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Robert Horvath Profile picture
Robert Horvath
@RG_Horvath
Academic @Latrobe. Admirer of East Slavic cultures. Sanctioned by Russian Foreign Ministry. Author of Putin's Fascists (2021).
2 subscribers
Apr 13 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
What is lost in the storm of vilification directed at @vkaramurza's 'colonial rhetoric' is that (1) his incriminating words were a clumsily-worded reflection on someone else's ideas; (2) he took a stridently pro-Ukraine position in his 90 minutes of testimony, including: 1/13 Repeated denunciations of Russia's invasion as 'a brutal and unprovoked attack against a sovereign and peaceful nation, bombarding hospitals and schools, killing civilians, families, children, eradicating entire cities from the face of the earth.' 2/13
Mar 3 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Lies worthy of Russia Today. The 'opposition party' you refer to is the Kremlin-backed Opposition Platform. Putin is godfather of its leader's daughter. A range of democratically elected parties, which diverge significantly on policy issues, serve in Ukraine's parliament. 1/4 TV was consolidated because of the scale of Russia's information warfare. Unlike in Putin's Russia, there is robust public debate in Ukraine, whose participants include prominent anti-Putin Russians. 2/4
Feb 22 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
No JD, what you & Rubio say is exactly wrong. You both fail to mention the crucial fact that Zelensky was responding to Trump's repetition of the Kremlin lie that Ukraine started the war.

Like other enablers of modern autocracy, you cannot understand moral courage. 1/6 Image You cannot understand why Zelensky felt the need to defend publicly his nation's reputation, and tell the truth about Trump's 'world of disinformation.'

You cannot understand why he doesn't follow your own opportunist path of gutless compromises and unprincipled sycophancy. 2/6
Dec 31, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In a changing world, one thing remains constant: the inability of many Western experts on Eastern Europe to conceive of the very possibility of democracy in Russia. This tweet is the latest contribution to a vast literature of prejudice dressed up in academic jargon. 1/5 Just over 40 years ago, in 1983, the same determinism, the same lack of imagination, pervaded 'After Brezhnev,' a major collaborative volume that synthesised the received wisdom of no less than 35 Sovietologists, including leading scholars like Adam Ulam and Seweryn Bialer. 2/5 Image
Oct 15, 2024 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
It's a sign of our disjointed, disinformed times that I've been asked by a serious scholar for proof that @navalny 'actually tried to fight against the war' and was 'not of imperialist views.'

The proof is out there. It's not hard to find.

And it's irrefutable. 1/15 Soon after Putin launched his 'Special Military Operation,' @Navalny issued a statement from his prison cell in which he exhorted Russians to overcome fear, to go out into the streets and 'fight against the war.' 2/15 bit.ly/4h4E9TSImage
Jun 28, 2024 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
A new cautionary tale about the Putin regime's assault on its Western academic critics. On Wednesday I opened an email from 'Vladislav,' a purported Russian 'PhD applicant,' with a thesis proposal about meritocracy. 1/8 Soon after clicking on the accompanying CV, I realised that I was the target of a spearfishing operation. The CV contained numerous red flags. First, it described the applicant as an 'ex-security officer.' 2/8 Image
Jun 5, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
For 2 decades, Western leaders & policymakers turned a deaf ear to Russian democrats who warned about the menace Putin posed to the world. One who listened was Raphael Glucksmann, a disciple of Anna Politkovskaya & today one of Europe's most eloquent anti-authoritarian voices.1/5 'Anna was a model for my life and my friend. Before her death, she uttered these words to me that still resonate: "Putin will go to war, I don't know when he will unleash it, but he will, and you Europeans, you will be surprised to discover that this war is aimed at you".' 2/5
Mar 19, 2024 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
This is wrong. Putin's dictatorship is founded upon social atomisation. Under totalitarian conditions, citizens acting together in public space is radically subversive. There is nothing the regime wants more than for a de-politicised population to cower in their apartments. 1/9 And there is nothing it fears more than collective protest actions. From the coloured revolutions in the former Soviet space to the Bolotnaya protests of 2011-12, brave citizens have used authoritarian elections as a pretext to cross the red lines of repressive regimes. 2/9
Mar 2, 2024 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
Navalny's death has not only provoked an outpouring of grief among his admirers. It has also triggered an explosion of ill-informed commentary from Western 'experts.' In terms of factual errors and racist bigotry, this diatribe in Foreign Policy is probably the worst. 1/16 Error 1. Navalny did not 'spend years… refusing to condemn Moscow’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014.' In fact Navalny opposed the invasion loudly and repeatedly. 2/16
Feb 11, 2024 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
An appallingly uncritical interview by @Peter_Fitz with the pro-Putin film maker and conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone. Fitzsimmons, a popular historian, leaves a succession of lies about recent history unchallenged. 1/7 bit.ly/3SQX36u Unchallenged Falsehood 1. The United States did not 'stage a coup in Ukraine in 2014.' It was ordinary Ukrainians who overthrew the pro-Putin kleptocrat, Yanukovych, who was dismantling democratic institutions & killing protesters.2/7
Sep 3, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Misleading on several levels. Politkovskaya was a journalist. Markelov was a human rights lawyer. Estemirova was a Memorial activist. While the West appeased Putin, they challenged the impunity that reigned in Chechnya during Putin's dirty war of the early 2000s. 1/4 Together, they achieved the conviction of Sergei Lapin, a brutal police officer, for the murder and disappearance of Zelimkhan Murdalov, a young Chechen man, and a non-combatant. The photograph shows them with members of Zelimkhan's family. 2/5
Aug 18, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Putin's secret police have charged Grigory Melkonyants, Russia's bravest & most accomplished election rights activist. He is chairman of Golos, the election-monitoring movement that repeatedly exposed the fraudulent elections that are the foundation of Putin's autocracy. 1/4 Melkonyants is famous for his humiliation of a regime propaganda team in 2011. They thought they were ambushing him, but he ruined their footage by constantly repeating 'You are Surkov propaganda' - a reference to the Putin regime's arch-manipulator. 2/4
Jul 29, 2023 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
@TimothyDSnyder claims that the past 30 years showed that the West didn't have an ability to influence Russia. In fact, we barely tried. More often than not, Western leaders and policymakers turned a deaf ear to brave Russians who raised the alarm about Putin. 1/13 Image Let us remember the moral cowardice of the West's response to Putinism's foundational crime, the savage war in Chechnya waged by levelling Grozny, zachistka punitive operations, death squads, torture in filtration camps and mass graves blown up with explosives. 2/13
Jul 25, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
As he wages genocidal war in Ukraine, Putin proclaims that he has 'consistently supported African peoples in their struggle for liberation from colonial oppression.'

This grotesque lie shrouds a record of atrocity crimes committed by Putin's proxies. 1/6 Even as Putin was boasting about 'African solutions for African problems,' Human Rights Watch was revealing the Wagner Group's role in new summary executions of dozens of innocent civilians in Mali. 2/6 hrw.org/news/2023/07/2…
Jul 23, 2023 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
In accusing Canada of cancelling Russian culture, the Russian Foreign Ministry conveniently forgets the Putin regime's own relentless onslaught against Russian culture - two decades of harassment, stigmatisation, attempted murders - all mimicking the Nazi cultural agenda.1/13 Putin's attack on Russian culture was heralded by Walking Together, a Kremlin-backed youth movement that staged Nazi-style actions in 2002 against 'pornographic' literature, tossing books by major writers like Vladimir Sorokin into an giant toilet outside the Bolshoi theatre.2/13 Image
Jul 15, 2023 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
Images of 'Russian culture' are central to the propaganda of Putin's genocidal war. So it is hardly surprising that many Ukrainians have come to despise the very idea of Russian culture. But the claim that 'Russian culture created Putin' is simplistic & counter-productive. 1/17 First, it aids the Putin regime - and its genocidal war - by reinforcing Kremlin propaganda (1) about Putin as a guardian of Russian traditions, and (2) about the unity of a dictator and a people he has stripped of every basic right. 2/17
Jul 11, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Prof. Steven Seegel, a brilliant scholar and one of academia's most eloquent defenders of Ukraine, has prompted an important discussion about Navalny's team and the Ukrainian cause. I'd like to contribute a thread. 1/11 First, @ACF_int helps Ukraine in a very important way by exposing the mendacity & corruption of the Putin regime. By drawing attention to the Western lifestyles & property of the Kremlin elite, ACF blasted a massive hole in the credibility of the regime & its war propaganda.2/11
Jul 7, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Few have done more than Professors Walt and Mearsheimer to normalise Putin's aggression and to nurture the politics of appeasement.

Here Walt spreads the falsehood that Russians 'across the political spectrum saw Ukraine joining NATO ... as a threat.' 1/7 This is simply wrong. In the late 1990s, Russian communists and authoritarian nationalists used NATO expansion as a mobilising cause. Most democrats saw this is a political problem, not a threat to Russia's national interests. 2/7
Jun 24, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
No. Putin was in a weak position at home in February 2022. His legitimacy had not recovered from the double impact of the Navalny crisis: (1) Putin's exposure as a despot prepared to use chemical weapons against his most popular political opponent; 1/5 (2) Navalny's release of 'Putin's Palace,' the devastating expose of how Putin pillaged his own people to build a dictator-kitsch palace - the most popular Russian language video in the history of Youtube, with over 125 million views. 2/5 bit.ly/3NIFuTI
Jun 12, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This exercise in psychoanalytical cultural relativism is a gift to the Kremlin. By locating the origins of Putin's genocidal war in Russian culture and history, it exonerates the leaders who ordered it and the security forces and mercenaries that implemented it. 1/6 The sweeping, unqualified claim that 'random violence runs through Russian history' distracts us from the real continuum of violence: the chekist/KGB cult that connects Putin to Lenin's exterminationist Red Terror and to the European revolutionary tradition. 2/6
Apr 13, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
This insinuation posing as a question is grossly misleading, and methodologically flawed. It ignores the consensus about accountability for war crimes in the Russian opposition, and it ignores the regular coverage on its platforms of atrocities, including the latest beheading: 1. @Dobrokhotov (retweeted by @SobolLubov): 'the word "beasts" in this connection insults "beasts".... There is no appropriate word for this filth in the language.' Image