I met a granddaughter of a former Yugoslav president today. No, not Tito. Dressed in a Pantera shirt, having a croissant in a Friedrichshain cafe and on a lookout for a job in Berlin.
She belongs to a dying breed, red bourgeoisie, a nickname for the communist dignitaries of second Yugoslavia, and their descendants. It was a pejorative term, but I don’t take it as one. They were urbanized peasants who rose to lead a country in brutal times. It required hard work, pragmatism, and courage.
At least, until the generation of their children came to power to gamble it all away. The Pantera shirt was a fun touch though.
Yet, the whole situation made me wonder. What happens when empires fail? The groups of the White Russians in the Paris salons, in the years after the 1917 revolution. The triggering of the Renaissance in Italy, thanks to the Byzantine nobles and scholars, running away from the Ottomans after Constantinople fell.
The French Huguenots in Berlin.
Somehow it also made me sad.
There are no more White Russians, Mensheviks, or Huguenots in Berlin. They withered away over time, and by the third generation, they could not be found anymore.
The eternal question of integration vs assimilation.
Not sure why I like the obscure groups of hard-line believers. Why are the Russian Old Believers so fascinating, or why is the Dalai Lama such a tragic and respectable character?
Do we as humans like stoics, fighters for ideals that are lost and non-relevant in the annals of modernity. For indeed reality is sometimes anal and filthy. Maybe we want to look up to our heroes but not actually be them, for that is hard living.
The numbers are hitting 1000 cases per day. With the collapse of old-school capitalism and the automation-information age on the doorstep, while pandemic rages, I explained that the outdated terminology of the past does not translate.
It is a joke now, the comrades, politburos, and Marx. Honesty, integrity, and courage will always have value, but only if one learns sales. Strakhanov of today has a blog, goes to conferences, and only mines enough to sustain the quota.
The new lingo means packaging yourself as a product and a tool, to be exploited and sharpened with a new job and a new position.
You need to get the lingo because the words of Dalai Lama will be only valid for an intellectual of a society of today, whereas the discourse of human-as-service is one of the middle-class. The bourgeoisie of the past becomes middle-class of the present, and the entire cultural context needs to be re-learned.
Sometimes it hurts, the loss of status. How was it for Greek scholars in Venice without the baths, or White Russians without their hunts and estates?
At least, the sense of dread is familiar. As the numbers rise, the Germans fear and work on compromises. No bars after 11. Masks in crowded streets.
Nobody is so sure of their footing anymore, and arrogance evaporates. I welcome the dread, it is a known friend. Yet I pity those who have to deal with it for the first time because it is not a lesson they should have to learn.
On the other hand, the news from the other side.
They say the Chinese economy grows at 5% in 2020. It seems like bastard communism might actually return, and the post-socialist kids of the 90s will welcome new overlords.
Memories resurface. Walking the broad boulevards of Beijing with a red bourgeoisie girl, a Chinese contemporary art curator, with links to CP. She asked me a few months ago to go and explore rural China with her.
The thought of submitting and welcoming our new overlords is a fine one. She is too. But individualism corrupted me, I am not as resolute as I used to be. The Battle of Stalingrad of our future will take place on the Internet, and there is no way to fight for a better tomorrow behind a firewall.
She will find an appropriate suitor elsewhere.
Maybe the fringe groups of the past can show what errors to avoid in the fights of the future.
If our biases don’t take hold, and the fog of war is not too dense.
Mensheviks that returned to the Soviet Union ended up in the gulag archipelago.
The only way is forward.
