Is It Wise To Humiliate Your Opponent?
What Kind of Kick O People Get Provoking and Humiliating Others? Joy of sadism? Assertion of power and dominance? Perpetuating the power and dominance by crushing the opponent's spirit? Is it a human or an animal quality?
In any case, it is there, latent probably in all of us.
Tolstoy's War and Peace contains one such character, Dolokhov. A dare-devil, who due to his courage, recklessness, and strong will, manages to impress the most rich and powerful, always finding himself in their company, impress dandies with his cool and cruel charm.
So at a certain moment this Dolokhov begins to feel restless and decides to humiliate Pierre, the main protagonist of the novel. Pierre came to the title, wealth, and a beautiful wife rather quickly and unexpectedly, eliciting a lot of envy and resentment on the way. He is a totally goofy man, kind, peaceful, prone to daydreaming, and chasing one ideal after another. Pierre started as an illegitimate son of one of Catherine the Great's favorites, of one of those big, strong, and multi talented Ukrainians for whom Catherine had a weakness. So there was a very macho streak in Pierre, despite his glasses, kindness, and awkwardness.
Dolokhov, known as бретер in Russian, which comes from French bretteur -- notorious duelist -- decides to mock Pierre during the fancy dinner dedicated to Russian hero of Napoleonic war, while hinting at his (and others') access to Pierre's wife.
So at certain moment Pierre explodes, grabs Dolokhov, screams at him, and lo and behold, they are ready for duel. Except Pierre does not even know how to shoot the gun.
This nasty Dolokhov was based on historical figure, on the so called, Fyodor Tolstoy, The American: the notorious duelist who killed 13 people in duels, and at certain moment was kicked out of the ship and abandoned in America, from which he managed to get back to Russia through Alaska. Thus, his nickname. And he shared the family name with Tolstoy; they were probably was related.
Why were Dolokhov or Tolstoy, The American, so nasty, hard to say. But obviously they felt this urge. In any case, and here is Tolstoy's insight, during the duel, Pierre, despite the series of mistakes manages to wound Dolokhov, rather than the other way around, as was expected. The calculations and sadism of Dolokhov were defeated. The icing on the cake -- when one of the Dolokhov's friends visited him and he met Dolokhov's mother, all she could do, however, was to complain about this nasty, aristocratic, and arrogant Pierre, who dared to wound, almost kill, her angelic and ever so innocent son. For the mother, the murderer Dolokhov was still an angel, and his victim - a vicious bully.
In any case, already Ancient Romans knew that you don't humiliate your defeated enemy. Machiavelli insisted that if you want to take out your political opponent, you have to take out everyone connected to him, or they will remember and revenge.
Furthermore, the rumor has it, that when Tolstoy, The American, finally married and began to have children, all of them died. So he was forced to realize that there is a curse on him, a revenge from above for the people he killed so callously during his duels. So all thirteen of his children died. Sadists get their revenge one way or another.
Consequently, we can ask: do these humiliations pay? Did humiliating Germany after WWI pay? What kind of kick did the French and the Brits get out of it? In any case, we know that the German revenge, inflicted upon the whole world was insanely brutal.
And now let get back to Russia. Country is defeated, the Cold War obviously breaking its back. It falls apart, its ideology in shambles, economy is wiped out, all sorts of nations hate it and feel comfortable humiliating Russians living on their territories. Furthermore, all those Poles, Latvians, and Estonians, began to complain about Russia oppression, when every Russian during these times knew damn well, that they, the Russians, lived ten times worse than any Pole, Czech, or Estonian. And then finally, the noble and democratic West gets into the act. It begins to push NATO into Russian noses. And to get the point across, it begins to humiliate Serbia by first demonizing and then bombing it to smithereens. A lot of my Russian friends were telling me then: it is not about Serbia, it is about us. And I am afraid they were right. Russia's smaller brothers were beaten in front of it, and the country couldn't do anything. Hillary, by the way, always brings Serbia to her thinking. In one of her leaked memos, she writes about Syria: don't worry, Russians would not do a thing. If they didn't do anything about their brothers Serbs, they would not do anything about Syrians. Well, we know how that worked.
Fast forward to Ukraine, the absolute center of provocations and humiliation. Similar to goofy and forgiving Pierre, Russia was giving all sorts of breaks to Ukraine, as it was giving to Poles and Estonians before: cheap gas, all sorts of trade privileges -so that they would stay neutral. If not in substance, at least externally. But that wasn't enough for Nuland-Dolokhov. She had to come to Kiev, and walk around the rebellious city deciding who's gonna run Ukraine from now on, and how it is going to be, and how all these deranged nationalists will be legitimatized, and F..k the EU, if they raise any objection. That's exactly Dolokhov's talk. F..k this or that. Well, EU has been taken it from US for years, so I guess, in their case, this bullying worked. But one sign that Russia had enough was Crimea. It was exactly, what Pierre did, by pulling a piece of paper from Dolokhov's hands, when Dolokhov grabbed it from Pierre's plate. Grabbing this peace of paper has occured before Pierre went full berserk.
But did Nuland get a message? Not really. So Biden/Clintons come back, and bring all those nasty politicians who were instrumental in humiliating Russia in both Serbia and Ukraine of 2014 and they start all over again: Russia this, or Russia that... You know, all this Cold War/Evil Empire talk, that since then had lost all the meaning.
Well, as Tolstoy knew, those duels can be very dangerous, and they can explode into the faces of those bretteurs, those notorious duelists, who think that they can go around humiliating their incredibly relaxed and kind, but incredibly strong opponents forever.
And one more thing. Despite what Ukrainians think, Russia is not their enemy, and it will never humiliate Ukrainians the way the west humiliated Russians, or the way Ukrainians humiliated Russian language speakers in their own country by burning them alive in Odessa, or shelling them for eight years in Donetsk.
Yes, it is war, and it is ugly and cruel. The sooner it will be over, the better. All I can say, is—similar to Pierre—Russia turned out to be mad enough to say to the US/Dolokhov: I had enough, let's duel it out; you might have experience of endless wars that you've conducted all over, and you might know how to decimate Iraq or level Fallujah, but I am f..ing mad and I am not gonna take it anymore. I hope the idiots in Biden's cabinet are hearing this, and so does Zelensky, who did happen to get on the wrong side of the extremely angry and extremely strong opponent.
And NYT and BBC -- in the manner of Dolokhov's mother -- can shed all their crocodile tears over the victims of the war. It is them who provoked it, as it was her who gave birth to the monstrous Dolokhov. And until that sinks in, and the whole provocation/humiliation business finally stops, the tears will be shed, be it on Ukrainian or Russian side or both.
