Russia’s war against Ukraine is proving to be a canvas for a systemic controversy. Rudolf Steiner’s reflections on East and West at the 1922 Congress in Vienna offer thought-provoking insights into these opposing spiritual forces. Knowledge and connection create peace.
In the summer of 2024, my wife and I traveled twice to a Demeter-certified farm in western Ukraine to attend seminars on biodynamic farming. The war was ever-present. There was much talk about how daily life had been disrupted in Kyiv, Odessa, and Kharkiv. During our first visit, there was an exuberant, rather nationalistic, atmosphere. The second time, just two months later, the atmosphere already seemed significantly more subdued and restrained. People had learned to live with the restrictions, the uncertainty, the power outages, and the nighttime air raid sirens. But the hardships were taking their toll. Near Ternopil—about 130 kilometers from Lviv—a missile struck a power plant, forcing the rationing of electricity. The milking and refrigeration systems could only be operated using expensive generator power. Daily life was so affected that the war was no longer perceived merely as a distant event in the east of the country. Being German and guests in Ukraine, we didn’t discuss the causes of the war so as to avoid getting caught up in the controversy surrounding differing viewpoints.
As part of the effort to promote friendly relations between Munich and Russian anthroposophists, we were invited to an April 2026 Easter conference in Saint Petersburg. There, too, we did not discuss the war. Not a single word was said about it. Instead, we talked about positive developments at the Waldorf school, in trainings for eurythmy, speech formation, therapeutic painting, and about the task of anthroposophy today. The human interactions in both Ukraine and Russia were warm, cordial, open, and communicative. It was easy to strike up a conversation. In both countries, we met people who treated us with kindness, hospitality, and warmth.
Schizophrenic Reality
How is it possible that people who are so warm and caring in their immediate surroundings are stripped of their humanity, objectified, and reduced to hostile entities in the world of politics and the media? How are these enemy stereotypes created? Those in power need enemy stereotypes to persuade society that young people must be conscripted into the military machine and sent to the front lines to die by the thousands. The number of deaths is shocking. While reports primarily mention destroyed houses, schools, and hospitals, as well as killed civilians, they rarely focus on the fallen soldiers. On the Russian side the average is said to be 1,000 per day. For the Ukrainian side, lower casualty figures are cited: 300 to 350 men per day. These numbers mask the inhuman reality. We are never shown the disturbing images of mangled physical bodies.
Where does the thread of true human dignity break? Where does social life split into these two tendencies? Reality is schizophrenic. People don’t want war. They clearly prefer social harmony and peace, even when living conditions are unequal. Systems start wars, engaging in fierce, life-and-death competition with one another. When global conflicts over markets, spheres of influence, and dominance reach a certain intensity, the military is geared up, reservists are mobilized, and new cohorts are recruited and sent to war. It does not seem all that difficult for politicians to send a country to war. A government is capable of expediting hundreds of thousands of young people into a deadly conflict. The necessary infrastructure has long since been prepared: laws, economy, and rhetoric provide the systemically indispensable cogs in the machine. Even if thousands of young people flee abroad, they are not safe from the reach of the recruiters. The major systems have always made promises of prosperity and peace through their top representatives. But peace is in short supply. If you search online for “international conflicts,” most sources list between 58 and 62 being waged by force of arms. You’ll find twice that number for military conflicts in general, including internal conflicts.
Projection of a Systemic Controversy
After World War I, a highly acclaimed congress took place in Vienna in 1922 at which Rudolf Steiner analyzed this catastrophe from the perspective of spiritual science in ten lectures [titled in the German edition as] Western and Eastern World Antagonism: Paths to Understanding Through Anthroposophy.1 One hundred years later, in 2022, invitations were once again extended by anthroposophists to a congress in Vienna addressing the same issues.2 The war between Russia and Ukraine had already begun that February. On the surface, the war appears to be merely a locally confined conflict, but is increasingly revealing itself as an expression of a systemic global conflict between West and East. To spiritually explore these profound oppositions—especially in the wake of the catastrophe of World War I—Steiner wrote two additional texts in the weekly Das Goetheanum immediately after the 1922 congress: “West-East Aphorisms.”3 These aphorisms are brief, condensed reflections that describe the spiritual relationship between East and West and aim to foster understanding between the two opposites. At their core they suggest that the East is more inclined toward spiritual reality, while the West emphasizes sensory reality and the reality of nature. From Steiner’s perspective, both sides possess a one-sided strength and a corresponding one-sidedness. In these aphorisms, Steiner does not attempt to make a superficial comparison of cultural differences, but rather to understand them as spiritual tasks for all humanity. He asks, in essence, how people in the East today can give strength of will to the spiritual world and how people in the West can imbue the natural world with deeper, spiritual meaning.
Today especially, in light of this horrific war between Russia and Ukraine, it is clear that peace cannot be achieved by blurring the lines between opposites, but rather through the conscious knowledge and fruitful integration of different spiritual forces. The aphorisms in question provide helpful and worthwhile food for thought on this subject.
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Roadblock in Ukraine, April 2022. Photo: Jonny Gios/Unsplash
Footnotes
- Rudolf Steiner, The Tension between East and West, CW 83 (Spencertown, NY: SteinerBooks, 2024), lectures in Vienna, June 1–12, 1922; German title: Westliche und östliche Weltgegensätzlichkeit: Wege zu ihrer Verständigung durch Anthroposophie.
- 2022 East-West Congress in Vienna, June 4–6, 2022.
- Ibid.; first published as Rudolf Steiner, “West-Ost-Aphorismen,” Das Goetheanum 1, no. 45 (June 18, 1922), and “Weitere West-Ost-Aphorismen,” Das Goetheanum 1, no. 46 (June 25, 1922); today, in GA 36 (German) and CW 83 (English).
