Continued ...

The Greeks will, I fear, forever be in the shade of the mythical exploits of their forebears – one of the principal episodes of which is currently dramatised in a new movie, 300, about the Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartan soldiers defeated a Persian army said to number a million – and the modern Greek certainly has a marked inferiority complex, casting envious eyes back to the time when Athens was the greatest city in the world, and blaming enemies and neighbours for their decline from those golden heights. It’s a long way from Pericles to Papandreou, and they know it.

One can see this fierce national pride reassert itself from time to time; sometimes (though less frequently nowadays) in disputes with Turkey; at the Olympics, the bill for which Greeks will be paying for many years; even when winning a football tournament, or Eurovision. For just a moment, the spotlight of world attention is back where it belongs, on the birthplace of western philosophy, of democracy, the rightful centre of the modern world. And then the spotlight moves on and the shadows return. The Greeks have decided, finally, that the solution is to be less Balkan and more European, and with every year you see the slow but steady march towards that goal.

Russia’s pre-eminence also belongs to the history books now, but in their case a much more recent volume. I have only visited the country once, but walking around the law faculty at St Petersburg University, my guide explained with barely restrained pride that Vladimir Putin was a graduate, and later, over a cold Baltika, I discovered that the saying about Russians respecting a “strongman” was no less true for being clichéd. You can see it reflected in Russian society in dozens of different ways; in the slowly dwindling attendances at parades on old Soviet holidays, one hears a nostalgia for the past that, though it defies logic, is perfectly understandable. You see it, too, in the increasing assertiveness of Russia on the world stage, the aggressive speeches being made by Putin accusing the USA of unilateralism, of abusing its status as the sole remaining superpower.

But despite strong words, and the influence that Russia still wields through its Security Council seats, its natural resources, and its nuclear arsenal, it is a much diminished force in the world; and, again, the Russians know it. Walking along the wide boulevards of Peter the Great’s capital - a city built to face Europe by a man determined to drag Russia into the concert of European nations - one senses the uncertainty about what lies in the future, the ambivalence about which path to head down. How best to regain our place at the top table? Only time will tell.

And Scotland? Well, we had our glory days, too. Anyone walking down the Royal Mile will come across shops selling teatowels and posters bearing a well-known ditty which lauds the achievements of Scots in making our modern world;

An Englishman enjoys his breakfast of toast and MARMALADE invented by Mrs. Keiller of Dundee, Scotland- reaches for his RAINCOAT patented by Charles MacIntosh of Glasgow, Scotland, to dash off to the station on his BICYCLE invented by Kirkpatrick MacMillan blacksmith of Dumfries, Scotland, whose TYRES, invented by John Boyd Dunlop of Dreghorn, Scotland, run on a TARMAC ROAD invented by John MacAdam of Ayr, Scotland.

The Journey by train whose STEAM ENGINE was invented by James Watt of Greenock, Scotland takes him to work at the BANK OF ENGLAND founded by William Patterson of Dumfries, Scotland. While opening his mail whose ADHESIVE STAMPS were invented by James Chalmers of Dundee, Scotland he puffs on a CIGARETTE first manufactured by Robert Gloag of Perth, Scotland.

He later rings his wife on the TELEPHONE invented by Alexander Graham Bell of Edinburgh, Scotland, and -

…and so on.

Scots are indeed responsible for some of the great achievements of science, of engineering, of philosophy; James Watt, Alexander Fleming, David Hume and all the rest. Nor is the spirit of discovery dead – one imagines there was some resentment in the valleys when the Scots at the Roslin Institute, outside Edinburgh, were the first to clone a sheep. And yet here, too, it is clear that the golden age of the Scottish Enlightenment, of Scots spreading their influence around the globe from Canada to New Zealand via all points in between… that is all in the past. The debate now is about how to revive that past. What was it that made us, for a time, amongst the greatest and most influential people in the world? Was it the Union? The Empire? Or did our big southern neighbour assimilate, exploit and ultimately crush that spirit of endeavour? How do we learn from the past so that we can recapture some of that greatness, and what does that mean for our politics?

A few years ago I found myself acting as tour guide to a group of Russian school pupils, and at their teachers’ insistence took them in to the cemetery of the Canongate Kirk on the Royal Mile where, after a little searching, I showed them the grave of Adam Smith. They expressed astonishment at the relatively modest surroundings in which the great man now resides, and I was forced to agree.

Scotland is very good, actually, at paying due deference to the great figures from its history, but less good at heeding the lessons they taught us. The irony of Smith’s last resting place, quite literally a stone’s throw from the Scottish Parliament, may have been lost on the 14 year-olds from St Petersburg; I fear it is certainly lost on most of the parliamentarians who sit in that expensive gathering place. Until my country and its leaders honour men like Adam Smith not just in word but in deed, I feel, our golden age will always be behind us.

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