ENTHUSIASM. A conversation with Dziga Vertov and Vasily Grossman

The paper is published in The Culturology Ideas /ISSN 2311-9489. КУЛЬТУРОЛОГІЧНА ДУМКА. 2025. №27/, an issue of The National Academy of Arts of Ukraine and The Institute for Cultural Research. 

Ентузіазм. Розмова з Дзиґою Вертовим та Василем Гросманом 

While the EU is arguing about where to find the money for its rearmament plan, a parallel debate is quietly taking place: where to find the soldiers? This is where culture will be called upon. On 11th March 2025 Polish PM Donald Tusk told us that the Ukrainian army has 800,000 soldiers, whilst Russia has around 1.3 million. He wants to increase the size of the Polish army, including reservists, to 500,000 from around 200,000 today. Tusk explained that his government was working on a plan for military training for all Polish men. “Of course, it will be open to both sexes,” he added. “I do not want to belittle the role of women here in any way, but war — due to physical conditions — is associated more with men.”

Europe is at the precipice of a new age of war. Again. Because if a country the size of Poland is now placing all men into military training, then surely a new age of war is what this is. For decades political leaders have categorically insisted that there was no alternative to financial austerity across the whole of the European public realm. And yet suddenly, within a few dizzying days (not even a month), we have jettisoned half a century of borrowing limits to invest 800 billion Euros in defence and the military. And this excludes the UK and its commitments. If only in terms of the abandonment of an economic orthodoxy, we are in a new age.

But this is not new. This is again. We ought to be conscious of what is coming towards us.

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