Once more on how the British perceive history, and a very brief word on letters

The magnificent consensus with which the people of Europe greeted the introduction of the common currency is comparable in its intensity only to the unanimous horror that had gripped Europe on September 11 of last year. Furthermore, it is clear that in the first instance, Britain enthusiastically joined Europe and the rest of the world (which, we might add, was nowhere near united in its sympathy for America – let us not exaggerate). In the second instance, I would call the British attitude 'qualified indifference' (qualified indifference), the 'measure' of which varies significantly – from the reaction of the Financial Times to that of the Sun, and from the attitude of a young person rushing to the City with a thick briefcase to that of a taxi driver who assures me that there is absolutely no way to avoid the catastrophe awaiting Manchester United.

What does this mean? – let us ask ourselves. A belated hope to escape a shared fate, political shortsightedness, or traditional British avoidance? I think it is none of these. In 1915, Winston Churchill, supplementing Samuel Johnson's definition of patriotism, said: 'Usually a patriot of his country is a man who does not know its history.' But for a Briton – a true Briton, I mean, not, say, a passionate Saudi patriot living in a five-story Regency mansion in Mayfair, or a bird of passage like the one writing these lines – history does not need to be known; he is in it anyway (even if there may not be that many such people, and their number is dwindling). By the way, I envy the intelligent young people in countries that have only just been formed – that is where you need to seize the moment and start dealing with history; the scope is guaranteed, and there is no literature yet either, so sit down and write, and you will be the first and, for the time being, the only historian, provided you don't miss the right moment. However, one must be careful here too: one such young man brilliantly defended a dissertation at my college and almost became a professor at one of the very new British universities, but unfortunately was soon shamed and expelled because it turned out that such a country does not yet exist (nothing, it will soon!), he had invented it.

In Britain, historicality is much more of a feeling than knowledge. And how could it be otherwise when in a small village in Kent, where there are 25 houses, three of them are pubs, and three obelisks have been erected to the soldiers who died in three wars: the Anglo-Boer War, the First World War, and the Second World War. You see it as soon as you start seeing, and you will see it even if you spend 30 years in Silicon Valley afterward. Therefore, to completely and fully accept Europe (rather than simply being 'accepted' into it), something must happen to your vision, not just your mind. It is significant that only in England do people born in entirely different places and speaking other languages become historians, and not just historians, but historians of England. It would be no exaggeration to say that the most prominent British historians were Sir Vinogradoff and Sir Lewis Namier (the Galician Jew Namierowski).

But time is moving faster. Europe does not want to wait for historicality to leave British hearts. But do they themselves want to wait? It would be more accurate to ask: can they wait?

For now, they are waiting, arguing, swearing, punishing themselves over the euro, praising the euro, in both cases using more or less banal arguments. But both pro-Europeans and anti-Europeans forget that their own historicality (both rational and emotional) was eroded long ago – and not by Europe, but quite the contrary. By what then? – Quite simply, by America. The British go there and live there without turning into Americans (though sometimes becoming American writers). Unlike some Third World and post-communist 'Third-and-a-half' world countries, their Americanisation is not happening. Or, let us say: over the last half-century, the British have shown an amazing 'Americo-resistance'. However, let us not forget that before that there was a vaccination that lasted at least two hundred years, such as neither the Russians nor the Turks had (my apologies to both).

But with Europe, the British have a completely different history, and they do not want the euro to draw a line under it. Currently, those British people who do not want the euro are afraid not so much of losing sovereignty as of mixing their history with a foreign one. And that is poetry, not politics! Moreover, we are talking about the history of a *united* Europe, not about what it was like when we were born. A united Europe will have a history with a completely different historiography*. Or, more precisely, the history of a united Europe will not be a history of letters. Do not fear, not in the sense that there will be no writing, as, for example, for the Iroquois Confederacy or the Democratic Republic of Madagascar, but it will not have letters as one of the main sources for our knowledge of history. All British history, including the history of Britain, so to speak, 'in Europe' – is first and foremost a history of letters. It is epistolary by its very nature. It is significant that the phenomenon of writing itself is first of all not a report, not communication, but a need to write, to record – first for oneself and only then for another. In 18th and 19th-century England, the letter was a lifestyle for a certain group of people, and British historism itself, that is, 'life in history', is life in a history that you yourself write or read. And it is your history only because you can continue it, continue reading, writing, or (if you are a historian) researching what has been written. But remember – this history did not begin with you, although it may happen that it will end with you. Others will find a different 'lifestyle' without asking your advice and without fearing to be left without a yesterday. In England, even those who do not know its history at all (and are therefore even more patriotic) know that history *is*, perhaps more than in any other European country. I think that among the anti-European euro-haters there are many middle-aged people who have not written a single letter by hand, but they know from their mother's stories how she waited for letters from her husband in the trenches of the Second World War.

Yes, a letter sent electronically is not the same as one written by hand. But even Europe, from which British wives and mothers awaited letters with military postal stamps, is no longer that Europe! Therefore, it is no wonder that the British, constantly dissatisfied with Europe's interference in their affairs – from chemical fertilisers to legislation, although they are dissatisfied, they endure it; however, they do not want to reconcile themselves to the introduction of the euro, because for them, it means interference in their history. And even if Blair and Brown's economic arguments are quite convincing, they miss the target, because for the anti-Europeans, the euro is a symbol that *their* history – distinct from Europe's – has ended. Think for yourselves: neither Sir Christopher Wren, nor Sir Michael Faraday, nor Sir Isaac Newton will look at you from the banknotes anymore. And it is not important that they are British, but that they only look at the British, thus continuing their history. And even if, after a quarter of a century, Blair and Brown, the great connectors of Britain to Europe, stare at these same Britons from the euro banknotes of that time, the young people of the next generation will not only not remember who Blair and Brown are, but I fear they will have long forgotten who Wren and Faraday were (let us hope Newton will be luckier, although history in current English schools is going worse and worse).

It turns out that many opponents of the euro are pro-American. Indeed, such concepts as 'state sovereignty' and 'national sovereignty' have long become political-legal fictions and will soon take their proper place among historical-cultural anachronisms alongside Marx's class struggle and Freud's Oedipalism. But let us not succumb to calf-like euro-enthusiasm. Because time will pass, and concepts such as 'united Europe', 'human rights', and even 'free market' (please, do not be horrified!) await the same fate. But let us return to euro-money in Britain.

A week ago, I happened to explain these reflections to a charming young lady with a double-barrelled name (double barrelled name – do not be afraid, that happens here, especially if you have a house in Greenwich and another one with a park in Essex). She, like her entire family, is an anti-European, even though she works in Berlin at an American bank, so she is doing just fine. 'Oh God, you don't seriously think that all our fussing about the euro is politics!' exclaimed my interlocutor. 'It's pure aesthetics. The sense of one's own history, which you magnanimously attribute to my compatriots, has long been possessed only by the few who have received a real education. But education here at the moment is much worse than in Europe; let us not be hypocritical. Our young anti-Europeans, yobboes (yobbo) from the City, are simply afraid that against the European background they will turn out to be complete idiots. That is why my father – a retired lieutenant general and a convinced anti-European – sends both my brothers to study at Harvard, not at Oxford or Cambridge.'

In one sense, she is undoubtedly right. A rudimentary aesthetic intuition can manifest spontaneously, without special education. But a developed aesthetic sense already assumes an education, and not just any kind, but the most real one. Let us fantasise a little. If Lord Byron were alive now, he would undoubtedly be a pro-European, not to mention Oscar Wilde. Dickens, I think – also (and with a strong pro-American bent). It would be more complicated with Thomas Hardy – he was very closely related to his local (the Duke of Dorset and the Duke of Somerset) history. George Bernard Shaw would hesitate for a long time (he liked to hesitate): that united Europe is too far from his social ideal, which for a time, of course, was the Soviet Union. And again – the main thing in these examples is aesthetics. But with Winston Churchill, everything would be much simpler: no aesthetics; the British attitude towards a 'new' Europe (let us not forget that for him, it was the Europe of de Gaulle and Adenauer) – is history turning into politics. Therefore, he would be 'for' it, but on the condition that the political leader of the united Europe would be a British political leader. Who then? – Well, certainly not Blair (he would promote Blair to the position of Mayor of London without much enthusiasm, from the Conservative party, of course). But enough fantasising. For now, Blair is not the Mayor of London or the leader of a united Europe. The owner of the grocery shop next door, the Pakistani Yusuf, a pro-European, curses the local tax, hoping that it will be easier for him to pay in euros (his economic erudition is about the same as his historical awareness). His neighbour, the owner of the souvenir shop, the Livonian Ahmed, thinks that since the pound has failed to become a tourist currency, then better to have the euro. My university colleague, the anthropologist Richard K., having not received pounds from Britain for his research on women's inequality in Sudanese universities, is firmly convinced that he will receive a grant in euros from Europe. For now, let us agree on this: the euro is a symbol of the unreflected political self-awareness of today's European resident.

Translated from Russian by Uldis Tīrons
* Historiography — Greek historia (history) + graphein (to write)
Article first published in the February 2002 issue of the magazine Rīgas Laiks