Sándor Márai and Košice

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An exhibition was opened on the 4 December in the European Parliament to honour Sándor Márai, the great Twentieth Century Hungarian writer in connection with his city of birth, Košice-Kassa-Kaschau, becoming the European City of Culture in 2013 (together with Marseille). This is a slightly edited version of my remarks.

I’m delighted to hear that Košice will be the European City of Culture next year, together with Marseille, and I’m looking forward to eating bouillabaisse in Košice and sztrapacska in Marseille.

Sándor Márai was a friend of my father’s. I never met him personally, but I was aware of his status as a major Hungarian writer from an early age. By common consent, he was an extremely proud man, even an obstinate man. Certainly, to judge from his correspondence with my father, he absolutely refused to believe that anything had changed in communist Hungary, which he left in 1948, by the 1980s.

He is best known as a novelist, though his writings, which were under complete ban in Hungary until the end of communism, include plays, poetry, essays, journalism and his diaries. One volume of his diaries, the one dealing with the last year of the war and the first few years thereafter, provide an extraordinarily vivid picture of the time, and they are available in English. And his Verse Cycle is a testament to Budapest after the siege of 1944-1945.

His novel Embers – a rather inadequate translation of the Hungarian title – turned out to be a major success. Hereby hangs a tale. Some time in the late 1990s, the Italian writer and publisher, Roberto Callasto, rediscovered “Embers” in a French translation from the early 1950s that had attracted no attention at the time, and was entranced by it. He draw the attention of the English-language publishing world to it and the editor in charge, Carole Brown (whom I know a little) read it and was also determined to bring it out. Carole looked around, but could find no translator, so decided to translate it herself from the German, using the French as a parallel text. You can judge the result for yourselves, but to my mind, while serviceable, the English is a rather anaemic and certainly fails to render the beauty of Márai’s style.

Still, it’s better than what happened to “Casanova in Bolzano” (Vendégjáték Bolzanóban), which in the English begins with the words, “In Mestre I left thought behind”. In the original, Casanova only left his gondola. George Szirtes, the leftwing poet, is responsible. Ah, the pitfalls of the Hungarian language – the distinction between gondolat and gondola clearly proved too much for this translator.

A final anecdote. Some time around 2000 or after, I was sitting in Amsterdam airport rereading Embers in Hungarian. I noticed that the woman next to me was reading the same book in Dutch. Quite a coincidence, you might say. So I decided to try and start a conversation with her and asked her as an opener, showing her the Hungarian, “Please tell me, is the Dutch version translated from the original?” She looked it up, said “Yes”, then got up, walked away and sat down somewhere else. One of the shortest conversations on record. Márai could well have written a short story or a novella about it. The woman in question indubitably behaved like one of Márai’s laconic female characters.

Sch. Gy.

“The right side of history”

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I’ve come across this phrase twice in the last few days  (here and here) and it’s a wonderful instance of a hidden normativity. First of all, it assumes that history has a purposiveness. I thought that this very Hegelian concept was dead and buried, but, no, despite the intellectual stake driven through its heart, it sneaks out of its grave yet again. Anyone using it, should be forced to read Popper’s Poverty of Historicism – repeatedly, until they get it right.

Second, it assumes that whoever voices the opinion knows (a) what history is (b) which is the right side and which the wrong side and (c) that they have the knowledge to pronounce who is on which side, to set the agenda.

Third, the phrase is very helpful in dismissing counterarguments. Who, after all, wants to be on the wrong side of history, indeed on the wrong side of anything? It is yet another instance of attributing guilt and dismissing the presumption of innocence.

Fourth, it springs from the inexhaustible well of presumption, that of the liberal consensus, that those who are insiders do not need to engage in argument with those who hold different views, because (of course) the latter are inherently wrong, or at any rate incorrigibly mistaken.

Fifth, it constitutes as fine an instance of ideological thinking as one would wish. Arendt would have seized on it with a will and trashed it as a very bad case of a muddled and dangerous argumentation.

Sixth, it is frequently applied to collective views and political programmes. So, those using the phrase, do they really believe that collectivities can be castigated by making moral attributions? Because if they do, then they are contradicting another key tenet of the liberal consensus, that of the supremacy of the individual.

Finally, what kind of democracy do those who use this phrase actually believe in? One in which one’s opponent can simply be dismissed for being “wrong”?

Alas, poor Clio.

Coda (ok, an ironic coda, lest anyone misunderstand, I repeat, it’s irony): here are some further propositions, yes, colonialism was on the right side of history or patriarchy is (still) on the right side of history or maybe that Europe is on the wrong side of history and, who knows, has always been.

Sch. Gy.

Sacred cows

Are there sacred cows in democratic politics? Ideas, institutions, procedures that may not be questioned, criticised or challenged? The answer is yes, however surprising that may be, seeing that democracy is the grandchild of the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment stands for the questioning of everything. There can be no privileged knowledge, no special status, no opt-outs from ongoing enquiry. Or so goes the theory.

In reality, the reality that is constituted by the current assumptions of the EU, the US, the IMF, NATO, Council of Europe etc., the democracy agenda in other words, as well as the ideas that have grown up around it, seem to be exempting an ever wider area of power from scrutiny.

The result, of course, is that an area of democracy thereby becomes depoliticised, that in turn means that the bodies in question are not open to questioning and those disadvantaged by this exercise of power have to live with their frustration. Frustration, as we know all too well or should, breeds resentment and that gives heart to those labelled as populists, extremists and others placed in that category.

What institutions, then, fall into this category? A broad-brush list would certainly include constitutional courts, national banks, civil society and, increasingly, the international guardians of democracy, all too often the self-appointed guardians. Note that there is nothing new in certain institutions being sacralised in this way. In the 1970s, it was the state and the working class that enjoyed this status, buoyed up by the legacy of Marxist, Marxisant and sub-Marxist thinking.

As far as the international guardians are concerned, the question of reciprocity, transparency, accountability – legitimacy at the end of the day – really does not apply and does not do so in spades. Their right to tell other states how to run democracy is decidedly precarious, especially if that right is exercised in one direction only. The international treaties that are generally the reference point seldom provide a carte blanche for intervention. The right to intervene, though it may be wrapped in the sweet-paper of “advice”, is never open to the challenge on the part of the citizens of the state that is the recipient of the sweet-paper wrapping, even although the “advisers” are supposedly acting on their behalf.

Is this intervention desired? No one knows. Some lobbies may welcome it, especially if the intervention serves their interests, but the majority? Doubtful. Is the power that is exercised by “advisers” democratic? Hardly. Does the intervention strengthen resentment and increase support for non-democratic and semi-democratic forces? Certainly. Is it counter-productive? Is the Pope Catholic?

What really angers public opinion in the countries at the receiving end of “well-meant” advice about democracy and democratic behaviour is that there is no come-back. The critics may be Arcadian shepherds living in glass houses (to merge my metaphors), but no country is and should be beyond reproach. The proposition that a country pulled by the scruff of its neck by a self-appointed repository of democratic virtue can tolerate this without, at least, the capacity to respond in equal measure to its critics is simply not true. It does not and cannot happen. The outcome is a double standard and there is nothing like a double standard to erode trust, credibility and democracy itself.

As far as the sacralised domestic institutions are concerned, the problem is a little different. They acquire their political legitimacy via the elected parliament and are thus an emanation of popular sovereignty, but the parliament in question then must abandon all right to any say as to how these bodies work. The assumption, tacit for sure, is that these institutions will work with Platonic objectivity, will have no personal or institutional interests that distort this objectivity and will invariably know best. On this assumption, they quite likely have access to perfect knowledge, the philosopher’s stone and Harry Potter’s mobile phone number.

There is a counter-argument to all this, that these bodies are a necessary part of the democratic infrastructure and constitute the vital checks and balances without which democracy inevitably defaults into majoritarian tyranny. This is a genuine point and must be addressed. Without intermediate institutions a democracy is not worthy of the name and given that popular sovereignty can never be expressed as the views of the entirety of the people, minorities must enjoy protection of their rights as citizens are to be addressed and safeguarded.

The problem, however, is the growing sacralisation of these bodies, their exemption from criticism, their being under no particular obligation to exercise their functions with due attention to self-limitation and to transparency. If these trends continue, then the clash between popular sovereignty and the system of checks and balances will only intensify and democracy will be the loser.

Sch. Gy.

Hegemony and liberalism

There was an interesting thought in the TLS 17 & 24 August (“No cause for despair”, review by David Hawkes of Susan Hegeman, The Cultural Return, [paywall]). This is a review of culture and its development in the 20th century, and it offers the suggestion that the radical left, drawing on Gramsci, recognised that it was failing at the ballot box, turned to culture, to eliminate “bourgeois” high culture and replace it with a “proletarian” one. This would be a step towards the elimination of capitalism, by launching a “war of position”. The hegemonic project was adopted by the post-war left and in academia cultural studies emerged as its offspring, one that played a significant role in reproducing the norms of the hegemony.

To this should be added the twin developments of the radical impatience identified by George Steiner (in his In Bluebeard’s Castle); the argument here is that the long 19th century allowed the evolution of a high bourgeois culture that the intellectuals of the time were determined to challenge as uncreative, banal, anti-innovative and a tiresome obstacle to art. The cultural dimension was soon paralleled by a political one, notably the one articulated by Marx, but also by Bakunin, Proudhon and others.

The aftermath of the First World War saw the rise of modernism which, faced with the complexity of the world, sought to break it down into its most basic, essential elements, so that the world could be made intelligible again. Becket’s minimalism was an extreme case. The destruction of the two world wars was blamed on capitalism, the bourgeoisie and their values; the rejection of these became the mainstream for the proponents of the hegemony. The aim of the project was “never again”.

In this context, one can happily cite Barthes, one of the key figures in the history of deconstruction. Barthes’s analysis aimed to decentre the petit-bourgeois culture of his time by showing that its tacitly proclaimed universalism and naturalised propositions were no more than a mystification. The process aimed to transform something contingent, the cultural practices of the time, into something immanent, the normal and natural order. Barthes’s analytical method can just as readily be applied to the mystification practised by the left and the hegemony that the left constructed in the 20th century. The deconstruction, once performed, shows the process to be a similar sleight-of-hand to the one attacked by Barthes. So, beware claims to universalism; if you see reference to “a single humanity”, be on your guard, because (to switch registers), “it ain’t necessarily so”.

Cultural studies, the academic counterpart of the hegemony, was and is about identifying the same processes of “bourgeois” culture, showing them to be constructed (or “artificial” or naturalised), which would thereby provide the possibility of deconstructing them and thereby bring into being the basis for the longed-for radical transformation that would produce utopia. In this they were following Marx, who proclaimed that it was not enough to understand the world, one must work to change it. The irony is that success in culture has not been accompanied by success in attaining political and economic power, on the contrary.

The outcome has been a widespread acceptance of a cultural assumption set that decries the Western canon as exploitative and imperialist. But, nota bene, the hegemony does not examine itself, it rejects a reflexivity that goes beyond the decried target and is, therefore, revealed as an ideological project, neither more praiseworthy nor to be decried than any other. In common with other cultural constructs, the life cycle of hegemony is historically brief, contingent and eventually it erodes. While they last, however, they do affect those socialised into the hegemony of the moment and thereby limit their choices, function as a constraint on thought and ultimately on freedom. So, it may be, that if one is looking for a true emancipatory proposition, the need is for another project to train people to recognise the hidden ideologies that lurk everywhere.

All this has present day implications for the centre-right and its values, which understandably are down-slope from the leftwing hegemony. Not least, cultural hegemony has to some extent found a political home in the liberal consensus identified by Chantal Mouffe. At the same time, the liberal consensus and the cultural hegemony, though conjoined, are unable to attain their political objective, not least because a sizeable section of the (voting) population is indifferent towards the culture that they promote, even while is very much affected by the economic dimension of market despotism espoused by the liberal consensus, must live with the resulting insecurity, for which the left-liberal culture offers no remedy. On the other hand, for the liberal consensus, rooted as it is in preserving the status quo, sustaining hegemony became feasible.

My intuition that the leftwing hegemony of the last 50 years, since 1968 certainly, is slowly coming to an end. The internal contradictions of the project, or rather the conjoining of the two projects – in effect, that democracy proclaims a kind of political equality, yet manifestly treats the losers of globalisation as less worthy of support than immigrants, with the consequence that they move towards political movements that do embrace them, is not without effect. Crucially the absolute market freedom embraced by the left sits uneasily with the set of cultural norms that insist on universal principles but are applied selectively. Starting from universalism, the idea of a liberal consensus was projected outside Europe as well, yet the entire construction simply failed in North-Africa, creating an interesting and evolving vacuum for the Arab Spring and its interpretation. The outcome is not yet clear.

Two further elements are relevant. Hegemony is seldom analysed or deconstructed, above all that left regards its cultural hegemony, possibly domination, as the natural order of things (with just a little nod towards Foucault), yet any hegemony whether of the left or the right or the centre makes a dent in democracy, in that it necessarily excludes sections of the voters and citizens and tends to see the excluded as pariahs, if not heretics and apostates. Hence popular sovereignty, the foundation of democracy, becomes something more to be accepted in the breach than in the observance. Furthermore, this state of affairs tends to lead those who sustain the hegemony – the reality defining agency – to distrust those outside the hegemony as potentially hostile or recalcitrant is their disdain for the “truth” (“truth-claims” is better).

Just as problematical is the tacit or at times explicit claim that the “truths” of the hegemony are universal, something desired  by the single humanity that the left dreams of, but in sociological reality is no more than a construct of the same hegemony, is very much an imagined humanity in Anderson’s terms.

As in so many other areas, the post-communist political and cultural fields diverge from those of the West. In sum, the legatees of the nomenklatura latched on to the liberal consensus with both hands, not least because they were very much used to operating in a hegemony. This left the post-communist centre and right with a severe definitional problem – what did it mean to be conservative or Christian Democrat in contradistinction to the post-nomenklatura left? This necessarily made the post-communist right different from their Western counterparts, where the political field was substantially different. The outcome was a significantly different concept of the right than in the EU-15, crucially because it had to begin from a rejection of the ex-communist now liberal consensus-based hegemony. The longer term consequence is that the post-communist right is much less open to accepting the liberal consensus that rules in the West and diverges from it. To that extent, it also diverges from those in the EU-15 centre-right who have accommodated themselves to the consensus. In simple terms, the centre-right has a somewhat different concept of democracy, which is neither superior nor inferior to that of the EU-15, but by its very existence challenges the proposition that this consensus is the natural order of things. This differentiation is unavoidable, given that the ex-nomenklatura left did so much to define the political field in the first place.

By the same token, it argues for a somewhat different set of centre-right values, notably solidarity, social protectionism, family values. Some limits on the freedom of the market and on the radical individualism of the left. The ex-nomenklatura left cannot tolerate this, because it lives it as a frontal challenge to its hegemonic aspirations, its attempt to control all cultural norms and ultimately its very identity, hence it denounces the centre-right as crypto-fascist, xenophobic, populist, whatever. As might be predicted, those who live within these norms utterly reject any thought of dialogue with the challengers, not surprisingly as any such dialogue would be tantamount to accepting that the hegemony was not quite as hegemonic as all that. There is a certain irony in all this, that the ex-nomenklatura left is probably less tolerant of alternatives than the cultural tsars of the late communist period were. This is a comparison that they would not welcome.

All this helps to account for the problems encountered in the integration of the former communist states into the EU’s order. The ex-nomenklatura left basically accept what the EU-15 tells it to do, whereas their centre-right counterparts try to find common ground with the EU-15, but without abandoning their principles, their voters and the national interest that they represent.

It follows from the foregoing that I have been sketching a deep structural problem. So do not expect change at any early date, but if one were to apply to Yuriy Lotman’s theory of cultural explosion to the hegemony, then it is quite possible that the left’s cultural system will collapse very rapidly once some serious flaw enters it. That, after all, is what happened to communism.

If the left collapses, how will this affect the centre-right? What happens then to the European centre-right, given that in the EU-15, the centre-right is tacitly a part of the liberal consensus, the status quo? Would a polarisation on the centre-right be a feature of this process?

Sch. Gy.

A guest post, sent in private correspondence, posted with the author’s permission

It seems to me after reading the draft post, that the author of the TLS article, Hawkes, (or maybe the author of the reviewed book) has a confused definition of culture. For Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, etc. culture meant everything humans do to make sense of the world and move about in it: university programmes like Cultural Studies can be a part of it, but so are particular ways of living, habits of work and leisure, local libraries and adult education, folk and pop culture, etc.

People's attitudes towards 9/11 mentioned in the article are very much part of culture in the sense of Gramsci, Williams or Hall, so it should not be contrasted in the manner culture/politics. It is exactly the point of Cultural Studies that we study culture not only in the sense of music or books, but also in the sense of e.g. the culture of political dispute. Furthermore, contrary to what the article argues, Cultural Studies (like the Left in general) have quite varied attitudes towards commercial popular culture (for once, Wikipedia is not a bad source ). Initially British Cultural Studies tend to be quite wary of it, it is contemporary American Cultural Studies which celebrate it (more of it later). 

Left hegemony. As I have understood it, it is true what you and the article argue that the Left had a hegemony after WWII. Capitalism didn't collapse as Gramsci would have wanted, but a rather changed (welfare state) version of it came into being. However, this changed version is not only an important part of the story of the Left, it is also an important part of the history of Christian Democracy. However, both Christian Democracy and the Left seem to have abandoned it in most of the places that I know.

There came next phase in the 1980s when the Left, but also Christian Democracy, lost their hegemony, the welfare state model considered "normal and natural". There developed Thatcherism, neoliberalism, the Soviet Union collapsed and the former communist area adopted neoliberalism which became the new hegemonic culture in the Gramsci’s and Williams’s sense of the word.

The mainstream Left moved to the right and is still there. This is the liberal consensus. I don't think there is much of a real Left in mainstream politics because the Left ought to be at least a little critical or capitalism or I don't know what the word means otherwise. Also the mainstream left popular movements are protesting against the limitation on their consumption capacities, not against capitalism.

Furthermore, I think the consensus is really only "liberal", not liberal: they are liberal towards historically persecuted minorities (which is good), but illiberal towards other totally legitimate ways of political and cultural thinking (as you say in your piece and as Mouffe says). Also, in case of the historical exclusions too, e.g. immigrants (who should also be often counted among the losers of globalisation), much of liberalism seems to consist of preaching how it ought to be, not real political debate, decision-making and coordinated action. This is a very stagnant form of liberalism. And I should add there is a non-mainstream contemporary Left, exemplified by the Occupy movements, for instance.

The neoliberal hegemony undoubtedly also manifests itself in the field of culture in the narrow sense (music, books, formal education, etc) and in the field of Cultural Studies. Increasingly, especially in the US, Cultural Studies have lost their critical and political edge and have become simply an umbrella term under which to study pop music, Hollywood, minority cultures, feminist issues, etc. Actually, in the US it was not very active politically in the first place, when compared to Britain.

The attitude is liberal in the broadest sense (what a US friend of mine called "sort of centre-progressive"), but also politically lukewarm, not left at all. It is certainly not anti-capitalist, it celebrates commercialism and consumerism as I see it, or at least accepts them as normal and natural. Many people say (I among them) that it has also to a considerable extent lost its academic edge and much of it is a rather naive positivistic accumulation of knowledge about pop culture, an elevated form of "fandom". Music critics tell me they regret that sophisticated ways for in-depth discussion of contemporary pop music are very underdeveloped.

I agree with you that Cultural Studies ought to promote analytical and critical thought about all sorts of culturally encoded power structures ("ideologies lurking everywhere"), not necessarily judging them as all negative. However, I think Stuart Hall's thought, for example, fosters it very well. He makes quite clear that he has particular political views, but also makes it clear that he has no truth monopoly: there are no final truths and truth is not "out there". One does not need to accept his political views to benefit from his approach.

Piret Peiker

Nazi-Soviet collaboration

The 23 August is the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, signed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939. This formed the basis of the de facto Nazi-Soviet alliance on the basis of which the two totalitarian powers divided Central and Eastern Europe into their respective spheres of occupation. Hence the decision to commemorate the victims of totalitarianism on this day. This year, the commemoration was organised by the Hungarian government and the solemn ceremony was held in the Parliament building, in Budapest.

This is a slightly edited text of my contribution:

“Molotov-Ribbentrop” is not just a shorthand expression, a term adopted to mark the accord between the two totalitarianisms of the 20th century. The consequences of the pact had far-reaching consequences. In the countries that they occupied, both the Nazi and the Soviet occupation aimed deliberately to destroy civil society, social cohesion and continuity in order to ensure that the occupied did as they were told.

The Nazi occupation of the region from the Gulf of Finland to the southern Balkans had an important and frequently unrecognised consequence. Having destroyed local political forces, the Nazis thereby made it much easier for the communists to seize power after the war. The communists were acting in already traumatised societies. In this sense, the Soviet Union was the beneficiary of Nazi destruction.

The most extreme illustration of this proposition was the behaviour of the Red Army during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Soviet forces had reached the Vistula and watched idly while the German military systematically destroyed Warsaw (across the river) and emptied the city of its inhabitants. And there is an interesting counter-example. Nazi German forces never occupied Finland, in consequence of which Finnish structures remained intact and the continuity of the state was secured, hence the attempt at a communist putsch in 1948 failed.

In essence, Nazism and communism had a shared interest in the destruction of the societies that they had overrun and ended up by assisting each other in this enterprise. It is in this sense that Stalin owed Hitler a certain debt of gratitude, he had made the communists’ task a good deal easier than it would have been had state structures survived the war.

The Crisis in Europe IV

There is one further dimension of the crisis that demands analysis and this is the European Union, together with the extent and intensity of integration and interdependence.

In brief, Europe’s problem in this perspective is that integration has gone too far to be reversed without terrible cost, but has not gone far enough to cope with the political and economic environment that integration has brought into being. Crucially, the EU’s institutional structure was designed for a pre-globalisation era, when the intermediacy of the EU, its balancing act between the power of member states and the needs of integration, was sustainable. In the interim, the last two decades roughly, both the integrity of the state and of the EU’s architecture have come under enormous strain from the multiple level inputs coming from a variety of directions.

A brief list will have to suffice, most of it is self-evident – China as an economic superpower, Russia as an energy superpower, the US in its short-lived role as hyperpower, the other BRICs, the Arab spring and so on. What is crucial here is that Europe had long been accustomed to seeing itself as moral, intellectual, cultural legislator to the world, albeit as sidekick to US in power political terms. These legislative prerogatives have all begun to fray and losing status is, maybe, the hardest loss of all.

The conclusion to be drawn from the above is that the need for a redesign, a renewal of the how and why of the “ever closer union”, has been imperative for a while. And, given the vastly different environment, the redesign should have been far more innovative than the outcome of Laeken and the Lisbon treaty. That is where the drawbacks or, to be fairer, the original design problems played the negative role that they did. Given the circumstances and objectives of the initial push towards integration, especially its elite-led, technocratic, legalistic modus operandi, together with the continued role of member state power, a radical thinking was inconceivable and, for that matter, unattainable. The failure of the Constitution in 2005 could just have been another opportunity, but once again Europe and Europe of the EU were not ready for a step as far-reaching as this, not least because the crisis was far from being visible. So it was business as usual, even while a great deal of the business was far from being usual.

From 2008, however, the assumptions of linear development were brought into question and the crisis of the EU, still a creeping crisis, was no longer remediable with the existing instruments. A radical rethink was essential, but it was not to be and the outcome today is a multiple crisis, with visible cracks – cleavage lines – that appear to be growing stronger all the time.

The multiple cleavage lines are widely acknowledged. In no particular order, they are: large states v. small states, net contributors v. net beneficiaries, north v. south, old members (EU-15) v. new members (EU-12). When it comes to the first of these, two particularly sensitive questions arise. Large states are generally better placed to sustain their cultural security than small states, albeit France is increasingly exhibiting the symptoms of cultural insecurity. Hence they are seldom open to the argument that small states need special attention if the European integration model is to work. The occasional disdain shown by some large states towards one small state or another – maybe the treatment accorded to Greece by the German media illustrates this most vividly – indicates that large states are unaware of their superior cultural power and will seldom apply the necessary self-limitation in this area. This does nothing to assist the solidarity that supposedly underpins further integration, quite the contrary.

That debouches into the second sensitive area. From the outset, European integration was predicated on the proposition – a normative one – that all member states enjoyed a parity of esteem. True, this was sometimes more evident in the breach than in the observance (e.g. the Austrian boycott), but the principle held up reasonably well. In the current crisis, it seems to be going by the board. The strains of managing a single currency under global pressure have spilled over into culture and politics, so that whatever solidarity may have existed between member states has begun to disappear. The extraordinarily vicious exchanges between Germany and Greece already noted, abetted by the media in both countries, are only the tip of the iceberg. In this context, the attitudes of the EU-15 towards the new member states are proving insidious and even poisonous – there is very little trust in evidence. Even the Commission has played its part in this by singling out Hungary for severe treatment, while letting Spain off relatively lightly.

All this augurs badly for the third problem area. The solution to the imbalances in the Euro-area evidently demands far greater integration, but that in turn requires a degree of political unity for which there appears to be little support, if at all. Economic and political imperatives are pulling in the opposite direction and are pulling very hard indeed.

It is very hard to see how further integration can mobilise the popular support without which it would have no legitimacy. Hitherto that legitimacy could be taken for granted or finessed as a legal matter, rather in the way in which the Lisbon Treaty sought to replace the defunct Constitution that was born of Laeken. In a sense, the problem of EU integration is that it functions at the institutional level, albeit the regulatory regime of the acquis gives rise to a good deal of grumbling especially from among the Eurosceptics, but neither the EU nor the member states has done much to let the integration process become a matter of politics. And the depoliticisation of a site of power – the EU has become a major site of power – is never a good idea if one wants to remain true to one’s democratic principles. In a democracy, serious concentrations of power, and the EU is just that, should be open to direct challenge and that challenge should be political.

In effect, the situation is that the indebtedness of several member states has come close to being unsustainable, the debt in question is financed by the private sector capital of the globalised world, this private sector capital no longer takes it for granted that its purchase of the sovereign bonds of the affected states is safe, hence it demands an ever higher rate of interest to offset the possible risk of default. This indebtedness could notionally be paid off through stronger competitiveness, but that evolution is held back by the indebtedness. Simultaneously, this also signifies that the entire Eurozone is beginning to be regarded as suspect, at any rate as long as the economically strong states refuse to assume the burden of cross-financing their weaker partners.

There is another aspect of this situation, however. As the interest rates of the sovereign bonds increase, thereby making borrowing yet more costly, it is then the taxpayers of the affected states that have to finance these outlays. In brief, this means a continuous transfer of taxpayers’ money into private pockets, which at the same time means a growing economic power of the private sector, thereby intensifying the overmighty subject problem. The political movements described as populist will only gather strength by reason of the operation of this transfer mechanism.

Another dimension of the crisis reflects the continuing divergence between the EU-15 and the post-2004 (new) member states. In  sum, what it boils down to is this. In several of the former communist states, though not all, the initial divergence between the former nomenklatura, the beneficiaries of the communist system, has not disappeared, but continues to inform politics and, certainly in some cases, it is becoming wider and deeper by the year. Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia evidently fall into this category.

The former nomenklatura was successful in salvaging much of its power, used its political skills to secure its positions in the new system and rapidly, though generally superficially, adopted the then prevailing ideology in the West – the liberal consensus discussed earlier this series. How sincere this liberalism was is another question, but it succeeded in its aim of making former communists acceptable in the West not only as born again democrats, but as democrats who conformed to the West’s expectations of how democrats should behave – accommodating Western demands for access to the new markets, privatising state property (often enough with some of the sale price ending up in private pockets) thereby earning yet more plaudits. The Western left found itself with new recruits who simply followed whatever the liberal consensus demanded of them and ignored (at best) the state interests of the countries they were running.

This accommodating attitude was appreciated in the capitals of the EU-15. I can still remember a conversation with a high level British diplomat in 2002 expressing his relief at the defeat of the Orbán government by the Hungarian left, because (in his view) the centre-right government had become a Europe-wide nuisance in defending the Hungarian interest. The left, with its weaker domestic rootedness always needed the extra input it was getting from the West and, therefore, was seldom “a nuisance”.

The problem is that yet again, Central Europe was functioning as Europe’s early warning system as Milan Kundera once observed. As the post-communist left moved into the liberal consensus, it performed a couple of intellectual summersaults, in that it dropped Marxism-Leninism, and then rapidly absorbed a universalism that saw nationhood as an obstacle, but, given the shallowness of its liberalism, it was equally capable of using nationhood to rally support at home. The implication is that the post-communist left needed an external support system, whether that was the Soviet Union or the EU did not really matter all that much, because what actually did matter was power and privilege. Given that the EU itself had become a bastion of the liberal consensus, that the Europe that it represented was a liberal-consensus-Europe, the post-communist left acquired a helpful patron, in that it could rely on the EU for support and, equally, use the EU as the criterion of proper behaviour, something that was quite useful in its struggle with the centre-right.

What the post-communist left did not seem to have taken into its reckoning was that this turn would necessarily associate the EU with the left, thereby eroding the Europe of the EU as an idealised future for the formerly communist-ruled societies and that this development conjoined dissatisfaction with the left with unease about the EU. EU membership for Central Europe was supposed to have operated as a way of crossing an age-old threshold, that of being accepted as full members of the European comity of states. The irony is that the close relationship between the Europe of the EU, the post-communist left and the liberal consensus ended up by reinforcing the feeling that the EU was riding roughshod over local values, local customs, local ways of doing things and that the left was strongly abetting the EU in this endeavour.

The division between left and right, to continue to use these terms, was also becoming a feature of several Western state, like Spain, Italy and to some extent even France. The basic idea of a single democratic polity, demos and society was beginning to erode. The liberal consensus was causing serious discord, not to say dissensus.

This state affairs certainly demanded, and continues to demand, a thoroughgoing rethinking of what democracy is about, how it is to be sustained when the social-political division is questioning the nature of democracy itself. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that some kind of a consociational arrangement, a left-right power sharing, may well prove to be the most effective means of saving democracy both from the growing polarisation and from the emerging extremism to the left and right of the liberal consensus. The EU clearly has no idea what to do with a situation when politics in Europe is increasingly questioning European integration, when elections are increasingly winnable by being anti-EU and when the anti-integration forces have found the political language to articulate their ideas.

All this points to a much deeper level crisis, one that touches legitimacy, culture, ideals and aspirations. For most of Europe, the EU represented a successful and desirable way of organising the highly complex interdependence of the Continent – peace, prosperity, democracy, overcoming the disasters of the 20th century. In a word, integrated Europe had become a successful model of modernity, one to be emulated and to be idealised as the real-time embodiment of the successful polity and society. The idea of “unity in diversity” promised a stable equilibrium between the local and the universal (true, only a European universal). This promise was potentially attractive to the late modernisers where the contest between the universal and the local was always more acute than in the core of states of Europe where modernity was initially defined (France, Britain above all).

The crisis, therefore, was not merely a crisis of the EU, but a crisis of what modernity was, what it should be, how one defined what being European was. Even if the EU had become legalistic and technocratic, the ideal of modernity remained in existence at the half explicit level – the Constitutional Treaty was probably the last expression of this. The inability and unwillingness of the member state elites to mobilise public opinion behind the idealism of the Constitution was a symptom of this and it pointed the way towards relying on intergovernmentalism that, in turn, offered more space to the national interest and to nationhood. No matter that nationhood was supposedly post-national, it was still structured by an idea of the nation that was superior to the European ideal. In that sense, the economic crisis of 2008 and after was the second grand failure of the EU as the ideal of modernity in Europe, though few would admit to seeing it in these terms (the failure of the Constitution was the first). The consequence was a subtle shift in once again elevating national politics above Europe, a process that can be seen most obviously in the declining political legitimacy of the EU and the integration process. Evidently this development made the politicisation of Europe virtually impossible.

There’s the rub. While arguably the EU did have a degree of political input and political engagement in the early years, in its later years it became legal, bureaucratic and technocratic, and, what is worse, it relied on a legal and technocratic discursivity that made political engagement with integration effectively impossible.

It is not at all clear that the member states would actually welcome such political engagement on the part of society, a European integration open to political contestation, above all because they tend to see such a development as eating into their domestic political legitimacy. This is one of the central ironies of European integration. Member states have been quite prepared to transfer swathes of power to Brussels, but they have held on to the legitimation of that power themselves. So, for example, the proposal to give the EU its own taxing power, more to give the citizens something to engage with than for revenue-raising purposes, is a non-starter at this time. The member states would not accept it.

Not surprisingly, EU power is now widely seen as remote, unaccountable and undemocratic, flying in the face of the EU’s democratic commitment. Likewise it follows that for the average European, their citizenship is next to meaningless in political terms. They may enjoy passport free travel in Schengen, but they seldom attribute it to the EU. The consequence is that the average European has no meaningful political identity as a European, even while he and she may accept a shared cultural identity. The aspiration of creating a European demos remains just that, so that there is yet another paradox – something like a European polis is in existence, but it does not really have a demos to underpin it. Instead there is a gap. A democracy without a demos, though, would seem to be something straight from absurdistan.

The gap, the disconnect to use the term that came into fashion during the Irish referenda on the Lisbon Treaty, has another consequence. It is increasingly being filled by an imagined, malign Europe, one constructed according to the whims and caprices of the Eurosceptics. This might not matter all that much were it not for the fact that the crisis seems – I wish to stress that word – to be confirming the Eurosceptic narrative, quite apart from that narrative coming together with others that are nationalist, introverted and/or fuelled by the sense of exclusion from the liberal consensus (as sketched in Part I of this series).

In conclusion, the argument and analysis in this examination of the crisis in Europe seem to add up to a far more complex set of problems than the run of the mill assessments that are current. Some of these factors when taken together, like the entirely contradictory economic and political imperatives, imply that no satisfactory solution to the crisis is on the agenda. The inference to be drawn from the foregoing, however, does make one point with great insistence – no solution will work unless it deals properly with the political power involved, with the urgent need to repoliticise a large area of the integration process, to include those currently excluded, to listen to all the relevant voices and confront the urgent need to establish legitimation for the politics of Europe.

Democracy demands nothing less.

Sch. Gy.

Bosznia-Hercegovina varázsa

"A vallás politika, a lelkében azonban minden ember egy." Ezt a mondatot egy perzsa szőnyegkereskedő mondta, a Morica Han-ban, Szarajevóban. Hogy mennyire akart hízelegni, vagy éppen a multikulturalizmust egy mondatban minden tételében megcáfoló igazságot terjeszteni, vagy amolyan vallási toleranciát hirdetni az iszlám kellős közepén, nem tudom. Mindesetre a magyar eredetmondát tökéletesen ismerte, és természetesen igazolva, hogy a perzsa és magyar törzsek rokonok, Mezopotámia a bölcső. Bár itt erős gyanúm volt, hogy csupán egy két és fél éven keresztül készülő kézi csomózású, selyem perzsaszőnyeget szeretett volna rám sózni, 16000 eurós törzsi-baráti áron. Hiába, sajnos már keresztény vagyok, mondtam neki, de ő csak mosolygott, és ismét megerősítette az egységes emberiségbe vetett hitét.

Node, hogy kerül egy iráni, bocsánat perzsa, Szarajevóba, egyáltalán milyen a lakosság etnikai összetétele, vagy éppen a helyes kérdésfelvetés úgy hangzana, hogy milyen a vallási összetétele a föderáció fővárosának, és magának a föderációnak? A vallás és etnikai származás közötti distinkció azért is szükséges, mert voltaképpen a bosnyák nemzeti öntudatra ébredés a 60-as 70-es évekig rejtve maradt, és igazán meghatározóvá a jugoszláv örökösödési háború vált; fejkendők és sertéshús tilalom addig nem létezett. Mind az Oszmán Birodalom, mind az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia, sőt azt követő államalakulatok is elsősorban vallási alapon tett különbségeket. Természetesen a szerb nemzeti öntudat a Crna Ruka mozgalommal hamar nyilvánvaló lett az egész világ számára.

Tehát a vallás felöl közelítve Szarajevó lakossága muzulmán, de vannak ortodoxok, katolikusok és zsidó közösség is, bár a többség számára a vallási töltet népszokássá szelídült. Igaz, azonnal cáfolnom kell magam, mivel statisztikai adatok alapján az egy főre jutó mecsetek, dzsámik száma Bosznia-Hercegovinában a legmagasabb, megelőzve az összes arab országot. Gomba-módra bújnak elő a hegyoldalakból a vakító fehér templomocskák, mindenféle adományokból: maláj, indonéz, szaúdi, kuvaiti iszlám közösségektől. És nem csak mecseteket építenek a kuvaiti, szaúdi befektetők, hanem szállodákat, gyárakat vesznek és nagy valószínűséggel cserébe a Boszniában található vízbázis érdekli őket igazán (boszna szó jelentése víz, és az iszlám számára a mosakodásnak, a tisztaságnak fontos szerepe van). De ez csupán spekuláció.

Már ramadan idején járunk, de a kávézók, éttermek egész nap tele vannak, egy jó erős török (sic!) bosnyák kávéra mindig, mindenkinek van ideje. Valahogy az emberek nem rohannak itt el egymás mellett, leülnek, beszélgetnek, meghallgatják egymást. A müezzin imára hív, egy-két boltocska tulajdonosa zárja be üzletét és szalad a dzsámiba imára. A ramadam számunkra akkor válik hihetővé, amikor napnyugtakor ágyúlövés jelzi, véget ért az aznapi böjt, lehet enni-inni. Bár a Morica Han ágyú lövés előtt is telve volt, sokan csevapot vagy más sült húst, friss túrót esznek; Szarajevó nem kedvez a vegetáriánusoknak.

Az iszlám valóban jól látható és érezhető Szarajevóban, de az Oszák-Magyar Monarchia rövid jelenléte is meghatározó képet kölcsönöz a városnak, és voltaképpen Szarajevó ennek a rövid időszaknak köszönheti modernizációját: Európa első (mások szerint Temesvár után a második) ló vontatta villamosa itt indult először, ahogy az első világháború is innen, a Latin-hídról indult pusztító útjára. A történelem itt sűrűsödik, kultúrák, etnikumok, minden egyszerre jelen van, lélegzik és élni akar. A 90-es évek háborúja nem látszik a városon, az arcokon, jóllehet az emlékezetekbe mélyen beleivódott, ahogy a békés egymás mellett élés megszűnését szimbolizáló vegyes házasságok is az emlékezetekben vagy éppen külföldön élnek. A vallási és etnikai feszültség valahol a felszín alatt azonban ott bujkál, a szrebrenicai mészárlás sehol sem felejtődik igazán, és nem lehet tudni, mikor erősödik fel annyira, hogy a föderációnak ezt a formáját szétfeszítse.

De valahogy mégiscsak hiányérzetünk támad; a föderáció legnagyobb támogatója az iszlám mellett szinte láthatatlan. Ahogy sokan azt sem tudják megbocsátani, hogy Európa láthatatlan maradt a Daytoni-szerződés megkötésekor is. Igaz, az erős kompenzációs kényszer egy hidegháborús hangulatot kölcsönöz az országnak, minden hatalomnak megvannak a kegyeltjei. Most azonban béke van.

Mostar egy másik világ, talán mostanra már turistacsapda. Az újonnan felépült Öreg-híd, magyar mérnökök segítségével, kiválóan szimbolizálja a horvát-bosnyák újra összekapcsolódást, a megbékélést talán. A tömeg mindkét irányba hömpölyög, bár a kettős, bosnyák-horvát intézményi struktúra valóság, két kórház, két tűzoltóság, két rendőrség. És itt a szimbólumok versenye továbbfolytatódik: keresztek és keresztek és keresztek mindenütt. Innen tudjuk biztosan, hogy már Hercegovinában járunk.

A csúcspont Medjugorje, ahol a Mária jelenésnek 1981-ben komoly üzenete volt az egész térség számára. Mára azonban be kell lássuk, Szűz Mária iparággá vált, a giccs ural mindent, Máriát minden méretben lehet kapni, ahogy rózsafűzért, keresztet, szentcsaládot és minden egyéb tárgyakat, csecsebecsét. Talán még a limonádé is szentelt vízből készült...

Csak remélni tudjuk, hogy nem a szimbólumok harcába süpped Bosznia-Hercegovina, nem a mecset és kereszt számok döntik el, ki az értékesebb, hanem igazolva perzsa szőnyegkereskedőnket, csak az ember számít.

kng

Útinapló: 5 nap, 5 karika

július 27. péntek

Korahajnali indulás a Liszt Ferenc reptérről, a tömött géppel és egy ajándékba kapott órával korareggeli érkezés Lutonon. Csak találgatható, hogy az olimpiai-schengeni övezetbe való belépés előtt kígyózó mintegy félórás embertömeg mekkora része tudható be az általános londoni tumultusnak és mekkora része köszönhető a ma esti nyitóünnepséggel induló XXX. Olimpiai játékoknak. A Lutonból a belvárosba haladó vasúti szerelvényen az agglomeráció ébredező lakói- egyik kezükben kávé (tea?), a másikban pedig újság, ahogy azt a londoni hangulatot felvillantó, két héttel később esedékes záróünnepség is megidézi majd.

Jellemző, hogy miközben a londoniak elmúlt egy éve az Olimpiai játékok alatt várható iszonyatos embertömeg miatti óvintézkedésekről (a szabadságok ekképp történő időzítése, otthoni távmunka stb.) szólt, a 6 metró- és temérdek vasúti vonal találkozásán fekvő St. Pancras állomáson reggel fél 10-kor csak szállingóznak az emberek, ami egyaránt tekinthető a megnyugtató szervezés eredményének és baljós előjelnek (mint később kiderül, a helyzet az előbbi: a várható 3,5 millió látogató mellett mintegy 2 millióan hagyták el a játékok idejére a várost). A városban az Oxford Street felett kifüggesztett nemzeti lobogókon kívül egyelőre semmi nem utal a ma estétől kezdődő sporttörténeti eseményre, délutántól azonban egyre többen foglalják el az olimpiai visszaszámlálónak helyt adó Trafalgar Square-t. Fényképező turisták, a jó beállást kereső operatőrök és helyszíni tudósítók, interjút adó sportolók, járőröző katonák és rendőri biztosítással áthaladó sötétített üvegű járművek (az Olimpia alatt a rendőri intézkedésekre és a biztonságra 1 milliárd fontot költöttek, csaknem ugyanannyit, mint a sportlétesítményekre). A még itt ragadt londoniak már déltájban elhagyhatják munkahelyüket, délutántól pedig egyre több ember tölti meg az utcákat. Estére megtelnek a Pub-ok a Sohoban, a nyitóünnepséget a helyszínen jelenlévő, fejenként legkevesebb 700 fontot fizető 80 ezer néző mellett a becslések szerint mintegy 1 milliárd ember követi televízión.





július 28. szombat

A különböző fegyvernemek sorában a női tőrvívás indítja meg a 2012-es vívóolimpiát. Az összesen hét sportágnak (pl. az asztaltenisznek, a súlylökésnek, a cselgáncsnak) helyt adó, London keleti részén fekvő ExCeL-i létesítménybe két órával korábban ajánlják az érkezést, így reggel nyolc óra tájban már kisebb tömeg hömpölyög békésen a vasúti megállótól önkéntesek által övezett úton. A szervezésre jellemző egyébként, hogy jelentős energiát fektetettek a humán erőforrásba, azaz a különböző életkorú és nemzetiségű mintegy 80 ezer önkéntes felkészítésébe, akik eltéveszthetetlen lila egyenpólójukban élő láncként mutatják az érkezőknek az utat az összes olimpiai helyszínen.

Az ExCeL-i stadion előtt a reggeli fényben a szurkolók a rend fenntartóival fotózkodnak, akik pillanatok alatt belesimulnak új szerepükbe. Míg a hatalmas magyar zászlóval próbáljuk a megfelelő beállást, a tőrvívást hamarosan közvetítő magyar tudósítók jönnek oda beszélgetni, akiktől azt is megtudjuk, hogy az aréna közepén felállított, olimpiai színekkel megvilágított pástok közül Mohamed Aida melyiken fog vívni a 32-es táblától egyenes kieséssel a negyeddöntőig tartó délelőtti turnusban. A jegyünk természetesen éppen a nézőtér legtávolabbi pontjára szól, de nem esünk kétségbe: látva az üresen maradt helyeket és a jegyszedők lanyhuló figyelmét, hamarosan már a kék pásttal szemben szurkolunk.

A londoni szervezést illető egyik legsúlyosabb kritika egyébként éppen az üresen maradt nézőtéri helyekkel volt kapcsolatos, amelyeket az évekkel korábban pályázó, de jegyhez nem jutó nézők is jól láthattak a közvetítések során. A jegyek értékesítése több körben történt: a leginkább favoritnak számító eseményekre (nyitó- és záróünnepség) és sportágakra (atlétika, úszás) már évekkel korábban kellett pályázni, míg más versenyekre, mint a vívás, vagy a kézi- és vízilabda, kellő éberséggel és gyorsasággal még május végén is lehetett az Olimpia hivatalos honlapján 20 fontos kezdőártól jegyet venni.

Egyszerre négy páston zajlanak tehát az asszók, és vívó legyen a talpán, aki mellette folyó küzdelmet ünneplő-tapsoló hangzavart ki tudja zárni saját pengeváltásai közben. Mohamed Aida bejut a legjobb 16 közé, ahol azonban a dél-koreai Nam-mal szoros küzdelem alakul ki. A háromszor három perces menetek közti szünetben az edzők a pástra szökkennek, kezükkel cseleket írnak le, ordítva magyaráznak tanítványuknak- Mohamed Aida háta mögött egy nyugodt és hallgatag ember áll köpcösen. Legyen ez betudható az összeszokásnak, vagy a magyar reziszteanciának, az semmiképpen sem tehetett jót, hogy a mester két héttel az Olimpia előtt kapta meg felmondólevelét. Talán még jó párszor négy év kell, hogy ilyen és hasonló dolgok nálunk se történhessenek meg, Mohamed Aida mindenesetre a nyolcaddöntőben a hirtelen halált jelentő ráadástussal búcsúzott, az este pedig hármas olasz éremszerzéssel zárult.





július 29. vasárnap


Pihenőnap, nekünk legalábbis, és hamisítatlan londoni hangulat: English breakfast olimpiai színű paprika-karikákkal és English summer rain. A Kossuth rádión keresztül követjük a magyar férfi vízilabda-válogatott Szerbia elleni vereségét, és egyszeri szurkolóként kicsit kevésbé keserít el az eredmény: annál nagyobb lesz a tétje a keddi mérkőzésnek.

A briteknek köszönhetjük egyébként, hogy július elején csodával határos módon sikerült még jegyet szereznünk a Magyarország-Montenegró vízilabda meccsre. A csoportok sorsolása ugyanis már két hónappal ezelőtt eldőlt, a szurkolók ennek megfelelően vehették meg jegyeiket. Az utolsó pillanatban azonban a teljes menetrend borult annak érdekében, hogy a hazai 'Team GB' a legtöbb néző által követhető délutáni órákban játsszon, és óriási jegy-cserebere vette kezdetét a közösségi portálokon.

Vasárnap délután a helyszín a nyugat-londoni Hammersmith és a lokális történelmet megtestesítő, Dove névvel fémjelzett pub, amely a világ legkisebb bar room-jával a Guiness Rekordok könyvébe is bekerült, de nekünk ma itt másfajta, sport-történelem íródik. A helységben szitáló fekete-fehér kisképernyős televízió mutat valami aktuális és számunkra unalmas eseményt, de rajtunk nem fognak ki. Wifi hozza be a Kossuth rádiót és a telefon fölé hajolva drukkoljuk végig Szilágyi Áron aranyérmét az olasz Occhiuzzi ellen. A verseny közvetítéséből egyébként semmit nem von le a képi világ hiánya: az amúgy is fantasztikus rádiós kommentárokkal ez különösen igaz a vívás esetében, ahol a bírói ítélet alapjául szolgáló gyors pengeváltások egymásutánja szabad szemmel egyébként sem igen követhető. Az elmúlt évek gyakorlatához képest azonban mégis történt e téren előrelépés: az asszókat előnyösebb szögből és közelebbről lehetett szemmel kísérni, ami a laikus nézők számára is élvezhetőbbé tette a versenyt. A különböző sportágak közvetítésére egyébként hagyományosan különböző nemzeti stábok szakosodnak, a vívás pedig ebben a tekintetben abszolút magyar territóriumnak számít.

És szerencsére most már (illetve ismét) nem csak ebben a tekintetben: a győztes pont beadása után Szilágyi Áron az égre mutat néhány éve elhunyt nevelőedzőjére, Gerevich Györgyre emlékezve, akinek szintén kardvívó édesapja a mai napig sporttörténeti rekordernek számít ugyanabban a számban (férfi kard csapat) elért hatszoros olimpiai győzelmével. Olyan sikerszéria veszi ezzel kezdetét, ami augusztus 12-ére, az Olimpia zárónapjára a nagyon várt, de elmaradt érmek ellenére is a 204-es lista 9. helyére repíti Magyarországot, olyan országokat megelőzve, mint Ausztrália, Japán vagy Kanada. (Ha pedig valakit a népességszám szerint súlyozott eredménytábla érdekelne: itt is a nagyon előkelő, 8. helyen szerepelünk, míg az érmek számát GDP-hez viszonyítva a 14. helyen állunk).




július 30. hétfő


A harmadik londoni Olimpia nem csak a sportesemény történetében kívánt maradandót alkotni: óriási kulturális kínálat fogadta az Egyesült Királyságba látogatókat. A házigazdák bemutatkozása, kultúra (-export) és sport keveredett ebben a két hétben. Bár a közel 12 ezer rendezvényen mind a 204 induló nemzet bemutatkozott, a kulturális Olimpia alapvetően a brit identitás-megerősítésről szólt, csak úgy, mint a verseny nyitó- és záróünnepsége, amelyet az ipari forradalom nyomán felemelkedő londoni metropolisz történetének, az angol humornak és a brit zenei kultúrának szenteltek. Ha azonban elfogadjuk azt, hogy egy ilyen, többmilliárd ember által követett világesemény évekig tartó, hatalmas költségeket felemésztő megszervezése, majd pedig több ezer ember összehangolt munkáját igénylő lebonyolítása kiemelt helyet foglal el egy társadalom önmeghatározási és önértékelési folyamatában, akkor az Olimpia alatt végtelenségig hangoztatott hívószavak egyfajta útkijelölésként is értelmezhetőek.

De mik is voltak ezek hívószavak? Fenntarthatóság- azaz az Olimpiai Park területén elbontott anyagok 98%-ának újrahasznosítása, tartós anyagból készülő és visszabontható létesítmények, a road-show-jellegű építési láz helyett hosszú távú tervezés, több sportág összevonása egy létesítménybe, városrehabilitáció. Szociális felelősségvállalás- azaz munkanélküliek, fogyatékkal élők és helyi lakosok foglalkoztatása, a következő generációk sportra nevelése, szociális bérlakások kialakítása az olimpiai falu helyén. Továbbá, on-line forgalom, hatalmas informatikai rendszerek és még több futurizmus: a gyermekek igényei szerint megtervezett formabontó kabalák és az ExCeL-i stadionnál az égben haladó közlekedési eszközök. Bár azzal mindenki tisztában lehet, hogy nem egy tündérmeséről van szó, az alapvető célok megfogalmazása egy olyan új irányt mutat, amelyben egyszerre tűnik fel egy dinamikusan fejlődő metropolisz jövőképe és egy több évtizedes, gazdasági prosperitást hozó időszak végének tudomásul vétele.





július 31. kedd



A 30. nyári, és az első őszi olimpiai játékokra ébredünk: 17 fok és szakadó eső. Reggel hét órakor már úton vagyunk a Central metro line East End-i részén található Olimpiai Parkba. A közlekedés kényelmes, ami úgy értendő, hogy a tömeg semmivel sem elviselhetetlenebb egy átlagos londoni reggelnél, és egy metróátszállással kint találjuk magunkat a stradfordi helyszínen. A szervezők becsületére legyen mondva, hogy a horribilis tömegközlekedési árak mellett az olimpiai jeggyel rendelkezők az aktuális esemény napjára egész napos, London mind a kilenc zónájára érvényes bérletet kaptak.

Az olimpiai falunál, akárcsak ExCeL-ben, a reptérihez hasonló biztonsági vizsgálaton kell átesni, ezután széles hídon át halad a folyamatosan érkező tömeg az Olimpiai Stadion felé. A 80 ezer férőhelyes arénán kívül a 350 futballpálya nagyságú Park területén találhatóak többek között az úszásnak, vízilabdának, kosár- és kézilabdának helyet adó létesítmények is. Az 5 ezer fős vízilabda-centrum is egy azok közül az épületek közül, amelyeket az Olimpia végeztével teljes mértékben el fognak bontani.

A ma reggeli esemény két mérkőzést, a már említett Magyarország-MontenegroMagyarország-Montenegró, és a Horvátország-Spanyolország meccset foglalja magában. E négy náció szurkolóin kívül néhány amerikai turista és békésen szemlélődő brit család található még a nézőtéren, a magyar fölény azonban első pillanattól szembetűnő. Ha a társadalmi szolidaritás mértékét az Olimpián tanúsított szurkolói aktivitáson mérnék, akkor egy jóval kiegyensúlyozottabb nemzet képét tükröznénk: a lelátókon tapasztalható példátlan magyar jelenlétről és támogatásról nem csak a helyszínen levők, de a tudósításokat nézők-hallgatók is meggyőződhettek. Az nem számít, hogy szinte végig vesztésre állunk, sőt az sem, hogy nem is játsszunk a legjobban, zeng a stadion. Öt percen belül a mellettünk ülő amerikai férfin is piros-fehér-zöld matrica díszeleg, másfél órával később pedig egy csapásra mindenkiből spanyol szurkoló válik, amikor a horvátok elleni utolsó másodpercben lőtt egyenlítő gólukat -tévesen- nem adja meg a bíró. A látottak megcáfolják, hogy mindenki a nyertes csapathoz szeretne tartozni: mindenki a legnagyobb összefogást mutató, a kollektív élményt nyújtó csapatnak szeretne a részese lenni. És éppen ez adja meg egy ilyen világesemény valódi jelentőségét: a közös rítusok olyan interakciókat és kapcsolódási pontokat teremtenek, melyeken keresztül egymást megismerjük, magunkat pedig elhelyezzük a világban. Ki cáfolná, hogy erre -csakúgy, mint az újkori olimpiák 116 éves története során bármikor-, ma is égető szükség van?

S.Z.