Juan Gelman, Lickspittle of Russian Imperialism

Juan Gelman can’t put pen to paper without revealing the ever-growing depths of his intellectual dishonesty. He doesn’t oppose imperialism, he opposes the foreign policy of the United States and is perfectly happy to endorse the blood-drenched expansionism of Russia as long as it inconveniences Washington.

In this article he mentions the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a kind of eastern rival to NATO without even hinting that at its summit last week its members went out of their way to avoid recognizing the “independence” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

He also speaks of Kosovo having been a province of Serbia. Marko Attila Hoare demolishes the supposed comparability of the cases of, on the one hand South Ossetia and Abkhazia and on the other, Kosovo, here Money quote,

Kosovo joined Serbia in 1945, it did so formally of its own free will, by a vote of its provincial assembly. Kosovo was, before Slobodan Milosevic’s abrogation of its autonomy in the late 1980s, already effectively independent of Serbia, which was a composite republic consisting of the two autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina and so-called ‘Serbia proper’ – each of which was a member of the Yugoslav federation in its own right, independently of the other two. There is absolutely no reason why the international community should, given the collapse of this federation, automatically assign Kosovo to the possession of an independent Serbia. Since Kosovo joined Serbia in 1945 on the understanding that it was simultaneously part of Yugoslavia, the only reasonable course of action would be to permit Kosovo’s assembly to decide what its status should be in the new circumstances. These new circumstances were, let us not forget, created by the leadership of Serbia’s deliberate and successful campaign to break up Yugoslavia and deprive all Yugoslavs – including the Kosovars – of their common homeland.

The rest of the post deserves a careful read.

Double Standards

The odious Juan Gelman has really excelled himself in this stomach churning article about the war between Georgia and Russia. He describes South Ossetia as,

…a territory which once formed part of Georgia and became an autonomous republic when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

It did nothing of the start. South Ossetia is part of Georgia occupied by Russia in 1991. It’s about as much an autonomous republic as Chechnia is, that is to say, not at all. Not one one country recognises South Ossetia as being anything other than a part of Georgia.

He then goes on to mention the,

…more than a thousand South Ossetians killed.

It’s good that he mentions them. Pity he says nothing about the uncounted thousands of Georgians since killed by the Russians both in South Ossetia and in those parts of Georgia which even he recognises as its sovereign territory.

He then goes onto compare the military tactics used by Georgia with those used by Nazi Germany  and offer a nearly complete defence of Russia’s behaviour; all of a part with his worldview which sees Washington as the Berlin of a new Reich.

Quite the most remarkable part is Gelman’s defence of Russia is the double standard it obliges him to adopt. Here and in numeous other articles, he has condemned Kosovan independence and had no hesitation in describing its leaders and government in terms bordering on the racist.  So, when the United States gives aid to a national minority in a foreign country and, in concert with other nations, helps it breakaway from the country of which it previously formed part and become independent, that’s  a massive crime of imperialism but when Russia exploits racial tension in a neighbouring country, not to help that territory achieve independence but to incorporate into its own national territory, that’s fine and dandy, all part of the noble fight against imperialism.

Independence

There’s a long and interesting article here by Jeremy Harding in which he doesn’t quite lament that Kosovo has separated itself from Serbia. Interesting though it is, and it has loads of information about the many problems which the new state is suffering from, I feel it rather misses the point.

Once a a group of people take it into their heads that they are unified by a national identity and that that identity is being prevented from achieving its full expression by another group of people, then that feeling/belief/identity usually trumps all other arguments.  Unemployment and corruption are very important issues but they are not at the races compared with the right to take your decisions while consulting only people that you regard as like you and without having to accept interference from those you regard as trying to oppress you.

Another important point is that new states, particular ones that have become independent through the use of force, are quite often basket cases in their early years.  When Ireland won a substantial degree of freedom from Britain in 1922 it quickly turned into an economic quagmire whose political and economic stability was founded on mass emigration. And there was the ever-growing power of the church, the banning of books and the gentle squeeze put on Protestants to consider too.  We made a hames of independence for a long time but it was our own hames.