Maryana Naumova is a Russian bodybuilder who holds the record as a 15 year old girl who has benchpressed 375lbs. She is called the Red Princess of Barbell. And is a member of the Communist Sports Club and a strong supporter of the Russian Communist Party. She recently visited the DPRK. This was reported in the Moscow Times as well as on the official KPRK site
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/arti ... 04624.html http://kprf.ru/activity/healthy-life/132310.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddfINKviL8k Here she is being honored by Zyuganov http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW1Ztz1rzkQ Kamran Heiss
Nice girl. I like the comments in the Moscow Times (usually an almost impossibly liberal newspaper), especially the one where the guy asks 'whatever happened to people thinking for themselves?'. Many Russians definitely have their own ideas about North Korea, and not just communist affiliated ones either.
"The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG
What are some of the prevalent opinions on North Korea in Russia? And what is the position of the Communist Party (the statements by this girl give me some ideas on that one)?
It's interesting to get views from other countries and cultures on other places. We think we're all so clever, free, and cosmopolitan, and we think that the filter bubble curated by Google and Facebook gives us the entire world with just the push of a button, but in fact there's a whole world out there. According to most of the content in this bubble, North Korea is a hellhole which you would only visit for the sense of adventure, where entrance is a bureaucratic nightmare and you get watched by minders and your hotel room gets bugged. Of course, this is always a combination of facts and imagination, but you have to make an effort just to find out that this perspective is not a universal truth. This reminded me of an old travel report from North Korea by two Russian guys which I found on SE years ago (posted by the incredibly thought-provoking user arif_moin, who just disappeared some day), and which first made me think about this. It struck me how different these guys were from all the American bloggers who fantasised about bugged hotel rooms and converting their North Korean guides to liberalism. Luckily I was able to find it back: http://www.enlight.ru/camera/dprk/index_e.html Anyway, I salute this girl for her open mind and her lifting abilities. If only we had more 15-year-olds like that. No. 14 wrote: Someone asked me about that by PM recently. This was my response: Quote: I can only add that our academics and publicists are also more prone to making excellent counterpoints to the 'Google/Facebook bubble', as you put it (excellent image by the way). Just a few days ago famous translator and commentator Dmitri Puchkov had a discussion with historian Boris Yulin about the DPRK, where the latter pointed out all the standard arguments most communists here can make to support the country -i.e. its political and economic superiority to the south for most of the Cold War, its mechanized agriculture and resulting high productivity in agriculture given its climate, its betrayal by the USSR in the late 1980s and the resulting fuel and food crises, etc. He also notes the inequities of the massive blockade faced by the country, the comparative preferences enjoyed by the south (include a $60 billion bailout loan in the late 1990s after the crisis of the Asian Tigers), and the ridiculousness of comparing the successes and failures of the 'capitalist' South and 'communist' North for these reasons. Moreover, Yulin mentions that even today, in fields such as advanced metallurgy, base sciences, nuclear physics, space-related sciences, etc., North Korea proves itself capable of achieving a great deal despite the tremendous challenges, and despite the economic and military blockade and provocations. He also mentions the ridiculousness of painting North Korea as this scary, militaristic and aggressive power, given that it faces the combined might of South Korea, Japan and the United States, and is often provoked by these countries. "The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG
Very informative stuff. As far as I know, the only western author with similar views is Bruce Cumings, whom I still have to read sometime.
The Russian travelogue guy talks about his travelling companion in the introduction: Quote: I would imagine that Soviet scholarship at the time (and perhaps Russian scholarship today?) would also paint a different picture, not to mention the academic exchange with the DPRK that was/is possible. No 14 wrote: I think so, yes. Yulin hints at this, noting that much of what he knows about the DPRK is based on discussions with friends and colleagues in the Russian Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, you won't see much (if any) of these Asia specialists' views published in the English language. I have achieved a pretty good understanding by now of how non-liberal, antiliberal, and leftist views are systematically ignored in the Russia-West academic dialog (i.e. in terms of what is translated from Russian into other languages). We have the Boris Yeltsin Fund for translation of some materials, various private funds like the Prokhorov Fund (Prokhorov the oligarch), so one can imagine why so little social sciences material from the non-liberal camp is translated, even if within the country they probably comprise the majority. "The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG
Quote: I think the world nowadays is more familiar with Zyuganov or Dugin than let's say...Navalny or Novodvorskaya or someone? Don't you think so? In fact i'd bet that even Kurginyan is better known in the West than any Russian liberal. Quote: Lel. Didn't notice this one before: ![]() A neo-Nazi party led by an antisemitic Jewish clown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDPR_%28political_party%29
That's a very beautiful creation No. 14, thanks so much for sharing!
I do want to mention that there is another hopeful moment in the making when it comes to the whole West-Russia crisis, and that is that it may result in the further improving of relations between Russia and the DPRK. In economic terms this would mean greater movement of Russian natural resources, primarily energy resources and fertilizers, in exchange for NK cooperation on machine-building, metallurgy, perhaps certain light consumer goods, and other areas. There are already plans drawn up for the creation of a pipeline network running through the Koreas, although at present it remains frozen. There is also the much-talked about railway connection between the two countries, which has already come into existence, and a proposal from the Korean side to open a road connection as well. I think more important than the economic cooperation (which even with a tenfold increase being talked about would still only amount to $1 billion), is the political symbolism of a more friendly relationship, which would be a move away from the Russian disinterestedness of past decades. The appearance of another large, generally friendly neighbour to the north would have a positive effect for a country surrounded by powerful enemies. ... Loz wrote: Certain elements of their commentary and/or positions on certain issues may be more widely known, but no, I wouldn't say non-liberals are better known. Put in another way, their fame exists only to strengthen negative preconceptions about Russia (i.e. Kurginyan turning up to prove Russian support for rebels, Dugin being portrayed as a close adviser to Putin, etc.). Liberal publicists, on the other hand, regularly have their books appearing on American and other Western political talk shows and in popular bookstores, and liberal academics in the social sciences and the humanities are far more likely to have their work published in academic journals, and to have their books available in big academic libraries. So unlike with non-liberals, you can actually pick up and read their theoretical discussions and studies for yourself, instead of relying on a second or third party source of who they are and what they're thinking. This of course is the natural order of things -whoever pays the piper calls the tune. It is a shame however that there is no institutional support from the Russian side for our own alternative thinkers -be they economists, philosophers, or political commentators. "The thing about capitalism is that it sounds awful on paper and is horrendous in practice. Communism sounds wonderful on paper and when it was put into practice it was done pretty well for what they had to work with." -MiG
No 14 wrote: I thought it was marvellous! Thank you very much! ![]() The great art of life is sensation, to feel that you exist, even in pain. |
Alternative Display:
Mobile view
|
||||||