The Battle Line at Louvain
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privatdozent.co
But more interestingly, there was a nationalist movement in Belgium at the the time, and a debate on which language to use at the university. The international language (french) or the local language (flemish). He was of the opinion that both had their place, which put him in opposition to the nationalists. Since he was one of the founders of the flemish literature movement, and the prime expert on flemish history he was hard to attack directly by the nationalists. So they denounced him to the gestapo, hoping they would get rid of him while keeping their hands clean. Fortunately for me it didn’t work, as the nazis were also reliant on his academic work for their pan-germanic narrative and refused to attack him directly as well.
Nowadays we see as well western nationalist movements with ambivalent support for murderous regimes such as Russia, and I think this support comes in no small part from the idea that those regimes can be used to do the dirty work that they are too cowardly to do themselves
As a Russian who emigrated a long time ago for political reasons, signed countless anti-Kremlin petitions, and sent money to support Ukraine and her people, I am scared how many people support this regime for reasons unknown. I don’t know any other possible reason except selling one’s soul for money.
People can’t seem to hold the idea of multiple countries being problematic and doing objectionable things. Certainly information ops from your usual suspects feed into this.
s/The/Some/
Plenty of right-wing extremists seemed happy to help the Nazis run their country (most definitely in a police-state spirit) after it was conquered in WW2. I think you underestimate the importance of ideology.
The most common narrative, supported by endless social media personalities on the Russian "liberal left" is that the Soviet Union was Double-Plus-Ungood, (for the American audience, the joke is that "the younger the blogger, the more he suffered under Stalin"), the 90s were a time of flowering possibility for Democracy and Freedom, and then Evil Pootin the Horrible showed up, and ruined things for everyone. In the interest of space, I won't get into the Soviet era, let's just leave it at "it's not as simple as you think", and when many, many people who actually live in Russia today look back on that era, they see much more of a mixed bag than just the "Gulag And Repressions" narrative, and the more the left pushes this fiction, the less relevant their voices become. If you struggle to understand "how can anyone support HIM?!", we need a bit of background.
Psychologically, modern Russia is heavily shaped by the 90s. The flowering of "Democracy" was chiefly embodied by incredibly flawed elections that brough Boris Yeltzin to power. And as Russian citizens watched in disbelief while Yeltzin stumbled around the world stage in a perennially drunken stupor, various economic "reformers" were taking the fullest possible advantage of the "Freedom" they were suddenly afforded. For an informed non-partisan's view of the economic pillaging, I refer you to the many speeches made by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, one of the main economic advisors to the Russian "reformers" of the time - chiefly Anatoly Chubais and Egor Gaidar. See also some of their remarks to get a measure of just how much contempt they had for the very people they would leave destitute. For those readers who did not follow those events - all valuable production "actives" (assets in English) were thought to be collectively owned by Soviet citizens. To transition the country to a capitalist economy, a "privitization" scheme was devised. In what should come as a surprise to literally no one, it was, of course, a completely fraudulent process and led to the rapid accumulation of wealth creating the very oligarchs whose influence the left will come to decry (after, of course, being hired by those very oligarchs to promote their rule). The new owners were only interested in rapid profit, which meant that factories were shuttered, cut up and sold for scrap, and the profits offshored into tax havens. Workers formerly employed were fired, and the entire country slid further and further into becoming a rust belt.
For most regular people in Russia, the 90s in post-Soviet Russia became a lost decade. Loss of identity and purpose, combined with economic stagnation, widespread unemployment, devaluation of the currency thrust millions of people into poverty. The excess mortality of the 90s from early death, suicide, and emigration is estimated at roughly 10 million - a third of the losses suffered by the Soviet Union during WWII. And this is "peacetime". The other delightful aspect of this situation was the rise of various organized crime groups, strengthened by military veterans and former members of various special agencies who found themselves out of a job, and hired out to the very oligarchs above. Assassinations of business competitors took place in broad daylight. Street violence, kidnappings, looting and murder were commonplace. The government was too busy getting bribed by the oligarchs to look the other way, or too busy "getting while the getting was good". I could go on, but I hope you get the point.
On the international scene, Russia obviously stopped being a relevant factor. This is the beginning of American's "Unipolar Moment", and Rusian citizens watched as the US took full advantage of this fact. They also watched as the US lavished Russia's corrupt government and its oligarchs with blandishments of how "democratic" Russia was becoming, and how "democracy" was going to make life better. Various NGOs sprung up, quietly paid for by outfits like USAID, NED, Open Society Foundation, and hired Russian liberal left personalities and had them promote the idea that "old Russia" was bad, and that "new Russia" was on its way to becoming a part of the civilized, collective West. The more effort such groups spent, the worse life seemed to get and the more firmly the idea that democracy and Western-directed reforms were inimical to Russia's collective interests took hold in the minds of many people living in Russia. And let's be honest, various Russian politicians were certainly busy helping that narrative along in the interests of their own political advancement, including a hard-right member of the already right-wing Yabloko party who started off promoting himself on a die-hard patriotic and xenophobic platform. He was so radical, Yabloko kicked him out. He reinvented himself, went to Yale, and would eventually return to Russia to feature prominently as a "fighter against corruption". (That joke's for my Russian-politics aware liberal left homies.)
And then came 1999, and the invasion of Yugoslavia. Again the outlooks diverged: for the West, it's an open-and-shut "we went in to stop a genocide" case. For Russians, this is the West coming in yet again to destroy a Slavic country. Irrespective of the facts, what will come to matter is the feeling that "invasion based on duty-to-protect" is legit, that starting a war in Europe without a UN mandate is ok, and the affirmation of the fact that the West (collectively) feels entitled to ignore warnings from Russian politicians. Particularly those of one rising politician from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) who will, one year later, come to supreme power in Russia in a completely fraudulent and bought election that the West will, of course, praise as being "progress towards Democracy". No, seriously, the US hailed it as such. US foreign policy establishment felt that as this politician came from Yeltzin's retinue, he would, naturally, continue Yeltzin's laissez-faire approach to, well, everything. They were, of course, wrong. For my own part, let me just add that when I learned that German warplanes painted with the balkenkreuz were once again bombing Europe, I felt an incredible sense of anger and betrayal. That Germany once again was bombing Yugoslavia, after everything that had happened in WWII, and that Europe's elites were standing by and cheering while this went on made it clear that we no longer share the same comprehension of history.
Still with me? Awesome. I hope this background gives some idea as to the challenges Putin faces when he comes to power. Putin choses the Lord Vetinary approach - he cannot eliminate corruption so he makes it manageable. Most oligarchs go along, retain their looted wealth, but their political power is curtailed. Those who do not go along are eliminated by their competitors, or are banished and suddenly join the liberal left opposition to Putin (shoutout to Khodorkovsky). Putin stabilizes enough of the economy so that people have jobs. Maybe not great ones, but there is an emergent sense of purpose. And he stops the street violence and the chaos. It is probably impossible for people that didn't live through the 90s to understand, but for many, the position is literally "anything is better than that". In this case, "anything" is Putin, and there is genuine, real support for him because of that. We really don't have the space to get into the international questions, it's a huge area, but again, let me just hint that the Western narrative of what is going on is widely rejected by regular people living in Russia in no small part because the ever-chittering horde of liberal-left commentators does their best to rebroadcast the Western narrative in the Russian language. Quite a few folks will automatically take a position opposite whatever a liberal-left commentator says, based on prior experience. The Western narrative is aimed at a Western audience and crafted to omit history and facts that are relevant to a Russian audience, which is why it doesn't work there.
So, to return to your original question, when you say that you signed "anti-Kremlin" petitions, most regular people interpret that as "so, you want to go back to the 90's 'democracy', do you? No thank you". When you say "you sent money to Ukraine and her people", many people in Russia will say: "so, you support a government whose national hero was a Nazi collaborator who committed ethnic cleansing of Poles, Russians and Jews."
Putin is far from perfect and modern Russia has many trends I'm deeply unhappy with. But the fact is that every alternative suggested by the West or its puppets is immeasurably, inconceivably worse.
No one sold their soul for money - we just have a different value function, and are using a different set of inputs.
Then they're under the influence of some serious propaganda.
Being as (1) the collaborator you are referring to is not "a national hero of the government", (2) he wasn't involved in the events you are referring to, and (3) none of that history is in any way relevant to the current conflict.
No, it's not a fact - it's a lie that forms the cornerstone of Putinism ("no alternative to Putin"). The struggles you describe were not unique to Russia, but to the entire former USSR and its satellites. The entire Eastern Bloc stood in the same starting position in 1991 and went through the same transformations. Countries like Poland or Estonia succeeded and are now proper first world contries, whereas Russia failed and is rapidly regressing into a stereotypical third world banana republic.
A key in Russia's failure is unwillingness to face its history. The USSR was not a beacon of human achievement, but a prison of nations held together only through violence. It disintegrated not because of malicious external scheming, but because of utter internal mismanagement and rotting that led to it being unable to feed its people. Despite immense oil and gas reserves, it suffered fuel shortages and apartment buildings went entire winters unheated in the end.
The 1990s were the endgame of stagnation that had set in decades prior. It was a disaster of your own making.
And as much as Putin is obsessed with complaining how Gorbachev destroyed the USSR, it's a great irony that with international isolation, sanctions, broken economy and pointless wars (then Afghanistan, now Ukraine), Putin has recreated the conditions that led to the 1990s. Gorbachev inherited the mess and tried to fix it, while Putin created it again from scratch. If you wanted Russia to squander its potential and get stuck in a self-destructive loop as rest of the world steams ahead, you could not have made a better pick than Putin.
Imagine where Germany would be if instead of focusing on economic development (Wirtschaftswunder) and cooperation (European Union and its predecessors), they had picked some Gestapo middle manager as their leader by 1960, began justifying suppression of freedoms with disillusionment from the difficulties of post-war years, and launched a massive war against France in a futile attempt to turn back time and restore the Third Reich at its widest extent and get back submarine bases on the Atlantic coast while yelling about the French having some communist resistance figure as their national hero. Certainly not a top economy in the world and a respected partner in international relations with a large circle of influential allies.
There is indeed a difference in inputs. For some obscure reason, Russians cannot even imagine their country developing on a normal path like Germany, the Eastern Bloc, and so many others.
They're doing nothing of the sort.
The cause in 1940 was apparently an artillery duel between German and British troops, which is on a different level from purposefully setting fire to a library within an occupied city, even if the result is equally terrible.
Related that library was split into 2 because of this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/when-was-the-leuven-li...
It was internationaly called Louvain before the international recognition for Leuven only camed after the events of 1968.
That's why the “Louvain shall be our battle cry” became a popular march in Britain. [1]
And why it was called so in Australia. [2].
I guess that's why most of the English articles about Leuven includes the French name.
1. https://theo.kuleuven.be/apps/press/ecsi/belgian-culture-and... 2. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15533652.
Yes you can.
What do you call the capital of China, The People's Republic of China? What do you call the city divided by the Bosphorus? What do you call the country of which that city is the largest? What do you call the country of which Prague is the capital?
Saint Petersburg was renamed to Petrograd, then Leningrad and then Saint Petersburg again but when Germans sieged the town in 1941, it was Leningrad.
But if your point is more about how people call them, well you're going down another rabbit hole with me.
Just for Belgium, all the major international cities have a name in the 3 official languages. (Dutch, French and German) : Cairo in Egypt is called Caïro (D), Le Caire (F) and Kairo(G).
There I've never met anyone using "Beijing" for the capital of China, it's always "Pékin"(F) and "Peking"(D). [1] [2]
And within Belgium itself, many towns have their names in the 3 languages; Liège (F), Luik (D) and Lüttich(G). (But other have only one like Knokke, Dinant or Eupen).
This can lead to many interesting situations, especially with the peculiar linguistic situation in Belgium :
- Anyone speaking their native language will use the name from that language : Mechelen in Dutch, Malines in French and Mecheln in German.
- Speaking in French with a Dutch native, they usually use the Dutch name. If they are willing to use the French name, they'll switch to it if you didn't catch it in Dutch, otherwise, they'only use the Dutch name. [3]
- Speaking English with a French or Dutch native, they'll use the English name if it's Brussels and their language's name any other time, wherever it's located. For cities in the Dutch speaking part, French natives will always use Anvers(F) for Antwerpen (D), Gand(F) for Gent(D) (even though it is Ghent in English). For cities in the French speaking part, Dutch will always use Namen(D) for Namur(F) or Bergen(D) for Mons(F)
- French native often need to specify which city they are talking about when using "Louvain" because it can refer to Leuven or Louvain-la-Neuve.
- And everyone want that cities only be called with the name from their linguistic region... hence the first post that said that it's now called Leuven.
1. https://www.lesoir.be/635347/article/2024-11-12/attaque-la-v...
2. https://www.hln.be/economie/china-kondigt-weer-tijdelijke-ma...
3. Which brings me to my true story of meeting a guy from France that only knew the town Luik and never heard of Liège. Nobody in Liège call it Luik, just like nobody in Leuven call it Louvain.
(see wikipedia)
I live in Leuven and you can clearly see that in the middle ages, they spoke dutch here. The switch to French and back is visible in the street names (because often they carry all 3 names). A funny example: The "grasmusstraat" (now) was "Rue Erasmus" in the 19th century and "grasmusstroike" in the middle ges. Apparently the French civil servants didn't know that a grasmus is a little bird and renamed it after a famous alumnus.
The correct name of the city is Leuven: it is a Flemish city, not a Wallonian one. Using French names for Flemish cities is just wrong.
If you add historical conflict to it then it can get much worse. "Warschau" in a non-German text would make many Polish people angry because of memories of forced Germanization.
I see no reason at all to use the French name for a Flemish city when writing in English. When writing in French, sure.
Most local inhabitants would have called it Leuven, as it is a Flemish city. The rich people at that time, both inside and outside the city, heavily promoted French, and pushed only the French names in politics and international communication.
Even today, this is a very touchy subject.
Flanders is Dutch-speaking.
Wallonia is primarily French-speaking, except for a small part of it which is German-speaking (
The Brussels Capital Region is officially bi-lingual Dutch/French, but in practice it's almost completely French. In restaurants, shops, ... you can be sure to find people who can help you in French, but almost never in Dutch. Police, hospitals, ... are supposed to be bi-lingual, but good luck getting good help if you speak Dutch but not French.
In most places, you'll only encounter one language: your own native language. Only Brussels is supposed to be bi-lingual.
Many cities do have two or three names, but that's not because those two or three languages are actually spoken in that city.
Which places in Belgium have an English Wikipedia page with an exonym as the page title? I can find Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Ostend. Are there others?
I wouldn't be very surprised if a couple of those went out of fashion in English over the coming decades, just like "Brunswick", "Francfort" and "Aix-la-Chapelle" went out of fashion. And "Basle" is on the way out, isn't it?
There's a lot of exonyms in Polish in everyday use.
First starting as Count of Leuven, then building up to become Duke of Brabant, then King of Lotharingia, then the Holy Roman Emperor.
Now, having this historical context, I want to visit.
Then they and their kids had to go through it again 26 years later.
In August of 1914, during World War I, Leuven was looted by German troops. In the night of the 25th to 26th of August, they set fire to a large part of the city, effectively destroying about half of it. The Germans set fire to the 14th century University Hall and its library wing. The University library burned, and with it about 300,000 books, about 1000 incunabula and a huge collection of manuscripts, including the University’s founding bull from 1425.
The Germans had aimed to punish Leuven after alleging the presence of snipers in the city. They claimed that the sacking of Leuven was a fair reprisal. Their ‘punisment’ of Leuven destroyed more than 1000 buildings and cost more than 200 lives.
When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, soon after the restoration of Leuven’s new library, Belgium found itself neutral once again.
After the retreat of the British and with German forces entering the city, on the 17th of May 1940 the new University library was set aflame after an artillery barrage. Molten glass from the above floors flowed into the cellars, past the steel doors, and destroyed the collections. The entire building was gutted. Not even twelve years after its opening, the new University library was reduced to rubble and its collections were ravaged once more. The occupying forces accused the British of having set the library ablaze on purpose to allow them to later blame the Germans. No access to the ruin or objective investigations were allowed. Joseph Goebbels, German propaganda minister, paid the ruined library a visit to push the German version of events. At the Nuremberg tribunal it was found that the library burned after German artillery had struck it. Only 21,000 of the original 900,000 pieces in the library collection were left. Hundreds of manuscripts (including some that had survived the 1914 fire) and everything from before 1501 was destroyed.
https://ghum.kuleuven.be/ggs/research/america-europefund/aef...
On firmer ground when it comes to sources, I'm now reading E. H. Carr's Conditions of Peace [1] (written in 1942, so during WW2) and at some point he was also suggesting moving UK's capital from London further to the North, he was thinking somewhere in Midlands, if I remember right. It turns out that even back then some of the British people were fully aware of London's negative pull caused by its oversize.
To this day, the burning of the library in Louvain remains a battle line, which we should be weary [sic] to ever cross again, for as Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) so eloquently once stated, “where they burn books, they will also burn people”.
I always assumed it was a confused fusion of "wary" and "leery".
Yes, that's my experience.
The words are homophones and both express a reticent emotional state.
There is arguably some overlap where someone is being wary because they are weary of similar situations turning out badly all too often in the past.
It looks similar to than/then, but than/then is much more jarring to me for some reason.
I guess that must mean “wear” and “weary” have a different pronunciation for “ea”.
This vowel digraph remains my eternal nemesis… Ever since I learned as a child that “bear” doesn’t rhyme with “fear” and found myself faced with the overwhelming realization that I will never speak this language 100% correctly, no matter how much effort I put into reading and writing.
Indeed so! "Wear" and "ware" are homophones, having the same vowel sound as "wary".
"Weary", on the other hand, rhymes with "cheery" or "dreary".
> I will never speak this language 100% correctly
I am a middle-aged native speaker, an avid lifelong reader with a love for the language, and I still occasionally discover that I am mispronouncing words I have known for years.
To me they are very similar and rhyme but not identical.
People these days…
https://eucliduniversity.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/who_...
- https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1502002700
- https://www.hi.uni-stuttgart.de/wgt/ww-one/Start/Weissbluten...
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25122278.pdf?acceptTC=true
I was born in Leuven and lived there for 30 years of my life - it would be pretty odd to see contemporary references as “Louvain” by those local to it.
Louvain is fine in English. Much like ruuban is the correct form in Japanese.
There's a whole article full of interesting historical context. Yet you comment on the perceived (and incorrect, thus imagined) slight against your mother tongue. This is a good example of why Belgium is such a hot mess. We'd rather spend time bickering about irrelevant nonsense than in addressing real problems.
From your perspective maybe? From my perspective I don’t understand why they need to make everything half french, especially in an ostensibly Dutch speaking part of the country.
It’s not like we use an alternative french name for Amsterdam.
And sure, we don't have a French word for Amsterdam, but we do have a Dutch word for Paris (Parijs), obviously not a Dutch speaking city.
You're taking this as a slight, when in fact it is an irrelevant artifact of history.
If anything, Leuven should be called Leive, as that's how Leiveneirs pronounce it. /s