Last Sunday, German Russia historian Karl Schlögel received the prestigious Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels in Frankfurt. I followed that ceremony on television because I admire the laureate for the philosophical way in which he takes you through Eastern European, Ukrainian and Russian history. For example, like an archaeologist he ‘reads’ cities, landscapes and city maps. He shows you that the most diverse events coexist and it is impossible to give a consistent picture of the past.
Several times that morning, tears streamed down my cheeks during Schlögel’s acceptance speech. His words were those of a disillusioned man who no longer wants anything to do with Russia since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Schlögel confronted his audience with, among other things, that many want peace, but few want to fight for it, thus demonstrating the moral bankruptcy of the West. He also said that Germany had many RussianVersteher matters, but that few understand anything about Russia.
In her laudatio, the Ukrainian-German writer Katya Petrovskaya movingly related how, on the day of the Russian invasion, she had seen Schlögel standing alone and in tears on Berlin’s Bebelsplatz, with a Ukrainian flag wrapped around him. A person could not be more disappointed.
On the occasion of Schlögel’s honoring, a collection of essays, speeches and lectures by him was published, entitled Auf der Sandbank der Zeit. Der Historiker als Chronist der Gegenwart. You can read that book as a summary of everything he has said and written since 2022 about both the Russian-Ukrainian war and the West’s cautious, cowardly attitude toward Putin. He also not only criticizes Putin as the instigator of that war, but also blames the entire Russian people for its passivity and tacit acceptance of that violence. That in itself is not so strange, as I have experienced myself. For example, I regularly speak to Russians who still dream of the Russian empire.
Schlögel argues against this. In his book he almost feels guilty that he has focused his entire academic life on Russia and neglected Ukraine. On the map, that country was even a white spot for him until 2022. Since then he has paid off that guilt by writing about Ukraine and traveling the country from east to west with his archaeological approach.
One of the articles in Auf der Sandbank der Zeit is dedicated to ‘Putinism’, a term coined by Schlögel. He treats it as a new phenomenon, which has come into its own in an ideal way through populism and inciting social media. Not only do you recognize the mechanisms of fascism, Stalinism and the mafia, but also the constant undermining of the truth by stating that something is both somewhat true and somewhat false. This is precisely what prompted Katya Petrovskaya to state in her laudatio that the war in Ukraine becomes more and more unreal the longer it lasts.
According to Schlögel, sowing fear is Putin’s most important weapon. He always wins when Europe yields to his blackmail practices. The world be warned.
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