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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34407 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Russian rockets crossed over the Polish border, killing two farmers.

Polish government official says national security meeting was called due to "emergency situation"

Pentagon is ' aware '

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-11-15-22/index.html

This stirred something in me that is rarely stirred (I was born in Poland). Some sort of patriotic anger. The Poles, along with the former Soviet states and most of Eastern Europe, absolutely loathe the Russians.

I imagine this isn't enough to send in the troops - but I could see myself reading a history book in 30 years about how Poland, and by extension, everyone else, were pulled into the Great Russian War by a bomb and two dead farmers.

Edit: Russia calls it provocation that Poland stated this

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2022/11/16/Russia-says-Polish-statements-of-Russian-missiles-hitting-its-territory-provocation-

Yesterday there have been talks between Foreign Intelligence Service head Naryshkin and CIA's Burns in Ankara.

But the US official, who spoke to the Reuters news agency on the condition of anonymity, said: “[Burns] is not conducting negotiations of any kind. He is not discussing settlement of the war in Ukraine.”

“He is conveying a message on the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by Russia and the risks of escalation to strategic stability,” the official said.

Today Russia kills (allegedly; confirmations and details pending – maybe it's another AA intercept gone wrong or whatever; though frankly wouldn't change in terms of culpability) some farmers in Poland, finally making progress towards *CredibleDefense's Article 5 memes.

I am not sure if those events are connected, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were. Anyway, expecting retaliations in the form of, oh I dunno, cancellation of my residence permit. Probably, hopefully, not explicit WWIII yet.

Condolences about the dead civilians, if this is confirmed. While this war as a whole is grossly irrational on Russian part, attacking Poland certainly sends it to another level of idiocy.

Incidentally, just the other day I saw a burly Polish man just randomly fuming in public before Turks about how much he hates Russians (Germans too) and Russian language, to the point he wouldn't talk to his (Ukrainian I guess?) GF in Russian, despite that being the only language they both know well, their English being broken (Polish and Ukrainian are highly mutually intelligible though). Guess he wanted to provoke someone. The degree of loathing was just incredible and on par with Azeri-Armenian tension. Poles sure are patriotic and raring to go.

What's with the extreme Polish seething relative to other post-Soviet states? The most irrationally hateful anti-Russian posters I see online are Polish. Many Eastern European countries suffered under the Soviets, but AFAIK there wasn't anything uniquely awful about Poland's experience? Perhaps "Russian Oppression" has just become central in their national historical narrative in a way that it has not in other Eastern European countries? Like slavery for Black Americans, the Japanese occupation for Korea, the "Century of Humiliation" for China, etc.

AFAIK there wasn't anything uniquely awful about Poland's experience?

Other than Russia teaming up with Nazi Germany to invade, occupy and partition them during the Big One? Poles probably don't view Russia as their "ally" against German aggression, the way US/France/Britain do, but part of the Axis. Plus, Poland is the direct geopolitical fence for Russia, and geography is important.

Poland thinks they could have been like Russia, but better and without despotic Asiatic excesses.

Napoleon was in Moscow for a month, Poles occupied Moscow for 2 years!

Baltic states are similar in seething.

Poles can make their own case just fine. But just for the record, the Soviet arc was only the last stretch of long Polish-Russian relations that... didn't go in their favor; other peoples on the outskirts of the Empire, like Finns, did not suffer as much, or for as long, did not resist as hard, did not get suppressed so brutally.

The most salient fact is that Poles exist at all. It's not clear when this tendency began to develop, probably can be traced to the emergence of szlachta class. But one could say Poles have survived as a people on the merit of their unusual reserves of spite and ability to produce national champions greatly devoted to resisting conquerors – Russian and Germanic empires were very eager to assimilate them, and had been making progress in this direction. They have also produced a strong and somewhat retconned self-concept («The Christ of Europe» idea, J. Conrad's self-serving bullshit about impeccable Western-European and not-Slavic creds of Poles one can see in his correspondence, unbelievably good lyrical narrative exemplified in Konrad Wallenrod, and the history of resurgence of national sentiment even among assimilated Poles after its release)...

Anyway, the fact that Poland could mostly reassemble herself, after so many false starts and upsets, on the basis of Nationalism and Catholicism, is an atypical historical turn and a testament to the strength of Polish national identity.

I would add, though I cannot search for sources right now, that there's a meme in Russian culture that's been around for some low number of centuries at least, where Russians consider other slavs as "lesser slavs" and themselves as "higher slavs." It shows itself in a disdain for other slavic cultures as less sophisticated, and in elevating the Russian culture/science/history as the pinnacle of slavic culture.

(Big, unverified historical arc warning) Every time Russia annexed a place like Poland, whether it was during the Partitions or in the aftermath of WW2, it basically treated Poland like place from which to extract resources and human labor and nothing more.

I think the situation surrounding this meme is particularly poignant because Poland as well as many other Eastern European states lean strongly toward European culture. Not slavishly though--there is both a respect and awe of Western Europe, but it's mixed with (growing) respect and awe for slavic culture and a slight, often humorous dig at Western European culture as being "fancy." Kind of a "together, but separate" kind of deal.

Edit:

Also, over the past decade, for reasons I cannot untangle, Poland has been heavily revisiting it's 20th century history. Speeches are made, monuments built, streets renamed for WW2 or anti-communist heroes. Seriously, comparing Poland of the 00's to Poland of '22, there's monument upon monument dedicated to WW2 or people murdered by the communist regime. Big or small, prominently placed in the capitol or secluded on a forest side road, the country is awash with monuments remembering historical suffering. I suspect this country-sized load of historical anger is now finding an outlet.

It's interesting, you know – how short Russian memories are in comparison. That Pan-Slavic project is utterly forgotten, literally nobody gives a shit about affirming superiority and patronage over Slavic «brothers». In the last century, there's a meme used to delegitimize Ukrainian/Belorussian independence, following from the earlier «Great Russians» vs «Little Russians» distinction (though this refers more to relative sizes of groups than to anything else). Anyway, I don't think it applies to Poles.

They are disliked and mocked for a) being highly interpersonally hostile, impulsive, provocative and pugilistic in the manner exemplified by soccer fans; b) being sore losers of history who have never made peace with losing their own Empire and chance at exterminating Orthodox Eastern Slavs (like we're ones to talk, yes), retconners of history, and leaders of the «butthurt belt» (accused of being «American lapdogs» etc.) and c) being absurdly, to a comical degree, haughty, racist and assuming some aristocratic posture vis a vis Russians (spamming psia krew!, an insult aimed at lower classes in the highly stratified premodern Poland), despite the aforementioned lower-class aggression and comparably humble historical background (that is, peasantry and serfdom) for the majority of the population. One can say Russians are bitter that they don't get to LARP as nobles, having embraced their lowly descent under communism, but a round-headed red-faced plumber from UK does, and shits on Russia unconditionally, including on aspects vastly beyond his cultural milieu.

Cue generic insults and pompously citing old poetry.

An average Russian is entirely ignorant of events like the Massacre of Praga, to say nothing of more mundane aspects of history and economy, and has doubts whether Katyn was truly a Soviet doing («but anyway, those stuck-up officers deserved it!»).

Nevertheless it seems to be recognized that much of the semi-deified Russian cultural elite had Polish descent, and that Poles have great culture, on par with Russian one, in ways Russians themselves prioritize. We can't very well deny liking Lem or Korczak or admiring Sienkiewicz in the more sophisticated circles or Sapkowski in simpler ones. There's the perception, correct one I believe, that Poles will not reciprocate and will pooh-pooh our own greats.

Ultimately I think Russians do not feel connection to the broad Slavic identity, being more interested in GeoPoLitIcAl relations, do not conceive of Slavs as something coherent enough to summarily look down on or up to, do not seek validation of that ethnic club and especially do not think about Poles in the context of Slavs in general. Poles are just Poles.

(...) but a round-headed red-faced plumber from UK does, and shits on Russia unconditionally, including on aspects vastly beyond his cultural milieu.

That is spot on and comically true. Thanks for the laugh, fine way to start the day.

It's amazing how much of that comes through even in The Brothers Karamazow, specifically the scene with Mitka, Grushenka, and the two Pans, where the elder Pan finally retreats, but not without one last show noble dignity. (Also, constantly calling everyone pan. Jesus Christ, that's tragicomic given how this remains a cultural taboo to this day).

This might be a reasonable place to start. Other tidbits might include stuff like the Soviets intentionally maximizing Polish casualties during their "liberation" during WWII, through stuff like intentionally slow-rolling offensives to give Nazis additional time to purge the locals, and malicious complience with allied demands to provide aid, for example dropping sacks of grain to polish holdouts fighting the nazis, sans parachutes. No links, just stuff I remember reading about in various histories of WWII and the cold war.

The sum, as I understand it, is that the Soviets and the Poles never liked each other much, and the Soviets went out of their way to inflict egregious harm against the poles when they had the chance.

One example of the WWII shenanigans you allude to is Warsaw Uprising in 1944. It was timed by Polish underground resistance to coincide with Soviet advance, and initially achieved success in wrestling control from Germans. However, when the Soviets arrived to Warsaw, instead of joining the ongoing combat operations, they just camped on the other bank of the river, allowing Nazis to regroup and reinforce, and ultimately defeat the uprising. Red Army just stood by and watched how Nazis crushed the resistance military, and murdered something between 100-200 000 civilians in mass executions.

Perhaps "Russian Oppression" has just become central in their national historical narrative in a way that it has not in other Eastern European countries?

Have you been paying attention to Eastern Europe? At all?

While Western Europe's smaller states tore each other to part in the early modern period, Eastern Europe saw itself consolidate into several larger realms. While the various people of Eastern Europe were ruled over by the Russians, Turks, and Austrian Germans, Western Europe saw the development of the nation-state, of nationalism, and of the national boundaries you see today. Through consolidating our nations here in Western Europe while the Eastern Europeans still had to deal with various empires, we ended up settling border disputes one by one, war after bloody war, with that mostly having come to an end after Germany reunified itself. Tellingly, the part of Western Europe that does still have a violent border dispute in living memory, Northern Ireland, is itself in one of its younger nations. The Irish just haven't had the time to figure that out as long as the rest of us did.

None of this applies to Eastern Europe. The Poles and Lithuanians look at the commonwealth they used to have before cursing Stalin's name, if they aren't brawling over just what should be whose instead. Hungary has people bitching about Slovaks 'having no culture' and clearly just being Hungarians in all but name and being rightfully theirs, if they aren't going on about Transylvania and Szekelyföld instead. Yugoslavia, Moldova, the other Baltics, and even such forgotten peoples as the Rusyn: they have not had as long to practice their nationalism, at all, and are in effect playing catch-up with the rest of the continent where that is concerned.

tl;dr: Poles are European as much as anyone else here is. Nothing weird to be seen here.

Have you been paying attention to Eastern Europe? At all?

Did you read my comment? At all? Climb down off the righteous indignation. I asked:

What's with the extreme Polish seething relative to other post-Soviet states?

Key point being "relative to other post-Soviet states." Many Eastern European countries have unresolved border disputes. So what? That doesn't explain at all why I have observed Polish posters writing way more genocidal, warmongering stuff towards Russians compared to other former Eastern bloc nations.

There's a shitload of Poles compared to most other Eastern European nations, they have beef with the Russians in a way Croats or Hungarians don't, and they - the ones in Germany, the UK, and other nations especially - tend to pop up in places other Russophobic randos also don't.

I think that's a reasonable explanation. Thank you.

Poland and Russia have a history, and as I recently observed in another forum, a history with "Muscovites" thinking they can push around "silly made up not actually a country"-countries in particular.

Many Eastern European countries suffered under the Soviets, but AFAIK there wasn't anything uniquely awful about Poland's experience?

I think it was? The difference with e.g. Ukraine is that Ukrainians were somewhat successfully assimilated, unlike Poland which was a distinct entity even under Russian thumb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Poland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_People%27s_Republic

So on one hand Poles were oppressed by Russians, on the other — they kept their cultural identity and historical memory (that incudes Russian abuses) intact.

Also Estonians, or Lithuanians, or Finns are just less numerous, so you see them less.

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