2022.08.22 俄罗斯的一场谋杀

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A Murder in Russia
Why an assassination in Moscow matters to Ukraine and the West

By Tom Nichols
View of Moscow and one of seven Stalinist skyscrapers
Moscow, December 2015 (Frédéric Soltan / Corbis / Getty)
AUGUST 22, 2022
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The daughter of a prominent Russian fascist was killed in a car bombing in Moscow. Most Americans have no idea who the Dugin family is, but this event could have serious repercussions in Russia and Ukraine.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

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A car bomb exploded in one of Moscow’s wealthy neighborhoods on Saturday night, killing Darya Dugina, the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, the spiritual godfather of Russia’s surging fascism. Her death may have an impact far beyond the Russian capital. Or it might not; this may have been part of yet another tangled vendetta among Russia’s elites. We won’t know the truth for a while—if ever—but following this story requires some context about the Dugins.

It’s possible (if unlikely) that this might not have been about politics. Dugin’s daughter was driving her father’s car, but in Moscow, people with money and proximity to power live with a certain amount of generic risk from any number of potential enemies. To be involved in anything of material or political importance in Russia is to court risk. (Many years ago I was interviewed for a relatively high-visibility job with a Western company that wanted to assign me to Moscow. The position, I was assured, came with a fine salary and a nice apartment—and reliable bodyguards.)

But the Dugins are not ordinary propagandists. Aleksandr Dugin is part of a weird strain of Russian imperial hypernationalism that somehow manages to venerate Russian Orthodoxy, Stalin, the Nazis, and the occult all at the same time. You can read more here about the late-1980s trends in the U.S.S.R. that produced this vicious and deeply weird school of thought, but spare yourself the effort it would take to make sense of it all. Much of it is warmed-over Russian messianism and mystical gobbledygook, the product not only of 19th-century Russian grievances against Europe and Western Christianity but also of late-20th-century Soviet resentments against the “Atlantic” world led by the United States.

Underneath it all is the simple and brutal belief that Russia—specifically white, Christian Russia—is destined to rule Eurasia as the first step to contesting world domination with the decadent Americans and Europeans. Dugin’s ravings are as unreadable in Russian as they are in English, but the Russian General Staff assigns Dugin’s book as a required text, and understandably so. It is an almost perfectly Orwellian view of total and permanent war, a perfect ideology for a country afflicted by both a deep inferiority complex and a dark spiritual vacuum.

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Ukraine, of course, is at the top of the list of regions to be recaptured. Kyiv is the birthplace of Slavic Christianity, and for people like Dugin (and Vladimir Putin), the existence of Ukraine as an independent state is intolerable. Dugin doesn’t mince words about Ukraine; back in 2014, he said that Ukrainians “must be killed, killed, killed.”

Dugin’s 29-year-old daughter ran a disinformation website in Russia and was already under U.S. sanctions. (Among other things, she claimed that the Bucha massacre outside Kyiv was staged.) She shared her father’s ideology and his loathing for Ukraine.

So who killed her? Russia’s Federal Security Service (the FSB, by its Russian initialism) claims that a Ukranian woman named Natalia Vovk moved into Dugina’s apartment block a month ago, planted the bomb, and fled to Estonia. This seems pretty quick and convenient, and the Russian news service TASS has already declared the case solved.

It’s true that Russian officials in Ukraine have been killed by car bombs, which are old-school hits by modern Russian standards. It’s not clear, however, why the Ukrainians would want to go to Moscow to take out second-stringers like Dugin or his daughter; his star has dimmed over the years, in part because he was critical of Putin for not being brutal and imperialistic enough. As my fellow Russia expert (and Dugin watcher) Nick Gvosdev told me today, Dugin’s ideas may have had some influence, but he wasn’t a presence in the Kremlin, where he was seen as unstable and potentially embarrassing. Dugin isn’t a nobody, but he wasn’t exactly running the war in Ukraine, either.

Kyiv denies Moscow’s charges. Meanwhile, a former Russian parliamentarian and dedicated Putin opponent, Ilya Ponomarev, claimed in a broadcast from Kyiv that the bombing was the work of a group calling itself “the National Republican Army” that is dedicated to overthrowing Putin, but this is not verifiable.

Could the FSB have hit Dugina while trying to kill Dugin, perhaps as a plot—the kind Russian spies have been accused of in the past—to spin up fresh hatred against Ukraine and get some of the heat off itself for its botched advice six months ago? That’s a stretch, too, because anyone who admired Dugin was already all in on the war. But in Moscow in 2022, anything is possible.

Unless someone with more credibility claims responsibility, or more evidence emerges in Russia, we’re unlikely to know much more anytime soon, no matter how quickly TASS or Twitter declares the case closed. The one certain outcome is that the Russians will use Dugina’s death to press on with their campaign of atrocities and destruction.

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But is it? A growing body of research suggests that the world could, in fact, raise enough beef, pork, chicken, and other meat to let anyone who wants to eat a modest portion of meat a few times a week—and do so sustainably. Indeed, it turns out that a world with some animal agriculture might have a smaller environmental footprint than an entirely vegan world.

Read the full article.

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P.S.
I’m often asked to recommend a good overall history of Russia’s post-Soviet period. That’s always a hard question to answer, because the story of modern Russia is intimately entwined with the recent past, and I end up wanting to hand over a reading list. But one book that might help a general reader make sense of Putin’s Russia is Putin’s Kleptocracy, by the late Karen Dawisha. Unlike other authors who either were too optimistic about Putin (I fell into that mistake more than 20 years ago) or treated Russia’s decline as an accident or the product of bad Western policies, Dawisha argues that the system we see now was not a tragic error but the result of a conscious design by Putin and the people around him. It’s a crushing read, especially for those of us who had greater hopes for a new Russia, but Dawisha, I believe, got it right.

— Tom

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Peacefield.



俄罗斯的一场谋杀
为什么在莫斯科发生的暗杀事件对乌克兰和西方很重要？

作者：汤姆-尼古拉斯
莫斯科的景色和七座斯大林式摩天大楼之一
莫斯科，2015年12月（Frédéric Soltan / Corbis / Getty）。
2022年8月22日
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这是《大西洋日报》的一个版本，该通讯引导你了解当天最大的故事，帮助你发现新的想法，并推荐最佳文化。请在此注册。

一位杰出的俄罗斯法西斯分子的女儿在莫斯科的一次汽车炸弹袭击中丧生。大多数美国人不知道杜金家族是谁，但这一事件可能在俄罗斯和乌克兰产生严重影响。

首先，这里有来自《大西洋月刊》的三个新故事。

迈克-彭斯欠国家一个解释。
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不是普通的宣传者
周六晚上，一枚汽车炸弹在莫斯科的一个富人区爆炸，杀害了俄罗斯法西斯主义激增的精神教父亚历山大-杜金的女儿达里娅-杜金娜。她的死可能会产生远远超出俄罗斯首都的影响。也可能不会；这可能是俄罗斯精英们之间又一次纠结的仇杀的一部分。我们在一段时间内不会知道真相--如果有的话--但关注这个故事需要一些关于杜金的背景。

有可能（尽管不太可能），这可能与政治无关。杜金的女儿开着她父亲的车，但在莫斯科，有钱和接近权力的人生活在一定程度上有来自任何数量的潜在敌人的一般风险。在俄罗斯，参与任何具有物质或政治重要性的事情，都是在承担风险。(许多年前，我在一家西方公司面试了一份相对高知名度的工作，该公司希望将我派往莫斯科。该公司向我保证，这个职位有很好的薪水和漂亮的公寓，还有可靠的保镖）。

但杜金夫妇不是普通的宣传员。Aleksandr Dugin是俄罗斯帝国超国家主义的一个奇怪的分支，不知何故，他能同时崇尚俄罗斯东正教、斯大林、纳粹和神秘主义。你可以在这里读到更多关于1980年代末美国的趋势，这些趋势产生了这一恶毒而深刻的怪异思想流派，但请你不要为理解这一切而花费精力。它的大部分内容都是暖昧的俄罗斯弥赛亚主义和神秘的胡言乱语，不仅是19世纪俄罗斯对欧洲和西方基督教的不满，也是20世纪末苏联对美国领导的 "大西洋 "世界的怨恨的产物。

在这一切的背后是一个简单而残酷的信念，即俄罗斯--特别是白人、基督徒的俄罗斯--注定要统治欧亚大陆，作为与腐朽的美国人和欧洲人争夺世界统治权的第一步。杜金的狂言在俄语中和在英语中一样让人看不懂，但俄罗斯总参谋部把杜金的书作为必修课，这是可以理解的。这是一种几乎完美的奥威尔式的全面和永久战争观，对于一个既深受自卑感困扰又有黑暗的精神真空的国家来说是一种完美的意识形态。

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乌克兰当然是要夺回的地区名单中的首位。基辅是斯拉夫基督教的发源地，对杜金（和弗拉基米尔-普京）这样的人来说，乌克兰作为一个独立国家的存在是不可容忍的。杜金对乌克兰毫不吝啬，早在2014年，他就说乌克兰人 "必须被杀死，杀死，杀死"。

杜金29岁的女儿在俄罗斯经营着一个虚假信息网站，并且已经受到美国的制裁。(除其他事项外，她声称基辅郊外的布查大屠杀是伪造的）。她与她父亲的意识形态和他对乌克兰的厌恶是一样的。

那么是谁杀了她？俄罗斯联邦安全局（FSB，俄语缩写）声称，一个名叫纳塔利娅-沃夫克的乌克兰妇女一个月前搬进了杜吉娜的公寓楼，安置了炸弹，然后逃到了爱沙尼亚。这似乎相当迅速和方便，而且俄罗斯新闻社塔斯社已经宣布此案告破。

在乌克兰的俄罗斯官员确实是被汽车炸弹炸死的，按照现代俄罗斯的标准，这是老式的打击。然而，不清楚为什么乌克兰人要去莫斯科干掉杜金或他女儿这样的二流子；这些年来他的星光已经暗淡，部分原因是他批评普京不够野蛮和帝国主义。正如我的俄罗斯专家同事（也是杜金的观察者）尼克-格沃斯德夫今天告诉我的那样，杜金的思想可能有一些影响，但他在克里姆林宫并不存在，在那里他被视为不稳定和潜在的尴尬。杜金不是一个无名小卒，但他也不完全是在管理乌克兰的战争。

基辅否认了莫斯科的指控。同时，俄罗斯前议员、普京的忠实反对者伊利亚-波诺马廖夫在基辅的一次广播中声称，这次爆炸是一个自称 "民族共和军 "的团体所为，该团体致力于推翻普京，但这无法核实。

联邦安全局会不会在试图杀死杜金的同时袭击杜金，也许是作为一个阴谋--俄罗斯间谍过去曾被指控的那种阴谋--来挑起对乌克兰的新仇恨，并为自己六个月前的失败建议分担一些压力？这也太夸张了，因为任何钦佩杜金的人都已经在这场战争中全力以赴。但在2022年的莫斯科，一切皆有可能。

除非有更可信的人声称对此事负责，或在俄罗斯出现更多证据，否则无论塔斯社或推特如何迅速宣布结案，我们都不太可能很快知道更多。一个确定的结果是，俄罗斯人将利用杜吉纳的死亡来继续他们的暴行和破坏活动。

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牧场上的奶牛。
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素食主义可能不是最可持续的饮食方式

作者：鲍勃-霍姆斯

由于政府在应对气候变化方面拖拖拉拉，许多有关人士正在寻找他们作为个人可以采取的行动--少吃肉显然是一个开始。今天，牲畜占全球温室气体排放量的14.5%......对于对气候变化感到震惊的人来说，完全放弃肉类似乎是唯一的选择。

但这是真的吗？越来越多的研究表明，事实上，世界可以饲养足够的牛肉、猪肉、鸡肉和其他肉类，让任何想每周吃几次肉的人都能吃到适量的肉，而且是可持续的。事实上，事实证明，一个有一些畜牧业的世界可能比一个完全素食的世界有更小的环境足迹。

阅读全文。

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阅读。看看我们新的非常短的故事，展示了轻盈的美德。

看吧。如果你在《龙的传人》之后需要一点清心寡欲的东西，可以试试这20部适合注意力短暂的电视节目之一。

玩我们的每日填字游戏。

P.S.
我经常被要求推荐一本好的俄罗斯后苏维埃时期的整体历史。这总是一个很难回答的问题，因为现代俄罗斯的故事与最近的过去紧密地纠缠在一起，而我最终想递上一份阅读清单。但有一本书可能有助于普通读者理解普京的俄罗斯，那就是已故的卡伦-达维沙的《普京的贪污腐败》。与其他作者不同的是，他们要么对普京过于乐观（我20多年前就犯了这个错误），要么将俄罗斯的衰落视为一个意外或西方坏政策的产物，达维沙认为，我们现在看到的制度不是一个悲剧性的错误，而是普京和他周围的人有意识设计的结果。这是一本令人崩溃的书，尤其是对于我们这些对新俄罗斯抱有更大希望的人来说，但我相信，达维沙是正确的。

- 汤姆

伊莎贝尔-法塔尔对本通讯有贡献。

汤姆-尼古拉斯是《大西洋》杂志的工作人员，也是其通讯《和平场》的作者。