#meanwhile back in communist russia ...

[spilladabalia]

[sixty-silver-wishes]

Okay I Could do work but instead I'm going to write about the time shostakovich had the worst time in america

(So, despite the clickbaity title, this will be more of a serious post. I wrote about the topic a few years ago on Reddit , and I'll be citing a lot of the same sources as I cited there, because there are some good ones, along with some new information I've gathered over the years. This was going to be a video essay on my youtube channel, but I sort of kept putting it off.)

The Scientific and Cultural Congress for World Peace, held in New York in 1949, is a particularly fascinating event to study when it comes to researching Shostakovich because of just how divisive it was. True, the event itself, which only lasted a few days, doesn’t get as much spotlight as the Lady Macbeth scandal or the posthumous “Shostakovich Wars,” but you’ll find that when reading about the Peace Conference, as I’ll be referring to it here for the sake of brevity, many of the primary accounts of it never quite tell the full story. The Peace Conference was held during a volatile time, both in Soviet and American politics, as Cold War tensions were on the rise and an ideological debate between capitalism and communism gradually extended to become the focus of seemingly every factor of life- not just politics and economics, but also the sciences, culture, and the arts.

While artists on both sides were frequently cast in different roles in order to create or destroy the image of Soviet or American cultural and ideological superiority, the image either government sought to cast was sometimes contradictory with the sentiments of the artists themselves. For instance, while the CIA-founded Congress of Cultural Freedom (CCF) sent African American jazz musician Louis Armstrong on various tours around the world to promote jazz as American culture and dispel perceptions of racism in America, Armstrong canceled a trip to the Soviet Union in order to protest the use of armed guards against the integration of Black students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Meanwhile, the Soviet government’s use of international diplomatic missions by artists as cultural warfare also reflected a desire to portray themselves as the dominant culture, despite the tensions and complications that existed for artists at home. When the Soviet Union sent Dmitri Shostakovich to New York in March 1949 for the Peace Conference, such cultural contradictions are why the conference occurred the way it did, and why Shostakovich’s image has received so much controversy, both in Russia and in the west.

If you’re familiar with Soviet history, you may be familiar with the term Zhdanovshchina, which refers to a period of time between 1946 and 1948 in which Andrei Zhdanov, the Central Committee Secretary of the Soviet Union, headed a number of denunciations against prominent figures in the arts and sciences. Among musicians, Shostakovich was one of the most heavily attacked, likely due to his cultural standing, with many of his pieces censored and referred to as “formalist,” along with his expulsion from his teaching positions at the Moscow and Leningrad conservatories. During this time, Shostakovich often resorted to writing film and ideological music in order to make an income.

Meanwhile, in the United States, as fears of nuclear war began accumulating, peace movements between the two superpowers were regarded more and more as pro-Communist, an opinion backed by the House Committee of Un-American Activities (HUAC). The Waldorf-Astoria Peace Conference, to be held from March 25-27th 1949, was organized by the National Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions, a progressive American organization, and was to feature speeches held by representatives of both American and Soviet science and culture. Harlow Shapely, one of the conference’s organizers, stated that he intended for the conference to be “non-partisan” and focused on American and Soviet cooperation.

On the 16th of February, 1949, Shostakovich was chosen to be one of the six Soviet delegates to speak at the conference. This was largely due to his fame in the west, where both his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies met a mostly positive reception. Shostakovich initially did not want to go to the conference, stating in a letter to the Agitprop leader Leonid Ilichev that he was suffering from poor health at the time and wasn’t feeling up to international travel and performances. He also said that if he were to go, he wanted his wife Nina to be able to accompany him, but he ended up being sent to New York without any members of his family- perhaps to quell concerns of defection (recall the amount of artists who defected around the time of the 1917 revolution, including notable names such as Rachmaninov and Heifetz).

Stalin famously called Shostakovich on the phone that same day to address the conference, and again, Shostakovich told him he couldn’t go, as he was feeling unwell. Sofia Khentova’s biography even states that Shostakovich actually did undergo medical examinations and was found to be sick at the time, but Stalin's personal secretary refused to relay this information. Shostakovich's close friend Yuri Levitin recalls that when Stalin called Shostakovich on the phone to ask him to go to the conference (despite the fact he had been chosen to go in advance), Shostakovich offered two reasons as to why he couldn't go- in addition to his health, Levitin claims that Shostakovich also cited the fact that his works were currently banned in the Soviet Union due to the Zhdanov decree, and that he could not represent the USSR to the west if his works were banned. While accounts of the phone call vary, the ban on Shostakovich's works was indeed lifted by the time he went to New York for the conference.

When Shostakovich arrived in New York, general anti-Communist sentiment from both Americans and Soviet expatriates, as well as media excitement, resulted in a series of protests in front of the Waldorf Astoria hotel where the conference was to be held, with some of the protesters directly referencing Shostakovich himself, as he was the most well-known Soviet delegate on the trip. In 1942, Shostakovich's 7th ("Leningrad") Symphony was performed in the United States under Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra to high acclaim, helping to promote the idea of allyship with the Soviet Union in the US during the war, and Americans were aware of the Zhdanov denunciations in 1948, as well as the previous denunciations that Shostakovich had suffered in 1936 as a result of the scandal surrounding his opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District." So by 1949, many people in American artistic circles had a sympathetic, if not completely understanding, view of Shostakovich during the birth of the Cold War. They viewed him as a victim of Communism and the Soviet state, who was forced to appease it in order to stay in favor, and as a result, could potentially voice his dissent with the system once in the west. Pickets visible in footage from the protests outside the Waldorf Astoria carried slogans such as "Shostakovich, jump thru [sic] the window," a likely reference to Oksana Kosyankina, a Soviet schoolteacher who had reportedly jumped out of a window in protest (although the details of this story would be found to be highly dubious). Meanwhile, another sign read "Shostakovich, we understand!," a statement that would prove to be deeply ironic. At the conference itself, Shostakovich did not jump through the window, nor did he attempt any form of dissent. Instead, an interpreter read through a prepared speech as he sat on stage in front of a crowd of about 800. The speech praised Soviet music, denounced American "warmongering," and claimed that Shostakovich had accepted the criticism of 1948, saying it "brought his music forward." Many in the audience could see that Shostakovich was visibly nervous- he was "painfully ill at ease," and Nicholas Nabokov (brother of the writer Vladimir Nabokov) remarked that he looked like a "trapped man." Arthur Miller recalled he appeared "so scared." As they noticed how nervous he looked, some of those in attendance sought to make a demonstration of him in order to illustrate Soviet oppression in contrast to the freedoms supposedly enjoyed by American artists, asking him intentionally provocative questions that they knew he would not be able to answer truthfully. From Nicholas Nabokov:

After his speech I felt I had to ask him publicly a few questions. I had to do it, not in order to embarrass a wretched human being who had just given me the most flagrant example of what it is to be a composer in the Soviet Union, but because of the several thousand people that sat in the hall, because of those that perhaps still could not or did not wish to understand the sinister game that was being played before their eyes. I asked him simple factual questions concerning modern music, questions that should be of interest to all musicians. I asked him whether he, personally, the composer Shostakovich, not the delegate of Stalin’s Government, subscribed to the wholesale condemnation of Western music as it had been expounded daily by the Soviet Press and as it appeared in the official pronouncements of the Soviet Government. I asked him whether he, personally, agreed with the condemnation of the music of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Hindemith. To these questions he acquiesced: ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I completely subscribe to the views as expressed by … etc….’ When he finished answering my questions the dupes in the audience gave him a new and prolonged ovation.

During the discussion panel on March 26th, music critic Olin Downes delivered yet another provocative statement towards Shostakovich:

I found both of your works [the 7th and 8th Symphonies] too long, and I strongly suspected in them the presence of a subversive influence—that of the music of Gustav Mahler.

For Shostakovich, and anyone knowledgeable of Soviet politics and music at the time, it's not hard to see why Downes had explicitly mentioned Mahler. Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was a highly influential composer when it came to 20th century western music, particularly with regards to the avant-garde movement pioneered by the Second Viennese School- Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg. Shostakovich was also heavily influenced by Mahler, but such influences were frowned upon in the mid-30s to 50s Soviet Union. Mahler's style was decidedly more "western," and it's potentially for this reason that Shostakovich's 4th Symphony- perhaps his most "Mahlerian," was withdrawn from performance before its premiere in 1936, having followed the "Lady Macbeth" denunciations. To tie Shostakovich to Mahler would be to point out his direct western influences, while he was being made to issue statements that rejected them. During his speech, Shostakovich made statements criticizing Stravinsky and Prokofiev- two composers who had emigrated and adopted western-inspired neoclassical styles (although Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union in 1936). Stravinsky had taken insult to Shostakovich's comments against him, and carried an animosity towards Shostakovich that appeared once again in their meeting in 1962, according to the composer Karen Khachaturian.

On the last day of the conference, March 27th, Shostakovich performed the second movement of his Fifth Symphony on piano at Madison Square Garden to an audience of about 18,000, and had received a massive ovation, as well as a declaration of friendship signed by American composers such as Bernstein, Copland, Koussevitzky, and Ormandy. He returned to the Soviet Union on April 3.

In addition to the 1948 denunciations, in which Shostakovich was pressured to make public statements against his own works, the likely humiliation he endured at the 1949 conference played a role in cementing his dual "public" and "private" personas. For the rest of his life, Shostakovich displayed mannerisms and characteristics at official events that were reportedly much different from those he displayed among friends and family. For the public, and for researchers after his death, it became difficult to determine which statements from him reflected his genuine sentiments, and which ones were made to appease a wider political or social system.

Both the Soviet Union and the west had treated Shostakovich as a means of legitimizing their respective ideologies against one another, a trend that continued long after his death in 1975 and the fall of the USSR in 1991. The publication of his purported memoirs, "Testimony," allegedly transcribed by Solomon Volkov, fueled this debate among academics and artists, becoming known as the "Shostakovich wars." The feud over the legitimacy of "Testimony," however, stood for something much larger than the credibility of an alleged historical document- as historians and musicologists debated whether or not it was comprised of Shostakovich's own words and sentiments towards the Soviet Union, its political systems, and its artistic spheres, they were largely seeking to prove the credibility of their stances for or against Soviet or western superiority. "Testimony" helped evolve the popular western view of Shostakovich as well, from a talented but helpless puppet at the hands of the regime, to a secret dissident bravely rebelling against the system from inside.

Modern Shostakovich scholars, however, will argue that neither of these views are quite true- as more correspondence and documents come to light, and more research is conducted, a more complete view of Shostakovich has been coming into focus over the past decade or so. Today, many academics tend to view Shostakovich and the debate over his ideology with far more nuance- not as a cowardly government mouthpiece or as an embittered undercover rebel, but as a multifaceted person who made difficult decisions, shaped by the varying time periods he lived in, whose actions were often determined by the shifting cultural atmospheres of those time periods, along with his own relationships with others and the evolution of his art. We can be certain Shostakovich did not approve of Stalin's restrictions on the arts- his posthumous work "Antiformalist Rayok," among other pieces of evidence from people he knew, makes that very clear- but many nuances of his beliefs are still very much debated. There has also been a shift away from judging Shostakovich's music based on its merit as evidence in the ideological dispute, and rather for its quality as artwork (something I'm sure he would appreciate!). As expansive as Shostakovich research has become, one thing has become abundantly clear- none of us can hope to truthfully make the statement, "Shostakovich, we understand."

Sources for further reading:

Articles:

Shostakovich and the Peace Conference (umich.edu)

Louis Armstrong Plays Historic Cold War Concerts in East Berlin & Budapest (1965) | Open Culture

Biographical and Primary Sources:

Laurel Fay, "Shostakovich, a Life"

Pauline Fairclough, "Critical Lives: Dmitry Shostakovich"

Elizabeth Wilson, "Shostakovich, a Life Remembered"

Mikhail Ardov, "Memories of Shostakovich"

HUAC Report on Peace Conference

Video Sources and Historic Footage:

Arthur Miller on the Conference

"New York Greets Mr. Bevin and Peace Conference Delegates"

"Shostakovich at the Waldorf"

"1949 Anti Communism Protest"

"Battle of the Pickets"

[ghelgheli]

agree with everything you said but iran is not imperialist. ethnonationalist theocracy sure but where are you getting imperialism from. empire =\ imperialist, would you call russia imperialist?

The Iranian state is not even half a century removed from being a formal empire: Pahlavi Iran was "The Imperial State of Iran" and recalled imperial possessions lost to Tsarist Russia another century prior. But setting aside nomenclature, which is fickle and floats—It's exactly that ethnonationalism which forms the logic of what I have been calling imperialism, even if there are not formal imperial possessions involved.

The consolidation of "irani" national identity through the 19th century went together with heightening of the core's exploitative and even colonial relationship to its periphery. This relationship can be traced back centuries to the earliest period of "reclaimed" Iranian rule of the region in the case of e.g. the forced displacement of Kurds to Khorāsān under early 16th century Safavid shahs. With the latest, industrial stage of Iranian statecraft and nation-building, the economic nature of this exploitation has been accelerated and what autonomy the peripheries previously had is restrained by the growing military apparatus the IRI commands.

The country's oil reserves are heavily concentrated in the province of Khuzestan, home to the city of Ahwaz/Ahvaz and most of the nearly two million or so Iranian Arabs. This is a region that is obviously of great economic significance. Strikes in 1978 played a major role in precipitating the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty, and in a pattern that will be familiar to the people who know, many of the communists and worker's parties responsible were put down by the subsequent IRI that owed its existence to them. Labour rights in the region remain suppressed; little of the wealth extracted from factories there is seen by the ethnic minorities that compose much of the working population, making its way instead to the private monopolies of the core; Ahwaz itself is sickeningly and dangerously polluted as reward for the riches it yields. What is this exploitation but imperialism?

And what of the constant harassment and material extortion of Kurdish kolbars carrying goods across the mountains in Kurdistan? The pāsdārān/IRGC often "confiscate" the possessions of people working to move essential wares within their families and communities, if they don't kill them outright, citing border violations if they make any excuses at all. This only exacerbates the ongoing economic deprivation of both Rojhilat/Iranian Kurdistan and Kurds in nearby parts of greater Kurdistan, whose economies and societies are disrupted by the border. Seems pretty imperialist to me.

Meanwhile, the national hero Qassem Soleimani is in fact reviled by many of the people who actually lived in those regions of Syria and Iraq that were his remit. He was known not only for his opposition to US imperialism and campaigns against Da'esh, but also for overseeing violence against protesters in the region and serving as the figurehead of Iranian intervention in local people's movements. Exertion of military force on other nations beyond the boundaries of the state, in the interest of developing its political and economic sphere—what would you call this?

Don't misunderstand me: the solution is not reactionary intervention in Iran, and anyone who tries to leverage these facts to advocate for US-collaborationist separatism is just a would-be comprador. But the political economy of Iran relies on an ongoing imperialism that is only the latest stage of an imperial legacy.

[arbitrarygreay]

It makes sense that the show pulled back on the international world-building pretty quickly. The primary aesthetic of the show is all rooted in that Salem origin, so they don't want to stray too far from it. But it's still really fun to think about. We have to go to the beginning, don't we? And then wonder about before that. There's a sense that the Salem Accords were unprecedented. The implications of this is that the formality of which the US Military Forces being comprised of witches, but yet the culture being still somewhat segregated, was not the case in other nations before that point. Which is really weird, honestly, the idea that the existence of witches did not have any affect whatsoever on the rise and fall of the likes of Rome, Egypt, or the Islamic empires? So, then, we have to narrow the context to the relevant parties in the region during the American Revolution. Sarah Alder looked at all of the potential factions around her at the time (Britain, France, Spain, Native), and somehow decided that the British colonists who wanted to break away were her best bet. Alder is a Scottish origin surname (while Lyne is from Belgium). Despite her modern differentiation between human and witch, it's more than likely that she worked through racial and nationalist prejudices over the centuries. So, then, let's assume that the state of how Natives, France, and Spain treated witches was not a factor for Sarah's consideration at the time. This means that Britain's culture was not witch-friendly, so they wouldn't have a witch force in their military, except under DADT plausible deniability cases. It also means that Britain nonetheless achieved their colonial power with this mindset. This implies that nowhere else in the world was open usage of witch powers sufficient to outweigh conventional military power. Despite the Cession not splitting between witch and civilian leadership, evidently having a more witch-friendly culture was not sufficient for the Americas not to get colonized by European powers that were Camarilla-friendly.

Meanwhile, the show also implies that witch-vs.-witch combat was not a norm before the Spree. Other nations imitating the Salem Accords did not result in each nations' witches battling each other. This implies that America achieved global hegemony with Alder's military way faster than in our world, such that Alder was able to control the formation of the UN-equivalent international Witch Council at the Hague to reinforce that status. (She had enough power that apparently no one else in the world has created immortality/avatar workings like hers? Highly doubt that other researchers couldn't figure it out, so she had to have banned it beyond herself and the Marshal.) The Hague meeting in S1E3 is chock full of intriguing details. The Russian general's uniform does have a red star on the lapel, which implies that there was still a Communist Revolution in that region. However, the general also refers to his nation as Russia, and not the Soviet Union. The political tensions over the Tarim showed that Russia does not share a closer relationship to China than it does to the US (whereas India has more sympathies). And, obviously, the fact that China is not a part of the Hague council at all. But, the US president is still named as the the "leader of the free nations", so if China had a different relationship to its witches than the rest of the world following the US model, it was not enough to result in China as a meaningful global hegemon rival. Perhaps China is still isolationist in this world, which might indicate that there was not Communist Revolution there and they're still on the Dynastic model. However, China being aggressive about the Tarim doesn't seem isolationist. But I wonder if the international geopolitics would have been where the show went next. Assuming that they only ran the First Song storyline in S3 because they got cancelled, then it makes a lot of sense that the first portion of the show was the US having to clean its own house. Once that is done, though, they can only look back outwards. And that "China is not here" thread seems way too juicy not to explore. The Last Ship was covering those sorts of dynamics, so that kind of plotting is viable for cable TV. For one thing, all of the holiday touchstones the show uses are carry-overs from Europe. I do wonder why exactly the Marshal celebrated Yule, except maybe as a courtesy to his charges. Maybe the crack about the log getting heavier every year was a joke. Or maybe the Marshal is of mixed heritage. Anyways, there's no way that the Middle East and South Asia and East Asia and Africa are also still using those holidays. Which then brings up the question of immigrants. China's absence from the Hague obviously didn't prevent the noticeable presence of many high ranking Asian-American members in the military. Is Tally's ignorance of High-Atlantic holidays because she actually has more knowledge of East Asian practices in California? We see skepticism by the High Atlantics towards Raelle's "Christo-pagan" chants, but where does Islam even fit into this world-building?

(And yes, I do have rather mixed feelings about them suddenly elevating the Mycelium from the product of one moment of human grief to suddenly All According To Keikaku From The Beginning Of Time. They even acknowledged that fungus wouldn't be a relevant power in certain parts of the world due to climate.)

[mariacallous]

An indictment from the US Department of Justice may have solved the mystery of how disgraced cryptocurrency exchange FTX lost over $400 million in crypto. The indictment, filed last week, alleges that three individuals used a SIM-swapping attack to steal hundreds of millions in virtual currency from an unnamed company. The timing and the amount stolen coincides with FTX's theft. Meanwhile, in a letter obtained by WIRED this week, seven lawmakers have demanded the DOJ stop funding biased and inaccurate predictive policing tools until the agency has a way to ensure law enforcement won’t use them in a way that has a “discriminatory impact.”

In Florida, prosecutors say a 17-year-old named Alan Winston Filion is responsible for hundreds of swatting attacks around the United States. The news of his arrest was first reported by WIRED days before law enforcement made it public. It was the culmination of a multi-agency manhunt to piece together a trail of digital breadcrumbs left by the teenager. In Ukraine, unmanned aerial vehicles have been powerful tools since the Russian invasion began in February 2022. But as the war rages on, another kind of unmanned robot has increasingly appeared on the front-lines: the unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV.

For months lawyers affiliated with an India based hacker-for-hire firm called Appin Technology have used legal threats to censor reporting about the company’s alleged cyber mercenary past. The EFF, Techdirt, MuckRock, and DDoSecrets are now pushing back, publicly sharing details for the first time about the firm's efforts to remove content from the web. It’s a dangerous world out there, so we’ve also got a list of some major patches issued in January that you can use to update your devices to keep them secure.

And there’s more. Each week, we highlight the news we didn’t cover in-depth ourselves. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

China’s Hackers Keep Targeting US Water and Electricity Supplies

For years Western security officials have warned about the threat of China collecting data about millions of people and the country’s hackers infiltrating sensitive systems. This week, Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray said hackers affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party are constantly targeting US critical infrastructure, such as water treatment plants, the electrical grid, and oil and gas pipelines. Wray’s testimony, at a House subcommittee on China, came as the FBI also revealed it removed malware from hundreds of routers in people’s homes and offices that had been planted by the Chinese hacking group Volt Typhoon.

“China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities,” Wray said in the public appearance. “Low blows against civilians are part of China’s plan.” The FBI director added that China has a bigger hacking operation than “every other major nation combined,” and claimed that if all of the FBI’s cyber-focused agents were assigned to work on issues related to China, they would still be outnumbered “by at least 50 to 1.”

While concerns about the scale of China’s espionage and cyber operations aren’t new, the US intelligence community has been increasingly vocal and worried about critical infrastructure being targeted by Volt Typhoon and other groups. “The threat is extremely sophisticated and pervasive,” NSA officials warned in November. In May 2023, Microsoft revealed it had been tracking Volt Typhoon intrusions at communications and transportation infrastructure, among other critical infrastructure, in US states and Guam.

The FBI and DOJ, also revealed this week that they remotely removed the KV Botnet malware from hundreds of routers infected by Volt Typhoon. The impacted routers, from Cisco and Netgear, were mostly at the end of their life, but were being used as part of wider operations. “​​The Volt Typhoon malware enabled China to hide, among other things, pre-operational reconnaissance and network exploitation against critical infrastructure like our communications, energy, transportation, and water sectors,” Wray said. It isn’t the first time US officials have obtained a court order to remotely wipe devices infected by hackers, but the move is still rare.

‘Untraceable’ Monero Transactions Have Been Traced, Police Claim

Since the first cryptocurrencies emerged more than a decade ago, there has been the assumption that the blockchain-based digital currencies are anonymous and untraceable. They are, in fact, very traceable. Researchers have shown how people can be linked to the transactions they make and law enforcement have used the techniques to help bust illicit dark web markets and catch pedophiles. There are, however, still some privacy-focused cryptocurrencies that appear to be less traceable than Bitcoin. This includes Monero, which is increasingly being adopted by sellers of child sexual abuse materials.

This week investigators in Finland said Moreno-tracing helped reveal the identity of a hacker who allegedly attacked psychotherapy company Vastaamo in 2020, stealing thousands of patient records and threatening to leak them unless people paid a ransom. Investigators from the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation claim they used heuristic analysis to infer where funds were moved to. The investigators did not reveal the full methods of how they allegedly traced the Monero payments, however, they add to the growing body of evidence that cryptocurrency tracing firms and investigators may be able to track the currency.

Russia Likely Behind a Spike in GPS Interference, Officials Say

Planes flying over Europe have faced a spike in accuracy issues with GPS systems used for navigation in recent months. The head of Estonia’s Defense Forces has claimed that Russia is likely the source of this interference, according to an interview with Bloomberg. “Someone is causing it, and we think it’s Russia,” Martin Herem told the publication, adding that Russia may be testing its electronic warfare capabilities and “learning” the most effective tactics. Across Europe, and particularly the Baltics region, there has been a reported increase in GPS jamming, with Finland reporting large interferences in December and pilots repeatedly reporting issues with their navigation systems.

Vault 7 Hacking Tools Leaker Joshua Schulte Sentenced to 40 Years

In 2017, the Vault 7 leaks exposed some of the CIA’s most sophisticated hacking tools, including how the agency could compromise routers, phones, PC, and TVs. Joshua Schulte, a former CIA engineer in the agency’s Operations Support Branch who prosecutors identified as being behind the data breach and responsible for leaking the materials to Wikileaks, was convicted in numerous trials in recent years. Schulte, who denied the allegations, has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for the espionage and also for possessing thousands of child abuse images. Judge Jesse Furman, sentencing Schulte, said he had caused “untold damage to national security.” In June 2022, The New Yorker published this comprehensive investigation into the data breach and Schulte’s troubled history working at the agency.

[overanalyst556]

Korean War: The Forgotten War and why it matters.

Hello, and welcome again, my amazing readers to another history blog lesson. Last time we talked about the black death and how it changed Europe as a whole, now we talk about the Korean War.

When It comes to wars in the 20th century post ww1 that people talk about, It's mostly ww2 and the Vietnam War that people talk about. In ww2 Americans celebrated the end of the war. It was a momentous victory and many soldiers came back as heroes in post-war America.

Two decades later, Vietnam was the opposite. The Vietnam War was a humiliation for any American serving in the war. They were shamed and hated. the deaths of a lot of Us soldiers tend to have that effect.

But there was one war that wasn't loved or hated, It was just right there. The Korean War. To say that this war was forgotten would be an understatement. It might just be one of the most forgotten wars in history.

Often today, it's never taught. The one time I learned about it was when I was 12 years old, That was it. But millions died in a footnote in history including some 33,000 Americans.

And we are left with the ramifications of the end of the conflict. So what was the Korean War? Why does it matter? Well, strap in, and let me tell you about the forgotten cold war proxy war.

The Buildup To War

This whole thing starts before ww2. Korea was once independent before being annexed or taken over by Japan in 1910. The Koreans were subject to awful treatment by their Japanese overlords for at least three and a half decades.

By 1945, the Japanese empire was defeated through a combination of two atomic bombs, a Naval war, and the Soviets invaded Manchuria. The United states and the Soviet Union( Russia) proceeded to divide Korea amongst themselves.

It was divided and held between Soviet and American occupation with both deciding to divide it by the 38th parallel.

The Un attempted to give free elections to Korea, However, the Soviets blocked it and boycotted it real quick, the reason being that it would be unfair. By December 1945, Korea was stuck in a hard place between both sides. They both agreed to a trusteeship that would last for five years.

There was an attempt however to establish a new provisional government in the American zone, Known as the People's Republic of Korea, or PRK. The issue was they were pro-radical communists. The American military quickly smashed its legitimacy as a government and outlawed the Prk.

In the north, the Soviets hired a man and veteran activist called Cho man sik and saw that he could be a leader for a potential Korea.

Cho however disagreed with the Soviets and only worked with them under his own terms, which annoyed them. The final straw came after he refused to sign the trusteeship. As a result, he was removed from power and sent under house arrest before he disappeared.

This was Stalin after all, so guess what happened. Cho's leave of absence convinced the Soviets to find a new leader for a new Korea. This new puppet was Kim il sung, a former. communist guerilla leader.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or what would become known to the world as North Korea was born.

Meanwhile, in the southern part of Korea, the elections were held and the presidential candidate, Syngman Rhee came to power. Thus south korea was born in 1948

Rhee was a hardline anticommunist and proceeded to have the military hunt down and kill suspected communists across the south to suppress uprisings. About 100,000 people were killed in the south for being suspected communists.

Things came to a head in 1950. Kim il sung believed he could invade South Korea and so proceeded to meet with Stalin to ask for equipment and support for the invasion.

Stalin was wary at first, but eventually, by April, He gave Kim his support. However, he made it clear that he would not send Soviet ground troops if a conflict broke out as to avoid conflict with the Americans.

North Korean forces Numbered around between 150,000 and 200,000 troops. 10 infantry divisions were organized, one tank division and one air force division. 210 aircraft as well as 280 tanks were prepared for the invasion of South Korea.

The South, by comparison, was nowhere close to that. By the day of the invasion, they only had around 98,000 soldiers, 0 tanks, and a 22 aircraft force, Most of which were trainer and liaison aircraft.

On the 25 of June 1950, North Korea launched an invasion of the south. The Korean war had begun.

The course of the war.

The North Koreans easily smashed their way into South Korea. The S South Korean military or Rok military had virtually no tanks or anti-tank weaponry to speak of. They resorted to blowing up a bridge in the Han River, killing many refugees. Seoul, the capital fell on the same day, the 28th of June.

The South Korean military had been reduced to just 22,000 troops from its original force of 98,000 in the spend of five days. While the North Koreans were consolidating their success, The Us was deciding whether or not they wanted to get involved or not.

They were concerned about the fact that if Korea fell, the communists could easily follow the same line with other nations, domino theory, and all of that. China had fallen a year earlier to communism, while half of Europe was encompassed under the Soviet sphere.

At the same time, they were also concerned about escalating the situation in Korea into war with the Soviets, believing that Europe was more of a concern than Korea.

Eventually, however, they agreed to send a Un peacekeeping force from several different nations, led by the Us in order to support South Korea. The generals were tasked to rebuild a force that was a shadow of its ww2 self.

Meanwhile, Us forces in Korea were fighting the Kpa, or the Korean people's army, for control of the south. The battle of Osan was one instance when task force Smith was fighting the North Koreans and highlighted the failures of poorly trained men and equipment such as bazookas and recoilless rifles, which were unable to penetrate the t34 tanks the North had.

Task force Smith retreated from the battlefield, but not before succeeding to hold off the enemy.

The battle of the Pusan perimeter was a battle where Un forces managed to hold back the North Koreans for a long time, with the air force and navy's amazing overwhelming superiority, And the grit of the un troops, they succeeded in holding the perimeter long enough for reinforcements to come.

During the battle of Pusan, efforts to relieve the defenders were underway. The Battle of Inchon however was a turning point in the un's favor. While I would like to go more in-depth about Inchon, All you need to know is that the landings were a success and they destroyed the North Korean forces there.

As a result of the landings, the defenders of Pusan were relieved. On September 15th, they broke out of Pusan. That same month the Un forces launched a counteroffensive into the south and managed to retake lost territory.

On September 22, 1950, Un forces fought for Seoul In what was known as the second battle of Seoul. The battle was a Un victory and Seoul was freed from the north.

Wanting to stop any future incursion from happening, the Un decided to eliminate North Korea once and for all by invading the North. They succeeded in capturing most of the north by October, as Kpa resistance crumbled. It finally culminated in the capture of the capital Pyongyang on October 19th, 1950.

Regardless, They continued to pummel the Kpa and pushed them all the way back to the Chinese border. And this is where things take a huge turn backward.

Chinese Involvement in this Conflict

As the Un pushed up north, China was starting to become increasingly wary of an approaching American force, which was pummeling a fellow communist state that they supported from the start. Mao Zedong, the leader of China, feared that America might not just stop at eradicating communism in Korea and that China might be the next one on the block.

After a series of emergency meetings that lasted from the 2 to the 5th of October, China decided to send in troops to support their ally. After enlisting Stalin's support, the Chinese were ready with about 200,000 troops. On October 19th, 1950, Chinese soldiers crossed the border in secret and across the Frozen Yalu River.

Wave after wave of Chinese soldiers crossed down the mountains and borders, Overwhelming the Un forces and forcing them back. They successfully retook Pyongyang as well as North Korea from the American forces.

Enraged so much that the Chinese had done this, the American commander Douglas MacArthur began looking for a way to defeat the Chinese, One of which was atomic weapons. Truman had said earlier at the beginning of the war that all options were on the table, including the bomb.

However as the months went by, This decision slowly changed. By 1951, However, Macarthur wanted to still use atomic bombs on China. Eventually, Macarthur's requests for the bombs were too much for Truman, and on April 11, He fired him and replaced him with this man, General Matthew Ridgeway.

Meanwhile, the Chinese and North Koreans were rapidly advancing and had taken Seoul again. However, Ridgeway hatched a counteroffensive known as Operation Thunderbolt. The counteroffensive was a success and they once again took Seoul back into un hands as well as South Korea.

However, from this point forwards, The war became a back-and-forth between the Chinese and North Koreans vs the Un and the South Koreans. Un forces were unable to get to Pyongyang while Chinese and north korean forces were unable to reach Seoul. Any gain both sides make was just taken back by the next offensive.

Now while the war on the ground was a stalemate, the war in the air was a far different story. This was the first war in which jet fighters played the central war in combat. No longer are piston fighters the main fighter plane, Jets are the new rage.

Fighters such as the ww2 era gloster meteor, the f-80 shooting Star, Mig 15, And especially the f-86 sabre became the standard jet fighters in the Korean War. This was a decade when fighter jets were still new and looked exactly like this.

See what I mean. North Korea was also subject to a huge bombing campaign that left thousands dead and injured. It still ranks among the highest countries that have been bombed. both sides continued to fight,

But eventually however by 1953, both sides were tired of conflict. After gaining no strategic advantage for several years, The combatants agreed to an armistice that was officially signed on July 27, 1953. The fighting was over.

The aftermath and conclusion

With the fighting over, Both sides created the Korean demilitarized zone, or Dmz for short. The Zone still exists to this very day.

With the war over, there was no cheering in the streets for Korea. Most people barely even paid attention to the war at all. Soldiers went back to their civilian lives. the 1950s continued, that was it.

North Korea was somehow better off than the South, With better health care and a better standard of living in the South, which is weird considering it's North Korea we are talking about here. But by the 80s, It began to stagnate and became a poverty-stricken place with concentration camps and famine.

South Korea went through a lot of regime changes and had a poor economy and living standards than the North. However, by the 1980s, South Korea's economy increased big time to the point of being one of the richest economies on earth.

The Korean War also had the highest causality civilian count than ww2 with approximately about 3 million civilian causalities in the entire war. 1.5 million North Koreans fled the country during the war. Millions of Koreans from both the North and South died during the war.

33,000 Americans were also dead, as well as 114,000 Chinese.

Ironically even though it's called the forgotten war, It's still ongoing. There was never an official peace treaty signed, meaning the Us is still at war with North Korea. The North in many ways sees the war from all those decades ago as a constant part of their ideology, with generations born to hate the Americans.

And a constant paranoia that the war may start again, which explains most of their craziness and general hostility towards other nations that aren't allied with them.

Even though the Korean War may be remembered today as a forgotten war, It's a war that impacted the lives of two nations and has defined generations of young Koreans. And it will continue to define future generations, as we still live with the consequences of a small conflict that began on that fateful day on 25 of June 1950.

[azhdakha]

Despite my firm and radical anti-colonial position I don't get why a big part of liberal anti-colonial activists in Eastern Europe and Western Asia somehow avoid the fact that there were enough communists and pro-communists in our republics, it wasn't exclusively Moscow-backed red army that came from central russia, meanwhile indiegnous nationalists aren't innocent snowballs just for fighting for independence.

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Distant Correspondent

I'm usually highlighting recent-ish records for these Bandcamp Monday situations, but let's take things back a little bit to celebrate a woefully under-celebrated record — the lone long-player from Distant Correspondent, released 10 years ago this week. There's no expanded reissue of the album, but maybe there should be! Distant Correspondent is a classic slice of dream pop featuring the dulcet tones of Drag City superstar Edith Frost, haunting guitars worthy of The Cure's Faith and David Obuchowski's extraordinary skills as a songwriter and arranger.

The cherry on top is Emily Gray (formerly of Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia), who adds her poetic/melancholic reveries to the mix — I hesitate to call it "spoken word;" there's an uncanny musicality to her vocals here, adding a drama and tension that you won't find many other places. And we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the one-man rhythm section of Michael Lengel, whose sense of dynamics ensures that the songs have deep and shifting textures. Give this one a spin, you won't regret it ...

(And full disclosure — after Distant Correspondent was recorded, I actually joined Distant Correspondent for a little while there, touring the country! Yes, dear reader, I liked this record that much.)

[minetteskvareninova]

Hetalia Headcannons: World War 1

(Because I am having finals and I’m gonna make it everyone else’s problem)

- I mean. Is there anything more hillarious than WW1 but Hetalia? Just these idiots shelling each other to oblivion because of what someone’s ally did to someone else’s ally and everyone was too stubborn to make peace. They were going to win this exceedingly stupid conflict, dammnit! Meanwhile, Spain and Portugal were passing each other popcorn in the distance like. There’s this superflu going around, should we be worried? You also get bangers like Italy attacking the same fucking mountain pass ELEVEN TIMES, untill it’s absolutely destroyed by Austria. In the end, the Entente won by being just a little less destroyed than the Alliance, and they were going to make it their problem.

- Russia meanwhile left for the war, but got absolutely destroyed by Germany, who then let his “long lost relative” Soviet Union (now thought to be Russia in a brown wig) live in the abandoned house. People faithful to their old master tried to sack him, but without much success. Meanwhile, Czechia and Slovakia got stuck in Russia, and had to sneak to Paris trough his backyard. Ukraine, Poland etc. of course used the opportunity to run away; some managed to escape, while others were kidnapped back to Russia.

- Poland was resurrected by England’s magic and given Ukraine and Belarus as roommates. Poland proceeded to treat them like shit. In fact, he treated everyone around him like shit, under the impression that it would make him look tougher for some reason. Interwar period was Poland’s bitch era. He also developed a real fetish for men in uniform, for some reason.

- Germany was at the death’s door by the end of the war, but Prussia kept fighting and was severely pissed when the Entente kept insisting “Alliance lost” - like, HE didn’t lose shit, what are they talking about?! Meanwhile, Bavaria, their long-lost brother appeared out of nowhere and was now communist for some reason? He got absorbed back into Germany as soon as Ludwig recovered, and Prussia and Germany don’t talk about this period very much.

- Paris was decidedly NOT the city of love at the end of the war. The Alliance called up this big conference there that was supposed to end all war forever, but they were the same petty assholes as always, so that was a doomed endeavour. Like, the whole “everything is always Germany’s fault” clause was simply unwarranted. But they did settle some disputes, like Austria’s divorce from Hungary (he needed to go away to support his cousin), so that was nice.

- After Italy was severely wounded in a war, Romano took care of him, and took charge of the household. And boy, you could tell. Italy was never as willing to throw hands as it was after one of the most devastating wars in human history (at least for them). He also got radicalized by the far right...

- Soviet Union went around, preaching to everyone who would listen about the need for GLORIOUS COMMUNIST REVOLUTION. In the end, he only convinced Bavaria, who as mentioned got absorbed into Germany, and Hungary, who then tried to convert Slovakia, by violence if necessary (luckily Czechia and Slovakia managed to defend themselves).

[chivalrouswooly]

A thought on Russia’s future:

I’ve only seen one poll on Russian war support. It was something like “~70% in favor of war” prior to the mobilization. But its validity was, of course, questionable as dissent in a post-Soviet oligarchy is treated only marginally better than dissent in a communist government (where you get “suicided” if you don’t openly support the government).

I think at some point early in the war, I mentioned that I thought the war could be the end of the Russian government.

Now, there’s mass protests in Russian cities. Now that it affects them, the war has become real to Russian citizens - and they are being jailed for opposing mobilization/war. Russians are trying to flee at every Russian border, and airport. Even those who support the war, are openly criticizing the Kremlin and their decisions (from military moves, lack of transparency, and trading Azov for other political prisoners).

I don’t know how Russian leadership could possibly change the optics, or public viewpoints, besides falling back into very visible soviet-era repression with the end of a gun barrel. Russian has been made a laughing stock of a world power by Ukrainian tenacity, and Russian corruption.

Meanwhile, Putin has again flaunted the nuclear option as being “on the table”. While this is likely just posturing, I have other fears.

The collapse of the Soviet Union left a massive power vacuum that Russian generals and politicians scrambled to fill. With Gorbachev leading efforts toward democratization, he conceded to his opponent upon losing an election.

I don’t believe Putin will concede if presented with Russian pressure to step down. The man is out of options, and could face war crimes tribunals if he isn’t the one in power. The threat to his existence may make him more inclined to turn Russia into a new North Korea.

[cryptometaphor]

Me: Holy shit I need a joooobbbb

Sarah: Babe, it'll be fine. I love you regardless. I'm a communist that'd be pretty hypocritical of me lol

Me: I don't caaaarrrreeeee. I wanna get us marching wedding rings of ruby and sapphire like Pokemon. That'll be our kids names too.

Sarah: That's so sweet lol <3

Me: At the very least right now, I wanna afford to just go to Minissota and we'll make every day the 90s.

Sarah: How?

Me: Well I was thinking we watch movies like Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, and I just hold and touch you the whole time. I don't stop, ever. Ever ever.

Sarah: You've got the love high lol. That's ok I do too. I'm just better at hiding it but I think mine is more intense because you're Mr. Angry nihilist all the time lol.

Me: Oh? Is that a challenge? lol

Sarah: It is. Cause you think you wanna touch me forever? I wanna make you cum till you're whimpering and beging me to stop, but I won't. That body belongs to me. Every bit of your joy is gonna be wrapped around my giant boy-hands as these dumbass terfs say lol.

Me: LOL

Sarah: You laugh now but I'm serious lol

Me: Oh I believe you.

Sarah: I don't care if you do or not. You're mine.

Me: You're mine too Sarah. Always.

Sarah: See, you're still talking. Because you're not laid down and totally at my mercy as my man and only my man. I don't wanna hear about mods or exes. I'm not saying your anger isn't justified, I'm saying I own you and I personally need your body and mind.

Me: You uhh... (Smacks lips) You a bit dominant aren't cha lol

Sarah: NO SHIT lol it scares most guys away. Every guy says they wanna be loved but you're just a tiny bit masculine about your love and ooooh, suddenly you're a psycho bitch.

Me: Oh I love your psycho. Especially when you're threatening other people lol

Sarah: I know you do. And that's why you're gonna be all mine.

Oskar: Jim be careful. Sarah gonna peg you.

Havoc: Assuming she even needs a peg and doesn't have a feminine penis.

Sarah: You two numbskulls had your chance with Jim and wouldn't go along with his schemes.

Havoc: His schemes are stupid.

Me: Fuck you Havoc lol

Sarah: He's mine now. All mine. No cuckold shit. I ain't sharing.

Oskar: I didn't say anything about cuckold but pegging is...

Me: Oskar if I remember correctly, Zyrah said you were...

Oskar: THAT WAS FAKE NEWS AND YOU KNOW IT

Me: Do I? The fact I can believe it lol

Oskar: Well I can believe it about you

Havoc: I wouldn't mind being pegged by a hot girl

Oskar: That's cause you're gay

Me: You do say some pretty gay shit Havoc

Sarah: You're all fucking gay lol. But that's ok so am I. It's just a matter of if the spectrum of gay is compatible.

Havoc: It's not all one big pool of degeneracy?

Oskar: It is

Sarah: It isn't. Jim is the sweetest, most romantic, loving boy ever. You all call it gay, meanwhile Havoc is a furry and borderline pedo.

Me: Borderline? lol

Havoc: stfu Jim

Sarah: You Oskar, are just an angry bath-house gayman. You talk a big game but have swallowed more cock on Grindr than all of us combined and you wear the maga hat while you do it

Me: Gotem. You know Oskar like a book lol

Oskar: This is more fake news by Russia

Sarah: I admit I'm a fucking yandere. I'm a needy bitch and Jim fulfills that need. Only Jim. It could only ever be Jim.

Me: Honey you're so wonderful.

Me: I know you'd never leave me BUT IF YOU DID I am cutting you up into pieces to suck on your appendages and stick them up my twat lol

Oskar: Jesus fucking Christ

Havoc: Jim you need to get the hell outta there

Me: Cowards lol

Sarah: JIM'S A REAL MAN WHO CAN HANDLE A STRONG WOMAN

Havoc: You're not strong, just crazy

Oskar: Crazier than Jim, that's saying a lot

Sarah: Blah blah blah. Incels who ignore my man and don't give him what he wants. What he needs.

Me: I need you.

Sarah: You fucking better cause I need you more lol

Havoc: I take it back. I don't envy Jim.

Oskar: Me either

Havoc: Nigga you've had a wife longer than any of us

[spilladabalia]

Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia... - Blindspot/Invisible Bend

[inazuma-fulgur]

Y'know, I like watching chess and learning about the people even if I'm not great at it myself

And one thing that's inevitably going to come up between all the goat calling is that Bobby Fisher was a sexist and specifically an anti semite (I'm not aware he said anything about other minority groups) and bought into many conspiracy theories or made them up himself, Fisher denied the Holocaust etc (also he was half Jewish? That man made decisions for sure.)

And the chess community being incredibly sexist isn't a secret. Fide itself being sexist and by extension transphobic isn't a secret, it's in their rules

But how nonchalantly people say Fisher was right about all his opinions (except that he said the US is run by Jews because obviously the US is great and perfectly moral so that can't be true) and shit is wild. Today I've seen someone say there is no such thing as being antisemitic, because it's right

Meanwhile my comments critical of Fides rules and open discrimination have gained me a ban from speaking but these """opinions"'" are fair game apparently.

At least moderators don't do anything about them

Oh generally chess is very pro capitalism and more specifically pro americanism. If someone's pro US and pro US imperialism that's great and deserves to be celebrated (usually they front it with something other that just loops back to US imperialism, that implicitly mandates it but makes it possible to not name it explicitly)

Or if someone's say anti communist, anti russia, then that gets publicly celebrated regardless of all other opinions they might have

Like I don't know enough about the history of chess and its organizations to judge why discrimination has become so accepted and standard within that space far beyond the general acceptance of discriminatory behavior that is currently still seen as normal

But I do know that in the 20th century getting rich became much more of a central premise of big chess games/events and everything else became kind of second in importance. So lots of whacky shit happened from then on with no one wanting to give up their own share of profits and sponsors entering the arena. Bobby Fisher hated communism and loved capitalism, and unsurprisingly he was one of the largest reasons this money development came to be.

And it didn't make chess players as a whole more well off, on the contrary they're still piss poor to this day. Unless they have other sources of income like youtube basically only top 10 players can afford to live off of chess and they're not even the only ones playing in all the prestigious and high stakes tournaments. This just made world champtions a lot of money (which good for them but doesn't solve larger issues)

But crypto involvement, large companies having stakes in chess/their own tournaments named after them, seeing which types of countries are involved. US, Russia, Germany, India, Ukraine, I can't even name them all but basically all of them are European or European colonies/similar, it's pretty apparent how white chess players are. The (relatively speaking) few that aren't white are often "white enough". I'm not a light skinned privilege believer but chess really makes it seem like it's a thing. There's a lot going on.

[ajoytobeheld]

Gareth Campesinos!' favourite records of the decade

December 31st, 2009

This was torture, I swear. Only one album per-band (so that it wasn’t just a list of Xiu Xiu/Elverum albums. That rule occasionally stretched a little (hence no TITSJ or cLOUDDEAD etc). I’d written some stuff but Rob blew that out of the water yesterday, so here we go. Expect adjustments to be made in the comments section, as and when I realise I made horrific mistakes. A Top 20:

20. Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia – Indian Ink “Drunken strangers trying to lock their eyes onto a body that’s slowly disappearing”

19. Electrelane – The Power Out “I loved you in the morning before the sun would come / you were the dawn to me”

18. Des Ark – Loose Lips Sink Ships “You think I don’t know that my lover’s got a sickness that I can’t fuck him out of”

17. Les Mouches – You’re Worth More To Me Than 1,000 Christians “Can’t find a noose, can’t find a razor, too good a swimmer”

16. Ten Grand – This Is The Way To Rule “Don’t let them get to you first”

15. Help She Can’t Swim – Fashionista Super Dance Troupe “Not everyone looks down on you, not half as much as I fucking do”

14. The Notwist – Neon Golden “Leave me paralysed love, leave me hypnotised, love”

13. Mull Historical Society – Loss “I tried to be afraid, I think that’s what you do”

12. Desaparecidos – Read Music/Speak Spanish “Swing low satellite, hot white chariot!”

11. Tim Hecker – Harmony In Ultra Violet “…”

10. Hymie’s Basement – Hymie’s Basement “when you’re gone I nibble at your lip space”

9. The Aislers Set – How I Learned To Write Backwards “If I’d never learned to love I would never have been hit by the train”

8. Gowns – Red State “You’ve gotta look it in the eyes and say that I don’t believe, you gotta hold it under water so you see where it bleeds”

7. Black Eyes – Black Eyes “The second you touched it it started to die inside, when you said “show me your tits” we were wishing you died”

6. Hood – Cold House “We spit in the pond to give the fish something to pray to” 5. the Organ – Grab That Gun “My neck hurts / ’cause I’ve been cutting moons”

4. Former Ghosts – Fleurs “Who is going to love you like I do?”

3. The Microphones – The Glow pt. II “And, like the moon, my chest was full because we both knew we’re just floating in space over molten rock, and we felt safe and we discovered that our skin is soft”

2. Parenthetical Girls – Safe As Houses “Our hands, our glands are both on the rampage”

1. Xiu Xiu –Knife Play “This is the worst vacation ever. I am going to cut open your forehead with a roofing shingle”

[evita-shelby]

i headcanoned in ur jack/eva universe that Eva does some brujeria that kills Hoover (dude who likely ordered JFK be killed, (i’m sorry if it sounds psycho but i do think he did bc JFK was against CIA type of intervention in foreign countries)).

also esp after watching oppenheimer i can’t help but be struck with that red scare crap. Like i understand the historical context and how the cold war was incredibly influential but like… being so scared of communism? Both sides are stupid, the communists are too idealistic and weirdly focused on providing Russia relief… also some of them were either for rapid integration or incredibly racist (viewed POC as subhuman therefore belonging in a hierarchy below them). But like dude why are you so obsessed with giving russians secrets and money…worry about yourself first. Like i understand that they don’t have the access to information we do in current day but like history and literature provide endless examples of what is likely to happen if you give one group/man power. (i’m in the firm belief power corrupts like 99% of the time) Also like people not just back then with that whole red-scare community thing but also ppl today who point at communism/socialism as if it’s the devil … and can’t even explain why nowadays it honestly feels like media brainrot but back then? all those politician douche bags come off as egregious and pompous as they try to demonize meanwhile offering up their alternative of a capitalist hellscape where we’re cannibalizing eachother because there’s nothing left to consume…

lmao sorry for the rant i’m just annoyed post-oppenheimer about stupid men in stupid politics and i’m imagining Jack/Eva maneuvering that political landscape and it’s just….honestly daunting so koodos to you if you manage to get it off the ground

I might need to brush up on that cuz its been a while.

the red scare was pretty much just right wing groups doing what they do best: finding someoen to blame and see as an enemy.

Remember how the gop were bitching about Hillary Clinton's emails? Remember how much they hate mexicans? How they blame queer people for fucking everything and disney and poc and doverse casting and treating people with dignity and respect?

Yeah. Communists were that for them.

Communism is good as long as the people in charge are perfect, which is never going to happen because humans are not so and abuse of power will always happen.

Hence why it eventually fails, and is used as see capitilism is better(its not its worse) thing.

Shit could be fixed and done better to make it last. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten there yet. We could, but it hasn't happened yet

Whoever put the hit on jfk knew he'd get away with it and likely was a right wing conservative as it is a trademark of theirs to hate progress amd good shit and anyone that opposes war(unless its with russia these days because trump grabs his ankles whenever a dictator is near him)

In the National Anthem fic, Eva and Jack know better than to be too public and inconspicuous about it, so they'll probably just play mind games and ruin their lives and have them do their work for them as they are not as young as they were even though Jack can still wrap a garrote round a man's balls in seconds.

[mariacallous]

The invasion of Ukraine confronted Russian society with the consequences of a decades-long transformation that began, among other things, with Vladimir Putin’s introduction of a new Labor Code. The new labor legislation, passed in December 2001, curtailed the rights of labor unions, contributing to social atomization and to the crumbling of solidarity politics. Historian and political commentator Ilya Budraitskis has been part of Russia’s leftist political scene since the 1990s, engaging in labor union activism and other civic initiatives. Meduza spoke with him about Russia’s wartime left-wing politics, the role of CPRF (Russia’s establishment Communist Party) in the large picture of the Russian left, the latter’s survival in what Budraitskis calls “the conditions of dictatorship,” and the goals its activists can embrace now to bring about a decentralized, democratic future Russia, where the state will genuinely serve the interests of the majority.

What are the elements that comprise Russia’s political left today?

Starting on February 24, 2022, the present regime in Russia entered the stage of flagrant dictatorship, which puts in question all legal political activity in the country. Accordingly, political groups and movements that existed until that date split into two major camps: one supporting the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine, and the other condemning and protesting it. The same kind of division occurred with the political left at large. This was a foreseeable development, since it extended the tendencies that can be traced all the way back to 2014. Today’s Russia has two different kinds of leftists, and we need to be clear as to which of these two antagonistic movements we’re talking about.

Let’s begin with the pro-war bloc. When talking about the establishment parliamentary left represented by the Communist Party (CPRF), can we consider it a genuine leftist force?

The pro-war left is represented first and foremost by CPRF’s leadership and by those who support its position. For instance, Sergey Udaltsov’s Left Front has adopted a pro-war position and is effectively allied with the CPRF. They think of the war and the conflict with the West as a radical challenge to Russia’s former socio-political model, a challenge that will inevitably push the country in the direction of what they like to call “socialism.”

The main problem with their position (bracketing its morality and practicability) is that it provides no account of who is to be the subject of the political shift towards this “socialism” of theirs. They cannot be talking about the masses, the organized hired labor, because that possibility has been eradicated in Russia. All public political life, including the freedom of assembly, has been destroyed. Strikes have ceased to be a phenomenon. Russia’s society is in a maximally depressed and humiliated state. Putin’s Russia has no room for any kind of progress towards social justice.

From the point of view of the pro-war left, the subject of the “socialist” shift is to be today’s ruling elite. Its strategy, then, is the persuade the elite to go down the path of socio-economic reforms. The motive of these changes, meanwhile (we’re talking about things like nationalization of major industrial concerns, or a more “equitable” redistribution of the country’s resources) are the objective needs of a country confronted with acute external conflict. Hence the orientation towards militarized socialism, including top-down planning to meet the needs of ongoing warfare.

In the actual conditions of dictatorship, Putin has become the sole addressee of all CPRF propaganda. It’s him that this party must persuade to effect the reforms it is promoting. So, at the president’s July 2022 meeting with the parliamentary factions, the CPRF’s chairman Gennady Zyuganov declared that his party fully supports Putin’s political course, but it would like to see movement towards socialism. Putin replied, somewhat facetiously, that it’s an interesting idea, but it would be good to first come up with some estimates of what socialism would look like in practice.

There are very good reasons to doubt that the CPRF and its allies can be described as a bona fide leftist political force, since the socialist position is based on the idea that disenfranchised masses must take back political and economic power through grassroots self-organization. Socialism in this classic leftist sense is something that’s initiated by the people, who establish a new social order to benefit the many instead of the few.

Today’s CPRF and its allies have rejected this idea, since they don’t view the masses with their interest in bottom-up change as a subject, or an engine, of change. Zyuganov’s idea of socialism does not require any participation from the masses; in his view, grassroots activity is actually undesirable, since everyday people’s behavior is unpredictable and can therefore be exploited by Russia’s enemies, who might seduce them with their false values. It’s far safer to conduct reforms with a view to the interests of the state.

Does the CPRF have real political power? Even if it’s abandoned the root ideas of left-wing politics, does this party have real influence over reforms in the country?

The CPRF has just celebrated its 30th anniversary, and with great pomp. This makes the party, headed by its changeless leader Gennady Zyuganov practically coeval with the post-Soviet political system itself. It’s worth noting that its place in that system is fairly ambiguous. As a party of “managed democracy,” it never made any claims to real political power, coordinating its every step with the Kremlin, and lately following its explicit directives.

This party has never tried to get anyone to take to the streets. Its orientation is not about what happens outside the parliament; instead, it’s all about redistributing the seats in the State Duma and in regional governance. In other words, this party has no great political ambitions. It simply maintains itself and its own apparatus, providing a career ladder for politicians.

There are scores of people who became governors or representatives solely because they spent their early years climbing the hierarchic ladder of the Communist Party. Take the Oryol Governor Andrey Klychkov or Moscow City Duma deputies like Gennady Zyuganov’s grandson Leonid Zyuganov, or the governor of Khakassia, Valentin Konovalov. All of them made their careers in the CPRF, getting their modest share of political power. Within the current political system, the CPRF is unlikely to take you beyond the post of a deputy or a place in local government.

The CPRF’s niche in the system of Russian politics is a product of its function, which is to absorb protest-minded dissident voters during elections. People who vote for the CPRF don’t do it because they want Zyuganov’s grandson to make a career for himself, or because they want their party to support Putin’s every new undertaking. They vote for the CPRF because they are disgruntled with Russian life in various aspects, the social aspect being foremost. They’re unhappy about inequality and poverty.

Another case in point is the September 2021 State Duma election. Thanks in large part to the “smart vote” strategy championed by the Navalny team, most opposition voters gave their votes to CPRF candidates. A significant share of those candidates won their districts but still couldn’t get a seat in the parliament because of the sweeping falsifications, including the manipulation of online votes. The party leadership’s position was, meanwhile: sure, there have been some violations, but not so great as to question the election results or to go to bat against the regime.

This ambivalence on the part of the CPRF, an establishment party that attracted voters prone to protest, was also reflected in its composition. The CPRF has been a magnet for people looking to get serious about leftist opposition politics without pandering to the Kremlin, to defend their constituents’ interests, and to develop grassroots movements. Over its entire lifespan, the CPRF included these two conflicting groups with completely different motives. Its leadership, though, was always comprised of Kremlin collaborators, content to see the CPRF as an establishment party. Meanwhile, the party’s local branches often attracted people with completely different expectations.

In 2021, we saw this contradiction at play when the “smart vote” strategy garnered support for CPRF candidates like Mikhail Lobanov in Moscow, not least thanks to the fact that they held genuine, consistent anti-establishment views. When the war broke out, just a few State Duma deputies declared their antiwar position, but all of those who spoke up were CPRF members.

Did CPRF activists manage to achieve results despite these internal antagonisms?

When you become a municipal or a regional deputy, this opens up certain opportunities. They are, of course, severely circumscribed, given that any establishment opposition party, the CPRF included, is going to be a minority presence. Still, a deputy is someone who can significantly amplify the voices of local communities, as in the case of the Moscow City Duma Deputy Evgeny Stupin, who happens to be a CPRF member.

Let’s talk about the other leftist camp, which didn’t support the invasion. If a person doesn’t see oneself affiliated with the CPRF, what other leftist options are there?

Among the leftist organizations that condemned the invasion, there’s a number of small groups operating essentially as mass media. In the situation where practically any pacifist or antiwar activity is outlawed, these groups are just barely legal. Political organizations that adopted a clear-cut antiwar position have been forced underground and must be extremely careful now. This presents a serious strategic problem for all leftist groups that existed in Russia prior to the invasion, be they socialist or anarchist. There are several basic strategies they can use to adapt in today’s severe conditions.

The first approach is illicit direct action, which is difficult to embrace if you’re already a public figure. The second is to limit one’s activity to propaganda in small communities like closed reading groups. Finally, there is the strategy of labor advocacy, which remains legal for now. We’re talking about the messengers’ union Courier, the medical workers’ union Deistvie, and a number of other smaller unions where antiwar activists participate.

How did Russia’s trade unions become a political force, and is this changing now?

Let’s begin with the fact that Russia has both establishment and independent trade unions. The establishment, official unions get very little media attention, and most of their putative members hardly even suspect that they exist. Still, it’s a massive bureaucracy. Russia’s Federation of Independent Trade Unions (“FNPR”) has functioned for decades as an extension of the government in the arena of labor relations and as a tool of the business owners’ control over the workers. Clearly, this has nothing to do with real labor unions. If we look for historic parallels, various fascist regimes had their own state trade unions and associations for both employers and workers.

As for the independent trade unions, the few remaining avenues of still legal public activity (like the trade union rights advocacy, connected with the propaganda of self-education) have become exceptionally risky. For example, Kirill Ukraintsev, the leader of the Courier messengers’ union, was arrested and jailed last spring, and has only been released very recently.

We have to understand that, despite their localized achievements, these organizations cannot be considered fully-fledged trade unions, since a genuine trade union is capable of negotiating collective agreements with major industry employers. In today’s Russia, though, this is practically impossible, and not just because of repressive pressure from the government and business owners. It’s impossible due to the very legislation in effect, since one of Putin’s earliest initiatives when he first came to power was the adoption of a new Labor Code that curtailed the powers of trade unions.

This means that it’s practically impossible to have an effective strike in present-day Russia. The legal scope of trade unions is practically nil. Associations like Courier, Deistvie, or the Teachers’ Alliance are excellent and very important initiatives, operating nevertheless in close-to-underground conditions. They look more like advocacy organizations than trade unions proper. For comparison, just take a look at the pension reform protests in France, and you’ll see the difference.

What about the anarchists? They have long been subject to state repressions; are anarchist movements now growing in response to the invasion? Is it anarchists that organize railway sabotage and set draft offices on fire?

We have fairly scant information about who is really behind those initiatives. I have no data on whether anarchist movements are growing or shrinking, since they’re operating under enormous pressure, in a de facto underground mode. But it’s very difficult to grow when you’re underground.

The regime has been at pains to curtail the anarchists’ sweeping influence over the younger generation of Russians. About a decade ago, a major antifascist subculture that significantly relied on some anarchist ideas established itself in Russia. Its influence was very palpable. The regime invested a great deal of effort in crushing this antifascist scene. This is what prompted the prosecution of The Web,as well as many other politically-motivated criminal cases. The regime succeeded in liquidating a more-or-less mass movement, simply by taking out its key activists.

Of course, something of that antifascist element has survived, transforming into partisan groups. The question here is not so much about the present as the future. How much of what these groups do today will remain meaningful in the future? Isolated actions, however heroic, are incapable of breaking the momentum of the current situation. But I think that if Russian society presents a demand for a mass antiwar movement, all of its available forms, including those that exist already, will be welcome.

Is it true, then, that no left-wing movement can significantly grow in numbers in 2023? Isn’t this, rather, the perfect time to aim for growth?

I think that the dictatorial conditions leave no room for political and civic rights in principle. They permit no legal political activity in any form, effectively precluding these movements from gaining new adherents or actively spreading their message in society.

The question is whether Russian society can manifest change serious enough to engender a new kind of politics, and also what the left itself has to offer in terms of the country’s post-Putin development. This is the main task faced by the left at the moment, as well as by any opposition group in Russia, and this means that what they’re doing now is calculated largely for the long run, as opposed to immediate effect.

How does the Russian left understand decolonization, and what should it look like in Russia?

This is a complicated question, since there’s, on the one hand, the term “decolonization” as it stands in the context of post-colonial studies, and on the other hand, there are practical questions about Russia’s political future after the dead end it has come to at this time. And these two things are completely unrelated. So perhaps it’s best to focus on Russia’s current political order as rooted in its imperial past.

First of all, we realize that the war is grounded in historical revisionism and the idea that no authentic existence is possible for Russia within its current borders. The way the regime sees it, Russia’s borders must be constantly advanced, so as to “recover” the supposedly “historically Russian” lands. Regrettably, this line of thought comes with a certain tradition: it wasn’t invented by Putin, but is, instead, conditioned by all of Russia’s pre-revolutionary imperial heritage, as well as the Stalin-era and the post-Stalin Soviet experience.

This tradition has by now rooted itself in the consciousness of a large part of the population, and this is what makes propaganda so effective. Making post-Putin Russia live in peace with its neighbors without threatening other countries, including the post-Soviet states and Eastern Europe, requires a cardinal overhaul of the imperial mindset. We have to work out not just our present, but also our past and how our people see Russia’s history and its relations with the surrounding countries. This is the first point.

The second point has to do with Russia’s current official status as a “federation,” when in reality it’s a hyper-centralized state where all the resources are appropriated by Moscow to trickle down back to the regions based on their degree of political loyalty to the regime. This is what determines Russia’s policies with regard to its indigenous minorities, since the very existence of non-Russian identities inside the country is viewed by the Kremlin as a threat. Hence the suppression of indigenous languages and of the remaining vestiges of autonomy in regions with significant native non-Russian populations.

These policies have been in place for the entirety of Putin’s two decades in power, and are directly connected with the Moscow-centric nature of this regime and the absence of real democracy in the country. In this sense, we do need a serious revision of Moscow’s place in Russian governance.

Would this necessarily entail Russia’s disintegration as a single political entity?

Russia as it exists today is holding back the development of its regions with coercive power and money. It has no further positive program to offer those regions. This is why, once the regime’s political power begins to wane and money starts to dry up (and this will happen within the foreseeable future), we’re going to see an eruption of centrifugal forces within the country.

The results will not be entirely comfortable for those who live in the regions. If we want to preserve some common political space — not in the sense of its being bound by a single political power, but in the sense of an environment that permits some kind of intercultural human exchange — we have to think about the values, ideas, and principles that Russia as such can offer to the regions. The ideas of tolerance, equality, well-developed social policies, and the regions’ right to manage their own resources would help preserve this space in the form of a federation or a commonwealth.

If we keep denying that centralization is a problem till the bitter end, if we keep trying to force the ethnic regions into some Procrustean single standard, considering all signs of uniqueness to be a threat to the state and its integrity, this will lead to disintegration. Russia’s continuing its present course may possibly lead to a very harsh disintegration scenario. But it’s also possible to change this course, and avert disintegration.

What is the Russians’ overall attitude to left-wing politics? How much of a foundation for the future have these movements built up for themselves?

Left-wing politicians have seen some success in post-Soviet Russia. There are, for example, Mikhail Lobanov’s and other stories of electoral victories, as well as a whole array of charismatic municipal deputies like Sergey Tsukasov, who had at one point been the head of Moscow’s Ostankino municipal district. Or take the role of left-wing politics in mass social movements like the Shies environmental protests in the Arkhangelsk region. Then, there is the work of independent trade unions, and their role in local victories like the Labor Confederacy’s effective work on giving back their jobs to dozens of Moscow subway employees, illegally laid off in 2021.

Over the past decade, Russia presented a dual dynamic. On the one hand, we saw increasing political engagement among the younger people, growing grassroots movements and political protest, and active participation in electoral campaigns and elections. On the other hand, we’re also witnessing the growth of state repressive apparatus and its increasing pressure on this awakening society. Everything this regime had done in response to the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, and right up to the launch of the invasion, pursued not just foreign policy goals but also domestic ones. The regime’s principal aim was to suppress the society completely, atomizing the population and instilling an atmosphere of panic and terror in the face of any and all political activity.

I’m not a sociologist and cannot present specific numbers, but based on my own experience, which includes activism, I can say that the majority of Russians consider social inequality and inequity to be the key political question. An absolute majority of people would agree with you if you were to speak about redistributing the resources and wealth. They would also agree that Russia needs to become a genuine welfare state working in the interests of the majority. This is why the left-wing agenda is so important here.

Even the thrice-outlawed Alexey Navalny’s achievements have a lot to do with his inclusion of some elements of the leftist agenda in his own anti-corruption rhetoric. I would say that the majority of viewers realize that Navalny’s videos are not just about corrupt state officials. They’re really about how a negligible minority has seized all the wealth in an otherwise destitute country. This situation is flagrantly unjust. Whether the officials got rich legally or illegally is the last thing that people worry about, because the very laws that enabled this group to usurp these riches were written by the usurpers themselves.

Another important aspect of the leftist tradition is its orientation towards democracy, and not just formal democracy. For the political left, democracy is not just about working electoral institutions. It’s a question of how ordinary people can take part in the decisions that affect their own life. Socialism as it had been conceived by its founders, some 150 years ago, was an internally consistent vision of democracy taken to its logical limits. It was an idea of democracy as a majority rule not just in politics, but also in economics. This is why the democratic demands that have been so important to Russian society over the past decades — the demands for fair elections, freedom of assembly, free trade unions, and the right to strike — are endemic to the political left.

I think that, had Russia preserved some possibility of genuine public political life, with the creation of a legal left-wing liberal party that could take part in elections, we would have already seen a rise in left-wing politics in this country. All the conditions have been in place over the past decade, and ferment in the masses was very much in its favor, too.

Apart from state repressions, were there other factors that kept left-wing movements from penetrating deeper into society?

Despite Russian society’s demand for democratization and social justice, most of it remains politically passive. People have shown themselves to be unprepared for action, and I don’t think this has to do only with obstruction of grassroots self-organization or with the fear of repressions.

In a hardcore market society where every person stands for themselves, where money is synonymous with power, and where everyone subscribes to some personal survival strategy, any suggestion of common interests sounds like total rubbish. This prewar Russian “common sense” got in the way of the leftist agenda and of any grassroots self-organization. Russian activists had a very hard time explaining why the tenants in an apartment building should create a committee to defend their rights vis-à-vis the local management companies. Hired workers too have a hard time grasping what organized collective struggle for common rights is all about.

Instead, people wondered whether the struggle would bring them more benefits or problems. This was Russia’s reality, and it was largely responsible for the apathy we’ve seen and for the population’s vulnerability to militarist propaganda.

The left’s preoccupation with localized struggles against inequality seems to alienate it from the masses. At the same time, the left doesn’t propose any systemic reforms, economic or any other kind. Is this view unfair?

There is a real problem with the activists’ focus on everyday practical matters. People are easier to motivate when there is something they can do here and now. It’s generally a good thing, since activists often do manage to help someone. At the same time, the fixation on the “here and now” leads activists away from conceptualizing political programs and proposals, from developing large, comprehensive accounts that would explain the social reality. But everyday people need such accounts.

We can see that the Russians’ obsession with YouTube and with all kinds of talking heads has to do with this demand for a comprehensive worldview: to understand what they must do, people need someone who would tie all the events and goings-on into a coherent holistic picture. Often, people who are completely immersed in activism cannot supply such a picture. Either they don’t think it’s all that important, or they don’t have the time and the resources. This is detrimental to the left-wing movement as we have it in today’s Russia.

But this isn’t just a problem of how few people are developing large-scale political programs. Proposals that are decoupled from practice and from actual mass movements often become abstract. When liberal economists, for example, start talking about “how to reform Russia,” there’s usually some clarity about agency: “Putin must be replaced by a figurative Evgeny Chichvarkin, who will transform the economy as he sees fit.” For the left, the question of agency is radically different. It’s the question of how to reform the political system so that it would serve the majority. The answer to this question cannot be anticipated, or arrived at by some thought experiment.

Vladimir Lenin said that we’ll never find out what socialism looks like in detail until the masses get to work. This is something that’s still true for the left-wing movement. We won’t know what a just society looks like, until the time when this idea reaches millions of people and the masses decide that they want to see it realized in practice.

How can we figure out which long-term goals should be the priority in Russia’s left-wing politics? What should politicians emphasize if they want to be heard?

Leftists must learn their lesson and draw conclusions from what has happened to the country. We must be very clear that this regime is not subject to evolution. It’s not going to change on its own, and some fairly radical transformation is needed. This transformation will happen if Russia experiences a crisis of governance simultaneously with an active will for grassroots change from below.

This is why the left needs to think about how it plans to participate in this future mass movement. The present regime has made change within the existing institutional framework impossible. The country will need a new constitution, new laws, new political parties, and the CPRF will, in all likelihood, land in the dumpster together with the rest of the current political system.

There will be a definite need to reevaluate the past privatization, which became the foundation of the current regime in Russia. There will be a need for a radical revision of social policy, with a dismantling of the Putin-instituted labor law, with progressive taxation, with new budgetary policies for education and healthcare, now funded on a trickle-down basis.

Beyond this, what society needs isn’t just a redistribution of resources but a revision of the whole philosophy underpinning Russia’s social policy as we have it now. Today, it’s governed by the principle of efficiency: colleges, hospitals, and museums are all free-market agents that must generate revenues and finance themselves. Inefficient institutions are closed, ensuring that the state doesn’t ever have to take a loss. This premise that the state must always make a profit, that it should get more than what it spends in the first place, must be defeated. The whole social welfare sphere must be determined by the needs of society, not by market efficiencies or profitability.

In addition, there has to be a program for gender equality, with an overhaul of all these anti-LGBT laws, and with new laws against domestic violence. There should be a special program for turning Russia into a genuine federation enabling local governance to manage regional budgets. We must also enable ethnic minorities to develop their languages and cultures, without which these minorities are placed in a position of powerlessness and victimhood.

These aims are all definitely tied to decentralization of governance in Russia. What form this is all going to take is an open question, but I’m certain that decentralization is directly connected with democracy. The more power people have locally, and the less of it remains in the center, the more durable Russia’s democratic institutions will be in the future.