While others are fighting - 2
Here is the Habsburg Palace - Schönbrunn and their tomb - The crypt of the Capuchins in Vienna. Here is the Franz Josef Bridge in Budapest, named after the penultimate Austrian emperor - the Hungarians have not renamed it to something more “Hungarian” until now, because the emperor was considered to be their king at the same time and wore the crown of St. Stefan with a ukherski cross lopsided to the side. Here is Belgrade, from where Serbia came, in 1914, in the Empire, the death in the guise of the terrorist Gavrila Princip, who killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Only later did I suddenly realize that I was actually traveling through the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which does not exist from the year 1918. Both the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, and Hungary, and even Croatia with Slovenia and Bosnia were once part of it. And the Danube was its main road.
No wonder Austria-Hungary was called the Danube monarchy - all one way or another in its stories was associated with this great river.
After this two-week walk along the Danube, I quietly became interested in Austria-Hungary, the experience of which would be very useful for today's Ukraine. I was fascinated by a country in which there were a half dozen nationalities, two parliaments (one in Vienna, the other in Budapest), a fleet on the Adriatic Sea with the main base in Pola (now it is on the coast of Croatia) and several official languages in each regiment, depending on the national composition of the soldiers. "Patchwork Empire", the subject of ridicule arrogant Petersburg journalists and Czech humorist Hasek, born a subject of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph and did not appreciate such happiness. How could such a strange, even implausible state exist?
But it existed! Making millions of liters of beer, the guns of the Škoda concern, the system of classical education, copied, among other things, by the Russian Empire, and at the same time the perverted novels Sacher-Masoch, in which Venus in furs whip the main characters. It was pretty good and even flourished, if it hadn't fallen into World War I and had not shattered into pieces, like the “fossil” planet Phaeton, instead of which now the Asteroid Belt - all these Czechs, Slovenia and Bosnia ...
I remembered the phaeton for good reason - today Austria does not produce cars (in the near future it threatens Ukraine because of the abolition of import duties under pressure from the European Union), and in the good old days it was the capital of the Danube monarchy that delivered the famous Viennese carriages to the world market with the softest spring move and reclining body-phaeton. Especially for walking ladies and gentlemen in any weather. It was the world center of the then “automotive industry” - still equestrian, not motorized. Moscow and Kiev brought in crews from Vienna, like the products of the German automotive industry today.
But Austria was not immediately tolerant and mixed. She was forced to do so by life itself, the inexorable flow of it, who once declared to the Empire: if you want to survive, stretch a little more, become a federation, otherwise, I will demolish you like an old blurred dam!
In the middle of the nineteenth century, when it happened, Austria was torn apart by contradictions, to the present Ukraine, despite the complexity of its situation, not even dreaming. Both external and internal. The main external contradiction pressed her from Berlin - a very “brotherly”, very “German”, but, nevertheless, a very anti-Austrian city with growing great-power ambitions.
Throughout its long history, Vienna and Berlin competed as passionately as Kiev and Moscow today. Vienna was the old center of the German World. Berlin is new. Like Moscow, founded in the XII century on the very border of Russia and the then East Slavic and Finnish ethnic massifs (in the so-called Zalesky Ukraine — with emphasis on “a”), Berlin also originated in the “cordon” - only Germans and Western Slavs.
Berlin has one more parallel with Moscow - the totem one. Berlin's coat of arms is a bear. In the name of the capital of present-day Germany, the same bear root is hidden — in almost all Aryan languages, the bear is ber. Even in the Russian word "den" ("Ber's den"), he hid. The ancient pagan Slavs imposed a taboo on the common European word “ber”, replacing it with a “bear” out of fear. Too many had these dangerous unpredictable animals in our places. Not everyone dares to throw at him with a spear. Therefore, most of the time “bera” (do you hear his roar?) Began to be designated as a respectful euphemism - “knowing honey”. In order not to disturb once again. But in the word "den" the ancient root, according to our usual inconsistency, survived.
Moscow is translated from Finnish as “bear water”. The same hail of the indomitable Bear, like Berlin. It seems that there were a lot of shaggy honey lovers in the territory of the future Moscow already in those ancient times when no Slavs got there yet.
But this is so - a philological digression symbolically illustrating the seriousness of the geopolitical problem that Kiev faces today (no matter what the regime is), and then Vienna.
The internal contradiction was in the very east of the empire - in Hungary. In that country, which was often called also “the crown of sv. Stephen "- in honor of one of her first kings from the Arpad dynasty, who adopted Christianity. In its time - in the XVII century - Hungary fled under the wing of the mighty Austria from Turkey. Then she was not very capricious - just to survive. And from two subjects - Turkish and Austrian - chose the latter.
The Austrians have shed a lot of blood for the expulsion of the Turks from Hungary. On the site of the current Budapest since 1541, there was a so-called Budinsky pashalyk (Buda and Pest were still considered different cities on the two banks of the Danube) with Turkish pasha at the head. And so it was until the very 1686 year, when the troops of the Austrian emperor, led by Prince Karl of Lorraine, retook this city, incorporating the Hapsburg Empire. As we see, not always and not everything can be solved only by a successful marriage - sometimes you have to act with guns, which Austria also knew how.
But after a century and a half, all these Austrian good deeds already seemed to the Hungarians insufficient. They believed that they had fully paid off their hussars with their blood, fighting for Vienna in numerous wars with Prussia and France. In 1848, Hungary rebelled, demanding complete independence. And at the same time quite young Franz-Joseph came to the imperial throne.
In the Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik, the heroes call him an “old Progulkin,” a “wreck,” which “cannot be let out of the outhouse without him making a mess of the whole Schönbrunn”. And in 1848, Franz Joseph was a single eighteen-year-old boy. There is a portrait of him in a hussar uniform - you can be sure. He wanted to fight, but he didn’t know how. Emperor Nicholas I saved Austria from the catastrophe of Austria. He believed that any rebellion was evil, no matter where it took place, and he felt fatherly feelings for the future “old Progulkin”. Nikolai sent troops to Hungary led by our countryman Poltava field marshal Paskevich. Hungarian revolution in two accounts suppressed the Russian army.
But Franz Joseph turned out to be a very ungrateful boy. Exactly five years later, at the height of the Crimean War, the emperor of Austria instead of sonsing Nicholas, which he very much hoped for, sided with England and France and demanded that the Russians clean up Moldavia and Wallachia - the so-called Danube principalities. You see, he himself had views on them. Vienna really wanted to take the whole river down to the lower reaches! Between the two empires, the emblems of which were a double-headed eagle (only Austria with a flaming sword in its paw, and Russia with a scepter) ran a frowning cloud, which later will only thicken. Bear dissatisfied crawled away from the Danube, along with the lieutenant of artillery, Count Leo Tolstoy (thus - the future author of "War and Peace") who served in the Russian expeditionary army. But Austria, as it turned out, was not relieved.
Like every young man, Franz Joseph wanted to prove that he was ALL cooler and smarter. Instead of the proven Austrian principle “As long as Europe fights, Austria marries,” he decided to marry and fight. Naturally, this could not end in a great folly. With Russia, the young Habsburg quarreled. With the West (and France and Britain were for him the West) did not make friends. Is that the wife found successfully - Princess Elizabeth of Bavaria, a charming slender girl of the most blue blood - the sister of half-mad King of Bavaria Ludwig, mad at Wagner's music and building fantastic mountain castles.
Finding himself in complete international isolation, without friends and allies (one could not be considered a true ally of poor Ludwig, who was waiting for a straitjacket in a madhouse), Franz-Joseph was twice cruelly beaten. First, in 1859, the French in the battle of Solferino, where the young emperor of Austria in a white field marshal's uniform tried to command personally. (Was it worth signing in six years earlier for France?) And then — in 1866 — the Prussians, who came from Berlin and strongly broke into the Austrians at the Battle of Sadovaya on the Czech fields, had already come to him in absentia. This time the emperor, taught by bitter experience (see, he was still able to draw conclusions from even the worst mistakes!) Decided not to go into the battle personally and gave command of General Benedek - Hungarian by origin. The Hungarian was a dashing Rubak, but he did not justify his hopes and the general battle blew out with a bang. Since Austria is not beaten since the time of Austerlitz.
With the Prussians, although they spoke the same German language as the Austrians had to sign a humiliating world - Austria was thrown out of the German Union. Berlin's bearish paw has conquered Vienna, fluttering in waltzes.
It was at this moment that Austria for the first time approached the last line. The autocratic rule of a young stupid Franz Josef without public control over state power, two consecutive wars lost undermined the prestige of the monarchy in the bud. All the subject nations of the empire — the Czechs, the Poles, and the mixed Balkan Slavs — grumbled. But the Hungarians screamed the most, threatening to rebel again, as in 1848. A very real threat of disintegration loomed over the Danube monarchy.
And then Franz Joseph decided on a revolutionary step, which turned him from a young tyrant into one of the most progressive monarchs in world history. Instead of the “united and indivisible” autocratic Austria, which sought to Germanize everything and everyone, there emerged as if from nothing dual Austria-Hungary - a fundamentally new country that completely changed the wild ideology of autocratic unitarism into decent from all points of view parliamentary federalism.
True, some prerequisites were before. For example, back in 1860, Vienna made Hungarian an official language in Hungary and expanded the rights of land councils - the Landtags. At the same time, the Hungarian Assembly was granted the right of legislative initiative, although it could not be called a full-fledged parliament. Any initiative in a despotic police state is easily cut off like a decorative flower.
But 1867 year brought a real revolution from above. On the river Leith, the state was divided into two parts - the Austrian Empire and the Hungarian Kingdom. From now on, countries had two parliaments, two armies, but one common monarch, one foreign ministry, one finance ministry, and one general headquarters. Austrian laws in Hungary were declared null and void. Hungarian became the state language. And the slogan: “Viribusunitis” (“Common efforts”) now became the motto of the two states.
Not a single state in the world had such a tolerant political system as Austria-Hungary. Her tender fabric resembled ladies' lace. All others sought simpler solutions. Russia and France - to the maximum centralization. Great Britain - to the commonplace oligarchic parliamentarism and one state language. But the special conditions of the Danube monarchy gave rise to completely original ways of resolving its internal crisis. The economy won out on ideology. Political expediency - the hardened principles of the ruling elite. The Vienna bureaucracy shared power with the regions and ... survived.
For many years, the empire on the Danube became a symbol of stability and prosperity. Still, it remains a mystery who finally persuaded Franz Joseph, who was striving for completely medieval sole proprietorship, to make concessions to Hungary and progress. It is believed that the main role in curbing the emperor's political ambitions was played by his wife, the charming Elizabeth of Bavaria. Not having hardened Austrian managerial stereotypes and even experiencing a certain antipathy towards them, she was not averse to being crowned with her husband again - like the Hungarian queen. After all, women, as you know, love to stay in the limelight in public. The dream of Elizabeth was fulfilled with success in Budapest on May 8 of the year 1867, and she and her deceased husband were crowned with the crown of St. Stefan. Sometimes - to marry correctly is still more important than winning a war.
Austria-Hungary could exist to this day, if the peace party in it finally pinched the war party. At the beginning of the 20th century, the heir to Franz Josef, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was married to a Czech countess, even seriously considered transforming an empire into a triune one, with the release of an autonomous Czech kingdom. And so, surely, it would have happened if the aggressive aspirations of the Austrian General Staff in the Balkans and the predatory appetites of the young Serbian kingdom, which had turned into a fatal shot in Sarajevo, did not exist.
Too tasty, too elegant, at the same time more powerful than a small power should be, and weaker than a truly great one. Austria-Hungary became the main victim of the First World War - the Danube monarchy was literally screwed up. As if in mockery, the lost empire left a modern type of military uniform invented by it to new seekers of greatness - kepi, tanker jacket, navypusk pants and boots instead of boots. Thanks to the Austrian designers, any current fighter resembles the silhouette of a brave soldier Schweik.
- Oles Elder
- http://www.buzina.org/publications/1319-poka-drugie-voyuyut-2.html
- While others are fighting
While others are fighting - 2
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