A courageous work by a Russian author willing to look beyond the rhetoric on both sides of the firing line.
A Russian journalist and Putin critic examines the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Panyushkin, the author of Twelve Who Don’t Agree, argues that by delineating the plights of ordinary Ukrainian citizens, the immensity and toll of the violence and suffering should become apparent. As a journalist who left Russia yet remains a keen observer of the conflict, the author maintains some distance—e.g., as he tries to point out to his patriotically pro-Russian father the kind of propaganda that the Russian government spews about Ukraine and the West. However, as Panyushkin reveals, most Russians believe the invasion was justified and provoked. In a narrative that takes place soon after the invasion on February 24, 2022, the author follows characters such as Alla, a soil scientist in Kharkiv who scrambled to gather water and food supplies when the bombs began falling. Panyushkin shows how many of the people he profiles had divided loyalties, which made them uncertain about where to flee. The author highlights myriad heartbreaking cases: hospital patients desperately waiting for delayed or canceled surgeries; caretakers attempting to help the sick and traumatized children; refugees and terminally ill patients who were under full Ukrainian care and medication but then cast aside in shelters and labeled as “inconvenient.” Some of the other characters include survivors in occupied Bucha and Mariupol and “daredevil” drivers who emerged mysteriously to aid refugees, often for a large fee. Throughout, Panyushkin offers valuable insight into how war propaganda operates, on either side, when people are desperately fleeing danger and starvation. “It seems to me,” he writes, “that sooner or later all the participants become pitiless and bitter.…Do you know what the civilians and refugees see during the war? They see nothing.”
A courageous work by a Russian author willing to look beyond the rhetoric on both sides of the firing line.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9798889660583
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.
A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.
Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016015
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
A powerful guide to national reconciliation.
In this nonfiction book, an activist and scholar shares strategies for peace and reconciliation based on her experiences in West Africa.
More than a decade ago, Hoffman listened to her internal “soul-whispers” calling her to help facilitate peace in civil war–torn Sierra Leone. Drawing from her successful collaboration with local activists, she not only provides a contemporary history of a successful West African peace movement, but also offers a tested strategy for national reconciliation. “The answers are there,” as the book’s title suggests, if only people heed the “larger whispering echoing through our world—a part of our collective, unconscious, awakening, wanting us to listen and receive.” Indeed, listening lies at the center of the volume’s strategy. Fifteen years ago, Hoffman co-founded the nongovernmental organization Fambul Tok with John Caulker, a human rights activist from Sierra Leone. Meaning Family Talk in Krio, Fambul Tok centered on the voices and perspectives of those directly impacted by the nation’s civil war. The organization facilitated more than 200 “tradition-based community bonfire ceremonies of truth-telling, apology, and forgiveness,” involving more than 2,500 villages, 4,500 speakers, and over 150,000 witnesses. Though these events required Sierra Leone to confront “difficult truths,” they became the “taproot…of community healing” and are featured not only in this book, but also in Hoffman’s award-winning 2011 documentary, Fambul Tok. To the author, a former political science professor, they also reveal an alternative solution to Western involvement in Africa, which has traditionally manifested as a top-down, money-centered approach that failed to tap into the “real reasons for peace—healthy and whole communities.” While the volume could have used visual aids like maps and photographs, its account carefully balances an astute scholarly analysis of African geopolitics and Western aid with an intimate portrayal of Sierra Leone’s citizenry. With forewords by the country’s current minister of state in the Office of Vice President and the British director of the Institute for State Effectiveness as well as an afterword by Caulker, this volume has much to teach about the ways in which Western organizations and activists can effect positive global change through humility, listening, and empowering local communities.
A powerful guide to national reconciliation.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-9862030-1-0
Page Count: 313
Publisher: Blue Chair Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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