for a general
betterment of society and culture. Not because an ideal
state can be reached on earth, but because we can always
improve our moral, social and political stature and
circumstances.
The real aim of the Christians is divine ransom, that is,
mercy. Divine mercy makes not only the individual human
life meaningful but also the life of communities and their
histories. Such a meaning, just like the meaning of a person’s
life, is not always obvious. In order to understand it one
must face the challenge of brutal senselessness; one has to
make real efforts to overcome the personal and historical
challenges to arrive at an approximate understanding of the
workings of divine mercy.
In the present crisis, we need to make a similar effort.
By facing the threat of the total collapse of our culture
we may recognize the aim and means of renewal. This
renewal, as history teaches us, cannot be the dream of a
simple restoration; nor can it be some worldly utopia.
Genuine renewal must be based on the recognition of
learning: re-learning the meaning of our traditions and the
meaning of human history as well. Solidarity and charity
are fundamental requirements, but, beyond them, we are
called to discern how, in our present situation, we can
maintain and renew our culture in the context of epochal
change — a change that reminds us of that embodied in
the person and work of Alaric.
Rome was conquered but never really died; just some
decades later its central mission was reinforced and its
legacy reformulated in the framework of the epochal rise
of Christianity. The culture of Europe can never really
die; through the vicissitudes of a centuries long change, it
still harbours the best achievements of a spirituality which
points to the only true story without which the meaning of
humanity cannot be properly understood.
Our task is no less than that of our predecessors: In the
midst of epochal disturbances, we need to learn to truly
embrace the fullness of our traditions — and thus find new
ways to again formulate their perennial contents.
Balázs M. Mezei is Professor of Philosophy at Péter Pázmány
Catholic University, Hungary.

Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind

is the most important book in the
conservative world. Published in the
United States in 1953, it has never
been translated into Italian —
until today.

The text traces the history of

conservative thought — from
Edmund Burke to the 20th century —
summarizing the ideas and positions
of its main exponents. Kirk’s book
influenced the thinking of generations
of conservative intellectuals, politicians,
and journalists — including US
presidential candidate Barry
Goldwater and presidents Richard
Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Il pensiero conservatore can be ordered directly from

the Italian publisher, Giubilei Regnani, at the link below:
www.giubileiregnani.com

The European Conservative 19

 Choosing Our Battles
Darragh McDonagh
F or many European nations — Ireland included
— an exit from the European Union is not truly
on the cards. Nigel Farage — whom many credit with
Brexit — recently attended a conference in Dublin
that was trying to establish a campaign for Ireland to
leave the EU. While Mr. Farage correctly sensed some
disillusionment with the EU amongst the Irish people,
his belief that a referendum on withdrawal would pass
there was not realistic. Indeed, this is true in most EU
member states.
So this is the fundamental reality that conservatives
must face: Whether we like it or not, we are part of the
European project. Thus, rather than wasting time trying to
replicate the UK’s secession, we must fight for conservative
values.
In the aftermath of Brexit, a lot is being mentioned of
‘a new vision for Europe’. But what this entails is an even
more ‘neo-liberal’ Europe, one led by French President
Emmanuel Macron. For conservatives to spend their time
on a battlefield that focuses on fighting for a hopeless
cause, is to allow Mr. Macron and his allies to storm to
victory in an entirely different and empty arena — in the
end outflanking everyone around him. In this way, Mr.
Macron and his allies will make gains while conservatives
continue to harp on for a dream that will never come to
fruition.
With the UK leaving, Europe is on the cusp of ever
closer union. President Macron seems determined to
establish a banking union and, even worse, a harmonised
tax rate. The independence of European nations, especially
smaller states, will be vastly eroded if this comes to pass. A
frightening prospect for state sovereignty presents itself in
the form of a ‘European Finance Minister’, another item on
le président’s wish list.
While Angela Merkel may not be a favourite among
some, she — along with the CDU — used to pose a far
lesser threat than Mr. Macron. Now with her drastically
weakened power base, along with the possibly increased
influence of the SPD in the new grand coalition, integration
will take on a new lease of life. Her Große Koalition’s
document calls for stronger Franco-German cooperation,
increasing the EU budget, and transforming the ESM into
a ‘European Monetary Fund’.
Why are conservatives dreaming of greener pastures
when our own pastures are about to be taken from under
our own feet? We should be demanding reform — but
reform which would bring more democratic accountability,
20 Summer/Fall 2018
not closer integration. There cannot be a ‘Euro-zone
Finance Minister’, for example: It would take too much
power away from national governments.
The attitudes of the Republicans vs. Democrats in
the US in the last Presidential election provides a useful
comparison. The top brass of both parties had issues with
very popular outsiders: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
The Democrats tried desperately to damage Sanders,
alienating their own supporters in the process and forcing
an establishment candidate who simply wasn’t going to
win on the ballot. The Republican leadership, however,
once realising that Donald Trump wasn’t going away and
represented the majority of its members, backed him —
albeit reluctantly — and swept to victory.
Accepting the situation, even though not one hundred
percent happy with it but accepting it and fighting on
for the advancement of what you care about, is what is
important. Now the Republicans in Congress can pursue
their agenda. Conservatives here in Europe, while of a very
different breed to the Americans, could learn a thing or two
from their experience.
I am not a Eurosceptic. I am Irish and I have seen
first-hand some of the good the European Union can do.
Small states like Ireland can benefit immensely from the
EU. Along with NATO, of course, it has helped keep peace
and keep cooperation firmly to the fore among European
neighbours.
However, at the same time, I do not want Ireland to
disappear. At the end of the day, the UK may be — for
a while anyway — economically worse off for leaving
the EU; but many British people seem to see that as a
reasonable trade-off for a reclamation of sovereignty and
regaining a sense of control over the direction of the
nation.
To be sure, that same desire can be found in other
EU member states — and if conservatives strike a more
balanced tone, there is the strong possibility of garnering
support from other kinds of conservatives (like me), who
would not vote to leave the EU but who do not share
President Macron’s vision for closer integration. These are
people who are Irish first and European second — but who
still would identify themselves as a European. These are
people who want to see conservative values in across all
European institutions.
European conservatives must accept that the EU is here;
but they must also strive to keep it a union of independent,
sovereign states — and not the let it morph into a ‘United
States of Europe’.
Darragh McDonagh writes from Trinity College Dublin.
 The Weakness of the West
Stefan Beig
An Interview with
Martin van Creveld
I n his recently published book, Pussycats: Why the
Rest Keeps Beating the West, Martin Van Creveld
considers the current weakness of Western nations and the
reasons why their armies frequently fail to achieve their
objectives. In an exclusive interview, he discusses these issues
— and highlights the many reasons for the West’s decline,
including the lack of motivation of soldiers, feminism, and
the presence of female soldiers in the armed forces.

In the rankings of the ten best armies in the world, the US,
Great Britain, France, and sometimes Germany almost
always appear. In your book Pussycats, you complain that
these same armies have lost all wars in the past decades. Do
such ratings have no relevance?

That’s how it is. These armies are probably the best in

conventional wars such as the Falklands War or the First
Iraq War. But most wars are no longer conventional and
those were lost by these armies. The operations of the
German Army in particular were terrible. Why should
a German soldier be killed — so that Shiites, Sunnis,
Christians, or Israelis no longer fight each other?
Then the mistake is in the objectives of these war missions?
Many of these interventions are completely
incomprehensible to ordinary soldiers. What are they
doing there? This creates problems for the motivation
of the soldiers. Motivation has always been one of the
most important, if not the most important factor in war.
Without motivation, you fail in the face of death.
Is the technical equipment overrated?
In these wars, the technically inferior side has almost
always won, even if it has paid a very high price for it.
One thinks of Afghanistan, India, Vietnam ...
These are only the best-known cases, but there have been
dozens of them. Many books have dealt with it. Some
blame the defeats on failed organization or the wrong
goals; others think the politicians were too soft, the officers
too bad, or public opinion too critical. That’s all right.
But in the end, the guerrillas and terrorists were simply
better. They were more motivated, obstinate, determined,
inventive. You just can’t get past it.
Association of Friends of the National Defence Academy / University of Vienna
The renowned Israeli military historian
Martin van Creveld was born in Rotterdam
in 1946 and grew up in Israel and England.
He is Professor Emeritus of history at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is one of
the world’s most influential and well-known
military historians. Van Creveld has lectured
and taught at virtually every institute dealing
with strategic military studies around the
world, and has advised various governments,
including those of the United States, Canada,
and Sweden. He is a frequent guest on CNN,
BBC, and other international media, and has
written hundreds of articles for magazines and
periodicals around the world. Some of his most
recent books include Equality: The Impossible
Quest (Castalia, 2015), A History of
Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind
(Castalia, 2015), and Pussycats: Why the
Rest Keeps Beating the West — and What
Can Be Done about It (CreateSpace, 2016).

The European Conservative 21

A 19th century portrait of Prussian general and military
theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) by the German
painter Karl Wilhelm Wach (1787-1845).
Are such asymmetric wars, in which a technically superior
civilization fights an inferior one, a specific challenge?
Of course. That creates a completely different situation.
Some politicians have still not understood how self-
destructive such wars can be.
The line separating civilians and soldiers is also omitted.
Exactly. Thirty years ago, I invented the term ‘Triple War’.
A clear difference between government, armed forces, and
civilians was characteristic of the interstate war, as Carl von
Clausewitz (1780–1831) pointed out. From the second half
of the 17th century, war was waged like this in Europe and
later elsewhere. If one didn’t stick to it, it was a war crime.
This division of labour collapsed after the Second World
War.
Is it a psychological burden for soldiers not to know whether
they are shooting at other soldiers or children?
For the soldiers this is a very big burden, especially because
their opponent is so weak. It would be nice if we had
conventional wars like the Falklands War again, but in
many ways our situation resembles the Thirty Years’ War. In
Syria there is actually no army, only different militias. Some
are controlled by foreign powers. Turkey, Iran, Russia, the
22 Summer/Fall 2018
Naval History & Heritage Command
Josephus Daniels (1862-1948), who served as US Secretary of
the Navy from 1913 to 1921.
US — everyone is interfering. Nobody knows what they’re
doing. Only one thing is certain: The civilians are suffering
terribly.
In Gaza and Lebanon, too, the distinction between soldiers
and civilians no longer applies. How does Israel deal with
this?
This problem cannot be solved well, but Israel has solved
it well enough to survive — so far. The impact on Israeli
society is very harsh. One problem is that the army loses
unless it wins. The guerrilla wins as long as it doesn’t lose.
That’s why there’s never-ending war, knife attacks, suicide
attacks, and rockets.
You see feminism and gender as important causes for the
weakening of Western civilizations. You think the situation
would be better if only men were in charge?
The men have almost given up without a fight. Women need
us men for two purposes: fathering children and protection.
Both are omitted today. We’ve grown weak. That may be the
secret of feminism. It is not for nothing that Putin is against
feminism. The Russian soldiers are ready to do things that
others no longer can or want to do. In war, you need not
only good technology but people who are willing and able
to cut throats. Maybe the Russians have the best army today.
In history, there used to be important female rulers. What is
the main problem with the role of women today?
A society is born in which there is simply no more room for
men. You can hardly make a move or say a word without
being accused of sexual harassment. Right now the whole
world is making fun of Europe, the US, and Canada. They’re
not men anymore, they say. They can’t handle their own
women. How are they supposed to fight? Feminism is the
largest and best organized penis envy in the world. Women
always believe that what men do is more important and
better than what they do. But they always start 100 years too
late. When the men jump off the rooftops tomorrow, the
women will follow them.
Do you criticize the acceptance of women as soldiers in the
army?
The US Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels (1862–1948)
once said: “You can’t treat a woman like a man.” It won’t
work. When you have women with you, the disciplinary
problems start. You have to draw a line, and that line is on
the fighting troops. Otherwise you will be left without men
in the long run, because they will say: If women can do it, it
is no longer an honour for me to do it.
Russian soldiers marching during a ceremony welcoming then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in March 2011. “Maybe
the Russians have the best army today,” says Van Creveld.
The European Conservative 23
Sport is taken much more seriously today than war.
Nobody lets men fight women there. The stands would
be empty. Also in the gladiator games of the Romans,
opponents were as equal as possible. It’s different with the
army because we don’t take war seriously anymore.
Should migrants from patriarchal societies be enticed to join
our armies?
That’s what the ancient Romans did. From the time of
Augustus they allowed more and more Teutons into their
armies. In the end, there was no Roman army any more.
Up to the commander, it consisted only of Teutons and
barbarians, and they no longer defended the Roman
Empire. What was worse, there was a separation between
government and soldiers. Those who could fight could not
rule, and those who ruled could not fight. This separation is
very dangerous in the long run.
In your book you criticize today’s education in family and
school. You claim it leads to a lack of independence. Is
independence important for a soldier?
War is marked by insecurity, more than any other human
activity. That’s why everything goes wrong. It doesn’t work
US Department of Defense
 US Department of Defense

This map, property of the Department of History of the US Military Academy, shows some of the tactics used along the
Western Front during World War I.

without independence. War requires the independent
cooperation of all soldiers, from the common soldier to the
general. In addition, the battle varies greatly according to
war and enemy. The ability and willingness to take initiative
and work independently are therefore indispensable. The
main problem is: How to combine independence with
discipline?
Which armies have solved this problem best?
The German armies between 1870 and 1945; ideally,
discipline and initiative should mutually reinforce each
other. That’s the ideal. How to do this is a difficult
question and it also depends on the culture. Some things
can be demanded from a German soldier but not from an
American soldier and vice versa.
And Israel’s army?
Israel is the most undisciplined country in the world I
know. It used to be an advantage in terms of initiative.
Today, I’m not sure anymore. The main problem is that
for years we have been fighting people who are so weak
that they are not really opponents. When you fight a weak
opponent, you become weak. That’s the same with games.
Books have been written about war games, according to
which there is a lot of similarity between war and games.
Many rules of the game apply to war and vice versa. In
many ways, war is not a continuation of politics but a
violent form of play.
You have a high opinion of the present Russian army. How
do you see China’s army?
It’s hard to say. The Chinese haven’t fought a war for many
years. They’ve never been a military people. The Mandarin
[civil servant of the Chinese state administration] was
always above the military. It’s a Confucian society and
Confucius was everything but a militarist. I met many
young officers during a two-week visit. The commands go
from top to bottom, but no proposal goes from bottom to
top. If China is ever in battle, I believe that the soldiers’

24 Summer/Fall 2018
lack of independence will be a problem. They are not used
to thinking for themselves. When they have to, they feel
insecure.
You’ve written 33 books. Your last one, Hitler in Hell, is a
fictional autobiography, not a non-fiction book.
It’s not a novel either. Nothing is fictional. Everything is
based on facts. I tried to write a fictional autobiography, as
Hitler would have probably written after his death. Like so
many historians, I’ve been involved with Hitler for years.
But three years ago, I noticed something: Nobody wrote
about how Hitler saw himself. I found this question very
interesting. Hitler always saw himself as a good person
who, if it had only been for himself, would not have hurt a
fly. “But when it comes to the interests of the people, I get
ice-cold”, he said. I thought: Perhaps this is the true core
of Hitler, at least in his own eyes. He was not like Stalin
or Göring, who were not interested in human suffering.
Hitler felt responsible for the death of every soldier. That’s
why he never wanted to see cities destroyed.
But Hitler’s last order was against the German people.
This happened in a moment of despair. His will (testament)
doesn’t mention it. It says there that the German people
will continue to exist. What distinguishes Hitler from
other terrible personalities of history is that he acted against
his will. He kept saying that. In my opinion, Hitler forced
The European Conservative 25
himself internally to commit these terrible crimes, and
that is exactly what made him so terrible himself. There is
something unnatural about it, something perverse. Stalin
was not a pervert but a Caucasian tribal chief who had
grown a hundred times larger. Genghis Khan apparently
had no problem with his crimes either. It’s not like Hitler.
He wasn’t comfortable with it. It has also given him a
certain humanity.
Your family and your people have suffered more under
Hitler than under any other ruler.
It is impossible to write a good biography if you hate
the person portrayed as much as practically all Hitler
biographers do. Therefore I hesitated for years until I
started to write a different kind of Hitler biography. To
explain this, I added a few pages at the end of the book
about my family and myself.
The last four years of his life, when the war was already lost,
Hitler put all his energy into destroying the Jewish people.
That’s right. He wrote about it again in his will. It was
demonic, but what made it more demonic was that he
didn’t feel comfortable with it. This man had something
profoundly perverse that is not so easy to find in other mass
murderers.
Stefan Beig is a freelance journalist in Vienna.
 Burke, Prophet of Peace
Mark Dooley
R ussell Kirk begins his wonderful biography of Edmund
Burke, A Genius Reconsidered, with the following
observation: “In College Green, at the gate of Trinity
College, near the heart of Dublin, stand the handsome
statues of Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith.” In the
final chapter of that book, Professor Kirk reflects:
“If the fine statue of Burke stands beside that of his
friend Oliver Goldsmith in College Green, Dublin — why,
they will remain as symbols of a human order that has not
been pulled down altogether. But if those statues of Burke
are one day no longer to be seen — well, their vanishing
will be a sign that humankind has been expelled from what
Burke called ‘this world of reason, and order, and peace,
and virtue’. Humanity will have been thrust into Orwell’s
dystopia — into the realm of Chaos and old Night,
described by Burke as ‘the antagonist world of madness,
discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow’.”
The good news is that those statues are still standing
today. The sad truth is that this monument may be the
last remnant of Burke’s legacy in Ireland. In 2016, when
the Irish were celebrating the birth pangs of their State in
1916, there was scant mention of Burke in the media or
in official commemorations. Is it that Ireland has, in fact,
fallen into the “antagonistic world of madness, discord,
vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow”?
The complexities of Irish identity
Many Irish people would claim that, with the receding
influence of the Catholic Church, we have indeed opted
for madness over the world of reason, order, peace and
virtue. While that may be so, it still does not account
for the fact that Burke is largely absent from the modern
Irish imagination. After all, in a country that has been
under siege from Jacobinism of various strains for the past
century, you might think that Burke’s passionate plea in
defence of decency over destruction would still resound.
That this is not the case, has, I believe, more to do with
the complexities of Irish identity than with any outright
repudiation of Burke’s enduring message.
Firstly, the identity of modern Ireland is bound up
with the so-called ‘Rising’ of Easter 1916, when a group
of revolutionary idealists sought to win independence from
Britain. It was a violent uprising that lasted less than a
week, but which caused mass casualties and untold carnage.
Had the British not responded by mercilessly executing the
protagonists, the whole episode would have been written
26 Summer/Fall 2018
off as a disaster. However, once the executions began, the
Rising took on a mythic dimension which has ingrained
itself in the Irish psyche. The leaders, such as Padraig Pearse
and James Connolly, are now revered as martyrs through
whose ‘courageous sacrifice’ the Irish State was born.
The most significant consequence of the Rising was
that it eclipsed the noble tradition of peaceful nationalism.
Those who had sought to achieve ‘home rule’ without resort
to the gun were consigned to oblivion. Those, in other
words, who believed Ireland could achieve independence
through reform rather than revolution were rejected in
favour of those committed to ‘blood sacrifice’. I do not say
that the leaders of the 1916 Rising would have approved of
the so-called ‘armed struggle’ waged by the IRA through the
decades that followed. What is certain, however, is that the
fanatical Jacobins of Irish republicanism sought to justify
their terror campaign by posing as heirs to the 1916 ‘martyrs’.
I think it true to say that Burke would have perceived
both the leaders of 1916, and the nationalist terror squads
that subsequently claimed their legacy, as enemies of “the
ancient civil, moral and political order”. There is little doubt
that he would have sided with those who sought to secure
independence by purely peaceful means. This, however, is
not because he wanted to uphold the British ascendancy
in Ireland. What is often overlooked is that while Burke’s
father was a Protestant, his mother’s family, the Nagles —
with whom the young Burke lived for six years in Cork —
were members of the Catholic gentry. Indeed, his mother’s
deep devotion to the old faith inspired Burke to become one
of its most ardent defenders. Reflections on the Revolution in
France was, lest we forget, written in furious opposition to
the anti-Catholic invective of a pamphlet produced by the
Revolutionary Society in 1789. What most vexed Burke
was that the Society found common cause with the French
Jacobins because both were dedicated to eradicating the old
Catholic order.
It is true that Burke was committed to the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 and to the Protestant succession. This,
however, did nothing to dampen his zeal in defence of the
subjugated Catholics of Ireland. While living in Cork,
he had seen the effect of the anti-Catholic penal codes
under which his family were forced to live. That is why,
throughout his life, he sought to have those codes repealed,
and it was due primarily to him that the Catholic Relief
Act was passed in 1778. This act, which Burke drew up,
gave property rights to Roman Catholics in both England
and Ireland. It led, in 1780, to the infamous Gordon
Riots — Lord George Gordon himself accusing Burke of
having been directly responsible for the whole fiasco. It also
resulted in Burke losing his parliamentary seat for Bristol.

A view of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, near Dublin, which was officially established in 1795.
Even as his life drew to an end, Burke persevered with
his moral crusade on behalf of Irish Catholics. In this
regard Professor Kirk highlights a relatively unknown but
most significant fact:
“One product of the old Burke’s wisdom … was
the foundation of the seminary for Irish Catholics in
Maynooth, in which Burke had a large hand. Maynooth
was meant to elevate the intellects of the Irish priests, so
helping to save Ireland from Jacobinism; and very much
had Maynooth been needed. Though Burke failed in his
attempt to place control of the college entirely in the hands
of the Catholic clergy, its establishment with governmental
approval and participation was Burke’s final success in his
war upon the Penal Laws.”
It is largely thanks to Edmund Burke, therefore, that
Ireland’s national seminary was established. Why, then,
has subsequent history failed to acknowledge, let alone
thank him, for this remarkable accomplishment? As I see
it, the answer lies in the fact that the Irish Church did not,
as Burke had hoped, always stand between Ireland and
Jacobinism. Indeed, there were moments in Irish history
when the Church became synonymous with the nationalist
cause. That is, rather than defending Ireland from what
Burke called “a sect of fanatical and ambitious atheists”, the
Church often took their side.
To repeat, Burke would have considered the seizure of
the General Post Office (GPO) by the insurgents of 1916, as
an act akin to the storming of the Bastille in 1789. Likewise,
the ‘armed doctrine’ of Sinn Fein and the IRA would have
appalled him, as would the current attempt by Sinn Fein
to “massacre by judgments, or otherwise, those who make
any struggle for their old legal government, and their legal,
The European Conservative 27
Finaghy
hereditary, or acquired possessions”. Surely, however, what
would have wounded him most was the way in which the
Catholic Church very often gave comfort to those Irish
Jacobins in their so-called ‘armed struggle’ — a struggle that
traced its origins to the Jacobin-inspired uprising of 1798
by Theobald Wolfe Tone. Hence, no Burkean could have
supported violent nationalism as it evolved following 1916
because no Burkean could ever subscribe to any movement
that uses terror or tyranny to perfect people against their
will. Consequently, once Irish Catholicism bedded down
with nationalism, Burke was simply eclipsed in the Irish
mind — even by those constitutional nationalists who also
clearly perceived the link between the French Jacobins their
latter-day Irish descendants.
The admiration of a liberal
One person who did evoke him, most notably in his
book The Great Melody, was UN statesman, scholar,
parliamentarian and Irish journalist, Conor Cruise O’Brien.
O’Brien’s Burkeanism was formed from his equally intense
detestation of ‘armed doctrine’, a fact that led him to
become the most trenchant critic of Sinn Fein-IRA in Irish
politics until his death in 2008. In fact, as Minister for
Posts and Telegraphs, it was O’Brien who, through Section
31 of Broadcasting Act, banned Sinn Fein-IRA from the
Irish airwaves. Throughout his long career, O’Brien was to
Sinn Fein-IRA what Burke was to the French Jacobins. For
example, in his book Ancestral Voices, he writes:
“For most of my life … I did not seriously question what
Irish nationalism was about. I was led to do so when the
offensive of the Provisional IRA began in 1971. This was,
and is, a major convergence of religion and nationalism: a
Catholic and nationalist offensive, not only (as claimed)
against a British occupation but against the Protestant and
unionist population of Northern Ireland: a kind of Holy
War.”
Despite his deep admiration for Burke, O’Brien
was not a conservative in the Burkean mode. He was a
quintessential Enlightenment liberal and a member of
the Irish Labour Party. And, like all good Enlightenment
liberals, he perceived the main threat to the Enlightenment
as stemming from religion in general and Catholicism in
particular. Writing in On the Eve of the Millennium (1994),
he states: “Around mid-century, with the processes of
thought that led to Vatican II, the Church had seemed
to be coming to terms with the Enlightenment. But the
present Pope [John Paul II], with formidable pertinacity —
and an ingenuity which had seemed hardly less formidable
until recently — has managed to repeal Vatican II in spirit
… beyond that, the objective is nothing less than the repeal
of the Enlightenment itself.”
Responding to such regular pronouncements, Roger
Scruton wrote in a 1986 review of O’Brien’s book Passion
and Cunning: “Those who speak for Reason tend to see
only darkness and superstition in their opponents. People
like the Pope, therefore, who believe that a world without
obedience is a world without sense, are scarcely likely to
make any impact on the apostles of Enlightenment.”
Scruton concludes, however: “On the other hand, O’Brien
is a student of the French Revolution. He is aware that
Reason too can become a god.”
O’Brien was indeed aware of this, which is why he
could write with confidence that, while it seems to be
widely assumed in “most circles to the left of centre, that
Spudgun67 / CCA-SA 4.0 International
A plaque honouring Burke in Leicester Square, London.
28 Summer/Fall 2018
the true liberal must be sympathetic, if not necessarily to all
revolutions, at least to the French one, whose intellectual
origins were in the later Enlightenment and whose most
memorable rhetoric is resolutely liberal. Yet surely there
is validity, from a liberal point of view, in the Burkean
distinction between limited revolutions, like England’s
Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution, and
limitless, totally innovative ones, like the revolution in
France, which claim to extend the boundaries of liberty but
in fact result in successive mutations of despotism.”
While Burke would have wholeheartedly supported
O’Brien’s contention that the “communists were the direct
heirs of the Jacobins”, I doubt he would have been so quick
— given his history — to subscribe to O’Brien’s view that
religion was the problem and not something which could
also supply a cure. Indeed, the fact that Sinn Fein have
subsequently been revealed to be, what Burke described,
as “a sect of fanatical and ambitious atheists”, people for
whom Marxist dogma is still the only respectable political
creed, only proves that they were, in reality, contemptuously
hostile to all religion.
In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke
spoke of the Church as the “first of our prejudices, not a
prejudice destitute of reason, but involving in it profound
and extensive wisdom”. He would, to repeat, have decried
any unholy alliance between the Church and the new
Jacobins, but he would have also insisted that, in opting
for Enlightenment over religion, we “cast away the coat
of prejudice” leaving nothing but “naked reason”. For it is
only prejudice — as custom and virtue — which “renders
a man’s virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected
acts”. As such, Burke — as he did in his lifetime thanks
to the influence of his Protestant father and Catholic
mother — would have looked to both the Protestant and
Catholic traditions in order to find common ground and to
conserve the best in both. He would have done this because
he believed the churches, despite their flaws, “do not look
to the paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary
and transient praise of the vulgar, but to a solid, permanent
existence, in the permanent part of their nature”.
Ireland’s prophet of peace
One person who recognised this was public commentator,
former senator and journalist, Eoghan Harris. Having
made his own journey from socialism to sanity, and having
publicly supported O’Brien’s silencing of Sinn Fein-IRA,
Harris saw much more clearly the full scope of Burke’s
political philosophy and vision. It was Harris who wrote
David Trimble’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1998.
Trimble was former First Minister of Northern Ireland,
leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and architect of the
Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In his capacity as adviser
to Trimble, Harris penned a speech that would dramatically
resurrect Burke as someone whose insights
could bring lasting peace to Ireland.
Harris’s speech was not only littered
with references to Burke, but it employed his
political vision as a roadmap for lasting peace
in Ireland. Both “the Catholic and Protestant
communities of Northern Ireland” must,
Harris wrote, leave behind the “dark sludge of
historical sectarianism” because “both created
it”. He continues: “Each thought it had good
reason to fear the other … Ulster Unionists,
fearful of being isolated on the island, built a
solid house, but it was a cold house for Catholics.
And northern nationalists, although they had
a roof over their heads, seemed to us as if they
meant to burn the house down. None of us
are entirely innocent. But thanks to our strong
sense of civil society, thanks to our religious
recognition that none of us are perfect, thanks to
the thousands of people from both sides who
made countless acts of good authority, thanks to
a tradition of parliamentary democracy which
meant that paramilitarism never displaced
politics, thanks to all these specific, concrete
circumstances we, thank god, stopped short
of that abyss that engulfed Bosnia, Kosovo,
Somalia and Rwanda.”
That is something you would never have
read in Conor Cruise O’Brien, but in that
statement we see the true spirit of Burke. In The famed statue of Edmund Burke at the entrance of Trinity College
those words, we hear Burke the Catholic, Burke Dublin being admired by two gentlemen in December 1869.
the Protestant, Burke the statesman, Burke the
anti-utopian pragmatist, Burke the anti-fascist of Trinity College as a reminder of the ever-present threat
— Burke the prophet of peace. Unlike O’Brien, Harris saw from our homegrown Jacobins. This is not the Burke of
clearly that Burke would have been the first to recognise the Conor Cruise O’Brien but the Burke of Russell Kirk,
threat faced by Ulster Unionists from Nationalist Jacobins. Eoghan Harris, and Roger Scruton. It is a monument that
Conversely, he would also have been the first to declare that stands before us not as an appeal to Enlightened reason,
Northern Ireland was indeed a “cold house for Catholics”, but as a warning against those armies of darkness which
and that the long history of Irish Catholicism could not perennially threaten the fragile forces of democracy and
be reduced to those elements within the Church that decency. And it is a warning that tells us simply that “life
gave blessing and support to armed doctrine. In reviving being short and experience limited, the individual — even
Burke from the ashes of historical amnesia, and in rescuing the wisest man of his age — is comparatively foolish; but
him from “the whole clan of the enlightened among us”, through the experience of man with God, and through the
Eoghan Harris showed how his genuinely conservative experience of man with man, over thousands of years, the
vision provides the best path forward for modern Ireland. species has a wisdom, expressed in prejudice, habit, and
For this is a vision of reconciliation in which, as Burke put custom, which in the long run [always] judges aright.”
it, the “errors and defects of old establishments are visible
and palpable”. Still, “we compensate, we reconcile, we Mark Dooley is an Irish philosopher and writer. He is the
balance. We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole author of several books, including The Politics of Exodus:
the various anomalies and contending principles that are Kierkegaard‘s Ethics of Responsibility (Fordham UP,
found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence arises, 2001), Roger Scruton: The Philosopher of Dover Beach
not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior, an (Continuum, 2009), Why Be a Catholic? (Burns & Oates,
excellence in composition.” 2011), and Conversations with Roger Scruton (Bloomsbury,
The statue of Burke still proudly stands in the grounds 2016). He writes a regular column for the Irish Daily Mail.

The European Conservative 29

A Parable for the Fall of the West
François La Choüe

I f you open the most recent French edition (2011) of

Jean Raspail’s masterpiece, Le Camp des Saints, you
might be startled. In the new preface, mysteriously entitled
“Big Other”, the novelist reflects upon the reception of
his book over the years. Raspail estimates that 87 criminal
charges could be filed against him if Le Camp des Saints
were to be published today. Hatred, racism, xenophobia,
white supremacism, a lack of compassion for so-called
‘refugees’: Long is the list of Raspail’s alleged sins against
the dogma of ‘political correctness’.
Fortunately, Raspail’s novel — the very first of his
books, actually — was published in 1973 in a France that
still granted citizens much more freedom of expression
than it does today. This is why the author of Le Camp des
Saints escaped any attempts at censorship. Nevertheless,
his book has never ceased to be controversial — and as the
subject of his infamous work of fiction has increasingly
become reality, the debate over his novel has become
more heated than ever.

The novel in brief

The genesis of the book began in the 1970s in southern
France. Jean Raspail was then a young and quite
inexperienced writer. He was enjoying the pleasant
Le Camp des Saints
weather of the French Riviera immersed in thought as he Paris: Robert Laffont, 1973
stared at the deep blue horizon of the Mediterranean. He
then anxiously wondered: “What if they came now?” And
the young author took out his pen and began to write, as
the idyllic landscape around him inspired the fictitious
tale of the fall of the West.
He began to narrate the tale of one million immigrants
fleeing the shores of the Ganges where they were suffering
from starvation; men, women, children: a peaceful army
without weapons with nothing to lose — and everything
to expect from the Old World, Europe, the West; countless
ships — rusted and antiquated vessels — setting sail from
the Indian subcontinent. Long, perilous, and inhuman
would be their maritime journey across the oceans. Many
would drown or die from thirst.
But Raspail’s narration does not solely focus on the
immigrant fleet, though he offers rather vivid descriptions
of their poverty, grime, promiscuity, and misfortunes. Earlier French editions
of the much reviled
His main interest is describing the reaction of the West.
dystopian classic.
From Paris to Washington, from Rome to Geneva, a
vague anxiety is what first greets news of this wretched
flotilla. Soon, however, calls for charity, welcome, and

30 Summer/Fall 2018
brotherly love for the poor and the stranger soon prevail.
Politicians, intellectuals, journalists, and clerics across the
Western world all come together under the naïve ‘Gospel’
of welcoming these immigrants — whatever the cost may
be.
Only a tiny minority of people are sufficiently awake to
realize how much their civilization is in danger. Only two
countries publicly refuse the eventuality of welcoming the
fleet: Australia and Afrikaner South Africa. Meanwhile,
in Europe, infernal propaganda is manipulating people’s
consciences so that they may more easily let go of any
sense of cultural resistance against the foreign ‘invasion’.
Radios and newspapers are full of repentant manifestos
and appeals to multiculturalism and cultural diversity. A
nearly religious frenzy gains hold of French minds.
In Raspail’s novel, only one conservative newspaper
is bold enough to publicly break with the growing
symphony of ‘welcome’. But its dissident voice is hardly
heard. When it is finally clear that the exotic armada
of immigrants is disembarking in Provence, the whole
nation descends into chaos.
Terrified by the prospect of cohabiting with absolute
strangers, the southern half of France chooses the way of
exodus. Only a minority of soldiers is brave enough to
desperately gather on a strange frontline: on the beaches
of the French Riviera. There, led by a French colonel
called Constantin Dragasès, these ultimate partisans
of European order face the quiet masses of immigrants
waiting eagerly to disembark and invade French soil. To
shoot or not to shoot? That is the question.
Prophet of submission?
With 15,000 copies sold in 1973, which quickly
reached 40,000 in 1975, Le Camp des Saints quickly
became a bestseller. Raspail’s success rapidly crossed
US Coast Guard
This small sail freighter carrying 162 Haitians was intercepted
by US Coast Guard personnel.
The European Conservative 31
French borders. Praised by the late Harvard University
professor Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of
Civilizations (1996), Raspail’s novel was most notably
read — and appreciated — by President Ronald
Reagan himself. In conservative circles worldwide, the
book has become a true classic in just a few decades.
In April 2017, Steve Bannon — then a Donald Trump
advisor — explained that the immigration crisis in
Europe was actually “an invasion”. He then specified:
“I call it The Camp of the Saints.” This was proof that
Raspail’s apocalyptic novel has stood the test of time.
Of course, there are some differences between the
events painted by the novelist and today’s crisis in Europe.
In the novel, immigrants come in one, single wave; they
are undoubtedly peaceful but no further details are given
about their religion (which is probably Hindu). In today’s
Europe — mainly France, Italy, and Germany — many
illegal immigrants come from Africa or the Middle East.
A great number are Muslim and some have arrived in
Europe with nothing less than aggressive and violent
intentions. Indeed, some of the terrorists involved in the
2015 Bataclan slaughter in Paris had originally come to
Europe as ‘refugees’.
Still, the thesis of Le Camp des Saints does indeed
eerily resemble the situation that we in Europe are
currently experiencing. Some examples? The intense
“refugees welcome” propaganda; the suicidal blindness
of the so-called elites; and the absolute reign of political
correctness. In France, when a terror attack occurs, the
priority of journalists is to remain sensitive and prevent
lumping terrorists together with immigrants, rather than
to question the ideology of multiculturalism that has
facilitated the occurrence of such incidents in the first
place.
One major theme in Raspail’s book is the attitude of
the Catholic Church, whose inordinate compassion for

Fabrice Bluszez / CCA-SA 4.0 International
Jean Raspail in his apartment in Paris in December 2015.
the incoming fleet relegates the Church and its followers
to civilizational suicide. This aspect of the novel echoes
powerfully with Pope Francis’ current pontificate and
His Holiness’ repeated appeals to welcome indigent
foreigners. Philippe de Villiers, a Catholic and prominent
French conservative, has even nicknamed Francis “the
Pope of Le Camp des Saints”.
Raspail himself, quite pessimistic about the possibility
of the West to prevail over “migratory submersion”,
stated in 2011 that “in order to push back immigrants,
we ought to be firm. But that is impossible because
Christian charity prohibits it. In some way, Christian
charity leads us to disaster”.
Although Raspail himself is a traditionalist Catholic,
he has thoroughly developed the idea of “the treason
of clerics”, thus echoing G.K. Chesterton’s criticism of
“Christian ideas gone mad”. Nevertheless, intellectual
integrity must lead people to recognize that Christian
social doctrine — especially Thomistic thought —
preaches filial piety and reasonable patriotism. It also
legitimates the defence of national identity against
foreign threats.
It is worth recalling that the title of Raspail’s novel
itself is a biblical quotation from The Book of Revelation:
“They surrounded the camp of the saints and the
beloved city”. Taking up this theme, the African prelate,
Cardinal Sarah, last year confessed to a French right-
wing media outlet: “I fear that the West might die. You
are being invaded by other cultures, other peoples that
will dominate you”.
Many people consider Raspail a prophet, which seems
especially apt when one remembers that his dystopian
32 Summer/Fall 2018
novel was written forty years ago.
However, he himself is averse to
such notions. If one were ever to
meet Raspail and congratulate
him for his foresight and wisdom,
he would surely ridicule you. He is
fond of reminding people that he
is neither an oracle nor a theorist.
He is merely a novelist. Le Camp
des Saints is nothing more than a
work of fiction — and the author
offers no solutions at the end
of the book. The tragedy is that
reality today now resembles what
was supposed to be a mere fiction.
Preserving ancient roots
A prolific writer, Jean Raspail has
published forty books, ranging
from his famed apocalyptic novel
to travel writing. Born in 1925,
his literary oeuvre is broad and eclectic — and cannot be
limited to Le Camp des Saints. His works are, however,
all characterized by a sense of decadence and the fear of
loss — the loss of an established civilization, one ruined
by vulgarity and the ‘God Progress’.
At the same time, this gentleman-writer has explored
countless countries on the other side of the world. In
1949, with fellow Catholic boy scouts, Raspail canoed
from Quebec to New Orleans, in the footsteps of the
French missionaries and explorers who built ‘New
France’ during the 17th and 18th centuries. In his logbook,
entitled En canot sur les chemins d’eau du Roi (By Canoe
on the King’s Waterways), Raspail pays tribute to the deep
respect French adventurers showed to Indian tribes,
which was directly opposite to the English attitude.
In fact, there is a long-running romance between
the writer and the Americas: In 1952, Raspail organized
a motorized tour from Patagonia to Alaska. These
travels provided Raspail with enough material to write
numerous books dedicated to ‘Tierra del Fuego’ and
to the last indigenous tribes living in those remote and
frozen lands.
Raspail’s works are full of disdain for the absurd ‘cult
of progress’ that has ended in the total destruction of those
primitive yet noble cultures. Raspail has even expressed a
somewhat astonishing enthusiasm for a French adventurer
who, in the 1860s, became the self-proclaimed ‘King of
Araucanía and Patagonia’ and dedicated himself to the
preservation the Mapuche Indian tribe. (His Moi, Antoine
de Tounens, Roi de Patagonie, published in 1981, tells this
tragic tale.) Having defended the rights of indigenous
populations to live on their land according to their own
ancestral customs, how can anyone now accuse Raspail
of racism?
He is also a recipient of two French literary awards:
the Grand Prix du Roman and the Grand Prix de
literature, awarded by the Académie française. If one
had to categorize and qualify the literary genre in which
Raspail works, ‘exotic’ might be a good adjective. The last
compilation of his works, published in France in 2015
under the title Là-bas, si loin (Over There, Far Away)
perfectly illustrates how his novels are an invitation to
travel — travelling across oceans, travelling across ages.
Raspail’s own dreams of a restored French monarchy —
Sire (1991) and Le Roi au-delà de la mer (2000) — and
his evocations of fictional city-states of Eastern Europe
— Sept cavaliers (1993) and Les Royaumes de Borée
(2003) — have become legendary in French literary (and
conservative) circles.
It is only by reading his works — and getting to
know that Raspail’s work is not built on heartless satires
or ridicule of ‘the other’ but rather on the amazement
and enchantment one encounters when encountering
the stunning beauty of deep-rooted civilizations — that
one discovers the ‘secret message’ of Le Camp des Saints:
Behind the bitter depiction of a society in decline is a
poignant love song to Christian and Roman culture.
If we truly cherish the fruits of European culture
and Western civilization, Raspail urges us, then we have
the moral duty to defend it. Otherwise, we may face
the fate of the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI
Dragasès Palaiologos (after whom the French colonel in
Raspail’s prophetic novel is named), who was killed while
defending the walls of his beloved city of Constantinople
from the Ottomans. This is a struggle that is still going
on today — as the last sentence of Le Camp des Saints
seems to remind us: “The fall of Constantinople is a
personal misfortune that happened to us last week.”
François La Choüe is a writer in Paris.

Hungarian National Gallery

“Nikola Šubić Zrinski’s Charge from the Fortress of Szigetvár” (1825) by the German-born Austrian painter Johann Peter Krafft
(1780-1856). The siege of Szigetvár in 1566 was, according to Cardinal Richelieu, “the battle that saved civilization.”

The European Conservative 33

 The Brilliance of
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A n d r é P. D e B a t t i s t a
I n his somewhat autobiographical novel, The First Circle,
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes: “A great writer is, so to
speak, a second government in his country and for that
reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor
ones.” This statement best captures the life and work of
Solzhenitsyn. He was undoubtedly a great writer — a
defining author — who shaped Western attitudes to the
Soviet Union. It is through his work that the West got its
first glimpse of what life was like in the Soviet Union —
the Gulag in the harsh Siberian winter, the pain of internal
exile, the soul-crushing atmosphere of a socialist state, the
absurdity of trumped up charges, and the tragic reality
of living in fear. These images are far more lasting than
anything the Soviet Union could have achieved in its,
mercifully-brief, 74-year existence.
However, at one
point, Solzhenitsyn seemed to fall out of favour
in the West, too. In his famous Harvard Commencement
Speech delivered in June 1978, he bemoaned the state of
things in the political system where he was living in exile.
This was a rallying call for humanity to re-discover its
spiritual roots:
“We have placed too much hope in politics and social
reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our
most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled
by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the
34 Summer/Fall 2018
West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world
is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting
its main sections.”
Whether one agrees or not with his assessments, one
cannot deny that he had the right credentials to make such
statements. A century from his birth and a decade from his
death, it is right and fitting to remember this literary giant.
The author as a young man
Solzhenitsyn was born on 11 December 1918. His father
died before he was born while his mother refused to re-
marry fearing that a new husband would be too strict a
stepfather for the young Aleksandr. He spent most of his
childhood in the town of Rostov-on-the-Don. He claims
to have had a vocation for writing from
a very young age: “Even as
a child, without any prompting from others, I wanted
to be a writer and, indeed, I turned out a good deal of
the usual juvenilia.” Literature and writing would be a
love that would consume him throughout his entire life.
In the 1930s he tried to get his writings published, but all
his manuscripts were rejected. Mathematics was his second
choice.
He began his studies at the University of Rostov. While
not his first choice, mathematics would prove to be both
a life changer and a life saver. In October 1941, after war
broke out, Solzhenitsyn was commissioned to be a driver of
horse-drawn vehicles in the Red Army. His mathematical
background saw him transferred to an artillery school where
he completed an abridged artillery training programme.
He served the Red Army on its front in the Battle of Kursk,
in Poland and Eastern Prussia, until 1945. He was then
promoted to the rank of Captain and received the Order
of the Patriotic War Class II and the Order of the Red Star.
Becoming Ivan Denisovich
During his last year in the army, he corresponded with a
school friend. Disenchanted by some aspects of Marxism,
his letters contained veiled criticism directed towards
Stalin. In the introduction to one of Solzhenitsyn’s
most celebrated novels, the poet and essayist, Yevgeny
Yevtushenko reflected on the significance of the aftermath
of this episode: “His friend, in the name of patriotism, had
turned him in. Solzhenitsyn spent a total of eleven years in
a special prison, in the camps, and in exile. But the system,
for all its cruelty and deceitfulness, turned out to be stupid.
It had taught its future gravedigger how to wield a
shovel.”
Böll, speaking to the
ob el Pri ze w inner Heinrich
at the home of N
Solzhenitsyn,
After a harsh and
gruelling time in the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn had
his life saved after he was transferred to a special camp
for scientists to teach mathematics. In 1950, he was sent
to a camp for political prisoners in Kazakhstan where
he was to serve the last three years of his sentence. His
experience as a bricklayer and a labourer within the camp
were immortalised in his first novel, One Day in the Life
of Ivan Denisovich. In 1953, in the same year in which
Joseph Stalin died, he was transferred to perpetual exile in
Southern Kazakhstan.
Three years later, in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev delivered
his explosive speech, “On the Cult of Personality and Its
Consequences”. It was a speech which was critical of Stalin’s
The European Conservative 35
personality cult and the purges enacted during his time
in office. It proved to be providential for Solzhenitsyn.
He was freed from exile and returned to Russia where he
continued to teach mathematics to support himself.
He wrote in his spare time. In 1958 he completed
the manuscript for what would be his first novel — One
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich — finally published in
1962. He would later reflect that he was convinced that he
would never see a single line of his work in print during
his lifetime.
The political significance of his first novel cannot be
underestimated. Its content was undoubtedly explosive.
Yevtushenko reflects that Solzhenitsyn “was the first to cut
the barbed wire of the camps with the blade he found, and
he let in millions of readers, Russian and foreign, to see
the Gulag through his eyes and be horrified by it. Reading
the book is an excursion inside the shame of Russia and
humanity”.
3.0 Netherlands
s / CCA-SA
nal Archive
Dutch Natio
4 .
Union in 197
om the Soviet
ing expelled fr
press, after be
Nonetheless, the
novel had a political aim which did not necessarily
please the Gulag survivors. Khrushchev was aware of its
publication. He went to great lengths to make sure it was
published since he “decided to put his money not on Stalin
but on Ivan Denisovich”.
Paradoxically, “the ‘Ivan Denisoviches’ were not
particularly thrilled with the book,” says Yevtushenko,
“and probably most of them did not even read it. It was
the Soviet intelligentsia, which Solzhenitsyn did not like
or trust, that raised this novel as its banner.”
Full-time writing
The success of this novel enabled Solzhenitsyn to quit
teaching and write full-time. For a while, he seemed to
have been embraced by the Soviet establishment. This
began to change after Khrushchev was forced to retire in
1964.
In that same year, editors questioned his novel The
First Circle. In 1965, the KGB took possession of his
manuscripts and his private archives. In 1966, censors
would also take issue with The Cancer Ward — yet another
semi-autobiographical novel.
The novels were smuggled and published in Russian
outside the Soviet Union. Unauthorised excerpts and
translations also appeared in the United Kingdom and
Western Europe. Two years later, in October 1970, the
Nobel Committee awarded Solzhenitsyn the prize for
literature “for the ethical force with which he has pursued
the indispensable traditions of Russian literature”.
The Soviet Government condemned this award
and called it a “politically hostile act”. KGB Chief Yuri
Andropov was concerned that “[i]f Solzhenitsyn continues
to reside in the country after receiving the Nobel Prize, it
36 Summer/Fall 2018
will strengthen his position, and allow him to propagate
his views more actively”.
Solzhenitsyn was thus forced to decline the
opportunity to accept the award in person fearing that
he would be barred from re-entering Russia following the
ceremony. This did not diminish his determination to
chronicle the horrors of the gulags.
In December 1973, the first volume of his magnum
opus, The Gulag Archipelago, was published in Paris. In
1,800 pages, Solzhenitsyn weaves the story of nameless
innocent victims and others who “did not live to tell” the
tale. It is based on the testimony of some 200 survivors
as well as the author’s own experience of a labour camp
and exile.
The three volumes tell a story of collective slavery
enforced through vast camps and prisons, secret informers
and spies, brutal officials and interrogators. Citizens report
on their fellow citizens if they believe a “crime against
the state” has been committed. These crimes are often
Antonu / CCA-SA 3.0 Unported

“First Russian editions of each volume of [Solzhenitsyn’s] ... masterwork, preceding the English translation. ... All three volumes
are inscribed and dated by [the author].” Only US$22,000.
trivial remarks or insignificant actions. The governors
and the administrators are both complicit and enslaved.
The overall effect is that of a dystopian fantasy (which,
unfortunately, was a harsh socialist reality). It popularised
the word ‘Gulag’ and highlighted the horrors of the Soviet
system. Pravda called it “a fabrication” while foreign radio
stations began to broadcast the text. An abridged version
of about 470 pages was later published.
KGB arrest and exile
In February 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by KGB
officers. He was stripped naked, interrogated, charged
with treason, and deprived of his citizenship. Later, he was
expelled from the Soviet Union. Before his deportation,
he predicted that Russia would be free during his lifetime.
Leading Sovietologists laughed off his remarks. However,
Solzhenitsyn proved to be prophetic.
Before settling in the northeastern US State of
Vermont in 1976, he lived in Switzerland for two years.
His time in exile was equally productive. During this
period, he wrote his multi-volume historical epic on the
Russian Revolution, The Red Wheel. For many years, only
the first two volumes were available in English translations.
In early 2017, an anonymous donor funded the complete
translation of this work.
In 1978, he was asked to give the Commencement
Address at Harvard University. During this speech, he
delivered a harsh but pertinent analysis of the problems
plaguing the West. His remarks remain as valid now as
they were then. He noted that the West was experiencing
a decline in courage at every level of governance. He
The European Conservative 37
Raptis Rare Books
bemoaned a society obsessed with the letter of the law: “The
letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial
influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven
of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of
spiritual mediocrity that paralyses man’s noblest impulses.”
Spiritual mediocrity, he argued, was forming the basis
of a crisis: “The humanistic way of thinking, which had
proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence
of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher
than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started
modern Western civilisation on the dangerous trend of
worshipping man and his material needs.”
He ends his speech with a rallying call for change: “We
shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level
of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in
the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual
being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.”
This was Solzhenitsyn at his best and his most prophetic.
Back in the USSR
There is indeed something prophetic in the
pronouncements of Solzhenitsyn. He was correct in his
arlier prediction that he would return to Russia in his
lifetime. In 1990, General Secretary of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, restored
Solzhenitsyn’s citizenship. A year later, the charges of
treason were formally dropped.
In 1994, Solzhenitsyn made his return trip to Russia.
His time in exile had come to an end. He was received by
President Boris Yeltsin; he addressed the Russian Duma,
had a bi-monthly television programme where he spoke
 Gaspard / CC BY 2.0

A modern artistic woodcut made by one of Solzhenitsyn’s many admirers.

on various topics, and toured Russia. A writing prize in
his name was established in 1997.
His political views remained consistent. He implored
Russia to be mindful of its historical roots and not to adopt
the western liberal-democratic model indiscriminately. In
this regard, he was rather disappointed with both President
Gorbachev and President Yeltsin’s reforms.
A WikiLeaks cable sent in the wake of a meeting
between US Ambassador William J. Burns and
Solzhenitsyn notes the following: the Russian author
“positively contrasted the eight-year reign of Putin with
those of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, which he said had ‘added
to the damage done to the Russian state by 70 years of
communist rule’. Under Putin, the nation was rediscovering
what it was to be Russian, Solzhenitsyn thought.”
Nonetheless, this support wasn’t unqualified. He was
saddened at the widening gap between the rich and the
poor, and was critical of Vladimir Putin’s decision to have

38 Summer/Fall 2018

all regional governments appointed rather than elected.
By the time this meeting had taken place, Solzhenitsyn’s
health had deteriorated.
He died of heart failure on 3 August 2008. His body
lay in state at the Russian Academy of Sciences where
thousands of mourners came to pay their respects. His
funeral service was held in the historic Donskoy Monastery
according to the rites of the Russian Orthodox Church.
President Dimitri Medvedev and then-Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin were in attendance. He was buried in
the grounds of the monastery. Outside the gates of the
monastery lies a mass grave which contains the remains of
many who died during Stalin’s purges.
A warning to the West
As an author, Solzhenitsyn was an observer, a commentator,
and an activist. Through his work, the reader gets a glimpse
of the emotions, the concerns, and the hopelessness of life
in Soviet Russia. His use of language reveals the extreme
inhumanity of the Gulag system. His words immortalised
the pain of those whose lives had been conditioned by
Soviet terror. Solzhenitsyn was unique in that he was truly
a product of the Soviet Union.
Yevtushenko reflects: “It is important to remember
that no matter how much Solzhenitsyn hated Soviet
power; he was not a pre-Revolutionary intellectual, but
very much a Soviet one.” Having been raised in the Soviet
Union, Solzhenitsyn was a committed atheist. However,
he emerged from the Gulag as a committed Christian.
His re-discovery of Christianity — specifically Russian
Orthodoxy — would shape his worldview. It moulded
The European Conservative 39
Amazon.com
his understanding of the human person. However, it
also shaped his political views. He was suspicious of the
prevailing models of Western democracy because they did
not take into account the historical and the cultural roles
of Christianity. Democracy which is based on the ‘letter
of the law’ can never help the human person or society
reach fulfilment. Spirituality was not a tangential aspect
but a necessity.
The Christian dimension of Solzhenitsyn is often
overlooked. When interviewing Solzhenitsyn for his
masterful biography, Dr. Joseph Pearce noted that
when presented with a list of great Christian authors
— including Chesterton, Belloc, Tolkien, Waugh, and
Newman — the author “chuckled infectiously” and
signalled that he knew of such authors and their current
unpopularity in the West. Pearce argues, “he evidently
saw them as kindred spirits who had shared a similar fate
to his own at the hands of the West’s secular humanist
critics”.
Solzhenitsyn was, thus, more than the author who
shed light on the Gulags. He was also the chronicler of a
society that wilfully rejected God, imposed its own secular
religion, and destroyed itself in the process. He wrote of
a society that had rejected the idea of humanity being
created in the image and likeness of God, and which had
instead proposed that it should be moulded into a new
socialist creation. His work sounded warning bells for our
times. Alas, they have not yet been heeded.
André P. DeBattista is a researcher and occasional columnist.
He is a Visiting Lecturer at the Pastoral Formation Institute
of the Archdiocese of Malta.
 Natural Law, Social Justice
& the Crisis of the West
Ryan T. Anderson
Indeed, one can understand many of the religious
liberty threats in the West today as partly the result of
people no longer thinking there are duties to the Creator. If

S ome people think social justice is a 20th century

invention of left-leaning thinkers, but this starts the
history of social justice midstream. To understand its true
there are no special duties to God, then there should be no
special religious liberties either.
Something similar may be the case for the economy.
meaning, we must look farther back to its real historical Economic freedom is meant to give us the space to fulfil
origins. our economic duties: the duty to work to support our
The first known use of the phrase ‘social justice’ was by families, the duty to work hard and be a good employee
a Jesuit Thomist, Luigi Taparelli, in his multi-volume work so as not to waste our talents or our employer’s time and
published between 1840 and 1843 titled  Saggio teoretico money, the duty to serve our customers, the duty to serve
di dritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto (A Theoretical Treatise our communities, and so on. The purpose of economic
on Natural Law Resting on Fact). I want to emphasize two freedom was to allow people the space to fulfil these duties.
arguments that Taparelli highlighted by coining the new Social justice is about fulfilling our duties to the various
phrase ‘social justice’: first, that man is social by nature societies of which we are a part, and it is about the state
and belongs to many societies and, second, that man has respecting the authority of the many societies that make
natural duties to others in justice. up civil society.
Taparelli created the phrase ‘social justice’ to highlight Take, for example, the society known as the family. The
that there are societies in between individuals and family is a natural society with its own nature and integrity.
governments. He wanted to avoid both the individualistic Because of the natural reality of the family, we have certain
and the collectivistic temptations. He wanted to point out obligations. If you are a husband or a wife, you have
that the truth was somewhere in between. He wanted to
highlight that, as a matter of nature, man is a social being.
This places duties on individuals — duties people have to
their family, to their church, to their community. It also
places limits on government — that government is limited
by the reality of the natural family, that government is
limited by the prerogatives of religious communities,
that government is limited by the authority of local
communities.
But I want to focus here on the duties because one
aspect of the crisis of liberty in the West is that we no longer
realize we have unchosen duties. A sound understanding
of our duties, however, gives us one of our best reasons
for respecting liberty — to have the freedom to fulfil our
duties.
This, after all, is precisely how James Madison
understood religious liberty. As he wrote in his Memorial
and Remonstrance, “[t]he Religion then of every man must
be left to the conviction and conscience of every man”
because of a prior duty to seek out the truth about God
and the created order. “What is here a right towards men,
is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man
to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he
believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, Archivum Romanum Societatis Jesu

both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the A portrait of Itaian priest Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio SJ (1793-
claims of Civil Society.” 1862), who seems to have coined the term ‘social justice’.

40 Summer/Fall 2018
 the proper authority of society — a
society of societies — as it does so.
And this means that the state must
also respect the proper authority of
economic societies — employees
and employers, consumers and
producers.
But while respecting their
authority and the markets that allow
them to interact and fulfil their
duties, government can perform
certain welfare activities, as Hayek
taught us, without distorting
market signals and processes.
Insofar as government programs
are intended to ameliorate the
forces of globalization and new
technologies distort markets, they
are likely to simply make matters
worse by prolonging the dying
process of outdated industries
and preventing the necessary
transitions. What a natural law
account of social justice would
suggest are policies that would
empower more people to engage
White House Historical Association
for themselves in the market and
A portrait of James Madison, fourth US president, by John Vanderlyn (1775-1852). flourish.
I can illustrate this with some
certain duties to your spouse. If you are a parent, you have examples. Consider education. Some ‘taxation-is-theft’
certain duties to your children, regardless of whether or libertarians say children should receive whatever education
not you ever chose them. And children, not Social Security their parents, extended families, and charities can provide
administrators, have duties to their parents, especially as and that there is no role for government. Liberals say
they age. It is the natural reality of father and child, mother education of children is a matter of public concern, and
and child, that creates the relationship of authority and thus government should run schools and most children
responsibility. must attend them. Conservatives have traditionally said,
This places limits on what the government can do. yes, education is a matter of public concern, but justice
The government is not free to recreate the family. The requires us to respect the authority of parents, and
government is not free to usurp the authority of parents whatever assistance we provide must empower, not replace
over the education of their children or adult children over them. Hence conservative support for school choice:
the care of their elderly parents. vouchers, education savings accounts, and charter schools
The same is true for religious organizations, especially — programs that help all students get the best education
if you believe that your church has a divine origin, that it they can without giving the government an unhealthy
is a divine creation. Government is thus not at liberty to monopoly on schools.
recreate it, to recreate its authority or structure, or to recreate The same is true for health care. Consider the standard
its teachings. Your church is something that is entrusted false dichotomy: If taxation is theft, then we should just
with a stewardship. The nature of religious authority thus leave health care to the market and charities; if health care is
places limits on political authority and places duties upon a matter of public concern, then government should run it
members of the church. and finance it — the typical libertarian and liberal pitfalls.
The conservative alternative has been to create markets in
The state and social justice health care while empowering patients to choose, whether
through premium support, health care vouchers, tax
None of this, however, says that the state has no role to play credits, or what have you.
in economic justice. It simply means that it must respect The details of policy need not bog us down; the concept

The European Conservative 41

 Marie-Lan Nguyen / CC BY 2.5

The grand tomb of Leo XIII, who was Pope from 1878 to 1903. Designed by Giulio Tadolini (1849-1918), it is located in the
Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome.

is what matters. We need to make markets work better and
work for more people by empowering more people to be
market actors — empowering them to take control of their
own lives and flourish.
So now the question is what can be done for working-
class families, especially for workers who find their skills
less and less marketable in ever-changing markets because
of the forces of globalization and new technology. Appeals
to natural rights or utilitarianism will not allow us to think
best about the justice in the distribution of costs and benefits
of the creative destruction of free trade and globalization
and how best to smooth out the rough patches. We need to
think through the appropriate roles of various institutions:
What does justice require of families and churches, of
workers and business owners, of civil society and charitable
organizations, of local and national governments? What
rights and duties do these various individuals and societies
have?

42 Summer/Fall 2018
 In a certain sense, the economic challenges I have
mentioned can be classified as partly the result of a
deindustrialization making way for the knowledge
economy. If Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, which inaugurated
modern Catholic social thought, was a response to the
industrial revolution, what we now need is a response to
the de-industrial revolution. What to do is a question for
policymakers. That we need to think about what to do
is a demand of justice, and the principles of natural law
should inform how we think about it.

Our spiritual crisis

But the challenges of the present moment can be
overstated. They can be phrased in a way that makes it
seem as if globalization and new technologies simply
make people into pawns in a giant chess game, victims
of global economic and technological forces outside of
anyone’s control. This entirely ignores the importance of
human agency and personal responsibility.
Public policy and governmental programs are not, at
the end of the day, the main solutions to what threatens
freedom in the West. Yes, economic anxiety is a problem,
but economic anxiety is partly a result of an underlying
anthropological and spiritual crisis that has resulted in an
emaciated civil society uniquely ill-equipped to handle
our current challenges.
We are all aware of the West’s problems — the empty
pews and the drug addictions, the problems of falling
male employment and the breakdown of family that
results in fatherless children, and the widespread belief
that there is no truth, particularly moral truth. Some of
these problems have been caused by various economic
and technological changes in the past several decades.
But I am not a Marxist. I do not believe that the changes
in our values and beliefs are simply the result of material
forces. Some spiritual crises are the result of bad ideas and
ideals, and these bad ideas and ideals have exacerbated
our economic challenges.
Bad anthropology has given us natural rights without
foundations or directions — a freedom of indifference but
not for excellence. Bad anthropology has debased modern
man’s mind so that it is unable to distinguish liberty from
license, rendering man unable to think about which desires
should be acted on, which preferences should be satisfied.
Bad anthropology has sought to liberate man from the
very communities where he finds meaning and purpose,
alienating man from work, from family, and from God.
The result is a working class without the values and
virtues needed to flourish in the condition of freedom, and
a ruling class more devoted to a global community of elites
than to its own communities. The result is a working class
increasingly isolated from meaningful relationships and
thus more anxious about its future in an age of economic
Sean O’Connor / CCA 2.0 Generic
Alasdair MacIntyre speaking at a conference in Dublin of the
International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry in 2009.
uncertainty and a ruling class increasingly isolated from
its working-class neighbours and thus unaware of their
anxieties. The result is a nation — both working class
and ruling class — that increasingly lacks a transcendent
orientation and thus fails to have even a decent humanistic
vision.
If we do not have God for a Father, we will not see our
fellow man as our brother. If we are not made in the image
and likeness of God, we will not treat every life as created
equal and endowed with unalienable rights — indeed, we
will view our neighbours as random, meaningless cosmic
dust that gets in our way.
The challenge before us, then, is to recover at the very
least a common understanding of what human flourishing
looks like and how all of us should help to make it a reality
for more people. It requires a better intellectual foundation
for freedom. It requires the hard work of rebuilding civil
society. It requires acknowledging our duties — not to
the abstraction of ‘humanity’ but to concrete, particular
neighbours. And it requires respecting the freedom of
religious communities to do the important work of
ministering to the peripheries and forming disciples with
loyalties beyond the state.
This means that now is the time for more engagement
in the public square, not less. Now is the time for greater
involvement in our local churches and synagogues and
mosques, for greater involvement in our schools and little

The European Conservative 43


Today’s ‘Social Justice Warriors’ have never met an issue that cannot be made into a cause.
leagues and less time on our smartphones. And now is
the time for more political engagement, not less, pursued
more thoughtfully.
Remembering who we are
Everything I have said above has been a reflection on man’s
nature as a “dependent rational animal”, in the words of
Alasdair MacIntyre.
First, we are animals. We have a nature. Certain things
are good and bad for us given the type of animal that we are.
Second, we are rational. We can know our nature and
direct our actions accordingly, or not. We do not get to
choose what is good or bad for us; we simply get to choose
whether we will live in accord with our nature.
Third, we are dependent. We are social creatures. We
enter life entirely dependent on our parents, and many of
us will exit life in a similar condition of dependence. And
all along the way we will depend on family and friends,
neighbours and colleagues — farmers and artisans,
merchants and bankers.
Our mistakes take place when we forget that we are
simultaneously dependent and rational and animal; when
we reduce ourselves merely to the level of animal and
embrace a crude materialism; when we deny that reason
can know truth and embrace scepticism; when we refuse
44 Summer/Fall 2018
Cringe Core / YouTube
to embrace our dependence under the illusion of a false
sense of self-sufficiency and individualism or when we
locate our dependence primarily on government rather
than on family and friends and markets and God; when
we propose that the government should provide for all our
physical needs and that our culture should encourage us
to act on our every animal instinct.
We must see that our rational capacities can know the
good and that, being self-authors, we must choose the good
for ourselves. Of course, there is no such thing as the good
life but as many good lives as are imaginable. These good
lives will be various ways for dependent rational animals
to flourish, and that means that initiative and enterprise,
free choice, self-determination, and community are just as
truly basic needs as food and shelter — and that fulfilling
our duties to God and neighbour is why we were given
freedom in the first place.
Ryan T. Anderson  is William E. Simon Senior Research
Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The
Heritage Foundation, and is the founder and editor of
Public Discourse. This essay is adapted from the annual
Calihan Lecture delivered in London in December 2016 at
a conference sponsored by the Acton Institute. It originally
appeared in Public Discourse and is published here with
permission.
The European Conservative 45
Krakow: The City that Remembers
Carrie
Gress
upon Poland’s second largest city. Today it is vibrant and
alive, recovering from the dark, grey, hungry days of Soviet
domination, once again reclaiming its unique, urban

I t’s a small thing, scarcely noticeable at first. And then as

the hours continue, it happens again and again. What is
that trumpeting? And where is it coming from?
This is something almost every newcomer to Krakow
has experienced. It is just one small reminder that
Krakow is a city of living memory. Every hour on the
hour, a trumpeter plays a tune out of the four windows
of the bell tower of St. Mary’s Church. It is the hejnał,
the warning tune of an impending attack. The song,
however, abruptly ends mid-melody, never to finish — a
reminder, according to legend, of the Tartar arrow that
pierced a medieval trumpeter’s throat. Most would think
this nearly 800-year-old event far too lost in history to
bother — but not Cracovians. The 1241 invasion is still
fresh in their minds.
Krakow is a city with a long memory. Wars, battles,
betrayals, saints, heroes, cowards, geniuses, and friends
are all themes that have left deep impressions and scars
character that has been honed through one thousand years
of East meeting West.
Many associate Krakow with stag parties or Schindler’s
List and the nearby former concentration camp Auschwitz.
Those dark, dark days when the ashes of fellow-countrymen
covered the city in soot from the death camp have also not
been forgotten. There is, however, much more to know
about Krakow than those terrible five years of terror.
Situated along the Vistula River on flat terrain with no
natural defences, Krakow has a history that illustrates why
geography matters. The river and surrounding plains gave
it a thriving trade economy. Goods and immigrants flowed
in from all directions, with invaders not far behind. During
its Golden Age of the 15th and 16th centuries, Krakow was
a major international centre for trade, exporting salt, lead,
and textiles. Throughout most of its history, however, the
city lived under the constant threat of aggressive invasion
with little to no warning.

46 Summer/Fall 2018
 When approaching the city, the first thing one
encounters is the Planty Park, or what used to be the
first line of defence against invaders. Known today just
as the Planty, it is one of the largest parks in the city built
upon the plot of land where the Medieval city walls once
stood to protect against frequent sieges. The Planty Park
includes nearly 2.5 miles (four kilometres) of walking
paths that ring the city centre. Fifty-two acres (21,000
square meters) of grass are a ‘green belt’ around the
paths, adorned with monuments and fountains. With the
exception of Wawel Hill, which had its own fortifications,
most of the historic sites of the city are inside the Planty
or just beyond it.
After crossing over the Planty, all roads lead to the old
city centre: the Rynek Główny, or Market Square. The
Rynek Główny holds a special place in the hearts of all
Cracovians, and even all Poles. Today the square remains a
hub of activity, where one can find all the essentials of daily
life, including commerce, news, entertainment, prayer, and
food.
The Market Square — or Rynek, as it is commonly
referred to — is formed by brightly colored, four and
five-story palaces. On the ground floors of many of these
buildings are restaurants, cafes and shops, with the upper
floors serving as residences.
The European Conservative 47
The Cloth Hall, or Sukiennice, is a long, rectangular
commercial building and museum that sits prominently in
the square’s centre. It is flanked on the southwestern side
by a bell tower, and on the southeastern side by the tiny
dedicated to St. Adalbert (or St. Wojciech), the bishop
of Prague who brought Christianity to Poland in the 10th
century. On the northeastern side of the square, sitting
at an angle, is the towering brick Basilica of Our Lady of
the Assumption, or Bazylika Mariacka, as it is commonly
known. Originally built in 1222, the church predates the
square, which is why it does not line up the rest of the
square’s symmetry.
The Cloth Hall or Sukiennice, built as a centre
for trade during the height of the city’s popularity, is
considered the world’s oldest shopping mall. Today, the
first floor of the hall is still a place of commerce where
artisans sell their handcrafted goods, while the upper floors
house the recently renovated Sukiennice Museum, part of
the National Museum of Krakow.
This is generally the face of Krakow — what is seen
by overnight ‘stag parties’ or quick trips to this intriguing
destination — but there is much beyond this vibrant
square. Krakow is both the cultural and spiritual heart
of Poland, but the city’s history must be looked at more
carefully in order to grasp why.
Arkadiusz Frankowicz / CCA SA 4.0 International

A view of Market Square in Krakow from the tower of St. Mary’s Church.
Krakow’s early history
Few cities can claim to have built their history on the
legend of a dragon. Smok Wawelski, the dragon who lived
at the base of Wawel Hill, was reportedly terrorizing the
neighbourhood. Gobbling up livestock, the hungry dragon
turned to eating people when the beasts of burden had all
been consumed. Many knights bravely fought the dragon,
but Smok Wawelski over-powered all of them, making them
midnight snacks. That was until the clever prince Krakus
(sometimes also called Krak) thought up the ingenious
plan to feed the hungry dragon a meal of lamb packed full
of sulphur. It turned out to be Smok’s last meal, and the
town was free of the dragon menace. The grateful residents
made Krakus king and named the town after him, Krakow.
Until the Polish state was formed under the Piast
Dynasty, Cracovians were members of various tribes,
including the Vistulans, Moravians, Hungarians, and
then finally Bohemians. Not coincidentally, Poland as a
state came into being under Prince Mieszko I, who was
also Poland’s first Christian ruler. Influenced by his wife,
Princess Doubravka of Bohemia, the Prince was baptized,
along with most of his royal court, on Holy Saturday, 14
48 Summer/Fall 2018
Pko / CCA-SA 3.0 Unported
April 966. Several decades later, the entire population had
abandoned their pagan ways and embraced Christ.
After Christianity spread to Krakow, the city was
anxious to establish its Catholic bona fides by naming
a patron saint. Since no Cracovian had yet achieved
sainthood, they did the next best thing and imported one
(after all, trade is their specialty). After negotiating with
Roman Church officials, Austrian-born St. Florian (who
died around 304) was moved to Krakow in 1184. Legend
has it that the horse pulling the wagon with the holy
relics stopped just outside the city walls and could not be
cajoled into going any further. Deciding it was a sign from
Providence, the church of St. Florian was built on that site.
The baroque church still stands today despite several fires
and new construction.
First Saint
It wouldn’t take long for Polish Krakow to produce its own
local saint. Stanisław Szczepanowski (1030-1079) was born
of a noble family in Lesser Poland. After studying abroad,
the young ‘Stanislaus’ returned to Poland to be made one of
the first bishops of the newly converted country. He served

The interior of St. Mary’s Church (more precisely known as Church of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven).
first as the auxiliary bishop and then bishop of Krakow.
As bishop, Stanislaus had several run-ins with the
local king, Boleslaus the Bold II. Though historical
records are spotty, it is clear that Bishop Stanislaus
excommunicated King Boleslaus, probably for his sexual
libertinism and cruel treatment of his subjects. The king,
in turn, sentenced the good bishop to death for treason.
Though instructed to carry out the death sentence,
the king’s henchmen wouldn’t touch the bishop. King
Boleslaus was forced to do the dirty work himself,
attacking the bishop while he was saying Mass. The king
tossed the hacked-up pieces of the holy man into a nearby
pond. Miraculously, and much to the king’s dismay, the
body of Bishop Stanislaus was later found in one piece.
The king fled Poland and was exiled in Hungary, never to
return to his homeland. St. Stanislaus was canonized in
1253 and made the patron saint of the country, replacing
St. Florian as the Patron of Poland.
Not surprisingly, devotion to St. Stanislaus is still alive
today, making the Church of Skalka — the site where the
bishop was martyred — the second holiest site in Poland
after Jasna Gora, home of Our Lady of Czestochowa. His
feast of May 8 is celebrated annually by thousands of people
The European Conservative 49
Bart Van den Bosch / CCA-SA 3.0
with a procession of the saint’s relics from Skalka to Wawel
Cathedral, where is remains are interned the rest of the year.
The miraculous reconstruction of the saint’s body
has taken on deeper meaning in Poland’s history. The
country’s Achilles’ Heel in the centuries that followed
was political disunity. Poland, in fact, had the largest
percentage of noblemen of any European nation, with
8-10% of the population claiming the honour, compared
to 2-3% elsewhere in Europe.
While its purpose was to prevent a dictator king,
the swelling noble class eventually gave way to a power
struggle between them and the ruling elites. This
struggle often weakened the great nation and provided
opportunities for outsiders to capitalize on weak spots.
This, along with an almost chronic inability by the kings
to produce a male heir, led to a crisis of authority at
crucial points in the country’s history, particularly in the
18th and 19th centuries when Poland was partitioned by
opposing empires.
St. Stanislaus, as the martyr who was made whole
again, became an intercessor for all Poles. He offered a
model for unity through the miraculous reunification of
his own divided body.

St. Stanislaus in a 16th century painting.
Wawel Castle and Cathedral
For centuries, the political heart of Poland beat at Wawel
Castle. In the 14th century, King Casimir the Great (1310-
1370) was said to have “found a country of wood and made
[it] into a country of stone”. The good king expanded
Poland’s borders, from the Baltic Sea to the banks of
the Black Sea, and fortified the country economically,
politically, and culturally. He also invited many Jews to
Krakow, giving them privileges and making the city a
centre of Jewish life in Medieval Europe at a time when
other rulers were expelling and persecuting Jews.
At the height of Krakow’s cultural and political
influence, considered ‘The Golden Age’ (1466-1576), the
Wawel Court rivalled those anywhere in Europe, hosting
nobility from all over western and central Europe. In 1517,
King Sigismund the Old married a well-connected Italian,
Bona Sforza. The Sforza queen brought the best of the
Italian Renaissance with her to Krakow — architecturally
and culturally — including many of the best Italian artisans
of the time.
More important than the political heart of the castle,
however, was the spiritual heart that also beat at Wawel
in the cathedral. Starting with the newly established
pilgrimage site to venerate the relics of St. Stanislaus in
the 14th century, Wawel Cathedral also became the natural
location for coronations. Monarchs were anxious to
50 Summer/Fall 2018
display the fealty they felt toward the late archbishop, slain
at the hands of another king. In 1320, King Władysław
the Elbow-high was the first monarch to be crowned at
Krakow Cathedral, followed by the coronation of other
kings for centuries.
Among the many leaders and holy men and women
buried in the Cathedral is St. Jadwiga (Hedwig in English).
Canonized by Pope John Paul II, she was a holy leader.
Her lasting legacy is establishing the Jagiellonian University
(called the Academy of Krakow until 1817) in 1364, making
it Poland’s oldest university, which still thrives today. The
good queen died prematurely after childbirth in 1399 and
bequeathed her fortune to the university. For centuries, the
university educated the noble classes in Poland and those
of other nations. Its most famous students include Mikołaj
Kopernik (Nicolaus Copernicus), who studied liberal arts
there during the years 1491-1495, and Karol Wojtyła, the
future Pope John Paul II, who studied there in the 1940s,
before and after World War II.
Wawel’s political decline in power and influence can be
traced back to the establishment of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth in 1596. Because of the new alliance,
Wawel and the city of Krakow were edged out of political
activity and Warsaw rose in influence because of its close
proximity to the vital capital of Vilnius.
Unfortunately, the centuries of the city’s decline were
marked by unrelenting difficulties, including political
in-fighting, invaders, disease, famine, and fires, only to
be topped by the loss of national sovereignty in the 18th
century when Poland was partitioned three times by
rivalling neighbours. For 123 years, there was no country
on the map called ‘Poland’. Though their country was
gone, the Poles held onto the national pride and culture.
Wawel Cathedral, with its interred saints and national
heroes, became a pilgrimage site and rallying point for
those thirsting for a lost-Poland. Sovereignty was finally
restored at the end of World War I.
City of Saints
No mention of Krakow would be complete without further
mention of its most famous resident, Karol Wojtyła, or
Pope Saint John Paul II, as he is known today. Wojtyła’s
sanctity didn’t spring up out of nowhere, but was honed
and shaped by the Catholic ethos that is still alive in the
ancient city. Saintly men and women helped build the
city and the Church in Krakow, such as St. Stanislaus, St.
Jadwiga, St. Stanislaus Kostka, St. Faustina, St. Maximillian
Kolbe, St. Simon of Lipnica, St. Hyacinth, and St John
Cantius, along with many beatified Catholics (the last step
before sainthood in the Catholic Church), and those whose
sanctity is remembered today by God alone. Called “the
little Rome”, there are few other cities that can boast as
many saints or churches as Krakow.
 Pistal / CCA SA 4.0 International Jerzy Szota / CCA-SA 3.0 Poland

The Church of Skalka. Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa.

Today, Krakow maintains its international flair. It is

still a crossroad for students, tourists, and pilgrims. The
crumbling, grey façades of the communist era have been
painted over and repaired. New restaurants and hotels
populate the city centre. Hotels like Hotel Stary and the
Bonerowski Palace capture old elegance with modern
conveniences on the edge of the Rynek, while Hotel
Copernius offers similar luxury closer to the Wawel Castle.
Fare from near and far can also be found, from street-side
kebab shops, to French (Michelin recommended Cyrano
de Bergerac), and even Mexican food (Alebriche). But
Poland’s own food still gets top billing, from the 800-year-
old Wierzynek, to the newcomer, Szara, which features
Polish food, along with French and Swedish influences.
Krakow turns up the charm with bars and restaurants that
dot the city featuring cozy cellars for those frozen winter Jakub Halun / CCA-SA 3.0 Unported
months. Wawel Castle
Unlike other places in Europe, Krakow has maintained
its sense of the sacred and Catholic ethos. The city’s living
memory, full of recollections of feast, famine, fires, invaders,
feuds, and changing fortunes, are a reminder to its people
not to get too caught up in fads, fashions, pleasures, and
fancies. These are all passing and ultimately unsatisfying.
Krakow is a city that remains the wise old aristocratic and
faithful woman of Europe who has seen too much, lived
through too much, lost too much. And yet, despite all of
this, her heart, vibrancy, and spirit have never been snuffed
out.

Carrie Gress is a faculty member at Pontifex University and

Editor-in-Chief at HelenaDaily.com. She is the author of
numerous books, including The Marian Option: God’s
Solution to a Civilization in Crisis (TAN Books, 2017), and
co-author with George Weigel of City of Saints: A Pilgrim’s
Guide to John Paul II’s Krakow. She has lived and worked
professionally in Washington, DC, and Rome, and her work
has been translated into seven languages. She received her Jorge Lascar / CCA 2.0 Generic

Ph.D. from the Catholic University of America. Interior of the Bernardine Church at the foot of Wawel Hill.

The European Conservative 51

Communist Terror in Modern Film
Filip Mazurczak
L ate last year, we marked two very somber anniversaries:
the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution
and the 85th anniversary of the start of the Holodomor,
Stalin’s genocidal famine in Ukraine. These were perfect
opportunities to educate the world about the horrors of
communism. The West desperately needs a crash course
in this history. Just recall Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau’s open praise of Cuban butcher Fidel Castro in
The Holodomor Memorial to Victims of the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932–1933 in Washington, DC.
2016, displaying his complete ignorance of the 94 million
human lives, according to the Black Book of Communism,
that the most murderous ideology in human history
claimed during the 20th century.
Two recent films, George Mendeluk’s Bitter Harvest
and Andrzej Wajda’s Afterimage, seek to bring the story
of communist persecution to international audiences.
While the two films are very different, and Bitter Harvest
has its obvious flaws, they are moving glimpses of the
refusal of both the individual and the nation to give in to
communist terror.
Bitter Harvest deals with the Holodomor. If you are
asking yourself what the Holodomor was, then you are
proving just why a film on this tragic event is necessary.
According to a state investigation in post-Soviet Ukraine,
the Holodomor claimed four million human lives. In
his book Harvest of Sorrow, an account of the enormous
human cost of the Soviet collectivization of agriculture,
52 Summer/Fall 2018
the late British Sovietologist, Robert Conquest, gave a
slightly larger death toll of five million. The Holodomor
ranks alongside the Holocaust and Armenian genocide as
one of the biggest mass murders in 20th century European
history. However, it is much less known than the other
two tragedies.
From 1928 to 1932, Joseph Stalin embarked on
his ‘Five-Year Plan’ of developing heavy industry and
collectivizing agriculture in order to modernize the
Soviet Union. The latter met with enormous resistance
among the Soviet peasantry, especially in Ukraine. Armed
CCA-SA 4.0 International
rebellions broke out, and when Communist Party officials
began to requisition grain and livestock, peasants would
slaughter all their animals so that they would not have to
hand them over to communist thugs.
In order to crush resistance, the Soviet government
began to steal firearms from the peasants, while Stalin
signed an order for “the liquidation of the kulaks as a
class” on 29 December 1929. The ‘kulaks’ were broadly
understood to be well-off peasants, although the Soviet
state failed to define a kulak with any degree of precision.
In an act of class genocide, kulaks were to be shot or
deported to Siberia.
Although himself the son of a Georgian cobbler,
Stalin became completely Russified to the point of being
a racist Russian chauvinist. Starting in 1939, the anti-
Semitic Stalin purged the state apparatus of Jews. In 1937,
the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, initiated its ‘Polish
Operation’, ordering at least 111,091 members of the
Soviet Union’s Polish minority to be shot and deporting While for years the Holodomor has been little known
many more to Central Asia. outside Ukraine, in recent years there have been some
Stalin didn’t care much for the Ukrainians, either. attempts at educating the world of this massive crime
Stalin scoffed at the notion that the Ukrainians were a against humanity. In 2015, a large Holodomor memorial
nation distinct from the Russians, and so in the 1930s was unveiled near Union Station in Washington, DC.
he embarked on a Russification campaign of Ukraine. Then, in 2017, George Mendeluk’s film Bitter Harvest
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox was released.
Church and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (an eastern
rite Catholic Church that recognizes the pope and is in Bitter Harvest
union with Rome but has a different liturgy than the Latin
Church) were criminalized and driven underground. Its By any measure, the film was a failure. It grossed just half
leaders were sent to the gulags. (It’s worth noting that a million dollars on a $21 million budget. The reviews
the Soviets failed to eradicate the Ukrainians’ Christian were scathing. According to the film review aggregate
identity; since 1991, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic site RottenTomatoes.com, only 13% of reviews of the
Church has experienced an impressive revival.) This was film were positive. Several reviewers noted that while a
more than just atheism under state communism. The film about the Holodomor is necessary, this was a wasted
Soviet regime detested these churches because they were opportunity. Is Bitter Harvest really that bad?
distinctly Ukrainian. Having seen the film, I can say that it was mediocre
In 1932, Stalin also began his war against the rather than terrible. It certainly did not deserve such
Ukrainian peasantry. Between four and five million disdain from film critics. Parts of the film are genuinely
Ukrainian peasants — a fourth of the rural population moving. Its major flaw, however, is that the plot revolves
of Soviet Ukraine — were starved to death. This was around a very simplistic love story. If Michael Bay’s Pearl
deliberately done to quench Ukrainian peasants’ resistance Harbor is any indication, making a film about ‘love’ set
to collectivization. Stalin ordered that Ukraine produce against the backdrop of dramatic historical events is a
extraordinary amounts of grain each year. The targets recipe for disaster.
Stalin had demanded were, of course, impossible to attain.
Thus, he used this as a pretext to send Komsomols and
Communist Party activists to the Ukrainian countryside
to requisition every bit of grain. Meanwhile, watchtowers
were set up in fields across Ukraine to prevent peasants
from taking any grain for themselves and the borders
were heavily guarded. Ukrainian peasants trying to flee to
neighboring Poland or Romania were shot on sight.
One would think that taking the grain from
starving peasants would soften the hearts of at least
some communists sent on requisitioning missions, but
their testimonies reveal that they were overwhelmingly
unaffected. They were genuinely convinced that starving
millions of Ukrainians to death was a sacrifice necessary
for the party.
Ukraine can boast of the most fertile soil in all of
Europe. Under normal conditions, a famine would be
impossible there. But the Komsomols were very effective
in stealing all the Ukrainian peasants’ grain. Consequently,
millions died of starvation. Ukrainians ate everything from
the chaff of wheat to horse manure (which contained bits
of grain) to stay alive.
Hunger is a dehumanizing state that leads man to
cruel, unsavory things. In desperation, some Ukrainian
peasants engaged in cannibalism, and there are accounts of
parents eating their children to stay alive. Cannibalism has
been a source of shame for the Ukrainian diaspora. Sadly,
this is how men, regardless of nationality, are sometimes
forced to act when trying to survive extreme hunger.

The European Conservative 53


The ‘Memory Candle’ monument, part of the Holodomor Victims Memorial in Kiev, Ukraine.
Bitter Harvest follows the love story of Yuri and
Natalka. (For the record, Yuri is Ukrainian for George.)
The rather unoriginal symbolism of Yuri/George fighting
the communist, Russian dragon is directly referenced. In
a voiceover early in the film, Yuri says: “Before I grew up
and learned that dragons are real, and evil roamed the
world, I fell in love.”
As a little boy, Yuri falls in love with Natalka, the
beauty of his village. While his friends go off to Kyiv
to study, he stays behind to be with his beloved, who
eventually reciprocates his feelings. However, as the
Holodomor starts to devastate Soviet Ukraine, Max
finally does go to the big city to study at the art academy.
He and Natalka send each other letters. His professor is
deported to Siberia. Not even Stalinist genocide can deal
a blow to Yuri and Natalka’s love, and they try to escape
the surrounding horrors and flee to Canada together.
Sound original? The plot of Bitter Harvest is by
no means innovative. Natalka and Yuri are pretty one-
dimensional characters; their main features are that they
love each other and are proud Ukrainians (and, of course,
Yuri is a promising, talented painter). While Yuri and
Natalka are forgettable characters, Bitter Harvest does
54 Summer/Fall 2018
Jaroslaw Goralcyk / CCA-SA 4.0 International
have its merits. The scenes showing starving Ukrainians
are genuinely unsettling without being graphic. The film
conveys the sense of looming terror well.
Above all, Bitter Harvest is a moving tribute to the
Ukrainian people and their attachment to their national
traditions and faith. The film shows an idyllic view of
pre-Holodomor rural Ukraine. The Orthodox Church
is shown to be at the center of Ukrainian life, and all
the characters respect the local priest, Father Ostapovich.
(One wonders if perhaps the film’s pro-Christian tone
was one reason for Bitter Harvest’s poor reviews in
the mainstream media.) As part of their campaign of
eliminating the “opium for the masses,” communist
thugs steal and desecrate icons from local priests. Father
Ostapovich hides the icons and bravely refuses to hand
them over, which leads to his martyrdom. This scene
by no means idealizes the clergy. Ukrainian priests,
both Orthodox and Greek Catholic, steadfastly refused
to renounce their faith despite the threats of shootings,
prison, and ten-year gulag sentences.
While Bitter Harvest is an average film in terms of
its artistic merit, it deserves to be seen by more viewers
for its moving depiction of the Ukrainian people’s fidelity
 and a comrade-in-arms are in a bar and light shot glasses
of vodka to commemorate their friends who died fighting
the Third Reich. While Wajda’s Szczuka is not an entirely
unsympathetic figure, his Maciek is a Polish patriot ready
to risk his life fighting against all shades of totalitarianism.
Whereas Ashes and Diamonds was, politically, a
cautious film, Wajda became increasingly critical of the
Communist regime over time. His Man of Marble (1977)
tells of the downfall of Mateusz Birkut, a model bricklayer
once feted by the regime. Man of Iron, the Palm d’Or-
winning 1981 sequel, depicts ‘Solidarity’ right as it was
unfolding. Showing footage of Solidarity leader Lech
Wałęsa, Man of Iron is a loving tribute to Solidarity and
was banned by the Communist Party.
Perhaps Wajda’s best-known film on communism
(at least to contemporary audiences) is the 2007 Oscar-
nominated film, Katyn. It depicts the massacre of 22,000
Polish reserve officers (including Wajda’s own father) by
the NKVD. However, the Soviets did not admit to their
culpability for the crime until the Gorbachev era, instead
placing the blame on the Germans. Only the last scene
of Katyn depicts the shooting of Polish officers. In fact,
the film is arguably less about the massacre itself than
CCA-SA 4.0 International it is about the lie concerning the slaughter in the Katyn
A close-up of the plaque at the Holodomor Memorial in Forest. This is a fitting metaphor for Poland’s communist
Washington, DC.

to their traditions amidst great persecution. Perhaps

in time it will inspire another filmmaker to direct a
movie of greater depth and humanity that will be to the
Holodomor (and, more broadly, to communist terror)
what The Pianist is to the Holocaust.

Afterimage
From an artistic perspective, Afterimage, the other recent
film depicting the horrors of communism, is much better
than Bitter Harvest. It is the last film by the late Andrzej
Wajda (1926-2016), one of Poland’s great filmmakers.
Wajda’s career spanned more than six decades. A part
of Poland’s resistance movement against Nazi Germany
during World War II, Wajda frequently depicted Poland’s
tragic recent history, including its devastation during the
war and fight for freedom from the communist regime.
Wajda’s best-known film is Ashes and Diamonds
(1958), starring Zbigniew Cybulski, “the Polish James
Dean.” Martin Scorsese named Ashes and Diamonds as
one of his 10 favorite films, while in a poll by the Village
Voice film critics named it one of the 100 greatest films
of all time. Set on the last day of World War II, Ashes
and Diamonds tells the story of Maciek, a member of
Poland’s anti-Nazi and anti-communist resistance who
is ordered to execute Szczuka, a local Communist Party
chief. In one of the film’s most moving scenes, Maciek

The European Conservative 55


German-born director, George Mendeluk (right), alongside actor Tamer Hussein on the set of Bitter Harvest in Ukraine.
regime (and any communist regime, for that matter),
which was based on lies.
Afterimage is an effective coda to Katyn. Even if it is
not one of Wajda’s greatest films, as many Polish critics
have argued (the film received better reviews outside
Poland), it is still a powerful swan song for Wajda.
This sad, deeply affecting film depicts the true story of
Władysław Strzemiński (1893-1952), who within just a
few years went from being one of Poland’s most successful
painters to dying of tuberculosis penniless, malnourished,
and abandoned. His rejection of the socialist realist
philosophy of art was what caused his reversal of fortune.
Strzemiński — played convincingly by Bogusław
Linda, who starred in Wajda’s Man of Iron — was a World
War I invalid missing an arm and a leg. He became a
leading avant-garde painter; he collaborated with Chagall,
Malevich, and Kandinsky, among others; and his art was
exhibited around the world. He founded the art museum
in Lodz, one of the world’s first modern art collections.
Although as a young man he believed in communism,
Strzemiński eventually came to believe that art should
represent the subjective visual experience of the painter
rather than promote a political ideology.
56 Summer/Fall 2018
IMDB.com
Wajda himself studied painting at the Academy of
Fine Arts in Krakow, and he expertly portrays the contrast
between Strzemiński’s vision of art and that of the regime.
Strzemiński’s lecture at the academy of fine arts in Lodz
is interrupted by regime functionaries. Suddenly, the
minister of culture gives an unannounced lecture. “Art
that proclaims a lack of ideology is the enemy of the
working man,” he says. Strzemiński’s books are banned
by the regime, but he dictates his ideas on art to his
students, who illegally transcribe them. One student is
especially devoted to Strzemiński, with whom she is in
love, although when arrested even she spills details about
him during a police interrogation, presumably under
torture (the interrogation takes place off-screen). Wajda
ruthlessly shows that totalitarian ideology can break even
the most loyal and honest of people.
Strzemiński disagreed with the regime’s ideology
of art, and his disagreement cost him dearly. Wajda
disturbingly shows how Poland’s Stalinist regime was
bent on destroying Strzemiński for having views on art
different from those of the regime. Strzemiński is expelled
from the state artists’ union; consequently, he cannot find
work, buy paints, or even obtain food ration cards. In one
scene, the woman who cooks for Strzemiński pours him
a bowl of soup, telling him that he owes her two months’
worth of money. When Strzemiński says he does not have
the money, she pours the soup back in her pot and leaves.
The hungry Strzemiński proceeds to lick the empty bowl
clean of every bit of soup residue.
Meanwhile, functionaries of the communist regime
storm into galleries and museums to destroy Strzemiński’s
valuable works. One of them is a polychrome relief titled
Colonial Exploitation, which depicts Africans carrying
heavy objects for European colonizers. Even though such
subject matter should seem appealing to a communist
regime, this does not matter. Strzemiński and his work are
simply to be destroyed. (This scene reminds the viewer of
the protagonist of Arthur Koestler’s classic 1940 novel on
Stalinist terror, Darkness at Noon, who, despite being a
lifelong Marxist, is deemed suspect by the Soviet regime
and undergoes imprisonment and tortures.)
Like other films by Andrzej Wajda, Afterimage
is replete with haunting imagery. In an early scene,
Strzemiński is preparing to paint. Just before his brush
touches the canvas, it turns completely red. This confuses
the viewer, but it quickly turns out to be the reflection
of a giant red banner with the slogan “Long live Stalin”
carried at a communist rally just outside Strzemiński’s
window. This scene brilliantly foreshadows the Stalinist
attempt to gain full state control over art, something that
Strzemiński would very brutally experience himself.
Afterimage will not go down in the history of film
Andrzej Wajda at a recent film and television event.
The European Conservative 57
as one of Andrzej Wajda’s greatest or most noteworthy
works. However, the film portrays one of the great
anthropological lies on which communism is based quite
well. One of the reasons why communism failed is that it
falsely saw humans not as individuals but merely parts of
a collective group, such as a class. Such an ideology cannot
tolerate individualism and in order to get closer to the
goal of creating a classless society it must brutally crush all
dissent. Władysław Strzemiński’s individual nature and
non-Marxist view of art made Poland’s Stalinist regime
seek to destroy him. Afterimage is, in reality, less a biopic
and more a meditation on totalitarianism’s attempted
destruction of the individual.
In recalling the 100th anniversary of the October
Revolution and the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor
late last year, it is worth seeing Afterimage and Bitter
Harvest. Although the latter film is definitely a missed
opportunity, it is not as bad as its reviews would suggest.
While very different, both films are a tribute to the very
things that communism unsuccessfully tried to crush.
Although millions of Ukrainian peasants were starved
to death by Stalin, and Poland’s communists destroyed
Władysław Strzemiński’s career and reduced him to
penury, communists could not crush the human spirit.
In the end, it was they who ended up on the losing side
of history.
Filip Mazurczak is Assistant Editor of The European
Conservative.
Piotr Drabik / CCA 2.0 Generic
 OBITUARY:
Miłowit Kuniński (1946–2018)
Ryszard
M iłowit Kuniński, professor at the Jagiellonian
University, was one of the best known Polish
historians of philosophy in recent decades, and a well-
respected and admired teacher. He was a scholar and
a gentleman. Superbly educated and impeccably well-
mannered, he represented the best of what the Polish
academic tradition has stood for. He not only led his
students through the complicated paths of European
58 Summer/Fall 2018
Legutko
Rafal Guz / Wiadomosci w Onet
philosophy of the modern era but also, indirectly,
influenced them by his own example and the power of
his personality.
From the first days of the anti-communist
opposition in Poland in the late 1970s, he was
politically active. As academics were at that time rather
notorious for their docility, his involvement was not a
common attitude. When the Solidarity movement was
formed in 1980, Kuniński became one of the natural
leaders in the Krakow academic community. When
General Jaruzelski introduced martial law in 1981,
Kuniński was busy organizing clandestine work and
distributing samizdat publications. In those difficult
years, he and his charming wife Jola were the people
one could always turn to for help, information, and
recent samizdat.
After the regime fell, Kuniński continued his
involvement, trying to respond — as an activist and as
a scholar — to the political and intellectual challenges
of the new liberal democratic order. He was deeply
aware of the specificity of Polish culture, which he
thought both an opportunity and a problem for the
new times. He believed that in a new political situation
Poland might be one of the few places in the modern
world in which liberal and conservative traditions
might not only be reconciled but somehow lead to a
dynamic synthesis.
However, he thought this required a deeper
understanding of the civilizational processes in the
modern world. With that purpose in mind he co-
founded the Centre for Political Thought, a private
institution, which was to become a major conservative
organisation devoted to education and research. He
was also among the first ‘Vanenburgers’, one of the
founding fathers of the Vanenburg Society and the
Centre for European Renewal.
Kuniński’s conservatism was temperamental —
resulting from his natural moderation and a well-
balanced mind — but also intellectual. As a historian of
philosophy well-acquainted with the wealth of human
thought since antiquity, he could not be lured by
sudden outbursts of intellectual fashions, philosophical
revolutions, hasty generalizations, and ideological
shortcuts. In other words, he knew so much about the
peregrinations of the human mind throughout our
history that he could not but be a conservative — that
is, a person full of respect for the philosophical heritage
and for the wisdom of the classical thought, organically
resistant to the leftist desire of social engineering.
Under his tutelage, the Centre of Political Thought
steered exactly in this direction. In its emphasis on
liberty, it did not limit itself to the liberal tradition
The European Conservative 59
from Locke to Rawls but focused on classical, medieval,
and non-liberal modern thought. For Kuniński, a
particularly valuable part of European culture was
Christian philosophy which, he believed, revealed
a crucial dimension of human nature, not to be
ignored in any sound moral and political philosophy.
A practising Roman Catholic who took his faith very
seriously, he was particularly sensitive to the religious
and theological assumptions and implications of
philosophical theories.
His best-known theoretical work was on the
philosophy of F. A. Hayek. The book [titled Knowledge,
Ethics, and Politics in F.A. von Hayek’s Thought],
however, was more than an analysis of a particular
thinker. Kuniński made an attempt to advance a
‘liberal-conservative’ theory — that is, a theory which
would combine a defence of the free market with a
classical Aristotelian view of human nature. He argued
that such a combination is not a priori impossible, and
that one could construct a consistent set of principles
which would do justice to both basic liberal notions
and the classical concept of man. Kuniński’s book was,
in my opinion, the most persuasive study — at least in
Eastern Europe — of this oxymoronic theory which
came to be called ‘liberal conservatism’ and which
many regarded as philosophically untenable.
Unfortunately, Western civilization was moving
further and further away from its conservative
foundations, and Kuniński was aware of it. He became
increasingly disappointed with the onslaught of
liberalism and upset by its destructive effects, also in
the academic life. He was one of those who did their
best to continue the noble traditions of university
education and to keep it safe from the ideological
madness that again, two decades after the fall of the
communist regime, has begun to paralyse the life of
the mind.
Miłowit Kuniński died in Kraków on 9 June 2018.
He is sadly missed by his friends, students, colleagues,
and all those who had the privilege to know him.
Requiescat in pace.
Ryszard Legutko, MEP, is professor of philosophy at
Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
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