I left Russia almost thirty years ago. My mom is still there. Last time I spoke to her a week ago made me feel very pessimistic about the situation there; she was completely immune to common sense or evidence (and called me a traitor in the end, even though I had nothing to do with Russia for a long time). At first I thought that maybe it was just her, being old and all, but other reports and what I saw on Russian TV (that I don’t normally watch) confirmed it is commonplace among all groups. People are brainwashed. A friend found the following passage and it felt surreal
“The editorials were abominable, packed with bloodthirsty, arrogant lies. The whole outside world was represented as degenerate, treacherous, stupid, and good for nothing else but to be taken over by Germany. These were not small local papers; they had formerly enjoyed a good reputation.
"I studied the man at my table. He ate, drank, and read with pleasure. I looked around. Many of the diners were reading papers, and in none of them did I detect any sign of distaste. This had become their daily fare; it seemed just as natural to them as their beer.
…
After reading the papers, I wasn’t so sure that it would take an average mortal very long before believing what he read, especially when there was no possibility of comparison. Foreign papers were strictly censored in Germany
…
Finally my eyes lit on a black loudspeaker propped up on a platform. It stood there under a light, naked and alone, an automaton, screaming about the right to reconquer every inch of German soil, the Greater Germany, revenge. The peace of the world, it roared, could be safeguarded in only one way: the world must do what Germany wanted. That was right and just.”
What should I tell a coworker of mine who is from Ukraine but grew up speaking Russian and was from the Russian speaking parts of eastern Ukraine when he says shit like the real problem is that Ukrainian military is parking their vehicles and such in civilian areas, near hospitals/churches etc? Perhaps don’t blame the victim?
They often don’t have to be. The whole business with subdued rank insignia and not saluting for the sake of OPSEC and all, while it does have some value – makes the potential targets feel better, if nothing else – it doesn’t take more than a few minutes of observing to suss things out.
“Yeah, the guy who’s obviously older and a bit stocky, who’s giving orders to everyone else clustered around him? He’s in charge, drop him first.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed North Carolina and Pennsylvania to use electoral maps approved by state courts to replace ones deemed to have given Republicans unfair advantages, improving Democratic chances of retaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November.
The justices denied Republican requests to put on hold lower court rulings that adopted court-drawn boundaries for North Carolina’s 14 House districts and Pennsylvania’s 17 House districts to replace electoral maps devised by Republican-controlled legislatures in the two states.
And I’m by no means a Russophobe: I’ve studied a lot of Russian history and have the highest respect for Russian culture. I’m also convinced that there is a powerful strain of passivity (maybe fatalism is a better word for it) in Russian tradition that translates into acceptance of authority, as well as cynicism about everything, including the possibility of ordinary people bringing about any kind of change for the better. Western-style liberal and progressive ideas are certainly not unknown in Russia, either past or present, but the “westernizers” and “liberals” always seem to wind up on the losing side. The Slavophile cast of mind, with its rather mystical faith in Russia’s “unique” path and destiny, is still very powerful and profoundly anti-modernist, anti-progressive, and anti-western. (Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn were very much plugged into that way of thought.) And this is what Putin’s pseudo-historical “Russian World” notions amount to.
There is a very interesting New York Times story up today about how Ukrainians are expressing furious hatred against their Russian “cousins” for passively accepting Putin’s regime and the access it affords, at least for middle-class urban Russians, to nice western consumer goods, but at the price of political passivity and refusal to fight for basic human rights: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/world/europe/ukraine-putin-hate.html
