RE: Russia Gallery - My Russian Taxi Driver
Wery well written! I've enjoyed reading your story. You have stated that you deeply believe last thing Russians want is another war. They don't want to have another war on their territory, that's certain. Nobody wants that. But I feel Russians take pride in their millitancy. After the losses of WW2 (and I have to denote that advancing Red Army made up for their losses by raping, pillaging and murdering in the countries they "liberated") Russia had a few wars with its troops involved. Clashes of Hungarian Uprising of '56, Afghanistan, Georgia and meddling with Ukraine.
But after all Russia is fascinating country with great people. There is darkness and the light as in every place. And its government is not more evil than that of US of A. And not less evil, though.
You are absolutely correct in your comment about the post-war era. I notice you live in Poland, and I hope I did no offend you, that was not my intention. Neither was it my intention to laud Russia as a paragon of victimhood leading to sainthood.
After the second world war, the US and the Soviet Union divided the spoils of a broken Europe like vultures over a corpse. For the US, it was the Marshall Plan which so generously “helped” a destroyed western Europe rebuild itself (and conveniently stop the spread of communism), for the Soviet Union, it was the Easter block. Capitalism vs. communism/socialism. NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact. The methods of the overlords looked very different. In the West, the mirage of capitalism and consumerism***. In the East, the stick, the occupying army. It is fair to say that the Eastern Bloc countries suffered a lot more, and I can understand that there is much residual bitterness towards what is now Russia. All in all, European countries were little more than pawns in the US and USSR game.
At the end of your comment you state that there is darkness and light in every place. I totally agree with you. Indeed, if we were to open the closet of every single country in this world, we would see a heap of skeletons in each one of them. I also believe that no amount of beauty or glory makes up for the skeletons, but neither can their beauty and glory be discounted because of the skeletons. However, at some point we have to say “Enough skeletons! Stop!”
These are interesting times. We are in an era when we can talk to each other at the grassroots level across large distances just by using our computers and grow in understanding and solidarity. With such ease of communication we can also denounce the abuses and the dirty schemes of our own governments, regardless of where we live.
***(It slowly morphed into the European Union, which in effect is now a soft politburo with large corporations and banks pulling the strings and imposing the will of the unelected few on member states that are expected to give up their sovereignty and slowly lose their identity as they meld into an amorphous European mass. In passing I am concerned when I see former countries of the Eastern bloc now subjected to the diktats of Brussels, and encouraged when I see some pushback against Brussels. As an aside, I am crossing my fingers that NATO will disband. But that’s a different topic.)
I didn't expect such comprehensive answer for sure. And no, you didn't offend me, don't worry about that. To be honest, I have very ambivalent attitude towards Russia. It's a fascinating country on many levels. I will praise Russian patriotism and the help for Syria in the fight against ISIL, but I know that Russia fights proxy wars as any modern superpower. I'm fascinated with its culture and people, who seem to be very hospitable (from what I've seen in street polls and vlog of Michał Pater about his travel to Kolyma and back, which I really reccommend), but then I think about the Red Army, still venerated in modern Russia, whose soldiers raped countless thousands of women in Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe at the end of WWII (not to mention the plundering of these countries). As you can see, it's virtually impossible to have non-emotional attitude towards Russia, especially as Central European.
By the way, do you know the films of Alexey Balabanov (Cargo 200, The Stoker, Brother...)? They describe perfectly the reality of post-soviet Russia. And they're pretty good as well.