My point. Anti-Russian sentiments run long and strong in this Country. The Republicans misjudged that and now they are on video supporting Putin; wonderful campaign fodder for the Democrats. The pro-Putin, pro-Russian rhetoric backfired which is why the Republicans changed their tune.
In addition I am fully, painfully and fearfully…
My point. Anti-Russian sentiments run long and strong in this Country. The Republicans misjudged that and now they are on video supporting Putin; wonderful campaign fodder for the Democrats. The pro-Putin, pro-Russian rhetoric backfired which is why the Republicans changed their tune.
In addition I am fully, painfully and fearfully aware of the damage the Republicans have done and continue to wrought against Democracy in the United States. Only someone in a coma or a cult or could miss that fact.
Barbara I would like to parse the phrase ‘anti-Russian sentiments.’ Recent polls reflect such ‘sentiments.’ However, this is a response to Putin and what he has done and is doing with his ‘silovikis.’
President Biden made clear that he was attacking Putin, not the Russian people. (His ab lib about Putin having to go could be interpreted as a sentiment for a better way of life for the Russian people.)
Perhaps the most dramatic example of how the U. S. Government could distinguish between a brutal regime and its population was 1919-1923 in Russia. We had troops fighting the Russian Reds in northern Russia and eastern Russia.
Several years later, in response to a massive Russian famine, Herbert Hoover (prior to his entry into government) organized and implemented an extraordinary food relief program that was gratefully honored by the Leninist/Stalinist government and the Russian people for years.
The American government did not recognize the Russian/Soviet government until 1933.
I am speaking of the Red Scare, Cold War, Cuban Crisis and Communists scare when saying anti-Russia sentiment. These are the things that are in the DNA of an awful lot of Americans. And yes. President Biden exhibited masterful skill in attacking Putin and not the Russians.
leaders turn populations against each other, and once the shooting starts it is usually too late. the cuban missile crisis was all about optics. the missiles in cuba would have been on above ground platforms and would have taken hours to deploy. meanwhile, there were missiles on russian nuclear subs off of both us coasts, not to mention missiles in underground silos in siberia. these were the real threat, but they were out of sight and out of mind for most americans. russia, meanwhile, was in paranoia mode. at a time when russia controlled the iron curtain countries from poland to bulgaria, she still thought of herself as 'surrounded' by enemy missiles, a laughable notion. kruschchev agreed to 'turn his ships around' when kennedy agreed to remove us missiles from turkey. kennedy hadn't even known they were there. in her second paragraph, HCR mentions the failed polish uprising in warsaw. it failed because of a cold-blooded decision on russia's part. the russian army was at the gates and the days of the germans were numbered. the polish underground asked that, as a matter of polish pride, they be allowed to signal the final offensive against the germans by coming out into the open to begin the battle, after which the russians would move in to assure victory. the russians agreed. but when the fighting started, the russians did nothing. the resistance leaders were all captured or killed in the german counteroffensive. then the russians moved in. without firing a shot the russians had killed off the future leaders of poland, the best, the bravest. this made it much easier for russia to control poland after the war. it took poland two generations to find new leaders, a pope and a shipyard electrician, who led a revolution in which less than ten people died. this has to be one of the great achievements of human history.
"the russians agreed. but when the fighting started, the russians did nothing. the resistance leaders were all captured or killed in the german counteroffensive. then the russians moved in. without firing a shot the russians had killed off the future leaders of poland, the best, the bravest. this made it much easier for russia to control poland after the war."
So Russian. Today, Russian Putin says one thing and does another. Things don't change.
"These are the things that are in the DNA of an awful lot of Americans."
Absolutely. We have been drowned in anti-communist propaganda for a long time. Consider the many Hollywood dramatic and documentary films of the late 1940s and '50s which brought a rabid anti-communist message to Americans. (Sen. Joe McCarthy really capitalized on this.) We were bathed and fed with endless propaganda, and that message has further been instilled in subsequent generations. Even the word "socialism" can trigger fear and anger in so many millions of Americans today.
Of course not. But Socialism seems to be the 'fear' most referred to here in the U.S. People can't even imagine Communism here, so it doesn't get an audience. But Socialism is the most often bug-a-boo used to frighten the masses.
Interesting information. What present Russia forgets is the massive support from the west that enabled Russian victory in WWII. It is propagated that they did it all by themselves, and they are boasting about loosing more lives than all others, 20 millions, which was largely due to Stalin's recklessness.
Olof History depends upon one’s personal perspective. Through Lend Lease and later, after Pearl Harbor, America provided massive supplies to Russia through Murmansk and the Persian Gulf. One might say that this was in our self interest. From memory I recall that the Russians lost about 20 million (mostly military) persons. By contrast,, I believe that America lost about 320,000 soldiers during the entire war in Europe and the Pacific.
I recall at Teheran that Stalin was pushing FDR/Churchill for a major invasion of Europe. (Normandy occurred on June 6, 1944). We delayed while Russian troops were bearing catastrophic losses. Our military assistance for their massive loss of life.
As for Stalin’s ‘recklessness.’ Stalingrad was the turning point of the war. It was fought building by building. Stalin ordered that any Russian soldier caught leaving the frontlines would be shot. Also, in the race to Berlin, he encouraged two field marshals (Zhukov was one) to move forward with no concern about loss of life. I think the Russians lost about 100,000 soldiers, while Ike kept American troops at a safe distance away from Berlin.
"We delayed while Russian troops were bearing catastrophic losses. Our military assistance for their massive loss of life."
I don't know if we "delayed." But if we did, it was out of rational self-interest. This was a European war, not ours, and it took forever to get Congress out of its isolationist sour apples. Realpolitik demanded that if millions of troops were going to be sacrificed anyway, better Europe's than ours.
Also, Stalin had no problem being Hitler's friend in the early stages; what went around came around.
I'm glad we made the blood-and-treasure sacrifices to help Good Europe beat Evil Europe. Defeating Hitler was a moral imperative. But our national interest was never in volunteering to let America kids die so Russian kids wouldn't.
What we COULD do that Russia and the rest of Europe couldn't was manufacture and ship billions of pounds of war goods. We did. America did nothing wrong in letting Russia take the hit on the Eastern Front.
Bill Spot on regarding American and British self interests. You can imagine that Stalin might have been pissed that millions of Soviet troops were being killed in fighting the Nazis while the US/UK equivocated for ‘good reason.” We were concerned about massive US/UK deaths, while Stalin was not. Also, Stalin, a highly suspicious fellow, thought that he was left in a meat grinder, as his ‘allies’ spoke of the difficulties of mounting a cross channel invasion of Europe.
Thanks, Keith, appreciated. Unless the war is aimed directly at your throat and you have no choice but to throw the kitchen sink and all your kids into the maw, every nation will choose self-interest over selflessness. War is politics by other means, etc.
I also have to wonder if a little bit of that UK-U.S. delay was (a) punishing Stalin for being pals with Hitler in the beginning, and (b) bleeding Russia while they could because they sensed that, as Patton famously predicted, Stalin would become a menace after the war.
Which is another way of agreeing with you that much of what every nation did was out of self-interest. Russia just didn't have much of a choice after Hitler turned on Stalin.
Fred, isn’t whose troops the key? In Ukraine, what would be the American public’s reactions, if we had 100,000 American soldiers fighting and dying along side Ukrainians and our airplanes in dog fights with the Russians? In WWII our military supplies saved many American lives when, for nearly a year, we weren’t engaged against Germany while the Russians were losing millions of men.
As a youngster in WW II, our newspapers focused mainly on American (and British) military operations, with minor coverage of Russia. Then the public impression was that the US won WW II. It took years for any public appreciation that Russian losses were more than 20 times total American/British losses.
Ultimately, this is the truth of war, Keith and Olof. Modern warfare has gotten better only in the sense that the winning side CAN do so with fewest lives lost and fewer permanently disabled personnel (on its side) because we know better how to conduct operations (strategy) and rely more on personnel using more and more precise technology. Bragging rights (up until Viet Nam) were body counts; especially how the enemy forces were pulverized into submission, until they stopped fighting conventionally and became sophisticated in assaults, rather than waging battles. I think there still is a mentality that says deaths and injuries aren't so very important as is pounding the enemy back into the 8th century, destroying civilization, civilians, and economic capacity and history of the country invaded. This mentality I think is that of Putin's military strategy, where square miles of Ukraine devastated represent gain and subjugation and high body counts among Russian and Ukrainians are pretty much OK. Why else send half of your total war making personnel into just one country and not have figured out how to train, resupply, and work on the fight message for their troops? I remember WWI (from reading and my dad in the cavalry) and that battles were mostly fought with flanks (or stationary trenches) of troops and horses and how that turned out to be tons and masses of corpuscles as fodder thrown against opposing sides and ended only when one side puked the last breath crawling across the imaginary line marking the opposition's. I imagine you saw the horribly beautiful poppy display at London Tower to celebrate the 900+ thousand British (mostly) personnel who gave their lives in that conflict, they were the fodder of a warfare style that failed for the British in the US during our revolution. A heartbreaking display for me as the poppies flowed down the Tower and filled the moat with individual remembrances of a family member, a British citizen. The warfare approach of WWI was continued into WWII by the Soviets and German military geniuses and a preference of many top ranking French and British military leader. Lives are cheap and intellectuals/academics make terrible fodder I think reflected the general military belief. The west, sadly, has become the most efficient at waging wars, long wars, unwinnable wars, because we now prize the return of our warriors and, probably, are too cheap or divided to be willing to build new monuments to their sacrifices, and the enemies of democracy are willing to absorb high body counts. And yes, I think the American entry into WWII brought the introduction of modern warfare where material and techniques and volumnous weaponary could be cheaply enough manufactured to prize lives over blood soaking of the battlefield and left us to really commit to leaving no one behind in some anonymous battlefield grave. Gads. I spent to much time thinking about this, when I could have said, I agree. Be well.
Well, I was not thinking of body counts, but at the lack of gratitude, and the glorifying of Stalin in the present version of Russian history. I have heard Zhukov was Stalin's favorite because he was just as merciless to his own people as to the enemy. So, I believe the loss of 20 million was not necessary, and it is appalling that it is now taken as a sign of having done so much more than everyone else against the nazis. - What the Russians are staging now in Mariupol is a revenge for Stalingrad; that's why the narrative of Ukrainian nazis is so important. - Americans were not at a safe distance in the Ardennes.
Olof ... I understand your comments and the deflection value Putin is using. Punish someone else, another country, for the terrible manner in which your leaders threw away the lives of your own people conscripted in the battles that were unwinnable.
When Putin finds no one else to blame for his megalomania, he will still see his face in the mirror. I strongly recommend Roger Cohen’s perceptive historical analysis of Putin over the years in today’s New York Times.
Olof After Stalin killed 3-6 million Ukrainians by starving them to death, some Ukrainians joined a Nazi brigade to fight against Stalin in WW II and Stalin, after the war, sent a number of Ukrainians to Siberia and relocated a number of Russians in Ukraine.
My understanding is that today ‘Nazis’ in Ukraine is a non-issue, except in Putin’s mind.
Well, both-and. Timothy Snyder would agree with you:
“…what’s interesting about the Ukrainians is that they seem to be moving more towards the argument that the nation is not about a clear story of the past. It’s more about action directed towards the future.
And I say this because both in the case of the Russian invasion in 2014 and in this much more stressful period now, when I talk to Ukrainians anyway, I don’t find them talking much about the Second World War, about ancient hatreds with Russia, or about some long narrative which has to be clear in some way. I find them more focused on what they’re doing.”
Olof Whatever you feel, Russians were dying by the millions while FDR/Churchill were continually postponed our Normandy invasion. At Teheran Stalin made this abundantly clear. He had the impression that FDR/Churchill were delighted to have the Russians and Germans massacring one other, while the Americans and Brits slow walked their European effort through Sicily and the boot of Italy.
This is not to overgeneralize any country’s war policy, but interestingly, in 1944 after the Normandy invasion in June, in August, while the Nazis leveled the city to rubble and annihilated the Polish underground resistance to quash the Warsaw Uprising, the Russian army lingered across the river for 63 days, letting the Germans deplete their resources.
Yes on the need for Americans to focus solely on anti-Putin sentiments instead of people quickly jumping to an anti-Russian bandwagon. Further, Americans should consider our part in getting Putin into power through a series of changes--i.e., Reagan's drive to "end the evil empire"; then the installation of Yeltsin and our role in that election; and subsequently Putin coming into power and his being amenable to the seedier side of capitalism which quickly led to establishing the Russian oligarchs. trump is just another oligarch; and that's why he bonds so well with Putin, some business quid-pro-quo between them. In the end, the common Russian people suffer as they have for so much of history.
Yes, I've read that Herbert Hoover demonstrated great organizational skills. (Must have been enabled by his engineering background.) Unfortunately, when the Great Depression occurred during his presidency, he didn't bother organizing anything to help the American people endure it. He took the laissez faire approach, and things just got worse until Pres. Roosevelt was elected and able to put his relief plan into effect. (I know this info is not new to you.)
Heydon You would be surprised at what dour-faced Herbert Hoover actually did to address the Depression. While he was against massive public employment programs, he initiated some structural programs that FDR, after his 100-day blitz, greatly expanded. The RFC, I recall, provided, for then, a massive amount (without checking my notes—$500 million when the entire federal budget was minimal) for the RFC. Indeed, some economists credit Hoover. With employing more sound economics than FDR is addressing the Depression.
Of course Hoover was zero in charisma and FDR was 100. After the Roosevelt recession in 1937, it took WW II to get us out of massive unemployment.
Well said, Keith. He seemed to always have that look.
My overall impression of the RFC Act of 1932 is that it was too little, too late. When FDR entered the WH in March 1933, the banking system was near total collapse, and unemployment had reached 25%.
I think about the term used to describe any collection of shanties in the U.S.--"Hooverville". That's a classic.
Keith, with your knowledge of Russian history, I’m wondering if you might have heard about something I recently read about on a Twitter feed: “dedovshchina, which is an extreme form of hazing that new conscripts in the Russian forces are subjected to.” ?
Christy I haven’t heard of ‘devovshchina’ related to hazing of Russian conscripts. It sounds similar to what occurred at Marine training at Quantico, where some of the new recruits died. I read that, at some American fraternities, hazing has led to deaths.
I much preferred the Foreign Service process: extreme written exam after which the survivors (about 10%) faced an oral exam (33% passed). That enabled me to operate alone in rebel-infested Congolese provinces with a M-16 and .45. At times I sort off wished that I had flunked the entrance exam.
My point. Anti-Russian sentiments run long and strong in this Country. The Republicans misjudged that and now they are on video supporting Putin; wonderful campaign fodder for the Democrats. The pro-Putin, pro-Russian rhetoric backfired which is why the Republicans changed their tune.
In addition I am fully, painfully and fearfully aware of the damage the Republicans have done and continue to wrought against Democracy in the United States. Only someone in a coma or a cult or could miss that fact.
Barbara I would like to parse the phrase ‘anti-Russian sentiments.’ Recent polls reflect such ‘sentiments.’ However, this is a response to Putin and what he has done and is doing with his ‘silovikis.’
President Biden made clear that he was attacking Putin, not the Russian people. (His ab lib about Putin having to go could be interpreted as a sentiment for a better way of life for the Russian people.)
Perhaps the most dramatic example of how the U. S. Government could distinguish between a brutal regime and its population was 1919-1923 in Russia. We had troops fighting the Russian Reds in northern Russia and eastern Russia.
Several years later, in response to a massive Russian famine, Herbert Hoover (prior to his entry into government) organized and implemented an extraordinary food relief program that was gratefully honored by the Leninist/Stalinist government and the Russian people for years.
The American government did not recognize the Russian/Soviet government until 1933.
I am speaking of the Red Scare, Cold War, Cuban Crisis and Communists scare when saying anti-Russia sentiment. These are the things that are in the DNA of an awful lot of Americans. And yes. President Biden exhibited masterful skill in attacking Putin and not the Russians.
leaders turn populations against each other, and once the shooting starts it is usually too late. the cuban missile crisis was all about optics. the missiles in cuba would have been on above ground platforms and would have taken hours to deploy. meanwhile, there were missiles on russian nuclear subs off of both us coasts, not to mention missiles in underground silos in siberia. these were the real threat, but they were out of sight and out of mind for most americans. russia, meanwhile, was in paranoia mode. at a time when russia controlled the iron curtain countries from poland to bulgaria, she still thought of herself as 'surrounded' by enemy missiles, a laughable notion. kruschchev agreed to 'turn his ships around' when kennedy agreed to remove us missiles from turkey. kennedy hadn't even known they were there. in her second paragraph, HCR mentions the failed polish uprising in warsaw. it failed because of a cold-blooded decision on russia's part. the russian army was at the gates and the days of the germans were numbered. the polish underground asked that, as a matter of polish pride, they be allowed to signal the final offensive against the germans by coming out into the open to begin the battle, after which the russians would move in to assure victory. the russians agreed. but when the fighting started, the russians did nothing. the resistance leaders were all captured or killed in the german counteroffensive. then the russians moved in. without firing a shot the russians had killed off the future leaders of poland, the best, the bravest. this made it much easier for russia to control poland after the war. it took poland two generations to find new leaders, a pope and a shipyard electrician, who led a revolution in which less than ten people died. this has to be one of the great achievements of human history.
"the russians agreed. but when the fighting started, the russians did nothing. the resistance leaders were all captured or killed in the german counteroffensive. then the russians moved in. without firing a shot the russians had killed off the future leaders of poland, the best, the bravest. this made it much easier for russia to control poland after the war."
So Russian. Today, Russian Putin says one thing and does another. Things don't change.
"These are the things that are in the DNA of an awful lot of Americans."
Absolutely. We have been drowned in anti-communist propaganda for a long time. Consider the many Hollywood dramatic and documentary films of the late 1940s and '50s which brought a rabid anti-communist message to Americans. (Sen. Joe McCarthy really capitalized on this.) We were bathed and fed with endless propaganda, and that message has further been instilled in subsequent generations. Even the word "socialism" can trigger fear and anger in so many millions of Americans today.
Socialism and Communism are not the same thing.
Of course not. But Socialism seems to be the 'fear' most referred to here in the U.S. People can't even imagine Communism here, so it doesn't get an audience. But Socialism is the most often bug-a-boo used to frighten the masses.
Anti-communist propaganda? You sure all of it was propaganda? Or was it a rational fear based upon Russia's actions following World War II?
Keith, thank you for sharing that information. The more I learn, the less I realize I know about our history.
Interesting information. What present Russia forgets is the massive support from the west that enabled Russian victory in WWII. It is propagated that they did it all by themselves, and they are boasting about loosing more lives than all others, 20 millions, which was largely due to Stalin's recklessness.
Olof History depends upon one’s personal perspective. Through Lend Lease and later, after Pearl Harbor, America provided massive supplies to Russia through Murmansk and the Persian Gulf. One might say that this was in our self interest. From memory I recall that the Russians lost about 20 million (mostly military) persons. By contrast,, I believe that America lost about 320,000 soldiers during the entire war in Europe and the Pacific.
I recall at Teheran that Stalin was pushing FDR/Churchill for a major invasion of Europe. (Normandy occurred on June 6, 1944). We delayed while Russian troops were bearing catastrophic losses. Our military assistance for their massive loss of life.
As for Stalin’s ‘recklessness.’ Stalingrad was the turning point of the war. It was fought building by building. Stalin ordered that any Russian soldier caught leaving the frontlines would be shot. Also, in the race to Berlin, he encouraged two field marshals (Zhukov was one) to move forward with no concern about loss of life. I think the Russians lost about 100,000 soldiers, while Ike kept American troops at a safe distance away from Berlin.
"We delayed while Russian troops were bearing catastrophic losses. Our military assistance for their massive loss of life."
I don't know if we "delayed." But if we did, it was out of rational self-interest. This was a European war, not ours, and it took forever to get Congress out of its isolationist sour apples. Realpolitik demanded that if millions of troops were going to be sacrificed anyway, better Europe's than ours.
Also, Stalin had no problem being Hitler's friend in the early stages; what went around came around.
I'm glad we made the blood-and-treasure sacrifices to help Good Europe beat Evil Europe. Defeating Hitler was a moral imperative. But our national interest was never in volunteering to let America kids die so Russian kids wouldn't.
What we COULD do that Russia and the rest of Europe couldn't was manufacture and ship billions of pounds of war goods. We did. America did nothing wrong in letting Russia take the hit on the Eastern Front.
Bill Spot on regarding American and British self interests. You can imagine that Stalin might have been pissed that millions of Soviet troops were being killed in fighting the Nazis while the US/UK equivocated for ‘good reason.” We were concerned about massive US/UK deaths, while Stalin was not. Also, Stalin, a highly suspicious fellow, thought that he was left in a meat grinder, as his ‘allies’ spoke of the difficulties of mounting a cross channel invasion of Europe.
Thanks, Keith, appreciated. Unless the war is aimed directly at your throat and you have no choice but to throw the kitchen sink and all your kids into the maw, every nation will choose self-interest over selflessness. War is politics by other means, etc.
I also have to wonder if a little bit of that UK-U.S. delay was (a) punishing Stalin for being pals with Hitler in the beginning, and (b) bleeding Russia while they could because they sensed that, as Patton famously predicted, Stalin would become a menace after the war.
Which is another way of agreeing with you that much of what every nation did was out of self-interest. Russia just didn't have much of a choice after Hitler turned on Stalin.
Two philosophies of war. Troops as fodder versus troops as weapons. Alas.
Fred, isn’t whose troops the key? In Ukraine, what would be the American public’s reactions, if we had 100,000 American soldiers fighting and dying along side Ukrainians and our airplanes in dog fights with the Russians? In WWII our military supplies saved many American lives when, for nearly a year, we weren’t engaged against Germany while the Russians were losing millions of men.
As a youngster in WW II, our newspapers focused mainly on American (and British) military operations, with minor coverage of Russia. Then the public impression was that the US won WW II. It took years for any public appreciation that Russian losses were more than 20 times total American/British losses.
Ultimately, this is the truth of war, Keith and Olof. Modern warfare has gotten better only in the sense that the winning side CAN do so with fewest lives lost and fewer permanently disabled personnel (on its side) because we know better how to conduct operations (strategy) and rely more on personnel using more and more precise technology. Bragging rights (up until Viet Nam) were body counts; especially how the enemy forces were pulverized into submission, until they stopped fighting conventionally and became sophisticated in assaults, rather than waging battles. I think there still is a mentality that says deaths and injuries aren't so very important as is pounding the enemy back into the 8th century, destroying civilization, civilians, and economic capacity and history of the country invaded. This mentality I think is that of Putin's military strategy, where square miles of Ukraine devastated represent gain and subjugation and high body counts among Russian and Ukrainians are pretty much OK. Why else send half of your total war making personnel into just one country and not have figured out how to train, resupply, and work on the fight message for their troops? I remember WWI (from reading and my dad in the cavalry) and that battles were mostly fought with flanks (or stationary trenches) of troops and horses and how that turned out to be tons and masses of corpuscles as fodder thrown against opposing sides and ended only when one side puked the last breath crawling across the imaginary line marking the opposition's. I imagine you saw the horribly beautiful poppy display at London Tower to celebrate the 900+ thousand British (mostly) personnel who gave their lives in that conflict, they were the fodder of a warfare style that failed for the British in the US during our revolution. A heartbreaking display for me as the poppies flowed down the Tower and filled the moat with individual remembrances of a family member, a British citizen. The warfare approach of WWI was continued into WWII by the Soviets and German military geniuses and a preference of many top ranking French and British military leader. Lives are cheap and intellectuals/academics make terrible fodder I think reflected the general military belief. The west, sadly, has become the most efficient at waging wars, long wars, unwinnable wars, because we now prize the return of our warriors and, probably, are too cheap or divided to be willing to build new monuments to their sacrifices, and the enemies of democracy are willing to absorb high body counts. And yes, I think the American entry into WWII brought the introduction of modern warfare where material and techniques and volumnous weaponary could be cheaply enough manufactured to prize lives over blood soaking of the battlefield and left us to really commit to leaving no one behind in some anonymous battlefield grave. Gads. I spent to much time thinking about this, when I could have said, I agree. Be well.
Don't forget Japan and Italy found their way into headlines.
Indeed. The idea of a "peoples emissary", representing all the people, actually only takes that he alone is surviving.
Well, I was not thinking of body counts, but at the lack of gratitude, and the glorifying of Stalin in the present version of Russian history. I have heard Zhukov was Stalin's favorite because he was just as merciless to his own people as to the enemy. So, I believe the loss of 20 million was not necessary, and it is appalling that it is now taken as a sign of having done so much more than everyone else against the nazis. - What the Russians are staging now in Mariupol is a revenge for Stalingrad; that's why the narrative of Ukrainian nazis is so important. - Americans were not at a safe distance in the Ardennes.
Olof ... I understand your comments and the deflection value Putin is using. Punish someone else, another country, for the terrible manner in which your leaders threw away the lives of your own people conscripted in the battles that were unwinnable.
When Putin finds no one else to blame for his megalomania, he will still see his face in the mirror. I strongly recommend Roger Cohen’s perceptive historical analysis of Putin over the years in today’s New York Times.
Olof After Stalin killed 3-6 million Ukrainians by starving them to death, some Ukrainians joined a Nazi brigade to fight against Stalin in WW II and Stalin, after the war, sent a number of Ukrainians to Siberia and relocated a number of Russians in Ukraine.
My understanding is that today ‘Nazis’ in Ukraine is a non-issue, except in Putin’s mind.
Well, both-and. Timothy Snyder would agree with you:
“…what’s interesting about the Ukrainians is that they seem to be moving more towards the argument that the nation is not about a clear story of the past. It’s more about action directed towards the future.
And I say this because both in the case of the Russian invasion in 2014 and in this much more stressful period now, when I talk to Ukrainians anyway, I don’t find them talking much about the Second World War, about ancient hatreds with Russia, or about some long narrative which has to be clear in some way. I find them more focused on what they’re doing.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-timothy-snyder.html
Except for the 17 Holocaust memorials in Ukraine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_memorials_and_museums
Olof Whatever you feel, Russians were dying by the millions while FDR/Churchill were continually postponed our Normandy invasion. At Teheran Stalin made this abundantly clear. He had the impression that FDR/Churchill were delighted to have the Russians and Germans massacring one other, while the Americans and Brits slow walked their European effort through Sicily and the boot of Italy.
This is not to overgeneralize any country’s war policy, but interestingly, in 1944 after the Normandy invasion in June, in August, while the Nazis leveled the city to rubble and annihilated the Polish underground resistance to quash the Warsaw Uprising, the Russian army lingered across the river for 63 days, letting the Germans deplete their resources.
Yes on the need for Americans to focus solely on anti-Putin sentiments instead of people quickly jumping to an anti-Russian bandwagon. Further, Americans should consider our part in getting Putin into power through a series of changes--i.e., Reagan's drive to "end the evil empire"; then the installation of Yeltsin and our role in that election; and subsequently Putin coming into power and his being amenable to the seedier side of capitalism which quickly led to establishing the Russian oligarchs. trump is just another oligarch; and that's why he bonds so well with Putin, some business quid-pro-quo between them. In the end, the common Russian people suffer as they have for so much of history.
Yes, I've read that Herbert Hoover demonstrated great organizational skills. (Must have been enabled by his engineering background.) Unfortunately, when the Great Depression occurred during his presidency, he didn't bother organizing anything to help the American people endure it. He took the laissez faire approach, and things just got worse until Pres. Roosevelt was elected and able to put his relief plan into effect. (I know this info is not new to you.)
Heydon You would be surprised at what dour-faced Herbert Hoover actually did to address the Depression. While he was against massive public employment programs, he initiated some structural programs that FDR, after his 100-day blitz, greatly expanded. The RFC, I recall, provided, for then, a massive amount (without checking my notes—$500 million when the entire federal budget was minimal) for the RFC. Indeed, some economists credit Hoover. With employing more sound economics than FDR is addressing the Depression.
Of course Hoover was zero in charisma and FDR was 100. After the Roosevelt recession in 1937, it took WW II to get us out of massive unemployment.
"dour-faced Herbert Hoover"
Well said, Keith. He seemed to always have that look.
My overall impression of the RFC Act of 1932 is that it was too little, too late. When FDR entered the WH in March 1933, the banking system was near total collapse, and unemployment had reached 25%.
I think about the term used to describe any collection of shanties in the U.S.--"Hooverville". That's a classic.
Keith, with your knowledge of Russian history, I’m wondering if you might have heard about something I recently read about on a Twitter feed: “dedovshchina, which is an extreme form of hazing that new conscripts in the Russian forces are subjected to.” ?
Christy I haven’t heard of ‘devovshchina’ related to hazing of Russian conscripts. It sounds similar to what occurred at Marine training at Quantico, where some of the new recruits died. I read that, at some American fraternities, hazing has led to deaths.
I much preferred the Foreign Service process: extreme written exam after which the survivors (about 10%) faced an oral exam (33% passed). That enabled me to operate alone in rebel-infested Congolese provinces with a M-16 and .45. At times I sort off wished that I had flunked the entrance exam.