Our resident Kholmogorov translator Fluctuarius Argenteus further develops his Russoshoe Theory:
Devised a perfect formula for debates on whether contemporary Russia is a continuation of the USSR, Stalinism is true Marxism, Trump is a conservative, Star Wars is science fiction, etc.
Essentially, all positions of the matter are reducible to four options, presented in the following sentence:
“A is/is not a continuation (an example) of B, and that’s awesome/terrible.”
Citing one of examples above:
A) Stalinism is true Marxism, and that’s awesome.
B) Stalinism is not true Marxism, and that’s awesome.
C) Stalinism is true Marxism, and that’s terrible.
D) Stalinism is not true Marxism, and that’s terrible.I have yet to see a debate whether an argument couldn’t be condensed into one of those four positions.
You’re welcome.
Some examples:
A –
- Soviet nationalists/Prokhanov
- Unz.com columnists: Israel Shamir, Martyanov
B –
- This blog’s erstwhile commenter Lazy Glossophiliac
- Most Russian neo-Stalinists, Eurasianists
- The Saker (with caveats)
- The Spencerian Alt Right (esp. Nina Kouprianova)
- Tankies
C –
- Mainstream Russian nationalists inc. Fluctuarius, Kholmogorov, Sputnik & Pogrom
- Solzhenitsyn, Igor Shafarevich
- Probably the commenter Felix Keverich
- Myself
D –
- Western Trotskyists, eurocommies: “Lenin was gonna build fully automated luxury gay space communism but then that Great Russian chauvinist Stalinist ruined it all!”
- Neocons: “Stalinism was an inevitable reversion to Russia’s millennial yearning for an iron fist.”
- Aggrieved minorities whose nice NKVD gigs were rudely interrupted in the late 1930s: “Fellow Russians, you must repent for Russian nationalist Stalin’s murder of my granddaddy Moisei!”
I think the only groups that sort of get on with each other are A and B, who agree that Stalinism is awesome.
Nina Busted-tina may be married to Dick Spencer, but she’s not Spencerian alt right. She’s a Eurasianist obsessed with Alexander Dugin, whose racial views are incompatible with Spencer’s.
Needless to say it speaks quite poorly of Spencer that he doesn’t have enough frame to brainwash his own busted titcow Kremlin-bux wife into parroting his ideology. Let’s not forget they were “separated” for a bit.
I’m reminded of self-confessed herb John Derbyshire who once made the shocking confession that his sinister oriental bride votes Democrat.
As to the main subject at hand, while I agree with Karlin’s position that Stalin and his Soviet Union were genuinely communist, there’s some grain of truth in the B position. In the late 1930s Stalin rolled back de-Russianization efforts, reintroduced traditional military uniforms and medals, and even rehabilitated the cossacks.
I’m sympathetic to the A and B camps in that their delusions are born of love of country. Who wants to admit your country took a disastrous turn and that you were complicit in it? And if nothing else the pro-USSR crowd can point to two triumphs:
*The destruction of the German Army and the conquest of Berlin
*Yuri Gagarin
And on a different note internet Russian nationalists who live in America are highly irritating–and I say this as a Trump-voting Russophile (the Facebook ads were just too good).
Where exactly did Andrey state that “Marxism/Stalin is awesome”? I remember him writing that USSR had to be dismantled instead.
Don`t agree on AR either, these guys have no qualms whatsoever proclaiming Stalin a mass murderer and Marx a “kike subversive on a planetary scale”(citation). Do I have to remind you of AR stance on kikes and kikery?
“Tankie” in a British context is a member of th CPGB, or fellow traveller, who supported the USSR/Warsaw Pact interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
They might have paid lip service to de-Stalinisation, but I would mostly put them in A.
The strangest one that you see occasionally is a certain subset of “trads” and zealous Western-born converts to Orthodoxy that left their original churches for being too modern. Someone online tells them to read Dugin once and next thing you know your anti-communist holy crusader is going around repeating the old “Stalin was actually an Orthodox patriot” line like a sovok grandmother.
What if people can be both terrible and awesome at the same time? Which most of them are, especially important historical figures.
Mass repressions and executions: terrible.
Re-instituting conservative social values: awesome
Killing Trotsky: awesome.
Giving up on exporting revolution and taking a stand against the “rootless cosmopolitans” – awesome.
Of course one could argue that everything else pales before the repressions and killings and I mostly agree. Then again, if I had the power I would absolutely put modern liberals in GULAGs (if they are consigned to forced labor they will at least become useful for the first time in their lives) and who knows how would history judge me after some time.
OT
Any take on the ex-Russian spy murder attempt thingy?
Did Stalin actually give up on this? The Red Army did export the revolution, as any Polish nationalist will bitterly point out to you.
If not for D-Day it’s entirely plausible that Stalin would’ve painted Europe red to the English channel.
Wartime gains in a war that was not started by him don’t count in my opinion.
The gains weren’t even entirely in wartime.
How about the 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia?
That said, I’m not sure why wartime gains wouldn’t count. Note that Stalin committed to free elections at Yalta, and the right in America bitterly criticized FDR for selling Eastern Europe into communist slavery. So Stalin broke his agreement in order to export the revolution. Future leaders of the Soviet Union continued exporting the revolution as well.
Of course not sure the West could’ve done much about communist Eastern Europe, short of launching Operation Unthinkable. Which would require reviving the Wehrmacht…awkward.
Stalin also sent a jew who was seeing his daughter to the Gulags (dead serious, this really happened), and it had a lot to do with the fact that he was a jew. For that he is pretty awesome, does not make up for his other crimes obviously.
It’s not quite fair to portray Stalin imposing Communism on unwilling Europe. It wasn’t quite so unwilling as that.
In the wake of WWII, the Communist ideas and the USSR itself enjoyed high prestige among a significant portion of Europeans. France and Italy had huge and popular Communist parties. Italian Communist Party came close to gaining power and it required shenanigans by CIA to prevent it from doing so. In France, the whole political system was designed around the need to prevent the Communists from winning the elections (now the same techniques are used against National Front.)
Yugoslav and Albanian Communists came to power with little to no support from USSR (and indeed Tito soon turned hostile to Stalin.) Moscow withdrew all support from the Greek Communists, and yet it took years of bloody civil war to suppress them.
And so on. Now, of course, everyone pretends that only the evil Russkies are to blame and domestic Communist movements did not exist.
Any take on the ex-Russian spy murder attempt thingy?
What seems eminently clear is that whoever did it knew that this would be attributed to the Russians, and either didn’t care (a Russian “fuck you” to the West, just like Syria’s repeated gas attacks that everyone knows all about), or actively desired it.
So why not consider the following scenario:
What if Christopher Steele (“author” of the famous dossier), unable to personally travel to Russia, engaged Skripal to dig up the “dirt” on Trump?
What if Skripal either manufactured or was fed “dirt” (false information) by his Russian connections?
What if now, with the heat on Steele, Skripal got nervous (knowing the information he provided was false and that he was in danger of becoming the fall guy, or the guy who knew too much)?
What if Skripal, living alone in the UK, then decided that his life would be more meaningful (and longer) if he were to return to Russia and be close to his daughter?
What if, using his Moscow-based daughter as an intermediay, he came to an agreement that would have allowed him to return to Russia in return for a “confession” about his role in manufacturing the dossier at the behest of British intelligence?
What if this became known to certain people in the UK?
What would their likely reaction have been?
Is this scenario any less plausible than the idea that the Russians would have done this in such a blatantly obvious manner, shortly before their Presidential elections and three months before the World Cup they are hosting?
It’s perfectly fair.
Do you suppose communists would’ve one free and fair elections in Poland? You know, the country Stalin divided with the H-man in 1939?
How about in the Baltic states, which Stalin annexed in 1940 after agreement with the H-man?
The communists did decently in Czechoslovakian elections, but they weren’t able to form a government on their own. Unwisely the other parties let the communists have the interior ministry, and then the communists overthrew the government with the support of the USSR.
Sure. Everybody loves a winner, and for that matter socialist ideas had been popular in the working classes of Europe for a century by then.
When the H-man was ascendant in Europe little knock off nazi parties started appearing everywhere. Arrow Cross in Hungary, Iron Guard in Rumania, etc. Even America had one.
Does this mean Stalin wasn’t exporting revolution? He was following his percentages agreement with Churchill.
At the same time he wasn’t supporting one group of communists he’d support another group–for instance the Chicoms did get his support (though he wisely hedged his position).
Stalin was much more sophisticated than Trotsky and another opponents of the socialism in one country model as he realized that he simply couldn’t attack on all fronts at all times. That would overextend the USSR’s resources and provoke a dangerous response from the West. Which is what actually happened after the Berlin Blockade–NATO was formed in 1949.
It’s likely that his thinking here was influenced by the brief Western intervention in the Russian civil war and the Polish-Soviet War.
It was a long time ago. The right however was always acutely aware of how extremely dangerous communists are.
I understand it the communists were popular in places without a Red Army presence (this included Czechoslovakia), but it was not the case in places where they actually managed to introduce the communist system. (Czechoslovakia being the exception.)
In Hungary in 1945 the communists expected to become a big enough party to join a coalition with all other leftist parties. Well, one party, which was rather centrist (the Smallholders’ Party) and was basically the rightmost party allowed to run, won a clear majority of the votes at 57%, while the social democrats and the communists both got 17-17%. The communists backed by the Soviets quickly made it clear that a grand coalition should be formed, where the communists got hold of the ministry of the interior (in control of the police and security services), and then went on to force their way into power.
There is zero chance they could have created a dictatorship (or even become part of the government) in the absence of Soviet troops.
That’s far from impossible. I also don’t understand the Litvinenko case, but it was maybe more believable.
Actually Stalin demanded D-day, and thought it came to late. There is also Yalta agreement.
Oh,and i dislike the guy
the Facebook ads were just too good
Who was responsible for #DraftOurDaughters?
Maybe Putin is doing something useful with my tax rubles after all.
I just searched for it, and it seems it was a professional organized campaign, not some anonymous shitlords. There are several dozens of these, and most seem to be using exactly the same format. Though obviously there are some copycats. Some didn’t even try to imitate the format, like the “Mom, I’m scared. I don’t want to fight in a war.” “Honey, quite being selfish. I want a woman president.”
That’s far from impossible. I also don’t understand the Litvinenko case, but it was maybe more believable.
Regarding Litvinenko, this is probably the best summary/analysis I have seen:
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/01/27/assessing-a-murder-case-against-putin/
Yes, but my understanding was that by 1944 he was less interested in it for obvious reasons. The failure of Operation Citadel prevented German efforts to stabilize and stalemate the Eastern Front, and in any case functionally a second front existed from 1943 as it is (North Africa, Italy, Atlantic Wall, Allied combined bombing offensive).
Failed D-Day makes for an interesting alternate history scenario of course. About one-quarter of the German Army and half its mobile units was allocated to the Westheer.
How many would the Germans be able to transfer to the Eastern Front? Would it be enough to stabilize the front after the collapse of Army Group Center?
And with a stabilized front, what would the impact be of the German armaments miracle in 1945?
Would the USA allocate B-29s to Britain and delay the bombing offensive against Japan?
The war continuing into 1946 would presumably recreate some WWI type problems for Germany and the USSR as both were scraping the bottom of the barrel on manpower by 1944.
This allows for some milporn fanboyism as well such as jet dogfights, Panther vs. Centurion, etc.
Most importantly this magnificent machine would not have been cancelled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-12_Rainbow
I know Russians all maintain that the Red Army would’ve rolled right to the Channel, but I’m not convinced.
The chair force, incidentally, maintains they would’ve defeated Germany if D-Day failed anyway. Plausible to judge by the disastrous consequences of the attacks on Germany’s oil supplies.
Spencer parrots poppycock like ‘Russia is the last white nation acting in the interest of its whites’ (it really acts in the interests of the Kremlin oligarch/mil-sec machine), so maybe she imposed her frame on him.
(Ex?) Mrs Spencer is the ultimate THICC thot mega ultra Instagram whore. Always strategically dressed though; I suspect to disguise how fat she is. And yet, if you go in her mentions, there’s thirstposters salivating over her ‘curves’. I guess they must like playing squash.
In fairness to Dick plenty of people on the alt-right and alt-lite believe this. Putin actively cultivates this image as well, and he even cited the need to defend ethnic Russians when he seized the Crimea.
Dick is smart enough that he really should know better, but he spends too much time rambling about the FAUSTIAN SPIRIT.
https://www.instagram.com/ninakouprianova/
In fairness to her she takes many more nature photos than attention-whoring selfies.
And yes, she is fat and busted, but credit where credit is due: her tits are fantastic. Definitely a two-bagger but would motorboat. In her shoes I would flaunt them as well–essential to distract from the face.
I’ll close this by noting that I’m not hostile to Spencer, in fact I respect him and value his efforts. Just poking fun.
I do dislike his wife for the same reason I dislike the Faker, Dmitry Orlov, Andrei Martyanov, etc.
The Red Army did export the revolution, as any Polish nationalist will bitterly point out to you
Really? They exported a revolution? It’s interesting that someone thinks that this is possible.
Thanks. I might try to check out the original report. This seems to make a fairly strong case against it, in fact, almost demolishing the theory of Russian government involvement.
Do you perchance have anything regarding the apartment bombings? Unfortunately what is available on Wikipedia and elsewhere makes a moderately strong case for FSB involvement. This is probably the worst thing that I have read of Putin, where I have to assign a significant probability of being true.
Do you perchance have anything regarding the apartment bombings?
Not really, however I have never found convincing the argument that Putin was behind it, I think this is Western agitprop inspired by the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya , whose membership (recognise anybody?) can be checked out at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Committee_for_Peace_in_Chechnya#ACPC_members
In fact, one of the main sources for the “Putin did it” theory was the book Litvinenko co-authored Blowing Up Russia (you can buy a used copy on Amazon.co.uk for £0.27p + postage) and the subsequent documentary film based on the book for which he worked as a consultant, which you can watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sx2YmSXDy8
I can’t provide anything very detailed on the other side, but here is a brief summary by the same author (Alexander Mercouris) who wrote the detailed analysis of the Litvinenko case:
Who is blaming “the evil Russkies”?
An evil Georgian, Stalin, assisted by evil Jews, such as Kaganovich, at the head of an evil multicultural empire, the Soviet Union, exported the evil Bolshevik revolution to innocent Poland.
Competitive elections were never held in East Germany, Yugoslavia, or Albania
Elections held in Poland, Roumania, and Bulgaria were disfigured by massive vote fraud.
The Communists won 19% of the vote in Hungary. The Red Army presence in Hungary allowed them to extort from the Smallholders Party key ministries (Interior in particular) which they used to wage war on non-Communist forces in Hungary (and that included infiltrating and suborning influential Smallholders).
The Communists proceeded similarly in Czechoslovakia, but aided by a much larger popular base.
What’s not noted is that the Communists managed to suborn the Socialist parties in Eastern Europe. The Polish and East German parties were Communist satellites. There were two Socialist parties in Czechoslovakia. One co-operated in modest measure but also resisted. The other was split down the middle between a faction adopting that position and another acting as agents of the Communists with the latter making use of strong-arm methods to maintain control of the party apparatus. It was in Roumania where the majority faction was resistant. The ‘salami’ tactics employed in Hungary and Czechoslovakia were dependent on the help of the local Socialist factions.
I don’t think Spencer’s enough of an ideologue deep down to mind the Stalinophilia that much: he just seems to worship brute force and power for its own sake, in a weird kind of sadomasochistic way. His real beef with liberalism seems to be mainly that it’s passive aggressive and too boring to romanticize. I suspect that if in an alternate timeline poz/zog/whatever produced more charismatic leaders and imposed itself upon recalcitrant populations around the globe without sugarcoating it with a lot of talk about “freedom” and “equality” first, he’d probably find it pretty rad too.
Yeah, and because there have never been any terrorist attacks in Russia, especially back in the late 90s and early 2000s. The Dark Lord is obviously behind all of them. It was really necessary to fabricate a casus belli. Makes as much sense as killing all those random 5 Putler “critics” in a country of 150 million (and basically all of them before 2008-10), while the rest live in peace.
There was this one Slovakian journalist who was recently killed. Where’s the Western media? Well, it seems that they are actually following it somewhat closely, but huge double standards are of course clear. People are protesting, the government is “on defensive”. What is going on lol?
And in turn the help of the social democrats (at least in Hungary) was dependent on the security services subverting the party and pressuring it to cooperate with the communists. Interesting to note that the “salami tactics” were employed against the social democrats as well, their right wing was sliced down and then the party was forced to merge with the communists. I think the vote itself on the merger was technically invalid. I think it was only accepted by acclamation at the party congress, but it was far from obvious that the majority really did support it. And by that time the right wing of the party was already kicked out, some even arrested.
German_Reader: I’m not sure if you heard anything about Trump’s new tariffs, but American liberals are losing their minds (what else is new) over it. On one of my two left wing boards, ResetEra (the other is DailyKos), one American liberal made the following post:
Thought you’d appreciate that.
Again I would like to remind everyone that this stuff is not parody. I know that can be hard to believe at times.
lol, those people don’t seem to realize how unpopular the EU has become in large parts of the continent…the Southern Euros hate it because of austerity, the Easterners because of the refugee issue and general alienation from “European values”, and the Northern Euros feel exploited by everyone else…
Haven’t read much about Trump’s planned tariffs so far tbh…I guess it will be bad for the German economy, but I don’t care.
I’m fascinated by the idea of Trump meeting Kim Jong Un though. I wonder if Dennis Rodman will come along.
“Luxury gay space communism” LOL!
https://youtu.be/UWQMHfXUUj0
You have a way with words, AK.
One issue I can find is that he says polonium is cheap. But I think he mixes up polonium 209 with polonium 210. At least I found some sources that polonium 209 (by far the most stable and least toxic isotope of it) costs $3200 per microcurie. About polonium 210 I could only find post-Litvinenko articles claiming that it’s extremely expensive, but I actually can imagine the less stable isotope to be way more expensive. (Halflife is several orders of magnitude shorter, so practically impossible to store.) Apparently Litvinenko was poisoned by some 50 microcurie. Even if the microcurie costs for 210 are the same as for 209, it must have cost $150,000 instead of a few thousand.
I was too quick. It’s really easy to obtain anywhere and cheap.
I was too quick.
Yes, it would appear. Check out your link!
On a more serious matter, what will be the next step in the Skribal “affair”, now that the Brits have already made it an affair of state?
Will they find the “real” culprit? I think not.
Will they admit that it is highly unlikely the Russians did it? I think not.
Will they blame the Russians? I think so.
Having already warned Russia (and the world) that they cannot let such a dastardly deed go unpunished, what action will they take?
Will they adopt the “nuclear” option and try to torpedo the World Cup? There are 10 NATO countries participating, plus “allies”, Sweden, Japan, Australia, Korea and Saudi Arabia that they (or more likely their big brother) could perhaps “persuade” to follow suit, as well as other countries that by hook or crook could also be induced to go along (Egypt, Colombia, Panama, etc.).
The issue was the Ryazan incident. Do you have an explanation for that? If you could provide a satisfactory explanation for that, then we could easily render it a conspiracy theory.
Wikipedia writes in detail about it.
Now I understand that it’s far from certain that the official explanation (that of an exercise – though what exactly were they trying to accomplish with the supposed “exercise?”) was wrong, for example the substance apparently failed to detonate when local authorities tried to detonate it. But some explanation is definitely needed.
Paging Ron Unz: my links regularly get changed after sending. Why is that?
I use an iPhone 7, always the latest iOS.
Link again:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/europe/03iht-web.1203spyWIR2.3754686.html?referer=https://www.google.ch/
I normally delete the referer etc. part, but this time I didn’t. I have tried it just now. (Annoying, because NYT only allows ten pageviews per month, and I think each time I try a link I use up some of the quota. It can be circumvented but it’s complicated. Fortunately I usually don’t read more than a couple of NYT articles per month, but occasionally I do.) Could be a Safari or iOS issue.
Another issue was the explosion announced by a Russian MP three days early. Did it happen? Can someone speaking Russian confirm this?
Then a journalist announced months in advance that the Kremlin was to execute false flag terror attacks.
Then an MP received a similar warning a day before the bombings started.
The latter two might be explained by a demonic Chechen plan to sow confusion, so to give advance warnings to certain liberal etc. journalists and politicians about impending false flag attacks. (They had to be people already prone to believe the worst of the Kremlin or especially the FSB.) When the warnings were ignored as sheer lunacy (as they would be), they would proceed to execute the long prepared terror campaign.
The incident with the house speaker is still difficult to explain, and to be honest, so is the Ryazan incident. You need to explain these two.
There was at least one similar large scale false flag attack in Western Europe, the Bologna massacre in 1980, similarly an explosion, killing almost a hundred.
Will they adopt the “nuclear” option and try to torpedo the World Cup? There are 10 NATO countries participating, plus “allies”, Sweden, Japan, Australia, Korea and Saudi Arabia that they (or more likely their big brother) could perhaps “persuade” to follow suit, as well as other countries that by hook or crook could also be induced to go along (Egypt, Colombia, Panama, etc.).
From Today’s Daily Mail:
I have been predicting for months that an “incident” would occur that would be used for a coordinated attack on the World Cup (especially after the USA was eliminated!)
Edward Jay Epstein, the distinguished author, has written several articles on the Litvinenko case. He concluded that Litvinenko had likely died as a result of his involvement in a Polonium-210 smuggling ring.
https://www.nysun.com/foreign/specter-that-haunts-the-death-of-litvinenko/73212/
I agree.
Anatoly: I apologize if you’ve mentioned this before, but do Russian Muslims mostly support Putin? What is the rate of intermarriage between Russian Muslims and Russian Christians?
I don’t know if the victory over Nazi Germany should count, since Nazi Germany probably wouldn’t even have existed without the USSR.
However, besides Gagarin, the USSR deserves credit for its successful 25-year effort (1945- c. 1970) to achieve nuclear parity with the USA. Without the USSR, Russia today might not even be a nuclear power, let alone a nuclear superpower.
@Anatoly Karlin
Your post is gross oversimplification and a strawman you know it.
People like Glossy, Martyanov, Starikov or myself do not consider ‘Stalin awesome’, only that if Lenin was succeeded by a true-believer revolutionary like Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev or yourself, the entire country would have collapsed in a 1990’s-style disaster in the 1940’s, with obvious consequences. With the possible exception of Shamir, no commentators are saying that the 1917 Bolshevik revolution was a positive thing. Considering that you traveled back to Russia (a culture that you despise despite your best efforts to conceal it) to agitate against its government at one of the most crucial and dangerous times in her history has perhaps made some people suspicious.
However, considering the USSR’s collapse as ‘inevitable’ and a good thing is retarded. Not a single person in the country benefited except for a collection of speculating scum who sold the country off for a pittance. If the Russian SSR had kept direct control over central-asia, the mass-immigration to Moskow and other major cities would never had happened. Which is a direct result of Free-Market Capitalism by the way. The collapse of state control of the economy is what led to a bunch of gangster-oligarch clans importing cheap labour from abroad in the first place.
There are no neoliberal free-market ethnostates. Before you say it, Japan’s economy is heavily state-regulated, the same people arguing for more immigration there are the same people arguing for cutting regulations.
But that isn’t even the issue such people started having with you. It is your obvious contempt for Russian culture, your completely Western worldview and the disdain you hold for ordinary people in general, not just Russians. Whether ‘tropical hyperborea’ is a joke or not, it is in extremely poor taste. Do you not see the entire 3rd-world converging on Russia in such a situation?
That’s getting very speculative. If no USSR, no Nazi Germany, probably no World War II. The US would likely have been much less desperate to have nukes, in that case. There probably would not have been a cold war.
But shouldn’t it be easier to block immigration across state borders than internal migration within a state? If Central Asians were still within a single state with Russia, wouldn’t there possibly be even more migration of them to Russian areas (unless one drastically restricts freedom of movement even for citizens which may have been possible in Soviet times, but would presumably be rather more difficult today)?
But with no Russian World War II victory there’s no Gagarin since Germany was the furthest along in rocketry and it would have almost certainly been the first country to send a man to space if it had not been wrecked by the war. Germany was the first country to reach space and the V-2 program was a scientific triumph even though its military value was questionable.
“Reaching parity” can’t count as an achievement compared to “first X” achievements that demonstrate the feasibility of some idea since once an idea has been proven by one actor the others can invest in it free of any risk and with less human resources since they get parts of the design for free (potentially a lot of it with spy work). Besides, a big part of the cost of nuclear arsenals is maintaining them and their delivery systems and the USSR was not able to maintain parity with the US in the long term.
Americans leaders should get credit for investing in the right superweapon long before its feasibility was demonstrated, even if it in the end came late in the war. This is pretty rare given that politicians tend to not be able to tell the difference between a scientist and a con artist and both Nazi and Soviet leaders sunk lots of resources into charlatans and sycophants who had ideologically favorable ideas that went nowhere.
But without the USSR reaching parity with the US, there would not be a nuclear superpower Russia now. Probably Russia would have become a nuclear power, but it would be something like France or China, thousands of warheads, merely at most a few hundreds.
For a second rate nuclear power, it’s difficult to become a first rate one, because it would alarm others. Like China could easily reach parity with the US or Russia, but the fast growing Chinese nuclear forces would alarm the US and others and create extraordinary tensions. So for the moment China has to make do with smaller nuclear forces.
There might well have still been a Pacific War (depending on whether 1930’s China was still as vulnerable to Japanese expansionism as it was in reality).
Regardless, even without a Cold War, the USA would likely still have developed nuclear weapons, and sought nuclear superiority over everyone else.
True, but we don’t know that Germany would still have been the world’s rocketry leader circa 1960, in a world where Russia kept industrializing and scientifically developing at its pre-1917 pace for another 40 years.
I don’t know what you mean by that. Both the USSR and Russia have maintained rough parity with the USA in number of strategic warheads since the early 1970s, even during the Yeltsin years when Russia’s total military budget (nominal) had collapsed to the size of Israel’s.
Not necessarily, as those states would not have undergone the economic and social collapse that they did. Civil War, ethnic cleansing, mass Russian-exodus, tinpot dictators, opium epidemics, implosion of industry, Islamic Insurgency, separatist conflicts etc.
Contrary to what popular belief, most 3rd-worlders would much prefer to stay home, at least if their countries were slightly better shitholes than they are. I am sure that if Britain still administered its African and Indian Empires, Londonistan would never have happened. That is a small price to pay for the expenses of colonialism.
The USSR was the last major country to believe in the white-man’s burden and in preserving high-culture. Despite its gross economic efficiency and other internal problems, it could have reformed without it being dismantled wholesale.
https://fbreporter.org/2015/07/07/genocide-the-british-dont-want-you-to-know-about-they-systematically-starved-to-death-over-60-millions-of-eastern-indians/
http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/threads/british-support-for-pakistan-partition-of-india.74768/
No further comment.
Just delete your cookies, and you can read another free 10 articles of New York Times. Rinse and repeat.
All nationalities in Russia, generally support Putin. He has around 85% approval rating nationwide.
I would rather not ask about this conspiracy theory, which seems another attempt (like so many conspiracy theories) to shift away blame from Islamic terrorism.
But I had one slightly creepy question I guess I would need to ask an expert, is how difficult is this kind of apartment attack to do.?
Because the Palestinians have not done this, with 70 years of attacks, and expert bombing making, and they used to have open, unblocked access in Israel and a lot of them are working as builders and maintenance for apartments there. Also the whole of Israel is built in the same style of apartment blocks. Almost every site you can visit in Israel has been bombed at one time.
But their worst ever attack they managed in history in Israel, only killed around 30 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terrorist_attacks_attributed_to_Palestinian_militant_groups
Yet we allow these terrorists could kill 300 people in under two weeks. With the official version, it is a shocking incompetence to allow this (or a shocking competence of the terrorists).
This argument makes zero sense. Chechen jihadists have carried out a series of terrorist attacks (Budennovsk, Beslan, Durovka) which has no parallel in the history of Israel. Similarly, there are no analogues in Israel history of terrorist acts in new York, Paris, Madrid, etc.
Ok something weird.
The transcript of the original meeting on 13th Septemeber where Seleznyov read the note that there was apartment bombing in Volgodonsk does not exist (deleted from the internet?).
http://transcript.duma.gov.ru/search/?&sessid=32&doctype=3&dt_start=13.09.1999&dt_end=17.09.1999&phrase1=
Four days later in the Duma, day after the bombing in Volgodonsk , Zhirinovsky is wondering to Seleznyov – how did you tell us about this bombing in Volgodonsk, three days before it happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJmVDYecovY
The man (Achemez Gochiyayev) who on forged documents rented a cellar in which there was an explosion in Moscow in the photo
http://i6.pixs.ru/storage/4/4/4/4jpg_8938922_29609444.jpg
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/russiancommun/66141190/868828/868828_800.jpg
“31 August 2004 the terrorist attack at metro Rizhskaya blew himself up Karachai Nicholas Kipkeev a relative and bodyguard of Achemez Gochiyayev. February 6, 2004 at Avtozavodskaya blew himself Anzor Izhaev- pupil of Achemez Gochiyayev and student of “Muslim society number 3” (the head of the society was Achemez ). On 30 may 2004, a relative of Achemez , Hakim Abayev, was killed in combat during a special operation in the Ingush village of Barsuki.”etc.
Among the participants of this discussion there are people who may believe that Achemez Gochiyayev, an innocent victim maligned by the FSB? Вut Supporters of the version ” Putin was behind the bombings”, think that “Gochiyayev was an ordinary “russified Karachai” who lived in Moscow, and the information that he was an adherent of the Wahhabis came solely from a fabricated FSB investigation” (it’s from English Wikipedia – you can estimate how rotten Wikipedia is))
You did not answer the more important part, what are the miscegenation rates (I am assuming that “Russian” Muslim implies Central Asian).
That affects my other cookies as well.
As I wrote, it’s easy to circumvent, but it’s a bit of an inconvenience.
Sure – but I want to ask the question of how hard this is done.
Is shocking incompetence to allow this (or a shocking competence of the terrorists).
In Tatarstan, Putin won 82% of the vote in the 2012 elections (overall results for Russia are 63 %). In Chechnya, Dagestan, etc. Putin receives about 98% of the votes, but these republics are a place where there is no democracy (and there are objective reasons why democracy in these republics in the near future can not exist)
Mixed marriage statistics (by nationality of wives)
Russian— 94.4% married Russian, 1,5% Ukrainian, 1.1% of Tatar
Tatars — 69.1%, married Tatar, 21.9% Russians, 5.3% Bashkir
Circassians — 79,8% Circassian, 7,0% Russian,
Chechens — 97,0% married Chechen women, 1.9% Russian
But only half of the Tatars who consider themselves Muslims. About 4% of Tatars are real Muslims.
Caucasian Muslim peoples are extremely endogamous-there are practically no mixed marriages with neighboring Muslim peoples.
I don’t know about him, so I’m not really sure. However, did he really call the police about the two remaining apartments and thus preventing two explosions? If so, it’s difficult to square with his supposedly being a terrorist. It’s also possible that he was framed by the Chechens – a Talha-like peaceful Muslim unwittingly helping his Muslim brothers commit terrorism. I’m not even sure how we can know if his supposed later statements about being framed by an FSB officer truly emanated from him.
So, it’s all a lot of big unknowns. I’d be happy if Russian speakers weighed in on these issues and explained the points I raised before: the Ryazan incident, the Russian house speaker announcing an explosion three days in advance, and the early warnings received by a journalist and a Russian MP. Then there’s the point about Gochiyayev, who allegedly called police and warned them about the two remaining bombs in Moscow.
I think it could be a bit of both (Chechens are more competent than Palestinians, while Russian security services in the 1990s were less competent than the Israelis), but the biggest difficulty might be the availability of explosives. It might have been easy to get hold of such explosives in Chechnya in the wake of the breakup of the USSR, but no longer.
It must be noted that in 1993 a small bunch of Muslims almost blew up the WTC. So it’s not entirely unheard of elsewhere.
So I don’t think the apartment bombings were necessarily an FSB plot, but I don’t think it’s so easy to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory. Especially in light of at least one similar false flag bombing in Europe (Italy, Bologna, 1980).
This version told by Gochiyayev himself 2 years after the terrorist attacks. This version has no evidence (only the words of Gochiyayev ).
The bombings of two buildings was averted, because the realtor who rented the basements, identified Gochiyayev by Facial composite, and not because of the Gochiyayev call.
Okay, so this thing is gone.
The explosion announced three days in advance? Or the Ryazan incident? These are the two big remaining issues. I can already explain away the other two issues, but these two are big things.
The biggest issue is the explosion announced in the Duma three days in advance.
23 October 1999 the newspaper “Evening Volgodonsk” wrote:
The local press leaked from the Central media, as if the state Duma four days before the attack knew about the fact of the explosion in Volgodonsk. And the speaker Gennady Seleznev read the note on this subject. As it turned out, all the way, except for one thing — the explosion. The speech in the note went about that ill-fated Sunday explosion that sounded in our city during criminal showdowns, really, four days before act of terrorism. So dispel myths ” I will answer in detail in the evening (now I’m going to look at the flowering of azaleas)
As I wrote, it’s easy to circumvent, but it’s a bit of an inconvenience.
Do you have incognito window on your fancy phone? On my very basic laptop I simply shift to this and essentially get unlimited articles, and then shift back. Not very inconvenient, really.
I didn’t think of it. I rarely use the incognito mode. Okay.
now I’m going to look at the flowering of azaleas
Outside? I thought you lived near St. Petersburg?
Keep in mind that Stalin changed over time,
and he wasnt exactly a world revolution type. He removed almost all those types around the Purges (where top military, Poles in Russia, and others were killed). Although eventually the Doctors Plot got him. He also rejected the Baruch Plan (I think).
He became sort of a quasi national socialist right before WW2 (not Nazism btw).
He certainly was a mass criminal (and in a way saved his country). Though I doubt he wanted to reach Portugal or UK.
They tried to. Linking Russia and Germany commies. I guess it failed.
He also rejected the Baruch Plan (I think).
The Morgenthau Plan? If so, this is not certain by any means.
According to the author the plan was largely formulated by Morgenthau’s aide Harry Dexter White, who many (including obviously the author) believe was a Soviet agent.
A slightly creepy issue is that the notes/transcripts from that day are not available (have been deleted) on the Duma website, when other days are all there. Duma website skips that day, even though we know meetings occurred as per Zhirik.
Another question, in relation to melanf (who is quoting the explanation on the Russian Wikipedia article for this incident), below, is that Seleznyov was surely trying to announce the 13th September Moscow apartment bombing in the Duma, on 13th September. I don’t see that Chairman of the Duma does not make formal announcement to the whole audience, for some small criminal-related bomb, in far away city, that is not reported in national/local press.
Other than this – I cannot say I know anything about the subject – less than the other commentators here.
Sure, but it would have come decades later. With no war in Europe Japan would have been neutralized earlier and easier; there would have been less desperation.
A world without Nazism and Bolshevism would have been so different it is difficult to speculate how things would have played out. German-Russian alliance with Germany developing the world’s first nukes? Or Russia and West alliance keeping Germany in check?
Sure. Good thing I never said anything of the sort, then.
azaleas in St. Petersburg today (in greenhouse of botanical garden)
http://i6.pixs.ru/storage/6/1/4/IMG7697jpg_9592926_29614614.jpg
http://i6.pixs.ru/storage/5/6/8/IMG7713jpg_7432670_29614568.jpg
“Outside” in St. Petersburg right now
http://i6.pixs.ru/storage/5/9/6/IMG7550jpg_8155193_29614596.jpg
Yes I wonder why are Islamic terrorists not repeating this method – which is so successful and kills hundreds, and can be repeated very rapidly over and over again, within 12 days. Nowadays, they try to attack high-profile targets, which makes sense. But amount of deaths are far higher with this method.
Again – either answer, that it is hard, or that it is easy – is not re-assuring.
But it’s question I would need to ask an expert. And cannot find explanation of online.
For example, when they find an easy method, such as ‘running people over with a machine attacks’, they will repeat it, to the extent that now anti-vehicle bollards are built all over the place https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3759672/france-anti-terror-barriers-nice-truck-attack-london/.
I guess the explanation makes sense if there was some confusion. There’s a report of a small explosion in Volgodonsk, and someone thinks that was the big one. But it’s nevertheless creepy.
In any event, it’s incredible incompetence on the part of the FSB either way. If it was a false flag, then obviously the Volgodonsk attack should have been canceled after the screwed up announcement. It’s also incredible that they’d give a prepared announcement instead of making a new announcement on that day by people who are not in on it.
On the other hand it’s remarkable (if true) that there really was an explosion on the day before. I have heard horror stories about public safety in 1990s Russia, but I guess explosions weren’t taking place in most cities on most days (or indeed, on most weeks).
It is just perfectly clear-on September 12 in Volgodonsk there was an explosion at an entrance of a house (as a result of actions of ordinary gangsters). In the context of the hysteria caused by previous terrorist acts, this explosion is also probably at first perceived as a terrorist attack. Because of this, Seleznyov mentioned about this explosion. Alternative (conspiracy) explanation absolutely ridiculous – if the FSB organized the explosions, why would the FSB have informed in advance about the bombings oppositionist-Communist Seleznev?
azaleas in St. Petersburg today (in greenhouse of botanical garden
Obrigado.
Okay, that makes sense.
Those are two different plans.
Morgenthau = plan for Germany to be split and stop all its arms production (or thereabouts)
Baruch plan = plan for “world government” by Baruch and Lilenthal. It relates to convergence.
Stalin reject it because of course it had too much Jewish influence, and it was pro American.
Perhaps one of the reasons the Cold War started.
Yes I agree that is ridiculous conspiracy.
But the question are still there which makes me want explanations.
Why is the transcript of this day at the state duma deleted or deleted?
And yes it is massive co-incidence that there would be explosion on those days. The Chairman of the Duma announces the explosion in the 13th day in such unimportant place that never is in national news before or since, and then this is the same place there is the huge explosion on the 16th. It seems more likely the explosion on 13th day is somehow connected (to remove the conspiracy theory version) to the explosion on the 16th.
The superstitious in me would say some kind of foreshadowing or omen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omen
For two explosions to be announced by chairman of the duma, in unimportant place which is never in national news before or since, within 4 days, itself is a little creepy.
That said strange co-incidences do occur in life, and to some extent are statistically inevitable. Often times co-incidence does not necessarily mean anything other than that – co-incidence, which is product of the large number of events in life.
The original explosion is indeed reported in news agencies.
http://www.polit.ru/news/1999/09/13/536535/
Wouldn’t the acknowledgement that it was the time honored practice of a great power or empire installing a puppet ruling elite in a buffer state pretty much cover it?
I don’t think this data is available, and of course will vary by region. In some regions it will be extremely high (where populations are mix of nationalities), and other regions – (with either almost all Russians or almost all Muslim nationalities) – much lower.
I thought I was getting on a bit. Hungary?
Or to put it another way, what is the correct translation for Grozny?
Poland and the Baltics were Russian gains in 1939.
Not just Czechoslovakia. Most of Eastern Europe. Bulgaria might not have been communist otherwise. In France nobody noticed the communist coup but in Italy and Austria it was serious stuff. Greece went into civil war.
I vote for Chechen terrorists. In 2004 I was in the Metro train behind the bombed train going into Pavletsky station. The police had been pulling young men of Caucasian appearance aside for two days beforehand. There was a serious organization behind it to have been infiltrated.
It’s a bit like Russia where everyone is dissatisfied with Putin over any one policy but overall they will back the President and mostly vote for Putin (not the same thing). EU stronk. EU does into space.
On my view the decisive argument – Everything is known about the terrorist act in Volgodonsk.
Jihadists Кrymshamhalov and Dekkushev 13 Sep bought from the local Abbasali Iskenderov (Muslim – Azerbaijan) his GAS truck, saying the truck they need to trade in the market of potatoes. The jihadists then filled the back of the truck with explosive bags (they put potato bags on top). On the night of the 16th Jihadists asked Iskenderov to sit in the truck all night (to protect potato – for a good fee). Iskenderov was sitting in the truck until 5 am, then went home to warm up. At 5.57, the truck exploded. Iskenderov (which according to the plan of the jihadists must die) survived, and immediately testified to the FSB.
Krymshamkhalov and Dekkushev fled to Georgia, but in 2002 they were extradited to Russia. At trial, they told all the details about the terrorist act in Volgodonsk. They explained how they produced the explosives as transported the explosives to Volgodonsk, as the chosen object of attack, etc. etc. Although the process was closed, this testimony is “leaked” in the Internet. These readings are easy to verify. As proponents of a version of “the FSB blows up Russia” carefully ignore these evidences, conspiracy theories can be confidently considered as nonsense in this case (and accordingly in case of explosions in Moscow).
I have done work on Major Events in Russia. Finding TV companies hotels, interpreters etc. For three years, my efforts to find interest in preparing for the FIFA world cup have met with zero uptake. Maybe my firm is too small for the producers. Rugby 7’s being a smaller event for example but I do wonder. There has been a grim lack of enthusiasm to invest money to prepare for it for years. The moderate right wing Tories do not like Russia (The far right do).
Red mercury next. I have 5 grammes in a secret location in the Libyan Desert. Do you want some? 🙂
The elder George Bush thought that losing the Central Asia unemployment line would be one of two things that would strengthen Russia. The other was losing the need to subsidize Ukrainian agriculture. There have of course been some devaluations since then.
Not forgetting the British Empire which folded its existing atom bomb programme into the new US one for the sake of accelerating the latter.
There was no systematic starvation. It is a Jana Sangh/BJP independence struggle myth. The famines took place. The 1770 famine and perhaps 1943 might have been worse than they would have been but in between famine administration was greatly improved if only because railways could move food around. There was famine in India before the EIC arrived. There was famine in India after the British Raj left. There was famine in the Princely States while the British were in India.
As for Ryazan, I think it really was a stupid experiment of the FSB to check readiness to prevent terrorist acts.
Here’s an example of the work of the FSB – 9 Dec 2016 armed (and hung with explosives) jihadists took as hostage the students of medical College in Tikhvin. Here is a picture
http://www.sobaka.ru/images/image/00/79/36/61/_normal.jpg
Then (afterward!) to the students explained that it’s not real jihadists but exercises of the FSB for the release of the hostages. Appreciate the “humor”.
Years, not decades. Even with no Manhattan Project, somebody (presumably the US, Germany, or Russia) would surely have tested a bomb by c. 1960 at the latest. A non-Nazi Germany might well have had a better chance of getting the bomb first than Nazi Germany did, since it would have benefited from the contribution of its Jewish physicists. But regardless of who was first, the USA had such a large advantage in resources, that once it got the bomb, it would be extremely difficult for any competitor to prevent it from becoming the dominant nuclear power. It took the USSR a quarter-century of effort to do so with a command economy. In a world without the USSR, the USA would probably have enjoyed sole nuclear superpower status at least into the early 21st century- with perhaps 1000 + strategic warheads while nobody else had more than a few hundred- and if it had any serious nuclear rival today it would be (Guomindang-ruled?) China, not Russia.
As noted elsewhere in this comment thread, I was there in the metro train behind the bomb going into Pavletsky station. The police had been stopping dark haired bearded young men for two days before hand.
There was also a little reported bomb on the train from Saratov to Astrakhan via Volgograd about the same time, maybe 2005. I was on that train from Moscow to Saratov. Does somebody up there like me or hate me? The IRA came close in Warrington too. A few years ago there was a bomb at Volgograd station. I have wondered if it was the same team. Last Summer there were regular bomb threats in Saratov that resulted in the centre of the city grinding to a halt.
My direct personal observation suggests that there is more prejudice concerning marriage against Caucasians than Central Asians but plenty against both but that may be because of my location. I have walked into market traders’ cafes where everyone said a Salaam on entry. Best lamb broth outside Wales though. I think marrying outside the community often relates to a history of violent drunkeness (so get away from Russians) or violence (get away from Muslims) in the family.
That’s pretty sick, have to say, seen from the outside it fits the stereotype of the Russian state not really caring about its citizens. Were there protests about this?
Since this is the horseshoe theory post, let me add this:
And that’s awesome!
Erm, why?
The Civil War/Red Terror knocked Russia back a decade economically – a bit more in terms of high academia (Russian Empire had highest number of university students in Europe in 1913, and one of the most meritocratic admissions systems; the 1920s USSR did away with entrance exams).
Doubtful that Stalin’s sharashkas and purges did anything to accelerate scientific progress either. The converse is likelier.
???
The Soviet arsenal took longer to build up, since its industrial base c.1950 was far smaller and less complex, but it eventually exceeded the American one (in megatonnage, if not – until the 1980s or so – in precision), and Russia has maintained parity with the Americans even after the USSR.
Maintaining nuclear arsenals are cheap relative to modern conventional forces, which is in fact why post-Soviet Russia has been able to do it.
Yes, they do.
More so than ethnic Russians, as a matter of fact. Although official figures are generally useless (electoral fraud ranged from massive to total in non-Russian Muslim areas), one blogger, Kireev, calculated the numbers for the 2012 elections for the few Dagestani districts where officials did not falsify.
Putin – ~65% (vs. 57-59% non-falsified score in Russia as a whole), commie Zyuganov – ~30%, liberals got considerably less than the Russia average, Zhirinovsky got about 1%.
But turnout was very low (~40%), suggesting either that a significant part of the population doesn’t care to be involved in Russian civic processes, or that they realize their votes are pointless due to the total fraud.
Completely agree.
The German, American and Jewish elites. Tried to destroy your country.
Even today Khodovorsky says that Putin isnot the future and “we will be the future”
By we he means Jews.
He wants another repeat of that civil war.
Around 1913, the Russians had the first or second largest economy.
Lots of grain supplies. They were improving in many sectors.
Then the homosexuals from the West came.
Between 1917-1925, 30-50 percent of grain supplies disapppeared,
millions of people were killed.
The economy dropped to significantly.
Lenin claimed that Russians were stupid, and that only Jews and Letts could make Russia strong.
Lenin and Trotsky and their ilk mass murdered thousands of churches,
killed many Orthodox..
The USSR only returned to levels of 1913 by 1925-1933.
(keep in mind im going from memory, so my figures may be off).
Then after USSR fell, the Jews (Adelson, and others) destroyed the economy more.
1 trillion dollars literally disappeared from USSR territory. (half off it from Russia).
Couple corrections:
Russia had the 2nd highest economy in 1913 in Europe
3rd highest in the world.
After the revolution Russia dropped to 4th in Europe and somewhere between 6-15 in world.
Only by 1928 they return to numbers of 1913.
[quote]Lenin and Trotsky and their ilk mass murdered thousands of churches,
killed many Orthodox.[/quote]
they mass murdered millions of Russians (and some others).
destroyed thousands of churches and killed thousands of priests.
I don’t disagree that a non-Soviet Russia would have been more economically and scientifically advanced.
But building a strategic nuclear arsenal on par with the USA, probably means getting into a very expensive arms race with the USA. And it’s not clear that a non-Soviet Russia would have had both the motive and will to do so, as opposed to building a minimal deterrent of a few hundred warheads, as the UK, France, and China have all done in reality.
Since it was far from inevitable that Russia would become a nuclear superpower, I think it’s fair to point to that as a major achievement that the USSR deserves credit for. And likewise for the space program.
In the history of Tikhvin’s medical College, as far as I know, students should have been warned, but because of a bureaucratic error, this has not been done. Naturally there was a scandal in the local press (and probably the local FSB officers had a lot of trouble).
But if in General, since 1999, the FSB has radically improved its work. In recent years, there have been a number of attempts to carry out terrorist acts with sticks and knives. This shows how bad the situation for jihadists. In the North Caucasus there is a constant hunt for jihadists (to the horror of human rights defenders, but the full satisfaction of the rest of the population). Therefore, in General, the population fully endorses the actions of the FSB. In the case of the extermination of jihadists Russian state really caring about its citizens
I agree with Jono815 here, absent a communist USSR, probably there’d have been no Cold War, therefore no arms race, and so no nuclear parity with the US. Instead a few hundred warheads.
They forced farmers to sell their grain reserves which increased severity.
They would regularly send missionaries into famine hit areas.
& there’s plethora of material on British conduct especially post 1857
It’s a wonder why Charles dickens is still taught in school despite declaring he wanted to murder every member of the Hindu race।।
Never trust the word of white men (Pagans are Euro not ‘white)
Nothing more to say.
The barbarian view is that white people/christianity are God’s gift to earth & they bring happiness wherever they go.
Reality is very different; your paradigm of Muh British Empire was so nice/progressive is why you have mass immigration because you believe the only reason you’re not dumping a chamber pot out a window & burning women at the stake is (((liberalism)))
Long ago concluded that the white man is a slavish race destined to be conquered/working under others. Very few think independently outside the Jewish liberal/christian paradigm & like most good things, most of them are in Rus/Ukr।।
I’d say that it’s even unlikelier that the isolationist United States (of all countries) would have strived to achieve nuclear primacy in the absence of a Communist threat.
Recall that the US was spending no more than 2% of its GDP on the military before 1941.
I doubt the US would have strived to achieve nuclear primary itself. (See above).
It’s possible that without a Cold War there would have been strong nuclear taboo, and we’d be seeing a lot more use of it for civilian purposes (e.g. carving out canals, blasting things into space).
And yet it strove to achieve naval parity with the British Empire. In fact, it did achieve it.
I think nuclear weapons suit the American psyche well. It’s all hardware no manpower, requires no martial skills, is expensive, but gives literally big bang for the buck. Air power is similarly well suited for them, in that it’s expensive, allows for war to be waged far from your shores, and requires less martial skills or masses of soldiers. It’s also possible to use it without taking a lot of casualties.
So I guess they’d have a strong navy and air force and also strong nuclear forces.
I’m also unconvinced they’d stay isolationist, but a strong military (except the army) is not incompatible with isolationism.
Even if the US didn’t strive to achieve nuclear primacy, it’d still mean that Russia would merely be one of several nuclear powers, and not one of the two nuclear superpowers.
This would mean less power for Russia, though maybe it would be compensated by Russia being richer, somewhat more populous, and probably larger.
Yes, isolationism was an artifact of an era when the USA felt protected by two wide oceans: Even without Pearl Harbor (which might well still have happened in a world without the USSR), that era would have ended anyway by the 1960s, due to the development of nuclear weapons plus long-range delivery systems.
Yes, I agree with that. Most likely many of the Great Powers would have sizable (though not massive) and comparable nuclear arsenals, and the risk of nuclear war breaking out during the 20th century may have even been comparable to that in the Cold War (less ideological antagonism, but many more independent players involved).
Good argument on nukes being a good fit for the American psyche. Minor point: They also aren’t particularly expensive to maintain – much less so than a blue water navy, for instance.
Conspiracy theory doesn’t exactly get off the ground, because Khodorkovsky is not Jewish.
He is what they call in Israel – a non-Jewish son of a Jew. Or ‘non-Jew with Jewish roots’. His father was a Jew and his mother was not Jewish.
To be accepted by Jews, you need a Jewish mother.
If he went to Israel, he would not be able to marry a Jewish woman, and he would be buried in a separate graveyard built for non-Jews. Even in Russia, he would not be able join any synagogue.
If there was a Jewish plot, they would need to have the actual Jews running it (i.e. people who could qualify for synagogue membership).
Mikhail Prokhorov and Roman Abramovich are examples of real Jews, which would be allowed into synagogue membership.
On bright side – increases the readiness of students in case of real attacks.
Actually there’s a specific nationality for it in Hebrew – “זרע ישראל”.
The non-Jews with Jewish roots are classified as a separate nation called ‘Zera Israel”.
I’m also non-Jew with Jewish roots (My maternal grandfather was Jewish through his mother.) So the Jews would say I belong to lost nation of Zera Israel.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXV04sgWsAE2F7w.jpg
LOL
I reject the Jewish ultra religious definition of who is a Jew.
Therefore Soros and Khodorovosky are Jews.
Why should I care if its the mother or father?
a Jew (anyone with significant Jewish ancestry, follower of Judaism, or one who follows Jewish ethnoculture).
How would you get Jewish plot off the ground with those guys who, although they could qualify for Israeli citizenship, are being categorized by Jews as non-Jews, who are not allowed to join any synagogue (either in Russia or Israel), or to be buried in a Jewish cemetery, or to marry a Jewish woman in Israel.
It would not be a loyal set of plotters, if they cannot even attend synagogue, and are a kind of ‘unwanted outcasts’ for the Jews themselves.
The other definition of Jews (from the non-Jews), of course you are right that it is mixed cases.
Khodorkovsky must have some Jewish sentimentality towards of feeling of being Jewish. But he is categorized by the Jews, as non-Jewish. And it would not exactly instill much Jewish feeling in him, when he finds himself being called by Jews – and all Israelis – as a non-Jew and buried in separate the non-Jewish grave site.
For Jews – the maternal grandmother is what they care about.