commentary to student safety in St Petersburg

[Robert Orr]

I'll pick up the towel .....

> I believe that in any one group of people, even within the Slavist group,
> there will always be a group who are anti-X, where X is what they are
> studying.
>
> Some people learn because they appreciate Russia and its culture, etc.,
> while others learn about Russia because it was/is 'an enemy' to their own
> culture.  Some here are bound to be Russophobes.

Nobody's commented on the segue from "Slavist" to "Russian".  The point 
here, all too easily forgotten, is that "Russian" is only a subset of 
"Slavic".

> If there can exist a self-loathing gay who is against gay rights,

Nor has anybody on this thread commented on the recent gay pride parades in 
Poland, which have also run into trouble, for completely different reasons 
than those in Moscow..

then
> there
> certainly can exist a scholar who devotes their life to learning about
> Russia, but at the same time is a Russophobe, and anti-Russia.

For historical reasons, there are plenty of people who study other parts of 
Slavic and are not too fond of Russian culture, etc. - maybe even on 
SEELANGS.  I know at least one scholar of a non-Russian Slavic background 
who is horrified by the way that "Slavic" and "Russian" often appear to be 
used interchangeably in North America.

> Perhaps we should query some of the students who are studying Arabic at
> the
> moment why they decided to pursue their studies?

Perhaps we'd better leave that one alone, actually.

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