“There are no separate Russia or Ukraine, but one Holy Rus” – Elder Iona of Odessa
The year 2014 saw an unprecedented surge of patriotism in contemporary Russia, which resulted in popularizing the notion of the Russian World. One reason for increased patriotic sentiment was Crimea’s return to the home port after the overwhelmingly positive vote by its majority-Russian residents in a referendum one year ago. The onset of the liberation war in Donbass from the West-backed Kiev regime was the other. This war truly delineated the stakes for the existence of the Russian World. The latter is not an ethnic, but a civilizational concept that encompasses shared culture, history, and language in the Eurasian space within a traditionalist framework. To a certain extent and despite the obvious ideological differences, the Russian Empire and the USSR embodied the same geopolitical entity. A particularly noteworthy aspect of the ongoing crisis in Donbass is the symbolism—religious and historic—that surpasses the commonly used, but outdated Left-Right political spectrum. In the Russian context, this also means overcoming the Red-White divide of the Communist Revolution. That this war pushed Russians to examine their country’s raison d’être is somewhat remarkable: for two decades its citizens did not have an official ideology, prohibited by the Constitution that is based on Western models. The emergence of a new way of thinking in Russia will become clearer once we refer to the meaning of religious insignia, wars—Russian Civil and Great Patriotic, as well as the question of ideology in the Postmodern world.
Background to the Ukrainian Conflict
Prior to examining these factors, let us recap the recent historic events that led up to them. Since 1991, NATO has been moving closer to Russia’s borders despite its promises otherwise at the time of the Soviet collapse. Western officialdom used project Ukraine—not without its oligarchic elites’ own volition—as project anti-Russia, based upon the negative identity of the Western Ukrainian minority. Large sums of money were invested into establishing aggressively anti-Russian cadres in the media and opinion-making in places like Kiev, where none existed before. Internally, post-Soviet Ukraine was a historically problematic entity from the onset. Indeed, it attempted to house two conflicting identities without much effort at reasonable cohesion: Russians left behind across the newly instituted border as well as eastern and central Ukrainians sharing roots with today’s Russia (historically, eastern Orthodox Novorossia and Malorossia) on the one hand, and Western Ukrainians, such as Galicians (Greek Catholics in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) seeking greater ties with Europe, on the other.
In February of 2014, these two identities came to a clash, when the country saw a West-backed coup d’état under the banner of European integration. A siren song, the latter was essentially meant to transform Ukraine into a large market for dumping European goods, economically, NATO bases, militarily, with a slew of other negative possibilities that surface whenever IMF credits are involved. The coup channeled a certain level of popular discontent with the Yanukovich government, expressed at the Maidan, to bring about the logical conclusion to project Ukraine. This was an ideologically anti-Russian state—based on the ethnic fundamentalist views of its Western minority—that ignored the wishes of eastern Ukrainian residents. Its violent inception led to another logical conclusion. When the Kiev government denied that region its basic rights of language and popular representation through federalization, and attempted to crush them by force, a liberation war in Donbass—historic Novorossia since the time of Catherine the Great—began as a response. Those that Maidan attendees called “slaves” sought to be free after all.
A year and 50,000 deaths later—if the German secret service is to be believed—this conflict remains on the lips of political analysts. Donbass infrastructure is destroyed, 2.5 million refugees fled into Russia (including previous guest workers), Ukraine’s economy is collapsing, and half of its best farm lands had already been purchased by the oligarchs and foreign companies. There is even growing disagreement within Europe—over the questions of Ukraine and the consequent Russian sanctions—the atomization of which would benefit Washington’s ability to exert even greater influence in the region over increasingly un-sovereign states.
This civil-war scenario within the grand scheme of geopolitics was not a surprise for some. Lugansk author Gleb Bobrov, for instance, released what now seems to be a prophetic novel called Epoch of the Stillborn (Epokha Mertvorozhdennykh) in 2008 through a major publisher Yauza-EKSMO. The book described a hypothetical civil war in Ukraine. In 2014, it was republished five times for obvious reasons.
Symbols of Tradition…and Beyond
The iconography of the liberation struggle in Donbass fuses various layers of shared Russian-Ukrainian history. It attempts to overcome its conflicting points and give birth to a new synthesis of the Russian World that surpasses the specificity of Enlightenment-based ideologies, channeling older traditions or finding positive focal points.
One prominent aspect of Donbass resistance is the usage of religious insignia. Post-Maidan protests in eastern Ukraine—before Kiev initiated an “anti-terrorist operation” against civilians in the region—frequently used eastern Orthodox images at the barricades. These were protective icons like those of the Virgin and Tsar Nicholas. Orthodox insignia, unifying eastern Slavs, remained a significant part of the Donbass liberation war since.
Tanks head into battle featuring Mandylion banners, as do road blocks and individual commanders. Igor Strelkov explicitly had the Slavyansk volunteer-battalion flag blessed in a church and paraded it through that town in mid-2014. Perhaps, subconsciously, such acts underscore the even more ancient Indo-European roots—here, the social and political leadership of warriors and priests, which stand in stark contrast to the salesman-politician within mass democracy.
Orthodox Christianity has, of course, been the thousand-year-old religious tradition in Kievan and Muscovite Rus, the Russian Empire, and, today, both in Russia and eastern and central Ukraine. And, whereas the USSR was officially atheist, as per Marxist ideology, religion never fully left the private sphere, particularly outside urban centers; at times, it was even officially sanctioned, as was the case with Stalin in 1941. Indeed, historians have pointed out that by the 1930s, the USSR turned into a neo-traditionalist state—albeit with a Communist economy—in which socially conservative values, like pro-natalism, were reintroduced in a top-down manner.
A significant role played by Orthodox Christianity in the Donbass conflict is also evident from the fact that over 70 churches had been deliberately damaged or destroyed in this region by the West-backed Kiev forces. Novorossia’s spokespeople stated that they had no strategic military positions nearby, and that generally nothing else was hit next to the churches. Targeting religious architecture and communal centers should not be surprising, considering that Orthodoxy provides powerful cultural links between today’s Russia and Ukraine.
When it comes to the Red-White schism, the official reading of history in the Soviet Union denounced many aspects of late imperial Russia on an ideological basis. In the 1990s, the pendulum swung far in the opposite direction—this time the target was the entire Soviet period—with more balanced views of history emerging in the next decade. These views are socially unifying rather than divisive, with the latter often exploited by certain outside forces looking to destabilize Russia. Whereas some polarization remains, most Russians have grown to surpass ideology and interpret the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as the variations of the same geopolitical entity. Furthermore, many families contain these seeming contradictions within: while some of their ancestors were well-positioned during the imperial era, or were purged in the 1930s, others were farmers, laborers, and soldiers in the Red Army.
For this reason, the participants of the Armed Forces of Novorossia exhibit a variety of symbolism, the synthesis of which indicates the emergence of a balanced view of one’s past: in it, no single period is wholly positive or negative. For instance, in the spring and summer of 2014, the media paid much attention to Igor Strelkov’s interest in historic reenactment, primarily focused on the Russian Army in the First World War and the White Movement during the 1917-21 Civil War.
Donetsk’s current leader, Alexander Zakharchenko, was elected in November of 2014, choosing to be inaugurated to the sounds of the Petrine-era Russian imperial March of the Preobrazhenskii Regiment.
Zakharchenko’s inauguration also involved Cossack participation. Prior to the artificial political division into southern Russia and eastern Ukraine, this region housed the same peoples (narod), including the Don Cossacks—a soslovie (estate) that was autonomous, but fiercely loyal to God and, often, the tsar. Dormant during the Soviet period, Cossack traditions are reemerging. They, too, came to play a prominent role at the front lines of Donbass liberation.
Cossack heritage underscores the historic complexity of Donbass. A hundred years ago, the Russian Civil War polarized the population in this region primarily on the basis of ideology between the White Movement and the Bolsheviks. Indeed, the current civil-war aspect of Donbass liberation generates this comparison. After all, many of the soldiers drafted by Kiev are actually ethnic Russians from cities like Dnepropetrovsk fighting against other ethnic Russians further east.
Furthermore, despite imperial Russian symbolism, Novorossia’s leadership explicitly sees itself as the heirs of the short-lived and transitional Donetsk-Krivoi Rog Soviet Republic (1918). And, in an industry-heavy area, primarily focused on coal mining, class-based Soviet references cannot be avoided. Novorossia’s banner is based on St. Andrew’s cross and reads, “Will and Labor”; Donetsk Republic flag, too, uses a color scheme borrowed from that period.
However, the issue of labor has more continuity between these two seemingly polar Red-White camps than one would think. Whereas the Soviet Union attempted to institute social equality in a top-down manner, some industrialists in the late Russian Empire were pious Orthodox Christians, who believed in providing charity on a personal level. They created good working conditions for their employees prior to any labor legislation, including kindergartens and women’s hospitals in the case of Abrikosov & Sons, or schools and pensions in the case of Einem, to name some.
World War Two All Over Again?
Yet it is the Second World War that maintains the greatest Soviet legacy and—the central role in the Donbass conflict. The English-language mainstream media narrative, even including the initially rare sympathetic pieces, describes Donbass residents being duped by Russian television into thinking that they are reliving the Second World War by fighting fascism. Considering that many of them are miners by profession, the derogatory implication is that these working-class people are too uneducated to know better or to think for themselves. There are two issues of note here: one of the Second World War, in general, and the other—of ideology, specifically.
First, just about every family in the former Soviet Union was touched by what in Russia is referred to as the Great Patriotic War (1941-45) with the total loss estimated at approximately 26 million. People are aware of their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences, some of whom are still alive. On an ideological level, this war was the great solidifier for the USSR following the turbulent years of Lenin’s Revolution and Stalin’s consolidation (1917-41). But it is far more than that. The entire geography and topography of Novorossia replicates well-known battles of the Red Army in this region, making it difficult to avoid comparisons.
The town of Slavyanoserbsk outside of Lugansk, for instance, was named after the Serbian officers at the service of Russia’s Empress Elizabeth in mid-18th century. The town was under Nazi occupation in 1942-43—with Soviet partisans active in the area—until the Red Army’s liberation in September of that year. Representatives of the Armed Forces of Novorossia emphasized how the geographic positioning between the Soviet and Nazi troops mimicked that of their own and Kiev forces. To top that off, Serbian volunteers are rumored to have liberated the town from their opponents in August of 2014.
Saur Mogila (Grave), a strategic height in Donetsk region, served as the location for one of the most fierce battles of the Great Patriotic War, with the Soviet troops recapturing it in August of 1943. This level of intensity seemed like a déjà vu in the summer of 2014, when Saur Mogila went back and forth between the Kiev troops and Armed Forces of Novorossia. The latter ultimately recaptured it in August of that year. In fact, the 1963 memorial obelisk to the Great Patriotic War was destroyed as a result of this battle.
Thus, it seems that every inch of this landscape could tell a similar story. There is a caricature of Hitler “worrying” (play on words with nearby Volnovakha) about Soviet retaking of Mariupol, a 1945 photograph of a T-34 tank labeled “Donbass avengers”—including two brothers and a cousin, and an early postwar painting of the train station in Debaltsevo by a local school teacher.
There even are numerous museum T-34s that were resurrected by the resistance fighters, like this Lugansk-area tank early in 2015.
Furthermore, there are international brigades on both sides of the conflict, apparently mimicking the Spanish Civil War of the same period. Kiev’s troops have Swedes, Spaniards, Americans. The Armed Forces of Novorossia also include Spaniards, Brazilians, Frenchmen, Serbs. If anything, the miners of Donbass could be blamed for knowing their homeland’s history too well, in drawing these Second World War-era comparisons.
Then there is the question of fascism in Ukraine that the Western media avoids, while the Russian counterpart emphasizes. During the Second World War, some in Ukraine initially welcomed the Nazis over the Soviet Communists, but quickly grew to despise their colonization. Ukraine experienced varying degrees of collaboration, from the Galician SS to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) that despised and fought everyone—Germans, Poles, Russians, and Jews—and was complicit in ethnic cleansing in Volyn region.
Current Ukrainian fundamentalist ethno-nationalists, the Right Sector, the Social National Assembly, and the Azov Battalion, see themselves as the heirs of UPA’s leaders, Bandera and Shukhevich, and explicitly subscribe to the “third way,” including Second World War-inspired insignia. And it is their reading of history that was effectively established after the coup in February of 2014. That these are not simply marginal figures is evident from the complete negation of federalization and Russian-language rights to President Poroshenko calling Odessa a “Bandera city”—particularly insulting to many residents of this Soviet-era Hero City and the site of the Trade Union House massacre in May of 2014 at the hands of Maidan activists.
Don’t Throw Ideology out with Bath Water
Yet however tempting it is to think that history repeats itself, it is important to note the vast ideological differences. As some theorists pointed out, on a philosophical level the Second World War comprised the battle of three ideologies in order to determine which one best represents Modernity on a global scale. As a result, Communism (USSR) and Liberalism (U.S.) triumphed over Fascism. Subsequently, the Cold War served as the confrontation of the two remaining Modern ideologies, in which the collapse of the USSR (1991) signaled the victory of Liberalism. With Liberalism as the sole remaining representation of Modernity in the historical process—rendering the accepted 20th-century Left-Right paradigm obsolete—the period of Postmodernity commenced. Some analysts call this ideology “neo-Liberalism,” others—“post-Liberalism.” Both, however, describe the same historic trajectory, in which this set of ideas developed into its current form: the individual—with all his traditional ties removed—at the center of history, financial capital with its faceless transnational corporations as well as mindless consumerism and infotainment for the masses, the false belief in infinite economic progress, and the secular religion of “human rights” as a tool of foreign policy that is often less than humanitarian, to name a few characteristics.
Of course, the other 20th-century ideologies did not disappear completely. But it is post-Liberalism with its global hegemony that allows them to exist and serve its own purposes. And it is the purveyors of this ideology, the elites in the official West, that sanction the existence of the self-described fascists in Ukraine, much as they do the so-called “moderate” rebels in the Middle East. Thus, the elites’ mouthpiece, mass media, whitewashes the former as “nationalists,” the “far right,” or simply “controversial.” In contrast, those that challenge its dominance ideologically, even in the most modest manner, undergo reductio ad Hitlerum. This is the case with any political party, for instance, Front National, exhibiting a semblance of traditionalism (anti-globalism), as modest as asserting national sovereignty over supra-national bodies, like NATO.
In fact, post-Liberal ideology is one of the factors that blinds many Westerners to the realities of the liberation war in Donbass. The current Western model of citizenship is an abstract one: it centers around a set of principles in which individuals are interchangeable—as long as they adopt “European values” or the “American way of life”—instead of the more traditional notions of rootedness in the landscape, cultural and linguistic ties, and ancestral bonds. Thus, those who subscribe to this abstraction have difficulties understanding how belonging to the same people (narod) overrides living in two different states—contemporary Russia and Ukraine—haphazardly formed at the time of the Soviet collapse, and why they seem so attached to their language, culture, religion, history, and land that they are willing to die for them. But even for those Russians that lean toward more traditionalist thought, it took this war—the war that was meant to separate—to ideologically and spiritually unite them with others like them across the border, to begin questioning who they really are, uncertain, but hopeful, forging the idea of the Russian World. Beyond Left and Right, Beyond Red and White.
Ho Chi Ming was a nationalist who believed in his country and people – far outnumbered and lacking in armaments and capital he destroyed the American juggernaut and the Americans left in chaos via helicopter from the US Embassy
The Americans will lose the Ukraine with exception of the Fascists in Kiev and Lviv – which they can keep
I hope that Kiev is lost to the nazi/fascists too. I don’t know how, but this ideology has to leave the planet….
Galacia will have to go to Poland…they belong there. The rest ? Russia.
Disband Ukraine. Its over.
OMG, why back to Poland?
Watch polish naciz now, there is almost no difference btw. them and Ukrops. They already claim to be leaders of post East European ex-socialist countries.
And they cherish to be backed by the USA, they are no less US puppets than G.Britain.
Somehow the idiots have forgotten their experience in Katyn and stupidly support Praviy sektor because of their russophobia.
But OK, well, afterwards please also return Gdansk to Germany…etc.
Poland’s next on my list…they’d better watch out.
Ann – who gives you the right to divide a country? You are not even Ukrainian, are you? Perhaps it is up to their people to decide if they are eager to join Poland or stay independent. It is also their decision to work closely with EU and/or with NATO. It is independent and sovereign country after all.
Esten dear, I can’t divide the country. That’s just what I think.
Keep in mind Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong won because they had a nearly unlimited supply of weaponry, fuel, and food provided to them by the Soviet Union, and the United States was generally unwilling to bomb Soviet supply ships since the Soviet’s were officially neutral and not a party to the armed conflict. North Vietnam did not have the industrial infrastructure to carry on a war from 1941 to 1975 against Japan, France, and then the United States without this significant outside support. North Vietnam did not have steel and lead deposits, steel mills, lead smelters, chemical plants, munitions and armament manufacturers, or electronics manufacturers in any significant size.
Without that aid, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese would surely have lost.
Also, the Vietcong and NVA generally significantly outnumbered the American and Allied forces in Vietnam, and not the other way around. They also suffered a much higher casualty ratio. It is generally thought 10 of their soldiers died for every American who died. They made up for this through determination to protect their homeland and will to see the fight to the finish, which the French and Americans, and even more importantly, the South Vietnamese Army lacked.
Thanks for this profound and insightful article. You have really nailed the Neo Liberal ideology in all its nihilism. The denial of culture is particularly resonant for indigenous peoples in my country Australia also.
Neo-liberalism is fascism plus tittietainment. The reality of US society, the flag-bearer of neo-liberalism is one of record inequality, rapidly growing, with no chance of being reversed, ever. Of crumbling infrastructure, garbage education, record debt, record incarceration, ubiquitous torture abroad, and at home in prisons, secret dungeons, police stations even schools. Of 80,000 buried alive in solitary confinement, some for decades. Of relentless aggression, seeking to impose US will in every country on the planet, regardless of the wishes of the locals. Of anomic materialism, where a person’s worth is measured in terms of possessions only, and character and personal integrity are either non-existent, pathological, or faked. Of ecological carnage, simply denied in contempt of the laws of science and of rationality, purportedly the triumphs of the Western Enlightenment, but now jettisoned when pecuniary interest is threatened. Of popular culture that is debased, even depraved, egotistical, crude, vulgar and meaningless, and ‘high culture’ that is rationed by price for the rich only, to feed their self-regard and for display purposes only. And one could go on.
Are their seriously still no English translations of the documentary “Crimea: the Road Home” three full days after its release?
here is a 5 minute section that we found
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y13W3s2jKHU
http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150318/1019656840.html
“Crimea — Way Back Home” will be presented in English Wednesday at 17:00 Moscow Time (14:00 GMT) at the Rossiya Segodnya International press center.
Rgds,
Veritas
Much obliged, thank you.
“A significant role played by Orthodox Christianity in the Donbass conflict is also evident from the fact that over 70 churches had been deliberately damaged or destroyed in this region by the West-backed Kiev forces.”
Well in Croatia Serbs and Yugoslav army deliberately destroyed more than 400 sacral buildings (including churches):
“…15 percent of housing units and 2,423 cultural heritage structures, including 495 sacral structures, were destroyed or damaged.[285]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_War_of_Independence#Wartime_damage_and_minefields
Photos of destroyed churches in Archdiocese of Zagreb:
http://www.glas-koncila.hr/portal.html?catID=&conID=5428&act=view
To conclude, vicious thugs were active in former Yugoslavia and the same scum of the society is active today in Donbass destroying civilians and their heritage thus trying to force them to leave their native lands.
Could you please refrain from spilling ustashe propaganda on this site. I come here to read stuff written by and for people who do not approve of nazies and their fanboys, not written by people who think that ethnic cleansing is great as long as people cleansed are Orthodox.
As a Serbian whose family lived in Military Border area for 350 years and whose family was partially exterminated by original ustashe , and reminder was made refugee by their descendants I find your particular propaganda hard to stomach. On par with people who try to explain how Waffen SS Galitzien and their Croatian friends in Waffen SS Kama were just misunderstud lambs that only wanted to fight big, bad Stalin but weren’t men enough so they had to kill women and children instead.
PS I apologise to other readers for my rant
You are cleverly not mentioning that so called Krajina was ethnically clenased of Croats since 1991 and destruction of catholic churches was the part of agenda.
As you mention Ustashe you should also put an equal sign with serbian chetniks who together with ustashe were nazi collaborators (btw resurection of chetniks has been completed since both the president and prime minister of Serbia are member of Chetnik movement, and the firts is even the duke of chetniks):
http://espressostalinist.com/genocide/chetniks-collaboration-genocide/
So you’re arguing that Croat fascists are preferable to Serb fascists. Jasenovac says different.
Croats just love to exonerate Ustashe war crimes by equating them to Chetniks.
Ustashe were not nazi collaborators. They were the nazis themselves (or fascists if you prefer).
Chetniks, OTOH, were royalists who wanted to see Serbia liberated by the west. The only reason they collaborated with Germans is the fact that they considered communism as their prime enemy and got engaged in a civil war against communist partisans.
In early stages of war, both Chetniks and Partisans were liberation movements and even conducted some joint operations against Germans. Toward the later part of WW2, when it was obvious that Germany was going to lose the war, Chetniks decided that communists were the biggest threat to post-war Serbia and tried to defeat them at all costs, even if it meant temporary collaboration with the Axis.
Their real allegiance lied with the Western Allies.
The civil war no one is talking about that we had along the WWII. But collaboration? Yes to some small extent. Scum can be found everywhere. War against Tito and his communists is not war alongside germans. Just fighting the mutual enemy.
And why against Tito and not germans anymore? Beacuse english favored Tito and his communists as a ruler after the war. Before and during WWII they showed who they are. Ruthless, power hungry, demagogues,who showed no compunction to sacrifice innocent lives. If you are loyal to your oath,remember they were remnants of the regular Yugoslavian army. And if you love your country,you will try everything to stop these people from taking power.
To hide these facts,Tito,after the war,started equating chetniks and ustashas. We even now have aparatchiks from that era or their pupils that are propagating these lies in our academy of scince and culture. Acronim is SANU but we here call them by their current name-ANUS(latin).
Gifts of english diplomacy. And now our PM and president,scum of the earth-both of them,are taking Tonny Blair as an advisor or something. Our ancestors are turning in their graves.
Chetnik collaboration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIiPJgoFJZ0
This is not the first time i have encountered this narrative, so i am compelled to answer it. Basis for this claim is following. Ukraine (bad guys) is being left by Donbass people (good guys). Yugoslavia (bad guys) was left by Croats (good guys). Completely ignoring the fact that by the same right that Croatia left Yugoslavia,Serb populated areas in Croatia were denied that same right to secede from Croatia and stay in Yugoslavia.
So,if we would follow the logic implied here we would discover the spin . Ukraine leaves USSR using the right to self determination but that right is denied to Crimea and Donbass. Croatia leaves Yugoslavia but that same right is denied to Republika Srpska Krajina.
To add some more food for the thought. Crimea and Kosovo are the same cases. Just 60 years apart. Kosovo is taken from us after “Merciful Angel”. Crimea is taken by administrative decree. Those administrative decrees defining internal borders by communists in YU and in USSR,now after those decades,start to seem like nice planning for the future disbandment of the states along those borders. Crimea is now returned after 60 years. Guess what will happen with Kosovo? I just pity those people there,all of them.
As for the statement about destruction of the sacral objects i will say this. Possible,there is no war where destruction does not include sacral objects. But considering the logic used in the comment i say that you,sir or lady,are a Vatican troll. Or just a “useful idiot”. If you,on the other hand,used some other resources or mentioned Orthodox or Muslim objects destroyed i would give you a benefit of a doubt.
I would like to support your description of simularities between destructon of churches in Croatia and Donbass. In my opinion it is the right way to see who is attacker and who is defender. You can compare Donetsk and Vukovar and see similarities.
Yes, in the end in Vukovar Croatian nazies won, with help of their EU/American allies.
And in the end the Novorussians will win with the help of their Russian allies.
Only Novorussions will decide about their own faith, as Croats did. Help from outside can be important but foot on the field decide the war. None will bleed for goals of others.
Historical comparisons are tricky.
All one really needs to now is who is fighting on which side NOW:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/02/12/world/croatian-volunteers-fighting-alongside-ukrainian-army-serb-counterparts-helping-pro-russian-rebels/#.VQn7EY4iqYY
Croat Nazis fighting with Ukrainian Nazis. The more things change…..
As a Swede, I was shocked when angry Albanians destroyed some 130 churches and monasteries in Kosovo. In 2004, after the war, they attacked again. The important Decani monastery survived thanks to a Swedish UN officer. He had only 700 men and fought against thousands of Albanians. Some of his men worked in the kitchen and were not ordinary fighters. They had the difficult task of stopping the attack without killing the Albanians. The officer got a medal. The long fight was shown on Russian TV.
A German officer stepped aside and allowed the Albanians to destroy another important monastery. For reasons I am unable to explain, this officer also got a medal. A Swedish veteran said at the time the road to that monastery was so narrow, he could have stopped the Albanians with only two men at his side.
In the Yugoslav war, fighters were using churches and mosques as weapons depots and Muslims were also sniping from the minarets. They were doing this at the very beginning of the war in Sarajevo at the Military Hospital in Sarajevo which was still held by the JNA/Yugoslav soldiers – before the UN forced the Yugoslav army out.
Also a 1/2 Croat fighter who fought for the Bosnian Muslim army mentioned how, in an interview, that they, the soldiers would destroy a church or mosque “if the army was behind it”.
So SOME of those churches were damaged in the fighting.
Also, must be mentioned that there were still some Bosnian Muslims fighting in the JNA at the very beginning of the war in Croatia.
But you also had Bosnian and Albanian Muslims fighting on the Croat side – and Croatia was training the Bosnian Muslims before the war too.
“25,000 Muslims fought in Croatia’s war of independence and that 1,180 were killed in it” mufti of the Islamic community in Croatia, Aziz Hasanovic http://dalje.com/en-croatia/mufti–croatia-model-of-how-to-arrange-relations-with-islamic-community/533093
Croats also invaded Bosnia and started massacring civilian Serbs even before he war began.
The Croats murdered SERB CHILDREN – the very first mass grave of the Bosnian war was one:
26. March 1992, Sijekovac – the very first war crime in Bosnia was commited in Sijekovac http://theremustbejustice.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/26-march-1992-sijekovac-the-very-first-war-crime-in-bosnia-was-commited-in-sijekovac/
And how many were destroyed by the Ustashi vermin that the USA returned to power after forty years, aided and abetted by their old allies, Germany and the Vatican?
Not to be sacrilegious to such a fine article about Ukraine and Russia (viz. the “Russian World” meaning the Russian speaking people outside of current Mother Russia), but what’s happening in Ukraine, especially to the Russian-speaking “Ukrainians” in Eastern Ukraine, parallels eerily to the Germans in Austria, Eastern Poland, etc., i.e., the “German diaspora” during PRE-WW2.
Study real history, because history has a funny way to make rhymes!
David Chu:
I think the comparison of the situation of Russians today to the situation of ethnic Germans between 1919 and 1939 is highly misleading. The Atlanticists are using this as propaganda to support the concept that Annexing Crimea = Annexing Sudetenland/Czechoslovakia, and Donbass = Polish Corridor/Danzig, and thus the Donbass War = German-Polish War to start WWII and of course finally, Putin = Hitler.
Lets instead note significant differences in the situation.
All Russians lived in a single state from 1795 to 1991, and really, ignoring the Uniate west of Ukraine/Belarus in the Kingdom of Poland, all Orthodox Russians lived together from 1653 up until 1991. This included the entire Russian “diaspora” in Central Asia and the Baltics linguistically by other peoples from the main Russian territory in Muscovy, Sloboda Ukraine, and Siberia. Prior to the Polish-Lithuanian conquests in the 1300’s, all Russians also lived in a unified polity from the time of Rurik into the 1300’s. The normal state of affiars for Russians (Russkij – ethnic Russians) has been for all Russians to live together in one country. Russians have only lived apart when seperated by force due to external circumstances and exercises of power by other states.
The Germans have never leved together in a single state except the Empire of Charlemagne. After that time, some Germans were always seperated from the main body of the Reich due to their living in areas controlled by France and Switzerland, and also from the German eastward immigration from the 1100’s into Poland, Prussia, the Baltics, and the Carpathian Mountains. Additionally, the fact of the reformation further shattered the unity of Germans by creating a tripartite religious schism between Lutherans, Catholics, and Calvinists.
Because of this, the German ethnic nation is fractured to this day and does not possess a united national consciousness. The Dutch and Flemings (who are Germans and speak low German) think of themselves as one nation, the Swiss Germans (who are Allemanian Germans like the people in Alsace and Baden and speak high German) think of themselves as another nation, and the main German polity is divided between allegiance to Catholic Austria and Bavaria and the Lutheran north. The Luxemburgers (who are Lorraine Germans) have adopted a quasi-French identity.
The nationalism of the 1800’s identified Germany as “From the Meuse (the medieval Franco-German border) to Memel (the east side of Prussia) and from the Etsch (a river in South Tyrol) to the Belt (the south of Denmark)”, but this could not include the long time German settlement of the Carpathians, Estonia, and Latvia, excluded Flanders, and left the status of Swabian Germans in Hungary uncertain. When the chance for nearly full German national unity was at hand in 1866-1871, Prussian lead Germany consciously turned away from opportunity. Even when Hitler had a near free reign to annex German lands in 1938 to 1939, he initially consciouly chose to abandon the South Tyrol, Slovenia, Alsace, Luxemburg, the Baltics, and the Carpathians, despite historical long-time German settlement and cultural dominance, and to instead pursue physical resettlment of seperated Germans.
The movement of the Russian Spring to reunite Russians in one country is a movement to restore the natural historical state of affairs of Russians when they have a place of power in the world. The movement of Hitler to unite even most Germans was a quixotic anti-historical quest that was against the will of many Germans outside Germany (especially the Swiss, Alsatians, Dutch, and Luxemburgers), and involved forced population transfers of those who fell outside the neat future borders he envisioned.
Lastly, the leadership and action to reunite Russians today is coming from the seperated Russians in Crimea and Donbass themselves, not from Russia. It is the Crimeans and Donbassers who organized militia and referenda to express their will. In Austria and Sudeteneland, the pressure was mainly from Hitler and Nazi Germany to annex the local Germans. There were not uprisings for Germany. Ironically, the one place this was not the case – Danzig – where the local Germans elected a Nazi government in 1933 and expressed a desire for annexation, was the place that sparked a World War when Hitler finally acted on the democratically expressed will of the local Germans.
“In Austria and Sudeteneland, the pressure was mainly from Hitler and Nazi Germany to annex the local Germans.”
You understanding WW2, specifically this above sentence of yours, is full of you know what!
The real story was that the Austrians voted overwhelming (something like 98%) to join their German brothers to the north. One of the reasons was the tremendous economic progress that the Germans experienced from 1934 through 1939. While the rest of the “industrial” West were still in the midst of GD1, the Germans were already out of theirs. This was miraculous given the lack of money and natural resources like oil.
Your little lie quoted above is EXACTLY the same **** that is repeated today about Russia !
Hence, the rhythms of history!
Anonymess:
Regardless of the later vote after the Anschluss, there was not prior external pressure from Austrian Germans to be annexed. The initative for the annexation came from the Nazi German government, not the Austrian German people. Similarly, before the annexation of Austria, there was no agitation for annexation of the Sudetenland by the Sudeten Germans, and their initial program after the Austrian annexation (the Karlsbad Program) did not demand annexation.
This is the exact opposite of what has occurred in Crimea and Donbass. In those areas, there was no external pressure from Russia and instead the people themselves rose up and demanded to be incorporated in Russia, rather than Russian invading and annexing the areas.
“The initative for the annexation came from the Nazi German government, not the Austrian German people.”
That is complete BULLSHIT! It was not an ANNEXATION! The German-speaking Austrians voted 98% in favor of REUNIFICATION with Germany, just like Crimea one year ago!
David Chu:
That is complete BULLSHIT! It was not an ANNEXATION! The German-speaking Austrians voted 98% in favor of REUNIFICATION with Germany, just like Crimea one year ago!
After the Nazi military invasion of Austria and its annexation, then the Austrian Germans voted in favor of annexation. Before that, nothing.
Crimeans voted on their own in a self-organized referendum for independence, and their newly independent government requested annexation by Russia.
I can’t help you if you can’t understand how such actons are different.
And neither can I you!
It’s like we’re living on parallel universes: You believe the official narrative of WW2 and I don’t!
Peace be unto you, as this will be my last reply to you.
And neither can I you!
It’s like we’re living on parallel universes: You believe the official narrative of WW2 and I don’t!
Peace be unto you, as this will be my last reply to you.
David, I don’t get Andrew’s argument either…It doesn’t seem to ring true. Might be a troll
Instead of fighting, why don’t you guys look at HOW DO YOU KNOW what you know (or think you do).
This is the most important issue of our times — how do we know? how do we know that is not propaganda? it is NOT true that history is written by the victors. Everyone writes their own, only the victors’ is the one the outsiders get to accept.
We have on this site a mixture of “outsiders” and “insiders”. This here is your chance to set a few things straight.
HINT: try looking at dates. Generally something with an older date happened before the one with the fresher date, so the fresher date item could not have caused the earlier event. Producing dates is better than “Stop telling lies”. Produce sources, too, so everyone (yourself included) can check it out for bias.
COMPARE: Crimea voted for autonomy or independence from Ukraine back in 1991. A similar vote last year is not surprising. Was there similar indicative history in Austria or other “German” areas?
I agree
rhymes, times, crimes.
I must say the pictures are just as remarkable as the article, and I am sure Western readers will be equally impressed by both.
Particularly expressive of the current Russian philosophy and politics is the picture with those three flags flying on the pole: Jesus Christ, the communist hammer and sickle, and the Russian flag. This kind of inclusion surely nobody else on the planet has yet achieved.
I have always thought that from logical perspective ideal Christianity and ideal communism had lot in common based on way they are doable only if everybody living it has disposition of saint.
Also, from my experience lot of true communist have temperament and passion that would make them feel right at home with people who have spread early christianity troughout Roman Empire.
Problem with communism was/is that by denying God they destroyed baseline in societal morality and made society rot from inside. Although, West managed to do same thing by having unholy alliance of transnational progressives and big business in charge of everything.
So basically you are saying that people who believe in God and people who deny God have anything in common ?
You used the word “people” to describe both groups.
That’s a good start.
And what exactly is your contribution to the discussion ?
The author above did raise the White vs. Red issue herself, so I don’t think this post is too off-base.
Well, yeah. Really, that’s not a huge difference for most purposes. The question is what impact each turns out to have on your ethics. Some have used belief in God to do evil, others to do good. Some have used unbelief in God to do evil, others to do good. And for many, their evil or good have little to do with their religion or lack thereof.
Very nice, but the issue here is whether these two incompatible worldviews go together. Which the symbolism of the images tries hard to suggest.
FLOR solitaria:
saying that people who believe in God and people who deny God have anything in common
Well, yes that is what is being said, and as a traditonal Catholic Christian I agree. And what is your problem with this assertion exactly? Further, why must a Communist be an atheist (or a revolutionary Bolshevik)? That doesn’t follow.
Christians and Communists share the importance of the community before the individual and especially before the whims and opinions of the individual, share a similar set of aesthetic and moral values, and most importantly place man before money.
The contrast with liberalism, neo-liberalism, conservatism, libertinism, objectivism, and other money centered individualistic systems of asserting the primacy of personal autonomy and profit above all other considerations could not be clearer.
The one big thing which makes these two irreconcilable is the fact that communists killed Christians just about everywhere: in Russia, in China, in Mexico, in Spain, in Poland, in Romania, in Hungary, in Ukraine, in Latin America, etc. Communists were and are a physical threat for the Christians, as history has demonstrated not so long ago; and by the same token, communists consider the Christians a threat to their God-less ideology.
And they most definitely do not share the same set of values. I must say that I am surprised that a traditional Catholic can believe that they do.
FLOR solitaria
I think you are confusing historic Bolshevism, and the murderous acts of the Bolsheviks in Russia or Marxist revolutionaries in Hungary, Spain, and Mexico as they attempted to seize power with Communism, which is an ideology and a way of thinking and acting towards other humans. As an ideology, communism is about detatchment from the endless acqusition of personal material possessions, charity towards other people so that they can share equally in the earth’s abundance, working to eliminate selfishness, greed, and obsession with money. None of that is incompatible with belief in God or Christianity. In fact, Christ talks quite a bit about those things.
Monks and nuns live in a communistic manner. So do the Hutterian Brethren. The book of Acts explains how the early Christians lived communally. Maybe thinking in that way makes it clearer. I’m not a communist myself, but I have a lot more personally in common with friends who are communists, even atheists, than with liberals, even liberals who are Christians.
@ Andrew
Calling it bolshevism, or marxism, or communism, is giving names to the same stinky putrid plant brought to light by Marx & co. in the Communist Manifesto.
An ideology which reduces mature people, as Jung said, to the level of kindergarden children, with the Dear Leader being the “daddy” who’s the only one to know what’s best for everybody, has absolutely no charity in it, and no desire to “share equally in the earth’s abundance”. Especially as the dear leaders were never required to work on their dettachment from material possessions and money. And the charitable secret police which sustained the ideology from crumbling also were never quite able to eliminate their selfishness.
On the contrary, the goal of communism was clearly to enslave all people with the exception of a few select leaders, and to aquire by force all the material possessions of the bourgeoisie; which was in itself an expression of greed as naked as that of ordinary thieves.
If you think any of these have anything to do with the teachings of Christ, then you clearly incline toward the Torah part of the Bible.
FLOR:
All of the failures you mention can be chalked up to people acting without grace. They are what happen when men abandon God and try to perfect the world on their own.
“enslave all people with the exception of a few select leaders”
Yes of course, as opposed to the previous dichotomy of Boyars and Serfs. Really, this childish rubbish has no bearing in history. If everyone in the Soviet Union was a slave, they would have all welcomed Hitler with open arms instead of fighting him to the death. And if there was no one acting with natural virtue there, the state would have fallen apart instead of being superpower. I would have hoped after a year of this rebellion that people at this site might be aware of a little of what motivates the people in Donbass.
“incline toward the Torah part of the Bible”
Well, I do rather enjoy reading the Pentateuch and the Prophets, and I very much like chanting the Psalms and reading Proverbs.
And I am not an adherent of Marcionism, which is what you are espousing.
@ Andrew
Yeah, I thought that was what you might enjoy.
FLOR:
And so your point is what? I’m a bad person for liking to read and meditate on both the New Testament and Old Testament?
Oh, please. There have been numerous Communist governments which did not revolve around a cult of personality and which were democratically elected and made no moves to change the democratic system. By odd co-incidence, most of them were soon thereafter overthrown in military and/or fascist coups, often backed by the United States. Allende in Chile springs to mind. So they don’t have huge track records. But they did exist.
It is worth arguing whether it’s a good idea to replace the capitalist-ownership system with either a state-ownership or co-operative-ownership system. There are strong arguments that maybe it isn’t. But if you need to foam at the mouth with misrepresentations and propaganda, that suggests to me that you don’t actually believe the real arguments against Marxism et al. are very strong.
Communists killed Christians just about everywhere? Yeah, Christians killed Christians just about everywhere too. What’s your point?
You never heard of the killing of Orthodox priests and faithful in Russia ? That was on a pretty big scale, possibly the biggest in modern history. I’m sure the Russians could tell you a lot about this.
And also in all the (now) former communist countries when they took power. Google “The Pitesti Experiment”, (that was in Romania) there are some links in English, if not I will give you some quotes from my books.
Never heard of the Spanish Civil War ? I don’t mean the official side where all-the-nations-united-in-joy-fought-against-fascists, but that where the Catholic Christians were killed by the communist side. Google “paracuellos”. The wikipedia entry is politically correct and reduces the numbers of the dead and twists the story a bit, but still couldn’t hide the actual killings. There is a better site in Spanish about this http://www.martiresdeparacuellos.com
About Mexico there is a book called “Le Mexique rouge”, written by a French priest in 1935 who managed to get into Mexico (it was forbidden by the authorities for any foreign priest to enter the country). He interviewed survivors and personally assisted to a lot of cruelties perpetrated against Christians who defended the demolition of their churches.
One particularly bestial account is that of the killing of priests, some were impaled alive with bayonets on the doors of their churches and left to die, in a mockery of the Crucifixion.
My point is the one that I already expressed in my comments, namely that communism is incompatible with Christianity, and I also gave the reasons why.
Now go google “incompatibility” and stop waisting my time.
Catholic Church sided with the fascist coup and not only that, also took up arms in what some bishops described as “holy crusade”. Hence they died, many, like in all civil wars, where many people from both sides died. What you forget voluntarily is that because they won the war, the fascist , after the war, here in Spain, kept dying many in the red side, even until Franco died in bed, and all with the blessing of the US, Europe and the Catholic Church.
As I’m sure you speak Spanish, here you have a link for you to read something more than the propaganda that they are passing to you.
https://falsasbanderas.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/franco-y-la-iglesia-en-la-posguerra-una-beatificacion-a-golpe-de-pistola/
The road to socialism as the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas, is unstoppable, go accustomed. You can not always win.
https://falsasbanderas.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/franco-y-la-iglesia-en-la-posguerra-una-beatificacion-a-golpe-de-pistola/
How abut you take that smug face away from the mirror and address the actual point of the above assertion (Christians killed Christians just about everywhere) and stop wasting everybody’s time.
To FLOR solitaria
“The US and the Vatican campaign against the PCI in the decisive elections of 1948 (March 3). The role of the CIA”:
http://blogdelviejotopo.blogspot.com.es/2015/03/la-campana-de-eeuu-y-del-vaticano_14.html
Well, well, a lot of communist sympathizers on this site. Why don’t you all go ask the Russian Orthodox Church why it canonized Tsar Nicholas II and his family, and by whom they were killed. And you will learn many interesting things in the process.
We are in this, for the moment we can not make this trip because we have no vacation yet. Lonely FLOWER do not worry, we will try to learn as we can, from Orthodox Church and from everyone else. Fortunately we like to study, serious things, no pamphlets or manipulations of history. Sure, once come back, we will have more information to dismantle the usual nonsense about communism.
I totally agree with Lil’Deano. But in reality there is no such thing as “ideal communism”
Then study this, comrades:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity_under_Communist_regimes
It’s a well documented Reader’s Digest version of many books by serious historians, very good for people who are not on vacation, but are desirous of serious studying.
Don’t forget to include in your serious research the origins of communism, marxism and bolshevism, and the origins of their creators and leaders.
Afghan Villagers: US-Trained Militias Far More Terrifying than Taliban – US proxy militias in Afghanistan “enforce their will through beatings and rape”, say new reports.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/afghan-villagers-us-trained-militias-far-terrifying-taliban.html
Yet another Yankee trained death-squad, that great American gift to humanity.
An absolutely brilliant essay. I come to The Saker for information on Ukraine, not expecting cogent analysis. But I always skim the analysis anyway and today I was well rewarded. Thank you.
I live in Australia. Have you read a work by one of our former Prime Ministers, which has largely been ignored here, “Dangerous Allies”? It’s largely about why Australia should be independent of US policy, but it also spends some words on post cold war politics.
Bill, I’ll look for “Dangerous Allies”, thanks.
Certainly EU wd be safer outside NATO than in it, since US aggression is likely to cause a war which will put Europe on the frontlines.
Malcolm Fraser, an ex-PM who argued for breaking the slavish ‘alliance’ with the USA, died suddenly today. He was 84, but appeared fit as a fiddle. Perhaps he got the ‘Chavez treatment’.
Great article – very illuminating.
I would add that the Left was co-opted by single issue groups with socially-harmful agendas in the West in the service of corporate agendas a good decade ago. There is no Left internationally. The most obvious is the manufacture of LGBT as a ‘human rights’ issue when it is in fact homo-fascism and requires an economic underclass to achieve its objectives, namely legalizing eugenics.
While historically Gay Liberation merely sought social inclusion LGBT are well-funded, top-down, militant media-operatives dedicated to the destruction of the nuclear family. It is essentially fascist in ideology, as it is vital to maintain a female underclass from which to harvest eggs and rent wombs: all institutions which promote family values are therefore targeted, particularly the Christian nominations. The inclusion of militant lesbians is not uprising since they have never been pro-natal.
Eugenics was a major movement of the fascist thirties – Churchhill was a keen proponent. Unsurprisingly, Britain is at the forefront of removing all obstacles to the manufacture of GM babies through the promotion of IV F and the legalization of 3PR.
The global 1% are obsessed with there ‘bloodlines’ and have invested enormous sums of money in the creation of genetically-engineered humans. The corruption of national ie i independent governance is essential as most countries currently ban surrogacy/egg-harvesting. They are currently attempting to circumvent this through EU ‘freedom of movement’ laws. And the offspring of the 1% – and their financial inheritance – would be severely compromised through international illegitimacy.
American ‘exceptionalism’ allows the IVF/eugenics agenda to flourish: whole university schools are funded by the industry and advertising for eggs is rampant on campus. Its is of course deeply racist: Jewish eggs are at a premium. The largest IVF industry in the world relative to GDP is in Israel. The rabbis there have been brought around through Zionist expansionism: anything which helps to promote population growth through state policy gets their agreement. Through excising the natural rights of the mother, it copperfastens the Patriarchy. Soon, Jewish heretability will no longer be matrilineal.
But the Christian denominations – most notably the Roman Catholic Church have refused to be co-opted: the Patriarch has no intention climbing into bed with the Gaytriarch and his rent-a-womb kids – the Matriarch is still enthroned. Hence the persistent attacks on Christian values by the Anglophone media.
The Ukraine – along with India – is one of the biggest surrogate industries in the world. It also one of the most corrupt and, along with India, now likely to be among those countries where conditions for women – economically – are among the worst. I expect an increase in child-trafficking, particularly to Israel, now that the neo-Zionist project in Ukraine is not going according to plan: the East has risen, and they are saying ‘NYET’!
Jewish heretability will always be matrilineal; that’s what separates the jews from the other semites. Abraham’s first son was not Isaac, but Ishmael’s mother didn’t have the right paper-work. It’s all about the inheritance.
Well article by Mrs Kuprianova, althought I do not aggree with it completely, I am realy delighted about how she has explained, specially in the last paragraphs, the hegemony of post-liberalism/post-modernism in the ideological sphere (both Left and Right) and the challenge to it, that is coming, inevitably from pro-sovereignty ideologies.
We have developed (a little bit) this kind of States with alternative (inti-idividualist) ideology and national-sovreignty (anti-globalist) States as “ideocratic States” in this article (in Russian) http://euskalherria-donbas.org/2014/11/27/independentzia-sozialismoa-ru/
This article needs your time and concentration, but give it that decent attention and you will reap much that will stay with you throughout the long Resistance ahead.
Enriching.
Makes you glad you have a brain and joyful that you have eyes.
This woman should produce a book.
I appreciate her writing and the entire presentation.
Not to mention her looks.
And what is your contribution to this discussion? Since you mentioned those words to someone else above.
Isn’t it obvious ? They put a sexy picture of the author to be seen by everybody, so I commented on her good looks.
FLOR solitaria:
Mrs. Kouprianova is somebody else’s wife. Can’t you keep your eyes to yourself instead of verbalizing your adultery? And if not, can you at least keep your lustful comments to yourself?
Her article was posted here because of her beautiful mind and its ability to express these topics clearly to others, not for you to drool over a picture of the author and make internet wolf-whistles.
Saker posts pictures of male authors too. I suppose we should be grateful you aren’t a homosexual and telling us how good lookig they are also?
I already expressed my admiration for her beautiful mind and her beautiful article. This was all I had left. But it’s very chivalrous of you to defend her of any perceived slight. Which actually proves my point.
FLOR:
God knows I love a beuatiful woman as much as the next man. But I think its best to make such praises in person to the possessor of the beauty. Commenting on the looks of women in a picture is a distraction from online discussion.
@ Andrew
And so are ad hominem’s.
Red Ryder. Did you take a look at her website? It’s posted at the top of the article.
Regards.
I dunno about this. Basically, what I see here is that when the chips are down and there are external threats, people cluster together closer and invoke any symbolism they can which represents some shared experience, whether it’s a (fairly) common religion or a background in labor-related struggles. And when there’s war in the offing people will invoke warrior traditions.
I don’t see that any of this “transcends” ideology or makes it ultimately go away. To say this misunderstands what ideologies are and how they arise. Any given society is run in a particular way, with a particular structure. So far, it’s always been the case that whatever the structure is, it privileges some groups and either deliberately or as a by-product shoves down others. If you’re living in the society, that’s going to have an impact on you; the society will either enrich and empower you, or do OK by you, or jerk you around in some way. Ideology is the question of what is just, and of whose ox gets gored. People getting jerked around by a society’s structure may be willing to stay quiet as long as there’s a fight for survival on, but no set of iconography is going to magically disappear their actual situation or make the privileged who are in control just relinquish that privilege. When things quiet down, struggle will reassert itself. This is one reason people in control so often invent an external enemy if there is none actually available–so the dissatisfied will shut up for the duration of the “fight” (and anyone who doesn’t can more easily be painted a traitor and shut up forcibly).
A politics that appeals primarily to historical solidarity based on warrior and religious traditions may not in itself be fascism, but it has quite a few elements in common with fascism. I mean, fascism is characterized particularly by all that stuff. So is feudalism. Neither transcends ideology. Nothing about this article suggests to me a reason why whatever this zeitgeist could be called does so either. But it does vaguely worry me if this is really supposed to be the new defining political content of Russia and/or Novorossiya. It seems like it will lend itself readily to some sort of repression, especially once the initial rush of we’re-all-in-this-together fervor dissipates somewhat.
None of this is going to make me stop backing Russia or Novorossiya against the imperialists. They should be able to go to Hell their own way, and in any case it’s precisely imperialism that leads to this kind of chauvinist backlash. But I’d certainly be happier to see a politics coming out of all this that was somewhat less chauvinist and less inclined to try to paper over real political economy with symbolism. So I’m kind of hoping the author is wrong and this approach will not actually dominate Russian or Novorossiyan politics going forward.
I was distractedly attempting to piece together a cogent response to the “warrior/religious/iconograph” paean while reading through the rest of the posts, and then there was your post saying exactly what I was thinking.
Thank you.
It is my considered belief that any political entity that roots itself in superstitious belief is doomed to failure, but not until after a whole lot of unfortunates get themselves slaughtered in the inevitable clash of factional bayonetting. (see Israel)
I’m in my mid 50s, so I’m old enough to remember the tail end of cold war era. I live in the west and I would say that there was much greater social, political and technological dynamism in that era then than exists today. I would put that down to the existence of a viable alternative social & political system, which although it was crudely propagandised as a threat, also functioned as an exemplar. The western elite was genuinely fearful of Russia. Too strong to take on militarily and a concrete demonstration that power is not necessarily inherited or purchasable.
I think that we were actually better off at a time when “ideology” was more prevalent than in our now more “enlightened” times, where political choices are lipstick shades.
This is a wonderful article. I only wish Mrs. Kouprianova had delved into the portent and meaning of the single most auspicious event of the war, which is the translation of the Tikhvin Mother of God Icon to Donetsk on July 10, one day after its feast in the Russian Orthodox calendar.
This famous icon has always been the safety and victory of the Russian people and its arrival in Donetsk in my opinion marked a permanent turning point in the war and a defeat from which the Ukrainian forces have never recovered. If you recall, prior to July 10, Col. Strelkov was forced to abandon Slavyansk and Kramatorsk and retreat to Donetsk, then Donetsk itself was threatened with betrayal and infighting, and the Ukrainians began a relentless offensive to encircle and cut off Lugansk and Donetsk. It seemed as though the entire Novorossiya project might come crashing to an end.
But then just as all seemed lost, the Tikhvin Mother of God Icon came to Donetsk and was venerated by Strelkov and Boroday and the Novorossiyan forces and paraded about the provinces. After this, the Ukrainians were suddenly and massively defeated first in the Southern Pocket, the Novoazovsk, then Ilovaisk and Lugansk Airport, suffering such enormous losses in two months that they were forced to sue for peace at Minsk lest they be completely crushed in their insolence.
Colonel Strelkov venerating the icon on July 11:
https://02varvara.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/11-july-2014-a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words-i-i-strelkov-warrior-christian-gentleman-what-more-do-you-want/
One can hardly imagine Yatseniuk or Turchinov or Obama doing Our Lady such humble veneration.
The Troparion of the feast is extremely appropriate and predicative of what followed:
“Today, like the eternal sun, Your Icon appears in the sky, O Theotokos. / With rays of mercy it enlightens the world. / This land accepts the heavenly gift from above, Honoring You as the Mother of God. / We praise Christ our Lord who was born of You. / Pray to Him, O Queen and sovereign virgin, that all Christian cities and lands be guarded in safety, / And that He save those who kneel to His divine, and Your holy image, O unwedded bride.”
What in tarnation?
A few more significant examples:
‘Vladimir Putin’s election victory carries Russians forward into the past’, by Wayne K. Spear | March 4, 2012
“When in the final days of his anti-climactic election campaign Vladimir Putin sought the blessing of the Theotokos of Tikhvin, he confirmed symbolically an attachment both to the Russian Orthodox Church and the czarist tradition….” (the rest of the article is BS)
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/04/wayne-k-spear-putin-victory-carries-russians-forward-into-the-past/
“In the early 17th century, Russia went through the Smuta, the Time of Troubles. Secular state power was very weak. As a result, Polish invaders seized Moscow. St Germogen, the Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias, who was then in prison, appealed to the nation. He called for unity in the struggle against the invaders. He also gave instructions that people should bring the Kazan Icon to Moscow. On the eve of the decisive battle, the clergy served a molieben before the wonder-working icon. After fierce battles, the opolchenie drove the Polish invaders out of the capital. To mark the event, Tsar Mikhail Romanov established a second holiday in the honour of the Kazan Icon on 4 November. Later, the Kazan Cathedral was built on Red Square to house the icon. Destroyed in Soviet times, the cathedral was rebuilt in the 1990s….
the Kazan Icon saved Russia more than once. For instance, in 1941, during the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany, the Virgin appeared to Metropolitan Ilya of the Antiochian Church, who prayed wholeheartedly for Russia. She instructed him to tell the Russians that they should carry the Kazan Icon in a religious procession around the besieged city of Leningrad (now St Petersburg). Then, the Virgin said, they should serve a molieben before the icon in Moscow. The Virgin said that the icon should stay with the Russian troops in Stalingrad, and later move with them to the Russian border. Leningrad didn’t surrender. Miraculously, Moscow was also saved. During the Battle of Stalingrad, the icon was with the Russian army on the right bank of the Volga, and the Nazi troops couldn’t cross the river. The Battle of Stalingrad began with a molieben before the Kazan Icon. Only when it was finished, did the troops receive the order to attack. The Kazan Icon was at the most important sectors of the front, and in the places where the troops were preparing for an offensive. It was like in the old times, when in response to earnest prayers, the Virgin instilled fear in enemies and drove them away. Even atheists told stories of the Virgin’s help to the Russian troops. During the assault on Königsberg in 1945, the Soviet troops were in a critical situation. Suddenly, the soldiers saw their commander arrive with priests and an icon. Many made jokes, “Just wait, that’ll help us!” The commander silenced the jokers. He ordered everybody to line up and to take off their caps. When the priests finished the molieben, they moved to the frontline carrying the icon. The amazed soldiers watched them going straight forward, under intense Nazi fire. Suddenly, the Nazis stopped shooting. Then, the Russian troops received orders to attack on the ground and from the sea. Nazis died in the thousands. Nazi prisoners told the Russians that they saw the Virgin in the sky before the Russians began to attack, the whole of the Nazi army saw Her, and their weapons wouldn’t fire. Today, the Orthodox Church also turns to the Virgin in any difficulty. We say, “Our Lady and intercessor, pray to God for us!”
2 November 2006
Lyubov Tsarevskaya
@https://02varvara.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/the-wonderworking-icon-of-kazan-of-the-most-holy-mother-of-god/
Russia is under the Protection of the Mother of God. She “possesses power invincible”.
Wonderful, Mrs. Kouprianova! I understand more, now. Thank you.
Beyond Left and Right, Beyond Red and White.
An interesting read. One thing I’ve noticed about post Soviet Russians, (on the web mostly, but also from a few conversations), is that they are remarkably dogmatism free. Right-left, communist-capitalists ideas intermix to a degree not seen in the zio-enlightened west.
Which is good up to a point in that it reflects a willingness to try and mix new ideas, but I can’t help feeling that it also reflects a simple lack of understanding of what the ideas are that they think they’re mixing.
To the author,thank you.you have put all the thoughts I agree with into a very elegant piece.I wish for a similar ability,yet it does not appear.
I prefer Khazins way of expressing things in terms of competing interest groups rather than competing ideologies. The former way is much more realistic. Ideology is mostly just propaganda. As an orthodox Marxian (taking more the descriptive rather than prescriptive from Marx) I consider the Soviet Union to be State-Capitalist because there was no industrial democracy, you could say the means of production were the private property of the nomenklatura. Fascism is just the pure form of Capitalism, so the great 20th century ideologies in practice are just different window dressings for different capitalist managerial camps. All the warm and fuzzy ‘principles’ of liberalism have been proven to be just temporary tools with which to win the cold war, now to be dispensed with.
And I prefer Jimme Moglia’s broader way of contrasting East and west. It was something more along the lines of the spiritual vs the temporal, idealist vs materialist. I can attest that it’s possible to feel more belonging to the Eastern culture with only tangental identification with the ‘blood and soil’ inspiration that this lady accidentally drives at toward the end of the article.
How do Marxians explain the obvious fact that both Fascism and National-Socialism are outgrowths of Socialism? Mussolini was even close to the Left of the Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party) and Bolshevism through Angelika Balabanova (“a Russian-Jewish-Italian communist and social democratic activist” – born in Chernihiv, of all).
It always amazes me that people still say that. Look, if you know nothing whatsoever about Marxism, socialism and so forth, it’s better to do what you’d do with respect to other things you know nothing whatsoever about: Not talk about it.
I know that it would be very convenient for people of certain ideologies if Marxism and Fascism were somehow the same thing. But it’s a moronic idea. People professing those ideologies who wish to be taken seriously resist the temptation of convenience and deal with the world as it is.
In the world as it is, fascism has certain fairly well-understood markers. Those markers have a bit in common with Stalinism but relatively little in common with the basic features of Marxism, socialism and so on.
The point of Marxism and socialism (and old-fashioned European-style Anarchism) is that private individuals owning the stuff that allows wealth to be produced (factories, in the simplest case, also mines, printing presses etc) and by that ownership, claiming the profits flowing from them, is a bad thing that leads to an opposition of interests between the majority, who own nothing and must sell their labour under disadvantageous conditions, and the propertied minority who live by owning rather than by labour (a group Marx and many others at the time called the “bourgeoisie”). Marx believed that the majority needed to take the minority’s stuff and run it for the majority’s benefit instead. So did socialists and old-school anarchists. Differences were mainly over just how the stuff should then be run. On that subject, answers ranged all the way from Stalin’s position (“The stuff should be run by one person, me!”) to the Anarchist position (“The stuff should be run directly and locally by the people who live around and work in the stuff in question”) and many points in between. This variance has been true both in theory and practice; the Soviet system was repressive, undemocratic, and centralized, for instance, while the Spanish republic was very democratic and decentralized for as long as it lasted. But it’s the idea that things are run for the benefit of capitalists and that they should be run for the benefit of people and more specifically workers instead, which really defines Marxism and Socialism. Maybe you think that’s a sound idea, maybe you think it’s a nonsensical idea, but that’s their idea.
Nazism and Fascism believe in a single leader, in a militarized society, in unity for the sake of unity (and repression of any attempts to diverge from unity), in reliance on emotional imagery and symbolism, and various other things. But none of those things have any class implications and they certainly don’t believe in giving control of privately owned firms to the workers. To the contrary, one of the most common accompaniments of fascist rule has always been banning of trade unionism. Not to mention the systematic persecution of all stripes of leftist. The fascist idea, such as it is (fascism is actually oddly, almost deliberately, vacuous when it comes to actual political/social content) is utterly different from the ideas of Marxism et al.
So. Now you know better, please don’t say such nonsense again.
Nice lecture. Strait from the library of the Socialist Alternative. Of course you know Marxism from ‘Marxism Discussion Groups’ or articles of the Red Flag (like ‘Nemtsov murder a result of Putin’s tyranny’, by Alex Chklovski!). How many people who talk with authority about Marxism have ever gone beyond the first pages of the Capital? Or Lenin’s? Or even your darling Trotsky’s? It is true that it is such an indigestible reading that you can’t blame them.
I think that is a fair assumption that you never lived in a Marxist society. Some people here did. Be more cautious when you accuse people of not knowing what they are talking about.
That’s cute, but unless you’ve lived in multiple different Marxist societies your experience is all but irrelevant to my points. There have been a number of different ones and their practise was not all the same or even that similar, for the reasons I pointed out. And your invitation to disregard the forest in favour of the trees is even more irrelevant; I don’t particularly care how many angels can dance on the third chapter of the second book of whichever seminal text.
Trotsky is not particularly my hero, so swing and a miss there as well. I do draw on Marx for economic analysis of capitalism, but I’m probably closest to the social Anarchists.
But above all, your reply is completely and utterly irrelevant in that, while it frantically grasps after victory by authority, it doesn’t actually say a damned thing about your original ridiculous claim about Nazism and Fascism, probably because there really is nothing much that can be said defending that one.
It’s a claim we find now and then among the kind-of-hard-but-not-really-violent right, whose rationale goes roughly “Well, if Nazis and Fascists were right wing that would make them kind of on our side, but we’re wonderful and perfect so that can’t be, so they must be, um, closet Commies! Yeah, that’s it, if we blame the Commies it all goes away!” It’s childish.
I said I’m an orthodox marxian. If you knew anything about it you’d know this means I’m a fan of Rosa Luxembourg and not Lenin. As I clearly said, the USSR was ‘state capitalist.’ This pretty much answers your inane question. I’d like to see private propetry abolished through economic democracy. Has nothing to do with Lenin.
The influences on Lenin and Stalin are a lot more complex and varied than Marx. Engels wrote in Anti-Duering that it’s stupid to abolish religion and try to start from square one. He and Marx also thought that capitalism can only end when it reaches it’s own inherent limits. Russia might be a special case, they thought, able to hop over the capitalist stage of development due to it’s tradition of peasant co-ops. But only if the main industrial countries of Germany and UK successfully transition to socialism in the wake of capitalism’s collapse and safeguard the process in Russia.
It’s been said that Lenin was more influenced by Chernyshevsky than by Marx and Stalin’s rule is modelled on his experience in religious school.
The USSR bought out the labour movement. Real socialism died when the social democratic parties voted for war credits in the first world war.
Just as the creature created by Paul isn’t what Jesus had in mind, Rabbinical Judaism is nothing like the original and Sunnism is a blatant hijacking of islam for political ends, Marxism-Leninism is a weird quasi-religion built partly with scraps and contortions of an analytical method called Marxism.
It doesn’t matter where the organizational tools come from. political movements are the product of interest groups. If one group borrows the organizational tools of another it doesn’t mean that the one movement sprung out of the other. Socialism until WWI was the interest of the Industrial workers. Marxism Leninism served the nomenclatura in their drive to maintain Russian sovereignty in the face of ceasless implacable western expansionism. The original German Revolutionary Conservatives were in favour of retaining the aristocracy and opposing the bourgeoisie, while Nazis used the tools available and allied with the bourgeoisie to establish power.
Now I see, you are a lecturer at those “Marxism Discussion groups”. Save your breath for them.
I’m sorry this got uncivil. I encourage you to consider what I said, look into it further and consider that reality is a lot more nuanced and complex than crude mouthfarts like ‘fascism is a result of Marxism’ ‘Lenin hated Russia,’ ‘Jews are Khazarians,’ or ‘Communism was a Jewish conspiracy,’ ‘Lenin was German Agent’ or ‘The Russian Empire was a functional society destroyed by commies.’
If you don’t want to listen to me on Socialism, read George Orwell, whose views on the matter are identical to my own. Particularly Homage to Catalonia.
Thank you no, I laughed already enough.
Dear Saker,
again, sorry for interrupting, but …
if you want to get rid of an empire, rid of an hegemon, rid of anything like that, you, we have to liberate yourself/ourselves. This process of self-liberation always starts in our minds, always. The first thing to do: getting sovereign about terms and definitions.
Thus:
It’s in no way any kind of “Liberalism”. What they are doing to us or – better – right now to the people of Donbas or Russia never at all has been in any way kind of liberal. Never.
Instead:
It’s just the plain old feudalism, the Feudalism. Absolutly the same feudalism like the one the roman empire implemented for more than 1000 years, the same feudalism as always, even as the one of the Russian Empire. The (from now on formerly so-called) liberals just want to implement the very same unequality like in the so-called mediaval, there are no differences.
Using their terminology is to be taken by their propaganda, is losing the war at the very beginning.
There is nothing liberal with the current Empire of Chaos. Even the Ottoman Empire, by comparison, has been much more liberal; even by comparison with nowadays EU.
So i really beg you, lets win the (world wide civil) war, i.e. call them by their real name: it’s Feudalism.
BTW: the very same is true in regard to the so-called liberals in Russia.
oh blah blah
great article. I would only say that I believe the masses in the West, at least in the US, are mainly controlled by the puppet masters in Washington and by the MSM and are devoid of any real ideology. Proof of this is the fact that most liberals have now unwittingly embraced neocon policies. And they are rabid about it – yet they stupidly believe they are informed people, who make sound decisions. We are a simple people, completely without political sophistication. The problem is not that Americans cannot understand the position of the people of Donbass – it is that they have never heard their position and never will hear it.
Very good. Clever. You know your stuff.