WWII is the most important for the Russian identity. It is a part of Soviet mythology, but also for Putin. Russians didn’t have a history to be proud of, so this pride over a Russian victory was not manufactured by Putin, but it was harnessed due to the west treating Russia like a second-rate country.

Lol, what? Stomping the Nazis in WWII isn’t “Soviet mythology”, it’s historical fact. The real mythology is how WWII is portrayed in Western history where the roles of the USSR and China are severely downplayed in favor of elevating Britain and the US.

And “Russians didn’t have a history to be proud of”? That is such an odd thing to say, because if you have ever talked to Russians about their history, you quickly realize that most Russians are extremely proud of most of their history. And they have a lot of it too, not just WWII. From the Rurikids and the conversion to Orthodoxy, through Alexander Nevsky and the struggle against the “Tatar Yoke”, all the way to Peter and Catherine the Great, Russia has a very well established national historical identity.

Now, whether it’s always a good thing, being proud of their Tsarist history, that’s a different debate. Obviously as communists we’re not on board with glorifying feudal monarchies. But it is a fact that Russians deeply identify with their history, and it’s not simply because Russia was treated “like a second-rate country”. That would imply that it is rooted in resentment when that is not really the case for most of it.

There is resentment over the treatment of Russia by the West after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, because Russia firmly believed that it would now finally be accepted into the club of the “civilized Western world”, but this is a much more recent phenomenon.

The democratic opposition portrayed Russia as forcing its people to love the country.

Again, anyone who thinks you need to force Russians to love their country does not know Russians.

Also, lol at calling it “the democratic opposition” when this opposition’s sole raison d’être is to oppose the leader democratically elected (to the extent that it is possible to speak of “democracy” in any bourgeois system) by the Russian people…that’s not very “democratic” of them, is it? They should be called the comprador opposition, because they just want to sell the country out to the West.

This was not done by the government, it was an act of memory for loved ones. The sentiment was at the grassroots, the government just used it.

I think this is a perfect example of what I was talking about. Historical awareness and respect for the sacrifices of their ancestors does not need to be enforced or propagandized by the state. It has genuine grassroots support in Russia. They do this sort of thing out of their own initiative. The regular people are often more patriotic than the state itself.

And the reason for this is very simple: the Soviet Union lost 27 million people in the Great Patriotic War. Tens of millions fought.

Almost every Russian family has relatives who fought in the war. Either they themselves have lost one or more relatives or they know someone very close to them who has. This is a shared national trauma, much like the War of Anti-Japanese Resistance is for China.

Students started reading literature, state propaganda and journalists portrayed these centres as western imports. There is also an issue with the word “gender” as it doesn’t exist in Russian, so when it was used they had to say it the English way which meant it felt even more like foreign interference. This actually blew my mind.

This is a very important point. A lot (maybe even most, but i don’t know so i don’t want to make any unsubstantiated claims here) of languages do not in fact differentiate between gender and sex. German for example also doesn’t have that differentiation. This is not just a linguistic oddity. Language directly informs how a culture views the world and makes it difficult to accept concepts that can only be expressed in borrowed language.

This poses a problem for people who might have good intentions and want to engage in activism and education on behalf of marginalized communities, but naively assume that they can simply take western ideas and just import them one to one into their own culture, expressed in ways that make sense in English but come off as very clunky and alien in another language.

You see this sometimes with gender studies programs that get established in global south countries in collaboration with Western universities by researchers and academics who have studied in the West and want to bring those disciplines to their own countries. They have become used to using western terminology and a western cultural framing and as a result, despite their best efforts, they struggle to have their ideas break through to people in their own culture.

It is very important for activists to understand that being academically correct is not the same thing as being successful in changing hearts and minds.

It is essential that you don’t come off as trying to impose something foreign. You must somehow find a way to draw from your own people’s history and culture (and imo every country has some form of queer sub-currents in their own culture, in the form of literature, art, folklore, etc., because this is a universal human phenomenon, but one that expresses itself differently across time and geography).

Organizers were doubtful of having a parade as parades were an American concept.

This also feeds into what I was just saying. Instead of finding ways to center activism around authentically native forms of expression which are rooted in the history and culture of the country’s population, Western cultural products get simply imported wholesale instead, which then makes the entire cause associated with them come off as alienating and as a foreign imposition.

Certain forms of expression that are acceptable in one culture and not always going to be acceptable in another. China has a much more laissez faire attitude toward LGBT than Russia does, and that acceptance is constantly progressing which is great, but still pride parades have struggled to catch on outside of Hong Kong (and maybe occasionally Shanghai).

Honestly i think it wouldn’t work there even if it was a straight heterosexual pride parade, because the culture around how gender and sexuality are displayed in public is just different there.

That’s not to say that these things can’t change over time. Culture is never static and constantly evolves.

I think these demonstrations were stupid and only appealed to people in the west. They’re really weren’t convincing anyone at home.

That’s exactly the point. The West is always the intended target audience for that sort of spectacle. Especially when so much of the branding is done in English rather than the native language of the country. You see this with a lot of astroturfed protests, all across the world, from Hong Kong to Cuba and everywhere in between where the West wants to cause destabilization.

The point is to get a reaction out of the authorities, who often are themselves forced to respond because the actions by the protesters are so provocative that a large part of their own population (conservative attitudes are generally pretty widespread in most non-Western countries) is repulsed and outraged and the government feels pressured to put a stop to those activities, which can then be portrayed by Western media as authoritarian, justifying sanctions, hostility and regime change operations.

Most importantly these kinds of actions do nothing to actually help women or the LGBT community in these countries. It is in fact the opposite. By becoming associated, often against their own will, with over-the-top provocations and foreign interference, they become the targets of resentment which endangers their safety and sets back their struggle. Marginalized communities often get deliberately and cynically used in this way as sacrificial pawns in the imperialist agenda, and not just in Russia.

Rainbow imperialism is not the solution, and more often than not it actually backfires.

If you want to say anything about him please do!

He was a fascist and politcally irrelevant before becoming a NATO goon.

Organizers were doubtful of having a parade as parades were an American concept. In Russia, parades were only for the military.

Lol do they seriously think that Russia never has protest marches? Even in the same lecture, they reference the immortal regiment, which is a march (“parade”) and not a military one.