Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
More from Peter Pomerantsev’s Ukrains’ka Pravda interview (his text, translated by me, is in blue). I think he cuts to the heart of the problem but I detest the idea of a “global BBC” financed by a group of governments. There…
Peter Pomerantsev speaking to Ukrains’ka Pravda. Excerpt One (dark blue, translation mine), no comment for now: It’s not that the Kremlin has built a political system around Baudrillard’s ideas. Russia arrived at postmodernism via post-Soviet cynicism. It followed its own…
From the judgment of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg [pdf], p. 194: It was contended before the Tribunal that the annexation of Austria was justified by the strong desire expressed in many quarters for the union of Austria and…
Last weekend, on the first anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Russian TV aired a propaganda “documentary” called Krym: vozvraschenie na rodinu, which can be translated as Crimea: Homecoming or literally Crimea: The Return to Motherland. Let’s do a simple…
Last week, The Interpreter ran a story by Paul Goble that emphasized the importance of the urban-rural divide for understanding today’s Ukraine. The story was largely based on an interview with Sergey Koshman, a coordinator of We Are Europeans, a Ukrainan civil movement, published…
I’m not going to watch that documentary but there seems to be little discrepancy over its content between the state-controlled and independent media and from what I have read so far, I believe this title and subtitle, by the Ukrainian UNIAN, area…
Professor Ronald Beiner of the University of Toronto discusses Alexander Dugin’s dangerousness in a guest post at Crooked Timber. I am reposting my comment, slightly edited. I have always thought of Dugin as a buffoon and charlatan not worth discussing…
In The Guardian, Elena Savchuk on female nurses and fighters with the Ukrainian volunteer battalion Aidar. My two cents in the comments, edited: The author reports that fighters of the Aidar battalion “have a reputation for fierce nationalism” and writes…
“Never has so much been written about a speech that hasn’t been given,” said Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu of his address to US Congress scheduled for today. True: it’s been on the front pages for weeks. Some argue that Netanyahu…
Kommersant‘s February dispatches from Donbass mentioned “Buryats,” apparently Russian servicemen from the republic of Buryatia. Yesterday, Novaya Gazeta published an interview with a young man, apparently an ethnic Buryat from Chita, wounded in a tank fight against the Ukrainian army.…
The Boris Nemtsov memorial march, which has recently ended in Moscow, was impressively attended. Despite the short notice and the bleak weather, an unbelievably large number of people took part. It’s only my feeling at this point but estimates are already being released from various quarters. Two…
Boris Nemtsov was assassinated last night in Moscow, on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge near the Kremlin. Nemtsov was the only Russian opposition leader who had held both a major elected public office, as governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region (appointed 1991, elected 1995,…