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It’s wonderfully ironic that he began with a passage from War and Peace since Russia is full, at so many levels, of the longing of which he speaks, both the Rus
by gumby 3y ago
It’s wonderfully ironic that he began with a passage from War and Peace since Russia is full, at so many levels, of the longing of which he speaks, both the Russia contemporary to Tolstoy and today, where they invaded a country in hopes of being recognized as a nation in the “inner ring”.
- dullcrisp 3y agoIt’s ironic that you accuse Tolstoy of invading Ukraine when the text already speaks for itself.
- gumby 3y agoI re-read my comment and I think it’s clear. Russia had this kind of cultural inferiority complex back in the days of Tolstoy, which I think helped him skewer it in War And Peace (the events of which were shortly before his birth). And in the War and Peace days that quoted scene also shone a light on the macro (geopolitical) level of feeling like they weren’t really part of the “in group”. Feels like the same might have been true when he wrote the novel (invading Crimea in the 1850s is also a good example) but I am not a scholar of Russia. Also the same is true in today’s Russia, with Putin and others vainly trying to prove that Russia is still part of some inner ring, which they most definitely no longer are.