quinta-feira, agosto 27, 2009

O melhor emprego para qualquer antiamericano!

Este anúncio publicitário diz o seguinte:

Se desde a nascença você odeia os EUA. Se você sabe com a precisão, que em todos os males da Rússia são responsáveis os EUA. Se para você a imagem do americano morto é mais agradável do que a foto de família, onde você, ainda um menino, bebe o leitinho, tirado da vaquinha russa, que comeu a relvinha na terrinha russa … então, nós lhe encontramos o melhor emprego do mundo!
Ver no YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuoLx4Uob7A

p.s.
Na realidade, estamos perante o exemplo do “marketing viral” (virus marketing), de um serviço online, que organiza e ajuda combinar as festas…

quarta-feira, agosto 26, 2009

Stalin no coração

Nesta semana, em Moscovo, após a restauração foi reaberto o vestíbulo da estação do metro “Kurskaya – Koltsevaya”. A grande novidade é a restauração da frase dourada, que foi eliminada durante a Primavera do Khrushev: “Nos criou Stalin à dedicação do povo, nós inspirou ao trabalho e aos feitios”. As palavras fazem parte da letra do hino soviético estalinista, descartado por Boris Yeltsin e restaurado pelo Putin.
O actual Director do metropolitano de Moscovo, Dmitri Gaev, entre 08.1982 e 03.1990 era o funcionário do Comité do PCUS da cidade de Moscovo.

Foto:
http://tapirr.livejournal.com/2148721.html

segunda-feira, agosto 17, 2009

As raízes culturais do imperialismo russo

O historiador russo do renome, Leonid Radzikhovsky, explica as raízes do medo primário do Kremlin (e dos milhões de russos) de viver sem a Ucrânia.

“Notem, que a Rússia não é capaz de formular as suas reais pretensões para com a Ucrânia… Trânsito do gás, NATO, a Frota do Mar Negro, holodomor … Detalhes – detalhes. /…/ Pois não será possível de dizer: “Me ame!” Será de rir… Mas tem muita vontade de dizer! /…/ Daí as conversas sem fim sobre os “povos irmãos” e mesmo sobre o “povo DIVIDIDO”.

For Ukrainians, ‘Ukraine is Ukraine;’ for Russians, ‘Russia is Russia Plus Ukraine’

By: Paul Goble

Vienna, August 15 – Underlying the current escalation of tensions between Moscow and Kyiv is a fundamental difference in the way the two nations define themselves, a leading Moscow commentator says. For Ukrainians, “Ukraine is Ukraine,” but for Russians, “Russia is Russia plus Ukraine.”
In his Ekho Moskvy blog, Leonid Radzikhovsky argues that this difference in national self-conceptions is more important than any other factor in explaining why Moscow “again and again” acts as if Ukraine is Russia’s “INTERNAL affair,” something Ukrainians quite naturally view as outside inference in their own (http://echo.msk.ru/blog/radzihovski/612611-echo).
Obviously, President Dmitry Medvedev hopes to win support at home by his attacks on Ukraine and Ukrainian officials, the Moscow commentator continues, but that is “SECONDARY” as an explanation for what is going on. The “PRIMARY” factor is “THE DEMAND OF SOCIETY.”
And that demand, Radzikhovsky continues, is not so much about rebuilding the empire or supporting Yanukovich whom, the Moscow writer suggests, “80 percent of the population of the Russian Federation” haven’t heard of, but rather about the feeling among most Russians that “WITHOUT UKRAINE, RUSSIA IS INCOMPLETE!”
To feel itself whole, he says, “Russian society doesn’t need alien Central Asia. And it doesn’t need the alien Baltic. And it does not need the unloved Transcaucasus” – although the North Caucasus, Radzikhovsky continues, is “an anything but simple” matter. “But [Russian society] NEEDS Ukraine! Even more than it does Belarus.”
Given their interwoven history as Slavs, given Russia’s self-definition of its history as beginning with Kievan Rus’, and given their religion, Russians are inclined to see Ukraine and Ukrainians as part of themselves, failing to acknowledge to anyone including themselves that Ukrainians do not see the Russians in the same way.
Because Ukraine means so much more for Russians than Moscow means for Ukrainians, he continues, Russians feel that their love is “unrequited,” and consequently, their feelings have shifted toward “a cruel jealousy” in which Russians are demanding something that the Ukrainians are not in a position to give.
“Note,” Radzikhovsky continues, “Russia is not able to formulate its REAL pretensions toward Ukraine … The transit of gas, NATO, the Black Sea fleet, and the terror famine are just details. With whom are there no such details?” But Russia’s obsession with them is because it cannot say in full voice “’Love me!’”
And because this cannot be said openly, there is all the continuing blather about “’fraternal peoples’ or even about ‘a DIVIDED people.’” What makes this so disturbing is that it is not just a question of Kremlin PR. This is how millions, even TENS OF MILLIONS of people in Russia feel.”
But the situation in the Ukraine is very different. Despite frequent Russian suggestions that Ukraine will fall into pieces, that has not happened. And while “the Russian and Russian- speaking population of Ukraine does not want to join NATO, [those same people] do not want to join RUSSIA either.” Instead, they like others in Ukraine WANT TO JOIN EUROPE.”
“Many Ukrainians do business in Russia, and all want to travel there without visas, but with this, the ‘list of their desires’ is exhausted.” They do not want more from Russia, but Russia very much wants more from them, Radzikhovsky says.
“Russia and the Russian people need Ukraine for their own SELF-IDENTIFICATION. Russia equals GREAT Russia equals Russia plus Ukraine,” the Moscow analyst suggests. “They are consumed with an unsatisfied feeling of GREAT POWERNESS. Given Russian history, it could not be otherwise.”
But “Ukraine and its people including both ethnic Russians and ‘Russian Ukrainians’ for their SELF-IDENTIFICATION need … only Ukraine.” For them, “Ukraine equals Ukraine. They do not have a Great Power sense of themselves. They are satisfied with the sense of being a ‘middle size power.’”
As a result, the Ukrainians will ‘NEVER UNIFY WITH ANYONE ELSE into a single whole.” (Joining the EU is an entirely different thing, Radzikhovsky says.) “Russia in general understands this. But it cannot accept it,” and consequently, Moscow will continue to talk about a “divided” nation when Russia should be talking about two.
Radzikhovsky says that talk of that kind could have “AN ENORMOUSLY POSITIVE MEANING” if it were directed to dealing with “the various forms of separatism ‘INSIDE RUSSIA’” because then it would promote a sense of the “SOLIDITY OF THE NATION” and the “VALUE OF EACH INDIVIDUAL.”
But if such discussions among Russians remain focused on Ukraine, not only will the Russians further alienate the Ukrainians, Radzikhovsky suggests, but they will fail to address the very problems within their own borders that a more adequate understanding of themselves and of Ukrainians would permit.

quarta-feira, agosto 05, 2009

Integridade territorial vs auto – determinação

Window on Eurasia: Georgian War Led Russians to Support Self-Determination over Territorial Integrity – at Least in the Case of the ‘Unrecognized Republics’

by: Paul Goble

Vienna, August 5 – Many commentators speculated that Moscow’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the wake of Russia’s military action in geography might prompt non-Russians especially in the North Caucasus to invoke the principle of the right of nations to self-determination and press their case for independence.
In the last 12 months, there has been relatively little evidence that the Georgia war led to any such transformation of opinion among those groups, but a new poll, released in Moscow yesterday, suggests that the events of August 2008 did have a significant impact on the thinking of many Russians about self-determination, at least beyond the borders of their country.
According to the results of a poll conducted by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), an agency with close ties to the Russian government, “the opinion of Russians about the principles by which [Moscow] should be guided in relation to unrecognized republics like Nagorno-Karabakh and Transdniestria, changed in a radical way.”
In March 2008, VTsIOM said, “respondents most often considered that every situation requires specific consideration.” Now, the latest poll shows that they “are more inclined to support the principle of the right of nations to self-determination and state independence for the unrecognized republics” (www.wciom.ru/novosti/press-vypuski/press-vypusk/single/12235.html).
Thirty-six percent of the most recent sample back those principles, with the share supporting the application of the principle of the territorial integrity of states to such conflicts having fallen from 21 percent to 17 percent and those without any opinion on the matter having declined from 25 percent to 15 percent.
On the one hand, this shift in Russian opinion simply reflects widespread Russian popular support for what Moscow did in Georgia – even though another poll released yesterday by the Levada Center found that many Russians say Abkhazia and South Ossetia are not “useful” for Russia (www.gazeta.ru/politics/2009/08/04_a_3231615.shtml).
But on the other, it represents popular support for a more revisionist stance toward the borders of the former Soviet republics, at least other than those of the Russian Federation. (Another Levada Center poll today showed that Russians are prepared to use force to defend their country’s borders in the Caucasus (www.levada.ru/press/2009080501.html).)
Such popular attitudes, of course, will not determine the Russian government’s approach – which as Moscow analyst Aleksey Makarkin pointed out in an interview published today in Baku will in most cases reflect larger calculations (www.day.az/news/politics/167310.html) – but they do represent a potential resource that some in Moscow or elsewhere may invoke.
That could change the dynamics of discussions about these issues even if it does not do more than delay the resolution of any of them, issues that as Makarkin points out with his reference to Cyprus often involve sets of mutually exclusive but tightly held values and that are thus extremely difficult to resolve.
But there is another and more intriguing possible consequence of this shift in Russian public opinion. If the principle of the right of nations to self-determination becomes more acceptable in Russian discussions, then it is entirely possible that non-Russians inside the Russian Federation will pick up on that and play this idea back at Moscow.
If that should happen, and there is up to now no clear-cut evidence that it will, then one of the consequences of Russia’s actions in Georgia in August 2008 that many predicted at that time could in fact be realized, albeit with a significant delay and via a different pattern of influence than anyone expected.