Peter Pomerantsev wrote a piece in the Observer (Guardian) about Russia and Russians. As readers will know, this kind of thing triggers me.
Here’s some things he wrote. He starts with some incisive and original political analysis:
“The Kremlin [is] like a loser smearing their faeces over life.”
“senselessness seems to be the sense”
“To Russian genocide add ecocide”
Then he quickly moves on to historical destiny:
“Russia is [not] driven by some theory of rational choice – century after century the opposite appears to be the case.”
“Few have captured the Russian cycle of self-destruction and the destruction”
Citing Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko [yes, that guy who deleted an infamous tweet on how Russians are the new Asiatic hordes that Ukraine defends Europe against], Pomerantsev talks about
“Russia [as] a culture where you have crime without punishment, and punishment without crime”… “while Nazis had some rules about who they punished (non-Aryans; communists) in Stalin’s terror anyone could be a victim at any moment. Random violence runs through Russian history.”
Maybe someone should remind Peter that this kind of speech is considered by many to be Holocaust trivialization and a gateway drug to antisemitism.
After a left-field lurch into psychoanalysis of the death drive (Did the author pinch this from Etkind? He doesn’t appear to really understand it), he writes:
“In a culture such as Russia’s, where avoiding facing up to the dark past with all its complex webs of guilt and responsibility is commonplace, such oblivion can be especially seductive.”
The author ends on the confident note:
“Pushing the strange lure of death, oblivion and just giving up is the Russian gambit.”
***
The Observer asks people to send comments to their op-eds. I wrote one and sent it off immediately, but curiously, for this piece there are no published comments. By contrast, a piece about Elizabeth Gilbert pulling her novel set in Siberia garnered 150 published comments almost immediately.
I won’t bore you with my short unpublished response as anyone reading my blog would already know what I would say. Instead here are some comments from Twitter accounts:
“Alright, since everyone is commenting on it one way or another… I suppose yesterday was the day of the week when The Observer publishes some Nazi apologetics. To say that, at least, “Nazis had some rules about whom they punished” is a woeful thing to write.” [Legal Scholar]
“This exercise in psychoanalytical cultural relativism is a gift to the Kremlin. By locating the origins of Putin’s genocidal war in Russian culture and history, it exonerates the leaders who ordered it and the security forces and mercenaries that implemented it. 1/6” [renown scholar of nationalism, sanctioned by Russian government]
“it’s understandable why some Ukrainians would react to the invasion by lashing out with cultural essentialism, but less understandable why the guardian would endorse it”[anon account]
“Russians worship death, Russians hate life, etc. This stuff has been written about Palestinians & Arabs more generally since the 60s. It’s racist dehumanisation. In the case of its original targets it said everything about the authors of this propaganda than those targeted by it.” [anon account]
“Maybe I’m being unreasonable here but I really think that “Russians have a culturally innate psychosexual death urge” isn’t the sort of thing that ought to be acceptable to say in the pages of mainstream newspapers” [anon account]
“stupid icing on a stupid cake.” [anon account – specifically about Pomerantsev’s grasp of Russian literature]
Of course, most responses were not like this. They were fulsome praise. Often from respected academics and journalists.
***
Anyway, today we observed what is surely now the bandwagon effect. Czech president Petr Pavel citing US concentration camps for ethnically-Japanese US citizens during WWII as good practice applicable to Russians residing in the EU today.
Maybe I’m completely jaded, but I do think this could happen. Not for political reasons (there is no public ‘demand’, nor law-enforcement logic), but because it would be a great new post-Covid scam for siphoning money to cronies (the PPE scandal in UK): a new frontier for the carceral state-capital matrix.
Channeling the Testimony of John L. DeWitt, April 13, 1943, House Naval Affairs Subcommittee to Investigate Congested Areas, who almost said: “I don’t want any of them here. They are dangerous elements. Their loyalty is in doubt… It makes no difference whether they’re citizens, a Russian is a Russian. Citizenship does not determine loyalty… We must worry about the Russian until he is wiped off the map.”
At a stroke all our Brexit problems would disappear. Make them pick strawberries for example. “Many Japanese detainees were temporarily released from their camps – for instance, to harvest Western beet crops – to address this wartime labor shortage”. Later on, we could even use it to address the cost of living crisis. Sponsor a Russian and get extra Nectar points: “Eventually, some were authorized to return to their hometowns in the exclusion zone under supervision of a sponsoring American family”
However, we now know, thanks to the progressive press, that Russians are psychoanalytically predisposed to morbid feelings and a tendency to ‘sink back into inorganic matter’ (thanks, Peter). Therefore they should be paired carefully to suitable locales. Perhaps the Fens and Norfolk? In WWII it was the Isle of Man. After all, the Russians are likely to be more or less ‘normal for Norfolk’.
Nonetheless this being UK/EU we should also make this process as bureaucratically painful and opaque as possible. Therefore instead of WWII’s three categories of Enemy Alien, we should have at least 7. Category A, privatized prison; B, tagged at own cost ; C, exempt on basis of writing for the Guardian; D, fruit and veg pickers; E, Bexhill-on-Sea internment (Alfonso Cuarón scheme); F, Dancing on Ice posted worker; G, Normal for Norfolk scheme.
Once more, all this will increase GDP and help struggling companies like Capita – not content with hounding disabled people to their death – could be contracted to do the RIP assessments. Russian Ideal Person assessment. Just like in 1940, I’m sure the very smart people who write those clever columns at the Observer, who write about the ‘seduction of oblivion in Russian culture’, will sail through such assessments.
Although there remains the tricky topic of racial purity laws. Like that pioneer, the government of Germany in the 1930s, we need a judicial body to work out where to draw the line – 1/16 Russian, like in the US? Or only 3/8 “Mischling ersten Grades”? Again, I foresee a new legal industry. We could even get a bright young legal mind to come up with this: “A mixed-race child originating from forbidden extramarital sexual intercourse with a Russian that is born out of wedlock after 31 July 2025 will be classified as a Russian.”
But, before you object, no, I’m not trivializing the Holocaust because I’m making comparisons which the Guardian says are ok! “while Nazis had some rules* about who they punished (non-Aryans; communists) in Stalin’s terror anyone could be a victim at any moment.”
*patently and pretty disgustingly wrong
Postsocialism 
The Czechs have a long tradition of senseless cruelty. Just look at the horror committed during the Hussite Wars. You see, the cruelty is the point. So are we surprised to see them want to put people in internment camps?
/s
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Remember kids, any and all research that shows Russians supporting imperialism, genocide and supremacist views is falsified, because Jeremy Morris told me so!
Remember kids, the history of modern Russia (Moldova 91, Chechnya I/II, Georgia 08, Ukraine 2014-) has nothing to do with Russians; they are not really imperialist and they don’t support war. The Russian opposition never made statements about the invasion of Ukraine (which began with Crimea) being genuinely popular among Russians. Jeremy Morris told me so!
Remember kids, violence is not a universal element of Russian culture and history. The red terror, the Holodomor, the purges, the gulags, the genocide of Crimean Tartars, Chechens (in both the 40s and 90s) and Balts have nothing to do with Russian history or society, because Jeremy Morris told me so!
Remember kids, a statement such as “Russia [as] a culture where you have crime without punishment, and punishment without crime” is not at all representative of modern Russia or the USSR. Jeremy Morris’ research on the Russian prison system even found that prisoners had access to champagne bottles!
Remember kids, Russian society has totally come to terms with its past and imperialist crimes! Just look at the type of messaging we see from Navalniy’s “opposition” ФБК group:
“Who is driving corruption in Russia’s cruise missile industry?” (Surprisingly they used a different translation for the English language version of the video “The Foreign Life of Russia’s Leading Missile Maker ” – I wonder why they would do this?).
“Why is Shoigu’s [zoomer] son, not serving in the military?” (I wonder what Russia’s military is up to these days?)
The vignette about Petr Pavel statement is completely ridiculous. He never mentioned anything about camps and the pearl clutchers know this.
I will also add that relatives from my extended family had to move to Poland to pick strawberries after the Russians invaded Donbas.
But this is not a big deal, right Mr Morris?
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Respectfully, Bohdan, I think you miss the point. Pomerantsev’s article is his opinion and bears no relation to objective science on imperialism, genocide or any of the other things you mention. The clue is in the name – op-ed. Despite this he sees fit to rather hypocritically launch in to ahistorical and essentializing platitudes, many of which make no sense at all. My job is to call that out.
Nowhere do I imply that Russia somehow came to terms with its imperial past. Saying violence is a universal element of ‘culture’ and ‘history’ of a particular state is simply meaningless. Even more so if we’re talking about a state that was by turns, revolutionary, totalitarian, inheritor of empire, colonial and than again a dictatorship (now). Stalinism was super violent? My god, thanks for the lesson in history! Which is why the column is worse than cowardly pablum. The author presents himself as a great analytical mind, but faced with the mildest challenge to his principles, ditches them in favour of this kanalizatsiia of the new zeitgeist.
Did you know, it’s possible to support Ukraine 100%, even 150% and at the same time not resort to essentializing others and whipping up more hatred? This kind of article is a woeful DISTRACTION from addressing the people (and yes these people are many thousands of Russian citizens) and organizations guilty of crimes and who should definitely be punished. If it’s news to you that it’s possible to do more than one thing at once, then that’s a real shame. Unlike Peter P, my humble blog is mainly about my own expertise. I wish I could write more about Ukraine and maybe later I will. Nonetheless, Ukrainians quite rightly have 99.9% of the support of the English-speaking world and I have little to add there.
You also appear to have some issues in separating sarcasm and satire. El Prez Petr did indeed mention Japanese internment. If you think even a mild repeat of selecting whole groups who have incredibly diverse opinion and very little in common for punishment based on ‘ethnicity’ then I’m sorry, but you’re coming across as a bit of a stereotype. As someone whose ‘name’ is associated with the massacre of 100,000 Jews you are dishing out lessons on violence and genocide?
Anyway, as you no doubt picked up, that part of the post was not entirely serious. But given that I live in a state that houses refugees in concentration camp conditions unfit for humans: http://refugees.dk/en/news/2020/january/council-of-europe-anti-torture-committe-ellebaek-is-unsuitable-for-humans/ I think all these things may already be coming to pass.
I’m sorry your family had to move, and I’m sorry they had to pick strawberries.
And you get my name wrong!
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The end outcome of “essentialism polemics” and relegation of Russian crimes exclusively to a limited subset of Russians consisting of “many thousands” (yeah, just several thousand!) of individuals boils down to two points:
[1] Russians have no responsibility for any and all actions of their government, military and broader society. Any actions that are negative by definition have no relationship to Russians except for tiny group consisting of “many thousands” of individuals. Any and all research, polling or arguments that suggest otherwise are methodologically unsound and/or reflect a desire to spread hatred of innocent people. Such research et al. is unsound solely based on its findings (i.e. if there is any suggestion/findings that all Russians except for the aforementioned subset are not innocent angels), any substantial arguments or methodology is irrelevant, by definition.
[2] On an outcome basis, the pitch around “many thousands of individuals” means that Russians should never have to take any responsibility for their actions (be it those many thousands or otherwise).
Regarding [1], in just the last ~100 years (let’s ignore their history before 1917 for the sake of argument) the Russians have consistently been involved in imperial wars of conquest, mass murder, genocides and attempts to eliminate the culture and languages of occupied peoples.
This is not relegated to Stalinist times or the early USSR. The very same methods that are used today in Ukraine (systematic castration of POWs, razing cities, mass killing of civilians) were also used in Chechnya and Syria. Nothing has changed.
US intel (who have been very accurate on issues related to the full scale invasion) outlined that the Russians were planning a reign of terror with giant kill lists, public executions and a policy of mass incarnation in what would have been death camps. Ukrainian language and culture would be banned.
The Russians know all of this and the overwhelming majority of them support it. They know full well that the pitch around “Ukrainian Nazis” and “NATO” or “BATO” is complete BS. But they also know that this a good PR trick (and it works to some degree). After all, we are fighting BATO (that invaded us 7 times in the last two days) and not destroying Ukraine and killing Ukrainians.
Regarding [2], this is a rhetorical trick that revolves around pretending to care about human rights (perhaps even somewhat genuinely in some cases) while knowing full well that the Russians (even that alleged small subset) will never be forced to take responsibility for their actions.
Have any Russians been sent to court for their actions in Moldova? Chechnya? Georgia? Syria? Ukraine? What about the preceding 70 years?
Outside of a few brave individuals (Politkovskaya), most Russians support mass killings and brutality (Don’t BATO me bro! I don’t buy it!). Even allegedly liberal Russians who seem to be concerned about the impact of the full scale invasion of Ukraine on their own fortunes have no concerns about the razing of Grozniy (because it does not concern their fortunes).
How would this even work? Putin is going die tomorrow and Russia is going turn into a liberal democracy? Bull fucking shit. He is going to stay in power until he dies and when he dies some other Russian will take over. He will be no better than Putin.
The whole thing is a red herring. Just ask any supporter of such “miracle polemics”. How will it happen? When will it happen? The only reply you’ll hear is “You’re an evil essentialist who hates innocent people!” or perhaps “What about Iraq?”
You will never get a real answer.
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Not sure which is more pathetic: Pomerantsev’s article or the public intellectuals praising its point of view.
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This is getting so depressing, my God. And only serves to bolster Putin’s claims that the West hates Russia and is out to get it. Straight-up nasty essentialism going on here that the Guardian would be the first to robustly condemn if it was aimed against ANY other group.
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In some respects I care less about how it helps Putin and more that it just shows how many people would really like to find a group to hate on. “It’s too easy to be antifascist on the molar level, and not even see the fascist inside you” – M Foucault.
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What has long bugged me about Pomerantsev is how he peddles the line that Russians live in a post-truth world, where nothing is what it seems, while himself engaging in what I called in a review of his book ‘Nothing is Real’, ‘hyperbole and what sometimes appears to be invention.’ Nothing is real, indeed!
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Could I say a word here for the excellent analysis of Anatol Lieven who has been writing about Russia for a few decades now? You can read him at https://responsiblestatecraft.org/author/alieven/
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Dear Jeremy, sorry if I am coming a bit late on this. not at very good at techs beyond Facebook and not keen on reading anything on this other than the strictly academic stuff in my field for reasons made very clear in your post. Anyway, just wanted to express support and solidarity to your position against russophobia. I was actually somewhat relieved because this war like war always does have turned some people to the dark side and silenced many more. it would take a book or an entire conference to draw out all the wrongs associated with it and spell out a coherent and rigorous analysis to counter it but for now if you do not mind I would like to share a couple of thoughts. first, I would always rate brutality over systematic discrimination. the former is a sign of underdevelopment, the latter the opposite, hence it is much more dangerous and difficult to tackle! Second, how we explain its sudden comeback? I feel that essentialist arguments are neither new nor mere propagandistic flare, this has been a long way coming, for example Brennan as early (or late) as 2006 in its “War of position” singled out russophobia as a best example of the degradation of thought by the Cultural Turn. Roughly speaking the route is via identity politics allowing the revaluation of ethno-nationalism, remember the propaganda against Milosevich Serbia’s barbaric Slavism in the 1990s exposed by Peter Handke? Ethno-nationalism in turn is at the hearth of politics in the post-socialist region. Why the embracement of its more extreme twist in the form of fascism? I found the most convincing and intellectually elegant elucidation in Gramscian explanations of the rise of Italian fascism – a political economy of state-building combining predatory but lacklustre capital with conservative and corrupt politics . As early as 2015 we presented it at a conference arguing how this fitted perfectly the Yugoslavian conflict and saw it as a model for the future of the russo-ukranian conflict that started the year before. of course; no one liked the idea and wanted to publish us! still remember the russian and ukranian delegates firmly rejecting the idea their nations could come to such thing. not say our approach was right but surely the guess is….anyway, hope you do not mind me sharing some thoughts!
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