|
Interesting tidbit from the latest ISW update on Ukraine: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-11-2023 quote:Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed that there is infighting in the Kremlin inner circle, that the Kremlin has ceded centralized control over the Russian information space, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently cannot readily fix it. Kremlin journalists, academics, and Novorossiya supporters held a forum on the “practical and technological aspects of information and cognitive warfare in modern realities” in Moscow on March 11.[2] During a panel discussion Zakharova stated that the Kremlin cannot replicate the Stalinist approach of establishing a modern equivalent to the Soviet Information Bureau to centrally control Russia’s internal information space due to fighting among unspecified Kremlin “elites.”[3] Not sure what to make of this as I'm certainly no Kremlinologist but this seems noteworthy for sure.
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 02:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 08:58 |
|
|
Well it adds a couple percentage points to the daily chance that Putin gets putout.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 02:28
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1634731569339412481?t=mwBAjmk413YsTNVhC-hc3A&s=19 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1634731572107661316?t=ehp6BqwcWxAR2xuaaxgxvQ&s=19 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1634731575312101376?t=8Uq6GOZz7hHuR7ZITWkElg&s=19 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1634731576956264450?t=FNf5qNU4C-UoQqT8SHsbZA&s=19 https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1634745457183186945?t=FzybUHrbEKA8mycitFPcWQ&s=19 Pine Cone Jones fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Mar 12, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 02:50
|
|
|
pantslesswithwolves posted:Interesting tidbit from the latest ISW update on Ukraine: The "infighting" is actually everyone saying, "not it" after Putin filled his diaper.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 05:09
|
|
|
Zakharova has also given statements while visibly drunk off her rear end https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IESYkbrf_1A So she may just be off the reservation a bit.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 07:00
|
|
|
Wartranslated put up a video from Ukrainian media who got to visit the training in the UK: https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1634878279630061569 Obviously they've selected their interviewees but some interesting things come out. First guy is someone who was caught up in the occupation in the first phase of the war, is too old for the draft so signed up under contract. His first language is clearly Russian and he unprompted corrects himself mid-interview to Ukrainian. Second guy lied to his wife and claimed to have been grabbed off the street as cover for the fact that he volunteered for a contract.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 13:00
|
|
|
Lum_ posted:Zakharova has also given statements while visibly drunk off her rear end Well, if she falls out a window in a couple of days I suppose we can assume she overreacted.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 13:52
|
|
|
Power Khan posted:Btw, can you recommend a book on this? I've only heard bits of this, like 90% of all copper being shipped in from the US or nearly all the aviation fuel supplied by lend-lease. https://youtu.be/N6xLMUifbxQ At 26:20 in this video John Parshal talks about Soviet tank production and specifically some of the American factory designers being involved in the Soviet Union in the 30s.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 14:46
|
|
|
Yeah 'Stalin's oppression was necessary to get the USSR industrialised to face the Nazis' has a bunch of responses, but one of the simplest is 'but he just paid US capitalists to build a bunch of factories?'
Alchenar fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Mar 12, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 14:56
|
|
|
Lum_ posted:Zakharova has also given statements while visibly drunk off her rear end
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 15:48
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:Yeah 'Stalin's oppression was necessary to get the USSR industrialised to face the Nazis' has a bunch of responses, but one of the simplest is 'but he just paid US capitalists to build a bunch of factories?' ... This actually kind of checks out. How did he get the money to pay US capitalists? By exporting grain. Where did he get the grain? By setting grain quotas, which were brutally enforced, by punishing kolhozes/communities that failed to meet them with mass murder. (The pattern was that soldiers would surround the kolhoz, enter to remove literally all food, and then prevent people inside from leaving for about a week, and then move on to the next one.) Add to that a weak year, resulting in everyone in a wide area failing to meet the quotas, and you have the ingredients ready for something that's at least debatably genocide.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 17:00
|
|
|
Is there research to say that Ukraine received the worst of that? Holodomor is a thing, but I do wonder how much of that is also down to the eternal "Russia just doesn't want Ukraine to exist" as opposed to "well, Ukraine is the breadbasket, so of course they received the worst of those policies"
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 17:31
|
|
|
Tuna-Fish posted:... This actually kind of checks out. How did he get the money to pay US capitalists? By exporting grain. Where did he get the grain? By setting grain quotas, which were brutally enforced, by punishing kolhozes/communities that failed to meet them with mass murder. (The pattern was that soldiers would surround the kolhoz, enter to remove literally all food, and then prevent people inside from leaving for about a week, and then move on to the next one.) Add to that a weak year, resulting in everyone in a wide area failing to meet the quotas, and you have the ingredients ready for something that's at least debatably genocide. Would have been more merciful to shoot them rather than condemn the population to cannibalism and starvation.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 17:31
|
|
|
Aces High posted:Is there research to say that Ukraine received the worst of that? Holodomor is a thing, but I do wonder how much of that is also down to the eternal "Russia just doesn't want Ukraine to exist" as opposed to "well, Ukraine is the breadbasket, so of course they received the worst of those policies" Its not like anybody else was getting great treatment with NKVD death squads being a thing...
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 17:41
|
|
|
Aces High posted:Is there research to say that Ukraine received the worst of that? Holodomor is a thing, but I do wonder how much of that is also down to the eternal "Russia just doesn't want Ukraine to exist" as opposed to "well, Ukraine is the breadbasket, so of course they received the worst of those policies" By percentage Kazakhs likely received the worst of the collectivization famines and somewhere between 30 and 50% of Kazakhs starved. Notably Kazakh's went from a significant majority to a minority in their own country in just a few years and the nomadic way of life they'd practiced for thousands of years was almost totally eliminated to make room for the soviet pattern collective farming (which was additionally poorly suited to the geology and as such made the famines even worse). If it sounds like there's any ambiguity about what the intentions were, set that aside: the intention was to end the nomadic way of life and Kazakhs caught fleeing the famine were shot as a matter of policy. Curiously, Russian colonists did not share that fate. Something very similar transpired in Kyrgistan and Turkmenistan, too.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 17:51
|
|
|
Russia's primary products are misery & sadness. No wonder nobody wants to be around them, which I guess make's Russia's depression worse, and the vicious cycle continues.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 17:55
|
|
|
Aces High posted:Is there research to say that Ukraine received the worst of that? Holodomor is a thing, but I do wonder how much of that is also down to the eternal "Russia just doesn't want Ukraine to exist" as opposed to "well, Ukraine is the breadbasket, so of course they received the worst of those policies" It's complicated. Other parts of the agricultural periphery were also hit hard, so it wasn't just Ukraine, but the Russian core was definitely shielded from the worst of the famine at the expense of less-Russian areas. The extent to which this was deliberate ethnic cleansing is debatable but I don't think anyone who died would feel better knowing that they were only a victim of opportunistic ethnic cleansing. Then there's another layer of class warfare--the stated objective was not to punish Ukrainians for being Ukrainians, but to punish landowning peasants for being landowning peasants, and the fact that this class was largely concentrated in the rural periphery where fewer of them were ethnic Russians was supposedly a nonfactor. But again, there's a big question about how much intent really matters when the result is the same.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 17:57
|
|
|
The definition of genocide was a drawn-out issue leading to the passing of the convention. Various groups and countries pushed their own definition or exceptions, leading to the formal definition of the crime of genocide excluding killing of *political* groups. Various historians and genocide scholars have disagreed with this, but the convention is what we got as part of international law. So if you limit genocide to the deliberate, targeted physical destruction of a specific racial, ethnic or religious group, you will probably conclude that Holodomor does not meet the legal definition of the crime of genocide. If you consider genocide to include more broadly political/economic groups as well - then it was indeed genocide, particularly if you consider deliberately depriving populations of the necessities of life, much as the Bengal and Irish famines are broadly labelled genocides. Likewise Cambodia seems to have been political, yet is regularly labelled genocide. One analogy (perhaps not great) is when a cop kills an unarmed, fleeing suspect by shooting them in the back. As a matter of law, okay, it's not formally 'murder', but I have no compunction at saying the cop murdered the victim, nor do many here. I also find comparing genocides to be both futile and frankly somewhat sickening. Were the deaths under Mao 'worse' than Stalin or Hitler? Was the genocide of the Armenians 'worse' than Cambodia? I don't think you can meaningfully ask that question except on the simplest of bases, raw numbers. Because the horror and pain suffered by half a million is unique, as is the horror and suffering of one, two, three, six, or any number of millions. Saying Rwanda was better or worse or anything is just not a meaningful comparison to me. It's incalculable suffering.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 18:30
|
|
|
Tuna-Fish posted:... This actually kind of checks out. How did he get the money to pay US capitalists? By exporting grain. Where did he get the grain? By setting grain quotas, which were brutally enforced, by punishing kolhozes/communities that failed to meet them with mass murder. (The pattern was that soldiers would surround the kolhoz, enter to remove literally all food, and then prevent people inside from leaving for about a week, and then move on to the next one.) Add to that a weak year, resulting in everyone in a wide area failing to meet the quotas, and you have the ingredients ready for something that's at least debatably genocide. I take extreme exception to this false narrative ! He also used labor/death camps to mine mineral wealth to pay for those programs. See also: how he paid off lend/lease.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 19:20
|
|
|
Aces High posted:Is there research to say that Ukraine received the worst of that? Holodomor is a thing, but I do wonder how much of that is also down to the eternal "Russia just doesn't want Ukraine to exist" as opposed to "well, Ukraine is the breadbasket, so of course they received the worst of those policies" If you've got an hour and a half to kill, this is a pretty comprehensive overview of where academic research was on this issue a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k5ScxnpQrg The Kazakhs were even worse off, because for them, it wasn't just an issue of collectivization and impossible grain quotas, but also a forced transition from pastoralism into agriculture, without the necessary know-how, and maybe even suitable land. There also was famine in Russian agricultural aereas, but they received more food support - except in the largely Ukrainian-settled Kuban. The Russian government is currently not very interested in funding research about this in Russia. Generally, minorities like also the Volga-Germans received less help than ethnic Russians. A real gotcha for me was to learn that Stalin had a bunch of demographers killed or deported, because the 1937 census accurately showed just how many people died in the famine. That census was buried, and a doctored one was commissioned for 1939.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 20:10
|
|
|
Aces High posted:Is there research to say that Ukraine received the worst of that? Holodomor is a thing, but I do wonder how much of that is also down to the eternal "Russia just doesn't want Ukraine to exist" as opposed to "well, Ukraine is the breadbasket, so of course they received the worst of those policies" As the grain seizures were occurring, the Soviet government was targeting ethnic Ukrainian communities outside of Ukraine for destruction. Oh, and the whole cultural homogeneity with communist characteristics thing that was Russification mk 2 was also taking place. The grain seizures were made much worse by the insistence on farming by the principles of Lysenkoism, which ensured that subsequent yields would be even worse. So yes, there is an element of staggering, breathtaking incompetence here too but also wilful malice as well. If we look at attempts to destroy culture via forced education, relocation and dispersal of communities and the seizure of children as an aspect of genocide (and to be clear, these things are), the Holodomor is very much a genocide and only fails in that classification if one insists that genocide only looks like Armenia or the Holocaust. Fearless fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Mar 12, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 20:52
|
|
|
Russia and China seem like the worst places to attempt communism given their penchant for comically racist score settling.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 21:18
|
|
|
Casimir Radon posted:Russia and China seem like the worst places to attempt communism given their penchant for comically racist score settling. The revolutions mostly succeeded because the previous government was so bad that nobody believed that anything could be worse.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 21:22
|
|
|
My neighbor, Bill, leaves his garbage can out for more than 24 hours. This is counter revolutionary behavior and he must be killed to keep it from spreading.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 21:24
|
|
|
Casimir Radon posted:Russia and China seem like the worst places to attempt communism given their penchant for comically racist score settling. I mean......... most of the world isn't all that much better, historically speaking
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 21:30
|
|
|
Herstory Begins Now posted:By percentage Kazakhs likely received the worst of the collectivization famines and somewhere between 30 and 50% of Kazakhs starved. Notably Kazakh's went from a significant majority to a minority in their own country in just a few years and the nomadic way of life they'd practiced for thousands of years was almost totally eliminated to make room for the soviet pattern collective farming (which was additionally poorly suited to the geology and as such made the famines even worse). This also happened in the context of the Basmachi uprising against the Russians which happened only a few years earlier (fighting ended well after the civil war did, in 1924-1926) so starving the Kazakhs and Uzbeks was seen as another front in that war, similarly to Ukrainian "de-kulakization". Aces High posted:Is there research to say that Ukraine received the worst of that? Holodomor is a thing, but I do wonder how much of that is also down to the eternal "Russia just doesn't want Ukraine to exist" as opposed to "well, Ukraine is the breadbasket, so of course they received the worst of those policies" There is no smoking gun memo from Stalin saying "starve those Ukrainian bastards to death". Given the bureaucratic nature of the Soviet state and Stalin's insistence on direct control over everything, this is actually significant. Scholars argue about intent to this day and Ukraine for its part has made the genocidal intent of the Holodomor famine part of state policy, but almost certainly it was more the result of massive incompetence (someone else mentioned Trofim Lysenko, a stunningly insane agronomist who came to power thanks to his Stalinist bona fides, who believed that plants behaved according to Marxist class struggle theory) and consequent murderous heavy-handedness when people began starving to death. However famines weren't new to the Soviets; Russian cities suffered from food shortages and famine almost immediately upon the Communist takeover and Lenin's response ("prodrazverstka" or food requisitions as a form of tax on farms which often seized *everything* from farmers, including seeds and farm animals they'd need to survive) did far more damage to the Soviets than their White Russian opponents in the civil war. So basically: probably not a literal "die you Ukrainian pigs" Nazi-style genocide, but still an incredible disaster that was mostly man-made.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 21:40
|
|
|
If I hate myself and wanted to read more about the non-Imperial anti-Bolsheviks where would I start? Everything I’ve read (largely Osprey) simplifies the conflict to Reds vs Whites and AFAIK there was a third or forth faction that wasn’t Tsarist but also not Bolshevik.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 21:54
|
|
|
Casimir Radon posted:My neighbor, Bill, leaves his garbage can out for more than 24 hours. This is counter revolutionary behavior and he must be killed to keep it from spreading. I do this routinely (long driveway, apathy) and I'm certain there are people on my street that absolutely hate me for it
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 21:55
|
|
|
sharknado slashfic posted:I do this routinely (long driveway, apathy) and I'm certain there are people on my street that absolutely hate me for it
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 21:59
|
|
|
Just leave it there permanently, what’s the point of dragging a can back and forth
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 21:59
|
|
|
Wind and/or dogs, here. I've got it inside my backyard fence by the side door after the neighbor's rear end in a top hat mutt spreading its contents all over my driveway when I made the mistake of having it out front by the garage door when I first moved in.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 22:01
|
|
|
Nystral posted:If I hate myself and wanted to read more about the non-Imperial anti-Bolsheviks where would I start? Everything I’ve read (largely Osprey) simplifies the conflict to Reds vs Whites and AFAIK there was a third or forth faction that wasn’t Tsarist but also not Bolshevik. I'm partial to "A People's Tragedy" by Orlando Figes, which begins with Czar Nicholas's shambolic collapse and continues on into the civil war era. There were FAR more than 3/4 factions: - the Bolsheviks, under Lenin - the "Volunteer Army", the White Army faction led first by Gen. Kornilov, then when he died Gen. Denikin took over, who eventually resigned in favor of Gen. Wrangel. - the Siberian wing of the White Army, led by Adm. Kolchak, which fought independently and had almost no coordination with the Volunteer Army - the left wing of the Social Revolutionaries ("Left SRs") who before the revolution were mostly allied with the Bolsheviks, then when Lenin seized sole power they revolted and were smashed by the Bolsheviks - the right wing of the Social Revolutionaries ("Right SRs") tried a leftist "popular front" revolt called Komuch in Omsk which was eventually overthrown by Kolchak - various nations which declared independence (Ukraine, Finland, the Caucasus, parts of Siberia) and wanted nothing to do with anyone else - Makhno's anarchists, who fought the Whites and Ukrainians alongside the Bolsheviks just long enough for the Bolsheviks to stab them in the back when they won - various bandit armies, mostly in Siberia, supported by Japan for maximum chaos - the British, who landed in Archangel and tried to send supplies to various White groups (as did the French, who didn't intervene militarily) - the Czech Legion, former prisoners of war who just wanted to go home and ended up taking the very long way through Siberia - the Americans - yes, American troops fought in the Russian Civil War, there was a group who tried to keep the Trans Siberian Railway open and spent the war mostly extremely confused over why they were even there I am *positive* I forgot someone. The Russian Civil War was a complete mess.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 22:08
|
|
|
Tell your neighbor that my neighbor leaves his garbage cans out every day of the year, and he fills them with shredded paper, which is great because the prevailing winds tip his bins over towards my place, and blow the whole loving mess into my front yard and driveway and my next door neighbors. Does he come rake up the mess? No he does not.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 22:16
|
|
|
Lum_ posted:
part of the reason why I develop an eye twitch every time I see black/red iconography.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 22:18
|
|
|
Lum_ posted:- the Americans - yes, American troops fought in the Russian Civil War, there was a group who tried to keep the Trans Siberian Railway open and spent the war mostly extremely confused over why they were even there Can you imagine if Americans were still this militant about trains Awesome post btw
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 22:21
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1635024109682987009 There was an article a while back about Luxembourg trying to buy what military supplies it can for Ukraine, but struggling with what's out there or losing out to larger nations. I guess these are one of the things they found. edit: earlier press release from the company with much more detail. These are either additional ones to Ukraine's original order or Luxenbourg stepped in to pay the cost. https://venari-group.com/venari-group-commences-building-ambulances-for-ukraine/ Pablo Bluth fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Mar 12, 2023 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 22:30
|
|
|
Every little bit helps.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 22:32
|
|
|
I don't understand, why would the ambulances be leaving a hospital?
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 22:38
|
|
|
There was recently an interview with an American medic volunteer, appealing for more ambulances. They also mentioned having to cover up the markings because pieces of poo poo would specifically target them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 22:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 08:58 |
|
|
Lum_ posted:I'm partial to "A People's Tragedy" by Orlando Figes, which begins with Czar Nicholas's shambolic collapse and continues on into the civil war era. -the Poles -the Japanese, had many more troops in the Russian far east than the US -that guy who thought he was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan -some German Freikorps fighting in the Baltics -the Greens, who are probably what the OP was thinking of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_armies
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2023 22:47
|
|