{"id":16870,"date":"2022-06-13T20:38:46","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T00:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=16870"},"modified":"2022-06-13T20:38:46","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T00:38:46","slug":"russia-published-war-novels-telegraphing-their-invasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=16870","title":{"rendered":"Russia Published War Novels Telegraphing Their Invasion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sergej Sumlenny, a political scientist focused on Eastern Europe and living in Berlin, posted a Twitter thread on the preparations Russian books made in advance of the Ukrainian war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"474\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">THREAD Let&#39;s start a long thread about how Russian book market prepared Russians for a full-scale war against Ukraine, NATO, the West, and promoted stalinism and nazism, and how this was ignored by the West. Keep seat belts fasten, you will see a lot of nasty things here. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/iPgl4OTU7C\">pic.twitter.com\/iPgl4OTU7C<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Sergej Sumlenny, LL.M (@sumlenny) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sumlenny\/status\/1535582101621420032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 11, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;One of the first indicators of Russia preparing for a full-scale turn to dictatorship and a global war,&#8221; Sumlenny says, &#8220;was the mass production of books about cool sides of Stalin and Stalinism and about upcoming war against the West.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The secret police control the publishing industry, he says, so it wasn&#8217;t the free market bringing a surge of books with titles like &#8220;Be proud, not sorry! Truth about Stalin Age,&#8221; &#8220;Stalinist&#8217;s Handbook&#8221;, and &#8220;Stalin&#8217;s Repressions: A Great Lie&#8221; in 2010 and following. Bookstores followed the theme with vintage war paraphernalia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"474\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This was the prelude. Soon after, Kremlin has started to publish what they called &quot;battle fantastic&quot;. Mass-produced low-quality books about Russian military superiority in all possible conflicts. The whole book series appeared. Here: &quot;Battlefield Ukraine series&quot; &quot;Ukraine on Fire&quot; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/hT2nahtGYr\">pic.twitter.com\/hT2nahtGYr<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Sergej Sumlenny, LL.M (@sumlenny) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sumlenny\/status\/1535586220411166720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 11, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To repeat from Twitter, Sumlenny writes, &#8220;Soon after, Kremlin has started to publish what they called &#8216;battle fantastic.&#8217; Mass-produced low-quality books about Russian military superiority in all possible conflicts. The whole book series appeared. Here: &#8216;Battlefield Ukraine series&#8217; &#8216;Ukraine on Fire.'&#8221; The series characterized Ukrainians as Nazis and proxies for the West, but Russia will kick in their teeth as a duty to righteousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Along with this, Russia is publishing history rewrites, describing the glory the motherland once had or could have had if the trusted had remained faithful. Sumlenny refers to the historic fantasy &#8220;Forward, Gardemarines!&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"474\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">There are tons of myths of &quot;stolen victories&quot; and &quot;betrayed Russia&quot;. My school teacher told us, Alaska was not sold to the US, but rented out for 100 yrs, and the US broke the contract. Nazis in 1920s told about one &quot;betrayal&quot; in 1914, Russians were fed with tons of such lies \/14<\/p>&mdash; Sergej Sumlenny, LL.M (@sumlenny) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sumlenny\/status\/1535599437673799681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 11, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He carries on, because the history gets even more twisted with Russians saving the world through time-travel and Hitler being one of the good guys who tries to capture Churchill and charge him with war crimes. He suggests <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sumlenny\/status\/1535623522747392001\">Western embassies ignored<\/a> the threads in part because they didn&#8217;t want to see them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sergej Sumlenny, a political scientist focused on Eastern Europe and living in Berlin, posted a Twitter thread on the preparations Russian books made in advance of the Ukrainian war. &#8220;One of the first indicators of Russia preparing for a full-scale turn to dictatorship and a global war,&#8221; Sumlenny says, &#8220;was the mass production of books &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=16870\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Russia Published War Novels Telegraphing Their Invasion<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,12],"tags":[2447,4084],"class_list":["post-16870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookselling","category-publishing","tag-russian","tag-ukraine"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16870"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16873,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16870\/revisions\/16873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}