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Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
41–50 of 251 posts
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#42I wonder who Shishkin is writing this for, and why he bothers. Readers interested in Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, or Chekhov are presumably intellectuals. Presumably, they will be familiar with the countless examples from history when, driven by patriotic fervor, countries cleansed themselves from the culture of an adversarial state, including language, literature, music, linguistic borrowings, scientific contributions, com…
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Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Have you read the Minsk agreements? Have you fucking read it? Do you know what they have in them, point by point? Care to quote them?
This is a weird comment.
> This agreement consisted of a package of measures, including a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, release of prisoners of war, constitutional reform in Ukraine granting self-government to certain areas of Donbas and restoring control of the state border to the Ukrainian government. While fighting subsided following the agreement's signing, it never ended completely, and the agreement's provisions were never fully implemented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
Nobody argues that Ukraine followed the Minsk agreements, the negotiated peace by France and Germany to the 2014 conflict, where Ukraine was supposed to give special, semi-autonomous status to those ethnic Russian regions.
Nor do they argue that Ukraine did not do the opposite: banning Russian language, cracking down on Russians in politics, shelling those regions, etc.
Perhaps you’re making unreasonable demands for specifics of an agreement Ukraine clearly broke because you find it uncomfortable that Ukraine’s refusal to abide by the resolution to the previous conflict is what led to this conflict, a decade later.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#44If you're interested in some constructive arguments why this article is wrong, please see a thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1516162437455654913.html
I’m quite certain a very similar article could be written about, say, UK and Ireland with quotes from famous authors. It’s not that the English lack an imperialist past and feelings of superiority.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#45I wonder who Shishkin is writing this for, and why he bothers. Readers interested in Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, or Chekhov are presumably intellectuals. Presumably, they will be familiar with the countless examples from history when, driven by patriotic fervor, countries cleansed themselves from the culture of an adversarial state, including language, literature, music, linguistic borrowings, scientific contributions, com…
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Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#46I wonder who Shishkin is writing this for, and why he bothers. Readers interested in Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, or Chekhov are presumably intellectuals. Presumably, they will be familiar with the countless examples from history when, driven by patriotic fervor, countries cleansed themselves from the culture of an adversarial state, including language, literature, music, linguistic borrowings, scientific contributions, com…
On the one hand, I sympathize with your sentiment. However, I feel it can be overstated. Applying your reasoning, we might conclude that formulating and publishing an argument of any kind at all is futile because, as your logic states, "the people who already think this, don't need it. And the people who oppose it, aren't listening." I think this is a simplistic way of looking at it. On all issues, there are people at the margins (or perhaps, in the "center"). Perhaps they have some visceral feeling that they ought to look at Russian literature, at this moment, with some disdain. Or they feel some vague sense of shame in indulging in or enjoying Russian literature. As an audience, people like this are quite able to be convinced that their feelings are misplaced and this post lays out exactly why.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#47Living in Eastern Europe, I have to say that I've always felt that there was something brutal and thuggish about both Russian and Ukrainian culture (they are more similar than Ukrainians want to admit). The article merely hints at this while talking of the "illiterate peasants" that create the foundational popular culture. The Russian people's spectrum is incredibly wide though, and have also produced some of the dee…
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Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#48Living in Eastern Europe, I have to say that I've always felt that there was something brutal and thuggish about both Russian and Ukrainian culture (they are more similar than Ukrainians want to admit). The article merely hints at this while talking of the "illiterate peasants" that create the foundational popular culture. The Russian people's spectrum is incredibly wide though, and have also produced some of the dee…
The greater the suffering of a people, the deeper the art they produce. (This is not a justification for violence of course.) Russia has been a nation of serfs for millennia now.
This seems to be only a part of the reason. Tolstoy was born into wealth, and it might be that his simultaneous exposure to the highlight of European culture, combined with the harsh reality of the lives of his serfs produced his insights into human nature.
Many cultures have had genocides and countless atrocities without producing anything of similar value.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#49I wonder who Shishkin is writing this for, and why he bothers. Readers interested in Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, or Chekhov are presumably intellectuals. Presumably, they will be familiar with the countless examples from history when, driven by patriotic fervor, countries cleansed themselves from the culture of an adversarial state, including language, literature, music, linguistic borrowings, scientific contributions, com…
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This is a sort of ad hominem and not helpful. I could _guess_ what you are alluding to, but you should make your point explicitly, rather than in personal and innuendo form.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
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