Eleanor Marx: The Last Word

BY DEAN WAREHAM

MARCH 31, 2022
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Eleanor Marx at the age of 18, in 1873.

Last year the New Yorker published Paul McCartney’s essay on how he came to write “Eleanor Rigby.” It turns out the main character was based on an old woman he knew in his childhood and her name was not Eleanor at all; it may have been Daisy Hawkins but that didn’t work in the scheme with Father MacKenzie (verse two), so he created “Eleanor” from Eleanor Bron, who worked on the Beatles’ Help movie, and “Rigby” after a shop sign he saw in Bristol.

During the first pandemic year, I wrote my own song about an Eleanor: Eleanor “Tussy” Marx, who died on this day, March 31, 1898. I found myself reading Mary Gabriel’s Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution which tells the epic story of Karl, his wife Jenny von Westphalen, and their daughters, Laura, Jenny (Jennychen), and Eleanor. There were others too — Karl and Jenny in fact had seven children but only three survived into adulthood. All three daughters — and their spouses — played a role in the socialist movement, but it was Tussy who was closest to Marx and Engels and the most active politically.

From Rachel Holmes’ biography, I learned that Eleanor Marx had done the first English translation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and figured it was high time I read that too. The novel was scandalous for its depiction of adultery and the newspaper that serialized it was tried for obscenity in 1857. It created a stir in England too, where it was secretly blacklisted even into the 1950s, with government files showing that police constables were under orders to purchase and destroy copies they found.

The first half of Madame Bovary is slow going — maybe Flaubert wanted to illustrate how tedious bourgeois life was in the provinces — but the novel shifts into another gear when Emma embarks on her affairs with Rodolphe and Léon, and it’s hard put it down. Here is the necessary spoiler: the fictional Emma Bovary, destitute and heartbroken, kills herself by taking a dose of arsenic.

Eleanor Marx was born on January 16, 1855, and Julian Barnes suggests that Emma Bovary also was “born” around 1855, as the serialized novel first appeared in the Revue de Paris in 1856.

The baby Tussy was vaccinated against smallpox, in compliance with the English Parliament’s Vaccination act of 1853, which mandated compulsory vaccination for infants. The Marxes, who had already lost two sons and a daughter to illness in their infancy, were happy to follow the mandate, and it may have saved her life — her mother contracted smallpox in 1860 and never fully recovered.

Formal education was not an option for girls in 1860s England, but Eleanor attended the South Hampstead College for Ladies and her teachers at home were top-notch: Marx, Engels (when he visited), and Engels’ partner Lizzy Burns, who could neither read nor write but interested Eleanor in the cause of Irish independence. From an early age she accompanied her father to the reading room at the British Museum and at the age of nine wrote letters to Abraham Lincoln, letters which her father pretended to mail but instead shared with Engels. By fourteen she was assisting both Marx and Engels in their research. She learned German and French and later studied Norwegian for the sole purpose of translating Ibsen.

Rachel Holmes argues that the feminist movement properly dates to the 1870s, not the 1970s, and considers Eleanor Marx the foremother of socialist feminism. The right to vote in England was predicated on property ownership; working class men could not vote, and women could not vote no matter what their social status. Eleanor supported the call for women’s suffrage, but always framed the question of women’s rights, as “the sex question and its economic base,” that is, she dealt with it from the perspective of working class. “Women are the creatures of an organized tyranny of men,” she wrote, “as workers are the creatures of an organized tyranny of idlers.”

Eleanor was her father’s first biographer, writing an important article for Progress magazine on his life and on the theory of surplus value. She organized the first women’s trade union sections and was a leader of the Gasworkers and General Labourers union (today’s GMB, who present an honor in her name each year).

Both Eleanor and Emma, writes Julian Barnes, led lives of sexual irregularity in the eyes of right-thinking people. For Emma Bovary, that irregularity was a series of adulterous affairs. For Eleanor Marx, it meant living for fifteen years in an open relationship, a free union, with Edward Aveling, whom she met in 1884, in the reading room of the British Museum. Aveling was a member of the Secular Society, a Darwinist, zoologist, actor-playwright, literary critic, socialist, and by all accounts a cad and a compulsive borrower and bouncer of checks.

“He has the eyes and face of a lizard,” wrote her friend George Bernard Shaw, and many of her friends refused dinner invitations if they thought Aveling might be there. So maybe the “free’ in their free union was mostly for Edward, who spent her money and carried on affairs while she worked tirelessly for the socialist and labor movements and took teaching and translating work to pay their bills.

In 1886 she completed her translation of Madame Bovary, as well as Lissagaray’s History of the Paris Commune, and staged the first reading of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in England, while also co-writing (with Aveling) The Woman Question: From a Socialist Point of View, on the oppression of women and how it affects both men and women. Holmes describes it as a synthesis of Marx, Engels, Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley.

That year the Marx-Avelings toured the United States, at the invitation of the Socialist Labor Party. She abhorred anarchists and their tactics, but still made speeches in defense of those Chicago anarchists who were framed and sentenced to death after the Haymarket Square Incident that May. She and Aveling wrote a treatise on the socialist movement in the States. She was in Trafalgar Square on Bloody Sunday, November 13, 1887, marching at the front of the rally when the police started beating people.

In 1895 Eleanor bought a small house at 7 Jews Walk in the London suburb of Sydenham, where she lived with Edward, and continued to edit the essays of Marx and Engels for publication. Aveling spent a lot of time in London and carried on a secret life, borrowing money compulsively. He was in considerable debt to G.B. Shaw, who nonetheless continued to loan him money only because Shaw was developing a play, The Doctor’s Dilemma, with a degenerate lead character based on Aveling, and said he wanted to observe his behavior.

On the 8th of June 1897, Aveling secretly married a young actress, Eva Frye, using a fake name on the marriage certificate. He left Eleanor without any explanation, but by the end of the year, he became seriously ill (kidney disease and a recurring abscess) and moved back into the Sydenham house without saying where he had been.

Aveling had been married before and always told people that his first wife — Isabel Campbell Frank — would not give him a divorce, and hence he could not marry Eleanor. In fact, Isabel died in 1892; Aveling had taken her inheritance and bought property that he kept hidden.

At the start of 1898, things were closing in, she was under financial pressure with Aveling’s considerable medical bills, and friends urged her to leave him. But she remained forgiving, to a fault.

“Dear Freddy,” she wrote to the family friend Frederick Demuth, “I see more and more that wrongdoing is just a moral disease, and the morally healthy . . are not fit to judge the condition of the morally diseased, just as the physically healthy person can hardly realize the condition of the physically diseased.” Most historians believe Demuth was in fact her half-brother, Karl Marx’s illegitimate son with Helene Demuth.

In the last week of March, an anonymous letter finally alerted her to Aveling’s marriage to Eva Frye. On the morning of March 31st, they quarreled loudly, and Edward took a train to London. Eleanor sent her maid Gertrude Gentry to the pharmacist with a note, signed “E.A.” and Aveling’s business card attached, asking for chloroform and “prussic acid (cyanide) for dog.” Upon receiving the package, she took her life in the same manner as Emma Bovary.

Gertrude found Eleanor dead in her bed, in her white muslin summer dress, her face and hands turning blue. A doctor was called — Dr Henry Shackleton, whose son Ernest later explored the Antarctic. The coroner’s report concluded, “suicide by swallowing prussic acid at the time labouring under mental derangement.” Her death was registered in Sydenham: “Eleanor Marx, age 40, a single woman.” In fact, she was forty-three.

She left a short note for Aveling:

Dear, it will soon be all over now. My last word to you is the same I’ve said during these long, sad years — love.

I decided to take that heartbreaking line and write a song around it. The line fit best in the four-chord bridge, but sill I had to lop off that last word — love — to make it fit the melody. I’m okay with that, I kinda like that I sing about the word without naming it. Maybe I should have used Paul’s trick, where the bridge — “Ah, look at all the lonely people” — starts the song.

I feel a bit morbid focusing on her death when her life is so inspiring, but telling that life story would have meant writing an opera and that really is best left to McCartney.

p.s. Jennifer Julia Eleanor Marx was cremated at the Woking Crematorium, and her ashes had their own history — brought first to the SDF offices, later in possession of the British Socialist Party and then the British Communist Party, then moved to the Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell Green, where they were displayed on a bookshelf in the Lenin room. In 1956, when Karl & Jenny’s tomb was built in Highgate Cemetery, her remains were buried alongside them.

p.p.s. Edward Aveling lasted only four months longer, succumbing to kidney disease on August 2, 1898.

The Last Word

I fell in love with a communist cad

A free union, he drove me mad

Isn’t it wonderful, isn’t it nice

Labor and capital, value and price

Labor and capital, value and price

I will tell you one last word

I will tell you one last word

I told you lies but I never deceived you

You only heard what you wanted to hear

Send for the chemist, send for the maid

My time has come, I’m not afraid

I will tell you one last word

I will tell you one last word

My last word to you is the same that I’ve said

During all of these long sad years

My last word to you is the same I’ve said

During all these long sad years

These are the ashes of Eleanor Marx

Jennifer Julia Eleanor Marx

Who took her life, on the last day of March

Jennifer Julia Eleanor Marx

Dean Wareham founded the bands Galaxie 500 and Luna. His most recent album, I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of L.A., was released in 2021.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

MK Tibi arrives at Temple Mount, confronts police officers

ZIONIST MEMBER OF KNESSET FREAKS OUT
MK Ben Gvir calls for MK Ahmed Tibi to be prosecuted for confronting security forces who were stationed at the Temple Mount.

Israel National News
15.04.22

Eastern JerusalemShalev Shalom/TPS

The chairman of the Otzma Yehudit Party, MK Itamar Ben Gvir, on Friday asked the Attorney General to look into prosecuting MK Ahmed Tibi (Joint List) after Tibi confronted security forces who were stationed at the Temple Mount.

Footage posted to social media showed Tibi arriving at the Temple Mount following the violent riots that erupted there on Friday morning. He confronted police and told them, "Today is the second Friday of Ramadan, I always come with the people to pray. I am Muslim, I am not Itamar Ben Gvir. He came to do provocations, I come to pray with my people."

The video clearly shows Tibi in the midst of a shouting match with one of the policemen and yelling at him, "Get out of here!" as one of the officers keeps the other Border Police officers away from Tibi.

Ben Gvir also appealed to the Border Police to remove the officer who defended Tibi instead of the fighters.

"It is clearly seen that Ahmed Tibi is attacking policemen and the officer is protecting Tibi instead of the fighters," he wrote.

"Tibi's place is in jail for assaulting police officers. I call on the Border Police commander to immediately suspend the officer who defended Tibi, instead of the fighters under his responsibility, who interrupted their determination to deal with the terrorist Tibi who attacked them. It is forbidden to leave an officer who abandons his fighters in the Israel Police for even one minute, and we must end the loss of control and governance."

Harris, Emhoff to hold first known Passover seder at VP’s residence

By 

Callie Patteson

April 15, 2022 

Emhoff became the first Jewish spouse of a US president or vice president when 

VP Harris was sworn in last year.Lawrence Jackson/White House/Handout via Xinhua/Sipa USA

Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will be the first known second family to host a Passover seder at the vice president’s residence Friday after holding a virtual celebration last year.

Harris confirmed her holiday plans on Twitter, posting a traditional Passover greeting.

“Chag Sameach to all those celebrating Passover. Tonight, like families in the United States, Israel, and around the world, the @SecondGentleman and I will also host a Passover Seder at our residence,” the post read. 

The news was first reported by CNN, citing a White House official who revealed that Jewish members of Harris and Emhoff’s staff will attend the gathering at the Naval Observatory in Washington along with their loved ones. 

The vice president also reportedly informed Israeli President Isaac Herzog of her plans to host the seder during their Thursday call.

Emhoff became the first Jewish spouse of a US president or vice president when Harris was sworn in last year. The couple were married in 2014.

Just two months after the inauguration, the second gentleman led the first-ever virtual Passover seder at the Naval Observatory, saying at the time he hoped it would be the last virtual celebration.

The couple will hold the seder at the Naval Observatory in Washington along with their loved ones.

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

In November of last year, the vice president’s family hung the first mezuzah on the front door of an executive residence in US history.

The celebration comes as Washington, DC, is hit with a wave of positive COVID-19 cases — with both Harris and President Biden potentially being exposed several times. 

Multiple administration officials, including Harris’ communications director Jamal Simmons and Attorney General Merrick Garland, contracted the virus after attending the superspreader Gridiron dinner April 2. 

As of Monday, both the president and vice president had tested negative for the virus.

Harris’ office did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment. 

 

Statement on Section Three to the Consultations on Political Declaration on the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas

Delivered by Steve Goose, Executive Director

Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.  I am making this statement on behalf of the

 International Network on Explosive Weapons.

The impact and success of the Political Declaration will depend on the strength of Section 3, and in particular paragraph 3.3. Paragraph 3.3 is the core commitment in the declaration, and it must be bold and carefully crafted. This commitment can maximize the power of the declaration to protect civilians from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

There are two main changes that need to be made to 3.3. First, the phrase explosive weapons with wide area effects should be reinserted. As noted yesterday, this should be accompanied by language in section 1 of the preamble that when used in populated areas, explosive weapons with wide area effects inevitably and significantly increase the risk of harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects given their concentration in populated areas. The preamble text should also describe factors that produce wide area effects - a wide blast and fragmentation radius, inaccuracy of delivery, the firing of multiple warheads across an area, or a combination of these factors.

The second key change to paragraph 3.3 is to replace “restricting or refraining” with “avoiding”.  A commitment to “avoid” use of explosive weapons when they have wide area effects in populated areas would provide clarity and boldness to the core commitment in the declaration and in doing so, help to ensure the strongest protection to civilians. This would reflect recommendations from the United Nations Secretary-General, the ICRC and other field-based humanitarian organizations, and states. A change of mindset is urgently needed, and a commitment to avoid use encompasses an approach of needing to undertake prior assessments and changes to policies to establish a presumption against such use.

This commitment could be further strengthened by suggesting specific assessments that would facilitate and promote a clear understanding and implementation of this commitment, including undertaking prior assessment of the area effects of specific types of explosive weapons and assessments of the specific contexts of use and of the urban environment.

Moreover, the reference to “in accordance with international humanitarian law” should be removed, as the paragraph is a policy commitment under this declaration.

This commitment should also be higher up in this operative section, given its centrality to the declaration and that other commitments such as training stem from this.

"[A]dopt and implement a range of policies and practices to avoid civilian harm, including by avoiding the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas, that is when the effects may be expected to extend beyond or occur outside of  the military objective, and undertaking prior assessment of the area effects of weapons and the operational context, including both the generic urban environment and the specific context of use.”

In addition to 3.3, a new paragraph 3.4 bis would be vital. While the political declaration recognizes the importance of tracking civilian harm in military operations in the preamble, it does not provide a corresponding commitment to do so in section 3. New text should be inserted, 3.4 bis. Tracking civilian harm in ‘real time’ means tracking the number and rate of civilian casualties to inform how many civilians are being killed and injured, as well as tracking damage to civilian objects. It would also involve assessing whether the situation is improving or getting worse, which can help to shape both operational and policy responses to better protect civilians. Matched with commitments to be transparent over data sharing, and to investigate credible allegations of civilian harm, it can help to provide better protection to civilians and promote compliance with international law. Battle Damage Assessments and Collateral Damage Estimation Methodologies are useful military tools but are not designed as tools to assess humanitarian impacts and have some fundamental limitations.

“Establish capabilities to track, analyse, respond to and learn from incidents of civilian harm, including damage to civilian objects”.

We have brief comments and suggestions for the other paragraphs in Section 3.

3.1       This commitment could be more prescriptive in driving specific actions that would be most effective in protecting civilians from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas by adding “in particular from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas”.

Also, replacing the phrase “with regard to” with “to enhance” would clarify and strengthen the commitments.

This commitment should reference measures and good practices not only during – but also and after - conflict.

“Review, develop, implement, and, where necessary, develop or improve national policy and practice to enhance the protection of civilians during and after armed conflict, in particular from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.”

3.2       This commitment should ensure training on the declaration itself, rather than international humanitarian law, which is already a legal requirement. It should be focused on the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. And it should be applied both during and after armed conflict.

“Ensure comprehensive training of our armed forces on this Declaration, and on the measures and good practices to be applied during and after the conduct of hostilities in populated areas to protect civilians and civilian objects from the use and impact of explosive weapons”.

3.4       We welcome a commitment that focuses on addressing the reverberating effects of explosive weapon use, which are considerable. The commitment could be strengthened further by clearly stating that armed forces should specifically assess and take steps to mitigate the different foreseeable effects rather than simply taking them into account. It should delete the clause regarding battle damage assessments, which, as already noted, focus on the military effectiveness rather than the civilian impact of military operations.

“Assess and take steps to mitigate the direct and reverberating effects on civilians and civilian objects which can reasonably be foreseen in the planning of military operations and the execution of attacks in populated areas.”

3.5        This commitment should include references to risk education, and should replace explosive remnants of war with explosive ordnance, a broader term.

“Ensure the marking, clearance, and removal or destruction of explosive ordnance as soon as possible after the end of active hostilities, and the provision of risk education.”

3.6       This commitment should focus on dissemination and understandings of the operative commitments in this political declaration, rather than disseminating IHL, which is already a legal obligation.

“Facilitate the dissemination and understanding of this Declaration and promote its respect and implementation by all parties to armed conflict, including by non-State armed groups.”

INEW’s detailed comments and specific language suggestions have already been submitted in writing. Thank you.

War on women: the trauma of Ukraine's pregnant rape victims

16-Apr-2022
Zofia Melanczuk

CGTN

VIDEO Cases of sexual assault emerge in Ukraine - CGTN

Women in Ukraine who have reportedly been raped are fleeing the war-torn region for neighbouring countries such as Poland. There, some are discovering they are pregnant.

With their homes destroyed, their livelihoods gone and most of their friends and family either dead or missing, the women are now faced with the hardship of an unwanted pregnancy.

Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, explains that her colleagues are having firsthand experiences of dealing with pregnant victims.

"[There are] instances in which Ukrainian women who were raped by Russian soldiers now have problem with pregnancy," Matviichuk says.






The Kyiv-based human rights lawyer tweeted 'Ukrainian women raped by Russians'./ Twitter

It's difficult to assess the scale of sexual violence that has taken place since the conflict erupted in Ukraine on February 24. Many victims are yet to come forward - if they will at all - given the chaos caused by the conflict and the continuing fighting.

According to the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an initial report by a mission of the body's experts documents a "catalogue of inhumanity" by Russian troops in Ukraine, including rape, claims Moscow denies. The OSCE also said it found evidence of human rights violations perpetrated by Ukrainian forces, but said these appeared to be on a far smaller scale.

UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo said last week UN human rights monitors were seeking further evidence to support the allegations.

In the meantime, more accounts of sexual assaults continue to emerge.

Bodies are exhumed from a mass grave in Bucha, a town devastated by suspected war crimes.

 /Sergei Supinsky/AFP


Victims who have escaped west to Poland only to find out they are pregnant, now face the trauma reality of being forced to continue with their pregnancies.

Catholic Poland implemented a near-total ban on abortions in 2021. It now has some of the strictest laws on abortion in the world. Though the procedure is legal in cases where "the pregnancy is as a result of a criminal act," most health clinics in Poland have generally refused to carry out the abortion.

"It's problematic for Ukrainian women who have suffered from sexual violence to be in situations where they are in the territory of a foreign country which has other laws," Matviichuk continues.

According to the UN, more than four million people have fled the conflict so far, 90 percent of whom are women and children. Given the risk of abuse, gender-based violence and trafficking in a time of conflict, Oleksandra suspects that the number of victims will only increase.

Ukrainian refugees arriving to cross the Ukraine-Poland border, after fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, at the border crossing checkpoint in Shehyni, Ukraine. Reuters/Hannah McKay

But she worries that there are already many unreported cases of assault, with women reluctant to reach out for support.

"Sexual violence is a hidden crime and victims do not often apply for law enforcement bodies. They do not apply for assistance from others. There are a lot of others who will keep silent for years," she said.

Against an ever-growing number of suspected human rights abuses, Matviichuk and her team are struggling with how best to help these women, given their vulnerability.

"You have to be qualified not to harm and provide additional trauma to survivors of sexual violence," she explains.

"Our documenters are not prepared to work with such sensitive cases but even we have received several cases from different regions of women who have been raped by Russian troops in Kharkiv and Kyiv."

For now they will hope to do what they can for the victims they encounter.

"If they need an abortion they will be transferred to other countries where such abortion is allowed. This is our solution from this situation because we just don't know how many women potentially will need such assistance."

Since the beginning of the conflict, Russia has argued its military operation is aiding oppressed people in separatist regions of Ukraine. Moscow has denied allegations by Ukraine, other western nations and international bodies that its forces have committed war crimes.

Good ol’ days: In Putin’s Russia, people increasingly identify with the Soviet Union

Many Russians hanker for the old USSR, but it has more to do with cultural and economic nostalgia than wanting the old Soviet empire back.

Stephen Whitefield& Paul Chaisty, The Conversation

File photo of Russian Communist party supporters at Red Square in Moscow. 

| Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP

The view that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, wants to restore territories of the Soviet Union has been a big part of the commentary on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But how much is he in tune with the wishes of the Russian people? Our research suggests that while Russian citizens increasingly identify with the Soviet Union, this is only partially explained by their desire to expand Russia’s borders.

People’s identification with the Soviet Union appears to have a clear and growing basis in Russian public opinion. Surveys we have conducted throughout the Putin period show that Soviet identification among the general population – something that had been steadily declining after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – began to increase in 2014 when the Russian government annexed Crimea and supported rebellions in the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. By 2021, almost 50% of those surveyed identified with the Soviet Union rather than the Russian Federation.

Survey asks respondents to consider the statement: ‘I identify more strongly with the Soviet Union than I do with the Russian Federation.’ The responses are reported in percentages.

 Data: Survey conducted by R-Research Ltd, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Author provided

This pattern was also evident among Putin’s supporters. As the graph below shows, after we have controlled for age and affluence – two variables that are strong predictors of identifying with the Soviet Union, with older and less affluent people more inclined to identify with the Soviet Union – the probability that Putin voters are likely to be Soviet rather than Russian identifiers increases significantly after 2014.

In this figure, we report the differences between the predicted probabilities that Putin voters would identify with either the Russian Federation or the Soviet Union, holding all other factors (including controls for age and economic affluence) at their means.

 Data: Survey conducted by R-Research Ltd. Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Author provided

But is this growth in Soviet identity motivated by support for Putin’s expansionist policies? In other words, did the annexation of Crimea create a bedrock of expansionist support for the Kremlin’s military assault on Ukraine in 2022?

Hankering for past

Identification with the Soviet past can derive from many sources. These tend to include nostalgia for Soviet-era economic and welfare policies as well as a cultural nostalgia for a particular Soviet “way of life” and traditional values. It can also manifest as a desire for direct worker participation in politics, and a rejection of “elitist” forms of representative liberal democracy.

Finally – and in line with the primary focus of our research – identifying with the Soviet Union may stem from hostility towards perceived western interference and a desire to expand Russia’s borders to include parts of the former Soviet Union – the so-called “near abroad”.


So which of these is most important among Russian citizens? Our data do not support the idea that expansionist or anti-western attitudes are the primary reason people want to identify with the Soviet Union, although they may have been a strong catalyst in 2014.

The chart below reports the probabilities for a direct measure of support for “expanding Russian borders to include the ‘near abroad’”, which we asked in 2001, 2003, 2014 and 2018. We also asked about people’s views of the market economy, whether they had conservative cultural views, “Leninist” notions of worker political participation and anti-western sentiment.

Our findings suggest that expansionism played a little role for Russian citizens in 2001 or 2003 – and was not the most significant element driving Soviet identity in 2018 either. Its effect was greatest in 2014, which is consistent with the “rally around the flag” effect that followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Note: Each variable is binary. In this figure, we report the differences between the predicted probabilities for each explanatory factor, holding all other factors (including controls for age and economic affluence) at their means. 

Data: Survey conducted by R-Research Ltd, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Author provided

Likewise, anti-western sentiment has not been the main driver of recent Soviet identification among Russians. Our fourth graph, below, summarises probabilities for the effects of anti-western attitudes across all the surveys we conducted from 2001 to 2021, along with the other measures.

As can be seen, the effect of anti-western attitudes has largely diminished over time. In most years, we find that cultural conservatism and anti-market sentiment have been the main reasons why people might prefer to identify with the Soviet Union.

Note: Each variable is binary. In this figure, we report the differences between the predicted probabilities for each explanatory variable, holding all other factors (including controls for age and economic affluence) at their means. 

Data: Survey conducted by R-Research Ltd, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Author provided

Support for Putin

The magnitude of the current conflict has the potential to deepen anti-western attitudes in Russia and to stimulate a further bout of “rallying around the flag” in support of Putin’s expansionist war.

Yet the economic and cultural bases of Soviet identity are likely to remain key to Putin’s support. These factors have enabled Putin to broaden his political coalition since returning to the presidency in 2012.

Support for Soviet-style social benefits featured in his election campaign in 2018 and was part of the political offer made to the Russian people in 2020 to secure constitutional changes that could keep him in office until 2036.

The economic costs imposed on Russians through sanctions could undermine this appeal, but as we argue in other research, this is unlikely to have an immediate impact.


Stephen Whitefield is a Fellow in Politics and Paul Chaisty is Professor of Russian and East European Politics at the University of Oxford.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

Post-Soviet Transformations as a Shame-Mediated “Civilizing Process”: Neoliberalization, Academia, and the War in Ukraine

Iveta Ķešāne

We at the Jordan Center stand with all the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the world who oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine. See our statement here.

Iveta Ķešāne is an Assistant Professor at the Latvian Academy of Culture.

I recently attended a workshop where each participant presented their observations about the state of national identity in the Baltic States. One of my arguments in the workshop was that emotions of (national) pride and shame are relational facets of national identity, and that in the post-Soviet space this emotional dynamic has been affected by Western expertise. Diplomats and others introduced neoliberal reforms and ideas to the Latvian “transformation elite,” a term I use to denote the Latvian political leadership that guided and governed the country’s post-Soviet transformation.

Relationships between the transformation elite and Western experts in post-Soviet Latvia established a specific discursive logic in the arena of national pride. Specifically, I noted that only after Latvia was recognized by the West could the ruling elite and the people feel proud of it. After my presentation, I was asked to expand on the idea that national pride relates to neoliberal transformations. I explained that by the end of the 1990s, the Latvian transformation elite, as well as the Latvian diaspora abroad, had been socialized into neoliberal ways of thinking through travel and contacts with Western diplomats, experts from international organizations, and representatives of the European Economic Community (later European Union). Among diplomats and experts of the time, neoliberal thought was considered development gospel. To think otherwise was shameful; to disagree meant signaling that the Latvian ruling elite did not want to cooperate with the west or switch from a Soviet to a Western mode of thought. To assimilate to Western norms, to be “like” the West meant to neoliberalize. In this way, neoliberalization became one mechanism for achieving national pride.

These relational and emotional dynamics within post-Soviet transformations, I argue, fit well with the idea of a “civilizing process,” articulated by the German-Jewish sociologist Norbert Elias nearly a century ago. For Norbert Elias, a “civilizing process” entails the historical homogenization of rules of conduct, rules historically shaped by powerful Western elites. Over time, these rules would dominate the globe, and, as they developed, came to include a specific socio-emotional dynamic. This domineering standard entailed a certain “threshold of shame” and, as such, implicitly worked as a moral instrument, since to deviate from the accepted standard constituted “bad” behavior. Elias contended that non-Western elites felt the anxiety of not “looking good” in the eyes of the more developed and powerful West, and were therefore eager to comply with the behavioral standard.

In my 2021 article, “Neoliberalization and Politics of Shaming: Ruling Elites’ Response to Protests by Schoolteachers and Farmers in Post-Soviet Latvia (1994–2000),” I suggested that, if Norbert Elias is right, neoliberalization could be seen as one such “civilizing process.” The secondary literature offers ample support for the idea that, during the post-Soviet period, Westerners helped socialize the Latvian ruling elite into a neoliberal behavioral standard. In my own research, I observe that the Latvian ruling elite used shaming in public rhetoric to discipline people according to neoliberal ideals. Borrowing from historian Bonnie Morris I call this phenomenon a “politics of shaming.”

My article follows the two largest protests of the 1990s, which were staged by school teachers and farmers. I was especially interested in finding out how the ruling elite responded to the protests, which were generally directed at neoliberal reformers. The schoolteachers’ protests took place in the autumns of 1994, 1996, and 1999, while the farmers’ protests occurred during the spring and autumn of 1997, in the spring of 1999, and in the summer of 2000. The schoolteachers protested against deteriorating working conditions and low wages; farmers were concerned about agricultural policy and issues like protecting the domestic market, state subsidies, and taxation. Neoliberal economic policies, which significantly reduced state protections for agriculture and subjected it to global competition, put Latvian farmers in a difficult situation.

The ruling elite tended to disregard the protesters’ demands, dismissing them as unreasonable. Instead of showing empathy with schoolteachers and farmers due to their impoverished condition, the ruling elite used the tactic of shaming and pitted various groups against one another to possibly tame further protests. Consistently with the neoliberal ideas of individual responsibility and marketization, the protesters were advised to find individual solutions to their problems and work hard rather than expecting any care to come from the state.

The protesters’ opponents also presented them as ignorant of the broader development issues at stake. For example, in his December 1994 response to protesters, Valdis Birkavs, head of the leading political party Latvijas Ceļš, labelled them “little men” incapable of understanding the overall socioeconomic and political situation and thus threatening “to destroy the whole structure of the national budget.” This lack of knowledge was said not only to jeopardize Latvia’s national development, but also threaten its belonging to the West.

During the farmers’ strike in 1999, Minister of Finance Ivars Godmanis explicitly stated that the needy ministries, including the Ministry of Agriculture, would not receive the funds the protesters demanded to avoid violating the austerity measures imposed by Western donors. This individualizing and essentializing rhetoric was supplemented by pitting various groups against one another. For example, an announcement by the Cabinet of Ministers published in response to teachers’ protests in November 1994 in the daily newspaper Diena [The Day], pitted groups like pensioners, doctors, and the needy against one another. The announcement shamed schoolteachers by stating that their demands could only be met at the expense of these other groups. Political leaders used a similar discursive strategy in response to farmers’ protests, which they framed as destructive to national development and endangering the well-being of other groups.

I argue that such shaming by the ruling elite is evidence of neoliberalization as a broader “civilizing process.” To gain Western recognition, the Latvian ruling elite felt compelled to resist any actions that  would deviate from the adoption of Western-approved neoliberal ideas and policy norms. Perceiving teachers and farmers’ protests as a threat to the process of assimilation to the Western political economic order, the elites sought to quell them through shaming rhetoric.

Yet this shaming, I believe, also alienated people from the state and divided societal groups from one another. Divisive language and individualizing rhetoric taught people not to seek solidarity with one another, but instead to look for individual solutions to collective problems. Accordingly, shaming acted as a discursive instrument to silence democratic voices in the post-Soviet space. The politics of shaming, which cast protesters as somehow impaired in terms of their expectations toward the state and national development, enfeebled people’s initiative to stand up for themselves in Latvia and socialized them to see protesting as morally wrong.

Shaming was also likely injurious to people’s personal self-confidence, a quality that, according to sociologist Jack Barbalet, is important for one’s “willingness to act” — in particular, to seek a democratic dialogue with the state. Despite the notion that people in a now-democratic Latvia should be active participants in the fashioning of the state and their own well-being along with it, when they expressed their will through protest and strike, the ruling elite routinely shamed them. Although I studied the Latvian case, if neoliberalism is a “civilizing process” that imposes uniform norms and standards across the world, it is entirely possible that similar episodes of shaming took place elsewhere.

To return now to the workshop I mentioned at the beginning of this post: one participant, a professor in religion and cultural history from a neighboring Baltic country, eagerly shared an example from academia that fit well with the idea of a “civilizing process” enacted through shaming. Although she herself had books and articles published by the recognized Western university presses and peer-reviewed articles in acclaimed international journals, she said she and other Baltic colleagues now felt anxious that monographs and articles published in their native languages and journals no longer “counted.” Only those research results recognized by Western publishers and internationally known peer-review journals were deemed “worthwhile.” Those academics who write for national outlets may begin to feel inferior and even ashamed in relation to those who are oriented towards international publishers. This workshop participant’s example demonstrates again how post-Soviet transformation more broadly followed the logic of what Norbert Elias called a “civilizing process.”

As I was writing this post, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began. As the mother of two toddlers, I felt great anxiety and simultaneous empathy and sadness for the desperation many Ukrainians and their families had to face. I was angry at Putin for his devastating ambition. Yet Norbert Elias’s argument made me see in Vladimir Putin a frantic will to stop the “civilizing process” the Western institutions and governments were encouraging in Ukraine, to limit the space this process invaded, and instead maintain the space run by Putin’s own standards, no matter what it takes. It is as though Putin resists accepting the logic of a “civilizing process” (the logic we in the West call “rational,” as opposed to all the irrationality Putin has unleashed), and the shaming which underlies it, instead replacing these emotions with deep anger and a desire for revenge.

Although Russia has not escaped capitalistic development, just as it has not escaped a post-Soviet neoliberalization that subordinated many of its institutions to a kind of Western standard, Putin continues to resist the Western “civilizing process” through the domain of power and its most brutal mechanism—war.

Panama Calls for Promotion of Renewable Energy Projects

Panama seeks to encourage renewable energy use. Apr. 15, 2022. 

| Photo: Twitter/@FreezoneAruba
Published 15 April 2022


The Panamanian government has asked public institutions to promote renewable energy projects amid rising fuel prices.

The country needs to prioritize solar and wind energy programs and promote electricity savings in the face of the problematic scenario the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine have brought about, the head of the National Energy Secretariat (SNE), Jorge Rivera, said.

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According to the official, the SNE is directing efforts to ensure a reduction in energy consumption in transportation, households, buildings, and state institutions.

The country aims to raise public awareness of the importance of energy-saving through rational usage of private vehicles and moderation in the consumption of energy resources for air conditioning.

The president of the Panamanian Chamber of Solar Energy, Rafael Galue, addressed the press on the impact of planning for sustainable energy.

 


During a forum on thermal solar power and energy efficiency that took place in the country's capital this week, Galue commended the strategy's pursuit of using natural resources wisely, protecting the environment, and incorporating energy sources that are low in carbon.