Putin's Counter Revolution

[David Morris]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/world/europe/as-putins-popularity-soars-voices-of-opposition-are-being-drowned-out.html?from=homepage
As Putin's Popularity Soars, Voices of Opposition Are Being Drowned Out
<http://mobile.nytimes.com/images/100000002770534/2014/03/16/world/europe/as-putins-popularity-soars-voices-of-opposition-are-being-drowned-out.html?from=homepage>


On Saturday, March 15, 2014, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> It seems the only violence in eastern Ukraine is inflicted upon pro
> Ukraine demonstrators. And the earlier pro EU demonstrations were peaceful
> until they were met with brutality and murder.  The early protestors
> weren't looking to oust Yanukovych either. The were just pro EU. It wasn't
> until they started getting brutally countered that they determined
> Yanukovych must go. And Putin thinks Yanukovych was too soft on the
> protestors.  The pro EU folks want a semblance of law. The pro Russians
> like dictatorial force.  It seems a clear contrast to me.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Saturday, March 15, 2014, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> Some truth to that but maybe just a teency bit oversimplified to propose
>> as a given the benign influence of western democracies and the Neo-liberal
>> project and the backwardness of Russia.  I have heard several middle class
>> Ukrainians who do not fully endorse either Putin or the EU. The idea that
>>  a large majority of Ukrainian people have changed their minds that much
>> since the last election seems far fetched and certainly cannot yet be
>> proven.
>>  The worst and largest scale  cross border violations of human and
>> national rights in recent history have come from the US and UK, not Russia.
>> I would like to see you or Meek refute that in a convincing way.
>> On Mar 15, 2014, at 4:37 PM, alice malice wrote:
>>
>> > 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/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
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