Posted on 08/11/2023 10:09:13 PM PDT by Cronos
To understand Russia’s current obsession with Ukraine, it is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike the modern Turkish state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.”
The Kremlin’s preferred narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (“Kyivan Rus”) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created and self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify their external expansion and internal repression.
Instead, what we think of today as Russia started out as a loose collection of independent city states that included Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Moscow, the last of which attained particular significance toward the end of Mongol rule a little over 500 years ago. Kyiv was no more a part of Russia then than it is now. There was no common language, no common administration, and no joint identity. Indeed, it would be centuries before the rulers of Muscovy attempted to assert their dominance over Kyiv and the lands of today’s Ukraine.
...Under Ivan III (“The Great”), Muscovy established itself as the strongest of the city states to emerge from the Mongol period. Ivan called himself “Tsar of all Rus,” but he was actually more like the mayor of Greater Moscow. It was Ivan who started the expansion of Muscovy, initiating the so-called “gathering of Russian lands.”
...Expansion demands inward Russification and repression, and further outward expansion. As Catherine the Great famously said, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”
“Why is it considered a Freeper conservative value to support Putin and Russia.”
should we be supporting Biden and Globohomo ?
“The Atlantic Council”
Propaganda much?
“What has happened to the American conservative movement? Where are the intellectual giants like William Buckley and Frank S. Meyer? .”
What happened is those types of conservatives were totally defeated and the Left took over every major institution in the country.
And so you have a defeated conservatism in America that you think is supposed to be exercised over who does what to who in Ukraine.
Meanwhile the USA has an uncontrolled sourthern border with hundreds of thousands from Asia and Africa crossing every month.
And every major city is in absolute squalor and chaos.
Repub elites tell us $5 billion for the Trump Wall is “too expensive” then they turn around and vote another $25 bill for Ukraine.
And Mike Pence is worried about not enough weapons for Ukraine, but he says the state of US cities is “Not my concern.”
"That is the folly of NATO and it should have been disbanded in 1991."
thanks !
Putin rejects them both, and that is good enough for me.
Why are some people so consumed by the “Globohomo” issue that they can’t see ANYTHING else? I mean being pro-life is even more important than being against “Globohomo”. Ultimately, people can refuse to participate in homosexual acts, but an unborn baby can’t refuse to participate in an abortion.
Some Freepers will probably tell you that Richard Pipes was a neocon and warmonger, and therefore he shouldn’t be trusted.
Nobody was confident that the ex-USSR would not collapse in such a way as to become, again, a threat to its neighbors. It was an unstable situation.
Ironically it was Putin that created a degree of order and stability, 20 years ago. But then Putin, and the situation, devolved.
Globohomo is actually short for Globalist Homogenization.
And it covers much more that just LGBT imperialism.
It is forcing every country in every region to adopt the same secularism, the same open borders, the same corporations, the same “democracy”, the same type of progressive politicians and judges, the same trade deals, use the same social media, buy the same products, live in cities that look the same filled with buildings the same as every other city.
So you have people in every city in the world that looks the same and there is so much immigration and homozenization that you can’t even tell what country you are in !
And the worse part of it is, you cannot reject any of it or you get sanctions, a proxy war or a Color Revolution.
Oh yeah, unrestricted abortion is also part of the Globohomo agenda.
Worse, he was a Polish Jew!
A lot of the pro-Russian commentary on FR is explicitly or implicitly antisemitic.
What? During the Second World War Russia (The Soviet Union), the US and the UK were fighting on the same side. After the war ended, Russia became expansionist again and wanted to seize all Europe. To prevent Russia from doing that, NATO was established.
No, “homo” is there for its explicit meaning. And its not an unfair meaning.
On the other hand, it is agitprop. And it is a lie, on the whole. Propaganda of an effective sort takes a part of the truth and emphasizes it disproportionately from all other truths, rejecting perspective.
The Soviet Union for instance made propaganda hay with US civil rights and racism problems. As have the “liberal”, “progressive” or “woke” propaganda lines.
Its the same rhetorical strategy.
Well, we in Central and Eastern Europe know much about Russia from personal experience, thank you very much. For us, Russia means despotism, serfdom and poverty.
“Why Putin’s Russia cannot accept its borders”
Actually, Russia did accept its borders for decades...as long as Russians trapped in other countries were treated reasonably well. Nuland made sure that WAS NOT the case in Ukraine, so here we are...
Are you trying to claim that Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland have nothing to fear even though they can see in real time what Russia is doing in Ukraine to re-establish its empire? Russian propagandists on TV openly say that Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and even Poland are part of the (Russian) Fatherland.
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