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A response to David Brooks on Russia
Concerning this opinion piece. The link for the story is to the Facebook postDear David: Don't fret, the Russia you miss is very much with us today. It continues to stand for something that America has never been known for. But not depth of soul as you suggest, rather its darkness. Its soul is as dark and tortured today as that of Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov albeit even less remorseful. Vladimir Putin is a fitting successor to Russia's most evil czars, Ivan, Peter, Catherine or commissars Lenin, Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev. In view of the nostalgia which so moves and influences you, may I suggest that you study Russian history from the XII through the XX centuries, replete with the oppression of its own people and the persecution of those peoples whose lands Russia invaded. This is the basis for that Russian soul Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in Crime and Punishment: “Yes...I'm covered with blood”, Raskolnokov said with a peculiar air; then he smiled, nodded and went downstairs. He walked down slowly and deliberately, feverish but not conscious of it, entirely absorbed in a new overwhelming sensation of life and strength that surged up suddenly within him.” This captures the essence of the Russian soul – covered with blood, feverish with killing to the point of not being conscious and acquiring a new found strength from that killing. Russia started as a simple walled city on the Moscow river in the XII century, rose to a duchy and then mushroomed to a vast czarist and then soviet wasteland comprising ten time zones, peppered with several centers like watchtowers in a concentration camp and monuments to its overbearing and suffocating might. Even its cultural capital, St. Petersburg, apparently the center of both your and Putin's longing, itself was built by a tyrant to satisfy and honor himself employing captured slaves for labor many of whom perished in the process. Czar Peter paid no regard to human loss of life. St. Petersburg's centerpieces, the Hermitage over the years became enriched with a collection of stolen booty while Petrodvoretz became an ostentatious faux Versailles. That Russia was characterized by its oppressed captives as a prison of nations and American president Ronald Reagan called it the evil empire. Mykola Hohol better known to you as Nikolai Gogol, a well known Russian writer who was really Ukrainian, but was compelled to write in Russian for the Czar, exposed this Russian soul in his satirical masterpiece Dead Souls. It was a satire of that Russia you miss where life was tragically absurd and meaningless and the dead counted for as much as the living. Russia did not honor its dead, it merely recounted them as a statistic. Gogol finally went mad perhaps as a result and ended his life. As for Russia today being a more normal country than it used to be, try telling that to the 150 ethnic groups other than Russian living in Russia, bereft of any cultural or political rights and very much abridged in their expression of human rights. Try explaining that to the Litvinenko, Berezovsky, Politkovskaya or Nemtsov families. Try telling that to the multitude of current political prisoners held in isolated cells, violently interrogated and tortured, standing trial in camera and receiving substantial prison terms from a quasi judicial system for such “crimes” as writing poetry. Josef Zissels, a Ukrainian Jewish leader and former Soviet prisoner of conscience, has stated on many occasions that Putin did not make Russia what it is today, Russia made Putin. Your lament is misplaced. It seems contrived and disingenuous as you continue to enjoy the good fortune of living in a country where life is precious and every individual has certain inalienable rights, endowed by his Creator and guaranteed by the rule of law. Yet you belittle America as not having depth of soul. Had you grown up in the Russia of your dreams you would have had precious little of anything. Perhaps your American largesse has contorted your perception. However, this isn't about you. You perform a disservice to the millions, yes, millions of victims of the Russia you contend missing. No country in history has been responsible for more suffering or more killings, in terms of sheer numbers, more than the Nazis, more than Mao's cultural revolutionaries, more than the regime of Pol Pot, more than the perpetrators of genocides in Armenia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and more than the Islamic radicals today. To those victims, you owe an apology. Respectfully, Askold S, Lozynskyj The writer is a former president of the Ukrainian World Congress. Posted by: badanov 2015-09-14 |
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