Richard Wagner: Prelude to «Lohengrin», Simon Rattle
Иван Шариков
I'm still reading Alan Furst, this time The Polish Officer. I think it might be time to pick up some new books, I've had enough of Europe for a while. Meanwhile I'm neck deep in this story.
It's 1940 and Germany and Russia have divided Poland, but they haven't started fighting each other yet. De Milja, the officer in the title, has joined a resistance group and on page 69 he is having a meeting with a couple of the other leaders. They come to realize that while the operations against the Germans haven't gone too badly, they have not yet learned how to operate against the Russians. Now they are wondering why that might be and Agata turns philosophical:
Agata tapped a pencil eraser against the open page of a notebook. "There is a difference," she said slowly, "that interests me. Say that it is the difference between nationalism and, ah, what we might call social theory. For the Germans, nationalism is an issue of race, ethnicity. For example, they accept as their own the Volksdeutsch - descendents of German colonists, many of whom do not even speak German. But their blood is German blood - these Teutonic philosophers really believe in such things. Cut a vein, listen closely, you can hear the overture to Lohengrin - why, that's a German you've got there! The Bolsheviks are just the opposite - they recruit the mind, or so they like to pretend. And all the world is invited to join them; you can be a communist any time you like - 'Good heavens! I just realized it's all in the dictatorship of the working class.'
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