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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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I know you mention often you don't have much time to read history books...but if I wanted a fundamental knowledge of Russian history leading up to where we are now--God help us--where should I start?

Okay. This post will consist of two parts: one, a suggested reading list, and two, some discussion on what you (or anyone) should do if they want to think, write, or speak about this situation in a remotely constructive way, and not one that just mindlessly amplifies destructive propaganda on any side of the conflict. I have a long-standing, if amateur, interest in Russian history, literature, and language; I started reading about Catherine the Great and the Russian Empire in high school, and over the last few years, I have been expanding that with work on the medieval Kievan Rus', the USSR, and post-Soviet Russia. So I have actually read almost all of these sources, which vary between the academic and the popular. I have starred and bolded the ones that I think will be the most accessible for a layperson and/or the most relevant.

This is a long post, but I have tagged it "long post" if for some reason anyone wants to filter. However, given the urgency of this moment, I feel as if it is more important to read in full than look away.

READING LIST

Medieval Kievan Rus'

Fonnesberg-Schmidt, Iben Marie. The Popes and the Baltic Crusades 1147–1254 (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

Isoaho, Mari. The Image of Aleksandr Nevskiiy in Medieval Russia: Warrior and Saint (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

Lind, John. ‘Early Russian-Swedish Rivalry: The Battle on the Neva in 1240 and Birger Magnusson’s Second Crusade to Tavastia’, Scandinavian Journal of History 16 (1991), 269–95.

———. ‘Scandinavian Nemtsy and Repaganized Russians. The Expansion of the Latin West During the Baltic Crusades and its Confessional Repercussions’, in The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, ed. Zsolt Hunyadi and József Laszlovszky (Budapest, 2001), pp. 481–97.

Nielsen, Torben K. ‘Sterile Monsters?: Russians and the Orthodox Church in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia’, in The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier, ed. Alan V. Murray (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 227–52.

Ostrowski, Donald. ‘Alexander Nevskii’s ‘Battle on the Ice’: The Creation of a Legend’, Russian History 33 (2006), 289–312.

*Plokhy, Serhii. The Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation, from 1470 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 2017).

———. The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Selart, Anti. Livonia, Rus’, and the Baltic Crusades in the Thirteenth Century, trans. Fiona Robb (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

The Cold War and the USSR

*Plokhy, Serhii. Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: Basic Books, 2018).

———, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (New York: Basic Books, 2014).

———, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (New York: Basic Books, 2015).

Sarotte, Mary Elise. 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).

*Westad, Odd Arne. The Cold War: A World History. New York: Basic Books, 2017).

Post-Soviet Russia and the Rise of Putin

*Belton, Catherine. Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2020).

*Gessen, Masha. The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017).

———, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013).

*Maddow, Rachel. Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Most Destructive Industry on Earth. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2019).

* Sarotte, Mary Elise. Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021). (This one is my own reading this weekend.)

ABOUT THE PRESENT SITUATION

First, I would argue that calling it the "Ukraine crisis" is deeply misleading, due to the fact that a) it's no longer a crisis, it's a full-fledged war, and b) it makes it sound as if Ukraine is the instigator or aggressor in the situation, while conveniently removing blame from Russia. This is not unprecedented in Russia's post-USSR or Soviet history (see: invasions of Georgia in 2008 and annexation of Crimea in 2014; invasion of Afghanistan in 1979), but it certainly represents the most serious breach of international law and outright war in Europe since the end of the Yugoslavian conflicts. (Everyone is saying 1945 and the end of WWII, but that erases the Balkan civil wars which happened in the NINETIES, when most of you were already alive, not to mention the Bosniak Muslim genocides.) I didn't rule out the possibility entirely, but I (like everyone else) was skeptical of Putin actually taking such an insane and suicidal step. (We'll get to that.) However, it's happened, and it needs to be taken seriously.

First, the usual impulse among terminally-online leftist circles is to engage in "whataboutism," point out Europe and the USA's own long and sordidly shameful history of colonialism and imperialism (believe me, I know, I have written many posts in that vein), and otherwise act as if Putin is somehow correct for "showing up" the West. I am obviously a sympathetic outside observer to Russia and I know a lot about it, so trust me when I say: bullshit. There is absolutely no call to soften or ameliorate Putin's actions, or try to excuse him or the paranoid imperial autocracy (with nuclear weapons that he has gone so far as to hint using on anyone who tries to stop Russia's current insane crusade) that he and the siloviki (ex-KGB security men who form his inner circle) have deliberately built in the ruins of post-Cold War Russia. You don't need to show that you Know About The Bad Things the West Has Done. Right now, what matters is that a sovereign democratic country has been violently attacked and is going to suffer another generation of bloodshed, destruction, and dysfunction for absolutely no other reason than Putin's paranoia, ego, and revanchist desire to rebuild the Russian Empire. Ukraine has already overthrown and/or gotten rid of several pro-Russian leaders in the last decade, and Putin is punishing them for that. As noted in his rambling speech "recognizing" Donetsk and Luhansk as "independent," he doesn't think Ukraine has any right to exist as a separate state, and he wants revenge for their daring to buck the good old days of absolute Russian/Soviet rule. That is the beginning and end of it.

Next: I'm already seeing a lot of Westerners insisting that, basically, "all Russians support Putin" and they're willing to follow him to the bitter end and there's no reasoning with them. Once again: this is bullshit. I have been reading a LOT of articles on this whole mess, including those from the Russian perspective, and I haven't seen one single ordinary Russian who is happy about this. Even those who do support Putin politically and think he was right to recognize the separatist republics don't want a war, are afraid of what it's going to do to their young people and/or economy, and otherwise don't feel great about it. Young Russians particularly hate it and are in despair about how their future has, again, been robbed from them. Bankers and businesspeople are worried about the crushing impact of expected sanctions on their savings and ability to plan for the future. One verbatim reaction was "only an absolute idiot would want war and sanctions instead of diplomacy and improvement of Russia's international reputation." They bemoaned the awkward, ludicrous, satire-worthy televised meeting of the National Security Council, where members of Putin's cabinet were forced to come to a microphone and tell him they supported recognizing the breakaway republics. (Putin went so far as to berate the head of the FSB, the KGB's successor organization, for forgetting his lines.) The members of the Duma, or Russian parliament, are widely hated among the Russian public for existing as a puppet rubber-stamp for the Kremlin's decisions and extorting bribes. Some people have gone so far as to say that sanctions on the otherwise-unaccountable Russian elite would be welcomed by 99% of the Russian population. So.

Not to mention, if you say, "all Russians support Putin," you are openly legitimizing Putin's own insane talking point that he is acting in the Name of All Russians, they all agree with what he's doing, this is a united nationwide effort, so forth and etc. You are supporting a ruthless dictator's own propaganda lines about himself and playing into the exact Cold War-era stereotypes about the Red Menace that give Putin his fodder to stoke domestic resentment against the West. If we're not going to agree that the lunatic fringe far-right Trumpist cultists represent All of America and the majority of its political views, we're not going to do the same with the lunatic far-right fringe of Russian politics. It is impossible to overstate how brutal and repressionist the Putin regime has been, and how much ordinary Russians are punished for speaking out. There is credible evidence that the 1999 apartment bombings and the 2002 Moscow theater siege, both attributed to Chechen terrorists and which shored up support for Putin at the start of his reign, were false-flag operations by the FSB. We all know what has systematically happened to Putin's political enemies. The government has stripped funding from any independent or critical media entity and forced them to flee the country, so the only "news" available on TV are the federal propaganda channels. The massive crowds who came out to protest the treatment of Alexei Navalny (who is somehow both still alive and still has access to Twitter: @navalny, which I recommend looking at; even if you don't read Russian, Twitter usually offers an auto-translate option) were arrested, investigated, and otherwise treated in bad-old-days Soviet fashion. The brave few who have openly come out in Moscow to protest this war have been immediately arrested. Modern Russia under Putin is a dictatorship, full stop. As the Russian opposition keeps saying, this war is going to hurt Russia as much as Ukraine, and turn the country once more into an isolated international pariah. If Putin was so confident that his plans and the party of United Russia were so fully supported by the Russian public, he wouldn’t need to completely destroy its limited democratic functions to prevent it from ever being replaced.

Likewise, there are some exceptionally deluded dirtbag leftists who like to do the same thing to Russia as they do to America: insist that the murderous right-wing authoritarian dictator (Putin/Trump) and the human but flawed democratic politician with some regrettable past statements/positions (Navalny/Biden) are fundamentally the same and that there's no point in differentiating between them. This reflects the immature, self-righteous, zero-sum logic that has increasingly developed on social media, where one side is the Good/Passive Thing that has Morally Problematic Things Done To Them, and the other is the Bad/Aggressive Actor who is solely responsible for Doing Morally Problematic Things, and that there are no other categories or shades of grey between them. This, obviously, is (again) bullshit, and if you come across ignorant westerners spouting this kind of rhetoric, you should push back hard. Once again, this removes the moral weight of this catastrophe from Vladimir Putin, the person who deserves to shoulder it, and makes it into some sort of abstract occurrence that would (apparently) have also happened if, in some better timeline, Navalny was the president of Russia. Because something something unchangeable Russian nature, straight-from-the-Cold-War nonsense. Do better.

In short, it's the same logic where certain elements of the so-enlightened Twitterati are now acting like this is Biden's fault, because he somehow should have magically stopped an insane dictator from launching an entirely unnecessary war, and that it isn't said insane dictator's fault at all. The current Russian system is a master of disinformation, denial, and turning the west against itself (indeed, that's its entire communications strategy) and the reason the Biden administration kept warning for weeks that this was coming, even when almost everyone didn't take them seriously and Moscow itself was in Deny Deny Deny mode, is because the US is belatedly realizing that they're going to need to play the information game at the same level. The US's almost-unprecedented real-time release of intelligence and calling out the false-flag attacks as they happened was one of the reasons that Putin kept having to shift his invasion strategy/pretext for launching hostilities.

Likewise: sanctions, especially if the US and EU go all the way and launch them to the level of cutting Russia off from SWIFT (the global banking system) and the ability to trade in the US dollar, are punishing, but they are not a magic bullet, and they won't stop the conflict immediately. Putin will take pride in being punished by the Unjust West, and it's going to take a long time for the pain to be felt; as noted, they are also going to hurt a lot of ordinary Russians who have nothing to do with this, and once more destroy the country's development and attempt to join the post-Cold War world. In the meantime, it's the people of Ukraine who are going to do the most suffering, and that's where our focus needs to remain.

There has been lots of talk about how the Russian oligarchs need to be sanctioned, but it's a mistake to think that they control Putin or set Kremlin policy. Their arrangement is that they give Putin money whenever he needs it and in return, they don't go to jail. Hitting them will definitely hurt the Bank of Putin, but it won't fundamentally influence Putin's current policy, because he listens to nobody but himself. Hitting his inner circle of enablers, the Duma, the security services, the siloviki, the military commanders, the top-level financial fixers who actually put his decisions into practice, and fueling their resentment against Putin for cutting off access to the lavish Western lifestyles they like to enjoy, will be much more effective. This will also require an effort of will on the West's part that is far from a given. The reason the UK initially launched such pathetic sanctions (five banks and three individuals already on the US sanctions list since 2018) is because they have done extremely well for themselves taking gobs of dirty Russian cash and turning London into "Londongrad." If we're condemning the Russian actions that led to this, we also need to take a hard look at how ravenous, undiscerning, late-stage capitalism where any money and any mega-fortune is a good thing, has directly contributed to the general breakdown of society.

Anyway: as I said last night, for someone who claims to be a student of history, Putin is remarkably oblivious to how the Russian empire ended twice (once in 1917 with the murder of the tsar, and in 1991 with the total collapse of the polity he now desperately yearns to rebuild.) As with most dictators, he somehow thinks that he will be exempt from this fate. I hope more than anything that the world can show him, sooner rather than later, how wrong that is.

#anonymous #ask #history #medieval history #modern history #russian history #soviet history #long post #russia ukraine war

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minnesotadruids · 3 years

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Hasidic Druids of North America (HDNA) Analysis

Year founded: 1976

Location Founded: Saint Louis, Missouri, USA

Origins, inspirations, or parent org: Parent - Schismatic Druids of North America (SDNA). Inspirations - New Reformed Druids of North America (NRDNA), Jewish heritage, mysticism, and “repaganized” cultural and religious customs.

Founders: Isaac Bonewits, Vicki Rhodes

Official Symbols: Not specified in the modern historic record. One third-party example exists as a Star of David with RDNA Druid Sigil at the center. The inverse would also work.

Theological compatibility: Intended for pagans with Jewish heritage, spirituality, culture, mysticism, neopagan syncretism and eclecticism, especially people who really like lots of rules in their religion.

Founder prior involvements: Isaac Bonewits - RDNA, occultism, LaVeyan Satanism, witchcraft. Vicki Rhodes - RDNA, Jewish & neopagan practices.

Active, Hiatus, or Defunct, & Rebootability: Defunct from late 1970s to 2001, active from 2002-2003 before becoming defunct again. Is rebootable. Rebooting would require RDNA or NRDNA Third Order ordination lineage.

Centrally organized: Under SDNA umbrella.

Governing body: The Provisional Council of Arch-Druids (PCOAD) was formed to voice their concerns on behalf of their Groves, though it seems the authority for all legislative decisions was still held by Bonewits to make it easier to get things done, effectively as “benevolent dictator.”

Study Program or Mentorship: No formal study program but had narrower guidelines than regular SDNA educational policy.

Member degrees, ranks, or levels of achievement: Initially identical to RDNA - First Order (entry level), Second Order (training for priesthood), Third Order (priesthood), plus seven higher orders of priesthood as areas of focus or dedication. There is also the Order of the Acorn as a self-dedication rite for those who wish to affiliate with the RDNA or its direct offshoots. The SDNA later began to develop a rank system of Circles - First, Second, and Third Circle, allegedly with more than one circle below First. Specifics now seem to be lost, but a ranking system of five circles were later incorporated into ADF until the 1990s and are likely close approximations to the SDNA. The SDNA and ADF are otherwise very similar, the latter being founded a year after the SDNA became defunct.

There will most assuredly be rituals that are open only to members who have been admitted to the First Circle or higher, and rituals closed to lower Circles. -The Fifth Epistle of Isaac, A Reformed Druid Anthology, 2nd ed.

Membership fees and recurrence: Like the RDNA, membership to the HDNA is free. Individual Groves have the autonomy to charge membership dues to offset operating costs. Entering the Third Order (priesthood) informally costs “breakfast” to feed the person who ordains you. It is viewed as a courtesy, not a requirement, after the All-Night Vigil and ordination ceremony.

Estimated membership: 0.

Estimated number of Groves or study groups: 0

Current grand poobah & title: N/A currently and no definitive title was recorded. Whoever becomes the next SDNA or HDNA priest would first have to be an RDNA or NRDNA Third Order, but we might suggest adopting the title “Benevolent Dictator” or at the very least, Chairperson of PCOAD.

Cult danger (A. B. C. D. E. F. version 2.7) estimated rating: LOW-MODERATE

Alleged cult criteria:

Dogma - Strict requirements detailed across 13 chapters that are vaguely reminiscent of Levitical Law but much more pagan.

Sexual Manipulation - Nine laws regarding sexual conduct including the expectation of sex on weekends and holidays, no restrictions on the grounds of age or species, bonded partners are expected to gratify each other at least weekly, menstrual periods are to be enjoyed and celebrated, and another creepy one is “Be careful about seducing their [outsiders’] children.”

Lots of these rules have caveats and exceptions akin to “void where prohibited” but some of them just shouldn’t be rules if they need disclaimers. If anyone wants to reboot the HDNA they should seriously amend the rules and laws to make them more acceptable to reasonable society.

If anything needs to be rectified, please contact me with proof for correction.

Return to Druid Order List

#hasidic #druids #north #america #HDNA #Schismatic #jewish paganism #analysis #druidism #about druidry

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