By Artem Goldberg
First half of the twentieth century was an age of ideologies. Public figures of the Nazi Germany would openly tell the world that Germans are superhumans, everyone else are below them and the world should recognize their superiority and submit to their rule.
Democracies (together with Hitler's former admirer and friend Joseph Stalin) had defeated the Absolute Evil. Yalta Conference exchanged the freedom of the eastern Europe for a peacefull existence in the region, the Absolute Evil was destroyed and denazified and everyone (apart from poor souls, who were killed or sent to Gulag by seemingly less evil dictators) lived happily ever after. For a while.
Now we are witnessing a classic Hollywood blockbuster sequence, where the Absolute Evil is back, ever more cunning and ambitious about destroying the world as we know it.
In these series of articles, author wants to explore ins and outs of the New Absolute Evil, because it is always good to know as much as possible about someone who wants to conquer and destroy everything you love.
In years of exploring the core of modern Russia's ideology, I found two definitions, which describe The Absolute Evil perfectly.
First was made by famous ukrainian contemporary author Les Podereviansky, who said that russian ideology can be called "cowardly nazism".
Nazis believed in their superiority and bore their beliefs like a banner. There is no real difference between their beliefs and what russian patriots think of themselves. The difference, however, is simple - russians would never admit it.
Cowardly Nazism is aparent to everyone who follows the dissonance between Russia's actions and justifications of these.
Let's take look at their annexation protocols. The Russian Constitution prohibits the annexation of the territories of another sovereign state into the Russian Federation. That could be a problem to everyone, apart from the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.
What you do includes a few simple steps:
Occupy the desired territory, denying that you are doing that, with soldiers having no insignia on them.
The territories local government declares independence from the state they are part of.
Recognize this independence.
Hold a referendum, giving a chance for the world to see and the people in occupation to express their 99,998% percent support to join Russia.
Incorporate newly aquired terriotries into your constitution.
Congrstulations! With these simple steps you have just ruined post-Yalta world, destoyed the architecture of international law and security, and your enemies, being afraid of direct confrontation with you, restrict the CEO of Russian Space Company Dmytro Rogozin from going to Disney World with his family, and that is it.
Once done, your Foreign Minister Lavrov just has to repeat that the process was completely legitimate and there is nothing to talk about. Amusingly enough, russians do not believe in legitimacy of their actions themselves.
In 2021, the President of the Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky held the first Crimea Platform forum - a gathering of leaders and officials, where they would discuss measures to deoccupy Crimea and express their deep concerns about Russia's behavior. Everyone, who has a displeasure of watching briefings of Russian Foreign Minister's Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova would enjoy her hysteria on the days the forum was held.
There is a famous russian saying describing an inadequate reaction of Ms Zakharova - "Even a hat burns on thievs head". They can repeat that annexation of Crimea was legitimate expression of the will of the people of Crimea as many times as russian propagandist Scott Ritter and soviet Chief of Secret police Lavrentiy Beria committed sex crimes against minors, - they all still realize that they are just a mob, breaking the international law, and hate to be reminded of that. Therefore, I kindly ask my readers to remind the world who they are as much as possible.
With all their willingness to legitimize every crime they commit, a slip of a tongue occurs even with the Russian President Vladimir Putin. Just recently, in one of his public appearences, while commenting on a possibility of negotiatiating peace with Ukraine, Putin said that Russia "will not give up the conquers that have been achieved over the past year and a half". President Putin was sincere. It is hard to lie about "liberation of the people" for years, when you are just a medieval conqueror of territories who believes in rule of might, but pretends to stand for the rule of international law. Even a hat burns on thievs head.
Legitimization becomes evermore challenging with every new territorial gain. Whilst Crimea is an authonomus region of Ukraine, having its own parliament, Zaporizhya, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, annexed by Russia in September 2022, are just regions of the unitary republic which Ukraine is. Despite that, before holding "referenfdums" on annexation of these territories, local Gauleiter of the occupied territories declared independence of each region, and Russia recognized it. Considering that in case of Zaporizhya and Kherson regions, regional centres - Kherson and Zaporizhya, are controlled by Ukraine, one might suggest a scent of schizophrenia of Russian legislators.
The second definition of modern Russia's ideology was coined by american historian Timthy Snyder - schizofascism or schizophrenic fascism.
In the next articles author will try to explore the depth of Russia's orwellian madness and its roots. For now, please support the Good in fight against the New Absolute Evil.
Good luck, stay healthy.