RESIGNED PEOPLE: – The average Russian knows that the system they live in is corrupt, that responsibilities are unclear and clouded, that both the space for expression and the legal system give them few resources to correct the regime they live under, writes Roy Jacobsen. Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP / NTB
Since I read Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy as a 16-year-old, I have been ridden with a fascination for Russia, culture and people.
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This is a chronicle. The chronicle expresses the writer’s attitude. You can submit chronicles and debate posts to debatt@vg.no.
ROY JACOBSEN, author and active in the organization “Free Ukraine”
Photo: Frode Hansen / VG
I have traveled there countless times and have friends and colleagues there, Russia has become an important reference for me.
Two years ago I heard a central analyst here in the West call Russia the world’s most dangerous country.
Why?
Not everyone immediately realizes that a country’s autocratic regime does not necessarily represent the same regime’s people.
But the Russian people have not been through the Reformation and Enlightenment, with all that the reform movements have meant to define the individual as free and inviolable, with responsibility for his own actions; the Russians have never experienced participating in free, democratic elections, they have learned to lie when going to the dentist, buying a car or trying to enroll their children in a decent school.
The average Russian knows that the system they live in is corrupt, that responsibilities are unclear and clouded, that both the space for expression and the legal system give them few resources to correct the regime they live under.
A Russian translator close to me said to his daughters when they enjoyed going out in Moscow in their teens: “If something happens, no matter what, by all means don’t call the police, call me.”
And this is not new; it was like that under the Tsar, it was like that under Stalin, and it is like that under Putin. Commoner and commoner are not free, responsible legal subjects, but the prince’s property, a property that the prince – whether his name is Alexander, Stalin or Putin – can bless, privilege or send to death on a battlefield at his own discretion, without being held accountable close questions from mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, as would have happened to a far greater extent in the West.
This is Russia’s profound silence. In few places is xenophobia more widespread, and in few places is it easier to play on for autocretans.
ELSEWHERE: Unlike Russia, Ukraine has a more integrated history with the West, through its complicated entanglements with Lithuania, Poland and Austria-Hungary. To a greater extent, the country has absorbed impulses from the Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment – about the rights of the individual, writes Roy Jacobsen. The picture is from Kyiv in June this year. Photo: Kyrre Lien / VG
Ukraine has a long and shared history with Russia, and has been called a nation of brothers – but by all means do not use this term today. After Butsja, Itzium and Marioupol, the hatred could not have been hotter.
Unlike Russia, Ukraine has a more integrated history with the West, through its complicated relationship with Lithuania, Poland and Austria-Hungary.
To a greater extent, the country has absorbed impulses from the Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment – about the rights of the individual. No one who visits the country today will be in any doubt that they are not in Russia, but in a different and far more European reality.
Ukraine, like Russia (and the other Warsaw Pact countries), has struggled with the corrupt legacy from the Soviet era, but has democratically elected a leadership that wants to move the country in a western-liberal direction.
Also while the war is going on. The fight against corruption is now underway. During the war. The settlement is not only about liberation, but is also a war of civilizations, not unlike the one republicans, socialists and anarchists fought against Franco in Spain in the thirties, but which they then lost.
Ukraine cannot lose.
Parts of the left in the West have, in my opinion, reacted instinctively rather than analytically to the full-scale invasion of 24.2.22, and in their notorious NATO resistance have depressingly chosen to “understand” Franco, i.e. Putin, instead of closing ranks against fascism, something that has led to both passivity and the most outlandish intellectual excesses, also here on the mountain, when, for example, awarding Fritt Ord’s prize to very special voices.
But neither can the liberal center and the right in the West, in my opinion, be said to have kept their path clean.
The responsible leadership of NATO and various governments in the US and Europe have chosen to allow themselves to be terrorized by their own anxiety about nuclear escalation – and have perhaps also too much scolded the unpredictable, which has always played a role in Russian warfare; in Russian military history, both the absurd and the ruthless and messianic brutalism have at times confused the opponent, now and then even to Russia’s favor on the battlefield.
AUTHORITARIAN CULTURE: – Private men and women are not free, responsible legal subjects, but the prince’s property, a property which the prince – whether his name is Alexander, Stalin or Putin – can bless, privilege or send to death on a battlefield at his own discretion, writes Roy Jacobsen . Photo: Alexei Nikolsky/AP
I think the West is making a big mistake by bowing to both the nuclear threats and the historical wisdom about Russian uniqueness. The US and the NATO countries have, with their stumbling hesitation – lately called “incrementalism» of critical voices – left to Ukrainians to fight an offensive that no NATO country would even undertake, an offensive without adequate air and artillery support, completely contrary to every modern doctrine.
In addition, several media and so-called analysts here in the West manage to be impatient with the toils of the Ukrainian heroes on the battlefield. The summer offensive is going too slowly, says the impatient corner of the sofa and the hesitant donor side.
The least NATO can do is deliver what Ukraine needs in terms of weapons, as soon as possible, preferably yesterday. It is the only thing that can save lives, it is the only thing that can ensure Ukraine’s peace and freedom.
It is the only thing that can save the West’s integrity and security.
And what can we civilians contribute? A lot. Each of us can contribute in a small and big way, in a way that also concerns all of us who enjoy the privilege of living in a far from perfect, but free world.
Ukrainians are grateful for all the support they can get.
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Published: 15.07.23 at 09:15
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2023-07-15 07:15:13
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