#i'm basing this on the fact that Poland and Ukraine are the ones helping Ukraine the most right now | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

the-jam-to-the-unicorn · 5 months

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Wonder if you would like to share your thoughts about what you think how Vova handled the missile incident in Poland? Good? Bad? Agreeing with Poles?

Sure.

Vova handled the whole thing not good, as much as I understand why he did what he did. (Other people also handled it awful.)

I mean, literally eveeeryone said it's a Russian missile. The press did. The military did. Other officials did. And that's probably what his level of knowledge was in the end. And he can't step infront of a camera or microphone and say something entirely different and turn on the military and the intelligence service. (I mean, sure, he could do it but that would be the longest time he's President.)

He could have waited a bit longer with his reaction. On the other hand everyone was talking about it, especially since two people died (which is, without a doubt, a tragedy) and he had to react.

Based on what we know today (Russia firing missiles and other things at countries like Romania and Poland), we know that there really was the possibility. And we know that Poland covered up several incidents in fear of what would follow.

I think with all the NATO talking a lot of people also didn't help. It sometimes turned into pure hysterics that it was immediately assumed it would trigger NATO article 5. Before that article 4 has to happen. And even if article 4 happened, that doesn't mean 5 happens immediately after. And even if article 5 would be activated, it doesn't mean WW3. Or any war for that matter.

So saying that Ze lied on purpose to have NATO fighting for Ukraine, is bullshit, in my opinion. I'm sorry, but it is. Ze knows how NATO works and as we know now, he was in constant contact with the NATO state leaders and I'm pretty sure they told him right away that NATO is not an option (not that NATO ever was as an option on the table ...).

In the end, more than one person (Ze) handled the whole matter in not a good way. But we can play the blame game forever and ever. It happened, lots of people overreacted and it was a tragedy. Ze condoled the victims, which was good.

The fact still stands that several important people must have told him that it was a Russian missile. We can blame Ze for not apolozing more and longer and everything but in the end, the lack of just means he stayed loyal to his people and didn't hurt the very important bond and trust. (I wish he would have admitted his mistake a bit more, but understand why he didn't.)

So yeah. That's pretty much it.

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damnhitsuzen · 2 years

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2014

Ukraine: WE'RE FUCKED

World: *deeply concerned*

2022

World: WE'RE FUCKED

Ukraine: *deeply concerned*

This is a popular meme here in Ukraine at the moment, along with mr Bean bored in a field, waiting for an "invasion" and many others.

We do that all the time, dark humour is indeed a very popular coping mechanism here. It really helps with anxiety, you know.

But some things just make me fucking livid.

For example, people in EU or US that tell Ukrainians we don't understand the severity of Russian threat. That we are "flippant and are not concerned enough". That this is not gonna be some "regional conflict" this time. As if it we don't really know what Russian invasion means.

As if we weren't experiencing Russian invasion for the last several hundreds of years.

The thing is I'm Ukrainian and lived in Ukraine for my whole life. Which has started in 1992, only a year after my country had gained Independence from Soviets.

My maternal grandparents, western Ukrainians, were forcefully deported from their homelands, which was in modern boundaries of Poland. It was after WWII, they had a couple of hours to get some stuff and they've been shipped in train containers to their "new home". My grandparents were lucky, it was Southern Ukrainian steppe for them. You could survive there - dig a primitive hut in the ground so you would not freeze in the night and actually find some food. Those who were shipped to Siberia were not so lucky. Some still survived though.

My paternal grandfather was from Northern Ukraine, which was also a part of Poland before the war. All of his older male relatives died till the end of WWII, both in insurgence against soviet invasion in 1939, and Red Army fighting Nazis in Belorussian front. At least, we think so: he might be in one mass graves there, but the surname is spelled wrong, so who knows. Soviets never cared for their soldiers - neither dead, nor alive.

My paternal grandmother is from central Ukraine. She lost one of her older sisters in Holodomor in 1933, man-made famine that was supposed to stop anti-collectivization and anti-communist protest among Ukrainian villagers. And it did. Starving people have no energy for anything but to die. At the same time, USSR exported record-breaking amounts of wheat in Europe and USA, wheat from Ukraine mostly. An achievement celebrated in Western media.

My parents knew that you won't be serviced in shops in Kyiv if you're speaking Ukrainian. Up till 90s. They never learned in schools that Ukrainian People's Republic was in fact invaded by Russian-led Red Army in 1920s. USSR somehow formed itself, as they were told. My parents couldn't really get a high, managing position job anywhere but far away from Ukraine, like Kazakhstan, because they were born in wrong part of the country. To the wrong families, since neither of their fathers joined the communist party. It all was like a damnation mark. Their teachers and peers were still visited by men in black Volga cars. A night of "talking" with those people, and mother's piano teacher, kind woman who liked Ukrainian poetry a bit too much for her own good, was completely white-haired by morning. Died of heart attack by the next day.

It was a time, when USSR was praised by western media and leaders for becoming more liberal.

I was born in independent Ukraine, in Ukrainian speaking family, and could speak and understand Russian by time I started school. Nobody taught me, I just never had an option to not understand it. Everything revolved around Russia and Moscow, media, science, art, and entertainment, at least they wanted us to think so. At some point, in 2012, I could write and speak it so fluently that Russian editor thought I was native Russian-based author. Now I speak Russian with some noticeable difficulties. And I've never been so glad to lose a skill due to a lack of practice.

I've never been so glad to have a choice not to speak a learned foreign language in my own country.

Since 2014, we have regular news from frontlines. Sieges, victims, casualties. A cemetery in my small home town is flooded by dead soldiers from a war on the other end of a country. People who fled from war, from death and ruined homes, from rapes and tortures in prisons, live everywhere. Everyday we have bomb threats - they almost became a routine. You get a phone call with a threat, schools/hospitals/stations/underground/malls/administrations/etc get evacuated, they check for explosives, everything gets back to normal. Just your everyday level of anxiety.

And now, some guys from EU or USA suddenly discover something that we experience CONSTANTLY for the last 8 years. They discover imperialistic speeches in Russian media, rotations of military near the border (which is a regular thing here, if you pay attention to news), they discover the way Russia has been conducting their hybrid warfare since forever. Like, do you remember they invaded Georgia? Same vibe, same strategy. We, neighbors of Russia, know the drill.

There's no a single one generation In Ukraine whose life was not fucked by Russians in some way or another.

We've been shouting for help in 2014, desperately. You know, the year that this war conflict in midst of Europe started. UN was deeply concerned, as well as America, EU was concerned even deeper. We were losing people, losing territories, but by some weird miracle of volunteers supplying neglected army, not losing a war. We are still fighting it, and we know how to do it. We know Russians, their military successes were always vastly exaggerated. They just bury enemy in their own dead bodies, that's it. And they are so blind with their imperialistic mindset, they missed the fact that they don't have a colony here anymore.

We heard their batshit crazy propaganda, seriously, you have no fucking idea how sick it is. How completely out of touch with real world their news are.

And now others have a fucking audacity to scold us for not panicking enough? For nor being scared enough?

Fuck that.

It's not like we just ignore the threat, but we have to fucking live with it somehow. You can't be 24/7 scared, you have to live, eat, shit, work, breathe for fuck's sake.

Ok, I get that this situation is a result of political play - Ukraine was a good choice for some kind of attention switch, common ground, leverage in discussion, I guess. I'm not going to go there even, I'm too fed up with it right now.

But if those guys in EU and USA think we should just lie down and prepare to die, or just run away in fear, then no.

It ain't happening.

We will live, laugh in the face of war, make tasty food and eat it, drink good coffee in the morning and nice wine in the evening, dance, support our army, argue over this year's Eurovision contestant, make territorial defense squads, remind ourselves how to give first aid and make Molotov's, celebrated every fucking holiday we have, and we are going to have fun, while doing it.

Oh, by the way

Isn't it funny how effective economic sanction are in this crisis? I mean, airlines are ceasing flights, investment go down, inflation rises, covid-stricken business is fighting for life. Pity, they did it to the wrong country, right? Not to the one that has actually started war.

#rant #ukraine #russia #war #ukrainian-russian war #eu #foreign policy #usa #ukrainian history #family history #i am so fucking mad #fuck you's giveway

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bopbopstyles · 4 years

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could you explain a bit of it as a political system used by the Soviets? And how it differs from the theories (as in does it follows the same principles), i'm also curious to know if you'd think a communist government could work (given the fact that in the past, at least the examples that i know of, it hasn't)

wowza this is a lot

k so these are my thoughts and based on what i’ve learned (and also remembered which are not the same thing) and by no means an expert opinion.

THIS website is super helpful!

Communism = “...there is no such thing as private property. All property is communally owned, and each person receives a portion based on what they need. A strong central government—the state—controls all aspects of economic production, and provides citizens with their necessities, including food, housing, medical care and education.” There is also within ideological Communism a deconstruction of the social order and usually a revolutionary overthrow of power is required to achieve this.

1. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922 by Lenin and was governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin was a communist, but he had some divergences from Marx (whose ideas are known as Marxism)--Lenin’s beliefs are known as Leninism. Stalin, who came to power in 1929, became the leader of the party and pushed the party more towards Marxism-Leninism, embraced socialism (loosely the idea of nationalizing industry and a command economy). A lot of the policies evolved as a result of international events (WWII was a big one), and when Khruschev came to power he pursued a more liberalized society.

The Soviet Union was the union of multiple Soviet republics, which grew SUBSTANTIALLY after WWII, because the Soviets were one of the allies and got maintained political control in Eastern Europe as a part of settlements. They were able to get essentially puppet governments established in countries including East Germany (est after the war b/c the Allies divided the country and couldn’t agree on anything so essentially they just let USSR have East Germany) Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, among many others. The Soviet Union benefited hugely from this situation, because these countries could only trade w/ other Soviet bloc countries. This meant these countries were not fully re-built after the war, most of their industrial manpower shipped off to the Soviet Union and their economies chronically suffering, really weak political power, etc. These countries, by and large, are still suffering the effects of these policies, because the USSR was only dissolved in 1991.

In my opinion, the Communism employed by the Soviet Union had largely negative outcomes. The parts that I think are noteworthy is that it became a dictatorship, became hugely exploitive of its citizens and bloc countries, and ended up having to relax many of its policies to sustain the economy in the late 70s + 80s. (The Communist bloc was largely like, really, really poor, fyi.) In reality, there has never been a fully Communist country, all the ones that have existed and continue to exist employing elements of it but not all.

2. I personally don’t believe communism is a sustainable government system, mainly because of the ability for it to be manipulated by the few at the top. Communist countries that continue to exist today (China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam) don’t really employ Communism in the ideological sense that Marxism or Leninism did, because it would be impossible to sustain a country without like any foreign investment. However, I do believe socialism is DEFINITELY possible and there are elements of communism that are possible. (The key difference between socialism and communism is under communism, there is no private property, under socialism you can have private property and it’s more flexible.) Communism ≠ Socialism!!!!!

Things like universal healthcare, free education, subsidized child care, just to name a few, are all socialist ideas that are employed by many countries. But similarly to communism, no country has ever been fully socialist.

So in conclusion, I think that elements of socialism are AMAZING and should definitely be employed in countries across the world (ahem, USA get ur act together on health care and education and child care to name a few). Do I consider myself a communist? No.

whoopsie that was a lot! and i do not claim to be an expert in any way! there are parts of this that are probably wrong! PLEASE educate yourself (read foundational Communist texts, learn the histories of Communism, etc. hmu if u want recs)

#this was a wild ask but here we are!#i spent too long on this!#whoopsie!#anon #answered

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