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Friday, June 30, 2006

Bursting a Bubble I: The Mythology of Russian Courage

A craven soldier is sitting in foxhole hiding, while his comrades charge the enemy. Suddenly, his fierce commander spies him, and points his revolver: "Get out of that trench now and charge the enemy or I'll shoot you a hundred times, and only the 100th shot will kill you," he roars with indescriblable venom. More terrified of the commander than the enemy, the soldier obeys.

Is the solider a brave man because he charges the enemy? Nobody would say so.

Yet, people often attribute bravery to Russians who fought against Germans. Russians, in the most craven, cowardly manner imaginable, sold out their allies to the Germans in hopes of carving up the spoils of Germany's victory, only to find themselves the victims of German aggression. Then, they fought against German invaders because their own crazed government ordered them to do so, at gunpoint, a government Russians found far more terrifying than any foreign enemy.

There is not one single instance in all of Russian history of Russians standing up to their own government in order to interrupt one of its legion of atrocities. The Bolshevik Revolution was nothing more than a naked power grab, one which involved only a thin sliver of the actual population (the vast majority of Russians were never members of the Communist Party), and the same is true of the "revolution" that brought Boris Yeltsin to power. Russians said they hated Yeltsin, but when he told them to elect Vladimir Putin, they did so unhesitatingly, like sheep. Baa-baa-baaaaaad sheep.

Russians didn't lift a finger to protect Pushkin or Dostoevsky or Solzhenitisn when they were persecuted by the regime, even though Russians lionized each of them as great Russian heroes. Nobody like Mary Wolstonecraft or Martin Luther King or Mohandas Ghandi has ever emerged in Russia, although Russia is the one place where such a person is needed most. There is no significant anti-nuclear movement in Russia, no significant anti-racism movement, no significant movement of any kind challenging the stasis of the regime. The only time Russians gather to make significant protests is when foreigners dare to oppose the policies of their regime.

Now, one could certainly argue that it is nothing but common sense for Russians (or anybody else) to avoid confrontation with the crazed, dictatorial, homicidal Kremlin. There is much to be said for self-preservation.

But why must Russians propagate such an absurd mythology of bravery and heroism for their country, which is uniquely distinguished by the total lack of those virtues, if so they are? Russians seem to display an almost pathological need to think of themselves as courageous, combined with an equally-if-not-more pathological inability to actually display courage.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are utterly pathetic. You must get all excited when you think about the millions of Russians that died at the hands of the Nazi invaders. The same Nazis that the Americans took two years to get round to declaring war on. It is nothing short of sickening to see how low your bigotry can plunge.

La Russophobe said...

REITH: It's you who are pathetic. You don't give one single exampmle of courage by Russians, proving how correct the theme of this post is. It's nothing short of sickening to see how low your bigotry and lack of scholarship or standards can plunge.

It's sad when people get killed, but it doesn't make you courageous. Pity and admiration are not the same.

Stalin killed far more Russians than Hitler, but Russians didn't resist Stalin one little bit. Russians have hatred of foreigners, to be sure, but not bravery. If they had bravery they wouldn't be where they are today, now would they?

You Reith could be murdered at any moment, but that woudln't make you anything more than the craven coward you are. Given that you wouldn't know courage if it bit off your face, it's not suprising that you can't respond intelligently to this post, much less with evidence.

Anonymous said...

It is actually quite interesting to see quite how your perverse logic works. You make a ridiculous blanket statement, that would itself necessitate a far greater burden of proof than stating the opposite, but then you demand your interlocutor provide evidence. You claim that nobody resisted Stalin, which is patent ahistorical bullcrap. What exactly do you think that the Great Terror was all about then? DO you imagine the gulags were gathering points for Stalin fan clubs? Only a sickened mind could overlook the personal bravery of mothers and grandparents fighting to protect their families in the Second World War. Many of the heroes of the war were ordinairy citizens who fought a desperate battle for survival. It is especially idiotic that the observations come from the U.S., a country that bawls and bawls the first time anybody properly attacks them on their soil. The Americans go on and on and on about their own bravery in the face of attack, as if the rest of us haven't already known what it was like. You hardly know me personally to make your childish and petulant assertions of my supposed cowardice, but it is evident that you wear your vicious and brutish bigotry on your sleeve. You manifest your supposed courage by anonymously smearing an entire nation while fakely posing as a sympathetic party. For heaven's sake, you aren't even consistent enough to hate properly. You ignorantly savage the oppressed and the oppressors in equal measure. All your statments are ridicule incarnate, but you want me to give you the proof of it. Such proof can be provided easily by reading any history of the second world war in Russia, among other things. I fear that for you, though, the only real answers can be found in the services of a well-qualified and highly patient psychoanalyst.

La Russophobe said...

REITH: It's typical Russophile gibberish you are spewing.

Russia is a cowardly, craven nation. It has some brave people in it, but many of them end up leaving the country.

If you want to debate whether America is a brave nation or not, you need to find a blog about America. I don't know what sort of words you need to hear to understand that the purpose of this blog IS NOT TO DISCUSS AMERICA but to DISCUSS RUSSIA. It's the classic tactic of the Russophile apologist to talk about other countries when Russia's faults are raised. It won't work here. Give it up. It's not excuse for REITH's murders that Stalin also committed murders. In REITHLAND maybe, but not in the real world.

But just out of idle curiosity, please state the date in history when Russians rose up against Stalin the way the Americans rose up against the British at the Boston Tea Party.

Anonymous said...

OK, if you state the date that British rule was anywhere near as all-encompassing or murderous as the Georgian's.

That's "the Georgian's," not the "Georgians," for the sake of the limp-brained crew at LR.

La Russophobe said...

ANONYMOUS: You have such a puny little mind. Stalin didn't start out as Stalin on day #1, he started out as something much less. Cowardly Russians allowed him to consolidate his power and become an "all-encompassing" demon, just as they are doing with Putin right now. There was a time when Russians could easily have deposed Stalin, but they were to pusilanimous to try.

You ought to read sometime about Ghandi to find out what real courage is. His unarmed followers walked into baseball bats and gunfire to make their nation free. Next to them, Russians can only cower in abject shame.

Mind you, nobody is saying Russians have to be brave. But if they aren't, they have no right to pretend to be.

Anonymous said...

I am sure that half-witted LR considers brave the European nations (hope you do you research to dsicover how many countries were occupied) who surrendered to Nazis without much fight and were waiting for cowardly Russians to save them.. And of course it was the Americans who won the WWII, that's what they teach them in the mental institution LR is at.

La Russophobe said...

ANONYMOUS: I don't know how you could possibly be sure of that, since you didn't ask La Russophobe what she thinks about Europeans and, in the typical manner of an ANONYMOUS Russophile coward, you propagandize and put words in her mouth.

What's more, in case your tiny little Russophile brain prevents you from understanding it, this blog is about RUSSIA not EUROPE. If you want to read comments about EUROPE, we suggest you visit a blog ABOUT EUROPE.

In the typical manner of a Russophile idiot, you respond to criticism of Russia not by pointing to any factual error in the criticism but by claiming that other countries also have vices. That kind of "thinking" destroyed the USSR and will destroy Russia too. The fact that ANOTHER man commits a murder does not excuse YOU from doing so, except maybe in the bizzaroland that is Russia.

Anonymous said...

You idiot, don't stop taking your pills, cause you sure do need them. I am NOT a Russophile to start with. I just can't stand people bullshitting and presenting this bullshit as a fact. I also can't stand people who spend a lot their time on spreading their little pathetic hatred on lots of other people. You can't even understand the reason why I brought up Europe as an example. Well OK, for mentally challenged I will explain. Sane people call s/o a coward when people around this person behave differently and display some courage, etc. This clearly is NOT the case with the Russians and their role in the WWII. I found out that you are from the US? R U by any chance of Russian descent? Cause such blind hatred towards this country is usually an atribute of some Russian immigrants (not at all of all of them, I have to stress out).

La Russophobe said...

You have not pointed to any factual error in the post, much less offered any citation to other facts to support your bizarre claims. Therefore, we stand by our post.