Beautiful excerpt. I've been thinking about the ordinary folks in both countries. I had a couple of Russian exchange students last semester, and keep thinking about how this situation is affecting them, especially the young man. Will have to check out the book.
Attributing Russia's war in Ukraine to Putin and Putin alone obscures the deep roots of the war, and minimizes the pain and suffering caused by Russian imperialism over the centuries. Think of it this way: voting out Trump didn't eliminate white supremacy in America, right? Just as in the US we continue to call on white Americans to acknowledge and confront their own complicity and privilege in structures that perpetuate racism, Russian society must be called on to acknowledge and confront its complicity in structures that perpetuate violence against, and subordination of, its formerly colonized territories, its indigenous peoples, and other religious and ethnic minorities.
To keep the comment on the topic of wheat, the 1932-1933 collectivization campaign mentioned in the excerpt is internationally recognized as Holodomor, a genocide against the Ukrainian people. (Even in other areas of the USSR that experienced famines, Ukrainians were disproportionately affected.) Coincidentally, Holodomor Recognition Day falls this Saturday, November 26th.
Ilyana - Yes, the truth is more nuanced than I expressed it here, but my point was that *from the outside*, it is all too easy to conflate the actions of a government with the people underneath it. I agree with you, but I also think it is necessary to resist the tendency to lump those in power with the general population who surely do not all support their government's actions unilaterally. (As a descendant of survivors of the Armenian genocide, I have to practice this regularly when the subject of Turkey arises.)
Beautiful excerpt. I've been thinking about the ordinary folks in both countries. I had a couple of Russian exchange students last semester, and keep thinking about how this situation is affecting them, especially the young man. Will have to check out the book.
Attributing Russia's war in Ukraine to Putin and Putin alone obscures the deep roots of the war, and minimizes the pain and suffering caused by Russian imperialism over the centuries. Think of it this way: voting out Trump didn't eliminate white supremacy in America, right? Just as in the US we continue to call on white Americans to acknowledge and confront their own complicity and privilege in structures that perpetuate racism, Russian society must be called on to acknowledge and confront its complicity in structures that perpetuate violence against, and subordination of, its formerly colonized territories, its indigenous peoples, and other religious and ethnic minorities.
To keep the comment on the topic of wheat, the 1932-1933 collectivization campaign mentioned in the excerpt is internationally recognized as Holodomor, a genocide against the Ukrainian people. (Even in other areas of the USSR that experienced famines, Ukrainians were disproportionately affected.) Coincidentally, Holodomor Recognition Day falls this Saturday, November 26th.
Ilyana - Yes, the truth is more nuanced than I expressed it here, but my point was that *from the outside*, it is all too easy to conflate the actions of a government with the people underneath it. I agree with you, but I also think it is necessary to resist the tendency to lump those in power with the general population who surely do not all support their government's actions unilaterally. (As a descendant of survivors of the Armenian genocide, I have to practice this regularly when the subject of Turkey arises.)