A friend asked for an explanation why "It's just Putin" is wrong and dangerous. I felt it needs a longer response. Here it is:
The problem is immeasurably deeper, wider and older than Putin and his band of gangsters. Generation after generation has been raised in a lie. And the despots who have ruled Russia have always gotten away with it internationally.
The terror of Bolsheviks, Stalinist purges, the GULAG as a system have never been criminalised, there was never a national, leadership-led redemption attempt. The opposite, all this is now, again, officially preached as a proud process of national cleansing and strengthening.
Stalin's generals and NKVD bosses were not tried at Nuremberg or Moscow process for co-conspiring with Hitler and Ribbentrop in 1939, for Katyn, for invading and illegally annexing all or parts of the Baltic states, Poland, Finland, Romania, Hungary etc,
never tried for genocide in all these countries nor for war crimes anywhere they went. I'm not even talking about the wave of Bolshevik aggression against all neighbours in 1918-24…
Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Ukraine were all independent democratic nations back then whose future was crushed by Moscow. All these countries were betrayed by the Paris Peace Conference first and at Teheran and Yalta for the second time. By the West.
Hence the deep suspicion in these countries that it’s going to happen again. If Ukraine would have not fought or fought but lost in a week, Ukraine would have been betrayed in a second. By Macron, Scholtz, Biden. Realpolitik and all. New Minsks, new mediations, soon new wars
Current national myth of Russia & the core of Putins ideology is the lie about Russia as liberator. All of us between Russia and Germany are watching Ukraine being liberated and hope that for once the West understands that this is how the Russian liberation has always looked like
This is what was done to us either in 1918-21 or 1939-45 or both. And it kept going until 1991. And it began again in 2008 and the West pretended, again, that it was not happening.
Germans have apologised for 80 years but I still felt a bit uneasy listening to Scholtz saying: wir werden uns remilitarisieren. Thankfully, for once, the Germans r on the right side of things because even there, after 80 years, the demons are not entirely dead under the surface.
So. No. It’s not about Putin. It is very much about the state of Russian society. It's not Russians' "fault", there are too many factors, but to fix this means a process of national breakdown, regrouping, redemption and re-education for, well, 80 years.
It can only be done by the Russians themselves and the best thing we can do is not get in there to tell them how. Because we don't know better.
All that is needed is help Ukraine win, set strict cold war rules relating to Russia until the war crimes have been tried, by them, and a representative government is in office. Let them demilitarise. And then take it slow. Very slow
And jail every and any Westerner who tries to engage in corrupt business with them. And help them rebuild Russia not Russian imagined expansionist interests.
Of course, it's not going to happen. At least not with the current bunch of leaders we got. The best outcome will be another short period of a Yeltsin after which it’s all going to come to something like we have today, again.
Hope you enjoyed the optimistic note from Estonia.
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As a reminder to my friend @vkaramurza, this is what Solzhenitsyn wrote on "Russian guilt."
"But who, if not we ourselves, constitutes society? This realm of darkness, of falsehood, of brute force, of justice denied and distrust of the good, this slimy swamp was formed by us, and no one else. We grew used to the idea that we must submit and lie in order to survive-and we brought up our children to do so."
"A n d if we now long - - and there is a glimmer of hope that we do - t o go forward at last into a just,
clean, honest society- how else can we do so except
by shedding the burden of our past, except by repen- tance, for we are all guilty, all besmirched?"
"We cannot convert the kingdom of universal falsehood into a kingdom of universal truth by even
the cleverest and most skillfully contrived economic and social reforms: these are the wrong building bricks."
I keep hearing that "the people" in the West are getting "tired" of the war against Ukraine. In case any of these tired people read this, I tell you a story. Its about not getting tired.
Erna Kelder was born in Järva county, Estonia, in 1922. She was one among 5 daughters and 1 son in a family of a local forester Eduard and Johanna Kelder.
This is Erna on the left, 14 years old in 1936. Estonia was free and the future was bright.
How to understand Prigozhin's mutiny. A thread.
There have been several attempts to draw historical parallels. Decembrists. Pugachev's peasants. Fights to remove Czar's favourites like Rasputin . None of those really apply.
Why? Because all these attempts to challenge or disrupt power have happened in a system where at least parts of it function as a real legitimate political organisation.
Decembrists were loyal and honourable officers acting out of sense of duty. Pugachev's peasants really represented peasants and demanded the end serfdom. Rasputin's killers protected the integrity on monarchy. All these rebellions had noble causes, at least in their own book.
This photo is of Alide Wilhelmine Purru. She was born in Rõuge, South Estonia in 1900. She was married to Otto Purru, a forester, born in 1896.
They had a son Ago, born in 1930 and a nice farmhouse in Saarlasõ village near Rõuge. Photo is of an Estonian pagan sacred place in Saarlasõ.
In August 1944 the "liberating" Russian army reached Rõuge parish. Reaching Alide's house, thhey murdered Alide, Otto, their 14 year old son Ago and Alide's 82 y old mother Minna (on this photo at a younger age)
Today's arrest warrants by the ICC are historical not only for Ukraine but all countries ever invaded and occupied by Russia and the Soviet Union. This is the first time since 1917 there is hope that the World community says: enough.
This is the story of my grandmother's sister and her family. On this picture they are together in front of their farmhouse in Helme, South-Estonia, in 1932. Independent Estonia, member of the League of Nations, a small proud democracy.
My great uncle Kusta graduated high school and learned farm management at big Baltic manors before WWI. He worked as a manor manager and inherited his fathers farm in Helme in 1911.