Sunday 3 April 2022

Toomas Karmo: Open Letter to Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, and to His Eminence the Titular Metropolitan of Volokolamsk

Quality assessment: 

On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 2/5. Justification: it is arguable that I knew enough to treat my subject adequately within the limited scope I set myself, an d yet the scope was VERY limited. (Sorry, although I did at first try to award myself 3/5, the Institutes insisted on going down to 2/5. Even the grubby hinterland has its standards.) 

Revision history:

UTC=20220403T1645000Z/version 1.0.0: Kmo uploaded base version. He then planned to continue producing, in a way not documented here, minor tweaks, over the coming 96 hours, as versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, ... . . 

War is liable to bring out the worst in everyone, not only in the people we oppose but within our own ranks. We recall, for instance, the problematic course of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the 1939-1945 war. Their fight - conducted with an entire nation, arguably much of an entire continent, under existential threat - fell safely with in the scope of Catholic "Justified War" theory. By the time the war was in its later phases, however, the RAF was carpet-bombing German civilians. The RAF became (to take one example from several possible) complicit in the July 1943 Hamburg firestorm. From that firestorm, German civilians in basements sheltered in vain. Winds in the streets attained speeds estimated at around 65 m/s or 70 m/s, in other words approximating the worst of all recorded hurricanes. So intense was the heat that even asphalt burst into flame. In some instances, the number of casualties in basements had to be estimated roughly, from the quantity of human ash. 

I could reinforce this lesson in human wartime depravity by first documenting the high moral tone of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, then citing those American war crimes, with still more civilian victims than in Hamburg, which were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

And I recall from my Estonian-exile childhood, in Canada, an album (I saw it in the Reader's Digest Condensed Books version) entitled German Faces. There were photo portraits of brave, civically minded 1945-era Germans. There were photo portraits of opportunistic 1945-era Germans working the black market; of complacent 1945-era Germans (fortunate in never being bombed), cold toward their own internal refugees; of embittered Germans; and of at least one youthful fanatical German, praising the songs he had been accustomed to singing under the now-extinguished Reich.

I was much taken at the time, and I still recall with anguish, the portrait photo of a mother and child, some quite tiny "Gerhard" or "Heinz". The mother explained to the author how things had gone for her with the Red Army. Since I do not have text and photo in front of me here in Estonia, I can now only paraphrase. What I read back then, roughly six decades ago, ran something like this: "So they did it, in the snow. I don't know how I kept track, but I did keep track: twenty-two times. One of them was different from the others, shy. The others said, 'Go on, do it, do it.' He did not want to, but eventually he did it too. I like to think that he is the father of little Heinz, here."

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Now we have Monsieur le Président Vladimir Vladimirovich inflicting spiritual harm, committing an assault, on Syrian men. Details can be had from various sources, for instance from 

The current Russian President's deal is this: You, a Syrian, can fight in Ukraine; we will pay you many times more than you could hope to earn in Syria; and in the event of your death, your family members back home will receive a monetary death benefit.

I need not dwell on the morality of dangling such an obscene temptation before traumatized men with starving families. You, Your Eminence the Titular Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, will agree with me that your President errs in proffering such a temptation. You will agree with me, as a trained theologian from my own UK university and sharing my own Faith, that the judgement of history may prove heavier on your current President than on those poor Syrians who in their weakness may soon be taking his bait. I beg of you in Christ, as I renew my efforts to get letters to you, that you discuss the theology with him directly, or alternatively with him through your Patriarch, pressing me also into back-channel service in any way you can devise.  

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War (to reiterate) is liable to bring out the worst in everyone, from the brutalized rank-and-file of the 1940s Red Army right up to the 1940s RAF élite. What, now, would be an appropriate response from Kyiv to the emerging Syria problem? How can the Ukrainian side, at least, avoid sinking into Mr Putin's theological morass?

If Syrian mercenaries should come, Kyiv must avoid the temptation to a reciprocal brutality. "They are combat-hardened soldiers" - it might be pleaded in extenuation - "accustomed to inflicting cruelty, and moreover fighting over here from commercial motives; let our lads give them what they deserve." Very well then: let those Syrians be as hardened as we may choose to imagine; let them share even in the brutality of 1945 Red Army personnel in Berlin: brutality must on no account be reciprocated with brutality. 

Some skilled people within the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine may now be able to reach out in Arabic and English to these incoming wretches, in terms that they will understand, despite their limited access to information, and moreover in terms that do not ask the emotionally impossible of them. Let there be no preaching. Let us reserve our homilies for Monsieur le Président Putin, via (so I hope and pray, admittedly still here groping in darkness) His Eminence my so-far-silent Oxford confrère the Titular Metropolitan of Volokolamsk. For the mercenaries, let Kyiv make merely an offer, of the simplest kind, by way of a counter-offer to the offer that brought them into Ukraine: If in a spirit of adroit cooperation you let yourself be "captured" by "unexpectedly materializing Ukrainian forces", then we for our part will provide you employment in some steady and physically safe capacity in the west of Ukraine, far from the killing fields. In legal documentation, you will be a prisoner of war. In physical reality, on the other hand, you will be a manual worker. Paying due regard to your de facto status of worker, we will pay you ten percent more than  Moscow would have paid you to fight in the far east of Ukraine. Additionally, mindful of your sad reasons for having attempted to fight, we will facilitate the remitting of your pay (should you desire this) to your impoverished family back home in Syria. 

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Servant of God Екатерина Фёдоровна де Гук-Дохерти, урождённая Колышкина, witness to the spiritual mission of Russia in the family of nations, intercede for us now.  
 

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