European Neighbourhood

Pro-Western fifth column in Russia by default

It’s not just a question of how much military power a given side to the conflict has at its disposal; it’s not even a question of whose economy is stronger. It’s more a question of which side prevails culturally, spiritually, or psychologically (psyche is Greek for soul or spirit).

Consider. The names of the months in Germanic and Romance languages, i.e. languages spoken in the West, have Latin origin. The names of the same months in Russian… also have Latin origin. Russians could have named the months giving them names in their native language, as the Poles or Czechs did; or they could have created the names of the months by drawing from Greek. The latter would have been more natural and understandable than taking those names from Latin: after all, the Russian principalities modeled themselves on Byzantium (a state that, although derived from the Roman Empire, used not Latin but Greek). Medieval Russians referred to Byzantium (and rightly so! and correctly so!) as to the Greek state; medieval Russians took Christianity from Byzantium; from the Greeks – Rus’ took (and slightly modified) the alphabet and modeled its own political system on Constantinople, which it called Tsargrad (Царьград) or Carigrad – the city of the emperor or the city of emperors. And yet, Russians adopted the names of the months from Western languages. And not only the names of the months. Those who know the language know how many German and French and now English words have found their way into Russian. These foreign inclusions are foreign to the point that they are not even declined by grammatical cases, although all native words are. Why are we talking about this? Is it because we are interested in proper names or etymology or languages in general?

We talk about it because language reflects the soul of a nation. It’s not the Germans, French or Americans who have Russian words in their own languages, but, conversely, the Russians have plenty of French, German and English words in their language. This, in turn, attests to who has an overwhelming cultural, philosophical, mental, spiritual and psychological influence on whom. It shows who really rules over whom. This is a better litmus test for demonstrating who is subject to whom than finances, the economy or military conquests. Why? Because financial or economic advantage can be coerced, because military advantage is demonstrated through the use of brute force. In the case of language, it is quite different. No one outside Russia told Russians to adopt foreign words! They did it on their own, willingly, and they did it because they recognized the superiority of Western civilization. Patriotic Russians may deny it, but it is the language that is hard evidence that Russians have always considered themselves inferior.

To get an Oscar (or a similar award given in the West) is the dream of every Russian film director; to get a Nobel Prize for literature (or a similar award given in the West) is the dream of every Russian writer. Does any Western film director or Western writer dream of getting an award in Moscow or St. Petersburg?

It is the above-described sense of the inferiority complex on the part of Russians that makes rich Russians buy properties in the West and keep their money in Western banks. In other words, rich Russians are at the mercy and disfavor of the West, which can take these estates and accounts from them at any time it sees fit. Such Russians with estates and bank accounts abroad constitute a fifth column within the Russian Federation. Russians who have accounts in Western banks, who have properties in the West – what’s more – whose children study at Western universities do not think in Russian, whether they want to admit it or not. These Russians are a powerful force, scattered about the country, that works to the advantage of the West and to the detriment of their own homeland whether they want to admit it or not. Continue reading →

War over Minds

Military hostilities used to be the last argument of sovereigns. The barrels of canons would bear the inscription ultima ratio regum (in France) or ultima ratio regis (in Prussia). This has changed a little bit. Since warfare has become a very costly venture and especially since a number of states possess nuclear weapons whose possible use might wreak unimaginable havoc and render large swathes of territory useless for the victorious power, present-day sovereigns have resorted more and more to soft tactics, which are – despite their name – as efficient or even more efficient than firearms. Did not the Soviet Union collapse due to the soft penetration, infiltration and subversion applied by the West? The collective mind of the Soviet leadership was in the cross hairs of the financial, philosophical, political and cultural impact directed against it by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and smaller players. The result was more than impressive: neither Charles XII of Sweden in the 18th century, nor Napoleon Bonaparte in the 19th, nor Adolf Hitler in the 20th succeed in weakening Russia to anything remotely comparable with what happened with the Soviet Union in 1991 and thereafter. The territory of the superpower was significantly reduced, new independent states were carved out of it, and Russia herself was plunged into a decade of economic chaos and political turmoil in their magnitude surpassed only by the civil war of the early twenties of the 20th century if one only considers modern history. The battle for the minds is certainly not as spectacular as the clash between tanks or dogfights of aircraft, and it certainly is fought over a much extended period, but nonetheless its outcome is more than satisfactory.

The Chinese leadership drew its lessons from the disintegration of the Soviet Union and they have held a tight grip on the state matters before and especially since the 1989 Tiananmen Square riot. Beijing is well aware of the psychological infiltration, penetration and subversion targeting China’s population from abroad and so it has cut off the national internet from the global web and recently has cracked down on the entertainment industry, took control of the computer games and TV programmes to which the Chinese youth is exposed. That’s another instance of the battles for the minds. The European Union is not lagging behind in matters concerning psychological war.

In 2015, the EU’s East StratCom Task Force rolled out its flagship project – as they call it themselves – named EUvsDisinfo, a body that “identifies, compiles, and exposes disinformation cases originating in pro-Kremlin media that are spread across the EU and Eastern Partnership countries.” Within this project, in one of the tabs, news items originating from the sources just mentioned are quoted – white on black – and a disproof is presented: black on orange. In other places a whole analysis is offered, an analysis that devastatingly critiques a text recognised as the Kremlin’s propaganda. Surveying the hundreds of allegedly debunked pieces of information and their sources, one can see almost immediately that EUvsDisinfo has been targeting Sputnik most of the time. Anything that is written against the Post-West, the European Union, the United States, even individuals like George Soros in the media associated with Moscow or regarded as close to Russia comes under attack from EUvsDisinfo, which – naturally! – acts as an absolutely objective source of truth. Consider the following example. Continue reading →