Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Bandits? Not quite

The Ekho Moskvy journalist Grigory Revzin, one-time commissioner of the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, has been fired by the Ministry of Culture. With no reason given, at least Revzin says he hasn't been given one, though he intimated on Facebook that it was because of his stand of Crimea.

That stand is resolutely anti. And it was expressed in a blog post at EM called Ужас обмана, The Horror of Deceit, published by Ekho Moskvy. One of the passages in it has been quoted around the Internet:
Можно сколько угодно делать вид, что все думающие украинцы – это бандеровцы, фашисты, антисемиты и русофобы, но это же чушь, и мы знаем, что это чушь. Миллион человек, который выходил в Киеве против путинских законов Януковича – это что, бандеровцы? Ну вы кого хотите обмануть? Себя?
I'm seeing that translated as:
“One may pretend that all thinking Ukrainians are bandits, fascists, anti-Semites and Russophobes, but this is all utter nonsense, and we know that it’s nonsense. A million people come out on the streets of Ukraine against Yanukovich’s Putinist laws, and who are they? Bandits? Who are you trying to fool? Yourselves?”
But "bandits" is бандиты, bandity. This is бандеровцы, banderovtsy - Banderists, followers of Stepan Bandera, the WWII-era Ukrainian nationalist leader. It's a very different accusation.

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