To view the Ukraine war as a conflict not only with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime but also with Russian culture is a great gift to the Kremlin. It strengthens the persecution complex Putin needs to maintain popular support.

NEW YORK – In an interesting recent article in the Times Literary Supplement, the Ukrainian novelist, essayist, and poet Oksana Zabuzhko took Western readers to task for not recognizing Russia’s barbarism. Too many people, Zabuzhko argued, believe that the great Russian writers, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, expressed humanistic European values. They have not looked deeply enough into the savage Russian soul.

Zabuzhko believes that Russian literature represents “an ancient culture in which people only breathe under water and have a banal hatred for those who have lungs instead of gills.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can be understood only through the prism of “Dostoevskyism,” defined as “an explosion of pure, distilled evil and long suppressed hatred and envy.”

This type of cultural analysis has a rather old-fashioned ring. It used to be common to interpret the Third Reich as a sickness of the German soul: “from Luther to Hitler,” the thesis went, implying that Luther’s anti-Semitism sowed the seeds of Nazism some 350 years before Hitler was born. But few people nowadays take such a crude view of German history.

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Writing for PS since 2001 188 Commentaries

Ian Buruma is the author of numerous books, including Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, Year Zero: A History of 1945, A Tokyo Romance: A Memoir, and, most recently, The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, From Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit (Penguin, 2020).

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An 8 year old article from NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/ukraine.html A pamphlet from Lenin 1916: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/imperialism.pdf

Russia's soul has been a throbbing wound for quite a while: excerpts from same pamphlet from Lenin: "The export of capital thus becomes a means of encouraging the export of commodities. In this connection, transactions between particularly big firms assume a form which, as Schilder3 “mildly” puts it, “borders on corruption”." Today in 2022, the more appropriate phrase may just be this one:"borders on extortion", especially throughout Europe. "France, when granting loans to Russia, “squeezed” her in the commercial treaty of September 16, 1905, stipulating for certain concessions to run till 1917. She did the same in the commercial treaty with Japan of August 19, 1911. The tariff war between Austria and Serbia, which lasted, with a seven months’ interval, from 1906 to 1911, was partly caused by Austria and France competing to supply Serbia with war materials." I question just what deep seated animosities aroused Serbia (Kosovo) a few years ago, and of course others, like any Russians, Ukrainians, and whatever labels are applied to name any of the affected groups in that part of the world. Now in 2022, the wound is raw and infected again. " Just count the dead when convenient." the unclaimed global TM for 2022.

A couple of paragraphs from that second link written back in 1916 by Lenin gives a "glimmer" to the actions occurring in Ukraine in 2022: "IV. Export of Capital Typical of the old capitalism, when free competition held undivided sway, was the export of goods. Typical of the latest stage of capitalism, when monopolies rule, is the export of capital. Capitalism is commodity production at its highest stage of development, when labour- power itself becomes a commodity. The growth of internal exchange, and, particularly, of international exchange, is a characteristic feature of capitalism. The uneven and spasmodic development of individual enterprises, individual branches of industry and individual countries is inevitable under the capitalist system. England became a capitalist country before any other, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, having adopted free trade, claimed to be the “workshop of the world”, the supplier of manufactured goods to all countries, which in exchange were to keep her provided with raw materials. But in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, this monopoly was already undermined; for other countries, sheltering themselves with “protective” tariffs, developed into independent capitalist states. On the threshold of the twentieth century we see the formation of a new type of monopoly: firstly, monopolist associations of capitalists in all capitalistically developed countries; secondly, the monopolist position of a few very rich countries, in which the accumulation of capital has reached gigantic proportions. An enormous “surplus of capital” has arisen in the advanced countries. It goes without saying that if capitalism could develop agriculture, which today is everywhere lagging terribly behind industry, if it could raise the living standards of the masses, who in spite of the amazing technical progress are everywhere still half-starved and poverty-stricken, there could be no question of a surplus of capital. This “argument” is very often advanced by the petty-bourgeois critics of capitalism. But if capitalism did these things it would not be capitalism; for both uneven development and a semi- starvation level of existence of the masses are fundamental and inevitable conditions and constitute premises of this mode of production. As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilised not for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries. In these backward countries profits are usually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap." That last sentence is a pretty accurate synopsis to very clearly "paint" what Ukraine really is, exactly "where it's at", getting cheaper by the millisecond, in 2022.

Does this ring a bell of familiarity? (another little tidbit from wayback in 1916 about monopolies and exporting capital as "product". same source) "The capital-exporting countries are nearly always able to obtain certain “advantages”, the character of which throws light on the peculiarity of the epoch of finance capital and monopoly. The following passage, for instance, appeared in the Berlin review, Die Bank, for October 1913: “A comedy worthy of the pen of Aristophanes is lately being played on the international capital market. Numerous foreign countries, from Spain to the Balkan states, from Russia to Argentina, Brazil and China, are openly or secretly coming into the big money market with demands, sometimes very persistent, for loans. The money markets are not very bright at the moment and the political outlook is not promising. But not a single money market dares to refuse a loan for fear that its neighbour may forestall it, consent to grant a loan and so secure some reciprocal service. In these international transactions the creditor nearly always manages to secure some extra benefit: a favourable clause in a commercial treaty, a coating station, a contract to construct a harbour, a fat concession, or an order for guns.”2 Of course, Russia would need to be omitted, and substitute the names of any of the nations at will.

A jewel from Lenin, 1916: "The capital-exporting countries have divided the world among themselves in the figurative sense of the term. But finance capital has led to the actual division of the world."

Russian culture is different to the West. The leaders behind the disastrous Irak war, Bush, Blair and Howard, were all kicked out of office by the system. By contrast the majority of Russians continue to support their murderous leader, even while tens of thousands on both sides die in vain. The West will stop blaming the savage Russian soul once Putin and his thieving cronies have been removed. Till then, Russia will remain a pack of Stone Age savages for the rest of the world, no matter what excuse Putin comes up with.

It is ridiculous to read the arguments of an amateur from the country of the eternal show about high matters. America has no values other than the dollar, so it will fundamentally not be able to understand not only the Russian soul, but also the Afghan, Iranian, Chinese and even Turkish. Arrogance and vanity is all America has, but it won't last long.

you know, this is what Hitler said way back when. "America is all about the Dollar". And look what happened.

And if it wasn't Hitler who said it (I doubt it was), would you gladly agree with this statement? ))

Can you tell me what right the US army had to kill civilians in Grenada, Panama, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia?

Let's celebrate the masterpieces of German culture! Would you say that in 1940 Europe? C'mon Ian, what do you know about Russian history, culture? Your musings about Dostoevsky and Russian Enlightenment are good (for the high school students). Do you know what Brodsky wrote about Ukraine and Ukrainians, what kind of derogatory language he used? (in the 90's), or Navalny for that matter, just couple of years ago? Have you spoken with avg. Russians in Russia, and asked what they think about Ukrainians? For real change Russia must be defeated and must be humiliated, the same way Japan and Germany were.

I am not sure how one arrives at the picture of the "Russian Soul". I will leave it to deep thinkers. One can, however, arrive at a summary of Russian history which is a nearly unbroken chain of murder, mayhem, atrocities and extreme violence ,for centuries on end. Anyone who was born into any country neighboring Russia is aware of this. As far as Russian culture is concerned, the best I can say is that there are two kinds: The Potemkin Culture of St Petersburgh and Moscow. This is the culture of the corrupt, rapacious court of the Russian Tsars. It has a thin veneer of actual civilization ,both for show and for personal amusement. Periodically, well meaning Westerners get seduced by this Potemkin Culture, thinking that Russia is actually a part of Europe. The real culture of the Russian Empire, which is the culture of the Mongol Horde. The sole preoccupation of the Horde is rape and pillage. For the young men born into the Horde, participating in an invasion of rape and pillage is the greatest life chance they will ever experience. And so, they participate enthusiastically and excel in brutality, cruelty, rape and pillage. You can see this on graphic display in Ukraine. Can the true Russian culture be suppressed one day and turned into something better? Maybe. One should remember though that it took 20+ years of foreign occupation to turn around the Nazi culture of Germany. War crimes trials did not happen in Germany until 1960-ies, which means that it took a nearly complete generational turnover before Germans were willing to confront their past and (maybe) repudiate it. In the meantime, while we are waiting for a chance to change Russian soul we should always remember what we are dealing with: nuclear armed Mongol Horde. Lets act accordingly.

Does the representative of the failed empire, marked by atrocities against the civilian population of neighboring countries at the beginning of the last century, dare to blame others? Poland is the hyena of Europe, as W. Churchill said.

or maybe one should answer this seriously, for the benefit of other readers. Poland emerged from WW1 as a newly independent country after ~150 years of partition by the three empires that fell as a result of that war. Two years after 1918, (1920 - 21) Poland had to fight a war with the Soviet Union in which she was not particularly supported by the Western Powers, including Winston Churchill.. This war nearly destroyed the Polish state. The Soviet Army reached the line of Vistula river but the Polish Army finally succeeded in pushing the Soviets back, half way into what today is Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. There were two consequences of this war. First, Poland stopped the march of Soviet Communism into Europe for 20 years, until Ribbentrop-Molotov treaty and the joint Hitler-Stalin aggression. More importantly for Ukraine, there was no Holodomor in Western Ukraine. Nationalist Ukrainians may not have liked Polish jurisdiction, but they lived and mostly in peace. Now, nationalism is rarely pretty and I include Polish nationalism in this assessment. This is why we have the European Union today and I am very glad that Poland is a part of this Union. I am also very glad that the European nations, supported by the United States, drew some lessons from history and are actively supporting Ukraine in her fight for survival. One hundred years ago Poland had to fight alone, twice. Once in 1920-21 and the second time in 1939.

absolutely, Comrade. What is the weather today in Petrograd?

Russians seem to be a society where the strong pick on the weak. Domestic violence is not a crime in Russia (many women get bashed by their husbands), there are no real property rights (the mafia simply takes), political opponents get shot in the back or poisoned, there is torture in the prisons and bashings in the army. Is this the Russian Soul you are referring to?

That truth-seeker who dared to hint at the crimes of the American military in countries subjected to US aggression is now being extradited from one Anglo-Saxon country to another, where he faces almost two centuries of imprisonment for the truth. You should keep quiet about human rights in "reference democracy".

It is because the English media dominates the narratives that we only hear about the atrocities of the Russians, the Germans, the Chinese communists, the Japanese imperialists. One hardly hear about the crimes and depravity of the British empire, and its extension, the US empire, which tops anything that came before and after.

History has far more examples of “demonizing” the people of a country with which one’s own nation is at war than it has examples of blaming a war on another country’s leader without also blaming that country’s people. I think the author’s argument might be more persuasive if he were able to provide an example where blaming an invader’s culture or people for the invasion made the situation worse than it otherwise would have been.

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The war in Ukraine has raised profound questions of political identity and its relationship to language. What happens to a novelist who writes in the same tongue as the invaders but no longer has anything to say to them?

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