2020s Threaten to Become Repeat of 1920s and without a US to Correct the Situation, Savvin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 26 – Calendars – days, months, years and even decades – do more than mark the passage of time: they structure our thinking and invite comparisons between a present interval of whatever length with a similar one in the past, sometimes mystically and sometimes with greater practical justification.

            In a new essay, Dimmitry Savvin, the editor of the Riga-based self-described conservative Russian portal, Harbin, argues that the 2020s not only resemble the 1920s but in a more intense and broader sense and that the results of that earlier decade are likely to be repeated following the current one (harbin.lv/novye-dvadtsatye-starye-ugrozy).

            The Russian commentator points out that the world is finding it ever more difficult to live according to the arrangements which followed World War II the more distant its end becomes, in large measure because those arrangements did not address the underlying problems which led to that war and which grew out of those which were the result of World War I.

             A major reason why few governments or analysts have focused on this reality is that “very many liberals, people on the right and conservatives in the final analysis have been thinking in a Marxist way: they have supposed that it is not the conscious of society which forms its being but that its being defines its consciousness.”

            In the second half of the 20^th century, democracy and market economies achieved “unique successes,” and these must not be forgotten, Savvin says; but at the same time, it must not be forgotten that many of these successes were a repetition of the successes European states achieved at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries.

            Those earlier successes, Savvin points out, led people at that time to argue that war was impossible and that the 20^th century would be one long flourishing course of development with everyone experiencing greater social well-being and international peace.  They simply could not imagine the alternative which was what World War I proved to be.

            That conflict not only resulted in the disintegration of the three continental empires of Europe; it opened the way to the rise of socialism, from Bolshevism to more moderate forms, and that in turn very quickly generated a reaction in the form of fascism, thus sparking “a systemic crisis” for both democracies and liberal ideas.

            “In the 1920s and 1930s, this crisis appeared to be self-evident for the majority of Europeans,” Savvin continues. But today, few want to acknowledge that a similar crisis has arisen and carries with it the threat of an outcome even more frightening than the second world war.

            After World War II, the US by occupation and by influence promoted democracy and liberal values in Western Europe; and after 1989 and 1991, it did the same without occupation further east.  But few paid attention to two problems: democracy and liberal values did not arise naturally but were introduced from the outside and the causes for attacks on both remained largely in place and are now reemerging with new force.

            And as a result, he argues, a situation is emerging in the world and in particular in Europe which “in many respects recalls that of the 20s of the last century.”  He lists the following:

·         “The system of international relations and hence of international security looks ever more archaic.”

·         “The inviolability of European borders already has become something extremely doubtful.”

·         “In the European Union and in the first place Germany, ever more marked is becoming the trend toward ‘constructive dialogue’ with the Kremlin.”

·         “In civil society and among the political elite of the United States the trend toward isolationism is becoming ever more obvious.”

·         “The crisis of elites is spreading across the world, beginning in the US, continuing in the European Union and ending on the neo-Soviet regimes in the space of the former USSR and communist China.”

·         “The systemic crisis in the Chinese Peoples Republic has led to the establishment of the personal dictatorship of Xi.”

·         “The relatively high probability of foreign aggression from the side of the neo-Soviet regime of the Russian Federation is also the result of these same causes.”

·         And “there has been a radicalization of political life in the EU and the US,” with both the left and the right gaining in strength and ever less space left for liberals in the classic sense.

What makes this all the more disturbing, Savvin says, is that the US is no longer ready and willing to spread democracy and liberalism but in fact is infected by many of the same problems that infect others. Thus, there won’t be anyone this time around to “reinstall Christian democracy after the latest upsurge of socialism.”

Many will dismiss his argument, the Russian conservative says, by pointing the success of democracy in India and South Korea.  But they need to remember that “personal freedom, freedom of speech, political pluralism and all the rest … are not things in themselves. They are the product of the development of Christian civilization,” and more specifically, its Protestant variant.

 “In 1945, the American authorities, who identified with Christian civilization, understood this very well. And they supported the model of Christian democracy in West Germany” and elsewhere.  But liberal democracy brought from outside may not survive for long if it does not rest on a similar culture.

Such a system “begins to function successfully where there is a complex return to Christian civilizational values.” Where such a return is impossible, the future of liberal democracy cannot be and has not been promising, Savvin suggests. And that too recalls the 1920s.

“It is possible of course to hope that now all will be different” than it was in the 1920s, Savvinn concludes. “But that is not the wisest” position to adopt. And thus this historical repetition is truly frightening because one player who did so much in the 1940s and thereafter has decided no longer to play that role.