The current Russian power uses the Soviet and more recent past to
justify its actions and its exactions, which all the published
testimonies call into question. ---- The compilation and the putting
into perspective of the texts of Putin and several other Russian
officials show the predominant weight of the Soviet past. They exalt the
greatness of the Soviet Union and consequently the role of the Army (Red
at the time) and the KGB, the Chekists who became the siloviki have a
central role. The work of Elisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski is fascinating,
because it underlines that the Russian president has announced his
intentions since the beginning of the 2010s. First, he wanted to give
Russia back its international place, then made Ukraine first a scapegoat
before justifying on all levels the intervention in Ukraine. These
speeches are based on totally invented constructions, sometimes totally
aberrant, which cannot be considered serious for a moment, so much do
they disregard reality or even common sense. Putin denies any existence
to the history of Ukraine and then explains that it has always been part
of Russian territory. These elements justify the intervention. It is
about "gathering the Russian lands" even if it means inventing or
rewriting history by using both the Soviet past and denouncing the role
of the first Bolsheviks before justifying the annexation by Stalinist
policy. Power is not averse to a lexical contradiction. What the author
also shows is that Putin's construction is based on a perfectly mastered
propaganda system, which has relays in a Russian society and sometimes
also in Western society. He left a civil society almost bloodless, the
main opponents have disappeared, either in exile, in prison, or
assassinated.
If the Ukrainians are suffering a war of annexation, the Russians are
suffering from the violence of the dictatorship. Two books each show
this in their own way.
The testimony of Elena Kostioutchenko is proof of this. This young
journalist was born in 1987 in Iroslavl, one of the cities of the Golden
Ring around Moscow, which she describes without concession, far from the
idyllic images for tourists. She comes from a very poor social
background and started working at the age of 9. For family reasons, she
moved to Moscow alone and very quickly became passionate about current
affairs. Luck smiled on her and she joined the team of Novaya Gazeta,
one of the last opposition newspapers. The newspaper then appeared every
two days. She mainly published articles on Russian society, apparently
blocked by Putin's conformism, but which she suggests can evolve
quickly. Her reports on the margins of this virile universe go against
the norm desired by the authorities: homosexuality, prostitution, the
disabled, the deep Russia, the society more mixed than the authorities
let on. In 2011, she officially affirmed her homosexuality, attracting
the wrath of the authorities' affidavits. Despite everything, she
continued her work, describing in small touches Russian society with its
faults, but also its qualities such as solidarity, barely veiled
protests, until her reports in Ukraine which forced her to leave Russia,
victim of an attempted poisoning and a conviction in absentia. She now
lives in Germany where she continues to write about this country which
despite the authorities possesses a human wealth and a society which may
one day be able to show another face.
Elena Tchijova's novel is a second illustration. She returns with a
clever construction on the weight of Stalinism in Russian society. Three
generations enter the scene: grandmother Anastasia, mother Ana and son
Pavel. The annexation of Crimea plunges the grandmother into
hallucinations. She finds herself in the 1930s at the time of Stalinist
terror, mass deportations and arbitrary arrests, then the siege of
Leningrad. The mother, an ordinary Soviet citizen, tries to survive in a
harsh era to make ends meet, she is forced to do housework for
oligarchs. The son lives in a kind of timeless space where his main
dream is to create a video game. The explosion born of the war in
Ukraine makes the three generations meet and talk, the discussions show
a Russian society in agony where speech has been confiscated and
expression is ultimately forbidden, even if interstitial spaces suggest
that all is not lost.
On the other side of the front line, accounts of the war provide
first-hand information which, if need be, contradicts the official
version of Putin's government.
The events of Maidan Square in 2014 do not resemble the description that
Putin may make of them in his speeches. The American historian Marci
Shore, a specialist in the intersecting history of communism and Nazism
in these bloody lands, was there in the 2010s. She looks at the events
of Maidan Square in 2014. She shows without difficulty that if a few
fascists were present, the vast majority of the occupants of this
central place in kyiv were on the contrary opponents of any form of
dictatorship. Her investigation takes the form of testimony where we
meet inhabitants of the city taken in their diversity. She emphasizes
that the majority of the people encountered are freedom-loving and seek
first and foremost to get rid of the aftereffects of communism and
fascism that have marked the history of the country, but also of their
consequence: an oligarchy ready to do anything to stay in power. They
certainly only have the value of individual testimonies, but their
cross-referencing and multiplication suggest that we are far from
post-Soviet propaganda.
The journalist Clara Marchand, correspondent for the French press in
kyiv since 2016, highlights the daily transformations brought about
first by the Orange Revolution, then by the Donbass uprising and by the
Russian invasion. As one might expect, the war has changed the daily
lives of the inhabitants. As Putin's speeches became more martial,
anxiety grew among the city's inhabitants. The threats were getting
closer, in the space of a day the sky darkened and fundamentally changed
the situation of the majority of the city's inhabitants, forced as in
any war to hide, to join air-raid shelters and to survive.
The work of the German academic, Karl Schlögel, who has made numerous
study trips to Ukraine, provides another refutation of Russian
propaganda. He uses geography and history to show that the architecture
and formation of Ukrainian cities resemble European urban planning more
than Russian and then Soviet-type cities. Even if, from the 1930s
onwards, triumphant Stalinism reshaped Ukrainian space. Using the main
urban planning schemes, the accounts of travellers up to the 20th
century and several Soviet authors, they show that Ukrainian space
resembles Mitteleuropa and is again very far removed from Putin's
speeches on the central place of Russia in Ukraine.
These often fascinating testimonies contradict the speeches initially
mentioned and attempt to invalidate the theses of the Russian power, if
they carry conviction, it remains to be hoped that they will spread in
Russia so that one day a surprise like that of 1991 will occur.
Putin in the text
Élisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski
CNRS éditions 392 p. 25 EUR
Russia My Beloved Country
Elena Kostioutcjenko
Black on White 2024 400 p. 24 EUR
The Great Game
Elena Tchijova
Black on White 2024 320 p. 23.5 EUR
Ukrainian Night
Marci Shore
Gallimard 2024 260 p. 25 EUR
Such a Long Month of February
Clara Marchand
Plein jour 2024 282 p. 21 EUR
The Future is Being Played Out in Kyiv
Karl Shlögel
Gallimard 2024 430 p. 25 EUR
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8061
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
justify its actions and its exactions, which all the published
testimonies call into question. ---- The compilation and the putting
into perspective of the texts of Putin and several other Russian
officials show the predominant weight of the Soviet past. They exalt the
greatness of the Soviet Union and consequently the role of the Army (Red
at the time) and the KGB, the Chekists who became the siloviki have a
central role. The work of Elisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski is fascinating,
because it underlines that the Russian president has announced his
intentions since the beginning of the 2010s. First, he wanted to give
Russia back its international place, then made Ukraine first a scapegoat
before justifying on all levels the intervention in Ukraine. These
speeches are based on totally invented constructions, sometimes totally
aberrant, which cannot be considered serious for a moment, so much do
they disregard reality or even common sense. Putin denies any existence
to the history of Ukraine and then explains that it has always been part
of Russian territory. These elements justify the intervention. It is
about "gathering the Russian lands" even if it means inventing or
rewriting history by using both the Soviet past and denouncing the role
of the first Bolsheviks before justifying the annexation by Stalinist
policy. Power is not averse to a lexical contradiction. What the author
also shows is that Putin's construction is based on a perfectly mastered
propaganda system, which has relays in a Russian society and sometimes
also in Western society. He left a civil society almost bloodless, the
main opponents have disappeared, either in exile, in prison, or
assassinated.
If the Ukrainians are suffering a war of annexation, the Russians are
suffering from the violence of the dictatorship. Two books each show
this in their own way.
The testimony of Elena Kostioutchenko is proof of this. This young
journalist was born in 1987 in Iroslavl, one of the cities of the Golden
Ring around Moscow, which she describes without concession, far from the
idyllic images for tourists. She comes from a very poor social
background and started working at the age of 9. For family reasons, she
moved to Moscow alone and very quickly became passionate about current
affairs. Luck smiled on her and she joined the team of Novaya Gazeta,
one of the last opposition newspapers. The newspaper then appeared every
two days. She mainly published articles on Russian society, apparently
blocked by Putin's conformism, but which she suggests can evolve
quickly. Her reports on the margins of this virile universe go against
the norm desired by the authorities: homosexuality, prostitution, the
disabled, the deep Russia, the society more mixed than the authorities
let on. In 2011, she officially affirmed her homosexuality, attracting
the wrath of the authorities' affidavits. Despite everything, she
continued her work, describing in small touches Russian society with its
faults, but also its qualities such as solidarity, barely veiled
protests, until her reports in Ukraine which forced her to leave Russia,
victim of an attempted poisoning and a conviction in absentia. She now
lives in Germany where she continues to write about this country which
despite the authorities possesses a human wealth and a society which may
one day be able to show another face.
Elena Tchijova's novel is a second illustration. She returns with a
clever construction on the weight of Stalinism in Russian society. Three
generations enter the scene: grandmother Anastasia, mother Ana and son
Pavel. The annexation of Crimea plunges the grandmother into
hallucinations. She finds herself in the 1930s at the time of Stalinist
terror, mass deportations and arbitrary arrests, then the siege of
Leningrad. The mother, an ordinary Soviet citizen, tries to survive in a
harsh era to make ends meet, she is forced to do housework for
oligarchs. The son lives in a kind of timeless space where his main
dream is to create a video game. The explosion born of the war in
Ukraine makes the three generations meet and talk, the discussions show
a Russian society in agony where speech has been confiscated and
expression is ultimately forbidden, even if interstitial spaces suggest
that all is not lost.
On the other side of the front line, accounts of the war provide
first-hand information which, if need be, contradicts the official
version of Putin's government.
The events of Maidan Square in 2014 do not resemble the description that
Putin may make of them in his speeches. The American historian Marci
Shore, a specialist in the intersecting history of communism and Nazism
in these bloody lands, was there in the 2010s. She looks at the events
of Maidan Square in 2014. She shows without difficulty that if a few
fascists were present, the vast majority of the occupants of this
central place in kyiv were on the contrary opponents of any form of
dictatorship. Her investigation takes the form of testimony where we
meet inhabitants of the city taken in their diversity. She emphasizes
that the majority of the people encountered are freedom-loving and seek
first and foremost to get rid of the aftereffects of communism and
fascism that have marked the history of the country, but also of their
consequence: an oligarchy ready to do anything to stay in power. They
certainly only have the value of individual testimonies, but their
cross-referencing and multiplication suggest that we are far from
post-Soviet propaganda.
The journalist Clara Marchand, correspondent for the French press in
kyiv since 2016, highlights the daily transformations brought about
first by the Orange Revolution, then by the Donbass uprising and by the
Russian invasion. As one might expect, the war has changed the daily
lives of the inhabitants. As Putin's speeches became more martial,
anxiety grew among the city's inhabitants. The threats were getting
closer, in the space of a day the sky darkened and fundamentally changed
the situation of the majority of the city's inhabitants, forced as in
any war to hide, to join air-raid shelters and to survive.
The work of the German academic, Karl Schlögel, who has made numerous
study trips to Ukraine, provides another refutation of Russian
propaganda. He uses geography and history to show that the architecture
and formation of Ukrainian cities resemble European urban planning more
than Russian and then Soviet-type cities. Even if, from the 1930s
onwards, triumphant Stalinism reshaped Ukrainian space. Using the main
urban planning schemes, the accounts of travellers up to the 20th
century and several Soviet authors, they show that Ukrainian space
resembles Mitteleuropa and is again very far removed from Putin's
speeches on the central place of Russia in Ukraine.
These often fascinating testimonies contradict the speeches initially
mentioned and attempt to invalidate the theses of the Russian power, if
they carry conviction, it remains to be hoped that they will spread in
Russia so that one day a surprise like that of 1991 will occur.
Putin in the text
Élisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski
CNRS éditions 392 p. 25 EUR
Russia My Beloved Country
Elena Kostioutcjenko
Black on White 2024 400 p. 24 EUR
The Great Game
Elena Tchijova
Black on White 2024 320 p. 23.5 EUR
Ukrainian Night
Marci Shore
Gallimard 2024 260 p. 25 EUR
Such a Long Month of February
Clara Marchand
Plein jour 2024 282 p. 21 EUR
The Future is Being Played Out in Kyiv
Karl Shlögel
Gallimard 2024 430 p. 25 EUR
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8061
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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