All played out. Some broader thoughts on war and peace. Kiev's four big bets. Praise for Russian fighting skills by western and Ukrainian media. The moral bankruptsy of moralism
Much gratitude for what you say in your concluding paragraph - something that hardly anybody understands about minority westernists vs majority 'slavists' in Ukraine and Russia. This fact has been important for a much longer time than people are aware. Thank you !
I remember a Ukrainian nationalist member of my family - herself a Russian speaker not born in Ukraine - told me that there is no such thing as slavs, this was invented by Putin. My Arab friends tell me that urban liberals in Egypt and other capitals say the same about Arabs.
Slavianstvo was coined by some tsarist individual in the 19th c if I'm not mistaken - ethno-geopolitics of those days.
But the word and its reality called 'slavs' are all over the place in older documents by foreign observers. For instance the important book by a Mauro Orbini in about 1600, 'Il Regno degli Slavi'. The facsimile of the original is barely legible, but has been translated into russky.
Those of the lower classes/narod/peasantry know very well that in their respective domains, there exist Slavs and Arabs and...
And linguists - who work with... roots shared by languages - aren't fooled by pronouncements of those in the 'urban liberal' category, which is also a... minority, and tends historically as well as today to have a rather... uprooted sense of belonging to a certain ethno-eco-socio-cultural whole.
It's a thing of the heart and spirit, ultimately - and in the spirit of the land, In this sense, the Ukr-Rus split is a deep deep tragedy going back centuries. Sigh. I do hope they stop this fratricide sooner than later.
It's easy for these liberal nationalists to disguise moral and political poverty as high ideals. When stuff like "joining the West" get disguised as "democracy" and demand blood, democracy and humanity are betrayed foremost.
But the blame is always on those who see that it's all nonsense for being "Western Leftists" or "Russified vatniks". As if agency doesn't mean responsibility or sharing blame with the Russian elite absolves the latter.
Your summary of what is the underlying cause of the conflict makes sense when you examine it as a war between ukraine and russia and in a broader sense between western proxies and russia. But it is also the first step in an ever escalating process of “diplomacy by other means” which characterises the crisis of capital. At some point the rate of profit dips so low that a given national bourgeoisie has no choice but to fight for spheres of influence, not just security guarantees. The russian bourgeoisie, being the weakest (economically) of the major imperialist powers, cracked first. We are spiralling towards another world war. You believe that western powers would not engage russia in a full scale conflict over ukraine. I believe they would, maybe not in the current phase of the war but no peace treaty that might be etched out in the medium term will be final (think winter war). But unlike what ukraine’s western cheerleaders believe, this would be even more disastrous for ukraine. Maybe if the euromaidan people didn’t win and ukraine fell increasingly into russian orbit, the eventual frontline would have been in the carpathians and not in the Donbas, but this would have been years down the line. The tragedy is that to truly end all this you need global working class upheaval and we are far from that.
Thanks for this article, like i feel and concur that this war can last for a while because there is no great movement itching for its end other than the Ukrainian people, or the westophiles get mass drafted which to be blunt is unlikely.
Indeed. On the one hand, most Ukrainians would like an end to the war, and are not so insistent about avoiding compromises as the nationalists. On the other hand, there is no organized political force in Ukraine that could harness that - all organized political forces are either highly ideologically nationalist, or have irrevocably tied their political fates to the war (eg Zelensky and his party, who were not ideologically nationalist to begin with). Furthermore, while Ukrainians are tired of war, it does not seem like many are willing to kill fellow citizens or risk death to force an end to the war - unlike the nationalists, who are are also armed.
Much gratitude for what you say in your concluding paragraph - something that hardly anybody understands about minority westernists vs majority 'slavists' in Ukraine and Russia. This fact has been important for a much longer time than people are aware. Thank you !
I remember a Ukrainian nationalist member of my family - herself a Russian speaker not born in Ukraine - told me that there is no such thing as slavs, this was invented by Putin. My Arab friends tell me that urban liberals in Egypt and other capitals say the same about Arabs.
Ouch. This is getting into murky territory.
Slavianstvo was coined by some tsarist individual in the 19th c if I'm not mistaken - ethno-geopolitics of those days.
But the word and its reality called 'slavs' are all over the place in older documents by foreign observers. For instance the important book by a Mauro Orbini in about 1600, 'Il Regno degli Slavi'. The facsimile of the original is barely legible, but has been translated into russky.
Those of the lower classes/narod/peasantry know very well that in their respective domains, there exist Slavs and Arabs and...
And linguists - who work with... roots shared by languages - aren't fooled by pronouncements of those in the 'urban liberal' category, which is also a... minority, and tends historically as well as today to have a rather... uprooted sense of belonging to a certain ethno-eco-socio-cultural whole.
It's a thing of the heart and spirit, ultimately - and in the spirit of the land, In this sense, the Ukr-Rus split is a deep deep tragedy going back centuries. Sigh. I do hope they stop this fratricide sooner than later.
It's easy for these liberal nationalists to disguise moral and political poverty as high ideals. When stuff like "joining the West" get disguised as "democracy" and demand blood, democracy and humanity are betrayed foremost.
But the blame is always on those who see that it's all nonsense for being "Western Leftists" or "Russified vatniks". As if agency doesn't mean responsibility or sharing blame with the Russian elite absolves the latter.
You need to write a book
Thank you Almut! Hopefully some day
America is done with Ukraine. They tricked both sides to get in the war, now they are abandoning them. Europe is falling.
Your summary of what is the underlying cause of the conflict makes sense when you examine it as a war between ukraine and russia and in a broader sense between western proxies and russia. But it is also the first step in an ever escalating process of “diplomacy by other means” which characterises the crisis of capital. At some point the rate of profit dips so low that a given national bourgeoisie has no choice but to fight for spheres of influence, not just security guarantees. The russian bourgeoisie, being the weakest (economically) of the major imperialist powers, cracked first. We are spiralling towards another world war. You believe that western powers would not engage russia in a full scale conflict over ukraine. I believe they would, maybe not in the current phase of the war but no peace treaty that might be etched out in the medium term will be final (think winter war). But unlike what ukraine’s western cheerleaders believe, this would be even more disastrous for ukraine. Maybe if the euromaidan people didn’t win and ukraine fell increasingly into russian orbit, the eventual frontline would have been in the carpathians and not in the Donbas, but this would have been years down the line. The tragedy is that to truly end all this you need global working class upheaval and we are far from that.
I agree, there aren't any real predictions one can make about a future conflagration. The western powers also probably didn't intend for WW1 to happen
Thanks for this article, like i feel and concur that this war can last for a while because there is no great movement itching for its end other than the Ukrainian people, or the westophiles get mass drafted which to be blunt is unlikely.
Indeed. On the one hand, most Ukrainians would like an end to the war, and are not so insistent about avoiding compromises as the nationalists. On the other hand, there is no organized political force in Ukraine that could harness that - all organized political forces are either highly ideologically nationalist, or have irrevocably tied their political fates to the war (eg Zelensky and his party, who were not ideologically nationalist to begin with). Furthermore, while Ukrainians are tired of war, it does not seem like many are willing to kill fellow citizens or risk death to force an end to the war - unlike the nationalists, who are are also armed.
Brilliant. Thank you 🙏