andie nachgeborenen:
as opposed to the civilized conduct exhibited by us troops in abu graib or the brits in malaysia or charlie company in my lai, not to mention certain devotees of beethoven, goethe, and nietzsche in some small polish villages and various tracts of western russia . . . . what makes you think that peasants have a monopoly on stupid, brutal, violence?
--
Whoever said that they did? God knows a lot of the peasant pogroms were instigated by the tsarist secret police, who I'm sure were pretty well-educated by and large.
But (talking about 19th-century Eastern European peasants here) this is a medieval society (emphasis on the word "medieval") that believed in witches, Jewish blood libel, that the tsar was god's representative on earth and so forth. Not much emancipatory potential. Easily manipulated and easily motivated to violence on their own ("the cows are dying! It must be the Jews! Kill them all or we will all starve!") Doesn't mean they were evil, just hopelessly ignorant.
To segue into another thread -- How could anybody expect that a democratic society be born in Soviet Russia in a generation, where people believed in the fucking Evil Eye?
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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