Slava
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As this article is being written, cry „Slava Ukraini, Slava herojima!“ – “Glory to Ukraine, Glory to Heroes!”, echoes throughout Europe. I was never prone to taking up such popular slogans, even when very young and when my own country was in the somewhat similar predicament as the one Ukraine is today, and patriotic slogans were aplenty, although less prestigious because Croatia haven’t had a fraction of a fraction of the international support Ukraine has at this moment. Yet I cannot help but let it slip through my lips from time to time and allow myself a smile at the thought how such wide spectrum of experts miscalculated the historical place and significance of this people. Mind you, it is not primarily out of solidarity with the Ukrainians but first and foremost out of love for truth: I just cannot withhold my delight when it hits the wise among the nations over their heads, even with such a crude instrument as the bludgeon of historical reality.
Whatever the outcome of the war, no one will ever carelessly dismiss Ukraine as the mere “borderland” between Russia and Europe that has to fit into “zone of influence” of the neighboring regional power. Now when it is becoming obvious, even to those who know little or nothing about Third Rome and its “manifest destiny” that Russian aspirations far transcend the status of regional power, it is also becoming plain to see how hollow this eschatological empire in the making was, is and will be.
However, we will not dwell on history at this pressing moment – I mean, it must be pressing: even birds are tweeting “Slava!” “Slava!”; we’ll rather take into focus current affairs, more precisely: the awkwardness this Slavic word acquires when taken up by certain demographics.
Few years ago, I stumbled upon a podcast where a group of young Westerners – from the UK and US, if I remember correctly – residing in Russia, discussed the Russian propaganda. It seemed promising; a group of young men were pointing out and ridiculing the absurdities behind the Western oriented Russian disinformation campaigns until something one of them said gave me a moment of stunned pause. While talking about British acquaintance that got swayed by the propaganda and became an occasional mouthpiece for Russian media targeting Western audiences, the point was made that the gentleman in question was, among other things, a “Brexiter”; nothing surprising there, guy just fits the stereotype, I thought to myself, but then came the punch: one of the participants, in order to underline how unintelligent their Russia intoxicated peer was, asked: “why should he care about UK leaving the EU, when he doesn’t even live there anymore?”
This sentence, uttered, as I very well remember, with peculiarly indifferent contempt, indicates to the point I want to stress in this article.
Namely, people of Ukraine are now in the process of forging a nation by defending themselves from the attack that quickly transcended an attempt at political dominance by force and, bogged down by the determined resistance, became an existential struggle; not the least significant in this respect is that, in the eyes of the Patriarch of Moscow, their resistance puts them squarely on the left hand of the Lord, among the damned in what Russian Church/State deems to be the final metaphysical struggle between Christ and the Devil, where Ukrainians (“Nazis”) are at the spearhead of the Devil’s (“West”) attack on “Christ” (Russia), giving Russian leader’s decision its necessary spiritual seal of approval.
I cannot conceive of Ukrainian expatriate who could say that he doesn’t care about this because he doesn’t make money, pay taxes or party in the Ukraine anymore. Correspondingly, I also cannot imagine how young man from our example could in clear conscience go about shouting, chanting, but most likely predominantly tweeting “Slava! Slava!” Yet I am quite certain he is currently doing just that.
The mentality we outlined was unknown to me up to just recently; most of my peers probably wouldn’t even notice it being expressed, simply because they cannot conceive of such depth of indifference; it is not a matter of the lack of patriotism, which in normal people ignites only when faced with the threat such as the one at work in Ukraine now, anyway – it is, I would claim, lack of something much deeper; something conveyed not so much by the careless phrase, but rather by the mood in which it was uttered – the one of utmost indifference.
How can someone so indifferent about whom he is, aside from who he presently wants to be, have any understanding of someone struggling for preservation of what he received and chose to accept as where he belongs?
Yet this is at stake for Ukrainians now. Therefore, I find “Slava!” in the mouths of those who are so indifferent towards belonging to their own people that, for them, the closest thing to ’their people’ became other individuals with the same consumer choices or “sexual orientation” to be in bad taste, to say the least.
To use an analogy: the fire of their wrath over images of the devastation of Ukraine is as genuinely righteous as their titillation over the images of genital mutilation, incest and violence from Game of Thrones is genuinely sadist.
However, as I am not in the habit of picking up the pen just to point out that something is in bad taste, there is more to it than meets the eye.
Belonging to people is one among the givens that constitute the human being and, as such, it is both the necessary condition for – and the expression of – existing in history. If it becomes the subject of the political project, where sovereignty is, at least in theory, being allotted to people as one, unified entity, it constitutes the basis for the most resilient political project of modernity – that of nationalism. In this sense one may be swayed by the misguided intuition that indifference towards one’s own people, as the existence-defining given, could be just a reaction against the infatuation with nationalist ideology. However, I am fairly certain that young man from our example has no experience of the peculiar combination of violence and tedium nationalism tends to generate when it suppresses all other political and ethical considerations; rather, his attitude seems to come from active indifference about his people and their nation, not the rejection of political philosophy holding sway over them; that philosophy presently certainly not being nationalism, anyway.
To illustrate with one more example: a noticeable characteristic of the so called “ex-pats” making my country their temporary home is their readiness to embrace qualities like “sense of historical continuity”, “sense of community” and even “patriotic pride” in a way they would embrace “low taxes”, “affordable public transport” or “friendly locals”. They see it all as parts of the package competing on the global “homeland market”. However, once the realization emerges that what those qualities entail is not a matter of consumer’s choice, and that there is more to the package then initially meets the eye – that continuity of history is at the same time a burden; that sense of community excludes unbridled freedom of self-expression and that patriotic pride is more often than not combined with odium towards one’s neighbor and, moreover, that it is in various ways both right and wrong to love one’s own country – then, the “expat” either attempts to transform his new home into something more accommodating to his needs through some kind of activism or simply leaves. What he did not realize was that having a homeland and, correspondingly, place in history is not like renting an apartment in a pleasant neighborhood but rather more akin to accepting the inheritance, where both property, but also the debts of the ancestor are passed on to descendant.
Belonging to people is a qualification of man as the historical being, just like belonging to one of two sexes both limits and defines one as human being in general; therefore, it transcends and ontologically predates modern nationalism and is, in a certain sense, an impediment to development of the more extreme forms of nationalism based upon modern political myths as opposed to real historical formation of the given people. None of the qualities that express human existence can be removed without consequent erosion of all others because the eidos of man cannot be reduced to a single one element but exists only in cohabitation of all of them. However, in our age the dominant outlook seems to be the diametrically opposite: all determinations are eligible to be erased for the sake of individual’s ability to choose, even to the point of falling into illusion that such choice has ontological force, i.e. that every individual conscious actor can create its own being. All the revolutionary changes in postmodern age seem to presuppose this assumption; that’s why the equalizing of homo- and heterosexuality cannot stop at homosexual marriage and has to go further into direction of making inborn sexual determinations a matter of choice; also, that’s why the heroes of the classics of European literature and great historical personages must be re-imagined as belonging to non-European peoples; finally, that’s why in certain parts of the West one already cannot publicly affirm that he belongs to people, without being automatically denigrated, because the nationality, albeit a modern political form, is always rooted in the pre-modern factuality of everyone being a member of the certain people which is an elementary part of being a person but in no way the matter of personal choice, save for the choice to accept or deny it. This revolutionary process, however, is not primarily a political, but rather a metaphysical one, its final purpose being liberating the abstract individual from all constraints.
Yet it certainly has political expression, which carries it further, and in order for such politics to fulfill its purpose of creating a certain kind of intellectual climate where completely counter-intuitive propositions become perceived as natural, i.e. in order for it to be accepted and supported by the sovereign political subject of Western democracies, their citizens, two conditions must be met. First, there has to exist in individual and collective – and ‘the collective’ becomes the necessary dialectical correlate of ‘the individual’ when the real distinctions of “man”, “woman” and “peoples” have been denied, making these determinations meaningless – an intellectual laziness of cosmic proportions, that is: the laziness which prevents revulsion to interiorizing the most obvious contradictions; second, there has to exist an absolute indifference towards everything lost in this process, i.e. absolute disregard for all determinants of human being, save for the individual choice – with its transformation into a collective one, as Covid19 crisis has showed, never too far around the corner.
What then, I ask, people of this sort can possibly mean when they shout, squeal, but mostly copy&paste: “Slava herojima, Slava Ukrajini!”?
The question is not a rhetorical one. I genuinely don’t know.
But I could make a few conjectures.
What happened in Ukraine in the last week of February was the triumph of the wild card – the unforeseen and unforeseeable variable won the geopolitical game before it properly started.
This wild card was free will.
Since the inception of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 almost all one could hear about the matter was that one country and its people found themselves in the tragic position of being stuck between East and West; Ukrainians are, so the proverbial wisdom pontificated, a bargaining chip in the great game between the dominant Western powers and Russian quasi-empire limping its way into regional ascendancy. The image provided infinite room to differ about whether one loves, hates, pities or denigrates Ukrainians but all could agree upon one thing: their insignificance. They were never, or extremely rarely, considered as autonomous subject of the political clash, but rather as inhabitants of the great patch of flat land whose very name spells its doom to forever be a huge dirt road between East and West.
Yet they hardly figured into analysis as an independent actor.
Well, lo and behold, this is precisely what they turned out to be, under the eyes of the whole world.
In Ukraine, no matter the outcome of the war, not only Russia, but also geopolitical realism of the “great spaces” in general got a sucker punch that should never be forgotten: the unpredictable happened, the wild card became – if even for a brief moment in history – a trump card; and now nothing will be the same, not because Russia seems to have made a final cut with Europe – something that was in the cards for better part of modernity – but because the unpredictable happened and, if this is so, all optics by which the events where observed and calculated until now is put into question.
People of Ukraine made a decision to defend their home and unified around this free, autonomous, decision. I find it infinitely ironic that better part of far Western rightist and nationalists, especially younger ones, who constantly advocate for the rebirth of nationalism, now root for Russians who want to destroy the purest currently observable instance of one people’s national unity for the sake of their poor man’s supra-national project.
Yet what does all this have to do with “European values” of inclusivity, sustainability and fight against the climate change, so that everyone can cheer “Slava!” without becoming a backward nationalist?
One of the accusations the Patriarch of the Russian Church used as a punch line in his homily against Ukrainians was their commitment to the West and its “Gay Parades”. Could this be the reason why Westerners, as the one we have put forward as an example, cheer without fear that they could be betting on the wrong horse?
I am fairly certain that organizing the Gay Pride events – an obligatory political act of obedience serving to signal, wittingly or unwittingly, readiness to dissolve the core of the given nation, because the dissolution of sexual differences dissolves the political community altogether – is not something people forging their nation in blood would see as the light at the end of the tunnel they are currently traversing. I also doubt that they are doing it in order to initiate fair and honest debate on multiplication of personal pronouns and ability of men to use female public toilets.
Most peoples of Eastern Europe are to a different degree struggling against political engineering of this sort precisely because they are aware that their nationhood is not a spent legacy but an achievement in the making, sometimes won with considerable sacrifices, and sacrifices Ukrainians are currently being forced to make are on the scale not seen in Europe since WWII.
One has to bear in mind that what peoples of post-communist European countries mean by the word “transition” is not the same thing EU administrators mean by it; while the former consider “transition” to essentially mean reintegration into European civilization, entailing, among other things, the opportunity to become autonomous subjects of history, the latter obviously see it as meaning the exact opposite – a participation in the dissolution of Europe as a historical given and replacing it with the supranational project that at its core – oh, the irony – is being steered by certain Western European states that albeit they systematically denigrated their own historical roots, obviously haven’t simultaneously abandoned their drive to control Europe.
How conformist dwellers of the semi-supranational system think and feel about nations in the birth pangs?
Well, we furnished some examples that make the matter crystal clear.
They are not merely critical about the necessity of belonging to people and, consequently, of employing one’s free will in affirmation and defense of one’s home in history, no matter how unpleasant it might be.
They don’t even know something like that exists.
So, for them, Slava is probably, at best, a cheer for their own selves – what else there is? – and their “European values”, freely chosen on the “marketplace of ideas”.
In this sense, the Eastern Europe is a place where “values” are not really established properly, but is temporarily exculpated by its geopolitical role of the bulwark against the barbarian invasions from the East.
Also, and more importantly, it is a place to where people living in the fantasy world can safely delegate reality; early nationalist ideologists used to do this regularly in creating their foundation myths of “noble savages”, “heavenly peoples” and “simple peasants” now made obsolete by the ideological matrix of greater sophistication, where inherent violence of expansive nationalism is being trumped by the cosmic tedium of expansive individualism.
None of it has any real connection to Ukraine in whose Slava the peons are currently being written.
But, let us not forget, I am not writing this in Slava of Ukraine; wouldn’t write it even in Slava of my own patch of land, which passed through similar kind of baptism in blood although it never got catapulted into status of geopolitical belle de jour, cheered on by almost all the Western world. Anyone familiar with the subject of war knows that even the most justified defensive war sooner or later starts to resemble its opposite and I believe Ukraine will not be an exception in that regard.
I write this because of the love for truth. And what one can glimpse of it in all of this is that human being is not an indifferent individual without properties, but the creature determined by – but also determining – history; we have been treated with a rare moment when one could see how unpredictable act can change the course of things and trump “realist” geopolitical predictions and explanations.
As every truth is true insofar it participates in the first Truth, so, for those of keen gaze, the glimpse revealed that author of history is not the one who calculates but the One Who creates unimpeded by invisible, but very real, borders of the East and West.
To this uncalculating and incalculable Truth I’ll give my Slava as it is the only way to perhaps join few of those miserable Russian kids conscripted to die in the mud into the cheer for the freedom of their foe. Who knows, it might just work now that finally they’ve been consecrated to the heart of the sovereign whose power is measured only by mercy.
Therefore,
Slava Bogu!
Branko Malić
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I find this article to be very flaccid and quite frankly unworthy of the usually bespoke quality of analysis that you feature here on Kali Tribune. More specifically I fear that you have barked up the wrong tree with your unquestioning assimilation of a narrative that is conductive to the interests of the Nazi collaborator glorifying regime in Kiev. The positions you have espoused in the past few weeks are absolutely stunning and quite frankly, heart breaking. I refrained from responding thus far, because I don’t hold it against someone to take a side contrary to my own on a genuinely divisive issue. I am aware of a great deal of Catholic writers who oppose Russia’s (or more specifically the Kremlin’s) fateful decision to escalate this unfortunate long-brewing conflict into full blown warfare. If that was the genuine extent of your position on this issue, then I would have nothing critical to offer, even though we would be on two different sides of the fence. When I disagree on principle, then I prefer to do so in silence. But the problem is that you haven’t just taken such a side here. You have quite simply paved over everything that you have said and written about in the past with your new found affinity with some of the worst terrorist organizations active in the world right now.
Are you the same Branco Malic? Are you the same person who meticulously mapped out the means by which post-nazi fringe groups are liable to take over mainstream ideological movements by virtue of the latter’s openness to postmodern digitally mediated idea-formations? Are you the same person who all this time, warned his readers to avoid getting sucked into political narratives favoring a particular interest group that have no bearing on reality? Are you the same person who warned that supporting a movement whose origins lie in the bowels of Serrano/Evola inspired far right branch of occult could potentially endanger their very spiritual wellbeing?
To seriously believe that an organization such as Azov (as a token example of a bevy of similar ultra-right “nationalist” band-formations active in Ukraine right now) is nothing but a victim of Kremlin’s malign propaganda seeking to blacken its pristine name, requires a degree of cognitive dissonance that is quite frankly downright destructive for a sane person to uphold. It would be the equivalent of claiming that the Waffen SS was nothing but a outdoor sporting club before 1945. In any case, I would dare you to go to Ukraine yourself and say that to the faces of those whose family members were murdered, tortured, beaten or otherwise brutalized by this particular terrorist gang.
I can assure you, that the sources from which I draw my opinions are not RT or any of the Kremlin-bullish Anglophone blogs such as the Duran. I personally know people who were called up for draft and are currently serving in the Ukrainian military faced up against the Russian forces. I know of people whose generations served in the Russian and Soviet armies. Most of my Russian speaking circle of friends happens to be of Ukrainian ethnicity. During liturgy in my “Third Rome’ church, we say prayers for peace, for the salvation of both Ukraine and Russia and for their mutual return to Christ. What they all agree upon, is the complete and utter farcical and fictive nature of the the current ideology that seeks to drive an impenetrable wedge between the Russian and Ukrainian people. I mean yes they are different people, nobody doubts that. They could and should have a separate state, contained within the borders of present Ukraine. Nobody in “Third Rome” has a problem with that. There is a strong affinity between the average Russian and the Ukrainian, a deeply held feeling of a shared cultural bond and common historical destiny. Countless Russians have family origins stretching for generations in Ukraine, just as countless Ukrainians have deeply held ties of friendship and co-lineage in Russia.
Slava Ukraini isn’t just some generic phrase of national praise. In this specific context it is being used as a rallying call used to identify one as a Banderite, that is to say one who extols Nazi collaborators in WW2. It is in fact a variation of “sieg heil”, as the word slava means to hail. Millions of Russians and Ukrainians fought side by side and died heaped on top of one to forever eradicate this ideological strain from the domain of history. Even the tiniest map marker in Ukraine has a story that can testify to the bitter human cost of this struggle.
I retain a certain faint hope that your writings stem from your lack of knowledge of the Russian language, and hence lack of basic familiarity of the true extent of the horror that the people in the Donbass region, as well as a silent majority of Ukrainians who do not buy into this media driven anti-Russia hysteria, have experienced over the past 8 years. If anything, judging by your past writings describing Yugoslavia, the residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics seem to be close to you Croats have been faced with during your very own civil conflict. So the irony is that what is happening in the Ukraine is the reverse of what occurred in your very own country. In that case please please please, reconsider the line of reasoning that you have adopted, at least with regards to the nazi terror band formations that you should brook no sympathy with.
I’m a supporter of genuine Ukrainian nationalism just as I’m a supporter of the Ukrainian nation. Genuine Ukrainian nationalism is not anti-Russian, and never has been. What I see unfolding right now, I assure you, has nothing to do with the interests of the Ukrainian nationhood. It is a country that has fallen into the firm grip of the powers of darkness and Chaos, and sadly I have no hopes for the veil lifting any time soon, regardless of the outcome of the Kremlin military operation.
Some people I care for very much have family members living in the Ukraine. I would like to see their future life unfold without the existence of Azov and similar terrorist organizations. Since you have apparently voiced your full blown backing for such band formations and their ideology, it behooves me to regrettably withdraw my financial support for Kali Tribune.
Then as a parting token I give you this mindful reminder of which side you have chosen:
https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html
Same to you then.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/ukraine-propaganda-war-international-pr-firms-dc-lobbyists-cia-cutouts/280012/
@HanFei: I know people with Romanian relatives in the Odessa region, who fled to Romania as soon as the war began. Mind you, the Romanian minority is not recognized currently by the Ukrainian state and the Romanians have been treated poorly until now by the Kiev regime.
Yet, these people chose to flee, rather than await their “liberators”…why is that?
Also, around here, we have two expressions based on historical experience to inquire about why someone who is in a hurry: either “are the Turks coming? Or are the Russians coming?”.
Why is that?
Surely, there is a lot of dirt on the Ukrainian side as well, as is in every war. But here you have the Kremlin deliberately and openly praising the Soviet Regime as “liberators of Europe” and the current regime as being its epigone.
Any regime which identifies claims any kind of admiration and.continuity with the Soviet Union is from the start compromised in the eyes of all who actually had to live under the boots of these “liberators”
The Russian press is currently posting Ilya Ehrenburg style articles…
I should also make it clear that my definition of the term “nazi” differs from that commonly used by Russian media figures. The latter simply use it to mean anyone who’s anti-Russian or is simply a member of any nation that participated on the side of the Axis in WW2. Furthermore the leftists have also poisoned the term, by basically smearing it on anybody espousing traditional conservative values (even though historical nazism and Italian fascism were firmly anti-conservative). I mean it in a much more narrow sense, that is to say those who uphold the idea that their surroundings need to be radically cleansed from the racially impure element, and who furthermore, in context of the development of nazi ideology in the aftermath of the war, embrace the mystical aspects and symbolism associated directly with the Third Reich.
What has been unfolding in the Ukraine these past 8 years fully corresponds to the definition I have laid out above, and also to the general formula of regime capture that Branco has outlined in his series of articles on the 09A and the general post-nazi phenomenon. The fact that he customarily ties such organizations with the Kremlin, is somewhat misguided, but not entirely factually wrong. Most of the nazi groups currently active in Ukraine have a thick percentage of its membership hailing from Russia. For many years, they were handled and raised by Putin’s close tactical aide de camp, Surkov, as a way of pressuring the Ukrainian leadership to adopt a pro-Kremlin stance. This is why the ideology of these groups is not strictly speaking, Ukrainian nationalism, but pan-Aryanism with the Slavic world (as opposed to the German), namely Kievan Rus (Ukraine) at its centre. The leader of one of these groups, I believe Avakov, was one of the trainer-leaders of Kremlin’s Nashi youth movement. Later, they found a better source of funding to advance their aims, the CIA and liberal NGOs such as the Open Society foundation, in front of which they put up a “liberal” face. A perfect insight role if you will.
This is why I consider the present day Ukraine to be an illegitimate state. This is why I believe it has to be destroyed (I’m talking about the STATE not the NATION), either by means of an internal restructuring, which now seems to be exceedingly unlikely given the near total capture or severe intimidation of government institutions by nazi groups, or preferably by an external coalition of responsible states with sane leaderships. Such a destruction might not necessarily be accomplished by military means, but by political ones, considering that at present, Ukraine has no means to sustain itself for even a day without foreign backing.
The West could have for example publicly pronounced something to the extent of “the condition of us imposing a no fly zone, and possibly even providing direct military support to Ukraine hinges on its willingness to clean up its home front first. This means to disband all nazi band formations, dismiss all members of government and police associated with them, and arrest its leadership, outlaw the glorification of Stepan Bandera and associated war criminals and cease all discrimination of the Russian speaking population on the basis of language or cultural affinity”. Such an action would have also knocked out the chief basis of support for this war among the majority of the Russians.
Of course this is a rhetorical question. It assumes the “West” gives a damn about Ukraine, Russia or collective security interests of the European continent. What the West wants is to impose its system of management and increasingly mechanized methods control over hyper conditioned, commercially exploitable populations everywhere regardless of the consequences. This for a better lack of phrasing is what is meant by “liberal democracy”. In order to achieve this goal throughout the globe, it needs highly fertile soil upon which to plant GMO crops en masse, and a cheap source of almost inexhaustible energy. These two economic precepts happen to have the names of two nation-states attached to them, which are currently, and quite conveniently, engaged in a process of mutual self-destruction.
This is why I have come to stress the errors that Branco is committing with regards to this matter. He’s wrong even from his own perspective rooted in European traditional sense of nationhood. He has become so engorged by this mainstream media narrative (I dunno what else to call it), which figures Kremlin and Russia as the main source of existential evil in the world, that he apparently failed to see the extent of what has been truly unfolding in Ukraine.
All right, let us bring this to a logical end. What follows applies to anyone who wants to comment on this subject. Below I will paste the article from RIA Novosti, dated 03.04.2022. For those who don’t know, RIA Novosti is Russian official news service and is completely in line with what Kremlin wants Russians to hear and believe. I am putting forward Russian original and translation into English. Anyone who wants to paint this situation as anything else than what it is must prove that the author of the article is not saying what he is in fact saying. Simple as that. Mind you that I am providing you with “Russian narrative”, meant primarily for Russians. Just prove that “tehnopol” who wrote it doesn’t mean what he’s saying, because if he does – and, rest assured, he does – people who support it have no bussiness commenting on this website.
This is all I have to say on the matter. Following is the Russian original and below you’ll find an English translation:
Что Россия должна сделать с Украиной
“Еще в апреле прошлого года мы писали о неизбежности денацификации Украины. Нацистская, бандеровская Украина, враг России и инструмент Запада по уничтожению России нам не нужна. Сегодня вопрос денацификации перешел в практическую плоскость.
Денацификация необходима, когда значительная часть народа — вероятнее всего, его большинство — освоено и втянуто нацистским режимом в свою политику. То есть тогда, когда не работает гипотеза “народ хороший — власть плохая”. Признание этого факта — основа политики денацификации, всех ее мероприятий, а сам факт и составляет ее предмет.
Украина находится именно в такой ситуации. То, что украинский избиратель голосовал за “мир Порошенко” и “мир Зеленского”, не должно вводить в заблуждение — украинцев вполне устраивал кратчайший путь к миру через блицкриг, на который и намекали прозрачно два последних украинских президента при своем избрании. Именно такой метод “умиротворения” внутренних антифашистов — через тотальный террор — и был использован в Одессе, Харькове, Днепропетровске, Мариуполе, других русских городах. И это вполне устроило украинского обывателя. Денацификация — это комплекс мероприятий по отношению к нацифицированной массе населения, которая технически не может быть подвергнута прямому наказанию в качестве военных преступников.
Нацисты, взявшие в руки оружие, должны быть по максимуму уничтожены на поле боя. Не следует проводить существенных различий между ВСУ и так называемыми нацбатами, а также примкнувшей к этим двум видам военных формирований территориальной обороной. Все они равно причастны к запредельной жестокости в отношении мирного населения, равно виновны в геноциде русского народа, не соблюдают законы и обычаи войны. Военные преступники и активные нацисты должны быть примерно и показательно наказаны. Должна быть проведена тотальная люстрация. Ликвидированы и запрещены любые организации, связавшие себя с практикой нацизма. Однако, помимо верхушки, виновна и значительная часть народной массы, которая является пассивными нацистами, пособниками нацизма. Они поддерживали нацистскую власть и потакали ей. Справедливое наказание этой части населения возможно только как несение неизбежных тягот справедливой войны против нацистской системы, ведущейся по возможности бережно и осмотрительно в отношении гражданских лиц. Дальнейшая денацификация этой массы населения состоит в перевоспитании, которое достигается идеологическими репрессиями (подавлением) нацистских установок и жесткой цензурой: не только в политической сфере, но обязательно также в сфере культуры и образования. Именно через культуру и образование была подготовлена и осуществлена глубокая массовая нацификация населения, закрепленная обещанием дивидендов от победы нацистского режима над Россией, нацистской пропагандой, внутренним насилием и террором, а также восьмилетней войной с восставшим против украинского нацизма народом Донбасса.
Денацификация может быть проведена только победителем, что предполагает (1) его безусловный контроль над процессом денацификации и (2) власть, обеспечивающую такой контроль. В этом отношении денацифицируемая страна не может быть суверенна. Денацифицирующее государство — Россия — не может исходить в отношении денацификации из либерального подхода. Идеология денацификатора не может оспариваться виновной стороной, подвергаемой денацификации. Признание Россией необходимости денацификации Украины означает признание невозможности крымского сценария для Украины в целом. Впрочем, этот сценарий был невозможен в 2014 году и в восставшем Донбассе. Лишь восьмилетнее сопротивление нацистскому насилию и террору привело к внутреннему сплочению и осознанному однозначному массовому отказу от сохранения какого-либо единства и связи с Украиной, определившей себя как нацистское общество.
Сроки денацификации никак не могут быть менее одного поколения, которое должно родиться, вырасти и достигнуть зрелости в условиях денацификации. Нацификация Украины продолжалась более 30 лет — начиная как минимум с 1989 года, когда украинский национализм получил легальные и легитимные формы политического самовыражения и возглавил движение за “независимость”, устремившись к нацизму.
Особенность современной нацифицированной Украины — в аморфности и амбивалентности, которые позволяют маскировать нацизм под стремление к “независимости” и “европейскому” (западному, проамериканскому) пути “развития” (в реальности — к деградации), утверждать, что на Украине “нет никакого нацизма, лишь частные единичные эксцессы”. Нет ведь ни главной нацистской партии, ни фюрера, ни полноценных расовых законов (только их урезанный вариант в виде репрессий против русского языка). Как следствие — никакой оппозиции и сопротивления режиму.
Однако все перечисленное не делает украинский нацизм “лайт-версией” нацизма немецкого времен первой половины ХХ века. Напротив — поскольку украинский нацизм свободен от подобных “жанровых” (политтехнологических по существу) рамок и ограничений, он свободно разворачивается как фундаментальная основа всякого нацизма — как европейский и, в наиболее развитой форме, американский расизм. Поэтому денацификация не может быть проведена компромиссно, на основе формулы типа “НАТО — нет, ЕС — да”. Коллективный Запад сам является проектировщиком, источником и спонсором украинского нацизма, в то время как западенские бандеровские кадры и их “историческая память” — лишь один из инструментов нацификации Украины. Укронацизм несет в себе не меньшую, а большую угрозу миру и России, чем немецкий нацизм гитлеровского извода.
Название “Украина”, по-видимому, не может быть сохранено в качестве титула никакого полностью денацифицированного государственного образования на освобожденной от нацистского режима территории. Вновь созданные на свободном от нацизма пространстве народные республики должны и будут расти из практики хозяйственного самоуправления и социального обеспечения, восстановления и модернизации систем жизнеобеспечения населения.
Их политическая устремленность на деле не может быть нейтральной — искупление вины перед Россией за отношение к ней как к врагу может реализоваться только в опоре на Россию в процессах восстановления, возрождения и развития. Никаких “планов Маршалла” для этих территорий допускать нельзя. Никакого “нейтралитета” в идеологическом и практическом смысле, совместимого с денацификацией, быть не может. Кадры и организации, являющиеся инструментом денацификации в новых денацифицируемых республиках, не могут не опираться на прямую силовую и организационную поддержку России.
Денацификация неизбежно будет являться и деукраинизацией — отказом от начатого еще советской властью масштабного искусственного раздувания этнического компонента самоидентификации населения территорий исторических Малороссии и Новороссии. Будучи инструментом коммунистической сверхвласти, после ее падения искусственный этноцентризм не остался бесхозным. Он перешел в этом своем служебном качестве под начало другой сверхвласти (власти, стоящей над государствами) — сверхвласти Запада. Его необходимо вернуть в естественные границы и лишить политической функциональности.
В отличие, скажем, от Грузии и стран Прибалтики, Украина, как показала история, невозможна в качестве национального государства, а попытки “построить” таковое закономерно приводят к нацизму. Украинизм — искусственная антирусская конструкция, не имеющая собственного цивилизационного содержания, подчиненный элемент чужой и чуждой цивилизации. Дебандеризации будет самой по себе недостаточно для денацификации — бандеровский элемент есть лишь исполнитель и ширма, маскировка для европейского проекта нацистской Украины, поэтому денацификация Украины — это и ее неизбежная деевропеизация.
Бандеровская верхушка должна быть ликвидирована, ее перевоспитание невозможно. Социальное “болото”, активно и пассивно ее поддержавшее действием и бездействием, должно пережить тяготы войны и усвоить пережитый опыт как исторический урок и искупление своей вины. Те же, кто не поддерживал нацистский режим, пострадал от него и развязанной им войны в Донбассе, должны быть консолидированы и организованы, должны стать опорой новой власти, ее вертикалью и горизонталью. Исторический опыт показывает, что трагедии и драмы военного времени идут на пользу народам, соблазнившимся и увлекшимся ролью врага России.
Денацификация как цель специальной военной операции в рамках самой этой операции понимается как военная победа над киевским режимом, освобождение территорий от вооруженных сторонников нацификации, ликвидация непримиримых нацистов, пленение военных преступников, а также создание системных условий для последующей денацификации мирного времени.
Последняя, в свою очередь, должна начинаться с организации местных органов самоуправления, милиции и обороны, очищенных от нацистских элементов, запуска на их базе учредительных процессов основания новой республиканской государственности, интеграции этой государственности в тесное взаимодействие с российским ведомством по денацификации Украины (вновь созданным или переделанным, скажем, из Россотрудничества), с принятия под российским контролем республиканской нормативной базы (законодательства) по денацификации, определения границ и рамок прямого применения российского права и российской юрисдикции на освобожденной территории в сфере денацификации, создания трибунала по преступлениям против человечности на бывшей Украине. В этом отношении Россия должна выступить хранителем Нюрнбергского процесса.
Все вышесказанное означает, что для достижения целей денацификации необходима поддержка населения, переход его на сторону России после освобождения от террора, насилия и идеологического давления киевского режима, после вывода из информационной изоляции. Разумеется, должно пройти некоторое время, за которое люди оправятся от шока военных действий, убедятся в долгосрочных намерениях России — в том, что “их не бросят”. Невозможно предвидеть заранее, на каких именно территориях такая масса населения составит критически необходимое большинство. “Католическая провинция” (Западная Украина в составе пяти областей) вряд ли войдет в состав пророссийских территорий. Линия отчуждения, однако, будет найдена опытным путем. За ней сохранится враждебная России, но принудительно нейтральная и демилитаризованная Украина с запрещенным по формальным признакам нацизмом. Туда уедут ненавистники России. Гарантией сохранения этой остаточной Украины в нейтральном состоянии должна быть угроза немедленного продолжения военной операции при несоблюдении перечисленных требований. Возможно, для этого потребуется постоянное российское военное присутствие на ее территории. От линии отчуждения и до российской границы будет располагаться территория потенциальной интеграции в русскую цивилизацию, антифашистскую по своей внутренней природе.
Операция по денацификации Украины, начавшаяся с военной фазы, будет следовать в мирное время той же логике этапов, что и военная операция. На каждом из них нужно будет добиваться необратимых изменений, которые и станут результатами соответствующего этапа. При этом необходимые начальные шаги денацификации можно определить следующим образом:
—ликвидация вооруженных нацистских формирований (под которыми понимаются любые вооруженные формирования Украины, включая ВСУ), а также обеспечивающей их активность военной, информационной, образовательной инфраструктуры;
—формирование органов народного самоуправления и милиции (обороны и правопорядка) освобожденных территорий, защищающих население от террора подпольных нацистских групп;
—инсталляция российского информационного пространства;
—изъятие учебных материалов и запрет образовательных программ всех уровней, содержащих нацистские идеологические установки;
—массовые следственные действия по установлению персональной ответственности за военные преступления, преступления против человечности, распространение нацистской идеологии и поддержку нацистского режима;
—люстрация, обнародование имен пособников нацистского режима, привлечение их к принудительному труду по восстановлению разрушенной инфраструктуры в порядке наказания за нацистскую деятельность (из числа тех, к кому не будет применена смертная казнь или лишение свободы);
—принятие на местном уровне при кураторстве России первичных нормативных актов денацификации “снизу”, запрет всех видов и форм возрождения нацистской идеологии;
—установление мемориалов, памятных знаков, памятников жертвам украинского нацизма, увековечение памяти героев борьбы с ним;
—включение комплекса антифашистских и денацификационных норм в конституции новых народных республик;
—создание постоянно действующих органов денацификации на период 25 лет.
Союзников по денацификации Украины у России не будет. Поскольку это сугубо русское дело. А также поскольку искоренению подвергнется не просто бандеровская версия нацистской Украины, но в том числе и прежде всего западный тоталитаризм, навязанные программы цивилизационной деградации и распада, механизмы подчинения сверхвласти Запада и США.
Для проведения плана денацификации Украины в жизнь России самой придется окончательно расстаться с проевропейскими и прозападными иллюзиями, осознать себя как последнюю инстанцию защиты и сохранения тех ценностей исторической Европы (Старого Света), которые того заслуживают и от которых Запад в конечном счете отказался, проиграв в борьбе за самого себя. Эта борьба продолжалась весь ХХ век и выразилась в мировой войне и русской революции, неразрывно связанных друг с другом.
Россия сделала все возможное для спасения Запада в ХХ веке. Она реализовала главный западный проект, альтернативный капитализму, победившему национальные государства, — социалистический, красный проект. Она раздавила немецкий нацизм — чудовищное порождение кризиса западной цивилизации. Последним актом русского альтруизма была протянутая Россией рука дружбы, за что Россия получила чудовищный удар 1990-х.
Все, что Россия сделала для Запада, она сделала за свой счет, приношением величайших жертв. Запад в конечном счете отверг все эти жертвы, обесценил вклад России в разрешение западного кризиса, решил отомстить России за ту помощь, которую она бескорыстно предоставила. Дальше Россия пойдет своим путем, не волнуясь о судьбе Запада, опираясь на другую часть своего наследия — лидерство в глобальном процессе деколонизации.
В рамках этого процесса у России есть высокий потенциал партнерских и союзнических отношений со странами, которые Запад угнетал столетиями и которые не собираются снова надевать его ярмо. Без русского жертвоприношения и борьбы эти страны бы не освободились. Денацификация Украины есть в то же время ее деколонизация, что предстоит понять населению Украины по мере того, как оно начнет освобождаться от дурмана, соблазна и зависимости так называемого европейского выбора.” src: https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html
Translation in English:
“What should Russia do with Ukraine?”
“We wrote about the inevitability of Ukraine’s denazification as early as last April. We do not need a Nazi, Banderite Ukraine, the enemy of Russia and a tool of the West used to destroy Russia. Today, the denazification issue has taken a practical turn.
Denazification is necessary when a considerable number of population (very likely most of it) has been subjected to the Nazi regime and engaged into its agenda. That is, when the “good people — bad government” hypothesis does not apply. Recognizing this fact forms the backbone of the denazification policy and all its measures, while the fact itself constitutes its subject.
This is the situation Ukraine has found itself in. The fact that the Ukrainian voter was choosing between the “Poroshenko peace” and the “Zelenskyy peace” must not deceive you: Ukrainians were quite happy with the shortest way to peace via a blitzkrieg, which was strongly alluded to by the last two Ukrainian presidents when they were elected. This was the method used to “pacify” home antifascists in Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro[the RU original uses the city’s former name “Dnipropetrovsk”], Mariupol, and other Russian cities — the method of total terror. And ordinary Ukrainians were fine with it. Denazification is a set of actions aimed at the nazified bulk of the population, who technically cannot be directly punished as war criminals.
Those Nazis who took up arms must be destroyed on the battlefield, as many of them as possible. No significant distinction should be made between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the so-called “nationalist battalions,” as well as the Territorial Defense, who have joined the two other types of military units. They are all equally complicit in the horrendous violence towards civilians, equally complicit in the genocide of the Russian people, and they don’t comply with the laws and customs of war. War criminals and active Nazis must be punished in such a way as to provide an example and a demonstration. A total lustration must be conducted. All organizations involved in Nazi actions must be eliminated and prohibited. However, besides the highest ranks, a significant number of common people are also guilty of being passive Nazis and Nazi accomplices. They supported the Nazi authorities and pandered to them. A just punishment for this part of the population can only be possible through bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, waged as carefully and sparingly as possible relates civilians. The further denazification of this bulk of the population will take the form of re-education through ideological repressions (suppression) of Nazi paradigms and a harsh censorship not only in the political sphere but also in the spheres of culture and education. It was through culture and education that the pervasive large-scale Nazification of the population was conducted, ensured by the guarantees of dividends from the Nazi regime victory over Russia, by the Nazi propaganda, internal violence and terror, and the 8-year-long war against the people of Donbas, who have rebelled against the Ukrainian Nazism.
Denazification can only be conducted by the winner, which means (1) their unconditional control over the denazification process and (2) the authority that can ensure such control. For this purpose, a country that is being denazified cannot possess sovereignty. The denazifier state, Russia, cannot take a liberal approach towards denazification. The denazifier ideology cannot be challenged by the guilty party that is being denazified. When Russia admits that Ukraine needs to be denazified, it essentially admits that the Crimea scenario cannot be applied to the whole Ukraine. In all fairness, this scenario was also not possible in the insurgent Donbas in 2014. Only the 8-year-long rebellion against the Nazi violence and terror managed to result in an internal unification and deliberate, explicit, broad-scale refusal of retaining any association with or relation to Ukraine, who has identified itself as a Nazi community.
The period of denazification can take no less than one generation that has to be born, brought upm and mature under the conditions of denazification. The nazification of Ukraine has been going on for more than 30 years — starting from as early as 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism was given legal and legitimate forms of political self-expression and led the movement for “independence”, setting a course for Nazism.
The current nazified Ukraine is characterized by its formlessness and ambivalence, which allow it to disguise Nazism as the aspiration to “independence” and the “European” (Western, pro-American) path of “development” (in reality, to degradation) and claim that “there is no Nazism” in Ukraine, “only few sporadic incidents.” Indeed, there isn’t a main Nazi party, no Führer, no full-fledged racial laws (only a cutdown version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result — no opposition or resistance against the regime.
However, all listed above doesn’t make Ukrainian Nazism a “light version” of the German Nazism of the first half of the 20th century. Quite the opposite: since Ukrainian Nazism is free from such “genre” norms and limitations (which are essentially a product of political technologies), it can spread freely just like a basis for any Nazism — both European and, in its most developed form, the American racism. That’s why there can be no compromise during denazification, as in the case of the “no to NATO, yes to EU” formula. The collective West is in itself the architect, source, and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism, while the Banderite supporters from Western Ukraine and their “historical memory” is just one of the tools of the nazification of Ukraine. Ukronazism poses a much bigger threat to the world and Russia than the Hitler version of German Nazism.
Apparently, the name “Ukraine” cannot be kept as a title of any fully denazified state entity on the territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The people’s republics, newly created on the territories free from Nazism, must and will develop on the basis of practices of economic self-government and social security, restoration and modernization of systems of essential services for the population.
Their political direction cannot be neutral in practice: the redemption of their guilt before Russia for treating it like an enemy can be manifested only by relying on Russia in the processes of restoration, revival, and development. No “Marshall Plans” can be allowed to happen on these territories. No “neutrality” in the ideological and practical sense that is compatible with denazification can be possible. Individuals and organizations who are to become tools of denazification in the new denazified republics cannot but rely on the direct organizational and force support from Russia.
Denazification will inevitably include de-ukrainization — the rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component in the self-identification of the population of the historical Malorossiya and Novorossiya territories, which was started by the Soviet authorities. Being a tool of the Communist superpower, this artificial ethnocentrism was not left unclaimed after its fall. It was transferred in its subservient role to a different superpower (the power above states) — the superpower of the West. It needs to be brought back within its natural boundaries and stripped of political functionality.
Unlike, for example, Georgia or the Baltic States, history has proved it impossible for Ukraine to exist as a nation-state, and any attempts to “build” such a nation-state naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construct that has no civilizational substance of its own, a subordinate element of an extraneous and alien civilization. Debanderization alone will not be enough for denazification: the Banderite element is only a hand and a screen, a disguise for the European project of the Nazi Ukraine, which is why the denazification of Ukraine means its inevitable de-europeanization.
The Banderite elites must be eliminated; their re-education is impossible. The social “bog,” which has actively and passively supported them through action and inaction, must go through the hardships of war and internalize the lived experience as a historical lesson and the redemption of its guilt. Those who didn’t support the Nazi regime and suffered from it and the war it started in Donbas must be consolidated and organized, must become the backbone of the new authorities, their vertical and horizontal framework. History has shown that the tragedies and dramas of the war time benefit the peoples who were tempted and carried away by their role as the enemy of Russia.
Denazification as a goal of the special military operation within the limits of the operation itself means a military victory over the Kyiv regime, the liberation of the territories from the armed supporters of nazification, the elimination of hard-line Nazis, the imprisonment of war criminals, and the creating of systemic conditions for further denazification in peacetime.
The latter, in its turn, must begin with the establishment of local governments, militia, and defense institutions, cleansed of Nazi elements, the launching on their basis of constituent processes to create a new republican statehood, the integration of this statehood into the close cooperation with the Russian agency on Ukraine denazification (newly established or reorganized on the basis of, for example, Rossotrudnichestvo), the adoption of the republican regulatory framework (legislation) on denazification under Russian control, the definition of boundaries and frameworks for the direct application of Russian law and Russian jurisdiction in the liberated territory in regard to denazification, the establishment of a tribunal for crimes against humanity in the former Ukraine. In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.
All of the above means that in order to achieve the denazification goals, the support of the population is necessary, as well as its transition to the Russian side after its liberation from the terror, violence, and ideological pressure of the Kyiv regime, and after their withdrawal from informational isolation. Of course, it will take some time for people to recover from the shock of military hostilities, to be convinced of Russia’s long-term intentions, meaning “they will not be abandoned.” It’s impossible to foresee exactly in which territories such a mass of the population will constitute a critically needed majority. The “Catholic province” (Western Ukraine, made up of five oblasts) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The exclusion line, however, will be found experimentally. Behind the line, a forcibly neutral and demilitarized Ukraine will remain, with the formally banned Nazism and hostile to Russia. This is where the haters of Russia will go. The threat of an immediate continuation of the military operation in case of non-compliance with the listed requirements must become a guarantee of the preservation of this obsolete Ukraine in a neutral state. Perhaps this will require a permanent Russian military presence on its territory. From the exclusion line to the Russian border, there will be a territory of potential integration into the Russian civilization, which is inherently anti-fascist.
The operation to denazify Ukraine, which began with a military phase, will follow the same logic of stages in peacetime as during the military operation. At each stage, it will be necessary to achieve irreversible changes, which will become the results of the corresponding stage. In this case, the necessary initial steps of denazification can be defined as follows:
— The elimination of armed Nazi formations (which means any armed formations of Ukraine, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as the military, informational, and educational infrastructure that ensures their activity;
— The establishment of people’s self-government institutions and militia (defense and law enforcement) of the liberated territories to protect the population from the terror of underground Nazi groups;
— The installation of the Russian information space;
— The seizure of educational materials and the prohibition of educational programs at all levels that contain Nazi ideological guidelines;
— Mass investigations aimed to establish personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the spread of Nazi ideology, and support for the Nazi regime;
— Lustration, making the names of accomplices of the Nazi regime public, involving them in forced labor to restore the destroyed infrastructure as punishment for Nazi activities (from among those who have not become subject to the death penalty or imprisonment);
— The adoption at the local level, under the supervision of Russia, of primary normative acts of denazification “from below,” a ban on all types and forms of the revival of Nazi ideology;
— The establishment of memorials, commemorative signs, monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, perpetuating the memory of the heroes of the struggle against it;
— The inclusion of a set of anti-fascist and denazification norms in the constitutions of the new people’s republics;
— The establishment of permanent denazification institutions for a period of 25 years.
Russia will have no allies in the denazification of Ukraine. Because this is a purely Russian business. And also because it is not just the Bandera version of Nazi Ukraine that will be eradicated. The process will also, and above all, affect Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, the mechanisms of subjugation under the superpower of the West and the United States.
In order to put the Ukraine denazification plan into practice, Russia itself will have to finally part with pro-European and pro-Western illusions, acknowledge itself as the last authority in protecting and preserving those values of historical Europe (the Old World) that deserve to preserve and that the West ultimately abandoned, losing the fight for itself. This struggle continued throughout the 20th century and found its expression in the world war and the Russian revolution, which were inextricably linked with each other.
Russia did everything possible to save the West in the 20th century. It implemented the main Western project that constituted an alternative to capitalism, which defeated the nation-states — the Socialist red project. It crushed German Nazism, a monstrous offspring of the crisis of Western civilization. The last act of Russian altruism was its outstretched hand of friendship, for which it received a monstrous blow in the 1990s.
Everything that Russia has done for the West, it has done at its own expense, by making the greatest sacrifices. The West ultimately rejected all these sacrifices, devalued Russia’s contribution to resolving the Western crisis, and decided to take revenge on Russia for the help that it had selflessly provided. From now on, Russia will follow its own way, not worrying about the fate of the West, relying on another part of its heritage — the leadership in the global process of decolonization.
As part of this process, Russia has a high potential for partnerships and alliances with countries that the West has oppressed for centuries and which are not going to put on its yoke again. Without Russian sacrifice and struggle, these countries would not have been liberated. The denazification of Ukraine is at the same time its decolonization, which the population of Ukraine will have to understand as it begins to free itself from the intoxication, temptation, and dependence of the so-called European choice.”
I think what the world needs the most right now is Jordan Peterson’s take on this situation.. Which one of his ten rules on how to live your life should Putin turn towards to fix this whole thing? My money is on cleaning his room.
You have cited a lengthy article in both languages without providing an argument of any sorts. While I can sort of glean the gist of what you’re trying to prove by doing so, you will need to articulate it yourself if you want your readers in this comment section to participate in your chain of thought.
I will point out your mistake specifically in this line: “RIA Novosti is Russian official news service and is completely in line with what Kremlin wants Russians to hear and believe.”
What follows is nothing but the opinion of the news article writer, who is a well known far right activist, which reflects the mainstream view of the patriotic circles in Russia long before Putin had even come to power. The reality is that neither you nor I have any inkling of what the Kremlin believes. Because it if were the case as described in this linked article, its policies and activities over the past 20 years would have been markedly different. For one, the style of governance that the current Kremlin regime represents, brooks no loyalty from its followers, and nothing but horrid aversion from its counterparts in neighboring regions. If anything I’d say it’s the opposite – a message, or more specifically an ultimatum to the Kremlin outlining what its supporters want it to achieve in Ukraine. Whether it is actually willing, or able to do so, is another matter entirely. Personally I wouldn’t stake any claims on it, given the current military/political situation that they have dug themselves into.
You didn’t answer the question.
Your linked article brings to mind a famous reggae song from the 1980s “Bad boy bad boy whatcha gonna do whatcha gonna do when they come for you”. Rather than referring to the police here as the songwriter of the band did, “they” would refer to Russian hordes.
On a serious note, do you mind doing a podcast on the historical roots of Ukrainian nationalism and identity, Stepan Bandera and Ukrainian collaboration with Nazism during WW2 and the resuscitation of these themes after the annexation of Crimea. And why all of this is a threat to Putin’s Great Russia project?
That particular fact is not a threat to Russian plans, because it is the pivot of their propaganda about Ukraine being an artificial and inherently evil nation.
Doing some research, I found out Stepan Bandera seems to have received the Hero of Ukraine honour from the Kremlin backed Yukashenko government?
Both Western allies and Soviets were careful to destroy ideological puppets installed by Axis, so there’s no historical continuity anyway. The Russians will raze to the ground everything they can as far as they can and call it “liberation”, that is the fact. I knew it from the beginning, as I’ve seen it before, but the trouble is that such alien state idea as the Russian one is hard to explain to people who never experienced anything like it. That’s why it is always demonstrated by blood, unfortunatelly. But once you see it for what it is, you’ll never forget it and no maskirovka will hide it anymore.
I’m absolutely baffled by the decisions of the Russian state…
They’ve taken decisions that have compromised their ability to rally support for the war every step of the way: invasion of Ukraine based on conflict restricted to Donbas; deliberate bombing of civilian centers, hospitals, etc and now mass killings of civilians after retreat..
Even in a amoral world of realpolitik, you make decisions based on a rational of improving your chances of winning the conflict.
I don’t know if the following statement is a stretch, but this is reminiscent of the accelerated mass murder the Nazis committed as they retreated on the Eastern front during WW2. Let’s kill as many Jews, Slavs, Roma, etc as we can before we must exit the city..
As a human being with a soul and a belief in morals, I don’t live in a world of realpolitik. Barbarism of this degree is completely incomprehensible. Whether it was the Nazis in WW2, Serbs in the Yugoslav Wars, Pakistanis in the Liberation of Bangladesh, foreign intervention was required to put an end to this evil.
I now believe the Russian states use of nuclear weapons is no longer an impossibility. Neutrality is no longer an option, Israel and India need to join in on the sanctions and side with democracies. Unfortunately, direct confrontation is no longer possible, we will have to rely on starving the Russian state until there is a coup that removes Putin and his cronies or the Russian state defaults and disintegrates. Unfortunately the chaos that ensues from both scenarios represents another danger for the world, the toppling of Saddam Hussein led to the creation of ISIS. We can’t afford to have something similar happen in Russia, because over there ISIS would have had nuclear weapons..
Nothing new for my neck of the woods, although I beleive Russians wouldn’t have slided into genocide if Ukrainians accepted that they are “artificial construct” and waved their hands in the air. But that was impossible from the beginning.
As for stopping the war, Russian state idea is incompatible with the existence of most, if not all, of Russia’s Western neighbours. Therefore, if you want a lasting solution, it would have to be a complete deconstruction of Russian political order at the root, akin to what allies did in Germany, and internal reform of the Russian Church.
None of this will happen, of course, unless it comes to total war.
Agreed. What’s needed is total war. Some Claus Von Clausewitz shit.
Or conversion from the inside.
What’s very interesting to me is the realization that Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution was a true outlier in Russian history, which seems to have been dominated by an absolute monarchy since it’s inception, a Hobbesian Leviathan. Rather than having the Church work in collaboration with the state, it seems here the Church is subservient to the state where the head of the church is chosen by the Sovereign.
Lenin and Bolshevism returned to a state of absolute leadership under Stalin.
It pains me to continue this back and forth, but you have regrettably chosen your side and I know better than to try to convince a stubborn Slav to change his mind.
The article that you’ve put forward as a dividing barrier between my views and yours, has no relevance to my position on this issue. Quite the contrary, it represents a type of thinking rooted in political happenings of the current time generally speaking divorced from the greater picture of the fate of civilizations and true purpose of man’s life on Earth.
You wish to know whether or not I acknowledge Ukraine as a nation. I think the better question would be, do I think Russia is a nation? No, I think it’s more of an ethnonym. In the sense that I view Russian identity as having formed on a series of lets put it, “superstructures”, of which the notion of a geopolitical landmass plays a major role, rather than a firm sense of rootedness in a specific language or bloodline. This is also confirmed by the theory that the ethnogenesis of Eurasian and European peoples is primarily distinguished by a territorial as opposed to hereditary basis for the identification of an in-group. Thus Ukraine has more in itself to call itself a nation in the European sense, though as always I say this with a strong caveat, since I do not see the distinction between Russians and Ukrainians as deriving necessarily from ethnicity.
No, I view Ukraine as fundamentally a cultural and political bridge between not only Europe and Russia but also between the Catholic and Orthodox worlds. Not even specifically religiously so, but rather mentally, through the Western methods of the purpose and application of reason. You see a reflection of this idea, taken so much for granted, in Soloviev, Gogol, Chaadaev and Bulgakov and many other Russian writers. It is said of Kiev that it is the most Russian of the Ukrainian cities. But Kiev is also the prettiest of the cities in the Russian speaking world (and most Kievans use no other language in daily speech) and one with the most sense of aesthetic architectural beauty that is characteristic of Europe. Such a sense can rarely be found most Russian cities, whose architecture tends to be monolithic, by design invoking a mixture of fear and awe. St. Petersburg is one such perfect example. An entire city of consisting of monuments, but without any sense of aesthetics. My grandfather used to call it “Bonegrad”. I understand this sounds quite russophobic coming from me, but I assure you it does not diminish my appreciation of the value of the city as a cultural landmark.
The loss of Ukraine from the Russian sphere, or its turning into an “anti-Russia” of sorts, whose national identity is entirely grounded on hatred against Russia, for either real or perceived reasons would spell disaster for the latter on a cultural and spiritual plane that is greater than any NATO invasion or occupation. It would firmly establish the political primacy of those so called “Eurasianists” who deny any sort of European origins of Russian civilization. Those segments of Orthodoxy who consider a genuine spiritual union between the two faiths to be out of the question will become firmly entrenched in the spiritual consciousness of the nation. This is why no head of state, no regime in Russia can allow such a thing to come to pass. It is for this reason I cannot accept a Ukraine whose foreign policy is directed entirely at the behest of the enemies of Russia. This is what influences my position over this issue more than some vague instinctual desire for expansionism.
As for the nazi groups. I consider them to be a political project initiated at first by the Kremlin (under a pan-Slavic pablum) and then picked up by the Ukrainian oligarchs and Western intelligence services. Though the grounds for their proliferation have been brewing for nearly 3 decades, beginning with the collapse of the Soviet Union. My concern over them is that such group serve as a perfect political vanguard for advancing the aims of the oligarchical-technocratic system of control and management we see unfolding throughout the globe. This is why I believe extremist terror groups driven by occult ideologies have a fundamental role to play in the near future, as would the struggle against them. Again this is based entirely on your own writings and my own observations of the ongoing events in Ukraine, Syria, Latin America, East Asia and elsewhere, as well as first hand accounts of persons whose lives were directly affected by these groups. Nothing I write is based on some blind adoption of some political narrative, which unfortunately cannot be said of yourself at the present moment.
It has all the relevance because it mirrors your views on the nature of two countries, as they are in line with general Russian rationale for invasion. After all, his view is shared by Prezident and Patriarch and one who supports Russia supports them.
The article is about mass executions and forced reeducations and you end up philosophizing about thinking rooted in political happenings of the current time. It looks like you really do belong to your Third Rome Church.
Looks like it’s spilling over to the balkans.. https://youtu.be/5pVh1HRRHM0
“Therefore, if you want a lasting solution, it would have to be a complete deconstruction of Russian political order at the root, akin to what allies did in Germany, and internal reform of the Russian Church. ”
And pray tell me, how do you expect to accomplish this without mass executions, deportations and forced reeducations?
“The Russians will raze to the ground everything they can as far as they can and call it “liberation”, that is the fact. I knew it from the beginning, as I’ve seen it before, but the trouble is that such alien state idea as the Russian one is hard to explain to people who never experienced anything like it. That’s why it is always demonstrated by blood, unfortunatelly.”
The last time Russia, or rather the Soviet Union, had intervened directly in your country was when it put an end to the Ustashist state, a regime so civilized and humane that even the Germans of the time had distanced themselves from it. So I don’t know what you’re on about. I will shamefully admit that whenever I hear the word “Croatia” the first thing that comes to my mind is “Jasenovac”. Apart from that I cannot name any notable cultural accomplishments of your country.
“The article is about mass executions and forced reeducations and you end up philosophizing about thinking rooted in political happenings of the current time.”
The Russians seek to overthrow the current government of Ukraine and replace its official state ideology, that happens to be amenable to the regional power interests of the current Russian state, just as the Austro-Hungarians did when they invented the extreme nationalist ideology currently espoused by Kiev. They do not seek to kill every Ukrainian. Don’t be stupid. If they did, they would turn their guns on the very people fighting in the ranks of the LNR and DNR, which forms the overwhelming bulk of the forces engaged in this conflict.
“After all, his view is shared by Prezident and Patriarch and one who supports Russia supports them.”
I don’t support Russia. I support Third Rome. Not the cuckoos in the Kremlin or the Sergianist “Patriarch”.
“It looks like you really do belong to your Third Rome Church.”
And you’re not? I’m asking honestly.
As per historical record, no Russian army, Red or otherwise, ever set foot in Croatia nor had anything to do with bringing down the NDH. They did, however, assist Tito in taking down Serbian Nazi puppet state. Interestingly enough, I accidentally learned the meaning of the word “silovanje” (“rape”) as a small child when Serbian family member talked about the courting methods of Russian soldiers.
The rest of the comment, I am sure, makes sense in Third Rome.
In the interests of brevity I will refrain from elaborating on historical details, but the specific brand of extreme nationalism espoused by the current Kiev regime is a fictitious construct created by the political machinations of several foreign states throughout history, among which the Kremlin played not the least hand. This, for lack of a better word, “Ukrainism”, is an artificial identification based on a false understanding of the history and ethnic origins of Ukraine. As a result we see the bloody absurdity unfolding in the last 8 years where one part is attempting to systematically eradicate another part which it feels is insufficiently hostile to its eastern neighbor. That does NOT mean the Ukrainian nation does not or should not exist, it simply means the current vector it has chosen is erroneous and self destructive, with or without a Russian aggression to worry about.
In case you haven’t caught on yet, I should make it clear that I’m leading you on with the way I’m using the term “Third Rome”. It is you who decided all of a sudden to assume that it simply refers to whichever foreign policy course Russia happens to take at any given moment, and thus completely disregard to its historiosophical meaning and why it has nothing to do with any single, specific state, people or region of the world. However, it’s perfectly acceptable for both Western Catholics and Eastern Orthodox to contemplate on this term and make appropriate reservation of it, since its roots extend long back before the schism. In fact my own understanding of this term comes more from Catholic authors, though in your parlance its more commonly referred to as “throne and altar”.
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/12/what-was-holy-roman-empire.html
To quote Dr. Feser
“According to traditional Catholic theology, the state also serves functions relevant to the realization of the supernatural end of salvation, such as protecting the Church. ”
This to my understanding, is what constitutes the essence behind the Third Rome idea, not the commonly assumed historical association with the dynastic Romanovs. Although that’s a story of its own. As far as specific nations go, I would lean towards hoping that this principle will be embodied in a newly consecrated China sometime in the near future. Apologies if I was not clear from the beginning.
For the sake of micro brevity I ll keep it even shorter: it is obvious that existence of any Ukraine as Ukraine is unacceptable to Russians, even from Pushkin onwards. As is the existence of many others.
But let us not repeat the obvious any more.