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Radio War Nerd EP #430 — Ukraine From Maidan To War, feat. Volodymyr Ishchenko (Patreon)

Published:
2024-03-07 00:03:58
Edited:
2024-03-07 00:06:04
Imported:
2024-03
Tags:

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Content

Guest: Volodymyr IshchenkoRecorded: March 5, 2024

We talk to Ukrainian writer/researcher Volodymyr Ishchenko about Ukraine's terminal condition in the post-Soviet era, the material conditions driving Ukraine towards the abyss, and how the war serves Russia's ruling class interests.  

Buy Volodymyr's book Towards The Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War (Verso).Follow Volodymyr on Twitter.

Total time: 1:28:02

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here.

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Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

NYCM&AHole

I enjoyed my legal studies at Freie Universität

Sean Emery

Can you guys raise the volume just a tad on your uploads? I have trouble making out what you guys are saying when I listen and go for walks, and I don’t have this issue with music/other podcasts. Thanks! Great episode

architect

At 14:30, what’s the book that he mentions?

Ernesto

Great episode, these theoretical insights help understand the grim realities of war. Please, consider inviting Artemy Magun. He is a Russian scholar who focuses on the reactionary nature of recent revolutionary processes, so he might be a good compliment to Volodymyr. Here is Magun with Yasha and evgenia https://yasha.substack.com/p/negative-revolution-with-artemy-magun

Blorst of times

I also missed the name of the book about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Can you please provide title.

T

I can’t wait for those home grown climate change Rochester mangoes and bananas!

brrrskrrrt

haven't listened to the epp yet but based on that description I'd blind wager that it's Collapse by Vladislav Zubok

greg

"Warming planet, dying planet" Dude the planet is not dying! Please emancipate yourself from this malthusian doom narrative!

Ander Pierce

I Agree. I take climate change and the threat it poses to human wellbeing seriously, but life has thrived on earth in MUCH hotter climates. 3.8 billion years of evolutionary history and we've seen much hotter and much colder. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of species (animal and plant) which will struggle or die out due to anthropogenic climate change, but there will also be a lot which don't die and reorient to capitalize on the newly available niches.

CR

I thought it was to work the factories (what factories?) or maybe I didn’t want to know, but I saw a theory that Ukraine’s draft floor of 27 is because if 18-26 year olds die en masse, Ukraine dies as an ethnicity and nation because the demographics are so bad. And that is terrifying. Thinking back to the episode on the War of the Triple Alliance, and Paraguay losing 95% of its men and boys, I can absolutely see the maniacs running Ukraine doing something equally stupid to satisfy NATO’s lust for their blood and the desire to wage war against Russia to the last Ukrainian.

greg

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. If you're feeling sturdy, I encourage you to interrogate your understanding of the AGW story. Judge the evidence for yourself! For example, look at the ice core data — which comes first: the temperature increases or the CO2 increases? And if you're feeling especially ambitious watch a William Happer talk. 1luv ✌️

Hans Anders

Nog a bad guess. But I think they were discussing Georgi Derluguian - Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography

Mark Ames

Yes, Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus by Georgi Derlugian.

Lord-Admiral of the Pyrenees

We will kill off all the species in earth before we go down so there will be hardly nothing left

LPO Crane Jefferson

I feel like NYC is turning into Seattle. It feels like flooding and torrential downpour is likely to happen every few weeks.

RT

Nonsense. Climate change is absolutely a near term threat to global civilization. The rapidity of change with increasing stress to agricultural output and concomitant population movements will destabilize vast stretches of the world. See RWN #182 w Christian parenti. And things have only accelerated since then; Jan 23-Feb 24 first year average above 1.5 C as reported in the BBC and elsewhere, SHATTERING sea surface temperature records for the last few months, record wildfires in Texas, etc etc TL;DR you’re a fucking poltroon if you take such a flippant attitude towards climate change

Ander Pierce

Never heard the word 'poltroon' but attitude is more or less meaningless. I can give myself ulcers worrying about it and have exactly the same impact as I do when going about life 'flippantly'. In either case, global disruption, mass famine, societal instability...all very different from a dying planet. It will take a lot to stamp out man, a lot more to stamp out bugs, and even more than that to stamp out bacteria. While any of those exist the re-evolution of complex life on earth is essentially inevitable over a long enough time frame.

Ander Pierce

Dig your vibe and courteousness Greg, and I've deeply interrogated AGW theory and an firmly in the 'its happening' camp. A quick trip to NASA's historical carbon ppm graph and temperature records is extremely enlightening, and their sources for those records are well sourced! Hope your day treats you excellently.

a clash of purple

Yeah, the danger of climate change is not that the planet will heat up so much that it bursts into flame and that kills everyone. The problem is that it exacerbates humanity's political crises, which are already an existential threat. The attitude "well I won't worry about that because it's too big/esoteric a crisis" is a big part of the problem, on a macro scale. That kind of blase thinking is a luxury that only the comfortable and secure can afford. People whose lives are threatened by these issues take them very seriously, much moreso than the people who actually have the money and power to do something about it. Nobody outside the global ruling elite should guilt trip themselves about it, nobody expects any individual person to fix any of these problems, but personally I'm not comforted by the idea that humanity might destroy itself but "life will go on." I don't really care about life in some abstract sense, I care about myself and my family, and we all happen to be human beings.

a clash of purple

I can't really imagine anyone in this conflict being able or willing to sustain that level of casualties. The War of the Triple Alliance dragged on the way it did because Solano Lopez flatly refused to surrender, right up until he himself was killed. I don't know if I can imagine Zelenskyy facing a bunch of Russian troops, being told to give up, and responding by pulling out his gun and yelling "I die with my country!" I think he values the lives of his people more than Solano Lopez did, even if that's not saying much.

David Andrews

Guys, you know I'm a big fan of your work, but this was one of your worst guests and poorest interviews. It was as if you did this show for yourselves and not for us. I learned nothing useful.

Ander Pierce

Well that's sort of what I'm getting at Purple. You say nobody expects any individual person to fix any of these problems, and in the same breath that a blase attitude towards it is blase thinking only the secure can afford. In my experience by and large a large swathe of the people most vulnerable to AGW don't believe in or understand it, and most of those that do understandably choose to ignore it due to a lack of agency. We're in an awkward spot where meeting the needs of several billion requires a lot of fossil fuels energy (the energy transition alone needs a ton of fossil energy to mine and refine ores), where rampant consumption has unstoppable momentum, finance capital is a similarly unstoppable force, and the world's elite seem dead set on mismanaging anything they touch and butting heads over geopolitical malarkey. So maybe I am a little blase about it, but more as a response to a lack of agency than out of apathy.

Ander Pierce

I enjoyed the guest, but even under the hypothetical that they did the article for themselves and not their membership, what's the issue? We're 430 episodes deep into a great series, let the Nerds do what they do xD

Aiden

Thank you!

Aiden

You will be a waiter at their table of success

Tommy York

Unrelated to episode: Started reading Erdogan Pizza last couple days and it’s really stellar. I’ve only listened to the podcast for a couple years, John’s travel writing is deeply witty and entertaining.

Dorst Savijeski

I don't agree with this criticism, having someone who is actually from Ukraine give thoughtful context to its modern history was great.

Alex Muir

Ishchenko highlights the fragmentation of the ruling (and subordinate) classes in the post-soviet space, preventing political consolidation. Which means Russia & Belarus could have ended up like Ukraine. Kind of makes tough leaders like Putin & Lukashenko putting their oligarchs on a short leash look like a very attractive alternative, in the absence of a strong Left, doesn't it? Who'd want to live in a Ukrainian style "democracy" in that case?

greg

Fun conversation! Appreciate the good-natured exchanges, A Guy ———— If there were one point I could invite reflection on it would be: "What's the correct, optimum level of CO2 in the atmosphere?" ———— I feel like the parameters of the larger discussion are somewhat ill-defined. Consider that, back in the 70's, the consensus was that we were on the precipice of an ice age. When that didn't happen, the explanation was that it's because of anthropogenic warming. Now, it's evolved into climate-change in general? But no one disputes that there have been changes to Earth's climate, right? The evidence of climatic variability is written unambiguously into geological record, and memorialized in every cultural tradition on Earth. So what are we actually saying? Here are some questions I'd humbly propose as being useful in tethering inquiry: * What's the correct, optimum level of CO2 in the atmosphere? * The Little Ice Age ended around the mid-1800s. When did that natural change stop, and give way to anthropogenic change? * Why do ice core data show that increases of CO2 lag temperature increases by an average of 800 years? Shouldn't it be the other way around? And to quote eminent physicist, Frederic Dyson: "Is every extreme weather event a confirmation of anthropogenic destabilization of climate? Did we not have terrible floods, hurricanes, tornados, fires, etc before the combustion engine? Do I really have to stop using my gas-powered fleshlight?" ———— As people who are interested in these issues, perhaps y'all will be familiar with The Club of Rome, and their seminal publications "The Limits of Growth" (1974) and "The First Global Revolution" (1991) — and the role of those works in shaping our current international climate policy framework, most notably the IPCC. I invite you to consider this excerpt from "The First Global Revolution" (p 115): > In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill...All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself. I worry that there are some extremes in the larger discourse which treat the matter as a vehicle for a projected, generalized misanthropy — and an opportunity for self-flagellation + hostility towards the heretical "others" in a contrived culture war. Whenever I find myself blaming other working-class people for stuff, I feel like I've fallen into a trap. Cheers

Magic Mikey

I feel quite the opposite. Fantastic guest and some of the deepest analysis I've seen.

Magic Mikey

I've been really critical of RWN's coverage of the Ukraine conflict since 2022. BUT I'm glad I stuck around for this incredible, insightful guest and the intelligent questions you put to him. A real tour de force.

CR

The "planet" as far as Westerners are concerned is dying, which is all that matters. Of course, life will grind on long after humans.

CR

I don't readily think he will, but I also think that it doesn't really matter because more men will flee, never to return, and the ones who remain are statistically likely to harden and radicalize even further as their numbers fall. Zelensky wouldn't fight to the last Ukrainian, but the Neo-Nazis who will eventually replace him, one way or other, will.

CR

Yes. Basically.

CR

I thought this was a joke about 431 at first.

Ezra de Leon

Late to the conversation but maple trees need below freezing temperatures at night and then above zero temperatures during the day before the sap starts flowing. Historically, this happened during springtime but climate change has introduced erratic changes in temperature, such as a couple weeks of balmy weather followed by a few days of almost winter conditions. The trees can't "read" the signals and so the sap doesn't end up flowing. Many places in Quebec (and probably also Vermont and upstate New York) have a tradition of "sugar shacks" in the countryside that people travel to in order to eat foods made with maple syrup - not just pancakes but also cookies, candies, maple bacon, and so on. These places are having a hard time staying open and this will probably lead to a lost cultural tradition in the near future.

Eric Snow

To quote George Carlin: "The planet is fine. It's human beings who are fucked."

PW

I think that's why it's called Climate and not Static.

Mark Ames

Yeah we have a lot of maple farms and sugar shacks here, had no idea how big NY is in the maple syrup industry. Some places are really fun for the kids, they get to tap trees, watch the sap flow, watch the sap being boiled down, see how early settlers and Natives made maple sugar bricks, etc. We didn't do it this year for the reasons you said.

MoldyTolge

And black flies big enough to carry a deer away