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Comment by lordleft | Hacker News Reader

Apart from the abstract conviction that we should not indict the cultural output of a country that is under the thrall of an oligarch, I'm a bit baffled at the notion of decrying Tolstoy of people -- a Christian anarchist who radically challenged all of the assumptions of Tsarist Russia. Basically all of the great Russian writers lived in opposition to the various incarnations of the Russian State (Tsarist Russia, USSR).

EDIT: It's clear that this is a sentiment that is coming from the emotional pressures of war. I don't blame some Ukrainians for feeling the way that they do, though I find the argument dubious and disagree with it.

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It’s a very strange emotional appeal. Yes, you can ban first-hand imports of Russian culture, or any other nation. But what about all the ways in which your culture has already been affected by decades and decades of integrating these works because they stand on their own, aesthetically speaking, regardless of their origin?

I’m reminded of an equally strange move, in an equally strange vein: “Freedom Fries.”

Why is this strange? Wartime changes many things, and propaganda is a powerful weapon.

> Freedom Fries

How about "Today Baghdad, tomorrow Paris!"

German language newspapers in the USA went from over a thousand to almost gone during WW1.

While I think it is too simplistic to “blame” or “decry” Tolstoy, the Tolstoy of War and Peace have some nationalistic and anti-individualistic ideas which is easy to see how can be misused for imperialistic purposes.

> I don't blame some Ukrainians for feeling the way that they do

I can certainly see why they're upset but it's a problem with Russia's leader at the time, and not the culture right? If it's a long-standing cultural issue then I'd imagine some introspection would also be required, which seems like it may undermine the whole notion.

Frankly, we have been having problems with Russian leaders for the last couple centuries or three.

This makes me wonder, is it possible that the pool of solutions available to Russia's leaders is objectively limited due to Russia's geopolitical and sociopolitical realities and they really don't have too much of a rational choice?

For some reason, Russia never had anything close to a democracy or any rights-enabling consequence of revolution. And that was certainly not for lack of revolutions.

It may be a coincidence (getting rights for the people is hard), or due to some structural issue. I don't believe anybody knows the reason, but yeah, it may be external because when modern democracy first appeared it was concentrated geographically, what usually happens when the causes are larger than a single country.

That's a point that deserves deeper study.

They have (from memory) 13 countries on their borders, and almost no "natural" borders, e.g. rivers or mountain ranges. They have a history that's blood-curdling. Expecting a new czar to make it like Denmark is a bit much.

The West tried in the 90s, and Boris Yeltsin is not remembered fondly over there. The emergence of gangster capitalism was the result.

I don’t think this is right. Germany, for example, has 9 countries on its borders and a blood-curdling history, and it’s a very pleasant place now. The idea that a country of 145M people lacking the agency to move forward doesn’t pass the smell test. I think it’s clear that Russia has some deeply-seated cultural problems that fuel this kind of thing.

None of this, of course, makes the banishment of Russian cultural products (especially old ones) any more reasonable. We’ve got to get better at separation of concerns.

"Russia" has been destroyed, raped and pillaged many times and been under hostile foreign control for the last half millenia (yup, if you dig deep enough). Don't expect them to let go easily, lol. The fact that people survive there never fails to amaze me. * quotes because lands had different names back then.

Well, no. Germany wasn't even united as a country until Bismarck. And it didn't grow to a gargantuan size by conquering neighboring, nearly empty lands.

Germany had good reasons for their actions in last century. Just remember the aggressions from likes of France... Historically thinking Ukraine is just continuation of constant wars in Europe.

> Just remember the aggressions from likes of France

What? We must not have the same history books. In none of the French-German wars was the German side (or Prussia before that, or the HRE even before) an innocent victim.

And, to be clear, everyone sleepwalked into WWI, sure (though it wasn’t France’s fault any more than Germany’s), but there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for WWII. I cannot believe someone would even write that.

> Historically thinking Ukraine is just continuation of constant wars in Europe.

I grant you that. Though Russia’s justifications are about as credible as Hitler’s were.

All the west “tried” in the 90s was to use dubious political techniques to support the guy who believed in democracy so much so that he shot at the parliament with tanks and installed a “successor” we’re all familiar with. The west’s meddling is part of the reason we’re in this mess.

As opposed to any other Eastern/Central European country? Is (e.g.) Poland's history any less turbulent?

Yeltsin also has blood on his hands from the First Chechen War. Democracy a la russe…

> They have (from memory) 13 countries on their borders

they have all of them on one side (Western border), and majority of these countries are small and weak. Comparing to Germany, which is surrounded by potential enemies (I am talking about pre WW2 time), Russia had significant advantage.

> we

Indeed, Russia has had its share of problems with Poland before that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Muscovite_War_(...

Thousand years, iirc

I've seen an insightful explanation (from an immigrant from Ukraine) why it doesn't matter is there is a problem with the Russian culture or not but it should be cancelled in any case: to win this war Ukrainian people need to mobilize and hatred to anything Russian will help to mobilize them. It is not enough for them to hate Putin, to fight they need to hate all Russians. For this reason it is important to convince all that all Russians are imperialists and Russian culture is all poisoned by imperialism. And it doesn't matter if it would backfire - in an authoritarian Russia it doesn't matter what ordinary people think. Ukraine on other hand is more or less democratic state - it is for the people to decide if they would accept defeat or will continue to fight.

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