If Putin could make them introduce those special reserved lanes everywhere and make them "for Westerners and other important people only", then maybe giving him all the Slavic countries is a good idea? They are not part of civilized Europe, and they only cause problems anyway, especially after foolishly letting some of them join EU... The faster we drop this baggage, the better!
"Just like the Dandelion’s ballads - truth doesn’t matter! What matters is that every child in Poland knows the legend." My favourite line. It also explains Zelensky's behaviour. I appreciate this lesson in Slavic history and relate to the sentiment. People speak of Africa and the Caribbean as if they're monolithic as well.
I have read this one with pleasure. Interesting with a witty style of anecdotic explanation which works great on my imagination. Will be waiting for more. Thank you.
The description at https://rg.ru/2012/02/20/putin-armiya.html says: "When visiting military units, Vladimir Putin always tries to find out firsthand how soldiers and officers live."
We are talking about something that is supposedly a core feature of Russian culture since the times of the Khans and Byzantine emperors, and is supposedly continued all the way to Putin. So I posted a counterexample involving Putin as a president. Yes, it's 11 years old, so what?
In numerous pictures such as the one your commanding officer told you to post, the "soldiers" have been identified as members of Putin's security detail and other apparatchiks.
You seem to have a problem understanding the point of this blog post. It is not about objective reality, but about "the ballads different Dandelions are singing". OK, let's assume that the picture I posted was staged. So what? It still shows what kind of leaders the Russians want to have. Which is not so different from other Slavic nations.
Our ballads value authenticity. In Russian they have a peiorative noun "pokazukha" - "things done only for the show". The Biden "pizza" pictures are real - all the regular GI's were allowed to take their own photos, so you have it from different angles - and thus make sure this actually happened. This is simply never the case with Putin. All you can find is a staged photo by some official Kremlin photographer. Putin will never mingle with common people, shaking hands, posing for selfies, answering random questions, allowing everyone to film it with their phones.
The fact that 'pokazukha' has a negative connotation in Russian clearly shows that Russian culture, like other Slavic cultures, doesn't value such behaviour.
As an anticlerical leftist I always felt somewhat uncomfortable and out of place in Poland. I got the feeling that, with all the anti-USSR feelings (which I share!) plus the specific traits of Polish culture, there simply was no room for leftism there.
This post reinforces that feeling. But I have to make an effort to understand the historical differences between Spain and Poland, and to imagine a leftism which is comfortable with shamelessly glorifying militar heroes of good old times. The 1st part, I can manage, but the 2nd... boy, that is hard!
I will go ahead and... tell you: no, we don't. But also, how could we? Our "nazis" won the war and held power for 40 years on your face, and 40 more in disguise. They did, and still do. We are still trying to get rid of streets being named after war criminals. They tainted our history and its learning so bad that we have a memory problem as a nation; like a collective Alzheimer syndrome.
Of course, we hold in great esteem the memory of all those *volunteers* who came to fight in Spain, of all those progressist mayors and aldermen in small towns and villages who were shot, all those maquis who lived in the mountains and forests and fought until WW2 was over and it became clear that nobody was going to help them... But all those are mostly anonymous, it is a collective honor, so to say. Pretty hard to single out a person. Perhaps Unamuno, a moderate right-wing writer and scholar who stood up to fascist authorities and paid the price.
Leaving the civil war behind... well, consider that Spain has been at civil war (mostly cold war, sometimes hot) for about 200 years. Hard to agree on anything, specially heroes in such country. Maybe the most we can agree on is Iniesta (football player; sorry 😁).
Maybe I could pick El Empecinado, a popular leader against the French invasion, but still it cannot compare. It is quite different because our borders haven't moved so much, plus we suck at learning history (at least I do, and I'm sure I'm not alone).
Going further back, we most definitely leave the glorifying of figures such as El Cid (in the fight against Islam in Iberia), or the America conquerors (Pizarro, Hernán Cortés) to the right-wingers. We are pretty clear on that front.
This is weird for me! You don't think they deserve praise, because they LOST? Since Poland mostly lost all the recent wars, we couldn't have a single monument in our country! We (as in: "we, Polish anticlerical lefties") glorify Polish heroes of the Spanish Civil War, the so called - don't you even try to pronounce it - Dąbrowszczacy.
Anyway, in general we (as in, "we, Slavs") glorify heroes who might have had lost in the long term, but they kept the good fight, and "you should see the other guy".
Oh, no no no no no no, that's not what I mean: we had our memory as a people almost erased by the winners. That's why we couldn't celebrate our heroes. Moreover, I have difficulties finding someone that i could guarantee that, if you ask any leftist Spaniards, would tell you that they are a war hero for us. Can only think of Durruti.
But, we have a pretty good agreement about the victims to single out in mourning, and they are mainly poets, either killed or exiled (F. G. Lorca, Miguel Hernández, Antonio Machado, ...) and other artists and scholars.
I had not heard about that tongue-twister Dąbrowszczacy before (but I can pronounce it 😎), because, again we had our memory removed. Schooling in Spain is not brilliant in general, but in History the teaching is really bad, and also crippled.
OK, now I get it. From my trips to Spain I must say I was surprised that there are no plaques or memorials marking important sited of the civil war, or even worse, the ones that are standing are only of the frankist side. If I was the mayor of Barcelona, I would take care to establish a hiking trail "on the footseps of George Orwell".
I'm not gonna lecture you on your country, just share my impression, that as a tourist in Spain you might think that Franco fought this war with nobody. Because there are frankist monuments, but no republican ones. Or maybe I didn't look in the right places.
I often get the impression that Spain is the best known deception of Europe: most people think they know it, but far from it. Many Europeans think it's a fun, sunny and relaxed country, and I think they think I'm crazy when I tell them we are 2nd only to Cambodya in unmarked burial sites and unidentified corpses of people still "disappeared".
Imagine that after the demolition of Warszawa in WW2, it was the Nazis, having won the war, who rebuilt it; that would be more or less the situation with many town in Spain, such as mine; except our nazis are and always have been technically and scientifically as smart as a cow (a dumb one) and keen on corruption and thievery (they are much better at that).
Franco's body remained in a massive mausoleum, built mostly by forced labour (political prisoners, mainly, subsequently buried on site, but off the spotlight, of course), under the biggest cross of Christiandom (Valle de los Caídos), until the current government managed to overcome all the hurdles laid by the post-francoist judiciary who still rule so much. I am talking of 2019, when his remains were extracted from there and moved to a regular cemetary. That mausoleum is a "pilgrimage destination" for fascists foreign and national, and still will be for a while, since the remains of Primo de Rivera (founder of "Spanish Phalanx", alma mater of Franco's fascism) are still there.
Republican monuments? Didn't leave one stone unturned. They still hinder as much as possible (very successfully for the most part) the exhumation and identification of bodies in mass graves.
Our civil war still continues, for now in cold mode.
And I stop talking about Spain, because I get carried away, and I am here to pay attention, to try to learn and understand.
I'm American, and this is the first time I've seen the story of Joe Biden and the pizza, but that is exactly the sort of thing American politicians do at home. You're not allowed to be President unless you've been photographed eating a corndog at a state fair.
If Putin could make them introduce those special reserved lanes everywhere and make them "for Westerners and other important people only", then maybe giving him all the Slavic countries is a good idea? They are not part of civilized Europe, and they only cause problems anyway, especially after foolishly letting some of them join EU... The faster we drop this baggage, the better!
Kindly retreat posthaste back to your station in Olgino, dear Westerner.
"Just like the Dandelion’s ballads - truth doesn’t matter! What matters is that every child in Poland knows the legend." My favourite line. It also explains Zelensky's behaviour. I appreciate this lesson in Slavic history and relate to the sentiment. People speak of Africa and the Caribbean as if they're monolithic as well.
I have read this one with pleasure. Interesting with a witty style of anecdotic explanation which works great on my imagination. Will be waiting for more. Thank you.
I don't need to imagine, it's easy to find pictures of Putin eating with common soldiers: https://cdnstatic.rg.ru/uploads/attachments/article/58/48/61/05.jpg
The description at https://rg.ru/2012/02/20/putin-armiya.html says: "When visiting military units, Vladimir Putin always tries to find out firsthand how soldiers and officers live."
it is telling that you had to dig out photo from 11 years ago
We are talking about something that is supposedly a core feature of Russian culture since the times of the Khans and Byzantine emperors, and is supposedly continued all the way to Putin. So I posted a counterexample involving Putin as a president. Yes, it's 11 years old, so what?
In numerous pictures such as the one your commanding officer told you to post, the "soldiers" have been identified as members of Putin's security detail and other apparatchiks.
https://www.bbc.com/news/64189366
You seem to have a problem understanding the point of this blog post. It is not about objective reality, but about "the ballads different Dandelions are singing". OK, let's assume that the picture I posted was staged. So what? It still shows what kind of leaders the Russians want to have. Which is not so different from other Slavic nations.
Our ballads value authenticity. In Russian they have a peiorative noun "pokazukha" - "things done only for the show". The Biden "pizza" pictures are real - all the regular GI's were allowed to take their own photos, so you have it from different angles - and thus make sure this actually happened. This is simply never the case with Putin. All you can find is a staged photo by some official Kremlin photographer. Putin will never mingle with common people, shaking hands, posing for selfies, answering random questions, allowing everyone to film it with their phones.
The fact that 'pokazukha' has a negative connotation in Russian clearly shows that Russian culture, like other Slavic cultures, doesn't value such behaviour.
"I don't need to imagine" - You don't need indeed. Russian governement owned media are enough for you.
As an anticlerical leftist I always felt somewhat uncomfortable and out of place in Poland. I got the feeling that, with all the anti-USSR feelings (which I share!) plus the specific traits of Polish culture, there simply was no room for leftism there.
This post reinforces that feeling. But I have to make an effort to understand the historical differences between Spain and Poland, and to imagine a leftism which is comfortable with shamelessly glorifying militar heroes of good old times. The 1st part, I can manage, but the 2nd... boy, that is hard!
Don't tell me you don't glorify the military heroes of the civil war!
I will go ahead and... tell you: no, we don't. But also, how could we? Our "nazis" won the war and held power for 40 years on your face, and 40 more in disguise. They did, and still do. We are still trying to get rid of streets being named after war criminals. They tainted our history and its learning so bad that we have a memory problem as a nation; like a collective Alzheimer syndrome.
Of course, we hold in great esteem the memory of all those *volunteers* who came to fight in Spain, of all those progressist mayors and aldermen in small towns and villages who were shot, all those maquis who lived in the mountains and forests and fought until WW2 was over and it became clear that nobody was going to help them... But all those are mostly anonymous, it is a collective honor, so to say. Pretty hard to single out a person. Perhaps Unamuno, a moderate right-wing writer and scholar who stood up to fascist authorities and paid the price.
Leaving the civil war behind... well, consider that Spain has been at civil war (mostly cold war, sometimes hot) for about 200 years. Hard to agree on anything, specially heroes in such country. Maybe the most we can agree on is Iniesta (football player; sorry 😁).
Maybe I could pick El Empecinado, a popular leader against the French invasion, but still it cannot compare. It is quite different because our borders haven't moved so much, plus we suck at learning history (at least I do, and I'm sure I'm not alone).
Going further back, we most definitely leave the glorifying of figures such as El Cid (in the fight against Islam in Iberia), or the America conquerors (Pizarro, Hernán Cortés) to the right-wingers. We are pretty clear on that front.
This is weird for me! You don't think they deserve praise, because they LOST? Since Poland mostly lost all the recent wars, we couldn't have a single monument in our country! We (as in: "we, Polish anticlerical lefties") glorify Polish heroes of the Spanish Civil War, the so called - don't you even try to pronounce it - Dąbrowszczacy.
Anyway, in general we (as in, "we, Slavs") glorify heroes who might have had lost in the long term, but they kept the good fight, and "you should see the other guy".
Oh, no no no no no no, that's not what I mean: we had our memory as a people almost erased by the winners. That's why we couldn't celebrate our heroes. Moreover, I have difficulties finding someone that i could guarantee that, if you ask any leftist Spaniards, would tell you that they are a war hero for us. Can only think of Durruti.
But, we have a pretty good agreement about the victims to single out in mourning, and they are mainly poets, either killed or exiled (F. G. Lorca, Miguel Hernández, Antonio Machado, ...) and other artists and scholars.
I had not heard about that tongue-twister Dąbrowszczacy before (but I can pronounce it 😎), because, again we had our memory removed. Schooling in Spain is not brilliant in general, but in History the teaching is really bad, and also crippled.
OK, now I get it. From my trips to Spain I must say I was surprised that there are no plaques or memorials marking important sited of the civil war, or even worse, the ones that are standing are only of the frankist side. If I was the mayor of Barcelona, I would take care to establish a hiking trail "on the footseps of George Orwell".
I'm not gonna lecture you on your country, just share my impression, that as a tourist in Spain you might think that Franco fought this war with nobody. Because there are frankist monuments, but no republican ones. Or maybe I didn't look in the right places.
I often get the impression that Spain is the best known deception of Europe: most people think they know it, but far from it. Many Europeans think it's a fun, sunny and relaxed country, and I think they think I'm crazy when I tell them we are 2nd only to Cambodya in unmarked burial sites and unidentified corpses of people still "disappeared".
Imagine that after the demolition of Warszawa in WW2, it was the Nazis, having won the war, who rebuilt it; that would be more or less the situation with many town in Spain, such as mine; except our nazis are and always have been technically and scientifically as smart as a cow (a dumb one) and keen on corruption and thievery (they are much better at that).
Franco's body remained in a massive mausoleum, built mostly by forced labour (political prisoners, mainly, subsequently buried on site, but off the spotlight, of course), under the biggest cross of Christiandom (Valle de los Caídos), until the current government managed to overcome all the hurdles laid by the post-francoist judiciary who still rule so much. I am talking of 2019, when his remains were extracted from there and moved to a regular cemetary. That mausoleum is a "pilgrimage destination" for fascists foreign and national, and still will be for a while, since the remains of Primo de Rivera (founder of "Spanish Phalanx", alma mater of Franco's fascism) are still there.
Republican monuments? Didn't leave one stone unturned. They still hinder as much as possible (very successfully for the most part) the exhumation and identification of bodies in mass graves.
Our civil war still continues, for now in cold mode.
And I stop talking about Spain, because I get carried away, and I am here to pay attention, to try to learn and understand.
why exactly leftism is supposed to hate every military hero of old past?
I understand core leftist trait is gatekeeping and treating everyone who does not 100% agree with your values to be "not real left", but come on....
I'm American, and this is the first time I've seen the story of Joe Biden and the pizza, but that is exactly the sort of thing American politicians do at home. You're not allowed to be President unless you've been photographed eating a corndog at a state fair.
Now I understand what "pakhan" ("papa khan") means.