SOS Georgia! Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Levy
What is the role of the intellectual? The question was addressed on 31 March 1995 by Václav Havel when he delivered the Chancellor's Lecture at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. Intellectuals, he said, "foster tolerance, struggle against evil and violence, promote human rights and argue for their indivisibility. In a word, they represent what has been called 'the conscience of society'. They are not indifferent when people in an unknown country on the other side of the planet are annihilated..."
Last week, in a Liberation piece titled "SOS Géorgie? SOS Europe!", two leading French intellectuals, Andre Glucksmann und Bernard-Henri Levy, took up Havel's challenge and placed their standard firmly on Georgian ground as they gallantly defended it against Russian neo-imperialism . Must we stand idly by and watch the "Caucasian Olympics of horror" they asked?
Helpless, divided, Europeans gazed at the siege of Sarajevo. Helpless, blind, they allowed the devastation of Grozny. Should cowardice now force us to passively watch the surrender of democracy in Tbilisi? The General Staff in the Kremlin has never accepted the existence of a "European Union". It believes that behind the fine speeches in Brussels age-old rivalries and national identities lurk, which it can mercilessly manipulate and then use to orchestrate mutual paralysis. The Europe that was constructed against the Iron Curtain, against fascism, then and now, against its own colonial wars, the Europe that celebrated the fall of the Wall and the Velvet Revolution is now almost comatose. 1945—2008 ... Will the end of our short common history be sealed in the Caucasian Olympics of horror?
Fighting words, no doubt, but considering what Russia is doing and intends to do, intellectuals, and the rest of us, cannot be "indifferent" as Václav Havel said in 1995 in New Zealand, "when people in an unknown country on the other side of the planet are annihilated..."
