The standard narrative is that the 1920s policy of korenizatsiya – the promotion of “national cultures” over the Russian one across the non-Russian republics of the USSR – was reversed in favor of Russification from the mid-1930s. However, at least so far as the book publications goes, this really seems to have been more of a post-Stalin development.
Here is a graph of the number of books published in the Russian language and Belorussian language from 1924 to 1990.
Books published by language in Belarus (BSSR) from 1924-1990. In thousands; Belarusian = blue; Russian = red.
Source: Мотульский Р.С. Книгоиздание Беларуси советского периода в зеркале статистики. Беларуская думка. 2012. №1. С. 56-63. [via Alexander Khramov]
There was a similar picture with respect to Ukrainian language books, as analyzed by Ivan Ivanko for Ukrainian newspaper Pravda.com in 2010.
Books (total) published by language in Ukraine (UkSSR) from 1921-1989. In thousands; Ukrainian = black; Russian = red.
Source:Книговидання в УРСР. Скільки українською і скільки російською
In the Ukraine, we see that at the very beginning, the number of books published in Russian consistently exceeded Ukrainian language ones until the mid-1920s, five years after the introduction of Ukrainian language schooling throughout the UkSSR in 1920. We don’t have numbers for Belarus before 1924, at least on this graph, but considering that by that year the two languages were level pegging despite korenizatsiya having been introduced at about the same time as in Ukraine (i.e. several years beforehand) we can probably assume that the Russian language likewise started out in the lead there, reflecting the incipient project of building an All-Russian identity within the late Russian Empire.
In both Belarus and the Ukraine, there is only a transition to predominantly Russophone book publication by the time of the later Soviet Union. Russian language books only decidedly overtook Belorussian language ones in Belarus c.1970, and Ukrainian language ones in Ukraine c.1985. This went in line with the reversal of korenizatsiya policies, which may perhaps be dated to the 1961 CPSU program to begin a “merger of nations” into one Soviet people, which was intensified under Brezhnev. This culminated in the removal of the “soft Ukrainizer” Petro Shelest as First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party in 1972 (his Belorussian counterpart Pyotr Masherov – who remained in his position from 1965-1980 – had a reputation as a Russifier).
There are several possible reasons for why the transition to Russophone dominance in Belarus preceded that in Ukraine by ~15 years. Perhaps it’s just a function of Belorussians being historically and culturally more “synced” with (Great) Russians. Perhaps political contingencies, as mentioned just above. Perhaps something to do with banal demographics and cultural weight – Ukrainians as an “audience” are five times as numerous as Belorussians, and while there are a few literary classics in the Ukrainian language, certainly the same cannot be said of Belarusian. Probably all of these reasons played some role.
Likewise, their post-Soviet trajectories were also different. Belarusian has continued fading away through to at least 2013, with the number of Belarusian language books falling to 3.9 million relative to 5.9 million in 2000 (note they were around 10 million in 1990). Despite the Crimean Crisis prompting Lukashenko into accelerating his regime’s accomodation with zmagarist elements in the cultural sphere, by 2018 that number was still essentially the same at 4.3 million versus 18.5 million Russian language books. Things have gone in the opposite direction in the Ukraine, where by 2009 there were 14.8 million Ukrainian language books published to 5.7 million Russian language ones, according to Ivanko’s figures. Ten years later, the numbers were 21.5 million and 3.0 million, respectively. This is only partially explained by the shearing away of near universally Russophone Crimea and the LDNR.
This last part is obviously more speculative, but it does suggest that Belorussians are “fixed” as Russophones for the indefinite future in a way that Ukrainians are not. I posted the following map (right, click it to see animation) tracking the evolution of Ukrainian language schooling from 1991 to 2012 in this post. Well, as of Sept 1, 2020, all of Ukraine – outside Crimea and the LDNR, of course – will go dark brown at 99%+ in line with new schooling laws. This is the logical culmination of post-Euromaidan efforts to root out the Russian language from public discourse, from the ban on Russian social network Vkontakte to removing Russian language translations from government websites.
In the Ukraine, the Russian language may well eventually become a “foreign language” in tandem with generational turnover, only regularly used by an ethnic Russian minority that will dwindle to ~10% of the population by the second half of the century. At least, such is the hope of the Ukrainizers. The Russian book market dwarfs the Ukrainian one not just in absolute terms, but relative ones (~500 million books published annually to ~25 million in Ukraine, and a similar number in Belarus). Imports could still sustain a predominantly Russophone book culture – at least, unless you ban them.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
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When I visited my relatives on the border of Ukraine back in the 1970s, I found that there was no sharp transition in the language system. There is a system of dialects that differ slightly from one another in the vast territory of our country. And after that, there was a powerful unification through radio and television and the exchange of people.
Russian Human Rights Council member urges Foreign Ministry stand up for Ukrainian activist http://rapsinews.com/news/20200825/306191927.html
12:28 25/08/2020
MOSCOW, August 25 (RAPSI) – The case of Ukrainian activist, pedagogue Tatyana Kuzmich, charged with treason, is a next step in elimination of everything Russian in Ukraine, according to member of Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council Alexander Brod.
No violation can be seen when analyzing the indictment; the charges are based on mere allegations and clearly pursue elimination of everything related to Russia, Russian language, and Russian culture, underway in Ukraine, Brod says.
The civic activist believes Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky follows the aggressive Russophobe policy of his predecessors, what results in a plunge in the number of his supporters wishing to keep cultural and economic relations with Russia.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Ombudsman, human rights watchdogs in Russia and Europe, Brod insists, need to stand up for the Ukrainian activist, who is a victim of the inhuman policy pursued by Ukraine.
The information on the detention of Tatiana Kuzmich has been already reported to the Council’s Standing Commission on International Cooperation in Human Rights, Brod notes adding that he intends to urge the Commission to stand up for the Ukrainian activist.
There’s currently a bit of a row in the British media at the moment over Dalia Stasevska, the Finnish-Ukrainian conductor of the Proms trying to ban the songs “Rule Britannia!” and “Land of Hope and Glory” traditionally sung at the Last Night of the Proms because she believes them to be “racist”.
Even though she is Ukrainian, she has spent most of her life in Finland from what I’ve read, so her Ukrainian origin probably isn’t that significant in this.
Ukrainian Reading and Publishing Data 2018:
Which language, if any, is the most comfortable for you to read in?
усі % of all who read books
16.5% placeholder Ukrainian 24.2%
19.4% placeholder Russian 28.3%
22.9% placeholder Any language if I know it well enough 33.3%
8.2% placeholder Doesn’t matter, if I know the language well 12.0%
This website offers data related to the topic including many different angles and sub topics. 2018 is almost three years ago. It would be interesting to get data from 2014 and see the differences. “The survey was carried out in all the oblasts of Ukraine, Crimea, Sevastopol, and Kyiv, 108 interviewers took part in the survey process.”
http://data.chytomo.com/en/chytannya-v-ukrayini/
Thing is, how different is Belarusian and Ukrainian from Russian? I see the difference as basically the difference between all the Yugoslavoid languages – ie not being languages
I think a comparison to the Russian books published in the RSFSR would make sense and put things in perspective, especially if it was normalized by population. Another way to look at this would be to just check the number of books sold in each language in both Ukraine and Belarus. Because probably lots of Russian language books sold in Belarus or Ukraine were published in the RSFSR. It’s a large country (and there are publishers outside Budapest even in a small country like Hungary), but most likely the majority of Russian language books sold and read in Ukraine and Belarus were published in the RSFSR. Conversely, probably some of the Russian language books published and printed in the UkrSSR and the BSSR were sold and read in the RSFSR.
The fact she’s a woman is more pertinent.
Russian alphabet considerably changed after Soviets came into power – so I don’t recognise the validity of these statistics- they are going to be distorted by that fact, and bored-out-of their minds “intellectual” Liberasts in Saint-Petersburg in pre-revolution times with easy access to printing press are going to gain an irrelevant large market share in a low-literacy era.
Also important is not the number of books published but what important or popular sections of literature were published in what language. Russian of course for near all of this. No surprise when everything for these other dialects has no equivalent, except direct copying, of Russian for every word or term in science, engineering, mathematics, culture, taking a piss, swearing, business and almost everything else where they are more thesaurus than separate languages.
Soviets coming to power is mass literacy at the same time as this so-called korenizatsiya what does it say that Russian became so normal decades later? That maybe some of the conclusions in your post are misguided
Interesting point about 1961/Shelest/Masherov – but maybe 2-3 million in Ukrainian SSR living in closed cities, maybe another 1 – 2 million “Ukrainians” living in closed cities throughout USSR is a relevant factor in one specific language used
Language is a function of how we are thinking/emotions. Khokholism is more mental disorder than a way of communicating your thoughts.
Facts are that 30 years after independence and Ukrainianisation, despite mass efforts has been a disaster.
Go walk in Kiev – 100% of people talking in Russian, look at high percentage on ukrop internet- just extension of Runet.
President and guy in Lutsk who hijacked bus…. all talking in Russia even though they both can speak “Ukrainian”
Defense, Interior and cheif infections doctor of Ukraine having deep conversations about safety of country in only language they can speak….. Russian
Plane gets shutdown in Iran, dead pilots wife speaking in Russian, President of Ukrainian International Airlines speaking to reporters 100% Russian, Vice- President next to him also dealing with world’s media in….. Russian
“Nationalist” ex President and his younger son….. speaking Russian – LOL
Writing from Kiev – I think the internet should keep the Russian language here. Posts in social media in Ukraine are generally in Russian On YouTube or Instagram, little kids here speak to each other in Russian not Ukrainian. Books published is one hing but my Ukrainian friends often just buy Russian language books online, same as cinema (only Ukrainian) vs Netflix where they can switch to Russian. Likewise whilst I hate Russian rap and pop music it’s one of Russia’s too soft power tools, Russian rap is very popular here and many Ukrainians aspire to make money like Monatik etc.
Have you been to Ukraine Anatoly?
Whereas Belarus events are feeding the conspiracy view that Lukashenko was targeted for his calling out the virus panic as a manipulated hoax of shadowy elites –
Ukraine now gives us the new global poster girl for corunka virus mania
Impressive how in her late 50s Tymoshenko manages to look like a teenager, photo from July 2019
https://i.ibb.co/4thG8ht/Yulia-Tymoshenko-July-2019.jpg
Thanks for ruining my day. I’m finding it hard to imagine how we, as citizens of the world, could carry on living without the invaluable talents and contributions of Yulia Tymoshenko.
The one standing next to her is Anna German, a stalwart member of the ex-Party of the Regions. She looks well preserved too, and perhaps more to your liking, surely more to AltanBakshi’s liking too. 🙂
No, and I am aware of that, and Kiev is more Russophone relative even to the central region, and I was mainly discussing trends.
I can’t speak for Belarusian, but Ukrainian many basic words are quite different, eg ‘tak’ instead of ‘da’, ‘lyudina’ (this sounds funny to Russians, like ‘peopleton’ or something) not ‘mushchina’ and so on, but generally if you look at alternate/less used word-forms there’s almost always direct equivalents. Also things that look totally different like Ukrainian days of the week or months are just (re)invented from Slavic roots instead of taken from Latin.
Adrenochrome is a hell of a drug.
Is that really true? Belarus seems to have had a number of good writers, such as Vasil Bykaŭ.
So basically Chakavian or Kajkavian Croatian or Slovene tier
Russian from Ukrainian like Polish from Ukrainian.
Excellent point. Of course almost all Ukrainian-language books in the USSR would be published in Ukraine, but most Russian-language books would be published in Russia which was after all the same country.
It’s only impressive for her surgeon, who managed to make her age backwards like Putin’s surgeon.
Some time ago I knew a young Polish woman who had lived abroad with a Russian and Ukrainian as roommates. With the Ukrainian each spoke their own language and they could understand enough but that didn’t work for Russian and the Ukrainian had to translate between them.
Poles have similar experiences with Czech and Slovak – they can understand Slovak easily enough but Czech is much harder.
IME Russians only understand Russian (they can learn other Slavic languages easily enough but they do have to do some learning).
I’m not entirely sure about Belarusian,
The first time I heard Belarusian it sounded like a Russian trying to speak Polish and not really succeeding (but not failing entirely either).
I remember a site that converted Belarusian cyrillic to łacinka. I looked at some short stories and could understand over well over half of the content.
The commanding heights of language-adoption are movies and TV. When did TV become mainstream in Belarus and the Ukraine, the 1970s? And was it all in Russian? What was the language of the radio? (I understand supplied with signal via wire.)
Books I think only matter in so far as they reflect history before TV, or in how they reflect the establishment’s attitude via the schools.
Although important, television has never quite captivated the audiences in the ex-Soviet Union countries like they do in the West, especially the US. The Soviet Union generally just couldn’t succeed in producing programs that were as entertaining and captivating as in the US. A parallel situation could be seen in the analogous film industry too. The “decadent and capitalist west” was just better at producing “bread and circuses” for its masses, than within the iron curtain. I’m sure that a lot of this has changed since the fall of the iron curtain though, especially with the advent of cable TV there too. Reading was and probably still is a more popular leisure time activity in these countries that in the West.
I’ve recently purchased a new 4K large screen TV. I bring this up because in my opinion this new technology signals a new phase of the entertainment industry. As movie theaters are drying up (because of Covid), more and more people are resorting to these new TV’s to fulfill their entertainment needs, including the viewing of new films. New productions go straight to cable or even bypass cable and go straight to internet streaming channels. The quality of the audio and visuals transmitted is outstanding. I’m sure that I’m a little bit late availing myself of these developments, but still there seems to be an evolution of television capabilities – unfortunately, I’m reading less books right now, but I think that this will correct itself more as time goes on and I get saturated with all of this “goodness”. 🙂
I don’t know why you airquote this, even non-political American entertainment is largely composed of coarse and lowbrow libertine prolefeed.
At the beginning of the cold war one can perhaps argue (though I wouldn’t) that the rot was comparatively mild and disguised, but by the middle phase the never very strong distinction between high culture and low culture in America had collapsed.
It is usually easier to appeal to the baser urges of humans, whatever their other failings the American Ideological State Apparatus excels at utilising this factor in order to turn peoples of the world into mere populations.
This is completely wrong, Russia is one of the top television watching nations on earth. Anyone who’s spent any significant time there will tell you that.
4K isn’t new and is pretty much standard on everything but entry level tv sets.
I am Polish and to my ear Ukrainian sounds closer to Russian than to Polish. I understand both because I learned Russian in school, it’s hard to say what I would understand if I hadn’t learned Russian.
But there is a lot more to the statehood than the language. Consider the number of Spanish speaking or English speaking countries, some of them culturally very close to each other (e.g. Australia and New Zealand.)
I can understand half of Ukrainian, whilst none of Polish spoken. Like seriously, assumption that Ukrainian is closer to Polish sounds absolutely asinine to native Russian speaker.
Does this mean there are no British conductors competent to be the conductor of the Proms or that British conductors have been banned, because they may be patriotic?
Ah! The vibrant enrichment of multiculturalism!
I’ve read that the Belarusian language in Belarus is a lot more controversial than the Ukrainian language in Ukraine.
Apparently many if not most Belarusians see their native language as being Russian, even if they don’t necessarily see themselves as ethnically Russian, and regard speaking Belarusian, especially publicly, as an almost subversive act and definitely don’t support the language having a higher status than Russian.
Whereas in Ukraine it seems that even most native Russian speaking Ukrainians still symbolically support the Ukrainian language having a higher status than Russian and it is encouraged in all areas of public and cultural life to a much greater extent than Belarusian is.
In Poland, advertisements aimed at Ukrainians are virtually always in Ukrainian but the great majority of them speak Russian among themselves.
I think the greater distance from Polish to Russian might be a factor – I assume that among themselves they complain a lot about the host country (a normal enough activity for economic migrants even if they have no plans to leave soon) and that might be understood if they spoke Ukrainian.
There’s occasionally a weird situation where they speak Russian and claim it’s Ukrainian…
Which reminds me of this:
https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/ukrainians-own-russian-but-dont-admit-it-historian-snyder
I agree with most of what you state, except that one can still get a rather good dose of high brow and good popular science presentations through PBS (Public Broadcasting Services). It’s been a popular outlet for this kind of thing for quite a long time now and shows no signs of abating. In fact, it’s expanding its output all of the time, In my area one can find PBS broadcast on three different channels (world; life; and plain PBS).
You’re probably right on this, since you live there and I haven’t been back for a few years. It would be interesting for Karlin to do a thread about the state of Russian TV today.
BTW, although 4K is state of the art today, it didn’t really start to capture the whole market until 2014. I guess 2014 isn’t new, except to an old guy like me. 🙂
I don’t watch much TV myself, but I keep track of it for other reasons. Russian TV has evolved quite a bit since the end of the Soviet Union. It went from just dubbing foreign shows in the 90s, when the soap opera Santa Barbara was a huge hit, to later making Russian versions of foreign shows. Now there is actually some high quality production of original content, some of which makes its way into other countries via streaming platforms.
As for 4K, I think that ever increasing resolution eventually bumps into the law of diminishing returns. Like the amount of pixels in digital cameras, it can turn into a gimmick. Personally, I prefer projectors to traditional TVs, it’s a more authentic film watching experience, and easier on the eyes.
I think it must also be one of more strong recent example of customers attraction to marketing hype about hardware capacity, while at the same time society still not using for years, the aspect of the hardware capacity that engineers had intended when they developed it.
Native 4K content and Ultra HD upscaled content is still a very small percentage of what people watch on their television, and mostly is significantly compressed by streaming (it’s often 500:1 compression).
4K broadcasting on satellite channels are still not common, and would only have a significant attraction from the population probably for watching football, and does seem to yet justify satellite television companies sending it with worthwhile bitrates (so the compression might not be that less than on the streaming services).
With physical media- there is only much demand from consumers for Ultra HD Blu-ray discs in a few markets like USA, Japan and UK, where there are presumably an economically viable amount of connoisseurs.
For Russia, in physical media – even standard blu-ray never became popular (now basically dead https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4418013 despite the fact blu-ray is the best way to watch films). Most people are still happy to watch films from DVD.
So one of the amusing messages of recent television production industry – you can sell to people hardware capacities, when even years later, it was clear majority of customers will not care if they are able to use those capacities effectively.
Most customers are surely much more impressed by the HDR, and we can see this is where the streaming services are sending us a lot of. HDR is what the people are actually impressed by, and all the Netflix and Amazon Prime is adding it to their new content.
There’s obviously diminishing returns, but whether 4K is useful depends on many different things, like how close you are to the screen, and size of screen – but also on the nature of an information which is being displayed.
Old 35mm film is equivalent of around 6K, while 70mm is 12K. So there is often plenty of extra information in old films which can be transferred.
It seems like for the vast majority for customers, we are not close to this issue – as only a small part of customers of the television, uses it to play the 4k content which is not over streaming.
You can also notice that people are not sitting close enough to the screen to notice, from the kind of compression ratios which companies like Netflix and Amazon Prime are feeding to us.
But surely again it depends on the content, and most of our content is not a reasonably less compressed deliver of 4k.
For example, even people who are buying 4k projectors, are mostly not watching 4k content.
(All 4k projectors still cost cost over $5000 at the moment – so we can assume it is mostly film fans buying them)
In productions of tvs, basically “futureproofed” to 4K already in the 2010s, but watching 4K content is still quite a small proportion of most peoples’ watching time – and most of the 4K is streamed anyway, so what services like Netflix and Prime give us with one hand (lots of native 4K series), they take away with the other hand (very “optimized” in terms of compression).
It’s still in 2020, one of the funny situations where the hardware capacity is sold, without people using it (almost like car industry production SUVs, for housewives never go offroad, or high top speeds in cars, people never would use). Hopefully in the 2020s, we will start to get better streaming that will be able to match fulfill capacity of our hardware.
Snyder engages in hyperbole when he claims that each country self-regulates the state language.
Ex.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Language_Union
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_for_German_Orthography
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Academies_of_the_Spanish_Language
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Language_Orthographic_Agreement_of_1990
Nor does he really understand the historical role of anglophilia in America nor the present-day utter domination of Britain by the USA.
However, despite this I think his proposal to turn the Ukraine into a revolutionary Russophone Taiwan showcasing “democracy” is a clever idea from an imperial perspective.
Reduction of culture – a lot of it generational, and it’s different to say if technology is a main cause of it, or just revealing peoples’ already preferences.
For example, perhaps the greatest reduction of culture has occurred with the transition from playing acoustic instruments, to playing more electronic instruments. (Although it’s not so simple as reduction of complexity of timbres, but also change in traditions of how people played the instruments and produced the music; simplifications occurred in a lot of areas of music).
Ironically, nowadays, we are in situation of continuous decline, so that old men, who were once the youthful fans of electronic music (for example Beatles fans), are the main market still trying to maintain recording standards, or complaining about things like “loudness wars”. So baby boomer rock fans, are in some aspects the largest group who are our best defense of civilization in recorded music now.
When most people moved from listening to CDs (where at least theoretically information can be transferred more or less at optimum that our hearing is capable or noticing), to listening to usually a very audibly noticeable lossy formats like Mp3.
Here was completely objective, and probably counter-intuitive, situation, where people chose significantly worse sounding music formats, than they had experienced a decade earlier.
It’s difficult to say where the cause and effect was here, though, as things like Apple Ipod might be simply revealing preferences people had – i.e. perhaps that most consumers didn’t notice the benefits of CD and Minidisc, and were happy to sacrifice it for more convenience to change songs? Or is it that the technology, is actually encouraging a large part of the audience to care more or less about the accuracy of sound in different decades?
I had ocassion at one time to plot the adoption rate of new consumer technology, using US market numbers for lack of widespread international sources. Black & White television was adopted very fast, colour less so, video recording quite slowly in comparison. PCs even more slowly (no numbers for Nintendo at the time). There was an anomaly. CD’s. They were priced low from the start to compete with Compact Tape and take up outperformed even B&W television. Of course there were audio rather than mostly video. I was doing forecasts for early adoption of LCDs at the time. They did indeed struggle at the beginning. The 27″ crt took some beating.
https://twitter.com/r_speer/status/1298297872228786176?s=20
This is still a bit unclear to me. I access a few providers directly through internet streaming, Netflix, Vudu even YouTube. Certainly some shows, like ones that you’ve recommended are taking full advantage of 4k technologies? I have in mind documentaries like “Our Planet” and “The Universe.” If you don’t have time to watch the whole series of the”Universe”, I would highly recommend viewing the segment entitled “Alien Galaxies”, where you’ll witness some pretty spectacular visual presentations. Last night I watched an equally impressive program from YouTube entitles “4K Costa Rica – Pura Vida”, and its hard for me to accept that the format of this program did not include all that 4k has to offer?
Lastly, cold you explain to me whether a program that is shot in 4k doesn’t intrinsically include HD properties? Are they stand alone technologies that are not related? Can a 4k production not include HD (high definiton)? Thanks again as usual for your very informative comments.
“Most customers are surely much more impressed by the HDR, and we can see this is where the streaming services are sending us a lot of. HDR is what the people are actually impressed by, and all the Netflix and Amazon Prime is adding it to their new content”.
This is still a bit unclear to me. I access a few providers directly through internet streaming, Netflix, Vudu even YouTube. Certainly some shows, like ones that you’ve recommended are taking full advantage of 4k technologies? I have in mind documentaries like “Our Planet” and “The Universe.” If you don’t have time to watch the whole series of the”Universe”, I would highly recommend viewing the segment entitled “Alien Galaxies”, where you’ll witness some pretty spectacular visual presentations. Last night I watched an equally impressive program from YouTube entitles “4K Costa Rica – Pura Vida”, and its hard for me to accept that the format of this program did not include all that 4k has to offer?
Lastly, cold you explain to me whether a program that is shot in 4k doesn’t intrinsically include HD properties? Are they stand alone technologies that are not related? Can a 4k production not include HD (high definiton)? Thanks again as usual for your very informative comments.
What happens to the quality when you transfer music from CD’s to Mp3’s? I own a few hundred CD’s and should probably consider going over to the newer Mp3 technology, although to be honest I’m quite satisfied with my CD collection. I have some pretty old CD’s too, and surprisingly they’re holding up pretty good with few to none exhibiting any loss of transmission strength. It’s becoming more difficult to locate good, new CD carousel playback units. 🙁
No surprise. Internet empowered superhumanly dedicated and obssessed people like nothing before.
They are the winners, this world belongs to them.
Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/
If you look for newest TV series in Netflix and Prime, they should almost all be native 4k. Netflix and Prime also puts HDR on its new content, which is what impresses viewers more often.
But then the medium they streaming to us, is very compressed at the final stage for streaming convenience, so if you sit close to the screen, then you might see all the compression artifacts. But if you sit at a kind of standard “old people” distance (2 metres?) away from television, then you might not experience any problems.
Netflix and Prime are surely just invested that most people will not sit too close to their television, to complain. But I have some bad habit to try to sit as close as possible to the screen, so for my custom, the compression is a bit annoying.
YouTube re-encodes whatever file people upload, and will likely compress 80-90% (it might vary). So it’s possible that you experience visibly noticeable data loss, or not.
But then it also depends on things like how close you sit, whether you will notice any deterioration from the re-encoding.
–
Easiest way if you wanted to view less compressed files, is just to play generously encoded 4k Ultra HD blu-rays. However, it’s clear that most of the population are not interested in this, at least at their current inflated prices.
4k Ultra HD blu-ray players were released 4 years ago, and yet still only a small minority people buy them. And very few interesting films are available yet in the format.
@cliff arroyo
Poles are so allergic to everything Russian that they wouldn’t publish ads in Russian even if the Ukrainians asked them to. Of course this is a generalization, but try speaking Russian in a shop in any Polish town. When I lived in Warsaw I occasionally had to intervene in Polish on behalf of Russian-speaking customers being treated extremely rudely by shop employees.
Perhaps because CDs were not just improvement of sound quality (especially for classical music fans, who had aversion to hissing noises of vinyl), but also such improvement in convenience?
It seems like consumers even today are still happy to upgrade for convenience (for example, people are still moving up iPhone generations, to the extent that Apple software updates can slow down old ones), but – upgrading purely for connoisseurship or appreciation of art and culture, doesn’t seem to be a motive enough for most people. Maybe only in Japan is a more significant proportion of consumers wanting to upgrade physical media to better formats for connoisseurship reasons.
A large part of Generation Z, are just uninterested in physical media, and apparently do not worry if they stream films onto small screens of their iPad or phone.
And then even among people who buy physical media in USA – they are mostly buying 480p content. It seems like most of the people who still buy physical media, have not much interest in improving picture quality.
https://i.imgur.com/be8S6hL.jpg
UHD discs – still only around 5% of sales. The final hope for it to become popular, is probably that Sony will succeed to boost the format through the PlayStation 5, as it will include a player.
The Russian state should subsidize or arrange to be made, patriotic TV series that will appeal to both Veliki Russians and Little Russians. I’ve said it before: the motif of ‘Russia as Liberator’ is substantially true, and can be played up for propaganda purposes.
I’m not sure exactly which episodes you focus on to try to building this narrative up, but basically find some time where Russians and Ukrainians were on the same side, ideally far enough in the past to avoid accusations of collaboration and such. Possibly the wars with Karl the 12th of Sweden? I guess there was some Ukrainian Cossack host who fought for the Swedes but anyway you guys could figure it out. Historical drama, in Russian, get the Ukrainians to watch. Model the behaviors and values you want people to have in compelling TV series. This is how you manage the public.
I’ll also add that there should be a series on the war where Russia freed the Finns from the (gay) Swedes. Nice propaganda opportunity to influence the Finns.
Also I forgot Mr Hack – read MORE – you need to be on “Premium Subscription” of Netflix to access to 4K and HDR/Dolby Visions on things they have it for (i.e. new tv series). So make sure you are on the Premium Subscription for Netflix, and almost all their new TV series will have both Dolby Vision and 4K.
On Amazon Prime, 4k and HDR is just indicated on a few of the new TV series which have this option. So for example, “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has 4K and HDR/Dolby Vision option. But some of Prime new series like, “Little Fires Everywhere” has 4K, but without any HDR/Dolby Vision.
I venture no opinion, but here is linguistics specialist Paul Jorgensen’s 2019 discussion of Russian and Ukrainian:
Paul is a talented guy whose passion for languages shines through despite his low-key delivery. He’s Canadian but lives in Japan with his Japanese wife. Fluent in Hebrew, French, and Japanese and apparently has intermediate proficiency in Italian, Indonesian, and a few other languages:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_t8OfPvuvsE
What do the Russian and Ukrainian speakers here think: does Paul overstate the difference between the two?
Also, he cites a poll about which Ukrainians say is their “native” language, but don’t the solid majority of ukrainians still speak russian in daily life except in a handful of western oblasts?
Is there some specific features of Russian or Ukrainian that Paul fails to discuss, that show a closer or more distant relationship between the two? If so, tell him. He has proven willing to revise his videos after further study and criticisms / debate with native speakers.
When did you live in Warsaw? Store employees used to treat everyone extremely rudely, especially in Warsaw (a situation much relieved in the last couple of years).
And I was told by a Ukrainian (who primarily speaks Russian) that Ukrainians want such messages to be in Ukrainian (part of the process of differentiating themselves from Russians).
What I’ve found is that many Polish people like how spoken Russian sounds and some parts of Russian fine arts resonate… it’s the politics they can’t stand.
Maybe that’s because Russian is a foreign language to them and most people find it irritating when foreigners start talking at them in another language without even asking them if they can speak it first?
At the end of the day the language in Poland is Polish, I’m surprised you think Russian speakers have a right to be served in Russian and that you think that all Poles must know Russian or should know Russian.
Speak English in a shop in France or Spain without making a token attempt at French or Spanish and you will probably get a frosty response too, especially in a non-tourist area because they resent foreigners who think they should just know English and be prepared to serve a customer in English.
I don’t think Britain today is dominated by the USA to any greater extent than most European countries. Maybe it will be post-Brexit, but for the decades it was in the EU it was very much an average European country. Nothing especially Americanised about it.
In my experience most Americans lump Britain in as “Europe”, they don’t differentiate it as something separate or as something more similar to themselves than the others.
There are a whole series of Russian historical dramas, mostly dubbed into English, on Amazon. Mostly free with Prime too. They tend not to correspond with academic history.
My native langauge is Welsh. These days, at best, I can read it.
Point taken, Mr. Owen. That would seem to suggest that many Ukrainians calling Ukrainian their native language don’t actually use Ukrainian much outside the home?
On the other hand: a Welsh speaker could forget Welsh and become fluent in English, as the two are quite different. Russian and Ukrainian definitely are closer in vocabulary and otherwise than English and Welsh. If a Ukrainian is fluent in Russian — as they mostly have been and still are — he could never lose proficiency in ukrainian to that same degree; it’s just not that far afield.
I agree. Given two similar languages it is harder to forget. Usually, the core grammar is similar. Maybe a case ending varies but there is a case ending and the sound rules for the variations will be consistent between words and so on. In a different language group the same words may be shared but the grammar can be very different. In Welsh for example, the beginning of the word may change. In this case a mutation rather than an inflexion.
Cymru – Wales
Yng Nghymru – in Wales
I Gymru – to Wales
Penybont – Bridgend
Ym Mhenybont
I Benybont
Totally unlike English. They don’t, as you say, help each other out. My Russian definitely helps me to make some sense of Ukrainain even if I am not particularly good at it.
I watched the video and feel that he is pretty accurate in his conclusions. Being brought up in an immigrant Ukrainian-American family and not having a real good command of formal Ukrainian, I first heard Russian in Ukraine visiting there as a teenager. I could barely understand the Russian that I heard say on the streets of Kiev, or on the movie theater screen, television etc; Over the years, my Ukrainian has improved dramatically and I’ve been able to also add a good modicum of Russian to my knowledge base. They look much more similar today, then they did back then. The bottom line, that Paul emphasizes, is that the two languages are indeed different and not dialects of one or the other.
Ukrainian is between Polish and Russian so of course you would understand half of Ukrainian but virtually no Polish.
Relation between Russian and Ukrainian, is just like relationship between Italian/Spanish/French/Portuguese.
Ukrainian divergence from Russian, is very analogous to difference of French and Italian languages, while both French and Italians are essentially just forms of the same underlying language – Latin. Much of the difference is word choice and strange pronunciation/spelling of the same words, although also some differences of customary grammar.
Aurally, the question of mutual intelligibility, depends on whether your brain has been habituated to both languages, as well as being able to understand their different and more obscure word choices.
Initially, when the words of the same origin, are pronounced in very different ways, you hear them as if they are incomprehensible foreign words. But after some time of exposure, you start to “map” them onto words in your own language. Asking average people if they understand Ukrainian aurally, underestimates the closeness of Ukrainian to Russian language. Difference between Russian and Ukrainian is just like difference between French and Italian languages, or between Catalan and Spanish languages. They seem closer to each other at a higher exposure, than they sounded to you first at minimum exposure.
In addition, there are use of different vocabulary sets that are both contained in the same languages, but which are emphasized more by one or other language. This is easier to understand when you see written text, than listening.
I agree with your description of the overall phenomenon but with the caveat that there are degrees of difference. Spanish is probably closer to Catalan than Ukrainian is to Russian, and French may be further from Italian than Ukrainian is from Russian. Ukrainian:Russian may be like Spanish:Italian.
Russian nationalists seeking to obliterate Ukrainian and create a unitary “Rus state” are comparable to non-existent, hypothetical Roman nationalists from Italy seeking to conquer and impose Italian upon the people of France, Spain, Portugal and Romania in a quest to recreate the Roman Empire.
One hundred years ago there was an unitary Rus state, the empire of All Russias. How long ago was the fall of the Western Roman empire? How long ago the paths of the Romance nations diverged from the each other? The Chinese struggled to unify their nation even after centuries of separation, and they were succesful, the Eastern Romans under the Justinian the great also aspired to once again to unify their empire , even if one hundred years had passed from the fall of the Rome, and they almost succeeded. Thank God that there has been such statesmen like Justinian, Caesar, Charlemagne, Qin Huang Di, Ivan IV, Peter I, Catherine II, Bismarck etc, without such statesmen the whole humanity would then be a just one great Balkan or even worse like the Papua-New Guinea.
Such false comparison from you. Normally you have much higher standards when making such statements.
By then there were different Rus peoples speaking their own languages and the “unity” was very shallow, as evidenced by the facts that in 1917 Ukrainians didn’t vote for Russian parties and no one in Ukraine came to Russia’s defense during the Civil War that followed.
The paths of the Rus peoples began to diverge after the reign of the last ruler of a united Rus state, Mstislav the Great, who died in 1132 (there were probably dialectical differences before that time), The Rus state thus only existed for about 250 years before it fell apart.* Afterward there was basically constant often brutal warfare (sack of Kiev by Suzdalians wasn’t nicer than the sack of Constantinople by Crusaders), followed by their entrance into different political worlds.Parts of defunct Rus were forced back together by the Muscovites centuries after the split into warring principalities. 500 years later in the case of eastern Ukraine, 650 years for central Ukraine and 800 years for Galicia. This forced union was shallow (during much of it Ukraine was an autonomous Hetmanate or a separate SSR) and temporary.
It’s very shaky ground upon which to build the idea of some eternal ancient union under Moscow.
Ukraine was under the enemy occupation you silly Mazepite! How one can help under such circumstances. Still Skoropadsky wanted federation with Russia, and White movement clearly found more support from Kiev than from the Central Russia itself. And I am tired of reminding you that most nations of Europe once had many different languages, and still have, like Northern Germany, with their Plattdütsch, or Southern France with their Occitan. I hope that UK and Spain are self explanatory to you… I have mentioned this to you multiple times already, next time I will just think that you are trolling me.
Oh okay so now you are just lying, really AP? You very well know that most of Eastern Ukraine was not ruled or administered by the Medieval Rus, and that the Russia conquered those lands from the Tatars, maybe some areas of Sloboda Ukraine were loosely ruled by Rus, but they were definitely depopulated after the Mongol invasion, it was the Russian power and Russian steel which brought those lands back to the Slavs you silly Hohol. And Central Ukraine 650?!?! Battle of Blue waters was in 1362, before that Golden horde ruled almost all the Rus, and in mid 17th Century or at least in 1667 the left bank Ukraine returned to Russia, as stated in treaty of Andrusovo. Area of the Chernigov had even shorter time outside of the Russian rule. And only one hundred years after the truce the Right bank Ukraine was annexed back to Russia, so 300 years for the left bank, 400 years for the right bank. I didnt know that you have such illiteracy regarding historical matters, soon you will claim that all regions that were ruled by rulers lieges in feudal fashion, were independent countries or something as crazy. But actually this is very typical or maybe even categorical for Svidomys, the anachronistic way of interpreting the history is their bread and butter, without it they would have nothing. But as you are an uniate its even worse with you, a common faith and a common liturgical language means nothing to you. For me the defining characteristic of the Rus civilization is their Orthodox faith given by the Greeks. In old times people were more defined by their faith, than by their tongue… Clearly you as an uniate see less beauty and truth in Orthodoxy than I, a pagan see, for you probably these matters are just political and cultural, without any deeper truths, you are such a secularized petty nationalist. Ideological product of the 19th Century politics, when the Rus traces its roots from time immemorial and has something transcendent in it, even in our degenerate and decaying age, can your uniate Church or petty nation claim something similar?
No less shakier than idea of united Germany or Italy. Evils committed by the Rus between each other pale in comparison to what Germans have done to each other. Like in the 30 years war where protestants and catholics committed acts of genocide upon each other. Vast regions of Germany lost more than half of their population.
https://i.redd.it/pikvfuyo1qq01.png
Your inane petty nationalism is just misguided and illogical, no matter how much you twist the facts. Your ideology could be called by the name of Balkanizationism, you truly are the enemy of the Slavs and the Rus, for you think that regional cultural differences of the Russian nation are large enough to justify different independent countries for each variation of Rus culture.
If Europeans would be stupid enough to follow your logic, we would not have united Spain, United Kingdom, united Germany, united Italy, united France. Your path is the patch chosen by the people of the Balkans, by the people of the Arab nations, a path being forever under domination and manipulation of foreign great powers, were brothers would constantly bicker between each other, and a foreigner would be dividing and ruling those brothers forever. You are an ideal lackey for hostile great powers. Oh communists of the past would have loved you more than you think…
During the 1917 elections to the Russian Assembly Ukraine was not occupied by anybody and virtually no Ukrainians voted for Russian political parties. In the civil war that followed there were no pro-Russian military units or figures from among Russian-ruled Ukrainians (there were among ethnic Ukrainians in Kuban and ironically Galicia).
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Skoropadsky only sought an alliance with the Whites when his preferred allies, the Germans, disappeared and the Whites were a lesser evil for him. I would have done the same. But he was quickly overthrown by nationalists who represented parties that had won the 1917 election in Ukraine.
It had some support from some ethnic Russians living in the city. But resistance to Bolsheviks from Russians was stronger in Moscow, where there was some heavy fighting, than from Russians in Kiev (where the Bolshevik uprising was successfully put down by Ukrainian nationalists).
Name some prominent ethnic Ukrainian or Little Russian units or commanders fighting for the Whites, who were from Ukraine. There weren’t any. Because in the beginning of the 20th century there was no significant pro-Russian sentiment in Ukraine.
It would be very sad if the unique, melodic and beautiful Rus language spoken in Ukraine was mostly erased as Plattdeutsch and Occitan., and replaced by GreatRussian. Unlike you, I love all Rus cultures, and don’t want to destroy some in favour of my own.
You speak of Balkanisation. Yet somehow there is no tragedy about the existence of separate Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic countries with their own Scandinavian languages.
Other than Icelandic, all of these are closer to each other than Ukrainian is to Russian. There is no tragedy about the Dutch not being Deautsch.
Let’s review history. The medieval Rus state (mostly based in Kiev) was founded in c. 880 and split up permanently into warring principalities after 1132. So it lasted about 250 years. These were all conquered by the Mongols/Tatars in 1240 although they were not united with each other after this conquest. The parts of Rus that became western, central and eastern (though not Far Eastern) Ukraine were annexed by Lithuania and Poland, the parts that became Russia stayed under Tatar rule for another 100 years or so before achieving independence.
About 500 years after the splitting of Rus in 1132, central/eastern Ukraine (the Left Bank) came under loose Moscow rule ( this didn’t become strong under after Poltava about 50 years later). So these territories were apart from Muscovy/Russia for twice as long as the very existence of the medieval Rus state.
The Right Bank did not join Moscow until 150 years after that, the end of the 18th century. And Galicia did not do so (other than for a few months during World War I) until 1940.
Until the 17th century ,Rus in Ukraine had their own Orthodox Church and when given the chance they kept trying to have a separate one as they do now.
Well, idea of Ukrainian unity with Russia had almost no support in the early 20th century in Ukraine and has none now, while in Germany and Italy it is the ideas of Bavarian or regional Italian separatism that are marginal.
The Kingdom of Germany and Holy Roman Empire was a relatively unified state for about 600 years, until split up by the brutal religious wars in the 16th century though they remained formally united until 1806, and reunited a few decades later under the Prussians (other than Austrians). Contrast this with the brief 250 year medieval Rus state’s unity which ended in 1132.
Projection. You are the one who excuses the physical extermination of Rus people of Novgorod, central Ukraine and Galicia and the destruction of their Rus cultures for the power of Moscow. You are a narrow patriot of Muscovy and the Muscovite Rus but clearly no friend of the collective Rus people or of Slavs in general (I suspect you aren’t too fond of Poles).
Who cares about this scandinavian faggot canadian? I refuse to watch the video.
Paul must realise that Ukrainian polls are as just as corrupt and just as non-credible as the state itself.
You will see it tomorrow when the kids start school. Every single time for every single year , every single ukrop report about first day at school will show the children going to school for the first time – smiling, nervous , excited…….and all speaking in Russian, EVERY time with their parents.
It’s a small thing that exposes the fraud , schizophrenia and fakeness of this banderite state in their language policy – before indoctrination these innocent children showing what language people in ukraine are talking ( just like any ukrop politician when secretly recorded or under stress also does). BTW the whole first school day is absolutely identical for Russia and Ukraine…..even for the smallest detail, every custom, procedure, style….everything is identical. What does that tell you?
Addendum: Yes I am aware that some territories on the eastern fringes of Ukraine were not part of medieval Rus.