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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2023-276
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
Palestine:
Ukraine:
China
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Other issues:
The Beezle:
Empire:
Syrakistan:
Russia
Use as open (neither Ukraine nor Palestine related) thread …
For many visitors at Moon of Alabama, b’s Whiskey Bar means more than merely a somewhat sobering board to gather critical information of a kind that sometimes feels rather exotic than just being nerdy and obscure. Being a regular visitor over many years does something to you; for myself I’d say it helped me develop a certain conscience, one that I was truly seeking for ever since I began trying to make sense of “the news” as a child, reading Der Spiegel around the time of the first Iraq war in 1991. It was a long way, and like many others here I am relieved, as well as amazed to have found this very venue where I’m now posting to share my thoughts with you.
We here often barflies speaking about the gift of companionship they find here, being among peers of various persuasions, united in a willingness to argue certain things in a rare light. We all know, however, this sort of topical indulgence comes with a flip side: most people – let’s call them ordinary for now, though I despise the judgemental aspect of the term – are hard to reach with the kind of arguments regularly developed here, all centered lastly on study of violent failures of living together, among others Hienieden in our shared Gaia.
I feel that we may rely on a good hope with our c(o)urse. For some this may be a rational case of ethics, while others are on a personal journey of sorts that drives them to and from here, and others still gain certitude from a relation with the spiritual (whatever concept applies). Some call it god, and I only hesitate insomuch as I prefer to address Him as my boss. We’re joking, of course. In truth, we are companions.
– This writing was meant as an introduction to a really concrete topic I would like to bring up here, as it came with a book given to me by my girlfriend of two years now. It’s about controversial radio astronomy, and she had found it on the streets of Köln. Two years may be enough to know that I want to be with her, but not enough to bring up all of the dissident political history and ethics which I’ve developed just like so many others here on the Moon. Neither of us two are astronomers, though I have some background to make sense of the book, and let me tell you, it’s a thriller. I have no idea how she knew, but as it stands, the whole story is yet another tale of an establishment stricken with egomania and pleonexia, as Karlof1 likes to say, leading to ignorance, and then, catastrophe. It thus makes for a great case in point in my task to tell her who I am, what I believe in, and how I try to decide what to do.
I hope that, perhaps, the little tale serves to encourage others here, many of whom are probably way more lonely than me. Trust in the good, I’d say; not only because there is no real alternative, but also because IT seems to answer.
Also, forgive me the cliffhanger, please. I’ll dedicate another post to my original intention soon. Meanwhile, here’s the thing.
Posted by: persiflo | Nov 20 2023 3:04 utc | 57
Russian historian Aleksandr Dyukov on the role of Lenin’s policy of nationalities in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
November 7:
Was it possible to save the USSR as a state?
Yes, of course.
For a long time—if in the 40s – early 60s (at the latest), as a result of the successful construction of socialism, at the request of the workers, national republics would have been liquidated (and the “nationality” field in passports would have been crossed out, too). Without the institutional resistance of the national republics, the formation of the new historical community (aka the big Russian nation) would have proceeded much further in 30–40 years, and by the beginning of Perestroyka there would have been no legitimate republics demanding to follow the Constitution and grant sovereignty.
In the short term—if, instead of Gorbachyov, Lukyanov and other young indoctrinated Leninists, there would have been old men, cautious due to their age and experience, who would not have been changing anything radically. The USSR would definitely have lasted twenty or thirty years, stagnating, but without the economic catastrophe of Perestroyka.
Ideally, a combination of both scenarios, in that case, there would have been 50–70 years, two or even three generations, to create a single state nation instead of a mosaic of socialist nations.
And then it wouldn’t have mattered whether socialism remained or not. The main thing would have been that a single country would have remained.
But in both cases, in order to save the USSR, it was necessary to violate the foundations of ideology and quietly deemphasize Lenin’s genius [meaning, his policy on nationalities — S].
November 7:
Stalin to Lenin on the first results of kowtowing to the ethnocrats (in a letter dated September 22, 1922):
“During the four years of the Civil War, when, due to the intervention, we were forced to demonstrate Moscow’s liberalism on the national question, we have created among the communists, beyond our will, true and consistent social independents, demanding real independence in every sense and regarding the intervention of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party as a deception and hypocrisy on Moscow’s part.
We are experiencing a period of development when the form, the law, the constitution cannot be ignored, when the young generation of communists on the outskirts refuses to accept the game of independence as a game, stubbornly recognizing the words about independence at face value and also just as stubbornly demanding that we implement the letter of the constitutions of the independent republics.
If we do not try now to adapt the form of relations between the center and the outskirts to the actual relationships, due to which the outskirts in all fundamental respects, of course, must obey the center, i.e., if we do not replace now the formal (fictitious) independence with just as formal (and, at the same time, real) autonomy, then in a year it will be incomparably more difficult to defend the actual unity of the Soviet Republics.”
Lenin answers in December 1922 with a philippic:
“I think that for the Bolsheviks, for the communists, there is no need to explain this further and in detail. And I think that in this case, in relation to the Georgian nation, we have a typical example of how extreme caution, consideration and willingness to compromise are required on our side by a truly proletarian attitude to the matter. The Georgian who disdains this side of the matter, disdainfully hurls accusations of “social-nationalism” (while he himself is a real and true not only “social-nationalist,” but also crude Great Russian derzhimorda*), that Georgian, in essence, violates the interests of proletarian class solidarity… That is why in this case it is better to overshoot in the direction of willingness to compromise and soft attitude towards national minorities than to undershoot. That is why in this case the fundamental interest of proletarian solidarity, and consequently of the proletarian class struggle, demands that we never treat the national question as a formality, but always take into account the unavoidable difference in the attitude of the proletarian of the oppressed (or small) nation towards the oppressive (or large) nation.”
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* A person who is rude, dumb and cruel to those below him, who uses his power to suppress freedom, initiative and so on. The word comes from the name of a character from Nikolay Gogol’s The Government Inspector. — S
November 8 (1, 2):
Once again I will try to focus attention on one simple fact that is studiously ignored (for obvious reasons).
The so-called “Leninist policy on nationalities” did not introduce equality between representatives of different ethnic groups, but consolidated the inequality of “titular” ones and “non-titular” ones in ethno-territorial entities. Inequality based on ethnic origin.
And I‘m not only talking about the fate of Russians who in the national republics were forced to either register as “Ukrainians” in order to move up the party ladder or come to terms with their second-class status (in the Transcaucasian and Central Asian republics)—I’m talking about all “non-titular” ones.
Armenians in Georgia, Tatars in Bashkiriya, Uzbeks in Tajikistan—just like Russians, they had to come to terms with the dominance of the “titular” ones. Who, by the way, often constituted a minority of the population.
Such a political system is called ethnocracy, and if the “non-titular” ones begin to fight for equality, an ethnocracy, defending the exclusive rights of the “titular” ones, turns into fascism, which, in fact, happened in a number of former Soviet republics in post-Soviet times.
The only alternative to ethnocracy is a big civil nation, in which everyone, regardless of ethnic origin, has equal rights and opportunities. The only two post-Soviet countries that came close to this ideal are Russia and Belarus.
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To be an anti-fascist means to fight against ethnocracies, for equal rights and opportunities for people, regardless of their ethnic origin. But, of course, defenders of ethnocracies will also cry about “great power chauvinism” and “fascism.”
Posted by: S | Nov 20 2023 4:59 utc | 62
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