******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
Back in the heady days of my adolescence, Ronald Reagan said the problem with the Russians was that they had no word for "freedom" in their language. I forget now which of his top-flight national security advisers or CIA/NSA whiz kids had advised him on this score, or whether the Gipper had just thought it sounded "right" for the occasion, but there is a word for "freedom" or "liberty" in Russian, and that word is "svoboda." It's the same word in Ukrainian. Hence, the word, since it existed in fact, was adopted, probably wrongly and maliciously, by the Russian-language station of the US-funded media outlet RE/RFL, Radio Svoboda. I found the interview with Vlad Kolesnikov, who I really do think should be an example to anti-war resisters everywhere, on the website of Radio Svoboda. http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/27064318.html Kolesnikov gave the interview to Dmitry Volchek, who far from being a Ukrainian fascist of any sort, is a long-time publisher of underground and marginal literature in Russian and Russian translation, including LGBT literature, through his literary almanac Mitin Zhurnal (which started out as a samizdat publication in Soviet times) and the affiliated Kolonna Publications imprint: http://kolonna.mitin.com/ http://rbth.co.uk/literature/2013/07/25/lgbt_literature_under_new_fire_survives_in_russia_28341.html I won't go into greater length about Mitya Volchek's great services to Russian literature and journalism, but if this were a slightly more just country (and not the fascist cesspool it's quickly becoming, with Marxmail subscribers like Amith and Roger Annis cheering it on from the sidelines), then Mitya would be awarded a knighthood or Medal of Freedom or whatever it's called here in Russia. Then I took the interview and translated it from Russian, a language I speak, read, and write fluently, into English. But then I made the big mistake of sharing my translation with this list, which has far too many self-made "experts" on Russian and Ukrainian affairs for its own good, including Amith and Roger. Where, Amith, was there any indication that either the interview itself, the brave anti-Putinist TEENAGER Vlad Kolesnikov (who has been speaking truth to power in the world's biggest country, which has so many nasty secret and other police that they're stumbling over each other looking for "dissidents" and "extremists" to crack down on) or the Petersburg-born Russian Jewish publisher and journalist Dmitry Volchek ( http://www.jewishgen.org/belarus/rje_v.htm) had anything to do with the fascist Ukrainian political party Svoboda? Just because you're apparently totally ignorant of all things Russian (and Ukrainian) doesn't mean you get to insult me and my work, and wonderful people like Vlad Kolesnikov and Mitya Volchek. For the record, in 2012, I published a report, on the blog I used to edit, on an attack by Ukrainian neo-Nazis on a presentation of the leftist journal Spilne ("Commons") in the city of Ternopil. At the time, it was alleged that the attack had been coordinated by a member of Svoboda. https://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/ukrainian-neo-nazis-attack-commons-ternopil/ Interestingly enough, Marxmail subscriber Sergii Kutnii reported on this same attack to the list at almost the same time: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.marxism.marxmail/164387 I don't remember if I shared my own translation of Spilne's report with the list as well, and I don't recall that Sergii's dispatch generated any discussion among list members at all, although as he knows better than me, Svoboda, their affiliates, and other Ukrainian far-righters and neo-Nazis were already causing a lot of trouble for Ukrainian leftists and others already "way" back then. It was just that back then this mattered to almost no one outside Ukraine, including, I suspect, Roger and Amith. But now everyone and their grandmother is an expert on "Ukrainian fascists," and Amith, a fluent Russian and Ukrainian speaker, just figured out that I have been aiding and abetting the Svoboda party of Ukraine, the cause of all evil in the known universe since February 2014. I want a full apology from Amith for this digusting insult to my reputation, competence, and leftist, anti-fascist political convictions. Failing that, I want Amith kicked off this list. If the moderators are unwilling to do that for any reason, then I'll kick myself off, because if this is what "Marxism" has come to in the 21st century, I don't want to have anything to do with it. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
