Putin's Counter Revolution

Sat Mar 15 15:59:14 CDT 2014

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-fog-and-rumblings-of-war

Another dispatch from Ukrainian emigre TPM Reader *RS*. Please note his own
caveats about the reliability of the reports and the different actors
trying to push their own narratives of events ...

Just wanted to send you a quick note on events in Ukraine. I realize most
of the world is concentrated on what's going on in Crimea, some are already
moving on. I just wanted to point to something else that's going on.

There is some really dark stuff happening in eastern Ukraine. As you know
it's the heartland of the Russian speaking population in Ukraine (and
Yanukovich's base), and there was some thought that Putin might invade
there, if things went completely off the wall. While that hasn't happened,
there have been many, semi-credible reports that busloads of Russian
"tourists" have been coming over to basically start trouble, give the
appearance of instability and maybe even the pretext for a Crimea style
referendum. Obviously the pro-Maidan side is certainly pushing that angle,
and it's hard to say what's actually going on without being there, on the
ground.

In any case, there have been some violent confrontations, especially in
Donetsk (Yanik's hometown) and yesterday all hell broke lose. From the
reports I've read, a pro-united Ukraine demonstration was winding down and
people were heading home, when some of those people were attacked by what I
can only call a pro-Russian lynch mob. Apparently up to 3 people are dead
and dozens were injured. The video might be more shocking then anything
I've seen at Maidan. Just brutal:

On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Just as the Pinkertons could start a 'commotion' and blame the anarchists
> after they
> cracked down on them, many in Ukraine right now are fearing that Putin's
> forces might
> start shooting (at nothing), storm something and Putin would claim their
> presence was obviously
> needed to quell the 'uprising'..
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Sat, 3/15/14, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Putin's Counter Revolution
>  To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>  Date: Saturday, March 15, 2014, 4:37 PM
>
>  Putin's Counter-Revolution
>
>  James Meek reports from Ukraine
>
>
>
>
>  When Putin spoke of 'chaos' in Kiev and Ukraine as a whole,
>  in his
>  press conference a few days after the Crimean invasion, he
>  must have
>  realised that his foreign audience, as well as the citizens
>  of Kiev
>  and all the people of Ukraine who favoured the revolution,
>  knew there
>  was no chaos. His audience were those who both believed and
>  wanted to
>  believe the 'Banderite' revolution had brought anarchy:
>  neo-Soviets on
>  both sides of the border who yearn for an enlarged
>  Russophone space -
>  socially conservative, militarily strong, inheritors of the
>  cherished
>  myths, martyrs and achievements of imperial and Soviet times
>  - but who
>  nonetheless don't feel bound by the old Soviet restrictions
>  on travel,
>  Orthodox Christian piety or consumerism.
>
>
>  [...]
>
>  The Russians and Ukrainians of the 1990s were able to temper
>  regret at
>  the collapse of the USSR with their own knowledge of the
>  dismembered
>  country's shortcomings. A generation later, this is less and
>  less the
>  case. Many of the most articulate and thoughtful Russians
>  and
>  Ukrainians, those of middle age who knew the realities of
>  Soviet life
>  and later prospered in the post-Soviet world, have moved
>  abroad, gone
>  into a small business or been intimidated: in any case they
>  have been
>  taken out of the political arena. In Russia and Russophone
>  Ukraine the
>  stage is left to neo-Soviet populists who propagate the
>  false notion
>  of the USSR as a paradisiac Russian-speaking commonwealth,
>  benignly
>  ruled from Moscow, a natural continuum of the tsarist
>  empire,
>  disturbed only by Nazi invaders to whom 'the west' are heirs
>  and the
>  only obstacle to its re-creation. If you were born after
>  1985 you have
>  no remembered reality to measure against this false vision,
>  just as
>  you have no way to situate those charming Soviet musical
>  comedies of
>  the 1960s and 1970s, idyllic portrayals of an idealised
>  Russophone
>  socialism, brightly coloured and fun, propaganda now in a
>  way they
>  weren't when they were made. This is the context that has
>  made it
>  possible for Vladimir Putin and his government to sell
>  Russia's
>  opportunistic invasion of Ukraine to his own people and to
>  Ukrainian
>  neo-Soviets: the idea that it undoes what should never have
>  been done,
>  an artificial division of Russian-speaking Eurasia by
>  fascists/the
>  West/America/rabid Ukrainian nationalists - in neo-Soviet
>  discourse,
>  avatars of a single anti-Russian monster.
>
>
>  http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n06/james-meek/putins-counter-revolution
>  -
>  Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20140315/83e76c66/attachment.html>