Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Notes from a Funeral

Today I received the following report from Club Orlov's special Kiev correspondent, Yu Shan:
Yesterday I was at a funeral. The crowd was well over 500, much more than I originally thought would be possible. It was a deeply emotional event. The man to whom everyone bid farewell was Oles' Buzina, a writer, historian, free thinker, wacky conversationalist, warm friend, a man who identified deeply with both the complex yet incomplete Ukrainian culture and with the multifaceted entity of eastern Slavic Orthodox Russian civilization, a man who would not take sides easily, and would adhere to his lone stand even when death threats started to arrive at his doorstep on a weekly basis.

The event was all over the Russian language news. But there was precisely zero coverage of it in the English-language news. He was murdered at 1:25, Thursday, April 16. There were two masked men waiting for him in front of his house. Five shots were fired, and that was that. It was the third such hit in a span of four days.

At the funeral there were a few reporters from Russia who came specifically for this event. They were polite and talkative. But I noticed something which to me seemed off: yesterday was a profoundly emotional time for all the Kiev residents who made the decision to attend the funeral, and many people were crying openly in the cold wind, for several hours, and not just old women. However, some of the questions asked by the Russian reporters, and some of the things they said, had a mild undertone of Schadenfreude: “Oh, look at you poor Ukrainians, what have you all brought upon yourselves? Now do you see how wrong you were? Do you see where you end up without Russia?”

But of those present—every decrepit old man or woman, every young, unfashionably dressed girl or threadbare-looking young man—all were the kind of Ukrainians who throughout this year of madness have kept in their hearts an earnest, warm feeling towards Russia! They have clung to the idea of seeing themselves as a part of a great singular civilization, as citizens of the once-proud Soviet Union. They don't need Russian condescension!

After this one year, it has become plain that there can be no Ukraine without support from Russia. But it is also true that there can never be a genuine resurrection of Russian Civilization without a resurrection of the Ukraine. It is not a matter of territory; the ties are psychological, emotional and historical. How many among the contemporary Russian public actually appreciate this point? A regular Russian guy sympathizes with Donbass, supports Putin, and despises the USA. But does he consider the Ukrainians to be good-for-nothing losers—possibly including his own brothers who happen to live there?
* * *

And that isn't at all helpful. The combination of clueless American warmongering and disingenuous offers of “integration” from the EU have turned the Ukraine into a disaster area and its population of 40 million into paupers. The nightmarish regime in Kiev, whose brainwashed adherents go around defacing World War II monuments while idolizing and deifying Nazi war criminals, will be finished soon enough, but once it is gone there will be more bloodshed in this deeply self-conflicted society.

The Ukrainian identity and national brand are tarnished beyond all hope. After a prolonged and painful process of de-westernization and de-Nazification, all that will be left of it will be a memory of failure which few will recall willingly or pass on to their children. But to make healing possible, to allow this year (or two or three) of Ukrainian madness to be consigned to oblivion, something else must take its place. And that something can be just one thing: a compassionate, inclusive, supportive, pluralistic Russian identity.

14 comments:

Rhisiart Gwilym said...

Very well said, both Shan and Dmitry.

Dave Stockton said...

Moon of Alabama has a post up, explaining how the website which posted Buzina's name and address on a hit list, can be traced back to NATO.

k-dog said...

No comment from me this week.

Instead I found this looking for information about Olesya Buzina and I want to share it.

Photos of the funeral.

The report in the guest article about news concerning Olesya not being translated from Russian to English is quite accurate. Olesya it seems was writing about the activity of hit squads and was murdered because of it. Thats what I gathered from a quick search anyway, but news is incomplete and it is hard to say what happened. Most of what I found looks to be raw translation from Russian using 'Google Translate'.

Obviously 'western media' does not want the activity of Ukrainian hit squads driving Fords talked about. Putin commented about Olesya's murder that a lot of murders are happening in Ukraine and they are not being investigated.

I guess I wound up writing a comment after all.

Баргузин said...

The slain writer's name is Oles', not Olesya, the latter being a female name.

Anonymous said...

Just discovered Buzina a few months ago on YouTube and was blown away. What a mind. What a loss. It seems the same backers of ISIS--which tries to destroy the cultural identity of one part of the world--have set their sights on destroying any sense of history in Ukraine and replacing it with some sort of rabid nationalism/ersatz Nazism. They had better think about history because they're set to walk the same path as Poland in 1939. The results could be far worse.

Unknown said...

Ukraine is in the hands of the researchers and producers of the infinite chaos. Those poor bastards whom are terrified of losing their golden touch over the feel of perfect control. But Ukraine is not the one suffering most of that golden touch. Middle East is way beyond everything currently and has been quite a long. But there is absolutely no common recognition in the west how badly we are involved as nations and states to be part of that brutality and insanity.

It's unbelievable the news went mad and with full speed over Nemchov and "Je suis hypocrite" (or what ever it was), but it's absolutely not possible to say anything critic of the current Ukrainian government. West is totally over criticism of it's on actions. And still it wants to believe (it's common citizen want to believe) it's media and news have an absolute and supreme value of always targeting to objectivity and neutrality. So, maybe the audience and the journalists are both just infantile..

k-dog said...

My apologies for getting the name wrong. Oles it is.

This website http://slavyangrad.org has a lot of information about Oles and I found there information concerning NATO's involvement. Seems a website 'Mirotvorets' publishes personal info about "separatists". On April 14th personal information on Oles Buzina was published there. This website is apparently hosted on NATO servers. You can discover the details on slavyangrad.org. Look for "Murder of Oles Buzina - a campaign of intimidation by NATO?" there.

Bukko Boomeranger said...

"Ilargi" of The Automatic Earth blog (another facet of the Peak Oil idea-diamond) has a recent post on all the murders and suspicious "suicides" of anti-oligarchers titled "When Did We All Become Murderers?" I had not realised how many killings there had been. The dots, or more properly, the blood spots, have not been connected in the Western media. Of course. It looks like death squads are at work, sent on their slaughterspree by the forces supported by the U.S. and Europe. It's Chile 1973, Central America mid 1980s, all over again. I'm no Putin fan, but the way to counter a dictator is not to out-do his thuggishness.

Dmitry Orlov said...

Bukko -

It matters not what you think of Putin, since you aren't a Russian citizen, and since he's got plenty of fans without you. But you'd have trouble proving that he is a dictator. Sounds like you got western media on the poor old brain.

rapier said...

One thing you notice in all comment sections on the internet, US centric anyway, is that anything and everything happening in Ukraine, which admittedly few people know a thing about, is justified because as they say, Putin is evil.

The normal or nominal liberal anti war anti violence position is completely absent. I attribute this to the absurd reduction of liberalism to defending LGBT rights. Putin and Russia it seems are homophobes, and Putin was mean to Pussy Riot too, so it seems anything goes if it's against Putin and Russia.

There is no peace party in the US so you better be prepared for war. Millions in the US demonstrated against the Iraq invasion and it didn't change a thing, Nobody is publicly against the 'unification' of Ukraine so anything goes just like Iraq, doubled. There is only the war party here. ing

I believe war with Russia, cold, warm or hot is seen to be a means of keeping the EU together and an excuse for increasing Brussels power.

Massinissa said...

Bukko, Putin doesn't hire Death Squads to kill Russians... Or anyone else for that matter. Nor does he do drone strikes. So who is the one out murdering who here?

Noula said...

Thank you Dimitry. I just discovered Oles a few months before his assassination and was fascinated that such a character might actually exist. Was a great loss to the entire Slavic world.

Yes, the "Ukraine" brand has been seriously devalued and will soon be associated with imbecilic malcontents and losers. As a result, the language will eventually be shunned by the youth (as in modern Quebec, many young French-Canadians now view English as being cool). Many bright young minds, including those from Galicia, fled the Ukie military draft for refuge in Russia and Belarus. They will integrate into and remain within the Russian world, as there will be very little to return to in Ukraine.

For a political movement that is little more than 140 years old, Ukrainianism is now collapsing into its own contradictions. There are however, peoples who to this day remain "Rusyn" or "Malo-Rus" and refused to submit to the Ukrainian nationalist narrative. So, maybe there is hope.

TH in SoC said...

I agree with Rapier about the reduction of "liberalism" in the West. I would go further and say that this reduction occurred so that "liberalism" might come to stand for something that costs no money to wealthy capitalists. This explains the hijacking of the civil rights movement in the US and Britain as well, since it allows people to take their focus off the ethnic minorities and nonwhite peoples who are still being oppressed by the Anglo-American empire.

Unknown said...

I am not going to comment about the attitudes of the clueless Western public. However, the attitudes of their fearless leaders towards Putin could be summarized in just one word which is common to us all " Jealousy".