Pravles Redneckoff 🇷🇺 Z

Thursday, September 12th, 2019, 12:45

Karlsplatz, 4th district of Vienna

"Here is the solution to the riddle," Lisa says. "Whatever Jesus taught, attracted the interest of many people. It also made the Roman government kill him."

"Let's make the assumption that human nature today is roughly as it was two thousands years ago," Lisa says. "Then, the nature of power must also be roughly the same as it was two thousand years ago."

"Jesus' teachings were considered dangerous by the elites," Lisa says. "That's why they killed them. If modern churches taught the same thing, then modern elites would have an incentive to persecute them."

"If the elites didn't persecute them, or even make them part of the government system like in Russia, then the modern Christian teaching must be fundamentally different from that of the original Jesus," Lisa says.

I need someone bright to bump off my thoughts off him or her, Lisa thinks. That's why I needed Dr. Zemanek. If Buba is going to become my father-in-law, we'll have lots of conversations.

"That's a smart observation," Buba says. "But Christian churches are being persecuted. In Soviet Russia, for example."

The old man must be tired if he is referring to such clichés, Lisa thinks.

"That's a good point," Lisa says. "On the surface, you are absolutely right."

Let's tease him again, Lisa thinks.

"And beneath?" Buba says.

Buba starts to walk faster.

"Look at the old pictures where the Bolsheviks remove crosses and destroy churches," Lisa says. "What you'll see is this: There are usually several ordinary men, peasants, workers, soldiers and very few, if any, members of the Communist party. If those ordinary people, citizens of the Russian empire, opposed the destruction of churches, they could have easily overcome those Bolsheviks who were – compared to the normal people – few and far between."

"Sorry, I still don't get it," Buba says.

"It wasn't the elites who destroyed churches, it was the Russian people," Lisa says. "The Bolsheviks couldn't have done zilch without the majority of the population supporting the persecution of the church, actively or passively."

"I never thought about it like this," Buba says. "Let me think."

They enter the Schwarzenbergplatz. In 1946, it was re-named Stalin Square to suck up to the Russians. After the withdrawal of Russian forces from Austria in 1955, pandering to them outlived its purpose, and Stalinplatz became Schwarzenbergplatz again. The same happened with the Floridsdorf bridge that used to be called Malinovsky bridge.

To the left, at one of its ends is a big monument to the Soviet soldiers who liberated Vienna from the Nazis in 1945. A statue of a Soviet soldier stands tall on a column behind a pond with a water jet fountain.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a paradox emerged around this monument. The supposedly brotherly and sisterly peoples of Eastern Europe dismantled and vandalized such monuments. The evil, Nazi-worshipping Austrians did not.

This poses an interesting question: Why haven't they? Could it be that they realized that genociding 30 million Russians during World War II was bad, 'mkay? Let's not genocide them again, 'mkay? Could preserving this monument be a form of collective repentance?

A careful student of Vienna can get answers to the most intricate questions by reading the city like a book.

In this case, the answer is located in Schwarzenbergplatz 4, a 19th-century building with the green lettering of Russia's state bank Sberbank on its roof. It probably wouldn't have an office here if the Austrians had tried to walk in the footsteps of their Slavic contemporaries.

"Let's say you are right about modern churches not being persecuted," Buba says. "But what is the true teaching? Especially if you want to be scientific about events that took place thousands of years ago."

"We need to read between the lines," Lisa says. "Science says that the New Testament is, most likely, close to the original version, despite the age and despite all the redactions."

"There, Jesus says 'Love thy neighbor as yourself,'" Lisa says. "And 'neighbors', in this case, are the other members of the society. To love them means to make sure as many of your compatriots live as well as possible under the circumstances. Does that ring a bell?"

Let's make him guess again, Lisa thinks.

"Not really," Buba says. "I get the idea of being nice to the people I interact with, to not screw them over. But how does that threaten the elites?"

"Excellent question!" Lisa says. "The answer is – not at all. But this obvious meaning is not what Jesus meant. That is, it's only part of it. The wellbeing of thy neighbor depends to a large extent on the policy the elites pursue."

They walk down the Schwarzenbergplatz towards the Ring street. To the right is the Hotel Imperial, where JFK and Nikita Khrushchev stayed during their summit in 1961.

(There you have another reason for keeping the Soviet monument.)

"Whether or not thy neighbor gets killed in a war is decided not by you and me, but by the elites," Lisa says. "Now let's remember that the elites today are similar in character to what they were back in Jesus's times. That was our assumption."

They turn to the left and walk down the Ring street in the direction of Stadtpark.

"Now I will make another assumption – Ukraine today is similar to the Israel Jesus lived in," Lisa says. "Ukraine today is occupied by foreign powers, the West and Russia. It is poorer compared to its occupiers, especially the West. Here the analogy ends."

"We don't know what made Jesus's Israel poor and weak," Lisa says. "We do know that regarding Ukraine. We know exactly who made Ukraine weak and poor."

Buba scratches his head again.

He reminds me of Zoe with his slow thinking, Lisa thinks. But maybe it's not slow thinking. Give him time. What I'm about to say may be emotionally disturbing to him.

"The Russians?" Buba says.

"If we stick to the facts, then it can't be the Russians," Lisa says. "They lost most of their power in Ukraine in 1991, and never managed to regain it. Even if they had motives to make Ukraine poor and weak, they didn't have the means."

They pass a bakery, out from which drifts the smell of coffee, cinnamon, and fresh croissants. Buba looks at the entrance intently, but says nothing.

"I don't know," Buba says. "But this whole theory of yours is very interesting. I want to see what you are hinting at."

"It was the Ukrainian elites," Lisa says. "Their mismanagement led to poverty and a civil war masquerading as a anti-terrorist operation."

"Thy neighbors are being killed and crippled by the thousands," Lisa says. "To love them means to prevent the elites from destroying your country completely. By any means necessary."

Lisa looks Buba directly in his eyes. He increases the distance between him and Lisa.

Is he afraid of me? Lisa thinks.

"I see you take Ukrainian politics very seriously," Buba says. "May I object?"

He raises his hand, as if bracing for a blow.

Some of that lionness vibe may have rubbed off on me, Lisa thinks. I should be gentle with the old man.

"Of course," Lisa says.

"There was no such thing as elections in ancient Israel," Buba says. "It is pretty easy today to love thy neighbor by electing the right party into parliament and the right president into office."

"Are you kidding me?" Lisa says. "It doesn't matter how the people vote. What matters is how the votes are counted."

"That's what the head of the Russian Central Election Commission said," Buba says. "Russia isn't exactly a beacon of democracy."

"I can give you plenty of examples from so-called democracies where the same thing happens," Lisa says. "Take Britain, for example, the oldest democracy in the world. Year after year, decade after decade, the British population expresses their wish to reduce immigration. And the British government, regardless of the ruling party and prime minister, consistently increases immigration."

"And your point is?" Buba says.

"My point is this," Lisa says. "In any society, the active minority tends to treat the population like cattle. In and of itself, the people do not have any political power. The people do not decide anything. Whether a regime calls itself democratic or authoritarian, the opinion of ordinary people doesn't count."

"Unless the people make their opinion matter," Buba says.

"Unless someone organizes and turns them into a political force," Lisa says. "What Jesus meant when he said 'love thy neighbor' is this: self-organize and prevent the elites from ruining Israel completely."

"This idea wasn't new at Jesus' times," Buba says. "Aristotle and Cicero said, basically, the same thing centuries before him."

"Aristotle and Cicero talked to the elites," Lisa says. "Jesus shared this with the underclasses. They seemed to take to it."

"Only if you believe in the Christian narratives," Buba says.

"Not really," Lisa says. "Aristotle's Greece and Cicero's Rome were in much better shape than Jesus's Israel."

"So?" Buba says.

"Jesus told the proletariat: Unless we force our Jewish kings to get their shit together, we're all gonna die," Lisa says. "And those who survive may envy the dead. This could galvanize Jewish peasants much stronger than it would Aristotle's and Cicero's readers."

"If you think about it, that knowledge about how politics really works is not shared widely even today," Buba says. "With that I agree."

"Jesus shared that knowledge with people who had little to lose and much to gain from a revolution," Lisa says. "This is why he was dangerous to the Romans. And if he lived in Ukraine, the SAS, CIA, GRU, and/or SBU would try to murder him as well."