On the Eruption of the German Volcano (Part I)

Suffering from defeat in the war and from the Versailles Treaty, Weimar Germany attributed blame to external and internal enemies: the power politics of the Western nations and the November criminals (Novemberverbrecher). Eager for national revenge, and in need of economic outlets, Weimar saw an opportunity to achieve both in rapprochement with the USSR. Politically, therefore, the Rapallo Treaty symbolized Germany's wandering between two European worlds, combining nationalist elements of German culture with a fascination for the anti-bourgeois Russian Revolution. A new Rapallo West German self-Finlandization would establish a cordon santiaire, allowing the Soviet Union to maintain unaltered its sphere of influence in the overall socio-political structure, while economically supplying the Eastern bloc's population, and simultaneously coping with Western technological and military development. This new Rapallo would be of disastrous consequences for Poland and for Eastern Europe as a whole. I agree with Feher and Heller that Zeitgeist may be expressed most accurately and precisely by minority groups amalgamating the quintessence of otherwise heterogeneous motifs and orientations, and which guide the politics of divergent social groups and strata. National Bolshevism is a metaphor, as is Rapallo. It signifies nationalism, anti-Westernism, and a fascination for revolution

Archaeology · German · Seismology · Volcano · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Geology · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History

• Green politics and the revolution in Eastern Europe

  John Ely•Capitalism Nature Socialism•1990

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