YAKOV KROTOV

HOW MANY WESTS AND EASTS?

The Church historian Konrad Repgen once said, describing the foreign policy of the Popes in the World wars: "In May and June 1940 the West had lost only a battle" (History of the Church, Ed. by H. Jedin, Crossroad, New York, vol. X, p. 86).

It doesn�t matter in 1995 what happened in 1940. What matters is that Germany and Italy for some time stopped being West. Did they become East? May be, in a sense they became non-democratic. You must be democratic in order to be the West.

To be democratic, to be the West is not as glorious as it can seem � even to the Westerner. Gilbert Chesterton in the anti-American essay "The Heresy of the Hustle" choosed to be Easterner, when he, Roman Catholic Britishman, one of the most Western people of all times wrote with irony about Americans: "In so far as the citizens of the western democracy have really gone wrong, they have not inherently or quite naturally gone wrong."

Chesterton criticized not democracy, but the West and England was an Eastern country for him at that moment. For him West and East symbolized not Freedom and Slavery, but Heathenry and Christianity:

"The real natural Americans are simple, generous, capable of a beautiful wonder and gratitude; enthusiastic about things external to themselves; easily contented and not particularly conceited. They have been deliberately and dogmatically taught to be conceited. They have been systematically educated in a theory of enthusiasm, which degrades it into mere self-assertion. The American has received, as a sort of religion, the notion that blowing his own trumpet is as important as the trump of doom. He does not in his hear really want very much to blow his own trumpet; he is sometimes as shy and sensitive as any other musician, when told that the trumpet is his favorite instrument; he is often easily put off and troubled by foreign criticism. ... The Americans were never naturally boomsters or musiness bullies. They would have been much happier and more themselves as a race of simple and warm-hearted country people, eager for country sports or gazing at the wonders in country fairs. An egotistic heresy, produced by the modern heathenry, has taught them against their Christian instincts that boasting is better than courtesy and pride better than humility."

(G.K.Chesterton. "The Heresy of Hustle". The Chesterton Review. Vol. XX No. 2-3, pp. 152-153.)

The East is not only a land of totalitarianism and Babylon. Moreover, precisely because East is the land of Babylon, the Liberation, the Gospel, the Light of Christ come from the East and onwards to the West. To liberate God comes to slaves, not to free people. Chesterton accuses Americans in the lack of the feeling of necessity to be liberated. Those who feel themselves so liberated already don�t need Liberator.

Certainly, Chesterton lied about Americans. He did so not because he wanted to humiliate them. He simply didn�t want to tell the truth about Englishmen. All bad words which we cited can be addressed to Englishmen, to Frenchmen, to Russians � to any people with Christianity in past in the wardrobe and Heathenry at the office and in the supermarket. That�s the usual story with West-East psychology. West is the white screen at which people Westerners project their hidden pretensions to each other. So every Western country has some more Western neibour. Usually these are States. America is the Truth about France, England, Australia � bitter truth about those who criticize America. Every critic knows that the vice is not in States but in his soul, but prefers to criticize States and bless his soul. It is so understandable, so Freudian, that Americans can look upon this with a salt of forgiveness.

Each stick has two ends. Two countries of the former Christendom are exceptions in this chain of projection. America has no Western neibour. She doesn�t want to look upon Russia as the West. Americans agree to be the West in the ultimate sense. As a result Russia is bordering with the West both at her right and left of the map. But Russia is bordering also with the East � on her northern borders. Moreover, Russia prefers to be West and agrees overtly to be East at the same time.

America is the only absolutely Western West. Moreover, America, the most Western West, is the only Western country which is sharply divided inside between West and East. The movement towards West, the myth about Western frontier constitutes the unique feature of America. Americans inherited from Indians the perception of the dwelling place as combination of West and East; nowhere in Europe you will find such a system of designation streets according to their orientation to the Sun. American cattle included in itself the large amount of Easterners, including the most Eastern East - African.

America is the very Western West with the great sense of the East. Russia is the only Western East and Eastern West. As a result both countries have the highest level of self-conscienceness, they are most sensitive to the problem of West and East, they embody this problem and both keep keys to its resolution. Resolution can be reached only when both keys will be inserted in the door. We � American and Russian woman/man � tried to use our keys in order to see what is in the safe.