This problem also exists in the US, our own government trolls social media posting as regular people intentionally to influence opinions and in certain cases cast doubt or muddy the waters on topics they don’t want discussed. If you think they don’t, you’re incredibly naive.
This would have been much better had there been a question and answer format without a mere recitation of what is in the book (although some interaction towards the latter portion of the talk was an improvement). It seems strange that the author might not understand some of the rationals of the church's position in Russia and why there is a strong alliance between the church and state there--the culture there has different aims, esp the protection and edification of the populace generations into the future, and is most certainly not like America's highly libertine and arguably deficient secularism which has diluted the purpose of the church here. I sense this author has a political position to satisfy and might not be positioned to understand the Orthodox church's very legitimate role within the broader, historical development of Russia's culture--which should not be compared to America's view of religion as an individualistic perogative or past-time. Yes these are two very different cultures and continually positioning Russia's self-determining goals as somehow wrong or subversive shows a fundamental lack of awareness (or respect) for the culture--America's culture is not superior to Russia's by any measure, and the underlying tone I hear in this author's analysis seems to be one of the continuing American/Western hegemony which presumes an inherent "wrongness" in Russia's actions toward self-determinism and its defense against continuing western expansion and aggression in the region. A better thumbnail title might be something like 'The Russian Orthodox Church--A Dangerous State Player?'
yes, Spain and the civil war there a prime example. He does say his views have evolved as archival documentation was becoming available. This is real history... "revisioninst" by nature
The book may be good but this interview is terrible. Why? He is politically apologetic the whole time... discussing dangers of imperialism. We know what political correctness his. How about discuss the subject objectively instead of injecting the requisite condemnations. So blasè
This is the problem with a theme approach to literary study, you disregard entirely literary quality, and end up seeming to treat evegeniya tur's feeble and worthless sub-bronte novel as the equal of first love of turgenev or the eternal husband of dostoevsky. Chernishevskii did a merciless hatchet-job on tur.
This is very similar to what I found when I talked with somebody who worked in government-owned factories in China in the 1980s. They mentioned that theft was so prevalent that every worker got some kind of booties.
Translator from Ukraine added Ukrainian subtitles and reuploaded this video to her channel If someone from Ukraine is interested you can find it here ru-vid.com/show-UClsDdxYyRuwg2FZWXMjeKbwvideos
The dynamic is between the west needing to support Stalinist Soviet Union as war/peace partner and Stalin's history of murderous rule. Couldn't afford to let the Soviet beast's tail go, it was firmly entrenched in western Europe.
Awesome to find this! I am reading Erika Fatland’s book Sovietistan, where she speaks briefly about Stavitsky’s passionate work and wanted to find out more. Thank you for sharing :)
I was born in 1950, Chicago, IL. I do not remember the dynamics/politics of the Balkans being taught, even in college. It was all U.S.S.R./Peoples' republic(?) of China. Only by reading Norman Davies did I get a glimpse of this part of Europe.
Unfortunately i am so depleted of energy that i have the attention span of a gnat, but i welcome discussion on this topic, including both analysis and pragmatic ideas on how to eliminate or at least minimise the problem.
Another interesting study was Stanford Uni quantification of CCP proaganda using the data provided by Twitter as covered in the Forbes article "Twitter Busts China's Info War on Hong Kong, Pandemic", from June 14, 2020. Notably the propaganda shills identified and traced by Twitter included those trolling for the Putin and Erdogan administrations (Russia and Turkey respectively).
