Tea at Trianon: Ukraine: The End of the Beginning?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Ukraine: The End of the Beginning?

From The Economist:

On February 27th, four days after the end of the Sochi Olympics, Russia in effect occupied Crimea, part of the sovereign territory of Ukraine, under the pretence of protecting its Russian-speaking population. Russian forces based at various installations on the peninsula seized airports, government buildings and broadcasters within hours, and blockaded Ukrainian military bases. In Sebastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet, local people celebrated their liberation in the central square, waving Russian flags to the accompaniment of Cossack songs, a Soviet-era pop group, and the fleet’s choir.

There was only one thing missing: the enemy. Everyone in Crimea. and now across eastern Ukraine, is talking about Ukrainian fascists, but nobody has actually seen one. “We have not seen them here yet, but we have seen them on television,” said Stanislav Nagorny, an aide to the leader of a local “self-defence” force in Sebastopol. The confusion was understandable: Russian television had unleashed a propaganda campaign impressive in both its intensity and cynicism, stoking ethnic hatred and exacerbating historical divides, mixing half truths with outright lies. Right-wing extremists and nationalists did take part in the revolution, but they do not control the government.

Russia struck when Ukraine was at its weakest—mourning the deaths of those who died on the Maidan, Kiev’s Independence Square, during an abortive crackdown by Mr Yanukovych, and struggling to form a new government. The Kremlin was greatly assisted in its task by Ukraine’s parliament which, despite the obvious tension between the Russian-speaking east of the country and the Ukrainian-speaking west, irresponsibly passed a bill (later dropped) that repealed the status of Russian as an official language on a par with Ukrainian. Parliament also failed to bring politicians from eastern Ukraine into the government. (Read more.)