The harms you don’t see
Падшие ангелы рядом с лицами старых солдат
Ждут одного лишь приказа: вернуться… Вернуться назад
Чтобы собрать все знамёна, стрелы, обломки мечей,
Вновь пережить вместе битву ста дней и ночей.
Катарсис, “Крылья”
I often see people in the West argue that Ukraine ought to cede some territories to Russia so that peace is achieved and people are kept safe. While perharps well intentioned, I think these suggestions are based on a distorted perception of reality. There are harms that you notice, because they happen in a big, loud fight that draws everyone attention, and there are harms that happen not so visibly, in dark overcrowded cells, in dusty courtrooms, in people’s heads. You may not hear about them in the news, but it is still important to know and account for them.
In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, it started destroying all Crimean Tatar civil society institutions. Mejlis, the executive representative body of Crimean Tatars since 1991, was outlawed as an “extremist organization” in 2016. Russia banned Crimean Tatar national events: the rally on the Deportation of Crimean Tatar People Day on May 18th and the Crimean Tatar National Flag day on June 26th.
Over 340 people are being persecuted for their alleged participation in Hizb ut-Tahrir. Over 230 people are already sentenced, and most of them got prison terms of 10 years or more. Hizb ut-Tahrir is an Islamist political organization that aims to establish Islamic caliphate by recruiting members and advancing them to positions of power. Russia considers them a terrorist organization, which is ridiculous as they never commited or were known to plan any acts of terror. CORRECTION: Despite their legal presence in many European countries and claims to only pursue non-violent methods, they did advocate for violence in Germany, which is why they were banned as a terrorist organization there. The case still raises questions because there were falsified confessions and witness testimonies, and one person claimed they were tortured to extract a confession.
Russia’s problem with Mejlis and Crimean Tatars in general is that they are organized groups.
Ukrainians often wonder why are Russian protests so toothless. Why don’t we fight for each other, through Molotov cocktails at the cops et cetera. One reason is that the Russian society is very atomized. You sure can start throwing Molotov cocktails on your own. But if other people don’t support you, you are just going to land yourself in prison for nothing. In order to protest effectively, you need to coordinate with others. You need to trust that other people will back you up, and they need to trust that you are not an agent provocateur. If you want to use violent tactics, you need to first build common knowledge that we, as a movement, are done with the whole nonviolent resistance thing, it didn’t work, and we are trying other methods now. You need to recruit enough people to execute your idea well and run into no undercover cops in the process. You need leaders who people can trust and who aren’t secretly working for Kremlin.
This is why Kremlin sees any independent organizations as a threat. Independent media must be destroyed, popular leaders imprisoned and killed, communities disbanded. You must not be able to talk to people, trust people or organize any collective action. Then you cannot resist the government effectively and are left helpless. This is what Russia is doing to people in Crimea and any other territory it controls.
But what happens to people when they are helpless before the government? I could tell you all day about the human right abuses, the widespread torture in Russian prisons and so on. But maybe the scariest thing is what happens in people’s heads.
When I got into protest activism and started talking to passerbys in Russia, the first thing that shocked me was some people’s cruelty. For example, a woman approached me on the Red Square during a picket to tell me “Pussy Riot should have been impaled!” Another thing I noticed is that people just seem so broken. While protesting against the government is geniunely dangerous, people’s fears of it seem out of all proportion to the real risk. An MSU student I met was afraid to sign a petition supporting political prisoners because he thought they’d expell him for that. (I never heard about anyone getting expelled from university for signing petitions.) My granny, too, was convinced that the next time I’m detained at a rally, my university will expell me. Pointing out that it didn’t happen 3 previous times, and that my university administration has a history of showing backbone in such situations couldn’t reassure her. A girl in the street told me she is afraid to go to rallies because her friend got her ribs broken in one. (Yes, it is possible to get injured at a rally, but it happens rarely, and you can further reduce risk by staying back and playing it safe. You’re about as likely to break your arm when skateboarding or catch an infection during sex. Yet most people aren’t terrified of having sex!) My dad feared that my brother might get imprisoned because I go to protests. Again, I’m not saying that the regime never targets your family. They imprisoned Navalny’s brother, they tortured the brother of an anarchist suspected of sabotaging a railway to find out his location. But I don’t sabotage railways and I’m not some popular figure. They don’t imprison your family just because you’ve gone to a few rallies. (At least they didn’t in 2015, I’m not paying such close attention anymore and the oppression gets worse every year.) When I just joined the opposition, I was going around the city and telling everyone who listened that our state security apparently kidnapped a man (Leonid Razvozhaev) abroad and forced him under duress to confess to crimes he didn’t commit. Most people didn’t believe it or supported it, but one old woman just looked at me sadly and said: “We are used to it”.
You know what’s the end result of adopting such an attitude to life? I’ve translated an exerpt from a conversation between a Ukrainian video blogger Lugansky and one Russian businessman, which I think illustrates it quite well:
[...]
Businessman: I have a question for you.
Lugansky: Go ahead.
B: Yes, we are on different sides of barricades...
L: Of good and evil.
B: So you think that I’m evil?
L: Of course.
B: Justify it.
L: Easily. Your government is an aggressor...
B: No, stop. Am I evil?
L: Of course. Your government is today an aggressor, an occupant. You are the mobilization resource of your country. If your country drafts you to carry diesel to Kherson in buckets, you’ll do it. What else would you do? You don’t have any other options. So of course you’re evil. In the forties, when the whole anti-Hitler coalition was on the side of good, all German citizens, Vermacht, SS, the leadership—were on the side of evil. Some worked to support the economy, switch it to military production. Some stamped shells, some made boxes to store shells, some cut down trees to make the boxes. You may be a lumberjack, cutting down trees, but the wood you produce goes into making boxes to ship shells to the frontlines. So of course, you all contribute to your country’s evil acts. In a war, there’s always the righteous side and the guilty side. The defenders and the aggressors. You attacked our country, so you’re evil. I’m Ukrainian, on the defending side, so I’m on the side of good. You are Russian, so you’re on the side of evil.
B: You can’t say you’re on the side of good.
L: Why not? I’m defending my country. You attacked us, invaded our land. You’re the aggressor. Therefore you’re evil.
B: Your logic is strange. I am not fighting you.
L: Do you pay taxes?
B: Not this again.
L: Of course you do. What’s your occupation?
B: I have a small company.
L: Then you’re supposed to provide the list of your employees to the military enlistment office. Did you?
B: Not yet. I have an appointment on Monday.
L: So, you’re going to give them the list on Monday. On Wednesday you’ll be collecting money to buy them uniforms and food. And you’re saying you’re not fighting? Maybe you’ll be drafted with them. You’ll be the first one to go.
B: I’d rather they drafted me than those kids.
L: They’ll draft them all and their children too.
B: They’re too small. Maybe I’m on the side of evil as you say, but...
L: What other options do you have? How could you avoid that? Tomorrow you’ll bring the list to the military, on Friday you’ll bury them.
B: I don’t know. I think the most important thing in this situation is to start a dialogue. There was no dialogue.
L: Between whom?
B: Between the two countries.
L: You’re saying we should find a compromise.
B: We should start talking so we can find a compromise.
L: It’s as Golda Meir said, “They want to kill us. We want to live. Where’s the place for compromise here?” You want to conquer or destroy us all, we want to live.
B: Are you sure? I can tell you as a Moscovite, we don’t need Ukraine at all. We have our own problems. Do you really think each Moscovite wants to conquer Ukraine?
L: Who cares what each Moscovite wants? It matters what your government wants, and whether you obey their orders. No one asks what you want. You’re going to be in the military enlistment office on Monday, and you don’t see other options. Who cares if you are killing voluntarily or because you’re ordered to? Our soldiers don’t care why you shoot. They will just kill you all.
Anyway, let us imagine that we are looking for a compromise. What do you want? Do you have any demands?
B: I don’t want anything. I don’t need this war.
L: Then how can we stop it, if you don’t want it, but participate anyway? Who am I supposed to negotiate with?
B: With the government.
L: What does your government want?
B: I don’t know.
L: If your government sends you to kill us, we can conclude it wants us dead. Simple conclusion, isn’t it?
B: That’s their business.
L: But you are the ones doing it! Did Peskov’s son go to war?
B: I think not.
L: He didn’t. But you’ll have to.
B: If I have to, I’ll go.
L: What for?
B: I don’t know. If the motherland says, I do.
L: I understand. Though, to be honest, not really. So are you ready to die for your motherland in a week or two?
B: Yes.
L: What about your employees who have little children, don’t you feel responsible for them?
B: For them, I’d rip your throat out.
L: Why me? I’m not the one sending them to war.
B: I’ll do everything I can so they don’t go.
L: What are you going to do? Are you bringing the list to the enlistment office?
B: Yes.
L: Then they will be drafted. Maybe they’ll ask you to deliver the order.
B: I know the military commissar personally, I told him he’s not going to take my people.
L: How is he going to fullfill his plan then? What, are you going to bribe him?
B: He has a plan. I have a plan too.
L: Why are you so weak-willed? Do you have no other option?
B: What option? Give me some option I understand. Go to Ukraine?
L: Of course not.
B: To Europe?
L: Who needs you there? They spit in your face there. So, out of all these options, you only have the option to go to war.
B: No. I’ll just keep doing my job.
L: I see. Do you feel sorry for your soldiers?
B: Very much so.
L: Why?
B: They didn’t choose this.
L: They joined the military.
B: Just as your soldiers didn’t choose to die. They didn’t create this situation.
L: How do you feel about Putin?
B: Positively.
L: Why?
B: Because there’s no one else.
L: What’s good about Putin?
B: He exists.
L: He’s good because he exists? That sounds like unconditional love.
B: Yes, I don’t like some things about Putin...
L: But you love him.
B: Who else would I love?
L: I donno. So, you see no choice. You’ve been voting for Putin your whole life.
B: Yes. There is no choice.
L: Don’t you think you are now getting the future you chose? Tomorrow you’re going to the military enlistment office, and after that—death. Of you or your employees. Is this not connected to your voting choice?
B: I understand what you’re saying. Though… not really.
L: But you write programs. You always get the outcome you programmed. You voted for Putin, and Putin causes death, so you voted for your death. You’re a programmer, you should get it.
B: I don’t know how to answer that.
L: Do you not regret your choice?
B: No. You should never regret you choices.
L: I see. How do you see your future in a month or two?
B: No idea.
L: But don’t you plan for the future? How long ahead do you plan?
B: For a month ahead. Because the times are hard.
L: Is this not sad?
B: It is.
L: Who’s to blame for this, how do you think?
B: You think I’m to blame.
L: No, I’m asking you. I see you’re well off, you have your own company, and you plan only for a month ahead. This is a catastrophe. How do you think, who is to blame for this?
B: You’re trying to get me to blame Putin.
L: I’m asking you.
B: I think we, people, are to blame for this situation.
L: Who are “we”?
B: Everyone.
L: Everyone? Including New Zealand?
B: Yes. Everyone who allowed this to happen is to blame.
L: Do you feel scared for your future?
B: I do.
[...]
I think the way you end up like this, is you do something cowardly or bad. You rationalize it, perharps by exaggerating the danger you faced out of all proportion and denying you had a choice. Then you keep this up in a vicious circle until you’ve self-inflicted enough brain damage that you have no idea what your country is fighting for, but you are prepared to kill for it. This is what Russia wants everyone to become. I don’t think Russia wants to kill all Ukrainians as Lugansky says. The oil and gas industry does not require many workers, but people can still be valuable as cannon fodder. Yes, ending up as an NPC is not exactly death. But I honestly think it’s worse.
When you think about it, it makes sense that people end up like this. When your government commits atrocities every day and you are forced to pay taxes to support it, something has to give. You can either sacrifice your compassion, and end up like the aggressive zombie people who cheer for the suffering of their neighbors. Or you can sacrifice your agency. Delude yourself into thinking that you are powerless and have no choice in anything. Become an NPC “out of politics” zombie. The only way to keep your humanity is to fight back. But usually too few people are willing to do that. So you usually end up imprisoned or killed. That would probably have happened to me, too, if I hadn’t come across Eliezer’s friendly AI project.
In 2013 I attended many political trials, on Bolotnaya case and others. At one of them, I saw a political prisoner’s mother cry. That’s not how things are normally. Most day these people hold up so strong. That day she was crying, though, and there was just nothing I could say to make it better. The protests of 2011 were withering out. People were giving up. We were not strong enough to free her son. I realized then that we had a unique opportunity in 2011. We wasted it and lost, and there was no knowing if we would ever in my lifetime stand a chance again. I vowed if a chance ever came I’d rather die than back down. But it never came. There was one time in 2015 that remotely resembled it. Many thousands of people subscribed to go to an unsanctioned rally, and Ukrainians left all kinds of helpful advice in our facebook group. The government decided things are getting too exciting and organized an antimaidan rally at the same place and time. So of course Navalny canceled the rally, but I and about a hundred people showed up anyway. Then police arrested some people and pressed all the antimaidan folks and some protesters into the underground. Around 20 people remained. It didn’t look like enough to start a revolution, so we went home. A friend of mine was arrested that day, and then he got imprisoned and tortured.
The moral of the story is, the times when the forces of good can coordinate, get their act together and effectively resist evil are rare and precious. When it happens, you have to make the most of it. Once the war is over, if Crimea is not liberated, Crimean activists will face 15 years in prison. If Putin’s regime still stands, Alexandra Skochilenko, a Russian artist arrested for spreading anti-war propaganda, faces up to 10 years in prison. This war has been going on for 8 years, but the civilized world ignored it and other wars before it. Once the war is over, the first world people will go back to discussing their first world problems and forget all about Russia. The oppression will go on, and there will probably be more wars. Any good people stuck on Russia-controlled territories will keep resisting. You won’t hear about it on BBC, but ovd-info will write about it. “A man set himself on fire”. “A man killed a few cops before killing himself”. “A group of anarchists arrested for teaching themselves how to fight.” People will go on fighting, wondering if ever in their lives will the forces of good be one hundredth as coordinated and strong as they are today. We have an opportunity to change the future now, and we should use it.
Russia started a partial mobilization 3 weeks ago. This is a great time to support Ukraine. You can donate here (this is a card of Tim Zlatkin, a Ukrainian volunteer who collects money to buy military equipment and who friends of my friends know):
Приват24: 4149 6293 1788 1159
Having grown up there, I understand your sentiment. However, the framing you use, good vs evil, is unhelpful. There is a basic orthogonality thesis: morality of actions is not positively correlated with their success. Most uprising fail because of strategic and tactical reasons, not because the other side was more evil (though by many metrics it often tends to be). Lenin, who employed extreme and evil means without hesitation to achieve what he perceived to be good ends, wrote the book on how to do it right, and then triumphantly followed it in October 1917 when no one else believed that a successful revolt was possible. We may question whether it was a net good (but that relies on inaccessible counterfactuals) but it’s hard to question its effectiveness. It pays to review the lessons of the 1905 Moscow uprising that led to success 12 years later:
we should have taken to arms more resolutely, energetically and aggressively; we should have explained to the masses that it was impossible to confine things to a peaceful strike and that a fearless and relentless armed fight was necessary.
we must carry on the widest agitation among the masses in favour of an armed uprising and make no attempt to obscure this question by talk about “preliminary stages”, or to befog it in any way. We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action.
That we must work among the troops goes without saying. But we must not imagine that they will come over to our side at one stroke, as a result of persuasion or their own convictions … at a time of uprising there must also be a physical struggle for the troops.
ruthless extermination of civil and military chiefs was our duty during an uprising
insurrection is an art and that the principal rule of this art is the waging of a desperately bold and irrevocably determined offensive
We must proclaim from the house tops the need for a bold offensive and armed attack, the necessity at such times of exterminating the persons in command of the enemy, and of a most energetic fight for the wavering troops.
The third great lesson taught by Moscow concerns the tactics and organisation of the forces for an uprising … [An essential part is] tactics and organisation raised by street fighting under the conditions imposed by modern military technique [he goes on to talk about the conditions of 1905, they may be different over 100 years later].
He goes on to say “if mass attacks are launched on the enemy, if a determined and skillful fight is waged for the troops, who after the Duma, after Sveaborg and Kronstadt are wavering more than ever—and if we ensure participation of the rural areas in the general struggle—victory will be ours in the next all-Russian armed uprising.” He finishes with
Other than the incidental mention of “the party of the class-conscious proletariat”, Lenin’s lessons are pretty universal and unambiguous, though desperate, brutal, violent, and, well, evil. Is there a part of the Russian underground that is prepared to fight for the minds, hearts and ammunition of the troops? If there is, it is not visible from outside. And if they win, will they be able to switch from brutality to a civil society, once they are in power? The evidence from Russian and other successful revolts is overwhelmingly against. Does this mean that Russia is screwed either way? Most likely. Moscow 2042 might yet prove prophetic.
This is a very good answer, but it seems like it is not answering the original post. (Or maybe my perception is biased and I am reading something that is not there… I apologize if so).
The main point I took from the post (and with which I wholeheartedly agree, so I am not approaching this topic as rationally as I probably should), is that, when talking about “buying off” Russia with a bit of Ukrainian land, the attention somehow avoids the people living there, and what will happen to them if such a compromise was enacted.
Probably not. And the existing system does everything it can to make sure no such underground will arise, by destroying the agency of the people living there. Chances are the system will succeed and there won’t be any change, forever.
And when talking about ceding, say, Zaporizhzhia Oblast to Russia, you must not forget that the people living there will get the same choice as the rest of Russia does now: get tortured, or become a zombie, or become an NPC.
>> Most uprising fail because of strategic and tactical reasons, not because the other side was more evil (though by many metrics it often tends to be).
I don’t disagree? I’m not saying that Russia is evil because the protests failed. It’s evil because it fights aggressive wars, imprisons, tortures and kills innocent people.
Didn’t mean to imply that, sorry.
Well, that’s not unique to Russia by any means. The US and virtually everyone else did all of the above as well, again and again. It’s more of a question of the scale/degree of evil. Not defending Russia, it needs to be stopped, but this is a sad reality of this world.
Scale/degree of evil matters a ton tho.
It does! Just not always easy to evaluate.
Damn, this reminds me of a fiction story I read a long time ago, of a parallel timeline where Gandhi tried to use nonviolent resistance on Nazi occupants. Spoiler:
Nazis simply kept exterminating the Indian population, just like they wanted to, with zero remorse. The only effect of the nonviolent resistance was that it made their job slightly easier, otherwise everyone ignored it. (The moral of the story: you can only appeal to your opponent’s conscience if he has one.)
*
But then, why is the entire world not like Russia? Missing a genius psychopath like Lenin cannot be the whole answer: psychopaths are everywhere, sooner or later someone would stumble upon the right strategy. Also, I think that Russia was quite… dark… long before communism.
There are two hypotheses I am aware of. First, the hypothesis of a huge indefensible steppe, where the geography makes “build something and protect it” a losing strategy, and the only way to be safe is to proactively destroy everyone else, as far as you can. That of course keeps the population in constant misery and conflict.
But the Chinese seem to have had a similar problem, and they solved it by building a wall. Why haven’t Russian Tzars done the same? Maybe the situation was not as similar as it sounds, or maybe building a wall of that size is a project super unlikely to succeed, so it’s the China that requires explanation, not Russia.
Second, the hypothesis of a resource curse (a.k.a. The Dictator’s Playbook, The Rules for Rulers), according to which the places where “the population generates wealth” incentivize democracy, as people who are happy, well fed, and well educated, can generate more wealth, and if you hurt the people, you destroy the most precious resource you have; and the places where “the natural resources generate wealth” incentivize dictatorship, because you only need a few slaves to extract the resources, and an army to keep them working and prevent someone else from taking over your business, and everything else can go to hell. Is Russia similarly cursed by having a lot of oil today (and other resources in the past)?
The problem with this hypothesis is that in current world, an army requires modern weapons, which require having an industrial base; the industrial base requires education, so the people become important again; you cannot go full Pol Pot when surrounded by developed countries. Then again, “some industry and some education” do not require general well-being of your entire population; you could simply elevate some selected cities (such as Moscow and St Petersburg) to modern era and keep the rest at the stone age level. Maybe Russia recently went a little further towards the dictatorship end of the scale than would be optimal, hurt their population a bit too much, and as a consequence now its army became too dysfunctional?
Depending on which hypothesis is right, a possible solution might involve some artificial barriers (being surrounded by NATO members, who do not proactively attack the territory of Russia proper, is a kind of such barrier), or finding alternative sources of energy so efficient that oil would become virtually useless. Too optimistic, I know; I am just brainstorming here.
Resource rich countries don’t decide “how much of a dictatorship should I be?”, it’s rather that an organization with very strong moral mazes dynamics can manage to do resource extraction but they don’t manage more complicated processes.
You can’t easily move to a less corrupt military in peacetime just because you think you need a functioning military because the military lacks good feedback cycles.
Complete focus on military strength is how you get to the kind of governance that North Korea has.
Your link just points back to this post.
Oops, thanks, fixed! The link is http://lesmaterialistes.com/english/lenin-lessons-moscow-uprising-1906
From a western perspective, supporting Ukraine means further empowering our globe-spanning military-industrial complex, and the political and espionage interests behind it, to engage in unknown further mischief, in pursuit of unknown further agendas. The USA has given more than $10 billion to Ukraine already this year, and has been a factor in Ukrainian politics for decades. So I support a ceasefire and I oppose sponsorship of insurgency in Russia. But my opinions don’t count.
I agree technically:
the future, if the West wins, is uncertain in many ways;
war is bad;
and disagree connotationally:
The future of Ukraine, if Russia wins, although much more certain, is definitely not good. I would expect lower quality of life for Ukrainians (compared to the situation before the war, not literally to the moment when bombs are falling on their houses, of course), both from the economical (of a median person) and human rights perspectives.
This war started in 2014 and escalated in spring 2022. What was your opinion on the war back then? The specific thing about autumn 2022 is that the Russian forces are now losing the occupied territory of Ukraine relatively quickly. Also, Russia losing this war might prevent future attempts at conquests. In a parallel reality where Russia gains the territory of Ukraine without much resistance, I would expect taking Belarus next (without much resistance) and within five years yet another attack.
Isn’t there a good chance for that no matter how the conflict in Ukraine goes? Given that Belarus already has a dictator, would much change through that?
I assume that Lukashenka is probably happier being a sovereign dictator than mere governor. His generals and other people in positions of power probably also prefer being near the top of the food chain rather than being integrated into Russian structures and becoming underlings of someone in Moscow. Their bargaining position, however weak it might be now, would probably get worse. Therefore, I would expect Lukashenka to drag his feet, even if Putin insists.
I heard that Lukashenka lobbied for a merger of Russia and Belarus because he liked his chances of eventually becoming leader of the combined entity.
Yes, but that was decades ago, when Yeltsin was president! The ‘union state’ has been moribund since the early aughts.
😲
But then...
...why wouldn’t Belarus already be a part of Russia? I doubt that Putin would say no.
EDIT:
Conditional on “Lukashenka wants Belarus to merge with Russia”, my best guess is that his army opposes it (for selfish reasons) and Lukashenka cannot ignore the wishes of his own army.
OK, well, here is where I got the information in my previous comment—somewhere in the first 47 minutes of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFmugMGl4Uo
Yes, it’s bad for Lukashenka but that’s not something that matters to us.
Do you think that Lukashenka has more resources to resist if Russia has no territory in Ukraine?
A decisively defeated Russia will have fewer resources with which to coerce him. And if he’s smart and keeps his powder dry like he has, he will have more resources with which to resist.
And if he gets overthrown in a color revolution, the Belarussians have not yet gotten so much blood on their hands as to preclude support from the West.
In 2014, the rise of the Islamic State was the main thing on my mind. But even then, I saw the fighting in Ukraine as Russia vs America, and both events, along with the rise of Xi and Modi, as part of a tremendous shift from “unipolar” to “multipolar” geopolitics. The Trump presidency, in a sense, completed the revolution, bringing ideological change to America itself—but then Covid scrambled things enough, that there was a liberal restoration under Biden. Still, things are not as they were—Biden is now fighting a three-front struggle, against Putin, Xi, and Trump; and the progressive wing of his own party also has a greatly reduced appetite for global intervention. Whatever its outcome, the war in Ukraine already looks like a struggle between two poles of a multipolar world, rather than a global alliance against a rogue state.
You opinions count, though most of us disagree with you. Thus, the replies.
Let’s suppose that supporting Ukraine does further empower ‘our globe-spanning military-industrial complex’. But failing to support Ukraine empower the rival globe-spanning military-industrial complex that in addition to Russia includes Iran, Syria, and China.
A ceasefire that results in Russia keeping more Ukrainian land than it started will empower this rival military-industrial complex and set the precedent for rewarding aggression while weakening Ukraine militarily and strategically. Even letting Russia keep Don-Bas and Crimea will leave Ukraine vulnerable to future invasions.
So, which globe-spanning military-industrial complex do you oppose more?
It’s absurd to equate the shaky and informal coalition of Russia, China, Iran, and Syria with the 750+ extraterritorial bases, worldwide naval dominance, and global surveillance network of the US Military.
True. But looking at the expected value of the two, it seems that USA hegemony is less harmful for my values. And it’s also a simple matter of not paying Danegeld, as that tends to not end well.
Currently the west is on top. And will probably stay there. But that’s in part because of these kind of reactions and opportunities to put down the other side. Iran has been under sanctions for ages—whether they’re effective is debatable, but they certainly don’t help. China is now getting kneecapped via the new chip embargoes. Russia had the second largest army so the war in Ukraine is a perfect opportunity to inflict as much damage as possible, virtually for free.
Living in Poland, a lot is said about how bad the Nazis were. A lot is done to remember. But everyone knows the Russians were worse. Currently it turns out that apart from nukes, the Russians aren’t that scary anymore. If they can be neutralized at the cost of drawing out the war in Ukraine for a bit longer, I reckon it’s worth it, cynical as that may sound. Most Ukrainians also think so.
In general, if I have to choose between the NSA snooping in all my data and people getting disappeared, then I’d choose the west. At least I can publicly gripe about how bad they are and even publish methods of circumventing them without worrying about getting arrested (with the obvious caveats). Yes, they play around with starting conflicts, and don’t have a good track record of tidying up after themselves. But they’re also the only thing stopping Russia, China, Iran and Syria from doing the same.
I’m not equating the West and Anti-West in terms of power. I agree that the Anti-West is much weaker. That doesn’t mean it’s incapable of becoming a threat in the future.
One may live under a variety of political orders. Life becomes difficult when you’re caught between two systems fighting each other. As an Australian, I had no problems with the rise of China, until the Trump presidency forced Australia to choose between its economic provider and its security provider.
Actually, while he was campaigning, Trump had an advisor, Carter Page, who proposed an entente between China, Russia, and America. But Page was purged along with all the Russophiles, and Trump wanted his trade war with China, and now under Biden, the idea that all nations should be liberal democracies has been restored to the list of reasons why east and west are at odds. And maybe the odds were always against a LaRouche-style peaceful coexistence of such different powers.
The way I see it, America has had supreme power in the world twice, and has a chance at a third time. First was in 1945, when only the USA has the bomb, and everywhere else was in ruins. Then came 1991, when American information society was suddenly the only serious political and economic model remaining. The third chance is due to artificial intelligence, although perhaps it’s more accurate to say that, whatever posthuman order characterizes the era of AI, it’s most likely to first take shape on the territory of America.
So personal preferences aside, there is a sense in which I judge the meta-alliance of “NATO+Quad” as more likely to win than “SCO+Iran”. But winning only because of AI, and only in the sense that it gets to be ground zero of the AI-driven transformation of the world. If it weren’t for AI, I would not expect America to ever be on top again.
A lot of the involvement of the US and EU in Ukraine politics is getting them to build anti-corruption structures into their system. That’s probably welcome by the Ukrainian population as getting parliamentarians to do anti-corruption initiatives that the population wants is generally hard.
If you think that US involvement is net negative, do you have examples of that?
This war looks like a net negative to me. But both sides disagree.
If you are speaking about the US being a factor in Ukrainian politics for decades then a lot of what the US did is not about war.
The EU and the US aren’t just pushing Ukraine to war. They want to do institution building that reduces corruption and that lets Ukraine respect the minority rights of Russian speakers.
If the US or EU had veto power over Ukraine laws, the decommunization laws that made it a criminal offense to insult Ukrainians who mass murdered Jews, Poles, and Communists during WW2 wouldn’t have happened in 2015. The Russian talk about denazification seems like a straight answer to the decommunization project that decided to glorify people who extreminated Jews, Poles, and Communists.
Tens of thousands are dead, and millions have fled their homes. The country may have lost all of its eastern provinces. That’s a heavy price to pay for whatever new political and psychological atmosphere was attained.
If Ukraine would have done what the West wanted they would have abided by the Minsk agreements. The far right in Ukraine and its militia (who did have a habit of attacking political gatherings) didn’t like the Minsk agreements and as a result, Ukraine didn’t abide by the agreements which is a key reason why the invasion in 2022 happened.
Maybe, if the West would have put more pressure on Ukraine to follow the West’s demands at protecting minority rights, the 2022 invasion could have been averted.
Was it really only the United States that was a factor in Ukrainian politics?
I am not denying the Russian or European influences. My point is that the west is not some neutral third party that only got involved in 2022. Ukraine was already a factor in American politics, so much so that it provided the rationale for the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
Depends on how you interpret the “policy factor”.
I would prefer Putin’s regime to end, but I don’t see a path that ends up there. On the other hand, actions that do challenge the regime, also increase the amount of repression because that’s what a cornered regime does.
Putin does manage to remove top military generals that criticize him for being disloyal. He trusts ultra-nationalists more than more moderate voices and as a result, it’s likely that even if Putin leaves power that power goes to ultra-nationalists.
Both 2014 and 2022 show Putin gaining roughly +15% approval rating by starting the respective wars. Those wars are not just fought because Putin likes enlarging Russia’s territory but because it is popular politics.
While it’s plausible that losing the war will make Putin lose more approval than starting it, it likely won’t make Russians less nationalistic and any leader that would replace him would still need to signal his nationalism.
When looking at the approval rating I find that it dipped somewhere in May/June/July of 2018. Googling doesn’t make it very clear to me what caused the dip. The best explanation that comes to me were Navalny’s protests. If I missed any events that explained that drop I would be happy to hear what did it.
True; but I think one of the Viktoria’s main points was that any “compromises” which surface in popular discussions from time to time, those that involve ceding parts of Ukraine to Russian control, will doom the people living there to the same fate people in Russia are already facing (or worse, because the regime on the newly-annexed territories will be more evil simply due to how the Russian system works).
Right now there is an opportunity to liberate the occupied territories, including Crimea, and at least the people of those lands will be saved. When considering any compromises, the invisible loss of those people must be factored in. Once this opportunity passes, another might not arise for a long time.
Also, there is a “theory” that Crimea is the Putin’s phylactery. In the sense that so-called “Crimean consensus”, the popular approval rise he got out of annexing Crimea, was a major factor in propping up his current power, and after losing Crimea he won’t be able to survive as every faction will turn on him. We cannot know if that’s true, but it will certainly destabilize the regime, and it may buy new opportunities for the Russian domestic players.
That’s true, but at an 80% approval rating for Putin, a majority of them do like their current fate.
As far as what fate the people in Crimea want, different people in Crimea want different things.
In 2014 before the invasion you had 67.9% identified as Russian, 15.7% as Ukrainians, and 12.6% Crimean Tatars.
When searching in Western media we have an absence of polling data about what the people in Crimea want. If a majority of Crimeans wanted to be part of Ukraine, I think it would be likely that Western players would have commissioned those studies.
What we do have is an NPR article, How People In Crimea View The Union With Russia, which says:
And then list a few examples of people critical of Russian governance without saying their view is held by many Crimeans.
Dissolving the Tatar civil society organizations is certainly bad, but unfortunately, Ukraine doesn’t care about freedom of association either, and outlawed parties representing the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine.
Infringing the freedoms of 13% is less bad than infringing those of 68% of Crimeans.
As far as Hizb ut-Tahrir goes, they are forbidden in Germany where I live because they advocated the usage of violence for political ends. Interestingly, Russia and Germany both outlawed the organization in 2003. I agree, that the actions of Russia are excessive and I would certainly prefer them not to throw people into prison for 10 to 20 years for belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Destabilizing the regime does open up new opportunities but the way Putin is likely to react to that is to use political violence against anybody who isn’t loyal but is a threat to his power.
I don’t think these restrictions to freedom of association are comparable. First of all, we need to account for magnitudes of possible harm and not just numbers. In 1944, the Soviet government deported at least 191,044 Crimean tatars to the Uzbek SSR. By different estimates, from 18% to 46% of them died in exile. Now their representative body is banned, and Russian government won’t even let them commemorate the deportation day. I think it would be reasonable for them to fear for their lives in this situation.
Secondly, Russia always, even before the war, had rigged elections with fake opposition parties. That may be why the man in the interview says he had no choice. There are 4 parties in Russian parlament, but they are “pocket opposition”, they all vote the same on all important questions. Navalny wasn’t even allowed to participate in president elections. And if he were to participate and win, the votes would be miscounted anyway. So in Russia 100% of people lack a democratic representation, because there is no democracy.
Ukraine is at least a democratic country. Poroshenko didn’t poison and imprison Zelensky or vice versa. And Zelensky, by the way, started out pretty pro-Russian. His election campaign movie, “The servant of the people”, has a theme that Europe is not so great and Russians and Ukrainians are brothers and allies. He got elected, which shows that Russian-sympathetic views can get represented.
It’s true that Ukraine suspended 11 parties with links to Russian government for the period of martial law, after Russia started a full-scale invasion. That sounds like a reasonable measure to me. I don’t think Great Britain is an unfree country because it banned the British Union of Fashists party in 1940. When I look at those banned parties, it looks similarly justified.
For example, Evgeny Muraev, the leader of the NASHI party which suspiciously shares its name with the NASHI youth pro-Putin movement in Russia, called on Ukraine to capitulate when the invasion started.
The “Opposition platform—for life” party in its program suggests canceling decommunization laws. USSR caused a famine in Ukraine, deported over 191 thousands of people, and now they want to cancel decommunization?! If that was not enough, their representatives reportedly collaborated with the occupants, helping correct fire in Mariupol. Their leader Medvedchuk is Putin’s friend, Putin is his daughter’s godfather. I think this shows that British Union of Fashists party is a good analogy here. A country has to defend itself from foreign government agents and inhumane ideologies.
I haven’t looked at them all. Maybe there is a party there that doesn’t deserve it. But then these parties are only suspended for the duration of martial law. They should become legal again after the war ends.
When it comes to Hizb ut-Tahrir, it seems I was indeed mistaken to believe that they never advocated violence. Calls to destroy the state of Izrael and kill people living there sure sound like calls to violence. I guess I should have investigated further instead of just trusting Wikipedia and ovd-info. Now I am confused why this org is legal in Izrael itself. I see this issue is a lot less clear-cut than it seemed at first. I am going to edit the post.
Countries are usually less free in wartime and that’s one of the problems of war. That said, the British Union of Fashists did not represent a significant number of people and even those that it does represent aren’t an ethic minority together.
In early February 2015 according to Western polling 90% of Crimeans said yes in some form to “Do you endorse Russia’s annexation of Crimea?”.
Let’s imaging that the Ukrainian military attacks Crimea, and as wars go some Crimeans die as a result. Is there likely to be peace after Ukraine has regained the full territory of Crimea? Very unlikely. It’s likely that there will be a bunch of Crimeans who do guerilla warfare with weapons that Russia graciously provides.
It’s very unlikely that the Ukrainian response to that is to give the Russian minority some minority rights back. It’s much more likely that they will further reduce Russian minority rights which in turn further inflames opposition.
It’s also worth noting here that the polling suggests that the Crimeans are much more pro-Russian than people in Donetsk and Luhansk, so you can’t generalize from the amount of support that staying part of Ukraine gets in those regions to Crimea.
Calls to capitulate seem to me valid speech. From what I see by googling The British Union of Fashists didn’t represent many people.
From Wikipedia:
The laws have raised some concerns about freedom of speech, as well as international concerns that they honor some organizations and individuals that participated in the mass murder of Jews, Poles, and Communists during the Holocaust in Ukraine and massacres in Volhynia.
The Venice commission (which exists partly to tell Ukraine how they have to change their laws to be compatible with the EU if they want to join) comes to the conclusion that the laws go to far in violating various rights. One exerpt:
113. While this interference might, on the grounds stated above, pursue legitimate aims, it is
not proportionate to these aims because it excludes political parties from participation in
elections without taking into account the severity of non-compliance with the Law by the
political party.
Just because the law is named “decommunization law” and there’s a history of communism causing problems doesn’t mean that the law is justified. If you think that a party that represents a minority and who calls for laws that discriminate against those minorities in a way that’s seen as illigitamte by the Venice Commission is illigimate because it calls for those laws to get repealed that’s a good sign that there’s a problem.
I believe that the decommunization laws are for the most part good and necessary, though I disagree with the part where you are not allowed to insult historical figures.
These laws are:
Law no. 2558 “On Condemning the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) Totalitarian Regimes and Prohibiting the Propagation of their Symbols” — banning Nazi and communist symbols, and public denial of their crimes. That included removal of communist monuments and renaming of public places named after communist-related themes.
Law no. 2538-1 “On the Legal Status and Honoring of the Memory of the Fighters for the Independence of Ukraine in the 20th Century” — elevating several historical organizations, including the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, to official status and assures social benefits to their surviving members.
Law no. 2539 “On Remembering the Victory over Nazism in the Second World War”
Law no. 2540 “On Access to the Archives of Repressive Bodies of the Communist Totalitarian Regime from 1917–1991” — placing the state archives concerning repression during the Soviet period under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.
Venice commision criticizes the specifics of some laws, insisting that they should be formulated more clearly, that sanctions should follow the principle of proportionality etc. Getting these details right is important and I support it. But as a matter of general principle,
“The Venice Commission and OSCE/ODIHR recognise the right of Ukraine to ban or even criminalise the use of certain symbols of and propaganda for totalitarian regimes.”
The Opposition Party—for Life, on the contrary, proposes to repel all these laws. There was no decommunization in Russia after the USSR fell. No lustration or opening of archives. This allowed a former KGB officer to consolidate power and start an aggressive war which many people justify as a way to bring back the “good old times”. Just as there are many people in Russia dreaming of bringing back USSR, there also such people in Ukraine. They shouldn’t be allowed to bring totalitarianism back. This is why decommunization is important.
There’s a difference between disagreeing about whether a law should exist and whether opposing a law should be ground for voters being barred from voting for a party that advocates the law. I disagree with many laws that are passed but I do believe in the right of voters to elect the parties that advocate those laws. That’s part of what being a Democracy is about.
Laws are either constitutional (or in the case of the EU compatible with its principles) or not. Courts usually invalidate unconstitutional laws and then it’s up to the government to make new laws that are constitutional. The ability to have political parties argue that such laws should be abolished seems to me a central feature of a healthy democracy.
Countries do have the right to criminalize the use of certain symbols and propaganda for totalitarian regimes but they don’t have a duty to do so. As a result, it’s very hard to argue that this topic should not be one that’s openly discussed where political parties can take both sides of the debate.
If your goal is peace between multiple ethnicities, honoring fascists who took part in the mass murder of Jews, Poles, and Communists while making sure that Communists are condemned is very unlikely to produce ethnic harmony.
That institute was led by Volodymyr Viatrovych at the time. ForeignPolicy (a respected journal for the US elite) has an article The Historian Whitewashing Ukraine’s Past—Volodymyr Viatrovych is erasing the country’s racist and bloody history — stripping pogroms and ethnic cleansing from the official archives.:
In that context, it seems very clear to me that opposing such a law should be within the realms of allowed democratic discourse. From a German perspective “Don’t empower people who want to purge the crimes of people who did mass murder of Jews” is just very common sense.
The EU approach to getting Ukraine to protect the rights of minorities seems more… sustainable… than Russia’s approach, so I propose a different compromise:
How about Russia withdraw all its troops back to the 2014 borders and we all give the slow, non-violent path a chance to work.
That’s unlikely going to happen in the real world.
When thinking about the world it makes sense to think in terms of what’s actually possible.
From 2014:
GALLUP, pages 25, 27, 28, 29, 30
Pew Research Center, pages 4, 6, 9, 16
Putin is an evil dictator, but it doesn’t mean that everything he and Russia did in the last 22 years was evil.
Do you really presume everyone on LW understands Russian, citing a Russian-language poem?
I can’t vouch for the quality as I don’t speak Russian myself, but https://lyricstranslate.com/en/крылья-krylya-wings.html has a human-authored translation, and I found google translate to line up with it reasonably well should that be your go-to.
Huh? If an organization ‘aims to establish an Islamic caliphate by recruiting members and advancing them to positions of power’, that certainly seems like planning acts of terror.
Surely there’s some more sympathetic organizations that could have been used as an example?
(Especially since a majority of readers on LW are based in North America, UK, Europe, etc., which have huge segments of the population that would sooner support Russia then support an Islamic Caliphate.)
I don’t find the goal of establishing and living by Islamic laws sympathetic either, but they are using legal means to achieve it, not acts of terror. I don’t know if the accused people actually belong to the organization, I suspect most don’t. All accused but one deny it, some evidence was forged and one person said he was tortured. Ukraine is supported by the West, so Russia wouldn’t accuse Crimean activists of something West finds sympathetic. They’re not stupid.
So the overwhelming majority of persecuted Crimean Tatars are accused of belonging to this organization. I could go pick some more sympathetic examples, of course, but that wouldn’t paint an accurate picture. I’m trying to describe things as I see them, not create propaganda.
I know almost nothing about the history of Hizb ut-Tahrir anywhere in the world, but in Denmark one of the leaders of Hizb ut-Tahrir once got convicted for threatening the prime minister.
The question of whether Hizb ut-Tahrir is worth forbidding and the question of whether those people are actually guilty of being members are two very different questions.
When trying to understand the organizations role in Crimea I found https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/125726/RU_41.pdf (of course I don’t know fully how trustworthy everything is):
Given that background 300 people doesn’t seem to be an unrealistic number.
It also suggests that Hizb ut-Tahrir does not speak for all Muslims.
Torture is obviously bad, but it’s not one-sided in the conflict https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-n-documents-prisoners-torture-abuse-in-ukrainian-conflict:
Unseen harms happen on both sides.
I find the torture happening on both sides terribly sad. The reason I continue to support Ukraine—aside from them being a victim of aggression—is that I have hope that things will change for the better there. While in Russia I’m confident that things will only get worse. Both countries have the same Soviet past, but Ukraine decided to move towards European values, while Russia decided to stand for imperialism and homophobia. And after writing this, I realised: your linked report says that Ukraine stopped using secret detention facilities in 2017 but separatists continue using them. Some things are really getting better.
This does not seem credible. Those who genuinely desire to establish an ‘Islamic Caliphate’ in a non-Islamic country likely also have some overlap with those who are fine with resorting to planning acts of terror. This is significantly different from ‘establishing and living by Islamic laws ’, and even then the overlap would likely not be zero.
The writing is not neutrally worded, contains highly emotional language, and clearly can affect readers into changing their views regarding a political topic, so it counts as propaganda by any dictionary definition.
If you didn’t intend to create propaganda, try looking into how the major news media from neutral countries such as India, Israel, Brazil, etc… are writing about the conflict.
>> Those who genuinely desire to establish an ‘Islamic Caliphate’ in a non-Islamic country likely also have some overlap with those who are fine with resorting to planning acts of terror
A civilized country cannot dish out 15 year prison terms just based on its imagination of what is likely. To find someone guilty of terrorism, you have to prove that they were planning or doing terrorism. Which Russia didn’t. Even in the official accusations, all that the accused allegedly did was meeting up, fundraising and spreading their literature.
I say I am not writing propaganda because I am describing my honest impressions and opinions on the matter, not cherry picking facts or telling lies to manipulate you. If your definition says that any writing that changes views is propaganda, then your definition is very broad and covers any persuasive argument. When it comes to emotions, I do not believe it is necessary, or rational, or virtuous, to see injustice and pain and remain impassive and neutral. So thank you, but I’ll pass.
If you got the impression that I was offering my own definition, instead of following standard definitions available in popular dictionaries, then you should reread my comment.
Online versions of the major English dictionaries exist and anyone can read them, so no one has to take my word for it.
Regardless of what has been done, is likely to be done, etc., I was addressing your claim that:
Which does not seem credible. As there are genuine reasons to believe that such groups may not use entirely legal means to advance their goals.
Whether or not this occurred in fact, or is in fact planned to occur in the future, isn’t something that can be proven either way without on-the-ground investigation, nor are they the claims that I’m addressing.