Midway in this journey we call our life, I chanced to find myself in a dark wood where the right way was wholly lost and gone. – Dante, from the Divine Comedy.
There was a time on the Left in Brisbane when all you’d ever hear about were debates concerning the Russian Revolution of 1917. A constant rehashing of history. Shall we compare it to the situation we face today: civil war in the old Soviet empire between Ukraine and Russia, egged on by the US and NATO.
It is as if the spooks and the politicians are not content to allow Putin and Zelensky to come to a peacefull compromise, they have to stick their fingers in, providing intelligence, weapons of mass destruction, and now tanks and even talk of airplanes. Nowhere do we hear from the lips of Putin and Zelensky about the killing and the poverty, the suffering of children and the old, a world in turmoil. All we get from Biden are US threats against China.
No doubt there is a very dark side to the Russian temperament. Take Putin’s justification for war with Ukraine:
“I will start with the fact that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it …” – V. Putin, 21 Feb 2022. [in Address by the President of the Russian Federation ]
But what of the dark side to the people of Europe and United States that have allowed this to happen? In what they call the great Western civilisation …
Not long ago there was a debate at the University of Queensland that there should be a course on the History of Western Civilisation. It was to be funded a right-wing think tank and called the Ramsay Centre sponsored by former conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his cronies, They were to laud the achievements of the West (colonialism, slavery?). Could the University be bought? Would it participate in the naked push to be great blowers of their own trumpets and equally great deniers of the evils they have done? The magnificent University of Queensland standing on the bend in the river at St Lucia and built on land purchased with money tainted by murder and theft.
So how did Western civilisation come to this? Has human intelligence developed since Aristotle? In those 4000 years have we learnt how to avoid war and make compromise, to settle for peace?
Odessa
Possibly one of the most famous films ever made, Battleship Potemkin by Eisenstein, depicts a massacre by soldiers on the Odessa steps. A hundred years later, the city of Odessa is part of a crucial struggle between Ukraine and Russia in 2023. The history of the city reminds us of how many famous Russians were born there, went to school or lived in that city. I list some of them here. Let us not forget that the Ukrainian nationalism as expressed by Zelensky is only a recent phenomenon in the grave history of that port city.
“As of July 26, 2022, as a result of rocket attacks in Odesa, eleven civilians were killed: eight (including a three-month-old girl) as a result of an attack on the residential complex “Tiras” on April 23; one teenager during the attack on the dormitory on May 2, one employee of the warehouse during the attack on the Suvorovsky district of Odessa on May 9 and a warehouse guard on June 20.” – Wikipedia
Origin: Odessa was established in 1794 by the Empress Catherine the Great on land conquered from the Ottoman Empire on the site of the Black Sea fortress town of Khadzhibei. Catherine sent notices throughout Europe offering migrants land, tax exemptions, and religious freedom, attracting migrants of all types.
Potemkin: The crew of a Russian vessel named Potemkin were served rancid meat and treated cruelly. They decided to stage a mutiny and thus ignite the wrath of the police on the Odessa steps. [In a moment of irony, we even called our small aluminum fishing boat The Tinny Potemkin].
Artist: Kandinsky, born in Moscow, spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art School. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat (today Tartu, Estonia)—Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.
Revolutionary: Marxist Leon Trotsky went to school in Odessa. Stalinists went halfway round the world to murder Trotsky with an axe in Mexico City.
Let us not forget these events in coming weeks as the war comes to a resolution.
While the new celebrity of Zelensky is touring the West asking for arms, the people of Odessa are in grave circumstance.
Ian Curr
19 Feb 2023