Russians have been trained that it’s their duty to die in vain
‘Journalist Peter Pomerantsev believes Russians have a death drive in their soul, not the drive for life that is said to be normal in humans.’
It is exhausting to try to understand the polycrisis, like trying to paste Toronto’s gauzy grey smoke to a piece of paper and neatly labelling it, “Canada On Fire.”
Uneasy, I look down Bloor Street West from Yonge Street and see smoke form like stratus, “a flat, grey indistinct, sheet of cloud” as “The Cloudspotter’s Guide” defines it, “an overcast veil that casts a drab, dreary light.”
Now try to understand another prong of the polycrisis, what Putin’s Russia has done to Ukraine. It’s impossible, another man-made stratus cloud enveloping two nations. But why?
The great journalist Peter Pomerantsev, whose remarkable book “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia” appeared back in 2014, has an idea, a terribly bleak one. He believes that Russians have a death drive in their soul, not the drive for life that is said to be normal in humans.
Like abused children, they have been forever tormented, which taught them to torment others.
In the 20th century, after lifetimes of aristocrats pumping out peasant pain, Russia moved “from communism to perestroika to shock therapy to penury to oligarchy to mafia state to mega-rich,” Pomerantsev wrote. What did those endless boots to the face do to Russians?
Writing in the Guardian this month, he assembled dark conclusions.
See Also:
Putin assassination bridge plot ‘foiled by Russian Secret Service’
Civilizations Clash—in Ukraine and at Home
Ukrainian author Victoria Amelina critically injured in Kramatorsk strike
Why Ukraine should get an invitation to NATO
