Russia's sacred myths
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Stalin loved Part I, but was unhappy with Part II, since it didn't fit his myth of Ivan. He banned the film and nearly had the director, Sergei Eisenstein executed.
This is exactly what the "public"[1] public opinion is in Russia nowadays - Putin is talked about with respect, while his friends and local authorities all over the country are believed to by corrupt. Of course this suits Putin because people never blame him for anything, only his subordinates.
[1] There's no way to know the "real" public opinion because people are reluctant to talk honestly about these things with random interviewers.
It is actually quite logical since Russia and the West often have had conflicting interests for centuries. What was good for Russia was often bad for the West and what's good for the West was often bad for Russia.
Current example: Putin. (not an exactly an emperor but certainly in power for decades) Insane support in Russia from the common people and viciously vilified by Western elites and media. (for common people though it is mixed here, they are not in a conflict with Putin)
In Russia you never know what chaos might come next. Before Putin there was Jelzin who oversaw one of the worst periods for ordinary Russians after the second world war. People are frightened at the prospect of what might come after Putin.
There is a lot of media available that attacks Putin relentlessly but people themselves see them as traitors. It's not my opinion but it certainly is the opinion of the majority there.
Like I said, different mentality, if a leader brings stability they rally behind him and (in an almost paranoid way) see behind every critic a traitor that is colluding with foreign powers.
It's been like that for centuries.
Edit: One thing that certainly doesn't help with having a strong opposition is the fact that every single opposition leader since Putin came into power has been caught having secret meetings with the US ambassador. I have no clue how they can believe that this will help in any way. It sometimes seems like the US ambassador in Russia is only there to collaborate with Russian opposition.
Imagine how that looks to ordinary Russians. Or how would it look to you if all of the US opposition would regularly meet with Russian or Chinese officials to get support?
Because you just don't need to ban dissenting voices, when your propaganda is successful enough.
And BTW, popular support for Putin really is quite genuine. To a point where he almost doesn't need to fix elections (it just makes him feel a bit "safer") or manipulate the press. This may not much much sense in the West, but it's the way things are, nonetheless.
First of all the RF is not totalitarian, Putin can't just do whatever he likes. If he did and people would hate him for that then he wouldn't have the power to turn a landslide defeat into a victory by fixing something. So there are real restraints on his power that are directly tied to the support he gets from the population.
But even if I were to accept your characterisation of Putin ruling with a "neototalitarian style" then I'd like to know when in the history of the RF, the USSR or the Russian Empire the society was more free than today? As far as I remember it has always been a Monarchy, a dictatorship or total chaos with Mafia ruling the streets and even the government. So what exactly is "neo" about his totalitarian style when it's obviously gotten better?
Russia never was a democracy by Western standards and it is highly unlikely that it will ever be one.
For me as a Libertarian I'd actually desire to get rid of democracy or at least restrict government influence so much that democratic elected officials have next to no influence. That's because I don't want to be robbed by the majority that always tends to vote for laws in order to steal from those who are successful so they themselves can be lazy.
Agreed, and by "neototalitarian" I mean something distinctly different from totalitarianism in the classical sense. It's a fuzzy term, but basically it refers to a system that attempts to maintain centralized control not, primarily, through "sledgehammer"-style coercion of classically totalitarian systems but more so through ideological and psychological means (accompanied by occasional, "surgical" acts of coercion).
So it is very much key to Putin's staying power that he has an astute sense for what the popular "psyche" really wants, and for the language they want to hear. And that he definitely could not have come to the position he's in through traditional "strongman" tactics alone.
I'd like to know when in the history of the RF, the USSR or the Russian Empire the society was more free than today? As far as I remember it has always been a Monarchy, a dictatorship or total chaos with Mafia ruling the streets and even the government.
Post-USSR, my general understanding was that (mafia chaos aside) the 90s were comparatively a far looser time; certainly very difficult (and sometimes quite hazardous) -- but, by and large, you could still believe that Russia was at least potentially on its way to becoming a normal country.
And things started to darken, and tighten gradually with Putin's first term (the various terror incidents, and the second phase of the Chechen War being major turning points); and with his third term (and finally with the intervention in Ukraine), quite precipitously so.
During Soviet times, there were also periods of comparative openness (the mid 60s and early 70s being an almost golden time, to those who remember it). Yes, things were tightly controlled, but you didn't have the feeling that the state was as thoroughly corrupt as one does today; the country was certainly better off economically than it every had been; and there was an overall feeling of optimism. As opposed to the overriding sense of pessimism felt by many on the dissenting side, today.
Yesterday. I mean in early Putin's days. Now thanks to powers inspiring "color revolutions" and "arabian springs" we have brain washing machine working non-stop.
Edit: corrected formatting.
Keep you randism for yourself please, it's really annoying to have to suffer listening to that ideology when it brings almost nothing to the discussion.
Also, re the question of a child post, Russia was politically its historically freest in the 1990s during the Yeltsin years, and even early Putin years, until he started murdering journalists.
My caveat is that the people support him only because any free media is marginalised, and most self censor in any case. Many know exactly what he is, but have given up on there being any meaningful change. Because Russia had mostly had terrible dictators and repression.
He got to that position by subjugating and manipulating the media in the first place. True, he may not need to do it to win elections "now", but if he cuts the media loose he'll easily lose his popularity. Russians live and breath TV and Putin knows it.
It does bother some of us. In fact, it's one of the things that annoys me most in political discourse with some individuals, especially religious ones. While not religious myself, I at least respect a few key portions of the Christian Bible, namely the portions of the Gospels demonstrating and advocating for true compassion and mercy for others, and the detachment of self from worldly possessions. Which is almost exactly counter the Religious Right's views in the US. Those who have nearly deified, certainly sanctified or beatified, the Founding Fathers and authors of the Constitution, along with their apparent view of the Constitution as a sacred text, despite its obvious flaws and amendments over the centuries. And who view wealth as the measure of a man, while simultaneously claiming to be devout Christians.
"Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" and "No Man can serve two masters" are passages which, I'm very nearly convinced, few US Christians have read or consider important.
The idea is people who point out a movie like Pearl Harbor is inaccurate aren't attacked in the US.
What triggers them is any suggestion that the Nazis were good and suggesting the surrender of St Petersburg to the Nazis would have been great definitely falls into that category for the majority of Russians.
On top of that St Petersburg really has a problem with violent Neo Nazis groups, or at least had - don't know how it's today.
I'm actually pro freedom of speech to a degree that most people in Europe are not (I would allow them have their stupid demonstrations) but the truth is that in most countries some ideologies are forbidden. Nazism is forbidden in most parts of Europe or how about showing public support for ISIS.
I'm 100% sure it is forbidden everywhere in Europe (maybe with UK being the only exception).
Well, it's not like anyone's trying to get the USSR officially reconstituted. But there does seem to be a very deep undercurrent of respect about what the USSR stood for (as a form a "Greater Russia", in effect), independent of the CPSU's hegemony over it.
As exemplified by, for example, Putin's famous statement about its collapse being "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century". And the widespread contempt for Gorbachev for having presided over it (or at least for having caved into under far too generous terms for Russia's geopolitical adversaries).
Meanwhile in the U.S. you can very well be sued into submission and silence if your opponent is sufficiently deep-pocketed. Not exactly congruent to top-down repression of unruly bloggers as happens occasionally in Russia. But still, we in the U.S. aren't always as free to "tell truth to power" as we might like to think we are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
But what was accomplished by the American 'Founding Fathers' was extraordinary and some of them were truly exceptional people.
Not in a Ra-Ra Blind Patriotism way. Just look at the choices they made and the scope and magnitude of the results of their actions.
"what was accomplished by the American 'Founding Fathers' was extraordinary" actually what they achieved was a bit of a cop-out, in fact T. Jefferson helped draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which was a much more progressive document in scope and content. That is, so much more could have been accomplished in social, cultural, and political terms.
I mean having things like "Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others" and "The society has the right of requesting account from any public agent of its administration" or "Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the separation of powers determined, has no Constitution" directly in the consituion instead of The Three-Fifth Compromise shows what each society finds important and necessary to be enshrined in the Constitution.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man was an idealistic credo that was never the basis for French government policy and was made a mockery of by the Terror.
The US founding was extraordinary.
Thank you.
Your ability to report on Clinton's shortcomings has been dismal in comparison to Trump. It's clear there is an editorial bias.
Please explain to me why Trump's changing-room-gate has been on the main page all week, but there hasn't been any coverage of Clinton's suggestion of assassinating Assange with drones? Both are deplorable, private comments said (at best) in jest.
ETA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery#Among_indig...
But ultimately at this point the US is culturally on a completely different level compared to backward nationalist countries like Russia. Maybe you're not familiar with American education, but a good portion of what we learn at a young age is actually national self criticism. In my personal experience I'd estimate almost half of my history education up to high school was on
- the terrible things we did to the Native Americas
- the terrible things we did to Slaves
- the terrible way we oppressed African Americans
Even when we learn about the founding fathers, time is always take out to point out the hypocrisies that happened at the time. I think the fact that a bunch of intelligent men were able to found a national structure that has lasted this long and has managed to regulate itself away from tyranny is truly magical and a great historical achievement. The more I learn about it, the more improbably it all seems - there were so many chances for it to go wrong. What are they on in France, their fifth republic? Or is it their 6th?
That doesn't happen (yet... until Trump) in the USA or western democracies.
I don't know where you got that. You should read up on the history of the war and learn a bit about all the fierce fighting in Western Europe (including the time when the Soviets were being friends of Hitler's).
Do you have a source for that claim, because I find it unlikely that Soviet schools taught that their wartime allies just "stood back and watched" during WWII.
I find it more likely that the Soviets simply focused on their own experience of WWII, exactly as every other country involved does.
For example, I seriously doubt much time, if any, was given in Cold War American schools to the effort and sacrifice of the Soviet Union in defeating Hitler.
Indeed, given the way Americans (and American movies) love to portray the USA as saving everyone's ass in WWII, it wouldn't surprise me if every country other than the USA is largely ignored in American teaching on WWII.
Naturally Soviet schools did put a lot weight on the sacrifices of Soviet soldiers to battle Germany. That is reasonable. But they stayed very quiet about other aspects of the suffering of Soviets and others. I mean things like:
- the happy co-operation of Nazis and Soviets prior to the war (e.g. providing training grounds for Panzers, teaching Nazis how to run an extermination camp)
- the secret protocol of Molotov-Ribbentrob pact (spheres of influence dividing Poland, Baltic countries and Finland)
- the invasions to Poland, Baltics and Finland (common parade in Brest-Litovsk, staged shelling at Mainila to start Winter War)
- the massacre of Polish officers and intelligentsia (Katyn Forest and Vasili Blokhin's work)
- overall, the magnitude of the Great Purges and the GULAG
It's not strictly speaking a lie that teaching was silent about these. But selecting what facts you talk about and what you don't talk about effectively denies truth. Particularly when there is little freedom of press and other ways to complement the knowledge after what was taught at school.
Yes, of course other nations have similar blind spots; those of the Soviet system just were rather large spots, comparatively.
Can you provide a source and/or further explanation for these two claims?
However, it is quite well documented that the German re-armament, forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles, was largely made possible by this co-operation with USSR. It provided grounds for training armored forces in Soviet Union, allowed building and testing chemical weapons in Soviet test sites under German leadership, and had German aircraft tested in the USSR. The sources I read before this were not in English but after a quick Google one could start with e.g. http://www.feldgrau.com/ger-sov.html
It looks like "The Roots for Blitzkrieg" is an English presentation that I should read myself (thanks to prompting the search). https://www.amazon.com/Roots-Blitzkrieg-Seeckt-German-Milita...
The Germans visiting Soviet extermination camps is documented at least in "Kremlin kellot" ("The bells of the Kremlin") by Arvo Poika Tuominen (a Finnish Communist who worked for Komintern in 1933-1939 and spent quite some time observing the camps at the Baltic-White Sea Canal works and Solovki prison.) It's a pretty chilling read; the canal works were where the basic research for extermination via forced labour was done.
Solzhenitsyn then later provided a more well-known description of the GULAG.
And the precise reason the co-operation "waned" was the rise of the Nazis. IOW, what happened was the complete opposite of what you claimed happened.
> it is quite well documented that the German re-armament, forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles, was largely made possible by this co-operation with USSR.
Pointing out co-operation between the USSR and Germany (not the Nazis) is one thing. Singling it out, in order to claim German re-armament was "largely made possible" due to the USSR simply doesn't hold up, and conveniently ignores the role of many other countries in German re-armament.
For example:
In the important field of submarine warfare, Germany
found a safe haven in Finland. [...] In addition to
Finland, countries such as Japan, Spain, The Netherlands,
Turkey, and Sweden helped German shipyards and the navy
[...]
In Germany's web of covert contacts, *Finland played
a central role*.
> to be reconciled at the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
The motivation behind which was a realization by Stalin that the USSR was on its own, and a requirement to delay any war with Hitler in order to strengthen the Soviet military.
Attempts by Stalin to form an anti-Nazi pact with France and Britain had failed, at least in part because Poland flatly refused to allow the Red Army (the only army realistically capable of aiding Poland) to defend Polish soil if the Nazis attacked.
We can blame Stalin for a lot of things, but I'm not sure what alternative he had to a non-aggression pact with Hitler, other than simply watching Panzer divisions roll up to the Soviet border.
> The Germans visiting Soviet extermination camps is documented at least in "Kremlin kellot" by Arvo Poika Tuominen (a Finnish Communist who worked for Komintern in 1933-1939 and spent quite some time observing the camps at the Baltic-White Sea Canal works and Solovki prison.)
From Tuominen's English Wikipedia page:
Research by Finnish historian Kimmo Rentola has exposed
[the falsehood of Tuominen's claim to be against the
Soviets during the Soviet-Finland war]. When the war
started, Tuominen was initially enthusiastic of the war
in expectation of a quick Soviet victory.
A man who, when he realized he would not become part of a Soviet quisling regime in Finland, switched to being overtly and conspicuously anti-Communist, with a clear motivation to lie or exaggerate the crimes of his former comrades.
> It's a pretty chilling read; the canal works were where the basic research for extermination via forced labour was done.
Soviet gulags were horrible enough places without falsely claiming them to be something they are not. And they were no more extermination camps than Indian "reservations" were, or British camps in South Africa, or the East Karelian concentration camps run by Finland.
> Solzhenitsyn then later provided a more well-known description of the GULAG.
Where does Solzhenitsyn claim gulags were "extermination camps"? In fact, where does any credible source?
Further, where does any credible source provide evidence that the Nazis received help or ideas from the USSR for their extermination programme?
The precursor to the Final Solution was in fact the Nazi eugenic and euthanasia programmes, and it's no secret they were inspired by and based on programmes in the USA (not USSR) in the early 20th century.
Stalin had a lot of alternatives. USSR spoke a lot about peace; it could lived up to this speech and seeked to support its neighbours against Germany when Hitler was perceived a threat.
Instead, Stalin decide to invade his neighbours, split the spheres of influence, murder any potential opposition in the parts is controlled, perform ethnic cleansing.
Stalin did have other options, but he was paranoid and power-hungry and thus he did what he did. I think it is a rather desperate whitewash to say he had no alternative. Yes, he did have.
Regarding the killings at the Stalin Canal works, Tuominen of course isn't the only witness and historian to document the killings on camps. And those who survived the experiment and wouldn't die of hunger were then taken to a ditch and were shot in places like Sandarmokh. The memorial is still there, although it seems Russia is developing to a direction where it may yet wipe it out.
What I am talking about is the sort of history that was taught in schools (at school level!) during 1960s-70s-80s in Soviet Union. Very simple stuff.
The ones that stood by and watched were us Swedes, btw. Sitting in the middle between Hitler and Stalin, you tried to do that... but it worked just for a few. (If Sweden should had joined the war, should they have fought with Norway/Denmark -- or with Finland?)
Also, being Swedish and re historical lies... A bit of a tangent: The Swedish schools didn't tell us anything about the Polish view on the "Polish deluge". And the English schools missed the part about the "harrying of the north". Is there any country in the history of civilization that acknowledged the dark parts of their history, except the Germans?
[Edit: But covering up aspects of embarrassing history is of course something different than hate mongering towards the own population over old history, to make the present government more popular. (But that is a Swede talking, we prefer that our neighboring countries don't read too much history. Not that we have anything like Holodomor to cover up. Trust us. :-) ) ]
(Plus thank you for the kind act of accepting thousands of small children as refugees, even if in the end it turned out to be not such a good idea to split families; the lesson is that don't do that as a temporary relief; if you must give children away, let them be adopted.)
The Swedish organized force (not individual volunteers) for the Winter War was trained, organized and at the front just as the peace started, so they missed most of the blood letting.
We talk about sending a 1/3 of the Swedish military equipment, including of the air force. (Sadly not enough, the politicians had been doing downsizing defense -- just as they have now, when Putin is starting to act like Hitler in the 1930s.)
Wikipedia claimed this aid was the politicians' way of silencing a popular opinion that Sweden should do more. I don't really know. I do know that Swedes in general have no clue about the subject, after the education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_support_of_Finland_in_...
Also, a disclaimer -- I am half Swedish and half Danish, with half the Swedish relatives from the Finn forests of Värmland. So I really don't have a horse in this race. (When Finns have problems with Swedes, I tell them about my relative in Norway 300 years ago, which became a general major by killing lots of "you damned Swedes and Finns". :-) )
Sure, a third of the total military equipment must be something of a world record. But still.
The Allies like to fancy themselves as the saviors, but without Russia fighting back the war would have gone the other way.
Couldn't have done it without me != All because of me.
The USSR could maybe have done it without help from ground combat troops from other countries. They definitely couldn't have done it without any help at all.
Without the UK's navy cutting off Axis shipping and without aerial warfare against the UK eating up a huge amount of resources, there would have been far more resources committed to the war against the USSR. Without lend-lease from the US, the USSR would have had extreme shortages of equipment.
Not to mention that usually this is viewed not as invasion, but a needed act to stop Nazis.
The losses sustained by Russia during that time are absolutely staggering and probably contribute to the "Are you guys even helping at all?" line of thought.
Of course there were stupid commanders who wasted soldiers's lives, as there were very good commanders. You should look at the big picture:
1) Ratio of Wermacht - Red Army losses is somewhere around 1:1.3, only 30% more. 2) Germany had fully deployed and ready to attack army on the June, 22nd, while USSR was in the process of deployment: second and third line divisions were moving towards the border, stretched for 500-600 kilometers. 3) Wermacht was trained in doing blitzkriegs: Poland invasion, France invasion gave them a lot of experience, Red Army did not have a lot of experience in defending against such an attack (no one had). 4) Germany attacked without a warning, without a formal war declaration, and most of those 30% come from the first stage of the war. 5) Germany had its full industrial potential, together with Poland, Czechoslovakia and France working to provide tanks, guns, food and supplies, while USSR had 1/3 of its territory captured and 20+ million people under occupation for the first two years.
The book was mainly inspired by the Soviet Union and China. Russia acting this way is more news in the "let's not forget" sense than in the "new" sense.
Just a quick historical recap of what was happening prior to the September the 1st, 1939.
After Hitler comes to power and starts hidden re-militarization of the Germany, Britain, France and Poland do nothing, silently looking how American and Sweden companies are building guns and ships for the Germany.
In 1938 Hitler demands control of the Sudetenland(part of Czechoslovakia). USSR starts negotiations with Britain, France and Poland willing to use army to protect Czechoslovakia. Poland refuses to let Soviet troops through its territory. Negotiations are artificially prolonged by Britain. Munich agreement is signed by the Britain, France and Germany, and Hitler gets a nice gift in a form of Czechoslovakia (you never see Britain and France talking about this, do you?).
On the 1st of September, 1939, Hitler invades Poland (Britain and France did not help their 'ally' in the slightest). USSR invades Poland 16 days later, when Poland ceased to exist as a sovereign state.
There were two pragmatic choices for the USSR: let Germany capture all the Poland and have their border be right at the gate, or prepare for the inevitable war with the Germany by capturing additional territory. No one in the USSR believed that Hitler will be a nice neighbor - there were a lot of information available on the Germany's descent into Nazism.
There is a similar story with Finland: USSR wanted to move their border further from the Leningrad (it was ~10-20 kilometers), because Leningrad is a major industrial center. USSR pragmatically wanted to trade territory with Finland, giving them a lot of land in exchange for that border shift. Finland refused. USSR was left with two choices: leave the border near your second largest city for an inevitable war (Finland was pro-Nazi) or solve this problem while Hitler is busy with France.
Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Wind-White-Snow-Nationalism/dp/...
> "According to the Soviet mythology, 28 soldiers from the Red Army's 316th Rifle Division, mainly recruits from the Kazakh and Kyrgyz Soviet republics"
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are both part of the Eurasian Steppe which play a big role in this invented history of Eurasianism
Russia has myths, Soviet mythology etc, which accidently happened yesterday in historical terms.
Real western democratic freedom loving surveilling states have history and fact checking.
> In January 2014, independent liberal broadcaster Dozhd TV came under attack. It was accused of smearing the memory of WW2 veterans by asking whether residents of wartime Leningrad could have been saved by surrendering the city to Nazi forces.
Zero? Germans were planning genocide to get their Lebensraum
> The public discussion of WW2 history has also been curbed by a controversial 2014 law against the rehabilitation of Nazism.
omg
However, a more reasonable question is whether a timely evacuation of Leningrad would have saved more of the residents. Stalin intentionally left much of the civilian population in the siege.
And it is indeed a problem if a law "against rehabilitation of nazism" is used for silencing honest, civilized discussion about WW2 history.
No it does. German documents clearly say "if they try to flee the city - shoot them". Hitler had specific plans to destroy it completely after the war.
> but not everyone was killed.
Out of 27 million deaths only 8 millions were combatants. Do the math on civilians.
> is whether a timely evacuation of Leningrad
Leningrad is a major industrial and cultural center, second city in the USSR, its loss would've dealt a colossal moral blow to the Soviet people. It also tied a lot of Nazi forces, that could've been used elsewhere (i.e. Stalingrad battle).
> Stalin intentionally left much of the civilian population in the siege.
No he didn't. Siege started in September, only 3 months after Nazis attacked. It is not possible to evacuate 3+ million city in such a short time. 659,000 were evacuated before the siege began, and 30,000 after. Many people didn't want to leave their homes.
> is used for silencing honest, civilized discussion about WW2 history.
No it is not.