The Greatest Secret Of All, Or...No Shit.

They begin to wake up to reality? Or should we say that that West's "scholarship" re: USSR was always defined by ideological imperatives of the Cold War 1.0 and was framed, in the US especially, by people who overwhelmingly were ideologues and shysters from "humanities" field. The main function for the "Russia Studies" field in the US was always a provision of the employment (or cash flow) for all kinds of dissidents (aka useful idiots) and obfuscating the fact that the USSR with the exception of a few post October 1917 Revolution years was predominantly a conservative country. 

Glenn Diesen now speaks in broadsides trying to make people aware of the Soviet past and how it formed several generations of Russians. 

Is Russia plotting a return of the Soviet Union? That is the question Western politicians and talking heads ask every time Moscow so much as contemplates the more positive aspects of its history, imagining imperialism everywhere. Liberalism versus communism was the lens that dominated discussion throughout the Cold War while, since then, the question has been about whether Russia has finally driven out its purported past sins in favor of US-style liberalism. Any sign it hasn’t, and any failure to transform itself into a carbon copy of the West, is interpreted as a retreat to its Soviet past. Renowned scholar Samuel Huntington dismissed this binary ideological prism as the “Single Alternative Fallacy” that severely corrupts analysis of Russia. For most of its history, Moscow pursued conservatism as a third alternative and is now returning to this long-held tradition.The communists and conservatives were typically fierce enemies, although conservatism demands a cohesive national narrative and identity. Thus, Russian conservatism entails salvaging what it can of Soviet history.

For people who never experienced life in the USSR, especially in its post-WW II period--that makes it an overwhelming majority of Westerners ranging from regular plumbers to Ph.Ds in Russian History--it may sound as an insult, but they don't have a fucking clue. But then again, I am making my writing career based very much on showing the intellectual impotence of the Western "scholarly" class majority of which, when it comes to Russia, views it as "solzhenitsified" version (that is a caricature) of hell. This is not to speak to the fact, that this very same Solzhenitsyn, who was thrown out of USSR in 1974, never had a clue about my generation of people, and this is a generation which is a main driving political force today--I am talking about decision-making level. This is the same reason why most Russia "scholars" in the US cannot wrap their brains around a simple fact the most Russians will yawn and read themselves to the death from boredom by Pasternak's literary mediocrity (not to speak of watching Hollywood's second-rate lubok universally admired..in the West) Doctor Zhivago, while will have tears in their eyes when watching Soviet adaptation of Bulgakov's Beg (The Flight). 

 

USSR was no paradise and it had its share of problems but it was NOT what was presented in the West and it is this "presentation" which is a major factor in the geopolitical defeat of the combined West and a destruction of Russian-American relations. And even Diesen, while promoting seemingly right thesis of Russian conservatism, doesn't go far enough in naming the real reason for it:

Conservatism embraces the concept of evolutionary change, stability and national unity. These things, it holds, hinge on building the present on the solid foundations of the past. In contrast, revolutionary change entails uprooting the past to give way to something entirely different. Russia’s attraction to conservatism derives from the disruptiveness of its revolutionary history. The continuous uprooting of Russia’s past has created a fragmented history that produced conflicting national identities and aspirations. Subsequently, society becomes divided and vulnerable to subversion by foreign powers.

Yes, "subversion by foreign power" in Russian case are wars, whose scale, scope and brutality  have no parallels in human history, period. West alone is responsible for tens of millions of Russians wiped out throughout the history of invasions and there is no bigger "disruption" than war in the humanity's tool kit of destruction. Diesen's calls on liberals to "take a note" is an exercise in futility--they will not, nor will America's nominal "conservatives", who are as illiterate as their "liberal" opponents. So, don't waste your time, Mr. Diesen. 

 

There is a reason Sergei Shoigu went on record yesterday:

"There is a more awful part, it is becoming or has already become, the main danger for any country over the recent time, over the past decades. These are internal threats. All this is connected with a gradual degradation of society," Shoigu told a panel discussion at the Territory of Senses youth forum on Tuesday. As an example, the defense minister cited Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Egypt. "Some have withstood, while others haven’t," he added. It is clear how to fight against external threats, he stressed. "Threats to use force is when we are threatened, and we understand who is threatening, what they threaten us with, know what they armed with, know how to resist it, how to fight this, and we build our military defense accordingly," the minister added.

He continued: 

МОСКВА, 10 августа. /ТАСС/. /ТАСС/. Министр обороны РФ генерал армии Сергей Шойгу заявил, что Россия не должна позволять никому "вымывать" память о людях, которые являются символами страны. Глава военного ведомства отметил, что у России много символов, в том числе космонавт Юрий Гагарин, певец Федор Шаляпин, поэт Роберт Рождественский. Также среди символов страны он назвал первую в мире женщину-космонавта, ныне депутата Госдумы Валентину Терешкову. "Но вы все видите, что их постепенно пытаются "вымыть", <...> уже <...> и Терешкова не та, и Гагарин плох, и много чего. Мы не должны позволять делать это", - сказал Шойгу, выступая на панельной дискуссии на молодежном форуме "Территория смыслов". По словам министра, уничтожать память об этих людях, оскорблять их нельзя позволять ни соседу по лестничной площадке, ни "вражине" из-за рубежа.

Translation: MOSCOW, August 10. / TASS /. / TASS /. Russian Defense Minister General of the Army Sergei Shoigu said that Russia should not allow anyone to "wash away" the memory of the people who are the symbols of the country. The head of the military department noted that Russia has many symbols, including cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, singer Fyodor Chaliapin, poet Robert Rozhdestvensky. Also, among the symbols of the country, he named the world's first woman-cosmonaut, now a State Duma deputy, Valentina Tereshkova. "But you all see that they are gradually trying to" wash ", <...> already <...> and Tereshkova is not the same, and Gagarin is bad, and a lot of things. We should not allow this to be done," Shoigu said. speaking at the panel discussion at the youth forum "Territory of Meanings". According to the minister, neither a neighbor on the staircase nor a "foe" from abroad should be allowed to destroy the memory of these people, to insult them.

Speaks volumes, doesn't it. Guess three times who was a Supreme Commander who led the country to the defeat of a combined West's forces in the Great Patriotic War? Right. The worst news for the West today is the fact that overwhelming majority of Russians recognized their history as a unified, continuous journey, most of it very difficult, but always resulting in the accomplishment of an enormous scale. That is why today the names of Alexander Nevsky and Stalin, of Peter the Great and of Zhukov are in the same pantheon of Russia's greats and that is the only way it is supposed to be. That is a huge part of conservatism, a real one--the preservation of the history of people. Diesen, however, beat me, to a degree, to the second part of my post on the Getting the Time Scale Right. Because what exists in the West as a "history" of the Cold War 1.0 has very little to do with the realities of the Soviet Union as presented by Soviet dissidents and liberal "reformers" of 1990s who didn't hate communism, they merely hated Russia and almost genetically driven conservatism of the majority of Russian people. I will omit here, for now, famous prediction by late Alexander Zinoviev who twenty years ago foresaw the "Re-sovietization" of Russia's life and it has nothing to do with the "restoration" of the USSR which Russians don't need and don't want as part of their country. It was same Zinoviev who coined the phrase about Soviet dissidents: we aimed at communism but hit Russia.  

P.S. Just ask yourself a question why Tucker Carlson is in Hungary right now, and why, strangely (not really), these are the countries of the former Soviet block who actively resist globalist post-modernist plague. You know, Victor Orban, Puti... cough, cough. Just saying.