Ukraine and the end of social democracy [quotage]

The dynamics of the Ukraine are of great interest. The Ukraine was part of the great soviet experiment and has moved (with some difficulty) from an impoverished communist starapy to a slightly less impoverished agricultural nation. At present Putin is trying to keep control of bases and the oil and the eastern (Tartar and Russian) part, while the Western (Ukranian and Polish) part turns to the Church and the EU. You should never trust the French. And, since Kelly models his foreign policy on them, you should never trust the USA. But let’s start this with an observation from Judgy.

Unrest in the Crimea is nothing new.  Looking over photos and watching video footage, I was struck by something:  where are all the women?  The young, strong, powerful, independent you go grrrrlz?  Where you at, ladies? Look at these two photos.  There does not seem to be any women at all. Oh, in the early days of protests, there were young women out in force. Look at the cute little feminist making her stand. And then shit got nasty.  And they are no where to be seen.  Isn’t that curious? There are middle aged women out and about.  And old women. There are wives and girlfriends kissing their male companions, but they seem more concerned about their personal lives.  Which is fine. It’s probably a really smart thing to do, given the circumstances.  The fish needs a bicycle!

Too right. When times get tough, one cannot afford to be either inefficient or stupid: and feminism is both.

 

And we should never, ever forget that Russian is becoming overtly more Christian and Orthodox as the West becomes pagan. In part, this is a religious war: it is akin to the last two wars in the Ukraine, where in one the athiest socailists dealt with the neopagan national socailists (and Ukraine was soaked with bullets and blood by massacre and reprisal) and there was a religious component to the great war and the messianic, pan slavic orthodoxy of a century ago,

This was nowhere more true than in Tsarist Russia, where—right up to 1917—politics never lost their apocalyptic and messianic character. When the Byzantine Empire fell to the Turks in 1453, Muscovite Russia took up that mantle. Two Romes had fallen, proclaimed the Tsars, a third stands, and a fourth will never be. As the Third Rome, Moscow was heir to the hopes that surrounded the glorious Byzantine name, including the dreams and visions presented in such texts as the Apocalypse of Daniel. In this apocryphal tradition, a future Constantine would liberate the Orthodox Christian world from the Sons of Hagar, who were increasingly identified as the Muslim Ottomans. At the height of the Turkish wars in the 1770s, Catherine the Great christened one of her grandsons Constantine.

Through the 19th century, even seemingly rational and cynical Russian statesmen maintained this concept of the messianic nation, destined to defend Orthodoxy against Muslims and Catholics alike. Nothing would prevent that empire from freeing Christians in the Balkans and then extending its power over Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine. The words of Pseudo-Daniel still guided Russian actions in 1914.

Obviously, Russian policies reflected both religious and secular motives, and both forces combined inextricably to drive this Russian version of manifest destiny. When the Russians annexed the Crimea in 1783, they did so because of the enormous opportunity to project their power into the Black Sea region, and also because they could now build warm-water naval bases. Nineteenth-century Odessa became a boom city, a Russian counterpart to San Francisco, and Sevastopol was a mighty naval fortress. But Russians also knew that extending their power on what had been those Muslim lands proved the truth of their fundamental religious/national vision. And in the 1850s, they perceived the deadly political and religious threat when foreign forces invaded the Crimea, that now-reconquered holy territory.

Tsarist power is long gone, and the Soviet regime that succeeded it had no time for mystical visions. Yet, as that Soviet idea perished in its turn, Russians have turned once more to the religious roots of national ideology. Post-Soviet regimes have worked intimately with the Orthodox Church, which has been happy to support strong government and to consecrate national occasions. In return, the state has helped the church rebuild Orthodox cathedrals and monasteries aplenty. For 20 years now, both state and church have even labored to reconstruct the once potent Russian presence in the holy places themselves, now of course under Israeli political control.

Why are we surprised to see this new holy Russia extend its protecting arm over the Christian-backed Ba’athist regime in Syria? Russian regimes have been staking a claim to guard that region’s Christians for 250 years.

Those of us who (for reasons I cannot fathom, reading this history is painful) have studied the Soviet era have noted that Stalin was quite happy to tap into the fervor of his Orthodox nation when he was facing defeat. Putin is overtly for the Church as an ideology: instead of the global revolution that the Soviets campaigned for he wants to see the Church arise, and pagan forces destroyed. He correctly notes that they come from Europe: and he knows the precedents for Russians resisting Western pagan progressivism start with the defeat of Napoleon. One should never underestimate the Russians. Avoiding invading them predated the idea that you should never get involved in a land war in Asia.

 

 

In times of war, the army and navy and weapons become a greater priorty than any social welfare state: you need to be a nation to tax. And that makes it tough for those who do not have a familial structure.

When times get tough, the men will be the ones who will bleed and die. Because they know, deep down, that they are disposable. Women and children will keep the nation going. They need to preserve them. When times get tough, women will seek the protection of those who can look after them: either through the resurgence of the patriarchy or via a market: they will do what is needed to survive. It’s less about morality than living long enough to raise your children.

For history is made by those who are alive, not memes that are dead.

UPDATE.

Sunshine Mary adds her five cents. And some Transporter3, mainly because.

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pukeko

Solo Dad. Calvinist. http://blog.photo.pukeko.net Photographer: manual, film and Digital. http://photo.pukeko.net.nz

2 thoughts on “Ukraine and the end of social democracy [quotage]”

  1. What the name says.

    AH, but who is the greater tyrant: Putin or the EU?

  2. Yes, it is very difficult, and it goes back a long way further. I keep on thinking that the boundaries of Catholicism were set by the Polish-Lithiuanian commonwealth, which disappeared during the Hundred years war or thereabouts as its territory became Austrian, Russian or under the Holy Roman Empire. The Russian Empire until Nicolas I included what is now Finland, Poland and the Balts: Poland as such re emerged in the Victorian era — and the current state is much smaller than the one that existed before WWII.

    Stalin wanted all the old Imperial Russia back under the Soviets in my opinion and thus left Poland as a Stump and was somewhat annoyed he did not get the Finns.

    I knew about the Catholicism of the Ukraine, but not the split among the Orthodox.

    As far as Putin, we cannot tell what is on a man’s heart, but his use of Orthodoxy is classical Western Tsarist or Imperial behaviour: having the church support him and he supporting the church. Just as both the Haspburgs and Romanovs did before him.

    I agree the West is on dangerous grounds. It would be like Russia supporting an independent Texas or a Resurgent Confederacy (without slavery) — the Monroe doctrine works both ways.

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