Pá 14 října 2022

(my comments on the Facebook comment by Doug Hart)

I really don’t feel any hatred towards the Moscow nation as whole (I don’t like to use the word Russia, Russian, because it is a contested term, and just its use makes the speaker agreeing to some parts of the Moscow narrative), but it doesn’t change anything on what Pavel was writing being true, and it especially doesn’t help me to think what to do when this war ends and Moscow will be defeated.

Since 1989 there was that idea (I have first heard it by Mr. Havel’s speech in the US Congress, but to his defence he meant something different than what then actually happened) that in order to help the part of Europe behind the Iron Curtain we should help Russia/Soviet Union. One of many big fat lies which are pouring from the Moscow and pro-Moscow media is that the West never wanted to help Russia but only to enslave it and exploit it. It is just not true: I still remember the amount of celebration that even Russia is finally a normal country and outflow of good will and attempts to help them to be such normal country among other normal countries.

I have heard couple of time during the years even suggestions about “The Marshall Plan for Soviet Union/Russia”. Let me say couple of words why I don’t think it is a good idea, despite for what I said above my non-hatred for the Moscow nation and despite how much I think the original Marshall Plan was an awesome idea.

My problem with this idea is that there are couple of substantial situation between Nazi Germany in 1945 and Moscow after the expected defeat in 2022/2023.

It is always difficult and quite often rather problematic to transfer concepts from the individual level to the level of communities or whole nations, but let me do it here. I hope I won’t make much damage.

For an individual to go through metanoia (or even for the good ol’ Ancient Greek catharsis) it is necessary for her to go through true repentance and especially an admittance of one’s guilt. I don’t know how well these concepts transfer to the national level (although, actually, post-Nazi Germany did the most of the admittance of one’s guilt I have ever heard about), but one thing which seems to me obvious in case of a nation in war is that it needs to be thoroughly defeated and that it stops fighting because of its own decision. And when I say thoroughly defeated I mean truly defeated, like the Red-flag-over-Reichstag defeated, like the Nürnberg-tribunal defeated, like the occupational-administration defeated. Stopping to fight, because it cannot continue and preparing for the next opportunity is certainly not it (which is how the Russian-Ukrainian War most likely ends). Nobody ever suggested as the best case scenario for this war in Ukraine anything more than Moscow completely withdrawing from the whole area of the occupied Ukraine to the borders of pre-2014 (i.e., all areas occupied after this past February, both DPR and LPR, and Crimea; I would also Transnistria, but that’s not necessary). Nobody ever suggested that Ukrainian-flag-on-Spasskaya-tower is the goal of anybody.

The second difference from the Nazi Germany post-1945 is that it was completely destroyed and incapable of survival. There were serious voices claiming a possibility of famine. However the Ukrainian war ends, there will be no damage to the Moscow economy other than the self-inflicted one (and foreign sanctions, which are in effect self-inflicted ones as well), given that (aside from tiny exceptions around Belgorod and Kursk) there was no war on the Moscow territory. UNRRA was not just friendly gesture but largely a necessity. Nothing like that will happen in Moscowia today. If they stop war tomorrow, leave occupied territories, agree on some payment plan for the reparrations, do whatever it would be necessary to stop sanctions, Moscow will be in largely the same shape as it was before February 2022 (or February 2014, annexation of Crimea) and just without around a million of people (lost to war and emigration), foreign companies invested in Moscow, they could continue ahead.

That’s just my few thoughts on the Marshall Plan for Russia 2022/3.

Category: faith Tagged: politics blogComment Russia Ukraine