Introductory Essay Still in the Face of War: On Framing Political Realities Anew
Abstract: A great war changes the world. Fighting the temptation to declare it part of normality, this introduction describes three ‘Western’ fallacies which account for the Western perception of a unilateral war of aggression in Europe as unpredictable and shocking. These delusions are the belief that the world is not merely global but cosmopolitan, that the world is on the threshold of perpetual peace, and that there is a widespread trend towards non-violent social relations. We describe the one-sided philosophical motives behind these expectations, and contrast these with the prevalent social motives to nationalism, a hidden compulsion to war, and a persistent habitual cruelty, all of which are found in present Russia or other autocracies. The underlying interest in these analyses is less about deciphering the aggressor than about working towards the question of whether the often-argued thesis of modernisation is more than fiction.
Keywords: cosmopolitanism, nationalism, perpetual peace, decline of violence, European politics, Ukraine war, Putinism, Stalinism, post-Soviet history.
Introduction
Several impressions of what had been lived through during the years before 1949 made its way into the famous book which Orwell published on this date, 1984. To begin with, a description of a totalitarian system in which the past is continually rewritten according to the needs of the day. A separate institution, the ‘Ministry of Truth’, is involved in destroying disturbing documents of the past and replacing them with currently opportune ones. Moreover, there is a permanent state of war between several power blocs. News of the war is part of normal everyday life and is merged with its barren state. Finally, there are ‘Big Brother’ and the ‘Thought Police’ holding the population in a smothering embrace. Orwell used the two totalitarian regimes of his times as models when he wrote his novel, but,
Thanks to Stefan Auer, Rüdiger Bittner, Julian Culp, Michael Mousseau, Martin Seel and Ursula Wolf for their comments.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111183343-001
Anton Leist and Rolf Zimmermann
out of a kind of love-hate relationship, his focus ended up being more on Stalinism than the German dictatorship. Consequently, the book was banned in the German Democratic Republic and in the Soviet Union. Thought of as a dark satire in the West within the blooming optimism of the immediate post-war period, Orwell’s dystopia keeps catching up with the present, now more than ever.
Echoing Orwell’s book, the Ukraine war has increasingly become part of the daily routine in Western democracies, broken only when domestic rows in the Western democracies ignite over the extent of aid to be given to Ukraine or when atrocities are committed, such as the Bucha massacre or the destruction of a major dam. World public opinion has become accustomed to the permanent terrorization of the civilian population by Russian missiles as a ‘normal’ part of the war. While the disputes about ‘collateral damage’ to the Serbian population during the NATO war against Serbia were never ending, this term has not surfaced even once in relation to the Ukraine war. The fact that the war is being intentionally waged on a civilian population that is denied its national, ethnic, and geopolitical existence has become as commonplace as the blatant lies and misrepresentations. Within Western democracies, Russian disinformation resonates with the anti-democratic tendencies as much as the ambiguous pacifist outcry against the Western military and in favour of ‘peace’ negotiations at Ukraine’s expense.
In official political discourse, in Germany, Chancellor Scholz rightly spoke of a ‘turn of the times’ at the outbreak of the war. And indeed, in German politics, for example, a gradually increasing rethinking of the necessity to boost military spending for defence has begun. The facts need not be discussed in detail here, but there has been a distinct change in military politics in USA, Europe, and NATO. A turning point, if this really is one, has many dimensions, and among these the purely factual events are the easiest to identify, as they are on everyone’s lips every day. Of greater significance, because of their pervasiveness, are the often-unnoticed cultural changes which, precisely because of their hidden nature, have effects in the long term. The ‘nothing new in the East’ habituation to the never-ending presence of distant war due to an otherwise unaffected daily life with its holidays and festivities is still less the perplexing observation. In contrast to the massive public protests against the Vietnam War, it is remarkable that demonstrations against the aggressor, Russia, remain decidedly few in number. This is probably less due to the rational consideration that the aggressor will be immune to such messages than to a mixture of disinterest, convenience, confusion of opinion, and (in Germany) ‘Querdenken’. In addition to this, there was the hesitant willingness on the part of German authorities to support Ukraine in the early phase of the war. It is no less proof of the persistence of habitual patterns of thought and interests, even though the geopolitical power shifts under way
herald dramatic changes in the future. Surprisingly, Orwell’s tripartite division into Oceania (Europe and the USA), Eurasia (Russia) and East Asia (China, India) still describes the shape of international relations and politics today.
European politicians and academics, with few but now significant exceptions, feared the war against Ukraine as imminent and to be avoided at all costs, but did not actually foresee it. They could not grasp that it would actually break out until the absolutely very last moment. If one assumes that ‘Europe’ or the ‘West’ (Oceania) intended to prevent such a war even at great cost to themselves, then the West has failed. Even now two years into the war, the reasons for this failure and the extent of incomprehension have not been adequately met. The focus should be on the contrast between the political systems of the West and Russia, surrounded by the changing systems of Asia, Africa, and South America. The work of the next few years should be aimed at understanding the shifts of power currently beginning in these systems and to predict future trends.
In a narrower sense, it is first of all a matter of highlighting some particularly striking differences in the political characteristics and the associated cultural aspects on the part of the Western democracies and Eastern countries, some manifestly autocratic, some tendentially so. In doing so, we attempt to identify possible focal points for research and discussion, some of which will be taken up and further explored in the present volume. In emphasising areas of typical blindness regarding the Russian development towards and into the war, we identify three focal points, which we call the cosmopolitan delusion, the perpetual peace delusion, and the decline-of-violence-delusion. These labels are admittedly polemic and are meant to describe a Candide-like expectation towards a glossy worldwide future enticing to many Western thinkers since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. Through Western eyes the future was seen as becoming ever more non-nationalist, peace-oriented, and free of violence. Developments brewing on the horizon from 2010 to 2022 were parenthesized or explained away. There are, of course, other developments blocked out during this time, the accelerating climate change being the most important one. But as we stand helplessly in front of the war, these three points strongly demand our attention.
It is obvious that these three beliefs are accompanied by numerous hypotheses about the role of the economy, the possibility of democracies, the importance of religions, the intervention of cultural traditions, and that behind them there is a more or less clear vision of an evolutionary development. These three delusions and the assumptions propping them up form parts of a comprehensively fantasised overall view of the future, which will be questioned severely and revised in light of the Ukraine war. It is, of course, impossible to tackle this issue as it deserves. Rather, we narrow our focus on the possible revision of political theories,
Anton Leist and Rolf Zimmermann
accompanied by the thoughts on possible new questions they raise. If there is, however, a common teaching behind the necessity of turning back from the all too optimistic bright lit upland seen in the 1990s, it is the central, comprehensive interest in the problem of the interrelation of socio-political identity and security. We will try to argue that this problem rears its head behind the renewed tendencies towards nationalism, peace or war, and a new liking for violence.
The Cosmopolitan Delusion
.
The Rationalist Offer
With the exception in the 18th century, nationalism has not been and continues not to be a favourite of intellectuals. During WW II, Hannah Arendt believed nationalism had finally proven its unsuitability and nations should be replaced by federations. There is no such thing as an ethnically ‘pure’ nation: aren’t virtually all nations ethnic hybrids?1 Today, even academic discussions of nations, national consciousness and nationalism is easily subject to moral suspicion when the according terms are used — especially in Germany. The moral climate of the use of terms is strongly influenced by historical experience and social interests. Internationally, however, contrasts and disagreements prevail. Terminologically, it has become common to use ‘patriotism’ positively and ‘nationalism’ negatively, without a clear difference in content.2 A purely terminological adjustment, which merely intuitively classifies the supposedly beneficial qualities under ‘patriotism’ and the threatening ones under ‘nationalism’ — is obviously not enough. Rather, it is necessary to go back to the ambivalent psychological potentials that are possibly just as inherent in patriotism as in nationalism. The fact that patriotism, too, when understood as a bond to a ‘fatherland’, entails not
1 Arendt had a highly historical contextual view on nations and nationalism. She approved of them as liberatory sources against imperialism and totalitarianism but thought the political potential of the nation state to be outdated by migratory developments. Her remarks on nationalism are widely spread within her oeuvre but see 1951/1966, Chs. 8–9; 1963. Helpful Canovan 1999. 2 Mitterrand: “Nationalism is war” (1995); Macron: “Patriotism is the opposite of nationalism” (2018); (German Federal President) Steinmeier: “Nationalism is ideological poison” (2019). But why is patriotism not a kind of nationalism? In contrast, historical research points out that no clear division of the two orientations is tenable, but at best an ideal-type definition. In summary: Jansen and Borggräfe 2020, 18–20. In the following we resist a derogatory predefinition of nationalism a priori. All depends on its particular manifestation. This terminological neutrality is also congruent with the newer philosophical debate about liberal nationalism, referred to below.
only moral joys but also moral hardships, is shown by the necessary exclusion of non-patriots. Inclusion is not possible without exclusion, and a society without exclusion is no society at all.
Among political ideologies, nationalism has a peculiarity. Socialism and liberalism are general-minded doctrines, they are formed on general, transferable values and views — albeit to be realised in each individual country and its political institutions. Nationalism, on the other hand, tends to distinguish the specific unity of a particular nation with self-government and a state above all others. Depending on how the potential citizen relates to this unit, the national state, identification with the value of the specific nation, or its embodiment as a state predominates. In the struggles for liberty of the 18th century, the achievement of freedom carried national identity and the formation of the state. In the imperialist and colonial wars of the 19th century, the state increasingly dominated freedom and other values. If at first the nation state was a kind of medium of a particular collective freedom, then the nation state turned into a medium of collective devotion and began to dominate the universal values, i.e. freedom and solidarity. The problem with nationalism (if this sounds one-sided: national consciousness) is that on the one hand it hardly can be dispensed with as a driving force of freedom and solidarity, on the other hand it tends to break through and in the end to restrict these values. Freedom and solidarity then open the way to terror and cruelty, as was amply experienced in German history.3
Regarding democracies being founded nationally, the unlikeliness of their realisation can also be described as two forces fighting with each other. On the one hand, there is the emotional attachment to a particular historical and cultural collective among members in sometimes very different ways and to varying degrees. This is the particularist basis of the state, in the modern era of democracy. Alongside this, there is a consciousness of moral principles, usually in the form of widespread intuitions, providing the basis of democracy itself. These principles have freedom and equality at their core and are considered universal in this. An obvious conflict between these two foundations of democracy, particularist devotion and universalist value, is thus given.
Please note that this conflict is visible in real societies and is not only being fought out by intellectuals on a purely theoretical level. By articulating and trying to deal with the conflict, intellectuals react to contemporary tendencies in society, although they try to read the signs in different ways and with some bias. One, from our point of view, a simplified reading lies in the ‘rationalist offer’, with
3 This is a simplified statement. For the dissolving of nationalism in imperialism and at the end totalitarianism see Arendt 1951/1966.
Anton Leist and Rolf Zimmermann
which it is assumed that the particular attachment to a culture, a history, a territory could be, as it were, rationalistically condensed to an ideal object: the state’s constitution. The best-known version of this proposition today comes from German debate, and in particular from Jürgen Habermas under the now well-entrenched label of ‘constitutional patriotism’. We will first describe the difficulties of this solution, which follows the Kantian school, after which, we will point to alternatives of universal morality not becoming the adversary of national culture. It should be noted right away that the ‘rationalist offer’ in response to nationalism today is not to be reduced to constitutional patriotism. The expectation that any sense of nationalism should be dissolved into a ‘morally correct’ cosmopolitanism has become generally widespread in Europe and the Western world in recent decades (see Brown and Held (eds.) 2010). For Germany especially, but for Europe in general (perhaps except for England), it might be said that the wars of the 20th century have contributed to the fact that there is no longer a serious intellectual nationalism nor a sophisticated political conservatism. A conscious, comprehensive, and considered defence of the historically evolved polity within its borders for the purpose of its preservation is not only virtually inexistent today, but also difficult to imagine.4 The two most pressing reasons, apart from the burdens of history as in the case of Germany, have been cited for decades: globalisation and migration. In the 1980s, they were seen as harbingers of cosmopolitanism; nowadays, they are evidence of backsliding into neo-nationalism.
The fact that globalisation, as the uncontrollable expansion of national markets into the world market, is an ongoing development with no foreseeable end, is now an everyday experience. Thirty years ago, more than a few predicted that the division of national states would increasingly dissolve and that supranational units, in a dystopian reading also private-capitalist organisations, would take their place. However, real developments have demonstrated the opposite to be the case. All over the world, we have witnessed the disintegration of national units of former multi-ethnic states (Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia) rather than the formation of new ones. The Covid pandemic recently demonstrated the surprisingly quick readiness of individual states to seal themselves off from neighbours and take their own security measures at the expense of others. In emergencies, they act according to old patterns of national security,
4 This even applies to England, where the philosopher Roger Scruton, as a famously programmatic conservative philosopher, was only gradually recognised as a public figure against considerable resistance. For Scruton on the importance of nation see Scruton 1990, Ch. 28. For the crisis of conservatism see Biebricher 2023. The flip side of this moral containment are the populist counter-movements spreading and growing extensively.
contrary to the style of the newly won international solidarity following Europe’s example. Today’s unregulated, chaotic, and threatening process of globalisation resembles the pandemic more than was announced by the libertarian optimists in the 20th century: analogously to the pandemic emergency, individual states are thinking in terms of an emergency plan to preserve their own economies. The national economic support plans in the West prove once again that economic nationalism works close behind military security cooperation.
Globalisation has not dissolved national structures but has contributed to strengthening them. They are further bolstered by migration, which has become an ongoing issue. Migration is now divided into the immigration of potentially skilled workers necessary to maintain production sites, undesirable migrants of affluence, and those seeking help in their fight for survival. The number of immigrants belonging to the last two categories especially will rise as climate change continues and civil wars and famines increase. It is doubtful whether official Europe will be able to muster the necessary unity for this rush in view of the national discord at home, and in any case, under the existing distribution pressure, the national units will not become weaker, but stronger.
Based on these two predicted near-future developments, which are only touched upon here, the prognosis of an increased importance of the nation and nationalism seems plausible. Those who predicted a cosmopolitan development at the beginning of globalisation based their predictions on the singularly positive effects of increasing traffic, communication, and exchange between cultures. However, to conclude a peaceful development from such effects alone was not only unduly optimistic, but historically uninformed. The First World War followed an unusual increase in world trade, the Peloponnesian War broke out at a period of maximum expansion of the Athenian economy. Likewise, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not economically rational. Human exchange is always ambivalent and allows destruction to follow as well as cooperation. Admittedly, such an open development can be interpreted in two ways, against or in favour of nationalism. Important European thinkers after 1945 have tended to stress the first interpretation.
Following Arendt and, even prior, Jaspers, Habermas attempted to pave a cosmopolitan road out of the accelerating developments in Germany. Since the 1980s, he set about drafting a new version of Kant’s ‘Weltbürgerbund’.5 A basic idea in Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795) was that republics must spread their universalistic law-orientation not only internally but also externally to exist as such. This is why in Kant’s work the draft of a world-encompassing peace order
5 Arendt 1963; Jaspers 1947; Habermas 1990; 1996; 1998; 2004; Müller 2007.
Anton Leist and Rolf Zimmermann
accompanies the philosophy of law, which deals with the legally ordered relations within. Similarly, Habermas’s plea for constitutional patriotism is not conceived in isolation as a political admonition to his German fellow citizens, but as a cosmopolitan segment in an updated Kantian design, guided by the same idea of potentially worldwide democracy.
Habermas is aware that, from the philosopher’s point of view, it is an issue of deciding, in the relationship between national interest and international law, or, as he himself puts it, the question of the ‘socio-ontological’ primacy between the two (2004, 131, 138, 148), whether national special interests or transnational law has the greater force. In his arguments on democracy and constitutional law, both the presumed mutual binding of citizens’ will and citizens’ rights internally and popular sovereignty and human rights externally, in short, the will and the ought, interests and rights play a key role. In doing so, Habermas is aware that Kant’s original answers to precisely these internally divided pairs cannot simply be repeated today, such as the reference to a normatively substantial reason or, in connection to this, a linearly proceeding history. Of course, while Habermas has analytically dissected the claim in this way, this does not mean that he has resolved the question satisfactorily. His scattered attempts make use of various cues: the introduction and, soberly viewed, mere stipulation of an ‘equiprimordiality’ of will and law, the ‘discourse-ethical’ proof of a basic equality among citizens, Kant’s ‘formally’ conceived concept of morally loaded autonomy.6 None of these references is sufficient in itself to provide compelling support for the hope that collective will or interest might happily adjust itself under universal right, not nationally and certainly not internationally.7 More generally speaking, one can fundamentally doubt whether Habermas’s project to introduce the principles of
6 “The sought-after internal connection between human rights and popular sovereignty then consists in the fact that human rights institutionalise the conditions of communication for the rational formation of political will.” (1998, 175) Habermas first formulates the ‘internal connection’ mentioned here as the ‘equiprimordiality’ of private and public autonomy, morality, and law, in Between Facts and Norms, Ch. 3. He repeatedly falls back on it as an axiom of democracy in which strong demands of citizen participation are by way of logic enclosed within the phenomena (will, right) themselves. See also 1990, 637, 641; 1996b, 299; 1998, 175–176.
7 For a more detailed critique of Habermas, see Canovan 2000; Laborde 2002; Breda 2004. For a defense, see Müller 2007. Auer 2022, 47–50 comments on the transnational expansion Habermas suggested for his concept, offering it as a European constitutional identity (Habermas 2012). This contradicts the original motive based in the specifically German past, which is certainly not transferrable to the European neighbors, having suffered under Nazi Germany. What Habermas defends is, ironically subverting his own intention, a typical German moralistic nationalism.
the rule of law independently of any historical legal order and any concrete form of institutionalization (Habermas 1992, Ch. 4) promises success at all.
Certainly, after the collapse of the multi-ethnic empires, many individual nations did indeed develop as freedom movements. This is true for many former Soviet republics, not least Ukraine. All other things being equal, people often vote for freedom and against oppression. But what freedom and oppression mean for real people is not easily reduced to a conceptual core, as in Habermas’ rationalist analysis, but is always embedded in mythologies, traditions, and ideologies, such as nationalism. Popular sovereignty can develop in connection with the three basic French values — liberté, égalité, fraternité — but it can also unfold along the plan of a ‘Greater Serbian Empire’. There is, contrary to Kant and Habermas, no logic deeply implanted in human thought that would make one or the other more likely. There are only contingent historical circumstances that tend to favour one development or the other among the available human drives. If there were to be something like a consistent logic at all, it would not be normative, but based on behavioural tendencies in contingent contexts. To look at these more closely, we need to separate the various motives and reasons in favour of nationalism.
. Cultural and Political Nationalism: A Dual Solution
The connection between the general and the particular in nationalism is of increased explosiveness for a democracy, which is why numerous philosophers have devoted themselves extensively to it in normative terms for some years. Due to the richness of detail, this debate can only be touched upon here in a cursory manner.8 Although philosophers scramble in their arguments along the most general meaning of their concepts, it goes unnoticed that they are often guided by the filters of their surroundings. It is therefore unsurprising that this literature focuses on typical problems of primarily Western societies, such as immigration, secession, multiculturalism, the protection of minorities, or coming to terms with a nationalist past. In contrast, in view of the Ukraine war, we are here primarily interested in a side of nationalism that had its historical echo in the 1930s and in the resurgence of genocides after the collapse of Yugoslavia: why and when does nationalism become murderous, what are the transitions to it and how can they
8 Not coincidentally, participants include nationals from countries with multi-ethnic conflicts, such as Israel (Tamir 1993; 2019; Gans 2003; Margalit and Raz 1990) or Canada (Moore 2001; Kymlicka 1991; 1995). See also Miller 1995; Miller and Ali 2014 and Auer 2004 for Central Europe. The field of discussion is broader than these names might suggest. See also the keyword Nationalism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Anton Leist and Rolf Zimmermann
be blocked or reversed? Since Western philosophers in the present debate mostly argue about the possibility of a ‘liberal nationalism’, their debate overlaps with interests in the quandaries of situation in Ukraine — uneasily including both nationalism and democracy.9
As a rough overview of these lines of discussion, it is helpful to distinguish the main variants based on the characteristic elements providing motivational powers of nationalism. These elements are: ancestry, history, culture, institutions, and territory. Clearly, these categories overlap to some extent. A shared ancestry is usually the subject of a shared history, and a shared history is usually accompanied by a shared culture. However, as evidenced by the Jewish diaspora before 1948, having a distinct history and culture does not entail settling in a territory with discrete boundaries. The great number and complexity of most of these elements show why nationalism is anything but a simple subject.
Hence, the following main types of nationalism can be distinguished: – ethnic nationalism (descent, ancestry), – cultural nationalism (culture, territory), – republican/political nationalism (history, institutions, territory).
This tripartite division may explain why pro-arguments worth considering tend to pertain to cultural nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is hardly credible today. It is no longer comprehensible why the genetic descent of individuals over longer periods of time, such as in the case of groups that emigrated centuries ago, should constitute a valid reason for national belonging, without further cultural or political commonalities.10 This ideology assumes an organic and intrinsically valuable notion of a ‘people’, which is no longer convincing (due to widespread normative individualism). Nevertheless, it was precisely this kind of nationalism that led to
9 The title of Gans 2003 is programmatic for the Western debate on nationalism: The Limits of Nationalism. Of course, the purely normative view of the philosophers (as, for example, Gans’ book) is to some extent ignorant to the empirical potentials and tendencies of nationalism, most often only anecdotally discussed by philosophers.
10 A phenomenon that needs to be distinguished from ethnic nationalism is biological racism in the Nazi sense. It is from the start not a kind of nationalism, as it purports cover whole continents. Racist-based antisemitism is also in opposition with cultural nationalism and ethnic nationalism, if it were coherent. Critics of cultural nationalism like Habermas regularly subsume the first two categories under the label ‘ethno-cultural’. And indeed, ‘culture’ invites an endless number of different aspects. And whether some, like the feeling of responsibility for the past, are good or bad needs to be proved separately. But ethnic commonalities should not be equated with cultural commonalities. If Israel, for example, is ethnically nationalist beyond cultural commonalities, it is more a problematic fiction than something historically real. Its biblical primordial society is literary fiction, if seen non-religiously from outside.
the genocide of 8,000 men in Srebrenica as recently as in 1995, an event for which Serbian society today is still far from appreciating properly.11 The question of how the underlying organic national ideology can be overcome is also important for Russia.
Republican nationalism is, in contrast, a kind of particularised constitutional patriotism, which imposes a heavy burden on its members by binding them to history. A German who has lived through the development of Germany in the 20th century may be pleased with his state at the end of the century and develop a feeling of loyalty towards it. Engaging with this same history purely in emotionally distanced recollection does not instil a comparable feeling of loyalty. But that is precisely the situation the present generation finds itself in, not to speak of the immigrants trying to assimilate into German society. This nationalism tends therefore to fall back on the rationalist offer, that is, on the demand of purely intellectual identifications imposed on citizens by rationalist thinkers. Admittedly, it would be premature to completely ignore political nationalism, if based primarily on the impression of history, as even if cultural idiosyncrasies are usually a condition for national feeling and nation-building, their extent does not always match the weight that the political will for national self-determination can assume. Ireland/Northern Ireland, Canada/USA, and Switzerland are the usual examples used to illustrate this.12 In these pairs the political will towards autonomy is not corresponded by cultural differences or harmonies.
Distinguishing between cultural and political identity is useful to do justice independently both to cultural reasons for national cohesion and a historically evolved political will, as pointed out by Margaret Moore (1999). Cultural identity is important and often provides strong reasons for belonging to a nation, but as shown in the cases just mentioned it does not always do so alone. National unity also requires affirmative political agreement. Such unity may or may not be democratic. It may or may not arise from the circumstances of history. It may be traditional or innovative. In our view, what lies at the basis of the political decision is, rather than a homogeneity of moral convictions, the expectation, and usually experience, of collective self-identification, self-assertion, security, and well-being.
11 See the reports on Bosnia at intervals of about 20 years in Ignatieff 1993; 1998; 2017. Of course, this is not meant to accuse Serbians one-sidedly of not confronting the past. Croatians’ way of coping with the past may also be less than ideal.
12 Arguing with Switzerland is not unproblematic, since it is a small and special country that has developed over centuries. Switzerland illustrates a special situation where three cultures are held together primarily by political will. Ticino and Romandie are culturally closer to northern Italy and to France than to German-speaking Switzerland. This does not diminish their nationalist role within the Swiss Confederation, however.
Anton Leist and Rolf Zimmermann
For example, a Canadian living in Quebec City who speaks French better than English will answer the question ‘Where do you come from?’ with the name of the city. If they are asked ‘What is your nation?’ they would answer ‘Canada’, provided they are not a radical separatist refusing to identify with the Canadian nation. If asked why they prefer their Canadian national identification to that with a separate nation of the province of Quebec, they will point to the advantages of living in an overall secure country granting her a better quality of life. In nationbuilding, then, various needs come into play that are often sweepingly subsumed under ‘culture’ or ‘politics’. In order to gain a better understanding of the matter, it seems necessary to identify the motives behind these labels more precisely.
‘Culture’ comprises language and social mores, family and religion, politics and morality, art, science, and work.13 Attempting to justify the meaning of national unity using a concept so broad will only result in platitudes. It is better to distinguish language and social mores, family structure and religion as culture — all of them — capable of geopolitical particularity in contrast to politics and morality, the latter tending to be universal. It is more realistic to understand politics, as the second element in a dual view, alongside and before moral demands as forms of rational considerations, in particular the need of national self-identification in combination with interests in security and the welfare gain of cooperation. The desire for cultural homogeneity in language and customs and the interest in personal security and recognition are then put at second place, in a simplified but perhaps still informative manner. The functional demand of these dual elements is clear: the two needs of cultural embedding and political self-definition in light of security and cooperation are always under pressure to in mutual alignment.
Assuming this dual condition for nations, and not simply inferring national unity from cultural homogeneity as many cultural nationalists do, seems necessary because of observations also referred to by Moore. Conflicts and wars among culturally close groups are not only possible but are often more relentless than those between groups which are culturally different. The American Civil War is a famous case in point, the cultural similarities among combatants being stronger than the differences. Also, the three ethnic groups — Serbs, Croats, Bosnians — in the 1992–1995 Bosnian War were divided by religion, but having been members of communist Yugoslavia for decades, their religious differences were not too significant to them and they largely shared a common way of life otherwise,
13 This list moves from the nationally specific to the general. Science and labour are increasingly internationalised in the era of globalisation.
including a common language.14 English-speaking Canada has more in common culturally with the US than with French Quebec. Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, but the Republic of Ireland is not, without linguistic differences being a decisive factor.
These examples do not suggest renouncing the importance of cultural identity. This identity, developed over time, is, collectively and personally, of a relevance which cannot be overestimated. Collective and personal identities are characterised by an unusual inertia, collectively over many generations, individually most often extending to a whole life. National identities are not easily changed, as can be observed in the case of immigrants, and collective experiences are held on to for long periods of history. Ireland was excluded from British nation-building in the 17th and 18th centuries and retains its emotional national autonomy from the UK to this day. Even today, after 30 years, the ‘Bosnian Bosnians’ cannot live together with the ‘Serb Bosnians’ in Srebrenica: genocide is not easily overcome. Present and future German generations do have some responsibility (to be distinguished from guilt) for the Holocaust, unlike the French or the Italians, who have other responsibilities to face up to (Vichy regime/collaboration, Mussolini/fascism). The conclusion is this: on the one hand, it is necessary to distinguish between cultural and political identity, on the other hand, there is a relationship between them that is difficult to grasp if one wants to do justice to the diversity of real-world instances of national consciousness.
In normative terms, there is no clear principle at hand that unconditionally translates cultural homogeneity into the political right to national autonomy and a national state. Instead, we must reckon with two prima facie principles that need to be in equilibrium in particular cases: a prima facie claim to national autonomy based on cultural homogeneity, and one based on political self-identification with implications for security-guaranteeing unification.15 The two are not necessarily in harmony with one another and can be in contradiction. Political unification may conflict with a lack of cultural homogeneity and, if democratic,
14 Brilliantly reported by Ignatieff 1998 and intriguingly explained by help of Freud’s insight of a ‘The Narcissism of Minor Differences’. See also below.
15 Thus formulated, political self-identification is more basic than security, or security is dependent on political beliefs. Alternatively, the need for security would under apt circumstances motivate political self-identification. Both alternatives become more complicated if related to moral recognition, in the sense of the recognition in democratic principles. Here again social recognition is the more basic need, interlinked with both political self-identification and security, structuring this using democratic principles which historically arrive at a later stage. We think that the ratios between these elements must be decided empirically, something which lies outside our scope here.
Anton Leist and Rolf Zimmermann
will probably not come about. But this is not guaranteed. Conversely, political agreement could co-occur with cultural heterogeneity, but it may or may not be democratic. These are always individual cases where special circumstances of history, the number of ethnic groups, etc. play a role. Under democratic conditions, cultural rights must be respected, which does not necessarily mean state autonomy.
Can a normative priority of political unification over cultural unification be inferred from this dual answer? If most people were interest-guided actors and therefore security and cooperative gain had priority, then this would be possible. But since most people are culturally shaped and the corresponding rational expectation is unrealistic, neither priority applies, nor should it be normatively postulated. It would be even less plausible to assume the actor model of constitutional patriotism, according to which patriots would be primarily motivated by democratic loyalty to the law. Here again cultural sympathies and interests in security and well-being may dominate beliefs in basic democratic principles, if they are meant to supervene on these interests. The only normative requirement to be drawn from the argument via cultural and political identity is this: the rights to culture and political unification must be brought into an appropriate relationship — whereby the fact itself of democratic agreement is not the final seal of appropriateness. There is no overarching normative solution to this opposition besides the one in real politics.
. Ukrainian Nation-Building and Russian National Imperialism
How does the two-tier analysis of nationalism apply to Ukraine and Russia? Again, this is of course a large topic and all we can do here is make some remarks on the extent to which nation-building in Ukraine is legitimately under way, even if lacking a long-term seal of being democratic. Nationalism in Russia is falling back onto an ethnic-cultural level renewing a historical imperialist tradition. A view on both these countries does not seem to require a rationalist point of view represented by constitutional patriotism, rather, it cries out for a realist perspective of cultural peculiarities covered by political unity. That Ukraine is a nation may seem obvious to the legal observer since there was an internationally recognized foundation of the state in 1991. But since Russia argues ethnically and culturally in favour of its war against Ukraine, it is not superfluous to reject the arguments based on these pre-legal and pre-political premises.
It seems important to take notice of a detailed history of Ukraine and the developments of nation-building outlined in the work of the historian Serhii Plokhy.
We confine ourselves to this reference because it can serve as a guideline for arguments in favour of Ukraine as a people with an identity of their own. To be sure, these arguments are suited only to those open to recognising the traditions and history of Ukraine as a people disposed to find nationhood.
As to Ukrainian culture, it is significant that Ukrainian culture has always existed in a common space with other cultures and had to come to terms with them early on. Thus, the ability of Ukrainian society to transcend internal and external borders and to cope with the identities they created can be grasped as a main feature of Ukraine’s history (Plokhy 2022, 29).16 Thus, the process of seeking Ukrainian nationhood must be seen against the background of a cultural diversity which conflicts with a model of Russian identity based on a common cultural homogeneity. Plokhy explains that, from its beginnings in the 19th century, the Ukrainian nation project has revolved around the Ukrainian language and culture, while also allowing for other languages and cultures. A telling example is the famous poet Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) and his writings in Russian, who is nonetheless considered by many to be the spiritual father of the Ukrainian nation and who became an iconic figure of the Maidan. Post-Soviet Ukraine promoted and normalised bilingualism and multiculturalism, thereby permitting the integration of people with different ethnic and religious backgrounds.
The Maidan-revolution and the subsequent military actions taken by Russia induced a geopolitical change in Ukrainian society. The proportion of Ukrainians viewing Russia positively fell from 80 per cent in January 2014 to less than 50 per cent in September of the same year. In November, 64 per cent of respondents supported Ukraine’s accession to the European Union (up from 39 per cent in November 2013); while only one third of Ukrainians were in favour of joining NATO in April 2014, more than half wanted to join in November 2014.
As a result, Russian hopes of winning support among ethnic Russians or Russian-speaking Ukrainians for their aggressive policies since 2014 were dashed. The invasion of 2022 failed to motivate ethnic Russians or Russian speaking Ukrainians to welcome the aggressors. Even in cities like Kherson or Melitopol where Russian speakers constitute the majority, the inhabitants confronted the Russian tanks brandishing the Ukrainian flag (Plokhy 2022, 502, 505). The extent to which this holds true for the eastern part of Ukraine may be still unclear, but in all probability a culturally motivated separation in favour of Russia only seems attractive for a minority. The elections held under Russian occupation are no serious evidence of a political decision in favour of national affiliation with Russia.
16 Our free translation. We use the German edition because of its latest additions (English editions: 2015, 2021).
Anton Leist and Rolf Zimmermann
As far as Ukraine as a whole is concerned, the Russian onslaught has committed the rest to paper over the cultural differences between the west and east of the country and united a population in a defensive struggle against a hated enemy. The Schmittian (Simmel, Coser) wisdom of national unity through an external enemy finds clear support here. In this case, political will dominates cultural differences, in so far as they exist.
Regardless of how the historically demonstrable cultural entanglements between Russia and Ukraine may be assessed, a collective identity has developed in Ukraine which has produced, against the backdrop of language, history, and religion, a social community of recognition based on its own demarcated territory. The Russian argument that overarching ethnic commonalities are more important than cultural differentiation with political consequences can no longer hold. In this respect, the international objection to the Russian incursion cannot only be justified in legal terms. Rather, Russia’s argumentation, insofar as it is nationalistic, can be countered on the same level; Russia’s ethnic nationalism is contrasted with Ukraine’s cultural nationalism. To what extent it is based on democratic principles beyond that one cannot objectively say under the current war conditions.
Even if Russian nationalism appeals to ethnic resources and seeks to integrate them into a common historical community of destiny between Russians and Ukrainians (‘peoples bound by blood’), imperialistic claims are prevalent in the subtext of this narrative. Historical research rightly points to the intertwining of nationalism and imperialism in Russian and Soviet history and includes Putinism in this line of tradition. In a significant way, Schulze Wessel (2023) addresses the problems that arise from this under the title The Curse of Empire.
In the case in question, the specifics of Russian imperial history from tsarism to the Russian Revolution are of less interest than the insight that the internationalist self-understanding of revolutionary Bolshevism was renationalized — and that means Russified — under Stalin. In this respect, the term National Bolshevism is appropriate in characterising a development that endures in unresolved questions of national identity formation in Putinism.17 It is instructive to return to a quote by Stalin that accompanied the 20th anniversary celebrations of the revolution (1937): “Old Russia has been transformed into today’s USSR, where all peoples are identical ... Among the equal nations, states, and countries of the USSR, the most Soviet and the most revolutionary is the Russian nation.” In this environment, the explicit linkage to tsarist traditions is made, revealing a
17 Brandenberger 2002. For the following: Ch. 7: Wartime Stalinist Ideology and its Discontents. The quote: 284.
contradictory attempt to reconcile Russia’s imperial past with the Soviet system, thereby staking a Russian claim to leadership over other ethnic groups.
The populist-motivated Russification of the Soviet Union under Stalin, which met with acceptance in broad sections of the population, continued after the Stalin era, preventing later attempts at conceiving a ‘Soviet people’ supplanting national identity. In this respect, the Stalinist imprint persists today under Putinism, wherein a nationalism based on Russian exceptionalism seeks to simultaneously continue the imperial legacy of the Soviet Union (Brandenberger 2002, 246–248).
This constellation is echoed in the concept of the ‘Great Patriotic War’. Schulze Wessel (2023, 214, 215) points out that this neologism, coined by Yaroslavsky in reference to the ‘Patriotic War’ against Napoleon, marginalises the share of the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union and, as a ‘symbolic Russification of the war’ against Nazism still determines official memory in Russia today. This is supported by the fact that in May 1945, in a victory toast, Stalin laid exceptional emphasis on the Russian people, praising them as the “most outstanding nation among all the nations belonging to the Soviet Union”. The selfimage of Russian dominance is also characteristic of the post-Stalinist period and the relationship with the Eastern European satellite states, which were kept on a short leash by military force or a pro-Moscow dictatorship (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Poland 1981).
It was only with Mikhail Gorbachev’s assumption of power and its consequences that the problem, hitherto under control, of the connection between Russian and imperial-Soviet identity came into focus. Despite an important Kremlin advisor’s critical characterisation of Russia’s hegemony and great power mentality towards Eastern Europe as an imperial aberration, Russian nationalist tendencies resurged, displaying a wide range of facets, including: a form of nationalism featuring Greater Russia as a continuation of the Soviet Union, the Russia-centred imperialistic preservation of state structure through the use of security forces, and an intellectual and literary nationalism that manifested itself in a “new genre of village prose” (Schulze Wessel 2023, 253, 257).
With the end of the Soviet Union, the unresolved tension between a reformoriented redefinition of Russian national identity and a traditional patriotism or nationalism, which by no means wants the ethnic Russian nation to be seen to renounce spheres of influence abroad, thus comes to the fore. A consistent redefinition would have meant a national-democratic new beginning and required abandoning imperial claims. The fact that the forces set to bring this about were ultimately too weak is again evidence of the neo-imperial character of Russian nationalism. Thus, since the 1990s, nationalist-imperial ideas (e.g. Dugin), which
Anton Leist and Rolf Zimmermann
Putin also employs, have intensified. In addition to traditionalist evidence emphasising an ethnic-historical commonality with Ukraine, there is also a cultural radicalism that distances itself from the culture of the West, branded as ‘decadent’. The claims against liberal-democratic orientations are based on its own Eurasian model of civilization.
It is no surprise, then, that Ukraine’s path to national self-determination under democratic auspices associated with the West turns out to be a challenge to Russia. The duality of culture and nation (cf. 1.2 above) thus takes the form of a Eurasian-based imperial nationalism. The question how to secure its pretensions becomes urgent, given that Russian policy is guided by self-definitions claiming a future for its model of Eurasian nationalism superior to that of the outdated ‘decadent West’. Ukraine, in this context, represents the threat of a Western alternative and must be fought. Russia’s security argument put forward against NATO in the face of this development sounds like a commentary on its deliberate construction of a warrior identity devoid of any further political ambitions.18
Schulze Wessel is right to emphasise that “Russia’s hermaphroditic character as a nationalizing empire” points back to a Russian identity problem. A new beginning for Russia seems possible only if a rethink takes hold leading to a postimperial understanding of the nation, so that Russia could become a ‘Euro-Asian Canada’ the educational resources and economic potential of which, combined with autonomy solutions for ethnic minorities, would give it a respected position on the world stage (Schulze Wessel 2023, 293–304). The remoteness of such a future is made evident by Russia’s use of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ as a foil for identification, to create a Stalin-style denouncement of the Ukrainian counter movement and its resistance against the imposed war. Thus, the massive Ukrainian resistance, underscoring its national self-determination, is accused of being ruled by ‘neo-Nazis’. Consequently, Russia’s imperialist attack on Ukraine is given a nationalist legitimation of defending its own country: in the face of ‘Nazism’ the will to collective self-assertion must be mobilised. An accompanying distortion of historical facts by the Russian government is also revealing. It finds its exemplary expression in misleading portrayals of the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who collaborated at times with the Nazis against the
18 Cf. the conclusion of Neumann (2018, 364): “The act of denying a future to another polity is a securitizing move, for security is, by definition, about warding off what are seen as threats to a polity’s ability to go on as before. Nationalism was imbricated with security concerns from the very beginning and remains so imbricated.” For the study of Russian identity between romantic nationalism and liberal trends see already Neumann 1996. This study predicts that Russian nationalism will radicalise regarding Europa as its ‘Other’.
Soviet Union to create an independent Ukraine, but later also fought against the Nazi occupation. By declaring the leadership of Ukraine to be Bandera’s successors (‘Banderivtsi’), Putin is trying to underline a common profile to an ethnocultural unity of Russians and Ukrainians.
This way of winning over the population through persuasion is accompanied by repressive methods reminiscent of Stalinism. An ideology of imperial nationalism has replaced the Bolshevik self-image under Stalin while retaining its geopolitical objectives with new militancy. Thus, Putinism invites a comparison of its system of rule with the totalitarian paradigms of the 20th century. Comparable key points can also be seen in the de facto one-party rule of Putin’s ‘united Russia’, which, although able to rely on democratic legitimisation procedures through elections, owes its dominance to the extensive destruction of political plurality and the abolition of all serious political opposition. The domination of the public sphere is instrumental to this, through comprehensive control of media, which silences controversies over politically relevant content. Furthermore, a cult of leadership has developed around Putin, with some similarities to the cult of Hitler and Stalin. Moreover, since the annexation of Crimea, a cult of military success and the propagation of violence is present as well. Rigid repressive measures by state security agencies and terrorist methods of the secret services, not reluctant to carrying out political murders, also point to parallels with totalitarian regimes. In sum, totalitarian signs are again written all over the Russian regime, putting into serious question whether it can be called nationalist any longer.19
This section is motivated by the assumption that a cosmopolitan segment of Europeans was not only ignorant of the possibility of a military attack on Ukraine but even contributed to the policies facilitating this invasion for years, especially since the annexation of Crimea. Broadly speaking, the historical and social lessons learnt is that nationalism should not be moralistically repressed, that its intellectual repression and the subsequent blinkered attitude led to grave political errors and to high costs. These costs are being borne on the ground by the citizens of Ukraine in the ongoing war and include the price of Europe’s overprotective reluctance to provide maximum military support to Ukraine, compounded by the general weakness of European military defence capability, due to unrealistic democratic thinking that complacently projected its own war fatigue onto others.
Even with the admission of the undeniable effect of nationalism, cosmopolitanism is not yet invalidated in its entirety, prior evidence of which is the emergence of democratic societies in Europe with a deeply entrenched rule of law as a
19 This points to Arendt’s analysis of the totalitarian systems transcending the nationalist origin they started from. See Arendt 1951/1966.
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and
expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no
prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
