heywood on 5/12/2022 at 16:29
Perhaps Macron is staring at a rough winter, a bad recession, and a renewed Cold War, and not liking the prospects. Besides, somebody has to try to make the Russian people believe there is still a way out of the hole they dug themselves into.
Qooper on 8/12/2022 at 07:21
Slava heroyam!
demagogue on 8/12/2022 at 08:34
Timothy Snyder's last (
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_) class on Ukrainian history in the context of the present war was released today. Man, what an amazing lecture series it's been, and it ends on a high note. More specifically, it ends with a nod to an unlikely Ukrainian revolutionary anthem right now for the holiday season.
[video=youtube;GqeJ38DThVc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqeJ38DThVc[/video]
I recommend anyone interested in not just Ukrainian history but European / Western history full stop watch these lectures. Now that it's all out, you have a good chance to binge it straight through.
It's helped me understand a lot of what the Post Cold War period that we're in right now even means. Imperial thinking is still around, by Russia, by Germany, by the US, and bewilderment about what's happening in Ukraine is one of its calling cards. One gets a good dose of unlearning our own prejudices beyond understanding this part of the world in a deep way.
Starker on 8/12/2022 at 09:48
Honestly, I'm a bit worried that much of it is going to fly straight over most people's heads, especially those who are not very familiar with this part of Europe to begin with. There's so much necessary background to know about these topics that he just flies over and I guess his students are going to get reading assignments to get a broader understanding of the topics, but I'm afraid not many people watching the series on Youtube are going to look into it deeper or read up on things or even know where to start, if they wanted to.
Like, I'm not all that familiar with Polish or Ukrainian history myself besides what we learned from school and the odd bits and pieces that dealt with mostly Soviet times, but I have some understanding of local history that I can extend to those situations. I don't need to really dig deep into the suppression of indigenous culture and language in areas under Soviet control, because I live in an area that was under Soviet control and experienced it first hand, although by the time I was born it wasn't nearly as bad as it was for my parents. Likewise, most older people here middle age and up have a mark left by Soviet terror in the form of a missing family member, a grand-parent or a grand-grand-parent, so I and most other people in my generation don't really have to imagine the terror wrought by executions and deportations of citizens, for example.
The older generation of Eastern Europe has been carrying a lot of this historical baggage and its consequences with them deep in the back of their minds and now that that the Ukrainians have been forced to go through it again, it's all brought back to the surface. And if you watched Russian TV, the rhetoric of its politicians, the events unfolding in Russia, and its acts against its neighbours in the past few decades, you already knew at least subconsciously where it was all heading. For me, the moment they did away with Куклы/Puppets, a show that made fun of politicians, including Putin, I could tell it was all going to go down a dark path. Not that, y'know, the Chechen wars or the handling of the Kursk incident or the Moscow hostage crisis were any less dark, but this kind of seemed like a point of no return where you could see only further consolidation of power and Russia was basically giving up even the pretense of being a liberal democracy.
Anyway, if anyone's interested in what some of the younger generation of Russians think, here's a podcast episode featuring someone who fled Russia and is not approving of the state or its actions. Neither the host or his guest speak English as their first language and the host is an almost stereotypically introverted Estonian, so the conversation is perhaps a bit awkward at times, but hopefully it sheds a bit of light on what's currently going on in Russia and countries next to it:
[video=youtube;GtTpXscSMqs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtTpXscSMqs[/video]
lowenz on 8/12/2022 at 11:21
The problem with russian elites is simple: they think themselves as new romans. No matter the "communism", the "liberalism", the "democracy", the "republic". Those are just suits to dress ad hoc and nothing more to russian elites.
In Russia - apart from the Lenin times - the REAL ideology is cryptofascism+imperialism since ever.
They implement what US elites can't (but would if they can)
Cipheron on 8/12/2022 at 21:32
Quote Posted by Starker
Like, I'm not all that familiar with Polish or Ukrainian history
More than anything they ever taught in school, I learned about the region's history from that time the Winged Hussars arrived, coming down the mountainside. Coming down, they turned the tide:
[video=youtube;rcYhYO02f98]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcYhYO02f98[/video]
baeuchlein on 9/12/2022 at 00:28
I have watched that last episode of Snyder's lectures now, but I'm afraid I'm not convinced by him very much. This may or may not stem from not having watched the previous 22 lectures, but I think there's more I'm not buying here.
For example, there are several statements of him that, AFAIK, are incorrect. Somewhere in the second half of this lecture he says something like: "Russian culture creators have never approved (or appreciated) the war." He claims that there was no such person who did so. However, there's another YouTube video linked to some posts above here, I think, which shows russian book author (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Lukyanenko) Sergei Lukyanenko speaking of how to kill ukrainian children when Russians would be in control there. The Wikipedia article also mentions a publication by Lukyanenko and others on February 28th, 2022, supporting the war.
Snyder also claimed that Europeans thought (from about 1970 up to now) that peace is good, and that peace would come through trade agreements, and therefore they never saw that Russia was going into a completely other direction from somewhere around 2005. He also applied that view, about trade bringing peace, to Germans, and that is where his picture is certainly incomplete. Being a German myself, I think that while this view indeed was prominent among Germans in the last decade (if you ask me, at least), there's also a view here that earning money is very, very important, and good (=profitable) economics are important, and so on. This also is an important drive here to start trade with other countries. And indeed, you will hardly find a country that completely agrees with your own on everything, so at one point you have to decide whether you want to make trade or politics. And sometimes you make the wrong decision. However, I do think that Germany should have seen earlier that the "trade brings peace and change" idea/plan did not succeed, and not only with Russia.
Snyder went on with his theory that Europeans thought trade was good and would bring changes and peace, but then, a bit later, he suddenly said that everyone
else,
except for the Europeans, thought that. Now what?!?
I could perhaps give more example, but then I could also write a book, and I'm currently not inclined to do so.
Another problem I have with Snyder's lecture is that there are certainly some "clusters" of thoughts I can relate to or understand, such as imperialism
in the past being connected to the imperialism currently displayed by the leaders of the Russian Federation. However, these clusters are very often connected by just some thin lines which I often can't follow. Sometimes, I am just not so certain that Snyder's conclusions or the connections seen by him are correct, and on other occasions, he speaks so fast and hastily that I can not follow (or sometimes not even accoustically understand) what he's talking about.
The last about 20 minutes of that lecture were very confusing to me. Look at the end, for example. He talks about a female journalist (probably a Russian one, but I can't understand that well) being killed in a russian bombardment, then goes on to speak about a road or path someone can walk somewhere, and there's a castle there, and it may have become russian by shelling (huh? If I shoot another country's building, that building suddenly is
mine, or what?!), or by something else, and Mr. Snyder visited a theater performance with his children, and there is this ukrainian (?) song he spoke about at the beginning of the lecture, and probably at the end of the last one...
What the hell is his point there anyway???I think one should be careful not to base one's view on anything on just
one source, be it the Holy Wikipedia, Mr. Snyder, or whoever/whatever else. Events during the pandemic should have shown us that, but I'm not so sure.
lowenz on 9/12/2022 at 00:47
"speaking of how to kill ukrainian children when Russians would be in control"
They're speaking of "russian" ukrainian children of "russian speaking" regions. They think they'll be traitors to "motherland" (showing solidarity with non-russian speaking ukrainian children) when adults so it's better to eliminate them.
I repeat, the so-called elites think themselves as romans, literally, so they think "pragmatically" as romans would think in these scenarios. Tipically "TABULA RASA".
If you prefer, it's "plain fascism" againt "nationalists" (=separatists) refusing the "rule of Rome" they can conveniently call "nazis" because of Bandera seen as national hero.
There's no "wellness through trade" you can use there (classic stupid american strategy), far right ideology is a heavy stimulant drug bypassing all reasons just like cocaine giving confidence and sense of greatness to a demented beggar: he will see himself as the hand of god and god shows no compromise and being the hand of god Russia can of course go nuclear because god is by her side. And you can't buy god with money or wellness.
It's why here in Italy all far right conservative people are by Putin side. Dogmatically, no need to ask nothing: he's the hand of god againt "satanic - jewish driven - west" so of course he has the right to use the "saint" nuclear fire and kill&destroy whatever he thinks must be killed and destroyed "to save us" from "evil".
People have this "dreaming dimension" that can be massively MASSIVELY dangerous when someone is good enough to feed it (and Putin is feeding it since 2010 through far right conservative / "euro-skeptical" parties in Europe).
The difference between USA and Russia, as I've said, it's Russian elites implement what US elites want implement but they can't: real dominion through consensus manipulation and not only at home.
And this time the damage would be ETERNAL, 'cause we can't use againt russian elites the tools used against nazi elites and eradicate all human sympathy to nazi ideology. Russia is here to stay and be what the Third Reich was meant to be.
This is the real damage apart the Ukraine destruction, if nowdays Hitler-lovers are fringe deranged elements the "putinists" are million and perfectly "socially integrated". And this thing can't be undone.
