Below is a transcript of our conversation with CMU senior Calvin Older:
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from the Central Michigan University students and faculty. Russia has waged war against Ukraine since February 2022. Territorial claims in Georgia led to military action there in 2008. International Relations major Calvin Older is spending his second summer in Georgia, which borders Ukraine, collecting the stories of residents and the many displaced by the violence. He has developed a nearly hour long podcast and has received an award from CMU for his undergraduate research. In the first of two segments, my conversation with Calvin, who joined me via Zoom from the Georgian capital of Tbilisi…
This evolution to this close to an hour long podcast that you've entitled Troika the chance to interview political activists who fled their home due to the conflict with Russia and Ukraine. Walk us through the process of how you came to center in on this major project that you've had.
Calvin Older:
From what I've done to study Russian was through just basically immersion in Russian media, whether that be Russian social media or just traditional media to using that to practice the language, understand, relate the language and what I noticed after the war is there was a lot of dialogue, especially against Russians, that they were all Russians are in support of this war. All Russians are just puppets of Putin. They're mind control. They're just a very slanderous things, which I always questioned primarily due to the fact that not only is it a contradiction to say Putin is a dictator and then also say that all Russians voted for Putin, but also, it's, I think it's unfair to describe this giant country that is Russia, with over 100 million people to say they have this one opinion. This is how they think. I mean, even just looking at America, we can see the wider range of ideas of opinions of different personal theories that people have to say that all Americans believe one thing. It would be ridiculous. And so, I think we need to extend the same level of attention that level of not just looking at the surface and actually see, OK, what do Russians actually believe? What is going on? And so, I wanted to put a spotlight on this antiwar effort that not only has been coming since February 2022, but also that has been going on basically since modern Russia was founded.
DN:
Have the stories of the people been impacted or have you seen a shift in what they say or the context in which they say it when we look at it through the lens of the years prior to the 2024 election and now, with the current administration in place, the relationship between the two countries, the relationship for that matter between the US and Ukraine and the (the) tensions we've seen there, how does that reflect, if at all, In in the stories that you have been told by the people there?
CO:
Yeah. So, at the time of filming the podcast for those interviews, it was about two years into the war, and at that point, no one expected from either side that the war was going to continue that long. So, people were more of just kind of in a limbo state of when can I return home? When is the war going to be over? When are things going to be better for me? And then, more than another year passes by and here we are looking at this war and the only thing that's changed since then was the election of Trump. And there was a hope not only from the reo-contis the Russians in different countries, but you could see that in just Eastern Europe and the caucuses in general that OK, at least something's going to change. We have been in this stalemate for so long. Maybe even if it's not the way we want the war to end. At least, it's an end to just this violence. There has been an opinion of, especially among Russians living abroad, of I don't care how this ends I just want this to end. That's at least at least the discussions that were happening in the communities abroad. In general, I remember one of them was telling me recently that he was arguing with his friend that he truly believed that the war was going to end before June, after Trump was elected, that we were going to see an end to this. And now June has passed.
We're now in July and there still is not an end. I mean, Kiev is still being bombed. We're seeing fire rise out of the skyline every single day. It seems again, we're kind of returning back to that limbo state that we saw same time July last year. We don't really see when this war. Is going to end.
DN:
My conversation with CMU student Calvin older continues next time on central Focus.
