The notion of Vladimir Putin as the defender of Western Civilization appears to be based on enemy-of-enemy-is-friend logic. But that's kind of hard to square with Putin's sponsorship of the savage Muslim buffoon Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin's proxy ruler in Chechnya.
In truth, the old KGB man is in charge of a giant, multicultural empire that traditionally doesn't have all that much going for it other than size and relative lack of fractiousness. The height of Russian political thought going back to the throwing off of the Tartar yoke is centralized command-and-control of political and (either directly under Stalin or indirectly under Stolypin and Putin) economic power, combined with multicultural sensitivity.
It's a way of thinking that demands to be understood, and even respected for its endurance, but it's alien to us fortunate enough to be born in the more geographically privileged Anglo-American world.
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154 comments:
Steve, there was warfare going on in Chechnya in the 1990s. There's peace there now. I think that's an achievement.
Putin needed a prominent Chechen leader by his side when he was bringing order to that region, and it so happened that Ramzan's dad was willing to help. After Akhmat Kadyrov was blown up by terrorists, Ramzan inherited his father's place.
It's not like Putin had a lot of choices. Akhmat was the chief mufti of Chechnya.
"giant, multicultural empire"
Sounds like your citizenist idea. And what is "empire" supposed to mean here? The vast majority of Russia's people want to be in Russia.
"centralized command-and-control"
Beats anarchy, as in 1917-1922 and 1990-2000.
"combined with multicultural sensitivity"
Beats inter-ethnic warfare.
Steve, you sound like a neocon. Are you Scottish-Irish by any chance?
Yep. I'm man enough to admit that whenever I think of Putin vs. Obama/Blue-State Dept my first reaction is to side with Putin's unashamed and unabashed male bravado.
Then I pause to reflect a moment and end up with a more Kissingerian stance: pity they both can't lose.
I also wonder what Romney would have done any differently. Well, with McInsane having made his desired intentions entirely too clear. (Speaking of quotes, somebody needs to run that one from Mark Twain by John: better to keep one's mouth shut and thought a fool, than open it and remove all doubt.)
And about Putin's cultural sensitivity: it's not like its Western namesake. The Russian state isn't only sensitive to the feelings of its minorities, it's sensitive to the feelings of the majority as well.
Bearded Ramzan secretly thinks Putin is a poof because of the smooth face.
I don't grasp the logic here. It's beyond the pale to sponsor any Muslim? Or just to rule any territory inhabited by Muslims?
Putin inherited the muslim territories, and since they have been part of Russia for centuries, I see no problem in treating them with respect so long as they acknowledge the position of the majority. Unlike say in the US, where the minority feels entitled to become the majority through mass immigration, and any opposition to this is treated as some sort of assault on them.
As for Putin defending Western Civilization, he is probably the only leader in the European world who publicly expresses his Christianity without reservation. I was surprised to find out his mother baptized him in secret.
Check out this youtube compilation of Putin in various interviews and settings where he discusses his religious views. I really like the part where thousands are rallying around a Church, I think to protect it from P. Riot.
For those of us old enough to remember the USSR, this video will blow your mind. The fact that religion is growing in Russia after 70 plus years of an atheist regime that made life hard on believers, to say the least, is amazing. While the rest of the Euro world becomes secular and loses all sense of any moral compass, the Russians seem to going in the opposite direction. I have no idea if they will succeed. Maybe they are too far gone. But I have to say that these people are not my enemies. I feel more kinship towards them then many in my own nation.
The height of Russian political thought going back to the throwing off of the Tartar yoke is centralized command-and-control of political and (either directly under Stalin or indirectly under Stolypin and Putin) economic power, combined with multicultural sensitivity.
It is interesting how a nation's people and geography shapes its outlook. You are correct that Russia has had to aspire to a centralized command-and-control system. The Tatars, Ottomans, Mongols and Western Europeans just attacked too many times.
But the sad thing is that America, protected by two huge moats and bordered by two weaklings, free to grow up in relative peace and prosperity, is now on the path to aspiring to the Russian centralized command-and-control system. We've flooded ourselves with enough diverse peoples that all thoughts of small, decentralized government are going down the memory hole. And judging by all the micro and macro aggressions we are supposed to prevent, our future multicultural sensitivity will make the Russians look downright intolerant.
RKad has lousy trigger discipline.
Putin has not defended "Western civilization" - whatever that means -, but traditional European lifestyles. Now, under a certain concept of Western civilization, we could have said that it helped people to maintain the lifestyle they liked. But as that is no more so, "Western civilization" is a hollow concept - and we shouldn't try to give a primitive geopolitical conflict a fake ideological justification.
"that traditionally doesn't have all that much going for it "
How smart are Russians anyway? Their soviet scientific achievements seem impressive ... until you realise that:
"In a few words: there is no such thing as Soviet technology. Almost all — perhaps 90-95 percent — came directly or indirectly from the United States and its allies. In effect the United States and the NATO countries have built the Soviet Union. Its industrial and its military capabilities. This massive construction job has taken 50 years. Since the Revolution in 1917. It has been carried out through trade and the sale of plants, equipment and technical assistance."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton
The Russian Empire historically treated their Muslim subjects fairly well. So long as they paid tribute to the Tsar and the Moscow Patriarch, the Tatars, Caucasians, and Turks were allowed almost complete religious freedom and a great deal of political and economic freedom as well.
It was only after the USSR came around that a system of brutal subjugation was put in place.
well, like i said. he's not going along with the cultural marxists, the globalist elites, or the EU bureaucrats. indeed, he's telling them to shove it. even though he is not a good guy, people in the west can respect that. who doesn't want to tell those groups to shove it?
once russia solidifies it's energy pact with china and india, there's nothing the west can do to stop them or even slow them down. indeed, their future is bright, relatively speaking.
If you don't know anything about Russian science, then believe me, 11.36 PM, there's no wikipedia page that will make you look well informed.
Maybe it's not enemy-of-my-enemy, but more because Putin doesn't throw parades celebrating gynephobia, heterophobia, and Christophobia, and in fact Putin saw to it that three ugly, talentless girls who publicly defiled a church got prison time for their hateful bigotry. I feel like I have much more in common with Putin than with anyone at the helm of Team Uncle Samantha, who just wants to steal my money and pass it out to Obama's Sons to secure their votes. I'm willing to take a chance the Putin wouldn't treat me like that.
"he has more balls and manliness than the entire wasp establishment of America."
We can all see your hard-on, guy. Please put it away. Sheesh.
>>>How smart are Russians anyway? Their soviet scientific achievements seem impressive ... until you realise that:
They are capable of making the Tsar bomba.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
So what would a defender of Western Civilization do if made president of that barbarous territory known as Russia?
Probably not give a cabinet position to Pussy Rot, for starters ...
I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that all these Russia defenders in the comments would choose to be born in multicultural Sweden any day of the week.
Just because Russia doesn't have the West's (comparatively minor) blemishes, doesn't mean that it doesn't have massive problems of its own. Here's an easy prediction: no country that ranks 127th out of 175 in global corruption (tied with Mali and Nicaragua!) is ever going to be amount to anything but a festering cesspool.
Doesn't matter how filled with white people you are. Only thing those barbarians have going for them is a big pile of oil. Like Saudi Arabia, once that runs out they'll be riding horses and chopping each others' heads off.
...Here's an easy prediction: no country that ranks 127th out of 175 in global corruption (tied with Mali and Nicaragua!) is ever going to be amount to anything but a festering cesspool.
Doesn't matter how filled with white people you are. Only thing those barbarians have going for them is a big pile of oil.
Was that essentially what AH was insisting when he rejected the pleas of softies like Rosenberg who wanted to be nicer to the Russians and Ukrainians?
I name a dozen men I'd rather have in charge of Russia - but they aren't in power. And I can name a dozen Western countries I'd rather live in - whose leaders don't give a damn. Putin seems to be one of the better tradeoffs between "being in power" and "caring about Western Civilization" available, not in the sense of having a good present-day state, but having a good future trajectory.
Sweden is a better place now, I expect, but Sweden is on its way to more diversity, more carbecues, more parking tickets for the owners of burnt-out cars that can't be driven away, more anarcho-tyranny, more World War GLBTIHNQ, and more seizures of children from those horrible, terrible, no good parents who think that they should get some say in raising their own kids.
Sweden may be higher above the abyss than Russia at this point, but Sweden is sliding into Hell; Russia is clawing its way out.
Yes Steve, - you say that, but for how long will the USA - a project that is only around 240 years old, mind you, will acyually remain a 'culturally homogenous' place hat will actually hold together?
Where 'Russia' sits - the eurasian hinterland has been settled by disparate peoples, cultures, nations, religions etc for thousands and thousands of years, the Russians merely being originally a small people at the European edge of that hinterland, who rose to dominance and control in the last few centuries.
Contrast that to the USA - around the same timeanother small people, the English colonists, took over a continent and mastered it. The people whom they dominated were never at the cultural or numerical level of the asiatic nations that the Russians dominated.
Fast forward to present times - the intractable black problem, post 1965 immigration, the Mexican takeover, a majority non-white USA in 30 year time, and I wouldn't be so smug over the fate of Russia. In fact, my feeling is that the long term destiny of the USA is *worse*. The non-Russian people of Russia are nations with nation states or pseudo nation states. The NAMs of the USA are a different animal altogether - basically part of the ation but not part of the nation at the same time - and well aware of it. What you have is, in fact, the recipe for permanent dischord and conflict.
Horrible it may be, but Russia is the only remaining bulwark against the neo-Bolshevist American Empire. Unless there's a big nationalist or "ultra"-right pan-Europeanist revival in Europe Russia is all there is.
How smart are Russians anyway?
Ethnic Russians are not smart at all. That's why the country is almost always ruled by foreigners, and why most of Russia's cultural and scientific achievements were created by people of Tatar, German, Polish, or Jewish ancestry. Lower income ethnic Russians (i.e. descendents of the serfs) are very similar culturally to African-Americans, and exhibit a lot of similar traits - poor impulse control, poor executive function, weak commitment to monogamy, low investment in fatherhood, violence, peacocking, etc. Steve is exactly right that Russia is actually a very alien society for Anglo-Americans.
You have to keep in mind that Russia is one of the few remaining empires. Being born in West we tend to see nation-states as "natural" form of government but if we recall, only 100 years ago nations and countries did not align very well even in Europe.
Governing multinational empire has always been quite different from nation-states. As a general rule governments there cannot invoke naked nationalism of dominant group to boost its support. Instead, whenever possible, it is usually good idea to "outsource" governing minority areas to local elite and give them relatively free hands as long as they are loyal. Kadyrov is openly flirting with polygamy, sharia law and Islamic dress code. Kremlin seems to be OK with that as long as he keeps it low-level, localized to Chechnya and does not try to export it into neighboring areas. Which seems much more rational approach to me compared to Western way of mixing populations and cultures with the goal of keeping the population of a country uniform - even if the uniformity of nation means throwing away much of the traditional culture.
Of course the fact that the minority subjects of empire are native cultures, not immigrants helps here.
Russia has historically had a very different hand to play than most of the West but when Putin plays that Russian hand well we win too.
By "we" I don't mean the collection of freaks and 3rd rate technocrats who govern the West but rather the rest of us, the people of the West who have to live with them. When they lose, we win and Putin just handed them a spectacular loss. That's why I've been cheering for Putin and Russia lately.
Obama yesterday touched on why I find myself siding with Putin. Obama stated that Russia threatened to violate the "international system". From my perspective this system is a globalist entity that seeks to diminish any notion of nationhood or self-determination. We are now just one big happy family.
The system needs to be taken down a peg or two and I hope Putin is the one that can do it.
Alejandro Akbar said: RKad has lousy trigger discipline.
Hunsdon said: Check out this stuff. Would never fly in the West.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI01qKAqYts
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/167289/nanjing-jewish-studies
This is how the Chinese (and pretty much everybody) sees the US.
Our effeminate elites are determined to push Russia against a wall. But the Russians have nukes, a history of rough play, and we have a totally open border.
What are our reasons to oppose Russia? What does opposing Russia gain us? What does opposing Russia cost us? Best and worst case scenarios, for all of the above.
That's a calculus I rarely see explicated. The first question is simply assumed, the second question seems to be answered "all good things" and the third question seems to be answered "nothing much."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_McGinty
The role of Ramzan Kadyrov was played brilliantly by Akim Tamiroff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akim_Tamiroff
You raised a grin out of me, Steve.
DR said: Only thing those barbarians have going for them is a big pile of oil. Like Saudi Arabia, once that runs out they'll be riding horses and chopping each others' heads off.
Hunsdon said: Is there any goy nation for which you have kind words, DR?
Our host mentioned: " . . . Putin's sponsorship of the savage Muslim buffoon Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin's proxy ruler in Chechnya."
Hunsdon said: When opposed by savage Christian buffoons like Sashko Byli, sometimes you need savage buffoons of your own. American history used to be replete with savage buffoons. Kit Carson, Jim Bowie, Jim Bridger.
When Praviy Sector stormed out of Maidan, restraint on the part of Berkut just meant that Berkut lost.
When the Chechen wars were at their fiercest, you needed savage buffoons to hold your own, and to win. It was also far better, in Chechnya, to suborn Chechens to be your savage buffoons, as opposed to bringing in savage Russian Orthodox buffoons (which let's face it is what the Wahabbists were hoping for).
The Russians are, well, going to be Russian. Whether or not anybody out there likes them is immaterial. They're here to stay and aren't going to go away just because somebody else doesn't care for them. It's a fact of life so ways of coexistence have to be found to keep the peace. There's also a good chance that as a nation they'll outlast the US which has an aggressive form of demographic cancer as well as suicidal tendencies. In the long haul who'll be the one left standing?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
Let's take a look at the data. 81% of the peop are ethnic Russian in Russia. Compared to the US that's not bad. They just increased their Russian population in one fell blow in Crimea too.
The Multicult condition of Russia appears to be slightly over played by the slick propagandists beavering away at getting WN in the US to attack Russia.
I've always been amazed at the support Putin's been getting from those in his Amen corner in the US like Pat Buchanan.
Given the huge amount of aid we've given Russia since 1941 you'd think the Russia First people here would be grateful.
I think its time some people here finally put America First (to coin a phrase).
Thanks Steve. This is a post that desperately needed to be written. The delusion among the dissident right commenters of this blog had reached embarrassing levels. Almost every Western country is still less diverse with much less social pathology than Russia. Non-Western countries that deserve praise from the dissident right are Japan and South Korea for their homogeneity, prosperity and lack of cultural Marxism. Even China is a more admirable country than Russia.
Even today, most literate Russian kids grow up reading Lermentov's A Hero of Our Time and Tolstoy's Haji Murad. It's not so much multi-culturalism that keeps the Russians in the Caucuses and other fringe possessions as it is the same kind of romanticism that drove British imperialism and US expansion into the West and Southwest. I suspect that there's probably the Russian equivalent of US history's Turner Thesis but I'm not familiar enough with Russian historiography to be definitive on that point.
It all depends on your definition of "western". It used to mean "European/Christian" as opposed to the East: Middle and Far East (Orientals). The Muslim and non-Christian world, in short.
Then after Western European domination took hold, and the Byzantine East withered, the West went on to mean Western European.
During the cold war, parts of Europe behind the Iron curtain that were previously considered Western, such as Poland and Central Europe (Hungary, Moravia, Bohemia, Slovenia, Galitzia)joined Russia and its satellites west of the Urals in being the new East, synonym of communist.
After the end of the Cold War, I think we should go back to calling Russia part of the West. My definition includes both Europe and the Americas (North, Central and South), Australia and New Zealand. South Africa under Black rule isn´t western anymore.
""that traditionally doesn't have all that much going for it "
How smart are Russians anyway? Their soviet scientific achievements seem impressive ... until you realise that:
"In a few words: there is no such thing as Soviet technology. Almost all — perhaps 90-95 percent — came directly or indirectly from the United States and its allies. In effect the United States and the NATO countries have built the Soviet Union. Its industrial and its military capabilities. This massive construction job has taken 50 years. Since the Revolution in 1917. It has been carried out through trade and the sale of plants, equipment and technical assistance."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._SuttonW"
Very kind of the West to transfer Sputnik technology and allow the Soviets to use it first.
http://alternative-right.blogspot.jp/2014/03/sorry-for-being-hated-hated-for-being_25.html
western civ
For those of us old enough to remember the USSR, this video will blow your mind. The fact that religion is growing in Russia after 70 plus years of an atheist regime that made life hard on believers, to say the least, is amazing. While the rest of the Euro world becomes secular and loses all sense of any moral compass, the Russians seem to going in the opposite direction. I have no idea if they will succeed. Maybe they are too far gone. But I have to say that these people are not my enemies. I feel more kinship towards them then many in my own nation.
Calling Peter Frost. Maybe we are not all blank slates, but in the West have been selected for adherence to the Christian strain of religion.
Weak post. Is this the real Steve Sailer?
You, of all people, should recognize that Chechens gonna Chech. And that it is entirely possible that it takes a Chechen to rule Chechens.
The fact of the matter is, this "buffoon" has kept a lid on the situation in Chechnya, something that previous rulers were unable to do. Something that a Mom jeans wearer like Obama would probably struggle to do.
I thought you understood that this guy's antics are funny, but they're also, to some degree, awesome. The fact of the matter is that we, as Americans, have been raised in an effeminate bourgeois liberal culture. We have been conditioned to laugh at manly behavior. At the same time, we laugh at the Swedes for their effeminacy, other manlier groups can't tell the difference between us and the Swedes. If this guy was really a complete buffoon, then we'd be reading more in the news about turmoil in Chechnya.
Russia isn't a multicultural state in the same way the US is. Russia is what a practical "citizenist" empire looks like, in a part of the world where leaders tend to take a little more off the topic. The vast majority of those multiple cultures in the Russian federation are located in their historical homelands and have been there for a long time. Russia can't be mono-cultural without pointless genocides or pointlessly putting itself at the mercy of its rivals by breaking up the country.
But unlike Americans, Russians and their neighbors are in their homelands. Which means that variation between Russians and their neighbors is more clinal in character. Genetic distances are far lower, stabilized hybrid populations have existed for long periods, etc, so the idea of say Russians, Tatars and Chuvash continuing to live as neighbors under the same political system is not unthinkable, specially if Russians can remain on top (a position they have only recently regained, mind you), while granting limited autonomy to the other populations and more significant autonomy to the groups, like the Chechens, that need it.
On the other hand, citizenism has a far tougher road ahead of it in America, because inter-continental migration has brought three highly disparate and incompatible populations from the corners of the world together. Because of the vast gulf in genetics and characteristics, these populations will always struggle to live in the same societies. It is, you after all who pointed out that the genetic distance between Anglos and Africans is about 100x that of the distance between Anglos and Danes. And of course, breeding these differences out would just be dysgenic.
Eurasianism / citizenism is a reasonable path for Russia, while dismemberment is the only viable option for America.
"The height of Russian political thought going back to the throwing off of the Tartar yoke is centralized command-and-control of political and (either directly under Stalin or indirectly under Stolypin and Putin) economic power, combined with multicultural sensitivity."
Other than complete centralization of economic power, isn't that sorf of what we are becoming? The Iron fist in the rainbow glove?
What does "geographically privileged" mean?
RE: Russian Intellectual Levels,
Murray provides some data in HUMAN ACCOMPLISHMENT. Tracking human accomplishment in Europe during the period 1400-1950, the big four are: Britain, Germany, France, and Italy. Combined, they account for 72% of the significant figures in the arts and sciences. Russia comes well behind these titans, being just slightly ahead of the Netherlands and Spain. (HA, 296)
The Russians who make it into Murray's "Giants" category are:
Astronomy: 0
Biology: 1 or 0 (depends on how you define Karl Ernst von Baer)
Chemistry:1 (Mendeleyev)
Earth Sciences:0
Physics:0
Mathematics:0
Medicine:0
Technology:0
Western Philosophy:0
Western Music:1 (Stravinsky)
Art:0
Literature:2 (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky)
fnn:"Was that essentially what AH was insisting when he rejected the pleas of softies like Rosenberg who wanted to be nicer to the Russians and Ukrainians?"
And we have a winner in the Godwin's Law category!
Steve, I love you man, but you are wrong on Richard Sherman and you are wrong on Crimea.
fnn:"Horrible it may be, but Russia is the only remaining bulwark against the neo-Bolshevist American Empire. Unless there's a big nationalist or "ultra"-right pan-Europeanist revival in Europe Russia is all there is."
Other way around, I should think. Putin's regime, as one would expect, has a good deal in common with his Bolshevik predecessors.
Some notes on the Chekist tradition in Putin's Russia:
"According to former Russian Duma member Konstantin Borovoi, "Putin's appointment is the culmination of the KGB's crusade for power. This is its finale. Now the KGB runs the country.".[10] Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Moscow-based Center for the Study of Elites, has found that up to 78% of 1,016 leading political figures in Russia have served previously in organizations affiliated with KGB or FSB.[11] She said: "If in the Soviet period and the first post-Soviet period, the KGB and FSB people were mainly involved in security issues, now half are still involved in security but the other half are involved in business, political parties, NGOs, regional governments, even culture... They started to use all political institutions."[11]
The KGB or FSB members usually remain in the "acting reserve" even if they formally leave the organization ("acting reserve" members receive second FSB salary, follow FSB instructions, and remain "above the law" being protected by the organization, according to Kryshtanovskaya[12]). As Vladimir Putin said, "There is no such thing as a former KGB man".[13] Soon after becoming prime minister of Russia, Putin also perhaps somewhat jokingly claimed that "A group of FSB colleagues dispatched to work undercover in the government has successfully completed its first mission."[10] Moreover, the FSB has formal membership, military discipline, and an extensive network of civilian informants.,[14] hardcore ideology, and support of population (60% of Russians trust FSB[15]), which according to Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick makes it a perfect totalitarian political party.[7]
Some observers note that the current Russian state security organization FSB is even more powerful than KGB was, because it does not operate under the control of the Communist Party as the KGB in the past.[11][16] Moreover, the FSB leadership and their partners own the most important economic assets in the country and control the Russian government and the State Duma. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa,
In the Soviet Union, the KGB was a state within a state. Now former KGB officers are running the state. They have custody of the country’s 6,000 nuclear weapons, entrusted to the KGB in the 1950s, and they now also manage the strategic oil industry renationalized by Putin. The KGB successor, rechristened FSB, still has the right to electronically monitor the population, control political groups, search homes and businesses, infiltrate the federal government, create its own front enterprises, investigate cases, and run its own prison system. The Soviet Union had one KGB officer for every 428 citizens. Putin’s Russia has one FSB-ist for every 297 citizens.[17]" (WIKIPEDIA)
It's not like Putin had a lot of choices.
Yeah, that’s what they said about Stalin, too. Pity all those kulaks had to starve, but what alternative was there? And how dare any Ukrainian living today desire more for himself and his children than to be a part of all that -- the ingratitude of it!
Horrible it may be, but Russia is the only remaining bulwark against the neo-Bolshevist American Empire.
Check out this youtube compilation of Putin in various interviews and settings where he discusses his religious views.
Does he present a theological justification for his opinion that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century? Or whether the Biblical injunction against graven images extends to all those Lenin statues still standing? Because this so-called Christian opposition to neo-Bolshevism is a little hard to swallow after that.
More on Chekists:
"Chekists perceive themselves as a ruling class, with political powers transferred from one generation to another. According to a former FSB general,
A Chekist is a breed. ... A good KGB heritage—a father or grandfather, say, who worked for the service—is highly valued by today's siloviki. Marriages between siloviki clans are also encouraged.[23]
The head of the Russian Drug Enforcement Administration Viktor Cherkesov said that all Russian siloviks must act as a united front:
We [Chekists] must stay together. We did not rush to power, we did not wish to appropriate the role of the ruling class. But the history commanded so that the weight of sustaining the Russian statehood fell to the large extent on our shoulders... There were no alternatives.[24]
Cherkesov emphasized the importance of Chekism as a "hook" that keeps the entire country from falling apart:
The country has survived a full-scale catastrophe in early 90-s. ... Some Chekists have quickly fell apart and parted the professional community. Some became traitors. Some have sweepingly become depraved. But a part of the community has nevertheless stayed. I won't discuss again what's the part and why did it remain intact... Falling into the abyss the post-Soviet society caught the 'chekist' hook. And hanged on it. ... Someone will say: “We saved the country from chekism!” In actuality, they will not have saved the country, they will have ruined it.[25]" (WIKIPEDIA)
"I was surprised to find out his mother baptized him in secret."
During the middle and late Soviet periods most ethnic Russians baptised their kids. Only the early Soviet period was militantly anti-clerical. After WWII the educational system was mildly anti-clerical, but churches were open and in use. It would be weird if Purin HADN'T been baptised. Marriages were overwhelmingly secular though.
Interesting to see Putin's ideological ideology:
"Though he hadn’t been in office very long, Putin had already begun to work on the FSB’s tarnished image, and the even more tarnished image of the KGB that had preceded it. He brought back the word “Chekist,” an old term for Lenin’s political police, coined in the 1920s, and used it with pride. He also initiated a minor cult of Yuri Andropov, the longest-serving KGB boss in Soviet history (1967–1982), as well as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, a post he held only briefly, in the year before his unexpected death in 1984. As FSB chief, Putin laid flowers on Andropov’s grave, and dedicated a plaque to his hero inside the Lubyanka, the KGB’s notorious Moscow headquarters. Later, as president, he ordered another plaque placed on the Moscow building where Andropov had lived and erected a statue to him in a St. Petersburg suburb.
But Putin wanted to restore more than Andropov’s name. He also, it seems, wanted to restore the old KGB boss’s way of thinking. Andropov, in Soviet terms, was a modernizer—but not a democrat. On the contrary, having been the Russian ambassador to Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Andropov understood very precisely the danger that “democrats” and other freethinking intellectuals posed to totalitarian regimes. He spent much of his KGB career stamping out dissident movements of various kinds, locking people in prison, expelling them from the USSR, and sending them to psychiatric hospitals, a form of punishment invented during his tenure." (Applebaum)
More on Putin and his heritage:
"But Putin had not only made his career in Andropov’s KGB, he also shared some similar experiences with the former secret police boss. As ambassador to Budapest, Andropov had been shocked when young Hungarians first called for democracy, then protested against the Communist establishment, and then took up arms against the regime, even lynching one or two secret policemen along the way. Putin had a similar experience in Dresden in 1989, where he witnessed mass street protests and the ransacking of the headquarters of the Stasi, the East German secret police. Both men drew the same conclusion: talk of democracy leads to protest, protest leads to attacks on the Chekists, better to stop all talk of democracy before it goes any further." (Applebaum)
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/
russ and sinoowa
Forget 'good guy bad guy' thinking, forget who you like more and which country you'd rather live in. (Personally I prefer Obama to Putin and would rather live here). Just think about the interests of U.S. citizens. Does it help the U.S. to provoke Russia by pushing NATO right up to the Russian border, and question their influence in Crimea, which they have held for centuries? What would we get in exchange for the risks taken here? What real interest do we have in Ukraine? To a first approximation, it seems clear me that the answers are NO, NOTHING, and NONE. The only justifications/excuses given for our involvement are extremely far-fetched domino theory type stories -- today Crimea, tomorrow Berlin, then China senses our 'weakness' and invades Japan! Right.
The 'good guy bad guy' framing of 'who do you like' has been used to justify idiotic war after idiotic war. Time for people to get smart and understand that U.S. empire does not serve the interests of ordinary Americans.
Russians rule at Math. Go to then top Math Institutes and University programs in the USA and world and find Russians.
No, it's not the Cold War again, but there are continuities none the less.
Recommended reading.
Re: Peter the Shark
I think Putin can be push both a neo-Soviet line and an ethnic nationalist line.
It's not a strictly either-or situation.
Putin can be "Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias" (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus) within some neo-USSR Eurasian customs union.
I simply don't buy that the Russians are our enemies. White Americans have much more common cause with Russians than we do even with most non-white Americans (legal and illegal).
Lower income ethnic Russians (i.e. descendants of the serfs) are very similar culturally to African-Americans, and exhibit a lot of similar traits - poor impulse control, poor executive function, weak commitment to monogamy, low investment in fatherhood, violence, peacocking, etc.
Unless you are a travel writer, anthropology professor, or something like that, you, Sir, have missed your true calling.
Why is it so easy to spot people on this site who actually know what they’re talking about when it comes to Putin’s Russia (as opposed to the innumerable anonymous posters who are simply ignorant, deluded, or paid to slap on whitewash and blow smoke in our faces)?
QUOTE: Steve, there was warfare going on in Chechnya in the 1990s. There's peace there now. I think that's an achievement.
--"They make a waste, and call it peace." -Tacitus
QUOTE: Not of western civilization but his own. That's at least something. No bending over to homo propaganda in Russia.
Russia is not part of western civ but it is part of European civ with its unique traditions and values.
--We are western civ. We--the vast majority of the commenters here--have nothing to do with Russia, and we have never even been there. Russia is the white equivalent of Saudi Arabia (with a strangely similar visa regime as well).
And how can Russia be Europan civ and not western civ? Western is more broad and more inclusive, European means Catholic-Protestant (not Romney, not Obama, maybe not even Methodist Clinton???) and ethnic (not America for a while now). Australia is western, thus it is not a geographical term. Maybe you mean the opposite, but that too can be argued against.
QUOTE: Chechens are 100X the man Anglo-Americans are.
--And this has gotten them... where? I have actually met fighters from both Afghanistan (Muslims) and from Iraq II (Americans), both accidentally via travel in strange places, but both kinds similar. DONE with emotions, that's how.
QUOTE: PS. Western civilization was so morally advanced--in contrast to bad old Russia--that it gave the world Hitler.
--Many things to say here, but even a Russian or a Pole would immediately see the superficial posturing behind this sentence. Oh, and Russia had Stalin (who was to his own people what Hitler was to other peoples). "But Stalin came from Lenin who came from Western ideological infection." What can one say to that?
QUOTE: once russia solidifies it's energy pact with china and india, there's nothing the west can do to stop them or even slow them down. indeed, their future is bright, relatively speaking.
--Sure.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10725643/Putins-Russia-caught-in-US-and-Chinese-double-pincer.html
Finally, what did Solzhenitsyn say?
"Imperialism is the ball and chain around the psyche of the Russian people."
He wanted Russia for the Russians. Let the Chechens etc. go, get rid of it all, why waste your time on that? But the power-crazy have other ideas (as in the USA, true)...
Wait, "ugly?" In what world is Nadezhda Tolokonnikova *ugly*?
http://rt.com/files/news/pussy-riot-trial-depression-050/pussy-punk-band-accused.jpg
So what is Putin has a local chieftain in Chechnya under his thumb. It sure as hell beats having Chechens blowing up Moscow apartment buildings and holding young Russian students as hostages in school which was occurring a few years ago.
It's none of our business anyhow. We should be sending mestizos back to where they belong and stationing our troops on the Mexican border where they are sorely needed.
Wise post Mr. Sailer - Putin is no defender of Western Civilization - but he is a defender of HIS civilization, which is way more than I can say for the clowns who are running US, UK and the Eeeeuwwww.
In that sense, he's a role model. Kind of like your backhanded praise of Israel, in defending its borders.
Not a good post. Putin is vastly superior to the venal clown show which comprises our elite. That this is so is less a testament to how awesome Putin is than it is a testament to how utterly vile our elite is.
There is nothing wonderful about the way Putin has managed the Ukraine crisis, for example. He has just behaved with normal prudence and attention to Russia's interests. He looks like a world-bestriding hero because our side's behavior is so utterly bizarre and comically incompetent.
His conduct in World War G or T or whatever is the same story. There is nothing especially great about putting Pussy Riot in jail or in beating them in the street. There is nothing especially great about outlawing homo propaganda. It's just that any society that would fail to do those things is depraved. Ours, for example.
Portlander said...
Yep. I'm man enough to admit that whenever I think of Putin vs. Obama/Blue-State Dept my first reaction is to side with Putin's unashamed and unabashed male bravado.
I think calm mastery is a better term than unabashed bravado. It compares rather favorably to the foot-stamping hissy fits thrown by Kerry and Obama.
Russia was never part of Western Civilization.
Some admire Putin because he stands up for his people, ethnic Russians. Sure he has some unsavory bedfellows but he won't throw Russians under the bus. He isn't afraid to stand up to the international sodomite mafia either.
Try to find even one white politician in America who isn't too cowardly to explicitly stand up for white rights or white children. The so-called conservative bend over backwards to appease non-white at the cost of whites every single day. And they appease the marching sodomites as well.
So ,yeah Putin isn't pro-Western Civ, but at least he isn't yellow.
I notice that a handful of commenters like to come out on these threads and statet how bad Putin is or how stupid and backward Russians supposedly are. I understand your hyperbole because you are not really attacking the Russians as much as you are the bulk of the other commenters, whom you feel are supporting Putin too much, and are not solidly behind your plans for world hegemony. Thus the attempt to shame them from supporting Putin and Russia.
But remember we are not supporting Putin and Russia. We have not provided financial or intelligence support. We have not pushed for free trade deals. We have not lobbied our government to provide military assistance or to attack Russian enemies. No, that is something that others in this nation do for other countries that are not Russia.
Neocons are conflating our neutrality with active, positive support which is ridiculous. It is you who are the ones that need to ask yourselves why are you so interested in attacking Putin and Russia. It is you who need to look in the mirror and wonder if the West and its new ideologies are worthy of your unbridled support. The same cautionary advice you give us about Putin, whom we don't support, should be taken by yourselves with the new West that you do support.
Yeah, I too wish for a leader that is going to let homosexuals, the masters of the universe, and millions of third world peasants take precedent over the people of that nation.
You're about two posts away from weeping about 'hooman rites' here Steve.
The Russian Empire historically treated their Muslim subjects fairly well. So long as they paid tribute to the Tsar and the Moscow Patriarch, the Tatars, Caucasians, and Turks were allowed almost complete religious freedom and a great deal of political and economic freedom as well.
Explain the Circassian Genocide of 1860-1870.
Portlander: Yep. I'm man enough to admit that whenever I think of Putin vs. Obama/Blue-State Dept my first reaction is to side with Putin's unashamed and unabashed male bravado.
Bill: I think calm mastery is a better term than unabashed bravado. It compares rather favorably to the foot-stamping hissy fits thrown by Kerry and Obama.
Portlander: Fair enough. I wasn't too happy with bravado, but couldn't think of a more suitable word. Thank you. As for "foot-stamping hissy fits," yep, and those are certainly the worst of feminine traits.
Putin is preparing for the coming war against America after Oprah becomes president. A giant luminous sign is being placed spanning the Kremlin Walls around the Red Square, it reads:
"It ain't over till the fat lady is under the trolley."
The patriotards or whatever you want to call them aren't going to "get their country back" in their lifetimes-so you have to at least give Putin critical support(i.e.,in the Leninist sense, "as a rope supports a hanging man").
"Neocons are conflating our neutrality with active, positive support which is ridiculous."
Let's say a grizzly bear wonders into your place of work. He meanders about knocking desks down and eating the kitchen food. No big deal. He's already eaten a few unlucky people in the parking lot, but that was a while ago. Plus inside's a little different than outside. Then he wonders into your boss' office and devours him. Your co-worker, Greg, comes over and says "Dude, we better do something about that bear. Call animal control."
You reply, "What's your agenda Greg? Why should we take anything but a neutral position on this bear. He hasn't attack us. Besides our boss made me us go diversity training last week, remember how much that sucked. Maybe we're better with the grizzly as our new manager."
People forget that it was only twenty five years ago that Russia was occupying Berlin, Prague and Tallinn in Communist slavery. Murdering, torturing and brutalizing without care. Furthermore modern day Russians aren't even reptant. Their current leader is from the Communist secret police, Joseph Stalin is widely admired. So you're damn right that when Russia starts trying to take back territory, it's the entire world's concern.
I just happen to be reading Alexander II, The Last Great Czar, by Edvard Radzinsky. Alexander was (I think?) the first as well as the last liberal in Russian history, unless you want to count Gorbochev. He was the one who freed the serfs and allied himself with Lincoln and the north during the Civil War.
Unfortunately he was also the one who was assassinated by the wild bunch of revolutionaries who popped up in Russia the minute the iron heel of despotism was relaxed -- the kind of guys described in Dostoevsky's Possessed. One of them was Lenin's older brother.
That wild bunch apparently sprang up in the wake of the Decembrist movement that arose response to the republican idealism that swept across Europe in the wake of the French Revolution, especially when the Russian forces occupied Paris after defeating Napoleon. If I am not mistaken those Decembrists were repressed by Alexander II's father (orm maybe his grandfather -- pardon my ignorance.
One of the most fascinating facts about Russian history, described in the early chapters of Radzinsky's bookk, is the bloody succession of czars once the Tartar yoke was lifted. It reminds one of the later emperors of Rome, one palace coup after another. Cahterine the Great herself was a lower-class German girl who caught the Czar's eye and went on to better (or worse) things later on.
I may have a few of these facts messed up but that is the basic gist of the thing. In some ways the assassination of Alexander II can be thought of as the first event in 20th century European history -- or, maybe combined with the story of his cousin who was the Kaiser who kicked off WWI.
Concerned citizen wrote: "On the other hand, citizenism has a far tougher road ahead of it in America, because inter-continental migration has brought three highly disparate and incompatible populations from the corners of the world together. Because of the vast gulf in genetics and characteristics, these populations will always struggle to live in the same societies. "
I think that describes the challenge all right.
Other way around, I should think. Putin's regime, as one would expect, has a good deal in common with his Bolshevik predecessors.
The American Empire is obviously neo-Marxist (i.e,"cultural Marxist) and promotes the population replacement of the white/European populations of Europe and N. America. RT pandering aside, the Putin regime rejects all forms of Marxism/neo-Marxism.
It's true that power is more concentrated in the Russian authoritarian state than it is in the now authoritarian states of the West.
In "Peter the Shark"'s comment, he writes:
Lower income ethnic Russians (i.e. descendents of the serfs) are very similar culturally to African-Americans
I am generally a Russophile, for all the reasons cited by Gubbler and Anonymous-12:18 AM.
Yet I have to admit that there is good supporting evidence for Peter's assertion in this classic letter to the famous eXile newspaper. For once its wise-ass editors were at a loss for words.
---
Russians are Negroes!
Negroes had slavery until the 1860s, Russians had slavery until the 1860s. Negroes mostly live in dilapidated highrises, Russians do too.
Negroes don't like to work, demanding payouts from the government, Russians don't like to work, missing the days when they could get payouts from the government.
Negroes like to riot, so do Russians.
Most Negro adult males have been to prison at least once, most Russian adult males have been to prison too.
Negroes like to wear leather jackets and huge golden chains, Russians do too.
When a Negro gets some money, he buys the biggest ugliest SUV he can find, so does a Russian.
The most popular Negro style of music is gangsta rap, "tough" criminals singing about their crimes and women, the most popular Russian style of music is blatnoy shanson, "tough" criminals singing about their crimes and women.
The biggest chance for a Negro to get rich is to get athletic success in the NBA or the NFL, the biggest chance for a Russian to get rich is athletic success in the NHL or tennis.
The most important Russian cultural icon, Pushkin, was an octonegro.
Negroes like watermelons, Russians have Azerbaijanis selling watermelons on every corner in every city in the summer.
Negroes like chicken, Russia is the biggest importer of American chicken, chicken imports is an issue that US and Russian presidents discuss often.
Negroes like grits and other rough cereals, Russians like Hercules, buckwheat and other rough cereals.
Negroes have bad hygiene, Russians have bad hygiene.
I don't understand how this important and revelatory subject has escaped your attention before.
Anonydroid at 7:11 AM said: What does "geographically privileged" mean?
Hunsdon said: It means the US, basically. Protected to East and West by Fortress Atlantic and Fortress Pacific, neighbored to the North and South by Canada and Mexico. "Geographically privileged," indeed.
Commenters who are comfortable liking Putin can keep on liking Putin. For commenters who aren't comfortable being on Putin's side I recommend Orwell's Notes on Nationalism.
Western Civilization grew out of Western Christendom, which never included Russia but did include what is now Western Ukraine. The old Western/Eastern Christendom line is still remarkably accurate in foretelling which counties can best assimilate to Western norms of prosperity and sociopolitical organization.
Western Christendom included Balts, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Western Ukraine but did not include Russia, Belarus, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Eastern Ukraine. Pretty much the only difference between Croatia and Serbia is that one was long a part of Western Christendom and the other the East, but with pretty much everything else being equal that fact has produced two very different countries.
People forget that it was only twenty five years ago that Russia was occupying Berlin, Prague and Tallinn in Communist slavery. Murdering, torturing and brutalizing without care. Furthermore modern day Russians aren't even reptant. Their current leader is from the Communist secret police, Joseph Stalin is widely admired. So you're damn right that when Russia starts trying to take back territory, it's the entire world's concern.
The US has no moral standing here since it dominates the globe, has been invading and bombing countries, and has bases all over the world.
Putin is restarting Stalin's national fitness program. If Russia were Western, it wouldn't be promoting this kind of fascist program. If Russia were Western, it wouldn't be promoting a national fitness program, it would be turning its citizens into obese jock-sniffing couch potatoes cheering like retards for black athletes on TV.
"Russia Is Restarting Stalin's National Fitness Program"
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/russia-is-restarting-stalins-national-fitness-program/359682/
The commenters trying to shame those who like or cheer Putin don't seem to feel to their bones the animosity and hated felt for them by the elites. Are the foreigners or elites themselves? Probably the former, but it doesn't matter.
Just earlier today, Ann Coulter laid out and explained beautifully what the ACA does to ordinary Americans. She forgot to mention that this huge injustice and burden is being compounded by Obama encouraging illegal aliens to sign up (and be among the winners). I haven't been opinionated about the ACA until her column... If you didn't know it already, these people despise and hate us.
DR said: People forget that it was only twenty five years ago that Russia was occupying Berlin, Prague and Tallinn in Communist slavery. Murdering, torturing and brutalizing without care.
Hunsdon said: Murdering, torturing and brutalizing without care? Twenty five years ago? Do you have any, you know, evidence of this? Or does it just sound good?
"Yep. I'm man enough to admit that whenever I think of Putin vs. Obama/Blue-State Dept my first reaction is to side with Putin's unashamed and unabashed male bravado".
That about sums it up for me as well. The more you look at Putin, the more kinks in the armor do appear.
"The US has no moral standing here since it dominates the globe, has been invading and bombing countries, and has bases all over the world."
The United States goes to extreme lengths to treat its imperial subjects with utmost care and respect, even when it involves great loss of money and American lives. The insurgents, who make up a significant fraction of the population, in Iraq and Afghanistan represent some of the most barbaric, vile and evil human garbage on the planet. Yet US forces operate under the most restrictive and conservative rules of engagement in military history. Any other world power at any other time would have had enough with those animals, been done with it, and turned sand into glass.
In general every single country occupied by the US, which didn't choose to go full retard insurgent, has become a prosperous, peaceful first world nation with strong rule of law. Japan, South Korea, West Germany, Austria, Italy. Frankly most of the world would be so lucky to live under American occupation. Contrast that with what life was like under Russian occupation.
American imperial policy is retarded. But its because its far too generous to its subjects, to the consternation of its citizens and its ability to suppress its enemies. Trust me, no one's ever accused the Russians of being too gentle with their enemies or generous with their subjects.
People forget that it was only twenty five years ago that Russia was occupying Berlin, Prague and Tallinn in Communist slavery.
Leaving aside that the USSR was not just Russia today's Russia is not communist and it's ridiculous to say that 1980s East Germans and Czechs were slaves. Besides no one is defending Soviet occupation of those places, though the neocons are defending Soviet borders of Ukraine.
Murdering, torturing and brutalizing without care.
25 years ago? I know some Lithuanians were killed during their fight for independence. (Incidentally neocon Russophobe Charles Krauthammer in part blamed Lithuanian leader Vytautas Landsbergis for these deaths). But I don't think too many Czechs, East Germans, or Estonians were being murdered, tortured and brutalised in in the late 1980s.
Furthermore modern day Russians aren't even reptant.
True, but they suffered too. Are Jews repentant over their role in the earlier much more brutal USSR? Are Americans repentant over the many millions of non-threatening foreigners killed by the US government? Besides it is not as if they want to reconquer non-Russian territories.
Their current leader is from the Communist secret police
By the time Putin was there the USSR was just another bureaucratic authoritarian state. Almost nobody in the USSR government really believed in communism in its last few decades. They cared as much about communist ideology as Obama does about democracy and self determination. Even in Stalin's last decade at least holding onto power was far more important than ideology.
So you're damn right that when Russia starts trying to take back territory, it's the entire world's concern.
The key word there is "back". You don't really think they are going to invade Germany or Poland do you? If they go into Estonia then you'll have a point.
But, of course, they didn't even care about Crimea until the government was overthrown and the local Russians took things into their own hands. Moscow had all it needed and wanted from Crimea in its naval agreement with Kiev. It was the American overreach that led to Russia formally taking back the territory in the first place. Unfortunately neocons and other ignorant American foreign policy planners never seem to learn from their mistakes.
Let's say a grizzly bear wonders into your place of work.
But the bear hasn't wandered into my place of work. The bear is in his habitat.
On the other hand the chihuahua is coming into my place of work in ever increasing numbers. If you would like to discuss how to handle the chihuahua, I'm all ears.
Western Civilization grew out of Western Christendom, which never included Russia but did include what is now Western Ukraine. The old Western/Eastern Christendom line is still remarkably accurate in foretelling which counties can best assimilate to Western norms of prosperity and sociopolitical organization.
And Western Christendom would have been killed in childhood had Russia and the other Orthodox peoples laid down to the invaders of the East and the Ottomans. Without them soaking up the energies of those outsiders, Western Europe would have been overrun and would have developed along a much different course.
DR: I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that all these Russia defenders in the comments would choose to be born in multicultural Sweden any day of the week.
So in order to defend a country's actions you have to want to live in said country? I take it you are doing all your typing from Tel Aviv?
Bearded Ramzan secretly thinks Putin is a poof because of the smooth face.
Putin should not have taken Berlusconi's advice on getting that facelift. What works in Rome doesn't necessarily work in Moscow.
During the middle and late Soviet periods most ethnic Russians baptised their kids. Only the early Soviet period was militantly anti-clerical. After WWII the educational system was mildly anti-clerical, but churches were open and in use.
Yes, it was interesting watching Vittorio De Sica's Sunflower filmed in part in Moscow in 1969. Marcello Mastroianni's character's family moved to a new housing project which had an Orthodox church at the centre of it.
I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that all these Russia defenders in the comments would choose to be born in multicultural Sweden any day of the week.
Just because Russia doesn't have the West's (comparatively minor) blemishes, doesn't mean that it doesn't have massive problems of its own.
You're assuming wealth means everything to people. For those who only want wealth and creature comforts, then being born in Sweden or some other western nation, especially during the glory years of the 1950s, would be the way to go. But believe it or not, there are people for which materialism is not the driving force behind their lives.
Here's an easy prediction: no country that ranks 127th out of 175 in global corruption (tied with Mali and Nicaragua!) is ever going to be amount to anything but a festering cesspool.
Here's a prediction, the USA will not last 1000 years. Russia has been around for 1000 years in the toughest neighborhood in the world, and it is still 81% ethnic Russian. By the time the USA reaches its 300th birthday, over half the population will have become unrecognizable to its Founders.
Doesn't matter how filled with white people you are. Only thing those barbarians have going for them is a big pile of oil. Like Saudi Arabia, once that runs out they'll be riding horses and chopping each others' heads off.
There is no guarantee that a country filled with whites will be successful. But the USA is soon going to have over half its population comprised of NAMs. That's pretty much a guarantee that you are going to be living in a cesspool.
As far as comparing them to Saudi Arabia, I guess they are similar if Saudi Arabia had a space program and designed and manufactured high end aircraft.
Why is the bear growling? Because we poke the bear. Why do we poke the bear? Because the bear is growling? Why is the bear growling?
Why does Russia pose a threat to neighboring countries? Because we expand NATO to Russia's neighbors. Why do we expand NATO to Russia's neighbors? Because Russia poses a threat to neighboring countries. Why does Russia pose a threat to neighboring countries?
NATO is a military alliance explicitly formed in opposition to the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union.
Victoria Nuland and the US government engineered, organized and funded a coup against the Yanukovich government in Ukraine. The Russian Black Sea Fleet is located in Crimea, under Ukrainian control until 2014. Sevastopol is the only warm water port that Russia, and the Soviet Union, and Russia, has.
No Russian president could lose the Black Sea Fleet, or Sevastopol. That's the kind of thing that gets the generals to conferencing late at night, breaking out feasibility studies. You know, about "who the next president will be."
For the US to do this is arrogance bordering on hubris. What follows hubris? Nemesis. Or as Proverbs put it, Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
What's the upside for the US in this?
Why's the bear growling?
Over 80% of the population of Russia is Great Russian. The place is not as homogenous as Japan, but it's within European norms.
I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that all these Russia defenders in the comments would choose to be born in multicultural Sweden any day of the week.
What if they had to wait in a time capsule for 100 years before they were born? Which country would they choose then?
Just because Russia doesn't have the West's (comparatively minor) blemishes
"'Tis but a scratch!"
notably the introduction of negro slavery right at the beginning, and post 1965 immigration.
Let's be honest here, it was manumission that turned slavery into a disaster. The problem was solvable up until manumission, when it became a doom.
And we have a winner in the Godwin's Law category!
He managed to make a point, too; the Neokahns do sound like Hitler.
People forget that it was only twenty five years ago that Russia was occupying Berlin, Prague and Tallinn in Communist slavery. Murdering, torturing and brutalizing without care. Furthermore modern day Russians aren't even reptant. Their current leader is from the Communist secret police, Joseph Stalin is widely admired. So you're damn right that when Russia starts trying to take back territory, it's the entire world's concern.
The current regime is the kids and grandkids of the people who colluded with the Soviets, who were cousins to the people murdering, torturing, and brutalizing. They were running cover in the media, too. I don't see much repentance from them for their crimes. At one point all the gulags were run by Jews, I don't see them apologizing.
True, but they suffered too. Are Jews repentant over their role in the earlier much more brutal USSR?
Great point; Soviet brutality waxed and waned along with Jewish power in the Soviet Union.
So in order to defend a country's actions you have to want to live in said country? I take it you are doing all your typing from Tel Aviv?
Lol.
"Russia Is Restarting Stalin's National Fitness Program"
They should try Participaction instead.
People forget that it was only twenty five years ago that Russia was occupying Berlin, Prague and Tallinn in Communist slavery.
Let's not stop there. What about Sofia, Kishinev, Sochi, Grozny, Mahachkala, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Baku, Tashkent, Derbent, Dushanbe, Bishkek, and the like?
Anonydroid at 4:08 PM said: Let's not stop there. What about Sofia, Kishinev, Sochi, Grozny, Mahachkala, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Baku, Tashkent, Derbent, Dushanbe, Bishkek, and the like?
Hunsdon said: Let's not stop there, they were occupying Moscow as well! Sofia, Kishinev, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Baku, Tashkent, Dushanbe and Bishkek were located----however conveniently, in non Russian SSRs.
Sochi, Grozny, Mahachkala, and Derbent were located in the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Just like with Crimea, the SSR you belonged to when the USSR dissolved, that's the newly independent state you ended up in.
Or do we want to dismember Russia down to a rump Grand Duchy of Muscovy?
What, you guys work for atlas companies, trying to drum up fresh business here?
So you're damn right that when Russia starts trying to take back territory, it's the entire world's concern.
It's a good thing Germany never tried taking back territory - they would have been re-educated out of existence.
The United States goes to extreme lengths to treat its imperial subjects with utmost care and respect
If it did actually treat its imperial subjects with care and respect, it wouldn't promote the mass migration, trade, globalism, Cultural Marxism that is rapidly depleting and replacing its imperial subject populations in Europe for example.
In general every single country occupied by the US, which didn't choose to go full retard insurgent, has become a prosperous, peaceful first world nation with strong rule of law. Japan, South Korea, West Germany, Austria, Italy.
Germany, Austria, Italy and other European countries' native populations are undergoing population depletion and replacement under America's aegis.
A very very ignorant post. What is better for Putin - controlling Chechnya using Russian troops and attracting foreign jihadists like moths to a flame or using a Chechen puppet to do it? Some might argue Russia shouldn't bother. Really? Have they looked at where Gazprom's pipelines go through?
To the commentator who pointed out that the KGB had taken over russian after the soviet fall. That is because during Soviet times, the security apparatus was the most russian and the most nationalistic institution of the soviet organs.
"centralized command-and-control of political and economic power, combined with multicultural sensitivity."
And that's a big deal. Compare the cultural trajectory (and eventual fate) of indigenous populations in Alaska under Russians and under Americans. That multicultural sensitivity was a glue that kept (and continues to keep) the whole thing together.
The Aleutian Indians say the only people to treat them fairly were Russian Orthodox priests. English sailors were particularly vile toward the Aleuts.
They should try Participaction instead.
Heh...
How does Russia feel about us Canucks these days, I wonder? I mean, considered apart from our government's eagerness to be an American running dog, that is.
"How does Russia feel about us Canucks these days, I wonder?"
Predictably, Russians mostly associate Canada with hockey, Russia's second most popular sport. Soccer is first. Since Canada is much more formidable in hockey than on the international stage, Russians have a somewhat exaggerated sense of Canada's importance. There is a certain amount of healthy respect.
The 1972 series is often talked about of course. Beating Canada in the final of the 2008 world championship which was held in Canada itself was a very big deal for Russia. That was the first time Russia won a hockey world championship since 1993, i.e. since the disaster. That win was seen as a sign of general revival and comeback, and not just in sports.
In general, beating Canada at hockey, when it happens, is viewed in Russia the way beating Brazil at soccer is viewed in most of the world.
Svigor:"He managed to make a point, too; the Neokahns do sound like Hitler."
And that is the point of Godwin's Law; everyone sounds like Hitler.Hence, invoking the dread spectre of Chaplin's German lookalike is meaningless.
Svigor:"At one point all the gulags were run by Jews,"
At what point were "all the gulags" run by Jews?
I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that all these Russia defenders in the comments would choose to be born in multicultural Sweden any day of the week.
Svigor:"What if they had to wait in a time capsule for 100 years before they were born? Which country would they choose then?"
Are you arguing that Russia will be less authoritarian 100 years from now?
"Anonymous said...
You're assuming wealth means everything to people. For those who only want wealth and creature comforts, then being born in Sweden or some other western nation, especially during the glory years of the 1950s, would be the way to go. But believe it or not, there are people for which materialism is not the driving force behind their lives."
DR is some kind of Wall Street parasite. Like most greedy people, he assumes that everyone is as materialistic as he is.
English sailors were particularly vile
Was it the buggery?
"DR said...
Let's say a grizzly bear wonders into your place of work."
The Ukraine is not my place of work. If your place of work is in the woods, don't be surprised that bears are there.
"People forget that it was only twenty five years ago that Russia was occupying Berlin, Prague and Tallinn in Communist slavery. Murdering, torturing and brutalizing without care. Furthermore modern day Russians aren't even reptant."
What people? You like to knock down a lot of cardboard cutouts. Nobody here believes what you ascribe to them.
And as far as repentence goes, I haven't noticed that any nation is repentent. Have we ever apologized to Vietnam? We dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on it than we did on Germany. Did we ever apologize to the Iraqi shiites, whom we encouraged to rebel, then left them to be massacred by Saddam Hussein? Have we ever apologized to any people whose nation we f**ked around in?
I don't particularly like Russia, nor do I trust it. But if they've earned your apparently deep animosity, then they can't be all bad.
He speak like Bond villain.
http://youtu.be/417kBcy9mSI?t=14m49s
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/03/crimea-whose-land-this-part-1-201431982818368453.html
@Mikeinboston- the "Russians are Negro" comparison is pretty obvious to any one who has actually lived in Russia and actually spent time with American Blacks. Most American liberals avoid the topic because they are afraid of pointing out black disfunction.
On the other hand blacks tend to be a lot more masculine and self assured than whites, so maybe "white Negroes" is exactly why Russians hold so much attraction for Paleos.
On the other hand blacks tend to be a lot more masculine and self assured than whites, so maybe "white Negroes" is exactly why Russians hold so much attraction for Paleos.
Funny, I thought that was why the neocons loved the Israelis so much, apart from any ethnic ties. Israelis seem much more masculine than their American cousins.
Was it the buggery?
No, it was the cannibalism, of which there is exactly none, and by that I mean just a little.
In general every single country occupied by the US, which didn't choose to go full retard insurgent, has become a prosperous, peaceful first world nation with strong rule of law. Japan, South Korea, West Germany, Austria, Italy.
It must have helped that all of these countries had very high IQ populations (probably the highest in the world, except for South Italy, whose prosperity mostly depends on Northern Italians subsidizing them), and that basically all of them were on the way to modernization (or have already fully modernized, as was the case with West Germany) before the American warplanes even first flew over them.
(South Korea might have been a partial exception, in that Korean industrialization before 1945 was concentrated in what later became North Korea. However, during the Korean war nearly all people with any kind of education fled to the South, so we might say that a great many people in South Korea already had been parts of a population that had started industrialization before American involvement even began.)
the "Russians are Negro" comparison is pretty obvious
I guess Chuck D is the Negro Tchaikovsky, and Kanye West must be the Negro Stravinsky.
A very large city with 90% Russians (Moscow) has a homicide rate of 15, a city roughly 7% its size (Detroit) with an 80% Black population has a homicide rate of over 50 (per 100,000 population). If you want to compare capital cities, Moscow could be compared to much larger Washington DC with a 50% Black population and a homicide rate of 21 (although Moscow was higher than that fifteen years ago). It must be kept in mind that whereas the Washington DC crime was disproportionately committed by Blacks, the Moscow crime was disproportionately committed by non-Russians.
Another useful comparison might be to compare a country populated and run mostly by Russians and another one populated and run mostly by Blacks. (I know, African Blacks are usually worse than American Blacks, but still.)
I think compared to say American Whites Russians have worse tastes (Arab- or Black-like love of tasteless gilded and even golden toilets and paper bins and interiors and golden chains and ugly SUVs etc.), but they are still incomparably better than Blacks in almost any respect, probably even in taste. (Yes, they like gold, but black leather jackets are better than hip-hop clothes now also worn by Whites around the world.)
DR,
In the minds of Afghan insurgents, George W. bush is simply the vilest, evilest most corrupt man that ever walked the earth. Not only a baby-killer and man-monster he's a dirty kuffar trying to impose his dirty kuffarism on people who don't want it, and apart from all that he sucks zionist dick. Not that I agree with all that, but that's how yer average Afghan/Pakistani sees it - Bush is or was satan and the USA is the great satan.
What with unmanned drones going off left right and cneter and blowing to pieces toothless paki grannies and babes at the crack of dawn, let me tell you here that you could not even begin to understand the sheer depths of hatred paki muslims have for America.
The Lee Rigby murder in the UK is a case in point. Alright it was some dumb, brainless Nigerian black who was stupid enough to do the deed, but doubtless he was riled up by his paki handlers and projected the paki hatred of all things Bush and Blair.
I've also got an inkling that somehow the mass US porn culture - the internet being loaded with billions of images of American women doing unspeakable things, is another bugbear for the mussulmen. There probably is the deep fear that once the US takes over and dominates, then *their* women will be induced to do all that. One thing every oriental instinctively knows is the true nature of women - and what inevitably happens when feminist dogma means that control is lost.
Economically Russia should attempt a version of what England did after the Black Death.
The aristocracy still owned all the land but they parceled it out into family farms on 99 year leases. The long lease is critical because it meant people could pass the farm down to their kids which meant they *treated* it as private property even though it wasn't and worked hard to improve the land as much as possible.
Effectively the *use* and *profit* from the land was privatized but not the actual ownership.
Russia should do the same. The 90s privatization was just a gigantic robbery so they should re-nationalize everything and then re-privatize it again *but* only privatize the use not the ownership.
That way they can prevent Russia being looted while still getting the benefit of private enterprise aka people wanting to pass an inheritance to their kids.
Reinor Tor:"It must have helped that all of these countries had very high IQ populations (probably the highest in the world, except for South Italy, whose prosperity mostly depends on Northern Italians subsidizing them), and that basically all of them were on the way to modernization (or have already fully modernized, as was the case with West Germany) before the American warplanes even first flew over them."
Yeah, one of the more delusional aspects of the George W. Bush administration was that the USA somehow engaged in nation-building in Japan and West Germany after WW2, the implication being that the same thing could be done in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, what those neo-liberal, egalitarian zealots in the White House failed to understand was that the Japanese and the Germans were slightly different from the Afghans and the Iraqis...
Svigor:"Let's be honest here, it was manumission that turned slavery into a disaster. The problem was solvable up until manumission, when it became a doom."
Rather depends on what side of the whip that you are on, I suppose.
DR:
People forget that it was only twenty five years ago that Russia was occupying Berlin, Prague and Tallinn in Communist slavery. Murdering, torturing and brutalizing without care. Furthermore modern day Russians aren't even reptant.
DR appears to forget that Germany launched two wars against Russia in the past 100 years, and that these wars cost the lives of over 40 million citizens of Russia/Soviet Union. The first of these wars was a successful attempt to seize the entire swath of land from Tallin to Baku until Germany was forced to cough it up at Versailles. The second of these wars was a declared full scale attempt at total extermination of the Slavic people and the seizure of their lands by others (Germans, Romanians, Finns, Balts), with tens of millions of civilian Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians murdered by death squads and in concentration camps as well as via criminal military acts by the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus had 20 million fewer people in 1946 than they did in 1940, and they had been gaining 2 million people per year prior to the war from an excess of births over deaths, so an additional 10 million people were missing from population growth that did not happen, totalling deaths in WWII to at least 30 million out of a starting population of around 170 million.
Joining Germany in both efforts was Hungary (first as part of Austria-Hungary, then as an independent state), and Bohemia/Moravia (first as part of Austria-Hungary, then as part of The German Reich) and Slovakia (first as part of Austria-Hungary, then as an independent state). Joining Germany in the second effort was Romania and Bulgaria. Additionally, Estonians (and Latvian and Lithuanians) acted as a subversive element in both wars, and volunteered in large numbers to fight Russia/Soviet Union.
So with all this in mind, DR expects that Russians should come begging on their knees asking for forgiveness from the people who twice invaded their land and killed tens of millions of their brethren because the Russians had the audacity to occupy East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, and to reannex the Baltic States (which had been part of Russia for centuries up to 1918) in order to prevent a third recurrance of this behavior. Even the Poles, the one Central European people who did not invade Russia in either WWI or WWII when given their own state in 1919 the first thing they did was invade Russia and attempt to annex all of Belarus and western Ukraine, of which they finally settled on about half.
Its worth noting that the one country in Central Europe which did not invade Russia in the past 100 years - Yugoslavia/Serbia, is the one which the Soviet Union did not occupy after WWII.
DR appears to forget that Germany launched two wars against Russia in the past 100 years, and that these wars cost the lives of over 40 million citizens of Russia/Soviet Union.
No ... no ... no.
For WWI, Russia mobilized against Germany first, following events in the Balkans. There was considerable war fever at all levels of Russian society. The Tsar initially was against the war, but he caved in to pressure from his advisors.
The first of these wars was a successful attempt to seize the entire swath of land from Tallin to Baku until Germany was forced to cough it up at Versailles.
The Tsar could have never entered the war in the first place (which he didn't). Germany never wanted a two-front war after all; it was forced upon it by the Allies. There was no great German desire for Lebensraum this time. Germany and Austria land-grabbed "from Tallinn to Baku" as a punitive measure for the casualties they suffered for a war forced on them by Russia. Very little of this land was actually Russian. It stretched from Estonia to Poland to Ukraine to Azerbaijan.
And when the Western Allies forced Germany to cough up the Brest-Litovsk territory, most of it formed the very same independent countries that exist today. They could have returned it to Russia.
The second of these wars was a declared full scale attempt at total extermination
That much is true; but consider the Germans at this point has about as much "agency" as Russia did in 1945. The Treaty of Versailles caused incredible suffering in Germany, to the point where some Germans wondered whether this was the beginning of an actual genocide. Most Germans just wanted to get WWII over, and get on with their lives, but the allies could not be so forgiving. The Anglo media never reported the full effect of Versailles, caring about as much for Germans as they did for the Irish and Indians.
Joining Germany in both efforts was Hungary (first as part of Austria-Hungary, then as an independent state)
You think the Bela Kun coup, a stealthy form of Soviet/Russian/communist imperialism, might not have anything to do with it?
Russians had the audacity to occupy East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria
Why should Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians, and Bulgarians have to suffer for the crimes of Germans? This sounds like communist logic - punish innocent people simply because they are "capitalists", i.e. not starving peasants.
and to reannex the Baltic States (which had been part of Russia for centuries up to 1918)
Russia had been a de facto part of Mongolia and Tatarstan for centuries, too.
in order to prevent a third recurrance of this behavior.
A third recurrence of what? A megalomaniacal glory-hound tsar acting against his own better judgement, and whining when the enemies he picked turned out stronger than expected? How many millions of Russians were casualties of a misguided attempt to help out Serbia?
Even the Poles, the one Central European people who did not invade Russia in either WWI or WWII when given their own state in 1919 the first thing they did was invade Russia and attempt to annex all of Belarus and western Ukraine, of which they finally settled on about half.
The Poles never invaded Russia, not unless you consider everything east of the Elbe as "Russia", which you probably do. Belarus and Ukraine, yes. And how did the Russo-Polish war happen in the first place? The Russian Civil War spilled over into Poland, just like it spilled over into Ukraine and Belarus.
Let's not stop there. What about Sofia, Kishinev, Sochi, Grozny, Mahachkala, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Baku, Tashkent, Derbent, Dushanbe, Bishkek, and the like?
I mentioned this because too many westerners care only about "western" countries and cities absorbed into the Soviet Empire.
Let's not stop there, they were occupying Moscow as well!
Who was "they", the Russians or the communists? Moscow actually belonged to Russia.
Sofia, Kishinev, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Baku, Tashkent, Dushanbe and Bishkek were located----however conveniently, in non Russian SSRs.
Which were themselves illegal puppet states denied the full benefits of nationhood. Even the technically-independent Warsaw Pact countries were nothing more than the "52nd state" of Russia.
Sochi, Grozny, Mahachkala, and Derbent were located in the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.
But these cities, are, or were, parts of Circassia, Chechnya, and Daghestan.
Or do we want to dismember Russia down to a rump Grand Duchy of Muscovy?
Nobody seriously proposes that. Just like nobody proposes giving Kaliningrad (full of Russians not Germans) back to Germany, just for historical reasons.
How about a Russia populated by Russians, with borders redrawn on that basis? What can be so wrong with that? The only real problem is with Russians living in other nations, legally or not. They have certain rights.
DR appears to forget that Germany launched
Whoever said that "Russians are Negroes" is dead wrong. If this particular Anonymous is typical of Russians and Serbs, then they are Jews. You can see the same guilt-mongering, paranoid obsessions with Nazis and WWII mixed with fantasy history, and hypocritical disregard for the rights of all other people and nations. From Tallinn to Baku ... or Cairo to Damascus to Baghdad ... Russian imperialism and Zionism, sides of the same coin.
"DR appears to forget that Germany launched two wars against Russia in the past 100 years, and that these wars cost the lives of over 40 million citizens of Russia/Soviet Union. The first of these wars was a successful attempt to seize the entire swath of land from Tallin to Baku until Germany was forced to cough it up at Versailles."
Germany was clearly in the wrong in WWII, but all it did in WWI was liberate mostly non-Russian areas from Russian imperialism.
Am I correct in assuming that the Anonydroid who posted at 2:34 and 2:49 are the same? If so, could I urge you to assume a nom de plume for use here? I find your arguments interesting and want to jump on them and tear them apart (or try, at least!), and posting as anonymous seems to be hiding your light under a bushel.
Anonydroid at 2:33 PM wrote: For WWI, Russia mobilized against Germany first, following events in the Balkans.
Hunsdon said: "Events in the Balkans" included Austria-Hungary shelling Belgrade on 29 June 1914, yes? My reading indicates that the Russians actually invaded East Prussia in August 1914.
Does war begin with mobilization, or with shelling?
Anonydroid: Germany never wanted a two-front war after all; it was forced upon it by the Allies.
Hunsdon said: Perfidious Albion!
Anonydroid: There was no great German desire for Lebensraum this time. Germany and Austria land-grabbed "from Tallinn to Baku" as a punitive measure for the casualties they suffered for a war forced on them by Russia.
Hunsdon said: I don't think this actually reflects better on Germany than if they had, you know, actually wanted the land.
Anonydroid: Very little of this land was actually Russian. It stretched from Estonia to Poland to Ukraine to Azerbaijan.
Hunsdon: Hence the term, "empire."
Anonydroid: A megalomaniacal glory-hound tsar acting against his own better judgement, and whining when the enemies he picked turned out stronger than expected?
Hunsdon: Funny, I usually see that spelled "kaiser" in reading about WW1.
Anonydroid: The Poles never invaded Russia, not unless you consider everything east of the Elbe as "Russia", which you probably do. Belarus and Ukraine, yes.
Hunsdon: There's that whole "Russian Empire" thing again . . . which in 1914 included the territories today known as Belarus and Ukraine.
Please do not think I am engaging in Russian triumphalism here. I am, indeed, fond of Russia, but not so fond as to overlook her faults. World War I was a horrid, tragic, stupid, miserable, insane mistake. Who was it that said that in 1914 Europe put a gun to its head and pulled the trigger?
Anonydroid at 2:49 PM said: [Non-Russian SSRs] were themselves illegal puppet states denied the full benefits of nationhood. Even the technically-independent Warsaw Pact countries were nothing more than the "52nd state" of Russia.
Hunsdon said: History is a bitch. However, those puppet states had been parts of the Russian Empire, which was my point. Were they illegal puppet states then, too? What about Georgia, which asked to come under the Great White Mother's skirts? (That's a Victorian joke, on a couple of levels, right there.) As to the Warsaw Pact, see my first line above.
Anonydroid: [Sochi, Grozny, Mahachkala, and Derbent] are, or were, parts of Circassia, Chechnya, and Daghestan.
Hunsdon: Circassia, Chechnya and Dagestan, for whatever reason, did not rise to the level of qualifying as SSRs. An accident of history? So be it.
Anonydroid: How about a Russia populated by Russians, with borders redrawn on that basis? What can be so wrong with that? The only real problem is with Russians living in other nations, legally or not.
Hunsdon: I am generally reluctant to start redrawing borders. Are you familiar with the horrors of Partition, between India and Pakistan? What I've read of Partition reminds me of the Russian Civil War, with truly appalling levels of massacre and countermassacre.
If those idiots and buffoons at State had not tried to force regime change in Ukraine, I would have been absolutely opposed to Russia's retaking of Crimea, but as I said above, history is a bitch.
Anonydroid at 3:33 PM said: Russian imperialism and Zionism, sides of the same coin.
Hunsdon said: I'd rather be a Tatar in Russia than a Palestinian in Israel.
Anonydroid at 3:37 PM said: Germany was clearly in the wrong in WWII, but all it did in WWI was liberate mostly non-Russian areas from Russian imperialism.
Hunsdon said: Ah yes. Say, how does one say "liberte, egalite, fraternite" in German? And at the time, wasn't it called the, ahem, German Empire (Deutsches Reich)?
For WWI, Russia mobilized against Germany first, following events in the Balkans.
From wiki:
The Russian Empire, unwilling to allow Austria-Hungary to eliminate its influence in the Balkans, and in support of its longtime Serb protégé, ordered a partial mobilisation one day later, 29 July.[22] Germany mobilised on 30 July, and Russia responded by declaring a full mobilisation that same day.[43] Germany imposed an ultimatum on Russia, through its ambassador in Berlin, to demobilise within 12 hours or face war.[43] Russia responded by offering to negotiate the terms of a demobilisation. However, Germany refused to negotiate, declaring war against Russia on 1 August 1914.[43]
You're right. It was all Russia's fault.
Germany was clearly in the wrong in WWII....
My point was at least try to understand WHY Germany did what it did back then. The parallel is that of a school or workplace shooter snapping after years of bullying. What he did was wrong, too, but understandable, and avoidable. What Germany had to endure from Versailles was hardly different or better than Hungary under the communist puppet Rakosi.
Blame the Nazis, not the German people, who had surprisingly little choice and agency. To the Volk, Barbarossa was simply smashing an evil power who had it coming since 1917. To Hitler and Himmler and Goering (but not Rosenberg), it was the chance to unleash atrocities unthinkable on German soil.
Am I correct in assuming that the Anonydroid who posted at 2:34 and 2:49 are the same?
Yes, it was me.
Hunsdon said:
"Events in the Balkans" included Austria-Hungary shelling Belgrade on 29 June 1914, yes? My reading indicates that the Russians actually invaded East Prussia in August 1914.
Austria-Hungary, which is not the same as Germany, shelled Serbia, which is not the same as Russia. Maybe the Tsar, and the warmongers in Russia, didn't think so. And what did the Tsar think of the tens of thousands of Poles who died in 1830 rather than live under Russian rule? To paraphrase William Taft, Poland never did want to be Russia's little brown brother.
A megalomaniacal glory-hound tsar acting against his own better judgement, and whining when the enemies he picked turned out stronger than expected?
Funny, I usually see that spelled "kaiser" in reading about WW1.
Their roles were about the same.
History is a bitch.
History was also a bitch for all those Russians living outside Russia's borders in the 1990s.
However, those puppet states had been parts of the Russian Empire, which was my point.
And my point, said to the Russo-fascist anonydroid of 12:56 PM, was that Russia was at one time a puppet state of Mongolia. Suppose that a revanchist regime takes hold of Mongolia, and demands the return of Russia, China, India, and all other former imperial holdings?
What about Georgia, which asked to come under the Great White Mother's skirts? (That's a Victorian joke, on a couple of levels, right there.)
Sounds more like a Freudian joke. And I can keep repeating my Taftian line about little brown brothers under White Mama's skirts. It may well of made sense for Georgia to want to be annexed, in 1801. Modern Georgian nationalists forget that. A better argument can be made for post-WWI Armenia than for 19th century Georgia. To this day, Armenia sees Russia as a protector against a greater evil (Turkey), and Russia has fit this role amazingly well.
I am generally reluctant to start redrawing borders. Are you familiar with the horrors of Partition, between India and Pakistan? What I've read of Partition reminds me of the Russian Civil War, with truly appalling levels of massacre and countermassacre.
I never said the task would be easy or bloodless (or even very necessary now). In the 1990s, as I sad, the borders never changed much. They kept to the ones marked by Lenin and Stalin. What did change was populations. Thousands of ethnic Russians flew from the former SSRs, to Russia proper.
Another thing to notice: capitalism works well for certain peoples and nations, but not others. Take Africa and the Islamic world ... they just can't seem to "get" capitalism, and not just because of poverty. China and Korea were both very poor in the 1950s, but they adapted to capitalism. The Persian Gulf states are oozing with oil wealth, owned and operated in a feudal, family-based manner. They leave the piddling (and to them, mind-boggling) details of administration to foreign bean counters, of course.
On to Russia. Capitalism never worked there. Steve said the Russian model is "centralized command-and-control of political and economic power, combined with multicultural sensitivity." That clashes with Western ideals of free markets. When Russians tried capitalism, it failed and led to tragedies like the oligarchs of the 1990s.
On to Russia. Capitalism never worked there. Steve said the Russian model is "centralized command-and-control of political and economic power, combined with multicultural sensitivity." That clashes with Western ideals of free markets. When Russians tried capitalism, it failed and led to tragedies like the oligarchs of the 1990s.
Funny that capitalism worked in the US, but we are now moving to the Russian model you describe. Our central government grows larger and more powerful each year. It has just made major inroads to take over the health sector. And it can't diversify our population fast enough. To prove its multicultural sensitivity, it will enact more affirmative action set-asides, more history months, and enforce more hate speech codes.
Sounds good doesn't it.
March of Crimes:
Blame the Nazis, not the German people, who had surprisingly little choice and agency.
Well, except for that pesky little thing called the elections of 1933 where the German people actually voted Hitler into power voluntarily with whatever bit of agency they had.
And then of course there are all those who volunteered for military duty (or concentration camp duty - or security police duty) in the war. I think they had a slight bit of agency too.
Anon @ 3:37:
Germany was clearly in the wrong in WWII, but all it did in WWI was liberate mostly non-Russian areas from Russian imperialism
Annexing or erecting puppet governments under martial law are not usually recognized as "liberation".
Germany's notion of "liberating" the Baltic states was to free the local Baltic-German elite who ran the country's from the need to report to the Tsar and let them instead report to the Kaiser. I'm sure your typical illiterate Lativan peasant was sorely appreciative of such "liberating" tendencies.
Also, Ukraine and Belarus are hardly "non-Russian", and anyway, no one ever asked all these places if they wanted to be "liberated" from the Russian Empire anyway.
March of Crimes:
And my point, said to the Russo-fascist anonydroid of 12:56 PM, was that Russia was at one time a puppet state of Mongolia. Suppose that a revanchist regime takes hold of Mongolia, and demands the return of Russia, China, India, and all other former imperial holdings?
Russo Fascist? Really? Its fascism to note that the Russians might have been a tad upset and understandibly wary after a genocidal attack by Germans, Hungarians, and Romanians that cost the lives of around 20% of the East Slavs?
Regarding your silly comment about Mongolia, Russia was the heir of the Mongol Empire, with many of its nobles of Mongol descent, and its shock troops (the Cossacks) being clearly Mongol-Turkic from their very name - which means freeman in the Cuman language, and also its recreator, seeing as there territories were nearly identical from the time Russia gained Manchuria and Mongolia as its sphere of influence in China.
March of Crimes:
Thanks! This should make engaging and arguing a lot easier---and welcome aboard.
March of Crimes said: Austria-Hungary, which is not the same as Germany, shelled Serbia, which is not the same as Russia.
Hunsdon said: This is where I quote George Washington on entangling alliances.
Would a fair restatement of your comment above be, "Austria-Hungary, which was allied to Germany, shelled Serbia, which was allied to Russia"?
March of Crimes said: And what did the Tsar think of the tens of thousands of Poles who died in 1830 rather than live under Russian rule? To paraphrase William Taft, Poland never did want to be Russia's little brown brother.
Hunsdon said: He probably thought their deaths were a small price to pay for the Russian Empire. Probably the same thing Taft thought about the Filipinos we slaughtered for the American, um, republic.
March of Crimes said: History was also a bitch for all those Russians living outside Russia's borders in the 1990s.
Hunsdon said: Yup---although not a patch on how hard it was for the Germans living outside Germany in the later 1940s.
March of Crimes said: When Russians tried capitalism, it failed and led to tragedies like the oligarchs of the 1990s.
Hunsdon said: Was that capitalism? Maybe---I can't believe I'm saying this---maybe Marx was right, and it takes time to develop a certain type of economy.
Say what you will about our robber barons, they built things more or less from the ground up, vice the situation in Russia in the 1990s which was more looting of existing but improperly valued assets.
Anonydroid at 12:04 AM attacked March of Crimes: Well, except for that pesky little thing called the elections of 1933 where the German people actually voted Hitler into power voluntarily with whatever bit of agency they had.
Hunsdon said: Yes, they did have agency, but are we to ignore the catastrophic effects, both material and moral, of the highly punitive Versailles Treaty?
One of my core convictions is that the Treaty of Versailles---where Wilson got rolled---set the stage for World War II.
Ignoring the Treaty of Versailles seems to me very much the same as ignoring Vicki Nuland's "democracy promotion" efforts in Ukraine while focusing on Putin's retaking of the Crimea.
Anonydroid at 12:29 AM attacked March of Crimes thus: Regarding your silly comment about Mongolia, Russia was the heir of the Mongol Empire, with many of its nobles of Mongol descent, and its shock troops (the Cossacks) being clearly Mongol-Turkic from their very name - which means freeman in the Cuman language, and also its recreator, seeing as there territories were nearly identical from the time Russia gained Manchuria and Mongolia as its sphere of influence in China.
Hunsdon said: Speaking of silly comments . . .
Anonydroid: Russia was the heir of the Mongol Empire
Hunsdon: The Mongol Empire had many heirs, depending on how you figure it. Are you going to claim Russia is the heir to the Mongol Empire, and not the Yuan Dynasty in China? What about the Mughals in India?
Anonydroid: with many of its nobles of Mongol descent
Hunsdon: As Ali G might say, the Mongols got all jiggy all over the place.
Anonydroid: and its shock troops (the Cossacks) being clearly Mongol-Turkic from their very name - which means freeman in the Cuman language.
Hunsdon said: And the buckaroos in Texas and New Mexico were clearly Castilian, since vaquero was a Spanish word. And Africans are clearly Roman, since they used to be called Negros.
To the best of my information and belief after reasonable inquiry, the cossacks (which word does mean free man in Turkic languages) were formed from a mix of escaped slaves, runaway serfs and adventurers of Russian/Ukrainian stock, leavened perhaps by some Tatar admixture.
Now the Crimean Khanate of the Tatars were Mongol-Turkic.
"When Russians tried capitalism, it failed and led to tragedies like the oligarchs of the 1990s."
The honest version of what happened is the IMF, World Bank etc sent (mostly Jewish) experts to supposedly help Russia transition to a free market economy but what they actually did was take massive bribes to sell Russia to (mostly Jewish) oligarchs who then looted Russia in the name of capitalism.
The tragedy of the oligarchs was created from the outside.
Russia should renationalize the lot and then re-privatize on the basis of leased use rather than ownership.
.
"And then of course there are all those who volunteered for military duty (or concentration camp duty - or security police duty) in the war. I think they had a slight bit of agency too."
If we're going to blame all Germans for those crimes including those unborn or living in other countries at the time let's not forget the millions murdered in Soviet concentration camps and who did that and who has tried to keep it covered up ever since.
Hunsdon:
To the best of my information and belief after reasonable inquiry, the cossacks (which word does mean free man in Turkic languages) were formed from a mix of escaped slaves, runaway serfs and adventurers of Russian/Ukrainian stock, leavened perhaps by some Tatar admixture.
Ita funny that the people called Cossacks (каза́ки - Kazaki transliterated) are suddenly Slavic on one side of the Volga River (I guess cause they speak Russian, like how the Irish are Anglo-Saxon's since they speak English), but are clearly Turkic on the other side where they get to be called Kazakh (Казах - Kazak transliterated).
Its even stranger that there is this big country called Kazakhstan right over the Volga still to this day - you know, Cossack-stan = Cossack Land, and people still can't put two and two together.
Have you ever looked at a picture of Bohdan Khmelnitsky and thought about how Turkic he looked?
The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk makes the self-claim that the Cossacks descended from the Khazars.
There were undoubtedly a good many escaped serfs and freebooters welcomed in. A band of pirates always loves new company.
Andrew said: Ita funny that the people called Cossacks (каза́ки - Kazaki transliterated) are suddenly Slavic on one side of the Volga River (I guess cause they speak Russian, like how the Irish are Anglo-Saxon's since they speak English), but are clearly Turkic on the other side where they get to be called Kazakh (Казах - Kazak transliterated).
Hunsdon said: Yup! Although you'll get a bog trogger coming at you with hands aimed at your throat if you use the term Anglo-Irish to refer to a son of Eire.
I've been in Ukraine, and I've been in Kazakhstan; the populations resemble each other to the extent of both displaying bilateral symmetry. Admittedly, I was only in Ukraine for a few weeks, and mostly in Kiev, but the Kazakhs look much, much more Turkic than the Cossacks---to my eyes at least.
I don't deny that there was race mixing, or that there were a lot of Tatars (or other Turkic tribes) in Ukraine, and Khmelnistky might have had a heaping helping of what 19th century writers called the tar brush (not the tarboosh!).
But the bald statement that the Cossacks were Turko-Mongol in origin? I'll need a lot more convincing.
(Interestingly enough, the Kazakhs were, pre-Genghis, supposed to have been red haired and green eyed, and you can still see traces of it sometimes under the Mongol overlay.)
I hadn't heard of the Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk before, and I thank you for the introduction.
How smart are Russians anyway?
Ethnic Russians are not smart at all.
Ha! Don't think so.
First, I feel this is a case where there is yet again a huge discrepancy between the upper and lower classes. Of course the descendants of serfs are going to be stupid, but I bet the descendants of Boyars aren't. The Tolstoy family comes to mind.
Second, tons of really smart people were killed or exiled during the Revolution and then in Stalinist purges. The intelligentsia was specifically targeted. So Russia is undoubtedly a shadow of its former self intellectually -- though it's very far from a stupid country.
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