ДЕНИС КУЉИШ: Шема на неделата

СЕКОЈА ЧЕСТ НА ЧАЧИЌ, АМА КАЈ ГО СОБРА ОНОЛКАВИОТ ПОЛИТИЧКИ ШЉАМ

OVIH SU MI DANA STRASNO ISLA NA ZIVCE DVA-TRI ISTUPA NEKIH HNS-ovih PIKZIBNERA KOJI, KAO, PRINCIPIJELNO KRITIZIRAJU SDP I HDZ…

Nikad ne skitam po Opcesvjetskoj mrezi, ne posjecujem portale, ne blogiram, ne odlazim na forume, ne razumijem tacno sto je My Space, ali sve sto se dogadja u virtualnoj sferi odmah doznam posredstvom puno jaceg medija – traca. Za svako podrucje imam nekog referenta, i nista mi ne promakne; posalju mi SMS, ili stvar iskrsne u razgovoru. Tako su me odmah upozorili da je neki Jaksa Marasovic, dalmatinski tudum koji sjedi u Saboru, napao Sanadera “jer je u Ameriku vodio Denisa Kuljisa”. Kao, mene i druge novinare EPH poveo je da o njemu ljepo pisemo. Mene, dakle, Sanader da je vodio u Ameriku! Nikad u zivotu nisam isao u pratnji nekog politicara bilo kamo, niti bih isao, a u Americi sam bio jedno dvadeset-trideset puta, uvek bez Sanadera, i zivio sam ondje godinu dana, pa imam Social Security Number vec dvadeset tri godine i permanentnu vizu.

Na seminar koji je professor Banac prosle godine organizirao na Yaleu otisao sam jer me on na nj pozvao. Znao sam da ce ondje biti i Sanader, ali njega mogu videti i u Zagrebu, a privuklo me sto su najavili dolazak moga starog prijatelja iz vojske, kosovskog predsjednika Fatmira Sejdiua. No zapravo sam otisao na posjetim na selu Branka Lustiga, koji je u Yonkersu, sjeverno od New Yorka, bas na putu za New Haven, snimao novi film Ridelya Scotta. Kad je cuo da dolazim, Branko je rezervirao stol u pomodnoj “Esci”, restoranu koji drzi sin nase cuvene gastronomke Lidije Bastijanic. U Ameriku sam tako stigao prije i otisao poslije Sanadera, u vlastitom aranzmanu, a stanovao sam kod sogora u New Jerseyu i okolo krstario autom.

Sto hocu reci svim tim bezocnim hvalisanjem? Da nisam netko koga bi Sanader mogao potkupiti avionskom kartom do JFK-a. Ali ne branim se ja od Marasovica, siguran sam da moja reputacija – takva kakva vec jest – moze izdrzati i filibusterijsku saborsku upadicu nekog tupeza iz duboke provincije, koji time sto govori otkriva kako funkcionira njegova koruptivna uobrazilja – i koliko on procjenjuje da netko vrijedi ili kosta. Dan nakon Petog Sabora HDZ-a, kad je Sanader potaracao Pasalica, Ivo i ja otisli smo na ribu u “Paviljon” (ja sam platio racun) i on mi je ponudio mjesto stranackoga glasnogovornika. Naravno, nisam prihvatio, jer sam po pozivu novinar, a ne politicar, a govoreci istinu, ne bih taj posao ni znao raditi. No nisam glup i bio sam svjestan koliko bih s takve pozicije mogao steci utjecaja, pogotovu uzme li se u obzir sto sve znam o medijskim konfiguracijama, ali – neki su putovi naprosto zatvoreno. Hocu reci, pa kojem god to dupeglavcu islo, znao bih se ogrebati, samo kad bih mogao. Uostalom, tesko je s avionskim kartama za ekonomsku klasu pridobiti nekoga tko je vec imao privatni avion.

Ali, dodjavola s Marasovicem i njegovim triljskim monadama, ne bih se ja na nj ni osvrtao da mi nisu isli na zivce zaredom – i to u kratkom roku – dva-tri istupa nekih haenesovskih pikzibnera koji su se, kao, malo agitirali uoci izbora, pa sve nesto principijelno kritiziraju SDP i HDZ, kao da s prvima nisu sudjelovali u upravljanju metropolom, i onda, posto su izbaceni iz vlasti, poceli svoje sudionike optuzivati za korupciju, a druge kao da nisu na koljenima molili za koaliciju kad je poslije proslih izbora postalo jasno da se Racan ne namjerava polomiti da na svaku foru slozi vecinu… Vesna Pusic cura je iz nasega drustvenog kruga, i ja ne bih nikad rekao nesto protiv nje, ili za nju glasao. Cacic je regionalni populisticki demagog i lokalni varazdinski kabadahija, ali zapravo jedan od najsposobnijih ljudi u hrvatskoj realpoplitici, no takav sljam kakav je inace skupio u HNS zbilja je tesko naci cak i na nasoj politickoj sceni. Ako vidis covjeka koji je korumpiran kao hadezeovac, a glup kao esdepeovac, odmah znas da je haenesovac. To je famozni treci put, da se izbjegne pogibelj bipolarizma. Male stranke za velike pljacke! Koperanti za korupciju u agroindustriji, gradjevinarstvu i lokalnoj upravi.

Ne znam cime se, inace, bavio taj Marasovic – pise da je nekakav gradjevinac, bit ce, dakle, kakva postenjacina, koji se dobro uvalila na politicke pozicije pa je u splitskom Gradskom vijecu glasao za cuvenu Lazaricu, “splitiski Beverly Hills”, cudovisnu bespravno podignutu zgradurinu, koja je usprkos njegovu protivljenju, srusena. Istodobno, zasticen imunitetom, nasrce na cast postenih ljudi mizernim objedama u funkciji jeftine politicke demagogije. Kako tome odgovoriti? Ne znam se braniti, ali imam semu: tko god misli da je Jaksa Marasovic tijelo bez ganglija, neka se javi na moj mejl – nominiram ga, naime, za pokusno veliko anketno ispitivanje javno mnijenja s pitanjem – koji je najgori hrvatski politicar? Ocjenjivat ce se dojam o njihovoj pameti, postenju i politickoj karizmi…

Ocjene Jakse Marasovica i informacije koje ce mi omoguciti da bolje upoznam toga lika molim na moj sajt www.denis.kuljis.com.

(изв. Globus – nacionalni tjednik br. 851, 30.3.2007, Zagreb)

ЏОРЏ ОРВЕЛ: 1984

9.

Глава прва

НЕЗНАЕЊЕТО Е МОЌ

Во текот на целата пишувана историја, а веројатно уште од крајот на неолитот, на светот постоеле три вида луѓе: високи, средни и ниски. Биле поделени на многу подгрупи, носеле безброј различни имиња, а нивниот броен однос, како и меѓусебниот однос, верирале од еден до друг период; но во суштината, структурата на општеството не се менувала. Дури и во огромни пресврти и навидум неповратни промени, секогаш повторно се воспоставувала истата структура, токму како што жироскопот секогаш се враќа во состојба на рамнотежа колку и да се ниша од едната на другата страна.

„Јулија, будна ли си?“ праша Винстон.

„Да, љубов моја, те слушам. Продолжи, прекрасно е.“

Тој продолжи:

Целите на овие групи се наполно непомирливи. Целта на високите е да останат таму каде што се. Целта на средните е да го преземат местото на високите. Целта на ниските, кога имаат цел – бидејќи постојана карактеристика им е тоа што се премногу притиснати од црнчење за да бидат свесни за што било друго освен за својот секојдневен живот – е да се укинат сите разлики и да создадат општество во кое сите ќе бидат еднакви. Така низ целата историја се повторува битката што е во основата секогаш иста. Високите остануваат на власт во текот на долг период, но порано или подоцна секогаш доаѓа моментот кога или ги губат вербата во себе или способноста ефективно да владејат, или и едното и другото. Потоа средните ги симнуваат од власт, претходно придобивајќи ги ниските во нивната стара положба на слуги, а самите стануваат високи. При тоа, од ниските или од поранешните високи или од двете групи, се отцепува група нови средни и борбата почнува од почеток. Од овие три групи, единствено ниските дури ни повремено не успеваат да ги остварат своите цели. Би било претерано да се каже дека низ целата историја немало никаков материјален напредок. Дури и денес, во периодот на опаѓање, просечниот човек е физички во подобра ситуација отколку пред неколку столетија. Но, никаков напредок во богатството, никаква цивилизираност во однесувањето, никаква реформа и ниту една револуција не ја приближија еднаквоста до човештвото ниту за милиметар. Од гледна точка на ниските, ниту една историска промена никогаш не значела ништо друго освен промена на името на господарот.

Кон крајот на XIX век, повратниот карактер на овој процес станува очигледен за многу набљудувачи. Притоа, се појавиле школи на мислители што ја толкувале историјата како цикличен процес и тврделе дека нееднаквоста е непроменлив закон на човечкиот живот. Се разбира, оваа доктрина секогаш имала следбеници, но сега начинот на кој била изнесена значително се променил. Во минатото, потребата од хиерархиски облик на општеството била специфична доктрина на високите. Неа ја проповедале кралевите и аристократите, а исто така и нивните паразити: свештеници, адвокати и слични, ублажувајќи ја со ветувањата дека ќе им биде надоместено во замислениот свет од другата страна на гробот. Средните, додека се борат за власт, секогаш ги употребуваа зборовите како слобода, правда и братство. Меѓутоа, сега идејата за човековото братство почнуваат да ја напаѓаат оние што се’ уште не биле на управувачка функција, туку едноставно се надевале дека наскоро ќе дојдат до неа. Во минатото, средните кревале револуција под знамето на еднаквоста, а потоа, откако ќе ја собореле старата, воспоставувале нова тиранија. Социјализмот, теорија што се појавила на почетокот на XIX век, а која претставува последна алка во мисловната верига што се протега се’ до робовските побуни од античко време, се’ уште беше силно инфициран со утопистичките идеи на минатите времиња. Но, во секоја варијанта на социјализмот што се појавила од околу 1900 година наваму, целта да се воспостават слобода и еднаквост се’ поотворено била напуштана. Новите движења што се појавиле во средината на векот: англосоцот во Океанија, необолшевизмот во Евроазија и обожавањето на смртта, како што обично се нарекува во Истоказија, имале свесна цел, овековечување на неслободата и неднаквоста. Овие нови движења, се разбира, никнале од старите и имале тенденција да ги задржат старите имиња и на зборови да и’ оддадат почит на старата идеологија. Но целта на сите нив била во одреден момент да се запре напредокот и да се закочи историјата. Веќе познатото нишало требало да направи уште еден замав и потоа да престане. По обичај, високите требало да бидат протерани од средните, кои со тоа ќе станеле високи, но овој пат применувајќи свесна стратегија, високите ќе биде во состојба да ја задржат својата положба вечно.

Овие нови доктрини никнале делумно поради натрупаното историско знаење и поради развојот на историската свест, која пред XIX век речиси не постоела. Цикличниот тек на историјата сега станал јасен или барем така изгледал; а ако е јасен, тогаш е и променлив. Но главната суштинска причина било тоа што уште од почетокот на XX век човечката еднаквост станала технички невозможна. Се’ уште било вистина дека луѓето не се еднакви според своите вродени таленти и дека функциите мора да се специјализираат, така што на некои единки им се дава предност пред други; но веќе не постоела вистинска потреба за класни разлики или за големи разлики во богатството. Во поранешните времиња, класните разлики биле не само неизбежни, туку и пожелни. Нееднаквоста претставувала цена на цивилизацијата. Меѓутоа, развојот на машинското производство ја промени ситуацијата. Иако и понатаму било потребно луѓето да извршуваат различни работи, веќе не било потребно да живеат на различни општествени или економски нивоа. Со тоа, според мислењето на новите групи што биле подготвени да ја приграбат власта, човечката еднаквост веќе не била идеалот за кој требало да се борат, туку опасност што требало да се спречи. Во примитивните времиња, кога праведно и мирно општество всушност не ни можело да постои, релативно лесно можело да се верува во еднаквоста. Визијата за земскиот рај, во кој луѓето ќе живеат заедно како браќа, без закон и без макотрпна работа, илјадници години не ја напуштила човечката мечта. Таа визија во извесна мера, ја имале дури и групите на кои историските промени им донесле корист. Наследниците на француската, англиската и американската револуција делумно и самите верувале во своите фрази за човечки права, слобода на говорот, еднаквост пред законот и сл. и дури дозволиле тие фрази во извесна смисла да влијаат врз однесувањето. Меѓутоа, во четвратата деценија на XX век сите главни текови на политичките мисли биле автократски. Земскиот рај бил дискретидиран токму во моментот кога станал возможен. Секоја нова политичка теорија, без разлика со кое име се нарекувала, водела назад кон хиерархија и кон круто устројство. Во општите огрубувања на погледите што почнале околу 1930 год. постапките што одамна биле напуштени, понекогаш и по неколку стотици години – апсења без судење, претварање воени заробеници во робови, јавни погубувања, мачења заробеници, земање заложници и раселување цели народи – не само што повторно станале практика, туку биле и толерирани, па дури и бранети од луѓето што се сметале за образовани и за напредни.

...

ПРИНЦИПИТЕ НА НОВОГОВОРОТ

Новоговорот е официјалниот јазик на Океанија, создаден да би ги задоволил принципите на Ангсоцот, или англискиот социјализам. Во годината 1984, се’ уште не постоеше никој што Новоговорот како средство за општење, го употребуваше, било писмено или усно. На Новоговорот се пишуваа уводниците во Тајмс, ама тие представуваа само Fours de force, коишто можеше да ги објавуви само специјалист. Очекувањата беа дека Новоговорот конечно ќе го замени Староговорот (или стандардниот англиски, како што ние би го нарекле) отприлика 2050 год. Во меѓувреме, тој се повеќе го освојуваше теренот, со тоа што членовите на Партијата настојуваа се’ почесто да употребуваат новоговорски зборови и граматички конструкции во секојдневниот говор. Верзијата што беше во употреба 1984 г. и беше систематизирана во деветото и десетото издание на Речникот на Новоговорот, беше привремена; содржеше голем број одвишни зборови и архаични облици кои подоцна требаше да се исфрлат. Ние овде ќе се бавиме со конечната, усовршена верзија, систематизирана во единаесетото издание на Речникот.

Сврхата на Новоговорот беше да не биде само средство со кое би се изразувала филозофијата и духовните навики на следбениците на Ангсоцот, ами да ги оневозможи сите останати начини на мислење. Намерата беше кога еднаш Новоговорот ќе биде прифатен засекогаш, секоја еретичка мисла - т.е. мислата која би била во несклад со принципите на Ангсоцот – дословно да биде непромислива, барем во онаа мерка во која зависи од зборови. Речникот на Новоговорот беше составен така што му даваше точен и често мошне суптилен израз на секое значење, кое членот на Партијата легитимно би сакал да му го пренесе на соговорникот или читателот, исклучувајќи ги притоа сите други значења, како и можноста до нив да се дојде по посреден пат. Тоа делумно се постигнуваше со измислување на нови зборови, но пред се’ преку исфрлување на непотребните думи, и тргањето на сите секундарни значење, колку што тоа беше можно. Ќе наведеме едне пример: Речта „слободен“ постоеше и во Новоговорот, арно ама можеше да се употреби само во реченици како што се: „Дали ова седиште е слободно?“ или „Ќе бидам слободен да ве замолам за еден жилет“. Во старата смисла на „политички слободен“ и „интелектуално слободен“ не можеше да се употребува, бидејќи политичката и интелектуалната слобода веќе не постоеја како поими, заради што нужно станаа безимени. Сосема неповрзано со исфрлувањето на еретичките зборови, стеснувањето на Речникот беше цел сама за себе; на ниеден збор кој не беше неопходен не му беше допуштано да остане во живот. Новоговорот беше замислен не да го прошири, туку да го стесни кругот на поими достапни на човековата мисла, и на таа сврха посредно и’ користеше смалувањето на зборовите на минимум.

Новоговорот се засноваше на англискиот јазик каков што го познаваме денес, макар што мноштво реченици на Новоговорот, дури и кога не би содржеле новоговорни зборови, би биле едвај разбирливи за денешниот читател кој говори англиски. Новоговорските думи беа поделени во три посебни категории, познати како Речник А, Речник Б (комбинирани зборови) и Речник Ц. Ќе биде поедноставно да се зборува за сите категории засебно, меѓутоа граматичките особености ќе ги разгледаме во одделот посветен на Речникот А, заради тоа што за сите три категории важеа исти правила.

Речник А. Речникот А се состоеше од зборови потребни во секојдневните нешта – јадење, пиење, работење, облекување, качување и слегување по скали, возење кола, обработување градина, готвење и сл. Се состоеше во потполност од зборови кои што веќе денес ги имаме – удирање, трчање, пес, дрво, куќа, нива – но во споредба со денешниот англиски речник, нивниот број беше извонредно мал, додека значењата им беа одредени далеку построго. Сите двосмислености и нијанси беа истребени. Во мера која што беше возможно, новоговорската реч од оваа категорија не беше ништо друго, освен еден staccato звук, што изразува само еден единствен јасно разбирлив поим. Речникот А беше невозможно да се употребува во книжевноста, како и во дискусиите за политиката или филозофијата. Неговата сврха беше да искажува единствени, целесообразни мисли, кои обично се однесуваа на конкретни премети или физички дела.

Граматиката на Новоговорот имаше две јасно изразени особености. Првата беше речиси потполна универзалност на сите видови зборови. Секоја дума (во принцип, тоа важеше и за мошне апстрактни зборови какви што се „ако“ или „кога“) можеше да се употреби и како глагол и како именка и како придавка и како прилог. Меѓу именскиот и глаголскиот облик, доколку потекнуваа од ист корен, немаше никаква разлика. Ова правило, само по себе, уништи голем број архаични форми. Зборот „мислење“, на пример, во Новоговорот не постоеше. Нејзиното место го зазема зборот „мисла“, која служеше и како глагол и како именка. Тука не се применуваше никаков етимолошки принцип: во некои случаеви е задржуван првобитниот именски облик, а во други глаголскиот. Чак и кога глаголот и именката со сродно значење не беа етимолошки поврзани, често од јазикот се исфрлуваше било едното или другото. Зборот „сечење“ на пример, не постоеше; нејзиното значење го содржеше зборот „нож“, којшто се употребуваше и како именка и како глагол. Придавките, секогаш во среден род, се образуваа со додавање на наставката –асто на именката (која истовремено беше и глагол), додека прилозите се образуваа со додавање на суфиксот –сно. Така на пример, „брзинасто“ значеше „брз“, а „брзинасно“ – „брзо“. Некои од денешните придавки – јак, добар, велик, црн, мек – се употребуваа и во Новоговорот, ама нивниот број беше многу мал. За нив се осеќаше слаба потреба, оти секоја придавка можеше да се изведе преку додавање на наставката –асто. Ниеден од денешните прилози не се задржа, сем оние кои веќе завршуваа на –сно. На пример, прилогот „близу“ гласеше „близносно“.

Освен тоа, спротивноста на секој збор – ова такуѓере важеше во принцип за сите збоови – се изведуваше со додаваше на префиксот не-, а засилувањето со додавање на префиксот повише-, или за појачани форми, двапатиповише-. Така на пример, „неладно“ значеше „топло“ (топла, топло) додека „повишеладно“ значеше многу студено, а „двапатиповишеладно“ исклучително студено. Исто така, беше можно, како и во денешниот англиски, да се менува скоро секоја дума со додавање на префикси, пре-, по-, уз-, под-, итн. Со ситер овие начини можеше драстично да се намали бројот на зборови. Постоењето на пример, на придавката „добар“ ја чинеше излишна придавката „лош“ бидејќи пожелуваната смисла можеше еднакво добро - ако не и подобро - да се искаже со зборот „недобар“. Секогаш кога две думи сочинуваа природен чифт на спротивности, се поставуваше само прашањето која од нив да се исфрли. На пример, „темен“ можеше да се замени со „несветол“, или „светол“ со придавката „нетемен“, по желба.

Втора карактеристична црта на граматиката на Новоговорот беше правилноста. Освен неколку исклучоци, кои ќе ги наведеме подолу, сите наставки беа подвргнати на исти правила. Минато време за сите глаголи се образуваше со додавање на наставката –ло, на трето лице еднина. Минато време од глаголот „иде“ гласеше „идело“, од „сретнува“ – „сретнело“ итн. Множина по правило се образуваше преку додавање на наставка –и, така да зборот „човек“ стануваше „човеки“, „прут“ – „прути“, а „лав“ – „лави“. Сите придавки се редеа по исти правила, така што компаратив и супрелатив од „добар“ (во Новоговорот „добро“, зашто сите придавки беа од среден род) гласеше „подобарско“ и „најдобарско“.

Единствени неправилности беа допуштени кај заменките, показни и односни, како и кај помошните глаголи. Исто така, имаше неправилности и во зборообразувањето, коишто беа диктирани од потребата да се говори брзо и леко. Збор тежок за изговор или кој можел погрешно да се чуе ipso facto се сметал за лош збор; оттаму понекогаш, заради еуфонија, се задржуваше архаичен облик или беа внесувани накнадни букви. Но, оваа потреба главно се почувствува во врска со Речникот Б. Чуму на леснотијата на говорот му се придаваше толкава важност ќе видиме во натамошниот тек на овој есеј.

Речник Б. Речникот Б се состоеше од зборови намерно составени во политички цели; имено, од зборови кои имаа не само ексклузивен политички смисол, ами кои целеле кон тоа на оној што ги кажува, да му наметнат посакуван ментален став. Без потполно сфаќање на принципот на којшто почиваше Ангсоц, тие зборови тешко би можело правилно да се употребуваат. Во некои случаи, тие можеа да се преведат на Староговор, па дури и на зборови од Речникот А, но обично со долго парафразирање и обавезно по цена на извесни финеси. Зборовите Б претставуваа некаква вербална стенографија, која често цели кругови од идеи ги искажуваше низ неколку слогови, а која беше истовремено попрецизна и поседуваше поголема ударна моќ од обичниот јазик.

Сите думи Б беа комбинирани. (Комбинирани зборови, разбира се, имаше и во Речникот А – на пример „дактилограф“; но тоа беа само погодни скратеници што немаа идеолошки бои.) Се состоеја од два или повеќе збора или од делови на два или повеќе збора, стопени во едно в облик лесен за изговор. Амалгамот кој оттаму произлегол секогаш истовремено бил и глагол и именка, а се менувал по вообичаените правила. Да земеме само еден пример: речта „добромисла“ во мошне груб превод значи „идеолошко-политичка исправност“, или посматрана како глагол, „да се мисли на идеолошки и политички исправен начин“. Нејзини форми беа: глагол и именка добромисла; минато време и прилог за минато време – добромислувано, прилог за сегашно – добромислечки; придавка – добромислено; прилог – добромисленосно; глаголска именка добромислител.

Зборовите Б не се градеа по никаков етимолошки план. Можеа да се составуваат од секаков вид зборови, наредени по било кој редослед и креснати на кој било начин којшто ги правел лесен за изговор, не одзимајќи им ја притоа нивната смисла. Со оглед на тоа што овде беше потешко да се постигне еуфонија, неправилните форми овде беа почести отколку во Речникот А. На пример, придавски форми од „добромисла“ и „злосекс“ гласеа „добромислесто“ и „злосексасто“...

(изв. Svetlost.org)

ЈОВАН ИЛИЌ: Балканскиот геополитички јазол и српското прашање

The Balkan Geopolitical Knot and the Serbian Question

...

Main Attributes of the Serbian Question

In order to fully understand and analyse the problem, we will attempt to make a definition of the Serbian question. In our opinion it consists of five elements which are closely related and conditioned. They are:

• The aspirations, wishes, needs that the maximum possible number of the Serbs in the Balkans and the Danube valley live in one, their own state. This is a question of self-determination. The Serbs must have equal rights as other peoples in the former Yugoslavia.
• The need that the Serbian state should become a democratic state, which means that its interior order is to be based on parliamentary democracy, market economy, law obedience and the protection of human rights.
• The demand that the Serbs behave in a democratic way towards non-Serbs in their state and towards non-Serbs in other states. This means that the Serbs as a people and as individuals shall observe ethnic and other features and interests of other peoples.
• The demand that the Serbs as a people and Serbia as their state are acknowledged equal rights and accepted as a constructive member of the international community. In other words, it is indispensable that other peoples and other states behave in a humane just and equal way towards the Serbs, regardless of where they live.
• The demand for an inherent unity of the Serbian people based on the principles, needs, and demands listed above as the four elements of the Serbian question.

With regard to the contents of the Serbian question and main geopolitical and economic directrices of Serbia - its functional environs, the Serbian question could be satisfactorily solved in the following way:

1. To allow the Serbian people their own administration on its historical and ethnic territories, also allowing other Yugoslav peoples the same rights. The Serbian people, compared to other Yugoslav peoples, has an additional right to self-determination and uniting because it was exposed to genocidal extermination many times. The Serbian people, united in this way, would be a key factor of stability in the Balkans as it is not in its nature to ill-treat and tyrannise other peoples. Since a large part of the Serbian ethnic area lies west of the Drina river, the western geopolitical and historical directrix is given primacy over other directrices because it is a symbol of the union of the Serbian countries.

2. In the process of delineating the Serbian ethnic area on the territories of the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and B&H the first principles to be applied shall be the ethnic and economic ones. It will be necessary to take account of and reconcile to the utmost the interests of the Croats, Serbs and Muslims. Immediately after the cease of war enmities and delineation, it will be necessary to initiate extensive economic and other co-operation, so that the available common natural resources and the already built infrastructure systems could be used to the utmost as well as market economy mechanisms and co-operation in science and culture.

3. Inside Serbia and the F.R.Y. and in the whole area of the former SFRY and the Balkans it will be necessary to verify the interior state order on a democratic civil-political and ethnic principle. This principle reads that the main conductor of all activities in a state is Man, individual, citizen, freely associated in his union of interests. The second component of the same principle stipulates that, if necessary, equal ethnic communities as collective subjects may exist and allow the accomplishment of a series of their specific anthropogeographic characteristics and interests.

4. Since Serbia, the homeland of the Serbian people, is located in the central part of the Balkans, in the area in which the main natural trajectories and anthropogenic lines and knots of the infrastructure are located, it has a marked transit function for the neighbouring and other states. At the same time, as a landlocked country it has great need to communicate with other countries. That is why its own geopolitical communication cross is operative on the territory of Serbia. That cross - knot contains, besides the said western directrix, the northern, southern and south-west ones. The northern directrix enables connections of Serbia with the economically most important part of Europe (Central Europe) and is a land bridge to Ukraine and Russia (branching in Budapest). The south-west connection means deepening the relations between Serbia and Montenegro and the egress of Serbia to the sea, and the southern one interconnects the three Orthodox states - Serbia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Greece and gives Serbia an egress to the Aegean sea. Other directrices are also important - the western one (the Sava river) which connects Serbia with Croatia, Slovenia, Alpine and Western Europe and the south-east one (the Nišava-Morava river valleys) that connects Serbia with Bulgaria, Turkey and other areas in the Orient.

5. The Serbs should endeavour to realise better and more universal relations with all the neighbouring countries and peoples within the shortest possible period. Special attention should be paid to the reinforcement of the relations between Serbs, Croats, Muslin-is and Albanians. As for other countries, every possible effort should be made to restore normal interstate relations. Without co-operating with the most developed countries we would remain at the periphery of policies, economics, science and technology and would be an object rather than the subject in international relations. Cvijic says, "The development of Serbia (and Yugoslavia - added by the author) should be in accord both with the prevailing general ideas in the world and with the objectives of our national work."^[18]

What are the Solutions? The Balkans to the Balkan Peoples!

1. The leading establishments of the Balkan peoples and states should be much more constructive, rational and tolerant when realising and solving ethnic, political, economic and other problems in the Balkans.

2. In the former Balkan socialist countries the post-communist reconstruction of the society and policies should be completed as soon as possible, i.e. a comprehensive parliamentary democracy, legality, and market economy should be introduced.

3. In resolving national questions and in shaping new states it is best to apply a combined civil-political and ethnic principle. When delineating states, primary principles should be: ethnic, functional, economic, and historical. The principle of democratic regionalism will be also useful.

4. The Balkan peoples should take their destinies into their own hands and regain a position of the subject in international relations after 640 years. The state boundaries need not be changed as they were internationally determined and recognised after the Balkan wars and after World War I.

5. The Balkan peninsula lost its geopolitical and geostrategic significance it had in the period of the "cold war" because of the changes in the key social and political relations in Europe (disappearance of the Eastern bloc, the USSR and Warsaw Treaty). It has no longer major significance for the international capital since it does not possess any geo-resources of world importance and because its productive and consumptive powers are proportionally small (45 million inhabitants with rather low per capita incomes). In this information-spreading globalistic period there is no need for conquering and formations of spheres of interest by means of methods of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. It means the time has come "to leave the Balkans to the Balkan peoples". This action should be aided by external powers, primarily those that have participated in the formation of the Balkan geopolitical cross and knot for centuries. Upon this gesture of the foreign factors, the Balkan peoples and states should arrange their internal relations in such a way that they are compatible with requirements and needs of the contemporary world of culture, civilisation, science and technology, with full respect for domiciliar ethnic, historical, and other specifics. Through negotiations and settlements, they should responsibly, honestly, and conscientiously endeavour to meet maximum territorial, ethnic, economic, and other interests of all the Balkan peoples. This can be best realised by applying the combined civil-political and ethnic principle in shaping nations and states. If necessary, the principle of democratic regionalism, including t1)e so called ethnic enclaves (enclaves), can be applied.

In fact, the application of the principle of demographic regionalism and the system of ethnic enclave (exclave) with appropriate autonomy can help to solve complex problems that arose in the Yugoslav area and in the Balkans as a whole due to ethnic, economic, cultural and political, territorial, and structural non-homogeneity and dynamic non-uniformity. There is a large number of scientists and public servants who are of the opinion that the democratic regionalism will gain in significance in the forthcoming social and political order and territorial organisation of Europe (Europe region). One should be aware of the two simultaneous global processes: 1) overall merging ("global village") and 2) democratic regionalisation. The latter means that smaller local communities, even in the same nation (regional or subnational communities), should be allowed to resolve their social, economic, cultural, and political problems by themselves, naturally not at the expense of the whole and other regional communities. An illustration of this is, for example, the wish of the Istrians to have their specific regional autonomy inside the Republic of Croatia.

The Balkan peoples and states may, if necessary, realise an overall or partial territorial federative or confederative system on the Balkans. Namely, the Balkan peoples should become their own lords after 640 years and change their status of an object to the status of the subject in international relations.The term "Balkanisation" should fundamentally change its meaning - instead of conflicts between the Balkan states and their subordination to foreign powers, the term should mean fruitful co-operation and active, equitable participation in international relations. Somewhat modified Scandinavian model of interstate relations should be implemented in the Balkans.

6. In the acute Yugoslav crisis it is most important to resolve the Serbo-Croat relations. The starting fact should be that the Serbs experienced two genocides organised by the Croatian state in the last 50 years. The Croats have the right to form their own state. The same right must be given to the Serbs. This means that the Serbs on the territory of the former SR of Croatia on which they have absolute majority (Republic of Serb Krajina) should be given a chance to decide with whom they want to live. Other, the so-called "urban" Serbs in the Republic of Croatia should enjoy all the rights stipulated for national minorities in international standards, provided that the international control for the implementation of them is instituted.

The Serbo-Croatian relations extend to Bosnia and Herzegovina and to Vojvodina. These questions can be settled by negotiations. Success would be rapid if 1) the Croats recognise the Serbs west of the Drina as a people equal to them and 2) if they refrain from unduly claiming and annexing to their state the Serbian ethnic areas west of the Drina river. With fulfilling these requirements, the Serbo-Croatian relations would be rapidly and essentially resolved. Later, it would be relatively easy to establish economic, cultural, sports and other relations, links and dependencies. This time the Serbo-Croatian relations should be shaped in a satisfactory way for both sides, implementing, if need be, the process of population resettlement and exchange of the territories. If these relations were settled the Serbian and the Croatian question would be resolved to a great extent.

The Croats in Serbia (Vojvodina) have never been threatened by the Serbian side on the basis of ethnic differences. They were and they are equal citizens of the Republic of Serbia.

7. The civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina showed that the unitary B&H cannot exist. Solutions are possible on the grounds of the Geneva Agreement on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nevertheless, if fruitful understanding in B&H and elsewhere is desired, it is necessary for individuals and members of different collectives to have equal rights. This particularly applies to the three ethnic collectivises in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The war in B&H broke out because the equality of the peoples was impaired (disrespect of consensus). After delineation, relationships on equal terms should be nurtured as well as the regard and respect for justified interests of the three peoples.

8. National minorities in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia do not have reasons for revolt on national grounds because they enjoy all minority rights formulated by the international standards. And more than that. The leading establishments in the F.R.Y., Serbia and Montenegro, should endeavour in the forthcoming period and make the adherents of all the national minorities in the F.R.Y. feel it as their homeland. On the other hand the adherents of the national minorities should show by their loyal and constructive efforts that the F.R.Y. is their only homeland.

9. The Federal units in the F.R.Y., the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Montenegro, namely the Serbs and Montenegrins as the constitutive equal peoples of the same ethnic origin should constantly promote their relations and connections thus enhancing the prosperity of their fatherland. Ardent resistance to any form of separatism and secessionism should be effectuated as it is against the interests of Montenegro and Serbia.

10. The F.R.Y., and Serbia in particular, should continue to work towards the union of all the Serbian countries, without harming the interests of the neighbouring peoples.

11. We should think thoroughly what awaits us in future. The area of the former SFRY and of the Balkans as a whole is inhabited by small peoples. Because of their geopolitical position and other circumstances described above, the Balkans were either occupied or subdued to foreign influences in the past. Now that we are quarrelling again many want to enter our area.

It would be very good if reason and common interest prevailed in the process of approaching and regaining trust among the Yugoslav peoples. The foundation of relations among the peoples shall be Man, citizen, overall equality of peoples regardless of their national, religious, social, and other affiliations.

The elements that unite us shall be emphasised just as the actual and progressive elements in the time to come. Democratic principles shall be realised, not only proclaimed.

(Source: The Serbian Questions in The Balkans, University of Belgrade, publisher - Faculty of Geography, Belgrade 1995)

ЦРНА КНИГА НА КОМУНИЗМОТ: Криминал, Терор, Репресија

Дел I

Држава против соопствениот народ: Репресалии и терор во Советскиот сојуз

4. ПРЉАВАТА ВОЈНА

Nicolas Werth

…

Among the episodes in the struggle between peasants and the Bolshevik authorities, “de-Cossackization” – the systematic elimination of the Cossacks of the Don and the Kuban as social groups – occupies a special place. For the first time, on the principal of collective responsibility, a new regime took a series of measures specially designed to eliminate, exterminate, and deport population on a whole territory, which Soviet leaders had taken to calling the “Soviet Vendee”. These operations were plainly not the result of military excesses in the heart of battle, but were carefully planed in advance in response to decrees from the highest level of state authority, directly implicating numerous top-ranking politicians, including Lenin, Sergo Ordzonikinze, Sergei Syrtsov, Grigori Sokolnikov and Isaac Reingold. Momentarily halted in the spring of 1919 because of military setbacks, the process of de-Cossackisation resumed with even greater cruelty in 1920, after Bolshevik victories in the Don and the Kuban.

The Cossacks, who since December 1917 had been deprived of the status they had enjoined under the old regime, were classified by the Bolsheviks as “kulaks” and “class enemies”; and as a result they joined forces with the White armies that had united in southern Russia in the spring of 1918 under the banner of Ataman Krasnov. In February 1919, after the general advance of the Bolsheviks into Ukraine and southern Russia, the first detachments of the Red Army penetrated the Cossack territories along the Don. At the outset the Bolsheviks took measures to destroy everything that made Cossacks a separate group: their land was confiscated and redistributed among Russian colonizers or local peasants who did not have Cossack status; they were ordered on pain of death, to surrender all their arms (historically, as the traditional frontier soldiers of the Russian empire, all Cossacks had a right to bear arms); and all Cossack administrative assemblies were immediately dissolved.

All these measures were part of the pre-established de-Cossackization plan approved in a secret resolution of the Bolshevik Party’s Central committee on 24 January 1919: “In a view of the experiences of the civil war against the Cossacks, we must recognize as the only politically correct measure massive terror and the merciless fight against the rich Cossacks, who must be exterminated and physically disposed of, down to the last man”.

In practice, as acknowledged by Reingold, the president of the Revolutionary Committee of the Don, who was entrusted with imposing Bolshevik rule in the Cossack territories, “what was carried out instead against the Cossacks was an indiscriminative policy of mass extermination”. From mid-February to mid-March 1919, Bolshevik detachments executed more than 8,000 Cossacks. In each stanitsa (Cossack village) revolutionary courts passed summary judgements in a matter of minute, and whole lists of suspects were condemned to death, generally for “counterrevolutionary behavior”. In the face of this relentless destruction, the Cossacks had no choice but to revolt.

The revolt began in the district of Veshenskaya on March 1919. The well-organized rebels decreed the general mobilization of all males aged sixteen to fifty-five and sent out telegrams urging the whole population to rise up against the Bolsheviks throughout the Don region and as far as the remote province of Voronezh.

“We, the Cossacks,” – they explained “are not anti-Soviet. We are in favor of free elections. We are against the Communists, collective farming, and the Jews. We are against the requisitioning, theft, and the endless round of executions practiced by the Chekas”. At the beginning of April, the Cossack rebels represented a well-armed force of nearly 30,000 men, all hardened by battle. Operating behind the lines of Red Army, which, further south, was fighting Denikin’s troops together with Kuban Cossacks, these rebels of Don, like their Ukrainian counterparts, contributed in no small measure to the huge advance of the White Army in May and June 1919. At the beginning of June, the Cossacks of the Don and the Kuban joined up with the greater part of the White armies. The whole of the “Cossack Vendee” was freed from the dreaded power of “Muscovites, Jews and Bolsheviks”.

But the Bolsheviks were back in February 1920. The second military occupation on the Cossack lands was even more murderous than the first. The whole Don was forced to make a grain contribution of 36 million pudy, a quantity that easily surpassed the total annual production of the area; and the whole local population was robbed not only of its meager food and grain reserves but also of all goods, including “shoes, bedding, and samovars”, according to a Che-ka report. Every man who was still fit to fight responded to this institutionalized pillaging by joining the groups of rebel Greens, which by July 1920 numbered at least 35,000 in the Kuban and the Don regions. Trapped in the Crimea since February, General Wrangel decided in a last desperate attempt to free himself from the Bolsheviks’ grip on the region by joining forces with Cossacks and the Greens of Kuban. On 17 August 1920, 5,000 men landed near Novorossiysk. Faced with the combined forces of the Whites, Cossacks, and Greens, the Bolsheviks were forced to abandon Ekaterinodar, the main city of the Kuban region, and to retreat from the region altogether. Although Wrangel made progress in the south of Ukraine, the Whites’ successes were short-lived. Overcome by the numerically superior Bolshevik forces, Wrangel troops, hampered by the large number of civilians that accompanied them, retreated in total disarray toward the Crimea at the end of October. The retaking of Crimea by the Bolsheviks, the last confrontation between the Red and White forces, was the occasion of one of the largest massacres in the civil war. At least 50,000 civilians were killed by the Bolsheviks in November and December 1920.

Finding themselves again on the losing side, the Cossacks were again devastated by the Red Terror. On of the principal leaders of Cheka, the Latvian Karl Lander, was named “Plenipotentiary of the Northern Caucasus and the Don”. One of his first actions was to establish troiki, special commissions in charge of de-Cossackization. In October 1920 alone these troiki condemned more than 6,000 people to death, all of whom was executed immediately. The families, and sometimes even the neighbors, of Green partisans or of Cossacks who had taken up arms against the regime and had escaped capture, were systematically arrested as hostages and thrown into concentration camps, which Martin Latsis, the head of  the Ukrainian Cheka, acknowledged in a report as being a genuine death camps: “Gathered together in a camp near Maikop, the hostage, women, children, and old men survive in the most appalling conditions, in the cold and mud of October… They are dying like flies. The women would do anything to escape death. The soldiers guarding the camp take advantage of this and treat them as prostitutes:

All resistance was merciless punished. When its chief fell into an ambush, the Pyatigorsk Cheka organized “a day of Red Terror”, that went well beyond instructions from Lander, who had recommended that “this act of terrorism should be turned to our advantage to take important hostage with a view of executing them, and as a reason to speed up executions of White spies and counterrevolutionaries in general”. In Lander’s words, “The Pyatigorsk Cheka decided straight to execute 300 people in one day. They divided up the town into various boroughs and took a quota of people from each, and ordered the Party to draw up execution lists… This rather unsatisfactory method led to a great deal of private settling old scores… In Kislovodsk, for lack of a better idea, it was decided to kill people who were in the hospital”.

One of the most effective means of de-Cossackization was destruction of Cossack towns and the deportation of all survivors. The files of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who was president of the Revolutionary Committee of the Northern Caucasus at that time, contain documents detailing one such operation in late October and early November 1920. On 23 Ocktober Ordzhonikidze ordered:

1.The town of  Kalinovskaya to be burned

2.The inhabitants of Ermolovskaya, Romanovskaya, Samachinskaya, and Mikhailovskaya to be driven out their homes, and the houses and land redistributed among poor peasants, particularly among the Chechens, who has always shown great respect for Soviet power

3.All males aged eighteen to fifty from the above mentioned towns to be gathered into convoys and deported under armed escort to the north, where they will be forced into heavy labor

4.Women, children, and old people to be driven out of their homes, although they are to be allowed to resettle farther north

5.All the cattle and goods of the above-mentioned towns to be seized

Three weeks later, Ordzhonikidze received a report outlining how the operation had progressed:

Kalinovskaya: town razed and the whole population (4,220) deported or expelled

Ermolovskaya: emptied of all inhabitants (3,218)

Romanovskaya: 1,600 deported, 1661 awaiting deportation

Samachinskaya: 1,018 deported, 1,900 awaiting deportation

Mikhailovskaya: 600 deported, 2,200 awaiting deportation

In addition, 154 carriages of foodstuffs had been sent to Grozny. In the three towns where the process of deportation is not yet complete, the first people to be deported were the families of Whites and Greens and anyone who participated in the last uprising. Among those still awaiting deportation are the known supporters of the Soviet regime and the families of Red Army soldiers, Soviet officials, and Communists. The delay is to be explained by the lack of railway carriages. On average, only one convoy per day can be devoted to these operations. To finish the operation as soon as possible, we urgently request 306 extra railway carriages.”

How did such “operations” come to an and? Unfortunately, there are no documents to provide an answer. It is clear that they continued for a considerable time, and that they almost always ended with deportations not to the great northern regions, as was to be the case for many years to come, but instead to the mines of Donetsk, which were closer. Given the state of the railways in 1920, the operation must have been fairly chaotic. Nonetheless, in their general shape and intention, the de-Cossackization operations of 1920 prefigure the large-scale de-kulakization operations of ten years later. They share the same idea of collective responsibility, the same process of deportation in convoys, the same organizational problems, the same unpreparedness of the destination for the arrival of prisoners, and the same principle of forcing deportees into heavy labor. The Cossack regions of the Don and the Kuban paid a heavy price for their opposition to the Bolsheviks. According to the most reliable estimates, between 300,000 and 500,000 people were killed or deported in 1919 and 1920, out of a population of no more than 3 million.

Among the atrocities whose scale is the most difficult to gauge are the massacres of prisoners and hostages who were been taken simply on the basis of their “belonging to an enemy class” or being socially undesirable”. These massacres were part of the logic of the Red Terror in the second half of 1918, but on even larger scale. The massacres on the basis of class were constantly justified with the claim that the new world was coming into being, and that everything was permitted to assist the difficult birth, as an editorial explained in the first issue of Krasnyi mech (The Red sword), the newspaper of the Kyiv Cheka:

“We reject the old system of morality and ‘humanity’ invented by the bourgeoisie to oppress and exploit the ‘lower classes’. Our morality has no precedent, and our humanity is absolute because it rests on a new ideal. Our aim is to destroy all forms of oppression and violence. To us, everything is permitted, for we are the first to raise the sword not to oppress races and reduce them to slavery, but to liberate humanity from its shackles… Blood? Let blood flow like water! Let blood stain forever the black pirate’s flag flown by the bourgeoisie, and let our flag be blood-red forever! For only through the death of the old world can we liberate ourselves forever from the return of these jackals!”

Such murderous calls found many ready to respond, and the ranks of the Cheka were filled with social elements anxious for revenge, recruited as they often were, as the Bolshevik leaders themselves acknowledged and eve recommended, from the ranks of “the criminals, and the socially degenerated”. In a letter of 22 March to Lenin, the Bolshevik leader Serafina Gopner described the activities of the Ekaterinoslavl Cheka: “This organization is rotten, to the core: the canker of criminality, violence, and total arbitrary decisions abounds, and it is filled with common criminals and the dregs of society, men armed to the teeth who simply execute anyone they don’t like. They steel, loot, rape, and throw anyone into prison, forge documents, practice extortion and blackmail, and will let anyone go in exchange for huge sums of money”.

The files of the Central Committee, like those of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, contain innumerable reports from the Party leaders or inspectors from the secret police detailing “degenerated acts” of local Chekas “driven mad by blood and violence”. The absence of any juridical or moral norm often resulted in complete autonomy for local Chekas. No longer answerable for their actions to any higher authority, they become bloodthirsty and tyrannical regimes, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Three abstracts from dozens of almost identical Cheka reports illustrate the slide into almost total anarchy.

First, a report from Smirnov, a Cheka training instructor in Syzran, in Tambov province, to Dzerzhinsky, on 22 March 1919:…”

(“The Black Book of Communism – CRIMES, TERROR, REPRESION” by Stephane Courtois, Nicholas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowsky, Karel Bartosek, and Jen-Louis Margolin; Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, London, England 1999)

ЗВОНИМИР МАЈДАК: Кужиш стари мој

Курбла је стајао ослоњен на ступ Централне апотеке и преживао „Вечерњак“. Глисти срце почне одмах јаче пумпати. Срести Курблу значило је бити на прагу узбудљивих и необичних доживљаја на које је тај фрајер био претплаћен. Ријетко је био соло и још к томе ѕадубљен у новине. Увијек је био у центру пажње окружен фамозним мачкама и увијек је био фантастично скужиран. Нитко није знао кај дела, али то вјеројатно зато јер је то питање постављати у његовој клапи било забрањено. Лове је имао ко пљеве, чинило се Глисти. Неколико је пута биио у његову друштву и Крубла му се страшно свидиио. Да му је бити као он! Да му је бити на његову мјесту! )Увијек ме гљавио с причама о Курбли. Мени фрајер смрди од главе до пете и дајем главу да нешто има истине кај други фрајери зуцкају, да Курбла ради за УДБУ и да га се треба чувати. Све је то сумњиво, драгец мој, али док Глиста скопча, треба му годину дана. Ја сам му лијепо рекао што мислим. Он мисли да сам ја луд, наравно! За њега је Курбла гала кит, прави арап коме би ципеле полизал само да нареди.)

Што се мене тиче, ја мислим да Курбла лаже колико је дугачак и широк и да све те фукове, журове, тулуме, ждераче и пијаче, мачке как му се на сваком углу хићу под ноге, как се фура у колима с женскама разних диша и осталих бициклиста, ја мислим да све то змишља и напухава се пред бедакима који нису толико паметни да знаду измишљати и лагати. Али ако му они вјерују, баш ме боли кар!

Глиста се узбуђен ко јумферица приближио Курбли и пискутаво салутирао: ти Бога, скоро су му гласне жице попуцале.

- Бог, живио!

Курбла дигне новине у зрак као на предају. Кажем ти, продаје штосове на велико. Онима који падају на њих.

- Ах, то сте ви, докторе.

Сваког је типа титулирао с доктор, и уопће, био је пун те госпоцке кењаже. Да ти се смучи! Али Глисти је то ласкало.

- Како жена, како дјеца, докторе? Пробава? Столица? Послови на фукодрому?

Глиста се на све те зезове у здрав мозак церио од миља, превијао и гледао у Курблу као у бога! Као да му је овој пришапнул да је постао генерални диша ИНЕ! Или так. Углавном, понашао се блесаво и понижавајуће да бих га најрадије с ногом у гузицу. Некад збиља ни оволико не држи до свог достојанства.

- Иде ко по лоју - правио се да је у деветом небу.

- Браво, браво докторе! А, шта ради остало друштво? Гдје су? Не видим их у задње вријеме.

Тако је Курбла лијепо Глисту преслушавао, а да овај није имао ни појма на какав је лијепак пао. То је још један доказ да је он УДБИН човјек. Само од Глисте нема кај дознати. Без везе су се спомињали и убрзо дошли на женско питање.

...

(изд. Графички завод Хрватске, 1981 год. Стр. 101-103)

Бенџамин Дизраели: ТАНКРЕД

CHAPTER XX.

A Modern Troubadour

...

‘I have been talking with Montacute,’ whispered Lord Henry to Coningsby, who was seated next to him. ‘Wonderful fellow! You can conceive nothing richer! Very wild, but all the right ideas; exaggerated of course. You must get hold of him after dinner.’

‘But they say he is going to Jerusalem.’

‘But he will return.’

‘I do not know that; even Napoleon regretted that he had ever re-crossed the Mediterranean. The East is a career.’

Mr. Vavasour was a social favourite; a poet and a real poet, and a troubadour, as well as a member of Parliament; travelled, sweet-tempered, and good-hearted; amusing and clever. With catholic sympathies and an eclectic turn of mind, Mr. Vavasour saw something good in everybody and everything, which is certainly amiable, and perhaps just, but disqualifies a man in some degree for the business of life, which requires for its conduct a certain degree of prejudice. Mr. Vavasour’s breakfasts were renowned. Whatever your creed, class, or country, one might almost add your character, you were a welcome guest at his matutinal meal, provided you were celebrated. That qualification, however, was rigidly enforced.

It not rarely happened that never were men more incongruously grouped. Individuals met at his hospitable house who had never met before, but who for years had been cherishing in solitude mutual detestation, with all the irritable exaggeration of the literary character. Vavasour liked to be the Amphitryon of a cluster of personal enemies. He prided himself on figuring as the social medium by which rival reputations became acquainted, and paid each other in his presence the compliments which veiled their ineffable disgust. All this was very well at his rooms in the Albany, and only funny; but when he collected his menageries at his ancestral hall in a distant county, the sport sometimes became tragic.

A real philosopher, alike from his genial disposition and from the influence of his rich and various information, Vavasour moved amid the strife, sympathising with every one; and perhaps, after all, the philanthropy which was his boast was not untinged by a dash of humour, of which rare and charming quality he possessed no inconsiderable portion. Vavasour liked to know everybody who was known, and to see everything which ought to be seen. He also was of opinion that everybody who was known ought to know him; and that the spectacle, however splendid or exciting, was not quite perfect without his presence.

His life was a gyration of energetic curiosity; an insatiable whirl of social celebrity. There was not a congregation of sages and philosophers in any part of Europe which he did not attend as a brother. He was present at the camp of Kalisch in his yeomanry uniform, and assisted at the festivals of Barcelona in an Andalusian jacket. He was everywhere, and at everything; he had gone down in a diving-bell and gone up in a balloon. As for his acquaintances, he was welcomed in every land; his universal sympathies seemed omnipotent. Emperor and king, jacobin and carbonaro, alike cherished him. He was the steward of Polish balls and the vindicator of Russian humanity; he dined with Louis Philippe, and gave dinners to Louis Blanc.

This was a dinner of which the guests came to partake. Though they delighted in each other’s society, their meetings were not so rare that they need sacrifice the elegant pleasures of a refined meal for the opportunity of conversation. They let that take its chance, and ate and drank without affectation. Nothing so rare as a female dinner where people eat, and few things more delightful. On the present occasion some time elapsed, while the admirable performances of Sidonia’s cook were discussed, with little interruption; a burst now and then from the ringing voice of Mrs. Coningsby crossing a lance with her habitual opponent, Mr. Vavasour, who, however, generally withdrew from the skirmish when a fresh dish was handed to him.

At length, the second course being served, Mrs. Coningsby said, ‘I think you have all eaten enough: I have a piece of information for you. There is going to be a costume ball at the Palace.’

This announcement produced a number of simultaneous remarks and exclamations. ‘When was it to be? What was it to be? An age, or a country; or an olio of all ages and all countries?’

‘An age is a masquerade,’ said Sidonia. ‘The more contracted the circle, the more perfect the illusion.’

‘Oh, no!’ said Vavasour, shaking his head. ‘An age is the thing; it is a much higher thing. What can be finer than to represent the spirit of an age?’

‘And Mr. Vavasour to perform the principal part,’ said Mrs. Coningsby. ‘I know exactly what he means. He wants to dance the polka as Petrarch, and find a Laura in every partner.’

‘You have no poetical feeling,’ said Mr. Vavasour, waving his hand. ‘I have often told you so.’

‘You will easily find Lauras, Mr. Vavasour, if you often write such beautiful verses as I have been reading to-day,’ said Lady Marney.

‘You, on the contrary,’ said Mr. Vavasour, bowing, ‘have a great deal of poetic feeling, Lady Marney; I have always said so.’

‘But give us your news, Edith,’ said Coningsby. ‘Imagine our suspense, when it is a question, whether we are all to look picturesque or quizzical.’

‘Ah, you want to know whether you can go as Cardinal Mazarin, or the Duke of Ripperda, Harry. I know exactly what you all are now thinking of; whether you will draw the prize in the forthcoming lottery, and get exactly the epoch and the character which suit you. Is it not so, Lord Montacute? Would not you like to practise a little with your crusados at the Queen’s ball before you go to the Holy Sepulchre?’

‘I would rather hear your description of it,’ said Tancred.

‘Lord Henry, I see, is half inclined to be your companion as a Red-cross Knight,’ continued Edith. ‘As for Lady Marney, she is the successor of Mrs. Fry, and would wish, I am sure, to go to the ball as her representative.’

‘And pray what are you thinking of being?’ said Mr. Vavasour. ‘We should like very much to be favoured with Mrs. Coningsby’s ideal of herself.’

‘Mrs. Coningsby leaves the ideal to poets. She is quite satisfied to remain what she is, and it is her intention to do so, though she means to go to Her Majesty’s ball.’

‘I see that you are in the secret,’ said Lord Marney.

‘If I could only keep secrets, I might turn out something.’ said Mrs. Coningsby. ‘I am the depositary of so much that is occult-joys, sorrows, plots, and scrapes; but I always tell Harry, and he always betrays me. Well, you must guess a little. Lady Marney begins.’

‘Well, we were at one at Turin,’ said Lady Marney, ‘and it was oriental, Lalla Rookh. Are you to be a sultana?’

Mrs. Coningsby shook her head.

‘Come, Edith,’ said her husband; ‘if you know, which I doubt——’

‘Oh! you doubt——’

‘Valentine told me yesterday,’ said Mr. Vavasour, in a mock peremptory tone, ‘that there would not be a ball.’

‘And Lord Valentine told me yesterday that there would be a ball, and what the ball would be; and what is more, I have fixed on my dress,’ said Mrs. Coningsby.

‘Such a rapid decision proves that much antiquarian research is not necessary,’ said Sidonia. ‘Your period is modern.’

‘Ah!’ said Edith, looking at Sidonia, ‘he always finds me out. Well, Mr. Vavasour, you will not be able to crown yourself with a laurel wreath, for the gentlemen will wear wigs.’

‘Louis Quatorze?’ said her husband. ‘Peel as Louvois.’

‘No, Sir Robert would be content with nothing less than Le Grand Colbert, rue Richelieu, No. 75, grand magasin de nouveautés très-anciennes: prix fixé, avec quelques rabais.’

‘A description of Conservatism,’ said Coningsby.

The secret was soon revealed: every one had a conjecture and a commentary: gentlemen in wigs, and ladies powdered, patched, and sacked. Vavasour pondered somewhat dolefully on the anti-poetic spirit of the age; Coningsby hailed him as the author of Leonidas.

‘And you, I suppose, will figure as one of the “boys” arrayed against the great Sir Robert?’ said Mr. Vavasour, with a countenance of mock veneration for that eminent personage.

‘The “boys” beat him at last,’ said Coningsby; and then, with a rapid precision and a richness of colouring which were peculiar to him, he threw out a sketch which placed the period before them; and they began to tear it to tatters, select the incidents, and apportion the characters.

Two things which are necessary to a perfect dinner are noiseless attendants, and a precision in serving the various dishes of each course, so that they may all be placed upon the table at the same moment. A deficiency in these respects produces that bustle and delay which distract many an agreeable conversation and spoil many a pleasant dish. These two excellent characteristics were never wanting at the dinners of Sidonia. At no house was there less parade. The appearance of the table changed as if by the waving of a wand, and silently as a dream. And at this moment, the dessert being arranged, fruits and their beautiful companions, flowers, reposed in alabaster baskets raised on silver stands of filigree work.

There was half an hour of merry talk, graceful and gay: a good story, a bon-mot fresh from the mint, some raillery like summer lightning, vivid but not scorching.

‘And now,’ said Edith, as the ladies rose to return to the library, ‘and now we leave you to Maynooth.’

‘By-the-bye, what do they say to it in your House, Lord Marney?’ inquired Henry Sydney, filling his glass.

‘It will go down,’ said Lord Marney. ‘A strong dose for some, but they are used to potent potions.’

‘The bishops, they say, have not made up their minds.’

‘Fancy bishops not having made up their minds,’ exclaimed Tancred: ‘the only persons who ought never to doubt.’

‘Except when they are offered a bishopric,’ said Lord Marney.

‘Why I like this Maynooth project,’ said Tancred, ‘though otherwise it little interests me, is, that all the shopkeepers are against it.’

‘Don’t tell that to the minister,’ said Coningsby, ‘or he will give up the measure.’

‘Well, that is the very reason,’ said Vavasour, ‘why, though otherwise inclined to the grant, I hesitate as to my vote. I have the highest opinion of the shopkeepers; I sympathise even with their prejudices. They are the class of the age; they represent its order, its decency, its industry.’

‘And you represent them,’ said Coningsby. ‘Vavasour is the quintessence of order, decency, and industry.’

‘You may jest,’ said Vavasour, shaking his head with a spice of solemn drollery; ‘but public opinion must and ought to be respected, right or wrong.’

‘What do you mean by public opinion?’ said Tancred.

‘The opinion of the reflecting majority,’ said Vavasour.

‘Those who don’t read your poems,’ said Coningsby.

‘Boy, boy!’ said Vavasour, who could endure raillery from one he had been at college with, but who was not over-pleased at Coningsby selecting the present occasion to claim his franchise, when a new man was present like Lord Montacute, on whom Vavasour naturally wished to produce an impression. It must be owned that it was not, as they say, very good taste in the husband of Edith, but prosperity had developed in Coningsby a native vein of sauciness which it required all the solemnity of the senate to repress. Indeed, even there, upon the benches, with a grave face, he often indulged in quips and cranks that convulsed his neighbouring audience, who often, amid the long dreary nights of statistical imposture, sought refuge in his gay sarcasms, his airy personalities, and happy quotations.

‘I do not see how there can be opinion without thought,’ said Tancred; ‘and I do not believe the public ever think. How can they? They have no time. Certainly we live at present under the empire of general ideas, which are extremely powerful. But the public have not invented those ideas. They have adopted them from convenience. No one has confidence in himself; on the contrary, every one has a mean idea of his own strength and has no reliance on his own judgment. Men obey a general impulse, they bow before an external necessity, whether for resistance or action. Individuality is dead; there is a want of inward and personal energy in man; and that is what people feel and mean when they go about complaining there is no faith.’

‘You would hold, then,’ said Henry Sydney, ‘that the progress of public liberty marches with the decay of personal greatness?’

‘It would seem so.’

‘But the majority will always prefer public liberty to personal greatness,’ said Lord Marney.

‘But, without personal greatness, you never would have had public liberty,’ said Coningsby.

‘After all, it is civilisation that you are kicking against,’ said Vavasour.

‘I do not understand what you mean by civilisation,’ said Tancred.

‘The progressive development of the faculties of man,’ said Vavasour.

‘Yes, but what is progressive development?’ said Sidonia; ‘and what are the faculties of man? If development be progressive, how do you account for the state of Italy? One will tell you it is superstition, indulgences, and the Lady of Loretto; yet three centuries ago, when all these influences were much more powerful, Italy was the soul of Europe. The less prejudiced, a Puseyite for example, like our friend Vavasour, will assure us that the state of Italy has nothing to do with the spirit of its religion, but that it is entirely an affair of commerce; a revolution of commerce has convulsed its destinies. I cannot forget that the world was once conquered by Italians who had no commerce. Has the development of Western Asia been progressive? It is a land of tombs and ruins. Is China progressive, the most ancient and numerous of existing societies? Is Europe itself progressive? Is Spain a tithe as great as she was? Is Germany as great as when she invented printing; as she was under the rule of Charles the Fifth? France herself laments her relative inferiority to the past. But England flourishes. Is it what you call civilisation that makes England flourish? Is it the universal development of the faculties of man that has rendered an island, almost unknown to the ancients, the arbiter of the world? Clearly not. It is her inhabitants that have done this; it is an affair of race. A Saxon race, protected by an insular position, has stamped its diligent and methodic character on the century. And when a superior race, with a superior idea to work and order, advances, its state will be progressive, and we shall, perhaps, follow the example of the desolate countries. All is race; there is no other truth.’

‘Because it includes all others?’ said Lord Henry.

‘You have said it.’

‘As for Vavasour’s definition of civilisation,’ said Coningsby, ‘civilisation was more advanced in ancient than modern times; then what becomes of the progressive principle? Look at the great centuries of the Roman Empire! You had two hundred millions of human beings governed by a jurisprudence so philosophical that we have been obliged to adopt its laws, and living in perpetual peace. The means of communication, of which we now make such a boast, were far more vast and extensive in those days. What were the Great Western and the London and Birmingham to the Appian and Flaminian roads? After two thousand five hundred years, parts of these are still used. A man under the Antonines might travel from Paris to Antioch with as much ease and security as we go from London to York. As for free trade, there never was a really unshackled commerce except in the days when the whole of the Mediterranean coasts belonged to one power. What a chatter there is now about

 the towns, and how their development is cited as the peculiarity of the age, and the great security for public improvement. Why, the Roman Empire was the empire of great cities. Man was then essentially municipal.’

‘What an empire!’ said Sidonia. ‘All the superior races in all the superior climes.’

‘But how does all this accord with your and Coningsby’s favourite theory of the influence of individual character?’ said Vavasour to Sidonia; ‘which I hold, by-the-bye,’ he added rather pompously, ‘to be entirely futile.’

‘What is individual character but the personification of race,’ said Sidonia, ‘its perfection and choice exemplar? Instead of being an inconsistency, the belief in the influence of the individual is a corollary of the original proposition.’

‘I look upon a belief in the influence of individual character as a barbarous superstition,’ said Vavasour.

‘Vavasour believes that there would be no heroes if there were a police,’ said Coningsby; ‘but I believe that civilisation is only fatal to minstrels, and that is the reason now we have no poets.’

‘How do you account for the Polish failure in 1831?’ said Lord Marney. ‘They had a capital army, they were backed by the population, but they failed. They had everything but a man.’

‘Why were the Whigs smashed in 1834,’ said Coningsby, ‘but because they had not a man?’

‘What is the real explanation of the state of Mexico?’ said Sidonia. ‘It has not a man.’

‘So much for progress since the days of Charles the Fifth,’ said Henry Sydney. ‘The Spaniards then conquered Mexico, and now they cannot govern it.’

‘So much for race,’ said Vavasour. ‘The race is the same; why are not the results the same?’

‘Because it is worn out,’ said Sidonia. ‘Why do not the Ethiopians build another Thebes, or excavate the colossal temples of the cataracts? The decay of a race is an inevitable necessity, unless it lives in deserts and never mixes its blood.’

CHAPTER XXI.

Sweet Sympathy

I AM sorry, my dear mother, that I cannot accompany you; but I must go down to my yacht this morning, and on my return from Greenwich I have an engagement.’

This was said about a week after the dinner at Sidonia’s, by Lord Montacute to the duchess. ‘That terrible yacht!’ thought the duchess. Her Grace, a year ago, had she been aware of it, would have deemed Tancred’s engagement as fearful an affair. The idea that her son should have called every day for a week on a married lady, beautiful and attractive, would have filled her with alarm amounting almost to horror. Yet such was the innocent case. It might at the first glance seem difficult to reconcile the rival charms of the Basilisk and Lady Bertie and Bellair, and to understand how Tancred could be so interested in the preparations for a voyage which was to bear him from the individual in whose society he found a daily gratification. But the truth is, that Lady Bertie and Bellair was the only person who sympathised with his adventure.

She listened with the liveliest concern to his account of all his progress; she even made many admirable suggestions, for Lady Bertie and Bellair had been a frequent visitor at Cowes, and was quite initiated in the mysteries of the dilettante service of the Yacht Club. She was a capital sailor; at least she always told Tancred so. But this was not the chief source of sympathy, or the principal bond of union, between them. It was not the voyage, so much as the object of the voyage, that touched all the passion of Lady Bertie and Bellair. Her heart was at Jerusalem. The sacred city was the dream of her life; and, amid the dissipations of May Fair and the distractions of Belgravia, she had in fact all this time only been thinking of Jehoshaphat and Sion. Strange coincidence of sentiment—strange and sweet!

The enamoured Montacute hung over her with pious rapture, as they examined together Mr. Roberts’s Syrian drawings, and she alike charmed and astonished him by her familiarity with every locality and each detail. She looked like a beautiful prophetess as she dilated with solemn enthusiasm on the sacred scene. Tancred called on her every day, because when he called the first time he had announced his immediate departure, and so had been authorised to promise that he would pay his respects to her every day till he went. It was calculated that by these means, that is to say three or four visits, they might perhaps travel through Mr. Roberts’s views together before he left England, which would facilitate their correspondence, for Tancred had engaged to write to the only person in the world worthy of receiving his letters. But, though separated, Lady Bertie and Bellair would be with him in spirit; and once she sighed and seemed to murmur that if his voyage could only be postponed awhile, she might in a manner become his fellow-pilgrim, for Lord Bertie, a great sportsman, had a desire to kill antelopes, and, wearied with the monotonous slaughter of English preserves, tired even of the eternal moors, had vague thoughts of seeking new sources of excitement amid the snipes of the Grecian marshes, and the deer and wild boars of the desert and the Syrian hills.

While his captain was repeating his inquiries for instructions on the deck of the Basilisk at Greenwich, moored off the Trafalgar Hotel, Tancred fell into reveries of female pilgrims kneeling at the Holy Sepulchre by his side; then started, gave a hurried reply, and drove back quickly to town, to pass the remainder of the morning in Brook Street.

The two or three days had expanded into two or three weeks, and Tancred continued to call daily on Lady Bertie and Bellair, to say farewell. It was not wonderful: she was the only person in London who understood him; so she delicately intimated, so he profoundly felt. They had the same ideas; they must have the same idiosyncrasy. The lady asked with a sigh why they had not met before; Tancred found some solace in the thought that they had at least become acquainted. There was something about this lady very interesting besides her beauty, her bright intelligence, and her seraphic thoughts. She was evidently the creature of impulse; to a certain degree perhaps the victim of her imagination. She seemed misplaced in life. The tone of the century hardly suited her refined and romantic spirit. Her ethereal nature seemed to shrink from the coarse reality which invades in our days even the boudoirs of May Fair.

There was something in her appearance and the temper of her being which rebuked the material, sordid, calculating genius of our reign of Mammon.

Her presence in this world was a triumphant vindication of the claims of beauty and of sentiment. It was evident that she was not happy; for, though her fair brow always lighted up when she met the glance of Tancred, it was impossible not to observe that she was sometimes strangely depressed, often anxious and excited, frequently absorbed in reverie. Yet her vivid intelligence, the clearness and precision of her thought and fancy, never faltered. In the unknown yet painful contest, the intellectual always triumphed. It was impossible to deny that she was a woman of great ability.

Nor could it for a moment be imagined that these fitful moods were merely the routine intimations that her domestic hearth was not as happy as it deserved to be. On the contrary, Lord and Lady Bertie and Bellair were the very best friends; she always spoke of her husband with interest and kindness; they were much together, and there evidently existed between them mutual confidence. His lordship’s heart, indeed, was not at Jerusalem; and perhaps this want of sympathy on a subject of such rare and absorbing interest might account for the occasional musings of his wife, taking refuge in her own solitary and devoutly passionate soul. But this deficiency on the part of his lordship could scarcely be alleged against him as a very heinous fault; it is far from usual to find a British noble who on such a topic entertains the notions and sentiments of Lord Montacute; almost as rare to find a British peeress who could respond to them with the same fervour and facility as the beautiful Lady Bertie and Bellair. The life of a British peer is mainly regulated by Arabian laws and Syrian customs at this moment; but, while he sabbatically abstains from the debate or the rubber, or regulates the quarterly performance of his judicial duties in his province by the advent of the sacred festivals, he thinks little of the land and the race who, under the immediate superintendence of the Deity, have by their sublime legislation established the principle of periodic rest to man, or by their deeds and their dogmas, commemorated by their holy anniversaries, have elevated the condition and softened the lot of every nation except their own.

‘And how does Tancred get on?’ asked Lord Eskdale one morning of the Duchess of Bellamont, with a dry smile. ‘I understand that, instead of going to Jerusalem, he is going to give us a fish dinner.’

The Duchess of Bellamont had made the acquaintance of Lady Bertie and Bellair, and was delighted with her, although her Grace had been told that Lord Montacute called upon her every day. The proud, intensely proper, and highly prejudiced Duchess of Bellamont took the most charitable view of this sudden and fervent friendship. A female friend, who talked about Jerusalem, but kept her son in London, was in the present estimation of the duchess a real treasure, the most interesting and admirable of her sex.

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