[BRIEF NOTE] On Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is dead, as multiple people on my friends list have noted.

A question to you all: Am I entirely misguided to think that although One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch in particular was a powerful denunciation of the gulag system and the whole Soviet structure of power, that after his escape to the West he became a hypocrite who denounced the Western materialism that saved him via the West's avaricious publishing industry, a mistake compounded by his decision on his return to Russia to promote the sort of reactionary Great Russian nationalism* that thankfully never took off in his lifetime?

* I'm quite aware that other forms of nationalism elsewhere are equally noxious, incidentally.

[REVIEW] Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom

Prussia, annihilated after the Second World War by Allied powers eager to eradicate the militarism that led to the Third Reich, is undergoing something of a revival in historical writing, with works like Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1700-1947 demonstrating a decidedly impressive reediting of the traditional blood-and-war narrative associated with Prussia. I'm not alone: Writers like Daniel Johnson at The Telegraph, Volker Ulrich at Sign and Sight, Patrick White at The Guardian, and William Grimes at The New York Times (1, 2, 3, 4).

Put briefly, Clark makes a convincing case that Prussia's Hohenzollerns responded to the devastation inflicted on Brandenburg, lacking defensible frontiers,during the Thirty Years War and pragmatically, developing an efficient military-driven state to defend Brandenburg (and East Prussia) effectively in the middle of a Germany that was still a contested buffer zone. The Hohenzollern dynasty that, in an amusing echo of Ernest Renan's argument that a nation is constituted by a continuous referendum on the part of its citizens, willed their state into existence did create a dynamic and pragmatically tolerant (Huguenots are mentioned, as are Jews) state that, after several rounds of reforms and substantial territorial expansions, first into Poland in the last quarter of the late 18th century and then in Germany in the first quarter of the late 19th, became the dominant German state. Eventually, the pragmatism of Prussian statesmen like Bismarck placed the Kingdom at the heart of a wider German Empire, The basic militarized insecurity that was the institutionalized flaw of Prussia, Clark continues, unfortunately infected the emergent German state with a malign reputation rooted in an innately reactionary Prussia that, in many cases, did not exist given an advanced economy and a fair degree of social liberalism. Even after the First World War, when a republicanized Free State of Prussia became a federal unit lucky enough to enjoy more efficient and competent government than Germany as a whole, Prussia's reputation followed it. The Second World War and the post-war partition of Prussia annihilated the existence of a political unit that by the time of the Nazi takeover, governed more people than France, and Prussia's historical units from west to east followed their own directions.

I really don't want to, and to some extent can't, criticize the The Iron Kingdom very much, apart from noting that this well-written tome with its compelling arguments is supported by an impressively diverse array of sources, covering a diverse subdivision of history at a diverse, from international power politics to the lived experience of the common people. The only contention thing that I can bring against this book is an observation that the sort of militarism that may have aided in the state's survival could quickly extend into wars of outright aggression that, well, actually did earn Prussia a reputation as a militarily aggressive state interested in territorial expansions out of proportino to its size, the War of the Austrian Succession triggered by Frederick the Great's occupation of Silesia being a case in point. I suspect that this is not entirely fair given the actions of other great powers, but well.

[AH] Vesper & Cywinski, Two centuries of Prussia: The cosmopolitan spirit survives

This one's for lemurbuoy.

* * *

Vesper & Cywinski, L. N. (Eds.). (2008). Two centuries of Prussia: The cosmopolitan spirit survives. Port Vancouver: International Studies Editions/Bass-Liebermann.

This provocative book-length exploration of the vicissitudes of Prussia as had the luck to be published on the two hundred year anniversary of the constitution of the modern Prussian state with the definitive annexation of Galicia that defined this state's eastern frontiers for the next two centuries. Even now that an associated broad Europe has allowed for a certain pan-nationalism, Prussia remains unique as a successful multinational state in north-central Europe, more effective in satisfying nationalist demands than, a perennially unstable Russia that keeps shedding provinces or a Swedish realm that no longer exists at all.

How did this happen? A variety of compelling articles explain how.

• Vesper and Cywinski's introduction, "Prussia Between Russia and Germany," properly situates the origins of modern Prussia in the unique positions of both Prussia and Poland between a threatening Holy Roman Empire of fragile German states and their menacing Great Power allies and an expansive Russia. The travails of the Polish Partitions that saw ethnic Poland placed under Prussia control may have occurred with the intent of creating a broader Prussian realm, the authors note, but it also had the effect of creating a Prussian monarchy with a citizenry concentrated in lands once belonging to the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. Napoleonic promises of liberation to Prussian Germans and Poles had their effect, but the Russian armies also ready to be massed on the states eastern frontier also counted. Is it any wonder, the authors ask, that the 1817 proclamation of the union of Polish notables with the Hohenzollern dynasty was made sincerely?
  
• Chapter 3 by Kempel, "The Constitution of the Prussian Populations," is a compelling statistical analysis of the population trends, marking the relative intensification of Polish migration (and Polish assimilation) in most of German-populated Prussia apart from the famously pluricultural region of Silesia, and the diffusion of Poland's Jews westwards following typical patterns of chain migration. Wozniak and Dombrowski's Chapter 4, a survey of the major constitutional developments in Prussia history, makes the telling point that the territorial Estates active on the ground since 1897 have been quite functional, united by the relatively strong presence of the monarchy as symbolic guardians of the untidy of the realm--guardians, it might be added, whose role has been sanctified by first the Great Northern war then by the Wars of Austrian Dissolution earlier in the 20th century.
  


• Foreign policy is treated by Kostova at length (Chapter 9, "Prussia In A Changing World"), as she examines the multipolarity that allowed Prussia to remain at a profitable equidistance from the European republic's alliance around France and Germany, the northern monarchies' of Sweden and especially Britain, and a Russia resentful of Prussia's notable economic success. Yager's Chapter 10, "Prussian Militarism In The Post-Napoleonic World," particularly the role of the nobility in a professionalized military as titular and sometimes more-than-titular heads of the famously efficient Landeswehr. The treatment of Prussia's atomic weaponry program is brief, but modern force levels, especially on the eastern frontier and with the hypersonics, are covered at length.


• The populations of smaller minorities apart from the Prussian Germans and the Poles are treated spottily neglected. Prussian pragmatism did, as explored in Chapter 9 by Savukynas et al., "Lithuania Between Grand Duchy And Nation," allow Prussia to manage the absorption of its Lithuanian conquests into the Prussian realm more efficiently than Sweden did its Baltic and Karelian acquisitions. Although there were explorations of the effects of Prussia on Jews in in Chapter 11 (Todorsky et al, "Yiddish Or German? Debates On the Jewish National Language") and Chapter 12 (Braunstein and Kaplan, "The Jews of Olystyn and Berlin: A Study In Migration") this collection is lacking. Finally, Czechs, Lemko and Masurians are no treated at all.


• Finally, the concluding Chapter 15, Soderström's "Prussia In The Future," is a worthwhile survey of continuing trends--the Bund's increasingly notable loudness on Palestinian affairs, ongoing disputes about the coincidence of ethnic with political frontiers, new migration trends from the wider world (the chain migration of Thais is given prominence in this), and declining economic growth--that is nonetheless bullish on Prussia's prospects. If nothing else, the latest convulsions to the east will serve as a deterrent to the few separatists.
  

This book is a necessary acquisition for any library of note--not only unviersity libraries, but people's libraries and even personal libraries. How do you run a multinational society deriving its legitimacy from tradition? The Prussians will show you how.


- R. McDonald, Simcoe University