Writing in The Nation, Jared McBride raises some important questions about the uses of (and control over) history in wartime Ukraine.
Marci Shore’s “Reading Tony Judt in Wartime Ukraine” indirectly, but provocatively, answers them.
Andrei Portnov’s “On Decommunization, Identity, and Legislating History, from a Slightly Different Angle” provides a balanced perspective on the same issues.
Links to various articles relevant to the topics explored on this blog (I may add to this list, so please check back periodically):
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/17/how-we-know-russia-shot-down-mh17.html
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/07/13/open-source-information-reveals-pro-kremlin-web-campaign/
http://voxukraine.org/2014/10/01/trust-and-prejudice/
http://culture.lb.ua/news/2015/05/08/304258_filosofi_tsitiruet_putin_.html
https://www.opendemocracy.net/denis-gorbach/struggle-for-progressive-politics-in-ukraine
http://krytyka.com/en/articles/country-war-love-excerpts-donetsk-diary
http://rbth.com/opinion/2015/02/05/the_real_leviathan_43475.html
David Marples provides an astute critique of the new parliamentary law “Concerning the legal status and commemorating the memory of the fighters for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century,” here.
This statement from December, a response by Ukrainian independent left groups to some western leftists’ (perceived) support for Russian aggression against Ukraine, deserves to be reprinted, as the attitudes it targets continue in some places.
The New York Times offers a history in maps of the Ukraine crisis, here.
Rory McFinn offers a handy set of guidelines for distinguishing Ukraine crisis commentators who don’t know much about Ukraine from those who do, here.
in “Peering Through the Fog of War,” Observer Ukraine’s Marco Bojcun provides another solid analysis of the current situation of unannounced war between Russia and Ukraine.
An excerpt:
“If on the one side we heard the apologists of the Kremlin insisting all this is just a Ukrainian civil war without Russian state intervention, from the other side we have had yet another kind of illusory and hopeful thinking: that the Ukrainian government can win the war in the east militarily, that with just a little more firepower the separatists can be defeated. And Russia would have to accept that fact and back off. The illusion in this line of thinking is twofold: first, that for Russia the goals of the war are limited to the subordination of Ukraine; and second, that the outcome of this war will be decided by the balance of brute force on the front.”
An Olympics-scale performance staged on August 9 in the Crimean military port of Sevastopol depicted the official Russian version of Ukraine’s Maidan revolution — complete with huge dancing human swastikas, lynchings, burnings, firings of Kalashnikovs, and symbols depicting the US (dollar signs, eagles, the Eye of Providence), the Right Sector, and the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics.”
Ostensibly organized by Russian biker club “Night Wolves” (Ночные волки) but clearly with a massive budget, the performance was broadcast nationally on the Rossiya-2 (Russia 2) state television network. Rather like Cirque du Soleil staging some Al-Qaedaesque millenarian nightmare, and bringing to mind Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, it is a disturbing example of what happens when cultural institutions are harnessed in the name of wartime propaganda.
Mat Babiak, editor of the Euromaidan Press web site, provides a detailed analysis (with numerous still photos) here. The original show in its entirety can be viewed on Rossiya-2. The web site for the “Triumphant Bike Show,” which began in Moscow and ended in Sevastopol, is here. For some images of the bikers themselves, see Google’s image database.
While the comments on the Euromaidan site reflect the shock, dismay, and befuddlement of Ukrainian viewers, those on the Russian Twitter feed express the delight of many Russian “patriotic” viewers.
The Center for Society Research has released its extensive report analyzing protests taking place in Ukraine between November 21 of last year and February 23, 2014. The report, according to its authors,
“is the first attempt to analyze Maidan based on the results of systematic research on protests, repressions and concessions of protesters in Ukraine.”
It appears that conservative groups — including the self-proclaimed media “watchdog” Accuracy in Media (AIM) — are now using Russia to try to discredit western environmentalist’ opposition to fracked natural gas and shale oil production.
See AIM director Cliff Kincaid’s article “Moscow Mobilizes its American Agents.”