Politics of Cold: Energy Crisis and Austerity Measures in Comparative Perspective

Recently, the energy crisis, fossil coal, and fuel, in general, stood at the center of political, social, and academic debate. Austerity measures implemented in various European countries in reaction to energy scarcity, intensified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, sparked a heated debate. Similarly, past energy crises were reminded, and comparisons were made with the recent European experience. In Europe, it was feared that the winter of 2022–23 could be “the harshest since 1944 due to fuel and electricity scarcity” (Högselius and Piahanau, 2022). Despite this re-emergence of debate on energy crisis and scarcity in general, a wide gap remains to be covered – the societal dimension of the aforementioned crises. In particular, academia has paid little attention to how austerity measures were implemented and communicated in the past and their potential impact on the broad public, which is what we call the Politics of Cold. Very little is known specifically about the First World War case in this regard, even though many studies on everyday life exist. Compared to the energy crises during World War II and the 1970s (Schramm, 2022), this case has attracted less scholarly attention. Therefore, this contribution aims to fill this gap and explore the French and the Czech experience of the austerity measures implemented during 1914–1918 and 2022–2023 on a national level to see whether any potential analogies can be drawn. The comparative study is based on the content analysis of the selected French and Czech period press and government-issued brochures from 1914–1918 and 2022–2023, and its goal is to contribute to the discursive dimension of the understanding of the energy crisis, respectively, coal crisis in the aforementioned context. While the main theoretical contribution lies in developing the concept of the Politics of Cold, empirically, the paper argues that we can learn from the experiences of our ancestors and contribute to greater self-resilience or preparedness for future energy crises by sharing experiences across generations. Although the specific measures may vary across these periods, the preliminary results reveal that the underlying argumentation remains remarkably similar. In both époques, elites refer to terms like "an unprecedented crisis," deal with the ineffectiveness of measures, and frequently resort to improvisation. Additionally, they employ “othering” and divisive language, such as contrasting "us and them" or "us and Putin." Such research is needed precisely because it can contribute to a better understanding of the past and building a resilient society in the 21st century, as it is important to remember that our predecessors had to cope with similar challenges. The vulnerability of both societies was (and has been) often severely exploited.