Thank you Rolo for these interviews with patriots from the Donbass. I surmised that they existed but have never encountered anything like them on any media channel in the West, whether mainstream or reinformation.
It pains me to learn about the poor treatment that the people in Donbass received from Russia, between the assassination or in…
Thank you Rolo for these interviews with patriots from the Donbass. I surmised that they existed but have never encountered anything like them on any media channel in the West, whether mainstream or reinformation.
It pains me to learn about the poor treatment that the people in Donbass received from Russia, between the assassination or incarceration of patriotic leaders and the appointment of corrupt managers. What a choice between being butchered by the Ukrainian nazis and being robbed by Russian security services while the Ukrainian nazis shell you. It reminds me of the months before February revolution when ministers, officials, and merchants used the difficulties in supplying the cities with food and coal in order to push up prices and make some coin : the people were mere sheep to be fleeced. I believe that Putin and his ministers have made a serious political mistake in their poor treatment of the population in the Donbass.
In the presentation of Ugolniy, you mention that he is in favour of the reunification of the Slavlands under the Russkiy Mir. A worthy goal. However it all depends on what is intended for the populations living in the Russkiy Mir. Peoples were left to their own culture and law under the tsar and there were no questions on their loyalty. The Balts, the Finns, the Cossacks fought for the tsar. Even the German aristocracy and bourgeoisie in the Baltic region fought for the tsar and against the Reich in the First World War. It all changed under the communists with large population displacements and a heavy-handed Russification campaign. This and the communist absurdity created bitterness and resentment among the non-Russians. The Finns and Balts are frightened at the thought of coming again under the rule of Moscow. So are the Ukrainians. They all think they will be killed or sent to Siberia. Nothing Putin does will dispel this fear.
«what is intended for the populations living in the Russkiy Mir. Peoples were left to their own culture and law under the tsar and there were no questions on their loyalty. The Balts, the Finns, the Cossacks fought for the tsar. Even the German aristocracy and bourgeoisie in the Baltic region fought for the tsar and against the Reich in the First World War.»
That needs to be understood properly, because the usual ways of "tory" and "whig" teaching of history obfuscate the big picture, focusing on "personalities":
* The "ancien regime" (feudal system) was the political form of the mob protection racket: the knights were the enforcers, the earls the local territory lieutenants, the dukes the bosses of a regional mob, the king/tsar the "boss of all bosses".
* In the "ancien regime" loyalty was *personal*, from lower mob boss to higher mob boss, and wars were *dynastic*, that is between mob groups for control of territory: an earl rising against a duke to take over the regional territory, a duke fighting against another duke to take over their mob territory. Ethnicity still mattered, but less than personal loyalty to your mob boss.
* Accordingly dynastic wars were fought by small armies, usually mostly cavalry, gangs of enforcers from different allied mobs, and sometimes they did not touch civilians, except of course to loot them, because the civilians were the prize, the source of the "protection" racket money.
* This all changed with firearms and cannons, which created the horror of industrialized war, fought mostly by huge masses of infantry.
* In order to raise large infantry armies there was a need of a unified ideology for them to fight together, and nationalism was invented for that purpose, and replaced personal loyalty as the basis for army cohesion.
«It all changed under the communists with large population displacements and a heavy-handed Russification campaign. This and the communist absurdity created bitterness and resentment among the non-Russians.»
That is quite the opposite: the non-russian parts of the USSR were heavily subsidized and had disproportionate influence in the USSR, in part because of true belief in internationalism (much the same in the PRC BTW, where for example the Uyghurs have been multiplying like rabbits). Indeed a large part of the collapse of the USSR was due to the russian nationalists wanting to drop the cost of keeping sending subsidies to third-world places like the "stans" (but they made a big mistake: they should have never let Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan leave the RF, simply because of geostrategic reasons).
«The Finns and Balts are frightened at the thought of coming again under the rule of Moscow.»
The finns are a special case (contended between Sweden and Russia), and balts and the ruthenians and the poles are largely managed by their expat communities, which are the descendants of the lower nobility of the lithuanian-ruthenian-polish empire, that is "white" petty nobility, and remember the USSR period as one of "red" egalitarianism.
They know very well that instead of rule of Moscow they are instead going to be ruled by Washington (or Berlin on behalf of Washington), but they also reckon that "western" rule is elitist and would protect their return to power as "white" elite.
«So are the Ukrainians.»
As usual, those are the (mostly catholic) *ruthenians*, from the western Belarus and western Ukraine areas (which used to be polish-lithuanian before WW2). The (mostly orthodox) ukrainians or malorussians instead usually remember the peace and egalitarianism of the USSR with favour, because the USSR freed them from servitude to their overlords (often ruthenian).
“The population welcomed us warmly, regardless of how hard it was for them to provide food to soldiers; they always found some nice treats — some villagers boiled chicken, others boiled potatoes and cut lard (soldiers dubbed this kind of catering ‘a grandmother’s ration’). However, such attitudes were common only in the Eastern Ukraine.
As soon as we entered the Western Ukraine, that had passed to the Soviet Union from Poland in 1940, the attitude of the population was quite different — people hid from us in their houses, as they disliked and feared the Muscovites and Kastaps [a disparaging name for Russians in Ukraine – translators comment]. Besides that, those places were Bandera areas, where the nationalistic movement was quite strong.”
“I even found my family on the internet! I found my mother's 88 year old sister which meant I could go back to Ukraine as an insider not just a tourist. I really saw both halves of the country that way; westward-looking Kiev which is Catholic and very different from the east, which is a lot closer to the Soviet Union. A lot of people speak Russian in the east so in Ukraine there are two very disparate cultures in one country.”
That is a big problem with V. Putin's famous "one culture, one country" claim about Ukraine and Russia, it does not work so well north-west of Kiev.
You are only half-right about the USSR. The Russification was heavy in terms of language, culture and population replacement. In 1992, Latvia declared independence but Latvians were only half of the population there. Russians made up around one third of the population in Estonia and Lithuania. There are no more Finns in Viipuri/Vyborg. A third of Kazakhstan's population was Russian in 1990. In the USSR, everybody had to speak Russian and had been immersed in a form of Russian culture. This policy is a major break compared to tsarist Russia.
The cultural cut in Ukraine runs west of Kiev, but Kiev and the region it commands are special. They are the ruling city and will do their outmost to resist coming under Moscow's rule. Even though almost everyone in Kiev speaks Russian and shares nearly the same culture. It is in the same vein as Vienna, which has rejected being part of Germany and has remained independent.
I really doubt the influence of the former Polish, Lithuanian, or Ruthenian aristocracy. The real leaders in the west of Ukraine have come from the families of priests and archpriests.
«You are only half-right about the USSR. The Russification was heavy in terms of language, culture»
That russification happened is not the question, it whether it was a policy of the USSR and whether if so it was forced. Consider westernization first and americanization later: it has affected a lot of cultures, some of them fiercely independent, simply because of "follow the leader" or cargo-cultism, voluntarily: after the "Meji restoration" japanese nobles started to wear "western" dress and build "western" style houses, they did not just adopt "western" technology.
«and population replacement»
That was largely due to the USSR being a vast multinational area (and internal passports only limited population exchanges). The richer parts of the USSR got a lot of non-russian immigrants too, from the flood of those from every tiny tribes in the Caucasus and the stans to Moscow, to vietnamese "guest workers" in east Germany. Also the cases of the baltics are special because there have been a lot of waves of different ethnicities as they were contended between various german, nordic, finnish, slavic kingdoms.
«In the USSR, everybody had to speak Russian and had been immersed in a form of Russian culture. This policy is a major break compared to tsarist Russia.»
Was that a policy? Sometimes, as there were both periods of greater central push towards "standardization" (but rarely forced) and periods of greater push towards localization, because the CPSU policy was that what kept together the USSR was not a single "russian world" culture, but the CPSU itself.
Compare instead the spanish or japanese colonial empires: there castilianization or nipponification were both a policy and as a rule forced (often quite violently).
«The cultural cut in Ukraine runs west of Kiev, but Kiev and the region it commands are special. They are the ruling city and will do their outmost to resist coming under Moscow's rule. Even though almost everyone in Kiev speaks Russian and shares nearly the same culture.»
That is I think because they are largely oligarchic gangsters who like enjoying the benefits of formal sovereignty, like those of many tax heavens, to do their dirty deals.
«It is in the same vein as Vienna, which has rejected being part of Germany and has remained independent.»
That's a bit different: the austrians have been independent for many centuries, at the centre of a big empire rivaling the prussian one, and the two "german" empires even fought wars for territory. In case their current independence is mostly fictitious, as for all practical purposes, despite a different culture, they are an extension of Bavaria (more than Germany). I guess Austria was exactly the model that V. Putin had for Ukraine before the SMO.
«I really doubt the influence of the former Polish, Lithuanian, or Ruthenian aristocracy. The real leaders in the west of Ukraine have come from the families of priests and archpriests.»
From what I have read the high "szchlacta" was indeed largely eliminated, the nostalgics of empire are the descendants of the lower nobility and "gentry", among which I guess can well be the families of the powerful local priests (which however tended to be catholic/uniates rather than byzantines).
Thank you Rolo for these interviews with patriots from the Donbass. I surmised that they existed but have never encountered anything like them on any media channel in the West, whether mainstream or reinformation.
It pains me to learn about the poor treatment that the people in Donbass received from Russia, between the assassination or incarceration of patriotic leaders and the appointment of corrupt managers. What a choice between being butchered by the Ukrainian nazis and being robbed by Russian security services while the Ukrainian nazis shell you. It reminds me of the months before February revolution when ministers, officials, and merchants used the difficulties in supplying the cities with food and coal in order to push up prices and make some coin : the people were mere sheep to be fleeced. I believe that Putin and his ministers have made a serious political mistake in their poor treatment of the population in the Donbass.
In the presentation of Ugolniy, you mention that he is in favour of the reunification of the Slavlands under the Russkiy Mir. A worthy goal. However it all depends on what is intended for the populations living in the Russkiy Mir. Peoples were left to their own culture and law under the tsar and there were no questions on their loyalty. The Balts, the Finns, the Cossacks fought for the tsar. Even the German aristocracy and bourgeoisie in the Baltic region fought for the tsar and against the Reich in the First World War. It all changed under the communists with large population displacements and a heavy-handed Russification campaign. This and the communist absurdity created bitterness and resentment among the non-Russians. The Finns and Balts are frightened at the thought of coming again under the rule of Moscow. So are the Ukrainians. They all think they will be killed or sent to Siberia. Nothing Putin does will dispel this fear.
Very insightful comment. Thank you for sharing. It's hard to explain this to Russians though. The issue is too emotional to them. Still.
«what is intended for the populations living in the Russkiy Mir. Peoples were left to their own culture and law under the tsar and there were no questions on their loyalty. The Balts, the Finns, the Cossacks fought for the tsar. Even the German aristocracy and bourgeoisie in the Baltic region fought for the tsar and against the Reich in the First World War.»
That needs to be understood properly, because the usual ways of "tory" and "whig" teaching of history obfuscate the big picture, focusing on "personalities":
* The "ancien regime" (feudal system) was the political form of the mob protection racket: the knights were the enforcers, the earls the local territory lieutenants, the dukes the bosses of a regional mob, the king/tsar the "boss of all bosses".
* In the "ancien regime" loyalty was *personal*, from lower mob boss to higher mob boss, and wars were *dynastic*, that is between mob groups for control of territory: an earl rising against a duke to take over the regional territory, a duke fighting against another duke to take over their mob territory. Ethnicity still mattered, but less than personal loyalty to your mob boss.
* Accordingly dynastic wars were fought by small armies, usually mostly cavalry, gangs of enforcers from different allied mobs, and sometimes they did not touch civilians, except of course to loot them, because the civilians were the prize, the source of the "protection" racket money.
* This all changed with firearms and cannons, which created the horror of industrialized war, fought mostly by huge masses of infantry.
* In order to raise large infantry armies there was a need of a unified ideology for them to fight together, and nationalism was invented for that purpose, and replaced personal loyalty as the basis for army cohesion.
«It all changed under the communists with large population displacements and a heavy-handed Russification campaign. This and the communist absurdity created bitterness and resentment among the non-Russians.»
That is quite the opposite: the non-russian parts of the USSR were heavily subsidized and had disproportionate influence in the USSR, in part because of true belief in internationalism (much the same in the PRC BTW, where for example the Uyghurs have been multiplying like rabbits). Indeed a large part of the collapse of the USSR was due to the russian nationalists wanting to drop the cost of keeping sending subsidies to third-world places like the "stans" (but they made a big mistake: they should have never let Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan leave the RF, simply because of geostrategic reasons).
«The Finns and Balts are frightened at the thought of coming again under the rule of Moscow.»
The finns are a special case (contended between Sweden and Russia), and balts and the ruthenians and the poles are largely managed by their expat communities, which are the descendants of the lower nobility of the lithuanian-ruthenian-polish empire, that is "white" petty nobility, and remember the USSR period as one of "red" egalitarianism.
They know very well that instead of rule of Moscow they are instead going to be ruled by Washington (or Berlin on behalf of Washington), but they also reckon that "western" rule is elitist and would protect their return to power as "white" elite.
«So are the Ukrainians.»
As usual, those are the (mostly catholic) *ruthenians*, from the western Belarus and western Ukraine areas (which used to be polish-lithuanian before WW2). The (mostly orthodox) ukrainians or malorussians instead usually remember the peace and egalitarianism of the USSR with favour, because the USSR freed them from servitude to their overlords (often ruthenian).
http://ww2today.com/1-march-1944-the-red-army-marches-across-ukraine
“The population welcomed us warmly, regardless of how hard it was for them to provide food to soldiers; they always found some nice treats — some villagers boiled chicken, others boiled potatoes and cut lard (soldiers dubbed this kind of catering ‘a grandmother’s ration’). However, such attitudes were common only in the Eastern Ukraine.
As soon as we entered the Western Ukraine, that had passed to the Soviet Union from Poland in 1940, the attitude of the population was quite different — people hid from us in their houses, as they disliked and feared the Muscovites and Kastaps [a disparaging name for Russians in Ukraine – translators comment]. Besides that, those places were Bandera areas, where the nationalistic movement was quite strong.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/articles/2007/04/16/marina_lewycka_rony_robinson_feature.shtml
“I even found my family on the internet! I found my mother's 88 year old sister which meant I could go back to Ukraine as an insider not just a tourist. I really saw both halves of the country that way; westward-looking Kiev which is Catholic and very different from the east, which is a lot closer to the Soviet Union. A lot of people speak Russian in the east so in Ukraine there are two very disparate cultures in one country.”
That is a big problem with V. Putin's famous "one culture, one country" claim about Ukraine and Russia, it does not work so well north-west of Kiev.
You are only half-right about the USSR. The Russification was heavy in terms of language, culture and population replacement. In 1992, Latvia declared independence but Latvians were only half of the population there. Russians made up around one third of the population in Estonia and Lithuania. There are no more Finns in Viipuri/Vyborg. A third of Kazakhstan's population was Russian in 1990. In the USSR, everybody had to speak Russian and had been immersed in a form of Russian culture. This policy is a major break compared to tsarist Russia.
The cultural cut in Ukraine runs west of Kiev, but Kiev and the region it commands are special. They are the ruling city and will do their outmost to resist coming under Moscow's rule. Even though almost everyone in Kiev speaks Russian and shares nearly the same culture. It is in the same vein as Vienna, which has rejected being part of Germany and has remained independent.
I really doubt the influence of the former Polish, Lithuanian, or Ruthenian aristocracy. The real leaders in the west of Ukraine have come from the families of priests and archpriests.
«You are only half-right about the USSR. The Russification was heavy in terms of language, culture»
That russification happened is not the question, it whether it was a policy of the USSR and whether if so it was forced. Consider westernization first and americanization later: it has affected a lot of cultures, some of them fiercely independent, simply because of "follow the leader" or cargo-cultism, voluntarily: after the "Meji restoration" japanese nobles started to wear "western" dress and build "western" style houses, they did not just adopt "western" technology.
«and population replacement»
That was largely due to the USSR being a vast multinational area (and internal passports only limited population exchanges). The richer parts of the USSR got a lot of non-russian immigrants too, from the flood of those from every tiny tribes in the Caucasus and the stans to Moscow, to vietnamese "guest workers" in east Germany. Also the cases of the baltics are special because there have been a lot of waves of different ethnicities as they were contended between various german, nordic, finnish, slavic kingdoms.
«In the USSR, everybody had to speak Russian and had been immersed in a form of Russian culture. This policy is a major break compared to tsarist Russia.»
Was that a policy? Sometimes, as there were both periods of greater central push towards "standardization" (but rarely forced) and periods of greater push towards localization, because the CPSU policy was that what kept together the USSR was not a single "russian world" culture, but the CPSU itself.
Compare instead the spanish or japanese colonial empires: there castilianization or nipponification were both a policy and as a rule forced (often quite violently).
«The cultural cut in Ukraine runs west of Kiev, but Kiev and the region it commands are special. They are the ruling city and will do their outmost to resist coming under Moscow's rule. Even though almost everyone in Kiev speaks Russian and shares nearly the same culture.»
That is I think because they are largely oligarchic gangsters who like enjoying the benefits of formal sovereignty, like those of many tax heavens, to do their dirty deals.
«It is in the same vein as Vienna, which has rejected being part of Germany and has remained independent.»
That's a bit different: the austrians have been independent for many centuries, at the centre of a big empire rivaling the prussian one, and the two "german" empires even fought wars for territory. In case their current independence is mostly fictitious, as for all practical purposes, despite a different culture, they are an extension of Bavaria (more than Germany). I guess Austria was exactly the model that V. Putin had for Ukraine before the SMO.
«I really doubt the influence of the former Polish, Lithuanian, or Ruthenian aristocracy. The real leaders in the west of Ukraine have come from the families of priests and archpriests.»
From what I have read the high "szchlacta" was indeed largely eliminated, the nostalgics of empire are the descendants of the lower nobility and "gentry", among which I guess can well be the families of the powerful local priests (which however tended to be catholic/uniates rather than byzantines).