🇷🇺 February 24 marks the first anniversary of the start of the special military operation (SMO) announced by the Russian leadership. This day a year ago, without any exaggeration, was one that divided Russian history into “before” and “after”.
It is clear that great things are seen at a distance, and trying now to provide any kind of “final” assessment of what is happening and determine its historical significance, would be approximately the same as reflecting in autumn of 1918 on the historical significance of the October Revolution that took place a year before. Then, the whole struggle was still ahead. The same can be said now. How the wheel of history would turn, no one knew in 1918, and no one knows today.
If we talk about the perception of the past year in Russian society, then we can start, oddly enough at first glance, with semantics and semiotics — in relation to the very abbreviation “SMO”.
The term “war”, as we all know, is being avoided in official Russian discourse. To a certain extent, how willingly this or that Russian uses this phrase “special military operation” in his speech can serve as a marker of his attitude to what is happening, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.
https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-first-year-of-the-conflict-the-semantics/
#Norms_and_Values #SMO #MilitaryOperation #UkraineCrisis
@valdai_club
It is clear that great things are seen at a distance, and trying now to provide any kind of “final” assessment of what is happening and determine its historical significance, would be approximately the same as reflecting in autumn of 1918 on the historical significance of the October Revolution that took place a year before. Then, the whole struggle was still ahead. The same can be said now. How the wheel of history would turn, no one knew in 1918, and no one knows today.
If we talk about the perception of the past year in Russian society, then we can start, oddly enough at first glance, with semantics and semiotics — in relation to the very abbreviation “SMO”.
The term “war”, as we all know, is being avoided in official Russian discourse. To a certain extent, how willingly this or that Russian uses this phrase “special military operation” in his speech can serve as a marker of his attitude to what is happening, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.
https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-first-year-of-the-conflict-the-semantics/
#Norms_and_Values #SMO #MilitaryOperation #UkraineCrisis
@valdai_club