War, Empire, Sacred Language, and Poetry

Deep background on Russia's invasion of Ukraine

I am traveling with my daughter this week. We visited the Scottish Highlands yesterday. The landscape is very beautiful, strange yet strangely familiar. It conveys a sense of fog-shrouded mysticism, myth, and magic. One can easily imagine Macbeth’s witches scheming in the blasted heaths, amidst the craggy mountains. We visited Loch Ness, but met no monster.

It was fun to learn about the region’s ancient history of bloody battles, invasions, clan warfare, and wander through castles abandoned after repeated wars over the course of centuries. It put Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine into perspective. Back then, long bows and catapults constituted technological advances. Today, it is Turkish drones and Javelin anti-tank missiles. We visited one castle where the victorious invaders looted and took away everything down to the door handles—hardly different from today, when Russian conscripts from impoverished regions pilfer washing machines, clothes, and Smart Phones from “liberated” zones.

I haven’t experienced any historical event in my lifetime possessing the Shakespearian depth of this current war: The clown who plays President on TV first becomes President, then thwarts the enraged Dictator. I continue soaking up information about it, trying to understand it. I found this long Twitter thread to be fascinating. According to Russian historian Kamil Galeev, the current war was inevitable: It is the culmination of a long-simmering fight over cultural “memes” above all, not over territory (although that, too).

In official media, from Putin on down, Russians deny the right of Ukraine to exist as a separate nation with a distinct culture.

“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,” Putin said before the invasion.

Why are they so focused on this?

Galeev steps back to consider the historical development of languages. Centuries ago, there were diverse vernaculars and dialects that were eventually standardized by modern states and school systems. Previously, multi-ethnic cultures that might span a wide geographic area formed a “sacred community,” held together by a book written in a language that was inaccessible to the common people, but accepted by the community as its divine truth.

“Global communities of the past were sacred communities built around ideographic systems. Latin in Europe, Quranic Arabic in Islamdom, characters in China. Every sacred community perceived itself as a world in itself, possessing the monopoly on truth due to its sacred language.” This ancient, sacred language was incomprehensible to the masses, which was a sign of its esoteric truth.