Aww, They Are So Sensitive.

 LOL))

Lithuanians should not enjoy Russian culture as long as a conflict is raging in Ukraine, its culture minister Simonas Kairys told national broadcaster LRT this week. The minister was echoing the ideas of his Ukrainian counterpart Aleksandr Tkachenko, who'd earlier called on the West to boycott Russian culture altogether. Kairys accused Moscow of using Russian culture as a “weapon” supposedly by sending Russian pop-culture artists to Lithuania on dates “important for the Lithuanian state.” While stopping short of supporting what he called an “authoritarian” administrative ban on Russian culture, the minister still said he favored a “mental quarantine” on it. Both individuals and institutions should demonstrate personal awareness, Kairys maintained, adding that “we must abandon works [of art] that seemed acceptable to us before.” He also praised those Lithuanian cultural figures, who “consciously responded” to his ministry’s recommendations.

"Mental Quarantine" is, certainly, something out of the Thought-crime realm, but you cannot explain them this, because they think they are... ahem... free and "democratic." Generally speaking, this unstoppable juggernaut of Russian art, ranging from ballet, symphony, literature to quirky pop, to Russian heavy metal can damage some people's mental state. The story with Polish "journalist", no, not our lovely and courageous Ania, who enjoys currently St.Petersburg, but some Polish righteous "reporter" Gomulka from ONET, who had her vacations in Egypt spoiled due to communication with Russian tourists, is making rounds in Russia. Here it is in Russian from KP, she left her "impressions" on Onet.pl in Polish. I guess she needs "mental quarantine" together with her Lithuanian colleagues-defenders of freedom and democracy.

Here is lovely Ania, though.

She describers Polish Army's training in one of the videos of Polish Defense Ministry. Generally, it is the list of the US-made weapons, some of them used. So, Poland prepares to... either fight Russian invasion of... Poland, or... well, what is the mood in Kremlin now? Will Kremlin now allow Poland just simply go and take Kresy? The Western Ukraine, you know. Something tells me that before Russia would look at it through fingers, all kinds of protestations for PR granted, of course, this time I can only assume that the mood in Kremlin changed. But I am on record--the worst enemy of Poland is... Poland, and nothing could be done about it.

Rod Dreher As A Symptom.

Nowadays, when I speak about American "intellectual" class, I cringe. No, it is not just the issue of an ongoing disaster which American foreign policy is, or cooking of books in terms of American economy--a euphemism for Stock Market. It is because there is nothing intellect-related in this class and most importantly, there are no indications whatsoever that any improvement is expected. Colonel Lang, evidently, had it with this American "academe" and wrote some really succinct observations on this issue. 

The world is filled with conformism and groupthink.  Most people do not wish to think for themselves.  Thinking for oneself is dangerous, requires effort and often leads to rejection by the herd of one's peers. The profession of arms, the intelligence business, the civil service bureaucracy, the wondrous world of groups like the League of Women Voters, Rotary Club as well as the empire of the thinktanks are all rotten with this sickness, an illness which leads inevitably to stereotyped and unrealistic thinking, thinking that does not reflect reality.

It is an excellent piece and I strongly suggest to everyone to read it. Now that we established a framework of sorts, I can go back to my shtick which long ago became my part-time job of sorts and repeat all over again--American Russia Studies field is a wasteland of ignorance, propaganda, cliches and stereotypes. It is literally dominated by two types of people: those who have no clue or those who have their own agenda, with the latter being by far the largest contingent. The fact that American "academe" which allegedly specializes in Russia has no clue about the subject of their study can be easily observed through the well documented, and easily referred to, events of the last 20 years. A bunch of neocon baboons and mediocrities such as Obama completely destroyed Russian-American relations because they thought that Russia would crumble. Well, we know the result, don't we? In civilized societies such "scholars" and politicians would have been long ago ostracized and had their sinecures removed. Not in the United States. 

But if that wasn't bad enough, a new, much larger disaster, has struck the field of American Russian Studies field, which, probably, now will never recover from a complete epistemic closure--Rod Dreher visited Russia. It is an unmitigated catastrophe on unimaginable scale since this guy who has a degree in "Journalism", that means no viable tools for sensible generalizations, started writing his impressions about Russia in The American Conservative which today culminated in an Exhibit A of American so called "intellectual" class inability to learn anything. Coincidentally, Dreher's piece is precisely about that--inability to learn. How ironic. The title of Dreher's piece is symptomatic for a history, especially Russian history, ignoramus: 

The Russian Twilight Of Late Imperial America

Bang! There you go, from the start--drawing historical parallels between two countries which have dramatically different histories in virtually every single aspect of their existence. Recall, if you will, my constant warnings about those parallels. From my latest: 

This brings us to the more important issue—historical parallels. Drawing historical parallels is an extremely dangerous business wrought with huge risks of miscalculation and learning wrong lessons. History, certainly, does provide some valuable lessons but at this stage the entirety of the term history, as it was understood even fairly recently, does not reflect the immense complexity of human development and activity for the last roughly hundred years. Those developments can no longer be described within traditional frameworks because an greater number causalities are being afflicted not just due to human nature but now to the technology created by and in service to it

But, of course, Rod Dreher knows better and without much ado pulls out what he calls "revered" (revered by who?) piece of the so called "Russian history" by James Billington. Billington's 1966 opus The Icon and the Axe is your typical Cold War fodder filled with all so familiar narratives of Russia's origins to a now pretty standard routine of quoting great Russian writers (Dostoevsky, of course him) trying to show that Russian culture, that is pre-Revolutionary culture, the culture of Russian aristocracy and land-owners, pretty much ended with 1917. As Dreher narrates:

According to Billington, in the 1890s, younger Russian elites became frustrated with the country’s long struggle towards constitutional liberalism, especially when the reactionary Tsar Alexander III took over from his assassinated father, a (relative) liberal who had ended serfdom. The new generation of intellectuals and artists moved into two different directions: dialectical materialism (that is, Marxism, whose leading exponent at the time was Gyorgi Plekhanov), and transcendental idealism, along the lines of the visionary Christian thinker Vladimir Soloviev. Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, wanted to revitalize society through working-class revolution. Soloviev, an Orthodox Christian, but one strongly influenced by Western Christianity, sought social renaissance through a return to a kind of religious mysticism. Writes Billington, “The materialists claimed to be the heirs to the traditions of the iconoclastic Sixties [1860s] ; the idealists claimed to be developing the traditions of Dostoevsky’s aesthetic and religious reaction to iconoclasm.” What drove them was  “the exasperation of a new student generation with the subjectivism, pessimism, and introspection of the age of small deeds.” Writes Billington, the “new radicals of both right and left” were both seeking “some new philosophic bedrock on which to stand.”

Let me make a short commentary here: it is easy to "learn" about culture, it is sure as hell not Signal Processing or Differential Equations. That's the point, only highly trained people provide solid opinions on such topics. Let's put it this way, unless a person has a damn serious scientific background, he cannot pass a sound judgement on a variety of complex issues related to modern civilization and its main driver--industry and technology. On culture? Oh boy, what a wonderfully unstuck field it is, one can go and "interpret" the shit out of anything without even referring to things which actually matter. I can wax philosophical and "cultural" whatever I want. Anyone with even basic education and average intelligence can concoct a couple of narratives which will simultaneously prove, say, Dostoevsky as being correct and wrong on some critical issue. In the end, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina can also be "explained" simultaneously as both a victim of Russia's upper class peculiarities and social dogma, and as a self-centered psycho-bitch--both characterizations work. That is the nature of "humanities" which rely as much on a spin as on actual facts. In the end, Strobe Talbot was educated on Russia by arguably best Western scholar on Russian culture and intelligentsia Isiah Berlin. Boy, what a waste of time that turned out to be, either due to Talbot's lack of intellect, which I totally can conceive, or Berlin not being a great mind and teacher--this one is hard to believe.  

But here is the problem, after Dreher spent a month in Russia, visited here and there some churches, spoke to some fringe figures and now tries to draw parallels between Russia and US. Sadly, Dreher, I guess after he found out who he was meeting with in Moscow, removed the piece called Moscow Diary, but my comment to him remained on Disqus:

Rod, pardon me, but you are wasting your time and learning nothing of value in Russia and about Russia, especially when one considers a category of public you meet, I don't understand why you went there, when you could have wrote same thing by reading materials about Russia in US media.

He met, totally expectedly some "dissident" so called "Christians", one of them was, if my memory doesn't fail me, after Dreher removed his "Diary" was Mr. Ogorodnikov--a rather shady figure who still tries to pass for Christian Democrat and still listens to Radio Liberty, which characterizes him extremely well. These were this kind of "dissidents" about who Russian Orthodox Church had this opinion:

В конфликте между религиозными диссидентами и представителями государственных структур Церковь, в лице иерархов, занимала позицию государства, в первую очередь, потому что официальная поддержка диссидентов могла навлечь на Церковь новые гонения. Другой причиной было то, что среди религиозных диссидентов было много людей, оторванных от подлинной церковности, для которых протестная деятельность становилась самоцелью. Позднейшие годы со всей убедительностью показали правильность такой позиции церковного руководства. Когда богоборческого государства не стало люди, привыкшие бороться против чего угодно, лишь бы бороться, направили свою энергию против Церкви.

Translation: In the conflict between religious dissidents and representatives of the state structures (in Soviet times), the Church as represented by Hierarchy took the position of the state, primarily because of the fear that Church's support for these dissidents could inspire new persecution. The other reason was the fact that among religious dissidents many people were detached from true Church and for who the protest activity was the main purpose. Later years demonstrated convincingly the correctness of such position by Church. When the godless state disappeared, people who got used to protest against anything, as long as they could protest for the sake of protesting, directed their energy against the Church.      

That's warmer and this definition covers pretty much most (not all) of the Soviet dissidents and Russia's professional "protesters" today. As long as the pressure on Russian state is maintained, the better it is. Moreover, nowadays Russian Orthodox Church is viewed by many in the West as a part of the Russian State and as such is perceived as an enemy. I wonder (wink, wink) if Dreher removed that post after recognizing the fact that some of his contacts in Russia could hardly be representative of Russia and Russians in general, and Russian Orthodoxy in particular. But it is, indeed, a peculiar fact that he removed that post.  Yet, even if recognizing this fact, references to ANY Russian experiences, as Billington limited them to pre-1917, not to mention drawing any parallels to the United States, even if one would find a degree of commonality in a  classic liberal thought between Russian intelligentsia and Western thinkers (after all, Tolstoy even carried a medallion of Jean-Jaques Rousseau all the time), any parallels are not only incorrect, they are harmful. 

Two things which all those Russia "scholars" in the United States fail to grasp about Russia because it is beyond the grasp of most of them:  

1. Russian peasant commune and its world-view;
2. War. 

These two factors explain why Bolsheviks were able to get and hold on to power for so long, the same as why Bolshevism transformed itself into something else entirely in Stalin and post-Stalin period. 

Crimean War, a simple fact, Russian Army faces Anglo-French force, armed with rifles, with smooth bore muskets which barely have a half range of British and French arms, not to mention not being in the same league in terms of accuracy. I will abstain from comparing respective fleets. Russia loses the war, is humiliated and is forbidden to have any fleet on the Black Sea. As none other than Grand Duke Konstantin noted:

We cannot deceive ourselves any longer; we must say that we are both weaker and poorer than the first-class powers, and furthermore poorer not only in material terms but in mental resources, especially in matters of administration. 

Did this thought ever visit Dreher or Billington when almost exactly 50 years from humiliating defeat in a Crimean War, Russia will be humiliated yet again in Russo-Japanese War with Russia's Baltic Squadron annihilated at Tsushima by Japanese Fleet in one of the most lopsided defeats in history. Almost surreal defeat which exposed Russia's weakness. Then comes Revolution of 1905 precipitated both by humiliation of Tsushima and by Bloody Sunday. Then comes its suppression with Russia's peasantry, when not executed, literally whipped--yes, villagers crowded at the central square, with Cossacks administering public whipping of men and women. Russia was literally whipped in 1905-07. And then comes WW I. I have to put it politely, American history, even when one considers Civil War looks almost tame compared to what even old Russophobe and falsifier of Russian history Richard Pipes called "rougher political climes".  

In what state Russia approached WW I is a separate topic, especially after everything became public and was generally settled--for Russia WW I was a catastrophe which resulted in millions upon millions of killed, maimed, displaced and, in the end, proved Grand Duke Konstantin's post-Crimean War diagnosis correct yet again, this time on a gigantic scale. Can some American journo who can not even speak Russian and who writes some fantasies about some Benedict Option even comprehend what effect those wars which saw millions of Russian lives wasted for the reasons which are beyond his grasp had on Russia and Russians? I am sure he has no clue as one would expect from a product of US humanities "education". Then it is no surprise that one will try to find some elusive symmetries between Russian and American history when in reality there are none and can not be. I am not sure Rod Dreher had time to actually get himself into the memorial on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow, but in the Hall of Memory and Sorrow there are 2, 660,000 small chains with tear drops on them, each chain symbolizing 10 people, in all--a memory of 26,660,000 Soviet citizens who died in WW II. Remarkably, those 2,660, 000 chains is roughly the number of Russian soldiers killed in WW I, without civilians. If Dreher wanted to experience epiphany, he should have gone there to take in a remote physical representation of what almost 2.7 millions killed look like as tear-drops. I think he would have had some answers, maybe, and would avoid drawing parallels to a fate of an American nation (???) which has no grasp of horrors of continental warfare and no experience with it. 

Then maybe, all those platitudes about culture, GULAG and other Cold War cliches and falsities will yield to an attempt, as late Father Robert Tobias wrote to perceive great depth and maybe understand that real Russian Church is not just in, however magnificent, Orthodox Cathedrals but in this:

Or in this, the closest one can get to living and dead marching together as one. 

If that is not a spiritual religious experience, I don't know what is and that is how Soviet Flag flies proudly by, in many cases, people wearing Christian cross. But that is the fact which is beyond comprehension of the American intellectual class, the thing they cannot wrap their brain around, the same as inevitable leaning to the  REAL Left of Russian society. They just don't get it in the US and Rod Dreher is a symptom of this narrow mindedness which cannot be cured, with protracted pseudo-intellectual discussions about Russian culture or without them. But I repeat myself.

Fast Thoughts On The Issue Of Projection (and Learning). A Bit of a Rant.

I would have loved to write articles on geoeconomics and some geopolitics, discuss some industries and write about culture, in the end--writing sophomoric prose on jazz fusion and progressive rock would have been wonderful. I was forced, literally, by circumstances to recall (yes, like in Total Recall) my past life and start writing... well, see the very beginning of this blog. Each time I want to concentrate on some large, important matter, I find myself explaining pretty basic things, such as this tragedy with Russian IL-20. 

Here is one thing which people should understand about me--I don't know everything. What I do have, however, is the ability (this comes with the territory for most former military professionals) to single out immediately a real professional. Not just with the military rank (after all, Colonel of Medical Service doesn't know how weapon systems integrate or how to calculate probability of a leaker) but with actual technological, tactical and operational background. I can single (recognize) these people out most of the time. So, my advantage here is that I am "jamming resistant" (that is to say BS-resistant) to a certain degree. But even I have my limits intellectually and emotionally in my attempts to bridge the gap between Western (and American) and Russian understanding of things. That is why I have to state this:

American political reality and decision making processes DO NOT correlate with the same in Russia. As this latest event with IL-20 has shown, projecting American, or generally Western, experiences onto Russian geopolitical and military reality is useless. It only confuses people, many of them honest and decent people, others simply deranged, who must keep in mind Sir Bernard Pares' almost 90 years old truism about Russia, if those people want to understand:

"And knowledge alone is not enough without understanding, which is much more hardly won. To no country does this apply more than to Russia....This gap has to be filled, or will it cost us dear."

And that is why sometimes I get frustrated when totality of facts still fails to create a reliable whole picture for so many. No greater gap exists between American patriots who, understanding the baneful effect of pro-Israeli NGOs on the formulation of the US domestic and, especially, foreign policies fail to recognize that:

1. Same doesn't apply to Russia (never did);

2. Modern Russian history (20th century on) was not formed by Jewish influences--they were merely few among a myriad of other complex geopolitical, cultural and economic factors which brought Russia to a catastrophic "reset" in 1917--first through open palace coup by Russian liberals (February) and then Civil War when in October, Bolsheviks literally picked the power from the ground--nobody wanted it anymore by then. Many people still do not know that first Sovnarkom was overwhelmingly Slavic, many with nobility ranks and the only Jew who was present there was Leon Trotsky.

Only knowing, as in having the ability to see not just facts but reliable causality behind them, will one be able to see Russia in a proper light and understand her. Granted one also learns Russian language, reads massive Russian literature, especially 19th Century classics, travels to Russia often, talks to real people (not urbanite hipsters), and then, discarding pretty much anything (almost) what is taught about Russia in the Western universities, will one be able to start gaining this Pares' understanding. I write about this non-stop for almost five years now. Russians do not play for media-appearances when it comes to national security and war, they play for result--such is Russia's history. And no, there is no such "animal" in Russia as Christian Zionism, a purely Anglo thing, which in US provides a good breeding ground for American neoconservatism ideas and loyalty to Israel, as US Vice President Mike Pence so enthusiastically supported Israel at CUFI gathering in 2017. Particular military breed of American Old Testament Christianity doesn't help either. These things are completely alien to Russians, their country and their history and bar some unhinged Russian "patriots" (and ignoramuses), Russians do not blame Jews for GULAG, nor do they blame them for October 1917 Revolution. 

This fact that some arrangement between Jews and other people, other than it is set up in the United States, can exist is simply beyond the grasp of many in the US. And the nauseating tune continues to play non-stop. Jews control everything in Russia--no they don't, Putin bows to Jews--no he doesn't, Jews are responsible for millions (tens of millions, hundreds...) Russians killed in GULAG--no, they are not. There is no New York, and with it Brooklyn and Brighton Beach, in Russia, there is a 850 years old young Russian city of Moscow, there is a newbie (merely 315 years old) St. Petersburg, there is massive Russian culture which has some Jewish influences, but it is Russian culture, which also has Tatar, Caucasus (Rasul Gamzatov, anyone?), yes, Jewish--incomparable Yan Frenkel, Armenian--Arno Babajanyan, Azeri-Muslim Magomaev influences, and I can continue this list--all that was completely integrated in a larger Russia culture and remains there as an everyday given for most Russians. 

Russian culture, especially Russian culture of the 20th and 21st centuries is UNKNOWN in the West, bar some Hollywood caricatures and fairy tales (well, Bullshit) by Western court "dissidents" such as Solzhenitsyn or, today, whoever passes as Russian "expert" in whatever media sewage outlets they work for. And here is a thought: no, I am not going to rub into faces of many, who unleashed hysteria after IL-20's tragedy, the fact that what happened today (yesterday) with Russia delivering S-300 and more to Syria was predicted by me within first three-four hours of tragedy. No, I just want to say--stop projecting, Russia is NOT the United Sates and the way the process of the decision making is set up in Moscow is something US political system has no experiences with. No, Putin is not a hostage of Russian military--decision on Syria's air defense was made, most likely, within first minutes of reports on IL-20s loss. And no, calling for thorough investigation, for a bullet proof case, is evidently not in American media tradition anymore. But here is the main strategic trick:

Russia needs Israel, healthy, prosperous and reasonably well-protected but also reasonably well-behaved. Why it is so--is a long story but I totally agree with this Russian position. How all those complex ME issues will be resolved, well--the proof is in the pudding: many Arabs know that Kremlin doesn't hold AIPAC conferences in Moscow, nor there are Christian Zionists in Russia, unless, of course, they travel to Russia from the West. That in itself makes Russia a prefect arbiter in the ME and... but I will simply stop here for now. A scale of global realignment today is such, that many simply fail to comprehend that their, often justified, scores with Israel are but a small fish in the ocean of a great turbulence and it takes this Putin's wisdom and cool to guide Russia where she and the world needs to be. In the end, Russia consistently continues to be a cat.