Images From Ukraine

Sort of along the lines that jch mentions, my sense of this is that there is in fact a a good but of popular support for the pro-Russian party/regime, so that it’s a little less evil govt. vs. The People than the US media esp. can make it out to be.

But I also don’t know much about this at all, and mostly getting this from reading a bunch of Jonathan Steele in the Guardian when the whichever colored revolution was going on several years ago.

Great photos tho.

Isn’t roughly half the population of the Ukraine, linguistically and culturally Russian?

Russo-philes and Russo-phobes largely separated regionally. Not a setup conducive to harmony, particularly when the Bear is being seen to apply pressure.

I quite like how the first photo is named punkrock—it seems perfectly apt for that (stunning) capture of dude(tte) lighting up with some garage band incendiaries…

The unedited version of the question is: What do y’all think the US soldiers in Vietnam needed Molotov cocktails for, given their access to essentially infinite quantities of fucking air-delivered fucking napalm?

I’ve no particular expertise on this, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if (some) American soldiers in Vietnam used a range of homemade (for lack of a better word) weapons, from knives to molotov cocktails to other things, in addition to the more standard equipment. Of course there were relatively few setpiece battles in the Vietnam War; it was a war fought often in difficult terrain and with brutality on both sides (cf. Henry F.’s post here on Nick Turse from a while back, not that I’m necessarily 100 percent endorsing Turse whose book I haven’t read) and in that context people are prob. going to use odd weapons.

One need only recall the infamous images from Morley Safer’s 1965 (?) 1966 (?) broadcast of the village being deliberately burned to realize that a molotov cocktail or two might have been, um, “useful.” Would be interesting to know whether the other side used them as well…

The latest round of protests is a reaction to the Ukrainian parliament (the Rada) passing a law restricting freedom of speech and assembly, modeled on Putin’s recent laws. “Parliament’s vote on the law… was taken by a sudden show of hands that caught the opposition off-guard.” (Reuters)

Naturally it infuriated a lot of people. Ukraine is a patchwork of regions with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, although homogenized to a degree by Soviet rule. But even in the Russian-speaking areas in the South and the East, Putin’s Russia does not look an attractive option to most of the young and educated voters. It has nothing to offer besides cheap gas and possibly oil.

Kiev/Kyiv is largely, perhaps predominantly Russian-speaking, yet it’s the core of the protest movement.

“what the hell US soldiers were doing with molotov cocktails”

It’s for the “Shit, we’re out of grenades, but not enemies. Now what?” moment.

Soldiers learn how to make and use improvised weapons because ammunition is heavy and runs out quickly. You can fire all the ammunition you can carry in a few minutes.

You can’t just shout “time out, we need more bullets”, you know.

If we are going to dismiss any kind of situation because between the groups protesting there are some that are fascist ,then well, whats the use? “Oh yes the goverment is implementing ACTUAL policies that are very much the stuff of totalitarian regimes, but hey, there are fascist there so screw it, this whole protest is a sham”

Maybe things are more complicated than that? Maybe, just maybe, Ukranians are dealing with their own problems and stuff instead of this view of everything being a Western media lie for dont-know-what-reason? Maybe they need our support on BOTH fronts, the goverment & the rise of fascists taking advantage of the crisis?

In fairness though, a lot of Ukranians living outside the country are generally (more than likely) going to be better disposed towards the EU, so maybe people arent that conflicted domestically and it falls along regional lines. So my anecdote is probably worthless.

I know quite a few Ukrainians in London – and the regional/linguistic divide on this issue appears quite noticeable.

I’d be inclined to echo Sasha Clarkson @17 – this is a quite severely split country and one is tempted to suggest that given the pressures, some kind of split could eventually be on the cards. I’d caution however that most of the surrounding countries (including the two “powers” – Russia and the EU) are nowhere near ready for (or to settle for) a split…

IMO the ‘manufactured’ – or orchestrated – protests tend to be the ones with flags and flowers more than the ones with bandanas and molotovs. If full-on rioting qualifies as “made for TV tactics”, what doesn’t?

I put together a history of Ukraine here, with maps. John @27 has some more details, although I don’t agree with all of them.

I also don’t know what’s going on the Ukraine, but the reporting of it reminds me of how much the media distort politics. There are plenty of examples in Britain where the protestors have some kind of political argument, but the newspaper reporters/newpaper readers aren’t interested in it, so the protestors end up doing something photogenic to get attention. In the Ukrainian case: newspapers seem more interested in getting photos of the guy in a suit of armour (who looks like like a LARPer), Orthdox priests in regalia etc. than actually explaining the Ukrainian politics.

I’m not sure how significant it is, but in nearly all the photos of the clergy they’re facing towards the protestors and with their backs to the police. This may be because the photographers are with the protestors (hence can only get a facial shot when the priest is turned towards them), or it may be indicative of where the church’s allegiance lies, despite claims of neutrality. (Over in Russian, weren’t Pussy Riot protesting in part againt the pro-Putin tendencies of the Russian Orthodox church?)

Sasha at 17- I’m mostly sympathetic to your account but curious why you think this bit:
Crimea will become independent, possibly associated with Russia

Crimea was, of course, never part of “traditional” Ukraine, being independent and then part of Russia, and only now part of Ukraine because it was “given” to the Ukrainian SSR by Krushchev at a point when no one thought that made any difference at all. My understanding is that most of the population there is “ethnic Russian” (insofar as that means anything- these categories are even more dubious than most, I’d claim) and Russian speakers, and many, many Russians feel strongly about Crimea being “really” part of Russia. Given this, I’d find independence surprising, though of course it’s hard to know, and there may be lots of things I’m missing.

I wouldn’t exaggerate the West-East tensions. Outside of the Crimea – which was transferred from the Russian Federation to Ukraine 1954 – I don’t believe many Ukrainians wish to join Russia. Those I have met in the past 10 years, mostly young to middle-aged and educated, from different regions, mostly bilingual Russian/Ukrainian, think of themselves as Ukrainians, not Russians.

Catholicism, mostly of the Greek rite, is strong in the west of Ukraine, but Catholics seem to only account for 10%-15% of the population at most. 60-70% are Eastern Orthodox. But there are at least three major Orthodox denominations there, one under the Moscow patriarch (albeit autonomous) and at least two self-governing (albeit not in communion with most other Greek Orthodox churches).

I have Ukrainian neighbors who were originally from Kiev, and their feelings about Russia, Yanukovich, and Putin cannot be repeated in a family blog. Like many western-looking Ukrainians, they think Russians are basically barbarians.

As a Ukrainian immigrant myself, I can tell you that this isn’t far from the opinion held by pretty much the entirety of my family. They didn’t like the USSR, but they hate Putin just as much.

Interesting to note the speculation about identification with the EU considering Germany is one of the leading powers of the EU and there is considerable history with Germans immigrating to the Ukraine. My maternal grandmother originated among the population of a small great plains town that identified itself as german-russians.

Anyone know what role the priests are likely to be playing in all of this ? Would they be more likely allied to the regime or protesters ?

also, a few links down the bottom here to stuff on the Orange revolution

http://www.princeton.edu/~mbeissin/research1.htm

Matt@32

The reason I mentioned that Crimea might become “independent”, is that the population there, although Russian speaking, was historically descended from Tatars. It is already autonomous within Ukraine. Should Ukraine break up, I would guess that its eventual destination would be as a republic in the Russian Federation.

In Ukraine proper, there are three regions: Western Ukraine which is separated from the rest by the Catholic/Orthodox fault-line (like Serbia and Croatia), Central Ukraine, including Kiev, where they tend to speak Russian in the towns, and Ukrainian in the country, and Russian Eastern/South-Eastern Ukraine. To complicate matters, there are three different Orthodox Churches. although the Moscow patriarchate has the greatest number of adherents.

As for the languages, both Russian and Ukrainian are descended from the classic East-Slavonic, now preserved as Church-Slavonic, and which has a role analogous to that of Latin (until recently) in the Western Church. Ukrainian speakers call the Russian language “Muscovite”. To my ear, the two languages are more similar than, say, southern English and Geordie. Also, southern Russian dialect and Ukrainian have a lot in common, eg pronouncing a “g” as “h”.

There are many many historical hatreds and insults. Russians as “barbarians” may be the Galician/catholic view, but historically, Russian was the language of the educated classes, although many could speak both. For a sense of what life was like in WWI Kiev, I recommend Mikhail Bulgakov’s “White Guard”.

And let us not forget the pogroms: my own grandfather was, I’m afraid, a Petlyurist: something of which I am not proud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Guard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petlura

Thanks John (@42) I (mistakenly) thought there were more, as a distant cousin of mine had married one.

jch@27, in his narrative of Ukrainian history, kind of leaves out the years 1939-45, when, first, the Soviet Union occupied what was then eastern Poland (including what is now western Ukraine), and, then, Germany occupied entire territory of what is today Ukraine (though jch mentions Nazi collaboration with Ukrainian nationalists).

A distant relative of mine is in Chortkiv, in the lucky position of having been a fireman, and so was useful to the various invaders ordinarily interested in killing local officials. He describes the first Soviet invasion and resultant horrors, and then speaks somewhat wistfully of the Nazis, who opened the prisons to show everyone in town the what savage tortures the Russians were employing (meanwhile shipping off the Jewish population, which my relative duly allowed was a bad thing). Then the Russians came again and that was very very bad.

David Duke has an honorary degree from this very large institution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interregional_Academy_of_Personnel_Management

I was in Ukraine (Kiev, Lviv, Odessa) last summer, combining touristing with some research for a class on Europe since 1945 and a chance to play some chess. (The day trip to Chornobyl, a couple of hours NE of central Kiev, was every bit as amazing/heart-rending/eerie/thought-provoking as one might imagine.) It breaks my heart to see the destruction, the violence, the pain, on those very same streets that I remember as being full of light, of young couples strolling in the evening air, of ice cream stands on every corner… Even then, though, it was clear whenever I chose to wander more than a couple of blocks off the prosperous main boulevards or to take the subway out beyond the city centre just how much sadness and raw hurt lay just below the surface.

@45

It seems to be a matter of governance then (Inequality, corruption etc .. ), rather than deep seated ethnic differences ?
The EU (maybe not the euro) still seems to be the best avenue to resolve that, maybe (?), if the other options are Russia or reverting to nationalism. Which is why I think the EU (if not the euro though I dont know the polling) is still popular in Southern Europe, because they realise the alternatives are worse.

@45: I think that you’re understating the magnitude of Soviet-era repression pretty dramatically, especially for people who experienced the functional equivalent of genocide in the Ukraine. Mass starvation as a political tool tends to leave very long memories in the survivors.

Ukraine wouldnt be joining the Euro though, afaik ?I mean Greeces problems are its trapped in a currency union without any options (and ‘the EU are detroying’ it is ott imo) From what I can tell Ukraine in the EU would have to meet a number before EU membership – on human rights, representative govt etc – not insignificant by any measure, and surely a measure of oversight the Russians wouldnt expect.

Jeff:

“If the Ukrainians were interested in stability, they would refrain from advocating policies certain to alienate and antagonize the Russians in the country. What the country needs is a modus vivendi, not a hard binary. Not a free-trade accord that would undermine the industry in the Russian East. Not occasional threats to evict Russia from the Crimean ports, where most of the people are Russian. Etc.”

1. “Russian-speaker” isn’t the same as “Russian”. It’s entirely possible to be a Russian-speaker and to identify as ethnically Ukrainian (are Anglophone Irish mistaken in their professions of ethnic identity), and even possible to be ethnically Russian and identify with the Ukrainian state.

2. How, exactly, does trying to establish actual bilingualism in Ukraine necessarily harmful to the interests of Russians? This strikes me as especially noteworthy since the strategy of others seems to be not to emphasize free choice but to argue that there isn’t anything distinctive about Ukrainian culture and language, for instance, in the Russian government’s opposition to the dubbing or subtitling of films in the Ukrainian language. The recent statement of the Russian ambassador to France that Ukraine is as distinctive as a French province is indicative.

3. The list of grievances you raise–free-trade with the EU, Russian basing rights in Crimea, a different language policy–seems to conflate grievances of Russians within the Ukraine with the concerns of the Russian state.

“Finally, the Russian and Soviet history may be relevant in the false consciousness of Latvians, but it is entirely irrelevant to the material welfare of Latvians in the present; it explains why they might wish to eliminate the possibility of “Russia pushing us around”, but it doesn’t obviate that they’ve merely chosen, objectively, to get pushed around by other masters, and are actually the worse off for it.”

1. Please define “false consciousness”. The Soviet occupation of Latvia is entirely relevant to Latvia’s contemporary reality, explaining everything from its relative lags in economic growth and democratic development to its ongoing ethnic divides and its military postures.

2. Can you explain how Latvia–and Latvians–would be better off as, say a Russian autonomous republic somewhat like Karelia, or a member of the emergent Eurasian Customs Union, than as a member-state of the European Union? I’d be interested in having your assumptions, as well as mine, unpacked.

the trouble in the Ukraine is that they’d be making that decision for Russians, who want no part of it, and would likely the bear the worst of it.

It’s not as if Russia has gone out of its way to intervene “on behalf of” ethnic Russians before…

@roy belmont #57: Victor Yushchenko was poisoned by dioxin during the 2004 presidential campaign. His face was badly pocked and scarred by chloracne. Here’s the New York Times account from 2004. Wikipedia collects the allegations. It appears that the incident has not been investigated enough to determine a legal basis for suspects.

RIA Novosti reported in 2012 that a new investigation “alleged that the Yushchenko dioxin poisoning could have been falsified to strengthen his positions during 2004 presidential elections.”

That looks to me to be of a piece with Tymoshenko’s conviction.

Randy @ 56,

It’s entirely possible to be a Russian-speaker and to identify as ethnically Ukrainian… and even possible to be ethnically Russian and identify with the Ukrainian state.

I wouldn’t deny the former proposition, though the latter is a bit more problematic, owing to the ambiguity of the term, ‘Ukrainian state’. There certainly are ethnic Russians in Ukraine who identify with the Ukraine as a nation, as a particular physical and cultural space in which they feel themselves at home; there are probably also some ethnic Russians who identify with elements of the political coalition opposed to Yanukovych; but this is where the identification likely stops. You won’t find many ethnic Russians who identify with Svoboda, the neo-fascist political organization which is part of this coalition, as it is more or less explicitly anti-Russian in orientation, and possibly spiritually descended from the Nazi collaborators of Western Ukraine; neither will you find many ethnic Russians who embrace the ‘Ukrainian national identity’ business, where this entails various petty forced Ukrainianizations, as mentioned above. In other words, many, even most Russians in Ukraine are happy to identify as citizens of Ukraine, though they are ashamed of their elites; but their conception of ‘Ukraine’ is of a multilingual, bi-national state, not one where the far west of the country imposes its national myth on the whole country.

How, exactly, does trying to establish actual bilingualism in Ukraine necessarily harmful to the interests of Russians?

‘Actual bilingualism’ is a slippery term here. If they were endeavouring to establish actual bilingualism, as I would employ that term, they would either offer all public services in both languages, or ensure that everyone in the country was taught both languages from childhood up. They’re not doing the former, and the latter is not exactly what is happening. Instead, there’s a sort of selective approach, as I mentioned previously. You don’t need to compel university students to defend their Master’s theses in Ukrainian, where this is barely even a second language, or to Ukrainianize their names in official documents; this is completely gratuitous. They could, I repeat, just teach both languages in school, and then let students take their exams and defend their theses in whichever language they had greater fluency in; virtually everyone in Lviv would pick Ukrainian; virtually everyone in the Crimea would pick Russian; Kiev might be a 60-40 Ukrainian split; and so on. And the names would have nothing to do with it – that they do that thing with the names shows that they are trying to impose an identity; it’s rather like telling them that they have to choose, that they cannot have the plural and complex identities that they do have.

This strikes me as especially noteworthy since the strategy of others seems to be not to emphasize free choice but to argue that there isn’t anything distinctive about Ukrainian culture and language..

Well, that’s not my position. Ukrainian and Russian cultures, and the languages, are related, but distinct. That Russia might be prohibiting the subtitling of films in Ukrainian is a kind of reflex from the olden times, when Russian was the language of a multicultural, multiethnic empire, and Russian culture the sort of cultural Big Other that held all the subcultures together; the policy, if it is such, is probably conditioned by reaction against Ukrainian nationalism. Tit for tat. It’s the same sort of petty nonsense that Western Ukrainians are themselves engaging in. Seriously, what’s wrong with either seeing a movie subtitled in your language, or getting to defend your academic work in your own language?

The list of grievances you raise–free-trade with the EU, Russian basing rights in Crimea, a different language policy–seems to conflate grievances of Russians within the Ukraine with the concerns of the Russian state.

There is no conflation. The majority of Ukraine’s industrial capacity is in the East, and it would be undermined by any sort of free trade accord with the EU; this would be adverse to the material interests of Russian Ukrainians, who are more numerous in the East, regardless of whether Russia took any interest in the process. The Russian interest comes in because Russia and Ukraine already have a customs arrangement, which Putin wants to deepen; if the existing arrangement were to stand unaltered, and Ukraine were to sign a free-trade accord with the EU, goods brought freely into Ukraine could be brought over the border into Russia – and Russia doesn’t want (backdoor) free trade with the EU. Russia would obviously prefer not to lose the trade it already enjoys with Ukraine; but free trade will do to Ukraine what it does everywhere, even if Russia relinquishes that trade with Ukraine. As for the basing rights, the majority population of the Crimea is Russian; the population of Sevastopol, where much of that part of the Russian Black Sea fleet is stationed, is probably better than 90% Russian. They don’t want Russia to depart. And why would they? The Crimea has never been, in any meaningful historical and cultural sense, a part of Ukraine. It was a part of the Tatar Khanate until Russia conquered it, and was part of Russia in the political sense until Khrushchev ‘gave’ it to Ukraine, basically because he was Ukrainian. Russia has not, so far as I am aware, articulated any sort of politically revanchist claims upon the Crimea; rather, Russia would simply like to retain the basing rights, and the people would prefer that Russia remain there, as the Russian presence sustains the local economy, at least along the coast.

The Soviet occupation of Latvia is entirely relevant to Latvia’s contemporary reality, explaining everything from its relative lags in economic growth and democratic development to its ongoing ethnic divides and its military postures.

I wouldn’t think to gainsay this. The false consciousness comes in with the belief among Latvians that EU membership will somehow rectify this; they have fundamentally misidentified the current structural and political causes of their economic backwardness, and, in consequence, have chosen a set of remedies that do not redress actual current problems. The Soviet legacy did bequeath to them a sclerotic economy, beset by corrupt oligarchs, etc., but the occupation is over – it was no longer the Russian state or regime, and Putin and his oligarchs, who held Latvia back, but those very Latvian oligarchs (and some of their economic relationships with Germany, Sweden, & etc.). And my point here is that EU membership is entirely compatible with the perpetuation in political and economic power of corrupt, insular, self-dealing elites, as witness the entire EU periphery, or, more broadly, that swathe of the globe over which neoliberal economic dogmas reign uncontested. As I indicated, the Latvians were entitled, in whatever sense of ‘entitlement’ applies to cases of national self-determination, to choose the de facto neoliberal bootheel over the hypothetical future Russian bootheel; as with white American conservatives, who blame their increasing economic immiseration on Mexicans, homosexuals, feminism, Obamacare, and whatever, and then vote for the running dogs of the plutocrats who actually are immiserating them, I’m entitled to observe that they’ve misdiagnosed the causes, and chosen the wrong cure.

Can you explain how Latvia–and Latvians–would be better off as, say a Russian autonomous republic somewhat like Karelia, or a member of the emergent Eurasian Customs Union, than as a member-state of the European Union?

I don’t really have to explain this, since I neither believe it, nor have asserted it. It hasn’t been on the table since the Soviet Union disintegrated. My argument is negative: the evidence of the EU periphery attests that EU integration isn’t the answer.

“If I knew that the agent was a Jew from the Warsaw Ghetto, and the bodies to be destroyed were those of Nazi soldiers, I would join you in cheering.”

I dont know oldster, my reaction would be different – I couldnt ‘cheer’ if I was aware who was on the other side. Regardless of context.
These pictures are dramatic, but desensitized, created to get a reaction like ‘what a badass’ – more than likely put out by the protesters, who are up against the security services of a *police state*.
This is the reaction these pictures are designed to get, so it is the reaction they will get. I dont see why that should be unacknowledged.

“Russia has not, so far as I am aware, articulated any sort of politically revanchist claims upon the Crimea;”

Putin and members of Putin’s government have repeatedly stated a desire to annex the Crimea. Also, you know, Ukraine. Plus, even if they hadn’t, given their actions in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria, given Putin’s frequent bemoaning of the breakup of the Soviet Union, not to mention the history of territorial conquest by the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, how on earth can you be so generous as to presume the Russian government is not interested in (re)aquiring territory?

It’s a bit odd that there’s a blogging meme now to post pictures specifically from Ukraine (see TPM) and not, say, Aleppo, Bangkok, or Cairo.

Sock puppet post deleted

Putin and members of Putin’s government have repeatedly stated a desire to annex the Crimea. Also, you know, Ukraine. Plus, even if they hadn’t, given their actions in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria, given Putin’s frequent bemoaning of the breakup of the Soviet Union, not to mention the history of territorial conquest by the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, how on earth can you be so generous as to presume the Russian government is not interested in (re)aquiring territory?

A Google search not two minutes ago yielded mixed results as regards Putin and the Crimea; first, Putin has volubly denied any intention of moving Russian troops into the Crimea, even in the event that the political situation in Ukraine deteriorates significantly; second, there are six-year-old reports, like this one, in which Putin is reported to have told Bush the Lesser that Russia would annex the Crimea and the Ukrainian East, in the event of Ukrainian accession to NATO. Now, I shouldn’t have to go into a lengthy discourse on how the US and Russia have been at odds in re: NATO since the end of the Cold War, how some US policymakers still see NATO as an anti-Russian alliance (among other things), and how Russia, cognizant of this, and mindful of Western connivance in the Great Barbecue of the Nineties, is chary of such things. I’ll lay my cards on the table: NATO should have passed out of existence within a few years of the end of the Cold War; since that time, it has served mainly as a fig leaf for atrocious US policymaking (Iraq, Afghanistan), and appears to have encouraged a former Georgian president to start a war he couldn’t win. And yes, I find imperial grubbing unseemly and destructive; but I have difficulty identifying the modal universe in which Russia’s mucking about in her near abroad has been more ruinous than American policy since 1990. Even adding in the Second Chechen War, the American body count is much higher. If one factors in the premature deaths resulting from the American-led shock therapy privatization, and its destruction of public services, the American body count is probably an order of magnitude higher. So yes, I find Putinism rather disquieting, but so disquieting as the American Empire.

As for Abkhazia, the Abkhaz fought a war with Georgia after the Soviet Union imploded – a pretty clear indication that they didn’t want to be part of Georgia, along with their ethnic cleansing of 250K Georgians. Since then, they’ve had an odd sort of unrecognized quasi-autonomy, probably hewing closer to Russia because they like Georgia still less.

South Ossetia is similar, in that the majority population didn’t want to be part of Georgia, endured a low-intensity civil conflict, and ultimately had an OSCE-Russian peacekeeping mission step in to maintain order. An odd quasi-autonomy resulted, which Mikhail Saakashvili promised to overturn by retaking South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

And I could go on about Transnistria, which also wanted no part of the new Moldovan state. The point is that in each of these three cases, majorities of the people did not wish to be incorporated into new political entities, at least one of which had a strong anti-Russian orientation. It’s rather odd to suggest that Ukrainians understandably wish to escape the geopolitical and economic clutches of Russia, and are entitled to do so, while these other populations, having no interest in Georgia and Moldova, respectively, must nonetheless be part of those entities.

One more thing, re Abkhazia.

In fact, the majority of the population of Abkhazia at the fall of the Soviet Union was fine with being part of the Georgian state, since they majority was ethnic Georgian. It was only after the ethnic cleansing of half of the population in a bitter war, that the majority of the remaining population has decided to resist the Georgian state.

“..and not, say, Aleppo, Bangkok, or Cairo.”

somewhat relatedly, Corey Pein has been writting about the use of cheap ‘civilian photographers’ in Syria by the big news agencies, particularly after the death of a Syrian teenager Molhem Barakat while working for Reuters

http://coreypein.net/blog/2013/12/22/reuters-molhem-barakat/

p.s. indeed he leaned left on certain things not related to gender roles, religion etc.

p.s. as far as the post-1945 population transfers are concerned, Stalin was I assume the worst offender (or the most vigorous practitioner), but that sort of goes w/o saying.

@DaveL: The accent your teacher described as Ukrainian probably refers to the way Russian is spoken in southern Russia as well as Ukraine. Its most obvious feature is “g” pronounced as a voiced “h” or a voiced “kh”. Although very common in Russia, this soft “g” comes across as folksy in Moscow and, of course, St. Petersburg. In contrast, my impression is that educated Ukrainians in Kiev speak Russian with a hard “g” and Ukrainian with a soft “g”, which is the “proper” accent.

Peter T
Over 3 million Germans were expelled from Poland, 3 million from Czechoslovakia, and substantial numbers from Yugoslavia and Rumania. After 45, no-one trusted or wanted a German minority.

ok, I’ll retract the wording re Stalin — but isn’t it the case that those expulsions from esp. Poland and Czechoslovakia could not have occurred without his approval (or wd have been v. unlikely to have occurred if he had for some reason said no)? Anyway not a lot hangs on my p.s. in terms of the main pt.

@80
A reasonable inference from the OP’s anecdote is that apparently at least one U.S. soldier used molotov cocktails in Vietnam. The Wikipedia entry ‘Molotov cocktail’ doesn’t mention Vietnam (it does mention one of the battles of Fallujah, btw).

Here’s a bunch of photos from Kiev, behind the scenesish of the inflammatory OP balaclava one – Belle Waring posted an approving picture of someone smoking!
https://tinyurl.com/kylpq96

#Randy McDonald #56: “It’s entirely possible to be a Russian-speaker and to identify as ethnically Ukrainian (are Anglophone Irish mistaken in their professions of ethnic identity), and even possible to be ethnically Russian and identify with the Ukrainian state.”

To complicate things further, the Russian-Ukrainian ethnic boundary is hard to define. Much of Ukraine’s steppe was settled, or colonized, relatively recently, some as late as the 19th century, along with large expanses of what is now Russia, often by people of the same origin. (Recall that Chichikov was buying the “dead souls” to resettle them in the Kherson governorship, now part of Ukraine north of the Crimea.) In addition, even a recent transplant from Siberia to Ukraine could be a descendant of a landless Ukrainian family that had moved out east, where the climate was harsher but land was abundant, early in the 20th century.

The “no one wanted Germans arround after 45*” rational is a rather bad excuse considering that Schlesien was an ethnical homogenous German region that belonged to Germany for gods sake. And sure, Stalin was in support if not instrumental in what happend there. The Czech case is barely better, since Germans were driven out of regions with a vast German majority.

*I dont think its even correct for more dispersed genuine ethnical German minorities in all eastern Europe.

Whatever economic problems Ukraine currently have are more likely to stem from lack of shock therapy back in the day than its non-existent presence.

Err, no. The reason Russia and world have Putinism to reckon with is precisely the imposition of shock therapy, which so devastated the country, and left it so exposed to the machinations of mercenary capitalists, that it nearly imploded. And imagine that! – circumstances of economic and social collapse, abetted and endorsed by foreign powers, led to an authoritarian nationalist reaction! Why, it’s almost as though we have no historical precedent for such a turnabout, nor a vast body of scholarship on the relationship between national humiliation and nationalist reaction! All snark aside, the idea that shock therapy would have benefited Ukraine is not even counterfactual; it’s just plain wrong. But hey, use your illusions.

No, Ukraine did not endure shock therapy after the Russian model; rather, prices, and some capital flows were liberalized pretty rapidly, and a few enterprises were privatized (which, in the circumstances, meant primitively accumulated); the remainder of the enterprises have been gradually parceled out to connected oligarchs by whichever oligarch happens to hold the presidency. In Russia, this all happened pretty much simultaneously, or as near to it as politics can muster. The effects on the population were identical to those of shock therapy in Russia, so quibbling over formal definitions of ‘shock therapy’ is the worst sort of hair-splitting.

I didn’t even bring up shock therapy in connection with the Ukraine: I brought it up by way of explaining Russian distrust of NATO, and other Western political activities in Ukraine. Whatever.

It’s true that far-right groups are to some extent trying to piggy bag on what are essentially mass, popular protests. Putin’s propaganda and pro-government side in Ukraine overemphasizes.

Again, this is just flat wrong. The fascists of Svoboda are not just piggy-backing on a mass popular protest; they’re an integral part of the protests, organizationally and otherwise. There are, of course, other reasons for the uprising, some of which one generally does not hear about in Western media. People are genuinely frustrated with the sclerosis and corruption of the economic system; in fact, so far from attributing the protests to Svoboda alone, I’ve already mentioned this, by way of arguing that the EU is no remedy for it. One factor that one doesn’t hear about in Western media is that the crisis arose, in part, as a result of a falling out among the oligarchs; some of the oligarchs feel that Yanukovych’s “Family”, or the Donetsk clan, have accumulated to much power, too much control over the key monopolies; they feel that EU association would give them a better deal. Perhaps it would, but that rather proves my earlier point.

Although there’s a bit of a historical precedent as far as nationalism goes – Ukrainians want autonomy/independence, whoever rules them cracks down (using the excuse that these are “extremists” or “terrorists”), this clears the moderates out, leaves a vacuum, and the extremists step in and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

This is precisely what has not happened in Ukraine since independence was declared in 1991; there has been no attempt to crack down on those ‘calling for independence’, even those whose conception of ‘independence’ entails severing ties with Russia and pretending that there are no Russians in Ukraine. And Ukraine has been independent since 1991; what it has been is an independent country with a divided legacy, which for approximately 20 years attempted to negotiate that history without, well, causing what’s happening now. Svoboda has existed since 1991, in its present incarnation at least. The moderates, for their part, have played into the hands of Svoboda on a few issues, particularly those centering on identity and language (They were outraged by a 2012 bill allowing that Russian was an official language in those regions of the country where it predominated – so, allowing people to speak their own language in government, while receiving public services, etc., was regarded as a threat to Ukrainian identity. One can say many things about this attitude; one cannot say that it is tolerant.) These national questions have converged with concerns about oligarchical corruption, the concerns of oligarchs to protect their fiefs, (unfounded) hopes and aspirations for a prosperous ‘European’ future, and yes, foreign interests, to produce the crisis.

To some extent portraying it that way is just a simple narrative which makes people in the West think they understand what’s going on in a country they don’t really give a shit about.

The most simplistic narratives I’m seeing on the crisis are precisely those retailed in most Western media, because even journalists paid to report on the crisis don’t really give a shit about what is happening there. There is a lot of complexity, but most media outlets try to force it into the tired schema of “enlightened Western-oriented democrats vs. Putin.”

He did advocate a three step strategy for avoiding getting into a horrible street fight/getting mugged, in order: ‘ka-run’, ka-gun’, ka-rate’. Like, get the hell away if possible, hopefully only threaten, but shoot the person if possible, then use your awesome black belt training as a fall-back. This is a refreshingly practical approach from karate black belts, actually, who often tout their training as a path to invulnerability.

That reminds me of James Brown, who didn’t know karate but knew ka-razor.

I knew a black belt who used to explain that his martial arts training had supplied him with crucial skills in case he was mugged: “You’d be amazed how quickly I can reach for my wallet.”

The connection, I guess, exists in so much as the shock therapy happened, privatised industries were bought up by domestic oligarchs and Putin came to power in response

This rise to power of Putin, as a person, was obviously full of contingencies and chance events, though perhaps something like him was quite likely. My impression (as, among other things, someone who was living in Russia when Putin came to power- I moved to Ryazan just after the FSB staged a “practice” bombing of an apartment building there in the run up to the second Chechen war) is that Putin was brought to Moscow, first made the head of the FSB and then Prime Minister, but expected to be a stooge that could be manipulated by “the family”- people closely associated with Yeltsin and Boris Berezovsky, who was, at the time, the most favored oligarch. But, Putin out-maneuvered them, and managed to turn himself from a pawn into a queen (with the help of various other FSB insiders, of course.) This was, in a sense, “in response” to the gross miss-rule of Yeltsin in the 90’s, of which “shock therapy” was a part, in that it was made more possible by these events, and these events gave motivation and cover for the take-over of the country by the Siloviki faction that Putin is the face of. The general population, sick of the miss-rule of the Yeltisin era, were generally quite eager to vote for Putin in his first election. But, it wasn’t “in response” to shock therapy in any direct way, and it wasn’t as if Putin has any coherent ideology that opposes this- he’s a sort of nationalist, but mostly a pragmatic opportunist.

After the first election in 2001, things get harder to know as far as the “real” opinion of the people- there was obvious fraud in every election after that, but access to state resources give favored candidates such an advantage over disfavored ones that it’s not really possible to say what would happen under more fair circumstances, or so it has seemed to me.

@ Jeff Martin

Hogwash, through and through.

The only way you can argue that Ukraine experienced “shock therapy” is if you DEFINE “shock therapy” = “collapse of communism”. Yes, (some) prices were liberalized, there was some – not much privatization. That is what “end of communism” means. You can’t end a command economy in any meaningful way without doing these things. “Shock therapy” is when you do these things very quickly. But in Ukraine, these changes were dragged out, so that no meaningful reform were implemented until mid 1990’s. And guess what. The *lack* of these reforms acerbated the collapse of the economy/communism that was already under way.

I guess you could argue that Ukraine’s economy today would somehow be better if “communism never collapse” or “communism never ended”. But then the silliness of that position would be transparent (if for no other reason than that simply wasn’t possible). So let’s pretend instead that there was “shock therapy” in Ukraine, even though there wasn’t.

And while Svoboda has played a role in the protests, claiming that they are “integral” to them is just Putinite bullshit. Unfortunately picked up by some “leftist” (and those quotes very much belong there) commentators in the West. You seen the pictures? You read commentary from people actually there? The protests span all of Ukraine society, from Ukrainian speakers to Russian speakers, from students, to workers, to retirees. I dunno maybe (almost) everyone in Ukraine is a “fascist”. It’s really the old Soviet propaganda canard: “anyone who opposes communism is a de facto fascist”. Except now “communism” has been substituted with “Putin” or “Putin’s Russia”.

John, I guess one could make the argument that “shock therapy” *in Russia* somehow caused economic collapse in *Ukraine*. It’s not a very good argument. But unlike the argument that “shock therapy” *in Ukraine* caused economic collapse in *Ukraine* it is at least plausible. The latter is implausible because there was no “shock therapy” in Ukraine. It had the opposite.

Funnily enough I recall a discussion I had about the effects of shock therapy a few years back (maybe even here) and the person arguing that it was “bad” was contrasting shock-therapy-having-Russia with no-shock-therapy-having-Ukraine. At the time Ukrainian economy was clocking in at 6, 7 % gdp per capita growth. It was being held up as an example of the benefits of “gradualism” rather than “shock therapy”. Apparently now that Ukraine has gone down the toilet both economically and politically, it turns out that Ukraine did have “shock therapy” after all. The term gets redefined, facts get altered, just to fit someone’s ideological prejudices.

The honest bottom line is that whatever “shock therapy” happened in Russia (and I – and many others – would argue that Russia never had “shock therapy”, in the proper sense of the term, it had something else (random resource grab with a veneer of reform as a fig leaf. Estonia was really the only post Soviet state which had genuine “shock therapy”)) it was twenty five years ago. Twenty or so for Ukraine. It’s just ridiculous to try and blame whatever is happening in Ukraine today on (a non-existent) “shock therapy” from a quarter of a century ago. It’s just that for some people “shock therapy” is a bete noire – a proxy for their ideological battles – so whenever the context of Eastern Europe comes out it must be dutifully dragged out and beaten upon. Whether it’s relevant or not.

Shock therapy doesn’t have crap do to with Euromaidan.

As to why I care, why shouldn’t I? (And you’re probably aware enough of the history to realize that Svoboda is not exactly popular in Poland, what with the UPA, OUN, and the massacres during German occupation) At any rate, yes Ukraine needs to be in EU. But if that happens, please, in the name of St. Andrew and all else that’s holy, let them not adopt the Euro!

The only way you can argue that Ukraine experienced “shock therapy” is if you DEFINE “shock therapy” = “collapse of communism”.

Err., no, else I’d be inveighing against the failure of shock therapy in the Czech Republic and Poland, where the transition from communism was successful precisely because it occurred – where liberalization and privatization are concerned – gradually and in accordance with defined procedures and regimes of property rights, all of which were absent in Russia and Ukraine. No, Ukraine was not subjected to the exigent and corrupt privatizations which characterized the Russian transition, but prices were liberalized pretty quickly after 1991, and the privatizations, as I mentioned previously, occurred corruptly and gradually, as ruling oligarchs parceled them out to their associates. Moreover, as John and Chaz observe, it was impossible for Ukraine to escape the consequences of shock therapy as it was imposed in Russia; as the consequences were essentially identical in both countries, it is tendentious to argue that what devastated one nation would have permitted the other to rise from the ruins of the Soviet Union.

The honest bottom line is that whatever “shock therapy” happened in Russia (and I – and many others – would argue that Russia never had “shock therapy”, in the proper sense of the term, it had something else (random resource grab with a veneer of reform as a fig leaf. Estonia was really the only post Soviet state which had genuine “shock therapy”)) it was twenty five years ago.

Like communism to its true believers, and conservatism to its apostles, shock therapy has never truly been attempted, only failed by its would-be practitioners – except in Estonia. In reality, as the central European nations demonstrate, there is a proper methodology for transitioning from a centrally planned economy to some form of capitalism, and that methodology, or heuristic, at least, does not involve doing things hastily, before legal regimes have been implemented. It takes time, and in that sense, it’s not shocking at all. The entire rationale of shock therapy as practiced in Russia and Ukraine was to facilitate resource and asset grabs; if anyone wants to deem the process described in this contemporaneous paper, from 1995 as successful shock therapy, I suppose they’re entitled to do so, but the process described is rather more akin to the central European processes, and also included some cushioning for the population, which was entirely absent in the Russian and Ukrainian cases. In other words, deeming the Estonian transition an instance of shock therapy could be regarded as argument by definition – which I what I, and others, are here accused of.

Shock therapy doesn’t have crap do to with Euromaidan.

No, it doesn’t. I’m not saying that it does, and neither is anyone else that I can determine. Shock therapy partially explains why Russia is distrustful of the drang nach osten of NATO and the EU. Other, less creditable impulses explain some of the distrust, too, in case anyone might think me unaware of such matters.

And while Svoboda has played a role in the protests, claiming that they are “integral” to them is just Putinite bullshit.

No, claiming that Svoboda is not integral to the protests is bullshite, but whose, I cannot say. Svoboda is a constituent element of the opposition political coalition headed by Fatherland and UDAR; that is to say, the more moderate, pro-European, soft-nationalist parties allied with the fascist party in order to strengthen their coalition. Moreover, Svoboda activists – and activists allied informally, though the sub-political networks of nationalist groups, some of which are more extreme than Svoboda – are visible everywhere in the protests, with their three-finger banners, the Nazi runes (which the three-finger symbol was supposed to replace), the white power symbols (which have appeared in some of the government buildings occupied in the regions), the iconography of WWII Nazi collaborators, the numbers 14 and 88, and occasional statements – more often in the regions than in cosmopolitan Kiev – to the effect that Ukraine is for Ukrainians, and not for Russians and Jews, etc. I’m sorry if this offends, but I’ve seen and heard these folks spouting off on television, including one priest in Lviv. They’re there. They’re integral to the actually-existing protests and opposition movement. Yes, there are millions of people opposed to the government who are not fascists, and have other grievances – I’ve never denied that; in fact, I’ve stated it. And it’s possible to imagine a movement against the government that did not involve fascists; but that movement is hypothetical, not actual.

You seen the pictures? You read commentary from people actually there?

I’ve seen the pictures; that’s one reason I can state with confident that the opposition has a disturbing contingent of fascists. While I don’t read commentary from Ukraine, as I am literate in neither Ukrainian nor Russian, my wife is, and translates it for me. The most interesting commentary from someone on the ground there, for my time and money, <a href="http://www.anarkismo.net/article/26669<is this interview with a Ukrainian anarchist-syndicalist, which is to say, a Ukrainian leftist with a fairly broad perspective. It’s a bit mystifying to me that any leftist would argue that the European Union has been so phenomenally successful that it should be expanded to incorporate a nation larger, yet weaker and more divided, than any of the flailing periphery countries of the EU bloc. What “leftism” is it that would laud, among other things, the imposition of structural adjustment upon the periphery, neoliberal “reforms” in the member and candidate states, and a deflationary monetary policy? If such be leftism, what need is there for conservatism? And if that is the “left”, no wonder the right, at least in Eastern Europe, consists of Jobbik, Golden Dawn, and Svoboda. Are the Russians emphasizing the presence of fascists in the opposition? Of course. But that’s not merely a function of Russian prejudices and interests. It’s also a reflection of Russian history and memory, in which the Great Patriotic War against German fascism is the defining struggle of the Twentieth Century, the struggle they take to have established the character of their nation. And what sort of “leftists” look at fascism, in any context, in any numbers, and simply shrug?