REPLIES TO 13 QUESTIONS
169
rope. Because she symbolizes the universe of art. Her artists are not
the greatest in all the arts, but all the arts meet and unite in her.
Except architecture. Despite Le Corbusier, despite Prouve.
French architecture is hidden away in portfolios, and its most
grandiose achievement will soon be the capital of Punjab.... But
that would take us too far afield.
Has Russia proposed any works or furnished any models to the other
Slavic peoples? For that matter, what is the meaning of the "Russian
World" now that Russia is cutting herself off from her own culture?
Has there ever been a Russian
culture?
In speaking of Poland
and Rumania I am speaking of the Russian world. Their annexa–
tion has been accomplished-to the Communist world. I am not
familiar with Rumanian affairs, but I believe I do know the mean–
ing of the Polish Resistance.
It
will never forget the passivity of the
Red Army before Warsaw. But Russia
is
not attempting to annex
Poland by Slavism but through Communism. Russian Communism
often seems to me the means Russia has hit upon of becoming a
true nation. I believe that a nation
is
something more than "the
memory of great deeds accomplished together and the will to achieve
still more," as Renan says. I believe that a nation implies the ex–
altation of particular values which, rightly or wrongly, unite those
who form a part of it. I believe that every old nation regards itself
as ranking above all others by virtue of one attribute, whether it be
strength or wisdom, grandeur or freedom. Russia was keenly con–
scious of her genius, and had quite a nice inferiority complex. Com–
munism has enabled the latter to undergo a brilliant transformation.
But the role once played by the past in the great nations of Europe
(from which what we call culture is inseparable) seems to me now
to be played in Russia-as in the United States-by the future.
Soviet propaganda claims everything for itself: Russia invented
the Archimedes Principle and Euclidean geometry. Good enough.
But her claims to Aeschylus, Giotto and the cathedrals are milder.
The Soviet Republics publish the classics as a "scientific" under–
taking: as a subheading of history. There
is
a Russian genius, but
Russia has no culture
in the sense
that the great Occidental nations
have it, because the Occidental cultures are bound up with a myth
of antiquity, which has never played a great role in Russia. The
