Good point. I watched the events leading to the creation of the Ukrainian state on live color TV.

You got a better idea?

This did the opposite to me.

I’m a jew, with a lot of ancestors killed by Ukranian nationalists, so I’ll say something gere. Zelensky is a freak. He has stopped speaking Russian, which is the primary language of much (most?) Of Ukraine’s Jewish population, to show his allegiances.

Ukrainian ethnic nationalism has always been antisemitic, but it can accommodate a jew, if he dabases himself like Zelensky, and he’s deflected some racist energy onto ethnic Russians.

My question is how do you expect there to be capitalist restoration in Ukraine without ethnic scapegoating for the vast decline in living standards?

My wife will waver from being a tankie that knows the American narrative around Stalin is bullshit, to backsliding into some soft liberalism during peak election season. She’s really busy and doesn’t always have the mental space to ponder the connections between capitalist production, our social/legal order, and each new horror you see in the daily news, but this shooting has felt really tangible (she knows someone who knew Renee Good very well) to her and gave her a serious comnunist brainworm infestation.

Our breakfast conversation was like this: Wife - Me -

Sounds reasonable to me

There’s a weird current on the left where you sympathize with Latin American socialists and are willing to consider the material constraints they have to contend with, but you have nothing but disdain for Asian and Russian communists because they didn’t just snap their fingers and out of thin air create productive forces and a classless society. I guess it’s unexamined Cold War racism?

It is

His interview with Stalin is hilarious, and it’s very interesting to see Stalin calmly explain himself to a dunce.

I don’t know who this guy is, but since the collective west had to give up on the Chinese genocide story I’m guessing his secret films didn’t reveal very much.