Putin Derangement Syndrome and Trump Derangement Syndrome continue moving towards an ever more perfect union.
Hillary Clinton just said Vladimir Putin leads a world wide white supremacist movement. Wow.
— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) August 25, 2016
Problem is: Putin is not actually a proponent of extreme nationalism, let along its godfather. At least, not according to the people who would presumably know best: The vast majority of, like, actual Russian nationalists.
They tend to consider Putin as a representative of sovok “multinationality,” who sends “real” Russian nationalists off to jail under the infamous Article 282 (one of them, Alexander Potkin/Belov, was jailed for 7.5 years on the same day as Hillary Clinton’s announcement) while allowing mass immigration and the transfer of the Russian economy to minorities and ethnic clans. 20% of Russia’s billionaires are Jews according to a study by Lenta a couple of years ago, and a recently released report by Forbes Russia revealed that only one of the ten richest “clans” in Russia are ethnically Russian, or russkie. (Incidentally, that is a term that, tellingly, Putin himself hardly ever uses, preferring the ethnically neutral term “rossiyane” that refers to all Russian citizens. A quick way of estimating how “based” a Russian commentator is Ctrl-F’ing and tallying the russkie/rossiyane ratio in his texts).
Of course the irony is that the Clinton Clique tends to like those kinds of anti-Putin nationalists and their Ukrainian counterparts.
Clinton protege Victoria Nuland meeting with Parubiy, Chairman of the Rada and founder of the Social National Party of Ukraine.
As for Putin’s actual nationalist/non nationalist status, what both Pozocracy hacks and the more “svidomy” elements of the Western Alt Right fail to realize is that in between:
(1) Being an open borders “keep them at arm’s length” cuck; and
(2) Living up to the overly “optimistic”/false image that the “Russophile” wing of the Alt Right (summarized in the widely shared but 100% fake meme/quote to the right) – and the Putin Derangement Syndrome-suffering SJWs and (((neocons))) – have of Putin;
… there is a pretty big middle ground around which Putin actually falls.
Yes, many Russian nationalists are sitting under Article 282 (some of them deservedly, but yes, many of them regrettably not; it is an unjust law that should ideally go the way of the rest of Europe’s “hate laws,” i.e. into the dustbin of history). But, at least, Russia also imprisons many Islamic extremists and even anti-ethnic Russians under that same law (a partial lack of double standards that the Council of Europe is very unhappy about). And moderate Russian (anti-immigration) nationalists like Egor Kholmogorov – I have translated a couple of his pieces here and here – are hardly social or legal pariahs; they get to write op-eds in the nation’s highest circulation newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda.
And there are even outright nationalists in positions of power, such as Dmitry Rogozin, who was an outright (anti-immigration) nationalist. He currently curates the military-industrial prospect and is not an altogether impossible (if highly unlikely) Presidential successor. Although with power, he has also of course strongly toned down his prior ethnonationalist rhetoric.
To reiterate, there is a very wide spectrum between a self-hating cuckold like Wolfgang Schaeuble and /pol/’s image of Ben Garrison, and on that spectrum, Putin is far closer to the likes of Trump, Le Pen, and Orban than he is to the Western political elites aka the Pozocracy (on this, at least, the Western MSM has it correct). Reasonable figures in the Alt Right recognize such as Richard Spencer recognize that they can’t have their way all of the time, and as such urge people to support these sorts of “middle ground” politicians, despite their occasional concessions to cuckoldry (even though Spencer himself got arrested in and banned from in Hungary for holding an identitarian conference so he has personal reasons to be skeptical of Orban).
However, this still does not make Putin a nationalist. In reality, like most serious politicians, Putin is a complex figure who continuously carries out an ideological balancing act (remember Angela Merkel’s “multiculturalism is a failure” speech, a long time ago in a galaxy far away?). Yes, nationalism is necessarily a part of that, and yes, to a greater extent than a decade ago, but it still needs to be balanced out against liberal, conservative, and socialist countercurrents. The dominant strand within Russia’s current ideological matrix is liberal-conservatism, a set of political and social ideas developed under late Tsarism and later amongst the White emigration that were perpendicular to both Marxism and Westernophile cargo cultism. The philosopher that Putin cites most frequently is Ivan Ilyin, an uncompromising anti-Stalinist emigre with views that are decidedly unorthodox (one daresays, cuckservative) for a Russian “extreme nationalist.”
Here are a couple of notes I made while reading Ilyin’s Our Tasks recently:
* Frankly he is much more of an anti-Communist ideologue than a Russian nationalist. He condemns in no uncertain terms those members of the White movement who were drawn towards the late Stalinist USSR by its adoption of quasi-nationalist rhetoric and is generally sanguine about Western (though not German) intentions towards Russia, casually discussing even the prospect of the atomic bombing of his country. That is decidedly strange for a nationalist, even a highly anti-Communist one.
* He even condemns the “oppression” of ethnic minorities in the USSR, whereas a staple of traditional Russian nationalist narratives on the USSR is the disproportional influence of ethnic minorities (especially the Jews) for its “anti-Russian” nature. So far he has been rather vague on the “who to blame” question as regards the Bolshevik Revolution, not going much further than “spiritual sickness.” Again, that is very milquetoast stuff, for a purported nationalist.
Putin’s nationalism, to the extent that it exists, boils down to a practical and materialist sort of patriotism or at most, a Human Biodiversity-naive civic nationalism:
We do not have and cannot have any unifying idea other than patriotism. … You said that public servants and business and all citizens in general work to make the country stronger. Because if that is the case, then each of us, each citizen will live better, and have higher incomes and be more comfortable, and so on. And that is the national idea. It isn’t ideological, it isn’t connected with any party or any stratum of society. It is connected to a general, unifying principle. If we want to live better, then the country must become more attractive for all citizens, more effective, and the public service and state apparatus and business must all become more effective. As you said, we work for the country, not understanding it in an amorphous way, like in Soviet times… when the country came first and then there was who knows what. The country is people, that’s what working ‘for the country’ means.
Of course even this might be rather too much for someone who blames whitey when blacks shoot up policemen and rewards the families of Islamic terrorists with front row seats at her conventions. (Though given HRC’s own “racist” skeletons – associations with KKK figures, the comments on superpredators, punitive anti-Black sentencing laws, etc. – it’s quite clear that her BLM and feminist pandering rhetoric is completely cynical and mercenary).
Now to be sure, Hillary Clinton can easily get away with such comments about Putin because of the strong ignorance of Russian political realities in the West and the Russophobic tilt of the Western media. But such comments elicit more skepticism when applied to anti-elite politicians in Western countries, because by definition Westerners are more familiar with them and they are pretty clearly not true (for instance, the “nationalist” Marine Le Pen is basically the conservative mainstream of yesteryear, being infinitely closer to Charles De Gaulle than, say, Marshal Pétain). And they should elicit much more skepticism when used to smear Donald Trump, given that basically everything “racist” he has ever said was taken out of context.
Will such ceaseless lying and prevarication, of which this is but one example, eventually rebound against Hillary Clinton and the mainstream media?
And eventually, perhaps, even on American perceptions of Russia?
After all if you can’t trust your media and self-proclaimed experts to tell your the truth about your own country, why should you defer to them to them on the Far Abroad?
Let us hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
OT: Poroshenko is building a new chocolate factory in Russia:
https://golospravdy.com/poroshenko-stroit-novuyu-fabriku-roshen-v-rossii/
This is from an oppo source, so there’s a possibility of it not being true. But, knowing Porky, COULD it be true? Yep.
Suspect it’s false; quick Google search doesn’t see this mentioned in any mainstream Russian news source (the likes of Vzglyad or LIFE News would leap upon something like this).
[But such comments elicit more skepticism when applied to anti-elite politicians in Western countries, because by definition Westerners are more familiar with them and they are pretty clearly not true (for instance, the “nationalist” Marine Le Pen is basically the conservative mainstream of yesteryear, being infinitely closer to Charles De Gaulle than, say, Marshal Pétain).]
Them not being true doesn’t stop any western “democrat” from repeating them. Even Nige Farage, to his shame let it be remembered, once said Marine Le Pen’s FN was beyond the pale because “anti-semitic”. How much more so everyone else!
I’m trying to think of developed countries that could fairly be described as nationalist in the WWI sense. I know a lot of people would say Israel but nobody in Israel would agree with that, as nationalism would value territory and require at least a modicum of self respect; whereas Israelis are total pussies who would rather see their southern towns live permanently under missile fire than to risk losing one of their worthless soldiers in a military operation.
The closest thing to a nationalist country amongst developed nations has to be Japan. Their extreme pacifism though makes them seem not very nationalist but maybe it is possible to have nationalism without militarism. I imagine that if any country was stupid enough to threaten Japanese security would get a very aggressive response from Japan and the Japanese people.
Putin’s Russia seems more like 1970’s America in that it is quasi-nationalist while being multi-cultural.
Regarding the russkiye/rossiyane difference that Anatoly talks about here:
I don’t think immigrants to England often call themselves English. I think “English” tends to be used kind of in an ethnic sense, in contrast to “British”. Would a person of Pakistani background born in Scotland call himself Scottish though? Don’t know.
The French term for an ethnically French person is “Français de souche”. This is actually the name of France’s main far-right web forum. Souche means stump of a tree, but “French from the root” would be a better translation.
I would imagine that Germans don’t use the term volksdeutsche much anymore because of its Hitlerite connotations, and I don’t know if they have any other terms for that concept.
You wrote “20% of Russia’s billionaires are Jews” which got me to thinking.
First, a comment, the 20% number by itself doesn’t really give any insight into Putin’s policy impact on Jews and Jewish wealth in Russia. It’s a static number given without meaningful context.
A much better thing to do would be to ask how this 20% number compares to the number at the time when Putin first took office.
After all, if this number has decreased from that level, which I very much expect that it has given the “oligarch” situation when Putin first took power, it could be seen as a de facto sign of policies which were anti-Jewish, or at least, anti-Jewish “elites.”
Similarly, one could look at how has the percentage of Jewish population in Russia changed under Putin’s dominance of Russian politics, as well as the percentage of politicians at the national level who were Jewish, and how that has changed during the period of Putin’s dominance of Russian politics.
I’d very much like to know the answers to those questions, if you have them. It may be worth an article to compare Jewish influence in Russia, both before and after Putin.
Regarding the Supralicious quotation above, all Putin is really describing is what we used to call assimilation. In the US, this was represented by the concept of the ‘American melting pot’. As late as the 1970s, they still celebrated this idea in the old Schoolhouse Rock animated short on ABC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZQl6XBo64M
But with rise of ‘multiculturalism’ in the 80s, this whole notion became taboo.
I bet that percentage was much higher during the Yeltsin period!
“Melting Pot” was propaganda invented by a Jewish playwright, Israel Zangwill, only about a hundred years ago. He himself was a Russian Jew whose parents immigrated to London, where Zangwill was born, and Zangwill died in England, from what I can tell, he never ever even lived in America.
“Melting Pot” is certainly not an originally American ideal, nor one that the Founders or for that matter any 19th- or 18th-century citizens of the US invented.
If you’re interested, look up Israel Zangwill and his family, examine the immigration situation vis-a-vis Russian Jews at the time his play was written, and use the NY Times “Chronicle” tool and the Google Books “ngrams” tool on the phrase “melting pot” and see what you come up with.
You are talking about the term (deutschstämmige) Deutsche ohne Migrationshintergrund /Germans without migrant background or ethnic Germans.
Vladimir Putin is poor man’s “invade the world, invite the world”.
He loves, loves, loves Chechens and other Caucasians.
He’s giving Russian passports to Ossetians and Abkhazians !
https://iwpr.net/global-voices/abkhaz-rush-russian-passports
He’s importing thousands of Tajiks and other central Asians.
He braught Kalmyks to Crimea.
http://uatoday.tv/politics/why-did-they-attach-crimea-to-kalmykia-707026.html
He wants to recreate multiracial empire.
That is why he hates, hates, hates Russky nationalists and puts them into prison !
Vladimir Putin is just Russian poor man’s version of George W Bush.
“He even condemns the “oppression” of ethnic minorities in the USSR, whereas a staple of traditional Russian nationalist narratives on the USSR is the disproportional influence of ethnic minorities”
Does that refer to Ilyin or to Putin? A bit confusing. And if Putin says something like this, he’s probably right…some minorities (like Poles of Finns) were oppressed pretty badly in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and it would be good if modern Russia got that historical baggage out of the way.
And criticism of Orban because of that WN conference is a bit silly…I’m glad for him (and the Eastern Europeans in general…in the Czech republic and Slovakia even the socialists openly state they don’t want any Muslims).
“I think “English” tends to be used kind of in an ethnic sense, in contrast to “British”.”
Yes, exactly. My father’s English and would never call himself British (increasingly a totally meaningless identity anyway).
Regarding Germany: Unless I’m mistaken, Volksdeutsche traditionally referred only to ethnic Germans outside of Germany (mostly in Eastern Europe). In recent years though the term Biodeutsche has occassionally come up in discussions…it sounds pretty silly and might even be meant to mock Germans (it’s a favourite of people like Green MP Cem Özdemir), but it does express the ethnic dimension.
How do you do fellow Russians
You’re an ignorant troll, so I feel kind of silly responding to you, but no, the article that you linked to does not say that Putin brought Kalmyks to Crimea. What it says is that he attached Crimea to the Southern Federal District, which includes Kalmykia, among many other regions. No movement of any Kalmyks to the Crimea was implied by that article.
Illyn. Karlin is quoting his impression of Ilyin’s work after reading a part of it.
More ammunition for anti-Russian Poles and Finns.
Not a good idea.
Marine Le Pen is basically the conservative mainstream of yesteryear, being infinitely closer to Charles De Gaulle than, say, Marshal Pétain).
This point — and your larger point about Putin — really needs to sink into the heads of the Anne Applebaum types. The irony is that even the progressives of a few decades ago would be labelled “new Hitlers” if their ideas were introduced today. This 1962 electoral ad for the Quebec Liberal Party Would give them all seizures: http://www.hydroelectricite.ca/fr/info-images.php?id=744
“Now or Never! Masters in our Own House”.
Russia and the rest of us simply cannot engage in real self-government without enraging the globalists and triggering the Hitler-hysterics.
I hope Trump wins and they all take time to wonder how the hell it happened. I hope then they will ask themselves “did we paint the boundaries of acceptable political discourse too tightly? Is that what made people so feisty?”
Rare case when I do not have much to argue. A good article. I’m really tired to hear that Putin is a Russian nationalist. It is ridicluous. He is not nationalist, nor liberal. He is an unprincipled opportunist, which would say everything and would play any role to remain in power.
If he was an unprincipled opportunist, wouldn’t the results of his rule look more liberal though? Why go into conflict with the West, why suffer all this demonization in the global media, why take a different course from Yeltsin? What Putin is doing doesn’t look like the path of least resistance to me.
I suspect that he’s a patriot of the multi-ethnic Russian state. He probably started as a patriot of the Soviet state, hence the KGB. I suspect that the nature of his rule – neither ethno-nationalist nor liberal in the modern Western mold – reflects his own sense of what society should be like.
I’ve just recently seen a funny illustration for your comment. In a BBC propaganda film named “Far Right & Proud” Reggie Yates, the Black narrator, was really offended when Demushkin named him firstly African American but then “Afro-English”, when finally Yates proudly said he was British (around the 25th min of the film, if you are interested). I hope he did not mean his ancestors were ancient Britons. But I wonder why a mere mention of an African (or any non-local) ancestry is so offending for such people.
Because Yeltsin-type rule would have been inherently unstable.
AK’s article is in my opinion correct, and reflects what I’ve thought about Putin’s rule for years.
The notion of “liberal” is very confusing now in the contemporary doublespeak. Obviously, he has not been recreating neither socialism, nor communism for the past 17 years. He’s followed up the capitalist way of his godfather Yeltsin, where a small group oligarchs pump and dig out oil, gas and minerals (OGM), sell them to the West and store and spend the money in the same West (usually London, but also everywhere in the EU as well as in the US) or in offshore havens (Cyprus, etc.). Probably some oligarchs lost something and some gained (obviously Putin’s close friends), but largely nothing’s changed since the 1990s, the core system is the same. Some rightfully calls the system the “Resource Federation”. It is ridiculous to remind over and over Berezovsky, Yukos and a couple of other “dissent” oligarchs, while really thousands of other oligarchs from the 1990s have been feeling very very good under Putin. So what is his anti-liberalism? If Putin is anything, he’s a dedicated capitalist, which is usually means liberal. He might be a social conservative, but it is expected for an old man in his 60s who has grown in the socially conservative USSR. Moreover, the current social conservatism is mostly driven not by Putin himself. but by the old Soviet generation with psychological complexes, of the same age as Putin.
Why is he (allegedly) anti-Western and why does the West (allegedly) hate him? Well, obviously as the Russian economy is heavily export oriented and heavily dependent on the West, Russian OGM oligarchs must have had very close and tight connections with the West, I would say the West controls them even if they do not understand that. It is difficult not to be controlled when your bank account and your villa somewhere in London. But it seems they are not ENTIRELY dependent, so this annoys the Western establishment. The West wants whole Russia on the plate, hot and ready. But the oligarchs do not want to loose a bit of their share, so they practically try to rebel against their “Western partners”.
And in the Western political doublespeak “liberal” means ultra-liberal pro-Western, so the Russia’s monopolist oligarchic capitalist but socially conservative system with rebelling oligarchs looks like right anti-liberalism. Not to mention that many Western allies like Saudi Arabia is much more monopolistic and nepotistic and much more socially conservative, but as they are totally controlled by the Western masters, the masters will never say a bad word about their pets. Russia is another story, hence the conflict.
It might be that there is no conflict at all, no rebellion, Russia is a real crypto-colony, and it just plays its assigned role of the world’s bad man, but it is too much of conspiracy.
I suspect that Putin cares deeply about the might and international standing of the Russian state. Hence his crackdown on Yeltsin-era chaos, the military buildup, the Olympics, his quick action to save the Black Sea Fleet, his involvement in Syria. I would guess that his feelings on that last one are something like “we’re globally important again, challenging the US far from home, like the USSR used to do, back up from our knees and in the ring, the biggest ring that there is.”
An unprincipled opportunist wouldn’t care about any of that, so there would be no progress on the might and standing fronts under him.
The might and international standing of the state reflect on the principle ethnicity in it, and I’m sure he’s proud of that at some level, but he’s also committed to a multi-culti model of the state. He grew up with that model in Soviet times. He probably feels some amounts of benevolent paternalism towards ethnic minorities. He probably enjoys the role of the “white tsar”.
“Because Yeltsin-type rule would have been inherently unstable.”
Rebelling against the oligarchs who brought him to power, confronting the neocons with their color rev toolkit – those were risky moves. He could have lost power many times. He’s kept it through it all because he’s good at politics. The KGB didn’t hire average people. But with those kinds of talents he could have probably made looting and dependence on the West work too, for himself. What I’m saying is that if he’s good at this, he could have probably been good at that too. But he probably didn’t want to be good at Yeltsin-type stuff because he cares about the might and standing of the country.
And while the Russian economic system is purely capitalist and hence liberal, the country’s social conservatism is much exaggerated. Comparing with the same Saudi Arabia or even with the US, the Russian society is very liberal.
First, the majority of Russian are if not atheist but agnostic and irreligious, that is not unthinkable in the US. Religion revival in Russia is a myth. Russians are so irreligious that even that level of religiosity like in the USA many consider too much.
Russians feel quite free about sexuality, they see no problems in premarital sex, no problems in cohabitation, no problems with divorces, aborts are allowed, pornography is allowed. Anti-gay sentiments are rather a result of the patriarchal and machoist mentality than pure homophobia.
What else? Even if the media is controlled by the Kremlin, Russians still have a variety of views, which unthinkable in the West. I think the rage about the Kremlin controlling the media is because the West thinks about others by its standards. In the West controlling the media means controlling everybody and everybody’s mind. In Russia few sincerely believe the media. Half of the Russian internet is anti-government.
Russia obviously follows multiculturalism in its extreme forms. Millions of immigrant live in Russia (it’s the second immigrant country after the USA), the visa regime with Central Asia is most liberal and unthinkable in the West. What would Americans say if Latinos could just cross the border without any visas and live free in the USA?
While in the USA Blacks are considered as an oppressed low class, Russia’s minority are a privileged one. Non-Russians are richest. The Kremlin favours non-Russians, particularly Chechens and other Muslim Asiatics. They can do what they want without any consequences. Do you imagine a Black or Muslim wedding with a Ferrari parade and a AK-47 salute in the centre of Washington?
While in the USA if a Black commit a crime he’s shot by White policemen, in Russia if a non-Russian commit a crime he’s freed by non-Russian policemen or judges. Non-Russian nepotism is flourishing.
How many Black oligarchs in the USA? What else should I add?
I’d just like to ask what do you mean by this. What do contemporary Russians who even might not be born in the USSR have to with Stalin’s repressions? What “baggage” do they bear? Their oppressed dekulakizated Russian great-grandparents? Or those 600,000 Russians who died while fighting in WWII for those ungrateful Polaks? Or what?
While in the USA if a Black commit a crime he’s shot by White policemen
The media hypes these rare incidents relentlessly. The cases of Blacks committing crimes and getting away with it are many times more common. Sure, they commit most of these crimes against other Blacks, but Black-on-White crime, while rarer, is still many times more common than White-on-Black crime. The media picture is Blacks cowering in fear of White cops. The reality is everyone, including Blacks, being anxious and sometimes fearful of Black criminals.
Anatoly did a post a while back on Russian real estate listings sometimes saying “will only rent to Russians”, “no Caucasus”, etc. Unthinkable in America. If you try to post that, the web site will delete it, but it simply wouldn’t occur to most Americans to post it in the first place. The concept of freedom of association does not compute, except for a tiny number of libertarian nerds, for whom it computes strictly in theory.
There are racial quotas in America for admission to top colleges. If I remember correctly, at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. the Black quota is 8% (if they admitted on the merits, the Black share would be below 1%) and the Asian quota is 17% (the on-the-merits number would be higher than that.) I’m quoting these from memory. I don’t think this exists in Russia.
Telling ethnic jokes is a firing offense at every job worth having.
“What would Americans say if Latinos could just cross the border without any visas and live free in the USA?”
No one knows the real number of illegal immigrants in America. Politicians often repeat the number 11 million, but I’m sure that they just grabbed it out of the sky. For all I know it could be twice that. In essence, you just walk in and stay here. Or you get a student visa and overstay it until the end of your life. No one will look for you.
“Do you imagine a Black or Muslim wedding with a Ferrari parade and a AK-47 salute in the centre of Washington?”
This makes me think of rich Black rappers and athletes. I think they’re more into handguns than AKs though. The car of choice is the Cadillac Escalade.
More on freedom of association:
“I own this apartment so I decide to whom I can rent it” – acting on that is illegal in America. If that’s proven in court, you’re done. Fifty years ago Donald Trump’s father was investigated by the government for “discriminating” against Black and Hispanic would-be-renters in his apartment complexes in New York. Hillary dredged that up in this race and is hitting the Donald with it.
As Boris pointed out, most oligarchs maintained their positions in life after Putin came to power. Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, and Gusinky did not represent the majority of their class. Maintaining the nihilistic 90s indefinitely would have led to ongoing decline, desperation, and probably Revolution. By stabilizing the country and enabling mass (relative) prosperity by not having the oligarchs take every single scrap, Putin created conditions for the oligarchs to keep what they had. His was the least risky approach, for Russia and its oligarchs. They needed exactly someone like him. Unlike Boris, I don’t think this is such a horrible thing, though his gripes, which I have heard from many people in Moscow, are very legitimate.
Empire is an inborn part of Russian identity(or at least within the elites) which is why I can’t take ethnic Russian nationalists too seriously. Ethnic diversity doesn’t exactly preclude nationalism… see Brazilian Integralism… and the Eurasianism of the Gumilyov variety seems close to Integralism.
My problem with Putin is that he has not done a good job shepherding Russian identity… too often it seems like he’s just trying to accommodate too many divergent and conflicting viewpoints into a mush. Putin’s failure to shepard Russian identity help contribute to Ukraine going westward.
The first “transhumanist” who could arguably also be called an “archeo-futurist” or a “reactionary modernist” came from Russia. I don’t understand why this hasn’t been used for “palingenetic” purposes by those who talk constantly about “ideology” and how Russia needs an “idea”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Fyodorovich_Fyodorov
The best thing that could be done for the future of Russian identity would be for every statute of Lenin be replaced with Fydororov and for Surkov to create a fake Russian Cosmist Political Party.
Russians don’t believe the media because of their experience under the USSR. They carry on with the same natural skepticism of old, perhaps unaware. Good for them.
It seems that migration to Russia is from the former members of the USSR. It makes sense since millions of Russians live in those republics. It is not a one-way kindness. How many refugees did Russia accept from the Middle East or Africa?
Also Russia is a federation of nations. Actually the power of the federal units was reduced under Putin. Chechnya was decimated, lost something like 50% of its population.
But, agree Putin is not a white nationalist, though some in the West wish he is out of fear of a planet numerically dominated by non-whites. They tend to forget that numbers and power don’t always go together. Would Putin exploit their fear to his advantage? Not sure, but he would look into it, he is a politician.
Maintaining the nihilistic 90s indefinitely would have led to ongoing decline, desperation, and probably Revolution
The 90s have been maintained indefinitely in the Ukraine. And the thing that you call the revolution there was a bad set of oligarchs being replaced by a worse set of them. The 90s could go on in the Ukraine for a very long time. I don’t believe in the possibility of revolution from below anywhere on Earth. If Russia doesn’t pay for its own sort of “revolution” in the Ukraine, the nihilism, decline and desperation there will keep increasing for decades to come. The bottom is not in sight.
Russia is so similar to the Ukraine that it’s possible to imagine the 90s going on indefinitely in it too if Putin hadn’t come along. Or if he was a selfish bastard who wasn’t interested in national revival. There would have been no revolution from below – I think Yeltsin had an approval rate of 7% at one point. Porky is probably in the same territory right now.
There can’t be any revolutions if no one will pay for them, and a hypothetical selfish Putin would still be a much more skillful politician than Yanukovich, so he wouldn’t be overthrown by a revolution paid for by a rival oligarchic group.
reflect on the principle ethnicity in it
Principal, not principle. I know what these words mean, damn it. I just sometimes get sloppy.
You are aware that the USSR also exported hydrocarbons and other natural resources to those who would pay for them?
[Moreover, the current social conservatism is mostly driven not by Putin himself. but by the old Soviet generation with psychological complexes, of the same age as Putin.]
You expect us to believe in your Soviet patriotism while allowing remarks like that to escape you? You’re a bouncing check, a false coin.
And there have been several revolutions. This has not been that great for the oligarchs, or for the regular people.
Each time, a lot of money is lost by them and few lose everything. Stability is better for oligarchs, but the ones in Ukraine haven’t found their Putin.
As for “better” or “worse” – Ukraine had been run by foreigners. It’s president was the child of Russian and Belarusian migrants, the Prime Minister was a Russian who moved to Ukraine from Russia when he was in his thirties. Their financial backer was a Muslim Tatar. These foreigners were looting the country as it stagnated, and then against popular opinion tried to integrate it with Russia, which for understandable strategic reasons would have supported their ongoing and eternal rule in exchange for geopolitical concessions.
Now locals are in charge. The president is half-Jewish and PM is Jewish, but they are locals born and raised in the center of the country, not immigrants and children of immigrants from the country’s non-Ukrainian periphery. Corrupt, but locals. This already makes a difference. Of course for you “better” or “worse” simply means who is better for Russia.
We already know you are full of silly beliefs. If you mean from the lowest of the low (which you don’t – you believe Revolutions are actually conspiracies, orchestrated from the top,by which you probably mean the top supranational organizations and structures), sure. Uneducated lumpens acting alone can’t do much. But when the middle classes and entire regions join in collectively, it’s a different story.
Russians are still generally satisfied. No conspiracy from above, no matter how well funded, will get them to revolt.
That would have meant, as in Ukraine, multiple revolutions, loss of assets, risk of things getting out of hand and bloodshed of oligarchs, power struggles and losses affecting more oligarchs than merely Berezovsky, Gusinky and Khodorkovsky. That’s what never-ending 90s looks like. Russian oligarchs have it much better with Putin.
This low number doesn’t mean much, as he is simply part of the pro-Western orientation that enjoys strong support. If he loses, he’ll be replaced by a friend or at worst friendly rival. His low rating doesn’t indicate disenchantment with his policies, but with his inability to implement those policies. Approval rating or support for the pro-Russian Opposition Bloc and its ally “Strong Ukraine” of 40% or higher would be really meaningful (it has crept up from a miserable 10% to a still-lousy 14%). Posroshenko’s 7% rating isn’t.
This is an excellent corrective to those who blindly believe the establishment’s propaganda on this issue. Communism, the USSR, etc. are no longer valid reasons for Russophobe propaganda. This “democratic party” campaign based on anti-Russianism is dangerous because it is easy to see how it ends in the threat of nuclear war. It seems that too many former skeptics of US war making are willing to accept any pile of excrement put forward as the “Democratic” candidate. In light of the indisputable facts put forward here, anybody still willing to vote for the harpy is recklessly putting our futures at risk.
“Now locals are in charge.”
This is equivalent to “the world was created in 7 days several thousand years ago”, “evolution is an unproven theory”, “race is a social construct”, etc. There are very smart people believing in each of these things. Man’s capacity to fool himself is infinite.
Most of the Maidanite elite isn’t just non-Ukrainian in the ethnic sense, which is the most important thing of all. Many were born outside of the Ukraine as well. Hilariously, this latter group includes ministers of both internal and external affairs.
Russian oligarchs have it much better with Putin.
What would be the oligarchs’ interest in Crimea, in sanctions (which will get worse under Hillary, by the way), in conflict with the West in general, in strengthening the military, in the Syrian campaign? How do they benefit from those things?
Right now the smart thing for them would be to liquidate their Western villas, sports teams, arenas (I live in Brooklyn where Prohorov owns an arena), etc., because all of that stuff could soon be confiscated.
If you had any sense, you’d be proud that Vicky doesn’t trust Ukrainians. Her trust is not a compliment. But you don’t have any sense.
We get that you don’t like Putin but who would you prefer? From afar it seems like the choices are either Putin or chaos.
I hear that Putin has gotten a little better on immigration too.
I’m not a Putin fanboy like everybody else here, but the thing I really don’t like about him is the Muslim immigration. Not cause I care about Russians (I don’t) or because I dislike Muslims (I’m an Islamophile) but because I don’t want to see Muslims take over Russia’s gigantic nuclear stockpile.
That’s hilarious! Especially since, in contemporary German, the word Bio is usually used to mean ‘organic food’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zAFA-hamZ0
Yes, I did know about Zangwill and his play.
There may a really tiny number of ethnic Finns in and around Karelia, but Finland–famously–was never part of the USSR. (Look up ‘finlandization’.) And Pollacks were discriminated against? Are you unaware that the founder of what later became the KGB, Felix Dzherzhinsky, was ethnic Polish? If it’s the Polish People’s Republic that you’re referring to, I don’t think they had it any worse than most of the other Warsaw Pact states at the time.
Actually, that would be a really bad idea. It would open up modern Russia for (((certain people))) to start a “guilt of your fathers” campaign against them, the same way that (((they))) have against Germany for the six gorrillion or the USA for the legacy of slabery.
IMO this is why LOLocaust “denial” is illegal in Russia, and why it’s illegal to compare Stalin to Hitler; they need to preserve a certain “founding myth” that allows them to escape what The Hebrew Hammer described as his greatest weapon – Jewish guilt.
President is half-Ukrainian, half-Jewish. PM is a Jewish man. Both are natives of Ukraine.
Economic minister is an ethnic Ukrainian from Ternopil.
Vice Prime-Ministers are Klympush-Tsintsadze (ethnic Ukrainian, granddaughter of some pre-World WarII nationalist leader), Zubko (ethnic Ukrainian), Kyrylenko (ethnic Ukrainian), and Rozenko (ethnic Ukrainian). All are from Ukraine and from the west, center and south.
Of the 24 members of the Ukrainian government, all but three are ethnic Ukrainians and all but two are born in Ukraine. Groysman, the Jewish Prime Minister. Avakov, the ethnic Armenian interior minister, came to Ukraine with his family when he was 2 years old. Klimkin, the foreign minister, is from Russia. He moved to Ukraine in his early twenties in 1991, after having graduated from Phys-Tech in Moscow.
Again, contrast with the overthrown government – an ethnic Russian-Belarussian President, Yanukovich, child of migrants. An ethnic Russian Prime Minister, Azarov, who came to Ukraine from Russia when he was already in his thirties! An ethnic Russian defense minister, Lebedyev, who moved to Ukraine from Russia as an adult because he was stationed there in the army during Soviet times. An ethnic Russian economics minister, Prasolov, who moved to Ukraine from Russia when he was 25 years old. A Russian-Jewish education minister (born in Kiev) who is now thought to be hiding in Israel. A justice minister (Lukash) of unclear ethnicity born in Moldova who came to Luhansk as an infant. Most of the government from one region -Donbas, an area on Ukraine’s periphery with an ethnic mix rather different from that of most of the country.
Review your words about smart people believing nonsense.
“That’s hilarious! Especially since, in contemporary German, the word Bio is usually used to mean ‘organic food’. ”
Seems accurate to me.
“Biodeutsche” = “Organically German”
No, the point isn’t that ordinary Russians should feel “guilty” or that Russia as a nation should engage in permanent self-castigation…but I don’t think you can deny Soviet crimes still cast a shadow over Russia’s relations with Poland, the Baltic states etc. That state of affairs can’t be in Russia’s best interest either. But I realize it’s a difficult problem and I don’t intend to lecture Russians on what they should or shouldn’t be doing.
Read up about the “national operations” during the Great Terror…some minorities that were seen as disloyal were very badly affected. A significant percentage of Soviet Poles was shot or sent to labour camps…that’s what I referred to. And of course the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland during 1939-1941 was fairly bad as well.
One mistake – Ukraine’s Heath Minister, Dr. Ulana Suprun, is a diaspora Ukrainian from suburban Detroit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulana_Suprun
Is Putin the Godfather of Extreme Nationalism? … No. He is the greatest and most effective trans-national diplomat since Bismarck. At times, I feel sorry for John Kerry and Hussein Obama. What is it like to believe you represent THE most powerful and exceptional world power in human history … and yet work under such debilitating handicaps?
Yes, you’re right about the way “bio” is generally used in German…that’s why I think the term is actually meant to mock Germans.
If you are Islamophile, why don’t you want muslims to have more nukes?
The Wikipedia says that the Finance Minister was born in Moldova.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Данилюк,_Александр_Александрович
Within the Maidanite elite, as the importance of the position increases, the likelihood of the holder being Ukrainain decreases.
Because I’m Jewish and I think that they would use them on us.
That’s some pretty strange logic…how can you be an Islamophile when you think Muslims would like to nuke you into oblivion?
Muslims aren’t Poles, with Muslims it’s not personal, it’s just business. Muslims are very protective of their fellow Muslims so of course they don’t like what we are doing to the Palestinians. Their hearts are in the right place though.
Muslims have always been good friends of the Jewish people. It’s just that we’ve been locked in a bloody fight to the death over the Land of Israel with them for the past 70 years. But like I said, it’s not personal.
I think that’s pretty foolish…yes, it’s probably true that Islamic societies traditionally were less anti-Jewish than Christian ones (though occasional outbursts of anti-Jewish violence still happened, like the pogrom of Cordoba in 1066). But the Islamic world has been flooded with anti-Jewish media, propaganda etc. for decades, with even the blood libel making a sort of return in claims that Jews kill Palestinian children for their organs. That must have had a profound effect on many Muslims’ views of Jews.
And your attitude towards Poles seems rather misguided to me. I guess I couldn’t blame you for negative views of Germans…but the hostility towards Poland some Jews still seem to harbour is pretty off-putting.
I don’t have negative views towards Germans. I’m a Nordicist Germanophile. I’m a huge admirer of Luther, Fredrick, Catherine the Great (ethnic German), Nietzsche, Wagner, Wilhelm, Ludendorff, Hindenburg and even somewhat of an admirer of Goebells (although I’m not a fan of his “kill all Jews” thing). Don’t let my taste for Latin/Arab/Iranian/Pakistani women and my support for warcrimes against WWII era German civilians deceive you.
SOME? Even the most liberal, self hating Jews hate Poles. Hell, even Sephardic/Mizrahi Jews hate Poles, and they never even lived there.
As for it being “off putting”, if you were Jewish, or even Polish, you would understand. Poles and Jews simply hate each other. It’s in both of our blood. The only difference is that our hatred of them is justified.
After WW2, we used to say to the Poles, “You wanted Poland without Jews, instead you got Jews without Poland.” Lol.
Fuck the Poles.
Which even Palestinians and Iranians don’t take seriously. Muslims love drama, but they know they know bullshit when they see it.
How can you be so sure about that? You may be right about Iran, but everything I’ve heard and read about Arabs seems to indicate to me that many of them really do hate Jews.
But anyway, we probably shouldn’t continue this discussion, it’s pretty off-topic. Thank you for answering my question.
Around 80%-90% of Arabs are anti-Semites (by the ADL’s methodology, anyway).
http://global100.adl.org/#map/meast
With Greasy William it seems to be a case of:
There’s a history of Jewish collaboration with the Mohammedan. Didn’t work out too well for them, eventually.
That quote from the occidental observer isn’t totally wrong, but as far as I know the history of Jews in medieval Spain was a bit more complicated. It’s true that the Visigothic kingdom had extensive anti-Jewish legislation in the late 7th century, and some of it seems to have been justified with reference to alleged Jewish subversion of other Christian realms (which probably referred to the Byzantines in their fight against Islam); as far as I know however there isn’t any real evidence that Jewish communities materially aided the Islamic conquest of Spain.
During the “golden age” of al-Andalus the position of Jews in Islamic Spain probably wasn’t that bad (though they weren’t legally the equals of Muslims). That changed somewhat in the 11th century (I already mentioned the pogrom of Cordoba in 1066); and finally, once those fanatics from the desert, the Almohads became the rulers of Muslim Spain in the 12th century, many Jews actually left for Castile and other Christian areas of Spain (where many would eventually convert to Christianity and intermarry with urban elites which led to the whole limpiezza del sangre thing in the early modern era).
The part of Spain that remained under Islamic rule, late medieval Granada was pretty homogenously Islamic (though that doesn’t keep leftists like Tariq Ali from presenting it as some sort of multicultural utopia destroyed by Catholic fanatics).
But anyway, I’d definitely agree that it’s an exaggeration that Islamic societies have always been “good friends” to the Jews…though Islamic societies on the whole have probably been less anti-Jewish than Christian ones (Jews as “Christ-killers”), an anti-Jewish strain has been present in Islam from the beginning.
You don’t think that maybe us being at war with each other for the last 70 years has had something to do with that? I doubt a poll of Jewish attitudes towards arabs would give a much better result.
And since when does the ADL have ANY credibility? They think everybody is an anti semite.
By the way, this whole tangent was launched because your own man Putin is importing Muslims to Russia by the millions. That jailbait Russian gymnast in the 2012 Olympics with the “I will cut you, bitch” stare I believe was actually a Muslim. Former Russian heavyweight boxing champ Sultan Ibramiov is a Muslim. Russia is Iran’s closest ally. Russia armed and encouraged the Arabs to go to war in 1967 and saved the Arab states from military disaster in 1956 and 1973.
In fact, Russia is so Islamophilic that it even banned the movie Borat for mocking Islam/Khazaks.
You are the last people who can accuse others of collaborating with Muslims.
I maintain that there is not, and never has been, any anti-semitism in the non-Iranian Islamic world beyond rhetoric.
By the way, Anatoly, I owe you an apology for calling you gay and a faggot a couple of months back in reaction to your “Sovok Jews for Trump” article. I can see now that I totally misunderstood what you were trying to say.
Ethnic Ukrainian, studied in Kiev.
There’s no real danger of that. Outside of Chechnya, Russia’s Muslims aren’t much more fertile than its non-Muslims (and Chechnya’s TFR is falling quickly, from 3.45 in 2010 to 2.8 in 2015).
Rosstat doesn’t break down fertility rates by religion, but they do by region. Russia has seven Muslim-majority regions, with a total 2015 population of 14.2 million. After I weighted their respective fertility rates by population, these were the Muslim vs. non-Muslim regional TFR figures for 2015:
Muslim-majority regions: 1.99
Non-Muslim regions: 1.76
Total Russia: 1.78
Don’t bother, no-one wastes his time trying to keep up with whatever you are pretending to be your deeply held beliefs this week on this blog.
Yet most Jews chose to live in Christian lands
The radical feminism and the pro-homo and pro-trannyism aside, this is the official ideology of the US:
https://spottedtoad.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/the-alt-right-and-the-underground-man/
In the US you become a pariah if you defend white people:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2016/07/18/steve-king-creates-uproar-salute-to-contributions-of-white-people/87270220/
The Russian government is mostly rotten, but the Russian people and culture have much more fight in them than western Europeans or the Anglosphere, look at how Russian immigrants in Germany fought back when they were assaulted by rapefugees.
Russian nationalism isn’t that extreme, though. It only seems that way because the west is more familiar with Russia. What Putin is doing is more of a reaction to western degeneracy. It is mostly anti-equality, not blood and soil.
Hindutva, Turkish nationalism, and East Asian nationalism are all much closer to the real thing.
OT: Anatoly, do you have any opinion on the recent news that long-time Uzbekistani autocrat Islam Karimov seems to be in poor health? Rumor is he had a stroke last week and may be seriously incapacitated.
Karimov, along with Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and Rahmon of Tajikistan are part the old guard Central Asian strongmen who emerged after the fall of the USSR. They keep a cap on much of the brewing social and religious strife that simmers in their fiefs, and in turn Moscow has worked hard to keep them in its orbit these past twenty-five years. That status quo seems to be fast changing however.
Uzbekistan is a real issue because it is the most heavily populated* of the Central Asian republics, and one where Radical Islamist ideology is digging in despite savage repressions on the part of Karimov’s secret police. It reminds me of Pre-Invasion Iraq in many respects, and when the Big Man dies, I sense somebody in Washington is going to use it as another opportunity to hassle Russia by funding a civil war between the numerous tribal/ethnic factions that populate the country. It could turn out to be a far bigger issue for Putin in the next few years than even the Ukraine or Syria since it could lead to a real domino effect through the whole region. The whole ‘Eurasian Project’ could be in serious risk.
Given the Kremlin’s generally conservative, reactive policy in these matters, what do you think the long term prospects are for Russia in this matter? Thanks in advance for any insights.
*And a rapidly growing population at that.
Indeed. All those Soviet-era Central Asian autocrats are aging fast and nobody knows what happens after them.
A few notes:
I am not a huge fan of Eurasian integration (at least in its open borders variant) so that coming to a halt will be feature not bug so far as I’m concerned. The sort of Eurasian integration I would like as regards Central Asia is annexation of South Siberia (aka Northern Kazakhstan) and a big beautiful wall from Guriev (“Atyrau”) to Lake Balkash and the Chinese border. I certainly hope Russia doesn’t get bogged down in any potential Uzbek flareup (other than the usual blant anti-terrorism assistance) and I suspect the Kremlin realizes that.
There was some confusion today on whether Karimov was dead or alive. On Twitter Kholmogorov joked about Shroedinger’s Karimov. I thought that was funny.
Uzbekistan had an oil windfall too.
You’re both mistaken on this. In fact, the Visigoth persecution of Jews and their subsequent pivot to the Muslims is a myth, because there were no virtually no Jews in Spain at the time. The anti-Jewish laws were more of a polemic against moral degeneracy and did not refer to actual living Jews, simply because there weren’t any. We don’t see much mention of Jews in Spanish documents until the 9th century, when they were imported from Arab lands as administrators.
As far as I know, this is controversial; but yes, I’ve read of claims that the actual number of Jews in Visigothic Spain was fairly small. But there must have been at least some, the anti-Jewish legislation (which basically went so far as to make Jews slaves of the king) makes no sense otherwise. And archbishop Julian of Toledo came from a family that had originally been Jewish.
As for Jews supporting the Muslim invasion, I’ve stated myself there is no evidence for this.
But at least they did not spend the oil money on luxury multi-million yachts or on luxary realty in the “rotting bourgeois” West. Though it did not help much the Soviet citizens, because the government spent a great share of that oil money on useless weaponry. However, there have been also rumours, that the Communist Party had a secret fund (so called “The Gold of the Party”), which was stored somewhere in the West, but disapeared during or shortly after the Perestroika.
I’ve never said I’m a patriot of the USSR. I wonder where you got that.
I am, and I dare to say such a heresy, national socialist with moderate liberal views on economics and society. I like the socialist model of Scandinavia, Benilux or Switzerland until the time they’ve become crazy about multiculti and sold out their own native people and culture (though Switzerland is not that hopeless). But because I’m not simply socialist, I want a prosperity only for Russia and Russians and not for the multitude of non-Russian oligarchs or incoming immigrants, I am, right, also nationalist. (I’m not against indigenous non-Russians of Russia doing also well, until they become overly rich and sponge on Russians like it is now.)
I think any cat would suffice.
(It is a wordplay from the well-known in Russia existential question “If not Putin, then who?”, where in Russian “who” is “kto”, which sound like “kot” (cat), so you get “If not Putin, then a cat (kot)”.)
If seriuosly, I think it is really crazy to think that in a nation of 145 mln people there is only one person who can be a president. It is like a nation with no talented people. Whether you like Putin or not, if you think such a way you clearly follow and believe in the Putin personality cult. But I do not follow it, and I think Putin is just an ordinary person, I’d say he is even pathetic, so millions of much more talented Russians could do his job.
He has done nothing. Currently up to 100 mln of Muslims from Central Asian and Transcaucasian republics with the living standards resembling Africa, have an absolutely free access to Russia, the borders practically do not exist, the visa regime, as if it exists at all, is most favorable. And some 6-10 mln of aggressive Muslims from the Russian Caucasian republics are migrating to the ethnic Russian cities where those Muslims create ethnic mafias and terrorize the local Russian population.
Thank you for your sincereity. No, seriously.
[I’ve never said I’m a patriot of the USSR. I wonder where you got that.]
My mistake. I thought your views had some elementary consistency. It turns out you are just a hireling of the west and your real, as distinct from pretended, motive for opposing Putin is his success at restoring Russia’s geopolitical standing.
Russian were hated there and literally were driven off from there. There were reported anti-Russian pogroms during the 1990s as well, but nobody has ever investigated it and now neither the Kremlin nor his Asiatic friends want to do it, so we’ll never know. So if Muslim Asiatics hated Russians in such a degree, that Russians had to be literally fleeing off and saving their lives, and as a result there are virtually no Russians in those Asiatic and Transcaucasian republics, why are they going in their millions in so hated Russia full of so hated Russian kafirs?
The degree of development of Central Asia is similar with Black Africa, so Russia has its own Africa at its borders, and Russia has already accepted at least 11-12 mln (the official figure) of economical refugees from there.
It is just an ugly and illogical legacy of the Soviet past. Nobody in the 1990s knew what to do with the Soviet administrative “divide and rule” system, so Yeltsin and friends have created this idiocy named the “Russian Federation”. No wonder Putin has been trying to control it, but he never intended to change the system.
You mean 300,000 ethnic Russians of Chechnya, who were totally annihilated from the republic like they’d never lived there? No, Putin, no matter how he might be evil, did not do that, that has been done by Chechens, now a fast growing privilege nation in Russia, and in some way done personally by Kadyrov, a close friend, a right hand and simply an admirer of Putin.
But Russians cannot fight back in their own country. If Muslims raped a Russian girl, or a Muslim immigrant abused a Russian kid, or a mob of Muslim youth gangsters abused, harmed and (often) killed a passer-by Russian, or a privileged rich Muslim on his Ferrari knocked dead a pedestrian – in most of such cases, which are now a part of the everyday life in Russia, Muslims are covered up, acquitted and defended by corrupt police, corrupt judges, corrupt state officials, corrupt state MSM, corrupt everybody. If you say something against this situation in the country you’re labeled as “fascist”, “nazist” and what not.
As if spending the money on supporting client states around the world was of any benefit for the Russian people.
That sounds pretty depressing, I had hoped things would be better in Russia in this regard.
Yeah I’ve seen some of the videos of Chechen vermin running wild in Moscow and Mohammedans filling the streets during Ramadan, sickening; and Putin spends billions on turning Grozny into glittering metropolis. I think the Russian people can overcome it though, but they should build bridges with other non-Muslims there: Buddhists, Christians in the Caucasus, Ukrainians, etc. instead of going it alone.
I just meant that I’m not a Russophile. I feel about Russians like I feel about the Chinese, I don’t care about them but wish them well.
Like I said, I liked The Kruetzer Sonata.
Anyway, you haven’t got police, courts, government, full of Blacks, you have no powerful Black oligarchs, no powerful Black mafias, no Black “diasporas”, etc. who would cover up other Blacks.
Russian state universities have quotas, though I do not know details. However, more important are unofficial quotas and ethnic nepotism. There have been circulated many lists of students in Russian law or medical universities where you’ll hardly find a Russian name. Just a recent anecdotal example.
https://pp.vk.me/c635100/v635100921/5555/6H_vCiDBe0Y.jpg
I once studied the American visa system. No, it is not that simple. You can not just “walk in”, unless you’re a lucky citizen of the EU and a few of other First World countries. You must get a visa even just to transit. And for many poor countries the number of visa denials is significant.
Compare with Russia: at least 70 mln of Muslims of Central Asia can just buy a train ticket and go to Russia (smuggling along the way narcotics). Then they can freely live and illegally work, and if they do not want to be illegal they literally BUY a “patent” (work permit). Whereas in the USA you must do a lot of paper work to get a work permit.
It is an exaggeration. I do not remember the correct numbers, but every years hundreds of thousands of illegals deported from the USA. There are many special prisons for illegals. There are no such prisons in Russia.
Yes, there exists such a very tiny class of rich Blacks in the USA. But you have not got the idea. In America Blacks are truly the lowest class, the poorest bottom, they have neither power nor money, they are underrepresented in the elite. In Russia non-Russians are at the top, they are privileged. You’ll never find a Chechen ghetto in Moscow but rather luxury villas and Chechen MPs or “siloviks” on Ferraris with golden handguns.
So in the USA there is bogus multiculturalism when in fact Blacks are nobody and nothing, while in Russia there is bogus “Russian nationalism”.
Objective data do not support your assertion that “non-Russians are at the top, they are privileged” if by that you mean the statistically average non-white as compared to the statistically average white in Russia. Quite the reverse, in fact. But I suspect you attach more value to your own real or pretended feelings and intuitions which tell you differently.
Let me guess: From here?
https://www.facebook.com/sputpom/photos/a.287321078022225.69487.287285068025826/1094027674018224/
First comment to that seems reasonable enough:
OK. Sorry, if my comment might look a little bit overreacted.
And I do not think that Russia should play in the dirty game of politicizing of history (Geschichtspolitik, polityka historyczna). If Poles and other East Europeans want good relations with Russians, they must stop playing in this game and making Russians feel guilty about real or imagined wrongdoings from the distant past. If they prefer having a grudge about Russians, then they’ll never get along with Russians. If East Europeans are looking for a historical scapegoat they must find somebody else. Russians do not like to be treated such a way.
Do you know that so-called “Eastern Poland” has been populated for centuries by non-Poles (i.e. Eastern Slavs and Balts), and Poland itself for centuries occupied that land and oppressed its population, and that before the Soviets got “Eastern Poland” in 1939 there was a war in 1920-21, exactly then Poland got this “Eastern Poland”, Poles even managed to occupy Kiev (is Kiev in “Eastern Poland” too?). And remember this “Eastern Poland” has been given to Belarus, Ukraine and (!) Lithuania, while Russia’s got not a single acre of it.
So I agree with their condemnations of Bolshevik repressions against ordinary Poles (and many oppressors were Poles themselves) and I condemn that as I condemn similar Bolshevik repressions against ordinary Russians, but Polish historical complains and scapegoating about “Eastern Poland” are ridiculous. Probably they must reload the guilt from Russia on those who now possess “Eastern Poland”.
And what about pre-1939 Eastern Germany (no quotes here), which is now Western Poland? I think Poles must be worried more about that than about “Eastern Poland”.
“And what about pre-1939 Eastern Germany (no quotes here), which is now Western Poland? I think Poles must be worried more about that than about “Eastern Poland”.”
They’ve got nothing to worry about, that issue is totally dead, nobody (apart maybe from some unimportant fringe elements) in Germany even thinks much about the lost eastern territories nowadays. Would be absurd anyway at a time when present-day Germany is given away to Arabs and Africans.
I understand your argument about Russia’s relations to the Eastern Europeans, it’s understandable ordinary Russians have no desire for being guilt-tripped because of Bolshevik crimes, given how bad communism was for Russians themselves.
Thank you! It’s amazing how many people buy the pro Polish version of 1939.
Polish Jews helped the Soviets stamp out Polish resistance after the war.
Re the bolded part: I don’t know what people think in Europe, but in America people consider Belarus and Russia the same thing. Ask any American where Minsk is and they will answer “Russia”.
Actually, they’ll probably answer “What’s a Minsk?”, but the ones who do know it is a city in Eastern Europe will think it’s in Russia.
Do you realize that your accusation of others in being sold out looks ridiculous? Do you realize that the very same accusation may be equally applied to you? But I won’t name you a Kremlin troll, I think you’re just a deluded Westerner who sympathize Russia. But I reveal a secret to you: if you like Russia, you do not need to like the Russian government or personally Putin. And vice versa.
My real motive of writing here is just having fun. Do you really believe that somebody would hire me to write here? What’s the point in propagating some dozens of commenters here? If I truly were a hireling I would have been openly working for NYT or WP, which are read by millions.
This geopolitical bogus success hardly adds anything to the well being of ordinary Russians. You see, for you Russia is an abstract thing, a far away distant country, and Putin looks like a last hero in the world who openly opposes Western crooks and makes “Russia great again”. But for me Russia means everyday earthly life here, and it does not look very promising.
Yes, you’ve made a good point, I somehow missed this important detail. So it is really difficult to decide if the USSR was better in spending money.
I did not mean you are a Russophobe either. I just mean, thousands of Westerners (especially journalists and politicians) are always eager to talk about Russia, a country they know little about, as if they really care and are concerned about its well being, while they’ll never sincerely admit they do not care, but just providing their own agenda.
No, I have no FB. Somewhere in the net. SP are usually late and always pick up already circulating news and memes.
It looks the opposite, like it confirms the point. Instead of living in their sunny beautiful Dagestan or wherever, these illiterate stupid “kirgudu” are going to Moscow colleges and universities, after which they’ll got their good place in Moscow. And all is due to the widespread ethnic nepotism and corruption.
But I know you like statistics, so feel free to make a rebuttal and show us that the majority of students in Moscow universities, where future policemen, judges, state officials and other “budgetniks” with a good and promising salaries study, come from Voronezh or ethnic Russian places like that.
You see, the difference between how it concerns you and how it concerns me that for you Russia is just another brain exercise, for me it is my today or future life, when I’ll sooner or later meet these “kirgudu” in police, in hospital and everywhere. But you’ll never face such problems, you’ll continue living in your comfortable White ‘hood in sunny CA.
Good for them. I was just trying to show that in their dirty game the accusers might easily become the accused.
This reminds me a popular joke:
Ukrainian #1:”Hey, Mykola, let’s go and beat Moskals (Russians) up!”
Uk. #2: “But if they’ll beat us up?”
Uk. #1: “But for WHAT will they beat US up?”
It does not surprise me and I never blame Americans, that they are stupid because they have little idea about the geography of faraway countries.
In fact, it is normal for all people around the world to know little about what is happening outside of their countries. They simply do not need or do not remember such useless information.
Most Russians hardly imagine the geography of the USA and can answer where, say, Ohio or Kansas are situated, and some even may think, for example, Texas is a different country or things like that. Many may confuse Slovakia and Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland, Spain and Italy (in Russian they sound similar: Shvetsiya and Shveytsariya, Italiya and Ispaniya). Few really can name all the capitals of European countries. But it is all normal. People does not need this until they are travelers or their job requires this.
I tried to investigate this a while back on the basis of the limited officially available data: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/are-caucasians-stealing-russian-university-places-the-data-says-probably-not/
This implies that Dagestan, at any rate, is unlikely to be cheating much.
I will ask you to kindly refrain from using this argument in the future. Most importantly, it is a logical fallacy, but not only that, it is factually incorrect.
[My real motive of writing here is just having fun. Do you really believe that somebody would hire me to write here? What’s the point in propagating some dozens of commenters here? If I truly were a hireling I would have been openly working for NYT or WP, which are read by millions]
This is your audition.
[This geopolitical bogus success hardly adds anything to the well being of ordinary Russians.]
Ordinary Russians have already seen what your antipatriotic cod-utilitarianism leads to. It leads to the 1990s. That was your golden age, which you are trying and failing to bring again.
[for you Russia is an abstract thing, a far away distant country]
That’s no more true than it is that you have never been there yourself.
[But for me Russia means everyday earthly life here, and it does not look very promising.]
Even if you could be trusted, I would not think you qualified to make that judgement.
@5371
You really shouldn’t let Boris N get to you. While he may be unusually articulate in English, obviously knowledgable and somewhat erudite, Russians like him are a dime a dozen. They complain, incessantly and pathologically, about everything (it’s the reason he’s often mistaken for a Russian liberal, they behave in much the same way). He would not be any happier in the USSR, or the chaotic hell of the 90s, or even in his mythical Caucasian- and Central Asian-free paradise; he’d just find something else to bitch about. Instead of taking responsibility for his own actions, it’s always (fill in the blank’s) fault.
Note that Boris N speaks almost native English and claims to have lived in the West. So he could easily just pick up and leave to go live in another country. Instead he marinates in his hate, wallowing in misery. Of course, if he lived in another country, he’d complain about it in the same way he’s bagging on Russia now.
Also note, people like Boris N are disinclined to actually offer any realistic solutions. There’s no nuance, no areas of admitted progress, just constant gloom and doom. Russians have a tendency to maximalism, but certainly the public at large gets it. Putin has a very high approval rating, but that of course doesn’t mean those same people who generally support him can’t be simultaneously critical of certain policies. So, as Boris N categorically denounces Putin, he’s also denouncing the 80-some-odd percent of his fellow countrymen who approve of him.
It hardly adds anything to the material well being of ordinary Russians, in fact detracts from it, but they seem to yearn for respect on the world stage. I’d say it’s probably one of the features about Putin they find the most appealing, despite the economic mismanagement. Funny thing, that. Of course, you certainly know better than they do what’s good for them and what they should want.
Yes. Most people I know in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia, most of whom are not liberals, have the exact same complaints that he does. The discrepancy between the attitudes of westerners who idolize Russia as some sort of conservative, ethnic Russian paradise and the attitudes of actual Russians who live, articulated very well by Boris, is enormous.
Westerners who idolize Russia should think about that.
Many of those 80-some percent of Russians who support Putin have the same complaints about Russia that Boris does, they just don’t blame Putin for these problems.
Despite such complaints, Russia is still a much better place for its residents than it was in the 90s.
It’s not like there is someone better out there for Russia than Putin. The Communists? The Liberals? Zhirinovski? Medvedev?
Stupids don’t go to universities.
If Putin doesn’t do anything to reverse the demographic displacement of the Slavic population, I can’t blame Russian nationalists for thinking he deserves to be overthrown regardless of better lack of better alternatives.
No they dont you lying,sociopathic troll POS. They all acknowledge the vast improvements in most areas since Putin came to power you dumb prick. Most Russians dont have a problem with the democracy in the country , don’t think the opposition are “silenced”, recognize their cities are better places to live, appreciate the vast benefits given to mothers, feel safer, fully support Russian foreign policy, have no problem with their media and its vast variety, feel the elections are being fought fairly, recognise that the corruption is going down, recognise the massive building of new homes that are going on, recognise travelling from Moscow to Saint Petersburg ( or to Helsinki) is much better now than it has ever been …and tonnes of other things
They would like more access to credit for small businesses but recognise the current situation makes this more difficult , most recognise their are brilliant roads…and bad roads, caused if anything by the greater access to cars, caused by greater international deals and increased wealth caused by moves made by….Putin
Like the tramp that you are…you are making an idiotic lie when saying that Russians have the same criticisms as this cretin Nemtsov
The police have a much better reputation now than they did when Putin started
….all these things I mention that pitiful Ukrainian Nazi scum aren’t and haven’t been able to develop in their failing society
He is a principled man and obvious true Russian Orthodox…..and is widely believed to have been made to stand in 2012 reluctantly….owing more than anything to the NATO ouster of Gaddaffi. He is also somehow always rigid about sticking to the law and showing discipline. If you don’t think his talk about US unipolarism, Nazi government in Ukraine is genuine…then you are an idiot
Amid all your other clueless bollocks. There are plenty of competent,dedicated people , knowledgeable about the rest of the world….in Russia who could do the job to a good standard.
The Communists have strong grassroots support, many competent politicians in local government…and the only way to know for sure how much of a successful or unsuccessful left-wing policy they could implement in government …would be if they were in government you dumb prick
One of Putin and United R’s, great successes has been taking many of the best ideas in policy from KP,LDPR Just Russia and so on….and then getting the credit for them
Zhirinovksy, clear if you actually listen to him …is a very smart individual, if he ran for Ukrainian President he would easily be the best politician they have ever had ( and the sanest)….and is obviously smarter than the western commentariat and the likes of Obama,Blair,Cameron,Carter,Kissinger,Merkel and Bill Clinton. This is quite obvious when you hear him speak on World Affairs…many such as with Banderastan…he has been proven right again…time after time
How about a song instead?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik1rw0AEuSU
That’s the crux of the matter, though.
Politics is the art of the possible. As of the present time, due in part to their intellectual failure to persuade enough Russians, the actual choice Russian nationalists have is not between Putin and their “Russian national state,” but between the Russian patriot Putin and the Ukrainian nationalist Navalny/Jewish nationalist Khodorkovsky/etc (I suppose there’s also the Soviet patriot Zyuganov as a museum relic).
The Jewish presence in politics and business has certainly diminished under Putin.
6/7 of the top oligarchs in the 1990s were Jews.
Today, the share of Jewish-Russian billionaires is at 20%.
Of course it was an almost entirely natural development and not due to any particular policy of Putin’s (the vast majority of oligarchs, including Jewish ones, went along quietly with his reconsolidation of the state’s political authority. Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, etc. were the exceptions, not the rule). First, there were far more Jews in Russia 25 years ago than today. During the 1990s, they were also unusually well placed to benefit from privatization, due to many of them having good access to capital due to their above average participation rates in the Soviet-era black economy. Since then, both factors have drastically attenuated.
The ultimate reason Jews are so commercially successful is of course their high average IQs (other factors play a role but this is a key one). Russian nationalists, like European ones, are much less aware of psychometric research than White Nationalists, NRx, and even many conservatives in the US. That is why for many of them the continued overperformance of Jews in the Russian economy is evidence of Putin being in on the ZOG conspiracy.
You pretending to know something is funny.
Excuse me for interrupting, gentlemen (I read your comments, esp. Boris’s with great interest), but why do you assume that a figure such as Rogozin (a Russian ultra-nationalist) is not likely to become president one day?
Another question re: Kavkaztsi – is there a real, economic need for them in Moscow (such as they will do lower paid work, like in that show Nasha Russia and thus many businesses couldn’t survive without them) or have they gained their status exclusively based on tribal nepotism?
Boris, you are right that Scandinavians are national socialist in many ways (except multiculturalism), they couldn’t have such a high HDI without it, in fact, that’s the way to go for any small European nation (under 50 million, which is most of them). Wouldn’t it be nice if Russia could find her own version of it and I sort of had the impression that that’s what Putin was doing (plus, managed liberal capitalism, because from what I recall Putin was selective about what foreign capital to invite or not, for instance, he didn’t let the Norwegians or French develop Shtokman). Of course, Putin is a “zapadnik” and a multi-culturalist, but I thought only to the extent that Russians are the dominant nation.
Re: Zhirinovsky and Zyuganov – they’re both kind of old, 70+. Don’t you think they are a little long in the tooth? Or do they hope to be like Brezhnev?
Have you thought about translating 200 Years Together?
Castalia House might publish it.
Wouldn’t having been active in Komsomol give one an advantage later, in the 90s? I’ve noticed that seems to be a common trend with many rich Jewish post-Soviet figures, including Khodorkovsky.
The lower paid work is done by the central Asian Muslims. In terms of Caucasians – Azeris run Moscow’s markets, Chechens used to run the casinos, Armenians (not Muslims, of course) run businesses and have taken over lucrative positions in academia (bribe farms.) Boris can probably tell you more.
It was the Georgians who ran the casinos, not the Chechens. They shut them all down partly as a way to press on the diaspora, back when there were tensions between Russia and Georgia.
Don’t talk bollocks you dumb prick..it was Georgians who ran the casinos. Georgians probably have in proportion about the same lucrative positions in academia (places of study that actually do something useful….not non-entity’s like Lvov ) as Armenians. Amid all those forms of work, except in the hard labour work which they now do in Poland….are “Ukrainians” featuring prominantly in all those categories too…..but a cretin like you can’t mention that because Ukrainians are one of the same with Russians…. apart from the suicidal 300 years perrenial nutcase Poles pretending to be Ukrainian…and causing much of the trouble in the cesspit that is Ukraine today.
As I had written earlier, you pretending to know something is funny.
http://www.pravdareport.com/history/20-02-2004/4901-ethnic-0/
Chechens and Ossetins hold the most paying spheres: gambling (Moscow casinos) and filling stations network. Chechen Umar Dzhabrailov is the owner of the Plaza group where the Rossia hotel and other 2-3-star hotels belong. Chechen Ruslan Baisarov is the vice-president of the Moscow Fuel Company keeping over 100 filling stations in Moscow and the Moscow Region. Even though the company is part of the TsRK holding and majority of the holding shares are held by the Moscow Government, businessmen say that Ruslan Baisarov “costs” $200 million (however it is not clear how the sum got formed). Saidullayev is Moscow’s richest Chechen whose fortune makes up $500 million. He is the owner of the Milan concern (the Russian Lotto group of companies). The Saidullayev Empire also includes restaurants, beauty salons, research companies and centers for construction technologies.
What do you mean? I cannot get your insinuations.
Well, unlike some self-proclaimed Russia experts I wasn’t back then a lucky member of a family of the Soviet Jewish intelligentsia, which could and did escape the worst of the Russian 1990s in the West. I am from a low middle working provincial family and I experienced the poverty and the depression of the 1990s in person and in full quite very well, so it was not my golden time. But in some sense you might be right, I was then very young and like everybody I sometimes miss my early days, but it is just because for every human the childhood and the youth is usually a happy time despite any problems. Not because I like the 1990s and want the era itself back. I have been griping here about the future exactly because I do not want the 1990s back, but I see how Russia is slowly approaching their repeat. The happy and promising 2000s are long ago over.
Well, finally I’m totally agree with you. You know about me and I know about you only that what we say about themselves in the comments. By the way, I still haven’t seen you saying anything about who you are and what connections with Russia you have (though you have the full right not to answer at all). You’re right we here have no means to check the personalities of each other. But I tend to believe people what they say about themselves, because maybe only 1 in 50 have a bad habit to pretend to be what they are not. However, it’s very strange that you think that pretending to be Russian is something worth to do. If you do not believe me then I cannot help you.
Yeah, for you it seems CA or NY residents who’ve never or hardly been in Russia can be trusted more than Russians who’ve lived in the country their whole life. You also believe more the Russian government, the Russian officials and the Russian media, which, of course, could never say a lie.
Since your views are not typical of Russians who have lived in Russia all their lives, you cannot claim they gain any credibility on that basis.
Your outlook is that of a late 80s west-aboo who will do anything he can to damage his own country. Fortunately your capacity to do that now is less than it would have been then.
Do not attribute your thoughts to me.
Again, do not insinuate. I’ve never, never blamed anybody for my own actions. Why you make up things about me if you’ve even not read me is outside of my understanding.
It is not that easy. Even if I wanted to, nobody wants me there. If some Americans with native English, with a life’s experience in the country, with a college degree, and with a full legal status as citizens cannot find job and are desperate, surely in the USA I easily might end up on the street. But even to simply get there I must get a visa, and to get a visa, I must find an employer who would need me, but that is hardly possible with my humanities degree. Good English is not suffice. I must’ve studied economics or computer science. So do not say “love it or leave it” to me.
Yes, you’re right, I have had complains about the West. But the degree of problems in the West is not comparable with problems in Russia. My complaining about the West is more of a cosmetic nature, even if it would irritate me, I could get along with it. In Russia problems are fundamental.
We are here not on electoral debates that I must propose solutions. But I’ve said I like the older version (some time before the 1980s-90s) of socialism in Scandinavia or Benilux and I’d like it to be in Russia. Again, you’ve not read me, but insinuate.
Probably it is not me, probably it is just the Russian reality is such.
Do not manipulate. Not 80% are for Putin, but 1500-2000 or so Russians from the polls are for Putin. One cannot extrapolate the opinion of 2000 onto the whole nation. Opinion poll is a sort of modern pseudo-science and manipulative technologies.
But the real voting has shown that among 120M of Russians, who are over 18 years old, only 45M voted for Putin and even much fewer, 32M, voted for Putin’s pet party “United Russia”. And there is a good chance these numbers are inflated due to the electoral frauds.
So even if I disagree with anybody, I disagree only with those 32M or 45M voters. And if in that way I “denounce my fellow countrymen”, then half or so of Americans, French, Germans, etc., who have not voted for the ruling governments, also “denounce their fellow countrymen”.
Say this to yourself every time you complain about Western governments.
@AP
You seem like a rather intelligent and reasonably well informed commentator here, but you can’t know everything. You’re wrong about the casino business and that article you posted is ridiculous. I’m not sure why you’re arguing about something that is common knowledge, you should just drop it.
Georgian control of the casinos has deep roots back to the heyday of Kvantrishvili, Karelin and the Sportsmen. As I already wrote above, the casino ban was at least partially motivated by the desire to pressure the Georgian diaspora in the wake of the 08.08.08 war. That’s not to say the Chechens didn’t hold a few casinos, they certainly did (like the Absolute in Yugo-zapadnaya), but it’s always been a predominately Georgian-run sphere.
So the only evidence you will accept that VVP is popular is a 98% vote for him at the polls.
Hi there, Mr. Western Democracy!
Yes, you’ve nailed it. “Russians for Putins” are just deluded that Putin has nothing to do with the system. “The tsar is good, but it is the boyars who are bad”. I’ve personally encountered many people with this attitude. But if you ask them what they think about Duma, or the goverment, or the officials, or the oligarchs, you’ll hear very different things than when you ask them about Putin. Even I might sound more patriotic then them. Moreover, why one can hear something bad about Putin from average Russians, if they simply lack necessary information, the whole Russian media machine never says anything bad about Putin. Putin is pictured like he’s never given any responsibility for what is going on bad in the country, it is all about the bad “boyars”. No wonder people might 80% approve Putin, but 99% disapprove the “boyars”.
Again, you’re right. Complains about the current situation does not mean people want back to the 1990s. It is a clear and ugly manipulation.
The Russian political landscape has been sterilized by the Kremlin, it is a political desert. So there is nobody to choose.
Unless they have connections, which usually also mean they belong to the right ethnic group.
I’ve read a lot of your comments on this site. If you’ve been published somewhere, have a blog, or whatever, please provide a link and I’l be happy to check it out.
I know of quite a few people who’ve done it and they’re not smaht like you. If you really want it, and the problems in the West are cosmetic, as opposed to fundamental like in Russia, then you should be able to pull it off.
My insinuations are based on quite a bit of exposure to people who always talk about leaving but don’t because they won’t be able to make better lives for themselves somewhere else. Yet they don’t admit that to themselves or anyone else, it’s just subconscious knowledge that makes them miserable. Sorry, but you sound just like them, so I will stick with my initial impressions despite your protestations.
I’m not saying “love it”, I’m saying deal with it. And have the intellectual integrity to put today’s Russia into some global and historical context and admit that the situation is not as black and white as you paint it. For example, if you say there are educated Americans who are desperate to find work in America, maybe the situation in Russia is not so severe.
Doesn’t everybody? But we’re talking about Russia here, not la-la land. The Scandic model is wonderful, but is not scalable to a country with the size and ethnic diversity of Russia. And Scandinavia was eventually consumed by its own success and is turning into multi-culti hell.
There are actually some elements of Russia’s ruling system that emulate Scandic-Style socialism, but I don’t feel like getting into a debate about that. I’m sure you’ll find a million reasons why I’m not qualified to have an opinion and yours is the one true truth. Otoh, I’d love to hear how, if you were appointed President of Russia tomorrow, you’d go about practically implementing your Scandinavian model in Russia. But, yeah, it’s not an electoral debate, just a meaningless internet forum for you to let off some steam.
No, it’s you.
Uh huh. I don’t agree with the polls so they must be wrong. Brilliant.
Again, your hate and misery are blinding you. You cite the millions who didn’t vote at all, as opposed to those who voted for other parties and candidates. Those who didn’t vote acted that way not out of opposition to Putin, but merely due to apathy and a general disdain for the democratic process. Many of the people who support Putin in the polls could be bothered to pick up the phone, but not to go out and vote.
Now you are the one insinuating without having read anything of mine. To the extent that I complain about Western governments at all, it is in relation to their foreign policies. But, even here, I assume they are acting in what they see as their best interests. They are the enemy of Russia, but that doesn’t make them in any way inferior, morally or otherwise.
There are no principles in foreign relations, might makes right, same as it’s always been. I don’t have a problem with double standards as long we’re honest about having them. It all depends on whose ox is being gored.
On a separate note, a lot of your complaints are unquestionably legitimate. It’s just that they are not original, nor do they present themselves with easy solutions. I’m not sure how to address the enormous crime and original sin of privatization. Likewise, as I see it, there are two choices in dealing with the North Caucuses, neither of them particularly attractive: feed them or fight them, pay in treasure or in blood. As for Central Asians, well, personally I don’t have a problem with them and much prefer them to the Caucasians, who, unlike the Central Asians, are actually Russian citizens. And I’ll take the Central Asians and Caucasians over American blacks any day of the week.
Good mythology. But especially funny, when only B-sky, Kh-sky and G-ky have been perished, while the others are home and dry and Fridman is a second man in the country according to the Forbes.
Let’s just take the first 20 of the Forbes list:
Mikhelson, Fridman, Vekselberg, Lisin, Khan, Abramovich, Skoch, Aven are obviously Jewish, it’s in the surface. Already 8/20 = 40%. Deripaska, Galitsky, and Rybolovlev sound suspicious. Plus Usmanov is Uzbek, Alekperov is Azeri, Galchev is Georgian Greek. Already 14/20=70% are non-Russian.
So you may be right that Jews does not own everything, but the entire picture is not very promising. And many seem to pay too much attention to the formal “fifth column”. Forget it. If a person has earned his billions exploiting Russia, but keeps and spends his money in the West, he clearly states he wants nothing to do with Russia and Russians, hence he is not Russian, he is a comprador, be his name Ivanov, Rabinovich or Mahomedov or whatever. It is just in the latter cases it is clear and obvious why these people have such an attitude to the country and to the people.
I once asked you and I ask again: could you decipher who are those mysterious “etc.”? The full list, please. This might be even an idea for your next article. At least we migh have known who are those poor sould from the 1990s who have been opressed by “Russian natonalist” Putin.
No wonder. Everything about Jews are all natural.
I’ll try not to. But it is very difficult for me not to ask the questions “who are you?” and “what is your interest?” to the foreigners who are eager to speak about Russia. Be they Western “Russian patriots” who only report never ending success of the Putin regime, or Western “liberals” who want “democracy”. And I cannot take seriously people who never plan to live in the country. Because for them it does not really matter what will happen there, their lives will be not affected.
I do not see why. Both I and you can discuss the current affairs, say, in Greenland or New Guinea, and it will hardly affect our lives, it would be another brain exercise.
So are you going to live in Russia and, what is most important, raise your children there? When?
Well, I’m joking. We both know well, the people who already have their lives settled in America cannot choose Russia. You must be really desperate, or be given such a promising offer, that you cannot decline.
No, a rule of thumb is: people from Central Asia work, people from the Caucasus own and benefit.
Of course, there is no need for both of them.
It wouldn’t, it is. The Russian ruling class literally has either come from the Party/KGB or (if they were too young then) from Komsomol.
I’ve said, I do not accept the polls per se. 99% or 1% or whatever. Polls are anti-scientific manipulations, nothing else.
What do you know about “typical Russians”? I bet you even do not know the language. Unless you are Russian yourself, but it does not seem to be the case.
On the off chance that this refers to me (which I’m sure it doesn’t, since I’d ban you for that), I have never proclaimed myself a Russian expert nor am I a Jew.
The two biggest “non-systemic” figures are Navalny and Khodorkovsky. If you as a Russian nationalist prefer the Ukrainian nationalist Navalny or the Jewish nationalist Khodorkovsky to the Rossiyansky patriot Putin that is your right, but I for one am quite content to continue keeping them “sterilized.”
Argue with Lenta: https://lenta.ru/articles/2014/10/27/reachethnic/
Not really sure who you’re arguing against. Not me at any rate.
Gusinsky comes to mind. Some smaller fish I don’t happen to have on my brain’s RAM. Again, what’s your argument here? That Putin imprisoned/exiled those oligarchs who didn’t heed his warning to BTFO from politics, while allowing the rest to continue enjoying their misbegotten gains, is hardly a controversial viewpoint. It is in fact the standard one.
Once again, where have I claimed otherwise? Why do you insist on putting up strawmen?
Jews are much better at making money than goyim. (They constitute almost 40% of US billionaires, twice more in relative terms than in Russia).
There are a number of explanations for that along with the sorts of people who give them:
* How dare you even mention that, you anti-Semite! (insufferable establishment faggots)
* Culture (e.g. Amy Chua, conservatives)
* Jewish privilege (leftists who can’t reconcile their egalitarian beliefs with Jewish wealth)
* Jewish IQ (people who like science, numbers, and understand psychometrics)
* Further “HBD” factors in addition to IQ, e.g. greater affinity for money in general; perhaps also something specific to Mediterranean peoples (in the US, Greek and Lebanese Americans have more billionaires than one might guess from their modest average IQs; perhaps there is a similar dynamic wrt Caucasians in Russia), i.e. Fat Tony > Dr. John at making money.
* Ethnic networks, pursuit of ethnic genetic interests at expense of host societies (people who buy Kevin MacDonald’s arguments on Jewish influence; IIRC, Krylov has made similar arguments)
* ZOG (Nazi types)
So which of these explanations do you favor?
I don’t discuss my personal life on this blog.
That said, I daresay the assumptions within that paragraph say far more about you than me.
Thanks for the info, I was thinking too much of the casinos the Chechens did run.
For some strange reason I thought the Shangri La in my old neighborhood in Moscow was owned by Chechens but obviously it was not (it’s owner, I now see, was an American); I must have misheard.
Blaming Putin for the problems isn’t typical, but his complaints in general are quite typical. How often do you travel to Russia? I haven’t been since 2013, but heard his complaints from Russians all the time. “Boris” says he’s from the provinces, but one hears his complaints even from well-off Muscovites, sometimes with different flavors. For example, the ones in Academia complain about native Russians (and Jews) being squeezed out by intellectually inferior, but connected, incoming non-Russians (especially Armenians). I heard the sad story of the ethnic Russian head of a department at a medical institute, member of the Academy of Sciences, pushed out against his will by some young guy from the Caucuses with a dubious degree and forged . “We don’t have our own country anymore” this man’s colleague complained.
A professor at a medical institute overheard how a dumb but well-connected student from the Caucuses who somehow got a 5 on an exam, consoled his tearful, brilliant Russian girl student who got a 3: “Don’t cry, your grade doesn’t matter, I know you’re smart and when we’re done here I’ll hire you in my clinic.” [his wealthy, connected family is buying him a clinic after he gets his degree].
*I believe, the state exam administered by people from outside the institute, a helpful “reform” that enables the circumvention of non-corrupt local teachers.
Well, this is something I disagree with…
Да пошел бы ты в одно место …
Although your English is good, in this case you didn’t understand correctly. A vote at the polls has nothing to do with opinion polls, it means a vote on election day.
Are you Russian? I thought you were Polish-American. In either case I don’t like you.
Boris: if Russia is so bad how come all the youtube videos I see of it everybody looks so happy?
Good things I’ve noticed about Russia from videos/movies:
1. Happy people
2. No fat people
3. Hot, well dressed and well made up girls (although I’m not a huge fan of white girls)
4. No blacks
5. No Hispanics
Bad things I’ve noticed:
1. Lots of drunk morons
2. No latinas
3. Girls are too tall
4. Horrible infrastructure; everything appears to be in a state of disintegration
5. Awful weather
hahahahaha!!! No…you were caught lying again you lowlife tramp idiot and fantastic prick. That is common knowledge about the Georgians you idiot…and your “anecdote “is yet more bollocks. Just admit that you lied (again)
Incidentally Saidullayev barely makes the top 100 richest people in Moscow
That is the same in every post-Soviet country ……including the Baltics…especially them as we all know they are hypocritical cretins.
a fake anecdote from a lowlife POS projecting some BS from Galicia. The Russian (not Ukrainian) education system is , on balance, producing many quality students for Professional life. Unlike with a fantasist tramp like you..nobody is even giving an anecdotal of any noticeable drop in student competence in a wide range of academia in Russia of now compared to 1991. Money for teachers and researching at Universities isn’t as much as with the top western Universities….but throughout Russia, education levels are still excellent.
gerad, well, that’s exactly why I said that because one of our richest persons who eventually caused a lot of damage by exposing the banking sector to risky investments prior to 2007 was a Russian speaking Jew who used to be prominent in Komsomol. I think he was able to become so “successful” because of his Komsomol contacts and experience (not just because of some innate Jewish intelligence which probably does exist but is not the only factor). Of course, there are also former communist functionaries in power (like everywhere in ex-USSR, as you said) but not everyone is a former communist by far.
Living standard is a relative thing… I agree that EE (incl. Russia) have some notable advantages… education is affordable and good. What they charge tens of thousands of dollars per year in private US schools, one can get for free in EE. Private tutoring is more affordable. Food is cleaner, too. Debt levels are lower. Russia might have issues with minorities (and I don’t want to be hard on any nationalities, but if they form gangs or interest groups, it’s not that great), but many EE countries don’t. Probably the last countries left on the planet with white only populations.
If you are a sad example of the post-Soviet educational system the deterioration is clear. Although, you seem to be too dumb to be a Russian; surely things couldn’t have gone downhill that much in Russia, that the system could have produced a “gerad”!
There is widespread consensus among older Russian professors that the quality of incoming students has declined considerably. The collapse in education seems to have lagged behind the overall collapse, occurring towards the end of the 90s, not right after the USSR fell apart.
It should be noted however that this process has been very uneven – there are for example excellent math secondary schools in Russia, and the best technical institutes and universities continue to be equal to if not surpassing the best such places in the West, at least on the undergraduate level. Mekh-Mat at MGU, Bauman, PhysTech are among the best in the world. My nephew chose one of these schools, rather Princeton or MIT (which he plans to attend in grad school in a few years).
It’s also common knowledge that Chechens did run casinos.
Are russian slavic nationalists prepared to shrink back to the area of the kievan rus? Because if russia were to become 99 percent slavic rus then that is what it would become. It would still be a region power with nukes, and would still have a decent industrial and engineering sector, but it would stop being a superpower, but it would still be the largest country in Europe, with a population of 50 to 60 million.
“The Russian political landscape has been sterilized by the Kremlin , it is a political desert. So there is no one to choose from.”
The Russian political landscape is almost the same as before Putin . Zhrinovsky , Yavlinsky , Zyuganov and Limonov have been known for 20 or 30 years. Who disappeared from the scene, as Gaidar and Nemtsov were figures despised by the people, and with no prospect of power. Most of the alleged new leaders like Navalny , Udaltsov , Illia Yashin , Ksenia Sobchak , Evgenia Chriikova , and other guests of the American Ambassador McFaul , lack credibility and are seen as puppets of the US government . This for not to mention the despicable figures of Pussy Riot .
There is no “widespread consensus” you dumb prick from Russian professors. Low life expectancy in the 90’s, low retirement age, several going abroad…..it is more fantasy to claim there is any nationwide or even Moscow/SP wide “consensus” on an imaginary deterioration in student quality as there is with the pitiful Ukraine.
We know you are a fantasist nutcase…….a tramp like you makingup some BS about a fake MIT nephew is low….even for a useless prick like you.
All the usual like Material science, programming, colour chemistry, all branches of mathematics, several of the “arts”…the standard is of an immense level….and this is clear whenever an American or British household and institution receives a Russian student on a placement year/exchange programme.
No, it is your who write in English ambiguously. The world “poll” has different meanings and we were speaking about opinion polls. If we recollect our discussion, one commenter said I “denounce” 80% of Russians because 80% of Russians from the opinion polls liked Putin. I said 1000-odd Russians were hardly demonstrative, because there had been elections and hardly 40% voted for him, so even if I denounce anybody it is only only those 40%, not 80% (and we do not know for sure how many of those 40% have changed their opinion since the last election, so they might have denounce their own vote by now). Then you falsely attribute to me the opinion that Putin can be said to be popular only with 98% for him at the polls. First, I never claimed that, second, about what polls must I think about? Opinion polls or presidential elections? In any case it is a manipulation to say that if I disagree with some part of the Russian population I denounce the majority of Russians. Do people who did not vote for, say, Obama denounce the majority of Americans? Hardly so. But even if it is, what the problem to be in the minority? Have the majority never made mistakes?
Anyway you constantly state that I am a Western troll, now you say I do not understand English well. Be consistent in you accusations.
No, it is you who’s written ambiguously. The word “poll” has different meanings and we were speaking about opinion polls. If we recollect our discussion, one commenter said I “denounced” 80% of Russians because 80% of Russians from the opinion polls liked Putin. I said 1000-odd Russians were hardly demonstrative, because there had been elections and hardly 40% had voted for him, so even if I denounced anybody it was only only those 40%, not 80% (and we do not know for sure how many of those 40% have changed their opinion since the last election, so many might have denounce their own vote by now). Then you falsely attribute to me the opinion that Putin could be said to be popular only with 98% for him at the polls. First, I never claimed that, second, about what polls must I think in the above-mentioned context? Opinion polls or presidential elections? In any case it is a manipulation to say that if I disagree with some part of the Russian population I denounce the majority of Russians. Do people who did not vote for, say, Obama denounce the majority of Americans? Hardly so. But even if it is, what’s the problem to be in the minority? Have the majority never made mistakes, have never believed in delusions?
Anyway you constantly state that I am a Western troll, now you say I do not understand English well. Be consistent in you accusations.
For moderators: please, delete that and this comment, it was a mistake, thanks.
Is it in Albanian? I do not understand that language. Please, write only in English here.
Vladimir Putin is significantly less Homosexual than Marlon Brando.