Stephen Komarnyckyj #standwithukraine 
#FBPE@komarnyckyj
#FBPEFeb 7
76 tweets
1 God is on the side of the big battalions as Napoleon said but wars are also waged in books and conversations and through an array of means we call soft power. This thread the third in a series on this topic will sketch out a conceptual framework and look at some examples.
2 You can read a definition of the term here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_powe, However I will develop the original concept coined by Joseph Nye on the basis of three sociological schools, conflict theory, functionalism and symbolic interactionism, and also experimental psychology.
3 The Russo-Ukrainian war has exposed how inadequate our understanding is of the past. It challenges us to look at how knowledge is constructed so that we can liberate the world and see it as it is- not as empires like Russia would like us to see it.
4 A caveat here: not all our knowledge of the past is wrong. We understand The Holocaust and World War Two in large degree. I am only looking at our failure to understand Russia and Ukraine due to Russian soft power. But why should you care?
5 Russia killed millions of Ukrainians by artificial famines and mass executions in Ukraine last century as it sought to destroy Ukrainian identity. This left Ukraine vulnerable to its colonisation by the Nazis and the subsequent Holocaust by Bullets on Ukrainian territory.
6 You can read Rafael Lemkin's account of one of the famines and associated genocidal actions here: ucc.ca/wp-content/upl and of the Holocaust by Bullets here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
The total number of casualties of these two genocides in Ukraine is enormous.
7 I should add that the Nazis also engaged in a genocide of non-Jewish Ukrainians because it was only interested in slaves: their central aims were exterminating Jews and creating an enslaved Ukrainian population that had no need of intellectuals etc. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar
8 Understanding Ukraine is therefore crucial to comprehending the enormous genocide inflicted on Ukraine, its link to the Holocaust and the causes of WW2 and what might be WW3 which has arguably commenced as Russia seeks to recolonise Ukraine.
9 The concepts I will draw on from sociologies and psychology; 1 The Core of Values from functionalism 2 Class status and party from Conflict Theory as articulated by Max Weber 3 Various ideas from symbolic intractionism sociology 4 The Asch conformity principle.
10 I will sketch these ideas swiftly. The American sociologist Talcott Parsons argued that societies were held together by a core of values: sociologyguide.com/social-structu.
11 The German sociologist Max Weber argued that states maintain power by a monopoly of the means of legitimate force en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_
12 He also asserted that people acted in their perceived economic interest and saw society as divided into social classes on the basis of economics but included classes also formed on status and “party” not necessarily a political party but a group focused on a common interest.
13 Symbolic interactionism sociology focuses on how we as individuals interact using symbols which can be words and actions or flags etc. structural-learning.com/post/symbolic-
14 Finally the Asch conformity studies showed that people will comply with majority opinion even tp the extent of denying the evidence of their own senses en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conf
15 So pulling these strands together to provide a framework:
A) Russia and Ukraine are two separate societies whose social cohesion depends on shared values and a monopoly on legitimate (in the sense of state sanctioned) violence.
16 B The two societies have opposing values and economic interests. Ukraine argues, correctly, that it is the legitimate descendant of Rus the Medieval state whose capital was Kyiv. Russia on the basis of a questionable dynastic genealogy claims it is the inheritor of Rus
17 and denies any legitimacy for Ukraine. Cohesion in Russia despite glaring social inequality and brutal oppression is built on a compact based on Russian Glory: Tolstoyevsky.
18 C) Although there are different social classes within Russia they are united by economic interests which render them complicit in looting Ukraine. The oligarchs can grab businesses and mineral resources, the proletarians can squat in an apartment built on the bones of Mariupol
19 People can gain social status within Russia from participating in the genocidal conquest of Ukraine; be they military bloggers now hob nobbing with the president or volunteers dancing with the skull of a Ukrainian soldier
20 (yes that did happen) in itself an assertion of Russian power over Ukraine by a monopoly of state sanctioned violence on the territory of another state.Journalists and academics from outside of Russia can gain status by researching the war and reporting it,
21 Crucially their careers depend in both instances on scoops and Russia controls access to archives concerning countries it has occupied in many instances and also territory which it controls by violence- as in occupied Ukraine.
22 D) Russia and Ukraine are in conflict because of different values and divergent economic interests here. (The economic interests diverge in the same way that a burglar is in economic conflict with the owner of the house they are looting.)
23 E) As per symbolic interactionism Russians and Ukrainians interact with different symbols or the same symbols to which they attract different meanings: they have different definitions of the situation.
24 I would argue again that Ukraine's definition is true, Russia's false and that moreover they know largely it is false but it is in their economic and status interests to dissemble.
25 F) Russia can shape opinions on Ukraine both within Ukraine and beyond its borders by using the conformity effects noted in the Asch studies. If enough sources tell you Ukrainians are Fascists and their culture is second rate you may eventually adopt this view.
26 Another example: Russia is not the inheritor of Rus. The heart of the Russian state is Moscow which in terms of interacting with the people of Rus is mentioned first in the 1140s en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Dolg.
27 It was only in the late 1400s they began to claim the legacy of Rus and only in 1721 did Muscovy adopt the name of Rossiya- which is actually a translation of Rus into Greek and borrowed by the “Russian” language. publicsphere.eu/2022/07/steali.
28 Subsequent centuries have seen an unprecedented falsification of history that will be dealth with elsewhere.
So going back to our sociological framework Russia's core values- that it is the successor of Rus which was based in Kyiv- require it to continuously invade Ukraine
29 and strive to make its fallacious narrative true by eradicating or neutralising Ukrainian identity which is a living contradiction of their origin myth. They are therefore seeking to impose their "core of values" on Ukraine-
30 and when I say Russia I mean Russians- including their language and culture and historical narratives. They impose a class system where preferment, both economically and in terms of status depends on compliance with this inflicted culture.
31 Finally they try and impose their symbols and denigrate Ukrainian ones, or reduce their prestige. The link to our framework with Weber's notion of status and symbolic interactionism will be obvious.
32 This framework explains the actions of both "liberal" Russians and those considered tyrants. Remember Keith Gessen laundering Brodsky's litany of hate for Ukrainian independence into English discourse as a lament for the retreat of Russian literature? newyorker.com/books/page-tur
33 This was in fact an emotionally negative reaction by a Russian to the de occupation of Ukraine. In fact Ukrainians might have continued reading Russian, what Brodsky laments...
34 if we accept Gessen's gaslighting as having some validity, is that Russia can no longer stuff Pushkin down their throats.
35 But this is Gessen's reaction rather than Brodsky's and depends on an impossibly distorted reading of the "poem", to naturalise a xenophobic reaction towards Ukrainian identity into English.
36 However, and alas, Russia has reoccupied part of Ukraine and is both burning Ukrainian books and imposing Russian literature and a curriculum which erases Ukraine on the occupied areas. kyivindependent.com/ukrainian-mili
37 A point to address the bothsidesing of the cultural front: Ukrainians aware that all of their land might be occupied and the dangers of Russian soft power affecting the population are withdrawing books deemed to be a threat; euractiv.com/section/langua
38 There is a clear difference between a nation fighting for its life and trying to avoid having its culture eradicated and replaced by an imperialist aggressor by curtaining the enemy's soft power, and an imperialist burning books occupying land and committing genocide.
39 However, how much difference is there between a Russian burning books and another laundering a poem brimming with hate into English?
40 Historically where Ukrainians were permitted to write, status and economic mobility depended on compliance with those core values. Hohol was feted because he wrote in Russian, prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/60477/ and appropriated by the Russians
41 Shevchenko was punished because of his assertion of Ukrainian identity origins.osu.edu/read/taras-she by being exiled and forbidden to write or to paint.
42 Hohol's work was policed to drain it of Ukrainian content: Taras Bulba, for example, his Cossack novel, originally published in 1835, was amended so that the 1842 edition complied with Russian imperialism.
43 The Wiki entry in English launders the amendments as ridding the text of "Cossack Jingoism" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taras_Bul a Russian Victor Erlich to that effect (!)
44 If you want to know a true account of what happened you have to use Ukrainian sources: ukrinform.ua/rubric-culture Erlich called jingoism was in fact simply portraying Ukrainians as an independent entity.
45 nothingintherulebook.com/2017/01/11/str that his "Ukrainian stuff" was worthless. In fact the Ukrainian stories are the most vibrant part of his works and he represents the import of Ukrainian exuberance (and indeed several Ukrainian words) and vivacity into Russian.
46 But as we have observed Russia(ns) seeks either to stigmatise Ukraine or render it invisible as noted here lithub.com/the-russian-wa
47 “We must thank fate (and the author’s thirst for universal fame) for his not having turned to the Ukrainian dialect as a medium of expression, because then all would have been lost,” wrote Vladimir Nabokov in his 1959 study, Gogol.
48 He continued: “When I want a good nightmare, I imagine Gogol penning in Little Russian dialect volume after volume….” What he calls the “Little Russian dialect” is none other than the Ukrainian language, which is about as close to Russian as Spanish is to Italian.
49 Nabokov’s dismissal of the Ukrainian language reflects a position taken by countless Russian writers and intellectuals over the last century. Such attitudes have consequences.
50 It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that this prejudice has contributed to the slaughter of millions of people and is a significant factor in the war currently being waged by Russia against Ukraine." Quote ends
51 Nabokov at least gives the game away- Hohol's compliance with the occupier his eschewing of his native language was rewarded with status. However note how Nabokov and Erlich launder this hatred into English, as a distaste for jingoism or an allegedly inferior culture-
52 and that Russians by coopting English into their view have secured a kind of Asch conformity effect across culture and the humanities embedding several stigmatising views of Ukraine firmly in English language discourse.
53 Meanwhile in Russia itself Hohol's Ukrainian qualities are being edited out of his books as this tweet by Ukrainian historian Oleksandr Polianichev illustrates: the magnificent Ukrainian night is no longer Ukrainian x.com/OPolianichev/s
Oleksandr Polianichev@OPolianichev
Feb 06
View on Twitter
Russia is purging books of the word "Ukrainian." The "magnificent Ukrainian sky" from Gogol's May Night (1831) is no longer Ukrainian.
Annihilating Ukraine means wiping out its very name.
54 Russians, good, bad pro anti Putin hate not only the language but the entirety of Ukrainian culture and nationhood and by the techniques noted in part above have exported that antipathy. Any notion that the creation of Soviet Ukraine disproves this thesis is misconceived.
55 The Russian Bolsheviks sought to root themselves in Ukraine initially by allowing Ukrainian to flourish after the numerous brutal Tsarist prohibitions and securing the alliance of Ukrainian communists who wished to foster Ukrainian culture.
56 However they subsequently crushed the generation which emerged in this period which came to be known as The Executed Renaissance. See euromaidanpress.com/longreads/exec
57 This prejudice is shared both by those Russians implementing or agreeing with the formal policies of the state, and those opposing certain elements of state policy, dissidents, by Brodsky, Solzhenitsyn and the Stalinist butchers of Ukraine who they supposedly differ from alike
58 As we have seen it manifests itself at macro level in formal state policies but also at micro and voluntaristic level where Russians independent of state bodies try and sully and denigrate Ukraine or render it invisible.
59 Here is an example of this kind of micro interaction: note how he like Nabokov and Erlich tries to launder his hate into a stance westerners will accept and validate. Ragozin pretends that some Ukrainian embroidery is Fascist threadreaderapp.com/thread/1754025
60 He is also contributing to the conformity effect which shapes perceptions of Ukrainians as innately Fascist and trying to export how Russians respond to these symbols, with aversion, into western emotional responses.
61 Many Ukrainians including members of the diaspora can testify to being bombarded with Russian narratives either in direct interactions or via print and other media, and in academic forums, by Russians or by westerners manipulated by the Asch conformity effect.
62 It has shaped discourse in universities and analyses of history. If countless academic Russians tell you that they did not purposely murder Ukrainians and dangle the carrot of archival access and collaboration in front of you fill in the blanks...
63 Social media is particularly pernicious in shifting opinions allowing populations to be bombarded on an industrial scale with negative tropes about Ukrainian history to soften people up for genocide or bring genocide facilitators to power.
64 The observations above illustrate why it is dangerous to platform Russians at this time. We are witnessing an ongoing genocide similar to that of last century which linked into the Holocaust, driven by the hatred we have analysed through a sociological framework.
65 Last century the notion of Russian cultural superiority and the deployment of access academia and journalism rendered that genocide invisible.
66 This thread is a plea for academia to make its manipulation by genocidal imperialist Russians an object of study, using the kind of tools I have suggested,
67 and for authors and artists to understand how Russians have weaponised culture and shed the disdain for Ukraine they have sown in the cultural industry.
68 It is a plea for editors and publishers to create a space where Ukrainian literature can thrive because I know from personal experience that it captivates readers.
69 You can address a historic wrong, fight an ongoing genocide and publish a book or two that will earn you some cash and help people in a desperate situation. Why not?
70 Finally Russia has always tried to convince you that Ukraine could only be understood by reading Russian sources. In fact the opposite is true you can only understand Russia by hearing Ukrainian voices and those of the other peoples Muscovy colonised.
71 The more you listen to Russians the less you will understand Russia. And you need to do so because they are burning your country down too.
If you have enjoyed this thread please consider buying one of the books I have translated with Kalyna Press, “Who are We Ukrainians?”; barnesandnoble.com/w/who-are-we-u amazon.com/Who-Are-Ukrain
which will take you on a crazy tour through Ukrainian history.
And search out my other work through @KalynaLanguagePress including my own poetry in The August Rain...
And as always please donate to @Повернись живим
savelife.in.ua/en/if you e mail me proof of a contribution with blanked out bank details I will send you a free PDF of Tychyna's poetry in translation: komarnyckyj.steve(at)gmail.com
More threads drawing on the theoretical framework sketched out here and focusing on journalism academia and culture will follow. Watch this space.
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Stephen Komarnyckyj #standwithukraine #FBPE
#FBPE@komarnyckyj
Steve Komarnyckyj is British Ukrainian PEN award winning poet and translator who is trying to rescue every abandoned dog. #poetry https://t.co/Yuw3aUv0uw
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