Until Russia returns to democracy, the social and moral pariah it was after the Hungarian Revolution and the invasion of Czechoslovakia will remain.
The newspapers say that the Russians repeatedly bombed the large Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, causing a dangerous fire. And in the end they occupied it. The Russian Defense Ministry, quoted by Tass, argues that this happened because the Russians were provoked by the Ukrainians. And obviously the thesis made many of us smile. It’s like the Mike Tyson of the good old days knocked me out with a straight and then claimed that I provoked him. But it doesn’t matter what actually happened. For once, the Russians might even be right, and that would not change an indisputable fact: in wartime, what the Russians say is worth zero.
I talk about it because I have seen that many people tend to equate what Putin says with what Westerners say. They might argue that if I have more faith in what Westerners (and even Ukrainians) say it is because I am biased; out of pure prejudice; because I decided that in any case, the Russians are wrong. And anyway, I don’t even know how things actually went. And on paper, the thesis is perfectly plausible. But if a long life requires walking with a cane, it also serves to have a long experience. And where experience does not arrive, culture and history arrive.
Just today I read a tasty article by Ferruccio De Bortoli about Gianfranco Pasquino. De Bortoli narrates that a girl, conversing on the train with the political scientist, not knowing him and being surprised by the acuteness of her answers, asked him: “But how do you know all these things?” And that, with amused coquetry: “I am cultured”.
I can’t say “I’m educated” as much as Pasquino but I know some things. The truth is favorable to those who are right and unfavorable to those who are wrong. It is favorable to whoever wins and unfavorable to whoever loses. So in war any government would love to tame the news. But in a democracy it is not always possible: the principle of freedom of the press. The state will certainly be able to react against defeatism and even introduce mild censorship, but if a radio says that a certain battle has been lost, and has actually been lost, the state cannot intervene. Not only out of respect for the freedom of the press, but also because the news would be confirmed by other sources.
Things are unlike in a dictatorship. Here the government can do anything: it can arrest anyone who allows himself to take to the streets to declare himself against the war; he can jail anyone who gives real but uncomfortable news, he can crush those who criticize the Boss, even just a little. Like this imposes his version of events and woe to those who dare to declare that it is a matter of lies. It comes to close newspapers, radios and televisions in the odor of dissent, as happens today in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Black out.
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