View Full Version : Russian political psyche: history and modernity
mirhond
05-16-2014, 09:56 PM
disclaimer #1. any links and sources which is going to be posted here are quite possibly biased
disclaimer #2. Unsupported claims and irrelevant ravings will be ignored.
Ok, lets get started.
Before posting anything here, you, Westerners must remember that we, Russians, lived for three generations under stern but (mostly) just supervision of omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent state. If you think it explains everything - you are probably far from truth.
How the whole system has been set up - that is a huge historical question, still unanswered, how it works today, after a dissolution of Soviet state - I'll try to explain.
Now we have a mostly free market economy, paternalistic politics, consumerism ethics and apathetic population.
I won't tell about structure of the economy, it's well known, but I'll tell what people think about it: free market is unjust, capitalism is unhuman, so any ideology which denies it as an economic basis would have public approval.
Most important tool of the paternalistic policy is the controlled media, full of dumb entertainment and, quite recently, spiritual guidance from the Orthodox chirch, pseudo-patriotic sentiments and sheer propaganda Dr Goebbels would be proud of.
Why it works? I think of the part of the answer is simple: people are stupid, so they are unable to tell the truth from the lie, they are politically powerless, because they are trained to be divided, they are in general want to be left alone, but won't mind to listen about great achievements, kicking some asses, stupid Americans who can't find Ukrain on the map or spoiled and souless Europeans - the majority of the Russians exposed to the media are prone to any lies which brings a little bit of comfort.
End of part one. Part two on the way (may be)
May 16, 2014
Window on Eurasia: Infantilism on the Rise among Russians, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ Says
In a lead article today entitled “On the Growth of Social-Political Infantilism in Russia,” the editors of the Moscow paper review recent poll results which show among other things a decrease in support for democracy, human rights and markets and a rise in the share of those who are indifferent as to what kind of state they live in as long as they and their families are well off (ng.ru/editorial/2014-05-16/2_red.html).
That there should be a decline in support for Western models of state and society is no surprise, the editors say. It reflects the Ukrainian events or “more precisely their treatment in the government and pro-regime mass media” and the tendency of Russians to evaluate other countries primarily on the basis of their policies toward Moscow rather than anything else.
This “lack of understanding of the role of procedures” has had the effect of opening the way for the acceptance among Russians of “declarations of ‘a special path’” for Russia without a clear understanding of what that might mean. Unless such things are specified, they add, coming up with and imposing an “alternative” model to the West will be “extremely difficult.”
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.be/2014/05/window-on-eurasia-infantilism-on-rise.html
Mirhond, hope to read your answers :)
Mirhond: "golden age lost due to the sins of fathers"
What was the period of that age?
Who were those fathers?
What sins they did?
To whom they lost it?
When the a Soviet Union collapsed the greatest mistake made by the US (and their western allies) was not to dismantle the Russian Empire to a status where there would no threat to neighboring minor nations of non Russians ever again. We are seeing the results of one of histories great strategic mistakes as Russia once again develops expansionist dreams and converts them into reality paid for by an oil industry that never should have been allowed to be developed.
Russia will probably get away with it because of the US fear of nuclear weapons (as was the real reason for the soft settlement at the collapse of the Soviet Union). So keep testing rockets and issuing threats about using weapons and the US will stay out of it.
The reason for this fear of Russian nuclear weapons is that it is generally believed that the Russians are actually stupid enough to use nuclear weapons despite the assurance of the complete destruction of Russia if they ever do. So don't do anything to lead the US to start to think Russians are really capable of intelligent and logical thought.
mirhond
05-18-2014, 09:42 AM
May 16, 2014
Window on Eurasia: Infantilism on the Rise among Russians, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ Says
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.be/2014/05/window-on-eurasia-infantilism-on-rise.html
I fail to see why it's called "infantilism", not just "indifference" or "apathy", but everything else in this article is true.
Mirhond, hope to read your answers :)
OK, lo and behold:
1. it were several last decades of Soviet epoch
2. anyone who is now at his 50-60s
3. they sold primogeniture for lentil soup, in geopolitical sence
4. to the coterie of thieves and foreign agents
mirhond, that golden era was called stagnation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Era_of_Stagnation
mirhond
05-21-2014, 10:21 AM
mirhond, that golden era was called stagnation.
So what? Does it even matter?
mirhond, I think it does. How country happened to be in this situation? Overstretched ambitions, bad economics etc ? Structural problems?
mirhond
05-21-2014, 02:02 PM
mirhond, I think it does. How country happened to be in this situation? Overstretched ambitions, bad economics etc ? Structural problems?
Source of the mith isn't necessarily rooted in reality, as Dayuhan have already said. Call it as you wish, it remains golden age of justice, equality and great achievements. Real problems of USSR you've mentioned above deserve another topic in "Historians" branch.
mirhond, what can I answer if Russians dream about era that had serious systematic errors. Memory is tricky thing that picks out usuallly good things. Freud may think other way. Do you still like Жигули beer or prefer Carlsberg? What about those Sovet ice creams that were dreams of childhood? What about Magnum ice cream? Did you like riding Десна-2 bicycle, or Scott would be better? Oh, I forgot that those NATO/EU guys are producing those things in Russia now together with Russian oligarhs ...
Nice example about golden age, that should remind childhood :)
http://blog.t30p.ru/post/A-vi-znaete-s-chego-Elektronika-v-SSSR-skopirovala-svoi-elektronnie-izdeliya.aspx
Some 61 percent of respondents polled by the Public Opinion Fund (FOM) in 2006, when Brezhnev’s 100th birth anniversary was marked, recalled the years of his rule as good times for the country and only 17 percent - bad times. Some 50 percent of Russians believe that Brezhnev played a positive role in the history of the country, 16 percent, think he played a negative role.
Meanwhile, only 36 percent of respondents wanted “to return the country to that historical period, when Brezhnev ruled it, with all typical features and peculiarities of the life in those years,” 42 percent opposed such comeback in the past.
According to the recent public opinion poll conducted by the Levada Centre, 45 percent of young people in the age brackets between 16-18 years stayed undecided about their evaluation of Brezhnev’s era. 44 percent of school students are unaware about the manhunt of dissidents in Brezhnev’s era, 54 percent of respondents do not have the slightest idea about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
http://in.rbth.com/articles/2012/11/12/nostalgia_for_the_brezhnev_era_19001.html
mirhond
05-21-2014, 02:57 PM
mirhond, what can I answer if Russians dream about era that had serious systematic errors. Memory is tricky thing that picks out usuallly good things. Freud may think other way. Do you still like Жигули beer or prefer Carlsberg? What about those Sovet ice creams that were dreams of childhood? What about Magnum ice cream? Did you like riding Десна-2 bicycle, or Scott would be better? Oh, I forgot that those NATO/EU guys are producing those things in Russia now together with Russian oligarhs ...
Exactly, not to mention that almost all they produce is BS, because almost no one follow technical requirements and standards. That is why customers usually prefer Belorussian dairy, meat and other staple, which is usually way better then Russian stuff. So when Belorussians lament about tirannical Lukashenko most Russians answer like: "You don't want him - excellent, we take him, we need such kind of a guy" So, if mass and public executions make business to follow the standarts, bureaucracy to obey the law and both to work for common good - we'd support it, because it's a part of a dream, along with free health care, free edication and ridiculously cheap housing we had in the days of yore. Class society is acceptable - unjust class society is unacceptable.
Why Russians need this Lukashenko guy? If I remember correctly Russian state pays every year 20 billion to support this system. 10x more than to Crimea in the future.
Why Russians need this Lukashenko guy? If I remember correctly Russian state pays every year 20 billion to support this system. 10x more than to Crimea in the future.
My bad with numbers. Bad memory :)
Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov told Reuters in March that Belarus and Kazakhstan received about $6 billion annually from Russia in direct and indirect support and said that could increase by $30 billion if all trade restrictions were lifted in 2015 after the union is created.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/25/us-russia-belarus-idUSBRE9BO06S20131225
In 2012 support was 6 billion. Belarus budget was 16 billion. First chapter here
http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/pw_34_bialorus_ang_net.pdf
Here are some numbers about Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria for comparsion.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/the-hidden-costs-of-a-russian-statelet-in-ukraine/284197/
Armenia.
Russian cumulative investment in Armenia currently exceeding $3 billion, or approximately one half of total foreign investment in this country whose total annual total GDP was reported at $9.8 billion in 2012 (Interfax, Armenpress, September 3, 4).
http://www.jamestown.org/regions/russia/single/?tx_ttnews%5Bpointer%5D=4&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=41319&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=655&cHash=e7f11c932242d2c9bfc666eb8104ee28#.U3zb7doayS M
mirhond
05-23-2014, 07:43 PM
Why Russians need this Lukashenko guy?
Answer is obvious - quality of Belorussian goods, fair pentions and working factories are strongly assosiated with his ironfist rule.
disclaimer #1. any links and sources which is going to be posted here are quite possibly biased
disclaimer #2. Unsupported claims and irrelevant ravings will be ignored.
Ok, lets get started.
Before posting anything here, you, Westerners must remember that we, Russians, lived for three generations under stern but (mostly) just supervision of omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent state. If you think it explains everything - you are probably far from truth.
How the whole system has been set up - that is a huge historical question, still unanswered, how it works today, after a dissolution of Soviet state - I'll try to explain.
Now we have a mostly free market economy, paternalistic politics, consumerism ethics and apathetic population.
I won't tell about structure of the economy, it's well known, but I'll tell what people think about it: free market is unjust, capitalism is unhuman, so any ideology which denies it as an economic basis would have public approval.
Most important tool of the paternalistic policy is the controlled media, full of dumb entertainment and, quite recently, spiritual guidance from the Orthodox chirch, pseudo-patriotic sentiments and sheer propaganda Dr Goebbels would be proud of.
Why it works? I think of the part of the answer is simple: people are stupid, so they are unable to tell the truth from the lie, they are politically powerless, because they are trained to be divided, they are in general want to be left alone, but won't mind to listen about great achievements, kicking some asses, stupid Americans who can't find Ukrain on the map or spoiled and souless Europeans - the majority of the Russians exposed to the media are prone to any lies which brings a little bit of comfort.
End of part one. Part two on the way (may be)
Mirhond: That is an extremely useful statement. It is just about the best and most cogent outline of the Russian popular worldview that I've read. You obviously can judge firsthand and I only know what I read but it is almost perfectly consistent with all I've read and what Russia has done.
When the a Soviet Union collapsed the greatest mistake made by the US (and their western allies) was not to dismantle the Russian Empire to a status where there would no threat to neighboring minor nations of non Russians ever again. We are seeing the results of one of histories great strategic mistakes as Russia once again develops expansionist dreams and converts them into reality paid for by an oil industry that never should have been allowed to be developed.
Russia will probably get away with it because of the US fear of nuclear weapons (as was the real reason for the soft settlement at the collapse of the Soviet Union). So keep testing rockets and issuing threats about using weapons and the US will stay out of it.
The reason for this fear of Russian nuclear weapons is that it is generally believed that the Russians are actually stupid enough to use nuclear weapons despite the assurance of the complete destruction of Russia if they ever do. So don't do anything to lead the US to start to think Russians are really capable of intelligent and logical thought.
This leads me to comment about something I've been thinking of for a bit. I wonder if historians, however many there may be left, in 200 years will judge the Americans with great harshness for what we didn't do. What we didn't do was make certain that after WWII nobody else developed nuclear weapons. We didn't maintain a nuclear monopoly.
We could have done it. The Western nations would have simply been told not to develop any or no aid and by the way pay your war debts tomorrow. The USSR and Red China would have required something harsher, no development or no (pick a city or province). We didn't because it would have required a willingness to actually torch some cities and we weren't willing. Besides the egalitarian streak in us always is susceptible to the argument that if we have something why can't they?
But what did that get us? The Pak Army/ISI with nukes, North Korea with nukes, the Russians with nukes. What it got us, the world, is a lot of people with nukes and more getting them every decade. And many of those realize that if they convince others they are willing to use them regardless of the consequences they most often get their way. They will continue to get their way until they meet somebody who will call a their bluff that may not be a bluff and then-tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions dead. I believe we are a lot closer to that in the Indian sub-continent than people realize. In any event it will happen somewhere in the next 50-80 years.
So that is where we stand today. Nukes everywhere in the hands of some very bad people and an almost certain nuke war somewhere. Now let's say we were the only ones with nukes, nobody else, just us. Things would be rather more stable I think, regardless of what you think of the noble Americans or the imperialist war-mongering Yankees. The threat of incineration wouldn't be hanging over the heads on millions and millions of Indians and Pakistanis. That is why I think the historians many tomorrows from now will judge us very harshly.
Dayuhan
05-23-2014, 11:51 PM
Why Russians need this Lukashenko guy?
I suspect it has a lot to do with fear that any move to replace him could get out of control and put a pro-western government in... the old "he's a bastard, but he's our bastard" attitude.
Of course if Putin comes out of the Ukraine mess feeling very confident, he might try destabilizing Lukashenko to create a pretext for outright annexation, but that is of course very speculative.
mirhond
06-06-2014, 02:29 PM
Specially for kaur
a good article about cossaks http://lurkmore.to/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B8
Аннотация: Казак - это костюмированный кубаноид. :D
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Window on Eurasia: Russians Back Putin Because He Offers Illusion Russia is Again a Superpower, Levinson Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, June 8 – Much of the public support in Russia for Vladimir Putin reflects the fact that his actions allow Russians to believe if only for a time that their country is once again a great power even though they fully understand that Russia is not in a position to be one the equal of the United States, according to Aleksey Levinson of the Levada Center.
In short, the supposed unity of the Russian people behind Putin is just as fragile and ultimately illusory as the supposed return of the Russian Federation to the status of a super power and could disappear more rapidly than many, including Putin and his supporters, now think possible.
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.be/2014/06/window-on-eurasia-russians-back-putin.html
SWJ Blog
06-10-2014, 02:11 AM
Old Aspirations - New Tensions: “In Search of a New Russian Identity” (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/old-aspirations-new-tensions-%E2%80%9Cin-search-of-a-new-russian-identity%E2%80%9D)
Entry Excerpt:
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Read the full post (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/old-aspirations-new-tensions-%E2%80%9Cin-search-of-a-new-russian-identity%E2%80%9D) and make any comments at the SWJ Blog (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog).
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.
Do you still like Жигули beer or prefer Carlsberg? What about those Sovet ice creams that were dreams of childhood? What about Magnum ice cream? Did you like riding Десна-2 bicycle, or Scott would be better?
I am not a Russian but I come from a country that has seen and lived socialism in its worst form.
Do I like Carlsberg or western goods?
Sure. There is quality control.
Do I like my country over Carlsberg.
You bet I do.
Can I still be what I am with this dichotomy?
Yes I can.
Do i reject my country for the Western way?
Never.
Therefore, your argument is false.
Further, may I ask why do you forsake your country's products for Chinese products?
What about the crave for Russian vodkas and Beluga and Iranian caviar and Cuban cigars?
In short, what is good and if one can pay, then one enjoys it beyond petty nationalist considerations.
Any answer?
Jingoism has limits.
This is what Patrick O'Brian said:
“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
Kaur and others,
This maybe of interest about revolutions and movements
ISIS has not emerged from nowhere. They were not ‘fading away’ before the onset of the Syrian civil war; rather, they were regrouping, cleaning up their house (imagine the rooftop discussion between Ali La Pointe and Ben M’Hidi in The Battle of Algiers when he declares that before they take the fight to the French they’re first going to sweep up the pipes and dope dealers in the Casbah). Up to July 2013, at least in Salaheddin province, ISIS’s attacks were paid for by the Turkish government, not private donors from the Gulf as is commonly mistaken. ISIS’s presence in Syria did not ‘just happen’; rather, it was orchestrated by Turkey, which then decided to back up the wrong horse–Nusra, in the Spring of 2013. This last aspect of Victoria’s strategic diagnosis is, in my view, the most worrisome.
What we are seeing is not ‘just’ a civil war but an incipient schismatic war with thick tentacles linking it abroad in a patently ominous manner...... While speaking with Victoria the first thought of the near future of the Middle East which sprang to mind was one akin to the Balkan tragedy of the 1990s–only on a larger scale, with more money for weapons and willing suppliers, and with even less scope for external mitigation.
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?p=157556#post157556
Time to smell the coffee and not get dreamy eyed and hallucinate on a dose of poppy induced govt and jingoistic public delusions .
Ray, why you dragged my point from context? Mirhond was talking about Soviet golden age. What was golden there, when Eastern Europe was under Soviet military occupation? During that age was started also Afganistan war, that should be closer example about golden age for you. During that age Indian politics was manipulated by KGB as they liked, if I belive what Mitrokin wrote. Do you want this age back?
mirhond
06-18-2014, 05:47 PM
Ray, why you dragged my point from context? Mirhond was talking about Soviet golden age. What was golden there, when Eastern Europe was under Soviet military occupation? During that age was started also Afganistan war, that should be closer example about golden age for you.
I think you need better explanation. Soviet era is considered golden age because life was predictable, social protection was available and just, everyone had jobs and decent income, the wery existence had a noble goal. Eastern Europe occupied? Fu(k it, until we have Polish rags, Romanian furniture and Czech appliances. Eight years of war in Somewherestan? Fu(k it too, besides our guys are kicking lots af asses there.
During Perestroika and first post-Soviet years we had illusions about capitalistic Elven kingdoms and Empire of Good and Light, but they didn't survived rough reality. That's why collective unconscious full of frustration, unmeet needs and low expectations was so easily hijacked by "bigtime, magor league bull#### story" of Putin's Russia, which is going to reclaim the past. Now almost everything is measured by Soviet scale.
So, your lamentations about occupation would fall into the deaf ears, the fact is irrelevant to the narrative of newfound paradise.
During that age Indian politics was manipulated by KGB as they liked, if I belive what Mitrokin wrote. Do you want this age back?
Outlaw-stile posting without any links and arguments? Come on, provide at least what you've read.
Ray, why you dragged my point from context? Mirhond was talking about Soviet golden age. What was golden there, when Eastern Europe was under Soviet military occupation? During that age was started also Afganistan war, that should be closer example about golden age for you. During that age Indian politics was manipulated by KGB as they liked, if I belive what Mitrokin wrote. Do you want this age back?
I want that age where we are not manipulated by external powers.
It is not that India is not flush with western covert funds being funnelled through for dubious purpose.
As the saying goes in India - Hamam men sab nanga hai (in the hamam (turkish bath) all are nude) i.e. not much to chose from.
To be frank, Eastern Europe or any other issue does not impact us, except the worry of the Cold War being revisited.
The Chinese proverb goes - When big fish fight, little fish eaten! :)
mere
Look at the chaos in Iraq and Syria. It has its roots in the Mandates of the League of Nations where arbritary boundaries were drawn to suit colonial interest with total disregard of ground realities. And now were are wondering what to do and what would be the effect.
I wonder if there was any 'golden age' in any country. It is all a figment of imagination and poetic imagery to indicate an era better than another. The travails remain merely comparative.
mirhond, I'm always glad to help you :)
http://mitrokhinarchiveii.blogspot.be
mirhond
06-21-2014, 10:18 AM
mirhond, I'm always glad to help you :)
http://mitrokhinarchiveii.blogspot.be
I've read it - it's a good political journalism, I'll put it into bookmarks, thanks.
KGB rulezz!!! :cool:
mirhond
07-03-2014, 10:07 PM
inspired by link davidbfpo has posted in Ukraine thread
link #1 http://20committee.com/2014/07/03/meet-russias-new-international-brigades/
link #2 http://20committee.com/2014/05/05/russias-soft-power-and-the-great-patriotic-war/
quote from 2:
Average Russians are emotionally invested in the potent lies of the Official Narrative and it’s hard to blame them, since most of them have never heard any other version of events. But it’s important to note that lies about 1939-1945 continue to serve as a justification for Russian crimes in Ukraine right now
Statement in bold is actual Bravo Sierra, because here in Russia we have entire school of folkhistorians preaching the dogma
USSR was just as complicit as Germany. It started in 90-s with Edward Topol famous exposure of "preparations of Soviet agression" and continues nowadays with Mark Solonin same crackpot theories. Anyone who eager to learn a thing about it could buy the books, or download it or resieve the sacraments from the worshippers at the corresponding sites. They aren't popular though, because most of the Russians just don't by this bull####.
So, the anonimous author of this article knows wery little or nothing about Russian popular beliefs.
A Soviet Leader Who Saw Russia Clearly (http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-07/a-soviet-leader-who-saw-russian-clearly) is an interesting piece by Leonid Bershidsky about the late Eduard Shevardnadze.
In 1992, the field commanders who had deposed independent Georgia's first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, invited Shevardnadze to return to his homeland and lead it. As he freely admitted, he was never fully in control. Contrary to his orders, one of the military commanders who had brought Shevardnadze to power led troops to the separatist region of Abkhazia. Shevardnadze tried to stop the advance and even negotiated a peace with the Abkhaz leadership, sealed with a handshake in Moscow in the presence of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Then Abkhazians, backed by Russian warships and planes as well as well-trained "volunteers" from neighboring Russian regions, such as Chechnya, struck back, and the weak Georgian army was crushed.
In other words, Shevardnadze was the first post-Soviet leader to see a Russian-backed unofficial military operation on his land. Like Ukrainian politicians today, he called it a war with Russia. Today's military operation in eastern Ukraine is as deniably but transparently Russian-backed as the 1992 war in Abhkazia was. Shevardnadze recalled in his memoirs that Yeltsin proposed splitting Georgia in two to stop the conflict. He called Leonid Kravchuk, then the Ukrainian president, to complain: "Can you imagine someone giving you a friendly recommendation to split Ukraine in two?"
"The centuries-long process of expansion and 'collection' of other nations' lands by Russia continues in the 21st century," Shevardnadze wrote more than a year before Russian troops openly entered Georgia in 2008 and Moscow recognized the separatists states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Personally I think it is rather obvious why that Soviet age glowed so golden for so many. While the seeds of the mighty implosion were sown already early most seem to have been unable to understand that the SU collapsed by it's own making. The sinew was streched till it had to break, and the economic and political result weren't pretty. Other nations were able to clean up the Soviet mess early while Russia and Putin needed the gift of a ressource boom to gain some of the ground lost.
Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia (http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Empire-Lessons-Modern-Russia/dp/0815731140/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404827733&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=russia+econmy+lesson+empire) is indeed a worthy read about that economic tragedy.
AmericanPride
07-09-2014, 05:05 PM
Interesting conversation. My thoughts:
(1) Perceptions are reference dependent on context in time and place. The traumas of the 'shock therapy' during the 1990s colored the public's perception of the time before it - same way conservative politics today in the United States mythologize the 1950s despite the Red Scare, segregation, and so on. The reference point also does the same for experiences gained afterwards; if the first experience with democratic capitalism is chaotic, perceived to be unjust, and difficult, then alternatives will be welcomed.
(2) The liberals/Westernizers in the early 1990s of the Yeltsin administration made great efforts in integrating Russia into the West's model of a Westphalian nation-state committed to democratic capitalism. It held elections. It sold off state property. It abandoned Russia's historical empire, creating numerous states of the dominant nations. This trend only tampered off recently, even the Putin administration pushed for Russia's membership in the World Trade Organization.
(3) Yes, the West did dismantle the Russian empire (there are 15 states where there used to be one, in addition to the former Warsaw Pact states). The problem is that the West never fully embraced Moscow, and Yeltsin's poor performance never met the challenges posed by the realists and nationalists. Russia's experiences with Yugoslavia, Kosovo, shock therapy, NATO expansion, and missile defense only empowered the realists and nationalists, and the second economic crisis in the late 1990s finally pushed Russian politics in their favor.
(4) Yeltsin virtually abdicated to Putin, paving the way for a relatively peaceful transition from the Westernizers to the Realists. During Putin's early years, he still had some of the same ambitions as his predecessor, but the abandonment of the democratic-capitalism project was necessary to save what the realists and nationalists believed to be at risk at the time: the very existence of Russia. The dissolution of the USSR and Yugoslavia, and the wars in Chechnya and Dageston were traumatic events from this perspective. All of Russia's wars from 1991 to 2014 involve former Soviet republics and all of them involve questions of territorial integrity and political sovereignty. These conflicts are a direct result of the dismantling of the Soviet empire - the very policy advocated here (and initially opposed by the Bush I administration).
(5) So, collapse of the USSR was a decentering of political power away from Moscow - and this triggered political and economic crisis throughout the entire post-Soviet region (it also untethered the international security regime from the bipolarity of the Cold War, making life more complicated for everyone). The West and some of those post-Soviet states took full advantage of this opportunity to make a clean break from Moscow. Good for them. The Putin administration has been working diligently to restore centralized political power - it started with the Second Chechen War and is continuining today through Ukraine. Despite it all, Russia has managed to build relatively constructive relations with continental Europe even as the U.S. has been generally confrontational and suspicious of Russia's efforts.
(6) Russia is still a second-rate power compared to the U.S.; the problem is that the Russian elite knows this and despises being in that position. That they are buoyed by the political attitudes of the general population is not surprising, but it should also be a signal that there are legitimate problems that need to resolved (preferably not through force of arms).
AmericanPride, could you elaborate your point. You were talking about Russia and then you added Ukraine to Russia. Were are the geographical limits of centralization?
The Putin administration has been working diligently to restore centralized political power - it started with the Second Chechen War and is continuining today through Ukraine.
Ps who is shouting Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom today in Ukraine?
D. Trenin has written nice book about rose and collapse od Russian empire.
http://carnegieendowment.org/pdf/book/post-imperium.pdf
In Russia this topic is very actual like this article shows.
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.be/2014/07/window-on-eurasia-russians-responding.html
Legendary Russian sociologist Yuri Levada studies "Soviet man" and without this aspect it is hard to uncode the events in Russia and connected with Russia.
http://cdclv.unlv.edu//yla/
AmericanPride
07-09-2014, 10:33 PM
Kaur,
That's part of the problem in de-centering an imperial power: where are the legitimate boundaries? Which norms make those boundaries legitimate? The Westphalian nation-state model provides some answers, but that's a different paradigm than the one under which the Russian state operates. The historical references of Moscow are not the same as those of Washington, London, etc. In the Russian experience, boundaries (and nationalities) are mobile, and state systems are less defined by their geographic scope than their political reach through networks of patronage. During the Yeltsin years, the Russian elite attempted to make this transformation from an imperial power to a Westphalian one, but that project ended in failure.
EDIT: There is not a differentiation between internal and external in an imperial system, or a recognition of subordinate but equal political units. The Westphalian model emphasizes the creation of nation-states, but Russia has historically been a single state with multiple nations. Whatever political structures were granted to these nations were subordinated to the centralized power in St. Petersburg and/or Moscow. So what the dismantling of the USSR did was create numerous issues about the territorial integrity and sovereignty of of new political units created for nations that were not, on the whole, independent historically. So what are the geographical limits of centralization? There are none because imperial power is not defined by geography. We use the Westphalian typology that makes clear demarcations between internal and external to describe the construction of states, which makes it difficult to describe the importance of the term 'Near Abroad' in the Russian foreign policy lexicon. Essentially, from Moscow's perspective, there is no difference between Ukraine and any of Russia's 22 republics.
AmericanPride, fact is that in Russia-Urkaine war Russian side has violated several agreements.
http://www.dw.de/bound-by-treaty-russia-ukraine-and-crimea/a-17487632
Some Russians claim that this is the beginning of new era of international relations and old agreements are not binding.
To follow your logic there must be done grand scale borders redrawing in Middle East. Let's start with Iraq and Afganistan. Sounds good?
http://www.oilempire.us/oil-jpg/afj.peters_map_after.JPG
Should we follow Huntington's map?
If you follow this Putin's definition I'm wondering when he intends to come to Brighton beach and liberate all Russian jews from Israel :)
[O]ur compatriots [sootechestvenniki], Russian people [russkiie lyudi], people of other ethnicities, their language, history, culture, their legitimate rights. When I say Russian people and Russian-speaking [russkoyazychnyie) citizens, I mean people who sense that they are a part of the broad Russian World, not necessarily of Russian ethnicity, but everyone who feels to be a Russian person [russkiy chelovek].
http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42579&cHash=a1f918256e114a431c6b745026b0c43c#.U7207mIayS M
AmericanPride
07-09-2014, 11:09 PM
AmericanPride, fact is that in Russia-Urkaine war Russian side has violated several agreements.
Hypocrisy and deception have always been a part of politics, Russian or otherwise.
Some Russians claim that this is the beginning of new era of international relations and old agreements are not binding.
True - to an extent. Power differentials between U.S., Russia, China, and Europe are changing, and this is having different effects in their respective capitals. Russia's perception of success is dependent on its historical reference points, most recently the collapse of the USSR and the chaos of the Yeltsin years. Emerging from this period, even as an authoritarian 'sovereign democracy', is a welcome change from the Russian perspective. Moscow is more assertive because opportunities exist, and those opportunities exist because the relative power balance between the U.S. and Russia has changed in Russia's favor since 2003.
To follow your logic there must be done grand scale borders redrawing in Middle East. Let's start with Iraq and Afganistan. Sounds good?
The logic of empire in Russia is not the same as the political logic in the Middle East - and there's no universal underlying political logic in the Middle East, anyway, that contextualizes the policies of the states in that region. The Arab monarchies, Arab republics, Iranian theocracy, Israel, and Turkey all have different reference points, values, and assumptions. The problem in the ME isn't the drawing of boundaries, but the inherent weakness of the region's states that makes them incapable of monopolizing political power within their assigned boundaries. That the legitimacy of these boundaries are also questioned does not add to the region's stability. Anyway - there are some arguments out there supporting a revolutionary redrawing of the ME's borders on sectarian/ethnic lines. That's something with which I disagree since homogeniety is not a guarantor of stability (or of democratization).
Should we follow Huntington's map?
Huntington's thesis is not useful. Dividing people on sectarian basis is an assured way to drive conflict on a sectarian basis.
True - to an extent. Power differentials between U.S., Russia, China, and Europe are changing, and this is having different effects in their respective capitals. Russia's perception of success is dependent on its historical reference points, most recently the collapse of the USSR and the chaos of the Yeltsin years. Emerging from this period, even as an authoritarian 'sovereign democracy', is a welcome change from the Russian perspective. Moscow is more assertive because opportunities exist, and those opportunities exist because the relative power balance between the U.S. and Russia has changed in Russia's favor since 2003.
Mm, how is this Ukraine case connected with USA and China. This war started because there was revolt in Kiev that was initated because Janukovish decided not to join AA/DCFTA agreement with EU. Putin with his hawks perceived this like NATO enlargement to Ukraine. Did they miscalculate? Is EU USA Troyan horse? I doubt seriously. Russia just grabbed land violating international agreements. Should this be tolerated?
What power balance? Count the national power of both and you see that they are uncompearable. What Russia has is aggressive stance and will to use arms, that USA lacks in former Russian empire area. If will power can be calculated then I agree with you.
About Huntington. Am I stupid, but it seems that Putin with his definition is preaching that civilization thing.
AmericanPride
07-09-2014, 11:48 PM
This war started because there was revolt in Kiev that was initated because Janukovish decided not to join AA/DCFTA agreement with EU. Putin with his hawks perceived this like NATO enlargement to Ukraine. Did they miscalculate? Is EU USA Troyan horse? I doubt seriously. Russia just grabbed land violating international agreements. Should this be tolerated?
That's the proximate cause but not the structural cause. Yanukovych was not inherently pro-Russian - in his first years in office, he attempted to approach the West. Ukraine's domestic politics required him to maintain his distance from both Russia and EU, and eventually the inefficiencies in Ukraine's economy (mainly the black hole of their debt) overturned the boat. Yanukovych wanted to avoid the privatization of Ukraine's economy since its ravaging would cost him his political legitimacy - the intentions of the new government were revealed in the opening days in office when they made it clear they were on a 'suicide' run to sell off state assets, including and perhaps most importantly the state's natural gas infrastructure. 'Austerity' is the price for the West's bailout of Ukraine's economy, but that was a price Yanukovych was unwilling to pay politically. So, after refusing the EU agreement upon seeing the terms he would have to meet, his time ran out. Moscow was happy to provide him cash and on generous terms and seemed for a time content with Ukraine's neutrality. Washington was never pleased with that situation since, as a great power, its interested in relative power gains made by the Russians. The crisis escalated when the Russians realized Washington's soft power grab had no back up plan - hard power trumps soft power any day. Is it worth it for Russia? Who am I to say? I will say that it's unsurprising to me how Russia responded. I've said since the beginning that Russia would not directly intervene to seize eastern Ukraine but that the conflict would persist until Ukraine formed a unity government since absent a neutral Ukraine, a divided and weakened one is prefered.
mirhond
07-10-2014, 07:51 PM
Interesting conversation. My thoughts:
(6) Russia is still a second-rate power compared to the U.S.; the problem is that the Russian elite knows this and despises being in that position. That they are buoyed by the political attitudes of the general population is not surprising, but it should also be a signal that there are legitimate problems that need to resolved (preferably not through force of arms).
Here, from inside, I don't see any frustration of the ruling class being second-rate power. Well, they always say so in the media (public love it), but for me personally it doesn't sound very persuasive.
Essentially, from Moscow's perspective, there is no difference between Ukraine and any of Russia's 22 republics.
Now it is, stated loud and clear and that's good for all. So, there are geo-political boundaries for the empire, they lay where the state can't project its political influence and military power.
For months, Western officials have been repeating a mantra that a new Cold War will not break out because there is no ideological basis for such a confrontation. But is it not a form of ideology when Putin states: "It is time we admit one another's right to be different, the right of every country to live its own life rather than to be told what to do by someone else"? Today's world exists in part because leading nations respect certain conventions, and turning the clock back to 1815 threatens that order.
Essentially, Putin is demanding the right to live in a fictional world and to structure not only Russia's life, but the entire world order, according to long-obsolete rules. The worst thing world leaders can do is to continue to pointlessly explain to Putin that they are not a threat, when he fixedly believes that they absolutely are.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/putin-and-the-west-dont-play-by-the-same-rules/503400.html
mirhond
07-14-2014, 07:59 PM
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/putin-and-the-west-dont-play-by-the-same-rules/503400.html
Aww, sweet bull####, Redictio ad Hitlerum and Outright Lie in one paragraph
Need I remind readers which European leader spoke of "protecting compatriots abroad" 70 years ago? Putin's regime apparently considers all citizens of the former Soviet republics as "Russians," meaning that his right of intervention extents at the very least to the entire territory of the former Soviet Union.
mirhond
I think you need better explanation. Soviet era is considered golden age because life was predictable, social protection was available and just, everyone had jobs and decent income, the wery existence had a noble goal.
FSB guy Strelkov/Girkin's deputy gave interview to Novaya Gazeta, where he justified Stalin's terror in 1930. Terror was ok, because next generation achieved success. Accrding to mirhond definition in 40 years golden era arrived. I think his points illustrate the thinking among top guys in Eastern Ukraine.
Here is Google translate version.
http://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://novayagazeta.livejournal.com/2164981.html&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://novayagazeta.livejournal.com/2164981.html%26newwindow%3D1%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D 425
PS mirhond, I hope that you survive the possible terror period without harm.
mirhond
08-18-2014, 12:29 PM
mirhond
FSB guy Strelkov/Girkin's deputy gave interview to Novaya Gazeta, where he justified Stalin's terror in 1930. Terror was ok, because next generation achieved success. Accrding to mirhond definition in 40 years golden era arrived. I think his points illustrate the thinking among top guys in Eastern Ukraine.
PS mirhond, I hope that you survive the possible terror period without harm.
1. It's a commonplace in current views on Stalin's era, sometimes terror is just accepted as unnecessary but inevitable flaw of bolshevism, sometimes it justified by calculation of utility function. The matter itself is more complicated, as usual.
2. Wishful Thinking Fallacy. Show any good evidence of possible terror or you know what. And read a fine article about hybrid regimes. http://users.livejournal.com/_niece/249212.html
В России не только демократия липовая, но и сталинские усы - накладные :)
mirhond, today this is common in Russia to play different camps against each other. Who is winner in the end? It seems to be Putin according to this article. First communists got beaten, then liberals and nationalists. What is left? Some kind of intellectual porrige that has something to eberybody.
http://slon.ru/russia/zakonchilas_li_russkaya_vesna-1140655.xhtml
mirhond, I do understand that this is all good for internal politics and crowd control, but how you justify those Stalinist admirers to external audience? You don't like them, but they are your son of bitches, who are roaming around with your weapons and support in neighbouring country.
mirhond
08-19-2014, 07:02 PM
mirhond, today this is common in Russia to play different camps against each other.
http://slon.ru/russia/zakonchilas_li_russkaya_vesna-1140655.xhtml
mirhond, I do understand that this is all good for internal politics and crowd control, but how you justify those Stalinist admirers to external audience? You don't like them, but they are your son of bitches, who are roaming around with your weapons and support in neighbouring country.
1. It's called bonapartism, common practice.
2. I stopped reading after this
Благо и у Лукашенко, и у Назарбаева есть свое русскоязычное население, которое отныне воспринимается как мина замедленного действия: а вдруг им тоже захочется «федерализации» или «народных республик»?
and I won't waste a second explaining why it's BS.
3. I. personally, needn't to justify anything to anyone, (as much as you don't need to justify your compatriots honouring Estonian Waffen SS http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3585272.stm),
what Russian establishment is going to do with this - I don't know and I don't care.
davidbfpo
08-19-2014, 07:53 PM
Citing Mirhond in part:
3. I. personally, needn't to justify anything to anyone, (as much as you don't need to justify your compatriots honouring Estonian Waffen SS http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3585272.stm),
what Russian establishment is going to do with this - I don't know and I don't care.
The linked BBC report is from 2004. The statue was actually moved at the insistence of the Estonian government to a private location see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_of_Lihula
When I toured Western Ukraine (after independence) a few years ago we learnt that statues were an essential sign of local history. Crossing from one town to another across a stream we came across a Stalin tank on a plinth and a communist era leaders statue - I think it was Stalin. A few miles away a new, local war memorial was inscribed for WW2 1939-1947 and our guide explained the last two years were for those who fought against Soviet rule.
mirhond
08-19-2014, 08:11 PM
Citing Mirhond in part:
The linked BBC report is from 2004. The statue was actually moved at the insistence of the Estonian government to a private location see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_of_Lihula
So what? Estonians stopped honouring their SS veterans after that?
mirhond, nice trick :) If you want to discuss the Estonian topic, make new thread.
Today is the fact that strange mix of Russian nationalists, fascists, Stalinists, communists, internationalists, imperialists etc are making mess in Ukraine and some spin doctors try to pack all this in phrase "Русский мир" = "Russian world".
For example:
http://lj.rossia.org/users/anticompromat/2353247.html
http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4798744.html#comments
http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4799220.html
http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4799528.html
http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4671118.html?thread=272343438
http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4682367.html
http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4723742.html
http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4681687.html
http://avmalgin.livejournal.com/4624931.html
Here is very good interview with Donets Peoples Republic (former) premier and Russian spin doctor Borodai. Covers more topics than that Stalinist's interview.
http://www.interpretermag.com/novorossiya-and-the-fifth-column-around-the-kremlin-interview-with-separatist-leader-boroday/
davidbfpo
08-19-2014, 09:21 PM
So what? Estonians stopped honouring their SS veterans after that?
Having done a little research I thought SWC readers should be aware that your link dated back to 2004 and that the Estonian state insisted on the statue being moved from a public to a private site. Somehow I expect those who do 'honour' SS veterans are a small minority.
I know that in Russia there are those who demonstrate in public their admiration of Stalin and his approach - personally I find that distasteful.
The current Russian state stance has little to recommend it. The Ukraine has immense problems without a neighbour interfering.
FSB guy Strelkov live and visiting sacred places in Russia. He is accompanied by famous Eurasian ideologue Dugin.
http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/1765761.html
Last weekend there was conference in Yalta, Crimea. Conference was organised by Kremlin hardlineres. Main speaker was Putin's adviser in Eurasian Union question Glazjev. It was carried by antifascist banners. Poroshenko led Ukraine was called fascist regime. They had also couple supporters from Europe.
http://nat-ali.livejournal.com/238399.html
Roberto Fiore (born 15 April 1959 in Rome) is an Italian politician and a founding member of the European third position (terzo polo) movement which is against both communism and capitalism. He is the leader of the Italian party Forza Nuova. He self-identified as a fascist.[1]
Luc Michel (born 1958) is a far-right Belgian political activist and supporter of the ideas of the Nazi-collaborator Jean-François Thiriart (having been his personal secretary[1]). He is the current leader and founder of the Parti Communautaire National-Européen as well as a former member of the néo-nazi movement Fédération d'action nationaliste et européenne.
Michel is a supporter of National Bolshevism. He is a lawyer by profession, he has also written extensively on his political ideas. He has claimed to have the support of Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, in this endeavour.[2] Previously he had also sought contact with Action directe as part of his moves to link the far left and the left.[1]
What a crazy event!
Nationalism Just a Tool in Putin's Cynical Hands
By Marlene Laruelle Sep. 17 2014
Russia is thus using a nationalist motive, but does not have a nationalist agenda. The Kremlin's relationship to Russian minorities abroad is in fact context specific. As seen from the Kremlin's perspective, the existential threat of Maidan was what lost Ukraine the Crimean peninsula, not the stated fear of violence against ethnic Russians in Crimea. Kazakhstan also hosts a large Russian minority, but so long as the Kazakh regime plays according to Moscow's rules, the nationalist argument will not be applied to it.
Indeed, while the separatists have many Russians among their ranks, only a few hundred actual nationalists were ready to throw in their lot with the Donbass insurgency. The population's support is mostly oriented around a narrative of humanitarian catastrophe and the need to secure Russia's interests. Bellicose postures calling for war with Ukraine or the West are in the minority.
The process of "normalization" of Donbass as a second Transnistria is under way. But the main boomerang effect may not be felt by the insurgents, but by the ideological "nurturers" of Novorossiya. Both the Izborsky Club and the political Orthodox lobbyists have consolidated their visibility in public space and cultivated networks of influence rising high in the state hierarchy with the hope of making nationalism, whatever its doctrinal contents, a new state ideology for Russia.
The Kremlin has been successful so far in keeping nationalist forces in check, but rising nationalism of various strains has been an undeniable trend for many years. As the regime needs more mobilizing narratives, it could have to unleash some of the most popular nationalists, without being sure its cooptation tool will continue to function.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/mobile/opinion/article/nationalism-just-a-tool-in-putin-s-cynical-hands/507317.html
slapout9
10-06-2014, 08:53 PM
Wasn't sure where to put this so if this is the wrong thread feel free to move or have it moved. It is a speech given by Putin recently where he states that Russia must develop their own spiritual,cultural and national identity. Neither Soviet nor liberal extremism as he calls it.
http://rt.com/politics/official-word/putin-valdai-national-idea-142/
AmericanPride
10-07-2014, 05:24 AM
Wasn't sure where to put this so if this is the wrong thread feel free to move or have it moved. It is a speech given by Putin recently where he states that Russia must develop their own spiritual,cultural and national identity. Neither Soviet nor liberal extremism as he calls it.
http://rt.com/politics/official-word/putin-valdai-national-idea-142/
Slap, that speech is a year old. But for a number of years now, the nationalists in the Russian elite have been pushing for a unique and separate development of Russia; a kind of neither 'east nor west' type of thing. For many centuries, one of the fundamental debates in Russian identity has been wrestling with is whether Russia is 'European' or 'Asian', or 'Slavic' or 'Western'. Same theme. I don't think it's fully understood in the West that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a traumatic experience; it simultaneously injured and inspired Russian nationalism.
Russia to Use Social Media in Fight Against Pseudoscience, Report Says
By Alexey Eremenko Oct. 07 2014 21:00
The Russian government allotted 30 million rubles ($750,000) for a social media campaign to combat rampant pseudoscience, Izvestia reported Tuesday.
The money, which will go toward a campaign on popular social media sites LiveJournal, Twitter, Facebook and VKontakte, is also meant to fund publications in the mass media and leaflets against pseudoscience, as well as lessons and journalistic workshops for students, the newspaper said, citing the Education and Science Ministry.
No direct statistics are available for pseudoscience in Russia, but 45 percent of the population believe in the existence of a global conspiracy to run the planet, state-run pollster VTsIOM said last month.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/mobile/news/article/508589.html
Interview with Russian Security Council head Patrushev. Putin's close friend from Leningrad times and former FSB director. In the original article in Russian words USA and American were used over 50 times.
http://rt.com/politics/196456-russia-fsb-patrushev-global/
mirhond
11-20-2014, 08:22 PM
http://news.mail.ru/video/229498/
A man got prison term for an anecdote. looks like "old good" Soviet tradition returns. An anecdote is defined as hate speech, while it's just an ancient deja moo (but somewhat funny)
The whole situation is still the stuff of a joke, but...
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2614961
Putin defined "antinational thinking" - call for owerthowing an existent regime falls into scale.
mirhond, back to golden era habits?
Beyond Putin? Nationalism and Xenophobia in Russian Public Opinion
Published 11-25-2014
(The Washington Quarterly) The role of nationalism within the Russian public is an under- examined but potentially important aspect of the crisis surrounding Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its continuing involvement in eastern and southern regions of Ukraine. As commentators have sought to comprehend President Vladimir Putin’s motives, many have asserted or assumed that such actions enjoy tremendous Russian public support. Indeed, public opinion polls from Russia indicate that Putin’s popularity soared in the wake of the Crimean annexation and that large majorities have supported the government’s policies in Ukraine, sympathizing with the Kremlin’s negative portrayals of U.S. motives and actions.1 However, it is not clear whether this wave of public support is a fleeting “rally around the flag” phenomenon or the result of an organic, deeper tendency toward nationalism and xenophobia in the Russian public
http://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/beyond-putin-nationalism-and-xenophobia-russian-public-opinion
In Ukraine topic I did mention DPR unit called СССР/Soviet Union. The leader explained the name with desire to stability that existed during SU time. Today Russian business daily published 1 poll about nostalgia to SU. 13% want this.
Надежд на Евразийский союз тоже мало: постоянно идут торговые войны с Белоруссией, поэтому все тенденции очень разнонаправленные и «у людей в голове каша», поясняет Бызов: «Те 13%, которые хотят обратно в СССР, — это сложившиеся и выросшие там люди. Сейчас уже выросло несколько поколений, для которых Советский Союз — просто романтический образ, и они считают возврат туда нереальным».
http://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/36672201/nostalgiya-srednej-tyazhesti
mirhond's golden age in pictures.
http://visualhistory.livejournal.com/902413.html
OUTLAW 09
12-05-2014, 01:09 PM
Seems even Putin has a hard time with history?
Bloomberg News
Putin’s Crimea-as-Jerusalem Myth Baffles Russian Historians
By Ilya Arkhipov and Stepan Kravchenko December 05, 2014
President Vladimir Putin’s elevation of Crimea to the status of Russia’s Holy Land has prompted puzzlement and scorn from historians and commentators.
Crimea for Russians is “like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem” for Muslims and Jews, Putin said, and would be regarded this way “from now on and forever.” Vladimir the Great was baptized in Chersonesus, Crimea, an event in 988 that’s considered to be the beginning of the Christianization of Kievan Rus, a precursor state to Russia and Ukraine, Putin explained in his annual address yesterday to parliament and top officials in Moscow.
“Prince Vladimir was Kievan, not Muscovite, and this probably only underlines the right of Kiev and not Moscow to Crimea,” Andrei Zubov, a Russian historian and political scientist, said in an interview.
Putin’s new Crimea myth added a religious aspect to Russia’s confrontation with the U.S. and the European Union after it annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in March. EU and U.S. sanctions have helped to push the Russian economy to the brink of recession as it wrestles with a 39 percent slump in the value of the ruble against the dollar this year and a one-third decline in the oil price. Russia depends on oil and gas revenue for about half of its federal budget.
Historians argue over whether Vladimir was baptized in Vasilev, near Kiev, rather than Chersonesus, said Zubov, who lost his post at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in March after he compared Putin’s takeover of Crimea to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938.
‘Incorrect’ Comparison
From a religious viewpoint, “Kiev is a much more important place for Russian Orthodox pilgrims than Crimea,” said Deacon Andrei Kuraev, a theologian and blogger. It’s “incorrect” to compare Crimea with the Temple Mount, the holiest place on Earth for Jews, he said.
Couple days ago there was small scale meeting in the centre of Moscow. Despite the size, it showed very well that Kremlin's methods have not changed. Once there was Surkov made youth movement Nashi. Group of Nashis established Stopham (Стопхам) movement. This is financed by Kremlin too. Now you can see Stopham movement faces under the name of "Antimaidan" organisation. Is it financed by Kremlin :D
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B7bFCFwIIAA8cGs.jpg:large
Visitors vith Russian language skills can read how this kind of shows are run from here.
http://b0ltai.org/2015/01/15/934/
This month was established "Antimaidan" movement. Before last Russian presidential elections couple years ago was established "Antiorange" movement. Some of those guys (Dugin, Prohanov, Shevtchenko, Kurginjan) are actively involved in fight against Ukraine today. This site has been inactive almost 3 years now.
http://www.anti-orange.ru
Back then 1 communist blogger explained that Antiorange was Kremlin project. This is not hard to belive. Text is in Russian.
http://ruscesar.livejournal.com/458827.html?thread=6675275
Yesterday there was Grikin's conference in Moscow. It starts with prayer.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4_TLWd9qbcI
This is good illustration to Schindler's column.
http://20committee.com/2014/12/27/putins-orthodox-jihad/
Grikin's fresh comment how in Crimea things were forced by Russia.
Have you actually been to Crimea during the referendum? Well, I have. I have been there since February the 20th. What you are describing here is absolute rubbish. There were no policemen who supported our side at that time. The only law-enforcement subdivision that has joined our ranks back then was the Berkut. The rest of the law-enforcement agencies remained under control of Ukrainian Ministry of Internal, and kept carrying out the MIA’s orders. Yes, sometimes they were sabotaging these orders, but all in all they were under Ukrainian control. I haven’t seen any support from official governmental representatives in Simferopol. Our troops had to force the deputies into the Oblast Council hall so that these representatives would vote in favor of our initiatives. I know this because I have been at the time commandeering one of such militant teams and I’ve seen it all from the inside. We had absolutely no support from the people, not to mention the army. The Ukrainian army units remained loyal to Kyiv as they were. Furthermore, most of the army remained that way. The only thing that made what we have accomplished in Crimea possible was the presence of Russian army.(Fragment of video in Russian):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3250361/posts
That would fit perfectly my impression I gathered from various sources at that time. Obviously Russia enjoyed the sympathy of many, mostly among the eldery and Russian-speakers but without the Russian invasion the illusion of an uprising, not to speak about the annexation of the Crimea, would hardly have been possible in such form.
mirhond
02-26-2015, 05:43 PM
Interesting document from House of Lords
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldselect/ldeucom/115/11502.htm
European Union Committee - Sixth Report
The EU and Russia: before and beyond the crisis in Ukraine
MEMBER STATES: LOSS OF ANALYTICAL CAPACITY
56. Witnesses told us that Member States had lost analytical capacity on Russia. This, we judge, contributed to a concomitant decline in their ability to maintain oversight of the direction of the EU-Russia relationship and, in particular, to monitor the political implications of the Commission's trade and technical programmes.
57. Mr Klaus recalled that there had been a historic asymmetry, whereby former communist countries "knew the West much more than you knew the East", and that this asymmetry remained.[74] His Excellency Dr Revaz Gachechiladze, Georgian Ambassador to the UK, also noted that there was "not a good understanding of Russia in the West".[75] Turning to recent events, Mr Lukyanov recalled that on the day of the Crimean referendum, when the question had already been announced, he continued to receive disbelieving calls from European diplomats saying: "'It cannot happen. It is just a bluff'." He warned us that with "this level of analysis, I am afraid that more surprises are to come, and not only from Russia."[76] Dr Casier agreed that there was a "huge need for more knowledge about the local situation both in Russia and in the Eastern Partnership countries." This was where "we have to build much stronger analytical capacity."[77] Dr Casier pointed out that President Yanukovych's decision not to sign the Association Agreement (AA) "had been the subject of speculation in the Ukrainian press long before he announced his decision, but took the EU by total surprise."[78]
58. Mr Josef Janning, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted that while there remained experienced diplomats in national capitals, there had been a shrinking of the "strategic space" within ministries of foreign affairs, in which to "go through the options and do analysis".[79]
59. The Rt Hon David Lidington MP agreed that there was a gap in knowledge and analysis, and judged this to be a function of time and of "various assumptions" made about Russia during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years. These meant that, by the beginning of 2014, "there were very few officials in any government department or agency, here or elsewhere, who had personal professional experience of working with the old Soviet Union before it collapsed."[80] During our informal discussions we were told that a similar situation prevailed in other Member States as well.
Gawd, does European political class really works like that? "It can't be true because I don't believe it!" :eek:
Your ruling classes urgently need Eliezer Yudkovsky as a political specialist, because he really nows how reality works: "There is only one reality that generates all of the observations". :D
Interesting reading.
What does the fascist conference in St. Petersburg tell us about contemporary Russia?
http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.be/2015/04/what-does-fascist-conference-in-st.html
davidbfpo
04-01-2015, 09:57 PM
Kaur,
This conference appeared briefly within the main Ukraine thread and a week ago I posted this:
If the St. Petersburg conference relies on Nick Griffin they have a problem, at least here in the UK - although I doubt the main media will report it.
Nick Griffin was the leader of the British National Party (BNP) from 1999 to October 2014, when he was expelled and left to form an even smaller fringe group. To many he was a figure of derision:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Griffin
Clearly no-one in the Russia government understands irony!
Apart from the very small fringe of democratic politics in Western Europe these people IMHO have no impact, although in places they can make conservative / nationalist parties wander what is going on behind them.
Whether they have any impact in Russia is a moot point. I expect those Russians who did attend like listening to like-minded folk.
David, thanks for Griffin backround. My humble opinion is that these European nationalists (I mean those who gathered in Petersburg) are just useful idiots for Kremlin. You can bring them to TV shows, take interviews, bring to different elections campaigns (Crimea, Donbas, Abkhazia, Transnistria etc). Russian people are watching all this and think even Europeans support them. Just one tool in their box. Who are they fooling? I think just their own people. At one moment I thought those European nationalists are like peace movement in 80s. If you consider FN support to Kremlin Russians are doing better this time and this is more serious achivement than St Petersburg episode.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/17/19830201.pdf
One aspect from Saint Petersburg. Usually the most important person in the room will make the last speech. According to program this man was from RISI.
http://realpatriot.ru/reports/
Couple month ago the backround of RISI was made open.
As Kseniya Kirillova documents on Novy Region 2, the head of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), earlier part of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and now in the Presidential Administration, admits his institution “over the course of the year has actively cooperated with analysts of the Greek SYRIZA Party” and that its leader, the new Greek prime minister, visited RISI.
That admission came in the course of a press release from RISI director Leonid Reshetnikov, a retired lieutenant general, concerning statements by Aleksandr Sytin, his former staffer, about RISI’s involvement in planning the Russian Anschluss of Crimea and the war in the Donbass and its current appeals for forming “pro-Russian” groups in Belarus on the basis of ties with the security agencies in that country.
http://www.interpretermag.com/kremlin-think-tank-confirms-close-links-with-kremlin-and-with-new-greek-premier/
Fresh survey (close to Kremlin polling firm ФОМ) shows 54% of Russians belive in danger of large scale war between Russia and NATO countries. 2/3 of Russians belive that Russia peace loving politics works hard to diminish this risk. Article in Russian.
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2700003
Continued Confrontation With the West Will Prop up Putin’s Regime for Years
April 2, 2015
By: Pavel Felgenhauer
http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=43731&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=27&cHash=ff62354d5461596e8b0e4f2f413e073b#.VR5_ChhXer V
Levada's poll shows how Russians perceive Russia's role in the world.
http://www.levada.ru/eng/russia’s-role-world
RF MFA statement.
Comment by the Information and Press Department on an anti-Russian campaign in the United States
628-03-04-2015
We are witnessing with dismay and indignation an unrestrained anti-Russian campaign, which is unfolding in the United States. The US national media and leading political research centres splash, as if at a command, russophobic pasquinades, diligently portraying Russia as an enemy and instilling hatred towards all things Russian in ordinary people.
Veteran “knights of the Cold War”, like Robert Scales, a retired general, who in March openly called for “killing Russians”, or Wesley Clark, the former top commander of NATO forces in Europe, are straining at the leash. Back in 1999, Mr Clark all but provoked a large-scale conflict when he ordered an attack on Russian airborne assault troops who arrived at the Pristina airport in Kosovo before the Americans. Addressing the Atlantic Council in Washington a couple of days ago, he again blew the whistle about the so-called “Russian threat”, demanding immediate supplies of weapons to Kiev to be used against Donbass and openly lauding Bandera supporters.
It should be said, however, that statements made by those odious characters are only slightly more offensive than what we hear from US officials. Echoing the retired US-NATO general’s odes to Hitler’s collaborators, US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that attempts to defend the right to speak Russian were “Russia’s linguistic nationalism”. To put it differently, Russians and Russian-speakers in other countries, including in Ukraine, are to blame just because they speak Russian and think in Russian.
In a word, those are propanganda-spewing loudspeakers working hard on Washington’s political assignment.
April 3, 2015
http://mid.ru/bdomp/brp_4.nsf/e78a48070f128a7b43256999005bcbb3/d7af9f56f58912f543257e1c00514756!OpenDocument
OUTLAW 09
04-04-2015, 08:27 PM
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.de/2015/04/novorossiya-will-never-be-part-of.html?spref=tw
A must read article that provides an unusual view into Putin ie Russian end state goals in the Ukraine, the "altered state of reality" they reside in and to a degree a certain amount of paranoia:
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Novorossiya Will Never Be Part of Ukraine Again, Kremlin Advisor Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, April 4 – Leonid Reshetnikov, a retired SVR general, director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), and an advisor to Vladimir Putin, says that there is no possibility that Novorossiya will be part of Ukraine ever again because “the people of the south-east do not want to be Ukrainians.”
He also rules out the likelihood that the territories of the Donetsk Peoples Republic and Luhansk Peoples Republic, with their “millions of people,” could become something like a Transdniestria, a partially recognized country within the borders of another country recognized by most.
And thus he suggests that the immediate future is more war and the longer term future is the annexation of these areas and ultimately the rest of Ukraine and much of the former Soviet space into a new Russian state that will combine “the best features” of the pre-1917 Russian Empire and the USSR.
These are just some of the views that Reshetnikov offers in the course of a wide-ranging interview he gave to Aleksandr Chuikov, a journalist for “Argumenty Nedeli” (rgumenti.ru/toptheme/n481/394395).
Reshetnikov says that his institute which began as a secret part of the SVR has long specialized on “the analysis of available information on the far and near abroad,” information “which is needed not only for intelligence but for the structures which define the foreign policy of the country.”
“However strange it may seem,” until very recently, “there were no such serious analytic centers in the Presidential Administration of Russia,” the former SVR general says. Instead, what the Kremlin had too many of were “’institutions’” which consisted of “a director, a secretary, and the wife of the director” but without the staff that could make them effective.
RISI is different, he continues. It was created by Vladimir Putin, “and all government assignments for its investigations are signed off by Sergey Ivanov, the head of the Presidential Administration.”
When RISI was set up as a separate institution in 2009, Reshetnikov says he thought then that if Moscow would finance it the way Stratfor or RAND are financed, he would be in a position to leave Western analytic centers in the dust because “Russian analysts are the very strongest in the world.”
“I can say this with confidence,” he adds, “on the basis of 33 years of analytic work initially in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB of the USSR and then in the SVR.”
Reshetnikov says that his institute was one of two that has been working most intensively on Ukraine. (The other is the Institute of CIS Countries.) “From the very beginning of our activity, we wrote analytic reports about the growth of anti-Russian attitudes in central Ukraine and the intensification of pro-Russian ones in Crimea.”
He says that RISI was not alarmist about this but rather urged that Moscow take steps to use NGOs in both places to promote pro-Moscow feelings, something the Russian embassy in Kyiv did not do as much as it should have and as Russian embassies are now doing thanks to the intervention of President Putin.
The probability that there will be more war in Ukraine in the coming months is “very high,” Reshetnikov says, because the idea of the federalization of Ukraine has been rejected by Kyiv which is operating under pressure from the United States which wants a united Ukraine so that it can put cruise missiles there to be directed at Russia.
That is so important to Washington, the RISI director says, that “the US will fight for the Donbas down to the last Ukrainian.”
When Yanukovich was ousted by the Maidan, Moscow lost its “SOB” in Ukraine, even as the US installed its “SOB,” he says. But both Russia and the US received “compensation.” Russia got Crimea and the resistance of Ukraine’s south-east, even though “the enemy also received an enormous territory which was part of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire.”
At the same time, Reshetnikov says that it is “too early” for Moscow to go for broke and attempt to seize all of Ukraine. That is because Putin understands that “in Europe there are taking place certain processes which are hidden for outsiders,” processes which “give hope that we will be able to defend our interests by other methods and means.”
Putin understands as many do not, Reshetnikov says, that the US has organized a plan to dismember Russia – something he says is “not propagandistic but real” -- even as it keeps its dominance over Europe. Washington is acting in Central Asia as well as Ukraine. Indeed, the US may strike first at Turkmenistan using various proxies, as some in Moscow have suggested.
According to Reshetnikov, Russian-American cooperation in the struggle with terrorism is “a fiction,” because the US “creates, feeds, provides for and then gives orders” to groups like ISIS for its own purposes. “Perhaps,” it will shoot attack one group of terrorists but only to be in a position to better control the others.
But all these American actions, the RISI director says, are part of a general plan and thus they must be countered as a whole rather than responded to piecemeal. That affects how Putin acts in Ukraine, even if many do not recognize the reasons that he does one thing or another, Reshetnikov adds.
According to the RISI director, what is occurring in Ukraine is not a fight between Ukrainians and Russians, “but a war of world systems. Some consider they are ‘all Europe’ but others that they are Russia. For our country is not simply a territory; it is a separate and enormous civilization which has brought to the attention of the entire world its views on world organization.”
The next year is going to be difficult for Russia, he continues, but “in the course of the next five or six years, we will see” the restoration of “a Russian empire as a model of eastern Slavic civilization. The Bolsheviks destroyed it,” but they brought “a new civilization idea.” Now, Reshetnikov says, Russia is moving toward “a good symbiosis” of its two predecessors.
The West understands that and consequently, “an attack has begun” on Russia “from all sides,” he says. That attack is being made by American presidents, but the real power lies with “secret forces,” including “transnational financial corporations” which want to define the new rules of the game.
But both the attractiveness of what Russia is offering and the ugliness of what the West is doing is leading to “an explosive growth of anti-American attitudes,” in Hungary, Greece, Italy, Austria, France and so on. “If Russia holds out now,” he says, “then processes will occur in Europe that will not be helpful to those now seeking world domination.”
At the end of his interview, Reshetnikov says that he is “extremely” opposed to the idea of uniting the SVR and the KGB. Were that to happen, he argues, the number of sources of information available to the president would be reduce to one, and thus he would be subject to distortions that that one would almost inevitably introduce.
He says that when he was a captain in the KGB in Soviet times, he was aware of “such manipulations with information” by his employer.
Chuikov appends a biographical sketch of Reshetnikov. The RISI director was born in Potsdam in East Germany in 1947. He graduated from the Kharkiv State University and did graduate work at the University of Sofia in Bulgaria. From 1974 to 1976, he worked at the Moscow Institute of the Economics of the World Socialist System.
NOTE: Putin as a KGB Major assigned to the KGB headquarters in Potsdam. Was the RISI a child of a Russian KGB member assigned to :Potsdam after the end of WW2?
Then, from 1976 to 2009, when he became RISI director, Reshetnikov served in the analytic sections of Soviet and then Russian foreign intelligence. His last post was as chief of the SVR’s Information and Analysis Administration. In addition to his native Russian, he speaks Serbian and Bulgarian and can communicate in Greek.
May parade in Grozny - escort of German prisoners, throwing trophies to Kadyrov, attack of Reichstag :eek:
http://lifenews.ru/news/153687
Yesterday Kadyrov gave 16 motorcycles to Nighwolves bikers club visiting Berlin today.
mirhond
06-10-2015, 12:49 PM
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/thumb/2/27/%D0%98%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%82% D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%B8_%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0% D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD.jpg/250px-%D0%98%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%82% D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%B8_%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0% D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD.jpg
I just put it here. This icon really exists: :eek:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C8%EA%EE%ED%E0_%AB%CC%E0%F2%F0%EE%ED%E0_%E8_%D1%F 2%E0%EB%E8%ED%BB
Miraclous Order of Lenin will follow, I am sure.
OUTLAW 09
06-10-2015, 03:33 PM
http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/06/10/russian-newspaper-regarding-ukrain...
Russian newspaper: Regarding Ukraine, Putin’s actions undercut Putin’s arguments
2015/06/10
Russian actions in Crimea and the Donbas “have weakened Russian arguments about the change of power in Kyiv” at the time of the Maidan and thus cost Moscow support in European and other Western capitals, according to a lead article in “Nezavisimaya gazeta” today.
In his interview with “Corriere della Sera,” Vladimir Putin repeated his longstanding views about the Maidan and the subsequent change of power in Ukraine, arguing that the change in power in Kyiv was unconstitutional and that the West should not be supporting those who came to power as a result.
Moreover, in the same interview, Putin suggested that the reason the Maidan happened was because then incumbent president Viktor Yanukovich did not immediately sign an agreement with the European Union. “But the new authorities also put off its signing. So why should the former have been overthrown if they behaved reasonably?” in Putin’s view.
Many would dispute Putin’s version of events and suggest that Yanukovich “delegitimized himself” as a result of a whole range of actions. But Putin’s argument “is not without an internal logic” and might have been accepted by Europe as significant “if it were not for two ‘buts’ – Crimea and the Donbas.”
Most of the European political establishment and society, the Moscow paper’s editors say, “consider that Russia seized and continues to occupy the territory of a sovereign state,” something that for them is “completely unacceptable.” And consequently, they are not interested in what Putin has to say about the Maidan, especially when they are convinced that Kyiv’s effort to join the West and “defend itself from an aggressive neighbor” is completely reasonable.
“Putin cannot present the annexation of Crimea in a way that the Europeans will consider it as well-based,” the paper says. The Kosovo argument “doesn’t work,” given that Milosevich was in the eyes of the Europeans carrying out a genocide against the Albanians, something for which there was no analogy in Ukraine.
Nor does his argument that Crimea became part of Russia as the result of an expression of the popular will, the editors continue. Europeans believe that for such a referendum to be valid, it has to be procedurally correct, correspond to Constitutional norms, and involve more time for free debate about its outcome.
Consequently, “if Russia criticizes the change in power in Kyiv as procedural arbitrariness, then does this mean that [the world] must welcome such arbitrary actions in Crimea? How do new mistakes with far-reaching consequences assist in the correction of previous mistakes?”
At the same time, the paper points out, “few in Europe believe that Russia is not providing active support to the militants in the Donbas, not supplying them with arms, not consulting with them, and not sending into the region its own soldiers.” Given that, few Europeans are willing to listen to Putin’s argument about anything else.
And that includes Putin’s arguments about Eurasian integration. He insists it is like European integration and thus is upset that Europeans do not support it. After all, why should they have anything against Moscow when Russia is only doing what they are? But for Europeans, Putin’s analogy in this regard is not convincing either.
“The European Union is an historically unprecedented project,” the Moscow paper says. “Bt the integration processes which have Moscow as their center recall to Western Europe the Soviet Union, which for decades was conceived as an opponent. Any movement toward the reintegration of the post-Soviet space generates among Europeans distrust and fear.”
Moreover, the paper continues, “Russia is not doing anything to dispel this fear. On the contrary, to take pride in the Soviet past and ‘the times when they feared us’ is considered correct in the Russian Federation.”
European integration is “super-national” and based on “blurring” the borders of member states, “Nezavisimaya gazeta” says. “If Russia asserts that its project is analogous, then why does its ruling elite talk so often about some kind of Russian world? And why has it annexed Crimea if integration processes are objective and Ukraine has nowhere to escape from them?”
Another icon with Stalin. Prohhanov was visiting strategic bomber unit with it.
http://pln-pskov.ru/society/207487.html
Prohhanov is close to Rodina party. Rodina guys are Glazev, who is responsible for Eurasian project in Administration and Rogozin, who is deputy PM responsible for military industrial complex. Prohhanov's colleague from Den TV Borodai was DNR PM last summer and during first peace talks with Ukraine.
Here is Prohhanov's icon's pic.
Back to the spins of 19th century.
Russophobia in the Kremlin’s strategy. A weapon of mass destruction
2015-11-02
Jolanta DarczewskaPiotr Żochowski
Building up an image of Russophobic countries is currently instrumental in shaping a neo-imperial political identity among the citizens of the Russian Federation, mobilising them in the face of real or alleged threats, and also serves as a form of restoring psychological comfort to them in the face of the failure of the Kremlin’s actions (as in Ukraine, for example). The mythologised stereotype of Russophobic countries also remains a crowning argument and a simple explanation for the ongoing tensions in relations between Russia and the West.
http://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/point-view/2015-11-02/russophobia-kremlins-strategy-a-weapon-mass-destruction
mirhond
11-10-2015, 07:12 PM
Back to the spins of 19th century.
Blaming Russo/Sovietophobic countries for anything was never out of stile in Russia, actually, except short phase of romantic relations with West in early90-s.
davidbfpo
11-20-2015, 10:20 PM
A podcast (55mins) by a retired US diplomat Ambassador Jack Matlock and his service:
During his 35 years in the American Foreign Service (1956-1991), Jack Matlock served as Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for European and Soviet Affairs on the National Security Council Staff from 1983 until 1986, and Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981 to 1983. Before his appointment to Moscow as Ambassador, Mr. Matlock served three tours at the American Embassy in the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1981. His other Foreign Service assignments were in Vienna, Munich, Accra, Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, in addition to tours in Washington as Director of Soviet Affairs in the State Department (1971-74) and as Deputy Director of the Foreign Service Institute (1979-80).
Link:http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/government-society/centres/iccs/news/2015/11/p-jack-matlock.aspx
SWJ Blog
03-30-2016, 01:50 PM
A Look at Russian Civilization: Power, Truth, Trust, and War (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/a-look-at-russian-civilization-power-truth-trust-and-war)
Entry Excerpt:
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Read the full post (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/a-look-at-russian-civilization-power-truth-trust-and-war) and make any comments at the SWJ Blog (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog).
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.
mirhond
04-01-2017, 06:58 PM
A Look at Russian Civilization: Power, Truth, Trust, and War (http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/a-look-at-russian-civilization-power-truth-trust-and-war)
.
This article contents some factual bull$hit, usually called lie, for example:
A heart-breaking present day example of this is the appearance of anti-theft devices in Russian supermarkets on mundane wares like cheese and sausage.
and its general tone sounds like mundane dehumanisation of Other, with lengthy qutations of some crackpots like Dugin, and know-nothings like Akunin while thorouthly ignoring good science like http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp, for example.
but some points are a true, as it should be with good propaganda.
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