Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
having read it - id say both. Its more explaining how and why the Ukrainians are doing so well - rather than much detail on what is happening on the ground.
Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24
- Thread starter kebabking
- Start date
seventh bullet
sovietwave
Yes, really. No matter your own political or ideological inclinations it has to be acknowledged that the Soviet Union (including moustache himself) and its derivations were viewed very differently in other parts of the world.
The anti-colonial/national liberation struggles not only received material support with funding and weaponry but also Soviet soft power, via its printing presses, not only produced cheap editions of translated Russian high-art literature but of the world (as well as cheap educational materials) which gave the educated members of these movements the sense of belonging to an international intellectual and cultural commons denied to them by foreign powers that crowed about the virtues and superiority of liberal democracy but absolutely did not allow it in the countries they dominated.
They had the example, however flawed and problematic, of an alternative form of modernity and a political and ideological framework through which to realise it. Annakisseds might get upset by that, but they could always call a public meeting and then vote to produce some stickers.
Rob Ray
Weight is meaningless
I'd respect the point more without the infantile name calling.
Though that said, it's not all that good a point tbh, given how many liberation struggles were diverted into autocratic dead ends via Soviet propaganda/soft power and then supported by an "international culture" that repeatedly fetishised murderous scum in red shirts. And often still does. Sometimes they aren't even bothering with the shirt any more.
Though that said, it's not all that good a point tbh, given how many liberation struggles were diverted into autocratic dead ends via Soviet propaganda/soft power and then supported by an "international culture" that repeatedly fetishised murderous scum in red shirts. And often still does. Sometimes they aren't even bothering with the shirt any more.
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Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
That's all true, but it was all based on a falsehood. Once that falsehood was exposed, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the left in Europe collapsed too. Even though anarchists, social democrats, environmentalists and other socialists and Marxists had long criticised the Soviet Union, the emotional attachment to the Russian revolution was still strong. When that link was shown to be invalid wider society found it difficult to believe in fundamental change.
That's what I reckon, anyhow.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
The Stalinists were true-believers, unfortunately. It's more comforting to call it all a sham, full of falsehoods etc but they believed their system of state ownership was socialism and the best one possible for the later realisation of a communist world society, including its horrors being worth it in the long run.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
You're preaching to the converted with the edited part of your post. How the various 'red nationalisms' have panned out even before the twentieth century ended. My post was to illustrate how the Soviet Union and later China was perceived by people going into national democratic or more revolutionary political activity (albeit Marxist-Leninist) to liberate their socities in the global south. The kind of understanding at odds with western European and North American perceptions of an enemy or threat, helped by way of crude and sophisticated propaganda efforts and information control. It was precisely the latter countries who were the brutal enemy, and for bloody good reason.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
i hope supine is suitably grateful to you
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Some of them believed it alright, but it was still based on falsehood. There was no multi-ethnic happy land where socialist realism was actual reality. Where there was no gulag, and all the rest of it. When Krushchev denounced Stalin the Soviet Union still went on pretending for decades that they had the answers, only for it all to vanish in a puff of smoke.
not-bono-ever
meh
Albania as well
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
and algiers
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
if only we could get rid of our regime, which is just as much based on smoke and mirrors, so easily
seventh bullet
sovietwave
There can be a conceptual straight jacket people put themselves into when looking at something outside of your their own worldview and is fundamentally opposite. Studying and attempting to see from theirs doesn't mean you are taking on or agreeing with them politically or whatever. You might be repulsed by it, afraid of it or whatever, but it can be handy in understanding how and why people, governments etc behave the way they do/did.
A form of authoritarian government that has defined its representative ownership of a state captured through revolution and war as socialist after using the machinery of that state to compel society through a rapid period of social-economic change that could only reasonably be defined as capitalist. What a load of bullshit etc. We'll, I'd be inclined to agree that their definition is wrong, but they weren't bullshitting about it. They genuinely believed it. And yes, we're not talking about time servers and the like only interested in personal positions, who are a feature in any large form of organisation.
Khrushchev only partially denounced Stalin the man on the abuses and excesses and idiosyncratic points of his personal rule, not the system built from the late 1920s. Stalin's dethronement wasn't intended to supplant the party's deeply ingrained practices. That would call into question the legitimacy of the Communist Party itself. Some of the reforms afterward, which were labelled revisionist by M-Ls the world over again weren't to shake the government's foundations, despite the anti-revisionists spitting feathers about the restoration of capitalism and so forth.
This is all off topic to the thread so best go elsewhere to carry on.
petee
no gods, no malarkey
bless.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
one s: blas: a celebrity's fart
rubbershoes
not the only raver in the village
I don't think he'll pull back from the conventional war. As you rightly say, he sees himself as Russia and withdrawing from Ukraine would be personal as well as national humiliation .
When, in the future, it's clear that Russia has lost the war, he should probably avoid standing too close to any 5th floor windows
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
how should their borders be defined? porous, i suspect, will be the decision
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
dalstroy
Rob Ray
Weight is meaningless
Some of them were probably genuine believers, and quite a lot weren't. These weren't uniform movements (even though a lot of them did like their uniforms). Cuba was won by anarchists as well as Marxists, for example, and the former were liquidated by Castro for their troubles.
bluescreen
tofu eating wokerati
Like a child's pet dog, you mean?
Idris2002
Christmas Eve, you know?
"Are we the baddies", indeed. All the people pushing"hate the Rooskies" on social media - I guarantee you that if they were russian they'd be 24 carat goyda goyda Putinist arseholes.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I have a sneaky feeling that a big part of Ukraine's motivation for the Big Push in Kherson is to cut off the Zaporizhzhia pocket and sort out the nuclear power station there.
Which will be an...interesting engagement, although so far Ukraine seems to be adopting a battle strategy (unlike the Russians) that doesn't involve bombing everything flat before they get there, which will be nice in the case of nuclear power stations. Cut them off and starve them out. Or prompt a total collapse.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Thread by @YudinGreg on Thread Reader App
@YudinGreg: There will probably appear very soon some poll numbers suggesting that Russians are incredibly enthusiastic about annexation. This was the case in 2014 with annexation of Crimea: on the Russian territory...…
threadreaderapp.com
A thread by sociologist Greg Yudin about polling in Russia
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Even if it's 100 times as big as conventional bombs that Russia has been using so far ... I'm sure that many more than 100 such bombs have already been used. In other words : 100 conventional bombs killing 1000 people = no retaliation but 1 nuclear bomb killing 1000 people = retaliation doesn't add up. A couple of "tactical nukes" might cause a great deal of suffering and destruction but (sadly) probably a drop in the ocean compared to what's happened already.
So it seems to me that it's more about a general fear of using anything nuclear - no doubt driven by biggest fear which is that a large nuclear weapon could suddenly be used well outside the region currently directly affected by war. The red line is drawn out of concern about implications for people outside of Ukraine, and it's not really got anything to do with suffering caused in Ukraine.
Maybe there is an argument about trying to limit the scale/speed of destruction, that larger weapons allow. But then that's not really compatible with supporting the supply of ever larger and more powerful (conventional) weapons to Ukraine.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
OK, so the thing is that a tactical nuclear bomb is comparable in power to a quantity of conventional weapons, so there's a kind of overlap. But it's at the bottom end of the range in terms of nuclear destructive power. Whether rightly or wrongly (I think "rightly"), the world seems to be operating on the assumption that moving to nuclear weapons represents some kind of step change/paradigm shift, opening the door to larger and larger weapons.
There has to be a red line somewhere, and even if it's not terribly meaningful operationally, drawing that red line at the point that an aggressor starts using nuclear weapons, no matter how small, seems to make sense. If nothing else, then psychologically.
There are other red lines - it's already a war crime to deliberately target civilians/civilian infrastructure, but that seems to be a line that is easily crossed, and hasn't become a trigger for some kind of step change in response. That'd have been a more meaningful red line, but it's too late now. As ever, this isn't so much about the practicalities as it is about politics and psychology.
strung out
💩 🤣 🍆 💦 🧐 👻 🐝 🐈⬛
Kherson doesn't cut off Zaporizhzhia/Enerhodar. Or at least, not the bit of Kherson they're likely to retake anytime soon.
Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
precedent
noun
/ˈprɛsɪd(ə)nt/
- an earlier event or action that is regarded as an example or guide to be considered in subsequent similar circumstances.
If the Kremlin decide it's okay to use a 0.5Kt nuclear bomb or two - no big deal, not that much radiation, doesn't kill as many people or do much more damage than a month long artillery barrage, what's the big deal? - and there's no big outrage, no consequences, then a precedent is set that it's okay to use 'small' nuclear bombs. That red line has been erased.
And if it's okay to use a couple of 0.5Kt nukes, why not a 1Kt nuke? Or two, or three? Or bigger or more?
It's that kind of incremental increase in destructive power that led from blokes dropping hand-held bombs out of bi-planes to specially designed bomber planes to mass bombings to creating deliberate firestorms which set the precedent for the US to drop nuclear bombs on Japan - after all they weren't really more destructive than the Tokyo firestorm, were they?
And once it's okay to start flinging nukes about we're really in a bad fucking place as a civilisation.
But I'm sure you know that really, don't you?
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
It's not really Kherson itself, though, is it? The attack they're making at the moment is more to the north-east of Kherson, between that place and Beryslav.
Or maybe I'm reading far too much into it, and the goal is simply to collapse that pocket, in the hope that it's enough to trigger further overall collapses in Russian morale.
Given that the Ukrainians seem to be implementing quite a shrewd operational plan, I guess we won't really know until they do it - much as most of us didn't see the Kharkiv offensive coming while they were banging the "Kherson or bust" drum in August.
ETA: I don't know what Ukraine's capabilities are right now, but I wonder if there's a possibility of a third front - perhaps a drive south towards Mariupol to split the occupied south into two? I know that got speculated about when the Kherson offensive began.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
It strikes me that, whenever it comes, a liberation of Mariupol is going to be an extremely symbolic step, albeit one with likely deeply unpleasant revelations.
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