I stand amazed at the torrent of words since I paid up to subscribe this week. But can I get a copy-edited version of the last paragraph? I really want to understand your concluding point on this, because (as an expat American in NZ) I'm completely on board, I think:
"Show me who I talk to say that I greatly understate the role that bribes and videos play in the construction of the pro-Muscovite opposition to North Atlantic civilization. Perhaps. Perhaps I am not barking up the wrong tree as a worry the question of how conceptual frameworks are much less important than performatively assuming an oppositional stance."
James: USSR could have participated in the Marshal Plan if it had chosen todo so. The benefit to Russia from just becoming a normal EU country (hopefully w/o the Euro) post war would be huge
When reading your book I was often reminded of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and “The Vital Center.” According to Schlesinger, “there are important differences between Communism and fascism, which one must understand if one is to cope with each effectively. But, from one viewpoint, the similarities are vastly more overpowering and significant than the differences.”
Left and right are such an easy shorthand that we reach for the terms even when they obscure meaning. Schlesinger preferred to see these extremes as existing on a circle, with the fascists and communists next to each other and the one side and the rest of us on the other.
We saw this in the last French elections, with both the left and right parties being Putin apologists. I find this disturbing. Schlesinger believed that “the similarities result, of course, from the fact that both faiths arose in response to the same frustrations; they bear the imprint of the same defects and failures of free society. Both have displaced the ‘anxious man’ with the ‘totalitarian man.” Both exploit the mystique of revolution, basing themselves on the deep popular disgust with vested inequalities.”
Somewhere I recall you writing that inequality had become a “first order problem” I believe that is true and that we should avoid anything that obscures the problem.
Thank you for your book. It added an important piece to my worldview.
I do not much care for your use of the term "actually existing socialism". When Brezhnev coined it, he intended it for propagandist purposes to justify a turn away from the promise of the future toward the worship of an idealized past. I suppose your intent is to subvert Brezhnev's usage, and throw his words back in his face; but I do not think that is how you are generally read.
As for Jäger, are you sure he is making a leftist argument? Or is it a German one? Most of his arguments are conservative economic points. Timothy Snyder has noted that after WWII, Germany and the USSR collaborated to concoct a fairy tale, in which the USSR's initial alliance with Germany, without which the war was unlikely to have been possible, was erased from memory. The USSR would be cast as both victim and victor - nice! But Germany would also get something from the arrangement: it would be the sole villain, fortunate to have been defeated by the USSR. Henceforth it would be barred from playing any important role in global politics, and stick to its economic knitting. Deutschland as Nederland writ large.
In this fairy tale, it was necessary to write Ukraine out of the picture - Ukraine, which was not only the location where the war was fought but who had supplied a disproportionate number of the Red Army soldiers that defeated Germany. More citizens of the Ukrainian SSR than of the Russian SSR died during WWII, but of course Stalin gave Russia all the credit. So it is that the persistent existence of Ukraine is as much an inconvenience for Germany's story about itself as for Russia. But the underlying reality is that Deutschland is simply *too* large to be Nederland; its retreat from the world stage constitutes and abdication of responsibility.
I stand amazed at the torrent of words since I paid up to subscribe this week. But can I get a copy-edited version of the last paragraph? I really want to understand your concluding point on this, because (as an expat American in NZ) I'm completely on board, I think:
"Show me who I talk to say that I greatly understate the role that bribes and videos play in the construction of the pro-Muscovite opposition to North Atlantic civilization. Perhaps. Perhaps I am not barking up the wrong tree as a worry the question of how conceptual frameworks are much less important than performatively assuming an oppositional stance."
Danke, gracias, grazie, and nga mihi...
James: USSR could have participated in the Marshal Plan if it had chosen todo so. The benefit to Russia from just becoming a normal EU country (hopefully w/o the Euro) post war would be huge
When reading your book I was often reminded of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and “The Vital Center.” According to Schlesinger, “there are important differences between Communism and fascism, which one must understand if one is to cope with each effectively. But, from one viewpoint, the similarities are vastly more overpowering and significant than the differences.”
Left and right are such an easy shorthand that we reach for the terms even when they obscure meaning. Schlesinger preferred to see these extremes as existing on a circle, with the fascists and communists next to each other and the one side and the rest of us on the other.
We saw this in the last French elections, with both the left and right parties being Putin apologists. I find this disturbing. Schlesinger believed that “the similarities result, of course, from the fact that both faiths arose in response to the same frustrations; they bear the imprint of the same defects and failures of free society. Both have displaced the ‘anxious man’ with the ‘totalitarian man.” Both exploit the mystique of revolution, basing themselves on the deep popular disgust with vested inequalities.”
Somewhere I recall you writing that inequality had become a “first order problem” I believe that is true and that we should avoid anything that obscures the problem.
Thank you for your book. It added an important piece to my worldview.
I do not much care for your use of the term "actually existing socialism". When Brezhnev coined it, he intended it for propagandist purposes to justify a turn away from the promise of the future toward the worship of an idealized past. I suppose your intent is to subvert Brezhnev's usage, and throw his words back in his face; but I do not think that is how you are generally read.
As for Jäger, are you sure he is making a leftist argument? Or is it a German one? Most of his arguments are conservative economic points. Timothy Snyder has noted that after WWII, Germany and the USSR collaborated to concoct a fairy tale, in which the USSR's initial alliance with Germany, without which the war was unlikely to have been possible, was erased from memory. The USSR would be cast as both victim and victor - nice! But Germany would also get something from the arrangement: it would be the sole villain, fortunate to have been defeated by the USSR. Henceforth it would be barred from playing any important role in global politics, and stick to its economic knitting. Deutschland as Nederland writ large.
In this fairy tale, it was necessary to write Ukraine out of the picture - Ukraine, which was not only the location where the war was fought but who had supplied a disproportionate number of the Red Army soldiers that defeated Germany. More citizens of the Ukrainian SSR than of the Russian SSR died during WWII, but of course Stalin gave Russia all the credit. So it is that the persistent existence of Ukraine is as much an inconvenience for Germany's story about itself as for Russia. But the underlying reality is that Deutschland is simply *too* large to be Nederland; its retreat from the world stage constitutes and abdication of responsibility.
LuceL: Two questions.
1) Is it possible that DeSantis is just an opportunist and does not really believe any of this crazy stuff?
2) Does it matter?