Re: Caucasian sketches

["Heidelbauer Andreas" <andreas.heidelbauer@student.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Sorry, but I do not see why you discuss this on the EJ list...
Andreas
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Umberto Rossi <urossi@programatic.it>
An: ernst-juenger-l@maillist.ox.ac.uk <ernst-juenger-l@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
Datum: Sonntag, 31. Januar 1999 12:05
Betreff: Re: Caucasian sketches


> Curious that the seeds of EJ's distrust of technology were planted in the
> Caucasus--not a technologically advanced area at all.  (snip) Or is the
contrast between the German technology
> (advanced) and Russian (backward)?

As for national technology, Russia's whas NOT that backward.  Ok, there's a
certain trend to consider the Russians as the Bad Guys, but if there was
something
they were NOT at that time (things changed after 1958-9) it is backward.
During
WWII Russian tanks were the only ones which could really compete with German
Panzers and Tigers.  Russian planes were not maybe as good as the Spits and
not
so innovative as the Schwalbe, but they were poweful, reliable machines (the
Sturmovik was a wonderful fighter-bomber and tank-killer).  USSR had quite
good
rifles and guns, and the only time they had backward planes was the first
year of
war.

Russia became backward when the US beat them on the computer field.  In some
specific sectors they remained more advanced than the western countries
(e.g. they
could produce H-bombs more powerful than 20 megatons, something which the
NATO couldn't do--and I wonder if they spread that scientific secret after
1989).
Also the field of mechanics was particularly refined.  Russian jet and
rocket engines
were always more powerful than Western machines.  And remember Russian
superiority in the field of pure mathematics and phisics.

> Can it be that the
> contrast between the pre-technical and the future technical was most
> evident there?


Yes, that may be it. That's what must have struck him:  technologized
warfare in an
almost primitive area.  It's not, say, computers in London which strike;
it's the
Bengali programmers that make the difference.


Umberto Rossi

"...io vedea la virtute esser spenta, e i vizi sollevati"
                                      Gerolamo Savonarola