Unlike those who search diligently for connections of prominent British figures from 200 years ago with slavery Memorial looked at deliberate policies of murder within the lifetime of men living.. one effort is trivial the other serious. The trivial continues the serious is closed down.
We know attitudes of our remote ancestors were not the attitudes we value today. There are no parties dedicated to the introduction of slavery here but the gulag is not a distant historic memory with no prospect of return in Russia.
Terence Fitch
2 years ago
Listening to an analysis of Dostoyevsky. How Orthodox religion has suffering as a necessity of life. Russians feel that suffering is spiritually ‘good’. Cyrillic did cut off Russia culturally too. Supine history. Inviting the Rus to rule them. Kiev vs Novgorod savagery. Mongol Yoke. Vast distances- need for a savage strong man to bind it. Serfdom. Bloody colonialism of the East geniocide of tribes. Napoleon, WW1, WW2. Stalin. Holodomor and Gulag. Shooting down innocent airliners. Salisbury. Constantly wanting to be European but seeing themselves in many Russian writers’ words as ‘savage’ and ‘Asiatic’. Always the fear of chaos and invasion and always the big lie. We are all the prisoners of history-the Russians more than most.
First-time prognosticator from Toronto, Canada. I can not buy into the idea that “it’s fine that Russia will always be Russia”.
Whatever might the essence of the Russian soul (which question is ultimately unknowable, and of course not applicable to individual Russians): I am 100% committed to the idea that all Russians — and all humans — desire greater freedom, rather than less, and would every time choose democracy over autocracy. (Hey, do a poll if you’re unsure).
And then: all Russians would enormously and immediately benefit from their every step in favour freedom and democracy.
Similarly, if Russia’s leadership were to abandon the goal of resurrecting the Russian Empire, how much more affluent could the Russian people be?
A re-establishment of trade, a ‘rapprochement’ if you will — with the West would be the cornerstone of the new-found affluence. Welcoming Russia as an engaged ‘partner’ in the Free World would pay both material and spiritual dividends for all Russians.
Confident of my naivete, I see nothing but upside if Russia were to ‘freedomize’. Incremental benefit at every step. Unfortunately, Russia is locked into a pure ‘lose-lose’ idiom.
Gorbachev and Yeltsin were leaning in the ‘right’ direction, but Putin manhandled the country back down the wealth-destroying, violent path.
I’ll start believing the Global Altruists care about freedom and human rights when they start taking an interest in the government that permanently destabilized the globe and turned the world into a faceless, collectivist society run by unelected, corporate bureacrats.
T-Bone you nailed it. There too much that’s not democratic in our so-called western liberal democracies. Canadians, as example, are just about the most locked-down people in the world; as example, our kids have been shut out of school the longest. Example, our handsome speech-impeded drama-teacher PM advised that we have the right to peaceful protest, but that protest against covid lockdowns should be illegal. The head of our national police (RCMP) made a similar comment. Of course, here I am equating democracy and freedom — they aren’t the same, but they move in tandem. And so, we must decry authoritarianism in Russia, while there are far too many examples of Big Brother trampling the citizenry around across the ‘free’ west.
Disagree with your second paragraph. “All humans desire greater freedom” Really? Open borders for example? Legalised drug taking for example? No, what most humans really desire ( not, of course, libertarian extremists like Liz Truss) is security. Security for themselves, their families, their cultures and countries. Putin delivers that for Russia and so Russia remains Russian, while England, for example, becomes a foreign place under a “Conservative ” government.
A brief perusal of history shows that ‘Russia being Russia’ means centuries of conquering other people’s lands and often exterminating those peoples.
George Kushner
2 years ago
Russia’s in a state of a permanent cognitive dissonance since the breakdown of the Soviet Union. On one hand communists destroyed the Great Russia, on the other hand they revived it even larger, won the Great Patriotic War, achieved great industrial and technological success etc. What we’re seeing now are probably lame attempts to avoid the painful dissonance and reach some sort of imaginary unity by a bureaucratic fiat.
The type of Russia that Putin wants is to maintain cognitive dissonance within the proletariat – aka Big Brother in ‘1984’ except that Putin has neither the finance or the will to get to that stage.
Dermot O'Sullivan
2 years ago
Navalny, who by the way has a Telrgram account, is always uplifting, strangely so as I live in the liberal west and he is in a prison camp! The link to the Time article is worth a read.
The obvious answer is for Ukraine to be Finlandized, by agreement between Russia, Ukraine, NATO and the EU.
If that cannot be made to work, by honest negotiations all around, we all have a big problem.
SULPICIA LEPIDINA
2 years ago
Oh come off it! Does one really believe a word the USA says?
First it was 9/11, then Saddam “did it”, then the ‘ Arab Spring’, then the dreaded Teletubbies* and now Putin the anti-Christ!
For a nation that habitually harbours IRA killers & slavishly follows the dictates of Tel Aviv, what more can one expect but lies and fantasy?
(* Otherwise known as the Taliban.)
Tapani Simojoki
2 years ago
One correction: Sauli Niinistö is Finland’s president. The prime minister is Sanna Marin.
Unlike those who search diligently for connections of prominent British figures from 200 years ago with slavery Memorial looked at deliberate policies of murder within the lifetime of men living.. one effort is trivial the other serious. The trivial continues the serious is closed down.
We know attitudes of our remote ancestors were not the attitudes we value today. There are no parties dedicated to the introduction of slavery here but the gulag is not a distant historic memory with no prospect of return in Russia.
Listening to an analysis of Dostoyevsky. How Orthodox religion has suffering as a necessity of life. Russians feel that suffering is spiritually ‘good’. Cyrillic did cut off Russia culturally too. Supine history. Inviting the Rus to rule them. Kiev vs Novgorod savagery. Mongol Yoke. Vast distances- need for a savage strong man to bind it. Serfdom. Bloody colonialism of the East geniocide of tribes. Napoleon, WW1, WW2. Stalin. Holodomor and Gulag. Shooting down innocent airliners. Salisbury. Constantly wanting to be European but seeing themselves in many Russian writers’ words as ‘savage’ and ‘Asiatic’. Always the fear of chaos and invasion and always the big lie. We are all the prisoners of history-the Russians more than most.
As someone once said each chapter of Russian history ends with the line “….and then things got worse”
That seems to apply to Russian literature also.
Respectfully: Globalism is not “inevitable”, nor is it desirable. Russia wants to be Russia, and that’s fine.
First-time prognosticator from Toronto, Canada. I can not buy into the idea that “it’s fine that Russia will always be Russia”.
Whatever might the essence of the Russian soul (which question is ultimately unknowable, and of course not applicable to individual Russians): I am 100% committed to the idea that all Russians — and all humans — desire greater freedom, rather than less, and would every time choose democracy over autocracy. (Hey, do a poll if you’re unsure).
And then: all Russians would enormously and immediately benefit from their every step in favour freedom and democracy.
Similarly, if Russia’s leadership were to abandon the goal of resurrecting the Russian Empire, how much more affluent could the Russian people be?
A re-establishment of trade, a ‘rapprochement’ if you will — with the West would be the cornerstone of the new-found affluence. Welcoming Russia as an engaged ‘partner’ in the Free World would pay both material and spiritual dividends for all Russians.
Confident of my naivete, I see nothing but upside if Russia were to ‘freedomize’. Incremental benefit at every step. Unfortunately, Russia is locked into a pure ‘lose-lose’ idiom.
Gorbachev and Yeltsin were leaning in the ‘right’ direction, but Putin manhandled the country back down the wealth-destroying, violent path.
I’ll start believing the Global Altruists care about freedom and human rights when they start taking an interest in the government that permanently destabilized the globe and turned the world into a faceless, collectivist society run by unelected, corporate bureacrats.
T-Bone you nailed it. There too much that’s not democratic in our so-called western liberal democracies. Canadians, as example, are just about the most locked-down people in the world; as example, our kids have been shut out of school the longest. Example, our handsome speech-impeded drama-teacher PM advised that we have the right to peaceful protest, but that protest against covid lockdowns should be illegal. The head of our national police (RCMP) made a similar comment. Of course, here I am equating democracy and freedom — they aren’t the same, but they move in tandem. And so, we must decry authoritarianism in Russia, while there are far too many examples of Big Brother trampling the citizenry around across the ‘free’ west.
Disagree with your second paragraph. “All humans desire greater freedom” Really? Open borders for example? Legalised drug taking for example? No, what most humans really desire ( not, of course, libertarian extremists like Liz Truss) is security. Security for themselves, their families, their cultures and countries. Putin delivers that for Russia and so Russia remains Russian, while England, for example, becomes a foreign place under a “Conservative ” government.
A brief perusal of history shows that ‘Russia being Russia’ means centuries of conquering other people’s lands and often exterminating those peoples.
Russia’s in a state of a permanent cognitive dissonance since the breakdown of the Soviet Union. On one hand communists destroyed the Great Russia, on the other hand they revived it even larger, won the Great Patriotic War, achieved great industrial and technological success etc. What we’re seeing now are probably lame attempts to avoid the painful dissonance and reach some sort of imaginary unity by a bureaucratic fiat.
The type of Russia that Putin wants is to maintain cognitive dissonance within the proletariat – aka Big Brother in ‘1984’ except that Putin has neither the finance or the will to get to that stage.
Navalny, who by the way has a Telrgram account, is always uplifting, strangely so as I live in the liberal west and he is in a prison camp! The link to the Time article is worth a read.
https://time.com/6140102/alexei-navalny-russia-profile/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_term=world_&linkId=148708129
The obvious answer is for Ukraine to be Finlandized, by agreement between Russia, Ukraine, NATO and the EU.
If that cannot be made to work, by honest negotiations all around, we all have a big problem.
Oh come off it! Does one really believe a word the USA says?
First it was 9/11, then Saddam “did it”, then the ‘ Arab Spring’, then the dreaded Teletubbies* and now Putin the anti-Christ!
For a nation that habitually harbours IRA killers & slavishly follows the dictates of Tel Aviv, what more can one expect but lies and fantasy?
(* Otherwise known as the Taliban.)
One correction: Sauli Niinistö is Finland’s president. The prime minister is Sanna Marin.
How wise is this recently letter, for British interests & safety? https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/open-letter-it-s-time-to-invite-russia-to-join-nato-a-682287.html