tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-821544239627177055.post8117227108654393522..comments2024-01-29T00:00:28.464+02:00Comments on MunteanUK: What makes Russia ‘great’ and what ‘belittles’ Great Britain [Ce face Rusia ‘mare’ şi ce ‘micşorează’ Marea Britanie]MunteanUKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04076516846278419749noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-821544239627177055.post-6800459114531754902012-07-19T13:32:58.424+03:002012-07-19T13:32:58.424+03:00Dear Gregor (part two),
[4] You touched a very se...Dear Gregor (part two),<br /><br />[4] You touched a very sensitive point for many people in Eastern Europe... There's an 'ancestral' fear of Russia in this part of the world that most Britons can't understand.<br /><br />Thanks to living on an island and haveing a good Navy, Britons have lost the 'fear of invasion' - they only 'relived' it a bit in 1940, when Luftwaffe's bombers were attacking England, wave after wave.<br /><br />In Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania + Moldova, there is a more vivid memory of Russian abuses...<br /><br />There's a saying (which some attribute to Bonaparte) - "Scratch the Russian, and you find a Tatar" - and many people in this part of the continent have found to be true :-(<br /><br />Obviously, I'd also like to see more respect from Russia to her neighbours, but... I simply can't make any assumptions on this...<br /><br />*<br /><br />[5] I also believe that there's considerably much hope for the better in regards to the Russian nationalistic model than in the UK's multicultural model, although both are prone to excesses.<br /><br />*<br /><br />[6] The world is on the brink of disaster, and the Orthodox faith offers meaningfulness, whilst the ideas of 'idols' like Darwing, Hawking, Dawkins, Hitchens etc offer nothing.<br /><br />From this perspective, although Russia may be directly involved and more severely affected by another world war than Britain, the Russians could still find their way to the light, to the true light of Christ.<br /><br />In the meantime, Britain (with or without Scotland) has no spiritual tradition to turn to... <br /><br />*<br /><br />[7] From a strictly economic point of view, both the UK and Russia are relying on fictions that provide them no 'insurance' against the turbulent times ahead of the world.<br /><br />America could still regain self-sufficiency, while Germany and France still have powerful and relatively diversified economies.<br /><br />To the contrary, Britain is too dependant on financial services which can be so easily made useless in times of war.<br /><br />The same applies for Russia, which is depending on massive sales of raw materials, whose prices drop in times of war, and markets are disrupted.MunteanUKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04076516846278419749noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-821544239627177055.post-48521131153096209622012-07-19T13:02:57.684+03:002012-07-19T13:02:57.684+03:00Dear Gregor (part one),
It's always nice to ...Dear Gregor (part one),<br /><br />It's always nice to read your lengthy and interesting comments, and I must accept your criticism.<br /><br />Inevitably, my view is influenced by the discourse of the British media, where contemporary Russia is depicted - more or less outrightly - as an 'archenemy' of present day UK.<br /><br />Since I'm not a skilled specialist on London-Moscow relations, but rather just an amateur observer of foreign politics, I guess you will accept my limitations.<br /><br />Here are some of my remarks to your comments:<br /><br />[1] Your image of Britain as an 'asylum' for all kinds of Russian crooks and criminals is at odds with the image projected by the British establishment - that of a country offering a haven to liberty seekers, revolutionaries, great misunderstood thinkers etc.<br /><br />Looking at the fact that Britan gave shelter to dubious 'heroes' like Karl Marx and Julian Assange or to vitriolic Islamic preachers, I'd tend to agree with you.<br /><br />On the other hand, I can't ignore the fact that Britain's openness has helped thousands of people escape the persecution in their countries. <br /><br />French Huguenots, Tsarist (White) Russians, Jews, Poles (during WW2), even some Romanians after WW2 etc have found refuge in the UK.<br /><br />Maybe what has been a laudable openness of Britain over the centuries is now steadily turning into something else... As long as anyone risks being extradited to the USA, it means Britain is not a safe place of refuge anymore.<br /><br />Moreover, I guess London wouldn't grant asylum to millions of threatened Christians around the world as easily as it offers its protection to all kinds of 'gangsters', as you - probably very correctly - call them.<br /><br />*<br /><br />[2] Of course, I'd also say that Britain didn't 'export' democracy anywhere!<br /><br />Americans have built their own democracy, and the people in India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore etc - although more influenced by the Westminster system that the USA - have also built their own political institutions.<br /><br />*<br /><br />[3] Dear Scottish friend, please believe me that I need not be 'pure stock' British, in order to be able to understand how ridicule Will Hague must have looked! :-)<br /><br />In the early half of the 19th century, Romanian nobles and those from the emerging burgeoisie were immitating Russian 'modernized' boyars. Later on, after 1848, they 'copied' directly the French, not through Russian mediation.<br /><br />No matter how ridiculous it was - and you can imagine there's a lot of good Romanian literature on that snobbish mimicry! - I bet it couldn't have been as ridiculous as Hague's 'performance'.<br /><br />For such a primitive, backward, unmodernized country like Romania was in the 19th century, such an attitude was excusable... <br /><br />...but not for a member of Her Majesty's Government 2012!MunteanUKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04076516846278419749noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-821544239627177055.post-50126553166792550562012-07-18T20:23:52.084+03:002012-07-18T20:23:52.084+03:00For Russia the same nostalgia has brought about, p...For Russia the same nostalgia has brought about, perhaps, a sense of possessiveness in central Europe and Central Asia. At first sight this is bad. Many countries (Poland, Romania, Estonia) want nothing to do with Russia. But others (most Central Asian countries, many Byelorussians and Ukrainians) do. <br /><br />I personally hope the Russians show more respect for the nations that want to be independent of them. But who knows? With the EU becoming increasingly a PC tyranny, maybe more conservative Poles and Romanians will start looking eastwards for shared values. <br /><br />And, as you concede, most importantly the Russians seem to be rediscovering Orthodox Christianity. This is surely most important. <br /><br />Another 19th century force they seem to have rediscovered is patriotism combined with belief in strong central government to advance a specifically Slavic culture. <br /><br />This is something I suppose I have mixed feelings about: I think it is better than a politically correct multiculturalism. But it also has a pretty brutal side and rather hypocritical undercurrents (e.g. how many middle class Russians support the strong state but bribe their way out of the army, though then few British warmongers will have kids in the army never mind have been there themselves). However, the curious thing about Britain is that conservatives increasingly define themselves by being pro-American rather than pro-British. I definitely prefer sovereign democracy to having a leadership that owes its loyalty abroad. <br /><br />It will be curious to see how things develop. Personally, I suspect that Britain will cease to exist before too long as if Britain keeps going the way it is, Scotland will want independence. Maybe Russia, by contrast, will expand its borders into Asia and Eastern Europe. <br /><br />After this, who knows what will happen? I think British foreign policy is based on false consciousness and it could fall apart quite easily. Similarly Britain’s economy is based on some rather dodgy ideas and could also fall apart. For both these reasons, I think British antipathy to Russia is rather exaggerated: that many in the media/political system might sincerely hate Russians but not sincerely want to spend lives and money on any potential conflict.Gregorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14729641571904025752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-821544239627177055.post-9074493242699195242012-07-18T20:23:22.948+03:002012-07-18T20:23:22.948+03:00Hi Bogdan
This is an interesting article
My only...Hi Bogdan<br /><br />This is an interesting article<br /><br />My only problem is I think you give too much credit to British politicians/ media. I’d actually say that the bad relations are almost entirely one way, that Britain has been appalling in its interactions with Russia, especially in its ‘asylum’ to terrorists, gangsters and oligarchs. <br /><br />And we can’t say that this is due to any pride or principles: we are happy to extradite anyone to the USA. <br /><br />Subsequently we faced humiliation when Litvinenko was poisoned. We don’t even know who ordered the poisoning, but the simple fact is that we always refused an extradition treaty with Russia. So in international terms our allies were very polite on the surface, but reading between the lines they basically told us ‘this is your own fault for being so foolish’. <br /><br />I’d say another similarity between Britain and Russia is that both countries reached a zenith in the late 19th century. But here there are similarities and differences as well. Britain’s media/political class have a weird sense of imperial greatness which ironically overlooks almost anything good that came out of the empire (eg technology/ English as a lingua-franca) and turns it into a weird morality tale about bringing democracy to the world. Which it didn’t. Similarly they’ve forgotten their protestant missionary work, but have a kind of very obnoxious secular Protestantism: i.e. Being nosy and interfering without having faith in God but only in themselves. <br /><br />Of course, now Britain is in no shape to have an empire even if it wanted to. This has led to a weird kind of paradox that many in the British political elite have a weird pan-Saxonism which they think brings imperial grandeur, but which actually makes them look pathetically sycophantic to almost anyone else. <br /><br />Case in point: Will Hague going to Washington to grovel and wearing a baseball cap.<br /><br />The weird thing is I think you’d need to be British to realize just how embarrassing this is: a middle aged, middle class Brit trying to be ‘cool’ and also using sycophantic language in a way he thinks looks tough.Gregorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14729641571904025752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-821544239627177055.post-42979791280693082072012-07-18T16:00:21.906+03:002012-07-18T16:00:21.906+03:00Photo Legend:
As I’ve got no pictures from Russia...Photo Legend:<br /><br />As I’ve got no pictures from Russia, I used an image of the Russian Church of St. Nicholas from the centre of Bucharest – built in 1905-1909 for the Russian community, now used by the Romanian Orthodox Church and known as The Students’ Church – to illustrate this article.MunteanUKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04076516846278419749noreply@blogger.com