in defence of russia
prompted by scott robinson’s excellent ‘father and son’
link: http://www.redbubble.com/people/resisto/clothing/244877-7-father-and-son
in russia they refer to their country as both ‘the fatherland’ and ‘the motherland’- fatherland in relation to anything military, motherland in relaition to agriculture and education.
in english we refer to patriotism when we refer to justification of military action, and in russia they do the same, except we’ve forgotten that ‘pater’ and ‘father’ mean the same thing in our language.
in russian, not having the whole latin thing going on quite as strong, they just have отец (ahhh-tyets)
the 2nd world war in russia just doesn’t exist. it’s called ‘the great patriotic war’, or ‘the great war of the fatherland’, depending which way you want to read it. means the same thing anyhow.
when considering russian attitude towards war one must remember their history is a little bit harsher than the average empire- statistically they’ve had more home matches than away fixtures, which is ironic considering their ‘threatening’ reputation. vikings first cut their way from the north west, then mongols sort of got all the way to the swedish border (and i think we all know what sort of behaviour they were famous for. (i’ve seen the bones of 12th century monks in piles in catacombs in the ukraine. they spared the women. 3 in a hundred russians are related to genghis khan himself.)
then 1812 and napoleon marched all the fucking way to moscow, and torched it.
and then there was the biggy. the ‘great patriotic war’- i was taken a back too when i learned it wasn’t called ww2 there. i was incensed. where was the repspect to the spitfire and barnes wallace and everythnig. but it was sort of different in russia. those sort of nice little details get lost in all the blood.
a couple of highlights for you.
in the three year leningrad siege, the 3 million population of st. petersburg was reduced to 1.3million. (that’s three long winters at upto -25 degrees without power or food.). 2.7 million dead.
battle of stalingrad, 1.5 million killed in a couple of weeks (okay, including 750,000 germans but you wouldn’t want to clean up, would you)
battle of moscow- 1million soviets died, half a million germans. nazi’s got about 15 km from the city centre and then the weather beat them.
battle of kursk- 2 million men and 6,000 tanks go head to head in the biggest motorized battle that there will probably ever be.
now imagine ‘stalingrad’ was ‘adelaide’ or, or ‘moscow’ was ‘sydney’ etc. they were just normal cities with normal people living normal, happy lives. kindergartens, old people. pretty young girls who’d never been kissed.
and brits go dewy eyed over the blitz (10,000 or so killed), and the fucking americans get hard ons about pearl harbour (about 2,500, and it’s nowhere fucking near america) and their twin fucking towers (3000)?. not a single enemy soldier has ever landed on their shores.
they don’t know what it is like and they have no right to take it to the shores of others.
with this sort of ‘imminent threat’ nailed into the national psyche of russia (victory day is still celebrated proudly, whilst the rest of the world ‘remembers’), is it any wonder the soviets took over the whole of eastern europe (they regard rather that they ‘won’ eastern europe, which is what war is all about i guess) and built up such an enormous arsenal, and continue to do so, so that nobody will ever, ever, ever dare step on their soil again. that is why they have a nuclear deterrant.
and with china on one border. india on another and pretty much the whole of eurasia’s metals and hydrocarbons under their control, they have to. the chinese are already sneaking their border westwards.
why america still pointing missiles at them god only knows, old ways die hard i guess, but then again in god they trust so they must be right.
i think in this context the father of all bombs is there to protect his children. i don’t think it was ever designed with the purpose of actually ever being used. and that’s where russian and american histories are assymetrical. america has shown the world it is willing to use atomic mass-destructive weapons in hostile acts against civilian targets on the other side of the planet. twice.
(footnote- i was really surprised when i learnt all this stuff cos i thought the second world war was all about people with nice moustaches shooting at each other in really far off places for some abstract reason. my grandad was posted to bombay for fucks sake, where he learnt how to do wheelies and mix the perfect gin and tonic. my ex-wife’s dad remembers watching german troops burn all the houses in his village, whilst hiding up a tree. he was five.)
kathleen
what to fucking say…. can you add this to the Art: Action Without Violence group for starter’s please, if you feel it fits….
truth is relative… always… facts are always written in blood…
Lucan Industri...
Corr, lovely, but I can’t be bothered telling you this all the time.
”...twin fucking towers” should spark some reaction I’m sure.
Always good to check the other 5 sides of the coin. Check The Shock Doctrine, it’s like Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing consent’ but with Banksy stencils, if that makes sense. A guide to ‘getting away with mass murder’ sort of thing.
I’m listening to Bodiebot.
mister khan
i am bodiebot.
mister khan
if anyone is interested check out ‘charles taylor’ , former warlord in residence in liberia, on wikipedia, and then choke on your breakfast when you see he went to college in the states,where was arrested for embezelling 1,000,000 of u.s. govt funds headed to liberia into a new york bank accout (quite a student). he then went into voluntary custody ‘for his own protection’ , fearing assasination from the incumbent liberian regime, and then not only broke out of prison, (resourceful student), but escaped the united states all together. a decade later he turns up in monrovia and overthrows the government and installs one of the most bloodthirsdty regimes the continent has ever seen. and it’s quite a continent.
the lawyer who arranged his voluntary custody was a former attorney general (basically one of the 5 most powerful unelected positions in u.s. govt) who later gained notriety for representing milosevic and saddam hussein (i don’t think they picked him personally) in war crimes trials for the u.n. (hmmm)
does the phrase ‘cia operative’ spring to mind…?
Scott Robinson
This was a huge eye-opener for me, I`m ashamed to admit. I guess I didn`t realise how much second hand mis-information I`d absorbed.
But like all good things, this was very inspiring, and I`ve been thinking of a visual way to explain exact what it inspired me to.
mister khan
putin with a hard-on?
Scott Robinson
Ha! Not quite that obvious..
mister khan
regardless of whatever it’s a mighty emotive piece of work you did scott- i was just trying to highlight the fact that sometimes things get a bit lost in translation (imagine how ‘one off the wrist’ turns out in russian). i saw the mixer as well- absolutely stumping stuff. you should link the piece to that and shift a few units.
Scott Robinson
I might have a chat to Jumpy about that, He`s the instigator.
kathleen
i believe Vladimir Putin is possibly the re-incarnation of Vlad Teppes the Impaler… is there anything you can educate me to disparage me from that notion… as you know we only get ‘snap shots’ of personality or action in our media.
cause in that perspective I have grave worries for the mental history of the psyche of a nation… maybe all nations…
you know the story of Vlad the Impaler no doubt… I know Walachia isn’t Russia but I doubt souls worry about border when they descend to a life for the ways and means of greed….
your thoughts?
kathleen
Hello Scott…
mister khan
you know putin has a secreted personal fortune of $40bn (he’s the richest guy in europe), owns 7.5 % of the company that supplies 25% of europe’s gas (gazprom), his wife controls the biggest mobile phone operator in moscow (and all their records, accordingly)- oh, and he has 2 daughters of marriagable age.
mister khan
and the next president of russia, medvedev, is the director of, er, gazprom. how about that for a coincidence.
kathleen
so do you think he could be the impaler returned… power control… old family magic… very unorthodox in feel that patriarchate black magic…
mister khan
he speaks german. maybe he’s katherine the great?
kathleen
:-) got the point… getting lost…
mister khan
why not- it was not just the ‘impalers’ and ‘terribles’ of russian history who were nasty pieces of work- and gender carries no beef when it comes to the dirty business of reincarnation, does it not..?.
kathleen
definitely not… I always think of the wife of Herod in the bible… asking for her sweet little girl to request the gruesome head of John the Baptist on a platter… that was Medusa too… eek…
and then I think of the wife of Milosovich… I believe she was a creep…
behind every evil man there is a supportive of evil woman… they may as well all be newted. not human and therefore do not deserve the magical right of gender… or something…
mister khan
i’ve had a few chats with milosevic’s son- marco- odd chap. lives on the territory where i work, under the protection of the russian constitutional court. ironically, he’s great with kids- spent half an hour trying to teach my son how to swim in the summer.
mad martha, marco’s mum, is not a creep. she was a borderline nutter with a phd in serbian history, with a seriously powerful evil streak responsible for one of the most atrocious wars in living memory..
kathleen
I know how small the world can be…
mad martha, marco’s mum, is not a creep. she was a borderline nutter with a phd in serbian history, with a seriously powerful evil streak responsible for one of the most atrocious wars in living memory..
I don’t get that can you please re-word it for me daftdedness…
mister khan
so slobadan milosevic, a meduim rare soviet style politician happened to be married to the world’s premier authority on serbian ethnic history and the centuries old turf battle with tthe moslem albanian neighbours )it was all about kosovo) like most self-interested historians she is also a raving nationalist with her own particular slant on ‘the truth’. ironically, yugoslavia hadn’t had any ethnic rivalry for close on 50 years thanks to the efforts of gen. tito and socialist philosophy, but that didn’t put mad martha off, who saw the opportunity of exploiting ethnic divides and tensions at a time of social reform, catapulting her releatively obscure and powerless husband into the halls of power, which is where all the money is to be made anyway- so she engineered milosevic’s transformation into the champion of the cause of the serbian orthodox people against their moslem and croatian oppressors, with quite famous results. from what i’ve read milosevic himself was more interestd in what he was having for breakfast than reclaiming the kosovan spiritual motherland from those dirty littel brown hand, whilst mad martha the historian was more interested in dominating not just her husband but the entire region, and quite happy to write the history books too.
Lucan Industri...
And her son taught yours to swim. Lovely.
You’re like some kind of 20th Century Soviet Wikipedia.
mister khan
it’s all that shredded wheat i’ve been eating. high fibre. that’s the secret.
Ange
you’re a fascinating man mister khan, a great writer whether fact or fictional.
good to read you’re keeping healthy re: high fibre…
but i honestly wonder what you do for a living?!
Ange
im enlightened, thank you for the bb mail.
EAWilliams
Educational…I’ve been schooled – I admit, I never paid much attention to the past…but lately it’s been demanding respect. Now I’ve got even more homework to do…
mister khan replied
we aim to please.
STRINGER
TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW MAN…..
YOU SHOULD ENLIGHTEN YOUR FAITHFUL CONGREGATION TO THE AMAZING ATROCITIES OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE.
THE WORLD IS FUCKED IT’S BIASED AND FULL OF HYPOCRITES.
THE WORLD IS NOT A COKE ADD.
THE WORLD WONT WAIT LISTEN OR CARE
THE WORLD IS SUCKING US ALL BACK INTO THE DIRT AND THE FLAMES
THE WORLD IS BEAUTIFUL.
mister khan replied
you’re right as usual, sexy stringer.
Damian
A facinating documant rabbitollah. The scale of the deaths is hard to grasp, more so once translated into a city you know.
mister khan replied
yeah. russian histroy has \it’s moments’. some of stalin’s actions are amazing, and it is sort of hard to get the cranium to stretch round some of the statistics. seperate to the war casualties, stalin managed to kill 20-25 million of his own countrymen over a 20 year period. makes hitler look like a fucking amateur. when he died (he was knocked off), he was just about to instigate he’s latest grand plan, which was, er, (copyright infringing moment) knocking off all the jews. (train loads were already heading towards siberia. when his death was announced, the trains were sent back and the folk- most of them doctors- immediately released).
he had some really great policies, like sentencing prisoners of war, who’d been captured by the germans, to hard-labour-to-death for being traitors, upon their release into russian custody. nice bloke. he also managed to resettle the entire chechen nation to uzbekistan in three days, just by sending in troops and telling them to start walking or be shot.
never trust people with moustaches.