Freedom fries went back to french fries. I wouldn't worry too much about Russian culture disappearing in the long run.
Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
91–100 of 251 posts
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
That book might have been relevent in 2005 but throw it out the window now. All anti-Russian sentiment in the world is due to the fact Russia is literally engaging in genocide against Ukrainians, right now.
Are you suggesting that bigotry is now okay towards all Russians?
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Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#93I 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…
I'm going to challenge this because I think it suggests that reading the Russian classics is an intellectual challenge with a perquisite of studying Russian history and culture. Dostoyevsky's works are amazing without any background knowledge. No 'intellectualism' is required, just a love of stories. With a few tweaks they could be set in a modern era and turned into Netflex series. War and Peace is considered a chal…
I don't think there was an inference that the books are opaque, just that people reading these books in 2022 are already weird ducks. Well, as weird as anyone reading, say, Tao Te Ching or other non-standard-academic-curriculum "classic" books you'd have to go out of your way to read.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#94A Ukrainian here - couldn't disagree more with the author. Take a beloved in the West author like Solzhenitsyn, whose "compassion" suddenly evaporates when Ukrainian question is raised. Even a modern sci-fi author Sergei Lukyanenko does not shy away from racial jokes against Ukrainians or Lithuanians in his Dozor books. Ukraine is a pawn at the world stage, but if the West is serious about battling russia (for its ow…
If ordinary Russians look out at the world and perceive that they and their culture are despised and hated, they'll rally around their xenophobic leader.
If Russians look out at the world and see a consensus that their leader has impoverished their nation for his personal benefit, they'll be more likely to question his motives.
Ukraine's best shot at winning the war is for Putin to lose the support of Russian soldiers. That should be one of the top priorities, and it will be better accomplished by driving a wedge between Putin and the Russian people than by driving them together. (Though delivering more HIMARS is an even higher priority.)
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#95Apart from the abstract conviction that we should not indict the cultural output of a country that is under the thrall of an oligarch, I'm a bit baffled at the notion of decrying Tolstoy of people -- a Christian anarchist who radically challenged all of the assumptions of Tsarist Russia. Basically all of the great Russian writers lived in opposition to the various incarnations of the Russian State (Tsarist Russia, US…
It’s a very strange emotional appeal. Yes, you can ban first-hand imports of Russian culture, or any other nation. But what about all the ways in which your culture has already been affected by decades and decades of integrating these works because they stand on their own, aesthetically speaking, regardless of their origin? I’m reminded of an equally strange move, in an equally strange vein: “Freedom Fries.”
Why is this strange? Wartime changes many things, and propaganda is a powerful weapon.
> Freedom Fries
How about "Today Baghdad, tomorrow Paris!"
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#96Right, blame Gogol: “We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/513055-we-all-come-out-from...
Gogol is an interesting one though. There being no Ukrainian state at the time, he was appropriated by the Russian literature as a quintessential Russian writer, but his sympathetic sentiment towards the Cossack tradition is well-known (and obvious in his texts), and one can make a good argument that in his early stuff he is more subversive about the entire Russian empire thing than a naive reader may think. (Ok, his…
Feels like an odd choice to imply that Gogol was subtle in any way about being subversive and unsympathetic to the state.
I haven't read that many of his works, but the two that almost any Russian adult would know about are "The Government Inspector" and "Dead Souls". Both of which are almost 100% about satirizing government corruption and awful local politicking in the most grotesque ways possible. The intent and overall theme of those stories was as obvious as it can get, though both pack plenty of great less obvious nuance as well.
Not disagreeing with you overall though, Gogol had so many massively impactful works, it is hard to neatly pack his work as "here are his 2-3 monumental pieces everyone knows", he has way too many of those. "Taras Bulba", as you've mentioned, is extremely different from the two i listed above, but there are just as many people who know Gogol exclusively for that. And that can be said about half of his works imo. Then "Viy"? That one was a whole different genre completely (supernatural horror with some subtle themes under), and there is a whole swath of people who would know him just for that as well.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a point that deserves deeper study. They have (from memory) 13 countries on their borders, and almost no "natural" borders, e.g. rivers or mountain ranges. They have a history that's blood-curdling. Expecting a new czar to make it like Denmark is a bit much. The West tried in the 90s, and Boris Yeltsin is not remembered fondly over there. The emergence of gangster capitalism was the result.
I don’t think this is right. Germany, for example, has 9 countries on its borders and a blood-curdling history, and it’s a very pleasant place now. The idea that a country of 145M people lacking the agency to move forward doesn’t pass the smell test. I think it’s clear that Russia has some deeply-seated cultural problems that fuel this kind of thing. None of this, of course, makes the banishment of Russian cultural p…
Well, no. Germany wasn't even united as a country until Bismarck. And it didn't grow to a gargantuan size by conquering neighboring, nearly empty lands.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#98A Ukrainian here - couldn't disagree more with the author. Take a beloved in the West author like Solzhenitsyn, whose "compassion" suddenly evaporates when Ukrainian question is raised. Even a modern sci-fi author Sergei Lukyanenko does not shy away from racial jokes against Ukrainians or Lithuanians in his Dozor books. Ukraine is a pawn at the world stage, but if the West is serious about battling russia (for its ow…
As per the pawn thing, welcome to the club. I’m writing from neighboring Romania, we lost some part of our territory to you guys when we were the pawns and you were part of an imperial entity that was doing its thing, I’m talking about the USSR, of course.
It sucks, but you have to manage expectations, i.e. that barring some unexpected event the smaller political entity will always have a lot more to lose in a battle against an imperial-like entity. Again, we, Romanians, had to learn that the hard way ever since the 1400s, when the Ottomans came around this part of the world.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#99Freedom fries went back to french fries. I wouldn't worry too much about Russian culture disappearing in the long run.
I look forward to "Freedom Dressing"
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#100If you're interested in some constructive arguments why this article is wrong, please see a thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1516162437455654913.html
I love Galeev threads - but he is sometimes a bit slopy. In this tread the quote
"Submit, Cherkes! Both West and East,
May soon share your fate,
When the time comes, you'll say arrogantly:
Yes, I'm a slave but a slave of the Tsar of the World!"