No one will get away with the catastrophe of Greece

13 January 2012 / 11:01:56 GRReporter

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Anastasia Balezdrova

Professor Alexander Kiossev heads the Department of History and Theory of Culture in the Philosophy Faculty of the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". He is the author of more than 80 studies and articles in the field of Bulgarian literature, cultural and literary theory, Bulgarian and Balkan identity and cultural history of the transition, published in Bulgarian and foreign academic journals.

In addition to his academic activities, he is one of the people who played an active role in the intellectual life of Bulgaria during the transition in the 1990s. He was one of the founders of the club "Synthesis" - created in 1989, shortly before the political changes in the country, by an intellectual circle of people who discussed the issues related to this.

In an interview for GRReporter Professor Kiossev analyzed the reasons for the European crisis, for the lack of solidarity between the Member States of the European Union, and the consequences of an eventual bankruptcy of Greece for its neighbours.

Where did the European idea succeed and where did it fail?

This is a really complicated question. The European idea is very old. Cultural historians talk about the first references to it dating back to around the 9th century. It has changed a lot, but still it has had two main stages. The first version of it was the United Christian Europe - a noble vision that Novalis formulated in the late 18th century. The other was the post-traumatic Europe after World War II, which had to overcome the giant trauma of what had happened. In both cases we are talking about a union. In the first case – about a unification based on the religious division of Europe, and in the second – about the union of the nationally fractured, and severely damaged in all directions, Europe.

In this context, the European idea arises from the past and is a utopia for something like the United States of Europe, which after World War II began very slowly and step by step to be made a reality by economists, politicians and managers. This is a good thing because they are careful people who are not at all prone to ideological overreaching. On the other hand, however, this gives rise to birth defects in the project of the "European Union", which we are currently observing.