The subject of passion arose recently in this electronic space, and it sprang loose a quote that I have yet to come to grips with, almost twenty years after encountering it as an epigraph to a book by Don Robertson:
Passions are not natural to mankind; they are always exceptions or excrescences. The ideal, genuine man is calm in joy and calm in pain and sorrow. Passions must quickly pass or else they must be driven out.
Said by Johannes Brahms, in a letter dated 17 October 1857.
Today is the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev‘s historic “secret speech” at the 20th Communist Party Congress in which he denounced Stalin and his brutal ways. The American historian William Taubman notes the “unintended consequences” of the speech: Khrushchev’s goal was to “to save Communism, not to destroy it” (a generation later, Mikhail Gorbachev would try the same trick):
By cleansing it of the Stalinist stain, he wanted to re-legitimize it in the eyes of people not just in the Soviet sphere but around the globe. Yet within weeks after the secret speech, at Communist Party meetings called to discuss it, criticism of Stalin rippled way beyond Khrushchev’s, including indictments not just of Stalin himself but of the Soviet system that spawned him. Others sprang to Stalin’s defense, especially in his native Georgia, where at least 20 pro-Stalin demonstrators were killed in clashes with the police.
In Eastern Europe, the unintended consequences of Khrushchev’s speech were even more shattering. A huge strike in the Polish city of Poznan in June was put down at a cost of at least 53 dead and hundreds wounded. Then, of course, the revolution in Hungary in October was smashed by Soviet forces, leaving more than 20,000 Hungarians dead.
Of course, “the ‘secret speech’ was part of a reform program that included many worthy achievements that Khrushchev did indeed intend,” as Taubman notes:
He released and rehabilitated millions of Stalin’s victims. He allowed what became known as “the thaw,” with its partial rebirth of Russian culture. He revivified Soviet agriculture, which Stalin had ruined, and started a boom in housing construction that permitted hundreds of thousands to move out of overcrowded communal apartments.
Literaturnaya Gazeta takes a critical look at the speech and its place in Russian history under the general rubric “The 20th Congress Masquerade: Legends and Myths of the Famous Party Forum.” Several authors weigh in:
An online forum is linked to each of these articles, so it may take a while to digest it all …
According to the New York Times, if you want to have fun at the 2006 Winter Olympics, hang out with the Russians.
Outside the Russia House, headquarters for the Russian delegation in Turin, a horde of people gathered at the entryway, looking frozen and distraught.
“Please, I am Russian,” one woman in heavy mascara and skintight jeans pleaded to a security guard late Tuesday night.
But the guard, in his red Russian team jacket, did not budge. The red rope keeping the woman from the hottest party spot at the Turin Games did not fall away.
“Sorry, but everybody says they are Russian,” the security guard said before looking the other way.
The stodgy, gloomy Bolsheviks are gone—Mother Russia is back to her old self.
“We have the best parties because we made Russia House look like our motherland,” said Olga Yudkis, a spokeswoman for the Russian luxury clothing company Bosco di Ciliegi, which sponsors Russia House.
At those parties, which happen nightly, a Russian polka/rock band plays. Borscht is served from huge vats sitting on an outdoor fire. At several bars, vodka drinks are served, some with syrupy black currant juice, others with orange rinds that bartenders set afire before dropping them into a martini glass.
For years, the Russian and Soviet teams were considered the evil empire of the Olympics. Their athletes seemed mass-produced by the Soviet machine. They performed like robots. Their presence loomed.
Now they have turned into a fun-loving group that is a great host.
Anyone who had Russian friends during the Cold War won’t be surprised at this. How they managed to keep the temperature down on their end of the “battle” is beyond me. But the English language plays funny games, doesn’t it?
It’s just as the American figure skater Johnny Weir preached from the moment these Olympics began: no one is cooler than the Russians.
Earlier in the Times article, the Russians were “hot.” C’mon, which is it?
Weir, who finished fifth last week in the men’s figure skating competition, showed up at the Russia House after midnight Tuesday, for his second consecutive night of partying with his favorite comrades.
This time, he wore a beaver-and-python jacket and True Religion jeans, blending in with the other men and women in fur and designer duds. In minutes, he had a leggy Russian woman in stilettos on each of his arms. The trio giggled as they skipped past the hors d’oeuvres.
“These are friends of the lawyer of the richest man in Moscow,” Weir said in passing, as the women tossed their long hair. “These Russians know how to have a good time.”
This all stinks of new money, of arrivistes and shady “entrepreneurs” (many of whom are just old Soviet bureaucrats who were in the right place at the right time to cash in). It’s hard to assess how well-off most Russians are. But it would be hard to find anyone who one wants to go back.
Meanwhile, back at Russia House:
The women interrupt him: “C’mon, Johnny,” one brunette said, in a heavy Russian accent. “We want to dance.”
“Dve minuti!” he yelled out in Russian, telling them to wait two minutes before running off.
Amid the guffaws and sarcasm surrounding the Vice President’s hunting mishap (which, in itself, was far from funny), some commentators and comedians have made the obvious connection between Cheney’s reckless hunting style and his approach to foreign policy. Tom Engelhardt has dug a bit deeper into the quail-hunting episode and has found resonance not only in the current misadventure in Iraq, but in the first Iraq war.
The image of big brave Cheney picking off pathetic little ranch-raised birds reminded Engelhardt of something—the denouement of Desert Storm in 1991:
The final act of this “war” involved an out-and-out slaughter of Iraqi troops (and the wholesale destruction of their vehicles) as they fled Kuwait City on what came to be known as “the highway of death.” American pilots over that highway famously referred to the battle as “a turkey shoot” or as “shooting fish in a barrel,” though (had they been rich enough) they might, even then, have said, “Like quail at the Armstrong ranch.” Later, Desert Storm Commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf would complain that the President had cut off the “turkey shoot” and ended the war too quickly.
When the time came to invade Iraq in 2003, some of the desk-jockey warriors predicted a “cakewalk,” a euphemism designed for delicate souls and network news anchors. What they meant was “turkey shoot.” What they got was something else, but it would behoove us to think about the “hunter mentality” shared by our illustrious leaders. Engelhardt has taken us partway there.
Last Wednesday Moscow News somberly noted the 17th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. In the course of the ten-year war, more than 14,600 Soviet soldiers died and some 50,000 were wounded. Since the US entered Afghanistan in 2001, 276 American soldiers have died. The scope of the US presence in Afghanistan is, of course, different from the Soviet Union’s aspirations there; and it should be kept in mind that much, if not most, of Afghanistan lies outside the control of the central Afghan government. The “war” goes on, as a sort of low-grade fever— “regime propping,” if you will.
It’s the Iraq war that more closely resembles the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan. According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, 2,270 Americans have lost their lives in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003; the number of wounded has reached 16,653. How does one interpret these numbers? One cannot. In an odd change of direction, the Tribune goes on to list vehicle “casualties”: 20 M1 Abrams tanks lost, 50 Bradley fighting vehicles, 250 Humvees, etc. There’s a point to be made, but it’s a dull one. Yes, stuff gets destroyed in war. The Tribune eventually circles back to the human toll (that is to say, the toll on US soldiers), and rightly so:
Equipment can be repaired or replaced. But nothing can replace a father or mother who has been killed in this war, or any war. Nothing can compensate for all the lives shattered when a soldier dies in combat. In Iraq it is estimated that the human toll includes nearly 1,000 spouses who have been left behind, alone, and more than 2,000 children who have lost a parent to the war.
Nor can you repair or replace what has been lost by hundreds of soldiers severely injured by powerful IED blasts and left double or triple amputees, blind or brain damaged, riddled by shrapnel. For them, and those who love them, life suddenly has become an unending struggle.
Remember them.
And remember the 30,000 (est.) Iraqi civilians killed so far. Does anyone know how many have been maimed? Is the ratio of wounds to deaths similar to that for US soldiers (~7:1)? That would be 210,000 Iraqi civilians injured by the war to date. Even if the number is far less, it’s astounding. And if the US strategy continues in the direction of an “air war,” things can only get worse for ordinary Iraqis.
Good grief! I hardly blog at all, and here I’ve been tagged. I’m it. And not the it from the eBay ads, just “it.”
Okay, what the heck. Four of this and four of that—petits fours … pour vous et vous seulement (and you know who vous are).
Four jobs I’ve had:
Four movies I can watch over and over:
Four TV shows I love:
Four highly regarded and recommended TV shows I haven’t seen:
Four places I’ve vacationed:
Four of my favorite dishes:
Four sites I visit daily:
Four places I’d rather be right now:
Four bloggers I’m tagging:
Vladimir Putin has invited Hamas leaders to Moscow, and the world press has dutifully reported the yowling from certain quarters of Israel and from their amen corner abroad (most particularly, in the US government and mainstream American media). As usual, there are voices in Israel that undermine the party line, but one rarely hears them. At the end of an Agence France-Presse report the reader finally stumbles upon this:
“Even if Israel is officially against it, it is not so catastrophic,” Amnon Sella, a professor of international relations at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, told AFP. “It could provide certain benefits for Israel.”
Yossi Beilin, the chairman and veteran dove of the left-wing party Meretz, said there should be no obstacle to talking with Hamas, whether or not it had renounced violence.
“We have no terms for dialogue, but we do have terms for negotiations,” said Beilin, one of the chief architects of the now largely defunct 1993 Oslo autonomy accords.
Justin Raimondo notes the irony in Putin’s Middle East pragmatism:
Putin’s challenge to the U.S. in the Middle East is given strength and credibility by his latest intervention. As the Russians mediate between the Iranians and the West and sell arms to Syria, Putin is emerging as the principal counterweight to American supremacism in the international arena — an ironic and historic reversal of roles. Whereas once it was the Russians who spouted ideological bromides and exported their “revolution” and the West united in resistance, today it is the Russians who are the center of opposition to a self-avowedly “revolutionary” nation with global aspirations.
I’ll know this country has finally grown up when its TV announcers and commentators no longer refer to the US Olympic contingent as Team USA.
A particularly vicious form of hazing had existed in the Soviet army for years. I remember friends in Moscow in the late ’80s desperately trying to get their draft-age son into an American university. It was the dedovshchina (дедовщина) they were worried about, which apparently was getting worse as the Soviet Union devolved into senescence.
I had assumed the problem had abated once the USSR collapsed and a new Russia struggled into existence. Not so. Recently I had begun to see headlines in the Russian press about hazing, but before I had a chance to read the stories, the Los Angeles Times came out with coverage of a particularly horrific incident in Chelyabinsk. The fate of Andrey Sychev has sparked a broad self-examination and calls for deep reform in the armed forces.
Amid the press reports, one can find this letter in Izvestia from a retired US general:
At one time I thought that dedovshchina in the Russian army was a deviation from the norm, that it would disappear after conditions of service improved and the service personnel were better provided for materially. But now I think it’s a problem that’s much more sinister and severe, as confirmed by the recent brutal beating of the soldier Andrey Sychev. I’ll allow myself to break a longstanding rule not to give advice to my Russian colleagues and offer three possible paths to solving the problem.
First, the fact that dedovshchina exists and that other crimes are committed in the military environment must be taken as a lapse in military supervision. All military supervisors, regardless of their official responsibilities, must bear personal responsibility for this.
Second, a special department in the Ministry of Defense must be created whose sole purpose is to investigate possible cases of dedovshchina. Service personnel would be able to turn to specialists in this department if they feel they cannot trust their commanders.
Third, the struggle against dedovshchina would be facilitated by the creation of a professional sergeant rank: instituting such a post would be an investment that would repay itself many times over.
But the main thing is this: eradicating dedovshchina must not be the prerogative of the Ministry of Defense. Dedovshchina is not merely a problem for commanders; it’s a problem for government, for the nation. Parents, teachers, business people—all must understand what becomes of an army weakened by abuse of its soldiers.
—Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan (ret.),
former military attaché at the US embassy in Russia
It would seem reformers have their work cut out for them. From the LA Times story:
“One should understand one very simple thing: Hazing is wild, barbaric, and also the only system of keeping discipline within barrack rooms,” Moscow military analyst Alexander Golts said. “The Russian army simply doesn’t know another system of keeping discipline.
“This hazing at the end of the day is the result of the entire attitude of the army, and the way it fights,” Golts said. “The attitude is that if a soldier is only needed [to live through] one battle, you don’t need a well-educated and well-trained soldier.”
A small sampling of the ongoing coverage (in Russian):
Muslims in many locales are protesting and burning things because of some cartoons printed in a Danish newspaper. Wikipedia describes the origin of the controversy:
The drawings, including a depiction of Muhammad with a bomb inside or under his turban, accompanied an article on self-censorship and freedom of speech. Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, commissioned twelve cartoonists for the project and published the cartoons to highlight the difficulty experienced by Danish writer Kåre Bluitgen in finding artists to illustrate his children’s book about Muhammad. Cartoonists previously approached by Bluitgen were reportedly unwilling to work with him for fear of violent attacks by extremist Muslims.
The question arises: why can’t non-Muslims depict Muhammad visually? It’s not against their religion (if they have one) to draw pictures of this self-proclaimed prophet (or any self-proclaimed [or even proclaimed] prophet). Blasphemy is reserved for the believer. Nonbelievers may irritate the believer; they may undermine the believer’s beliefs; they may even be rude (though one would prefer, of course, they not be). But they cannot, by definition, blaspheme. If a Muslim blasphemes, other Muslims are perfectly within their rights to rip that person’s eyes out. If a Dane, however, does the same thing—sorry, Muslim law doesn’t apply in Denmark.
Okay, but what about depictions of the prophet that are unflattering? In my view, the best course for the believer is to ignore those who criticize or even mock their religious beliefs, since the alternative—addressing the “attack” head-on (and we must always put the word “attack” in quotes when we’re talking about words or pictures)—will almost certainly mar the exquisite psychological nimbus that believers desire so deeply. The idea of violent protests against those who print images of Muhammad as a violent prophet—irony doesn’t come any richer.
That old pain-in-the-ass Christopher Hitchens has argued, in effect, for equal-opportunity mockery of religion. Makes sense to me. Maybe the Danes should’ve run some parodies of Jesus and Moses alongside the Muhammad cartoons: Jesus dressed as a magician, pulling loaves and fishes out of a hat; Moses dropping one tablet of the Fifteen Commandments, looking around and, seeing no one, brushing the shards under a rock; that kind of thing (or worse!). But given the origins of the controversy (see above), one can see why that didn’t happen. Jokes and even slanders about Jesus and other Bible folk have been published for years in the West. My Lord, look at The Life of Brian! I don’t think Eric Idle has suffered a fate like Salman Rushdie’s.
I’m not saying Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to prohibit depictions of Muhammad among themselves. (“Allowed to prohibit”—lovely!) Let everyone construct the society they prefer—if it works for them, God love ’em. I’m just saying: keep your society to yourself, please. (And that goes for us, too.)
