Video of the inspiring event with Ukraine’s leading public intellectual Oksana Sabuschko (Zabuzhko), independent Austrian political scientist Martin Malek and philosopher and editor of “Zwischenwelt international” Konstantin Kaiser
“Totalitarianism in the 21st Century: How Is Resistance Possible?”
Not to spill German blood: Austria 1938 – Nation, military resistance and freedom: Ukraine 2022”
Thanks for filming to Harald Monschein! The video can be shared via facebook, X and the youtube-channel.
Welcome by Wolfgang Mueller (0:00 – 9:00).
“Totalitarianism, a term critically debated for decades, is the attempt to control the minds of the people”.
Putin, as Hitler, “declared peace and started war”, reminds the historian and Deputy Head of the Institute of East European History and Co-Chairman of the Austrian-Ukrainian Historical Commission. Russia’s genocidal propaganda calls to burn alive and to drown ukrainian children, “all this is made by men and women”.
Mueller speaks about the resistance of soldiers, political representatives, civilians and public workers in Ukraine, about the increasing number of Russian operations in Europe destabilizing central and western european states.
In the presentation of the podium, Prof. Mueller stresses that Konstantin Kaiser is continuing the legacy of “Zwischenwelt, magazine of the culture of resistance and exile” with Zwischenwelt international.
This leads to the main topic of the symposium: The link between resistance and the national question, the nature of totalitarianism in the 21st century, the importance of suffering-with and rejoicing-with. And: what lessons Europeans must learn?
Lecture by Oksana Sabuschko on “Totalitarianism in the 21st Century: How Is Resistance Possible?” (9:00 – 1:01:13)
“I usually say what I am paid for. I am a writer, my work is naming things: A spade is a spade.”
Oksana Sabuschko has become the leading public intellectual of Ukraine, her books have been translated in 22 languages. (The english transcprition of her name is Zabuzhko). Already at the age of 12, she made her poetry debut, but it was not until the perestroika that her first book saw the light of day. Her parents had been blacklisted during the Soviet purges of the 1970s, her first memory of the KGB goes back to her early childhood, when her parents had been interrogated by the KGB, she was five years old then.
Propapanda, so Sabuschko, “acts like a predator, it prepares the ground for actual invasion”.
She opposes strongly the view of the war “as if it were pandemia”. War is not a natural disaster, it is a “global crisis of imagination.”
Putin could not imagine that elsewhere things could be different than in the Russian Federation where people say “We are small people, what can we do?”
This deeply grounded fatalism is the “basis of Russian totalitarianism” and one of the reasons why Russia has been “incapable of civil resistance.”
Scholars in the so-called West have failed in analyzing Russia by cherishing their own image of “great Russian culture” and completely ignoring “mainstream Russian culture, millions of volumes cooking the war in the minds of Russians, the invention of a special genre of historical fantasy rewriting history, the time-travellers.”
The education systems in democracies have neglected the imagination of dangers as if war in Europe could not be possible.
“Russia is not anti-Germannazi, the Russian trauma remains Hitler’s betrayal”
Russia believes that “it is born to put it right, to fix what was broken in 1941.”
This explains why the word “fascism” in Russia and by Russian propaganda can be put in whatsoever context. “We are Putin’s Jews, he has chosen us for extermination”.
Putin’s speech to invade Ukraine was a copy of Hitler’s speech to invade Poland. “They were never hiding their intentions.”
Sabuschko reminds the mobile crematories, the lists, “lists of loyals and lists of those subjected to extermination, in every city and town we have the mass murder scenes including torture of children.”
“This is extermination.” She reminds Raphael Lemkin’s definition of genocide.
Sabuschko quotes the main question central to understanding Ukraine’s resistance: “Where do you draw your strength from?”
She answers with Golda Meir: “We want to live. Our enemies want us dead. That leaves little room for compromise.”
Speaking about the scandalous discussion between Vice-President J.D.Vance and President Zelensky in the Oval Office on Feb 28, she sees “the technocratic, neo-orwellian version of the 21st century totalitarianism” proceeding a step further than Orwell had imagined and even further than Timothy Snyder had analyzed in “The Road to Unfreedom“ with the “demolition of factuality”.
“When Zelensky reacted to J.D.Vance’s arrogant, superior-sounding lecture on why Ukraine should surrender, with the most natural remark: ‘Have you ever been to Ukraine to tell us what problems we have?’, the Vice-President of the US replied, without a blink: ‘I’ve watched and seen the stories, and I know’ – ‘the stories’ apparently standing for Tik-Tok reels. Notably, the cousin of J.D.Vance, Nate Vance has spent three years fighting for Ukraine in the ranks of the Ukrainian Army, and got demobilized only recently, after his cousin made it to the White House. In his interviews he claimed he’s been trying to get in touch with his cousin many times to provide him with first-hand information on the situation, but J.D.Vance ‘rejected the contact’. It’s precisely what I mean by ‘unfactualizing reality’, it is replacing reality with a made-up substitute (‘stories’) that makes you feel comfortable, and either making other people to share your bubble, or infecting the bubbles of others with your beliefs.”
The incident in the Oval Office made Sabuschko say “Bravo!” to President Zelensky, though she “is not a fan” of him. Zelensky had answered to Trump’s “You have no cards” – “I am not playing cards”.
Putin and Trump are “children of the Jalta treaty.” She deplores that the “mindset shaped by the cold war” is also shared by others, thinking in termes of “spheres of influence” – former colonies – and feeling entitled to decide about the fate of small countries. She also criticizes that post-colonial studies were mostly about sea-based empires, not land-based empires. “That’s why Russia has been completely neglected”.
An essential part of European history has been completely neglected, as well as an essential part of European history of resistance.
Had Ukraine not resisted, it would have disappeared, and with the nation would have disappeared “many Ukrainians, myself included.” The author and feminist added: “Let’s be honest, without much protest from the world.”
“Ukraine is the country of grassroots initiatives, the armed resistance started in Donbas already in 2014.”
She wrote for the first time about “the hierarchy of fears” in her opus magnum “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets”. Every warrior has fears but there is something people “fear more than death: to lose the continuation of their lives, the security of their children.”
This fear is bigger in the hierarchy than losing your life. “And I can identify with that.”
In Ukraine, you see the “good face of nationalism.” It means regardless if you have children or you do not have children you protect the future of your country. She sees this attitude expressed by “how protective in the army the older warriors are towards the youngers.”
Lecture by Martin Malek, political scientist, on “The Jansa-Plan and lessons to draw from”
(1:01:13 – 1:20:39)
“Why is this still relevant today?”
Austria had a plan for military defence, developed by General Alfred Jansa who was convinced that Hitler’s Germany would attack Austria. He had personally experienced the aggressive attitude of German officers.
General Alfred Jansa was dismissed before the invasion of German soldiers by “the political elite of Austria who has given themselves and their country up”.
Chancellor Schuschnigg had surrendered without a fight. Austria, after the so-called “Anschluss”, disappeared from the landscape of the world for more than seven years.
“Of course, I would not have been invited to this event if I had written a book exclusively about an Austrian general who is not remembered by the general public in Austria. My investigation is also and especially concerned with the conclusions that can and should be dawn for the present from the European events in the second half of the 1930s that led to the Second World War.”
Martin Malek, who published his book on the Jansa-Plan in March 2025, summarizes his findings:
“Expansionist dictators must be stopped from the outside, as they have usually eliminated internal opposition and will not stop on their own.”
“There is not a single example in all of history of this collective Stockholm syndrome maintaining, strengthening or restoring peace anywhere.”
Lecture by Konstantin Kaiser, writer and philosopher, man of the Enlightenment, on “Anti-nationalism, Pan-Slavism and Pan-Germanism”
(1:20:39 – 1:31:40)
“A confusion of ideas always goes hand in hand with a confusion of terms.”
“Among the sacred ingredients of communist and leftist propaganda is the romanticized image of the partigiano che morì per libertà […] But this masks the simple truth that actually what all those partisans were fighting for was national independence being restored to their homeland. Accordingly, they were nationalists – people pursuing a national goal. They were just like the Austrian-Jewish exiles who all across the globe, campaigned for the re-estabilishment of a free, independent Austria.”
Kaiser warns of the wrong “backward-looking” which suggests that the formation of nation-states gave rise to modern anti-Semitism. “In actual fact, it was the nation-state that first provided the soil for establishing civil rights for Jews.”
He draws the attention to the alliance of Russia and Iran, with the underlying antisemitic ideas of “Aryan” Indo-Germanic roots and world domination.
Kaiser, who has been researching for decades the culture of resistance and exile, looks back to the war in Yugoslavia and sees links in the pro-Serbian anti-western propaganda and todays propaganda of “Rushism”. “’Nationalist’ was the derogatory label given to the efforts of Slovenia and Croatia to turn toward the democratic West and the EU.” In Russia’s propaganda and its followers, all of this has reappeared today, with minor variations. “It is simply ludicrous.”
How to immunize against totalitarian propaganda?
“Let me conclude by reminding you that Immanuel Kant, in his ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, speaks both of suffering-with and rejoicing-with. The two go hand in hand: rejoicing together with the Ukrainian nation, its resilience, its busy cheerfulness – and sharing its sorrow for its victims.”
The lectures were followed by a discussion with the public, facilitated by Sonja Pleßl, translator and publicist, Zwischenwelt international.
To the question pointing at the remembrance of the Holocaust and how to make people understand nowadays Russia’s genocidal war, Sabuschko stresses that “Musk’s Nazi salute” was not a coincidence, “it was a test to the public reaction” and explanations that the gesture would be a result of Musk’s Asperger syndrome are “an insult to all people with Asperger syndrome.”
Sabuschko says she likes the Danish approach in schools based on empathy:
“I basically rely on that: suffering-with and rejoicing-with”. She calls on using one’s own sensory organs: “Touch the grass, taste reality, get used to smelling the reality.”
Around ninety people attended the symposium. It was an intellectual vibrant event which allows to think further and to continue to work in a fruitful direction.
At the end of the discussion, Sonja Pleßl informed on Trump’s disastrous actions against the Task Force of Yale University. This Task Force had been established to find the children deported from Ukraine by the Russian army. She called to donate to the Ukrainian organisation that organizes rescue missions to bring the children back home: https://www.saveukraineua.org
253 Euro have been donated and the amount has been transferred by Sonja Pleßl to Save Ukraine the 2nd of April 2025. Heartfelt thanks to everybody who donated!
The quotes are taken from the speeches, from conversations before and after the event with the authors and from a letter by Oksana Sabuschko to Konstantin Kaiser the 31st of March 2025.
The books and the essay mentioned in the event are the following:
Oksana Sabuschko: Der lange Abschied von der Angst
Essay 70, Literaturverlag Droschl, ISBN: 978-3-99059-016-4
Oksana Zabuzhko: The Museum of Abandoned Secrets
Oksana Sabuschko: Die längste Buchtour. Fischer Taschenbuch, ISBN: 978-3-596-70949-6
on the KGB-doctrine of ideological sabotage and its four phases in order to seize a country, described by Yuri Bezmenow who fled to the West in the 1970s, see pages 50 ff – 70 ff.
Oksana Zabuzhko: On Europe(will be published in spring 2025)
Oksana Zabuzhko: “No guilty people in the world?”, Reading Russian literature after the Bucha massacre. Essay. European literature, 22.04.2022, TLS, UK.
Martin Malek: “Das Bundesheer steht bereit. General Alfred Jansa und seine Pläne für militärischen Widerstand gegen einen deutschen Einmarsch 1935 – 1938
Voraussetzungen, Begleiterscheinungen und Rückschlüsse für die Gegenwart”. New Academic Press, edited by Verein zur Förderung und Erforschung der antifaschistischen Literatur,ISBN 978-3-7003-2328-0
Konstantin Kaiser: Ausgedehnte Gegenwart. Gedichte
edition lex liszt 12, Oberwart, Austria, ISBN: 978-399016-271-2
Oksana Stavrou: Russlands Krieg gegen die Ukraine: Worum geht es? Fakten und Perspektiven.” www.oksana-stavrou.com
Fotos of the event taken by photographer Olga Pysarenko and painter Kristina Viera Wolf: https://konstantinkaiser.at/2025/04/01/impressions-of-the-lectures-and-podium-discussion-totalitarianism-in-the-21st-century/
Lecture by Martin Malek: https://konstantinkaiser.at/2025/03/28/the-jansa-plan-and-lessons-to-be-drawn-from-it/
Lecture by Konstantin Kaiser: https://konstantinkaiser.at/2025/03/28/on-anti-nationalism/
The event took place the 25th of March 2025 in Vienna School of International Studies, organized by Zwischenwelt international in cooperation with Ukraine Office Austria, Vienna School of International Studies, OeAD-Kooperationsbüro Lemberg, supported by Ukrainian-Austrian Association, Disinfo Resilience Network Vienna and BMKÖS. Book-table by bookshop analog.
Thanks for translation of Konstantin Kaiser’s lecture to Cynthia Peck-Kubaczek and for technical help to Oksana Stavrou, Gustav Freudmann, Hannah Menne.
Zwischenwelt international, Austria, www.zwischenwelt.net, Association for the promotion and research of anti-fascist literature, aims to be one of the many points of contact between people who are opposed to the new, deadly irrationalism of the multipolar nuclear powers and their misleading propaganda, and who care about the dignity of human beings. Partner association of www.pourlukraine.com – For Ukraine, for their Freedom and Ours.