{"id":9800,"date":"2022-05-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aspeninstitutece.softmedia.cz\/article\/2022\/corpse-ideology\/"},"modified":"2024-09-30T18:53:04","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T16:53:04","slug":"corpse-ideology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/article\/2022\/corpse-ideology\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s \u201cCorpse Ideology\u201d and Its Genocide in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few of my colleagues chastised me for writing a pessimistic and gloomy afterword for a collection of essays on the Euromaidan and Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine\u2019s Donbas which I published with ibidem-Verlag in 2016.<\/span> Back then, more than two years after the Revolution of Dignity, many aspects of Russia\u2019s politics and intentions in Ukraine and Europe appeared to me quite transparent. <\/span>Putin\u2019s obsession with <\/span>solving \u201cthe Ukrainian question\u201d once and for all resembled Stalin\u2019s <\/span>\u201cPolish complex\u201d and Hitler\u2019s antisemitic paranoia. This obsession most recently manifested itself in Medieval violence and ethnic cleansing in Ukraine perpetrated by armed Russian soldiers against unarmed Ukrainian civilians. <\/span>Today we have a clear view of what the Russians are capable of and what may lie ahead for Ukraine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russian soldiers\u2019 gang rapes of women and little children in Ukrainian towns and villages, and their systematic protracted torture of civilians before they are killed shook the world with its barbarism and brutality.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are crimes that accompanied Putin\u2019s long-held aim of ridding Ukraine of Ukrainians under the cover of a \u201cdenazification operation.\u201d Norman Naimark was correct when he suggested that ethnic cleansing is inherently misogynistic, and today\u2019s realities in Ukraine and the unmatched violence against women, the \u201cbiological core\u201d of the nation, create mental images of national humiliation and suffering that one simultaneously refuses to imagine and cannot forget.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How is it possible and how did the Russians descend to this barbarism? One of many explanations was offered by the brilliant Ukrainian writer Yevhen Hutsalo almost two decades ago. His thoughts resonated with my understanding of Russian history, culture, and the \u2018mysterious\u2019 Russian soul. Having been murdered spiritually and morally from birth by their authoritarian leaders, Russians have adopted a \u201ccorpse ideology,\u201d worshiping despots and venerating dictators and tyrants, dead and alive, a notion coined by Hutsalo in his enlightening and prophetic book <\/span>The Mentality of the Horde<\/span><\/i> (Mentalnist ordy). The Russians themselves, from Maksim Gorky to Viktor Yerofeev, those who managed to develop analytical skills after centuries of despotism and authoritarian regimentation, suggested that over their history of violence and brutal and senseless conquest Russian people have forgotten how to love, spending their entire lives in a correctional facility called the Russian Empire, where people\u2019s free spirit and morality have been systematically threatened, suppressed and punished. The late Soviet dissident and Russian opposition leader Valeriia Novodvroskaia echoed Hutsalo\u2019s notion of \u201ccorpse ideology,\u201d suggesting that, in contrast to Russia, Ukraine\u2019s ancient Cucuteni-Trypillian traditions grounded in agrarianism, cultural production, and creativity seemed to serve as a shield that helped Ukrainians nurture a mentality that drastically differed from that of the Russians.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Centuries of nomadic violence and bloodletting shaped the \u201ccorpse ideology\u201d that saturated contemporary Russian society, constantly adjusting the meaning of morality to its current needs and circumstances. \u201cWe are the Scythians\u201d who sowed death and fear, \u201ca people that got to cherish rampage and war,\u201d Valerii Briusov wrote. This trait, cultivated under the Golden Horde that ruled over Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Moldova and the Caucasus for nearly three hundred years, has survived in Russia, having been nourished by violent invasions and plunder of foreign lands. Aleksandr Gertsen seemed to grasp and internalize the Russian mentality absorbed from the Mongol Horde: \u201cDespite our appearance, we are nevertheless barbarians. Our civilization is superficial, corruption is crude, and, under the layers of powder and whitewash, whiskers and suntan are seen. We have a great deal of cunningness and the adaptability of slaves,\u201d where morality is circumstantial at best. Hutsalo drew parallels between the Russians\u2019 desire to perpetuate Lenin\u2019s principles by mummifying Lenin\u2019s body, and eternalizing themselves by erecting and maintaining the mausoleum of their own illusions and myths. Following Putin\u2019s, Dugin\u2019s and the late Zhirinovskii\u2019s truncated interpretations of history, they dreamed of re-creating a \u201chistoric Russia,\u201d and some of their followers still worship Lenin\u2019s corpse which continues to be exposed in the mausoleum on Red Square. They perpetuate Soviet legacies, memories, and dreams, reviving dead Soviet symbols and artifacts and modernizing them in the form of the letter \u201cZ\u201d, which is aesthetically and visually consistent with the Fascist swastika and concomitant with the Russian word \u201cZlo\u201d (evil). The aforementioned thinkers associated the Russian empire with Asian despotism and identified the Russian people as a nation that is deprived of aspirations for building a Western-like democratic state.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201ccorpse ideology\u201d is persistently perpetuated by the Russian political and intellectual elites, appealing to the darkest facets of Russian people\u2019s consciousness and revealing its ugly brutality in Bucha and Hostomel. Although Russian society could choose from a variety of options offered by this ideology, they have chosen claustrophobic mausoleums, designed to protect \u201chistoric Russia\u201d from outsiders. These mausoleums have been erected at all levels in the form of \u2018Novorosiia\u2019 and the \u2018Russian Izborskii Club,\u2019 and their aesthetic appeal has grown substantially in Russia over the last ten years.<\/span><\/p>\n

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As the Russian advance on Ukraine\u2019s capital stalled, a campaign of terror and revenge against civilians nearby in Bucha began, survivors and investigators say. The New York Times visited the suburb after Russia\u2019s retreat to uncover the scale of atrocities. https:\/\/t.co\/7aVUpsqqdx<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/29iGhpdI09<\/a><\/p>\n

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 11, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n