Originally posted by Bryn
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If this story it’s accurate it’s almost impossible to credit . They will have been comprehensively security screened … -
"...the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..."
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Does not the invasion of the new Soviet state by the British army on the side of the counter-revolutioonary White armies count? Sure, Russia could not be described at the time as "peaceful", but the lack of peace was internal and no real threat to the external world, only to its capitalist system. It's worth adding that during the 1930s period when "peaceful co-existence" became the watchwork of the Soviet government, and remained so until the USSR's collapse, the prime international aim of the Soviet Communists was protection of the Soviet regime, even at the expense of internationalising the revolutionary cause. Adherence to this cause was to be rigidly imposed on all the sympathetic CPs abroad: hence the transition from Leninism to a soft gradualist left reformism, insistence that trade union agitation in capitalist countries go no further than economic demands, the split with the Chinese Communist Party that inaugurated Maoism, and the need to get rid of Trotsky under all sorts of false pretexts, including most infamously that he was a western spy.Originally posted by french frank View PostComment
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Flabbergasted by the interview conducted by Nick Robinson with a pro-Putin Russian social media person on Today this morning. One gets used to hearing the ludicrous views of the US far-right but this was way beyond that exalted level.Comment
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Not just a social media person but a member of Putin's Duma, if I heard correctly.Originally posted by gradus View PostComment
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NATO didn't exist in 1919. The Red and White Russians were at war and if I recall correctly after the Social Revolutionaries had won the election the Bolsheviks didn't accept the result and took power by force.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View Post
Not sure how much carving up Poland , invading Finland and swallowing Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania counted as peaceful co-existence for them in 1939-1941.
Putin's behaviour is indefensible - his real fear is democracy and freedom of the press and the rule of law,Comment
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Indeed so. Although perhaps it should be noted that these values are being seriously eroded elsewhere as well, including rather obviously in the UK. Which of course is not to put Downing Street and the White House on the same level as the Kremlin; but one thing that could be learned from the current situation (and the reason why so many of us stress the expansionist and hypocritical approach of NATO) is that "we" would be in a much better position not just within our own society but in a more global context if "we" actually put our stated commitment to "democracy, freedom of the press and the rule of law" more clearly into practice. If there were such a moral example in the world it would be much more difficult for people like Putin to rise to power. The problem is that capitalism (both Western market capitalism and the state capitalism of countries like Russia and China) embodies fundamentally anti-democratic features.Originally posted by Barbirollians View PostComment
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I’ve just reread the chapter on Russia in Tim Marshall’s ‘Prisoners of Geography: Ten maps that tell you everything you need to know about global politics’. In 28 lucid pages, it gives a précis of Russia’s geopolitical outlook on the world from the foundation of Kievan Rus in the 9th Century to 2016 when the book was published. Seeing Russia’s resources, scale and security through the perspective of its geography shows the constants in its actions through the centuries. He concludes: ‘It does not matter if the ideology of those in control is tsarist, Communist or crony capitalism - the ports still freeze, and the North European Plain is still flat. Strip out the lines of nation states, and the map Ivan the Terrible confronted is the same one Vladimir Putin is faced with to this day.’ Worth a read.Comment
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Rather a grim joke recounted by Richard Morrison in an interesting piece suggesting that Russian artists who are not linked to the regime should not be cancelled .Matthew Syed takes a different view in the same paper about sportsmen and women.
Anyway the joke is “ Good to see Gergiev being punished for his crimes against humanity but that’s enough said about his Mahler recordings “Comment
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“…transition from Leninism to a soft gradual reformism…”. Is that how you describe Stalin? The collective farms, the resulting famine in the Ukraine that killed 2 million; the purges and the explosion in growth of the Gulag, and on it goes. It still is remarkable how many people still cherish the ideal of the Soviet Union and ignore the decades long ugly reality.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostComment
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Well, we've had Hitler who quite clearly was opposed by the West, we've had Napoleon (and what a success that invasion was) who again was an enemy of the British, and we have the Russian Revolution but again I torpedoed my own argument by not being clearer in my question.Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View Post
In the current international situation can we presume that Putin is suspicious of having NATO on his doorstep because he recalls Napoleon, Hitler and the British army 100 years ago? The nearest internal 'lack of peace' in recent times was surely the two Chechen wars where Yeltsin and Putin himself were left to destroy the opposition with no intervention from any Western power. Then there was the invasion of Georgia.
So I have been trying to argue that the current (post-WW2) situation has taught Putin, not that a NATO neighbour would present a security risk to Russia, but that it wouldn't.
It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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Well my post was in response to french frank's. The carving up of Poland and swallowing of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was initiated by the Nazi army, of course, then driven back by the Red Army and handed to the USSR in the Yalta agreement.Originally posted by Barbirollians View PostComment
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