Behind the Iron Curtain part 30 – Panslavism

These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.

A little cross-over with Slavic Saturday today, because it is not a coincidence that majority of the nations behind the Iron Curtain were Slavic nations. It was a direct consequence of history.

In early middle ages many Slavic nations were fairly influential – both Czechs and Poles were at the center of big kingdoms and even empires. As time went however, this changed and virtually all Slavic nations but one (Russians) were conquered and incorporated into empires and kingdoms ruled by other nationalities – German-speaking nations in the central and northern west Europe, Ottomans in the South and Russians in the east and north-east. The minority Slavic nations were treated poorly, to say the least, and some groups were slowly essentially absorbed by majority into non-existence. That is why there is no Polabian language today. In my country, Habsburgs attempted over these centuries to germanize Czechs in the same way and to eliminate Czech language altogether.

This has obviously failed and one of the reasons was so-called Czech national revival in nineteenth century. This was active political movement in Bohemia, aimed at what it says in the name – revival and preservation of Czech culture and Czech language. To this day some commonly used Czech words still have germanic origin, but some such words were replaced by artificial neologisms that were crafted by activists during this period and were good enough to take hold among the general populace.

In this period in time the so-called Panslavic Movement started, an active attempt to make Slavs stick together around shared identity. After all, “Slav” originates in essence from “he who speaks as I do”. The movement did and did not take off at the same time. It was and remained for long big sentiment in Czech and Slovak speaking lands, but not among Poles. Why is this? Because the movement was quickly dominated by Russia and there were many who advocated for all Slavs attempting to get under Russian leadership. But among the many Slavic nations, Poled had first-hand, centuries long experience with being ruled by Russians and they knew that they are not better off than Czechs under German rule and that voluntary russification is not the way to go.

But some sentiments took hold among the populace and when Communists took hold of power after WWII outside of Russia, the panslavic idea was incorporated into the party ideology. It was one of the reasons why Russian language was compulsively taught in all states behind the Iron Curtain, and the idea of Panslavism was part of school curriculum even towards the end of the regime short before its fall.

Today, when you look under some succesful video on YouTube made by someone of Slavic origin (like the video I shared before) you will find comments that can be interpreted as some expression of lingering panslavic sentiments in there. And as you might guess – correctly – there is some of this sentiment in me too.

But overall I think my yesterday’s post demonstrates clearly that the idea of Panslavism did not take very strong hold overall. The diversity among Slavs today is really, really big. For example on religion alone – there are Slavic nations that are predominantly Catholic, nations that are Orthodox Christian, nations that are Muslims and at least one nation which is decidedly Not Giving a Fuckist. And many of those nations tie their national identity strongly together with their religious identity which makes it hard to feel common bond with those whose religion is significantly different. Language similarities, even as big as between Czechs and Slovaks, are just not enough to build a strong common bond artificially after centuries of cultural divergence.

And thus when the last attempt to tie this identity together with political ideology of authoritarian communism failed, so did Panslavism fade into insignificance. The Iron Curtain was not strong enough to keep people apart. Unfortunately it was thus because it also was not good enough to keep them willingly together.

Slavic Saturday

The Brexit fiasco reminded me of a few events in recent history of Slavic nations, events that happened shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain – the breakups of former federate states from the eastern bloc. I am going to talk a bit about two of them, one of them is very typical and one of them is very atypical.

The first one I want to mention is the breakup of former Yugoslavia. I am no expert on this (I am no expert on anything), but from the outside it has followed up a fairly typical pattern. First multiple nations with historical tensions and grievances against each other were held together in one state where they were all supposedly equal, but in reality some were more equal than others. There was a lot of religious and national diversity, but it was separated not integrated diversity and so the tensions and grievances remained and bubbled under the surface. When the grip of communist regimes over their countries started to falter, nationalism and religious fanaticism started to rise their ugly heads in all of them, which quickly escalated into armed conflicts and full-blown wars, in Yugoslavia with genocide included. It is unlikely the wounds of this recent conflict will heal in foreseeable future as those ancient grievances got exacerbated and embedded in the minds of new generations. Even I know personally people who got displaced from their home country by this conflict, despite having had the luxury of not even being close to a military conflict my whole life.

The second breakup I want to mention is one that I have lived through – the breakup of former Czechoslovakia into two separate states, Czechia and Slovakia. This one was very atypical. It started differently – after the WWI when nation states were being formed, Czechs and Slovaks have voluntarily decided to form together one state, Czechoslovakia. An attempt was made to officialy blend them into one “Czechoslovak” nation, but this never took really hold – it was clear the two nations have their own distinct languages and cultures, and they retained them.

It was not all roses. Slovakia was significantly less developed both culturally (lower literacy) and economically than Czechia from the onset, and thus it was more rural and poorer. Unfortunately it remained poorer throughout the whole time the two nations shared one state (which was several generations with short disruption during WWII), because Czechs were a majority and power was concentrated in Prague. This has led to development of understandable resentment and nationalist tendencies among Slovaks, who wanted to take the reigns of their land into their own hands. And so they did. But not through revolution, or armed conflict, but through purely peaceful political means. Elected leaders of the two countries got together, discussed things, agreed on a separation, some money was exchanged, some treaties were signed, not too enthusiastically hard customs border was added and that was it. Most inconvenienced were people who lived along the border, who sometimes had to traverse the border on a commute to-from work, but nobody got actually hurt.

From what I know from history this is pretty rare, and my personal opinion about reasons for why this happened thus are:
1) One important factor here is the voluntary nature of the union in the first place.
2) Lack of historical conflict between the two nations. There was no past history of conflicts between the two nations anyone could remember, none whatsoever. Within the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Habsburgs, Czechs main grievance was against Germans (to which I will return in future musings) and Slovaks against Hungarians.
3) There was no religious fanaticism or even strong dividing religious identity involved. Technically both nations were predominantly catholic, but Czechs attitude towards religion could best be described as “meh” for almost a hundred years by that time, and Slovaks, whilst being more religious than Czechs, were no wannabe-crusaders either.
4) The party that initiated the dissolution – Slovaks – did not hold the economic majority. So Czechs had no economical incentive to hold onto the Slovak state. Quite the opposite, it was felt that it would be Slovaks who lose, so if the want to go, they should be left to do so..

I am not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this, or if any can be drawn at all, but I think both cases are worth remembering.

YouTube Video: Waking Up to Sam Harris Not Making Sense

Steve Shives puts out excellent commentary, I wish I had the time and strength to watch all of his output. This takedown of Sam Harris is particularly well done. But it is rather long, so I recommend having it in the background to some work, like doing dishes.

I was never a fan of Sam Harris as such. I thought originally he made some good points, even about Islam, and I thought that the metaphor about us striving to reach higher grounds on an imaginary “moral landscape” was very good from didactic standpoint.

Then I learned more about Islam, and I modified my beliefs accordingly. Sam Harris AFAIK did not. I still think that the moral landscape is a good metaphor for moral progress, but that is all.

Luckily Sam Harris, unlike Dawkins outed himself as an asshole before I spent a lot of money on his books.

Content warning: transphobia from 26:25-29:22 (there is also content warning in the video itself, but it is only textual so if you are only listening, you might miss it).

YouTube Video: Turning 2 hex nuts into a Diamond ring

Pablo Cimadevila Álvarez is paraplegic from childhood, after a car run him over at 4 years age. But his mother told him that if he cannot run, he still can swim – so he did. And he went on to  compete in several Paralympics and won several medals.

But besides sports he also designs and makes jewelry and had a smallish youtube channel where he shows his skill, which is really great.

This video of his went viral and his subscriber count exploded at the beginning of this year and very deservedly. Enjoy it – if you haven’t already. And if you had, it is re-watcheable (speaking from experience).

Very Curious Artform – Strandbeest

Whilst being sick, I came across this very peculiar video:

The creations look eerily organic and uncanny alive and I have found the creators site very interesting, or,  as Caine would name it “a time sink”. It is a fascinating blend of art and engineering. I think that in a virtual PC simulation it could be combined with real evolutionary algorithms these beasts could really “evolve” into even more bizzare shapes.

It also reminded me of Caine, I think she would love it.

Brexit means Brexit means ….????

Oh my, I have stumbled onto the twitter account of that bumbling nationalist buffoon Nigel Farage and my blood began to boil.

What really gets up my nose about this posturing pustule is that not only has he not done any meaningful work to clean up the mess he helped to make – he only stands on the sidelines, making potshots adding to it even more – but that he still pretends that the daft referendum has represented democratically the will of the people.

It has not.

The ever so vapid Theresa May likes to repeat “Brexit means Brexit”,  as if it were some meaningful statement saying something.

It is not.

A popular theme among the Brexiters is “people have spoken” as if people were actualy asked what they want.

The were not.

There is one important point ignored by Brexiters over and over again – the referendum did not ask people what they want. It does not represent the will of the people as they say it. It cannot.

The question posed was “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” as if it were a binary vote. But it is not, as recent shenanigans in British government shows, it is a very complex issue which cannot be reduced to a simple binary. There is only one way  to stay in the EU – but there is a multitude of ways to leave. There never was a majority to leave – there was a majority to remain and multiple minorities with mutually exclusive ideas about what leave means to them which were lumped together under one umbrella because some idiot did not think things through (or perhaps did? nah I think that gives these bozos too much credit). And now those mutually exclusive ideas about what Brexit actually, really, means bear fruit in the inevitable inability to decide on a deal and stick with it, as the different brexiter fractions keep posturing and demanding and not willing to compromise on anything, which is actualy necessary in any functioning democracy.

The only democratic way forward is to put to people a second referendum, this time with a list of multiple viable options, just like in the indicative votes last week. I do not think it will happen. I think the destructive self-centered assholes and those dupes that voted for them are going to get their no-deal, because that is the default option if they manage to disrupt and obstruct long enough – and they are determined to do exactly that.

And thus the whole country is piloted by these people towards a crash in one huge and completely unnecessary Brexikaze, a fanatical and futile act of self-destruction almost inevitably bound to make more damage to UK than to that which they seek to destroy.

Behind the Iron Curtain part 29 – Crime

These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.

Today, if I want to see the official crime rate in my country, I can just go to google and look it up. There are even handy pre-made comparisons with USA to be found. When I was a child, this was not the case, and essentially nobody knew what crime rate the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic actually has.

But it was not due to the nonexistence of internet as some might think. It was due to state’s secrecy about matters that might speak unfavourably about the regime.

Part of our education were occasional visits of schools by party dignitaries, local law-enforcement officers or border patrol officers etcetera. On several such occasions the talks veered into the territory of law trespassers and sometimes some kid has asked “how much crime X happens”? Invariably, the answer to this was “that is a state secret”. So nobody, except a few officials, had a chance to know pretty much anything specific.

But I do not want to talk about some generic crime rates today, I want to concentrate on one specific crime and how it was used to control people – unemployment, or, as it was officially called, “the crime of parasitism”. Under the regime, everyone had a right to a job, but that came with the duty to have a job. Every able person had a duty to work and it was literally against the law to not fulfill this duty.

And whilst it is reasonable to have measures to discourage or perhaps even punish slackers and hangers-on in a social state, that was not the only purpose and the only use of the law. Because since jobs were to great extent assigned centrally, the state had a huge control over what kind of job one can get, or whether one can get a job at all. And therefore political dissidents were sometimes pushed to jobs where it was clear that they are at odds with their qualifications and needs, so they could eventually be pushed towards joblessness – and thus criminalized. It was also a way to completely criminalize any form of sex work, which officialy did not exist so any sex worker was automatically a parasite without the regime having to acknowledge even the existence of sex workers publicly.

In TV there was a regular broadcast “Federal Criminal Headquarters Searches, Advises, Informats” where names and faces of searched criminals were shown so that general populace can help in finding them. I did not give it too much thought at the time – it was just one adult thing in the background – but I do remember hearing the phrase “is searched for the crime of parasitism” quite often. In retrospect today I wonder how many of those people actually were real moochers and how many were slowly and deliberately pushed out of society for being inconvenient to the reigning powers.

Slavic Saturday

My oral graduation exam in highschool* was not looked forward to by my Czech language and literature teacher.  All the others (Biology, Chemistry, German language) have expected me to do reasonably well or even excel, but he had some reservations. I already had a 1 for my essay writing, but the oral exam was essentially going to be about history of Czech literature, and I had great dislike towards learning that history.

The reasons for this were multiple. Firstly history was taught as a sequence of dates  and names to memorize, and I have always had very, very poor memory for numbers and names, despite having excellent memory in general. It is extremely difficult for me to remember birth dates, even of the closest people I know. Secondly I was never convinced by the argument that learning history is important in order to avoid repeating mistakes, because I saw very early on that the whole of history actualy consists of repeating said mistakes by people who knew about them. And thirdly I did not go on well with that teacher on personal level.

So my knowledge of Czech literary history and theory was very, very sketchy. I have honestly tried my best to memorize all the dull and unpalatable shit that I was supposed to know for the exam, but it just did not hold. About the only thing I had a really detailed knowledge about was Karel Čapek, because I liked his books and I have read everything he wrote that I could get my hands on. The teacher knew this and later on I learned that he actually expressly said that he is apprehensive of my exam because “Čapek is all (Charly) knows”.

I was lucky during my exam. I have drawn a question where the main component was some poetry shit I knew nearly nothing about, and secondary question was something vaguely connected to Karel Čapek. I took my chance when preparing my notes and during talking I managed to drift to Čapeks works just after a few sentences and I stayed there talking in minute detail for the whole 15 minutes the exam took. The teacher, relieved, has let me. The observing teacher (an independent assessor from another school) did not intervene either, for whatever reason. And so I got lucky and passed.

Actually, to say that I liked Čapek is an understatement, I admired him greatly. Čapek is in my opinion unsurpassed in Czech literature. Very progressive for his time, and, above all, a fervent pacifist. In today’s world he would probably be left of Bernie Sanders, but he would not be radical leftist in a real sense of the word “radical” not how it is viewed in Anglophone world today, where anyone arguing that not everything should be privatized is labeled as radical leftie. He might even be accused of centrism by true radicals.

Čapek was very outspoken critic of Nazi Germany and its policies, so much so that his personal safety was threatened by local Nazi sympathisers. Allegedly some friends recommended to him to carry a weapon for self-defense after he received death threats, but his commitment to pacifism was such that all he could manage to do was to carry a small starter pistol and when confronted about it he replied “I know that I won’t hurt anyone this way”. Many of his works center around criticizing authoritarian regimes, social injustices and war horrors, and there is absolutely no uncertainty about where he stood on social issues.

But he did not like Marx and communism. And neither do I. And to this day I think his essay “Why I am not a communist” bears weight. Some parts are of course not well aged after nearly a hundred years (the casual sexism f.e.), some parts can be seen as predictive of the massive social and scientific failure that was Russia under Stalin. If we are to learn from the mistakes of the past, I would everyone recommend to go, read that essay and think about it.

*the closest translation I can get to anglophone equivalents)

 

Even More Books…

Well, one more book. I have about twenty knife and swords books in the sights for future purchases, but I am still in the middle of reading the first seven I already have purchased. The flu-like illness that has been bugging me on and off for two weeks is unfortunately not very conducive to reading, especially to reading in a foreign language.

But Marcus was so very, very kind and has sent me this beauty, which I have not seen offered anywhere here. I must say it is a lovely book on first sight and it became a cherished possession instantly.

Now I had not planned on buying a book specifically about japanese knives, because I intend leaving making japanese knives to the Japanese, but there is no denying that they have a reputation of being superb tools so it won’t hurt to know about them. Quite the opposite, I am sure there is a lot of knowledge in this book that will be beneficial to me and I am very much looking forward to reading it.

However this makes me think a little – all the knives that I have made so far and that I intend to make in the future are my own designs and represent my aesthetical preferences as well as my style of using a knife. And whenever I look at works of other knife-makers (which I do not do very often), often I see that everyone develops a distinctive style. For example Bob Loveless has been renown for drop-point small hunting knives, Walter Sorrels sells mostly very pointy and straight, tanto-style all-purpose knives, Stefan Santangelo seems to like knives which have a slight forward angle between the blade and the handle with a little kink in it etc. I have no doubt that all these knives are perfectly functional and comfortable to use. There is no single “correct” knife design.

I find it remarkable how expressive can be a piece of craft that is essentialy just a sharpened sheet of metal with a piece of wood to hold it with, even when looking at just the outline.

Incidentally you can see two things in the last picture. Firstly, my left middle finger is nearly completely healed. There is still slight swelling and an area with tickling-burning sensation when touched, but it gets constantly, albeit very slowly, better. Secondly, in case you are wondering, that is my school pencil-case, about thirty years old by now.

YouTube Video: Tod’s Workshop

“You make one knife, you make another, and you never stop.” True words.

Tod Todeschini has put out a very short lovely video promoting his workshop.

I do not think that I will manage to pull it off with making knives for a living, to be honest. As in every endeavor, a bit of luck is required and the competition is tough. So even if I manage to do everything right (which I won’t, I never do), success is not guaranteed.  But I am definitively going to give it a try, because I am more than fed-up with being corporate drone.

And when I will be forced to seek employment again, I will do my best to avoid US owned shareholder companies like the plague they are.

Racialization of Muslims

In the light of the Christchurch terrorist attack, I think it is appropriate to try to put to rest, on this blog at least, the “Islam is not a race” argument so often thrown around in atheist circles. I admit to making this clueless blunder in the past as well, and really meaning it. But when arguing with actual unapologetic racists I had to point out some realities to them – like that Roma people are not in fact different race from Europeans, because we both stem from common and fairly recent Indo-European stock. And like that Arabs and Jews are also not different races from each other – and are not a different race from Europeans for the same reasons as Roma people are. That has made me to realize that racism is not, at least not only, what I thought it is, and that islamophobia is a real thing, alhtough the word itself can be used disingenuously (like any other word).

When I see a hijab (or a cross or any other overt religious symbol), I see a person being shackled by the throes of superstition, but still a person no fundamentaly different from you or I. But when a racist sees a hijab, they also do see an “other” in a very fundamental sense. Because to them race is not actually about biology (because biology does not support any form of racism) but about politics of power that merely uses biology and science in general to construct post hoc and ad hoc arguments for holding onto or acquiring said political power.

For the rest of the argument I give word to Philosophy Tube, who has made two excellent videos explaining the process of racialization of human groups and the whats, why’s and how’s behind it.