My attention was brought to the following map of Ukraine’s IQ.
I don’t know the methodology behind it, but it seems to be based on what is not an uncommonly cited average (usually low to mid 90s) coupled with the results of the ZNO, which is the nationwide school-leaving exam in Ukraine.
Russia’s equivalent is the EGE. It doesn’t tend to reveal much in the way of regional details, possibly as a result of political correctness considerations around the low results from DICh (Dagestan/Ingushetia/Chechnya), so the best sources of Russian regional IQ estimates are regional PISA results for the years in which regional details are available and, more recently, the results of military-run online proficiency tests for aspiring contract soldiers. I have a lengthy Russian language article on all this here: https://akarlin.ru/2020/04/russian-noosphere/
But anyhow, back to Ukraine. What I can say is that the above map does correlate with the regional maps of ZNO results I have seen. For instance, there are interactive maps available not just at oblast level but even at raion level at this website (which, however, unfortunately seems to be down right now). Nonetheless, here is not an atypical screenshot (this map shows regional results from the 2013 ZNO on Ukrainian history).
There are detailed raion level data at this website testportal.gov.ua/reg/, so all of this can be confirmed/reconstructed for more recent years as well.
Are these results an artifact of western Ukrainians doing better on Ukrainian history? Not really, looking at performance between subjects, there aren’t major differences in regional performance between an ideologically “neutral” subject like Math, and something like Ukrainian Language and Literature (e.g., Lugansk oblast actually did relatively worse on Math, last on the list, relative to Ukrainian language and Ukrainian history).
Here is the “general” rating of Ukrainian oblasts by ZNO performance for 2017.
| Місце | Область | Середній бал ЗНО | К-ть випускників | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2016 | Δ | Всього | Не здали один або більше тестів |
|||
| 1 | 1 | Lvov | 149.99 | 13239 | 2859 | 21.6% | |
| 2 | 2 | Kiev | 149.69 | 22919 | 3772 | 16.5% | |
| 3 | 3 | Ternopil | 146.54 | 4581 | 1053 | 23% | |
| 4 | 7 | +3 | Sumy | 144.71 | 4918 | 1051 | 21.4% |
| 5 | 4 | -1 | Kharkov | 144.01 | 11802 | 2686 | 22.8% |
| 6 | 6 | Volyn | 143.04 | 6355 | 1638 | 25.8% | |
| 7 | 8 | +1 | Ivano-Frankovsk | 142.98 | 6965 | 2191 | 31.5% |
| 8 | 5 | -3 | Cherkasy | 142.52 | 6067 | 1469 | 24.2% |
| 9 | 9 | Poltava | 142.45 | 6809 | 1644 | 24.1% | |
| 10 | 13 | +3 | Chernigov | 142.2 | 5597 | 1497 | 26.7% |
| 11 | 12 | +1 | Khmelnitsky | 142.05 | 6586 | 1673 | 25.4% |
| 12 | 10 | -2 | Vinnitsa | 141.88 | 7387 | 1924 | 26% |
| 13 | 11 | -2 | Dnepropetrovsk | 141.76 | 14741 | 3783 | 25.7% |
| 14 | 18 | +4 | Zhitomir | 141.3 | 6516 | 1857 | 28.5% |
| 15 | 14 | -1 | Donetsk | 141.08 | 8017 | 2060 | 25.7% |
| 16 | 17 | +1 | Zaporozhye | 140.86 | 7981 | 2116 | 26.5% |
| 17 | 15 | -2 | Rovno | 139.86 | 8155 | 2871 | 35.2% |
| 18 | 19 | +1 | Odessa | 139.41 | 11797 | 3792 | 32.1% |
| 19 | 20 | +1 | Kirovograd | 139.15 | 4668 | 1337 | 28.6% |
| 20 | 16 | -4 | Lugansk | 138.73 | 3068 | 786 | 25.6% |
| 21 | 21 | Nikolaevsk | 138.12 | 5314 | 1755 | 33% | |
| 22 | 22 | Kherson | 137.41 | 5673 | 1837 | 32.4% | |
| 23 | 23 | Chernivitsy | 136.07 | 5306 | 2401 | 45.3% | |
| 24 | 24 | Zakarpatye | 134.08 | 8324 | 4203 | 50.5% | |
All in all, even more than this is a Ukrotriumph, I would describe this more specifically as an APTriumph (in honor of the pro-Habsburg commenter).
After all, Lvov is on the same level as the capital Kiev, while the much more rural Ternopil and Ivano-Frankovsk, the two other major regions to have been within the Austrian-ruled part of Austria-Hungary – and which came to mass literacy a generation earlier than most of the rest of Ukraine – continue to strongly outperform today.
In contrast, Zakarpatye, which was within the more backward Hungarian ruled part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is instead at the very end.
Other than that, to the extent there exists a geographic pattern, it is that northern Ukrainians tend to do better than southern Ukrainians (Sumy of all places, an economically desolate and depopulating region with a significant Russian minority, does as well as the rural Galician oblasts). Northern Ukraine in this respect covers the territories from Volyn and Rovne, which were part of the Russian Empire but spend 25 years under Polish rule after its collapse, all the way to Kharkov, the much more Russified core of “Sloboda Ukraine” that has been part of Russia since as early as 16C. Meanwhile, perhaps rather surprisingly, classical Novorossiya seems to be the worst performing major region (only caveat is that Donetsk and Lugansk are probably both a bit underrated because since 2014, the LDNR hasn’t been participating in the ZNO, and the breakaway republics contain the more urbanized part of their oblast’s population). I don’t have a good explanation for this, the region had light serfdom, and both numeracy (see below) and literacy during the Russian Empire in this region were actually higher than in northern Ukraine and comparable to north-eastern Russia.
Speculatively, perhaps “internal colonization” selected for stupider (poorer, more desperate) peasants. They acquired more wealth, which even translated into higher human capital, during what remained of the Malthusian era, but then fell behind during the industrial era. Within Russia, IQ tends to fall as you go east beyond the Urals, even though Siberia was (mostly) settled by brighter northern Russians.
From PISA tests, Ukrainians on average ~= southern Russians, so probably what this really means is that the Novorossiyans are a bit below them whereas the northern Ukrainians are similar to Belorussians and most central Russians (northern Russians being higher still). Kiev and Lvov, being half an S.D. above the Ukrainian average, might be quite close to Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, and Yaroslavl oblast.
Here is the map of Russian regional IQ for comparison: https://akarlin.ru/2020/04/russian-noosphere/
Since we also have a good picture of Kazakh regional PISA results, all we need is some regional data for Belarus (their exam is the ЦТ but I have been unable to find regional results) and we would be able to construct a pretty good regional IQ map for the bulk of the ex-USSR, mostly using standardized exams as proxies for the regional IQs and norming the differences in the average to the PISA gaps between them.
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If I had to guess the Russian speaking regions experiencing brain drain to Russia. This is after you take into account north/south divide and capital VS provinces.
I don’t think that’s a huge factor. Brain drain from Kharkov and Sumy is indeed huge (not to even mention Lugansk/Donetsk) – a large part of Voronezh’s fast growth during 21C has been on account of UA immigrants. Certainly it’s happening there much more intensely than in, say, Nikolaevsk, or Odessa (whose low result is surprising in particular, given how it was a cultural center for a long time and for parts of 19C, Ukraine’s largest city), but they are lower than Kharkov and esp. Sumy.
Strange that Buryatia is so low on your map, though only 1/3 of population of Buryatia is Buryats, their Mongolian co-ethnics have quite high IQ, and normally Mongols of Mongolia think of Buryats as being more civilized and better educated in comparison with them. Mongolia is, or at least was a little time ago a backwards third world country.
Also Buryats were one of the better educated ethnicities in the former USSR.
What explains every single of these regions is a level they have experienced a brain drain. Lvov seems to hold out but Transcarpathia is a waste land. The more miserable the region the lower the IQ of the natives.
I live in rural CZ, and many of the brainy young people leave for Prague. Naturally, the locals tend to be simpler.
The red part in Siberia is Tyva, just in case. Yes, Buryatia quite low, though not an outlier like DICh and Tyva. Worth bearing in mind 30% is 2010 census figure, would be higher now, would probably be around 50% amongst the age group actually being primarily tested (mostly men in their 20s).
Maybe the good Austrian-Hungarian results have something to do, with these regions being WEIRD?
Considering the poor results in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, Ukraine should be happy, that Russia took a large number of Ukraine’s dumbest citizens. Would be great for Ukraine if Russia continues to annex dumb parts of Ukraine
Maybe the best strategy is to keep an apartment in a metro area for business/employment while keeping your family in a rural house 150km/2 hrs from the city to escape the cutural poz and pollution. Commute to your house on weekends.
Not really, because these regions vote most heavily for the nationalist Svoboda Party and are highly religious. They are certainly western, but western in the Hungarian or southern/eastern Polish way, not in the progressive WEIRD way.
Hungary and Poland are weird too. Being religious and voting for nationalist isn’t a contradiction to being weird. Frankly, I don’t know much about the Graeco-Roman catholic church there. Did they ban cousin marriage too, like the normal Catholic church?
Well, as I said, I don’t know their methodology, but it looks very close to something you’d get by averaging the ZNO results (which Ukraine does publish).
I am not at all surprised by Kiev, Galicia, and Transcarpathia: they are exactly as I expected. But I am surprised by northern Ukraine doing worse than southern Ukraine; I would have expected Volhynia to have been slightly better than Transcarpathia. If Kharkiv City were its own entity I’d suspect that it would be at Kiev and Galician levels.
Sumy is interesting. For some reason it has one of Ukraine’s top universities (#4, highest ranked outside Kiev and Lviv):
https://www.4icu.org/ua/
It was the heartland of the old Hetmanate, the old capital Hlukhiv is in Sumy oblast, the composers Bortniansky and Berezovsky are from here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hlukhiv
Perhaps some human capital remained in this region.
If ZNO is conducted in Galician dialect that would account for Russian-speaking regions underperforming. I know I would perform poorly, if I had to do an exam in mova!
Funny how the comments here can’t accept that Western Ukraineans have far higher IQs than the Russians in Novorossiya. People only like IQ tests when their ethnic groups scores high ( Should be called “Taleb syndrome”)
Can’t accept = one person here. Also, it’s not so much a West-East division (the Galician cluster notably excepted) as it is a North-South one.
The Ukrainian standard language, based on the speech in Poltava, is quite different from the Galician dialect. While Galician is much closer to standard Ukrainian than is Russian, I suspect that the surzhyk spoken by many southern and eastern Ukrainians isn’t a lot more distant from standard Ukrainian than is the Galician dialect.
Your butthurt is kind of funny though.
It goes against the reality of Western Ukrainians having lower incomes and doing menial jobs in Poland. Western Ukraine has a higher share of rural population and greater level of religiocity, which are typically associated with lower levels of IQ. It’s the more backward, less developed region overall.
For all practical purposes, the Galician dialect is dying out, fortunately in favor of standard Ukrainian, especially among the young. At least this is my impression based on conversing with the newbies in the states with whom I’ve been in contact. The grandparents back home may still include some of the local colloquialisms in their speech, but the younger ones speak very good standard Ukrainian.
The tests were given in Ukrainian and not in the native language of the local population. This explain the almost perfect correlation between this map and level of the usage of the Ukrainian language in real life. Absolutely no way there is a whole standard deviation gap between Galicia and Transcarpathia.
I doubt this is true for reasons I mentioned in the post. If that was the case, you’d expect big differences in, say, Math (least language dependent test) and Ukrainian Language and Literature. In reality, there is no such difference, in fact a quick scan suggests that Donetsk/Lugansk actually did about the same or even slightly better on the latter (15,19/24) than on the former (13,24/24).
Doing a math test in foreign language still puts you at a disadvantage. We also have no idea what Ukrotests look like.
You’re giving too much credence to an education system that does an excellent job of training toilet cleaners for Eastern Europe.
The wise interpret the low IQ test results as an indication of a necessary culling.
That says it all. How did it pass your smell test?
School results within multi-cultural countries (like Ukraine) are based on what the official education is encouraging and testing.
I agree that Subcarpathian Rusins can be a bit slow, but they compensate for it.
One more time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZALtzTmPz-E
Better than your own Slovak girls? Really?….
It’s hilarious that some Russian nationalists insist the two languages are the same or nearly alike but now, somehow, the linguistic gulf explains the differences on a math test.
Ukrainian is as easy to learn for Russian speakers as Russian is for Ukrainian speakers. It isn’t like Latvian or Estonian.
Why would you be surprised that a region that achieved full literacy first in Ukraine, that hosts several of the country’s top universities, whose main city is Ukraine’s per capita IT outsourcing leader, and which produces most of Ukraine’s chess champions, be a standard deviation over a pleasant backwater that achieved literacy last and which has no such traditions?
They are about the same, but Rusins tend to be more traditional….Traditions beat that amorphous thing referred to as ‘IQ‘ any day – in a biological way.
If you die out, how smart are you really?
Ukrainians do all sorts of jobs in Poland. My friend’s realtor in Warsaw was a Ukrainian from Lviv. There are even Ukrainian cops there.
Are you suggesting that when Russia’s economy was worse, educated Russians weren’t doing menial jobs in the West?
Poland is more religious and has a higher average IQ than Russia.
Mongols of neighbouring Mongolia have an average IQ of 100-102 depending on a study, even though quality of education has always been there worse than in current RusFed or in USSR with it’s excellent schools and teachers.
https://asiarussia.ru/articles/11846/
https://asiarussia.ru/upload/iblock/b0c/b0cc139694bf802493ddc03f3333c937.png
https://i.redd.it/in8e8xth11y51.jpg
I have not found any statistics about the Buryat IQ, but it cant be logically lower than the IQ of the Mongols of Independent Mongolia, especially when for over hundred years Buryats have had an access to better schools and universities than Mongols of Mongolia have.
This is now a Subcarpathian Rusins fan account.
The best is to live in the countryside and make the best out of it. It has its pluses but also minuses over a city.
And a TFR of 2.9. The only country with >100 IQ with a positive TFR.
Any good Mongolian stocks?
Lexically, the standard Ukrainian actually draws on Halychyna dialect instead of Poltava. That’s why there are even German words in Ukrainian, which you don’t even have in Czech, which went the way of Russification against the German element.
Only in limited ways, for technical terms. Galician “nitz” (nothing) “spatzeruvaty” (to stroll), are not in standard literary Ukrainian. Nor is the Galician greeting “Servus.”
Standard literary Ukrainian is based on the Poltava dialect, the language of Kotlyarevsky.
Standard Ukrainian always squares towards non-Russian forms in an attempt to make itself different and not a dialect of Russian. Hence the larger Polish and German vocabulary. Paradoxically, cities in Ukraine are named Uzhhorod, Myrhorod, Vyshhorod but the word for city is misto – a word of Polish origin. Reasons? 1. Ukrainian is a patois of Old Russian and Polish, or 2. conscious polonisation. In recent years, Halychyna was setting the standard for vocabulary.
We both know that the language of Kotlyarevsky was too primitive to be the seed tongue.
Glad someone else noticed this.
Perhaps it partly has to do with the fact that Mongolia is the least densely populated country in the region. But there is obviously something else primarily responsible.
Definitely warrants an investigation.
Seems to be a quite common phenomenon, the countryside here in Serbia is being annihilated by Belgrade and Novi Sad sucking up all the young and talented
Same thing appears to also be happening in Bulgaria and Romania
Could be. Ulaanbaatar is a decent sized city of 1.5mm but with a low population density of 311/km2. Any other cities with more than 1mm that have a similar or lower density?
The same thing is happening in every single region. Work from home was supposed to alleviate this problem but it hasn’t so far. Maybe this is because the transition to WFM is still in its infancy. But it seems to me that most young, smart people with gumption move to the city out of FOMO on experiences rather than for economic opportunities. And those experiences are mainly going to restaurants, bars, etc.
Nonsense. If this were the case they would have used Galician as the basis, not the Poltava dialect. Poltava was the most ethnically pure region of Ukraine.
Archaisms. Polish came into the speech of central and eastern Ukrainians in the 16th century. There were Polish printing presses in the Hetmanate, in Kiev and Chernihiv. As in English with its French-speaking overlords, Polish vocabulary filtered heavily into the common vernacular.
And English is a patois of Old English and Norman French. And Russian is a patois of Old Russian and Church Slavonic. Etc.
That’s not what happened. In the 19th century Czech language went back to its Slavic roots whenever possible. Foreign terms were intentionally replaced with domestic words often created for that purpose. It had nothing to do with Russia. Many German words you hear are not standard Czech – as is the case with Ukrainian.
Surprisingly, Russian has probably more foreign words (east and west), they don’t care much for linguistic purity.
Nations living between West and Russia have fluctuated like a jojo between their own identity and subsuming into the West (or some to Russia). We are at the end of a 50-year pro-Western cycle. West can either fully absorb them (unlikely), or the pendulum will swing to local nationalism. It has nothing to do with Russia, although Russia’s very existence has made these nations able to choose. It usually means a war.
Reminds me of Croatian. Except Croatian tends to make strange calques and very old archaisms in an pitiful attempt to differentiate from Serbian…
So his fantasy reminds you of Croatian?
Interestingly, the students in the Polish part of Galicia likewise outperform their peers in the former Russian and Prussian partitions.
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0147596718305006-gr4.jpg
The explanation of the author of this is as follows: “The main hypothesis here posits that an interaction between institutional quality and identity might be crucial for the creation of a positive social norm toward institutions, and thus for long-lasting persistence. In particular, because the Austrian education system actively supported Polish identity, positive norms toward education system were more likely to emerge in the Austrian partition and these could be transmitted through generations and still affect student and parental effort. The Prussian partition serves as the counter-factual situation, where an almost identical education system was used as a tool of Germanisation, and no positive social norm affects the modern performance of students.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596718305006
Ukrainian Romantic nationalists used a similar process. They were very much inspired by Herder’s focus in the language of the People (Herder had visited Ukraine and was enchanted by it). So they based the Ukrainian literary language on the vernacular speech of peasants in the most ethnically pure, yet idyllic and prosperous, place in Ukraine. It is the language of the writer Kotlyarevsky.
Ukrainian has the old Slavic words for the months (all of them, not only some as in Polish. Russian doesn’t have any). For word not used in the countryside, Slavic words were used. So the word for the floor of a building “poverkh” in Ukrainian is “etazh” in Russian (from French) and pietro in Polish (from Latin, I think).
In addition to having a lot of French words Russian, being somewhat of a created language, also included a lot of Church Slavonic words. For example Russian Vladimir was Church Slavonic while Ukrainian Volodymyr was the vernacular used by Old Rus people.
Well, I don’t know what he says about the Ukrainians is true – though, by the way they seem to behave and carry themselves politically, I wouldn’t be surprised it’s true.
“You’re giving too much credence to an education system that does an excellent job of training toilet cleaners for Eastern Europe.”
It’s still a superior educational system to that of the US where the students aren’t educated enough to know the brush end from the handle of the toilet brush.
That map is Zakarpattia phobic…..we will be calling the NAAZP!
Well “Rusyns” are lightyears ahead of Ukrainians in losing their “national” consciousness. Without being funded by Russia or Hungary, their “national” leadership would dry up overnight and end up in the dustbin of history.
The best way to live and the only way to pick your place is according to your economic and cultural philosophy.
A bunch of idiots here zooming into the mental development of the particular Slavs state Minakov bases his case for demodernization on.
IQ won’t go that far in a world of abandoned industrial plants, structural joblessness and drastic fall in living standard. Adapt and survive.
Ignorant foreigner here. What is wrong with Galician ?
Assuming all else is equal between Buryats and Mongols, one might conclude that schools and universities make people stupider.
It’s spoken by Galicians.
As my wife’s parents are from there and some of her relatives still live there, I’m familiar with Sumskaya Oblast. Although it is indeed poor, it has improved over the last fifteen years, despite the continued brain drain, which was already under way during Soviet times.
I claimed once in another thread that Sumskaya Oblast was cleaner and more orderly than comparable northern Russian regions. Having since traveled more in the provinces, I no longer think this is true: there is a surprising amount of variation between oblasts in the Russias, with some obviously poorer oblasts being more orderly than richer neighboring oblasts. It would be interesting to tease out, if possible, the causes of this variation.
AP once made the interesting observation that the later an oblast was incorporated into the Soviet Union, the better its current state in social indicators. But there must be other sources of variation as well, since for example villages and small towns in Tverskaya Oblast seem in better shape than in Moscow Oblast, at least to my eye.
I lived and worked in Ukraine in 08 , for a construction company from Moscow/ Kyiv and I was the Field PM , so I got to see how good the tradesmen were. I grew up in a tradition craftsmen family and after the army in 71, I went to trade school. I previously had a year and a half at a University also.
I’m not sure how an IQ fits in when it comes blue collar trades. I never heard/saw of any trade schools in Ukraine but there were some specialized schools in Kyiv .It seems like the guys mostly learned from on the job experience and/or their time in military work. They were not trained craftsmen as in the states, but with age , getting paid regularly, the right jobs etc.they learned their craft. They didn’t get the chance to see or use the US type modern tools { as of 08} but they could make things work, which is where I’m going. They could and always would know how to fix and repair things , because they couldn’t afford to buy , new like the Americans could. Same with their cars – Ladas- they could fix anything on them, they didn’t have the luxury of buying a new part. It boils down to the country’s economic health, the health of that particular government, and Ukrainians didn’t have the same opportunities as us in the west. It’s not these guys fault or an IQ – I think.
I live in Russia now, and have been in the same place for many years, and I watched a new school go up, down the road. It was built by a contractor from the mainland and I could tell this company had past experience in building schools, since I worked for a company in Alaska building schools. Russia also showed that the theory of a sound economic state with a good government can build a better work force. I’m convinced , everytime I go over the bridge from Crimea to the mainland. Thanks A K.
It’s worth noting that the IQ of Mongolians is extended from that of Mongolians in China, whose are 5 points below the Han Chinese.
I think there are significant Flynn improvements to be yet had amongst Buryats and Yakuts (indeed, we have actually seen significant amounts of that amongst the latter at least over the past decade).
Maybe the IQ for Carpathians is underestimated, considering that West Virginians, people from Montana and Wyoming have an IQ of 98 or higher. And why would Mongols have an IQ that is 12 points higher than Eskimoes and Native Americans and Canadian Aborigines? When low population density is supposed to lower IQ? Maybe all those IQ estimates are off? I mean low IQ peoples like Afghans and Serbs seem to perform well in guerilla warfare against higher IQ and higher tech nations, even if you disregard Houthis because they are fighting against Arabs.
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/macroevolution/18663086/33404/33404_1000.png
Map of the average human brain size cc for native populations.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EtabeDxXYAEvZx1.jpg
Surely waging a successful insurgency or conducting proper guerilla warfare tactics also requires a quite a lot of cognitive foresight?
I mean Josip Broz’s troops seem to have done well against German troops with an IQ level 15 points above them, or the difference between black and white Americans.
Nothing. It is sad that it is dying out. I think Mr. Hack was glad that it was being replaced by Ukrainian rather than Polish or Russian.
Or hungarian. It is totally diffrent language. I think, Anatolij have blind spot here.
Good point. However, Zakarpattiya is only about 10% Hungarian. Would it make a huge difference?
Ukraine has several regional dialectical variations, Galician, Bukovynian and Zakarpatian being perfect examples of such. A standardized language had to evolve for the whole country as the nation evolved, in this case based on the Poltava variant, nothing very unusual going on here.
Tito wasn’t a Serb, and in any case he was probably the greatest guerrilla commander in all history, so it’s hard to call him representative.
It’s too bad my father isn’t alive to see these results as they would confirm his prejudices. He was from Galicia and he always made fun of the Transcarpathians. I got the impression that they were the butt of jokes where he came from.
LMAO. As if any more proof was needed that you’re a fraud fantasist, who has never been to and has no connection at all with Russia /Banderastan, we have even more extreme delinquency ……. “Poverkhnost” , means surface in Russian you dumb POS. Poverkh as is self-explanatory is ” at or on the top”….. like you would be on a floor.
Any sane adult people out there? Like this retard has done all the time (one of many is his infamous Deer Hunter BS)….. he just copies something (heavily incorrect) off some ukrop blog, fakes it as his own
You have Russian using the Slavic word as it would in its original peasant, everyday application
Etazh, is very commonly used in Ukraine, as is Vokzal
What’s funny about this clueless, autistic idiocy – like the Empire State Building being a copy of a much bigger building The peasants building 5 storey homes with swimming pools on the roofs?
Although everybody in ukraine says “Vokzal”, Ukrop which is of course fake officially uses something different.
Vokzal is a tribute to Vauxhall of England, the same Vauxhall/ Opal cars.
Timed out on the masterpiece comment – as it stands, incoherent. But was going to talk about train stations, how this bastard is going to cry again to Karlin to ban me…… how I don’t think Karlin has EVER debated me even once on the blog-just banned constantly like a coward….. and how the other bastard Mr Hack will fake orgasm again to this scumbag AP’s next comment – even though he must know that it’s hideously wrong.
Anybody explain what exactly was incorrect with my previous masterpiece comment about Galicians? Cowards can’t debate.
….. Until you remember that Polish Universities have an abysmal record and ratings you cretin….. as do Ukrainian ones after evromaidan.
Lvov is hilarious – abysmal ratings in all indicators, the quality of the research rated very low…… but nonsensically it has high rating on citations (LOL)
Explanations for this? Polish and ukrop universities corruptly exchanging citations with each other, and nobody else doing so….. except maybe some trash diaspora in Canada on some pseudo history related issues
Not so fast. You scratch any person from Subcarpathia and he will say he is a Rusyn. It is a strong identity, at least regionally. In those circumstances leaders don’t matter.
Geographically large ethnic identities – like Ukrainian, Russian, or American – hold firm as long as their geography is stable. If they start disintegrating, people scatter and revert to smaller, more manageable identities. You can see the process in US today – the gradual disintegration into smaller groups. It happened in Russia in the 90’s, Ukraine is on the brink. It happened to Austria-Hungary. It can be stopped, but usually with bloodshed. What doesn’t help is pushing an extreme version of the ruling majority identity – that has not worked since at least the 19th century. That is what Kiev is doing today, they will come to regret it.
That’s enough of a catalyst for instability. The real issue with Subcarpathia is that it is literally behind the mountains from the rest of Ukraine, facing west and historically integrated with the surrounding countries, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland – and not with Ukraine, or even Galicia. Kiev is just too damn far.
The Maidan mania “we are going west” puts Subcarpathia into an odd position: they could go west very easily if they discard their Kiev links. If Ukraine never makes it to EU – a likely scenario for 20-30 years – why wouldn’t Subcarpathians try a shortcut? Ideology always follows self-interest, unfortunately even ethnic ideology.
After the latest data on the IQ of different regions of the world (published by Anatoly Karlin), in which Aragon was 10 points higher than Scotland, I completely lost faith in the value of such maps.
But I will note on the results of school exams – a huge role is played by motivation for success (or lack of such motivation). With the same intelligence, the more motivated students will far outperform the less motivated ones.
The idea that in the 18th and 19th centuries the most stupid peasants settled free land – well, it is clearly absurd.
Good Post B B . Well, I lived, worked, fished, hunted, and trapped with the Skimos and Indians for over 3 decades in Alaska, and I never seen a nicer Yurt than that one in your photo – LOL and I never saw a Native guy – that well built – either . A ladies man for sure ! lol I also coached basketball out in Mcgrath,Ak for the HS boys team and I did notice a couple interesting facts. One , those kids out there learn first with their eyes – watching how things are done and then listening or reading. Second most of these kids needed 5 years of HS in order to be ready for a Jr. College or Community college. Maybe it was their IQ but maybe , they just weren’t interested in all that schooling and couldn’t see such a great benefit to it , since they were so remote – like most Natives in other countries. I know they enjoyed the social part and,, that – they needed. My 2 rubles !
Relative lack of religious conviction must have been a big factor- and explanation of much of the differences between Czech and religious Slovak that had more Latin or westernisms.
Which goes to the main point that language is a function of how you’re thinking – you’re culture and mentality. Khokhol scum artificially imposing these non-words goes against the principles of forming or standardising a language.
Well of his troops are really that behind the average German troops cognitively (not to mention that occupation troops in the Balkans are probably not getting the best troops) it would not have helped either. Maybe these tests are not as good as you think they are?
What exactly does IQ measure anyway, it does not seem to measure battlefield competence of armies, there seems to be little difference in terms of ability of executing small unit infantry tactics between 80IQ Taliban fighters and Soviet or American troops 20 points or more above them. Keep in mind that the average US or Soviet infantry officer in the field also has a cognitive advantage of about 20 points over the typical Taliban field commander. That also goes for NATO troops vs. Taliban insurgents.
Individual American or Russian special forces (higher IQ) are probably better than individual Taliban soldiers, though the latter might have better knowledge of local territory.
I hesitate to call something a non-word, all words were invented at some point. They seem artificial because they are new. The issue with Ukraine is the unseemly desire to separate themselves from who they are. It is neurotic and if it goes on unchecked they will get psychotic. Why complicate life, why take away the linguistic ease that prevailed there in the past?
There was at the same time a Czech nationalist revival of Protestanism going back to Hussites in the 15th century. Catholicism was seen as anti-national, associated with Habsburgs. That dichotomy decreased religiosity – at the end all religion was abandoned. It makes one suspect that any top-down attempt to promote religion today would fail. The religious will prevail biologically – they procreate more.
I thought you are an anti-Lysenkoist and a denier of epigenetics. In your simplistic world, how is it possible that a few generations of universal schooling alter the IQ of generations tested more than one century later?
At least in part, it sped up the Flynn effect and the results have been longlasting.
There is no separatism in Transcarpathia (marginal movement with 2,000 or so passive followers doesn’t count, or counts about as much as pro-Ukrainian movement in Crimea which probably has more followers). I mean sure, if Kiev were occupied by Russian forces and a pro-Russian dictator from Donetsk installed, why not? Galicia itself would leave at that point. But no realistic scenario.
Actually, you have it all backwards. Ukrainians want to reestablish the primacy of their own separate language and separate themselves from a language that is associated with imperialistic practices of enforced russification. BTW, this is normal for submerged nations and ethnicities, to want to reestablish the primacy of their own language within their own territories. I think that it was a similar process in Slovakia and Czechia too.
Any person? Have you really scratched that many heads from Zakarpattya? The vast majority of the 1,000,000 Ukrainians within Zakarpattya are comfortable living within their Ukrainian skin, where’s any evidence to the contrary? The last census conducted there showed that 10,100 individuals identified themselves as Rusyns, surely not enough even within your own Ukrainophobic mind to constitute a separate nationality?
Can you even name the most important literary figure in Zakarpattya during the 20th century? Do you know what his ethnic orientation was?
You project your unconscious fears into what others write. I didn’t talk about separatism per se, I wrote that Subcarpathia is in an odd position as a small (1.25 million people) western outpost of Ukraine as Kiev is rushing head-first into anything western. Given that Ukraine will not be in EU – take my word for it, it is not happening for at least 25 years if ever – why wouldn’t this odd situation create tension? Why move people if you can move the border? Most Hungarians there are getting Hungary’s passports anyway, and almost all people there have relatives in EU countries across the border. It is an inherently unstable situation.
There is a strong Rusyn identity among people there. Sure, they will answer “Ukrainian” on census, but every single one I talk to – there are literally tens of thousands of them in Slovakia-Czechia – sooner or later says “I am also a Rusyn“. Deal with it.
If I recall correctly, the Outer Mongolians are primarily Khalka, whereas there’s quite a few different tribes that Inner Mongolians might belong to. Not sure how big of an inter-tribal IQ difference exists if any though.
There’s also the question of how much gene flow there was to the various Southern Mongols from both Han agriculturalists as well as from Tibetans. It’s possible that admixture with Han farmers along the border of the steppe might have boosted Southern Mongolian IQ.
If they had any real problems with exhibiting a Ukrainian identity, they would not only let it be known on any census questionnaire, they would organize into a meaningful opposition. As for borders changing etc; this is all wishful thinking on your part. Getting over the border to the EU has always been easy, now more than ever as border crossings are legitimate including the ability to obtain work visas.
The Hungarians are well organized within Zakarpattya, including at leaast two active political parties. Where are the comparable “Rusyn” parties and civic orgniazations? Even in Slovakia, the large Rusyn festivals exhibit a Ukrainian orientation.
Looking at the test results for 2020 (https://zno.testportal.com.ua/stat/2020), heavily Hungarian and Romanian counties in Zakarpatye and Chernovtsy oblasts scored significantly lower than neighboring Ukrainian-speaking counties. To me, this says that the language of the test does play a role here – the question is, how significant is it. For ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, I think the effect would be more around the margins, though still non-zero. More salient probably is the question of how Ukrainianization has affected the quality of education as a whole in Russian-speaking regions. For example, did good Russian-speaking teachers tend to stick around and persevere through it or did they emigrate? I suspect the net effect has been negative.
As for the overall trend, I think that Russian-speaking Ukraine (i.e. the “south” plus Kiev) has been subject to a substantially greater brain drain of its “cognitive elites” over the last 30 years than has western and Ukrainian-speaking Ukraine, including to Russia. The industrialized Russian-speaking areas had more of these cognitive elites (i.e. engineers, scientists, etc.) to start with and most of them eventually left the country with their families, leaving behind a decidedly less cognitively elite population to deal with post-Soviet post-industrial decay in places like Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, etc. To the extent that Ukrainian-speaking cognitive elites existed, they were, among other things, much less likely to move to Russia.
I’m not buying these theories about Hapsburg education etc, because they don’t even begin to explain the north-south difference outside of Galicia.
Galicia produces most of Ukraine’s chess champions? Here are Ukraine’s national chess champions: https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A7%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%BF%D1%96%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%82_%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D0%B8_%D1%96%D0%B7_%D1%88%D0%B0%D1%85%D1%96%D0%B2
The most frequent champion in post-Soviet Ukraine is a guy named Korobov from Kemerovo. There have been a few champions from Lviv, but Volokitin is clearly of Russian descent and Oleksienko doesn’t look like a Galician name to me either.
Intermarriage between Hans and Mongols was strictly forbidden by the laws of Great Qing, even today marriage with Hans is heavily frowned upon, and those few Mongol women who have been with Han risk their physical well being. Khalkha together with majority of Inner Mongolians and Buryats are proper Mongols, and were traditionally ruled by nobility descending from the Great Khan himself.
There are Upper Mongols of Qinghai who have mixed with Tibetans.
Women’s world chess champion was a girl from Lviv:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariya_Muzychuk
Highest ever ranked Ukrainian chess player was from Ternopil oblast (ranked #2 player in the world 1991, 1992, 2007):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasyl_Ivanchuk
Ivanchuk didn’t seem to compete locally in Ukraine.
Well, Kharkiv oblast in the north (IQ 98) is more Russian-speaking than Kherson oblast (IQ 90) in the deep south.
Galicia is south of Volhynia and has a higher average IQ than Volhynia.
Yeah. Big Chuckey’s games are the stuff that makes for legendary play. Beating Magnus Carlsen in 2016 for the rapid chess championship ($200,000 purse) was the work of a true genius, just ask Magnus:
https://en.chessbase.com/Portals/all/thumbs/095/95285.jpeg
Perhaps mixing was limited during the final imperial dynasty, but there might have been mixing earlier on. And of course there might have been more recent post-1911 intermarriage (and Han posing as Mongols in census data to obtain PRC minority benefits as well). There’s nothing similar to the hard geographical barrier of the Himalayas which precluded mixing between South Asian and East Asian populations in the case of Mongolia, so there should probably be some sort of a “Han-Mongol” cline along the border regions.
Not always, a few years back Brussels tried to stop any eastern migrants while encouraging anyone from Third World. I agree, now it’s easy to come for work.
For Ukrainians who want to move to EU to get local benefits, bring in families, etc…having an official EU citizenship matters, not only a work permit. For them having (or claiming) Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Slovak, or even Rusyn identity is a huge plus – they can migrate as co-ethnics under government programs.
Question: assuming rationally that Ukraine will not be in EU, does it make sense for these people to try Rusyn and other identities? Specifically in Subcarpathia that is behind the mountains from Ukraine and geographically a part of what is now “the West” (or EU). They do it today on a small scale, once the realization hits that Kiev will not be in EU, would they do it in an organized fashion? Especially if Kiev struggles economically and the disintegration starts. Both are very likely.
That sounds like an anti-equality slogan. Kiev should be careful, West may wake up and see it for what it is. (Probably not, hating anything Russian beats any other idea in the West today.)
Among the 35-40 million people in Ukraine there are 5-10 million whose origin, families, language are Russian. How do you establish a primacy over them? Would you suggest that the Flemish do the same to 4 million French in Belgium? Or Romanians to 1.5 million Hungarians in Hungary? The examples are endless, but the policy in EU is simple: you cannot denationalize people living in your country. For geo-political reasons EU is looking the other way, that doesn’t make it right.
In any case, taking on a huge neighbour like Russia and poking them endlessly is a stupid policy – it will fail and be painful. I can guarantee you that neither Brussels nor Washington (or Ottawa) will be around to help. Au contraire: they will suddenly discover that Kiev’s policies were illiberal and retroactively disassociate. See what has just happened with North Stream. The writing is on the wall.
There was once a time when multiple people and languages coexisted in Italy and Iberia, with their different ways and even nations, but now most inhabitants of Italy are Italians, and Iberia is mostly united under one government, similarly there is no need for separate Ukrainian and White Russian nations, would world be richer if every Bosnia, Bavaria, Catalonia, Kosovo, Montenegro is it’s own independent nation? There are no major differences between Ukrainian and Russian culture therefore Ukrainian nationhood is not necessary, maybe with Galician culture and faith, or some marginal areas on the frontier like Bukovina… Anyway only a fool would sacrifice the future of Slavdom for the wellbeing of Lvov. There is absolutely no need for other Slavic nations to exist than the Russia…. and maybe Serbia in the south, beyond the Hungarian lands. I know that at the present moment this sounds unrealistic, but there has been stranger developments in the history of mankind.
Thank you. Really enjoy these gals. Our family’s favorite, especially the children, is the Russian folk band OTAVA YO:
“Ivanushka Rachek”
https://m.vk.com/video347624397_456239076
“Marusya, Marusya”
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=ivanushka+rachek+otava+yo+youtube&&view=detail&mid=3CADA76B77BFE3CBA22D3CADA76B77BFE3CBA22D&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Divanushka%2Brachek%2Botava%2Byo%2Byoutube%26go%3DSearch%26qs%3Dn%26form%3DQBVR%26sp%3D-1%26pq%3Divanushka%2Brachek%2Botava%2Byo%2Byoutu%26sc%3D0-31%26sk%3D%26cvid%3D7BB2F4B9CF6745819CDD1549A6704B3D
Perhaps their best two videos yet:
„Russian Couplets While Fighting“
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0JQ0xnJyb0A&list=RDEM-HluKdox40sF6zJ683Yo-Q&start_radio=1
“Groove for Ivan”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YbBU06irWT8&list=RDEM-HluKdox40sF6zJ683Yo-Q&index=4
We hope to make our first visit to Russia before Otava Yo retire or thoroughly change personnel, so we can see them in concert. The slightly-built blond guy with the beard/mustache is hysterical – and isn’t he the spitting image of US actor David Hyde Pierce (who played “Niles Crane” on the hit show “Frazier”)?
You make choosing a national origin sound as simple as chosing an ice cream flavor at the candy shop. The Rusyns in Zakarpattia have felt a close affinity for all of their neighboring Rusyns in Galicia, Bukovina and actually all of Ukraine for quite some time. As a Slovak, you should know somthing about the only autonomous state structure that any Zakarpattyan Rusyns were ever involved in trying to create, that is the Carpatho Ukraine headed by Avgustin Voloshyn at the start of WWII. Can you point to any other state structure that the Rusyns in this area ever tried to create? Those in Zakarpattya have unfortunately braved poor conditions for centuries, so I’m sure that they’re the ones that will be most resilient in weathering any economic downturns. Since we’re now playing Q & A, I keep on asking you, and you keep on remaining silent about:
Rusyns in Slovakia don’t have Ukrainian orientation. Most try very hard to disassociate from Kiev or Galicia and stress their own culture and closeness to Slovaks, Hungarians, etc…
Why don’t Rusyns have organizations in Ukraine? You tell us, maybe because Kiev has jealously guarded against any regional identity. It is not exactly in Ukraine today to be anything but a hard-core Ukrainian nationalist. What I know is that people who have left Ukraine (incl. Subcarpathia) try very hard not to be labelled as supporting the current Kiev policies.
Damn right!! That’s some of the best styled “kicking ass and taking names” rhetoric to come down the pike in quite a while. And the students aren’t the whole story. Have you ever met a (white female, no less) public school teacher who flew all the way to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to board a cruise ship and the poor thing didn’t even know that you had to have a valid US passport to go on a multiple Caribbean ports of call ocean voyage? This was circa 2015.
Iberia still is very multi-lingual and multi-polity– de facto and de jure.
About languages, where I did claim that Russia should extinguish other Slavic languages out of existence, or what you were implying? Anyway all languages of Spain, except Basque are close relatives, unlike before the Roman era, when there were languages belonging to different language families both in Iberia and Italy.
I should have noticed where you put the comma in your comment. Sorry.
More baseless projection and fantasy on your part. Why don’t you go to Svidnik this month and see for yourself how wrong you really are:
https://www.severovychod.sk/content/images/1/13927-65-slavnosti-rusinov-ukrajincov-slovenska_full.jpg
You need to catch up a little on Western European (especially coastal Mediterranean area) current events. There’s is currently a “linguistic enrichment” program underway there and its arriving by watercraft of every description imaginable. And these languages, by and large, aren’t “close relatives”
to current vulgar Latin languages. And the cultures of these people aren’t very Romantic either.
As to Russia extinguishing other Slavic languages, I not sure where you got the idea that
I was, in any way, expressing or implying any opinion at all regarding that. In fact, I’m really quite uninformed on that matter.
A funny story from a previous tour de force on I.Q. by one Anatoly Karlin. The associative test. Test subjects were asked to group items: a saw, a hammer, nails, planks of wood. The ‘smart’ Russian chooses the hammer and the saw(the tools). The ‘stupid’ Khalmyk chooses all four. When asked why the Khalmyk’s answer is a classic. Well it gets cold in Kalmykia in the winter and I wanted to build a cosy log cabin! The smart Russian freezes to death and the stupid Khalmyk is roasting chestnuts on the fire.
Smart English academic tells us that the Negritos of North Sentinel Island are so stupid that they do not know how to fit feathers to their arrows. If they did the arrows could be shot 3 times as far. But the North Sentinelese are obviously aware of the concept of cost versus benefit. Why go to all the trouble of killing birds, plucking the feathers, grading the feathers and storing them, and then laboriously fitting the feathers to the arrows. The North Sentinelese only have to shoot the arrows 3 or 4 feet to catch a fish. The wily denizens of North Sentinel Island only work 3 or 4 hours a day. The rest of the time they spend making love with their hot girlfriends. Almost as good a life as the Arawaks of Hispaniola and the Bahamas(Jan Rogozinski, A Brief History of the Caribbean). Who is stupid here? The North Sentinelese who at least instinctively respond to the concept of cost versus benefit, or the English academic who is blithely unaware of one of the most basic concepts of existence?
If I may add / enter your conversation gentlemen. I have an article from President Putin about languages in Russia and I found it at Fort Russ , July 2017 and printed it out for my own – Defence of murdering the Russian language when I speak it. ” You can’t force a people to learn a language that isn’t native to them.” He was actually speaking about the Russian regions and about elderly folks that speak a couple languages already. ” There are over 100 minority languages , spoken in Russia today as in Tatar, Ukrainian, Chuvash, Mordvin, Circassian, Chechen etc. etc. etc. and no language is forbidden in Russian , especially when it is native to that region.” ” However, the Russian language must not be marginalized , as it is the official State Language”. Enjoyed reading these comments and learned some more about Ukraine and Russian Fed. Spacibo
The effect of Russia “sucking” qualified personal from the south and east heavily industrialized areas must be non-negligible.
Ireland, Wales, Quebec, the Basque Country, Catalonia do this too. Speakers of the Imperialist language still get by somehow. Sometimes they have to see road signs or the reverse (or is it front) page of a form that reminds them that the Empire has gone. Some get insanely upset by this.
Rebuilding minority languages was a major part of early 19th C Liberalism. The identity of small countries across Europe was strengthened by the spread of literacy beyond the artisan classes to the poor. Prussia also did its bit for other reasons.
Should you adopt a foreign word, transliterate it, translate it or make up a new one. In Wales the dividing line is the word for Microwave oven. The translators say Microdon, which is microwave where don is Welsh for wave. The new worders say Popty-Ping where Popty is Welsh for Bakehouse and Ping is the noise it makes. Boris Johnson whose children speak Welsh and speaks a little himself favours Popty-Ping. Social class and age come into this as well.
Dimwit Phil, WHERE in Ireland have they established primacy of Irish over English? Dublin isn’t even the Irish name of the city.
Disagree. Inside Ireland it is sign posted as Dun Laighrie (or whatever). That said, the Irish tend to a Black or White (maybe it’s Tan) solution of a Gaeltacht preserved in aspic. Wales has shades of grey everywhere. The Welsh language is alive enough to change and modernize een if teenageagers sometimes sound like as though they are speaking English with Welsh grammar.