(This was originally published on April 19th, 2022, two months after Russia attacked Ukraine. It’s been lightly edited.)
I’ve struggled with how to talk about the long history of science in Russia (and the Soviet Union) during their assault on Ukraine. On one hand, it’s already baked into the cake here. Russian history accounted for many of my columns, with such a high split of articles devoted to just two other countries: the US and Australia. On the other hand, everything can be seen as propaganda during wartime, including avoiding the subject.
Today’s Moment of Science… Precedented times.
How accurate is the average US citizen’s understanding of day to day reality in Ukraine or Russia right now? If someone hasn’t studied the geopolitics of the area and the extent of their Ukrainian starts and stops at ‘Слава Україні,’ this is a bit of a fuckpile.
It can even be hard to gain understanding with data and first hand sources. A Ukrainian vlogger I’ve followed for a while repeated the statistic that 80% of Russians support the war. So it was fair to use sanctions on ordinary Russians, he explained, because they’re not really all that innocent and sanctions are effective.
Lots to unpack there, not the least of which being our collective reaction of “80% support? Uh-huh. Whatever you say, Vlad.”
The Levada Center is a respected polling organization in Russia. If you’re having trouble believing that because the words ‘respected polling organization’ and ‘Russia’ appear in the same sentence, the Kremlin put them on their foreign agent list in 2016. It was, uh, totally not backlash for their polling data showing approval for Putin’s United Russia party had dropped. Nope. Nuh-uh. In Putin’s Russia, data polls you!
About a week into the attack on Ukraine, Levada’s polling showed that 58% of Russians supported the war. Which already seemed uncomfortably high, but about two months later it jumped to 81%. This is a pattern; over the years, you can see a spike in President Brotox’s approval ratings whenever Russian troops have made life miserable for any of the former soviet republics.
A steady campaign of propaganda, eliminating independent media, and threatening people with [censored redacted] if they tell Putin he isn’t Mother Russia’s most special son have been annoyingly effective at garnering support for this war. They’re going to liberate Ukraine from the Nazis, and nobody will hear or say a goddamn word otherwise. More Russians support Putin, the United Russia party, and their “special military operation” after two months than they did in February. But with credible evidence of war crimes, how could anyone with an internet connection and a conscience support attacking a sovereign nation like this?
So, this is awkward.
In 2003, the US invaded Iraq under false pretenses. We would be greeted as liberators, so said the administration. Support for both the war and President Shrub spiked in the weeks after the war started.
Looking at the rise in support those nineteen years ago, it all seems annoyingly familiar.
What could someone learn about you, average citizen, from a couple survey questions about the war in Iraq two decades ago? Probably not very much. What do I know about an average Russian civilian from some polling data? Probably not very much. For some people, polling data is enough to call for punishment. I don’t want to get way too into sanctions, but if we’re going by historical precedence? It’s unlikely to work, and it’s going to hurt a lot of average Russians far more than it will hurt President хуйло́.
But what does any of this have to do with Ms. Auntie SciBabe who just wants to tell daffy stories about Russian scientists making two headed dogs?
I’ve written about Soviet era heroes and monsters, Russian visionaries and the consequences of being a visionary in Russia alike. There have been not one but two Russians who were given every indicator that they should rain hell on those western bastards but chose instead- for no glory- to ease off the ‘fuck everything to kingdom come’ button. There has been the greatest of nuclear catastrophes and the greatest of efforts on the backs of everyday citizens to tilt the world back onto its axis. Eradicating smallpox? That idea came from a Soviet scientist. Only country with a president who ordered a politician from another country poisoned with dioxin? Russia. Country most likely to Frankenstein some animals together just because? Russia, and it’s not even fucking close.
Everything can be propaganda during wartime. If some polling data has the potential to make people view Russians with hatred or suspicion, what message does it send when I arbitrarily choose to write about Russian scientists making genetically modified smallpox? Or their radioactive lake? Or that time they dropped the biggest motherfucker of a nuke ever?
I wrote these kinds of stories before the war, but in a wide open universe of things to write about, they feel different. Hell, writing ‘nice’ articles about Russian history or the USSR feels off, because who wants a press release about that time those guys doing all the war were actually totally swell?
I don’t know what the right answer is, but it’s probably not to let the polling data tell the story.
This has been your Moment of Science, forever looking for the narrative.
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I’ve been told that I’m a rather bright individual. Alas, that is actually measured with a gamma camera. I was born a week after Tsar Bomba, the biggest nuke ever detonated was dropped.
And don’t forget how Russian science increased harvests by freezing sprouting wheat. Not in testing, but testing in production.
Of course, Russia is simply belatedly returning the favor of the Kiev-Rus invasion from 1000 or so years ago.
Or something.
History is complicated, nearly as complicated as protein folding and about as convoluted at times.