Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genocide is something entirely different. Watch out using that word. This a war about ground and resources, not an ethnic war.
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Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
221–230 of 251 posts
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#222A good read for folks riding on the anti-all-things-Russia bandwagon right now or for people with a more nuanced view trying to understand where the Russian stereotypes, tropes and general bigotry originate from: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34237648-creating-russop...
This description just reads like Russian propaganda. Indeed, from the author's Wikipedia page: "Mettan's journalistic credibility has been questioned on several occasions. In 2017, Reporters Without Borders criticised Mettan for his pro-Russian militancy and for serving as a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda. Florian Irminger, Secretary General of the Swiss Green Party, also called Mettan an apologist for Putin's gov…
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Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Take a beloved in the West author like Solzhenitsyn, whose "compassion" suddenly evaporates when Ukrainian question is raised. Solzhenitsin is one of the best literary chroniclers of repressions in the Soviet Russia (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, In the First Circle), with the degree of earnestness and realism that approaches Tolstoy's. How does his compassion to Ukranians, or lack…
> How does his compassion to Ukranians, or lack thereof, change that? Surely you can understand why it matters to Ukrainians?
I don't think I can, not really — it's like throwing away the whole corpus of Kipling's works for his imperialist verses, cancelling J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter because of her feminist tweets, or calling to boycott Noam Chomsky's linguistic works because of his political statements — but I can pretend that I do :-) However, I don't think the commenters in this thread are all Ukrainians.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War
>The conflict began on 2 April, when Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands, followed by the invasion of South Georgia the next day. I stand...correct?
fwiw - I counted the last century starting from today and backwards
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#225Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#226I think it’s important to understand that russian culture has failed. If it can’t guide a nation towards humanistic values, what is a culture’s point?
To survive? I don’t think cultures have points. They survive or die, and it’s a bit strange to use a specific cultural value as a measure of success of all other cultures.
The point of spammers or ransom ware authors is to survive as well. Doesn’t mean they are valuable.
If you say that russian culture is valuable, you must set the context why.
It doesn’t communicate anything particularly original. It’s not especially beautiful (arguably). It didn’t stop and some might argue even enabled the carriers of that culture to either tolerate a genocidal regime or actively support it. What’s the point of it then?
What’s the point of the moral dilemma in “Crime and punishment” for example, if their choice is always “let’s kill another old lady because we can”?
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why be interested in art for serfs?
Serfs can still make art..
Not all art is equal. Just because someone suffers doesn’t mean they are talented. If that was the relationship, that would imply that Italian artists of the renaissance were tortured horribly every day.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#228I 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 a…
Thanks for saying this, I tried writing the same but more briefly in a sibling comment, and... it wasn't well received. I suppose my wording seemed curt.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is wrong in so many levels. What does eating Thai food have to do with anything? I sense you tried to make an analogy, but it's so obtuse I honestly can't imagine what you were thinking. Are you honestly saying that empathy is dependent on culture or nationality? That is some pre-enlightenment thinking right there. I thought we civilized westerners had evolved towards universal empathy, all humankind is equal an…
I notice you don't mention conflicts in Ethiopia, Eritrea, or Sudan that have accumulated 300,000–500,000 fatalities. I notice you don't mention the ongoing conflict in Myanmar. I can only assume it's because of racism against black Africans and Asians.
It's clear to me lbrito is mentioning them tacitly, as part of those horrifying conflicts that don't cause outrage in the West because "they are not like us". You are making lbrito's point, really.
Re: Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm baffled how this seems only to apply to the Ukraine this one time. Any meaningful discussion is labeled "whataboutism" and dismissed. You will surely agree with me that Russia is not the world's pioneer in wars of aggression. What about (oh no, whataboutism! We can safely dismiss the argument without thinking now) all the other countries that did, and do the same? Should we also dismiss their cultural output? I'm…
This is not a meaningful discussion. There's an agression going on right now perpetrated by Russia. Talking about UK agression is just not relevant. It's an odd distraction.
There are other conflicts going on in the world besides the Russian-Ukrainian war. We do not usually avoid/cancel authors from any of the nations or cultures involved. Well, I suppose writings by ISIS authors are not in any bestsellers list...