Populism and nationalism create their own version of the past, and Russia is harking back to the glory days of WWII
- Georgi Gospodinov is the author of Time Shelter, which has been longlisted for the 2023 Booker International prize
Four years ago, I wrote a novel in which the feeling that there was a “deficit of future” was so acute that every nation in Europe wanted to hold its own referendum on the past. Until then, referendums had always been about the future. But the moment arrived when the horizon closed, and we started to only look back towards the past. A referendum on the past would involve choosing to return to the happiest decade or year from the 20th century in each nation’s history. A deficit of future always unlocks huge reserves of nostalgia for the past: which decade would nations choose? Germany picks the very end of the 80s, a perpetuum mobile of 1989 in which the wall is constantly falling. Italy goes back to the 60s. It’s as if the map of Europe shifts from territorial to temporal, and nations close themselves up – for a very short while – inside their own happy past.
We are seeing this model – this strong pull backwards – being played out now. In short, time has replaced space. The world has been parcelled out, more or less explored and familiar. We are left with an immense ocean of time, which is really an ocean of the past.
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