{"id":1563,"date":"2023-07-22T16:51:19","date_gmt":"2023-07-22T13:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/?p=1563"},"modified":"2023-07-29T14:38:59","modified_gmt":"2023-07-29T11:38:59","slug":"tatjana-zdanoka-the-demonization-of-russian-culture-as-a-motif-to-political-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/tatjana-zdanoka-the-demonization-of-russian-culture-as-a-motif-to-political-decisions\/","title":{"rendered":"TATJANA ZDANOKA: THE DEMONIZATION OF RUSSIAN CULTURE AS A MOTIF TO POLITICAL DECISIONS"},"content":{"rendered":"

On July 8-9 a two-day international conference entitled \u201dON THE VERGE OF A NEW WORLD WAR: EUROPEAN NATIONS MUST COOPERATE WITH THE GLOBAL SOUTH!\u201d was held in Strasbourg, France. It was organized by the International Schiller Institute, a Germany-based political and economic think-tank founded by Helga Zepp-LaRouch.<\/p>\n

Its organizers held it also as a necessary intervention against the Global NATO\u2019s summit held later in July in Vilnius, Lithuania. The conference organizers stated on their webpage that \u201dunless stopped the leaders of the West\u2019s military industrial complex will be plotting more measures which will bring the destruciton of humanity through thermonuclear war\u201d.<\/p>\n

The conference brought together 22 speakers from 14 different countries. The overall number of the people who attended the event was more than 200 people. The conference ended with the concert of classical music.<\/p>\n

Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave the conference keynote entitled \u201cLet a Garden Amidst a Million Gardens Bloom!\u201d<\/a> The founder of the Schiller Institute focused in her speech on the tragic consequences of the attempts by the trans-Atlantic \u201drules based order\u201d to maintain its hegemony despite the aspirations of \u201dthe rising nations of the Global South, freeing themselves from centuries of colonial servitude and asserting their right to economic development\u201d.<\/p>\n

Helga Zepp-LaRouche reminded of \u201dthe most dangerous moment the human species has ever faced, as we are extremely close to extinction as a species on this planet, because that would be the consequence of a global nuclear war\u201d. She attributed the imminence of the danger to mostly \u201dtrans-Atlantic forces who are unscrupulously playing with nuclear fire, while attempting by all means to exert unipolar dominance over the world when it has long since been moving in a multipolar direction\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of the key-note speakers of the conference was Ambassador of the People\u2019s Republic of China in France Lu Shaye. His presentation dealt with such issues as China\u2019s role for peace and development.\u201d He stated, \u201cAt present, changes unseen for a century are taking place at an accelerated pace, giving rise to unprecedented transformations of our world, our times and history.\u201d He characterized the world as divided into two camps: pro-peace and pro-war.\u00a0 He stated that the main question of the contemprorary time is which of the two camps will prevail.\u00a0 Ambassador Lu detailed the incredible opportunities Western nations would realize were they to cooperate with China and the Global South through participation in the multitude of development initiatives China is leading, such as the Belt and Road Initiative.<\/a><\/p>\n

Within the panel dedicated to such matters as culture to emancipate and expand the creative capacities of every human being and a dialogue among cultures and civilizations, MEP Tatjana Zdanoka in her presentation expressed grievance over the undeniable presence of russophobia as a motif to quite many political decisions.<\/p>\n

Tatjana Zdanoka delivered the following speech entitled \u201cOn Demonization of Russian Culture\u201d:<\/p>\n

We used to say, \u201cDon\u2019t bring me, My God, to live during an era of big changes.\u201d But we are living during an era of big changes now.<\/p>\n

The methods of management focused on unifying the population of Europe and the world according to values of \u201chomo economicus<\/em>\u201d\u2014the self-sufficient rational consumer\u2014are enduring a systemic crisis. \u201cThe economic person\u201d is not even an abstraction, it is a reduction, a flat projection of one of a set of measurements of any human being. The reality is that all people\u2014West Europeans, East Europeans, the Chinese, Indians or Russians\u2014cannot be reduced to the sum of their economic requirements and to functioning as consumers of goods and the benefits.<\/p>\n

Each person exists only in the interrelations and the relations with other people, and these communications are irreducible to mutually advantageous or mutually acceptable economic exchange. These are social and political communications\u2014belonging to language, culture, national or subnational community or to religious community. Both these communications and interests are unrealizable out of community, out of political space.<\/p>\n

The following phenomenon is evident: with the growth of integration on the contrary, awareness of the originality increases. There is the known mathematical rule: the process of integration must be accompanied by the process of differentiation. I\u2019m often used to quoting the words of Yehudi Menuhin: \u201cEither Europe will become the Europe of cultures, or Europe will die.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title of my intervention is \u201cOn Demonization of Russian Culture.\u201d There is no need to argue that the EU is infected with Russophobia. Here is just one single example out of thousands.<\/p>\n

You see in this slide the invitation to the discussion \u201cPushing Pushkin: the imperialism and decolonization of Russian culture\u201d co-hosted by Rasa Juknevi\u010dien\u0117, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Lithuania, and Rapha\u00ebl Gluksmann, MEP from France. The main idea promoted by the organizers and guests of that discussion is that Russia has always used and continues to use any work of culture as a \u201cweapon of colonization.\u201d The burning hatred in Baltic states, in particular in my country, Latvia, towards everything Russian is irrational and caused by a state inferiority-complex of national elites.<\/p>\n

At this moment, the Russian minority of Latvia is on the verge of a catastrophe under the blows of the decisions taken by the ruling politicians, who represent exclusively the national majority. Since last spring, the situation has deteriorated significantly. The war in Ukraine served as a signal for new persecution of the Russian-speakers of Latvia.<\/p>\n

Four years ago, my colleague Inese Vaidere, a member of the European Parliament from Latvia, denounced me to the State Security Service for publicly stating that Russians in Latvia felt like Jews on the eve of World War II (saying that we cannot compare [the two], the situation of Jews in Germany was worse). Now another colleague, Sandra Kalniete, calmly tweets that \u201cwe should take advantage of the \u201cwindow of opportunity\u201d that has opened to solve issues important to \u201cour people,\u201d first of all, the elimination of education in Russian and the demolition of the Monuments to the Liberators of Latvia from the Nazi invaders.<\/p>\n

Ethnic Russians make up 25% of the population of Latvia, the Russian-speaking linguistic minority makes up 37% of the country\u2019s population. This part of the country\u2019s population is of mixed origin\u2014some represent the descendants of the citizens of the Republic of Latvia from the period 1918-1940, and some represent the labor migrants of the Soviet era. There are approximately 25% of Russian-speaking citizens among the voters of the country, since 12% of Russian-speaking permanent residents remain in a status close to the status of a stateless person and cannot vote.<\/p>\n

When speaking about\u00a0a \u201cwindow of opportunity,\u201d\u00a0the Latvian colleague supposed, \u201c[W]e can now achieve our goals without much international attention.\u201d What are those goals? [They encompass] a full-scale campaign by the Latvian authorities to dehumanize, suppress and marginalize the country\u2019s Russian-speaking population. Latvian society is sinking in the wave of hate speech in the mainstream media and social networks. Columnists and commentators openly compare Russian-speaking compatriots with \u201canimals,\u201d a \u201cfifth column\u201d and \u201caggressive occupiers.\u201d One of the members of National Parliament (Saeima) of the ruling coalition party openly called for ethnic cleansing, aimed at increasing the proportion of ethnic Latvians in the country\u2019s population. The signatures are collected on a petition for the expulsion of \u201cdisloyal citizens\u201d from the country and deprivation of their Latvian citizenship, as well as on a petition for a ban on my party, the Latvian Russian Union, standing for the protection of the rights of Russian-speaking minority.<\/p>\n

The European Union nominally has an instrument to combat this kind of manifestation. This is the Council Framework Decision 2008\/913\/JHA of 28 November 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism. This document does not have direct effect\u2014it obligates the states to criminalize the respective acts in their legislation. And the Latvian Criminal Code has an article punishing incitement to national, ethnic and racial hatred. The crux of the matter is that this article is only selectively applied in my country.<\/p>\n

Appeals to the police and state security bodies regarding the use of hate speech and calls for violence against Russian-speaking residents of Latvia are fruitless. Consistent refusals to initiate criminal proceedings are coming in. At the same time, charges of allegedly inciting hatred against the titular population have been brought against several journalists writing in Russian, the most prominent of them being Yuri Alekseev and Vladimir Linderman.<\/p>\n

The Government has prepared a package of initiatives to destroy memorials dedicated to the soldiers of the Soviet army who liberated Latvia from Nazi occupation during World War II. About 150 thousand Soviet soldiers died in the battles for the liberation of Latvia. In almost every family of Russian-speaking Latvians and in many Latvian families, the memory of the victims of the war and the ancestors who fought on the side of the anti-Hitler coalition is preserved. Through this initiative, people are deprived of the opportunity to preserve the memory of their families.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the efforts of our party, complaints were submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee and a temporary settlement was requested, i.e., a ban on the demolition of eight monuments until the complaints were finalized. All these requests were granted. However, the government ignored the UN HRC\u2019s decision, stating that it was advisory in nature. During last summer and autumn, more than 70 monuments to the liberators of Latvia from German fascist occupiers were dismantled, despite the decisions of the UN Human Rights Committee obliging Latvia to refrain from demolition.<\/p>\n

I was among those who addressed the Committee. Fate so decreed that the land on which one of the monuments stood belonged to my ancestors, victims of the Holocaust. It is the monument to Alosha in the city of Rezekne, the capital of Latgale.<\/p>\n

In addition to the demolition of the World War II monuments, the authorities have recently taken on other sites. You see in this slide the sculpture of Pushkin in one of the parks in Riga which was recently demolished.<\/p>\n

The fight against monuments of the past continues with repressions against people living in Latvia today. Some of the elderly people are at risk of becoming illegals. The new retroactive norm provides annulment, in the case of bad knowledge of the Latvian language, of the permanent residence permission for those who acquired the citizenship of Russia. But most grave consequences of the use of \u201cwindow of opportunity\u201d affect the young generation. The ongoing destruction of minority education started in 1995 (higher education), continued in 2004 (secondary education) and 2018 (primary education). The latest amendments to the Education Laws in the Republic of Latvia are deemed to abolish the education in Russian language in total. It will apply both for public and private schools.<\/p>\n

I will conclude my intervention with the fragment of the video clip produced by our team in 2003 when the mass protests of Russian-speakers against education reform started. With the kind permission of Roger Waters, the fragments of the famous Pink Floyd clip were used.<\/p>\n

School education in native languages of traditional ethnic and linguistic minorities is one of the most important values of the EU. The Russian-speaking community of Latvia is one of such traditional linguistic minorities of the European Union like many others, and its rights should be respected.<\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/18\/on-demonization-of-russian-culture\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On July 8-9 a two-day international conference entitled \u201dON THE VERGE OF A NEW WORLD WAR: EUROPEAN NATIONS MUST COOPERATE WITH THE GLOBAL SOUTH!\u201d was held in Strasbourg, France. It was organized by the International Schiller Institute, a Germany-based political and economic think-tank founded by Helga Zepp-LaRouch. Its organizers held it also as a necessary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1567,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,16],"tags":[122],"class_list":["post-1563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-our-mer","tag-tatjana-zdanoka","post_format-post-format-video"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1569,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions\/1569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}