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Putin Has Tainted Russian Greatness
New York Times ^ | June 20, 2024, 5:02 a.m. ET | SERGE SCHMEMANN

Posted on 06/20/2024 6:56:33 AM PDT by Cronos

Many years ago, in the 1980s, I went to Brighton Beach, then in its heyday as a district of newly arrived Soviet Jews. It was a grand event, rich in humor and tinged with nostalgia. I asked a middle-aged partygoer for his thoughts on his lost homeland, and his reply has stayed with me: “I hate Russia, for forcing me to leave her.”

It was an apt summary of what waves of émigrés from Russia and the Soviet Union since the early 20th century have felt: a sorrowful sense of loss for a motherland — what Russians call “toska po rodine” — coupled with resentment at the autocratic powers that forced them out. My grandparents were among the “White” Russians who fled the Revolution and moved to Paris in the 1920s. A second wave of emigrants left in World War II. The third, Soviet Jews, started leaving in the 1970s. Vladimir Putin has now created another wave of people fleeing Russia, and many of them may still believe, as my forebears did, that they will one day return to the homeland.

Most probably will not.

It’s hard to say precisely where Russian exiles stand, politically or in their sense of attachment to Russia. The waves of emigrants differ widely one from another, and in the United States, they have not behaved like immigrants from Italy, China or Poland who formed hyphenated-American communities and organizations that have persisted over generations. Russians immigrants to America have, by comparison, melded quickly into the general population.

...That is the tragic irony of Mr. Putin’s war. His attempt to “restore Russian greatness” through violence and hatred has tainted Russia’s real greatness for years to come, just as his attempt to quash Ukrainian nationhood has steeled its foundations.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Russia
KEYWORDS: newyorkslimes; nohehasnt; sergeschmemann; theslimes; zeeperporn
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To: alexander_busek

Eisenhower did limp back to port... HOOTIE AND THE BLOWFISH pushed them off the coast of Yemen....


81 posted on 06/21/2024 6:01:26 AM PDT by Jumper
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To: Kazan

Russia did not have to be our enemy. That is 100 percent correct.

From 1991 until this week with the Zelenski photo op, Russia has sought to leave the ghosts of the USSR lie dormant.

North Korea and now Viet Nam are now orbiting along side Russia, and China, and Brics.

The DNC Borg has met it’s match.


82 posted on 06/21/2024 6:04:04 AM PDT by Jumper
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To: Cronos

The Polish have Macron Junior inviting Putin to attack Poland.

Finally, the US has put all the loud mouth louts on notice and stated that they have dropped their plans to base F16s in Romania and Poland for use in Ukriane by Ukraine.

Finally, the idiots in the Biden Admin have awaken from the Woke idiocies when N.Korea joined Russia. What was it the White Hut said, we never expected North Korea and Russia to join forces... after they said we never expected China and Russia to join forces.

EUrope and Zelenski had their photo op. Putin saved the best week of diplomacy for Monday with trips to N. Korea and Vietnam.

The US financial system has finally been put on notice. Misuse of threats, sanctions, printing money and attacks by NATO have given the world an alternative to Biden’s Shifting Sands of Changing Laws and misuse of international institutions.

I’m gonna laugh my a$$ off if Poland gets a little collateral damage - the US is not going to get nuked for a couple of airbases where mouthly politicians got sucker punched.


83 posted on 06/21/2024 6:36:28 AM PDT by Jumper
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To: Brian Griffin

That is ludicrous. It is like claiming that Nazi Germany declared war on the US in 1941 due to concern over the treatment of German Americans.


84 posted on 06/23/2024 11:59:37 PM PDT by Rockingham
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