Timothy Snyder is a historian at Yale Univerity who has written extensively on European history and threats to democracy. This essay is a fascinating history of Ukraine, which was published in The New Yorker.
He writes:
When Vladimir Putin denies the reality of the Ukrainian state, he is speaking the familiar language of empire. For five hundred years, European conquerors called the societies that they encountered “tribes,” treating them as incapable of governing themselves. As we see in the ruins of Ukrainian cities, and in the Russian practice of mass killing, rape, and deportation, the claim that a nation does not exist is the rhetorical preparation for destroying it.
Empire’s story divides subjects from objects. As the philosopher Frantz Fanon argued, colonizers see themselves as actors with purpose, and the colonized as instruments to realize the imperial vision. Putin took a pronounced colonial turn when returning to the Presidency a decade ago. In 2012, he described Russia as a “state-civilization,” which by its nature absorbed smaller cultures such as Ukraine’s. The next year, he claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were joined in “spiritual unity.” In a long essay on “historical unity,” published last July, he argued that Ukraine and Russia were a single country, bound by a shared origin. His vision is of a broken world that must be restored through violence. Russia becomes itself only by annihilating Ukraine.
As the objects of this rhetoric, and of the war of destruction that it sanctions, Ukrainians grasp all of this. Ukraine does have a history, of course, and Ukrainians do constitute a nation. But empire enforces objectification on the periphery and amnesia at the center. Thus modern Russian imperialism includes memory lawsthat forbid serious discussion of the Soviet past. It is illegal for Russians to apply the word “war” to the invasion of Ukraine. It is also illegal to say that Stalin began the Second World War as Hitler’s ally, and used much the same justification to attack Poland as Putin is using to attack Ukraine. When the invasion began, in February, Russian publishers were ordered to purge mentions of Ukraine from textbooks.
Faced with the Kremlin’s official mixture of fantasy and taboo, the temptation is to prove the opposite: that it is Ukraine rather than Russia that is eternal, that it is Ukrainians, not Russians, who are always right, and so on. Yet Ukrainian history gives us something more interesting than a mere counter-narrative to empire. We can find Ukrainian national feeling at a very early date. In contemporary Ukraine, though, the nation is not so much anti-colonial, a rejection of a particular imperial power, as post-colonial, the creation of something new.
Southern Ukraine, where Russian troops are now besieging cities and bombing hospitals, was well known to the ancients. In the founding myth of Athens, the goddess Athena gives the city the gift of the olive tree. In fact, the city could grow olives only because it imported grain from ports on the Black Sea coast. The Greeks knew the coast, but not the hinterland, where they imagined mythical creatures guarding fields of gold and ambrosia. Here already was a colonial view of Ukraine: a land of fantasy, where those who take have the right to dream.
The city of Kyiv did not exist in ancient times, but it is very old—about half a millennium older than Moscow. It was probably founded in the sixth or seventh century, north of any territory seen by Greeks or controlled by Romans. Islam was advancing, and Christianity was becoming European. The Western Roman Empire had fallen, leaving a form of Christianity subordinate to a pope. The Eastern (Byzantine) Empire remained, directing what we now call the Orthodox Church. As Rome and Constantinople competed for converts, peoples east of Kyiv converted to Islam. Kyivans spoke a Slavic language that had no writing system, and practiced a paganism without idols or temples.
Putin’s vision of “unity” relates to a baptism that took place in this setting. In the ninth century, a group of Vikings known as the Rus arrived in Kyiv. Seeking a southbound route for their slave trade, they found the Dnipro River, which runs through the city. Their chieftains then fought over a patchwork of territories in what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and the northeast of Russia—with Kyiv always as the prize. In the late tenth century, a Viking named Valdemar took the city, with the help of a Scandinavian army. He initially governed as a pagan. But, around 987, when the Byzantines faced an internal revolt, he sensed an opportunity. He came to the emperor’s aid, and received his sister’s hand in marriage. In the process, Valdemar converted to Christianity.
Putin claims that this messy sequence of events reveals the will of God to bind Russia and Ukraine forever. The will of God is easy to misunderstand; in any case, modern nations did not exist at the time, and the words “Russia” and “Ukraine” had no meaning. Valdemar was typical of the pagan Eastern European rulers of his day, considering multiple monotheistic options before choosing the one that made the most strategic sense. The word “Rus” no longer meant Viking slavers but a Christian polity. Its ruling family now intermarried with others, and the local people were treated as subjects to be taxed rather than as bodies to be sold.
Yet no rule defined who would take power after a Kyivan ruler’s death. Valdemar took a Byzantine princess as his wife, but he had a half a dozen others, not to mention a harem of hundreds of women. When he died in 1015, he had imprisoned one of his sons, Sviatopolk, and was making war upon another, Yaroslav. Sviatopolk was freed after his father’s death, and killed three of his brothers, but he was defeated on the battlefield by Yaroslav. Other sons entered the fray, and Yaroslav didn’t rule alone until 1036. The succession had taken twenty-one years. At least ten other sons of Valdemar had died in the meantime.
These events do not reveal a timeless empire, as Putin claims. But they do suggest the importance of a succession principle, a theme very important in Ukrainian-Russian relations today. The Ukrainian transliteration of “Valdemar” is “Volodymyr,” the name of Ukraine’s President. In Ukraine, power is transferred through democratic elections: when Volodymyr Zelensky won the 2019 Presidential election, the sitting President accepted defeat. The Russian transliteration of the same name is “Vladimir.” Russia is brittle: it has no succession principle, and it’s unclear what will happen when Vladimir Putin dies or is forced from power. The pressure of mortality confirms the imperial thinking. An aging tyrant, obsessed by his legacy, seizes upon a lofty illusion that seems to confer immortality: the “unity” of Russia and Ukraine.
In the Icelandic sagas, Yaroslav is remembered as the Lame; in Eastern Europe, he is the Wise, the giver of laws. Yet he did not solve the problem of succession. Following his reign, the lands around Kyiv fragmented again and again. In 1240, the city fell to the Mongols; later, most of old Rus was claimed by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then the largest state in Europe. Lithuania borrowed from Kyiv a grammar of politics, as well as a good deal of law. For a couple of centuries, its grand dukes also ruled Poland. But, in 1569, after the Lithuanian dynasty died out, a Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was formalized, and the territories of Ukraine were placed under Polish jurisdiction.
This was a crucial change. After 1569, Kyiv was no longer a source of law but an object of it—the archetypal colonial situation. It was colonization that set off Ukraine from the former territories of Rus, and its manner generated qualities still visible today: suspicion of the central state, organization in crisis, and the notion of freedom as self-expression, despite a powerful neighbor.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all the forces of Europe’s globalization seemed to bear down on Ukraine. Polish colonization resembled and in some measure enabled the European colonization of the wider world. Polish nobles introduced land-management practices—along with land managers, most of whom were Jewish—that allowed the establishment of profitable plantations. Local Ukrainian warlords rushed to imitate the system, and adopted elements of Polish culture, including Western Christianity and the Polish language. In an age of discovery, enserfed peasants labored for a world market.
Ukraine’s colonization coincided with the Renaissance, and with a spectacular flowering of Polish culture. Like other Renaissance thinkers, Polish scholars in Ukraine resuscitated ancient knowledge, and sometimes overturned it. It was a Pole, Copernicus, who undid the legacy of Ptolemy’s “Almagest” and confirmed that the Earth orbits the sun. It was another Pole, Maciej of Miechów, who corrected Ptolemy’s “Geography,” clearing Ukrainian maps of gold and ambrosia. As in ancient times, however, the tilling of the black earth enabled tremendous wealth, raising the question of why those who labored and those who profited experienced such different fates.
The Renaissance considered questions of identity through language. Across Europe, there was a debate as to whether Latin, now revived, was sufficient for the culture, or whether vernacular spoken languages should be elevated for the task. In the early fourteenth century, Dante answered this question in favor of Italian; English, French, Spanish, and Polish writers created other literary languages by codifying local vernaculars. In Ukraine, literary Polish emerged victorious over the Ukrainian vernacular, becoming the language of the commercial and intellectual élite. In a way, this was typical: Polish was a modern language, like English or Italian. But it was not the local language in Ukraine. Ukraine’s answer to the language question was deeply colonial, whereas in the rest of Europe it could be seen as broadly democratic.
The Reformation brought a similar result: local élites converted to Protestantism and then to Roman Catholicism, alienating them further from an Orthodox population. The convergence of colonization, the Renaissance, and the Reformation was specific to Ukraine. By the sixteen-forties, the few large landholders generally spoke Polish and were Catholic, and those who worked for them spoke Ukrainian and were Orthodox. Globalization had generated differences and inequalities that pushed the people to rebellion.
Ukrainians on the battlefield today rely on no fantasy of the past to counter Putin’s. If there is a precursor that matters to them, it is the Cossacks, a group of free people who lived on the far reaches of the Ukrainian steppe, making their fortress on an island in the middle of the Dnipro. Having escaped the Polish system of landowners and peasants, they could choose to be “registered Cossacks,” paid for their service in the Polish Army. Still, they were not citizens, and more of them wished to be registered than the Polish-Lithuanian parliament would allow.
The rebellion began in 1648, when an influential Cossack, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, saw his lands seized and his son attacked by a Polish noble. Finding himself beyond the protection of the law, Khmelnytsky turned his fellow-Cossacks toward revolt against the Polish-speaking, Roman Catholic magnates who dominated Ukraine. The accumulated cultural, religious, and economic grievances of the people quickly transformed the revolt into something very much like an anti-colonial uprising, with violence directed not only against the private armies of the magnates but against Poles and Jews generally. The magnates carried out reprisals against peasants and Cossacks, impaling them on stakes. The Polish-Lithuanian cavalry fought what had been their own Cossack infantry. Each side knew the other very well.
In 1651, the Cossacks, realizing that they needed help, turned to an Eastern power, Muscovy, about which they knew little. When Kyivan Rus had collapsed, most of its lands had been absorbed by Lithuania, but some of its northeastern territories remained under the dominion of a Mongol successor state. There, in a new city called Moscow, leaders known as tsars had begun an extraordinary period of territorial expansion, extending their realm into northern Asia. In 1648, the year that the Cossack uprising began, a Muscovite explorer reached the Pacific Ocean.
The war in Ukraine allowed Muscovy to turn its attention to Europe. In 1654, the Cossacks signed an agreement with representatives of the tsar. The Muscovite armies invaded Poland-Lithuania from the east; soon after, Sweden invaded from the north, setting off the crisis that Polish history remembers as “the Deluge.” Peace was eventually made between Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy, in 1667, and Ukraine was divided more or less down the middle, along the Dnipro. After a thousand years of existence, Kyiv was politically connected to Moscow for the first time.
The Cossacks were something like an early national movement. The problem was that their struggle against one colonial power enabled another. In 1721, Muscovy was renamed the Russian Empire, in reference to old Rus. Poland-Lithuania never really recovered from the Deluge, and was partitioned out of existence between 1772 and 1795. Russia thereby claimed the rest of Ukraine—everything but a western district known as Galicia, which went to the Habsburgs. Around the same time, in 1775, the Cossacks lost their status. They did not gain the political rights they had wanted, nor did the peasants who supported them gain control of the black earth. Polish landowners remained in Ukraine, even as state power became Russian.
Whereas Putin’s story of Ukraine is about destiny, the Ukrainian recollection of the Cossacks is about unfulfilled aspirations. The country’s national anthem, written in 1862, speaks of a young people upon whom fate has yet to smile, but who will one day prove worthy of the “Cossack nation.”
The nineteenth century was the age of national revivals. When the Ukrainian movement began in imperial Russian Kharkov—today Kharkiv, and largely in ruins—the focus was on the Cossack legacy. The next move was to locate history in the people, as an account of continuous culture. At first, such efforts did not seem threatening to imperial rule. But, after the Russian defeat in the Crimean War, in 1856, and the insult of the Polish uprisingof 1863 and 1864, Ukrainian culture was declared not to exist. It was often deemed an invention of Polish élites—an idea that Putin endorsed in his essay on “historical unity.” Leading Ukrainian thinkers emigrated to Galicia, where they could speak freely.
The First World War brought the principle of self-determination, which promised a release from imperial rule. In practice, it was often used to rescue old empires, or to build new ones. A Ukrainian National Republic was established in 1917, as the Russian Empire collapsed into revolution. In 1918, in return for a promise of foodstuffs, the country was recognized by Austria and Germany. Woodrow Wilson championed self-determination, but his victorious entente ignored Ukraine, recognizing Polish claims instead. Vladimir Lenin invoked the principle as well, though he meant only that the exploitation of national questions could advance class revolution. Ukraine soon found itself at the center of the Russian civil war, in which the Red Army, led by the Bolsheviks, and the White Army, fighting for the defunct empire, both denied Ukraine’s right to sovereignty. In this dreadful conflict, which followed four years of war, millions of people died, among them tens of thousands of Jews.
Though the Red Army ultimately prevailed, Bolshevik leaders knew that the Ukrainian question had to be addressed. Putin claims that the Bolsheviks created Ukraine, but the truth is close to the opposite. The Bolsheviks destroyed the Ukrainian National Republic. Aware that Ukrainian identity was real and widespread, they designed their new state to account for it. It was largely thanks to Ukraine that the Soviet Union took the form it did, as a federation of units with national names.
The failure of self-determination in Ukraine was hardly unique. Almost all of the new states created after the First World War were destroyed, within about two decades, by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or both. In the political imaginations of both regimes, Ukraine was the territory whose possession would allow them to break the postwar order, and to transform the world in their own image. As in the sixteenth century, it was as if all the forces of world history were concentrated on a single country.
Stalin spoke of an internal colonization, in which peasants would be exploited so that the Soviet economy could imitate—and then overtake—capitalism. His policy of collective agriculture, in which land was seized from farmers, was particularly unwelcome in Ukraine, where the revolution had finally got rid of the (still largely Polish) landholders. Yet the black earth of Ukraine was central to Stalin’s plans, and he moved to subdue it. In 1932 and 1933, he enforced a series of policies that led to around four million people dying of hunger or related disease. Soviet propaganda blamed the Ukrainians, claiming that they were killing themselves to discredit Soviet rule—a tactic echoed, today, by Putin. Europeans who tried to organize famine relief were dismissed as Nazis.
The actual Nazis saw Stalin’s famine as a sign that Ukrainian agriculture could be exploited for another imperial project: their own. Hitler wanted Soviet power overthrown, Soviet cities depopulated, and the whole western part of the country colonized. His vision of Ukrainians was intensely colonial: he imagined that he could deport and starve them by the millions, and exploit the labor of whoever remained. It was Hitler’s desire for Ukrainian land that brought millions of Jews under German control. In this sense, colonial logic about Ukraine was a necessary condition for the Holocaust.
Between 1933 and 1945, Soviet and Nazi colonialism made Ukraine the most dangerous place in the world. More civilians were killed in Ukraine, in acts of atrocity, than anywhere else. That reckoning doesn’t even include soldiers: more Ukrainians died fighting the Germans, in the Second World War, than French, American, and British troops combined.
The major conflict of the war in Europe was the German-Soviet struggle for Ukraine, which took place between 1941 and 1945. But, when the war began, in 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany were de-facto allies, and jointly invaded Poland. At the time, what is now western Ukraine was southeastern Poland. A small group of Ukrainian nationalists there joined the Germans, understanding that they would seek to destroy the U.S.S.R. When it became clear that the Germans would fail, the nationalists left their service, ethnically cleansed Poles in 1943 and 1944, and then resisted the Soviets. In Putin’s texts, they figure as timeless villains, responsible for Ukrainian difference generally. The irony, of course, is that they emerged thanks to Stalin’s much grander collaboration with Hitler. They were crushed by Soviet power, in a brutal counter-insurgency, and today Ukraine’s far right polls at one to two per cent. Meanwhile, the Poles, whose ancestors were the chief victims of Ukrainian nationalism, have admittednearly three million Ukrainian refugees, reminding us that there are other ways to handle history than stories of eternal victimhood.
After the war, western Ukraine was added to Soviet Ukraine, and the republic was placed under suspicion precisely because it had been under German occupation. New restrictions on Ukrainian culture were justified by a manufactured allocation of guilt. This circular logic—we punish you, therefore you must be guilty—informs Kremlin propaganda today. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, has argued that Russia had to invade Ukraine because Ukraine might have started a war. Putin, who has said the same, is clearly drawing on Stalin’s rhetoric. We are to understand that the Soviet victory in the Second World War left Russians forever pure and Ukrainians eternally guilty. At the funerals of Russian soldiers, grieving parents are told that their sons were fighting Nazis.
The history of the colonization of Ukraine, like the history of troubling and divisive subjects in general, can help us get free of myths. The past delivers to Putin several strands of colonial rhetoric, which he has combined and intensified. It also leaves us vulnerable to a language of exploitation: whenever we speak of “the Ukraine” instead of “Ukraine,” or pronounce the capital city in the Russian style, or act as if Americans can tell Ukrainians when and how to make peace, we are continuing imperial rhetoric by partaking in it.
Ukrainian national rhetoric is less coherent than Putin’s imperialism, and, therefore, more credible, and more human. Independence arrived in 1991, when the U.S.S.R was dissolved. Since then, the country’s politics have been marked by corruption and inequality, but also by a democratic spirit that has grown in tandem with national self-awareness. In 2004, an attempt to rig an election was defeated by a mass movement. In 2014, millions of Ukrainians protested a President who retreated from the E.U. The protesters were massacred, the President fled, and Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time. Again and again, Ukrainians have elected Presidents who seek reconciliation with Russia; again and again, this has failed. Zelensky is an extreme case: he ran on a platform of peace, only to be greeted with an invasion.
Ukraine is a post-colonial country, one that does not define itself against exploitation so much as accept, and sometimes even celebrate, the complications of emerging from it. Its people are bilingual, and its soldiers speak the language of the invader as well as their own. The war is fought in a decentralized way, dependent on the solidarity of local communities. These communities are diverse, but together they defend the notion of Ukraine as a political nation. There is something heartening in this. The model of the nation as a mini-empire, replicating inequalities on a smaller scale, and aiming for a homogeneity that is confused with identity, has worn itself out. If we are going to have democratic states in the twenty-first century, they will have to accept some of the complexity that is taken for granted in Ukraine.
The contrast between an aging empire and a new kind of nation is captured by Zelensky, whose simple presence makes Kremlin ideology seem senseless. Born in 1978, he is a child of the U.S.S.R., and speaks Russian with his family. A Jew, he reminds us that democracy can be multicultural. He does not so much answer Russian imperialism as exist alongside it, as though hailing from some wiser dimension. He does not need to mirror Putin; he just needs to show up. Every day, he affirms his nation by what he says and what he does.
Ukrainians assert their nation’s existence through simple acts of solidarity. They are not resisting Russia because of some absence or some difference, because they are not Russians or opposed to Russians. What is to be resisted is elemental: the threat of national extinction represented by Russian colonialism, a war of destruction expressly designed to resolve “the Ukrainian question.” Ukrainians know that there is not a question to be answered, only a life to be lived and, if need be, to be risked. They resist because they know who they are. In one of his very first videos after the invasion, when Russian propaganda claimed that he had fled Kyiv, Zelensky pointed the camera at himself and said, “The President is here.” That is it. Ukraine is here.
Timothy Synder is an international treasure. Highly recommended, his lectures on the history of Ukraine, which are available online:
The syllabus and reading list for that class:
https://snyder.substack.com/p/syllabus-of-my-ukraine-lecture-class
My college professor at CCNY around 1960, Hans Kohn, wrote”Panslavism,” I recently reread, as relevant today as sixty years ago, ….
Looks interesting, Peter.
“… claim that a nation does not exist is the rhetorical preparation for destroying it.”
This sounds like the process of each human group in history deploring it’s neighbor in order to take advantage of that neighbor. To the extent that we repent of this practice, we are allowed to pontificate.
Roy . . . just another way to express the zero-sum-game of tribalism. One’s very existence, beginning with tribal gods, depends on the eradication of the other. Pretty much definitive: Kill or be killed. And under capitalism’s transactional tendencies, use or be used.
Fortunately, the movements of history (and democracies and education within them) though spotty, have been against tribal consciousness, though it tends to come forward again in each generation. CBK
Snyder shows his expertise and adds to our knowledge of eastern Europe. But he is one-sided and biased, obviously. He uses a passive voice mostly, as in World War II “broke out.” But as JFK famously said, “Things don’t just happen. They are made to happen.” Snyder seems to ignore the example set by the “great” powers throughout modern history and back: The European empires–especially Britain–and the Crimean War; American Imperialism, continuing to the present as we try to re-shape the Middle East and “Latin” America. He doesn’t really deal with how Russians can reasonably see their history, as a series of invasions from the West: Napolean; Victoria; Kaiser; Wilson; Hitler. I’ve not been to Russia, but I’ve studied Russian history, especially the First World War and our Polar Bear invasion (which so few Americans seem to know about) and I’ve talked with Russians who tell me they all studied that in school–though Americans almost never do. No, I don’t approve of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but I think we need to place it in a fair context: Western powers, led by an aggressive America, pushing the boundaries of NATO and the EU ever toward Moscow. Can any readers of this assure us that our leaders do not dream of and work for the taking down of all “socialist” governments? We’ve had a constant harangue, disparagement, and aggression toward all of Russia’s allies in Venezuela, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Chile, etc. What we need now is the spirit of FDR and his Four Freedoms for “everyone in the world,” as he said. And JFK’s “make the world safe for diversity.” Let’s use the UN and settle this conflict. More war will just lead to more war. Which could very well lead to the unthinkable. Einstein warned us, “Nuclear weapons change everything.” Why can’t we grasp that fact?
Jack Burgess writes: *”What we need now is the spirit of FDR and his Four Freedoms for ‘everyone in the world,’ as he said. And JFK’s ‘make the world safe for diversity.'”
. . . you mean like Russia has?
Also, (earlier in your note) I wouldn’t confuse Snyder’s need to consolidate for publication of a paper with his overlooking the endless details and important facts of WWII “breaking out.” To me Snyder is a national treasure though certainly I do not mean he is above critique . . .
But the other distinction that seems to be so commonly overlooked is the (fascist-leaning) movement in the United States that, as we’ve seen unearthed by the Press, shows a pretty-tight bedfellows-type relationship between the State and self-serving corporations . . . though that relationship is not the only definition of fascism, which is not compared with chameleons for nothing.
The massive confusion HERE however (in the US), is a confusion of (a) predatory capitalist and (b) democratic principles (<–as are stated in the Constitution and other documents).
At present, and not as a mere happenstance of history, this confusion is the biggest historical elephant in OUR room. And if Russia and other “anti-American” countries complain or even hate America, perhaps its sheer capitalism and its thinning cloak of democracy as such that is the real problem? CBK
Nice try, Putin!
@Jack Burgess: What about the Russian empire, the largest country by land mass on earth. Did that just happen by accident or was it the result of imperialism on steroids. Finland was partially gobbled up by the ravenous Russia/USSR and Stalin had no problem making a deal with Hitler to slice and dice up Poland out of existence.
Putin apologist?
There are reasons why all those countries wanted to join NATO. NATO is a defensive alliance, and the peoples of those countries remember. The monstrous, murderous autocrat Tsar Putin was quite clear in his hallucinatory imperialist fantasy and tract “On the Historical Unity of Russia and Ukraine” that he envisions recreating a Greater Russia by gobbling up again, his neighbors and subjecting them to his central authority, and Russian media are required to get behind this insanity, and anyone who doesn’t gets poisoned or thrown out a window or down a set of stairs.
NATO is a defensive alliance. There are reasons why people want to be part of it.
Here’s how indicted international war criminal Tsar Putin’s genocidal imperialist war ends: Ukraine wins. Overwhelmingly. And then it rebuilds after the devastation visited upon it the bloody Chekist monster.
by the bloody Chekist monster.
What obscenity has been visited upon the people of Ukraine! Cities and villages laid waste. Cultural monuments destroyed. Kids and middle-aged women and grandmothers raped and murdered. THIS IS WHAT EVIL LOOKS LIKE. Those responsible for this need to be brought to justice. And the war must end with Putin going the way of Mussolini and Gaddafi and EVERY INCH OF UKRAINE being made, again, Ukrainian, including all of Crimea and the Donbas.
I would be quite pleased to see the UN, which has indicted Putin for war crimes, grow a pair and create an international force to drive the aggressor, Russia, which is in utter violation of international law, out of Ukraine. This needs to be a test case. The fundamental basis of the UN is respect for the territorial integrity of UN members states, and this Putin has blatantly violated for reasons that are patently, blatantly trumped up and absurd.
The description of Russia under Putin as a “Socialist government” is quite the piece of Orwellian Doublethink.
What brand of socialism is in Russia? It seems to be a dictatorship and an oligarchy.
Exactly, RT
RT, some extraordinarily deluded people imagine that Russia and the former USSR are/were Socialist. They weren’t except, at times, in name only. You know, the way that Ron DeSantis says that he is promoting freedom in Florida.
And Naziism was National “Socialism”
Exactly. Same shtick
Russia/USSR was never Communist or Socialist. I visited in the late 1980s. The party elite had special stores where they could buy whatever they wanted.
Ordinary people went to stores with empty shelves, stood in long lines to buy a tomato or a piece of fruit. Lived in tiny apartments. As a university student said to me, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” It was a thoroughly corrupt and deeply inefficient and unequal society.
And the very thing that Orwell was not so much satirizing as exposing with regard to the USSR with his concepts of the Ministry of Truth where workers in the Recdep, or Records Department, go about fixing “malreporting” by sending inconvenient facts down memory holes is stuff like Mr. Furr’s biographies of Stalin in which his horrific crimes are entirely erased and then his pristine biography is downloaded into minds then capable only of doubleplus goodthink about Big Brother.
Stalin’s purges and the Holodomor never happened. The Holocaust never happened. The Armenian Genocide never happened. NATO encircled and attempted to “strangle” Russia. Russia had to invade Ukraine to deNazify it (Ukraine is led by a Jew whose father’s brothers all died fighting the Nazis.) Russia never invaded Ukraine, and there is no war going on, just a military action. The atrocities in Ukraine are all committed by the Ukrainian Nazis attacking their own apartment complexes, cultural centers, children, and grandmothers because that’s how Nazis roll. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
It’s interesting to watch this creation of Alternative Facts history in real time. Russia has no intention of invading Ukraine! Russia didn’t invade Ukraine; it went in as a benevolent police force to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians from genocide. And, of course, Comrade Gordon Furr, is quite the busy Thinkpol operative. There’s so much Soviet history to cleanse.
Ah, yes. That would be Comrade Grover Furr.
So, no. As a general rule, I do not read tracts denying that the Holocaust, the Holodomor, and the Armenian Genocide occurred. I also don’t read most “spiritual” tracts written by the leaders of cults like Heaven’s Gate, Marconics, The Children of God, the Raëlians, and so on. I do read some of these, from time to time, but not as serious philosophy or history or whatever but, as is appropriate to them, as examples of ideological pathologies.
I’ve read this comment three times and still don’t have a clue what the point is. Snyder’s essay is quite focused on Ukraine and how Russia perceives it. As with many of your other criticisms, I think it can be boiled down to: “Why is not every article a grand sweep of history as seen from this particular perspective?” Not everything is related to a preconceived narrative nor can it be manipulated to fit. Nor does every article have to mention everything.
Why, for example, bring in the Middle East, Latin America, Venezuela, Syria, etc. into this? How will that help us “grasp that fact?” And it’s nice that you’ve read about the so-called Polar Bear “invasion.” It was a military exercise of folly that ended in tragedy, incompetence, and irrelevance except for the families who lost people to such stupidity. It is in no way relevant to the argument Snyder makes. Why bring it up?
Putin has written and claims that Ukraine doesn’t actually exist and that Russia and Ukraine and many other neighbors are all part of “Greater Russia.” Before launching his illegal and unprovoked war of choice against his peaceful neighbor, Putin published a long essay/fantasy about how Russia and Ukraine were one country going all the way back to the baptism of the Viking king of Kievan Rus, Volodymyr I, in 988. So, Snyder’s masterful essay has one purpose, and that’s to survey the relevant history in short compass to make quite clear that Putin’s reading is AHISTORICAL–a myth propagated to justify an utterly unjustifiable imperalist claim.
And, ofc, the worst thing about the absurd Polar Bear Expedition was that it wasn’t more carefully planned and heavily manned and equipped and executed. Imagine if the evil that was Bolshevism had been nipped in the bud!!! No Chekist slaughter of dissidents. No show trials. No Lubyanka torture chambers. No gulag. No Holodomor. No Russian imperialist takeover of Eastern Europe. No invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. No NKVD. No Stasi. No century of utter repression by murderous means of academic freedom and freedom of thought and expression in Russia and its client states. A century of utter corruption and oppression and Fascism from the Left avoided. And, of course, also avoided, the confusion of actual Democratic Socialism/Social Democracy with Fascist Nationalist Socialism in Name Only as practiced in the USSR and still practiced in Russia today.
Jack Burgess My response went to moderation, but do you really think that Snyder thinks things “just happen”? Come on. . . . CBK
Diane This one to Jack Burgess is still in moderation.
Go figure. CBK
It has to be manually unlocked. I’m guessing Diane will get to it this evening. She likely has a life!
GregB and Jack Burgess I’ll try it again below. Pardon my impatience? CBK
Jack Burgess writes: *”What we need now is the spirit of FDR and his Four Freedoms for ‘everyone in the world,’ as he said. And JFK’s ‘make the world safe for diversity.'” . . . you mean like Russia has?
Also, (earlier in your note) I wouldn’t confuse Snyder’s need to consolidate for publication of a paper with his overlooking the endless details and important facts of WWII “breaking out.” To me Snyder is a national treasure though certainly I do not mean he is above critique . . .
But the other distinction that seems to be so commonly overlooked is the (fascist-leaning) movement in the United States that, as we’ve seen unearthed by the Press, shows a pretty-tight bedfellows-type relationship between the State and self-serving corporations . . . though that relationship is not the only definition of fascism, which is not compared with chameleons for nothing.
The massive confusion HERE however (in the US), is a confusion of (a) predatory capitalist and (b) democratic principles (<–as are stated in the Constitution and other documents).
At present, and not as a mere happenstance of history, this confusion is the biggest historical elephant in OUR room. And if Russia and other “anti-American” countries complain or even hate America, perhaps its sheer capitalism and its thinning cloak of democracy as such that is the real problem? CBK
GregB Do pardon my impatience. CBK
As Señor Wences once said, s’alright!
Russia keeps the war crimes and crimes against humanity coming:
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-nova-kakhovka-dam-in-ukraine
Okay, I get it. You don’t like Russia, Putin, etc. But what about what I said–about how many times the West has invaded Russia since 1800? And about how many times we (our tax dollars at work) have invaded or destabilized a country–with the Bush II invasion and destruction of Iraq being only the most obvious? And how many times has Russia invaded US territory? Yes, I know NATO was created to block Russia (I studied that in grade school).
Eisenhower warned us (as I’m sure you know) “beware the military-industrial complex.” But we haven’t. That complex helps drive our policies. Some folks are making a LOT of money off this war, and a lot of those folks are us.
You can read about our dual invasion of WWI online. Too long ago? If the Civil War matters, and Thomas Jefferson matters, so do our overthrows in Panama, Guatemala, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and the continued efforts to destabilize Cuba, Venezuela and Syria. Most of the leaders of those countries were allies of Russia and now Putin. Hussein and Gadhafi are dead now. I’m not opposed to NATO. I’m just opposed to using it like a noose to strangle Russia. Oh, and what about the Ukraine of 2014? The evidence is crystal clear that US officials–including Sen. McCain and Victoria Nuland, among others, were involved in overthrowing a fairly (if not wisely) elected government. C’mon, folks. Just condemning Putin again and again is getting us nowhere. And the situation just gets worse in Ukraine. Do you really think our rhetoric can bring down the Russian leader? Or that he’s going to go peacefully? It’s not our job to run the world. China has offered a plan. What is it? I’ve not seen it in our corporate media. Someone has got to mediate or negotiate or arbitrate this dispute before it gets even worse. Peace!
Jack Burgess writes: “Okay, I get it. You don’t like Russia, Putin, etc. But what about what I said–about how many times the West has invaded Russia since 1800? And about how many times we (our tax dollars at work) have invaded or destabilized a country–with the Bush II invasion and destruction of Iraq being only the most obvious?”
First, “. . . don’t LIKE, Russia, Putin, etc.?” Try talking about what they are actually doing? And I guess Russians who complain also have certain kind of balance problem? . . . especially when standing around high rise windows?
But second, the massive confusion HERE (in the US), is of (a) predatory and self-serving capitalist principles and (b) democratic principles (i.e., in the Constitution and other documents). At present (and not as a mere happenstance of history) this confusion is the biggest historical elephant in OUR room.
If Russia and other “anti-American” countries complain or even hate America, perhaps it’s also a confusion about our (fascist-leaning) Congress with its combination of sheer capitalism with a thinning cloak of democracy that is the real object of contempt? (Remembering Kissinger here.)
In other words, this other confusion (which was earlier shoveled into the recesses of this site), that seems to be so commonly overlooked, is that confused and conflicted movement in the United States that, as we’ve seen unearthed by the Press, shows a pretty-tight bedfellows-type relationship between (a) the State (the U.S. Congress and courts) and (b) self-serving corporate interests . . . whose implicit motto is “I don’t give a hoot about democracy.”
. . . though that state-to-corporation relationship is not the only definition of fascism, which is not compared with chameleons for nothing. CBK
“Try talking about what they are actually doing?” Exactly
Totally flatting whole cities, leaving nothing standing
Bombing schools and playgrounds apartment blocks and buildings and vehicles labeled as having children inside
Destroying essential utilities
Destroying cultural monuments
Campaigns of rape and murder
Mass deportations in violation of international law
Using prohibited weapons
Extraordinarily dangerous military activity around nuclear facilities
Blocking food shipments
Widespread theft of private property
Blowing up a dam and flooding homes and fields
For example
All of those violations of international law–war crimes and crimes against humanity, on top of the originary violation of the most fundamental of international laws, that protecting the territorial integrity of UN member states
Gosh. For some reason I “don’t like” a bunch of young thugs being sent into a country to get drunk and rape and kill grandmothers and children. Silly me.
Bob re Burgess’ note: This redirecting of the focus “to the man” (rather than on the argument itself) has become ridiculously common on the right. I’d give the R’s a prize for the Most Used Logical Fallacy of the Year, if not the decade. And it’s Tribal Trump’s favorite. CBK
To be fair, I did attack Putin personally, and for good reason. He is a war criminal. A mass murderer. And a dictator. An extraordinarily evil fellow who has gotten high on his own supply, who has been surrounded by terrified yes men and women for so long that he has come to believe his own bs.
Bob You may have referred to Putin (so do I), but it was NOT for the purpose of diversion or, more insidiously, as a habit of mind we are not aware of formed by the constant present of similar propaganda. CBK
Ah, I see, CBK. Thanks.
Bob Key in YOUR note: “Not without reasons.” CBK
But thank you, CBK.
Here’s the “Plan” for ending the conflict in Ukraine: KICK THE AGGRESSOR OUT OF EVERY INCH OF IT, BRING THE PERPETRATORS OF TEH WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY TO TRIAL, and MAKE RUSSIA PAY FOR REBUILDING IT.
And I really freaking resent that “You don’t like Russia” stuff. I happen to have great love for Russia, for its people and music and literature and art and dance and folktales, for its many varied and rich cultures. And it is PRECISELY BECAUSE I LOVE IT AND UKRANE that I detest Putin and Putinism and the whole ugly history of State/Nationalist/Fascist So-called Socialism and this evil imperalist war.
Jack Burgess is proposing the Neville Chamberlainish solution to the war in Ukraine. Just declare peace while Russia still occupies huge chunks of Ukrainian territory. News flash: the Ukrainians are not about to cede to Russia all the land that they have illegally seized and occupied. Whatever sins the USA has committed over the centuries does not give Russia a free pass to trample on free democratic countries. The Ukrainians are determined to regain their lost land and they are still very much in the fight for their lives and identity.
Exactly. THIS WAR MUST END WITH A RETURN TO UKRAINE OF ALL UKRAINIAN TERRITORY, including Crimea and the Donbas.
“Oh, and what about the Ukraine of 2014? The evidence is crystal clear that US officials–including Sen. McCain and Victoria Nuland, among others, were involved in overthrowing a fairly (if not wisely) elected government.
BS.
President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine had pledged to sign the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, effectively forming an alliance with western Europe, which would have allowed free travel between Ukraine and western European countries. But in November of 2013, in direct renunciation of the principles that had gotten him elected, Yanukovych announced that he wasn’t going to sign the agreement and that he was going to forge closer ties with the repressive totalitarian regime of Vladimir Putin. Young people of Ukraine, who longed to be able to become part of Europe and freely go back and forth, for example, to school, flooded Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kiev (i.e., Independence Square) and then took over some government buildings. Yanukovych’s government responded with violence. Parents joined their kids in the Maidan. Soon, it was an overwhelming opposition to the government. And yes, some American politicians (rightly, I might add) approved of this. Yanukovych responded by having his police fire upon the students, killing 100 of them. The country responded with fury. Yanukovych fled to Russia, and in February of 2014, the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, voted UNANIMOUSLY to remove him from office. The Euromaidan, as it has come to be called, was a popular uprising on behalf of freedom.
Kyiv
Again, the Second Iraq War involved, just as the most recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has, multiple violations of international law, including crmes and against humanity and war crimes, violation on trumped-up charges (WMDs) of the territorial integrity of another UN member state, attacks upon civilians and civilian targets, use of internationally prohibited (illegal) weapons of war (radioactive, uranium-enriched weapons in Iraq; cluster bombs and thermobaric weapons and unguided missiles in civilian areas in Ukraine), and wanton destruction of cultural monuments (museums, schools) and civilian infrastructure (power generation facilities, power lines, water and sewage plants). So, same stuff, and a LOT of US politicians should be in prison right now for ordering and overseeing that criminal war. If there were any justice in the world, the US politicians and bureaucrats who conducted that war would have been arrested and tried before the International Criminal Court. In both cases, the war was/is clearly illegal under international law.
We’re making some progress if we can agree that ideally Bush should be in jail. My question now is how do we prevent WWIII and nuclear destruction?
We throw everything we can into the war in Ukraine to end it quickly and decisively and make the point that the rule of law, internationally, matters.
So happy you have “made progress” with me, Jack. I’m so incorrigible, what with my having actual facts at my disposal.
And, btw, my views about the illegality of Shrub’s War (and of Putin’s, for the same reasons) have not “progressed.” I have had the same views, and have expressed them many times here, for decades.
https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Freview%2Fshow%2F2769191094&data=05%7C01%7C%7C0221f3d02fce4909d63c08db6a394c65%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638220566543492326%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=zUU56SFvzUU7UDpGo4hmxFTan0%2BHJG89kXWc1TtZiNE%3D&reserved=0
Ok, I’m getting the message that this is not a discussion about foreign policy or history but about the evil villain of the moment, to replace Bush II, I guess. But before I give up, does anyone reading this have the comparative statistics on numbers of folks killed, displaced, impoverished by Putin’s current war in Ukraine vs. Bush II (never mind Bush I’s deceitful destruction)? Who’s displaced the most or slaughtered the most, Putin or Bush II? Oh, and how threatened were we (actually) by Hussein and his mighty Iraqi army?
C’mon. Just flailing at Putin gets us nowhere.
Ah, your homework, class
An Exercise in Whataboutism, by Jack Burgess
Jack Burgess writes: “Ok, I’m getting the message that this is not a discussion about foreign policy or history but about the evil villain of the moment, to replace Bush II, I guess.”
Ha, ha, ha, ha! Jack: So here’s your take on foreign policy and history? “I get it that you don’t like Putin, etc.” and everyone is just “flailing at Putin”?
(As you do or should know), it doesn’t matter whether it’s Putin or MLK; the issue is ANYONE who engineers that list of “doings” (put up here today) as their own policy and history is not to like, either person or policy or history. Further, I’m sure you are quite aware of that. There’s no “there” there in your narrative here. Too bad for you: That kind of troll-ish discourse is finally dying an albeit slow death.
And BTW, I don’t think Bush II is exactly the poster-boy for qualified international small-d democratic policy. That reference falsely identifies Bush II with what many here are talking about. NADA. Diane is much more generous than I. I say, don’t go away mad, just go away. CBK
And, of course, this has been PRECISELY a discussion about foreign policy and history. You’ve been listening to Russian propaganda for so long, Jack, that you sound like it.
ME: GRASS IS GREEN.
YOU: But you haven’t addressed the color of the grass.
ME: When it’s young.
YOU: Well, you are just obviously anti-grass. You grass hater.
LOL. RIDICULOUS. All my comments above have been about history and foreign policy. About the history that Snyder addresses. About the make-believe history in Putin’s essay. About the history that resulted from the failure to stop the Bolsheviks. About the violations of international law (I made an incomplete list) perpetrated in Ukraine by Russia. About the reasons why, as a matter of foreign policy, countries wanted to join NATO. About the reasons why it is essential, as a matter of foreign policy, that Russia be driven out of Ukraine COMPLETELY, out of every inch of it (because the UN’s foundational principle and the foundational principal of foreign policy ruled by international law is territorial integrity.
So, your statement is demonstrably false, Jack. Like much of the other bs above.
I give up. I asked for comparisons to our invasion of Iraq, and didn’t get a response from anyone to that. Instead, I got obfuscation. I’m disappointed. If you can’t response to a direct question, directly, we can’t have a discussion. You are proving once again–along with corporate control of our media–he who owns the fiddle calls the tune. Goodbye.
Jack
JACK, what the US did in the Second Iraq War was horrendous. But irrelevant to this discussion of Ukraine. Utter whataboutism. It’s as though a jury trying Wayne Gacy were told by the defense counsel, yeah, but what about Jack the Ripper? He never had to face a trial for his actions.
Bob Such whataboutism is about exposing the presumed hypocrisy of the accuser. “Wrong is wrong. You cannot indict Putin (and Russia) for doing the same thing Bush (and the United States), whom you supported, without also indicting Bush and America.”
Whether legitimate or not, as a tactic, whataboutism serves the purpose of diversion and tends to put the original accusers on the defensive, “back on their heels,” instead of focusing on the original claim. And so, it can change who controls the narrative making it difficult to “stay on point,” especially if the original accusers (you, me, Diane, et al) are not aware of its use as a tactic. And even if we do know it as a tactic, we tend to get drawn into it anyway, because . . . .
As legitimate, there may be some truth to the comparison . . . Bush’s movements are certainly open to critique and debate. However, often the different motivations, purposes, and details of different people working in historical situations negate or render superfluous such comparisons. At best, they are a “reach.” The “whatabouter” just feel bad about the exposure of their own error and/or moral degeneracy and needs to lash out. And so, covertly, the fallout of claiming “what about” means that, on principle, no one can take the intellectual or moral high road. “If I cannot be right, then neither can you.”
As illegitimate, and used as a tactic, there is a further subtlety in calling up the honesty of the original accusers (you, me, Diane, others) who, in the light of the accusation, feel the need to give a clear and often lengthy explanation to the “whataboutism” claim, while the tactician stands back to watches the dance, delighted in having changed the spotlight. In Burgess’ case, and though I do not know his motivation or that he knows exactly what he is doing in terms of the “bottomless pit” tactics, you, me, Diane, and others spent the time and effort explaining to him what (I think) he probably already knows. And so, we just elicit more offensive-defensive maneuvers. In this case, we are all merely “obfuscating.”
Whether Burgess is unaware of the fallacy or is merely using “whataboutism” as a tactic on purpose is open to conjecture (in any case, he subtly lends legitimacy to Putin, of all people). My view is that Burgess probably is quite aware of the tactics of the situation; but at the very least, and judging from his last note, he has closed his mind to listening to and giving moral credence to the MASSIVE examples about the Putin situation that you have both listed and of course wholeheartedly rejected.
So, harrumph, he leaves the stage in a cya effort, probably with the self-fooling and false idea that he has won the argument and put everyone here in our place. Sigh . . . CBK
Hi, friends, I’m back. There’s a little voice inside me saying “You can’t give up!” So, I’ll try this: No, I’m not defending Putin. Viscerally, I don’t like the guy. What I’m trying to do here–as preposterous as it sounds–is to affect the thinking of some folks (you) on this monumental matter. Because you are important. Whether we like Putin or not–raise your hand if you do–seeing no hands, I’ll go on–the guy has got 6000 nukes and can blow us all to smithereens, whether we deserve it or not. Whether he’s a goodguy, badguy, doesn’t matter. We still have to try and understand him and his motives. I’m arguing that from his standpoint, he’s seen some awful things–seen guys like him taken down and killed, by our side. Now, he knows this history, and he sees us closing in, tightening the noose. What is he going to do? Give up? Change his ways? Can he do that and be safe from his inside enemies? Or safe from us? Could he–imagine this–in desperation–use those nukes? Maybe just a small one–blow up one city–a few hundred thousand people. What does Biden do then? Back down? Unlikely. Worst case, Putin could launch them all and obliterate us. We could probably retaliate and kill him and most Russians with him. You say, “That’s not going to happen?” How do we know that? Why take that chance? We are the richest nation in the history of the world, and at times–Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms and creating the UN, etc.–arguably the best and most responsible of the Great Powers. Now we need to act that way. This is too serious for one-liners and comic putdowns. My opinions are based on a good education in Russian foreign policy, teaching bright kids, engaging in collective bargaining affecting a lot of lives, and working in labor relations for the VA and the State of Ohio, where I headed Arbitration Services. Again, I don’t like Putin, but he’s a caged lion. We have to deal with him very carefully…
Jack Burgess Why do you keep putting this in terms of “liking Putin”? It seems to me if you are not really a Putin troll, you have at least misjudged most that I know about on this blog.
Also, I and most here already understand Putin’s feeling like he is in a corner, and we know he has nukes (and all of his other psychological/ totalitarian desires and fears). So what? That does not mean the western powers, such as they are, should acquiesce to the bully in the room. Everyone knows there’s really no end to that, not to mention China’s and others’ desires and fears . . . and political ambitions which do not necessarily align with Putin’s.
I also think none of us knows all of what’s going on . . . on that level of international-political activity; and so WE, at least most of us, are in a must-trust situation. As you (probably) are suggesting, we may be helpless observers of our own demise. Or . . . . ??? Western powers could promise him an island to live out his life on?
But for this argument here, and for me at least, you’ll have to do more than THAT to crawl out from under the rock you are under . . . comparing Putin with Bush? Puleese. It seems to me you are only changing horses in the same race. CBK
CBK, Jack is saying that it’s not about whether Putin is a bad guy; it’s about the nukes. Because he could bring about Armageddon, we should back peace talks that would leave parts of Ukraine (Crimea, Donbas) under the Russian thumb. That’s his position, I think.
No concessions to the thugs. None. Ukraine must have every square millimeter of its country back. Then the war ends.
SLAVA UKRAINI! HERÓYAM SLÁVA!
Bob I can see that. I also can see that he changed his position when is fallacy was uncovered and proceeded to mount “another horse.” CBK
Yes.
It’s time that the fundamental mandate/purpose of the UN actually be enforced. That’s what this war is about. That and stopping the egregious, horrifying humanitarian crisis created by the Russian criminals.
Bob Well, that’s wonderful (Do you think I am arguing against THAT?) CBK
Why would you think that, CBK? I’m confused.
Bob Probably my misreading. Thanks. CBK
But I will bite. The Second Iraq War involved, just as the most recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has, multiple violations of international law, including violation on trumped-up charges of the territorial integrity of another UN member state, attacks upon civilian targets, use of internationally prohibited (illegal) weapons of war, and wanton destruction of cultural monuments and civilian infrastructure. So, same stuff, and a LOT of US politicians should be in prison right now for ordering and overseeing that criminal war. There. You good, now? HOW DOES THIS MAKE WHAT IS HAPPENING IN UKRAINE THE SLIGHTEST BIT BETTER? It doesn’t,
I agree, Jack, that there is a great deal more than just Ukraine at stake in this war. At stake is The Fundamental Principle on Which International Law Is Based–the inviolability of the territory of a sovereign UN state except based to intervene in limited ways, upon notice to the UN, to stop an ongoing violation of international law such as an ongoing genocide. This needs to be the test case. We will be a world of laws, and states will abide by them. They cannot just decide to engulf their neighbors, and if they do, the whole world will respond as one.
cx: except to intervene. . .
Yes, the fundamental principle at stake is the rule of law. The UN is based on the bedrock idea that one sovereign state may not invade and destroy another. If Russia is allowed to swallow Ukraine and eliminate its existence, the UN stands for nothing. Who will stop the imperialist when he decides to recreate the USSR, swallowing Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and the other states that were considered Soviet satellites until 1990? Putin has claimed that the disintegration of the USSR was the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”
Thank you, Diane, for saying this much more eloquently than did I.
Will the bedrock principle on which the UN rests hold, or not? That is what’s at stake. If not, then the UN means nothing. Kant’s dream was just a fantasy.
This just in: Justice Department releases 37-count felony indictment against Trump BUT
Aileen freaking Cannon? OMG.
Do handcuffs come in Extra Small?
Yes. Yes they do.
https://dissentpins.com/collections/trump-commemorative-cuffs/products/trump_actual_size_cuffs
Haaaaa!!!!
Walt Nauda’s attorney was formerly the president of the alumni association of Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America (2016-2021).
Politico, in a profile of Stanley Woodward, identifies him as at the epicenter of legal matters facing Trump. Woodward defended Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs. He escorted Kash Patel to a grand jury. He filed a brief on behalf of Dan Scavino. Other clients listed include, Peter Navarro and Ryan Sansel (Jan. 6).
A superb summary of the staggering losses to Russia of Putin’s stupid, criminal war against the people of Ukraine:
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/putins-war-brings-russias-decline
Snyder’s version of Russian history is disputed. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/12/02/pnvx-d02.html (this is part one – be sure to read all parts). Or if you prefer a book, try BLOOD LIES by Grover Furr.
Apologies to Bob.
“Pigs fly!” “I dispute that.”
“Water is wet!” “I dispute that.”
“I’m sane!” “I dispute that.”
And so on.
Off in the distance I hear a faint, “Did you actually read the article!” Or something like that.
And isn’t Grover Furr some kind of Jim Hensen invention?
Haaaaa!!!!
OK, couldn’t resist, Googled Grover Furr. His book on Stalin is subtitled–and I am not making this up–“The Truth About Mass Repressions and the So-Called ‘Great Terror’ in the USSR”
Don’t have to read more than that to know this guy is way beyond coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs.
You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not of sight and sound but of a mind numbed into obedience. A journey into a land whose boundaries are those of fantasy, propaganda, indoctrination, and assassination. Careful of those windows. They empty onto a memory hole. You’ve entered a land of shadow as substance, of superstition as science, of mythology as history. That’s a signpost up ahead. What does say? Is it goodthink? Your next stop, the Alternative Facts Zone.
Cue the woo woo.
Very impressively fast reading, Bob. And, as always, a most cogent rebuttal. This blog is such a great place to have in depth discussions where all viewpoints are thoughtfully considered.
Not all viewpoints get equal consideration on this blog.
Defending Putin’s brutal, unjust, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine does not get equal time.
Defending Putin’s war crimes against Ukraine civilians does not get equal time.
The international Court of Justice has already branded Putin a war criminal for kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian children and handing them over to Russian families.
His effort to destroy power plants and hydroelectric facilities and thus impose mas suffering on civilians was a war crime. His targeted bombing of hospitals, schools, and residences are war crimes.
I will delete any comments that defend this tyrant and his war.
I have just started reading and plan to read all of this piece of Holdomor Denial, Dienne, but I can say up front that Stalin was responsible for the collectivization and for the confiscation of peasant grain and for forcibly keeping Ukrainians from moving from areas experiencing the famine, etc. But I do intend to read this.
A few years back, a Middle Eastern student presented my then wife with a “history” that was, basically, a Holocaust denial tract. I admit to not bothering to read that one. However, I was in the process of reading the denialist swill that you posted, Dienne, when I read your note.
Stalin carried out a systematic plan of genocide leading to millions of deaths.
https://news.stanford.edu/2010/09/23/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310/
Cultists and other wackos always complain of not getting “cogent rebuttals” of their cockamamie theories about ancient aliens, shape-shifting reptilian aliens, Jewish space lasers, Holodomor denial, squaring the circle, perpetual motion machines, the non-measurablity of any intellectual accomplishment, the guru’s ability to levitate, channeled energy healings, etc.
Or read Gordon Fuzz in the Head who is not only a Holodomor denialist but also denies that Stalin conducted purges. Total wacko.
Not exactly a reputable site
Tell me what they’ve gotten wrong. I can tell you lots of things the “reputable” media have gotten wrong.
It’s Holodomor Denialism
From 18 November 1932, peasants from Ukraine were required to return extra grain they had previously earned for meeting their targets. State police and party brigades were sent into these regions to root out any food they could find.
Two days later, a law was passed forcing peasants who could not meet their grain quotas to surrender any livestock they had.
Eight days later, collective farms that failed to meet their quotas were placed on “blacklists” in which they were forced to surrender 15 times their quota. These farms were picked apart for any possible food by party activists. Blacklisted communes had no right to trade or to receive deliveries of any kind, and became death zones.
On 5 December 1932, Stalin’s security chief presented the justification for terrorizing Ukrainian party officials to collect the grain. It was considered treason if anyone refused to do their part in grain requisitions for the state.
In November 1932, Ukraine was required to provide one third of the grain collection of the entire Soviet Union. As Lazar Kaganovich put it, the Soviet state would fight “ferociously” to fulfill the plan.
In January 1933, Ukraine’s borders were sealed in order to prevent Ukrainian peasants from fleeing to other republics. By the end of February 1933, approximately 190,000 Ukrainian peasants had been caught trying to flee Ukraine and were forced to return to their villages to starve.
But Stalin knew nothing of any of this deliberate starvation of Ukrainians. He was an innocent choirboy. Just ask Dienne.
It is possible to condemn Putin and also condemn American imperialistic actions all over the world.
Chuck Jordan American imperialism is rooted in a mixed background of political and quasi-colonizing history that includes people like Teddy Roosevelt.
However, today’s brand of American imperialism has less to do with “American” democratic ambitions (small d) than it does with capitalist-oligarchic interests and their attack on that same American democracy . . . that attack noticeably leaning towards in-kind fascism, than it does the spread of democracy as such. (No one in WWII thought we (or other countries) were there to take over the countries that we were actually liberating from Nazism.)
But today, just look at Congress, the Supreme Court, and even the Presidency under Trump (all three branches). What better examples are there of fascism-in-the-works (capitalist overlords in bed with government officials), but still hiding under the still respectable name: American democracy? CBK