this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
1259 points (96.5% liked)

World News

38977 readers
2568 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Navalny’s friends knew he was willing to become a martyr if that’s what it took to stand up to Putin.

Alexei Navalny’s long struggle against President Putin began with a humorous blog and culminated in repeated demonstrations of his willingness to risk his own life. According to the Russian authorities on Friday, he has now died in prison.

Russia’s leading opposition voice has been silenced.

Other dissident figures went into exile or died in mysterious circumstances over the past decade, leaving Navalny as the last national figure with a dedicated following.

Though he had been arrested many times before, Navalny’s defining moment in the eyes of many Russians came after the attempt to assassinate him with Novichok. He recuperated in the sanctuary of a German hospital but chose to defy Putin and return to Russia in January 2021, knowing full well he would end up in prison.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] cosmicrookie 32 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Everybody know that Putin is a monster, except for the Russians. They need a revolution!

[–] maness300 9 points 8 months ago

Russians know it to, they just can't do anything about it.

[–] buddascrayon 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They know. They just don't care because he's "their" monster. Nothing will change in the wake of Nelvany's death.

This is a harsh lesson in allowing the cult of personality into a democratic election. Everyone should have learned from Hitler's example but memories are apparently short lived. Now we have people like Netanyahu, Putin, and Trump and a world war is inevitable.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

"They" do not hold any particular position. That would be because "they" hold a multitude of positions, at its extreme as many as there are people in the particular society we refer to as "they".

And lose the drama, because:

  1. There are always such people.

  2. Putin became president in 1999 and the last arguably democratic election in Russia was in 1996.

  3. About Hitler - I think somebody skipped their history and doesn't know that European states didn't immediately cease to be colonialist just cause WWII ended and the new reality ensued. And Europeans would behave pretty hitleresque in colonies, think of French in Algeria or maybe Indochina.

  4. It's spelled Navalny.

[–] ccunix 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That didn't end well last time though

[–] Phegan 7 points 8 months ago

I mean, they deposed a monarch, so that's good.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It sadly did end. Now another fucking imperialist is in charge.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_empire

At its peak, their empire was roughly the same size as the British Empire, 35 million square kilometers. Slightly more than half of it was just Russia, though, of course, which makes this a bit of an orange vs apples thing. But USSR definitely had an empire-like thing going on.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But USSR definitely had an empire-like thing going on.

... important parts of which were (declared and even attempted) meritocracy, scientific and social progress, and a promise (which seemed realistic enough) for the future of the whole world.

This doesn't have anything in common with any big state's ideology now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I suppose originally it was, and I do think original goals are important to consider.

Stalin brought an early end to many progressive dreams, though, and it doesn't seem like Soviet Union ever really recovered from his regressive regime.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I meant 60s and 70s.

The point is that even aggressive attitudes of Soviet leadership were constructed very differently.

Politburo really made collective decisions.

The Communist party and the ministries and local councils and all that could function in obscure, weird and undocumented ways, but they did generally follow laws and rules.

I mean ... it really was an empire. Very inefficient and it eventually failed, but still.

Today's Russia is just an entity of a lower order.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Today’s Russia is just an entity of a lower order.

Indeed it is, but in many ways it's just a legacy (even if a deeply warped one) of the earlier. Putin was a KGB man, and repeatedly mentions how he thinks the fall of USSR was one of the greatest geopolitical tragedies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Anything is a legacy of what was before. I'm just saying that it's not a rebuilt and changed USSR or even its part, it's something new built from the same bricks.

Putin was a KGB man,

Not of the "expected to be anywhere near leadership by intelligence" kind from what I've read.

and repeatedly mentions how he thinks the fall of USSR was one of the greatest geopolitical tragedies.

He repeatedly mentions anything he thinks will make him popular. Loved a few antifascist, centrist and legalist lines too.

BTW, he himself apparently still thinks his power is somehow dependent on popularity, while in fact it's dependent on apathy only at this point.

He worries about what people will think, however weird that may sound.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Man, Lenin set fire to a good chunk of his own dreams during the Civil War.

The betrayal of the SRs and Makhnovists, the butchering of Kronstadt, the subjugation of local soviets and trade unions to centralized top-down rulership, and nationalization of previously independent cooperatives all helped bring down the dreams of equality and liberty. Lenin created all of the infrastructure that Stalin then used to horrifying ends. IMO this is an inevitable outcome of vanguardism and a "dictatorship of the proletariat", but that is a topic for another day.

Some of the things mentioned above did manage to survive post-Stalin. There was immense scientific progress in the USSR and the education was the best in the world. Everyone got food, though it was poor-quality and standing in line for it was universal (again, post-Stalin).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Homelessness wasn’t a thing.

Homelessness was illegal in Soviet Union. USA has plenty of problems that are objectively worse in this area, but I'm not sure if just declaring it illegal and sending vagrants to labor camps is a very good solution either.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Point taken. I will revise my original post. You're right, man. Further reading supports your view. It seems that they just weren't very visible.