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DinoDoc
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AECCP loves Democracy
Sep 1999
time: 23:23
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quote:
By Konstanty Gebert
A huge, feminine statue, sword in outstretched hand, overlooks the southern Russian city of Volgograd: the symbolic Motherland, ever ready to repel foreign aggression. It commemorates the defense of the city, then known as Stalingrad, in the winter of 1942. At least a million people -- German and Romanian invaders, Soviet defenders and civilian inhabitants -- died there in one of World War II's decisive battles. A similar memorial stands in the outskirts of St. Petersburg, known as Leningrad during the war, where hundreds of thousands of civilians starved during a three-year German siege.
In both cases, Josef Stalin ordered his troops not to withdraw, and not to capitulate. This arguably contributed greatly to the German defeat. It is beyond debate that the death tolls would have been vastly lower had the cities capitulated.
In many countries an order to resist at all cost would be considered criminal folly today. In Russia, then and now, Leningrad and Stalingrad are seen as shining examples of patriotism, determination and bravery, their staggering human toll a necessary price of victory. ''The individual is nonsense, the individual is zero'' wrote revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky about Vladimir Lenin.
A bunch of zeros is still zero in Russia, including the 118 hostages who have died since last month's predawn raid by Russian commandos on Chechen rebels who held them in a Moscow theater.
A memorial surely will be built at the site. Like the Leningrad and Stalingrad ones, or the memorial to the sailors lost when the Kursk submarine sank, it will not commemorate the horrible deaths of Russians sacrificed by their state. Rather, it will glorify the state that sent them to their end.
Secrets trump lives
In the Kursk's case, the survivors of the explosion of an unsafe experimental torpedo were left to die under the sea two years ago because foreign rescuers might have gleaned some military secrets while saving lives. In the Moscow theater, hostages were knocked out by an overdose of gas intended to incapacitate their captors. Many died because officials refused to tell medical staff what gas had been used, or the antidote. True, this information might be useful to other terrorists, but its release was indispensable if lives were to be saved, there and then. Given a choice between the lives of its citizens and the protection of its interests, the Russian state once again did not hesitate.
It is the consistency over time and over regimes that makes Russian policy scary. Indeed, it reflects how far Russia remains from the notion of a democracy.
Enemies fare even worse
If Russia treats its own this way, it must be difficult for Russians to consider how their state probably treats the enemy. Yet such reflection is required if Russians are to understand what made the Moscow terrorists do what they did, and why Chechens continue to resist. Only Russian public opinion can stop this 10-year war -- but its grief now is working into the hands of Kremlin generals, who still believe, as generals will, in throwing bombs at the problem. Chechens must be terrified.
At the least, Russians need to reflect on whether they want to continue to be treated by their state as expendable. Even this will be difficult, though, for much is at stake.
In 1976, while crossing the campus of Moscow State University, I ran into a van surrounded by a police escort with sirens wailing. I later found out the van was bringing a sample of lunar soil recently brought in by a Soviet space probe.
''What's up?'' I asked a Russian passerby. He recognized me as a foreigner and suddenly seemed to grow taller, smiling at me with condescension as he said: ''Oh, nothing. We've just brought back a piece of the moon, that's what.''
We! He was an unfree man in an unfree country, his clothes shabby, his face aged before time -- but he was basking in the glory of the regime that had done all that to him. The price for that ''we'' was, of course, that he would be expendable, if ''we'' would decide that this would serve the cause.
This is why Russian masses are not out in Red Square, demonstrating against the massacre of fellow citizens at the hands of their state. As long as this ''we'' lives, many individual ''I''s -- Russian, Chechen and others -- will yet die. |
Hi Serb! 
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Sonic
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Vilnius, Lithuania
Dec 2001
time: 07:23
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I doubt it is troll...
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Sonic
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Vilnius, Lithuania
Dec 2001
time: 07:23
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quote:
Originally posted by BeBro
Question is, if this "we" is only a soviet product, or wheather such thinking is much older in Russia... |
Yes, such thinking is older. In Czar times it was also so as far as I know...
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Bereta_Eder
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The writer is just pissed that Russians still use "we" to refer to the accomplishments of their people under Soviet rule.
That's a normal thing to do and the only problem is the writer's utter repulse for the fact that Russians accept that they have a past which included great achievements and he doesn't like that past, its achievements or their identification with it and them.
Funny thing is that neither do many Russians, but they were still Russians when they send the first man in space...
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Bereta_Eder
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And that's worth remembering and that's still "we".
The same way it's "we" for Americans to send the first man on the moon. State over indivindual has nothing to do with it.
The writer needs to get a clue...
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:23
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quote:
So when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, proclaiming a racial war in the East to enslave the Slavic peoples and secure Lebensraum for the master German race in Mein Kampf, the Russians were just supposed to roll over and die? |
No, but ordering the NKVD to murder soldiers who were forced to retreat - giving soldiers the option of charging into German machine guns or Russian ones, in many cases - was absolutely immoral and totally unjustified in any and all circumstances.
Not to mention the whole idea of conscription being immoral and unjustified in any and every situation, but the US unfortunately did that as well.
Many of the actions of the Soviet Union during WW2, though, were far, far worse than those of the US or Britain, and even on par with or worse than Nazi and Japanese atrocities (in terms of "evilness" if not in terms of scale).
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Ironikinit
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I assumed that the emphasis on the word "we" was a literary reference to a fairly famous Russian science fiction novel.
Readers would do well to keep in mind that the intended audience of the editorial isn't a Russian audience, it's obviously an American one. IMO the piece is partly intended to explain why events in the Moscow theater hostage crisis played out the way they did and also why the results of the crisis are what they are, particularly in regards to Russian public opinion about how their government handled it. Americans might well be puzzled if they are not familiar with the Russian de-emphasis on individuals and their rights.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:23
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Actually, come to think of it, the US and Britain committed some horribly evil acts as well:
US dropped the atomic bomb on civilians
US and Britain murdered civilians by carpet bombing and firebombing them
US and Britain cracked down on dissent and certain political parties
So in retrospect, no side was really any better than any other, some sides just murdered more people during the war (Nazi Germany, Japan, and the US being the top three, though I'm not sure about the order, although the Soviet Union murdered more people in its history, of course).
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08-11-2002 20:48
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