All honors to a brave Dutch woman who stands for humane values and people to people exchanges with Russia in our intolerant times
About seven years ago, I was invited by the Rusland & Oost-Europa Academie in Arnhem, The Netherlands to join the well-known Dutch journalist Karel van Wolferen on the stage of a community center there to talk about the full frontal confrontation between Russia and the West that was already taking shape even then. The audience numbered about one hundred. They were laymen who were looking for expert and worldly wise views that would offset what they were reading and hearing in Dutch mass media. It was a very pleasant evening. Our hostess, the director of the Academie, Marie-Thérèse ter Haar, was most gracious.
My second encounter with the Academie was in April 2019, when they sent a cameraman to my home in Brussels to record my thoughts on the meaning of 9 May, Victory Day, to Russians. My little talk was personal in nature, going back in time to celebrations of 9 May with my wife’s family in Petersburg in 1995 and bringing it up to date with my experience since 2016 participating in the annual March of the Immortals that is the new citizen-led, as opposed to official celebration of 9 May held in towns and cities across Russia.
For those who could find that of interest, the link is here:
For these reasons, when this year, in mid-summer, Marie-Thérèse’s staff reached out to me again with an offer to conduct a lengthy interview covering the war in Ukraine and more generally East-West relations, I was quick to agree. The recording took place in Arnhem, in the Academie offices, and was preceded and followed by a long chat with Marie-Thérèse about her current activities as she strives to keep alive her mission of leading group travel to Russia and also to the Baltic States for the purpose of people-to-people exchanges and better mutual understanding.
As readers are surely aware, the government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte is fiercely anti-Russian, so that anyone promoting good relations with the big neighbor to the east faces severe head winds.
My one hour interview at the Academie was conducted by Elmer van Leeuwen in English. It opens with a four minute introduction in Dutch by Marie-Thérèse. The interview has just been posted on the Academie’s youtube account and the link is here:
Gilbert Doctorow & Elmer van Leeuwen
Preparations for the interview were meticulous. It would consist of four parts: Russian foreign policy, American foreign policy, European foreign policy and the Ukraine conflict. Each of these parts was broken down into sub-questions, set out in two single-spaced pages. With such preparation, the interview itself is tightly focused and a maximum of fact and opinion is available to the viewer in the given time.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023