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Warren Stupidity

(48,181 posts)
Sun Mar 16, 2014, 02:28 PM Mar 2014

How the West Enabled the Rise of Russian Nationalism


Russian nationalism would not have become as influential without the Ukrainian revolution and the Western support for it.

Andrei P. Tsygankov

The West has rejected the scheduled Crimea referendum as illegitimate and demanded that Russian President Vladimir Putin give up its support for the peninsula. This pressure is not likely to succeed and, if anything, will only strengthen Putin’s drive to recognize Crimea either as an independent state or a part of Russia. The attempts to explain Putin’s intervention in Crimea by Russia’s economic weakness and fear of democracy are not credible and ignore the genuine roots of Putin’s action—nationalism and the West’s own role in its rise.

Although Russia’s internal problems are serious, Putin’s approval ratings were high before the intervention and he hardly needed it to improve his domestic standing. By fall 2013, the Kremlin gained a new political confidence largely by locating what experts identified as Putin’s conservative majority. By studying Russian reactions to the Anti-Magnitsky Act, the trial over Pussy Riot and restrictions on the activities of protesters and NGOs, Putin’s regime concluded that it had a sufficiently strong social base to avert destabilization. In December of the same year, Putin pardoned 20,000 prisoners, including members of Pussy Riot and his longtime critic, former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Many of those charged for disturbances during protests in the early 2012 were either released or received sentences lighter than expected.

The true motives of Putin’s intervention in Ukraine have nothing to do with diversionary domestic politics, just as his true intentions have nothing to do with trying to recreate the USSR. Instead, the support for Crimea is a reflective nationalist reaction to what the Kremlin views as unjust treatment by the West. Putin can no longer ignore those inside Russia who have been worried for years about protecting the country’s security and values from what they view as a dangerous encroachment by Western nations.


http://www.thenation.com/article/178826/how-west-enabled-rise-russian-nationalism
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How the West Enabled the Rise of Russian Nationalism (Original Post) Warren Stupidity Mar 2014 OP
Amazing. Igel Mar 2014 #1
If you're putting Ukraine in the minor nations category remember, it snappyturtle Mar 2014 #3
They are aimless infants BeyondGeography Mar 2014 #4
Great insight....must read. K&R nt snappyturtle Mar 2014 #2

Igel

(35,197 posts)
1. Amazing.
Sun Mar 16, 2014, 02:40 PM
Mar 2014

Whatever it is, somehow the progressives' enemies in the West are responsible for it.


Some lucky few nations and peoples in the world are wanderers, not always on the same path but certainly still held in the West's orbits and unable to break free or have any control over their destiny. They have no will. No ability to affect things. They may act, but purely in reaction to the one true center. Russia. China.

All the world's minor nations and peoples are points on a celestial sphere that revolves around those Western structures and organizations.They don't even act in reaction. They are carried along, passive, pointlike in the distance.


Somebody is seriously in need of a Copernican revolution in their thinking.

snappyturtle

(14,656 posts)
3. If you're putting Ukraine in the minor nations category remember, it
Sun Mar 16, 2014, 02:53 PM
Mar 2014

once was part of the largest geographical country on the planet. Must be difficult for Ukraine and countries like it to be reduced to minor nation status. Just sayin'.......

BeyondGeography

(39,284 posts)
4. They are aimless infants
Sun Mar 16, 2014, 02:55 PM
Mar 2014

until their evil masters come along.

Poor Putin. First Georgia, now Ukraine. When will we leave him in peace?

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