The current Ukraine crisis...

[Diana]

Knowing the Ra material makes it especially interesting, because I think what they refer to as the Nibelvirch (if memory serves me well) is roughly the transition from 3rd to 4th density.

I see a lot of parallels to the Ra material (so far—I haven't finished it yet). What makes that connection seem very real to me is that it springs from a different milieu altogether, and the diary entries (even taking into consideration translating) are very authentic to the era in which the diary author wrote. I know this because I happen to have read many books (maybe close to 100) from the Victorian era and the first part of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, according to the book, our immediate future (next few centuries) is going to require some buckling up...

Yes. But that is another thing that seems realistic to me. I never thought we would just *poof* magically evolve with dual-activated people being the new breed. There is too much world complexity in many layers, and I do think we have to balance the proliferation and use of digital technology with the natural world.

But as Ra said, an immediate leap in evolution may not be likely, but it is ever possible.

I think that's exactly what I'm doing this weekend, reading this book again. I'd like to start a thread on this book, there's great overlap with the Ra material from a philosophical perspective. I've also highlighted all the dates in the book on my kindle in blue, to give me a rough date range of the events as they unfolded.

Yes—start the thread. I will definitely participate in it.

[YinYang]

I never thought we would just *poof* magically evolve with dual-activated people being the new breed.

Lol yes, the *poof* theory! I also don't buy into that. Just look at nature, everything happens gradually. Night gradually turns into day, day gradually turns into night. Seasons gradually change from one to the next. All life forms gradually grow from birth. There's not much *poofing* going on. So I think it's a logical assumption that densities gradually transition from one to the next. I believe we have been transitioning and will be transitioning for quite some time. A 'new dawn' if you will, as some esotericists refer to it.

Yes—start the thread. I will definitely participate in it.

Okay that's going to be awesome, let me just quickly read it again.

Another book that deserves some special attention is A Dweller On Two Planets , but that's for some other time! It goes by another title "The Dividing of the Way" which is in line with the Ra material, and point to 'the choice', and the fact that positive 4D planets and negative 4D planets are "divided" from one another. And there's an announcement at the end of the book of "a coming golden age":

All shall be converted from lower into higher.

"A glory shines across the coming years,
The glory of a race grown great and free.
'Twas seen by poets, sages, saints and seers,
Whose vision glimpsed the dawn that is to be.
A shining shore is by the Future's sea,
Whereon each man all stand among his peers
as Equal; and to none shall bend the knee.
Awake, my soul, shake off your doubts and fears;
Behold the hosts of darkness fade and flee
Before the magic of the Morning's face;
And hear the sweet and wondrous melody
That floats to us from far-off golden days
It is the choral song of liberty
It is the anthem of the coming Race".

[flofrog]

YinYang about that paasage. you copied,

Chronicles of the Future Wrote:
I knew that in the Pantheon I would find thousands of works by all the great spiritual men that have existed from my time and onwards. But the area of the Pantheon is extremely large; it’s an entire town in itself. I only spent a few hours there when it would take years for someone to study this entire cultural and spiritual heritage. One can find the names hosted there in school textbooks and read about their work. The guidebooks of the Valley are there to help you find content by a specific author or the exact shelf location of a specific book in that vast library.

Poets, philosophers, researchers of the natural sciences, music composers, thinkers, humanitarians, public and political figures, mystics, artists, social reformers, educators: they’re all here, as long as their work has stood the test of time. Einstein, Newton, Pythagoras, Homer, Milton, Virgil, Socrates, Plato, Confucius, William Tell, Gautama Buddha, Matteotti, Bach, Handel, Rousseau, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, Seneca, Pascal, Bergson and Rilke are some of the historical figures from the eras before mine that are hosted there.

Their life-size marble, brass, copper and synthetic ivory statues, most of them decorated with scenes from their work, that stand on equally tall pedestals, symbolise, at least in my own mind, a triumphant vindication of the cultural legacy of the “prehistoric and uncivilised”, as they call them, times.

It gave me considerable pleasure and satisfaction to see some of our great men come alive everywhere around me! Something that really struck me was that I even saw crowned ones, like Codrus, Numa Pompilius and Marcus Aurelius!

I had th fleeting thought when I was reading it, if it didn't have to do with the Akashic records, that he would have accessed to.

Also there is int eh first quarter of the book mentioned of a year, 3029, where apparently a nuclear disaster would have wiped out most of Europe, and it gave me  pause as in Ra, and this is also mentioned in other terms by Edgar Cayce, Earth asked for help, at the end of WW2  as she didn't wish in her service to others to have another nuclear disaster such as the two events on Japan. So my  weak thinking was, coulld this be mentioned as an option which might have taken place but didn't.  

Since we are right now living under that constant menace too... Faith abiding.

[Brandon Gwinn]

There's a video on Rumble.com called "Ukraine on Fire" giving an inside look on the total historical background of what's been going on there for decades, even centuries. It's very interesting and presents a well-informed gray-scale model instead of the black-hat/white-hat narrative poured onto us by our mass media.

[flofrog]

There was an interesting passage in the last  channeling of Q'uo from March 2nd,

" We mention this not to  attempt to judge or shame any individual for feeling any particular reaction, but to encourage one to enter the heart where it has now been opened to swim into these waters of emotion and allow it to flow freely, and in doing so, realize that the opportunity for this depth of feeling has been presenting many ways and in many places within your lives and within the long history of your planet.  That you feel these things now and not previously is not something to be discouraging or ashamed of, but rather the opposite - that there is now an opportunity to bring this emotion to bear, to allow it to fill your being and to feel it in its entirety, is a blessing that you may take from your personal situation . Not to make light of the suffering that has encouraged this reaction, but that the catalyst of the suffering that you view has now landed effectively and the potential to sue this catalyst to open your heart even more to discover deeper understanding of the self, and how the self may serve others, how one may come to relate to other selves - this potential is now available in ways that it has not been in the past. "

and further :

The overriding purpose of this design is to allow the self to make a choice within the mire of confusion. A moment such as this brings the potential for clarity. the strength of reaction allows for a potential pathway into the heart or a potential pathway to close the heart. And in those two pathways lies the choice that the third density was designed to promote, to place before the self.

We find innate within the question posed on this day another implied question of how one may relate to aggression in a positive sense without entering the attitude of bellicosity. Is ti possible to protect the self and to protect other self from aggression while remaining positive ? 

here is the link to more :

https://www.llresearch.org/channeling/2022/0302

[YinYang]

There's a video on Rumble.com called "Ukraine on Fire" giving an inside look on the total historical background of what's been going on there for decades, even centuries. It's very interesting and presents a well-informed gray-scale model instead of the black-hat/white-hat narrative poured onto us by our mass media.

We watched this tonight. At least now I'm slightly more familiar with Putin's "narrative".

In the "documentary", Odessa was particularly singled out as city with a strong pro-Russia population, so why do you think we don't see the people of Odessa currently welcoming Russian troops as liberators, but defending themselves against Russian troops?

See that's kind of where the "documentary" loses legitimacy for me, it doesn't explain the Ukrainians' utter defiance against the Russian "liberators who are coming to their rescue"....

Please also realise that my crash course on Ukrainian history started around the invasion a few weeks ago, so I'm just trying to make sense of all the competing narratives like most people at the moment.

[Diana]

I like this guy's take on Russia/Ukraine which is open inquiry rather than dogmatic outlooks, recognizing the complexity rather than following a simple B&W narrative, the underlying systems and concepts involved, and that the lives of people matter vs. the politics involved. 

[flofrog]

So many many good points Diana. Just a 4th one...

[flofrog]

Thi sis just to add some more excerpts of the March channelling..

From Q'uo March 2nd,

 We find this question an incredibly complicated topic to address through channeling circles such as this, for it requires an incredibly intimate perception of the self, and even of other self. For one to react to aggression with love in a way that still protects the self and other self requires one to know the self deeply and have shed many unconscious distortions that would fool yourself into thinking that they are acting out of love. Yet, in reality, they are acting from a place of survival, of instinct.

However, it is possible, my friends, if one has the bias towards protecting others, and they do so without engaging in attitudes of separation and see the aggressor as the Creator, and yet, do everything in their power to minimize harm in a situation, up to and including using similarly violent acts to prevent further harm, it is possible, yet a rare scenario upon your planet.

We emphasize that this is quite a rare occurrence. For as you may understand, this is an incredibly difficult attitude to maintain within the confusion of third density. For there are not only cultural biases, but biological biases within the self that promote an instinct of survival, of protecting the pack, the tribe.

And so, we find that it is much more common that any act taken in reaction to aggression, to protect the self and other self, likely must be reconciled, at some point within the self, as an act that separates. And thus, a positive entity must reflect upon their reaction in order to reconcile, and bring love and forgiveness and, if it is found necessary, restitution to one's actions. This is how one may engage with the attitude of bellicosity with the protection of self and other-self while upon the positive path.

We look upon your planet, and we look within your hearts, and we feel both great sorrow and great compassion. Your present moment presents a great opportunity for you, as conscious seekers, to awaken even more to the path of love. And we encourage each to, in any moment that they are reflecting upon the situation that they feel moved and energized in any way, to pause and consider where love is within that moment.

[Patrick]

Thi sis just to add some more excerpts of the March channelling..

From Q'uo March 2nd,

 We find this question an incredibly complicated topic to address through channeling circles such as this, for it requires an incredibly intimate perception of the self, and even of other self. For one to react to aggression with love in a way that still protects the self and other self requires one to know the self deeply and have shed many unconscious distortions that would fool yourself into thinking that they are acting out of love. Yet, in reality, they are acting from a place of survival, of instinct.

However, it is possible, my friends, if one has the bias towards protecting others, and they do so without engaging in attitudes of separation and see the aggressor as the Creator, and yet, do everything in their power to minimize harm in a situation, up to and including using similarly violent acts to prevent further harm, it is possible, yet a rare scenario upon your planet.

We emphasize that this is quite a rare occurrence. For as you may understand, this is an incredibly difficult attitude to maintain within the confusion of third density. For there are not only cultural biases, but biological biases within the self that promote an instinct of survival, of protecting the pack, the tribe.

And so, we find that it is much more common that any act taken in reaction to aggression, to protect the self and other self, likely must be reconciled, at some point within the self, as an act that separates. And thus, a positive entity must reflect upon their reaction in order to reconcile, and bring love and forgiveness and, if it is found necessary, restitution to one's actions. This is how one may engage with the attitude of bellicosity with the protection of self and other-self while upon the positive path.

We look upon your planet, and we look within your hearts, and we feel both great sorrow and great compassion. Your present moment presents a great opportunity for you, as conscious seekers, to awaken even more to the path of love. And we encourage each to, in any moment that they are reflecting upon the situation that they feel moved and energized in any way, to pause and consider where love is within that moment.

This attitude is exactly what is needed. Yet it is probably very advanced from the starting point of the mainstream. It helps when you know the rules of the game of life a little bit. I am thanking the Universe for all who are waking up to these concepts because of these hard catalysts. There is Love in the moment.

[YinYang]

I had th fleeting thought when I was reading it, if it didn't have to do with the Akashic records, that he would have accessed to.

Now that is a thought that hasn't even occurred to me! Interesting...

Also there is int eh first quarter of the book mentioned of a year, 3029, where apparently a nuclear disaster would have wiped out most of Europe, and it gave me  pause as in Ra, and this is also mentioned in other terms by Edgar Cayce, Earth asked for help, at the end of WW2  as she didn't wish in her service to others to have another nuclear disaster such as the two events on Japan. So my  weak thinking was, coulld this be mentioned as an option which might have taken place but didn't.  


Since we are right now living under that constant menace too... Faith abiding.

I'm not very familiar with Edgar Cayce, he has always been on my 'to read' list. When it comes to disastrous events in the book, I kind of just keep it in the back of my mind somewhere, knowing that Ra said there will be a sharp negative influx for a short time, so turmoil of all kinds is to be expected. I'm actually searching for that quote now. For me the wonderful thing in the book, is that we'll get there in the end, even though its likely going to get pretty turbulent.

[flofrog]

Totally agree YinYang...

Just tightening our belt as you said, steady love

[YinYang]

There's a video on Rumble.com called "Ukraine on Fire" giving an inside look on the total historical background of what's been going on there for decades, even centuries. It's very interesting and presents a well-informed gray-scale model instead of the black-hat/white-hat narrative poured onto us by our mass media.

Oliver Stone, whose Putin interviews were used in this documentary, has since issued some statements regarding his previous positions:

Oliver Stone Criticizes “Mr. Putin’s Aggression In Ukraine” After Previously Saying There Was “No Proof” Russia Intended To Invade

[YinYang]

the black-hat/white-hat narrative.

The only thing that is becoming increasingly clear to me, is that no-one is coming out of this smelling like roses on either side, unfortunately.

Ukraine with its vast natural resources is a prize that both sides have been after for quite some time.

Are Ukraine's vast natural resources a real reason behind Russia's invasion?

[Vasilisa]

In psychology, there is such a thing as "personal boundaries", in the case of one person it works well, I think in the case of states too. Because instinct repeats itself at all levels, whether it is the level of an animal, a person, or a social society. It's just that this principle of "personal boundaries" is poorly taken into account for some reason.

[Vasilisa]

The other day, the news about the shelling of the maternity hospital in Mariupol flew around all the Western media, at a press conference, journalists asked Lavrov three times about this maternity hospital. Why don't these same journalists want to ask the Ukrainian leadership about the shelling of the hospital in Volnovakha? And the shelling of residential areas in the republics?

[Vasilisa]

I also have a question for knowledgeable people, what was Kamala Harris happy about when she was asked about refugees in Poland? And will the US provide assistance?

[YinYang]

Don't worry I think I found the answer to my own question, Al Jazeera is at least a source I trust.

Profile: Who are Ukraine’s far-right Azov regiment?

(I accidently posted over my previous post, asking Vasilisa why Putin claimed he's "cleansing Ukraine of Nazis" in his public address, the edit button and comment button are perilously close together.)

...~sigh~....I knew this was a can of worms....

In 2016, Facebook first designated the Azov regiment a “dangerous organisation”.

Under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, Azov was banned from its platforms in 2019. The group was placed under Facebook’s Tier 1 designation, which includes groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and ISIL (ISIS). Users engaging in praise, support or representation of Tier 1 groups are also banned.

However, on February 24, the day Russia launched its invasion, Facebook reversed its ban, saying it would allow praise for Azov.

Mark Zuckerberg is.... Jewish?, as is Volodymyr Zelensky....

I think the world has lost their marbles.

[tadeus]

The central question is how much administration/government is really needed/senseful for a good life?

The same question was asked by the prophet Samuel, who is very respected by me, to the Israeli people when the people asked for a King instead of the Creator. Apparently humanity as a species is still very young and does not know how to live otherwise.

Humanity is only a word that is regarding to fictional persons.

Everything now is in substantive and maritime law - everyone and everything is treated only as a dead thing.

This can only be stopped when the people will show and practice the responsibility for the own life again.
That's the meaning of practical sovereignty and has not only to do with philosophy in the mind.


Just have a look at the juridical definitions:
Here is the favorite:

Ballentine's Law Dictionary, 1930.

Human Being. Monster. A human being by birth, but in some part resembling a lower animal.
A monster hath no inheritable blood and cannot be heir to any land.

That's the way a human being is seen in the fictional / juridical world.

[Vasilisa]

In my understanding, a Jew is a person who is familiar with his history and religion, especially the religion of the Prophets. I cannot say that Zuckerberg and Zelensky are sufficiently familiar with both the history of the Jews and their religion.

Azov is now creating a lot of problems for the Russian military.

[YinYang]

In my understanding, a Jew is a person who is familiar with his history and religion, especially the religion of the Prophets. I cannot say that Zuckerberg and Zelensky are sufficiently familiar with both the history of the Jews and their religion.

Azov is now creating a lot of problems for the Russian military.

No I just thought it was ironic that Mark Zuckerberg happens to be Jewish, but announced this week that he's changing Facebook and Instagram's policy and will now allow praise for this neo-Nazi organisation on his platforms, and Zelensky happens to be Jewish and is happy to allow this group in Ukraine's parliament and armed forces.

It's all a bit upside down right now.

Here's Intercept's version:

Facebook allows praise of Neo-Nazi Ukrainian Battalion if it fights Russian Invasion

[IndigoSalvia]

I like this guy's take on Russia/Ukraine which is open inquiry rather than dogmatic outlooks, recognizing the complexity rather than following a simple B&W narrative, the underlying systems and concepts involved, and that the lives of people matter vs. the politics involved. 

I watched this last night, and had to contemplate for a while. It seems he's calling us to see that we are a global tribe. 

And as Russell asked, "where do we start the clock?" in terms of where did this crisis truly start, I look back further and further. 100 years? 1000 years? I keep going back because these seeds of bellicosity were planted within us long, long ago. And, what we see happening today has been going on throughout human history. 

The Confederation has elucidated some of our Earth history, and bellicosity has been a consistent theme. As Quo mentions in the 3/2/22 session, this bellicosity is severe. 

I can not intellectually and fully understand (hold) all of the myriad choices made by humans and others over the preceding tens of thousands of years which lead us to the moments that are now. 

So, I am called back to simply the present moment. And, I recognize my shadow self, and my earthly impulses. And, I recognize my spiritual impulse to love and then love some more, to accept, to be compassionate. 

And, here I find myself seemingly between two realms which do not easily reconcile (for me at least). I seek some sort of a balance between my spiritual and physical selves. 

How do we seek a balance between our spiritual and physical impulses in these times? What do we do - how do we be - in these times of bellicosity, and suffering? 

I have no easy, straightforward answers. To me, it's a balancing act.

[Vasilisa]

"One of the youngest billionaires in the world was born into a Jewish family of two doctors who are still actively working in their fields. He has three sisters, one of whom is older.
The family adhered to traditional religious strict views, but the young man, only reaching adulthood, immediately declared his rejection of religion. Mark prefers to rely on human reason and science..." (This is an excerpt from Zuckerberg's biography)

And yet, I believe that religious laws plays a leading role in matters of ethics...
(As always, I can be wrong, this is only my private opinion)

The laws of Orthodox Jews are very interesting, but unfortunately I have only superficially studied this topic

PS. I want to add that what is happening now in Meta has nothing to do with Zuckerberg, Meta (Facebook) has become a popular information weapon, and it was not Zuckerberg who chose it.
The same applies to Zelensky, a talented comedian who was ruined by money. This is me to the question about the "Golden Calf". And in Russia they say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

[Vasilisa]

How do we seek a balance between our spiritual and physical impulses in these times? What do we do - how do we be - in these times of bellicosity, and suffering? 

I have no easy, straightforward answers. To me, it's a balancing act.

True Orthodox mystics chose Christ and learned to unite with Him while dying. But I don't think this is the way out for most people on this planet.

[LeiwoUnion]

I'd like to add two a bit off topical pointers.

Note that according to Ra the Akashic records are very inaccurate regarding the future of the planet and humankind.

Also, regarding the so called 'poof' theory, please consider this. While in the macrocosmic space/time things seem gradual, for the quantum the transition, when applicable, to another energy state happens instantaneously when the system is given enough energy. Also remember that borders between densities require 'an energetic jump' over a gap, if transformation to a higher (or lower) state is to happen.

[YinYang]

I enjoyed this opinion piece on Al Jazeera:

Whom to believe on Ukraine: Biden, Putin, or Nikolai Gogol?

Whom to believe on Ukraine: Biden, Putin, or Nikolai Gogol?
[url=https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/11/who-to-believe-on-ukraine-biden-putin-or-nicolai-gogol][/url]

Rather than the propaganda machinery of Russia or the US, the world would be better off turning to Gogol – a Ukrainian master of Russian literature.


Gogol crossed the borders between his native Ukraine and literary homeland Russia with ease, grace, and enduring blessing for both his homelands.


These days, the speed with which globalised calamities hit the news cycle is vertiginous. We were just learning how to cope with the calamities of Donald Trump’s presidency when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the ground running. The pandemic was still causing havoc around the globe when environmental calamities peaked to frightful dimensions. We had just watched Adam McKay’s apocalyptic black comedy Don’t Look Up (2021) to have a full satirical grasp on our pending climate predicament, when suddenly the headlines became thicker and scarier, warning us that Vladimir Putin was about to invade Ukraine.

Believe it or not, just around that time, I was invited to Moscow for the launch of a new Russian translation of Edward Said’s Orientalism. In the end, I opted to join the gathering via zoom because of the COVID-19 travel restrictions my university had introduced and other obligations that required me to remain in New York. Had I travelled to Moscow, I would likely still be stranded there due to President Joe Biden’s decision to close US skies to Russian aircraft in response to the all-out invasion Putin launched on February 24.

Two weeks on, the Russian army is still in Ukraine, fighting its way towards Kyiv. But to what end? What is this war going to achieve amid a looming climate crisis, a still raging pandemic and massive waves of displacement, famine, death and destruction already devastating the world, from Afghanistan and Yemen to Ethiopia and Myanmar? This reigniting of the nineteenth-century Russian imperial anxieties two decades into the environmental calamities of the twenty-first century really does not make any sense.


‘A plague on both your houses’

So how can we keep our heads above the smoke and breathe an air of sanity?


Personally, I always reach for the same security blanket – enduring works of art, masterpieces of world literature and music – whenever I feel as if the world is spiralling uncontrollably towards Armageddon.

Indeed, if I have to go under, I would rather do so while listening to Shostakovich and Bach, reading Gogol and Hafez, and looking at El Greco and Behzad, with my worn-out copies of YV Mudimbe’s Invention of Africa and Gadamer’s Truth and Method by my bedside.

Today, turning to art is perhaps the only way to sustain inner sanity in an insane world. Over the first two weeks of the Ukraine-Russia war, the propaganda warfare between the United States and Russia has reached a feverish pitch. The habitual liberal Russophobia in the US has been exacerbated by the Trumpian right’s growing admiration for Putin. As Tucker Carlson of Fox News reached new lows in his efforts to defend Putin and his invasion, and the usual suspects at The New York Times started banging the drums of war, we had to seek cover from both liberal Russophobia and conservative declarations of love for a strongman they think can help them restore white supremacy in the US.

The key to remaining sane today is being able to condemn Russia’s bold and vulgar act of military aggression against Ukraine without being sucked into the Anglo-American world’s pathological love-hate relationship with Putin.

It is, of course, not easy to ignore “the West’s” obsession with Putin and exaggeration of his villainy.

When people ranging from seasoned American idiot Thomas Friedman to Israeli best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari come together to argue Putin’s adventurism in Ukraine is unlike anything we have seen before and is a turning point in human history, it is hard not to bury your head in your pillow and wonder where have these people been over the last two decades of US military thuggery around the globe.

Putin after all is not doing in Ukraine anything the US has not already done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and so many other places around the globe – he is simply doing what he is doing not in Asia, Africa or Latin America, but in Europe. Same military thuggery, different bucket.

“Plague on both your houses,” as the Bard famously put it. Why should innocent people in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Yemen pay for imperial arrogance under any flag?



‘We all come out from Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’

Back to my survival toolkit. In my teenage years, I feasted on Russian and American literature – and never had any taste for European literature bar a few exceptions. Among the towering luminaries of my youthful fascination with Russian literature was and remains the glorious novelist Nikolai Gogol (1809-52). My fascination with him started when I read the Persian translation of his Dead Souls. I became so fascinated with him that I even translated into Persian one of his masterpieces, The Diary of a Madman (which I never dared to publish because I don’t know Russian and felt inadequate doing the translation only from its English translation – in a country where we were blessed with Iranian translators of Russian sources with native fluency over both languages).


For the longest time I had no clue that Gogol was in fact Ukrainian by birth, but Russian by literary culture. And I only remembered this factoid when I found myself listening to Biden and Putin both trying to convince their respective audiences into accepting as fact their own brand of gibberish about the war in Ukraine.

As I watched the two presidents battle for the world’s attention, I couldn’t help but think an entirely different map of the region would emerge if we were to pay attention not to warmongering politicians but to literary history that reveals the inanity of invasion of one country by another.

Consider Gogol’s Taras Bulba (1835), an epic tale chronicling the lives of Cossack warriors. The novel tells the story of an ageing Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, the younger of which falls in love with a Polish woman. Eventually, that son is captured and shot by his own father. In 1842, Gogol published a second version of this novel in which Russian nationalist themes are more evident. Scholars of Russian literature tell us how this second version of Gogol’s epic novel is actually “the transformation of a Ukrainian tale into a Russian novel” marking the “association of the Cossack and the Russian soul”.



Born in Ukraine, wrote in Russian, read by the world

In an essay they published in 2017, Giorgi Lomsadze and Nikoloz Bezhanishvili offered us a glimpse into the centrality of Gogol in the Ukrainian-Russian borderline of culture and identity.

“Born in Ukraine, made famous in Russia, Gogol embodies both the ties that bind the two countries and the differences that set them apart. As their relations deteriorated, the question of Gogol’s national affiliation repeatedly appeared on a list of matters disputed by Ukraine and Russia.”

What is at stake here? Gogol crossed the borders between his native Ukraine and his literary homeland Russia with ease, grace, and enduring blessing for both his homelands. When at the age of 20 he moved from Ukraine to Russia, he brought the gift of his native homeland to a literary promised land. He joined the ranks of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Turgenev, placing Russian literature on an unrivalled pedestal.

But Gogol was not beholden to Russia either, as he became an iconic literary powerhouse satirising the ruling monarchy. Did any Russian thug tell Gogol, “Go back to where you came from”, as American thugs regularly tell anyone who points out the terror of white supremacist racism in this country? Quite the contrary. “We all came out from Gogol’s Overcoat,” none other than Fyodor Dostoyevsky is reported to have said of one of Gogol’s masterpieces.

In an earlier essay in 2009, Tom Parfitt had detailed the Russian-Ukrainian rivalries in claiming Gogol all for themselves.

“First, it was politics, then it was gas. Now the protracted antagonism between Russia and Ukraine is taking on a literary tinge, as the bickering neighbours vie for the legacy of Nikolai Gogol on the 200th anniversary of his birth.”

But as Russia and Ukraine waged a battle to claim the literary glory of Gogol, people around the world who are neither Russian nor Ukrainian have an equal if not more legitimate love and admiration for Gogol not based on the place of his birth or the language of his literary output, but for the quintessence of his wit, wisdom, and sublime sense of humour.

From the vestiges of the Russian empire emerged the Soviet Union, and from the relics of the Soviet Union survived Russia. Now the traumatic memories of two grand empires, one tsarist, the other communist, haunt Russia’s image of itself. The military follies of Putin in Ukraine are neither the beginning of anything nor the end of something else.

Under Putin, Russia has been active in its own back yard in Chechnya with brutal precision and then in Syria supporting a violent thug on his bloody throne with expanded global ambitions. Neither the jingoism of Russian nationalism, nor the inanities of American pundits thinking this invasion is yet another turn for “the end of history” and civilisation, nor indeed the ghastly European racism once again on full display privileging Ukrainian refugees over millions of others, is the real issue here.

Ceasing to follow the propaganda machinery of Russia and the US, the world would be much better off turning to Gogol, a Ukrainian master of Russian literature, and in the liminal space he crafts in his superior literary heritage, thinking where the real borders lie between civilisation and barbarities.

[Vasilisa]

I'm thinking about two interesting points.
1. Looking at the motley map of the peoples inhabiting the USA, I did not find any hint of Russians. ( (Chinese and Japanese by the way, too) (But there are a lot of Germans)
2. I am a mystic by nature and have never specifically raised my son in any ideological way, but to my surprise, my son himself began to reflect on the possibilities of the ideology of capitalism and Marxism from the age of ten, preferring the latter. I don't understand him, but I respect his choices and preferences independent of me.

[Vasilisa]

Yin Yang
Thank you for the hint about the book by Edward V. Said "Orientalism", very interesting.

And yes, I have seen from my own experience how rational and irrational ways of thinking can conflict with each other. The progressive West is more characterized by a rational way of solving pressing issues, the east (in my opinion) was more irrational.

It seems to me that such a difference in world perception is described most interestingly in N. S. Leskov's story "Lefty"

[YinYang]

Yin Yang
Thank you for the hint about the book by Edward V. Said "Orientalism", very interesting.

And yes, I have seen from my own experience how rational and irrational ways of thinking can conflict with each other. The progressive West is more characterized by a rational way of solving pressing issues, the east (in my opinion) was more irrational.

It seems to me that such a difference in world perception is described most interestingly in N. S. Leskov's story "Lefty"

You're welcome Vasilisa, all these works are unfamilar to me, but after reading this opinion piece, I'm definitely going to start adventuring into Russian literature.

I started reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina recently, and then life got busy again and I had to abandon it.

Intestingly, Gogol's Taras Bulba is considered "fiction", but not according to Ra. He's the only one of the three negative musketeers Ra mentioned that I know almost nothing about, but given what I know about the other two, he must have been quite a gem!

[Vasilisa]

Yes, it is interesting that Ra gives an example of negative polarity pointing to the literary hero Taras Bulba. Many readers of the Law of One stumble over this "threshold")), but my personal opinion is that Gogol described a real character. It is very difficult to navigate a large amount of information, but if you believe Wikipedia, then in the image of Taras Bulba, the kurenny ataman of the Zaporozhye Army, Ohrim Makukha, an associate of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, appears. To look further, we will have to delve into the relations of the Zaporozhye Cossacks with the Polish gentry) And in general in the history of Europe.... The Poles have a historical hatred of the Muscovite Kingdom, as do the Swedes and the Balts... Inside what is now called Russia, there was also a tense struggle between the principalities, but in the end the Moscow Principality won, forming a State.