1 It is wildly inappropriate to give Russians a platform based on their insight into the war because a perception that Russia and Ukraine are parts of a continuous whole with Ukrainian identity an aberration is taught to them at a very young age.
https://twitter.com/GicAriana/status/1752205111345246500
2 this notion is an intrinsic part of their culture it features in the writing of Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Nabokov, shaping their commentary about Ukraine and in turn your perceptions.
3 It drives the current genocide which is an attempt to make this narrative true by eradicating the reality which exposes it as false; Ukrainians exist, they have culture, language and agency.
4 it is not even conscious necessarily, Ukraine is Russia, and its identity is toxic, or an aberration, the shifts in Ukraine now are a growth in nationalism. The dismantling of RusSian cultural hegemony is to be mourned.
5 This set of perceptions accounts for why Gessen was uncomfortable by his own account when she saw @geogvma wearing a Tryzub T shirt although she attributed it to an instance of being harassed in Kyiv.
6;This Ukrainian authored paper explains Russian soft power in Ukraine and how generations of Russian intellectuals have developed a tradition of denigrating Ukrainian identity as “blasphemous” and an artificial construct dividing a single people researchgate.net/publication/26…
7 They include authors like Brodsky whose poem on Ukrainian Independence is a litany of xenophobic derision. The account given here of its insulting words and his anger at the separation of Russia and Ukraine is reasonably accurate. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_In…
8;The poem reeks of the kind of antipathy that would flinch at a Tryzub T shirt. Yet this hatred remains largely invisible. Russians who can speak English and Russophiles launder it into western discourse. They include a certain Keith Gessen…
5 a) here is an account of that incident
https://twitter.com/geogvma/status/1752250641731174645
9) In this New Yorker piece Keith Gessen launders Brodsky's poem into an expression of mourning for the displacement of Russian culture in Ukraine alas this xenophobia laundering sophistry is taken seriouslynewyorker.com/books/page-tur…
10) The reality is that for centuries Russia occupied Ukraine and policed what language Ukrainians spoke and what books they read, what language could be used in publications and performance. See for example en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Ukaz
11 Brodsky's poem is a litany of hate for the stubborn otherness of Ukraine: its refusal to be Russian; and consequent antipathy towards Ukrainian identity.
12 This is why Gessen resigned from the board of PEN America when Ukrainians objected to sharing a panel with Russians. It was about the loss of control over discourse on Ukraine theatlantic.com/books/archive/…
13 Ukrainians have temporarily at least gained platforms and been able to dismantle Russian hegemony. Yet if you look at the media and literary landscape Russian voices predominate
14) And many of them try and appeal to a western constituency rightly appalled by xenophobia and autocracy to portray Ukrainians as retrograde bigots. And to forge a bogus community of enlightened Muscovites and Anglophones; see aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/…
15 Ukraine is in fact a far more liberal society than Russia yet Ragozin aims to convince you it is valueless, that Ukrainians want to be Russians that Russia did not intend to destroy Ukraine. If it walks like a duck...
16 Gessen tells you that democracy is suspended because elections in Ukraine cannot be held in wartime. This is not so. Russia is holding elections but they are not democratic. Ukrainians continue to challenge and hold their government to account. That is the heart of democracy.
17 Ukrainians refuse to share panels and platforms with Russians because they SEE these attitudes and understand that, whether by language or by bullets, Russians will try and regain control over both Ukraine and how it is seen.
18 There are, of course, a microscopically small number of exceptions- but, during an ongoing genocide driven by these attitudes should we promote those who in all probability bear them?
19 Last century Russians during the Soviet era were the focus of western attention. The result was that retrograde and xenophobic attitudes towards Ukraine were normalised. The reality of the Soviet entity was masked.
20) Ultimately the Russian rulers (as defined by culture rather than ethnicity) embarked like their Tsarist forebears on a series of genocides across the empire and genocidal actions.
21 Russian soft power, which has both voluntaristic elements (individuals raised in an account of history which masks genocides) and formal elements (the Russian state and institutions manipulating archives etc to mask genocide) has rendered this invisible.
22 These actions within Ukraine and ethnically Ukrainian areas include mass killings and three artificial famines where food confiscations aimed at exterminating Ukrainians, and/or sacrificing their lives for the privileged ethnicity accounted for a vast number of casualties.
23 We are in effect talking about the largest genocide within a single European state in history and a crucial element in understanding the absolute evil too of the Holocaust.
24 Yet to date the genocidal nature of only one of these artificial famines is beginning to be accepted- 1932-33 along with the associated killings.
25 It has been suggested to me that, although for years Ukrainians were marginalised because of the country they were born in, while Russian voices were privileged, excluding Russians from the discussion on Ukraine in prestigious platforms is prejudiced.
26 This is not so- it is about ensuring that, during an ongoing genocide, we place centre stage the voices of those directly affected. I would not treat White Americans as the right people to speak as victims of the genocide of Native Americans.
27 Yet we are asked to view Russians as victims during an ongoing genocide perpetrated by Russians on Ukrainians- this is in effect what we did last century when the Russians culled to strengthen the genocidal Russian polity were used to obscure the core of Soviet history.
28 We cannot afford to repeat this history. Yet we see Russian liberals given platforms at a point when it is entirely possible that Russia will murder millions of Ukrainians again. Some of these like Ragozin deny the historic genocide of Ukrainians.
29 So we must avoid shifting the focus onto Russians and creating the martyrology which had such disastrous consequences last century or suggesting that they are the victims of a censorious repressive Russia and Ukraine alike
30 A discourse which is beginning to creep out, or we might again find ourselves helping to mask a colossal genocide- the truth of last century and the genocide of Ukraine is only just emerging. History will not forgive a repeat and we will be judged accordingly.
1 a) here is a typical reaction by a Ukrainian to the piece which gives a frame to the issues I will outline in this thread
https://twitter.com/TheStanislawski/status/1752281337631756542
26 a) it is not censorship or xenophobia at play here but a recognition that they don’t have the right profile to explore and may obscure the issue unless they are in Ukraine and or embrace the fight against the Russian empire and acknowledge and atone for its genocides.
26 b) but even in such instances this genocide aims at eradicating Ukrainians and it is their voices we should elevate. Russians, the few that might do so, can attack their genocidal culture and speak to that if they wish
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