Europe: A History (14 page)
The peoples who settled on the Plain suffered from one permanent disability: they could find no natural limits to the territory which they chose to occupy. They had to fight for it. Lowlanders tend to think of themselves as docile tillers of the soil in contrast to the ferocious, predatory men from the hills. In reality, it was the plainsmen who had to learn the arts of systematic military organization and occupation. On the plain, one learned to strike first or to be struck down oneself. It is perhaps no accident that the Plain long resisted the onset of settlement; also that in due course it nourished the most formidable military powers of European history. France, Prussia, and Russia—all grew strong from the interminable wars of the plains, and all developed a martial tradition to match their predicament. The lowlands provided the setting for many of their most titanic encounters: at Kunersdorf and Kursk, at Leipzig and Tannenberg, at Waterloo and Stalingrad.
The physical gradients of the European Plain are tipped in two different directions—on the one hand from the alpine ridge to the shore of the northern seas, and, on the other hand, from east to west, from the peak of the Urals (1,894 m) to France’s Atlantic coast. On average, the main east-west gradient falls by 6,000 ft over almost 3,000 miles, or 26 inches per mile—a gradient of only 0.04 per cent.
The idea of ‘cultural gradients’, which run across the European Plain in the opposite direction to the physical ones, developed in response to Europe’s particular patterns of settlement and of political evolution. It so happened that permanent settlement occurred first in the south and the west, later in the north and centre, and last in the east. Hence for much of the last 4,000 years, to cross the mountains
from the Plain and to descend to the Mediterranean was actually to undertake a ‘cultural ascent’. Similarly, in modern times, to move along the European Plain from west to east was widely considered to involve a ‘cultural descent’.
UKRAINA
U
KRAINE
is the land through which the greatest number of European peoples approached their eventual homeland. In ancient times it was variously known as Scythia or Sarmatia, after the peoples who dominated the Pontic steppes long before the arrival of the Slavs,
[CHERSONESOS]
It occupies the largest sector of the southern European plain, between the Volga crossing and the Carpathian narrows; and it carries the principal overland pathway between Asia and Europe. Its modern, Slavonic name means ‘On the Edge’, a close counterpart to the American concept of ‘the Frontier’. Its focal point at the rapids of the Dnieper, where the steppe pathway crosses the river trade-route, was fiercely contested by all comers, for it provided the point of transition between the settled lands to the West and the open steppes to the East. Ukraine is rich in mineral resources—such as the coal of the ‘Donbass’ and the iron of Krivoi Roh. The loess of its famous ‘black earth’ underlies Europe’s richest agricultural lands, which in the years prior to 1914 were to become the Continent’s leading exporter of grain.
Yet apart from the peninsula of Crimea and the main river valleys—the Dnistro, the Dnipro, and the Din, which had served as the focus both for
[KHAZARIA]
and for the first East Slav state (see Appendix III, p. 1249)— much of Ukraine was only systematically settled In modern times. Until then, the wide open spaces of the ‘wild plains’ were ruled by the raids of pagans and nomads and by the wars of Cossacks and Tartars. Ottoman rule in the 15th—18th centuries drew it closer to the Black Sea and the Muslim world. Polish rule after 1569 brought in many Polish landowners and Polish Jews. Russian rule, which was steadily extended in stages between 1654 and 1945, brought in Russians and russification. The ‘Sich’ of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, on an island in the Dnieper, was destroyed by the Russian army in 1775; the Tartar Khanate of Crimea in 1783. Under the Tsars, the whole country was officially named ‘Little Russia’. The southern provinces designated for new colonization were called ‘New Russia’.
Not surprisingly, after so many twists and turns of fortune, Ukraine’s modern inhabitants are fiercely attached to their land. It features prominently in their plaintive poetry:
However, since the plain has always been the playground of power politics, the Ukrainians have rarely been allowed to control their destiny. In the twentieth century they were repeatedly suppressed. Their short-lived Republic, which in 1918–20 served as one of the main battlegrounds for Russia’s Reds and Whites, was crushed by the victorious Red Army (see pp. 928–9). They were victims of some of the Continent’s most terrible man-made disasters, and of wholesale genocide. Their casualties during the wars of 1918–20, the collectivization campaign of the 1930s, the terror-famine of 1932–3, and the devastations of the Second World War must have approached 20 million,
[CHERNOBYL] [HARVEST]
Some among them, frustrated by their impotence in face of Russians, Poles, and Germans, and unable to reach the source of their oppression, struck out in desperate violence against their neighbours,
[BUCZACZ] [POGROM]
Their population is similar in size to that of England or France, and contains important minorities; but the Ukrainians find very little place in the history books. For many years, they were usually presented to the outside world as ‘Russians’ or ‘Soviets’ whenever they were to be praised, and as ‘Ukrainians’ only when they did evil,
[LETTLAND]
They did not recover a free voice until the 1990s. The Republic of Ukraine eventually reclaimed its independence in December 1991, facing an uncertain future.
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This concept of the
Kulturgefälle
or ‘cultural gradient’ was implicit in the ideology of German nationalism, which reacted against the cultural dominance of the West whilst laying claim to the East. It can be observed in some aspects of French attitudes to Belgium and Germany, of German attitudes to the Slavs, of Polish attitudes to Russia and Ukraine, of Russian attitudes to the peoples of Central Asia. Human nature always tempts people to imagine that they inhabit the cultural upland whilst their neighbours inhabit the Styx. In the British Isles, for example, the
English majority are apt to perceive all cultural gradients sloping steadily downhill from the Himalayan peaks of Oxford or Hyde Park Corner to the ‘Celtic fringe’, the ‘Scotch mist’, the ‘Irish bogs’, and the ‘Channel fog’. The English saying that ‘wogs begin at Calais’ is very close in spirit to France’s
histoires beiges
to Metternich’s most Viennese remark that ‘Asia begins at the Landstrasse’, or to the Polish proverb ‘Na Rusi się musi’ (in Russia, one has to). The prejudices inherent in their elastic cultural geography have undoubtedly been strengthened by fears of the instability of life on the Plain.
Thanks to the configuration of its approaches, one small branch-line of the European Plain has assumed special importance. The plain of Pannonia, now in modern Hungary, is the only extensive stretch of grassland south of the mountain chain. It is protected in the north by the main Carpathian ridge, and is bounded to the south by the middle reaches of the Danube. It has three natural gateways—one at Vienna from the west, another through the Iron Gates from the east, and a third through the Moravian Gap from the north. Its well-watered pastures offered a natural terminus for nomads moving from east to west, and a convenient springboard for many a barbarian tribe preparing to invade the Roman Empire. It was the home successively of the Gepids, the Huns (from whom it took the name of Hungaria), the Avars, the Cumans, the Slavs, and eventually the Magyars. The Magyars call it the
Alfold
(Lowland), and sometimes the
puszta>
a word of Slav origin meaning ‘the wilderness’.
2.
The Mountains
. The central feature of the Peninsula is to be found in the majestic chain of mountains which curve in two elegant arcs from the Maritime Alps in Provence to the Carpathian Alps in Transylvania. This impressive barrier forms the Peninsula’s backbone, creating a watershed which divides the northern Plain from the Mediterranean lands. The highest peaks in the westerly sections—Mont Blanc (4,807 m), the Matterhorn (4,478 m), or Gran Paradiso (4,061 m)—are significantly higher than those in the more easterly ranges—Triglav (2,863 m) in the Julian Alps, Gerlach (2,655 m) in the Tatras, or Moldoveanu (2,543 m) in Romania. Even so, with the eternal snows lying above the 3,200-m line on the south-facing
Sonnenseite
or ‘sunshine side’, and above the 2,500-m contour on the north-facing slopes, the upper ridges are impassable almost everywhere. Continental Europe’s largest glacier, the Aletsch, which runs beneath the Jungfrau in the Bernese Oberland, has no equivalent in the East. But all the highest passes are closed by snow during the winter months. For well over 1,200 miles there are only three significant gaps in the chain—the Danube Gap in Bavaria, the Elbe Gap in Bohemia, and the Moravian Gap which links Silesia with Hungary.
For obvious reasons, the peoples who settled in the high valleys kept themselves aloof from the turbulent affairs of the lowlands, regarding their mountain home as a refuge and fortress to be defended against all intruders. Switzerland, which emerged in the thirteenth century as a confederation of mountain cantons (see p. 404), has retained something of this outlook to the present day.
[ALPI]
The mountains, however, have had a unifying as well as a divisive function. The
critical distances across them are not very great. Bourg St Maurice on the Isère and Martigny on the Rhone are, respectively, only 62 and 88 km (39 and 55 miles) from Italian Aosta. Austrian Innsbruck is 68 km from Bressanone (Brixen) in South Tirol; Sambor on the Dniester is 105 km from Uzhgorod, on a tributary of the Danube. Once the high alpine passes were tamed, the lands on either side of the ridge acquired common links, common interests, and to a large degree a common culture. Turin, for example, is much closer to Lyons and Geneva than it is to Rome. Milan or Venice have had stronger ties with Zurich, Munich, or Vienna than with distant Sicily. Bavaria, which was long cut off from the north by the vast forests and hills of central Germany, has shared much with nearby Lombardy. The old province of Galicia on the northern slopes of the Carpathians had much to do with Hungary over the ridge to the south. As any tourist can see, the worlds of the
Alpenraum
or of the Carpathians have survived, notwithstanding the barriers created by modern national states,
[GOTTHARD]
The presence of the mountains gave special significance to the three major gaps between them. The Bavarian Gap, which follows the corridor of the middle Danube from Passau to Krems, became a capital link between north and south. The Elbe Gap opened Bohemia to the German influences which the Böhmer Wald might otherwise have impeded. Of equal importance, especially in earlier times, was the Moravian Gap, which formed a natural south-bound funnel for many of the peoples coming from the steppes. In early medieval times it provided the site of the first Slav state, the Great Moravian Empire (see Chapter IV). In historic times it has provided a pathway for innumerable armies, for Sobieski bound for the Turkish Wars or for Napoleon bound for Austerlitz. It ultimately leads, like the routes through the Bavarian and the Elbe Gaps, to the Danube near Vienna, ‘the heart of the heart of Europe’,
[SLAVKOV]
Of course, Europe possesses many mighty mountain chains in addition to its central spine. Mulhacen (3,487 m) in the Sierra Nevada, Le Pic de Néthou or d’Aneto (3,404 m) in the Pyrenees, Mt Etna (3,323 m) in Sicily, Monte Corno (2,912 m) in the Apennines, Musala (2,925 m) in Bulgaria, Korab (2,764 m) in Albania, and Olympus itself (2,917 m) are all peaks of alpine proportions. Not all Europeans are aware that the supreme summit of the Peninsula is to be found, not on Mont Blanc, but on the Elbrus Massif (5,642 m) in the Greater Caucasus.
3.
The Mediterranean
, that marvellously secluded sea which laps Europe’s southern coastline, forms the basis of a self-contained geographical unit. Its sea lanes provide a ready channel for cultural, economic, and political contacts. It supplied the cradle for the classical world. Under the Caesars it became in effect a Roman lake. In the Renaissance and after, it was the focus of an interwoven civilization with important material as well as cultural dimensions.
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Yet significantly, since the decline of Roman power, the Mediterranean has never been politically united. Seapower has never been sufficient to overcome the land-based empires which established themselves on its perimeter. Indeed, once the Muslim states took root in the Levant and in Africa, the Mediterranean became an area of permanent
political division. Maritime and commercial powers such as Venice were incapable of uniting the whole. The European powers of the nineteenth century founded colonies from Syria to Morocco; but they were prevented by their rivalries from destroying the principal Muslim bastion in Turkey, and hence from creating a general hegemony.