http://edwardlucas.blogspot.com/
Xenophobic demonisation of Russia, or not?
Worth a peep
Steve Levine, Foreign Affairs writer for Business Week, says on his website:
"Edward Lucas, a colleague from the Economist, lets loose today with an excerpt in London's Daily Mail from his new book, The New Cold War. Lucas, a take-no-prisoners critic of the Putin Kremlin, is one of the most articulate voices writing in English on Russia. I expect his book to do well."
thanks for sharing..
AntwortenLöschenA friend does believe thats happening..so do I
I've heard of - and I own - the book (I am yet to read it, though :). However, I've also come across some sources that warn against using the "cold war" metaphor to describe today's situation. It's not exactly the same - some factors are cardinally different. I will try to locate those sources - I believe they were some articles in "The New York Review of Books", but I can't be sure - and post them here.
AntwortenLöschenBut please dont misunderstand..
AntwortenLöschenI think it would make good topic for debate,
For Russia is being demonized and I do not agree with Edward Lucas at all.
I'm pro-Ukraine, for reasons obvious to anyone here who knows me personally. But still, I think demonisation of Russia is not only happening, but a very specific agenda.
AntwortenLöschenAny takers?
*put his hand up*
AntwortenLöschenbut pro Ukraine?
Ukrainians, in my experience, object strongly to their country being called 'The Ukraine', as it often is, like 'The Sudan' or 'The Congo'. This implies 'The Borderland'... 'of the Soviet Union'...
AntwortenLöschenIt's just a territorial thing really like Wales and England, but Ukraine is a tad bigger and more resourceful than Ingushetia or South Ossetia. Lenin said '...lose Ukraine and we lose our head...'. It hosts a great deal of arable land which was of great benefit to the USSR. Yet, in the 1930s... Stalin killed more Ukrainians by means of starvation than the official numbers of Jews killed by Hitler. A genocide known as Holodomor (see photo galleries here) about which very little was known until recent years - certainly nothing like the exposure the German / Jewish holocaust received. Question is, why?
On one side, they have the EU. On the other, Russia, the old Imperial ruler... understandably despised by some (although many in Ukraine speak Russian - everyone had to learn it in Soviet times).
Many Ukrainians I've spoken to just want to be independent.
Long story... maybe Bohdan can tell you more. But if you fancy researching for yourself, 'Bohdan Khmelnitsky' is a good start.
I'm pro-Ukraine because I have a Ukrainian girlfriend, who I met on Multiply a few years ago. She's since left this network, but we're still together. Since then, she has suffered and survived a terminal disease. During this time, as a good example of Ukraine's political relationship with Russia, there was the incident last January where Russia's Gazprom turned off the gas that flows through Ukraine because of failure or refusal to pay by Ukraine's Naftogaz. This froze half of Europe, and nearly killed my girlfriend.
Putin's a former KGB agent. He's capable.... but his Russia (and he is still in the driving seat, despite Medvedev) is being demonised. Solzhenitsyn was right about 'encirclement'. China too, probably.
Sujay... there are photos from Kyiv (Kiev) last year, on my page, if you're interested...
Well, I certainly could, but you have given a good intro )). I can answer some more specific questions about Ukraine, if there are any. I'll just say this: I think that the world can learn a lot from Ukraine's history and Ukrainian thinkers. The more I learn about Ukraine's past intellectual history, the more I see how it relates to today's circumstances. And I think it is not true ONLY about Ukraine - it's true about many formerly colonized peoples and nations, whose perspective is invaluable and fills in the gaping hole in the existing debates, which are still mostly dominated by the former colonial powers.
AntwortenLöschenUkraine's unique civilizational postition between the East and the West - between Roman and Byzantine traditions, between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, between Western rationality and Eastern soulfulness - has made it a major cultural resource and a powerhouse of intellect throughout the centuries. Unfortunately, all that mind power was channeled into (in the better case) or suppressed by (in the worse case) imperial stuctures of Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires. So, Lenin (and a whole bunch of them there) was right that Russian Empire without Ukraine was unimaginable. And that is a big part of the problem these days - Russia is still looking for an identity for itself that is not imperial or parasitic on the stolen Kyivan Rus' identity. It is hard to relinquish these centuries-old structures of thought, but it simply has to be done, if violence is to be prevented and peaceful coexistence to be achieved.
Here's the link to that article I referred to above:
AntwortenLöschenThe Russians Are Coming? by Christian Caryl
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22277
And some further comments on the above article and the author's subsequent reply:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22651