Russia, Georgia, Finland and the history of victim-blamers
Some of these folks, like U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Joseph Davies, were simply useful idiots who just never met a tightly controlled society they didn't like. Others, like the writer Dalton Trumbo, were actual yeggs getting their orders from the Kremlin. Collectively, they provide us a shameful but valuable lesson in the dangers of thug apologism, as we try to assess how much, if at all, the Georgians are to blame for their own predicament.
I wish I could say today's Los Angeles Times were immune to kneejerk anti-westernism, but back in the days before Otis Chandler, the paper was still under adult supervision. Here's how the ed board described Stalin's invasion at the time:
I'm wondering how it all went down between the Georgian psychologist right-hander Nino Salukvadze and Russian army right-hander Natalia Paderina in the Olympic Women's 10m Air Pistol finals. Didn't catch it.
But don't you see? According to the Rober Scheer/SF Chronicle link, it's all so "convenient to forget that Stalin was a Georgian, and indeed if Russian troops had occupied the threatened Georgian town of Gori, they would have found a museum still honoring their local boy, who made good by seizing control of the Russian revolution. Indeed five Russian bombs were allegedly dropped on Gori's Stalin Square on Tuesday." Convenient, convenient, convenient. Sorta puts the Finland analogy to bed. Or not.
That's stupid, though, because I read that in the cyber-war on the internet, the Russians were hacking into Georgia's Parliament network and replacing everything with pictures of Hitler and Saakashvili. Seriously.
Posted by: Jason S. | August 16, 2008 at 09:15 PM