Russia's Eugenic War
By Timothy Snyder,
Thinking about...
| 01. 08. 2023
When Vladimir Putin says that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, what he means is that Ukrainians will agree when force is applied. Russian war planning assumed that Ukrainian identity was a superficial implant, to be extirpated by a quick military strike that would physically eliminate a foreign-backed elite. That form of genocide proved to be impossible, because it was based on an erroneous assumption. Ukrainian self-understanding is spread wide and deep through the population of Ukraine, to the point where people take initiative themselves to help their country win the war. In this sense, Ukrainian identity is far easier to observe in this war than is Russian identity.
Indeed, the war raises the question: what is Russia? Putin has failed to answer this question in any positive sense. If anything, he has harnessed Russian identity to that of Ukraine, which is not at all what he intended. Judging from Russian mass media, including the all-important talk shows, the dominant Russian self-understanding at the moment is that of an "anti-Ukraine."
As the Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt and the Russian...
Related Articles
By Yelena Biberman and Jonathan D. Moreno, Bioethics Forum | 04.16.2024
A quiet biological revolution in warfare is underway. The genome is emerging as a new domain of conflict. The level of destruction that only nuclear weapons could previously achieve is fast becoming as accessible as a cyberattack.
Now for the...
By Eric Schmidt, TIME | 04.16.2024
Imagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics and treat previously incurable genetic diseases. Meat is lab-grown; enhanced nutrient grains are climate-resistant. This is what the future could...
CGS is excited to announce the launch of a new anti-eugenics initiative that has been years in the making. Legacies of Eugenics in Science, Medicine, and Technology kicks off with a monthly essay series published at the Los Angeles Review of Books that will expose and contest the reemergence of eugenic ideas in contemporary health sciences, human biotechnology, public health, and medicine. Community and campus-based events featuring the authors are also being planned. The project is a collaboration among CGS...
By Jorge Barrera and Rachel Houlihan, CBC | 04.09.2024
A Canadian DNA laboratory knowingly delivered prenatal paternity test results that routinely identified the wrong biological fathers — ruling out the real dads — and left a trail of shattered lives around the globe, a CBC News investigation has found...