To the Editor;
One of Salvador Dali’s most famous paintings is “The Persistence of Memory,” while Carl Sagan pointed out that the basic units of cultural evolution are ideas. And relatively mundane decisions can have consequences sometimes millennia later. These memories, ideas and consequences can, and often do, permeate the lives of individuals, families, clans, tribes, nations, groups of nations and, indeed, the entire world, and are often the basis of both attitudes and actions. And so one can see with the events playing out in Eastern Europe in the past couple of weeks.
One can see direct consequences of an administrative decision made by Roman emperor Diocletian after about 285 AD, under the empire’s increasing pressure from restive German tribes on the frontier of the empire, to divide the empire into east and west for ease of governing. Eventually the centre of the east was established at Constantinople (now Istanbul), so that when the last emperor in the West was deposed by German tribesmen in 476 ADt, an eastern branch of the empire continued to flourish out of that city. In 1054, the pope in Rome and the patriarch in Constantinople mutually excommunicated each other from the church, over what to us would be a minor change in the Creed (church beliefs), and a permanent barrier is now created between East and West. To add injury to the clash of ideas, the Fourth Crusade departed from its original goal in Jerusalem, captured Constantinople, and established a Western(Latin) empire in the heart of what had been the Eastern (Greek) empire. Although the Eastern empire was eventually restored in Constantinople, this Western betrayal was a blow that fatally weakened the Eastern empire such that Constantinople finally fell (almost mercifully) to the Turks in 1453. Shortly after the fall, a niece of the last Eastern Roman emperor married a Russian czar. Hence the use of the double-headed eagle (the standard of the last Eastern emperor) in Russian symbols, and the claim of Russia to being a successor, third Rome, with the old title Czar, being a Slavic corruption of the Latin Caesar.. And then again, there is the fall-out from the more recent collapse in the period 1989-91 of the Soviet Union and its collection of client states. Here we are today with the consequences of a 1700 year old administrative decision, an 800 year old betrayal and a 30 year old internal implosion.
What about other countries? Why would Poland prefer membership in NATO over close association with Russia, a related Slavic nation?
The great Polish-Lithuanian state of the eighteenth century was carved to oblivion by three partitions (1772, 1793 and 1795) by its neighbours Prussia (Germany), Austria and Russia. Although partially restored in 1814(1815), it was ruled continuously from Moscow for a century, until the end of World War I. Restored to independence in 1919, it was overrun by Nazi Germany in 1939.
Often forgotten about this point in time is that Soviet (Russian) armies were simultaneously advancing from the east as a result of the Nazi-Soviet Pact allowing for a shared Fourth Partition of Poland. When Polish armies sought potential refuge from the Germans with their Russian cousins, the officers and other civilians thought to have leadership potential were slaughtered by the Soviets in the Katyn forest.
After the end of World War II Poland further endured another half century of political oppression emanating from Moscow. And why should Poland trust its German NATO ally over the linguistically akin Russians?
At least Germany is restrained by other strong allies, and constrained by its knowledge of its own, recently past, atrocities. And for others on the frontier from Finland to Bulgaria, they all have their own memories of Russian betrayal, occupation and/or oppression. (I think specifically of Finland and the Baltic States in 1940.)
Check these events, and others, and one can come to a greater understanding of what is going on presently in Eastern Europe, and particularly the motivation of the prime protagonist.
This knowledge will not justify the various egregious acts, but understanding has value in its own self, as it allows one to observe from that knowledge, and knowledge itself is a form of power.
Glenn Andrews
Barriere. B.C.
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