Russian Studies

A bit less visibly, Lenin’s ghost still haunts Russia

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 20:13:02 +0000

A bit less visibly, Lenin’s ghost still haunts Russia Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/05/2024 - 13:13

Bradley Worrell

This year is the 100^th anniversary of the death of the Soviet Union’s first communist leader, whose legacy in Russia and former Soviet republics is complicated

When Erin Hutchinson, an assistant professor in the University of ��ֱ�� Boulder Department of History, visited Russia and former Soviet republics in the mid-2010s for her research on the former Soviet Union, statues of Vladimir Lenin were ubiquitous.

“When I first started traveling to Russia and the former republics in the 2010s, every town and village had their own statue. I had so many photos taken of me and my friends with Lenin statues that I have a (good-sized) photo collection,” says Hutchinson, whose area of specialty is the cultural and political history of the Soviet Union, with a particular focus on nationality and empire.

Today, many of those statues featuring the goateed face and the intense stare of the founding father of communist Russia have been torn down—especially in former republics like Ukraine. The statues, Hutchinson says, signify Lenin’s complicated legacy in post-communist Russia and eastern Europe.

��ֱ�� Boulder researcher Erin Hutchinson studies the former Soviet Union and how its legacy affects Russia today.

January marked the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s death. ��ֱ�� Arts and Sciences Magazine recently spoke with Hutchinson about the leader’s legacy in Russia and its former republics, why leaders after Stalin wanted to return to Leninism and how he is viewed today in Russia. Her answers were lightly edited for style and condensed for space limitations.

Question: Set the scene for what was happening in Russia in the time leading up to the tsar’s abdication in early 1917, specifically as it relates to Lenin and his political party, the Bolsheviks.

Hutchinson: The Bolsheviks were one of many different groups that existed in the Russian empire. And the Russian empire under the tsar is a really oppressive place where you don’t have freedom of speech, or freedom of assembly or other basic rights. So, this oppressive government gives rise to these various political movements—a lot of which were either socialist or anarchist.

Lenin is a Social Democrat. He is a polarizing figure and, ultimately, he ends up splitting the party in two groups: the Mensheviks, which are the majority group, and the Bolsheviks, which are the minority.

Lenin is very driven and motivated to make revolution happen in Russia and he has the idea of having a small, disciplined, militant political organization rather than a broad-based party.

Question: A provisional government was formed after the abdication of the tsar. Many groups in Russia were vying for control at the time, so how is it that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were able to seize power?

Hutchinson: Without Lenin, the Bolsheviks probably would not have taken over in October of 1917. He’s the one who’s constantly pushing the Bolshevik faction within the Social Democrats to seize power. So, in that regard, he’s a central figure.

They (Bolsheviks) staged a coup in October, which had popular support. They kick out the provisional government that had been running the country since February and they take over all the important communication points and the seat of government, the Winter Palace.

Lenin is really the only person who has the vision to see, ‘If we want to take over, we just need to seize power now.’

It’s Lenin’s drive for power—along with his ability to see things that other political parties did not and to exploit the weaknesses of the other parties—that gives the Bolsheviks the advantage.

A statue of Vladimir Lenin in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. (Photo: Adam Harangozó)

For example, the Bolsheviks were the only party that (advocated) for Russia to pull out of the war (World War I, fighting Germany), because they recognized that the war was extremely unpopular in Russia. The country was getting defeated left and right on the eastern front, so this was a popular opinion with the masses. It’s a reflection of Lenin’s political cunning to espouse policies the other political parties were not but which were popular with the masses.

Question: What are some of the biggest legacies Lenin left on Russia and its territories?

Hutchinson: Lenin has a really big impact in terms of how the Soviet Union is structured, which is what I study. He’s the one who believes the Soviet Union needs to be structured as one country with many republics in it. He was the one who said that instead of unitary government, the different ethnic groups should have their own republics within the USSR. And he did this because, during the civil war that followed the 1917 revolution, he had seen the strength of separatist nationalists in the borderlands of the Russian empire, because he fought against them.

So, he knew that nationalism was strong, and this way (having independent republics) was his way of appeasing them. He said, ‘OK, we’ll have these different ethnic groups have their own little republics. They’re not going to be politically independent, but they will have their own institutions and culture.’

Stalin (Lenin’s successor) actually didn’t want that. He didn’t want to be organized along ethnic lines, which is interesting, because Stalin was Georgian.

Lenin established many things that determined the very structure of the USSR until it collapsed. And indeed, many have argued that the structure was the reason the USSR collapsed. It was relatively easy for the Soviet republics to break away because they already had ethnically consolidated populations and many of the same institutions as independent states.

Question: After Lenin’s death, he became a cult-like figure in the Soviet Union, correct?

Hutchinson: He’s definitely this ubiquitous figure in the Soviet Union. They called him Uncle Lenin. Every place where Lenin ever slept had a plaque that said, ‘Lenin slept here.’

Every school child learned about Lenin and his positive qualities that they should emulate. The myth of Lenin was very much a part of every Soviet child’s experience growing up; you can compare it to George Washington in the U.S.—but maybe on steroids.

Vladimir Lenin giving a speech in Moscow, Russia, May 5, 1920. (Photo: Grigory Petrovich Goldstein)

And, of course, everyone knows that his body is preserved in a mausoleum (in Moscow) and that’s where Soviet leaders would stand when they had parades in Red Square. They would stand in Lenin’s mausoleum and wave to people. It was just a ubiquitous part of everyday life.

Question: Lenin was essentially a follower of the political philosophy of Karl Marx. At what point did he become elevated to where people talk about Marxism-Leninism as a political philosophy?

Hutchinson: I think we would use a term like Marxism-Leninism to describe what Lenin added to Marxism. Because in many ways, you can see Lenin is going against some of the original ideas of Marx, because Marx thought that the working class revolution was going to happen in the most advanced industrialized countries in Europe, like Germany and Britain. Well, that didn’t happen.

Lenin believed that would eventually happen, but he also argued that the proletarian revolution could happen in places that did not have these advanced industrial economies. And Russia was still a country in 1917 where about 80% of the population were peasants and occupied with agriculture.

Workers made up about 10% of the population of Russia at the time of the revolution, so it’s really audacious to say that this relatively small working class can take over a whole country. But the idea that you didn’t have to be an advanced industrialized country to have a communist revolution does spread to other countries.

In many ways, his ideas sort of deviate from the original Marxism, but in a way that ends up being really productive in that other people kind of glom onto them and they make their own changes, like Mao in China, who had the idea of a communist revolution driven by the peasantry, which Marx definitely didn’t think was possible.

Question: After Stalin’s reign, some of the Soviet Union’s leaders talk about wanting to return to Leninism. What do they mean by that, exactly?

Hutchinson: After Stalin’s death, (Soviet Premier Nikita) Khrushchev gives his famous secret speech in 1956 about all the Stalinist crimes that were committed and all the people that were killed in the terror of 1937. And Khrushchev does this under the name of a return to Leninism. So, he’s actually repudiating Stalin, but then he goes back to some of those more original policies of Lenin, including reviving official atheism and persecuting the church, saying that this is what Lenin really wanted; saying that atheism is an official part of the Communist Party program.

It’s fascinating, even with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, he was reading all the writings of Lenin and thinking ‘We need to go back to the original ideas of Lenin.’ So, he sees himself initially as a Leninist revolutionary, but working from within the system.

Vladimir Lenin giving a speech in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1917. (Photo: public domain)

In some sense, every Soviet leader after Stalin is wanting to get back to Leninism.

Question: Russia stopped being a communist country with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. How do Russians regard Lenin today?

Hutchinson: Today, the attitude of Russians toward Lenin is kind of complex, I think.

If you look at things from the perspective of the Russian regime today, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin wants to claim some of the positive parts of the Soviet legacy, such as the Soviet victory in World War II (even though) Lenin was long dead by then and Stalin is more closely associated with the war.

But there is also some ambivalence to Lenin because the central part of Putin’s ideology is that he is opposed to revolution. Just a couple of years after he came to power, there started to be revolutions in former Soviet republics, like Ukraine, and similar things happen in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.

Putin perceives these as happening in his backyard, and he also doesn’t want them happening at home. Liberal groups oppose him, and some conservative nationalist groups oppose him and he’s stomping on all opposition. So, a figure like Lenin—who is a revolutionary—fits awkwardly with his worldview.

The other issue is that Putin’s ideology is increasingly influenced by Russian nationalism, which also has a very ambivalent attitude toward Lenin. Russian nationalists increasingly reject Lenin, seeing him as having destroyed the great Russian empire and many aspects of traditional Russian culture, like the church, the traditional village and these kinds of things.

Top image: Vladimir Lenin (center) in Moscow's Red Square. (Photo: public domain)

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This year is the 100th anniversary of the death of the Soviet Union’s first communist leader, whose legacy in Russia and former Soviet republics is complicated.

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Teaching Russian at ��ֱ�� Boulder was not her plan

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 22:37:19 +0000

Teaching Russian at ��ֱ�� Boulder was not her plan Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/31/2023 - 16:37

Clint Talbott

Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg was born in China, detained in World War II Japan and fully embraced her American life; a scholarship named for her describes her life in 54 words. Here is the rest of the story

Getting to know Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg was “like peeling an onion,” a longtime friend says. Each layer revealed another staggering challenge of a far-flung life faced by an indomitable woman.

Wittenberg taught Russian at the University of ��ֱ�� Boulder for a decade after earning a master’s in Russian here. She is remembered as a compelling teacher, now immortalized with a scholarship that is named for her and summarizes her life in 54 words. There is more to her story.

Born in Manchuria, China, educated as a dentist, married and later detained for four years in World War II Japan, she moved to post-war America and reared two boys in rural ��ֱ�� before coming to ��ֱ�� Boulder. She could have taught a rigorous curriculum on life. She was content to teach Russian.

At the top of the page: Elizabeth and Maria Shevchenko sail near Yokohama, Japan, in 1937. Above: Elizabeth and Ernst Wittenberg sit near a fireplace in Boulder in the 1980s.

Peter Wittenberg, a retired pathologist in North Carolina and a ��ֱ�� alumnus, recently shared his mother’s story with this publication. David Burrous, her student and friend and a teacher of Russian and Spanish in Jefferson County schools (and a ��ֱ�� alumnus), also shared his recollections. This is their account:

Elizabeth Shevchenko was born in Harbin, China, to a Ukrainian family who built part of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Her sister was born in Ukraine, and the family frequently traveled between Ukraine and Manchuria.

Elizabeth and her sister studied dentistry in Germany and, after earning her credential, Elizabeth moved to Tokyo, where she met Ernst Wittenberg, a young OB-GYN doctor.

He had worked for the Salvation Army Hospital in Berlin and later, with his father’s help, became a ship doctor and traveled the world. He moved to Japan in 1935 and opened a private practice, later becoming a physician for the British and U.S. Embassy delegations.

In Tokyo, they had two children, Peter and Paul. It was still a time of relative peace, though not for long.

Detained and marked for death

In 1941, before it attacked the United States, Japan was widely expected to attack. Fearing for their lives, the Wittenbergs secured a British visa and were scheduled to sail for Britain on the Swedish ship Gripsholm on Dec. 7, 1941.

But that was the “day of infamy” on which Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, propelling the United States into World War II.

Japan refused to let the Wittenbergs leave the country and interned the family. Britain tried to exchange the Wittenbergs for POWs, but Japan refused.

“The Japanese were afraid that my dad knew too much about what was going on in the diplomatic corps, so they put us on house arrest,” Peter Wittenberg says. The Swiss Embassy and Red Cross recruited Ernst Wittenberg to join their medical team. He was in the first group of physicians sent to treat U.S. prisoners of war at the Nagoya prison camp.

“I have his notes, and they were tearjerking. The prisoners were treated inhumanely. Food was scarce, and intimidation was common,” Wittenberg says, noting that Japan also intimidated the Wittenberg family:

“My neighbor was hung in front of our house as a warning.”

Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg near Yokohama, Japan, in 1937.

The entire Wittenberg family was to be executed on Aug. 15, 1945, but the execution order was halted because that was also the day that Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender.

The beginning and end of the war thus bookmarked their forced confinement and their escape from death.

New obstacles, more prejudice

After the war, Ernst Wittenberg became the personal doctor to the wife of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who commanded U.S. forces in the Pacific. Also, the family sailed to Seattle on a troop ship, ostensibly to freedom.

“Dad was a German Jew—mother was Russian Orthodox—and he had some money in the bank. But the (American) bank confiscated it, so we had no money.” The family’s money remained frozen and unavailable to them until the 1960s.

Ernst borrowed money from a sister in New York, so the near-penniless family then moved to Long Beach, New York. Young Peter and Paul went to school there.

“I spoke fluent Japanese, German and a smattering of English,” Wittenberg recalls. “Since we did not have grades in Japan, they put me in third grade, which I flunked.”

Elizabeth had been a dentist in Japan, but she would have had to repeat her training in dentistry to practice here. She declined. To help the family survive, she performed menial labor at a local hospital. She also waited tables.

Ernst faced similar obstacles.

“In those days, they didn’t let foreigners practice medicine in the states,” especially if they were German, Wittenberg notes. ��ֱ�� was one of the few states that allowed German-born physicians to take the medical licensing exam.

A few days before Ernst was scheduled to take the test, the state of ��ֱ�� forbade him to take the exam.

William L. Knous, who was then ��ֱ��’s governor, intervened on Wittenberg’s behalf. To those who would deny Wittenberg the right to practice medicine here, Knous said, “You can’t do that to the poor guy,” Peter Wittenberg recalls.

After Ernst worked for a time at Penrose Hospital in ��ֱ�� Springs, the family settled in the tiny town of La Jara, in ��ֱ��’s San Luis Valley. Ernst Wittenberg took over the OB-GYN practice of a Quaker physician and delivered about 100 babies a year.

Initially, the nearby Alamosa Hospital denied Wittenberg privileges but later relented under pressure from other physicians.

In the 1950s, Ernst Wittenberg wanted to leave the San Luis Valley, and the family moved to Boulder, over Elizabeth’s objections. Ernst became a physician at the ��ֱ�� Boulder Wardenburg Student Health Center.

Elizabeth enrolled in a ��ֱ�� Boulder master’s program in Russian and graduated in 1964. Peter earned a degree in biology in 1960 from ��ֱ�� Boulder, then an MD from ��ֱ��’s medical school in 1964. Peter’s brother, Paul, now deceased, earned his veterinary degree from ��ֱ�� State University in 1964.

“So, we all graduated the same week, which was unusual,” Peter Wittenberg says.

Drinking with George Gamow, speaking in many tongues

In Boulder, Elizabeth and Ernst became friends with George Gamow, the ��ֱ�� Boulder physicist who advocated for and developed the Big Bang theory of cosmology and after whom the Gamow Tower on campus is named. Gamow was born in Odessa, which was part of the Soviet Union then but became part of Ukraine after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991.

Gamow was Russian. “George would be at our house frequently,” often drinking cognac, Wittenberg recalls, though Wittenberg switched Gamow’s libation to vodka, because Gamow could drink great volumes of cognac. Vodka was cheaper.

David Burrous remembers many evenings at the Wittenberg home. The Shevchenkos were Ukrainian, but like many Ukrainian families, they spoke Russian and Ukrainian. Elizabeth’s brother was an exception. He refused to speak Russian and spoke only in Ukrainian.

In an undated photograph, the Shevchenko family poses for a portrait. Elizabeth is seated in the front, wearing black.

At dinner parties, the lingua franca could change, Burrous notes. A man who spoke Polish and German could speak in German to Elizabeth and Ernst, who would translate to English. Elizabeth’s sister-in-law visited from South America, and she spoke only Spanish and German. Though she spoke Chinese, Japanese, German, Ukrainian, English and Russian, Elizabeth did not know Spanish.

At the dinner table, then, Elizabeth’s sister-in-law spoke Spanish to Burrous and his wife, Alisa, who translated to English. “Occasionally we would use the wrong language with the wrong person and the table would erupt in laughter,” Burrous says, adding: “Dinner was always a multicultural experience."

The fare, too, was exotic. Before every dinner, Elizabeth would serve an hors d'oeuvre; her favorite was pickled cod.

“I don't know if you've ever had pickled cod, but it's a little bit like bubble gum. I mean, you just chew it and chew it,” Burrous notes. “But she always insisted that the the first part of the hors d'oeuvres was going to be pickled cod. And she wouldn't bring out the next hors d'oeuvre until we all finished the pickled cod. Ernst detested pickled cod, but he knew better than to not partake.”

Teaching with a passion

Elizabeth never complained about not working as a dentist in the United States. “She just saw an opportunity to teach, and she didn’t want to go through dental school again,” Wittenberg says.

Burrous agrees. “Her love was the Russian language and teaching. She was so kind in class, encouraging us to speak Russian. She had a new focus. In fact, I didn’t know she was a doctor of dentistry until several years before she passed away. It just never came up.

"We always spoke Russian together, in and outside of class. Meeting on Saturday mornings for coffee and a chance to speak Russian, my facility to speak Russian much improved.”

Although she was popular with the students and successful in teaching Russian, she did not gain a permanent faculty position at ��ֱ�� Boulder. The university reminded her that she was married to a physician and said another, male, candidate “needed the job” as a permanent faculty member.

“She was madder than hell,” Wittenberg recalls. “She was so mad when they told her that.”

Elizabeth Shevchenko poses for her graduation portrait, after earning her dentistry credential, in Germany.

Despite the setback, Elizabeth taught for a decade at ��ֱ�� Boulder and took other opportunities to teach Russian. “She just loved teaching, and she had a good personality,” Wittenberg says.

And a compelling personality, Burrous adds. She was fully multilingual, but she didn’t learn English until she was an adult. For that reason, she sometimes used phrases that would evoke laughter from her friends.

At a gathering whose attendees included ��ֱ�� alumnus John Bartow, Elizabeth said, “I want to sit next to the John.” She did not repeat that mistake.

Elizabeth loved to eat at a restaurant called the Black Angus, Burrous recalled. “But when she would tell us that she and Ernst were going out to dinner that night, she would say they were going to the Black Agnes. We kidded her about that for years.”

“She always took the joke very well. I mean, here was a woman who spoke six different languages, and we’re joking with her because she pronounced something incorrectly.”

Burrous attributes Elizabeth’s facility with language, in part, to the fact that she was extroverted and enjoyed talking with people, and in part to the fact that she needed to learn foreign languages when she was in foreign lands.

“If she went to a grocery store and there was someone speaking Japanese, she would join in the conversation. If there were someone speaking German, she would join in,” Burrous recalls.

She soaked up new languages as she went to the grocers, ferried clothes to the dry cleaners, “all of those things regardless of what country they were in,” Burrous adds.

Elizabeth maintained her Russian Orthodox Christian customs. For instance, when Burrous and his family moved into a new home, she brought them a loaf of bread and flask of salt, a Russian tradition that imparted a “house spirit.”

When those who have a house spirit move to a new home, they take the spirit, along with the bread and salt, with them. “You say, ‘House spirit, come with us. We are going to a new house,’” Burrous notes.

Now in a different home, the Burrous family still has the bread and salt she gave them, sustaining the spirit of the house and the memory of their friend.

Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg received her MA in Slavic Languages from ��ֱ�� in 1964 and taught at ��ֱ�� for 10 years and is the namesake for the Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg Scholarship. She was involved in Russian activities throughout the state, including the High School Olimpiada of Spoken Russian and Jefferson County’s weekend Russian immersion village “Sosnovka.” She died in 1990.

Ernst Wittenberg was inducted into San Luis Valley Health’s Medical Hall of Fame in 2017. He died in 1990.

Photos courtesy of the Wittenberg family.

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Russia retools Soviet propaganda against Ukraine, expert says

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 15:00:59 +0000

Russia retools Soviet propaganda against Ukraine, expert says Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/08/2023 - 09:00

Bradley Worrell

In her master’s thesis, ��ֱ�� grad student highlights how the current Russian regime is making use of Soviet narratives and symbols to justify its war with Ukraine

For Daria Molchanova, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine feels very personal.

“First of all, because I’m Russian, I’m literally a part of it,” she says. “My family was in Russia when it (the invasion) all started, I have a lot of friends in Ukraine, and I have been to Ukraine many, many times.”

So, perhaps it’s no surprise that when Molchanova was completing her master’s degree in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of ��ֱ�� Boulder, she decided to write her thesis on how the current regime in Moscow has co-opted propaganda and symbols from the Soviet era to justify its armed conflict with Ukraine.

Molchanova is pictured here in her native Russia; a Russian Orthodox church is pictured in the background. Molchanova has studied Russian war propaganda efforts, first when she earned a PhD in history from Moscow State University in 2016, and more recently when obtaining a master’s degree in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of ��ֱ�� Boulder, where she wrote her thesis on how the current regime in Moscow has co-opted Soviet World War II propaganda and symbols and made use of them in its current armed conflict with Ukraine.

“I have taken it (the invasion) very harshly, so I guess writing about it was one way to maybe have some personal input, and maybe (expressing) just a little bit of the feeling of guilt for what my country was doing,” she says.

Also, while earning a PhD in Russian history from Moscow State University in 2016, she wrote her dissertation on Russian propaganda in the country’s war with Japan and “instantly noticed a lot of similarities in terms of how some symbols were used and how some of the linguistic aspects are basically the same.”

Observing Russia’s initial propaganda efforts related to its invasion of Ukraine in 2020, Molchanova says she first noticed how chaotic and ineffective those efforts were.

“The propaganda was not effective from the beginning, because the main function of propaganda is to explain things,” she says, adding that the government failed to make a convincing case justifying an invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin and others in his government were confident the conflict would be over in almost no time, she says, so comprehensive propaganda efforts were not formulated in the beginning.

“I guess that by now it’s obvious that nobody was prepared that this so-called ‘special military operation’ would last for years,” she says. Instead, the government likely hoped it could achieve its goals quickly, like it did in its 2008 military campaign against the former Soviet republic of Georgia. That conflict lasted a matter of days and resulted in a defeat for Georgia and the loss of some of its territories.

As the war with Ukraine has dragged on, however, Russian propagandists have had more time to shape their narratives—some have fallen flat, but others have taken hold with at least part of the Russian populace.

Recently, Molchanova talked about the Russian government’s propaganda efforts and how some borrow symbols and terminology from the former Soviet Union, especially those relating to War II narratives. Her responses were lightly edited for style and clarity.

Question: When Russian propagandists talk about Ukrainian leaders being Nazis and fascists, is there more charged meaning to those words than the average American might understand?

Molchanova: Specifically using this Nazi card, it all comes from the biggest trauma of—not just Russian people, but from Slavic people, in general—because the losses Russia had during World War II were just unheard of, more than 20 million people. And if you talk to any Russian family, they had someone who either died in World War II or was severely injured.

So, I think it’s just very hard for some (in the West) to understand on the personal level. Imagine speaking to every American family and they would say, ‘We lost that person in that war’ or ‘We lost five people in that war.’ In Russia, every family had this sacrifice.

So, of course, the word Nazi for Russians, it’s something we grew up hearing about non-stop … because for Russians it’s much more personal than I think it is for most people. That’s why it’s so effective. And that’s why, unfortunately, modern propaganda is trying falsely to use this.

Question: It seems part of the recent propaganda efforts are focused on making the Russian soldiers seem very heroic?

Molchanova: They have this whole section in the news every day, showing how some brave Russian soldiers saved a family, or children, or a dog and her puppies. So, it’s always some emotional story of some soldier savior. That’s what they’re showing—and they’re completely denying every single accusation that comes from Ukraine.

If you go to any Russian news source … it’s like the opposite (of what Ukraine says happened), no matter what happened. For example, this church was destroyed in Odessa. The western side, of course, said Russian missiles hit the church. The Russian version said a Ukrainian rocket hit the church (because) Ukrainians can’t use their air defense system. They destroyed the church. So, it’s never, never admitted that Russians did anything wrong—complete opposite representation.

Question: One example of propaganda from a few years back that you highlighted in your thesis was a story of Ukrainian soldiers supposedly crucifying a young boy in a Ukrainian eastern province. Do average Russians really believe a story like that?

Molchanova: I think it’s one of the most successful propaganda stories, about the crucified boy back in 2014 in Slovansk (in eastern Ukraine). This young woman, a mother, was sharing this super emotional story (on Russian TV) about how Ukrainian Nazis crucified the boy and how he bled to death.

But when (independent journalists) tried to find any witnesses—it’s a very small town, and obviously someone would have seen, and she said the crowd was on the square, so everybody was there to witness it—they couldn’t find a single witness there at all. Never, ever was there any proof of this happening, and I think the dates that she was talking about, the Ukrainian army was not even there in those days. So, it’s a completely made-up story.

But the problem with propaganda is that once something so strong is thrown into the public, unfortunately, nobody is coming back (to check) if that story in 2014 was actually true. …

A lot of Russians sitting somewhere far away in the countryside in the evening were watching the news. They’re not interested in doing some further research or anything. No, it’s just the fact for them. So yeah, even today, a lot of people still think that it happened. Nobody wants to double-check, unfortunately.

Question: In your thesis, you note that there was a deliberate decision in Russia to play up Great Patriotic War mythology in recent years—even before the invasion of Ukraine. How have things changed, specifically?

Molchanova: Yeah, it (the May 9 holiday celebrating victory over Nazi Germany) was not as strong in the Soviet Union—especially in the first two decades after the victory. Even in the 1990s, it was a very quiet holiday. I remember it in my childhood, there were no festivities, there were no fireworks, no military parades, nothing like that. We would just buy some flowers and we went to the local memorial, where we laid the flowers. That was it.

But later, when I was starting at the university, I noticed every single year how it was just changing. I don’t even know what to compare it with—almost like cosplay. People were dressing their babies in the Red Army uniforms.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Russians lost the unifying force that communism provided. In recent years, the Russian government has promoted the myth of the Great Patriotic War (Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II) as a rallying point for the population. More recently, Russian leaders also have made use of propaganda efforts to justify the war with neighboring Ukraine.

And it looks fun at first, but when you start thinking about it, the main phrase that every single Russian veteran from World War II says was, ‘Never again. The only important thing is there is no war.’

Now, there is no sense of how terrible the war is. They replaced the idea of ‘never again’ with, ‘How amazing we are; how heroic we are; how we do this and that from one of the latest movies.’ On Amazon, there’s a movie called T-34 about tanks, and Russian media were presenting it as, basically, Fast and Furious with tanks. So, that’s how they’re portraying the most horrifying war in history. Now, there is no trace of how horrible war is; it’s only beautiful stuff and heroism.

Question: Are there other things you think it’s important to mention about Russian propaganda or the state of Russia today?

Molchanova: I think it’s important, especially for Western people, to understand that it (war propaganda) is not something unique to Russia. War propaganda has happened every single time in every single war, including in the United States. If you look for it, American propaganda has all the same patterns, the same rules, the same symbolics. So, there’s nothing new here. …

There is a massive brainwashing campaign in Russia now. There is this term ‘zombification’ right now, and it does work successfully on some groups of people. But a lot of Russians don’t support this war. And the proof is that millions of Russians had to leave the country.

There were Russian protests against the war. … Unfortunately, there is very little news from Russia of Russians being against the war. I think that should be shown more, because I don’t know a single person who supports it. Not one.

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In her master’s thesis, ��ֱ�� grad student highlights how the current Russian regime is making use of Soviet narratives and symbols to justify its war with Ukraine.

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What’s next for Putin’s Russia?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 21:11:40 +0000

What’s next for Putin’s Russia? Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/29/2023 - 15:11

Bradley Worrell

An agreement between the Wagner mercenary group and the Russian government averts a civil war for now, but the future is less clear, according to ��ֱ�� Boulder Russia expert and political science professor

Events in Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine took perhaps their most dramatic turn to date late last week.

On Saturday, members of the 25,000-member Wagner mercenary group—which had been fighting on behalf of Russia in Ukraine—took over a major Russian military base, shot down several Russian aircraft and launched a short-lived coup that threatened to start a civil war.

The two sides quickly approved a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the terms of which include Wagner forces agreeing to stand down in exchange for immunity and mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and some of his fighters relocating to nearby Belarus.

Sarah W. Sokhey specializes in comparative politics and political economy with a regional focus on the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.

Sarah Wilson Sokhey, an associate professor of political science at the University of ��ֱ�� Boulder who has spent more than 20 years traveling to and studying the politics of Russia and the former Soviet Union, has been monitoring the situation in Russia closely for signs of what might come next. She recently spoke to Have Ya Herd about what the latest developments could mean for Prigozhin, his mercenary fighters, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

Question: Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary army, was once a close ally of President Putin. How surprising is it he and Putin had a major falling out?

Wilson Sokhey: It’s surprising and not surprising, in a way.

So, it’s surprising in that most of us had no idea that this was coming with a particular timing of this. The U.S. government is saying that they did have some advance information that this might be about to occur, but I’m not sure how far in advance they had that information.

It’s not surprising that someone like Prigozhin would turn on Putin and would try to take advantage of the situation—to challenge Putin’s political power. … Given that the war has been going badly, and that he (Prigozhin) is not an entirely predictable person, it’s not shocking that someone like him would do something like this.

Question: Do you have any thoughts on what happens to Prigozhin, who supposedly is now receiving amnesty?

Wilson Sokhey: It probably doesn’t stop there. There are a lot of different scenarios that could play out. Prigozhin has been offered the opportunity to “retire,” in an old kind of Soviet sense, in Belarus, as negotiated by Belarus President Lukashenko.

If he’s smart, he’ll try to get out of Belarus and go somewhere else, but he doesn’t have any good options for where else he could go.

Some people think that Prigozhin could still pose a risk to Putin. He could still possibly have support among the soldiers that he led before. Some people are speculating that there’s every incentive for Putin or for the FSB (the Russian state security service) to try to kill him while he's in Belarus, or maybe for the Belarusian security forces to be involved in that, because Belarus is a close ally of Russia.

So, Prigozhin himself is still very much at risk, and the Russian system is still at risk from having someone who has recently engaged in this attempted coup still very close by.

Question: What happens to Wagner’s mercenary troops that are in in Russia and are deployed against the Ukrainians?

Wilson Sokhey: They’ve also been offered amnesty. So, the official line right now is that they’re not going to be prosecuted for their participation in the coup. They have every incentive as well, however, to try to get out of Russia with whatever options that they have. …

I wouldn’t imagine that the Russian government has any incentive to have those particular soldiers go back to Ukraine and fight, but the Russian government also is running out of (soldiers) and is facing a situation which it has to draft more people. It really needs every soldier it can get if it intends to keep waging this war. So, it’s really unclear.

Question: In the past, Putin has been an expert at spinning things—even when they didn’t necessarily go his way. But given this latest development with the attempted coup by Wagner mercenaries, is there a way for Putin to put a good spin on it?

Wilson Sokhey: He can’t turn it into a good thing, but Putin is certainly trying his hardest to spin it as a situation in which he was very much in control, that he knew what was happening and that it (the coup attempt) was put down quickly. But it’s going to be very challenging for him to avoid any consequences from this in the public eye.

On the front page of (the Russian newspaper) Komsomolskaya Pravda is an interview with a political analyst, saying, “Well, it doesn’t appear that Russian elites were involved in this at all … and it’s just a limited attempt at a coup.”

But there’s really not a scenario in which it doesn’t make the Russian government look grossly incompetent and divided that something like this could happen. And although the Russian people, like all people, are very susceptible to propaganda from the Russian state … they can also be remarkably savvy. And if this is what they see of how the Russian government is functioning, they know that what they don’t see has got to be all the worse.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Putin will immediately be removed from power as a result. But one possibility is that it’s the beginning of the end.

Question: In terms of the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, can the Ukrainians potentially use this turmoil to their advantage?

Wilson Sokhey: Absolutely. This is only good for Ukrainians, who are fighting against Russia. It shows that Russia is divided and that the military is falling apart. It provides an opportunity in the short and medium term, and maybe long term as well, for attention to be diverted away from attacks on Ukraine at a time when Ukraine is stepping up its own counteroffensive. …

Ukrainians were watching this very closely—and not only does it boost morale, but the actual ability to fight. So, it’s very clearly good for Ukraine.

Question: In terms of the long-term outlook for the war between Russia and Ukraine, do these recent developments with Wagner potentially change the calculus of the war?

Wilson Sokhey: The calculus changes entirely, really, in that it sends such a powerful signal that the Russian military is doing so badly. But the other critical component of this will be continued, strong support from Western governments and military aid and financial aid to continue fighting the war.

It absolutely changes the calculus of what we think is possible. And it shows that the Russian military is not invincible, which we already knew, but it demonstrates just how bad of a state the Russian military is in.

Question: What are Western governments to make of the current state of affairs in Russia?

Wilson Sokhey: Governments are watching these developments very, very closely. (Secretary of State) Anthony Blinken cancelled travel plans because of the potential coup attempt that was happening to make sure they were monitoring the situation closely.

And I think that what’s key here, is that Western governments will watch closely for opportunities to assist Ukraine most effectively, because what’s happening makes Russia look all the more vulnerable. So, what some Western governments didn’t entirely think was possible before, in defeating Russia in Ukraine … looks more possible now.

Question: Putin has managed to stay in power for about 20 years. Is there anything to suggest he might not be able to survive this politically?

Wilson Sokhey: Yes, but we really don’t know when that political demise would come, exactly. There have been people who have pointed out that this is similar to a failed attempted coup that happened in Russia back in 1917, before the Bolshevik Revolution, which was successful.

In the summer of 1917, there is a general who marches on the Tsar and is trying to bring down the monarchy, but fails. But that was the first step in what’s ultimately going to open up an opportunity for the Bolshevik Revolution to be successful.

Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) is a leader of a mercenary group and previous confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin (right).

So, one possible scenario is that we see something like that—that this attempt was not successful, but it opens the opportunity and creates cracks and weaknesses in the system that lead to regime change, perhaps, or the fall of Putin.

Question: If that happens, is there a sense of who Putin’s replacement might be?

Wilson Sokhey: One possibility is that it’s someone from the security services or from the military. And one possibility is that we see it be someone who, like Putin himself when he first came to power, is a relatively unknown name for the everyday person. So, it’s not someone on our radar right now, but someone who is high up in the ranks.

But the critical thing to remember is that the person who takes over from Putin may not be better than Putin. It’s not a quick fix if Putin dies tomorrow or if he’s deposed from power. With the system that’s being perpetuated in Russia, and the Russian government right now, it may get worse before it gets better.

Question: Is there anything else that people should be mindful of now, particularly regarding the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia?

Wilson Sokhey: I just think it’s so important to continue to keep Ukraine in the news and to remember that the war is happening. And that it actually could get worse this winter, especially because Russia has attacked infrastructure in Ukraine. …

That’s going to be a very challenging situation for Ukraine, and it needs as much support as ever from the West.

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Having built a business in Russia, alum fled as war began

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 22:40:13 +0000

Having built a business in Russia, alum fled as war began Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/15/2023 - 15:40

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Benjamin Lourie’s career has made twists and turns, taking him to outer Mongolia and back to Moscow, where he opened a Tex-Mex restaurant near Red Square—two weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Benjamin Lourie (IntlAf/Russ’16) knew exactly what he wanted when he started his undergraduate education at the University of ��ֱ�� Boulder: to become a commissioned officer in the U.S. Marine Corps through the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps.

Since then, he’s learned Russian, earned two degrees, gotten married, started a business in Moscow—Russia, not Idaho—moved to Georgia—the country, not the state—and experienced an ongoing evolution in his political thoughts and opinions.

Life, he’s discovered, has a way of rewriting scripts, and he’s happy with its twists and turns so far. For example, having done well in math and science in high school in suburban Denver, Lourie first thought he might want to study engineering as an undergraduate.

“Then I shadowed a mechanical engineer,” he says, “and realized I didn’t want to do that.”

Instead, he decided to follow his older brother into International Affairs and pursue a language that would be useful to a Marine officer. He settled on Russian.

Benjamin Lourie, alum of the University of ��ֱ�� Boulder, found a 'home away from home' in Russia.

When he didn’t get a spot in a shipboard ROTC program the summer after freshman year, he decided to join Russian Studies Professor Artemi Romanov for a six-week seminar in St. Petersburg—Russia, not Florida.

“My fellow midshipmen were going to live on a ship. I wanted to get outside my comfort zone, too,” Lourie says.

During that summer, he realized that Russia was not “like it seemed from Cold War documentaries. It reminded me of places I had been in Europe.”

After experiencing the frustration of not being able to communicate, Lourie returned to ��ֱ�� and “kind of nerded out with Russian.” By the time he returned to St. Petersburg in 2015, with the support of a ��ֱ�� Boulder Global Grant scholarship, he was sufficiently advanced to be able to make friends, understand Russian TV shows and use social media in Russian.

In 2014, after Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula of its neighbor Ukraine, Lourie began to see a career path that lay outside military service, perhaps in diplomacy. Eventually he decided to spend a full semester in Russia rather than continue seeking a spot in an officer-candidate training program. His senior year, he met his soon-to-be wife at ��ֱ�� Boulder.

He earned a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship after graduating and spent a year teaching English at a university in a remote Siberian town “literally in outer Mongolia,” where almost nobody spoke English.

There, he saw “the provincial side of Russia,” including the effects of corruption and propaganda with a much lower standard of living than in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

Returning from Siberia, he and his wife married and moved to the Netherlands, where she was attending graduate school. While working for nonprofits, he applied to the MBA program at Georgetown University. After earning his degree, he accepted a job offer in Moscow with a company that does outsourced software development for customers in the West and his wife took a job teaching science at a private high school in Moscow. Their plans to move in early 2020 were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but they were settling in by early 2021.

“It was everything I’d dreamed of; I was finally making a life in Russia,” Lourie says.

But then life happened—again—and he found himself looking for a way to have a larger impact in Russia. He decided to open a fast-casual Tex-Mex restaurant less than a half mile from the famous Red Square and the Kremlin. After many exhausting months learning about Russian laws, taxes, contracts and more, Sabroso Tex-Mex opened in February 2022.

Two weeks later, Russia invaded Ukraine.

“I saw the headlines before the invasion, but I was so preoccupied with the restaurant that I thought, “OK, that’s just us (the U.S.) wanting to sell more oil to Europe.”

Lourie assumed the threats would result in a minor cross-border incursion, and nobody he knew wanted war. Instead, “the Russian army was full-on bombing the capital of Ukraine and sending tanks across the border.”

When he and his wife saw how brutally the Russian government was suppressing all dissent, they decided to leave Russia for a few months with their cat, hoping things would settle down by summer or fall.

They moved to Georgia, where Lourie took a job with a Canadian company that makes restaurant software and his wife continued to study Russian. When it became clear that the war was not going to end any time soon, they sold the restaurant.

Disturbed by Russia’s decision to invade, passive and active support for the war among high-profile actors and large swaths of the population and the “storm trooper” tactics of shutting down dissent, he became more and more disillusioned, especially with the Russian government.

“I don’t think we’re going back to Russia any time soon,” he says.

But Lourie is also frustrated when those who know little of Russian history make sweeping statements about its people and individual Russians are shut out of opportunities because of decisions made by the authoritarian government of Vladimir Putin. He says people outside of Russia can’t imagine how steep the consequences are for expressing dissent over the war.

Russia is responsible for the bloodshed and there is no justification for the invasion and occupation of Ukraine. But I do think the conflict could have been avoided had the U.S. and the West been sensitive to Russia’s concerns sooner.”

He also believes the West bears some blame for the direction of Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, noting, for example, that the United States turned a blind eye to blatant anti-democratic trends, crime, and a massive decline in the standard of living in Russia in the ‘90s, which ultimately led to the consolidation of power in the hands of the president of the Russian Federation.

It was Russians themselves who “allowed the Soviet Union to be disintegrated in the hope they could rejoin the world. They were told they could join all the clubs, but they didn’t get to, and instead all of the sins of the Soviet dictatorship were on their heads. Now there is a lack of trust,” he says. And he understands why Russia would be leery of its opponents’ powerful military alliance “right up to the border.”

“Nonetheless Russia is responsible for the bloodshed and there is no justification for the invasion and occupation of Ukraine,” he says. “But I do think the conflict could have been avoided had the U.S. and the West been sensitive to Russia’s concerns sooner.”

With a return to Russia now unlikely, Lourie is studying French.

“I’ve always wanted to learn French. I’m opening up to learn a new language and culture. Russian is such a major part of who I am. But,” he says with a touch of mourning, “to make room for French, Russian has to become less.”

Lourie remains involved with his alma mater as a member of the ��ֱ�� Boulder International Affairs Advisory Board.

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