By announcing the sending of arms to Ukraine and the increase in Germany’s military budget, Chancellor Olaf Scholz broke with his traditional pacifist policy. For the writer Stephan Wackwitz, this historic decision, which he supports like a large part of the population, is above all pragmatic.
February 27, 2022 is one of the very few days – so far there have only been regarding ten in my life – when I was totally on board with my government and totally in my place in my city. A cold winter sun. Seagulls in the pale blue neighborhood sky [berlinois] from Kreuzberg. I had met friends at the Fountain of Neptune to demonstrate once morest the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The previous weeks had brought developments every day that were unthinkable just a few weeks ago.
It all started on a Monday night [le 21 février] by a long moment of amazement in front of the television. Vladimir Putin was giving a history lesson. He was comfortably settled – almost a little sprawled, at least very ostensibly relaxed – in front of telephones and flags in a strange studio apartment resembling the reception of a hotel. Groaning and sighing like a pissed off professor – as if he had to explain something very simple to a stuffy class for the fifteenth time – Putin turned a historical controversy into real news.
In September 1922, Lenin and Stalin had argued over the future status of the republics within the Soviet Union, which was to be officially founded in December. The first was in favor of principled equality for all the republics – and, above all, they should have the right to leave the Union. On this Monday in February 2022, exactly one hundred years later, Putin declared himself ready to correct Lenin’s “mistake” [et à empêcher l’Ukraine de rompre ses liens avec la Russie]. We like to tear down statues of Lenin in Ukraine, he said. Well, okay, fine – but let’s do it right. He was going to show Ukraine what real anti-Leninism was.
Installed in front of the post, cold in my stomach, I became aware of one thing: the last political leader to express himself with such an awareness of history and at the same time such brutality, such vulgarity, such cynicism, it was Stalin. No one had done it since.
“Don’t leave Ukraine to fend for itself”
For two days, we might imagine that by shaking hands with Stalin a century away, Putin was only spreading his conception of history. This illusion was dissipated, however, when I grabbed my laptop from my bedside table on Thursday morning, February 24: the invasion of Ukraine had begun. Lenin’s decision had been reversed with bombs, tanks, military vehicles, field hospitals and special units. Putin sided with Stalin 100 years late
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Stephen Wackwitz
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