Powerful Statement of Resistance from a College Student on Trial in Moscow | Hacker News Reader

Powerful Statement of Resistance from a College Student on Trial in Moscow

newyorker.com

271 pointsgigama93 comments

I spent a small part of my life studying Russian language and history, as other family members have done with other cultures (or lived in them, etc etc).

And regardless of where else we will agree or disagree, when anyone can sincerely talk like this young man did about love (meaning caring for others as much as for oneself) and personal responsibility (actually doing something about it, all of which I relate closely with honesty and the Golden Rule), I automatically think: "I would probably like knowing this person, and almost certainly we could enjoy working together on some worthwhile things."

That is a political (or whatever) "tribe", as some say, that I would like to belong to.

(fwiw, I have posted more about those thoughts at my simple site: http://lukecall.net . Use of https is on the to-do list...)

"I will endeavor to take joy in having this chance—the chance to be tested in the name of values I hold dear. In the end, Your Honor, the more frightening my future, the broader the smile with which I look at it. Thank you.”

Outstanding courage.

I would say his courage comes from his conviction that he is right in his beliefs. There have been many individuals and groups that have endured state oppression with the same attitude of bliss because of their resolute belief that what they are doing is right.

Politicking aside, I wish all the leaders in all the countries of the world held such ideals as this man.

There's a lot to absorb, but the rising alcohol and domestic abuse due to despair is something that's increasing in my country too: oz. Mental health issues are skyrocketing. Our politicians ignore what we ask for, but propagandize what they think we need based on their corruption, while actively suppressing liberty. The middle class is almost gone...

... and we're widely regarded as being called the lucky country. By comparison to many less fortunate others we still are.

Edit: typos

I live in a post-Soviet country that has many of the issues described in the statement too. We have the highest suicide rate in Europe (after Russia), and basically everyone knows of at least a handful of people who have died either directly or indirectly due to alcohol.

Earlier this year my father-in-law died due to alcohol. He had been out drinking and the next morning his family found him asleep on the floor downstairs. They assumed he was just drunk (he was still breathing at this point) so left him, and when they came back in the evening he was still there, but no longer breathing. His death was put down to heart failure as he had known heart problems (no post-mortem was done), but if it wasn't for the alcohol something would have been done. So even the statistics that associate deaths due to alcohol are too low.

Last year the government brought in laws to limit the hours alcohol could be sold in shops (8pm Monday - Saturday and 3pm on Sunday and holidays) and the drinking age was raised to 20, and of course it was met with plenty of public outcry. Most people refuse to admit that alcohol is such a big problem for socieity, even when it is staring them in the face.

“The lucky country” refers to how we have managed to make it this far for a nation whose economy is primary production and debt.

The term was originally intended as a criticism not a compliment.

It is far more. It is an indictment of Australia as an incurious (yet hardy) nation run by incurious people. It still adequately captures the state of our modern leadership.

"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."[1]

Edit: Also as an aside, the quote originally didn't have anything to do with resources, though in modern times it makes sense to make that link.

"When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.' I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a [British] derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never 'earned' our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country

> It still adequately captures the state of our modern leadership.

It also still describes the apathy of the population.

I’ve always thought that the author of that phrase showed a fundamental misunderstanding of what ought to make a country prosperous. He seems to think it’s surprising that Australia’s success has come from the bottom up (millions of individuals acting in accordance with basically-sensible cultural norms) rather than top down (imposed by the will of some great leader).

But societal success always comes from the bottom up, and great cultures come from evolution, not intelligent design.

May the reins of political power in our country continue to exist in the hands of uncreative intellectual non-entities and suburban solicitors. When Great Men with Big Ideas get into power it always seems to result in a disaster.

I personally think it's more of a give-and-take or feedback loop. Sometimes you need leaders who recognise strong ideas and run with them.

I think a clear recent example (regardless of personal opinion) is the whole gay marriage debacle. The majority of the population wanted it but no leader had the guts to be the one to do it. The closest we got was wasting money on a plebiscite, spending $80 million to basically ask "are you really sure you want this?". I don't mind being more directly involved in democracy, but we never have such plebiscites for other issues. They didn't have the courage to go ahead without covering their backsides.

Anyway, back to the quote, if we're going to anthropomorphise Australia then the impression I get is that we are the rich kid who grew up with all the advantages bestowed upon us by Mother Britain but we never really learned to fend for ourselves as independent adults. We can't coast forever.

> We can't coast forever.

Funny you should mention that. Keeping Australians 'Relaxed and Comfortable' was John Howard's election pitch from a famous interview in 1996 and that legacy of "keep coasting, don't rock the boat why take a risk..." Has pretty much defined politics in this country ever since.

And those "quiet Australians" who conveniently support the status quo :)

Thank you

Which country?

oz = Australia

This guy's father worked for Russian government space agency, trained to be a cosmonaut. Now he's in the court watching the same government prosecute his son for political youtube videos. It is a disturbing sign when authorities press baseless charges against children of people who served their country their whole life.

"It is a disturbing sign when authorities press baseless charges against children of people who served their country their whole life."

The baseless charges are disturbing but if they have done something wrong it's also disturbing to NOT press charges against children of people who served their country their whole life. Which happens quite a bit.

I had followed this case closely. Initially they accused a boy with directing crowds during Moscow protests on July 27, there was a video evidence. He was arrested and put into jail. Meanwhile prosecutors admitted that the guy on the video is not him. They let him go, he spent over a month in jail for no reason. They dropped initial charges but instead of begging his pardon, they brought totally different, unrelated charges of his blog content being extremist. While I agree your statement in general, in this particular case it all looks very thin and biased.

There’s a long history of russia executing and jailing it’s heroes.

Yes. The same could be said of many other societies, monarchies and liberal “democracies” as well though.

>It is a disturbing sign when authorities press baseless charges against children of people who served their country their whole life.

Don't get me wrong, tribalism happens in all systems (e.g. if you're immediate family of a local cop it's often a free pass to DUI in many parts of the US) but not prosecuting because his dad was "one of us" is even worse than prosecuting in the first place.

If they're gonna be tyrannical I'd at least like to see them be consistent rather than give people with ties to the state a free pass as happens in so many cases.

Neither virtue nor guilt is hereditary. I feel like we're losing touch with this fundamental principle of fairness.

> is a disturbing sign when authorities press baseless charges against children of people who served their country their whole life.

As opposed to baseless charges against an ordinary citizen being ok?

In Russia, there is no judicial system. Courts are simply rubber stamps for Putin run mafia, they do the bidding of the boss. So if repressive machine wants to crush someone, it would do it without hesitation, using hundreds of anti-social "laws" passed by the fascist Duma (parliament), that does the bidding of the same boss.

Basically courts do nothing in practice, just pass "judgements" that are handed to them by the "investigators" or whoever relays the mafia command to them. And if the boss decides that public would react too much to the court case, the "judges" might suddenly become more lenient.

Not too bad either: The 2012 remarks of Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot) before being sent to prison:

https://eng-pussy-riot.livejournal.com/4602.html

I wonder if the New Yorker writer realizes this brave young man is for the most part quoting the evil, alt-right, misogynistic, transphobic Jordan Peterson. And whether he would have republished the speech if he did. /s

Peterson said many other things that are objectionable. If he only said what Zhukov said, Peterson would also be in a more favourable light.

Like what? I am fairly familiar with his work, could you point out what you found problematic? Peterson talks mainly about personal responsibility as the only way to meaning in a life that is mostly suffering. Clearly this young man was influenced by that message.

I find objectionable his “slippery slope” argument about pronouns and his calls for silencing disciplines with which he disagrees.

I understand the slippery slope reference,but which disciplines are you referring to?

He’s called for some disciplines (e.g. women’s studies, anthropology) to be boycotted by students and ultimately removed.

Sometimes you need a martyr to make people realize the fuckery happening around them.

For example, from Occupied France during WWII...

On 5 December 1940, Bonsergent was convicted by a German military court of insulting the Wehrmacht as he insisted on taking full responsibility, saying he wanted to show the French what sort of people the Germans were and he was shot on 23 December 1940.[50]

The execution of Bonsergent, a man guilty only of being a witness to an incident that was in itself only very trivial brought home to many of the French the precise nature of the "New Order in Europe".

wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Resistance

The incredible bravery, to me, comes from the fact that you can't know for sure your sacrifice will ultimately mean anything or be noticed by anyone.

This is what is so interesting about it to me. If I were Snowden, I would have been suicidal or at least extremely depressed seeing how I basically threw away my life without the public caring at all (were there any long term changes? Does the average global citizen care about government spying? Were the responsible government officials brought to justice?).

If no one cares about your sacrifice, then what's the point of making the sacrifice in the first place? I know this is a very negative point of view looking at the world, but it's something I've been spending a lot of time thinking about as I grow up (maybe it's a normal thing you realise when you're starting to change into a realist from an idealist as you mature).

At the very least, privacy practices have evolved dramatically since Snowden affair. Everyone uses end-to-end encryption now, a website without https is now eyebrows-raising. So while government spying probably didn't reduce, there is a lot less they can do now.

I agree there have been improvements in the right direction, but if you were in Snowden's shoes, would you be satisfied with these improvements compared to the sacrifices you've made and continue to make? Why did he have to throw away a normal, comfortable life with good pay for constant anxiety and uncertainty to expose something to the citizens of the world - when the citizens of the world don't even want to stop watching Netflix to do something about this issue?

He created as much of a scandal as an ordinary person possibly can make. People definitely noticed.

To me, an important aspect of Snowden's revelations was to confirm that many "conspiracy theories" were actually fact.

To understand events, I like to examine different groups' motivations. What would be in their interest? For government, wanting to maintain control and power over its citizens, especially citizens with power, money, and influence, monitoring all conversations is obviously in their interest. Hiding this monitoring is also in their interest. So of course, they do both. It seems very obvious, but without Snowden's evidence, it's very easy to label this as "tin foil hat" conspiracy theory: "Of course the government is not monitoring everyone's phone calls. They could never keep that a secret for so long!" But as we have found out via Snowden, they actually can keep secrets for a very long time.

So an important aspect of his disclosure to me is to make it less easy to label something as conspiracy theory or being a paranoid nut job, just because there is no evidence to support a "wild" claim - yet.

The problem here is Gessen uses Zhukov's words to bash Donald Trump, but neglects to mention that Zhukov is a right-winger who supports Trump, and the Tea Party. He's also anti-feminist & new yorker readers would feel differently if they knew these things. It's disingenuous.

https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1203785706860109830

If you're quoting someone you should indicate that. If you're quoting Bryan MacDonald well I think you should validate it pretty carefully. And if you are Bryan MacDonald...well I'm not surprised how you turned out Bryan.

Yes, I'am quoting Bryan MacDonald, sorry if it wasn't clear. And since I speak russian, I can attest that his tweet is factually correct.

Well, there is a video where Zhukov tells that he doesn't agree with principle of collective responsibility advocated by _some_ feminists. Calling him anti-feminist after that is kind of big jump, isn't it?

Well even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

The BBC describes Zhukov as a "libertarian activist": https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50684676

But note that journalist who wrote that tweet is actually works for Russia Today -- russian state propaganda outlet. So don't take that seriously.

Turns out even people who work for Russia Today tell the truth sometimes (if they were consistently lying they would be telling the truth after all:).

I have watched Zhukovs videos before he got arrested, he self identifies as a libertarian, supports Trump as a lesser evil compared to Sanders and Warren, and likes Jordan Peterson. Because of this Russian twitter was abuzz today with feminists arguing whether it was ok to support him. So the article indeed misrepresents his views.

Is the tweet correct or not? Is your point here that

- Zhukov is not actually a Tea Party Trump supporter and the tweet is made up, or

- Zhukov is all these things but it would not in fact be relevant to New Yorker readers, or

- Zhukov is all these things, but the facts should be ignored because they are coming from an unapproved source?

I was just saying that collaboration with RT is a big red flag. Talking about tweet itself it's definitely not correct at least in anti-feminist part. Also whole tweet intention is kind of ad hominem, original article discussed Zhukov's speech and his sentence, not his personality.

> I was just saying that collaboration with RT is a big red flag

How come?

It comes from the consistent history of the factually incorrect propaganda reporting, with direct funding from the state budget. The very same state that dictates convictions to judges for political prisoners upon a phone call from the state administration.

So are you saying that because Zhukov is, you claim, a right-winger, that means that his criticisms of Russia are wrong, and that Russia is actually a pretty good place?

Oh, and by the way, I don't know if Zhukov actually is a right winger, but Putin definitely is.

No, I just find it amusing that Masha Gessen is praising some person, who, if relocated to USA while keeping his political views intact, will instantly become alt-right monster and God knows what else (see Covington kids case).

Funny how these things work.

The question of how good or bad Russia is, is a million times more important than an amusing observation about a particular journalist. So let me ask you again, what do you think of it?

> So are you saying that because Zhukov is, you claim, a right-winger, that means that his criticisms of Russia are wrong, and that Russia is actually a pretty good place?

There is no causal connection between the OP's message and this assumption. The initial argument is that the journalist interpreted the Zhukov’s letter and his (right-wing libertarian) views in accordance with her political (left-wing and anti-Trump) views.

edit: Putin is authoritarian right-wing, which has nothing to do with Zhukov's libertarianism. As follows at least from his indictment.

It's also par for the course for Gessen. She's extremely biased, and she doesn't even try to hide it. There's no nuance whatsoever in what she writes, it's all black and white for her. I'm not sure why she still calls herself a "jornalist".

His statement, however, looks like something a US conservative would largely agree with: decries identity (in his words "atomization") politics (which Gessen largely supports), calls to strengthen traditional families (which Gessen opposes), calls for individual responsibility, etc. For the record: I don't know about his "anti-feminist" views, but I agree with what he says in that particular statement.

It's directly applicable to the US as well - people are pretty much at war with each other here, and at least half the population is quite willing to give up their liberty for taxpayer funded government handouts. Having grown up in the USSR, I know where this particular road ends.

There's one bit of context that people in the US will miss: the Soviet legacy. Back then people relied on the government for _everything_ and had little to no individual responsibility for anything. You worked for peanuts and by Western standards lived in poverty, but a lot of the stuff was "free" and you didn't have to worry about your future - it was largely predetermined.

A large, older chunk of Russian population still lives like that and has futile expectations that the government will solve whatever problems they might have. The government stopped doing that some 30 years ago, but they don't know any better. I think this, and the extreme level of corruption, is why the GDP of Russia is less than that of Texas. IMO for a country with such insane wealth of natural resources, and a pretty decent education system this is shameful.

The whole 'government doing anything is a slippery slope to socialism' is such a worn cliche. It's much more likely that having a large, disadvantaged population thats cut off from class mobility or basic life necessities is what encourages people to start dragging landowners into the streets.

There's a reason why the Great Depression led to a number of relief programs - the threat of a soviet-style communist uprising was pretty high.

There also were some pretty great "relief programs" in the USSR at the time, where millions of people were relieved of their food and left to die of starvation. A government powerful enough to give you everything is also necessarily powerful enough to take everything.

And "class mobility" is a 100% capitalist concept. Under communism there's no "upper class" to be mobile to.

As of 2018, the US is experiencing the lowest poverty rate in history (considerably lower than e.g. UK, Germany, and France), and record low unemployment as well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/10/us-povert...

Repeating things doesn’t make them true. People aren’t asking for the government to do everything, they’re asking for affordable healthcare and education

But that's not what the government can actually deliver. All the government can really do is take money from one set of people under threat of violence, and give it to another set of people. That's it. It's a parasite. It doesn't produce anything. If you believe in the law of conservation of energy, adding government to any process will only make it less efficient. See e.g. US student loans and what that did to college tuition.

Governments obviously do more than what your absurd statement implies. They are democratically controlled veichles of power. One of the things they do is some measure of redistribution of wealth, attempting to counter the capitalist tendency for wealth concentration.

Bizarre references to "conservation of energy" (?) aside, you can simply look empirically. Places with low social and economic inequality are factually better places to live.

The US is factually a better place to live than most other countries, in spite of the high "inequality".

For subset of Americans, sure.

I found the speech very interesting, and the columnist’s attempt to twist it into relevance about his own hobbyhorse of US politics to be very boring.

Russian politics is very interesting on its own, and we hear far too little about it (whilst also hearing far too much about US politics). The analogies between the two are extremely weak and generally uninformative; saying “my opponent is like Putin” carries no more information than “my opponent is a big poop face”.

Russian politics? There are no such things since late nineties.

Whatever "opposition" is left in Russia today, is no more real than the token opposition to the CPSU that legally existed in the Soviet Union.

There is a long held Russian political tradition that long proceeded the creation of the Union: they pick the weakest enemy, the weakest opposition camp, and then surround them with spies, puppets, and then purposely let them show everybody their helpless, futile struggle.

In comparison, all credible opponents to the CPSU was dealt with in the swiftest way, without even a token trial. They either met their demise from KGB's signature potato trucks, or simply "disappeared" Latin American style.

The same was with modern Russia. The last credible, real opposition to MAFIA—KGB chimera was the Primakov-Lebed group. Lebed died in a helicopter crash, and Primakov, you know it. At the same time, KGB plotters didn't care the slightest about formal liberal opposition, because they knew that they were complete jokes, incapable of killing a fly.

Nor Primakov, nor Lebed were even remotely "liberal." That fabled "Russian liberal opposition" only existed in the imagination of Western "Kremlinologists." Those "non-violent resistance" clowns brought demise not only on themselves, but all and everybody else who was capable of standing against resurgent KGB. Their last chance assassinating Putin expired right around 2005-2006, and you know what those clowns did back then? They said "we need to bring Putin to Hague...," few month later a wave of assassinations rolled over Russia

It's always been interesting to watch that despite a lot of common similarities, politics took a different turn in Ukraine. While Ukrainians regularly run their politicians out of office, the same doesn't happen in Russia.

That's probably why Ukraine's per-capita GDP is about one third that of Russia (itself a pretty poor country) - each new cohort of politicians has to rob the country blind again and again, and they have to do it quick before they are chased out of the office. In Russia everyone knows Putin and his cronies aren't going anywhere until Putin croaks, and dude seems to be in good health for the time being.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...

Russia has oil, Ukraine doesn’t.

This comment make me wonder if it was written by a Markov chain.

One of the worst comments I've ever read on HN.

Also the word 'interesting' has to be the weakest adjective in the English language. It conveys no information.

The common thread is corruption.

President Obama allegedly attempted to kill a similar YouTuber/journalist American citizen.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-syria-drones-kill...

In Russia they put you on trial.

From the Wikipedia link on the American YouTuber:

Bilal Abdul Kareem (born Darrell Lamont Phelps) is an American journalist and war correspondent covering the Syrian Civil War.[1][2][3] He has worked with CNN,[4] and produces the YouTube channel On the Ground News TV (OGN TV).[2] He believes that he has been placed on the U.S. kill list.[5][6][7][8] He claims to have survived five drone assassination attempts by the U.S. military, which killed random civilians that were present nearby, including two attacks on vehicles he was traveling in, including one where the car he was sitting in was blown up by a missile shot from a drone.[9][10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilal_Abdul_Kareem

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/journalist-bilal-abdul-ka...

Putin's regime killed dozens of journalists.

Well known and documented. Just like the Putin regime, the Obama regime and W Bush regimes also killed journalists.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/apr/09/pressandpublis...

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