‘Oh, those Russians!’ (Boney M)
As I mentioned in my last post, there has been some bitter infighting in recent months among the ranks of Russian émigrés. Some of these people have the ear of Western politicians and so are not entirely unimportant. Therefore, while these émigré shenanigans may appear to be the pointless squabbles of the powerless, it’s worth taking a look at them. So here goes.
Continue reading Émigré Shenanigans‘Bсе так ненавидели друг друга, что нельзя было соединить двадцать человек, из которых десять не были бы врагами десяти остальных. А если не были, то немедленно делались.’ (Teffi – Gorodok)
The last few months have seen growing rifts in the already divided ranks of oppositionist Russian émigrés. On the one hand are the Navalnyites – one-time supporters of the late Aleksei Navalny. On the other hand is what I call the ‘defeatist’ faction, whose most prominent members are Gary Kasparov, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Leonid Nevzlin. I may do a deeper dive into all this in the weeks to come. For now, though, I offer you something else. For whenever I read of these émigré shenanigans, it reminds me of a (very) short story by interwar Russian émigré author Teffi (Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya) titled A Little Town (Gorodok). I can’t find a copy of this in English on the internet, so I thought that I would do a small public service by publishing my own very crude translation here. I always enjoy reading this. I hope that you do too.
An important document landed in the public sphere this week: the final report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR – a job long held by John Sopko).
I have mentioned SIGAR several times before, but for those not aware, he was the auditor appointed by the US government to check on what happened to the vast sums of money spend by the USA in Afghanistan. Over the years, he issued numerous reports detailing waste on a staggering scale. SIGAR’s work has now come to an end, and the final report sums up the findings of his office’s work over the past 20 or so years. Like SIGAR’s previous output, the final report is a damning condemnation of failed national building efforts. SIGAR concludes:
“The outcome in Afghanistan should serve as a cautionary tale for policymakers contemplating similar reconstruction efforts. If there is one overarching lesson to be learned from a tragedy that unfolded over 20 years, it is that any U.S. mission similar in context, scale, and ambition must confront the real possibility of failure.
The U.S. experience in Afghanistan demonstrates the need for sober assessments of what is achievable and what may be beyond the reach of an external intervention. Moreover, those tasked with deriving lessons from such endeavors should be wary of assuming that improvements in technique or tweaks in strategy can compensate for fundamental flaws in a mission’s premise. Without a realistic understanding of, and respect for, the constraints inherent in these situations, attempts to “fix” or refine the approach risk repeating the same mistakes while expecting different outcomes.”
In my book Russian Liberalism, I noted the tendencies of modern Russian liberals to believe in a version of the ‘Two Russia’s Theory’. In its contemporary manifestation, this theory maintains that there are two Russias – the dark, barbaric masses on the one hand, and the enlightened intelligentsia on the other. The first is conservative, imperialistic, pro-regime, and Asiatic. The second is liberal, peaceful, anti-regime, and European. As Boris Nemtsov put it, “The Russian people, for the most part, are divided into two uneven groups. On part is the descendants of serfs, people with a slavish consciousness. There are very many of them and their leader is V. V. Putin. The other (smaller) part is born free, proud, and independent. It does not have a leader but needs one.”
An associated concept is that of Homo Sovieticus (or homosos for short) – the Soviet Man. According to those who believe in his existence, Homo Sovieticus is a product of the repressive nature of the Soviet system, which created a people replete with negative characteristics, such as subservience, deceitfulness, and national chauvinism. Adherents to the Two Russias Theory see the root of Russia’s problems as lying in the prevalence of Homo Sovieticus, and Russia’s salvation as lying in the replacement of Homo Sovieticus with a new national character, something that requires a thorough process of decommunization. A very similar logic lay behind the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, many of whose supporters saw it as leading to the elimination of the Sovok (another prejorative word for the Soviet-style person) and his replacement with the European.
With this in mind, it has been interesting of late to read several books which directly impinge on the issue of the Post-Soviet person – Homo Postsovieticus. Is the Post-Soviet Person Homo Sovieticus reincarnated? Or is he/she something completely different?
Continue reading Homo PostsovieticusWar termination is back in the news again this week due to all the kerfuffle surrounding the US government’s 28 point peace plan for Ukraine. I thought, therefore, that this would provide a good opportunity for reviewing my latest read: Jan van Aken’s book, How Wars End: A Hopeful History of Making Peace.
I did an interview with Glenn Diesen about the subject of my book ‘Russia’s World Order: How Civilizationism Explains the Conflict with the West.’ You can watch it here:
In my latest article for Canadian Dimension magazine I discuss the Canadian Department of National Defence’s latest strange plan – to increase the armed forces reserves by a whopping 1000%. Read here.
Back in 2007 I wrote an article entitled ‘The Way of the Warrior’ for The Spectator, in which I criticized the ‘warrior ethos’ then in vogue in the US military. In a speech last week, US Secretary of Defense (or is he now Secretary of War?) Pete Hegseth sought to revive the warrior ethos, denouncing the allegedly pernicious effects of ‘wokism’ and the laws of war on US military effectiveness. In my latest article for Canadian Dimension I subject his speech to a detailed critique. You can read it here.
Iury Lisitsa, who has edited over 30 volumes of the works of philosopher Ivan Ilyin (or Il’in), has reminded me that today is the 20th anniversary of the reburial of Ilyin in Donskoy monastery in Moscow on 3 October 2005, a ceremony that we both attended. In memory of the event, I have republished below an account of it that I wrote for the Spectator magazine. Unfortunately, the optimism that I expressed in the article for Russia’s future has not been borne out. That said, I am very fond of the article, as it is, I think, one of my very best from a stylistic point of view. It gives, I believe, a very good impression of the atmosphere of the event. I have included it in my collection of articles published under the title ‘Reflections on the Early 21st Century‘.
The Return of White Russia
(Published in The Spectator – 29 October 2005)
[The article below contains a small factual error – the day of national unity is not 3 October but 4 November].
“Unbelievable,” the professor told me. It was hard to disagree. We had just laid flowers on the grave of the anti-communist Russian philosopher Ivan Alexandrovich Il’in. Just a short time ago, mere possession of one of Il’in’s books would have brought six years in prison. Now the Russian state has reburied the philosopher in Moscow with all the pomp and ceremony it could muster.
Continue reading The Return of White RussiaA while back, I was in Washington DC, and I visited the new Victims of Communism museum. My interest in this was piqued by the saga of the Victims of Communism monument here in Ottawa, which caused a scandal once it became known that many of the names people had paid to have inscribed on the monument were those of Nazi collaborators. I thought it would be interesting to see how the US museum compared.
I’m pleased to say that it’s not anything like the Ottawa monument. On the whole it does a decent job. That said, the historian in me did find a few claims in the museum that I questioned, and there was, I feel, a certain national bias that popped up here and there, largely in the form of Polish nationalism and in a tendency to portray Russian and Chinese people solely as perpetrators of communist atrocities and not as victims. This despite the fact that probably more Russian and Chinese people have perished as a result of communism than people of any other nationalities.
So let’s take a look. I will focus on the Soviet-related materials, not on those relating to China and elsewhere, as the former are more my area of expertise.
Continue reading Visit to the Victims of Communism Museum
IRRUSSIANALITY 