Protest meeting in Minsk on July 30.
The images of massive protests coming in from Belarus on the eve of their Presidential elections on August 9, in which Alexander Lukashenko is widely expected to rubber stamp himself another term, have provoked talk of a new color revolution/Maidan. The original social contract offered by Lukashenko since he came to power in 1994 – authoritarian rule coupled with retro-Soviet economic guarantees and rising prosperity – has derailed in the past decade, as the Russian oil and gas subsidies that sustained them have sharply contracted. Whereas more Russians migrated into Belarus than Belorussians into Russia through most of the 2000s, that flow has since reversed, and Belorussian provincial towns are now noticeably poorer than their Russian counterparts. Meanwhile, Poland has in recent years started attracting significant numbers of Belorussian Gastarbeiters – nowhere near on the scale of the Ukraine, but enough to exert cultural influence and stimulate more Belorussians into dreaming of a “European Choice.”
The problem, from Russia’s perspective, is that this “European Choice” often goes hand in hand with cultural Russophobia, such as restrictions on the Russian language, as well as the abrogation of Eurasian integration initiatives and a reversal of geopolitical orientation towards the West. In the Ukraine, the historical narrative taught in schools shifted to one of colonial oppression by Russians, who – it is claimed – are Finno-Mongol interlopers, who had actually stolen Russian culture from Ukrainians who had created it (such, at least, is the schizophrenic basis of the “Ukraina-Rus” concept). Consequently, it is not surprising that Western discussions on the events in Belarus revolve around the standard binary of American-sponsored colored revolution vs. Belarusians finally standing up to their unpopular Russian stooge dictator.
There are elements of truth to this narrative. That the West would want to topple “Europe’s last dictator”, and that a multitude of NGOs are working towards that goal, is hardly a big secret. Elections in Belarus are completely falsified, having long ceased to have any correlation to actual vote tallies (in Russia, most electoral fraud consists of adding pro-regime votes to the total, not inventing the result out of thin air; that only generally happens in some ethnic minority republics). Lukashenko’s approval rating had fallen to 30% by summer 2016, after which independent polling was banned. Considering the economic situation hasn’t gotten any better in the past four years, and Lukashenko’s dismissal of the coronavirus crisis as a “psychosis”, it is highly unlikely that his rating will be any better today. (For comparison, Putin – though at a relatively low ebb – is currently at ~60%, according to both state-owned and independent pollsters). There are unambiguous political prisoners – the current protests were, in significant part, spurred by the imprisonment of Presidential candidates Viktor Babiriko and Sergey Tikhanovsky, both of whom would have been strong contenders under a free and fair contest. The third, Valery Tsepkalo, fled to Russia with his children before the KGB could its hands on him.
… Wait, something doesn’t sound right there. Fleeing the KGB… to Russia!? This is where this narrative breaks down: the Belorussian opposition is just not all that anti-Russian. Tikhanovsky has made several social media posts portraying Putin in a positive context, visited Crimea in 2018 to meet up with some pro-Russian Orthodox activists, and even made a video in which he claims that the “Russian world” is much larger than what is contained within Russia’s borders, and that Belarus was part of it. This has not gone unnoticed by the Ukrainian authorities, who have put him on the “Peacekeeper” no-entry list of Ukraine’s enemies. Since Tikhanovskaya has been disqualified, his place was taken by his wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who until recently refused to commit to a position on Crimea (though she did, a couple of days ago, came out with “de jure Ukrainian, and de facto Russian”).
Anti-Lukashenko protests features the BSSR flag, the original independence flag, and the Russian flag. Certainly not a sight one would have seen during the Euromaidan in Ukraine with its UPA flags and Bandera iconography.
Meanwhile, it is mistaken to view Lukashenko as an unambiguously pro-Russian politician. To be sure, at the beginning of his career, he pursued a pro-Russian line – including pushing the idea of the Union State. During the late 1990s, when Yeltsin’s popularity was in the doldrums, the idea of Lukashenko becoming President of a 155 million population Union State of Russia and Belarus was not entirely far-fetched. Since then, his cachet in Russia has eroded, so it is no longer so much the Presidency of a quasi-superpower he has to look forwards to as some executive position within the Belorussian Federal District. That is obviously much less appetizing, hence his increasing penchant to make overtures to Belarusian nationalists (“zmagars”) and dalliances with the West – arrests of pro-Russian journalists and activists, the promotion of the “Litvinist” ideology that portrays Belarus as a spiritual successor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the refusal to recognize Crimea as Russian, joint exercises with the British military while refusing to host proposed Russian air bases, undermining the Russian food sanctions regime against the EU, and the steady replacement of Russian language signs by Belarusian (if with Chinese translations – Xi Jinping being a third prospective sugar daddy).
A few days ago, almost three dozen Russian mercenaries passing through Belarus en route to Sudan were arrested in a provocation that Lukashenko portrayed as a Russian plot against him. Unfortunately for him, nobody found that convincing, and latest signs point to him starting to backpedal.
The kremlins are not entirely blind to these developments, and this has resulted in them distancing from Lukashenko in recent years – after all, if he is not interested in deepening the Union State, why should Russia massively subsidize the Belarusian economy, allowing it to rake in the equivalent of ~10% of its GDP from re-exporting oil and gas sold at domestic Russian prices? This has created a vicious spiral, in which Lukashenko retaliates by further concessions to cultural zmagarists and Western outreach in order to shore up his legitimacy, which is crumbling in tandem with Belarus’ stagnant economy. Even so, the kremlins are hard-bitten realists who also recognize that, for all his faults, Lukashenko as the “last dictator in Europe” can, at least, be relied upon to not outright drift into the West’s orbit. Doing so would mean the near certain end of his regime.
One may summarize these positions in the following “Belarus Horseshoe” (as inspired by Fluctuarius Argenteus):
- “Lukashenko is a Russian stooge & that’s bad” – the Western MSM & the more zealous zmagars.
- “Lukashenko is a Russian stooge & that’s good” – Western Russophiles.
- “Lukashenko isn’t a Russian stooge & that’s bad” – Russian nationalists and the Kremlin.
- “Lukashenko isn’t a Russian stooge – but the opposition are!” – Lukashenko himself.
In the next two posts before the Belarusian elections, I will discuss in more detail why Belarus is not Ukraine in terms of anti-Russian sentiment, and will follow it up with a brief look at future prospects for the Lukashenko regime and Russian-Belorussian relations.
But before we go, I want to clarify that I am not saying that the a successful Maidan couldn’t potentially turn out very badly for Russia – while Lukashenko may not be a Russian stooge, certainly neither are the opposition. Tsepkalo seems to be a classic Westernizing technocrat, who has just moved on from Russia to Kiev. Babiriko, despite his position as chairman of a bank owned by Gazprom, has consistently been an open supporter of Western integration and distancing from Russia; as one of Belarus’ richest men, he is also perhaps best placed to fill a post-Lukashenko power vacuum. And despite her husband’s crypto-Russophilia, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has said that she would seek Belarus’ withdrawal from the Union State. That said, it remains an open question to what extent this reflects true sentiments, as opposed to the practical exigencies of keeping together a diverse coalition of Soviet nostalgics, pro-Western liberals, and even a few Russophiles/Russian nationalists.
Besides, expressions of political sentiment before coming to power should be treated with a grain of salt. Few remember this, but Saakashvili also made positive noises about Russia prior to the Rose Revolution. Poroshenko was one of the co-founders of the Party of Regions, and was photographed at BBQs with hardline Russian TV presenter Dmitry Kiselev (he of the turning the US into radioactive ash fame) and Russian nationalist Chalenko. Zelensky’s involvement in Russian showbiz has not stopped the Ukraine from ensuring that all Ukrainian schools without exception will eliminate teaching in the Russian language by September 2020. To the contrary, despite some limited anti-Russian rhetoric, the color revolution in Armenia hasn’t resulted in that country turning against its one critical ally. Geopolitics and strategic culture trump personal ideology and that is always well worth keeping in mind.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
It strikes me that letting Lukashenko continue his bizarre antics only further weakens the Russian position in Belarus. Regardless of Belarusian economic and geopolitical considerations favouring ties with Russia, having a Russia-hostile government in the form of Lukashenko (or various replacements) will do damage to Russophilic sentiment in the country. As we know, a sizeable portion of people in any country are ideological clay and will simply be absorbed in the prevailing narrative pushed by the centres of power. If Lukashenko is given another few years of playing up Zmagarism, pushing anti-Russian rhetoric, etc. the country will drift further from the Russian orbit. Precisely in the same mold that we have seen Ukraine become slowly more Russophobic over time.
Unless the Kremlin is waiting for a true crisis of Lukashenko’s power to step in, I fear the longer they wait to do anything about the Belarusian question the weaker the Russian position will become. There is a clock ticking on reintegration possibilities for the Russian world, let’s hope Putin isn’t tardy.
More of a question than a comment: it seems clear that Lukashenko seems to be getting increasingly desperate to hang on to power. But while presumably his accusations vs the Wagner group are about appealing to the nationalistic and/or anti-Russian segment of the populace, has he thought through the longer term implications with relations with Russia or does he figure that the Kremlin would understand this was just an election tactic and all would be forgiven post-election? Or does Lukashenko actually believe that the Kremlin seeks his ouster via provacateurs and/or is sending a message to Putin beyond election maneuverings?
In short: what’s Lukashenko’s gameplan here?
And for that matter: what’s the Kremlin’s gameplan for dealing with the bizarre antics of Lukashenko?
Can’t Russia outright invade Belarus? The US is incresingly falling apart and in any case, they’d never risk a world war for the sake some Eastern European statelet. The fiasco in Ukraine and Georgia prove that.
Sure there would be some sanctions on Russia but US sanctions are already maxxed out on Russia. A few years of rumbling and then everyone would forget it
Lukahsenko-controlled election commission did not register some candidates, whereas his police arrested others. Thus, it is clear that he will engage in massive fraud and appoint himself president for another term.
Rostislav Ishchenko says that everything is prepared for staging Maidan in Minsk after Lukashenko’s fraudulent “victory”.
Tikhanovskaya in her speeches spews populist BS: she describes how good everything will become without saying where the money comes from. Considering moribund state of Belarus economy and its massive debts to Russia and China, everything she says is a lie for the stupidest sheeple. Vote for her would be in fact vote against Lukashenko, who Belarus people are sick and tired of.
Basically, Russia has two options in Belarus: Crimean (take it) or Kievan (send it to Hell). Lukashenko won’t be retained in either case. If Russia chooses Kievan scenario, I hope it won’t save him. He deserves to be hanged, so I’d let “zmagars” do it. This would be the first and only good thing they ever do.
It’s not a question of Western sanctions, that horse is already flogged to death. It’s a question of whether it is worth it for Russia: Belarus is broke, its economy is moribund, so whatever benefits Russia might get out of taking it over would come at a pretty stiff price.
I rather disagree. Population is power — Belarusians are intelligent people and there’s 9.5m of them for the taking. This is a good investment regardless of whatever temporary economic costs are incurred. On that point, Belarus is considerably more developed and prosperous than pretty much anywhere in the Ukraine. Infrastructure would not need particularly massive investments, it’s only the economy that would need to be reformed to some degree. Not to mention that Belarus is home to many valuable industries that could be easily turned around. As we have seen from the Crimean success, it is not too difficult to revive an economically moribund province.
You might be right. However, comparison to Ukraine is meaningless, as almost any place on Earth now is in a better shape than long-suffering Ukraine. An important factor is that there are almost 4 times as many people in Belarus as in Crimea. But, similar to Crimea, there is strategic location.
Indeed, Belarus has 4x the population of Crimea. And Ukraine has 4x the population of Belarus. Interesting implications.
Russian annexation of Belarus would have interesting strategic implications for Ukraine and possibly very serious psychological effect on Ukrainians, after Crimea and Donbass Ukraine would be like an encircled tube or sausage amid Russian controlled lands. At least all politicians who would be Pro-Nato would seem irresponsible and out of touch with reality to the general public. I mean even more, much more, than they seem now. Belarus’s economy is salvageable by integrating it to Russia, they do lots of oil refining and petrochemical products so it would be win-win giving them gas on Russian prices when they are part of the Russia. About half of their imports come from Russia and half of their exports go there, so its economically already more integrated than Ukraine ever has been during its independence. Also Russia’s claim as inheritor of Rus would be greatly strenghtened. Really it would be a great cultural and propaganda victory on the long run. Hey Vladimir Vladimirovich do it!
Also what Karlin means by the kremlins is this some new nickname for those who belong to the Russian governing elite or are close to Putin? Like the Gremlins?
Seems Lukashenko is preparing his own Maidan.
What absolutely self destructive behaviour.
Just like Yanukovic trying to sit on two stools.
As this article states the economy and people’s sense of economic security will decide things in the future
I would appreciate an analysis of the Belarus economy.
What would make it attractive to the west beyond putting NATO on Russia’s border.
P.S. Russia should also learn that’s these mercenary are. It a good idea and can be used to undermine the counties policy.
We still don’t know clearly who sent them to Belarus
Allowing private companies to have effectively private armies is just asking for trouble.
Ukraine is certainly not worth having. Even its Western overlords are coming to this conclusion. Belarus is an open question. I don’t have enough info to decide. I hope Russian government has enough info and decides rationally. Hope springs eternal.
Those protesting people are electing Corona Chan for President.
Russia should be more aggressive with the charm offensive. For example, declare those arrested pro-Russian journalists martyrs for just cause and start building civil society around them. Don’t support any particular candidate, build a base system dedicated to promoting Russia, exerting gentle but persistent pressure at the local level, and placing qualified personnel in the key but low level power centers. Like Human Resources at the mayors office or something to manage personnel appointments. Not high enough to be noticed but still good to have impact and demonstrate results.
Use both carrots and sticks. If Nuland cookies are tasty, why can’t Zakharova bake some for those who do well in such organizing? Russia has 4th largest foreign exchange reserves in the world after China, Japan, and Switzerland so finding some spare change for a few cookies to develop democratic civil society shouldn’t be a problem. And if some part of the civil society wanders off the reservation, cutting off support is easy since you won’t be tied to any particular candidate.
This is how our friends in Soros-Clinton camp do it. Why can’t Russia? Western media won’t be able to complain too much either – Lukashenko is indeed authoritarian and arrested journalists are going to look authentic. Also, if you make your platform dedicated to the improvement of civil service and have some good results to show for it, it will be difficult to criticize from the Western viewpoint – Western media and puppet managers groom their people under the ‘fight corruption’ umbrella, you would be doing the same thing except groom your own people.
You are talking about Ukrainian politicians as if they are rational and care for the country. They do not give a hoot about Ukraine, and they are certainly not rational, more like hysterical. If they considered Ukraine interests and the realities, they would never go with the Maidan results ordered and paid for by the Empire and its sidekicks. All they want is steal as much as possible, transfer their spoils to the imperial sphere, and run away, like Yats. If Russia takes over Belarus, they would use it for whipping up the hysteria, producing more propaganda for stupid sheeple, as a fig leaf for their thievery.
They are rational, for they have a strong sense of self interest, but no country can forever stay in Ukrainian like situation, I think you are maybe little too pessimistic? I have noticed that there is a vast difference between Ukrainian internet commentators, who often reside in the West, and common Ukrainian people, they truly are tired in this crisis that has been going from 2013. Even election of Zelensky was a sign that majority of Ukrainians dont agree with Yatsenyuks and Poroshenkos message. But most people there are so tired that they have lost hope and have fallen in political apathy. Still in my opinion Putin plays long game and Slavs are not as susceptible to propaganda like westerners, they have or will notice that the Ukrainian independence has just brought misery and unstability, and that there is vast divide between lies told by authorities and reality.
I disagree about Slavs not being susceptible to propaganda. ALL people are susceptible to propaganda. Are you not forgetting all of that Soviet propaganda that turned the Slavs into Stalin worshippers?
To be honest, these protestors who are opposing Lukashenko really do not care about the future of the country, their civilisation or what have you. All they want is a good quality of life. If it means joining up to the EU in order to get those juicy subsidies, then so be it.
Even Serbia wants to join the EU. Serbia, the country that was heavily bombed by NATO in the 1990s. I think when it comes to nationalism, money talks more with people these days.
Rather then try to build up their own countries, they seem willing to sell it down the drain and mass migrate to the “New Romes” (London, Paris, Berlin, etc) in order to get some share of the pie.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that if one has to choose between Globohomo in the West and the Kakistocracy ruling Russia for the benefit of organized crime and Chechens, the only logical choice is to choose neither and instead work to reform the Rzeczpospolita under Polish leadership. Putting Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania back together would create a white Christian nation with a population of over 90 million, larger than Germany, and probably more white Europeans than live in the Russian Federation. It would instantly be a powerful force in the world for Christian European values in a way that no Western country is willing to be and Russian never can be.
The obvious hitch in the plan is that Poles don’t seem very interested, but if PiS really wants a future for an independent Poland, they need to start thinking big.
They will decide whose side they lay one – life, or death in the butthurt belt, to forever be known as the “montenegrins of the east”.
Smartest move? Make sure to push the pro-Russian narrative as much as possible. I’m certain the FSB is more than capable to handle subhuman zmagars (as we know from Yugoslavia, supporters of invented ethnicities tend to be absolute dumbshit). Pap, Maidan’d and then after some reconstruction full reunification with momma Russia, for maximum westoid butthurt and perhaps a few cases of butthurt-induced stroke (for everyone’s sake, the FSB should also salt the wound using internet trolls to increase such incidences).
Another alternative is to leave em be, become full on hardcore zmagars, and when the entire western system dies in a fire just either vacuum up their entire population or invade and helotize Morgenthau plan style. Tbh I’d perhaps like this option more, for I like to see people I don’t like get experience a free trial of hell before being thrown to the real one
Actually, the majority of the populace no longer does. The polling is done by westoid ass kissers.
Talks of “domestic traitor lists” and “cleaning up our own yard” (ironically a pro-globohomo motto that got horribly turned against them, with genuine genocidal implications) increase by the day.
FYI, Poland has as big a chance to become a great power or a bulwark of anything as Burkina Faso. Hence your “LOLs”.
Powerful take.
“Preparing his own Maidan” is all-too-common among strongmen who falter in their strength. The ailing camel attracts knives.
Correction: Belarus’ emigrant flow to Poland is now on par with Ukraine’s in per capita terms. At least according to the latest EU data I could find (2018).
Perceptions of Belarus as being far ahead of Ukraine are outdated. The average gross wage is in fact lower in Belarus. It may have better infrastructure, due to less overall corruption, but any real economic distinction between the two is fast getting blurry. Which would explain the large outflow in recent years.
Start smaller and you’ll get fewer “LOL”s. Say: a new Warsaw Pact without Germany or Russia, stopping short of the Balkans. It can include Slovakia. Maybe not Hungary, Czechia &c.
As I pointed out before, Poland is now experiencing a resurgence of its
cultural influence in Central and Eastern Europe, especially among the
young people due to (1) all those Polish rappers like Ronnie Ferrari,
Taco Hemingway, Mata, etc who easily garner 200-300 million views
on YouTube, (2) spectacular success of the Polish video game industry,
exemplified by Witcher 3, (3) Voice Kids song contests which attract
kids from Belarus, and even Kazakhstan. Elizaveta Misnikova from
Belarus who participated in the latest Voice Kids contest in January
is the latest example. She said she visits Warsaw constantly with her
family, and it’s her dream to live in Poland.
It has also not gone unnoticed that Poland is handling the CV pandemic
much better than Russia or Belarus. Everyone knows that the Polish
are a peaceful people, like the Czechs or Slovaks, and that the Germans,
Austrians, and the Jews took advantage of that. This fact holds its own
appeal. Many find peaceful people to be very attractive. Even the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed by the Treaty of Lublin (1569)
not through conquest but through a personal union between the
rulers of the respective entities.
The LOL from me has more to do with Peter’s lack of familiarity with basic East European populations stats. Like, even if we assume absolutely everybody in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania is “white” (OK, close enough), there are far more (25M more, estimating from my head) just ethnic Russians in Russia – not even talking about “whites” in general. Then again, he is also under the impression that Chinese are “ethnically taking over” the Russian Far East, so it’s not a topic he has much of a clue about.
Poland has a lot going for it when one contrasts it with neighboring states. That said it can’t stray too far off because it has a leash called eu/nato. And this leash is preferable for the Polish elite, which can’t ever conceive of making peace with Moscow and helping unite Slavdom. Nope it is better to antagonize Russia and Germany and then act surprised when the two rape Poland.
In the Ukraine, the historical narrative taught in schools shifted to one of colonial oppression by Russians, who – it is claimed – are Finno-Mongol interlopers
Is there some truth to it ? Are Russians are 100% slavic ethnically ? And how much Russians and ukrainians have in common culturally, ethnically ? Do Russians really descend from the Kievam Rus ?
I am not forgetting anything. Its precisely thanks to the Soviet propaganda and lies that they are not as susceptible to it!
Who can forget how the “peaceful Poles” staged a false flag operation in 1920 to steal Vilnius from Lithuania, eagerly seized land from Czechoslovakia while Hitler was ripping it apart, and tried to talk France into a preemptive invasion of Germany circa 1935?
That’s why such an Intermarium needs to be bigger–for instance, by including Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Latvia, and Estonia.
AK: No personal attacks.
100% pure ethnicities exist only in sick minds of nationalists. People who consider themselves Russians in Russia are somewhere ~80-85% Slavs genetically, pretty much the same as people who consider themselves Russians or Ukrainians in Ukraine.
Rus (as it called itself) was ruled from Kiev after Novgorod Rurikid prince Oleg with his army in 882 conquered Kiev, slaughtered local potentates, and made Kiev the capital of his state.
The term “Kievan Rus” was coined in the nineteenth century by Russian historians.
Ukraine voluntarily joined Russian Empire after hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky concluded the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654. Ukraine that he added to the Empire was less than 1/6th of its current territory (see map here https://www.google.com/search?q=ukraine+map+history&client=firefox-b-1-d&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=5N054DRwo19LEM%252CH6OX4LiG9gvHzM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kSF3ZxIH5kzLFFKeAe74tY4vgOp6g&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjHhtCL8P_qAhUFd98KHd-yAQgQ9QEwAXoECAgQHQ&biw=1378&bih=907#imgrc=5N054DRwo19LEM)
Large territories were later added by Russian tsars, Lenin in 1922, Stalin in 1939, and finally in 1954 Crimea was added to the Ukrainian SSR by Khrushchev.
Ethnically Ukrainians are close to Russians, massive migrations between the territories of current Russia and Ukraine happened several times in history. After Mongol khan Batu conquered Kiev in 1240, lots of people from present day Ukraine moved to present day Russia. The languages are similar in vocabulary and grammar, the alphabets differ by a few letters. Culture that can be claimed as Ukrainian is close to Russian, but vastly inferior to it. The first Ukrainian state was established in the wake of 1917 Russian revolution (so the most ancient Ukrainian money date from 1918). It was occupied by Germans for a while, who were kicked out of Kiev by Petliura. Ukraine was soon taken over by Bolsheviks, Petliura forces simply ran away from Kiev. An interesting vignette: Petliura was murdered in Paris in 1926 by a Jew named Schwartzbard, who confessed and said that he did it to avenge his family, slaughtered to a man by Petliura solders. French jury found his reason sufficient and acquitted him (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwartzbard_trial).
The Three Seas Initiative: Europe’s plan to checkmate Russia
Polish rappers like Ronnie Ferrari, Taco Hemingway
lol
Extremely bvsed and powerful post that deserves it’s own thread.
I disagree. Polands economy is booming and the country is a rising power on the world stage.
The demographics were the only real thing wrong with his post (his description of Russia was merely a hash exaggeration).
Reality check: Germany (not a great power) GDP is ~4 trillion, France (not a great power) ~2.8 trillion, Italy (not a great power) ~2 trillion, Poland ~600 billion.
On top of that, Polish politicians for many centuries appear to have a death wish: Poland continually antagonizes Germany and Russia. It was divided between them quite a few times in its history. Fast forward to 2020: it is clear to anyone with IQ greater than shoe size that the US will defend Poland exactly like France and UK did in 1939. Case closed.
As usual you post a lot of nonsense. It is your specialty.
That map is false. The “yellow” territory was only the Zaporozhian lands. Khmelytsky also ruled Kiev and much of central Ukraine.
Here is an actual map of the time:
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/24/a9/6c/24a96cc39f878fa5aca4d1768bd56a0f.jpg
Ukrainian vocabulary has more words in common with Polish than with Russian. All three are Slavic languages so they are not radically different. But grammar and pronunciation is closer to Russian than to Polish though grammar is not identical (i.e., Ukrainian has vocative tense while in Russian it is only retained in phrases such as “Bozhe” (my God!”).
By the name “Ukraine”, yes. But Khmelytsky’s state was independent for about 6 years before coming under the Tsar. Also the Hetmanate, while under the Tsar, was autonomous with its own government, courts, and even army. Prior to the Battle of Poltava it was more independent of Moscow than the Warsaw Pact countries were during the Cold War.
Did France and UK have troops stationed in Poland in 1939?
Resurrected neo-PLC becomes not a great power but a secondary power like Germany.
What exactly do you expect US to do?
If Russia wanted to attack Poland for some reason, US would sanction Russia and then sign a deconfliction agreement similar to the one Russia and US have in Syria, and working on in space today. US troops would be unharmed. The idea of attacking Poland is silly though.
Interesting, thanks. Who ruled the light green zone on your map before 1654 though ?
And modern day Russians – what do they descend from ? Novgorod ? The Rus in general ?
And where does the Ukrainian patois come from ? Was it spoken in Ukraine before the bolcheviks enforced its teaching ?
Is what AnonFromTN wrote, for the right bank Ukraine was quickly lost to Poland, you have a very selective eay of reading things.
This is just misinformation, more independent than Romania? That they could have their own foreign relations. Moscow was not micromanaging foreign relations of Warsaw pact countries, but only interfering when it was needed. Although relations to the west were a different case that was decided by Moscow more or less.
Also Don Cossacks too had their own elected goverment, with its army, I dont know if they had their own courts, they probably had, again you practice purposeful misreading of history, serving your nationalist agenda.
Russia still has about 110 million ethnic Russians. Problem is they are declining and Tatars/Bashkirs/Kalmyks etc. are increasing. Russia is further along the path to Islamization than any country in Western Europe. Would be nice for you to take this topic head on rather than ignoring it.
And how did that „defense“ end up working out for the Poles? Here’s a hint – go ask the Poles living in Lwów and Wilna.
When adjusted for PPP Poland is at 1 trillion already. Also it is growing rapidly, it could easily balloon to a top 10 global economy by 2040.
You could have hardly picked worse examples to illustrate your thesis of rapidly expanding Muslim demographics Russia (with the numbers of Tatars and Bashkirs being in decline, and Kalmyks being Buddhists).
Problem with Polish economy is lack of industrial tradition. Yes, they have many good people, but they far behind in heavy industries. Poland do not have even nuclear plant. Polish economy is based on the cheap labor and export to western europe. Most of Polish industry is in foregain hands. It prevent to develop own policies. Unless, there would be problems in Germany, Poland will be fine. Polish goverment is aware of this problem. They are trying to develop at least own weapon industries.
Surely that will change over the next few decades. I can see Polands gdp equaling that of Germany or Russia and with fewer people at that. Germany and Russia are shrinking and ageing while Poland is young and growing, demographically.
Of those 9.5 million an indordinate number are old and getting older, and Belarusian women don’t reproduce. “Population is power” if the populace you’re getting consists of productice young men and fertile women. Belarus has a relatively small amount of the former, and almost none of the latter.
Annexing Belarus is just another burden on Russia’s social safety net. Importing Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Mongolians, etc on the other hand is a big win. Those are the people Russia actually wants. Not useless ass alcoholic Slavs and their repugnant, entropic women.
His map did not include left bank either; only Zaporizhia lands. And not all of the Right Bank was lost, that occurred during the Ruin which was after 1654.
More than Hungary (after 1956) or Czechoslovakia. So no misinformation.
Irrelevant to what I wrote.
No.
I don’t think any Ukrainian nationalist condemns Khmelnytsky for his treasonous war against PLC.
Electing 2 homosexual( 1 definite, 1 probable) Presidents in the last 10 years is not exactly “white christian” you dummy.
Poland has gone from being Catholic Albania ……. to Warsaw a bit of Krakow and the rest of it Albania. So just a little bit of improvement,based on criminal exploitation of Ukrainians and parasite money from the EU….and the usual Polish delusions of grandeur occur, and you guys start acting as if it’s Monaco, LOL!
Not nuclear or conventional war using US troops of course, but increased sanctions and massive military aid to Poland, more than was given in 1939 (of course, it would be much easier to more quickly provide more military aid because Poland isn’t isolated from other NATO countries through which the aide could be sent). If Poland were like 2014 Ukraine this wouldn’t matter, it would be over in a week or two, but it isn’t, Poland would last long enough to take advantage of the aid.
If US troops are stationed in Poland there is a chance of them being harmed by a Russian invasion of Poland. In which one could expect limited but lethal retaliatory strikes by the US military on Russian targets. Imagine if, during the Cold War, the USA attacked and invaded Hungary in a limited operation. Would USSR start a nuclear war over Hungary? No.
Agreed, it would never happen.
Poland’s defense includes a corona-infected foreign army. Every country trying to squash the virus has to contend with a military that’s spreading the disease across the 150 countries it occupies. (The resurgence in Okanawa was traced back to the US bases there.)
“All they want is a good quality of life. If it means joining up to the EU …”
But there’ll be a price to pay for that good quality life, firstly because it was other people who built that good quality life, and they’re the ones who’ll initially pay for it in increased crime, lower wages, higher housing costs as a result of Eastern European immigration (albeit the Roma/Kosovars/Albanians are much worse than say Poles or Estonians).
But they’ll pay in their home countries when its time to settle “refugees”, allow gay “marriage” and generally “conform to European values”.
Serious question,nothing personal, purely scientific:
Are you a paedophile?
I was thinking of asking the same thing after you made an identical comment on one of Karlin other recent posts. Your over-eager approach to promoting Poland for nonexistent achievements has resulted in you bizzarely praising 13 or 14 year old girls for their “beauty” or whatever, and showing a disturbing interest in girls that age.
All you are doing when talking about Instagram and music is illustrating that Polish Internet culture is 10 years behind russian Internet culture.
Apart from some dickhead video game,poland has zero soft power. Even on the ukrainians arriving to work in poland there has been zero impact on them from Polish musicians or Internet trends/influences
Having inter-ex-Warsaw pact ( + Cuba) contestants in each others talent/entertainment shows or competitions is not a rare thing at all. Hungarians and Czechs appearing on Russian shows and viceversa has occured many times. Remember,despite the pro-western or anti-russian political paths that many of these countries have taken, the number of russophiles,or even strong pro-Soviet , even at a small percentage is still several million people.
A few months ago there was some scandal in which a Ukrainian boy from Ivano-Frankovsk (not sure about that but definitely from Galicia)took part in a singing competition in London organised by some soviet expat. He sang in Russian and it was a famous Soviet song. Some dickhead Ukrop journalists tried to attack him for it,but he seems to be a good kid with a great mother.
LOL Belarus has about the same death rate as Poland, with much less restrictions and far more testing . Belarus is on a large downward trend in infections at the moment,Poland on a large upward one – so there should be more mass coronavirus death there in a month.
Russia when it had the number of infections that Poland has now……had a fraction of the deaths. We also do far more testing,and unlike Poland we have actual international tourists come to our country, and we go on holiday to Italy,Spain,Turkey etc compared to the minimal numbers of poles who can be found there and the near zero numbers of Italians, brits,French and spanish going to Poland….so we were always likely to have far more cases because of our advanced society.
I mostly agree, but be careful about what you wish for with this:
US will never attack Russia proper over Poland. Thousands of Americans have died to Russian arms in Korea and Vietnam and other places but never has US bombed Kaliningrad or Vladivostok in retribution. Same for Russia in Afghanistan. USSR would never bomb US cities over casualties there. Everyone understands proxy wars and their rules.
Which means that to ‘help’ Poland, US will bomb Poland.
Just like US Air Force ‘helped’ South Vietnam by bombing it into oblivion, they are still dealing with Agent Orange toxic effects over there. Just like US Air Force ‘helped’ Iraqis and the Kurds against ISIS by bombing Mosul and Raqqa into apocalyptic disaster zones. Just like US Air Force ‘helped’ Afghans by bombing how many weddings now?
Now, Russian military may be no match for US in a single pitched battle, but Russian infiltration squads are more competent and have better budgets than ISIS or Talibans. And they can come for years. US Air Force will turn Poland into toxic wasteland trying to flush them out.
If you are hoping for US to help Poland, you must really hate poor Poland. May the gods help the people ‘helped’ by US Air Force.
Truly.
A week or two of living under an average American Democrat governor/tyrant would hopefully be all Karlin needs to purify his mind of the absurd claim that there is not a mass psychosis surrounding the corona virus. Either that or he would double down in the hysterical beliefs of the hypocrites who claim to be protectors of human life while they abort millions and permit support Marxist revolutionary terrorist marches that spread the virus more thoroughly than the churches or barber shops they lock down.
Lukashenko, clearly not a genius, reminds me of the enlightened mind memes, where often the brainless peon has the smartest take.
Mostly Poland (technically Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but the union between Poland and Lithuania was like a union between a lion and a lamb; when it was announced, many Lithuanian nobles saw it as an end of their country).
Russians descended from numerous Eastern Slavic tribes that lived in present day European part of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Novgorod was the strongest state. Maybe that’s why it was taken as a valuable prize by Rurikids.
Now, that’s a complex question. There were (and are) several dialects in present day Ukraine that developed over centuries. The parts ruled by Poland had the language Polonized, the parts ruled by Austro-Hungary had it Germanized. These are Western Ukrainian dialects (I only speak the one common near Lvov, in addition to literary Ukrainian). I was born in Lvov and lived near it for several years, speaking local language with other kids. When I went to school in Lugansk (used to be Eastern Ukraine, now Lugansk Peoples Republic), my Ukrainian teacher loved me, as I was the only kid in a class of 40+ who could speak proper Ukrainian. Official literary Ukrainian (taught in the USSR) is Poltava Ukrainian (Poltava is in Central Ukraine). The South and East speaks mostly Russian or “surzhik”, a horrible mix of Russian and Ukrainian. In Crimea, Odessa, Kharkov, and some other places the great majority speaks pure Russian w/o an accent. Ukraine was and is highly heterogeneous. If its governments after 1991 cared for the country, they would have been inclusive and had several state languages, like Switzerland or Singapore. But they wanted a fig leaf to cover their thievery, and chose rabid nationalism to serve this function.
LOL.
To which the obvious reply to your repeatedly cretinous commentary is that, according to the official position of the Polish defense minister,their government and much of their elite……. in 2010 the Russian state assasinated their President and 90+ more of their citizens when their plane went down in Smolensk. That classifies as an attack on the state – it certainly would for US,Italy,UK,France,China etc.
This is what they claim to believe. Their military response to this “attack”? LOL
But they at least sanctioned some Russians? No, zero officials
Considering plenty of sanctions from many different countries , including Russia have been placed on Russia for things that have not even got close to being “proven”- Magnitsky,Litvinenko, MH17, doping, various ” human rights abuses”… the point about the western states not bothering to protect this kamikaze,idiot state in 1939 is even more valid in today’s world. It’s also the peak of “faggot state” to make the stupid claim…..but then do nothing about it anyway!because of being a prostitute state of the US, and even they not willing to join in that nonsense.
Pole posters here are strange.
If you make a profile on talks.by there is a perhaps representative view of netizens of Belarus. I haven’t been there recently, but in previous years, the internet attitude of such forum addicts, seems to have been equally distributed triadic hatred of Lukashenko, hatred of opposition to Lukashenko, and hatred of Russian government.
Triadic hatred of all sides, is of course, the healthy response – for normal people in relation to their government, it is usually like a question of which gangster it would be better to pay your protection money for, not that you actually have a choice (except on some emotional level). Of course, the best “choice” of three is to support fully Lukashenko. It’s usually better to support your local gangster; moreover you had him for more than two decades and if he was going to go crazy burning your store and raping your wife and daughter, he would have already done it.
If we are talking about the causes of Poland’s economic ascent in the last couple decades, one of main factors is the most simple geographical one: they are next to Germany.
If you could transport countries, and you could “airlifted” Germany into Africa or South Africa – the neighbouring countries would soon experience wild GDP growth from their trade with, onshoring from, such a economic superpower being next to them.
If such surreal example could exist, we could speculate that living next to Germany, might elevated African and Latin American countries to first world in a short time.
This is in the 21st century (obviously in mid-20th century, you want your country as many kilometres away from Germany as possible).
For poorer countries like Poland, a large part of the young population will emigrate to North Western Europe, until the country approaches to EU average incomes. And even countries near EU average incomes like Spain and Italy, still emigrate a lot of their young workers to North Western Europe.
You know, I don’t think many of these people protesting actually care. They don’t think long term about the situation. They have been thoroughly indoctrinated into GloboHomo mass culture that to them, becoming like the West is the only way for them to prosper.
It is the same with the protests going on in Russia today. Most of them are young, they have grown up on a diet of GloboHomo propaganda and they want to live in a country that is on the TV such as “Friends”. They cannot conceive of the West’s problems or its future, just that it has a far better quality of life then back home.
I know what I am talking about because I have interacted alot with younger Russians and many of them still have this naive belief that if they just copy everything the West has done, magically things will radically improve. If you try to point out the alternatives, about what is happening in the West, etc, etc, they just cannot conceive that the West is bad and it is a lie. Like a religion almost.
I think the problem ultimately stems from Communism and the 1990s decade. When the Soviet system collapsed, people essentially lost hope with anything to do with Socialism and you had a younger generation growing up, watching Western TV, taking note of the bad situation in the former east at that time. Psychological speaking, the East has never recovered from that after shock.
To all of those here thinking the Slavic states are immune, to Karlin and his dreams of a greater Russian empire in space, I ask the question. Why are the Slavs not protesting for nationalism? Why are they protesting for Democracy and Liberalism?
Because it is the stronger “God” that they believe in.
Unless another system, a strong system, is developed that can successfully counter GloboHomo, Putin, Lukashenko and the nationalism that has been present is but a mirage of time that itself cannot ensure on a long term basis.
Now the bigger question is – could Democracy and Liberalism actually succeed in Belarus/Russia, etc? The answer is no, not for the long term. In Belarus’ case, it would just be a repeat Ukrainian horror show. The young would leave en masse to the “Glorious West” with false hopes of joining the EU.
In Russia’s case – it might succeed for a decade but quickly develop into another oligarchy. Whatever happens in that scenario I have no idea.
I am sceptical if this is true for Belarus, since in the 90s they voted to restore the Soviet emblem, flag and liberation day (despite being objectively aesthetically inferior)
My point exactly.
I’m having trouble getting past this statement about Poland’s influence.
Imagine telling a grizzled Gdansk shipyard worker in the 1980s that 30 years on Poland’s most famous person would be a guy called Taco Hemingway. And not even a world famous writer & hunter, but a fucking rapper.
This is the case amongst the Soviet generation. I’d say within the 50 – 80 year age groups, Soviet nostalgia is very strong. It is this generation that regretted the breakup of the Soviet Union, still believe (even to this day) in Communism and fondly remember how great life was back then (remember the Sovok Boomer Karlin presented a while back?).
However it is the younger generation that is having none of it. The smart ones are naturally critical of the West but still see Democracy as the way forward. The masses however want to go full on West and are in love with the GloboHomo culture. As one younger Russian told me once, “amongst the youth, the minority think the West is becoming a new Sodom and Gomorrah. The majority think the West is being progressive and cool.”
Another Russian also told me to expect gay marriage in Russia within 30 – 50 years after the Putin era if the current Western pop culture still heavily stands.
So it is down to comments like this and from the protests I am reading about why I am naturally very sceptical if Belarus and Russia can avoid the same fate. Watch the Visegrad states. When they decide to start adopting gay marriage and pushing towards a more liberal culture, expect the rest of Slavdom to follow suit.
“Friends” last aired 15 years ago.
Might as well remember Johnny Carson while you’re at it.
P.S. The proverbial “kids these days” don’t even know what television is.
Oh go screw yourself.
“Some other places” includes Kiev, of course.
Poland has a rather low TFR, lower than either Russia or Germany (as of 2018 anyways).
Had to look that claim up, and sure enough, these rappers’ most-viewed videos are:
Ronnie Ferrari – ONA BY TAK CHCIAŁA [139M views]
RUSKACZ – Ronnie Ferrari x Locke [30M views]
PIJEMY BY ZAPOMNIEĆ – Ronnie Ferrari ft. Locke [18M views]
TACONAFIDE – Tamagotchi [87M views]
TACONAFIDE – 8 Kobiet feat. Bedoes [65M views]
Otsochodzi – Nowy Kolor feat. Taco Hemingway [53M views]
Mata – Patointeligencja [35M views]
Mata – Schodki [20M views]
100 dni do matury [16M views]
That is to say, they are nowhere close to “easily garner 200-300 million views” — a claim that must now count as another strike against your trustworthiness. Please make it a habit, from now on, to look up the facts before you cloud people’s thinking with untruths like this.
Another commenter flushing his credibility down the toilet.
Poland’s TFR (total fertility rate) stood at 1.46 in 2018, which is well below the steady-state level of 2.1. That is, the Polish population is falling sharply (absent changes in migration, infant mortality, life expectancy, or the like).
Teenagers stream it, it’s very popular with them, “boomer.”
Of course you’ve got to be wrong in nearly every post.
I may not have been clear but yes, if Russia invaded Poland USA would not attack Russia itself. OTOH, especially if US troops in Poland were hit, expect strikes on Russian forces within Polish territory. This combined with well-supplied Polish resistance would make an invasion very bloody and expensive for the invader. So, it will never happen.
Taliban is ISIS have some support among locals. Russian squads in Poland would probably just get wiped out by locals.
Strange argument. If someone invaded Russia, would you feel sorry for people of Orel or whatever oblast because Moscow would strike invaders on those territories?
I’ve met three Belarusian girls (all 20-21) before. One had a rainbow bag and was sophisticated but also very promiscuous, one was very well acquainted with English culture and spoke exceptionally good English but, when I asked her about politics, said Lukashenko was basically fine since everyone in Belarus had guaranteed healthcare and a job. The third was a vapid, bleached-blonde slut.
Did you hear surzhik spoken? If that’s your language, you won’t notice anything untoward. However, if you know both Russian and Ukrainian, “horrible” is the only epithet that comes to mind. I’ve heard it for about 14 years in Lugansk and the region. Thank goodness, my grandma and grandpa spoke mostly proper Ukrainian, while all their kids spoke proper Russian.
People who grew up in Kiev, yes. Until recently speaking Ukrainian in Kiev was equal to acknowledging your mental inferiority. In a way, it still is. However, I hear (from my cousin living there) that today there are lots of uncouth village people from Western Ukraine there (normal people call them “vuiki” or “raguli”), who speak Ukrainian (i.e., what they consider Ukrainian, not the proper literary Ukrainian).
This would require the locals to mass and converge on the infiltration squads. There’s nothing Russian artillery loves more than massed and concentrated locals. Ukrainians found out the hard way.
I would. I mean, it would be necessary, but I wouldn’t be blind to the suffering of civilians in those areas.
Poland will be a regional power yes, it has the geographic potential, but first it must grow it’s population a lot. A hundred mil minimum. Geographically not suited for real global effect, but to be the top dog in “small” Europe (everything that isn’t Russia), yes
Imagine telling a grizzled Gdansk shipyard worker in the 1980s that 30 years later his shipyard will be owned by a Ukrainian billionaire, employ fewer than 1000 people, and stop building ships.
Can they? How do you know? The numbers of, for instance, Spetsnaz GRU are classified but they range from 7-15K. They need to cover a multitude of geographies so they’re quite busy. Are they all going to drop their assignments in Donbass, Syria, etc, and scurry to Poland?
Poland itself has about 3K special forces troops and Poland will not be alone.
While I don’t disagree with your general point about Russia’s vast resources, remember that it takes time to prepare these already highly selected soldiers (not only are they a small percentage of all military but even their relatives need to be vetted to make the cut, so it takes much more than just snapping one’s fingers even in Russia’s case).
And re: native/friendly vs enemy soil AP was correct. That’s exactly what happened in Ukraine where Russia relied heavily on the local militia. It is one thing for a paratrooper to land in a friendly territory where girls greet you with flowers and kisses, and something entirely different to land in a hostile area that’s full of, let’s say, snipers that are defending their homeland.
Democracy does t work out anywhere.
I agree Russia and Eastern European countries are susceptible to globohomo. However I think globohomo is falling apart too fast for that to matter.
You are overthinking this. They won’t need to be elite soldiers, or even need to shoot much. Just more or less competent artillery spotters to locate Polish military concentrations. Iskanders and Kh-101’s and Kalibrs will do the rest. Civilians will hopefully have good sense to stay out of the way. Or they will get bombed by US Air Force trying to get the Russians. Poland is only 900×700 km – well within Russian missile capability.
Poland has one very strong security guarantee: nobody wants it.
I have both Czech and Lithuanian friends. The Zaolzie and Vilnius
matters are so minor that they are almost never brought up. The Czechs,
Lithuanians, and the Poles all know that they pale by comparison
to the relentless aggression against all three countries by Germany,
Austria, and the German-ruled Russia (after all the Romanovs were
99% German)
Russia remains chronically short of oil refining capacity. Belarus has a large refining complex and associate industries like polyester production for mens suits. I’ve met the oligarch. So it has economic value to Russia.
But really, the Putinists can’t afford to take over Ukraine against popular resistance. It would confirm negative opinions about expansionism amongst Russia’s own population. People are realising that the present relative poverty is the new normal.
It is interesting to note that procurement in the Ukrainian health system is now handled by the British Crown Agents. They saved 40% in the first year they ran it. Since I saw that I believe the figure of 60% lost to corruption quoted for the Russian army around 2010. Less now I suspect.
The Crown Agents also handle procurement for 30 other countries with corruption problems including Zimbabwe (despite the rhetoric, Z is fundamentally British) and Japanese government infrastructure projects and foreign aid.
Ukraine has taken significant measures against corruption. Real ones.
Yep. If it keeps going in the same determined manner, in just another 500 years Ukraine would get rid of corruption.
Sure. But the point wasn’t about how far the Iskander fly (or that there needs to be better air defense). You seemed to imply that there is this cornucopia of Russian “infiltration squads” that can be replenished year over year and would be somehow stationed there, unharrassed. What you may not know is that there has been grumbling in parts of Russian society even when it comes to sending troops to Donbass (no, not the liberals but certain working class types). Voices saying “why should our boys (nashi mal’chiki) go there to be burned up in tanks?”
I’m not saying they won’t be, just saying it’s no longer the times of the Soviet Afghan war when men could just be pulled out of their houses without telling them where they’ll be going.
And re: civilians getting out of the way, soldiers dying on their own soil is just as bad because in these kinds of wars the soldiers are mothers’ sons and somebody’s husbands and fathers.
Correction: Romanovs were about 90% German (99% was a misprint)
I am profoundly humbled by the fact that all my knowledge
is no match for AnonFromTN’s ignorance.
But seriously folks, Steve Bannon recently said that Poland
is the most strategically located country in Europe, and in
this sense it can be compared to the South China Sea.
If nobody wants Poland, why has Warsaw changed hands
so many times in the 20th century?
Warsaw ruled by:
Russia 1900
Germany 1916
Poland 1919-1939
Germany 1939-45
Russia (controlled by) 1945-89
Poland 1989-
Re: Taco Hemingway
You’re not keeping up with rap.
Rappers are famous for having whimsical names.
I’m certainly not an expert in the field of rap, but their
often hilarious names are hard to miss
You didn’t even go before 1900. There were some interesting owners of Warsaw, even Napoleon.
But have you noticed that now is the 21st century? I did not say that Poland was never wanted by anyone, I said that no one wants it now.
The “success” of Ukraine gave Lukashenko a sort of buffer period for a few years following maidan as people realized things can always get worse than what they have. Too bad for him he squandered it, and most people have already forgotten the events to their South which most likely will end – perhaps in many years – catastrophically for the president of this country. I personally am tentatively Russophile in the sense I’d rather orient culture and economy towards the East, but I’m hostile to Russo-integration at least for the foreseeable future until either A) Russia fixes a great many problems it has and provides a great many guarantees which for the moment seem dubious or B) we can live on gibsmedats from Moscow all the while making fun of the retards Eastward, with my country acting as a sort of Northern Chechnya
This is God tier bait unironically thank you for posting
How is this bait and how is this new if the head of Az*v has been talking about this since the summer of 2014? And there could hypothetically be a less aggressive version of it if it is more to your liking. It is indeed in God’s hands.
You don’t need “military concentrations” to wipe out infiltrators. Just a hostile population and small numbers of counter-forces.
It’s so sad to deal on this blog with the Eastern Slavs who are
so quarrelsome with each other, and with others as well, and
so envious – although envy is all too common among all Slavs.
We Western Slavs don’t quarrel much with each other partly
because, averaged over the last 1200 years, the Western Slavs
have had a very pleasant life (of course, I’m not talking of
the underclass). Central Europe is a very pleasant part of Europe
compared to E. Europe or Scandinavia. And in recent decades,
as W. Europe has descended into chaos and insanity, Central Europe,
with its illiberal democracy (which is the only kind of democracy
that works), appears to be an island of sanity in Europe.
We never suffered the Mongol yoke or the horrors that took
place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and ‘30s. Currently, the
virus appears to be bypassing Central Europe, just like the
Black Death bypassed Poland and Bohemia ca. 1350. So life,
relatively speaking, has been pretty good for the Visegrad 4.
We’ve been blessed.
A) Lukashenko mentioned he wanted to pay for the Russian oil with rubles but apparently they said “no”, they only want dollars; B) you wanna fight for the gibsmedats with Khabarovsk et al?
The only question long term (or even medium term) is whether the Belarusian population is going to turn anti-Russian or pro-Russian after a Russian annexation. If they’d turn pro-Russian, then their economy would easily get integrated into the Russian economy and they would provide nearly 10 million loyal and productive people for Russia. So that would clearly be worth it. But if they’d turn anti-Russian, then it’s a very difficult situation for Russia.
It would be a difficult situation for everybody. They want to be left alone.
You are right about Kalmyks of course, dumb mistake.
Having spent time in Ufa, I have a hard time with the official demographic numbers. Seemed obvious to me what ethnicity is running the place, and it’s not Orthodox Christians. Same in Moscow for that matter, Russians cannot compete in business with Georgians, Tatars, Armenians, Jews or Poles. It was that way in the 19th century and it is sill that way today except now Russia has driven out a lot of the non-Russians and now has even fewer people able to compete in a global economy. Russia will remain a bloated bureaucratic parasitic state for the foreseeable future.
Of course, it’s impossible for a Swedish fellow who is unacquainted
with the Slavic languages to ascertain the exact number of views
on YouTube if he doesn’t even know what the bestselling
records are. Although I must admit that the growth of the Polish
video game industry and the Polish music industry has been so
explosive that even I was so caught by surprise. The situation is
literally changing from month to month. Poland is a medium-sized
country so 5-10 years ago a video that attracted 20-30 million
views was regarded as a great success.
But then in the last 2-3 years some videos began to reach over 100
million views, and a few over 200 million views. So what has changed?
The songs probably haven’t become twice as good in the last 2 years.
I think the main reason is the spectacular success that Polish girls
have experienced at the Junior Eurovision: Roxie Węgiel won in
2018 and Viki Gabor in November 2019. Suddenly the interest in
Polish music has increased exponentially, and Polish videos started
getting more views from Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary,
and even from Portugal and Spain. I saw that in the comments
under the songs. One Portuguese guy wrote, “I yearn to be Polish
but unfortunately I’m not.”
Sorry, misread your post. But this is an argument really for Poland strengthening Visegrad and trying to gain more influence in Ukraine and Belarus. The current leadership in Poland has a problem – they are nationalist but isolationists by temperament. That is fine if your country is defensible like the US or the UK but makes no sense in Poland. Poland, like Russia, is forced to be aggressively expansionist if it wants to survive.
Teenagers stream everything, including (but not limited to) “the Human Centipede” and “Зеленый слоник”.
In terms of popularity, video game streams are probably 10000 more popular than “Friends”.
Your popular culture is dead, wake up.
Now a few specific examples, showing views on YouTube
and many others close to 100 million.
All of these are recent so the numbers are still growing.
In addition to YouTube one has to include the numbers
on other platforms like Spotify, etc. Moreover, when videos
achieve this level of success, usually there are covers by
other artists, parodies, and translations. For example,
I understand that “Język Ciała” was released in other countries
in translation. “Ona by tak chciała być tu ze mná” had two versions:
one unexpurgated and the other for younger viewers.
When you add it all up, you will get, say, 150 to 250 million views.
I was quoting from memory so I exaggerated a bit. But the
interest in Polish music is growing so fast that next year
songs getting 200-300 million views may not be as uncommon
as they are now. This November Poland will host Junior Eurovision
again (because it won last time) so that will provide another
shot of publicity. Sapkowski’s Hussite Trilogy will be published
in English in October, which will probably start another video game
series. The Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Books of Jacob will also
be published in English this coming fall.
Re: The claim that the virus has largely bypassed Poland
The total number of Covid deaths in Poland currently stands at 46 per million
which is 10 times smaller than in the U.S.
The number of cases has been rather large in the last week or so,
500-700, but almost all are asymptomatic so that’s not something I
would worry about. During the flu season as many as 30-40 million
Americans may be infected, and that’s never mentioned in the press.
The increased number of cases is explained in the Polish press
by 3 factors (1) recent presidential campaign when few bothered
to wear a mask; (2) weddings which were postponed
by lockdown, and (3) funerals which also were postponed
so more family members could attend.
The Gdansk Shipyard is now held 50-50 by the Polish government
and the Industrial Union of Donbass. The govt had bought some
shares recently
Are you on drugs when you write your comments or are you congenitally stupid? You come across as the most idiotic and the most uncool Polack I ran into in the internet.
Correct, I don’t know. You, a Latvian nationalist, do know. / that totally happened.
Уймись, шпрот.
Ethnic minorities (esp. from Caucasus/Near East) having disproportional success in business is a universal story.
However, a majority of RF billionaires are Russian: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russian-billionaires-2017/
Many, ofc, in name only, but billionaires tend towards cosmopolitanism everything.
Anyhow, your post strikes me as a bit schizophrenic. Leaving the subjective judgments aside, you at the same time decry the presence of these foreign merchants, but at the same time lament that there aren’t enough of them. Which is it?
Ok thanks.
But we all know that the US has done very badly on this you cretin. As I was saying, Belarus, with much less restrictions has had about the same rate of deaths. Russia when it had the number of infections that Poland currently has….had about 4-5 times less deaths. Unlike Poland, people actually go to Russia, and all the central Asian countries shut their own border and effectively locked their own countrymen in Russia – not only were they a big source of the spreading, their numbers may have brought the actual number of people inside Russia close to the 160 million mark, certainly 155 million.
Now this is the key point. What is “almost all” – your deluded version of it, or actually almost all? What is the exact percentage – it’s crucial to the validity of your point if we are talking 70% + or whatever. As I said, testing is nothing compared to Belarus – so I assume there wouldn’t much room for high amounts of asymptomatic testing ( asymptomatics thus bringing a multiplier effect which will cause plenty of symptomatic cases soon you dummy)
So , the ukrainian language is not exactly an invention of the germans / poles as Russian nationalists say ?
Buffer zones need to be separated from “wanting” a country you idiot….as the Nazi’s wanted with Czechoslovakia and USSR, or Russia and UK with India…or Poland tried ( and laughably completely failed – – sending the country into it’s abject fate for the last millenium) to get Black Sea coast and much unexplored land that is now Russia. Nobody, including Napolean actually wanted Poland much – most of the time countries have wanted it solely as a passage to get to Russia. In other words, solely as a prostitute state.
…and part of the reason these countries have had control of it is because- Poland have initiated wars against them but got annihilated in return
Imagine having had the best of Russian, Swedish,French and German influence come to your lands…..but still being an abject blackhole of European culture and civilisation for many centuries.
Now Poles, not the state, are great people, but my friends in the UK can’t tell me even ONE thing about Poles or polish culture, despite there being over a million there! Absolutely nothing about great Polish food – even the Ethiopians or Sudanese have collected a better cultural reputation.
Yeah this is something I have been contemplating too. If the West was doing really well economically, everything was great and thriving and people were having a really great quality of life, I think that the Slavic world would very quickly embrace GloboHomo view points, believing that it is the road to prosperity.
However, considering that the West continues to decline with every passing year and the problems continue to grow, there is a potentially positive chance that the Slavic people will put two and two together, realising that the combination of GloboHomo views has led to the decline of the West.
I tend to concur with Dimitry that the East will for the foreseeable future attempt to go down the Visegrad route. He is right now Russia and surrounding areas have not been soaked in wealth and comfort to launch a full SJW cultural rebellion anytime soon. The protests are mainly economical in nature.
The light at the end of the tunnel might be that of Russia reaches the path of GloboHomo in 50 years time, it might be a concept long dead and buried with memories of totalitarianism that no one wants to embrace and thus might steer the country away from such stupidity. Same with Belarus. Only time will tell.
In fact, sprats still are somewhat an object of pride; although I do not know anyone eating them, most shops still carry some five or six brands.
If you really want to insult a Latvian nationalist, you need to go with the notion that they live in trees and descend only to pick mushrooms.
P.S. This meme stems from the articles in British/Swedish/etc. press telling the readers “the poverty in Eastern Europe is so abject that people go to pick mushrooms in the woods”; I reckon every Eastern European country has been mentioned at least once but for some reason only Latvians take offense.
That was utu displaying his inner demons for the whole world to see, and
proving once again his inability to rise above the level of predatory primates
A couple of years ago I mentioned a student whose family is originally
from Belarus, and who is now, along with her brother, a student at
the University of Warsaw. She actually grew up in Moscow but doesn’t
care for the city for many reasons. She said, (1) everywhere you go in
Moscow there is nothing but asphalt and cement, (2) the commutes in
Moscow, if you want to visit friends or relatives, are interminably
long and leave you exhausted, and (3) she cannot stand Moscow
winters. This is how she described what living in Russia is like,
“Presumably we have everything but in reality we have nothing.”
She loves Warsaw, and one gets the impression she couldn’t
get out of Russia fast enough.
A) ok?
B) Chechnya seems to have it work :^]
You haven’t spent enough time on RuNet
I don’t know about all Western Slavs (I know too few people personally and my sample is not representative, as everyone I know is a scientist working in biochemistry and cell biology, not BS “studies”). Czechs, for example, seem to always follow an old joke:
– What should you do when you are being raped?
– Relax and try to enjoy it.
Czechia not only meekly submitted to Nazi occupation (there was only one small army unit that fought Nazis during the invasion), it actively collaborated: every third Nazi tank in WWII was produced in Czechia. Next, in 1945 Czechs were just as enthusiastic about brutal ethnic cleansing in the Sudeten, murdering quite a few Sudeten Germans and kicking out the rest within a very short time. Compared to that, Stalin’s cleansing of Prussia was downright humane. Current policy of the Czech Republic government is a faithful continuation of this: imperial ass is always licked clean, Czech tongue is always ready to do more ass-licking. In Soviet times after 1968 there was a joke that Czechia is the most peaceful country on Earth: it does not interfere even in its own internal affairs.
You appear to be proud of this behavior, I would be deeply ashamed of something like that. To each his own.
I might be biased, as I speak Ukrainian fluently and have read pretty much all literature in Ukrainian worth reading. With this caveat, I believe that Ukrainian language exists and that it is a separate East Slavic language. Poles despised it and did their best to replace it with Polish. Austro-Hungarian Empire tried the opposite: it worked hard to create whatever was missing in Ukrainian and make it as unlike Russian as possible.
One more thing. In my posts I prefer to use science, not ideology.
Science describes humans as weapon-making predatory primates
pursuing self-interest. I think this application of the evolutionary
paradigm to humans is very powerful, and can explain perhaps
90% of our history. In this model humans are seen as tribal, territorial,
aggressive, revengeful, lustful, status seeking (i.e., seeking dominance
in most situations), and profoundly selfish. Of course, that’s not
all we are. Some individuals can rise above this base level. I then apply this
model to different countries and different groups with the result that
some groups end up looking better than others.
To form a prescriptive model I often combine the evolutionary
paradigm with the Aristotelian/Buddhist Principle of the Golden
Mean (i.e., seek moderation in all things), and its corollary,
namely that “size is the root of all evil” , i.e., in every situation
seek an optimal solution, with the result that there is an optimal
size (in practice, a size range) for countries, optimal size for
large cities, etc. For example, as a result of its excessive population
and excessive diversity the United States is no longer governable
by democratic means. This is one of many conclusions one can
draw in my model
I’m glad Ano4 is not you.
Re: You appear to be proud of this type of Czech behavior
No, I have Czech friends, and this has never been a problem for us.
I simply forgive them. Czechia has always been too small to offer
effective resistance to the Germanic onslaught over the centuries,
the German Drang nach Osten. With the Germanics and Jews
largely gone from Central Europe, the Czechs and the Poles can finally
enjoy our friendship. And, of course, the Polish-Hungarian friendship
has now been unbroken for many centuries.
I’ve been living in a relatively prosperous Western country for many years, but I still go mushroom picking each year. In fact have been doing it last weekend. Wild mushrooms are way better than the ones sold in the grocery stores, but one has to be a little knowledgeable about them otherwise poisoning is a possibility. Maybe the Scandinavian are not knowledgeable enough about the wild mushrooms and do not take risks?
Anon 2 posts are quite entertaining.
History is not sex, the size is not the critical factor. There are fewer Serbs (~7 million today) than Czechs (>10 million today), yet Serbs fought Nazis, and Czechs didn’t. BTW, Poles also fought, and if it weren’t for the betrayal of the government (that cowardly ran away), they might have withstood Germans. Well, history has no subjunctive mood.
Just a nitpick. They don’t count children born abroad to Polish parents, while those very same parents are often still included in the population statistics. So the real picture is probably somewhat better. Though it’s not a big effect.
Your fantasy of Central European history as an eternal struggle between evil Germans and righteous Slavs is a strange mirror image of the Nazi fantasy of the same.
The Polish government only left after the front has collapsed and they were attacked by the USSR.
So finally an event occurs, this explosion in Lebanon, that does actually have the “hand of Russia” in it….but the world media don’t appear too bothered by this detail.
Even with the blame that will probably be attributed to the Lebanese authorities and the the French companies who may have been in charge of that building……..this is a very negative indictment on the post-soviet world (Moldova, Russia, Gruzia)
Re: evil Germans and righteous Slavs
You misunderstood my model. On the contrary, I always talk about
ALL people trying to rise above the level of predatory primates.
In this model of the evolution of consciousnes, with minor exceptions,
we’re all still operating on a very primitive level, Slavs included,
compared to our glorious spiritual potential
and another thing…………
A Russian walks into the UK and he or she:
gets awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics after about 2 seconds
wins the UK main tv show every second year ( dancing competition)
obtains numerous other academic achievements in UK Universities
even this story about the Prime Minister of UK’s chief advisor breaking the coronavirus restrictions I notice appears to have been made by a journalist with a Russian name
sees that UK big supermarkets I noticed are full of Russian products like Kefir,
Matryoshka doll , Russky standard Vodka,
scores 4 goals in a Premier League match (OK that one doesn’t represent much, Arshavin was nothing most of the time)
Bizarrely even has a meerkat on advertising pretending to be Russian ( I saw this ridiculous thing when I visited there)
Sees plenty of other “Russian” things in advertising or around every corner in UK because of our great contributions to science, art, music and literature
………
A million poles walk into the UK and after over a decade……..absolutely nothing about them is known by anyone in the country, apart from afew doctors who have married a british guy and some (bad) nurses the only other thing they are associated with is very violent crime, drugs, drink-driving. Nothing in academia, zero products, zero food….absolutely nothing known about their history, their culture ..anything.
You got the sequence of events wrong: USSR moved into Poland after its government fled.
I haven’t been in UK for a few years (except Heathrow airport and NI a bit over a year ago), so I don’t know what they have in shops nowadays. However, I must be fair: Polish potato vodka is pretty good, even though it isn’t strictly speaking vodka: it has pronounced potato taste, whereas ideal vodka contains water, ethanol, and nothing else.
Not in countries with successful business traditions. In Italy, Poland, Sweden, Germany, China, Japan, Korea, and even England (more than one might suspect) natives hold their own.
Of course there are ethnic Russian billionaires, but their fortunes are built in extraction industries or trade. I am not schizophrenic. I would prefer to see a Russia prospering with Russian talent. Unlike you I see Putin as the continuation of the same centrist statist policies that failed in the Empire and the USSR. Ethnic Russians are financially rewarded for loyalty to the state and punished for independence and entrepreneurship. Non ethnic Russians have the opposite incentives- they will never be allowed to feed at the trough so they seek creative ways to get ahead. Over time this creates an imbalance in favor of the non Russians, who appear more dynamic and start influencing the state in ways detrimental to ethnic Russians until the whole structure collapses.
Of course. Russian elites move to the UK. Working class Poles move to the UK.
I’m also a moderate optimist because I believe that humanity is
finally beginning to rise from the level of weapon-making predatory
primates pursuing self-interest (this model is also partly employed
by the British philosopher John Gray). The reason for my optimism
is that I am also a panentheist. In this belief system immanent
divinity (I don’t use the concept of transcendent divinity typical of
monotheistic religions) acts as a strange attractor inexorably drawing
humanity toward itself.
I certainly didn’t invent this model. It’s been around since at least
the 1970s when the environmental movement came to the fore, and
the Gaia concept began to take shape. I gave a talk alluding to parts of this
model at one of the world’s most famous universities that shall remain
unnamed. I realize the model will not be popular here because it
predicts that very large countries like the U.S., Russia, and China
will break up into smaller entities. The cost/benefit ratio will exceed 1
(it probably is already close to 1), creating an unsustainable situation.
A number of people, not just I, have observed that an air of sadness
seems to hang over Anatoly’s blog. Most people posting here seem to
be cynics, nihilists, or Social Darwinists, running around in circles,
resigned to their fate. But, as I mentioned in a series of posts around
New Year’s, I believe we can be reasonably optimistic because
humanity is finally beginning to wake up from its dogmatic slumber
By the way, I never try to exclude Hungarians when I talk
about Central Europe. How could I? And I think some Bavarians
and Austrians can be reasonable enough to work with but I worry
that they may already be too cucked
Poles who arrived in the Second World War are much better than the ones who arrived post-EU. But of course your estimate of Russians in the UK is vastly overestimated. The reputation of Poles in the UK is not bad; your description fits Romanians better.
Academics are not “elites”, nor are professional dancers or medical professionals. I deliberately did not mention oligarchs who although are scum, I’m sure have been involved in positive cultural and social projects in England.
“Working-class” Poles is just misdirection – practically all Poles are working class by UK standards, emmigration of Poles to UK features huge amounts of educated and uneducated people. Highly qualified people from ex-Warsaw pact countries forced to do menial jobs in the west or even their own countries was not uncommon during the 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point
Western Europeans, incl. Germans, have been telling
the Slavs for centuries how superior they are to us,
at the same time as they engaged in rapacious colonialism,
slave trade, and even genocide. All I am saying is
“Go easy on your claims of superiority.”
This is quite changing. There new taxes introduced to push companies bring industries to Russia. Right now Russia is self sufficient in oil refining capacity. What Belarus did, was export. Russia can do these things on their own. No need for Belarus.
Russia have same relationship with Belarus like … Finlad. Time for integration passed and Belarus should find their way. But it would not happed, like Russia is too soft. So Russia would still purchase Belarus products, give discounts, give money, give military equipment etc. And Belarus would become another Poland. They would not start to hate Russia right away, but once there is “free” press. It would take less then 10 years… Like Chechnya. Russian would pay for this friendship.
Russians paying for my shit sounds fine by me
Off topic… but as people are talking about streaming services – they are prioritizing for television, and does fuck a bit people who want to watch films on large screens with their data compression ratios.
E.g. I’m looking now at my Netflix and Amazon Prime with high setting on datausage – Netflix is giving such 3.20 Mbps on Friends. (maybe they are behaving worse recently because of the pandemic?)
https://i.imgur.com/yDgzj56.jpg
It is around what you expect on the internet, for heavily compressed stream of a file for 1080p, with HEVC – but no problem? as you don’t watch Friends for cinematography.
But then Netflix is giving as low as some black and white films – where we would watch for cinematography…
https://i.imgur.com/71quiRp.jpg
By comparison (of course with the less efficient codec), this is how measured 1080p disc of a 1930s black and white film which Mr Hack had recently recommended: 1930s black and white film, and most of the time such disc set around 35 Mbps. A few bumps to 40 Mbps, so the encoder was not completely asleep.
https://i.imgur.com/WfdbM6z.jpg
We can see we will be somehow around 100:1 data compression ratio if the original file was some theoretical maximum (which it would not be). Obviously it is AVC instead of HEVC, but this should only cut it by 50% for comparable data loss, while Netflix’s black and white film is cutting by around 94% in comparison to black and white blu-ray discs. (I describe a complicated topic in a crude and simplistic way, but generally regardless of being simplistic, there is still no “free lunch”, certainly not of this size).
I think this is less important for most people, as the preference of streaming audiences is really for television where the picture quality is less of an obsession, and this also quite clear from how streaming service prioritize television series in their content. Netflix has much better selection for tv. I also speculate the obsession with Dolby Vision/HDR, was partly because it is a useful way to distract people with OLED screens with brightness from noticing they get more significantly compression on the streaming than from the blu-ray disc.
Surely, it looks for a superficial observer, that half of the Poles in Western Europe, must be some kind of prostitutes, drug-dealers, fruit collectors, bus drivers, toilet cleaner, etc.
But this doesn’t exactly say anything about the people of Poland, but rather is just result of the fact the Western European receives open borders, mass immigration from the Poland, and salaries are impossible to resist. (E.g. toilet cleaner in Western Europe, is probably easier job than school teacher in Poland – and perhaps with a higher salary).
On the other hand, from Russia, this is a more filtered and selective immigration, due to the barriers of paperwork and bureaucracy. For Russian citizen, it is difficult to immigrate to Western Europe, with a lot of barriers to surpass, and it’s usually a simple process where the company applies for a skilled worker visa. This is like Tier 2 visa in UK. or critical skills employment permit in Republic of Ireland.
For Poles, they just need to buy a plane ticket. This open borders style of immigration, is the cause such kind of mass waves of Polish prostitutes and bus drivers flooding Western Europe. Afterall, that is just one of the most mobile and perhaps price sensitive kind of professions.
By the way, Polish immigration are just incomparable in terms of their numbers. Vast numbers of Poles have flooded to North Western Europe. This includes middle class people, although I guess more than half most be some “less skilled” kind of random workers.
Anyway it’s interesting times we live in, what a powerful year!
https://defence-blog.com/news/army/russia-deploys-tanks-to-belarus-border-amid-unprecedented-escalation-of-tensions.html
But it wouldn’t be such a chad year if we didn’t have another brewing crisis at the same time:
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/usa-adiz-06242020155414.html
You are still living in the 1990s. University educated Poles in the UK today do exactly what you would expect – they work in finance, management consulting, hedge funds etc. There are also quite a lot of Russians, Italians and South Asians in those industries in London. Oddly, not so many English people. Maybe they lack the quant skills and have to work in marketing (or maybe the ambitious English move to New York?). One big difference between educated Poles in the UK and educated Russians is that Poles tend to move back to Poland after a few years. The quality of life in Poland is much better than in the UK if you are making a JP Morgan or PwC salary, even if at 50% the UK level.
Most of the Russians I know in London are permanent emigres. They raise their kids there, they eventually get UK citizenship. Poles in the UK, at least while it was still EU, mostly don’t see the UK as home, just a place to build a resume and save up some money. The fact that Russians contribute so much to UK culture is actually a testament to how badly the Putin regime has screwed up life in Russia.
Many people seem to be obsessed with Chechnya for one reason or another.
But it doesn’t receive more subsidies as a share of its local budget (80%) than do the rest of DICh, i.e. Dagestan and Ingushetia. (And in per capita terms, some of the Far Northern territories receive several times more subsidies). This is just a function of DICh being backwards.
The main problem with DICh is that they will almost certainly remain relatively backwards indefinitely, unless they can somehow close their 10 IQ point gap with the Russian average.
Belarus, now being substantially poorer than the Russian average, would indeed be subsidized for the first 5-10 years. But that will be a temporary state of affairs, since Belorussian human capital is not markedly inferior to Russian. I will not be surprised if eventually it becomes a net donor region. The same goes for Novorossiya.
Without data/statistics these are just anecdotes, i.e. mostly useless.
Nonetheless, something no one would dispute is that Polish emigration to London outnumbers Russian by an order of magnitude or so – certainly, at least, in per capita terms.
It is harder for Russians to emigrate to the UK, so there is additional selection for hating their own country.
Some non-trivial percentage of those Russians will be Jews, Germans, etc., who have fewer reasons to be loyal to Russia than ethnic Poles to Poland.
More generally, there is a pretty consistent 10 year gap in development between Russia and Poland since around 2000 (Russia having lost a decade’s worth of development). So what should more properly be compared is the share of Russians in London who want to go back to Russia now vs. the share of Poles in London who wanted to go back to Poland in 2010.
The main fear of people on this blog is that they will be reduced to the ash heap of history. They ultimately fear global liberalism as it leads to global mixing which means less and less people start to look like them. It is a basic evolutionary fact that no one likes to go extinct and usually when people can see above the herd and notice what is happening, they fear the future even more. So hence the air of sadness.
True, but Hungary, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats just like Poland should all be German-centric….but they have not flooded the UK en masse. Maybe not Czechia, but the others all had comparable wages to those in Poland during much of the 90’s and the time they joined the EU.
As for impressions made on the UK people, although the other countries don’t have comparable numbers to Poland in the UK, they all have significant communities in London at least ( as do the Swedes and French from what I have seen) – despite this they all have not made a negative or nothing impression on the locals like the Poles .
Contrary to what one of the other commentators says, I don’t believe Romanians have an equal or worse reputation than Poles in the UK. I’m not even sure if the Brits associate Romanians with gypsies – which is a success in itself. Romanians in IT sector have acquired a successful reputation from what I have heard – plus Romanian restaurants do exist there. I have seen more Russian restaurants in UK and France …than the absolute zero Polish ones. It might not seem a big thing – but it is just the absolute lack of cultural impression that is incredible.
You’re looking at rate and using it as an excuse, I am being generous and not even thinking about rate – 10 successful Russians out of 1000 in the UK, versus 10 out of 1million Poles I am still treating as 10 successful people for either countries. 10 successes raising the prestige of Poles around the world, giving national pride , inspiring migrant Polish families and domestic ones. Just like any South African might have national satisfaction from Nelson Mandela…..they are not going to compare him against the 100000s sitting in South African jails for rape and murder!
That the Poles are 0 in a million is an abject statistic. Perhaps explains their inferiority complex.
There is just no excuse for not having exported any notable cultural or scientific or business successes into the UK – Polish culture and their own communist heritage should have made this an impossibility.
As for class/wealth……the same situation applies to Indians, pakistanis, Jamaicans, Ghanians, Nigerians, Iranians and so on – but they have had big infiltration into UK public consciousness and their own successful people.
Might this be a European problem?
https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/netflix-degrading-hd-video-quality-europe-bit-rates-1234605316/
I recall once reading that streaming companies prioritize American consumers over European ones. I have a new Samsung 60 inch TV and the picture quality on Netflix nature documentaries is incredible. I’ve noticed nothing wrong with shows I have watched such as Better Call Saul on prime. I tend to see movies in theaters.
What part of “fictional Russian meerkat (???) extensively advertised in UK ” did you not understand the first time?
I will repeat, but with additions:
A Russian walks into the UK…and gets awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics after 2 seconds, $100 million+ of UK/EU government investment because of his work
a million Poles walk into the UK, and after 100+ years their biggest and only success ?……..being the main suspect in the Jack the ripper murders
Even with several evil or cynical things done by the British to sabotage Russia, they have still – introduced inoculations into Russia saving a million lives, invested plenty of money, built the first bridge over the Dnieper, their Royal family married into Romanovs , helped build infrastructure in our oilfields, in Donbass, in Estonia etc., extensive cultural exchange ( I hear that UK tv recently did another production of “War and Peace”), Arctic convoys
Britains contribution to Poland after a millenium? During WW2 they ………wrote a piece of music for Poland!!
To make things worse, the composer was directly, openly trying to copy Rakhmaninov in writing the “Warsaw Concerto”…perhaps the only time in history that “Poland” and “orchestral classical music” have been included in the same sentence
Nonsense, although I am including subconscious things in my analysis – the average brit may not know that a famous piece of music used in UK popular culture is by a Russian composer. This chief advisor to the UK Priminister, when the story about him breaking the coronavirus rules came out ( by a Russian name journalist) , I had a look at his blog…….clearly an intellectual….his blog full of references to exclusively Russian and American( 20th century) mathematicians, engineers and thinkers.
Britains most famous actress?.probably Yelena Mironov……….commonly known as Helen Mirren
the British founded store Marks and Spencers was founded by Russian jews
this big tv dancing competition won numerous times by Russian dancers
Son of liberast oligarch – owner of London Evening Standard ( OK oligarchs are scum, but owning the biggest paper in London does not give him any political power in Russia or UK)
I have no idea about this, I will accept your claim as the truth.
Mironoff. She was not of Sovok-Russian descent.
I think you watch the same one as me – “Our Planet”.
It looks striking or impressive in terms of the Dolby Vision/HDR. So Dolby Vision/HDR is giving it much more luminescence and wider range of colours.
I guess it also depends on brightness capacity of your television.
I was watching last month old film, Hitchcock “Vertigo” from Netflix, and compared to from blu-ray, where I was measuring five times higher Mbsp than on the Netflix stream.
In the Netflix, image is “smoother” and has less fuzzy distortion (i.e. film grain). A lot of the data loss in Netflix stream, are the original random distortion created by how they developed photos in old films.
Compression is losing a lot of data, but this data seems disproportionately itself the fuzzy optical distortion in the original film. So many people might find the compressed image clearer, and Netflix and Amazon Prime probably are very aware of this in their cost benefit sessions on of bits per second.
Netflix also raised the contrast a lot on the image. I think they have someone adjusting the settings for each of their uploads.
But personally, I prefer the less compressed version of the film on the disc. If it was television series, I would not care or notice. For old films, I preferred such more authentic appearance of old film.
How odd! Then my friend’s Polish-Swedish child isn’t thought Polish, even though his mother is from the Krakow region and rather strict about speaking Polish around him.
How would you know? These things are awful hard to forecast even with the best of data.
We have this saying in Slovakia. Stupid who not take when give you 🙂
I believe Eastern Germany is still being subsidized by Western German over 30 years post unification.
In any case does Russia really want to annex Belarus?
Belarus is a UN recognized country.Annexing it may trigger Iran tier sanctions.Is it worth this risk?
Also what is your view of some sort of a thaw in relations between US and Russia.I am referring to the likely completion of the Nordstream 2 pipeline.
Sure superficially the US is vocally against it but Germany is pushing ahead and almost on queue Denmark has also dropped its ‘environmental objection’.How likely is it that Germany and Denmark will both find the courage to openly defy the Empire without being given a back channel go ahead by the US deep state to do so?
Some of Polish gastarbaiters are a bit more careerist, and working as scientists, doctors (surgeons), pilots. Personally I know ones are scientists and have comfortable if quite low salary positions in a university.
However, of course, this is a small minority of immigrants exported by Poland, because Poland has open borders to far wealthier countries than themselves, and as a result they flooded Western Europe with their unfiltered, random people – including more mobile professionals like prostitutes, hooligans, drunk bus driver, car cleaner, etc. So this results in all the groups of drunk looking Poles who are working as car cleaners.
Mexico has some of the most educated seeming people – although it might not be a large proportion of the total labour in Mexico. But America had too much of open borders with Mexico, and as a result of the salary differences, they have been flooded with millions of unfiltered Mexican peasants – you can see one of the results is that Americans have developed a negative or superior attitude to Mexicans, and even popular culture positioned them as a kind of helots.
It’s interesting how contingent these perceptions are. If America had filtered only the educated Mexicans, then stereotypical perception of Mexicans in the American society would change. Americans seem to stereotype that Chinese people are educated, and that Mexicans are uneducated. However, in terms of international recognition of contributions e.g. Nobel prize winners in science per person, Mexico and China are at similar levels.
“I have seen more Russian restaurants in UK and France …than the absolute zero Polish ones.” – I got curious about it so I checked TripAdvisor for London, UK. It lists 8 Russian restaurants with over 10 reviews and 25 Polish with with over 10 reviews.
“..the British founded store Marks and Spencers was founded by Russian jews..” – Jews must love it when being adopted for the pride boasts by nationalities who are not known for liking them. Anyway the lying wiki states that ” Michael Marks, a Polish Jew” and Tesco founder “Jack Cohen, the son of Jewish migrants from Poland”.
Anyway, where does you derangement come from? Anon 2 can be silly in his claims but he does not mean harm and is quite charming. You on the other hand qualify as a sovok berserker who does not need the standard Red Army issue vodka ration to volunteer for minefield clearing.
Anatolij, but why should Belorus change? If Russia wanted send tanks, it should happend like 24 years ago. Or better, Lukashenko was sent to local farm 25 years ago. They live quarter of centuries from Russian subsidies.Russia would be bad, if you stop subsidies. Russia would be bad, if you continue subsidies. Russia would be bad, if you send tanks. Russia would be bad, if color revolution happen, economy collapse, western propaganda. There is no good resolution for Russia. Best option is to let Belarus be. If Russia wanted to do something, that time pass.
Despite questionable grammar, you are right. I might add that if the country wants to commit suicide, let it.
The child is thought to be Polish, but the birth is not registered in Poland, while the parents are often counted in the population, because moving abroad is usually not registered with the authorities.
Yes, any forecasting is hard (I made no such attempt) but the way I know is by chatting with them occassionaly. Unlike you I know Russian very well and even Ruthenian.
We always had contact but the last few years contact has intensified as more of them arrive for trade, work and vacationing. Not just Zmagars, everything has been clear with them for 30 years and even before, but regular, mainstream Belorussians.
Granted, they are not as open as the Ukes, one has to be very sensitive and tactful about these matters. They are like a little hedgehog that crawls inwards when you touch it. They don’t want intervention from either side, the regular folk. They don’t want a civil war and anyone from outside who stokes it — including Western Russophiles — is a criminal and an evil enemy.
Only the blind could not see how many red-white flags and Pahonias were used this summer, more than ever. Even if you discount those (which one shouldn’t but I’m doing it for the sake of Russophiles), if you look at their mainstream, censored press there aren’t very obvious calls for unification with Russia. Among the opposition, where is the purely pro-Russian candidate? It seems none have been groomed (as all cards were put on Luka). Even this Tsepkalo dude who fled to Russia talks more about economic and global competition issues than integration with Russia.
Of course, many Belarussians are friendly to Russians (so were the Ukes, too, before 2014, although one could argue that the Belarussian ties with Russia are much closer). Their temperament is also very mild, humble, introvert. But friendly neighbors and “annexation” are two different things.
Neither of these contenders — the current president or the opposition — are great for Russia. Third scenario — open military intervention — is a risk for Russia and aweful for everybody else as I said above (for Belarus’s Western and Southern neighbors, the lukewarm and impotent West and above all the Belorussians themselves). The alternative though — the potential loss of Belarus — would be a catastrophe of its own.
Interestingly, today the president invited both Russian and Ukrainian prosecutors to deal with the Wagnerites (instead of just straight up passing them to the Ukrainians which would have been a wild escalatory step). The president chose to act through diplomacy. Triunism in action. It seems like an attempt to bring things into the sphere of international law rather than bilateral (with just Russia). He also responded to the Russian side with “Do not talk of repercussions. We are aware of what the repercussians are.” A lion growled. Or should I say, a bison (zubr) smacked the ground with his hoof.
Let’s hope things cool off after the election.
Your idol Girkin complained about it in one of his YouTube rants. But, yea, whatever — he likes to “thicken the colors” and over dramatize. The Russian oppositionist YouTube scene is entertaining and confrontational enough, one doesn’t need petty Latvian nationalists.
You haven’t lived in Latvia long enough to know that very few ever take offense at these innocent and hilarios memes. They should’ve taught you that at the Catskills camp. You should go back to the US if your contempt for real Latvians is so intense that you feel compelled to flirt with Russian neo-imperialists. The whole exile thing is sad, you change too much by second generation, you don’t have a real home, we would’ve accepted you but you’ve chosen an unloving attitude.
P.s. Real ethnic slurs exist that are being used increasingly less but you don’t know those as they stem from the Russian world which you don’t know or understand either.
I need to write in proper English. Again. Internet was mistake.
There are 35,000 Russian citizens in the UK and about 2 million Poles although the Poles are hard to count because of free movement. There are also very many Baltic Russians and some ethnics who escaped from the Donbass via school twinning exchanges and so forth.
A mystery is where in American, have you acquired this kind of tedious Russian political slang? In Russian, the eye hits such an unobjective slang word, and instantly makes the person who uses it seem more unoriginal, unobjective and less interesting, so I don’t recommend that any importation into English conversation will be a salutary fashion.
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Negative perception about Poland in Russia, are not of a late Soviet culture, but the last 20 years, after Poland has joined NATO (in 1999).
Of course, there was “unfortunate history” we don’t need to mention, but after 1945, Poland had been promoted in the Soviet Union as a brotherly ally. What is the position of Poles in post-war Soviet culture? In my cultural consciousness: Barbara Brylska, and for elite culture in Soviet times, – Chopin was a favourite.
Poles did not have a bad reputation in Soviet times. There is some kind joke I don’t remember, that has the idea that “Jews in the USSR pretend to be of Polish origin, Tatars pretend to be Bulgarians.”
He is certainly a bit charming, as some kind of “anti-Copernicus”, who believes it is around Poland, that the sun rotates.
But, really Gerard is correct that there is something strange about the lack of centrality of Poland in world’s consciousness of recent decades – why is the world so uninterested in Poland? In Russia, there are few people interested in Poland, which is not what could be predicted from the importance of Poland in the mutual history.
I think in Great Britain, few people – excluding Poles and people with Polish girlfriends – are interested in Poland. I can imagine many Americans, will not know where Poland is, considering its almost lack of existence in America media and films (outside of Second World War genre).
It probably more in response to this, that Poles living abroad, are often unusually flag waving and promoting their country. If Lewandowski is playing in Bayern Munich on the UEFA Champions League, I know a couple of girls who paint Poland flags on their faces.
Such desires to ostentatiously self-promote your country abroad – probably often a reaction when you see that people don’t know or care much about your country.
According to Wikipedia, the latest figure for the number of the Polish
in U.K. is not 2 million but about 800,000
Re: Why the world is so uninterested in Poland
The world is so uninterested in Poland that 4 (count them: four)
nationalities have lusted after Warsaw: Germans, Jews, Poles, and Russians.
Each has laid a claim to Warsaw in the 20th century, as I listed
before. Now you can add in Ukrainians who are a visible presence
in Warsaw. Is there another major city in Europe that 5 major
groups want to possess so badly as though it were the most precious
diamond the world has ever seen? Germans, Jews, Russians,
and even Poles have all died for Warsaw!
Londoners are so uninterested in Poland that there is a street called
“Poland” in the Soho district that goes back to the time when Poland
and England were big trading partners.
The U.S. is so uninterested in Poland that President Duda visited
Trump many times, and Trump visited Warsaw in 2017. So uninterested
that there is a statue of Gen. Kosciuszko right in front of the White
House. There are 10 million Polish Americans. Countless celebrities
are of Polish origin, incl .Martha Stewart, actress Meg Ryan, singer
Pat Benatar (although you’re probably too young to have heard of them),etc.
There are many towns named Warsaw, and even Pulaski. In the south
‘Pulaski’ connotes refinement, so there are Pulaski academies.
And, of course, no American has ever heard of Pope John Paul II, not
even one I can assure you of that, especially because there are
only 70 million Catholics in the U.S.
And of course in Britain nobody has heard of Poland because,
for example, the actress, singer, comedienne Tracey Ullman,
whose parents were Polish immigrants, had a song “They don’t
know” (1983) which she recorded with Paul McCartney that
only reached No. 2 on the U.K. singles chart. But, after all,
who has even heard of the Beatles in today’s Britain or a song that
wasn’t even No.1? The Beatles were too white so they belong
in the dustbin of history anyway.
And who in England today even remembers Józef Konrad
Korzeniowski, or Joseph Conrad, descended from Polish nobility,
a writer whose novels have become part of the English canon?
Who cares about dead white males? And nobody has even
heard of Heart of Darkness or Lord Jim.
Of course, since the Polish are world-famous for their bilocating powers,
it’s a very natural mistake to make to think there are 2 million of them instead
of only 800,000
Yes, Barbara Brylska who played in the movie “Irony of Fate”
which if I remember correctly is shown in Russia every New
Year’s Eve. She actually had a well-established movie career
in Poland before she effectively moved to Russia. Singer Anna
German I understand was huge in Russia in the 1960s-‘70s.
And I understand the prolific Polish sci-fi writer Stanislaw
Lem was very popular in Russia starting in the 1960s. Movie
Solaris directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (descended from Polish
nobility) was based on one of Lem’s novels. Lem is now regarded
as a philosopher as much as a writer.
And there is a long list of famous Russians who have Polish ancestry.
Here’s a small sample:
Composers: Glinka, Stravinsky (who desperately tried to get Polish
citizenship in the 1920s), Shostakovich
Mathematicians: Lobachevsky, Sofia Kovalevska
Scientists: Tsiolkovsky (Ciołkowski)
Ballet dancers: Vaslav Nijinsky (Wacław Niżynski) although he
always considered himself strictly Polish
Also the fantastic painter Vrubel, although in his case ancestry was distant.
The sharpness of the details is also very impressive.
I wonder if the details are “too sharp” – sharper than when one sees things with the naked eye, from a comparable distance, and therefore not quite realistic. Sometimes there is almost a CGI effect when looking at real creatures in real nature.
Unlike 21st century Americans, Soviet people tended not to whine about being “victims.” However Polish origins were somewhat suspect compared to Russian, Ukrainian or Tatar. I actually do know an ethnic Pole who was registered as a “Ukrainian” for this purpose, when her family moved to Russia after World War II, and was told that this was not an uncommon practice.
Brylska was indeed very popular in the USSR (because of her popularity in Russia, the actress was somewhat blacklisted in Poland by Poles, out of spite I suppose) but there was some conflation between Poles and Jews (sneaky) and Poles being “foreign.”
It’s an interesting coincidence that I too recently purchased a brand new 55″ Samsung 4K TV, and therefore we’re both probably experiencing similar activities related to the enjoyment and usage of these truly amazing instruments of entertainment. I have to agree that the overall picture quality is absolutely spectacular (as Dimitry informed that it would be). I do understand his nuanced discernment for the accurate translation of black and white films and am glad that he seems to be a big fan of such films.
Anther thing that I’m also impressed with is how Samsung has managed to preinstall apps that help you access with ease providers of films such as Netflix, Prime time, YouTube and more. Besides the ease of access, these specialized apps also seem to offer presentations of their many films in interesting groupings that aren’t available in the same manner through my normal computer internet search engine. For instance, YouTube (that is still one of my favorites, if for no other reason that it still offers more black and white films than most others), I’ve found an excellent presentation of free Russian language films from their “classic period”. I’m currently taking advantage of a one month free trial period for Netflix and am watching vociferously. I’m currently watching “Marco Polo” that is an interesting historical/fantasy series with an interesting plot and sub-plot lines, however I wouldn’t recommend you watching it with your children, due to an excessive mount of graphic violence and “exotic” sexual scenes. If you and Dimitry enjoy the “Our Great Universe” type of documentaies, again check out YouTube that has tons of these sorts of offerings. I would be interested in hearing about your new experiences using your new Samsung TV.
A lot of this fare is 4K compatible, a real sumptuous feast for the eyes! 🙂
No, I don’t think it was a mistake. The only way to acquire any skill is practice. Nobody is perfect at the beginning: just recall how we all learn to walk. As Russian saying puts it, “you can’t learn to swim without jumping into the water”.
Sorry to disappoint, but looks like Poles (at least those like you) suffer from a severe “Republic of Palau syndrome”. Of course, Poles have company: Ukrainians, Belorussians, Georgians, Armenians, not to mention all three Baltic vaudeville states, who got it even worse than others. Thing is, grown-ups are not interested in your petty internal quarrels. They only get interested in various “Republics of Palau” when they can be used as disposable tools in a geopolitical game of big boys. Disposable being the key word.
Germans have been telling Poland for at least a thousand years, “I can’t
even tell you how superior we are to you.” Our commenter German
Reader mentioned that they still feel this way. When they say “you”
they mean all Slavs, including you AnonFromTN. You’re an
inferior creature to them. You obviously have an inferiority complex
which you repress by deliberately trying to think of yourself as
one of the “big boys.” Keep trying! You’re not fooling anyone.
When Germans say, “We are superior to you Slavs,” my response is
as follows: Over the last 1200 years (i.e., when the Germanic states
became well defined) have Germans been a peaceful people? Are Germans
a joyous people? Are Germans a loving people, particularly toward their
neighbors? If not, then Germans have a long way to go before they can
claim to be superior?
I vaguely heard of Vrubel but I had to look him up.
Of course, in Polish Vrubel is a common word. Wróbel
means a sparrow
First, you are mixing two totally different and independent things: national superiority/inferiority complexes and relative importance of states. Say, nobody considers Swiss, Dutch, Swedes, or Danes inferior on a personal level, yet the importance of their states in the grand scheme of things isn’t much higher than the importance of Burkina Faso.
Second, you are wrong about Germans. I collaborate with several labs in Germany, had many German summer exchange undergraduate and graduate students in the lab, taught a graduate course in Germany (in English), and never encountered anything you speak of. In my experience Germans are very rational, mostly intelligent and well-educated people without stupid preconceptions. Of course, my sample is not representative: every German I encountered was either a scientist or aspired to become one. So, I cannot speak of ignorant burgers, but those in every country are intellectually inferior and therefore often have delusions of grandeur of their nations, as a compensation mechanism. People who have no personal achievements to be proud of often take pride in their nationality, race, gender, religion, or something else on these lines. I can only pity those creatures.
Germans are now desperately trying to redeem themselves in the eyes
of history, and your sample is totally unrepresentative of the whole population.
Their recent ancestors committed 3 genocides in 40 years:
1. Southwest Africa, early 20th century, 2. Polish Christians, WW II,
3. Polish Jews, WW II. Germans should all get on their knees, and beg
forgiveness for what their ancestors have done to Europe in the last
1200 years, or even the last 120 years. Except for the recent “unpleasantness”
Russians know next to nothing about Germans (e.g., their hate for Chopin
throughout the 19th century, and into the 1950s) because they don’t share
a border with them.
There is growing disillusionment with science and technology. They are
increasingly seen as mostly instruments of domination. I recommend
the book “Technological Slavery” by the Polish-American mathematician
Theodore Kaczynski (yes, the Unabomber) who has a Ph.D. from Harvard.
I think:
Americans are beginning to realize that all the Nobel Prizes in medicine
that were awarded to Americans, and all the billions spent on biomedical research,
turned out to be useless in protecting the U.S. against Covid-19. Americans
have always been antiintellectual but they are pragmatic. They see guys
like you as useless due to 1. biological weapons, 2. falling life expectancy
in the U.S., 3. medicine offering no protection against the growing danger
of pandemics. No results, no funding. That’s American pragmatism. Hence
I fully expect cuts in biomedical funding, esp. now in view of the severe
recession we’re experiencing now.
Imagine believing this
There are numerous brilliant artists in Russia that few people outside Russia have heard of but that are the equals to well known ones in the West.
Vrubel is an amazing painter. He was well ahead of his time. His Faust and Mephistopheles mural and of course his Seated Demon are among my favorite paintings in the Tretyakov Gallery.
https://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/pan/
He has also decorated a church in Kiev.
https://veryimportantlot.com/en/lot-gallery/view/oleg-lytvynenko-centralnaa-cast-hor-kirillovsko-16912
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vrubel_Madonna_Kiev.jpg
I really love his paintings.
I finally saw the church filled with is work in Kiev in 2017. I brought home an icon with the image from this church, that they sell there:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Mikhail-Vrubel-Icon2-%28fragment%29.png
I was too young when I visited Kiev to go to St Cyril’s Church. But if one day I have a chance to go and see it I would be really glad.
And his Seated Demon is also quite amazing:
https://www.msk-guide.ru/img/146/143209big.jpg
Lol actually I don’t know much about American films, or classic American cinema.
Just a couple of years ago I bought the perhaps “world’s best OLED television”, – more from an interest in the technology, and without having a license to watch television in the country where I bought it. So instead of television, I started to see more films, as the best way to show off the television (aside from video games). Slowly I’m becoming more acquainted with film history.
Funnily I have been buying films which you mention.
https://i.imgur.com/izaGLWM.jpg
Your best recommendation so far has been “Cat on a hot tin roof” – it is exactly how I envisage of “classic Hollywood”, and one of the best picture quality of blu-ray for my taste.
If you like a kind of modernist Russian cinema – I can recommend strongly the works of Tarkovsky, in case you do not know his films. Although with a warning his films are most more like a meditation exercise (some might say torture), than a traditional film, with any coherent story.
I re-watched his film “Stalker” a couple months ago, and it reverberates in the background of your memory for weeks later.
It’s likely because of the Dolby Vision/HDR10+, which is the same reason the documentary looks so vibrant and impressive.
Probably, a bit of an unnatural result, is a result of certain decisions in their procedure of adding metadata in the mastering, and this depends partly on the taste of the engineers who are monitoring it, as well as their monitoring equipment.
In addition, depends on how your hardware/television is able to realize the HDR metadata in a way which accurately matches the creators’ intentions. It also introduces questions about how similar your equipment is to the monitoring equipment of the engineers mastering the video. A certain result that is seen on the monitors during the mastering, is not going to produce completely uniform results on equipment which is different to the monitors. (This was quite a important topic, and there was a lot of work to create dynamic metadata in response to this).
–
When I got an OLED television in 2018, I was rather excited about the Dolby Vision/HDR stuff. But my taste now has changed, to appreciating picture quality of old cinema.
Something like not special, standard 1080p blu-ray of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (which Mr Hack to me recommended), is the kind of video I found most impressive on my tv – at least it is sufficient to trick my untrained eyes to thinking I am looking at a real celluloid in some old cinema. Anyway, I recommend that disc.
In terms of geopolitics, of course Poland is one of the most important allies of America today, as it is one of the strongest EU supporters of NATO against Russia.
As the current situation between NATO and Russia is continuing to be mildly hostile in the last decade, then Poland has become more important to NATO and American geopolitics, and it’s not surprising that Trump is meeting with the Poland’s government regularly.
However, in terms of cultural knowledge of, or interest in, Poland, by the ordinary public – I doubt Poland is very high in the American consciousness, and perhaps only Ukraine can be less for a such a medium size European country of 40 million. Does any average housewife of Texas, even know that Poland exists?
European countries like Italy, France, Great Britain, Spain, Germany and even Sweden or Ireland – these are the fashionable or interesting parts of Europe in the American culture and media.
Nationalism in Poland is a bit of a different situation than large and powerful countries, as the aspirations of self-determination had often been crushed in a tragic way.
.
Therefore, nationalism in Poland, has until recently still more of a character of a liberal, “liberation movement” – i.e kind of thing would attract romantics like Byron.
This is why normally politically liberal or leftwing Poles, are often among the most patriotic and nationalist. This type of “liberation nationalism” is attracting a more normal section of the population – than the nationalism in more powerful countries, where there is no need of liberation from foreign occupation.
This has to be distangled from the importance of a peoples’ self-determination. We know islands like England and Japan, had a benefit of longer continuity of national self-determination, and I don’t need to list the benefits of this type of nationalism. National autonomy – a quite a universally desired thing. And pride in your culture is healthy, if your culture is actually a superior one. No-one is going to say Athenians of the golden age, should not be proud of their culture – as it was the best one in the world.
There has also been importance of such nationalism in development of art – how could develop the music Tchaikovsky, let alone to Janacek or Dvorak, without the nationalist motivation in their projects?
On a personal level, it is true, of course – as Schopenhauer often says the obvious things we all know since we were about 12 years old:
https://i.imgur.com/zgzeQsA.png
Only “Lost Horizon” is in black & white, whereas the other two films are in color, depicted above. If you really enjoyed “Lost Horizon” I’d like to suggest another very similar film that you’d probably enjoy, “The Razor’s Edge”, based on the book of the same name written by the very talented short story author and play write Somerset Maugham. I recently watched two other films that were based on his short stories. “Trio” and “Quartet”, but this one was definitely a better film:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/The_Razor%27s_Edge_%281946_poster%29.jpg/220px-The_Razor%27s_Edge_%281946_poster%29.jpg
If you’re not familiar with Somerset Maugham, you might want to read some of his fare. He’s originally from England but also spent a great deal of time in the States, including some profitable years in Hollywood. I’m glad to say that there’s a great deal of his output that is waiting for me (books and film). I first encountered him when I picked up a hardcover book of his, “Ashendon: Or the Secret Agent” that was a thinly veiled tell all about some of his own exploits doing intelligence work in Switzerland – I’ve always been a sucker for a good spy yarn.
Oh, and I very much enjoyed the original “Blade Runner film, although equally disappointed in its follow up that came out a few years back. Like I mentioned above, there are lots great older films, both black and white and in color that are readily available through YouTube.
As far as Tarkovsky is concerned, I was fortunate enough to be exposed to some of films ack in the 90’s: “Solaris”, Andrei Rublev” and “Stalker”. I there are any other ones that you’ve seen and enjoyed, please let me know about them.
45 years of capitalism vs. central planning division are not comparable to 30 years of state capitalism vs. “market socialism” division.
Also more generally countries that are happy to give away territories with their own people for muh GDP considerations (which don’t even apply here) do not deserve to exist.
Yes, sure.
Я сама Крымчанка, живу тут 50 лет. Дочь офицера. Просто поверьте, – у нас не все так однозначно… Никто не хочет отделения!!!
In America there are a lot of “Polish jokes” (sort of like Russian Chukchi jokes, but more common). Because America got lots of very poor, uneducated Polish immigrants in the late 19th century, the Polish reputation was of very simple, uneducated and unintelligent people, which is the opposite of the Polish reputation in Eastern Europe.
So most Americans have heard of Poles.
Before the onset of victim-culture, many Poles could also laugh at such jokes.
Here is a list of them:
https://www.lysator.liu.se/jokes/polish2.html
Some brief ones:
Polish firing squad, stands in a circle.
Polish kamikaze flew 48 successful missions.
Did you hear in the news that a 747 recently crashed in a cemetery in Poland? The Polish officials have so far retrieved 2000 bodies.
Q: How do you get a one-armed Polak out of a tree?
A: Wave to him.
Q: Did you hear about the new automatic Polish parachutes?
A: They open on impact.
Q: Did you hear about the Polish man that locked his keys in his car?
A: He had to use a coat hanger to get his family out.
Q: Why did the Polish couple decide to have only 4 children?
A: They’d read in the newspaper that one out of every five babies
born in the world today is Chinese.
Q: What did the Polish mother say when her daughter announced that she
was pregnant?
A: “Are you sure it’s yours?”
Q: How do you break a Pole’s finger?
A: Hit him on the nose.
Etc.
Sacrifice is a great one.
LOL- I thought I was very generous finding Polish “success” in UK, eventually, from the main Jack the ripper suspect, though I think even he was Jewish. In doing that I thought I would tradeoff that Jew, for a Russian jew in “Marks and Spencer”. But you are correct, myself wrong- it was only one of them who was a Russian empire Jew, and he was from Poland….. and anyway I should not be using pogrom Jewish diaspora as example of Russian success, just like I would never do that for subhuman anti-russian, Soviet jew diaspora into the west during the 1970s/1980s ( though Ukraine, embarrassingly does).
I only did it because that store is supposed to be high quality, so maybe their skills derived mainly from creativity of Russian world….. not yiddish cunning, business tactics and any gangsterism.
I always separate tragic Jewish deaths in Poland during WW2, from the kamikaze authority-inspired ethnic Pole deaths. The Poles don’t deserve to have their suffering tagged onto Jewish Pole suffering in 1 big number. They were 2 completely different events. This is completely different for USSR where we fought together and many Jews, in normal proportion, deservedly got Hero of the Soviet Union award.
I never would separate Jew deaths in GPW from Russian deaths or the other Soviet people- either I would think of total USSR or individual SSR deaths.
But these Jews are firstly Russian Empire Jews, and not Polish ones….. they owe absolutely zero of their fame to Poles or ANY immersion into Polish culture…. but many of them do owe it to Russian world culture.
Great symbol of Russia, playwright Chekhov, had a Jewish girlfriend and wrote a play based on her as the central character , we have thousands of wonderful genius ethnic Russian ballet stars….. you actually think I should separate Maya Plisetskaya from that or be bothered by her being a Jew in such a world renowned, Russian world high-culture?
Leo Strasberg, pole-Jew, main jew villain in the Godfather film and founder of famous acting School in US, owes his success to Russian theatre genius Stanislavsky, many jew artists in Russian empire taught under our many great painters, same thing with musicians under the great Russian composers.
There is though absolutely zero Polish cultural connection in any mathematical, engineering, performing arts Russian empire Polish-jew accomplishment. LOL.
Russian restaurants have minimal or even zero reputation for Brits as I see it. I never said they did ( though you may have got that impression because I was comparing Russian and Pole success in other areas) . We haven’t even promoted our cuisine IN Russia with any propaganda until about 4 years ago! My point is that Poles have zero restaurants, even with a million of them there! Your research is random Internet BS/ secret drug place/brothel/human trafficking room….. because nobody here can or is talking about any Polish restaurants they know.
We still have Pavlova dessert, beef stroganov, Kiev chicken, Kefir ( although I have never seen Kvass in UK or France) and of course our Vodka mass sold in every UK store . EU Poland has precisely…. f*ck all products, lol.
Gruzian restaurants are more popular there. Although cuisine is of course gruzian, restaurants are effectively Russian.
I want to state that I’m probably the most pro-Polish man on the planet.
LOL….so the fantasist land of “Kyiff” now exists for 19 century Malorossiyan or “Ukrainian” Banderetard CIA sadist diaspora in English-speaking West?
A million peoples fingers all accidentally slipped and they all typed “Kief” or “Kiev” for a century you cretin?
I will decide when to put – off, and when to type – ov. Not biased to any version particularly
What a nonsensical term. BTW I must congratulate you on yet “another” peremoga. Galicia has totally showed their sophistication ahead of Novorossiya……….. by having 5 times more deaths from coronavirus, despite less population.
This is a far bigger achievement by Galicia than Novorossiya being light years ahead in achievements in nothing areas like mathematics, science, sports, arts, politics and business!
Any UK town of any size and many city suburbs has a Polish shop or three. Street markets here serve Polish pirogi (completely different from Russian).
Some where in Yorkshire, Sheffield I think, there is a Russian pie maker who sells mail order.
I watched Stalker about 35 years ago, and I did not get one thing: you don’t need a long film just to say that everything is shit. As I liked “Ivan’s childhood”, “Andrey Rublev”, and even much simpler “Solaris”, I had a feeling that Tarkovsky tried to disguise the fact that he ran out of steam.
LOL, more bitterness because North American Ukrainians are something like five times richer than Russians.
You can feel free to decide to be wrong. Meanwhile it is Mironoff not Mironov. Her ancestors were never Sovoks, like you.
Yes, I have, starting with Brother which played on the big screen in Chicago when it came out.
Will give it a go.
Have you read Vodolazkin’s Лавр?
Completely agree. It’s a mystery why they don’t export their potato vodka. Smirnoff and russky standard ( I must admit it gives me a mild glow of national pride to see it written on bottle in Cyrillic , the only product not written in English that I saw in UK store ) are not particularly great tasting.
It’s a disgrace that Poles destroyed their own national manufacturer automobile industry, probably the best in all Eastern bloc . They could easily have made own vehicles after 1989 equal to, or even much more profitable than Skoda now, who are doing very well in EU market . We’re mass exporting our Lada’s (though these are half-EU, half-Russian cars now), UAZ and Kamaz vehicles throughout CIS, and we can see that in Ukraine once they stopped being able to buy Russian cars after coup – they effectively stopped buying any cars!…… a huge share of that market could and should have been Poland, but they chose to be prostitutes.
My theory is that in Western Europe, though they were given the impression that Eastern bloc was low quality, this didn’t necessarily apply to anything with “Russian” in front of it. In other words there was clearly more of negative connotation or bias from westerners hearing “Polish plane” or “Bulgarian camera” or East German whatever, than if the same product has “Russian” in front of it in time of Communism. Probably good reputation from Tsarist era, but for Poland and Bulgaria no positive reputation in west to fall back on.
That’s why I don’t think they sell Polish vodka…. they don’t expect people to buy it because of very negative subconscious bias when reading “Polish”
Some English proverbs are “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” and “Necessity is the mother of invention”.
Poland does a lot of outsourced production but it’s interesting that they have quite a high level of national unity, and are managing to get very good PISA scores – probably the best single indicator of future economic development. They can undertake national projects and aren’t lumbered with the Euro. Also they have millions of their own Ukrainian “gastarbeiters”.
While not associated with stupidity as in the US, I’m not aware of any “clever Pokack” stereotypes/jokes in Russia either. Would you know of any examples?
Poles are viewed as clever in a sneaky way (like Jews), somewhat malevolent, while also being haughty and fancy (remember Dostoyevsky’s the Gambler?). While in America the stereotype is dumb, simple, and very prole but not bad people.
I haven’t watched it yet – I just remembered now that I bought it a some weeks (or months) ago, when you recommended it. I’ll look about ordering “Razor’s Edge”.
Last year I bought some other films you recommended, but I cannot remember which ones they were, except “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – which I saw twice already. And I thought you recommended the new Bladerunner as well, which I enjoyed.
But probably, aside from you, the best guide to films on this forum, is to invert what melanf says.
So, if melanf says a film is “bad” – it will be probably a great work of art and you should order it. On the other hand, if he says that a film is good – then you know you shouldn’t see that one. Not that most people need to be told to avoid “Aquaman” )).
I have a short attention span. So I found to enjoy old films, I need the most uncompressed, and well restored, version, – where you can the film grain – to play on OLED television, and imagine I am in an old cinema in the 1950s.
I would hold off on buying “Razor’s Edge” until you’ve viewed “Lost Horizon”, and proceed only if you enjoy the latter. Both are quite interesting and fun for me to watch as they both entail visits to “Shangri-La”. Another great fantasy flick that didn’t fare all that well at the boxoffice (that I loved, nevertheless for many reasons) was “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” that also includes a side trip to Shangri-La. What real fun to watch, and a large portion of the film (not the Shangri-La portion, shot in glorious color) was done in black & white.
Have you ever watched the American production of “Dr. Zhivago”? I think it’s a great film and have watched it many times and think that you’d find it quite enjoyable too.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/71/Skycaptainposter.jpg/220px-Skycaptainposter.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DrZhivago_Asheet.jpg
Sure, it seems like the strongest national stereotypes are often created by immigration processes, which can replant one demographic layer from a country, without a counter-balancing one that you would normally experience if you visited their home society.
So, Americans could experience meeting replanted Polish peasants, who are our pulled out of context by the mass immigration. But in the normal context of Polish society, you would also have the counter-balance of the urban centres of the country, with the universities, with professors and scientists, and this would make you think again. Possibility of such intense stereotypes of a Polish people (where you encountered the stupider ones) are diffused, if you meet the other sectors of the country, and the wider context.
One of the most extreme examples of modification of national stereotyping by immigration – might be if you look at Italian-American cinema, against the Italian one.
In both cases, there is very well developed and internationally most celebrated cinema. But heroes of films of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola – violent gangsters.
And in Fellini or Visconti, etc. disproportionate obsession with fashion journalists, society women, elite, etc.
In neither example, are representative. But the impression of Italian-American on the viewer, can be a total opposite of the Italians in the native cinema.
So in the Italian Americans’ women in the great Italian-American cinema, can be viewed as distinctively unfashionable and with bad clothes – they arrived at an opposite of the Italian “high society” stereotype.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2L_0bDK6tY
But from Italian cinema (excluding the Spaghetti Western and neorelism), you might imagine too much a country of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb0IlSBFVt0
Not yet, but I have just looked it up and it looks quite interesting.
Ginzburg’s Generation P is available free on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/CpAdOi1Vo5s
They have edited its beginning a little, so to see the uncut version of the beginning you might try looking here:
https://youtu.be/HVqR9M4evNk
No, if anything I would have recommended the original “Bladerunner” that was a rollercoaster ride shot in almost fluorescent color.
I actually found the new one a dissapointment (compared to the original). Rather dark and monotonous, as I remember.
I too enjoy the shorter format of the older B&W films. “Dr. Zhivago” is a large grand production done in color, that goes on for a while, so don’t say that you weren’t warned.
As you profess being a relative novice to the world of American film, let me get you up to speed a bit about the use of color film. Back in 60’s I believe Hollywood came out with what they called “technicolor”. I love the results of this new innovation, where real color presentation was enhanced to provide a color that was even more real than what one can experience in the real world! 🙂
And I think that to a large extent it succeeded. It was a very difficult process that used several cameras at once to achieve the “magical effects”. Unfortunately, at some point Hollywood disbanded its abilities to shoot in this interesting media, a grievous sin a far as I’m concerned. 🙁
In the final 30 minutes of Stalker, it does, and becomes like a Swedish play. But before this, there are a couple of hours where the film can successfully hypnotize you.
The slowness of the movements and camera, is closer to real life, than most films – and this also seems to help trick the memory, so that a few days later it feels like it you had been walking around in the grass yourself. This is one measure of its success – you still have a strong memory of the film for the next days later.
Sorry, but this is second-hand. Maybe you are too young to remember Italian neorealism, but I saw it all long time ago.
One of the best books I’ve read.
Thank you! Will watch it.
If you watch Leviathan without the sound on…..then counter-productively it effectively looks like a tourism advert for Russia. How anybody could actually recommend Zvyagintsev as a director , is a mystery. Dreadful, pseudo-intellectual, liberast undertone garbage.
Just because Leviathan was critical of some aspects of modern Russia, doesn’t mean the director is a fanatical liberal. The Return by Zvyagintsev is an excellent movie that has nothing liberal about it. His Elena movie was also good, I liked it. I did not watch his last movie, but I will sooner or later.
But even if he was a Russophobic liberast, what would it have to do with the quality of his movies? Should we only enjoy movies by directors that subscribe exactly to our political and philosophical opinions?
Pavel Lungin for example is probably a Russophobic liberast, but his movie The Island was really a great film. Mikhalkov is supposedly a consevative patriot but his recent movies are all really bad.
We could find other examples, but I don’t really care about elaborating more…
This can be interesting, but am not saying that slowness in cinema was something that he has invented.
My point is slowness has interesting effects (on some viewers, in some moods, at least).
If someone uses garlic in their cooking, then you can complain that people have been using this for centuries, and it is a second-hand technique. But the another question is whether you like how it tastes, not who used the technique first.
Even in very commercial 1940s-50s Hollywood, films usually have a much slower speed, and longer shots, than in modern cinema.
For me, one of the main problems of most of the 21st century films – shots are too rapidly cut, like edited by someone with ADHD, and story moves like you are in fastforward. This has a blurred, very stylized effect, and films do not remain in your memory after.
Tarkovsky films like Stalker intentionally on the opposite speed setting – where he tries to emphasizes slow, long shots and quiet contemplation. Viewers have to pay an entry cost of potential boredom, but the benefit is that the film experience is remaining in the memory for days later, and perhaps because timing of the experience is more like in real life: it’s possible you might feel like you were actually there.
I agree about Zvyagintsev. Whole complaining about Leviathan was a manufactured controversy, created by an idiot (Medinsky), and then amplified by fake news media in a hysterical way.
His films themselves are not propaganda about politics – although they contain cynical picture on society, which happens to be his own one -, and regardless if you like his films, he at least tries to express a very idiosyncratic viewpoint, which is one of prerogatives of cinema.
I don’t have Dr Zhivago. I have some blu-ray by the same director (David Lean), like the restored one “Lawrence of Arabia” (but I also haven’t seen it yet).
I thought the new Bladerunner is quite good and visually attractive – if I would give it a score, I would award it 6/10. It’s not as good as the original film (which is probably more like 8/10, especially with the melodies by Vangelis and in theatrical cut), but it’s more an improvisation on some themes from a classic original.
In terms of causation, the reason it is not bad, is probably because it is fortunately not directed by Ridley Scott.
Have you seen recent films of Ridley Scott? (If you haven’t, then try to avoid them). His recent films are just terrible trash. It’s sad because as two of his early films – Alien and Bladerunner – were quite classic productions of science fiction.
A little incoherent film, especially with all its different versions, but with more than a few real “cinematic moments” – with such lighting all in a distinctive and yet uniform style, very simple melody by Vangelis, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVZDyeTTsic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-MYn1xxwVc
I’ll certainly have to give “Bladerunner 2” a second look. Really, all I remember is that visually it was rather dark, and the plotline required more attention to detail, that for some reason I just wasn’t willing to invest. Maybe I was just in a dark and somber mood to begin with?…
Yes, David Lean’s “Lawrence” was a great production with so many great actors in it. Peter O’Toole may have played the role of his life in this one. Don’t put off watching it much longer!