In 2015, when 32 people burned to death in Romania, hundreds of thousands of people came out into the streets to protest against corruption that caused the tragedy. It
Yesterday, 300 children burned to death in Russia because of exactly the same kind of corruption. Nobody has come out to protest so far. I’m still hoping people will wake up but for now nobody seems to care.
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This is the thing with Russians (collectively)… they just don’t seem to care about what might be called hierarchical killings, whether it’s government killing citizens or the poor falling prey to the rich if there’s a clear hierarchy they just kind of shrug and suck it up… it’s deeply, deeply freaky, one of those cultural divides that I cannot breach.
A few years ago a Polish newspaper story about the Katyń mass murder during WWII and it mentioned that many Russians just didn’t get why Poland wants to find the answers and/or punish the guilty to the extent that that’s possible. The attitude was something like “eh the government killed people, what can you do?”
Is Ukraine any different? Was there any kind of attempt to deal with soviets (or collaborators) guilty of crimes after the collapse of communism?
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Ukrainians were like this, too, which is why I emigrated. I couldn’t stand the sheepishness. I didn’t think it would change in my lifetime but it did, as I was shocked to discover in 2013-14. There is hope for us, so there must be hope for Russians, too.
There is more and more talk in Ukraine about looking at the crimes of the Soviet era. Historically, these things take a lot of time, but at least it’s being discussed. I will be teaching a course on Ukraine and Spain next year, and I hope to be able to report good news in this direction to students.
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“I didn’t think it would change in my lifetime but it did, as I was shocked to discover in 2013-14. ”
I’d backdate that to 2004-05, that’s when Ukrainians learned (collectively) that they can stand up to an unjust government instead of just accepting things (Russians still haven’t learned that).
2013-14 was the second (dramatic) step. Of course between the big dramatic steps it’s a long, drawn out agonizing process that sometimes seems to be stuck in place or even going backwards before starting to lumber forward again.
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Side note I think you should watch the crime series Mar de plástico, it is on Netflix. It’s set in Almería which looks very interesting, I now want to go there, and has to do with undocumented workers, Gypsies, and a Serbian-Russian-Ukrainian drug and human trafficking ring. It’s good as entertainment but the stereotyping is quite a thing to see, it is hard to tell whether they are trying to be straight and failing or whether it is tongue-in-cheek.
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Thank you! Sounds extremely interesting. I just submitted an article about the stereotypes of Russian immigrants in Spain, so this is very much up my alley.
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Is there anything us foreigners can do to help the victims of this tragedy? I’ve found (and donated to) a Red Cross fund at http://www.kemredcross.ru/stranitsa-oplatyi-chronopay/, but immediate medical treatment (which is what this appears to be for) will only be the beginning of what would be needed.
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Thank you for caring! This is an unbelievable tragedy, and I don’t know what can be done. I hope that this is at least a wake-up call, so that it won’t happen again.
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