Russian Tensions

March 2024 Forums General discussion Russian Tensions

Viewing 15 posts - 1,576 through 1,590 (of 5,146 total)
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  • #228846
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    But some of the Russian tanks are flying the Soviet flag, and some nationalists wear jackets with CCCP on the back.

    Lenin and Stalin are nationalist heroes for Russian nationalists, and the Putin regime conflates them into one with its “Atomic Orthodoxy” and the Tsars. Stalin is now St. Josef Stalin and his image is in the churches, showing him carrying a small cross. St. Seraphim of Sarov has been made patron saint of nuclear weapons, and the red star is used side by side with the Russian Cross. Lenin’s empty shell still lies obscenely on view, I believe, and I think the restoration of statues perfectly plausible in this psychotic pastiche that is modern Russian nationalism – a hotchpotch of historical eras all jumbled up.

    #228847
    sshenfield
    Participant

    Thomas More is quite right.

    #228848
    Thomas_More
    Participant
    #228849
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    More than 50% of the Russian want the Soviet Union back again and millions still worship Stalin and Lenin, most of them are not ‘communists”, they are nationalists and they feel that during the time of the Soviet Union they had more protection and nationalism prevailed and that Stalin and Lenin were Russian nationalists. In Georgia still, they worship Joseph Stalin, and during the time of the WW2 the Russian Orthodox Church said that Stalin was the apostle of God who was going to save the Soviet Union from the devil of Nazism

    #228850
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Fair enough. Ok there will be nostalgics in the Russian army for the old USSR. But I still don’t believe that they restored that statute of Lenin or even that it was restored at all. The Ukrainian side also has an interest in cultivating the idea that the Russian government wants to recreate the USSR.

    #228851
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    I think they are too busy killing to be restoring statues. Maybe they’ll renovate some churches along the way, or do some illuminated art?

    #228852
    ALB
    Keymaster

    That was part of my point. They have better — or, rather, worse — things to do.

    There are also nostalgics in Russia for the pre-Bolshevik, Tsarist regime, including, apparently, Putin.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/1061851.html

    #228853
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    They do not have to restore any of Lenin’s statutes. Ukraine’s had more than 5 000 Lenin monuments and more than a thousand were kept including a bunch of statues. There are around three Lenin statutes in the USA placed on private property and one of them is owned by a business

    https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/8/27/20830552/seattle-fremont-vladimir-lenin-statue-history

    #228854
    ALB
    Keymaster

    More about Lenin statutes in Ukraine here:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-53500436.amp

    The ironic thing is that, as Putin himself has pointed out, it was Lenin who created Ukraine by making it a separate administrative unit of Bolshevik Russia:

    https://huri.harvard.edu/news/serhii-plokhii-casus-belli-did-lenin-create-modern-ukraine

    #228855
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    What about the Ukrainian nationalists of Simon Petliura, fighting against Lenin?

    #228856
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Lenin sent Trotsky, known as “the butcher of the Ukraine” to crush opposition there. When the Whites were defeated by Makhno, with Trotsky claiming the credit, the Reds then turned on the peasantry, for whom Makhno was a protector from both the nationalists and the Bolsheviks.

    The title “butcher of the Ukraine” was also conferred on Khrushchev whilst he was Stalin’s henchman.

    As for the Whites in the Ukraine, led by Denikin, they burned peasants alive, nailed to doors and thrown on pyres.

    #228857
    Ozymandias
    Participant

    https://mubi.com/films/state-funeral

    I highly recommend this astonishing documentary by Sergei Loznitsa.

    MUBI is a streaming platform specialising in “Art House” movies. They offer a weeks free trial. A further four free weeks is offered if you decide to cancel.

    This is a must see for anyone. Sadly phones and tellies are smarter than workers nowadays.

    #228858
    ALB
    Keymaster

    By today’s legalistic standards Trotsky would be Ukrainian as would Martov, Brezhnev and Khrushchev. Or would they? Which goes to show how stupid nationalism and “national identity” are.

    #228859
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Yes, exactly. What does Bierce say? “Flag, n. A piece of colored rag … borne by ships and troops … serving the same purpose as the signs in public parks which read “Rubbish may be shot here.””

    The west of Ukraine has been Catholic (Uniate) for centuries, viewing “schismatic” Russians as savages.. A legacy of the massive Polish-Lithuanian kingdom which stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Gogol’s Taras Bulba, a hymn to Orthodox Russian nationalistic madness, but still an exciting novel.

    #228860
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    What an old-time nationalist nutter of both sides in the region would have said, of course, in the past, was that the “enemy” are all Jews. They don’t dare say that today, but it had always been the first recourse of confrontation in the area.

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