Thinking about...

Today the Ukrainian president visits to thank Americans for our support. The right kind of hospitality would be to thank Ukrainians for all that they have done for us and others. Here are ten reasons we should be grateful.

(Kherson Oblast, Ukraine, TS)

TS 19 September 2023

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Dear Friends,

This is a lecture I delivered yesterday (6 April 2023) at Princeton University, in a series devoted to the European Union, and in the presence of colleagues who study Europe as social scientists and historians (and I was impressed by how many turned up!).

I took as my title “Empire, Integration, and Ukraine,” because I wished to show how the present moment, that of the Russo-Ukrainian war, gives us a precious opportunity to consider what European integration actually means (and thus what it is for).

The standard story from which both the policymakers and the scholars begin is that of European nation-states learning a lesson from the Second World War: war is bad; peace is good; trade is pacifying. This is very appealing, but it is not true. The historical trajectory is actually this: European empires lose wars; and after the Second World War, best understood as a German defeat in an imperial war, they begin a process of European integration that overlaps with (and distracts from, and compensates for) imperial defeat and decline.

Seeing matters this way (as Tony Judt did in his Postwar) has the advantage of opening European history to world history, since part of the appeal of the standard story is that it allows Europeans to forget the imperial past. It also sets the Russo-Ukrainian war in a context that is easier to understand: another imperial war, where the defeat of the imperial power is a necessary condition for continued European integration. The actual question in European politics has been empire or integration, and this has been true for decades; the Russian invasion of Ukraine brings this to light. Russia’s invasion is obviously a colonial war; juxtaposing it with others helps us to understand it and think through the proper response.

Once recognized, this basic historical truth should alter policy discussions. Trade might be pacifying, but the European example is of trade among defeated empires (in particular a defeated Germany). The defeat is part of the story not to be overlooked. In general, defeat (not peace) is the relevant category; it was not peace that happened Germans in 1945 or the Dutch in 1949 or the French in 1962, but defeat. We also see that the stakes of this war for the European project are as high as can be. Finally, we recognize that Ukraine resistance cannot be understood only in national categories, as we tend to do, but also in the broader categories of anti-colonialism and European integration.

Drawing from arguments I made in Bloodlands, Black Earth and Road to Unfreedom, I develop all of this in what I hope is an accessible manner in the lecture, which I share with you now.

TS 7 April 2023

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Russia’s war against Ukraine has been genocidal from the beginning.

Genocide is a matter of actions, and a matter of intentions. In this lecture, delivered at Boston University on 28 October 2022, I give examples of all five of the crimes that are designated genocidal by the 1948 convention. In Russia’s war against Ukraine, the problem is not the absence of expressions of genocidal intention. If anything, Russian officials and propagandists provide so many of them that we risk being overwhelmed, becoming jaded, and demanding even more evidence.

I recite a few straightforward declarations of genocidal purpose, but devote more time to categorizing nine forms of speech that we know express an intention to carry out genocidal acts.

I realize that there are objections to the thesis of genocide: I begin with them. In my view, the core problem is that we do not want to believe that a genocide is going on, because that would make us bystanders. But it is this sort of reaction, precisely, that makes bystanders of people. Please listen.

I am sending this lecture to all subscribers. If you would like access to all audio content and to the complete archive of all posts, please become a paid subscriber. On 4 November I will also host a live discussion with paid subscribers.

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In this lecture, which I will summarize briefly here, I take the premise seriously. Democracy might or might not have a future. The signs, in general, are not good. The tendency, also in this country, is not encouraging. Our republic might have only a few years left. I will write about this soon.

I try to make the case that the future is democracy, or it is not at all. We are used to people telling us that we have to choose between freedom and security. In fact, we have to choose both to get either. Climate change will be resolved if majorities are heeded. Those who accelerate climate change tend to be oligarchs backed by minorities.

In the lecture, I try to show how the war in Ukraine is a specific (and terrible) instance of a general problem. Vladimir Putin is the most important of the hydrocarbon oligarchs. Like all of them, he has no plausible vision of the future, and instead tries to realize implausible visions that consume the future for everyone else. His personal fantasy is that there is no Ukraine. On this absurd basis Russia has invaded a neighboring country and begun a war of extermination.

A sense of time is necessary for democracy. In the lecture, I move to the relationship between the future and the past. A tyrant who says that something has “always” been a certain way is consigning to “never” the things that actually happened. So the claims that Crimea was “always” Russia or that Ukraine and Russia were “always” together are not simply false; they are also a self-authorization to say that other peoples or countries “never” existed — and so that any signs of their existence have to be suppressed

.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has been genocidal. If Ukraine is not real, than anyone defending it must somehow be a foreigner; when more and more Ukrainians appear to defend their country, they too must be killed. These assertions of non-existence, I continue, raise the more interesting question of what it does mean to exist as a society or as a nation. What exactly is it that Russia is encountering in Ukraine? (And is it not a problem for Russia that the non-existence of Ukraine has become the central argument for the existence of Russia?)

I contend that the “objective” measures that we apply from the outside to judge the existence of a society or a nation, such as ethnicity or language, are themselves often imperial forms of knowledge, suppressing or ignoring the actions and commitments of the people in question. The fact that Ukrainians are bilingual is very confusing to both Russians and Americans; in fact, Ukrainian use of language, for example in creative wartime communications, is an example of creative self-assertion.

I contend in the lecture that the existence of Ukraine as a society and as a nation is better understood as a matter of recent experience, including the ability to change leaders through elections, and defend that process when necessary. The war itself has been carried out in large measure by a Ukrainian civil society that has constituted itself in the last decade.

The Ukrainian president’s choice to remain in the country, I argue, is an important reminder that democracy exists as a commitment, or not at all. In taking a physical risk, he was making possible certain kinds of futures that would otherwise have been impossible. Democracy depends upon choices of this kind. In the United States, people were generally convinced that Volodomyr Zelens’kyi would fled the country, and that Ukraine would quickly fold. This was a sign of our own problems.

We (and this is lecture’s conclusion) have tended to forget that democracy is about the future, and as such can only exist when individuals seek to generate futures on the basis of values with the help of institutions that allow them to do so. Since 1991, since the end of the Soviet Union and the beginning of Ukrainian independence, we have tended to believe the democracy was inevitable, because there were no alternatives, because capitalism would guarantee it, and so on. In fact, placing faith in structural factors and abstractions makes democracy impossible. Democracy will always be a struggle.

This is just a summary! The points are much better made in the lecture itself, which was delivered at Stony Brook on 19 October.

PS I am making this lecture and this summary available to all on the mailing list, but please do subscribe if you can. Paid subscription will give you access to the entire archive, as well as access to a number of other podcasts, as well as to on-line exchanges with me, which will resume in a few days.

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In this lecture, I begin from a recent clip on Russian television: a Russian soldier explaining that, if Ukrainians do not accept that they are Russians, it will be necessary to kill a million of them, five million of them, or all of them.

The man in question is a known fascist (he appears in my book Road to Unfreedom), and what he says opens the way to a discussion of the character of Russian fascism.

We have no trouble seeing the genocidal aspects of the Russian invasion — the eliminationist language, the deportations, the mass murders, the rape — but we do not always grasp how they are connected to the notion of the non-existence of Ukraine.

The Russian soldier claims that Ukrainians are “possessed. This reveals a basic current of Russian fascism that one finds in a favored thinker of Putin (whom he just cited again) and in television propaganda. In this mindset, Russia’s enemy is actually “Satan” (I will develop this theme in a written post to come).

In the next part of the lecture, I move to the related topic of Russian colonialism, using history to explain how there is no basis for the claim that Crimea in particular, or Ukraine in general, were “always” part of Russia.

Indeed, the “always” claim is part of an imperial maneuver by which power is able to begin things “anew.” Both Catherine the Great at the time of the annexation of Crimea and southern Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin now, make “always” claims on the basis of obliterating actual history. Their “always” is the “never” that is insisted upon for Ukraine and for Crimea.

I conclude the lecture with the argument that democracy can succeed when those who support it are aware of history, are aware of their own historical predicaments, and choose to act.

In this sense, Ukrainian resistance is a model. If we believe that democracy will be brought to us by structural factors, then we will get more fascism, more genocide, more imperialism.

But we do not have to believe that. We can believe instead that democracy is always a struggle, but that the struggle is worth it. On this theme the lecture concludes. It was delivered 12 October 2022 at the University of Connecticut.

PS Most of the audio content here is for paid subscribers. I am sending this one out to everyone, but I would appreciate it if you would subscribe if you can. If you do, you will have access to all of the podcasts, as well as to an archive of all of the written material, as well as to live interactions starting later this month.

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TS, 14 October 2022

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This year I have been writing a philosophical book about freedom, in which the war in Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelens’kyi figure in important ways.

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of a long conversation with President Zelens’kyi, which was entirely devoted to the subject of freedom. I was able to pursue with him several interesting conceptions that he himself has advanced, in word and in deed, these last seven months, since his decision to remain in Kyiv despite the Russian invasion. One of the things we spoke about was the tradition of the dissidents of the 1970s and 1980s, and in particular Václav Havel’s idea of “living in truth.”

In the lecture recorded here, which I was very happy to be able to give at a conference at Colby College devoted to Havel last Saturday, I work together some of the main themes of the thinking of Zelens’kyi and of Havel, and present elements of my argument about the nature of freedom. I am proud of this lecture, and hope that you will enjoy it.

PS As I’ve been saying for months now, Ukraine is winning the war. Look out for some headlines about Ukrainian advances in the next day or two.

PPS Normally I keep audio material for paid subscribers only, but this time I will release it for everyone. If you can, though, I would appreciate it if you subscribe. Doing so opens the archive to you, and will give you access to other audio material, as well as on-line discussions with me to be scheduled in the months to come.

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Lesson 13. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

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Lesson 12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

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Lesson 11: Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate to others.

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Lesson 10: Believe in Truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

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