Just like the Balkan Wars before World War I, there are interesting lessons to be drawn from the conflict, and as such I find it rather fascinating – if not surprising, given the quality of our chattering class – that it has receiving such scant journalistic and analytical attention. This is not just an insurgency or slugfest between poorly armed and trained semi-Third World militias militias. Both sides have reasonable modern armies which have bought up billions worth of NATO and Russian equipment and are manned by soldiers of reasonably high (by global, if not European, standards) and broadly comparable human capital. This makes this the most relevant conflict to how a larger conflagration between the Great Powers might look like that we’ve had in decades!
One as yet weak and preliminary observation (also made yesterday by Aris Roussinos) is that anti-aircraft systems struggle against drones, and armor struggles against both ATGMs and drones. This is accompanied by a ton of caveats. Mountainous terrain prejudices both armor (limits maneuverability; tank guns have limited angles of inclination) and anti-air systems (blocks radar, while drone AI can hug the landscape to avoid detection). Most Armenian tanks are T-72’s, AFAIK most of them don’t have either active defense or reactive armor, and most of their air defense systems, like the ubiquitous Osas, are old and dated. They don’t have Pantsirs which have been proven effective against cheap suicide drones at Khmeimim. On the other hand, it’s not like the Turkish TB2 drones that are wreaking havoc on Armenian armor and logistics lines are top of the line stuff amongst military drones. Even so, at just $5 million per unit, no physically present operators, and economies of scale that could potentially make them much cheaper still – and seemingly outperforming other systems by a vast margin, relative to their cost – they can be expected to play a central role in future warfare.
While the commentariat has yet to settle on a final name for the conflict, at this point it quite clearly is a war, with commenter Annatar making this point well:
I think we can use data from ww2 to estimate Armenian losses as casualty rates are likely similar as this is conventional warfare, casualty rates in Normandy were 4 per 1000 men/day, the Armenians have 20,000 men engaged, that’s the size of the Artsakh defense force, maybe they have a few thousand men from Armenia as well, to maybe 25,000 engaged overall, the fighting had been going on for 4 days, that should suggest 400 casualties, the fatality rate being 20-25%, let us say, again ww2 levels would suggest 80-100 dead Armenians.
The Armenian dead are now at 152+. Azerbaijan is more serious about military secrecy – perhaps also less concerned about its image with Western publics – so it’s not divulging any official data. The Armenians claim they killed 830 Azeris, but that is surely a huge overestimate. While it’s likely that the Azeris have sustained more casualties than the Armenians – they are, after all, assaulting heavily-fortified positions in mountainous terrain, which privileges the defender with an even better combat effectiveness multiplier than the standard 1.3 for the defense – I do not believe that the ratio is anywhere near 1:5. It’s not like the Azeris are doing human wave assaults like in 1993, when we actually did see such ratios. Besides, there are so many videos of Armenian troop concentrations being taken out by drone missile strikes that there’s a good chance that they’re understating their losses too. My guess is that it’s something like 1:1.5 or 1:2.
This picture is perhaps reinforced by the data we have on material losses. Unfortunately, LostArmor.info, the classic resource for this during the Donbass War, does not yet appear to be offering that service for the Karabakh conflict. However, a person called Stijn Mitzer has a blog post where he attempts to track the losses on both sides. As of the time of writing, they are as follows:
| Losses | Armenia | Azerbaijan |
| Tanks | 22 | 12 |
| Armored Fighting Vehicles | 4 | |
| Infantry Fighting Vehicles | 9 | 13 |
| Towed Artillery | 6 | |
| Self-Propelled Artillery | 1 | |
| Multiple Rocket Launchers | 11 | |
| Mortars | 1 | |
| SAM Systems | 12 | |
| Engineering Systems | 1 | |
| Aircraft (AN-2) | 3 | |
| UAVs | 9 | |
| Trucks & Vehicles | 35 |
This certainly does not look like a story of Armenians mowing down masses of zerg rushing Azeris, even if one should adjust for Azeris being better at hiding losses.
This is bad for Armenia. They resoundingly won during the previous conflict during 1992-1994, when Azerbaijan’s population advantage over it was just twofold (3.5 million vs. 7 million) but incurred five times as many casualties, eventually causing morale to crack. Now, the Azeri population advantage is over threefold, with Armenia’s population having since fallen to 3 million while the Azeris, not having experienced a severe post-Soviet fertility collapse and not having had as much emigration, have instead closed in on 10 million. Population is power.
Meanwhile, as I have previously pointed out, the “correlation of forces” has been sharply tilting against Armenia over the past 15 years, as measured by military spending or my CMP index.
The Armenians do have a patriotic diaspora they can draw upon, but the Azeris have an even readier stock of cannon fodder in the form of Turkish-sponsored Syrian mercenaries, some 2,000-4,000 of whom have been flown over by the Turks. Morale is low amongst them, since many of them are jihadists who resent having to fight for a secular Shi’ite state for ethnonationalist reasons that do not concern them. But it doesn’t matter, their point is to serve as meatbags in lieu of Azeri conscripts. Azerbaijan might be a dictatorship, but public opinion does still count, and morale will quickly wane if there’s too many casualties.
Another problem that the Armenians face, as suggested by the above map, is that their logistics is pretty shaky. There are only two major roads running from Armenia proper to Stepanakert, the capital of the Artsakh exclave. The northern M11 is vulnerable to being cut off, while just today, the bridge on the central M12 road over the Hakari River near Berdzor has been targeted by drones. At this point in time, the Azeris must have already drastically degraded the air defenses over Artsakh, so they might soon be able to bring their 12 Su-25s and 12 MiG-29s into play.
Finally, Azerbaijan is getting the better reception internally. To be sure, world public opinion is firmly on Armenia’s side – but how many divisions does world public opinion have? Nations as diverse and geopolitically opposed as the US, France, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia have expressed varying degrees of implicit support for Armenia. But they are not getting involved, while Israel has been sending Azerbaijan more drones, and Turkey has not just explicitly endorsed Azerbaijan’s maximalist war aims but does everything for it short of direct military interference. The Armenian Lobby might be powerful, but the Israel Lobby it is not.
Meanwhile, Putin’s “chef” and mercenary chief Evgeny Prigozhin has expressed his opinion that Karabakh is Azeri, which suggests that we won’t be seeing Wagnerites there anytime soon. Russian public opinion is not enthused about intervention. This is understandable, considering that the color revolution which overthrew the old Armenian regime of Robert Kocharyan and his Karabakh vets was accompanied by anti-Russian rhetoric (to the effect of “stop occupying Armenia“) and was followed by the imprisonment of Russophile Armenian politicians. In 2016, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan refused to integrate the Armenian air defense system with Russia’s (“[We should] develop a system of air defence of sovereign Armenia. Why should we transfer our own air defence system under the command of Russia?“) and stated that “[Russia] cannot be considered a real guarantor of Armenia’s security.” The logic amongst some of the kremlins must be, if they insist that it is so – then let them be. I think allowing the Azeris to reconquer Artsakh would be a bad idea for Russian national interests too, due to knock-on consequences on its position in the Donbass and the ex-USSR in general, but it’s understandable why at least some members of the Russian elites might not hold that view.
So I think the most likely outcome is that Russia continues feeding Armenia arms, but Turkey and Israel can do the same for Azerbaijan, but as per above, offsetting the Armenian defensive advantage, Azerbaijan has four times Armenia’s military manpower, a better logistical position, and advances may also become progressively easier as its drones wear down Armenian resistance and the first lines of the defense are overrun. For what it’s worth, Armenia has already expressed readiness for a ceasefire.
And as if all that isn’t enough, Iran has been seeing protests from its large Azeri minority in support of Azerbaijan, which runs contrary to its official pro-Armenian position. It seems that diversity is not Iran’s strength either.
The main question now is whether the Azeris would be content with eking out a symbolic win and calling it quits, such as taking the town of Fuzuli in the east – an outcome that will be satisfactory and perhaps to the kremlins (Armenians humbled, Azeris and Turks don’t grow too big for their breeches). Or whether Aliev is intent on going all-in and trying to reclaim all of Artsakh – the regime’s rhetoric, both now and in the past, suggests that that is the goal, and that territorial pretensions may well extend beyond unrecognized Artsakh into Armenia proper.
There’s no way to tell at this point. If I were him, I’d probably try to finish the job unless Russia began threatening an outright intervention. Oil revenues are down, so Azerbaijan will not be able to lavishly fund its military as it did during the 2005-2015 period; the resultant military preponderance that had been acquired over Armenia is also going to start going down again. As I pointed out during previous, smaller clashes in 2018, Azerbaijan’s window of superiority is likely time-limited. I suppose we might see in another 1-2 weeks.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
What are they reading? It’s interesting that they are so very literate.
AK: Yes, sorry, hit publish way too early on that. Ended up doing a ton of edits on that and elsewhere.
The Armenians do have a patriotic diaspora they can draw upon
Maybe the Kardashians can be persuaded to go and flash the Azeris as a distraction.
Kim Kardashian has already tweeted in support of Armenia. This is truly a global conflict.
Odd that some of those tanks and artillery look like they are in fixed positions and positioned in depressions and hollows where they are shielded on the sides, but none of them are attempted to be camouflaged from the air. Maybe Armenians are not use to countering air-to-land warfare.
In the first video, a lot of the vehicles have camo patterns painted on but at 4:00 and 4:33 for instance there are what looks like rocket artillery painted with green camo dug into bunkers of yellow sand. Wrong color. No attempts at putting tarps or netting over them. At 6:19 there is something that I guess looks like a tank destroyer (?) that almost sort of blends in but their choice of a brushy olive green background with splotches of bright sandy yellow seems designed to not fit in anywhere, in the brush or on the sand.
In the 2nd video, the tanks (which are mobile and not in fixed positions) are tan colored and manage to blend into the sand around them better.
Interesting that AK’s blog provides a lot more information on the conflict than the Jew York Times. The quality article that I read there was mostly about Turkey.
It’s clear that there has been an active choice to not give this attention. In particular since Armenians being persecuted, oppressed, and so on is something which is given a decent amount of attention. This is partly because of the Armenian diaspora lobbying for the recognition of their suffering or whatever, but nonetheless the media is usually sympathetic for Armenians. Furthermore, in this case it’s hard to give Armenians the moral high ground. The argument for the pro-Azerbaijan position is all about preserving the Soviet borders.
Yes, seems likely. Kasparov still hasn’t uttered a word on this, so far as I’m aware.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1310391849736175617
As you noticed, the USA is not very relevant to this conflict. So perhaps American papers are not very much interested in it.
It’s also a pretty complicated thing. It’s not Americans against Russians (or Iran or China or whoever) proxy conflict. It’s not even a Russia against Turkey proxy war, because Russia also sold a lot of weapons to Azerbaijan. The Armenian government is not on very good terms with Russia, at least for an ally, it’s a bit like how Turkey is not a very reliable American ally and vice versa. The combination of Israel and Turkey supporting Azerbaijan against a diverse group of lukewarm friends/allies of the Armenians including Russia, the USA, France, etc., it’s just not very easy.
Tl;dr. The Americans are not much involved, so the American press is not much interested. It’s also very complicated, so they avoid it if they can.
This is clearly a ZOG spoiling operation and perhaps Trump’s COVID diagnosis is just a ruse to get into the war room where Kushner/Trump get to do their favorite thing: planning the ZOG war on Iran. Just coincidentally, the “Doomsday planes” are in the air according to Sputnik News.
Do you have any source besides from some propaganda accounts regarding with Syrian mercenaries? I am very skeptical since we haven’t seen any video leaked by them (which they always do since they’re pretty stupid.). Although one can argue that it is quite similar in Libya as well (I haven’t seen anything on the social media from them, especially a widely circulating one, even though their existence have been known for quite some time). Also, I am very skeptical about their behaviour in Shia majority country since, to put it mildy, they don’t like Shias.
Are drones that powerful in conflicts like this? Or are many conflict-parties just ill-equiped?
A few years ago, I saw that for example the Vietnamese military has put tons of servo-engined legacy AAA-cannons on trucks with EO-sensors. According to local media it’s a cheap upgrade but very effective against UAVs.
Maybe militaries shouldn’t have gone full missile.
So, you are saying that the elites don’t care what happens?
I get a kick out of these twin city relationships.
The first time I heard of them – that European cities had twin cities in America, I thought it was pretty strange, given the demographic differences, at that time. Though, maybe they are a bit more even matched now, and back in the ’60s or ’70s, the contrast probably wasn’t extreme in most cities.
I don’t see the point. Seems like an excuse to go on junkets or something.
“Iran has been seeing protests from its large Azeri minority in support of Azerbaijan, which runs contrary to its official pro-Armenian position. It seems that diversity is not Iran’s strength either.”
It’s just a loud minority. There have been no recorded cases of Iranian citizens joining Baku’s military to fight its wars against Armenia. More Afghans and Chechens were in the Azerbaijani Republic’s army than Iranians, which says a lot about the Iranian-Azeris indifference to the conflict. Out of 12-18 million Iranian-Azeris, of course you’ll find enough to form a protest, but the masses don’t care.
It’s been noted that many Iranian-Azeris frequent Armenia on holiday. I think local Armenians initially thought it strange to see people speaking Azeri, but came to see it as normal as more and more came.
I actually think that the Azeris are doomed. Hungary seems to be supporting them. Hungary has lost all its wars for centuries. The Central Powers were finished. The Axis, too. The Warsaw Pact is no longer. NATO is going to be next, probably. The Azeris are going to lose.
Karsparov’s mother was Armenian.
Father Jewish.
Father died when Kasparov was about 7 years old.
His mother raised him, and he took his mother’s last name.
By Jewish law/custom/tradition he is not considered Jewish, because his mother is not Jewish. He is Armenian. Half or not.
Kasparov is unquestionably the greatest chess Grandmaster to have ever lived.
But he is a certifiable nut.
Him wasting his life trying to unseat Pres. Putin is proof positive that he is off the rails.
People of unusual genius in one particular field are, more often than not, completely disconnected from reality, when it comes to ordinary human affairs.
He does have something human in him though: when the Baku massacres of (Soviet) Armenian civilians living in Baku began (1990), Kasparov chartered a plane and got himself and his relatives out of there. He later sold his world crown to help those who had escaped the Baku massacres (…at the hands of Caspian Turk Musavat party fascist goons).
In the FT it has also received very little coverage; less than one short article a day and I think one medium length article which mostly focussed on Turkey and Syrian mercenaries.
It’s like these people dying there don’t really “count”.
So much for the NYT being “the record”. LOL
They seem effective based on all the videos of them blowing things up
I think drones are powerful in this one conflict. I don’t think they will always be all-powerful, especially with air defense cannons and similar equipment, which would be cheap to produce.
But certainly militaries ought to study this conflict a lot to avoid falling into the same traps.
I think the Muslim world will become more cooperative, once their TFR collapses. But it won’t be some type of pan-Arab cooperation. It will be an organization filled with globalist subversion, like the EU.
But certainly militaries ought to study this conflict a lot to avoid falling into the same traps
Our diversity corps is all over this.
Media in Russia is also not so interested in this conflict, even though it is the Russian government on which the two sides will depend for restoring peace, and its predecessor which has created the two countries. But who can blame the media? I couldn’t even have the attention span to skim read Karlin’s blog post on this battle.
You can see the general bored attitude of the public, or netizens in Russia, about Armenia fighting Azerbaijan – toad fucking a viper, or cholera vs syphilis.
Lack of reporting can also be partly result of the two sides of the conflict, not providing any reliable information that a professional journalist could write in a fact-checked article. .
Media under capitalism is a form of entertainment, and especially in internet age where clicks are easily measurable – has to account for public interest, in the topics it covers. It’s not supposed to be some objective reflection of events in the world. And if we had such an objective, non-entertainment media, then it should probably be more focused on “urban planning in China”, or “infrastructure development in Latin America”.
Have you seen the youtube channel Binkov’s Battlegrounds and if so, what do you think of the quality?
I couldn’t even have the attention span to skim read Karlin’s blog post on this battle.
Shirley, you jest.
I meant it’s hard to give the Azerbaijanis the moral high ground. The region is historically Armenian and Armenians have lost enough land as it is.
I’d imagine that when they’re on the Turkish payroll, rather than free-roaming around Idlib, there are restrictions on bringing ID and mobile devices into battle.
As Karlin astutely pointed out, Armenia does not have or is not deploying the Pantsir which is very effective at killing off these UAV.
UAV’s come in different flavors with different purposes and cost – benefit ratios. Suicide drones might be able to swarm S300’s very cost effectively. But not so much if they are backed by Pantsirs.
UAV’s that shoot long range missiles can kill off the Pantsirs, but these types of drones can be taken out by S300’s more effectively.
The best drones fielded by US, China, and Russia will have stealth features which is an added battlefield element.
But this is just the beginning of drone wars where you can see how different types of drones will be utilized going forward.
Defensive systems like S300 and Pantsirs are not meant to win against offensive systems. They are just meant to slow down the enemy and provide time for your offense to inflict damage.
Turkey have second best drone fleet right know. After Americans. People try to underestimate Turks but their drone warfare is on spot. Drones don’t win wars, but dramatically increase loses of enemies. Only Russia have good record while fighting of drones.
The media is trying to figure out how to make it “orange man bad”…..I miss the war correspondents of yesteryear…….when you said American papers the first thing that popped in my mind was toilet paper…….which is much more useful.
Eugh. On one side we have a dead-but-doesn’t-yet-know-it nation of Armenia, and on the other we have the fake and gay nation of Azerbaijan (actually just Shia Turkey).
Unless the Armenians start to breed like rabbits, the land and the region would do better under the custody of an actual civilization. Iran seems like a logical choice, and you can throw ’em the (of course, reduced) carcass of Georgia too.
There’s nothing magical about drones. They’re smaller, slower airplanes. Very slow. The IAI Harop, the one the Azeris favor so much, has a top speed of only 250 mph. It would lose a straight line race against a late 1930s biplane, and could thus be shot down by even a 1930s era anti-aircraft gun, provided its operators saw it coming.
The Vietnamese are correct, the answer to these is a lot of cheap flak guns hooked up to a good targeting system. Armenia’s air defenses, however, are overwhelmingly based on missiles, which are generally inefficient for engaging swarms of low value threats.
These Harop drones aren’t exactly cheap, by the way. India bought a lot of 10 of them in 2009 at $10 million apiece. Perhaps the manufacturing costs have gone down a lot since then, but that’s not a very efficient way for a small country to invest its money.
$10 million will buy you a top of the line main battle tank, or two of an economy model. $10 million will also go most of the way to buying you a Pantsir S1, which you could use to shoot these down.
It’s a one use weapon that costs just as much as the targets you’ll be trying to destroy with it. For the price of four or five of these, you could buy a Flanker jet from Russia, which can give you 20-30 years of service and carry out hundreds or even thousands of missions over its lifetime, as opposed to the four or five you get with the suicide drones.
Unless they’ve succeeded in reducing the cost of these by an order of magnitude or two, they’re an impractical novelty weapon to sell to morons with a lot of money to waste.
My first thought on seeing these videos was to wonder why the Armenians aren’t using it themselves – how come Russia isn’t selling them its own version of a kamikaze drone?
It makes sense when you realize it’s not cheap or efficient at all. The Armenians have much less money to play around with and they’re not going to waste it on showboating with meme toys.
Seems hard to find reliable numbers, but there are supposedly more Azerbaijanis in Iran than Azerbaijan.
Only other obvious country that I can think of like that is Mongolia, in relation to China.
You are not talking about the top of the line drones that the US, China, and Russia would field.
These would be stealthy and much more effective.
Drones are not meant to replace any facet of a modern military. They are meant to complement it.
Countries might send cheap and slow drones in first to smoke out AA missiles and guns. S300’s have proven to be vulnerable to drone swarms.
You are right about the cost though. This is where China has a huge advantage. I am sure American UAV’s are more advanced but way more expensive. China can afford to send wave after wave of drones at army’s to soften them up first if they get the cost down enough.
Pashinyan is a Soros plant. I get the impression Pashinyan sees Karabakh as an obstacle to his Western integration plans, would love to give it back, but can’t, because Armenian society is highly nationalistic…
Armenians are at a major disadvantage, being led by a man, who is not committed to victory.
Orban was at one time Soros funded as well. Ditto some of the svidos – typically those of a sugar coated variant. Soros funded people can be nationalist nonetheless, as long as it’s the PC variant – anti-Russian and/or anti-Serb.
Serbia is an example of Sorosian influence clashing with some mainstream Serb views.
Kind of related:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/10/02/the-brezhnev-doctrine-comes-alive-in-montenegro/
https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/1311726770492641280?s=20
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/DJI_Innovations_logo.svg/1200px-DJI_Innovations_logo.svg.png
Sanctions incoming!
There are more Irish in Britain/America than Ireland
There are probably more Armenians in Russia, than in Armenia at this point.
Jesus Christ would it break the budget to throw a $2 dazzler or a 75cent thermal blanket on your tanks? Is a $100 HackRFOne too much for early warning detectors? It’s like EW isn’t a thing with these people.
Ugh nothing is worse than seeing a military that just buy things from the catalog. No innovation or novel tactics/usage or even hack additions. Seeing North Korea spam blinding lasers willy nilly is great. Watching Iran test out small ekranoplans is cool. Watching Israel produced specialized weapon systems is fascinating. Even South Africa and its doctrinal decision to use wheel mobile armor pieces. You can appreciate the decision and rational behind it.
Watching two assholes throw stock toys at each other is boring.
France accused them.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-armenia-azerbaijan-putin-macron/france-accuses-turkey-of-sending-syrian-mercenaries-to-nagorno-karabakh-idUSKBN26L3SB
Turkish drones inflicted heavy losses on Russian allies in libya and Syria
Yup. Notice that nobody ever hoards the New York Times!
Exactly. And that’s why the State Department will never chide Turkey over the Armenian Genocide: because every time the Armenian Lobby tries to get such a resolution through Congress, the Israel Lobby steps in and nixes it. In Washington, there’s no lobby that can beat The Lobby.
A “kamikaze drone” is more accurately called a “cruise missile”.
$10 million apiece is completely out there, you can get a Tomahawk at sub $2 million (but have to pay support systems & training too of course).
Unless there is a controlling living cat brain in those drones, with a virtual reality where tanks are shown as mice to get good response I don’t see why the sticker price is that high.
“the USA is not very relevant to this conflict”
They weren’t relevant to Syria either, but they funded and trained the ‘moderate terrorists’ there, and gave the resulting civil war top billing.
I remember, was it Christmas 2015? Aleppo was the first or second item on every news bulletin.
his Western integration plans
Why would we (the West) want Armenia? Wouldn’t that be like “getting” The Ukraine without the benefit of giving the Russkies a major heartburn?
What kind of laser dazzler can you buy for $2? A green hand-held laser pointer? I don’t see how that could defend a tank, could you explain?
The Russo-Japanese war also gave some insights into early modern warfare
I might be off on a useless tangent, but I definitely think we are hearing a dog that is not barking. Maybe the MSM are waiting on the Azeris to win and launch the payback for the ethnic cleansing by the Armenians in the 90’s. It is possible that they are undecided about how to spin it. They definitely don’t like the idea of the Turks going rogue all the time, but then they don’t like the idea that Russia is checking them in some of their operations. Decisions, decisions, what’s best for me?
Anyway, I don’t buy the not very relevant argument, because it is backwards. They tell us what is relevant and what is not.
Its significantly different from a cruise missile.
It can loiter over a target for something like an hour and in many scenarios in which a target is not found/ Strike called off can fly back be refueled and used again.
Think of it as sort of a UCAV/Observation Drone hybrid.
It also has a much smaller RCS and IR signature than a typical cruise missile even stealthy ones like Taurus and SCALP.
Countries that operate this model and its predecessor include South Korea,Singapore,Israel, India,Turkey..So obviously there us a solid tactical case for procuring these at $10 million..
There is Laos, which has less Lao people than Thailand.
Sad that there are so many people on this site having such infantile and not well established opinions regarding this conflict. Azeris in republic of Azerbaijan have lived separately from Iranian Azeris for almost 200 years for now. Iranian Azeris are very well integrated with the Islamic republic of Iran. Ali Khamenei himself has Azeri roots and they have not experienced the communist and kemalist propaganda like their brethren living in republic of Azerbaijan.
Iranian Azeris are much more religious and much more connected with their cultural roots, one can say that their historical development has been more “organic.”
And I am very sad that ano4 wants that Russians descend on the level of the Ukrainian far right nationalists. Shouldnt one strive to be better than others?
Armenians have paid the ultimate price for their collaboration with the Russia. Hamidian massacres and Armenian genocide happened because Turks saw them as Russias fifth coloumn and Armenians would not have gotten as rebellious without Russia annexing neighbouring lands like Kars Oblast and treatening local Christians in much more civilized and egalitarian manner unlike Ottomans with their dhimmis.
And some ignorant idiots think here that Catholicism is closer to Orthodoxy than Oriental Orthodoxy/Miaphysites, because their separation happened on a later date. By that logic all Protestant sects are automatically closer to Catholic Church than Catholic Church is towards the Orthodoxy. Or gay marriage espiscopals are automatically closer to hard line calvinists. Idiots!
Russian and Coptic Church have had theological discussions for generations and their conclusion was that there are no hard differences in theology or christology between Miaphysite and Orthodox communion. That the Miaphysites also condemn monophysite theology. But why they cant then unite, you ask? Because both churches have condemned some of others church’s saints as heretics. The reasons are not well known anymore, but the tradition of both churches makes changing of their status impossible.
And there are more Pashtuns/Afghans in Pakistan than there are in Afghanistan.
For quite some time, there’ve been more Jews in the US than in Israel.
Welcome back AltanBakshi, your contributions were sorely missed!
When Israel-Turkey relations soured, there has been more talk within US establishment circles about supporting the Armenian genocide status, along with recognizing the plight of the Kurds.
It can get nuanced. With votes in mind, southern California establishment politicos have been at the forefront of giving lip service to Armenian issues.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-14/adam-schiff-armenian-town-hall
Welcome back!
We should indeed strive to be better people. Not just compared to others, but first and foremost compared to ourselves.
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russias-options-in-artsakh-war/#comments
See my comment # 265
Isn’t saying Azerbaijan Azeris and Iranian Azeris are the same people almost like saying British people and white Australians/New Zealanders are the same people?
Mostly the same roots and have a very similar culture, but have been geographically and politically separated for long enough now that no one would think of them as the same people.
I forgot to add that it was Soviets who gave Kars oblast and Ararat to the nascent republic of Turkey, for some reason, even though Turkey in 20s was dependent on Soviet funding and arm shipments.
You always try to make strange anglo-analogies? How I could explain this to you? Lets say that half of Scotland was occupied by a revolutionary French Empire and and after one hundred years that empire would undergo a Communist revolution, but for couple years before the revolution there would be an independent government in that part of Scotland supported by Ireland. And that now that part of Scotland would be an independent and sovereign country. Oh and that Ireland of past would have had many pan-Celtic leaders. Young Celts?
Really I know that you guys are the archetypical universalists, but…. oh well….
Macron seems to have specific problem with Erdogan, can’t really take him seriously about anything regarding with Turkey. I would like to see visual proof from multiple sources involving multiple soldiers. I mean, at the end of the day, even Russian mercenaries can be found, so I don’t expect Syrians/Turkish officials to cover all of their traces. Also, I have read in some other places about their salaries (1000$). There is no way Turkey pays that much. I mean if they pay that, you can simply recruit from Turkey (Only 10% of the population earn 1000$ per month).
It’s not easy to control them. I mean if you move 4k fighters, you don’t need to do anything expect looking/searching in the Syria, right? You can look at the areas under Turkey’s direct control in the North or Idlib, I bet you can find evidence easily. It would make more sense if we see some Turkish citizens on the frontline (There were a lot of Turkish citizens fought in Syria for all sides.). At the end of the day, Azerbaijan is not Libya.
Since the beginning of the current war on September 27 based off the underlying factors and the evidence I have seen it seems highly likely Azerbaijan will be able to achieve its strategic goals, in many key areas Azerbaijan seems to have a decisive advantage over Armenia and that advantage is likely to remain unless facts on the ground change.
In terms of equipment, Azerbaijan obviously has larger military stockpiles overall, but just as importantly, Turkey which likely has large reserves of equipment and ammunition in reserve can keep Azerbaijan supplied as long as possible, Armenia has no such benefactor at the moment, in addition, Turkey can obviously produce equipment in terms of drones and other weapons delivery platforms as required to replace any losses the Azeri’s might sustain. Also it should be noted Turkey does have the economic capacity to easily replace any losses Azerbaijan incurs and inundate Armenia with equipment if required, Armenia’s whole GDP in nominal terms is only $13 billion, Turkey’s defence budget in 2019 was $20.4 billion.
In terms of manpower, again the odds favour Azerbaijan, it possesses 10 million inhabitants to Armenia’s 2.95 million, a ratio of 3.4:1, even more worryingly for Armenia, due to higher Azeri fertility rates post 1991, the ratio in terms of young men is even worse for Armenia as it has an older age structure. Among men aged 20-29, Azerbaijan’s advantage rises to 4:1, in addition as pointed out in the blog post, Azerbaijan has access to Turkish mercenaries, and if required, it is not inconceivable Turkey might be willing to send soldiers to fight in Azeri uniform, Turkey has a large army and reserve force after all and most Turks and I assume this holds for Turkish soldiers as well dislike Armenians.
Regarding intelligence, it is almost certain Turkey is using its satellites and aerial reconnaissance aircraft to feed intelligence to the Azeri’s regarding Armenian troop positions and movements, Azerbaijan also clearly has air control over the battlefield which will help it in terms of gathering intelligence, as such it is likely that Azerbaijan is more well informed of Armenian troop dispositions than vice versa.
In closing, considering Azerbaijan’s advantages in equipment, manpower and intelligence, it is likely Azerbaijan will achieve the strategic aims it has set for itself in this war; of course the Armenians have the advantage of defending hilly terrain, and fortune matters in war as well so Armenia could win but I think it is more likely that Azerbaijan will win.
The example I used was Australia and New Zealand, not Scotland and Ireland. White Australians and New Zealanders are very similar to English people, so much so that Americans and others find it very difficult to even tell the accents apart in my experience.
Also AK you are wrong. Diversity is strength of Iran, not multiethnic Iran would be a weaker and less significant country than Poland with similar population size and without any oil or gas. Traditional empires were truly multicultural. Liberal and soviet multiculturalism is same, just superficial differences like ethnic clothing and food but no real diversity.
But either Iranian Azerbaijan or republic of Azerbaijan are not their own land masses beyond sea and they were not colonized relatively recently. Also people there have not nlived under a foreign and revolutionary administration. Your analogies are too far fetched….
Someone may correct me about this, but I think that all those videos of things (and men) getting blown up “by drones” are actually videos of things getting blown up by artillery shells for which the drones are the forward observers.
They are “drone kills” in a sense because the drone is a key component, but these are relatively cheap observation-commo drones, not expensive missile/suicide drones.
Indeed, cheap artillery shells + cheap observation drones seems to be an extremely cost-effective military system, judging not least by the above videos.
Despite its pretensions, the NYT (and most Western media today) have very few actual reporters, i.e., people on the ground, outside of the HQ bubble, who are conversant in the local language and culture. So when there is an Armenian-Azeri war and the NYT‘s response is something-something-Turkey-something, that translates as “ignorant NYT HQ checks map, phones up English-speaking stringer in Istanbul”.
The Western prestige press do have plenty of people at headquarters ready to shape any incoming reports into the standard narratives though (all chiefs, no Indians, as we used to say). Even if they did have actual reporters, the Armenian-Azeri conflict is convoluted enough to occasion a lot of Editorial Meetings where they would have to hash out semi-plausible spin. That’s time-consuming and painful. Being fundamentally lazy and incurious, they’ll just wait and see what happens until there is an opening for an OrangeManBad article or two. Much easier just to stick to the standard narrative.
The New York Times mostly concerns itself with rapper bios and the latest Trump tweets these days, even Lebedev’s ‘The Independent’ is better at this point, at least while Robert Fisk is still writing there, anyway.
I noticed that. How damaged does your national psyche have to be that you want to LARP as T*rks of all people? Obviously you still haven’t recovered from Mohacs. Although going from the regional great power to being bullied by Slovaks and Romanians is quite a fall, admittedly.
No doubt. Probably more in America as well, although out-marriage and total assimilation seems far higher there. It should be kept in mind the Armenian SSR is a rump-state comprised of the poorest and least fertile portion of the old Armenian heartland. It’s too bad the CIS didn’t develop into anything worth talking about or the USSR didn’t take the Chinese route or develop into a genuine federation, so many of these pointless wars and deaths of millions could have been avoided.
Or the Balkan Wars, a year and a half before the Great War.
When Turkey became a Republic in the 1920’s, it was a crypto Jew, Mustafa Kemal later named Ataturk, who was in charge. The newly formed communist Russia (lots of Jews in charge) financed Mustafa to the hilt enabling him to kick out the Greeks, deal with the Armenians etc. Jews don’t like Armenians because they are too good at business, never knew that Armenian land was even given to Turkey.
Where do I start?
The “support” we are giving is basically Orbán’s foreign minister mentioning that Karabakh is a part of the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan, which is true. Even Armenia itself hasn’t yet recognized Karabakh as anything but a province of Azerbaijan.
Second, you might have noticed that I have never been totally enthusiastic about Orbán’s government, and frequently mentioned their low ethical standards, especially corruption, but some other issues as well. I have asked you once about the axe murderer – his release to Azerbaijan was a major scandal in Hungary, and I would have thought Armenians around the world have heard of it. Anyway, this was mostly due to the Turks providing Orbán with a large loan while he was short of cash, Azerbaijan providing the state owned Hungarian oil company with concessions, and probably some money directly into Orbán’s pockets (at least that’s the standard expectation for whatever Orbán does).
But since the release of that murderer, Orbán cannot have changed course, because the Armenians would never like or trust him after this, so his choice is basically reduced to being hated by both the Turks/Azeris and the Armenians, or the Armenians only. Obviously he consistently chooses the latter.
Regardless of this, Orbán has advocated closing the EU borders in 2015 and not giving in to Erdogan’s blackmail, which shows the limits of Erdogan’s influence over him.
BTW the pro-Turk policy is not very popular in Hungary, even among Orbán’s voters. I have met lots of people passionately defending his kinda sorta friendship with Putin, but I haven’t met anyone who had anything but unenthusiastic pragmatic arguments supporting his relationship with Erdogan, and even such people are few and far between. It’s just not a very central topic for voters, which is easy to understand, since our involvement with Azerbaijan or Armenia is fairly low level, and even our relationship with Turkey is mostly economic (though probably will include the purchase of certain weapons systems, probably some lightly wheeled personnel carriers).
Only other obvious country that I can think of like that is Mongolia, in relation to China.
Tajikistan is the “stan” I always forget about.
And to think – there are almost 10 million people living there. Almost a population the size of Hungary – a country the media was going crazy over, and comparing to Nazi Germany. But they probably haven’t mentioned Tajikistan in years.
That’s probably because Takikistan has always been a model democracy.
Must be a really dramatic difference, if one just considers the Ashkenazim.
Jewish demographic stats are really interesting. Only about 31-36% of Jews in Israel are Ashkenazi. Globally, one in four Jews live in a country other than their birth country. 44% of immigrants to Israel arrived after 1990.
Only about 31-36% of Jews in Israel are Ashkenazi.
. . . but 100% of the Prime Ministers of Israel have been Ashkenazi.
It seems that there are at least twice as many Ashkenazis in the US as in Israel.
I guess the Lao only constitute 53.2% of the population of Laos – didn’t realize it was so low. I suppose most in Thailand must have been made vassals of Siam or been otherwise conquered, rather than been refugees from the communists, though about 10% of the pop fled after they took power.
And whats wrong with the Turks? Muslim Greeks and Armenians love to larp as Turks. Theres nothing wrong in being of Tatar,Tuvan, Yakut or Kyrgyz.
Artsakh was on my pre-COVID itinerary for this year. Guess that trip really managed to get itself canceled twice over.
{And whats wrong with the Turks?}
What isn’t?
Turks are nomad savages* who invaded Asia Minor and thru centuries of ethnic cleansing, massacres, and finally Genocide of Christian Armenians, Christian Greeks, and Christian Assyrians displaced the indigenous peoples of Asia Minor and now are squatting on somebody else’ lands. 100s of 1,000s of Christian children were abducted by the nomad Muslim Turk savages after their parents were murdered. These children were sexually abused, forcibly Turkified. SOP for Turk nomads.
Turks are abductors and rapists of Christian children.
Turks are thieves: everything so-called “Turkish” was stolen from others – Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Persians, Arabs,…..Everything: cuisine, song, dance, culture,….
Turks are the original ISIS: bloodthirsty murderers.
Aren’t you glad you asked
{ Muslim Greeks and Armenians love to larp as Turks. }
There are lots of forcibly Islamized Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians.
They are traumatized hostages of a savage Islamofascist nomads.
No normal civilized human being would, quote, ‘love to larp as Turks’.
It would be like Aram Khachaturian dreaming of howling like a pack of jackals.
{Theres nothing wrong in being of Tatar,Tuvan, Yakut or Kyrgyz.}
Who said there is?
Show us the post, Uyguroğlu.
There lots and lots of civilized, righteous Turks, e.g. Orhan Pamuk, Taner Akçam,…..
I thought that Armenians were, on average, a bit smarter based on their TIMSS scores, no? Plus, Armenians have a history of being a type of economic and cognitive elite in the Ottoman Empire that the Azeris don’t have anywhere to my knowledge (or do I not know something?).
Anyway, if I was in charge of Azerbaijan, I would quite literally try to expand as much as possible right now–ideally try to finish the job of reconquering all of Nagorno-Karabakh, but if that’s not possible, then conquer as much of it as Russia would allow me to without directly militarily intervening itself.
That’s exactly what wily Aliyev is doing. He waited until the relationship between Russian government and Pashinian went to frostiness (as was inevitable, considering that Pashinian is Soros-linked scum brought to power via color revolution). Then he waited some more until the popular opinion in Russia swung to “f..k those Armenians” level. Now he studiously avoids the only two things that can trigger Russian response: an attack on Armenia proper (because of ODKB treaty) and an attack on a Russian military asset. Some here claimed that Azeris aren’t particularly smart. Maybe on average, but Aliyev is playing a smart game. I’d say that only Erdogan in his stupidity and arrogance can spoil his game. But I suspect that Aliyev would do his best to prevent that.
Pashinian says that Armenia is ready for a cease fire and would accept Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh.
Russia has officially replied that Russian peacekeepers can only be deployed if asked by both Armenian and Azeri governments.
The evolution of drones:
Pocket Force Of Stealthy Avenger Drones May Have Made Returning F-117s To Service Unnecessary
Avengers have flown over Syria and the secretive nature of who owns and operates the handful that have been delivered points to a clandestine program.
BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK AND TYLER ROGOWAYMARCH 5, 2019
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26791/pocket-force-of-stealthy-avenger-drones-may-have-made-returning-f-117s-to-service-unnecessary
I think Russia and Putin is just waiting for Armenian govt to cave and ask for help.
My earlier comments on Russia being in a great diplomatic position are substantiated:
https://www.rt.com/russia/502455-azerbaijan-moscow-karabakh-mediator/
I wonder how many Israeli Ashkenazi intermarry with the native Middle Eastern Sephardim. A possible solution for the genetic diseases caused by the limited Euro-Jewish gene pool.
If Armenia will lose a huge part/most/all of Nagorno-Karabakh, might Armenia subsequently withdraw from the Eurasian Economic Union? After all, wasn’t a huge part of Armenia’s decision to join and subsequently remain in the Eurasian Economic Union the implicit Russian guarantees to protect the existing status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh?
Israel could claim otherwise considering that some of the US’s Jews are non-halakhic–as in, patrilineal Jews.
You see NATO eventually disappearing? Sometime soon?
https://m.made-in-china.com/product/2019-Most-Popular-Inflatable-Military-Tank-836858195.html
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQoupUcd9P__2MRGL34xk7WimfyHgOFjOqeYg&usqp.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRNCl6saiTc13k4oBiFHlXjirTBxHU1bIN2hg&usqp.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSL-rYKkZ9Tp2RSaT5gxj-gfXxWnMrHUKeN6Q&usqp.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTPm6PABb60DJndDCGQOy9ZmfpFCGfVY-hVsw&usqp.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQ8Gak8NNS_BIDlyNAn7YGvX6cBU91mgFChOg&usqp.jpg
There’s something symptomatic, that one of the most jingoistic pro-Azerbaijan military soundin websites is the Russian government funded one in Azerbaijan. i.e. https://az.sputniknews.ru/karabakh/20201004/425104022/Po-protivniku-nanesen-sokrushitelnyy-udar—itogi-sedmogo-dnya-kontrnastupleniya.html
British government media, like BBC World Service, tries to maintain the similar editorial positions across its different country version. Whereas Russian government equivalents matches the editorial position to every continent at least, and I guess sometimes expending money for the different editor for each individual country.
“Turks” of Turkey are as Turk as Romanians are Roman.
“Nomad savages” who invaded Asia Minor were already very heavily Persianised both culturally and genetically.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Jenetic.jpg
“Who said there is?
Show us the post, Uyguroğlu.”
But they are definitely Turks.
The Mongol Empire was ally and supporter of local Armenian and Christian populations.
Israel population is more mixed like Brazil or America. That doesn’t exclude it being tribal, but the tribal identity is based on religion, lifestyle, and clothes, not the skin colour.
In some parts of the Israel’s elite (for example, Supreme Court), or in the hermetically closed religious communities, there can be still a quite homogenous people.
But even if you divide the normal population by specific religious/social groups, they are usually more like random mix. And that’s why partly why the language and the ideologies, are so important there, compared to traditional countries.
So if you search for is a secular Jewish school in city like Beersheba, it is highly diverse.
But even the orthodox religious nationalist sector, have the same kind of mix of brown and lighter races.
Palestinians are more homogenous racially, so in at least that one sense it could be a “real people” or authentic nationality (or less ideologically constructed), than the Jews in Israel. But even much more homogenous Palestinians’ population is not exactly pure looking.
Israel is somewhere near the opposite end of comparison, to the pure nationalities like Armenians, where the population looks almost all from the same family as each other.
Palestinians usually appear as an externally more homogenous nationality. But still look a bit mixed race.
Actually Vlachs are more Roman or Romanian, which is the name used by the Romans btw, than Anatolian Osmans are Turks, for at least they share the faith of the Romans and are genetically closer to Roman people than Anatolian larpers are to the original Turks, who in all likelihood were direct ancestors of Tuvans and Turkic peoples of Altai republic.
Actually the Ottomans didnt call each other Turk, at least before the end of the 19th Century and the rise of the nationalist movements in the empire.
Many Nigerians and Pakistanis speak English, are they Germanic?
Of course Anatolians are linguistically Turkic, but are they culturally and genetically, or one can say that there is no Turkic genetics or blood, but then one cant speak of Slavic or Germanic blood too. Which in my opinion is one extreme.
100% correct . They did same in Balkan created Muslims out of Christianity and 500 later we have same problems
Islam has nothing to do with fascism. The term was coined (as “Islamic fascism”) by a nationalist Muslim Indian, who opposed the partition of India, to refer to the perceived totalitarian tendencies of modern Islamist movements. Of course, modern Islamist movements are, by definition, modern, and thus are quite different from premodern ideologies. (Not that Islam was much better in its premodern form.) So calling nomads “Islamofascist” is an anachronism at best.
But the main reason I dislike the term is because it’s a neocon word, used and popularized by the neocons. It adds nothing to our understanding of the situation, but it reinforces the neocon messages. (Though now it’s slowly falling out of use, it’s still way more prevalent than it was twenty years ago.)
I think Turks would be okay if they weren’t Muslims. They are also genocidal, at least totally unapologetic about their genocide of Christians, including Armenians, but also Greeks and others.
I still wish them well, but I don’t think they should get to exterminate or ethnically cleanse a further chunk of the Armenian land, after what they did to the rest of Armenia a century ago.
Anatolian fake Turks have an identity crisis and genocidal tendencies arise from their insecurities. Its very important that nations have holistic and organic view of their past. I hope that Russians will not start to deny their Soviet past as much as Anatolians deny their Greek amd Persian past.
Imagine the dissonance and identity crisis if the Russians would “clean” their language from all the Greek loans and switch to the Latin alphabet?
But maybe such drastic changes are the Anatolian tradition? Once they were loyal and integral part of the Roman and the Hellenic world, then they wuz the caliphate and now they wuz the Attila!
Most of the Serbian commanders from those wars ended up leading the army in WW1
The experience helped them win the early battles of 1914.
https://i.hurimg.com/i/hdn/75/0x0/59c88ae045d2a027e83c6a5a
Erdogan with Abbas and soldiers of 16 great Turkic empires.
Identity crisis much? Unparallable larping levels at least. Erdogan by the way has Laz roots, who are Islamized Georgians.
By the way 16 great Turkic empires as predessors of the republic of Turkey is an official ideology there and is propagated by the state.
It seems to me that Kemal thought that the Osmans and their empire were totally rotten and degenerate, why else he would overwrite all their magnificent history?
Although its popular to bash the Ottomans they still deserve some respect, after all they could almost simultaneously wage war against the Spanish, Venetians, Habsburgs, Poles, Russians and the Persians. They were truly the greatest power of the Early modern period.
Certainly one of the greatest. I would be proud of it, if I were Turkish. But it was actually destroying a superior culture. Arguably even the Balkan states were superior to the vilayets of the Ottoman Empire which replaced them, not to mention the Byzantine Empire.
I don’t know, but Hungarians have joked about it since we joined NATO.
I don’t know much about that region but should Russia really bother with them? I think that those who turn towards the West will suffer sooner or later. Wasn’t Gaddafi trying to cozy up to Blair and Obama and look how it ended up for Libya? And look at the state of Ukraine now. Even in Eastern Europe, all those countries joining NATO, is it really such a threat to Russia? Once someone joins NATO they just go on the target list for Russia’s nukes, and those missiles won’t have to travel far to reach their targets the closer they are to Russia. I don’t think the US will ever risk getting obliterated for the sake of its NATO satellites and it could easily let them go down the drain. Russia is not the old USSR interested in territorial expansion and ready to send the tanks rolling in when someone turns against it. Crimea was strategically important but then most people there wanted to join Russia. Look at those Christian Georgians allowing Turkey to transport weapons and fighters through its territory against Armenia who is no threat to them and almost as much Russophobic as they are. Maybe Russia should even let go of those Muslim republics in the south and deport most Muslims back to them. Then Christian Armenia and Georgia will be surrounded by Muslims and let’s see if the West will help them. They’ll then go crying to Russia for help but why should it? Of course the Western media will make a big deal about Russia being weak for not getting involved in all these troubles on its borders. But if it does get involved they’ll then complain about Russian expansionism. Who cares what the Western media says? I don’t think Russia has to worry about external treats but from the pro-Western filth fifth columns inside the country. The only reason I can see why Russia should get involved in any conflicts and wars is to try out its weapons and tactics and to keep its soldiers in fighting form for when they may be required to defend their country.
Theres nothing superior in an decaying empire which is more preoccupied with civil wars than fighting against external foes. Yes Roman Empire of the Basil the Bulgarslayer was still great and glorious civilization, but not 14th and 15th Century Byzantines. Everything that grows, will one day decay and wither. Be it men, cultures or countries. Ottoman culture of the 15th Century was adaptive, swift, industrious and agile.
To cleanse modern Turkish language from the Arabic and Persian loanwords, Ataturk and his nationalists sent linguists to the Gagauz Christian Turks of Valakhia. The Gagauz fought against the Ottoman Turks during the conquest of the Byzantine realm by the latter. They are staunchly pro-Russian today.
Its extremely common.
https://youtu.be/m-CA6Eaaibs
Armenians have just upended the stakes by shelling Gyandzha, the second largest Azeri city. From the Karabakh territory, Armenians launched a massive Smerch attack tonight targeting Gyandzha air base which houses the Turkish F-16. The civilian neighborhoods have also been hit.
Karabakh Armenian leadership announced that the attacks are a retaliation for the bombing of Stepanakert and that hundreds of thousands of other targets in Azerbaijan proper will be attacked if Azeris keep bombing Karabakh cities.
Azeri leadership has announced that after this attack, the territory of Armenia proper becomes a legitimate target for their retaliatory strikes.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjeKrc3WoAAlFzW?format=jpg&
Street after the shelling in Gyandzha.
Creators of modern Iran have all come from the Turko-Persian circles of Azerbaijan. Tabriz and surrounding regions were the orignal seat of the Safavids and although I am not completely sure I think that Qajars also were from there. Therefore many Iranian Azerbaijanis think and believe that they are as integral part of the Iran as the Persians are. At least they are the actual builders of the Persian empire during the era of islam and gathererers of the Iranian lands. They made Iran Shia, they beat the Ottoman incursions etc. Republic of Azerbaijan is once again one of these strange and young fake countries, lackimg understanding or knowledge of themselves and their history, very few them are really Shia, or have genuine understanding of Shia tradition. But although there would be problems it would be better to return majority of it to Iran, Russia could take adjacent Dagestani lands, which are populated by Dargins and Tats, and Armenia could take its own. My personal experiences of Armenians have been mostly positive and I think that they are cultured people. I am appaled by some Russian commentators on the social media and their attitudes towards the Armenian people. Armenoans didnt just get massacred as a Russian fifth column in ww1 but like I already mentioned lost the Kars oblast because of the Soviets and not just that, Soviets for some reason gave Karabakh to Azerbaijan, even though the region between Artsakh and Azerbaijan proper was in those times mostly populated by Kurds, not Azerbaijanis, and Nakhichevan with large Armenian minority was also given to Azerbaijan and not made autonomous part of Armenia like Karabakh was made part of Azerbaija. Strange double standards. Then there is ano4 who reminds people of Armenian legion of SS. Hey ano4 what about all the Russians, Kalmyks, Cossacks in the SS? If I would start to despise people based on couple bad experiences I would start to hate the majority of Human race. I was once beaten in 2003 by a Russian gopnik, should I now hate Russians? Okay I had a big mouth but i was much younger and weaker than the other guy…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Great_Turkic_Empires
Apparently the Azeris are winning. I agree that the Sorosite prime minister is bad, but I like the idea of a Turkish victory even less. (Not to mention Azerbaijan, which based on this Hajibala Abutalybov seems to be a nation of Borats.)
Even if we grant all your points, throughout history the stronger groups have survived and the weaker ones have perished, why attack the Turks for being successful.
Invading other peoples land and enslaving and killing them is not a crime, that is how countries expand and grow strong, there are tens of thousands of ethnic groups that once existed in the world that do not exist today because they were not strong enough to survive.
The strong endure and the weak perish when it comes to history.
That is true.
https://www.biography.com/.image/t_share/MTE4MDAzNDEwNTU1MDc4MTU4/adolf-hitler-9340144-1-402.jpg
The Vienna painter was probably not strong enough. At least when compared to the Georgian Ossetian Seminary drop-out.
https://i.imgflip.com/1hpmfa.jpg
True, but Stalin didn’t openly say such things.
Of course, because Stalin was also more intelligent than Hitler was.
Perhaps, though it must be noted that it didn’t matter. Hitler didn’t lose because he openly stated such things (though in a long book, or before his immediate entourage only, so people didn’t care for it), he lost because his vision was pretty much impossible to implement. Of course, what Stalin wanted was also impossible, but it didn’t become apparent in such a dramatic fashion.
And Hitler didn’t create an elaborate penal system (concentration camps) to starve or freeze his own for being “bourgeois nationalists” either. You’re not one of those that still idolizes this tyrant?
Hitler could easily have won by giving Rommel couple more Tank divisions and not attacking Soviet Uniom, after conquerimg of Suez and sympathetic and oil rich Iraq the British empire would have been on its knees. But he was too greedy and lacked grander view of geopolitics. Stalin was too cautious to go on offensive against Germany, especially after the failure of the Winter War.
Hey show some respect to the gatherer of the Ukrainian lands!
The BBC’s report on the 10 o clock News last night was surprising pro-Armenian, with the reporter sheltering from Azeri bombs with ethnic Armenian civilians in Stepanakert.
Their take was clearly that they see the Azeris as ruthless butchers. I find this surprising because I would have expected the BBC to be more pro-Azeri, because they’re Muslim and also because their big ally is Turkey, which is a NATO country.
Okay nice to know that you are not holding any special antipathy towards Armenians.
So a traitor is okay as long as he is a Russian? All SS-men of Soviet Union were traitors and enemies of the people.
But Qajars were definitely Tabriz or Azerbaijani Turks like the Safavids.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qajars_(tribe)
Donbass and large Slavic majority areas of Kazakhstan were probably added for ensuring easier Sovietization of Ukraine and Russia. Although early Soviet Union was hostile against traditional Russian culture, it wasnt hostile against its own version of Russian culture, which was heavily modified, socialist and atheist. Thus the workers of Donbass and very Russified people of Kharkov were probably seen as a trustworthy good counterbalance against more traditionally minded and agrarian population. After all the capital of the Ukrainian SSR was Kharkov during the Stalin.
He lost because of a few contingencies in the war. A few tank divisions one way or another in August 1941, slightly different leadership in Britain and he might have won.
Being a tyrant doesn’t preclude someone from being clever.
And many greatest Russian statesmen were tyrants to some extent.
My main beef with the Father of the Peoples is that he murdered a lot of Russians and gave a lot of Russian lands to Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
Other than that he did a few nice things as well, like ordering Trotsky killed, ensuing the liquidation of Konovalets and Bandera…
Overall Stalin was a mixed blessing for Russia, like Mao for China.
You might have been a traitor to the Soviets without being a traitor to the Russian people.
The core of Krasnow’s Cossacks were mainly White Russian emigrants. The guy I referred to in my comment had his grandfather living in Serbia after evacuation from Crimea during the Civil War. Just like Krasnow and Shkuro he was a White Guard officer who gladly joined the Nazi to kill the Commie.
https://weaponsandwarfare.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/6a4cb-kaz-3.jpg
After the terrible things that Red Guard and (mainly) Jewish commissars did in the Kuban region, one might easily understand why Cossacks (including the Kalmyk) itched at setting scores with the Soviets.
Jewish commissars of course also had scores to settle with the Cossacks who were the equivalent of the anti-riot police in the Tzar times and were also known for their pogroms during the Civil War.
I understand the motivation of both parties.
BTW Krasnow’s son kept setting scores in Chile, where he was a counterintelligence officer under Pinochet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Krassnoff
An eye for an eye etc.
If one reads Krasnow’s book ” From Double Headed Eagle to the Red Banner “, one understands perfectly what the personage he was.
https://www.amazon.ca/Double-Headed-Eagle-Red-Flag-1894-1921/dp/5519450420
I actually have no trouble understanding why Stalin and Hitler did what they did. All sentient beings act according to their perception of right and wrong, and all of them are of course subjective and misguided to some extent.
Including myself…
He lost because he saw Slavs in general as subhuman untermenshen. This is of course a consequence of him growing up in the Austrian Empire.
Almost all, not all. From Orthodox or Buddhist point of view perfection is possible, so there is hope. So did the ancient Greeks believe, that there are rare individuals, truly wise Sophos, sages. As did traditional Muslims with their Walis who have Baraka, holiness.
Main sign of modernist mindset is a belief that all being are categorically more or less deluded, I am and probably all on this site, but it does not mean that there has never been perfect men or women. Although our concept of perfection has been too strongly coloured by enlightenment rationality and we automatically think that perfect man must be some kind of superman. But I am just nitpicking, I dont believe that you have that kind of mindset.
Which is a logical extension of Russian policy of neutrality and non-interference. Proves yet again that Aliyev’s calculations were correct. If he were just a bit more patient and waited until Armenia formally withdraws from ODKB treaty (essentially Russian obligation to protect other members), he could have leveled the whole Armenia in cooperation with Erdogan. Then the fate of Armenians would be exactly the same as of those who had the misfortune to be in Turkey in the early twentieth century or in Azerbaijan in the late twentieth century. The Empire and its vassals would raise a stink but won’t lift a finger to help. History has shown that only Russia can protect Armenia. So, Pashinian’s policy of moving the country away from its alliance with Russia shows that he is not just Soros-linked scum, but also an idiot (always assuming that he cares about Armenia, which might be a wrong assumption).
All these countries with a draft must be a treasure trove of HBD statistics. I should like to see numbers for the different groups of Jews, but I suppose, in most cases, the data is not very accessible to researchers.
I heard Denmark locked down on their testing data, after embarrassing things were revealed about the immigrant pop.
I strongly suspect that current Armenian government won’t get any help from Russia. Besides, Armenians (technically Karabakh forces) just struck Azeri city of Gyandzha (also spelled as Ganja), giving Putin an extra excuse not to interfere: ODKB treaty contains an obligation to protect attacked member, but no obligation to support member’s aggression against anyone. My bet is that Armenia has a chance to get Russian help only after its people change the government and kick out all Soros-linked scum. It may be too late already.
Thank you for the article.
To me, the most interesting part was how tightly the Air Force restricted pilot qualifications on the Avenger drone type.
I thought it was a very interesting contrast between the AF process and how loose Boeing and the FAA were with 737 Max type qualification.
I can only take this distinction as evidence of what the people in charge consider truly important.
slightly different leadership in Britain
Slightly different leadership in Britain in the late 30’s and his plans would have been stillborn.
The Turks are the result of miscegenation. Fairly small numbers of Turks came into Anatolia after Manzikert ( 1071 ). They mixed, often forcibly, with the Greek and Armenian-speaking inhabitants and very largely imposed Islam on them. These Greeks and Armenian speakers were themselves the descendants of prior civilisations going back to the Hittites and earlier.
Islam is a tabula rasa religion, unlike Christianity or Buddhism. It seeks to erase all of the past previous to its imposition. Given that Turks are the result of the miscegenation with infidels, the infidels must be erased. That was Ottoman policy – to culturally erase, physically if necessary, these infidels.
The retention of Hagia Sophia as a Mosque was a gross mistake from that point of view – it should have been destroyed in 1453.
No, I don’t wish the Turks well.
You are very rational. So am I, so I agree. This appears to be a big chunk of Putin’s thinking, too. But politics cannot be 100% rational: you have to engage your subjects emotionally. Putin certainly wants to punish Armenians for placing Pashinian and others of his ilk into power. The only reason I see for him to protect Armenia proper is to show wannabe sultan his limits. Other than that, Armenia is not important enough geopolitically to even be the first item on his daily briefing. There is ~95% chance that Karabakh is a goner. Unless that stimulates Armenians to kick out Pahinian and his gang and replace them with more rational people who actually care about Armenia, Armenia would be a goner, too.
I disagree. War was too unpopular until the annexation of Czechoslovakia
That’d be sad. Armenians are arguably a real nation, with some important cultural contributions to the world. While Azeris… they resemble a nation of Borats. Okay, their nationalistic military videos are cool.
The Central Asian ancestry is probably around 10% of the modern Turkish population. The Anatolian Turks are indeed mainly the result of the indigenous populations acculturation. An example comes to mind, Kheirredine and Aruç pashas of the Barbary pirates’ fame had a Turk officer as a father and a Greek mother who was a widow of an Orthodox clergyman.
I agree. Then again, they only have themselves to blame. When a nation with about three thousand years of history chooses a cheap clown like Pashinian to lead it, it’s a sure sign of deep decline. I am not claiming that Azeris can boast of being a real nation, but Aliyev is at least ten times smarter than Pashinian. He has another clear strength: he cares about his country, whereas Soros-raised scum usually does not.
It’s too bad that he wasn’t similarly inclined towards the gathering of the Ukrainian people and ended up being responsible for deaths of millions of Ukrainians through starvation.
There is nothing wrong with Russia waiting till the collapsed of the current Armenian govt before going in to save the day. If it comes to that point.
Lol, no.
Long story short – Germans timed their offensive on USSR very very well, extra Pz and Mot in Africa would only excerberate the logistical issues due to Malta, RN and RAF; German logistical tail to Moscow was unsustainable, and the hypothetical diversion of tanks towards Moscow instead of eliminating the Kiev salient could have been a total disaster. German success at sucker punches and the industrial/geopolitical reality meant that Germans got the best chance in 1941. In 1942, RKKA would have been an entirely different affair – for example, T-34 wouldn’t be in production anymore.
The sort of response one would expect from a 90IQ Balkanoid
War was too unpopular
War is unpopular amongst the English, Scots, Irish and their descendants? What planet are you from?
That’s rich coming from a person who unironically wrote that a couple of Pz.Div. could alter the outcome of the war.
Let me guess – you also think North Africa was a major theatre of war?
Just came to this thread to post that the Russian state TV news are surprisingly pro-Azerbaijan.
Starting from the title, “Conflict in Nagorno-Karabach: Casualties among Azeri civilian population are increasing”.
I found it funny that both the Armenian Prime Minister and the Azerbaijan President gave short interviews to a Russian political talk show (“60 minutes”) in Russian. The Azeri president message was clearly tailored to Russian audience, said how the Soros-sponsored color revolution made the Armenians not willing to negotiate, etc. Pashinyan’s statement was unfocused and he looked nervous.
Then the video shows how people volunteer en masse in Azerbaijan to be drafted, and then a few clips of Russian journalists asking questions to Azeri officials, basically spreading their propaganda unchallenged.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/nintchdbpict000270816928.jpg
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/NINTCHDBPICT000491674105.jpg
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7053097/amp/Vladimir-Putins-rumoured-lover-36-gives-birth-twins-guarded-clinic-Russian-reports-claim.html
Pashinian doesn’t stand a chance against the Kabaeva’s discreet Azeri charm….
You don’t need any alleged female angle to understand Putin’s stance. Only a complete fool would put third-rate Soros product like Pashinian over wily Azeri president Aliyev. Not to mention that even Armenia did not officially recognize Karabakh, so legally speaking nobody disputes that it belongs to Azerbaijan.
Boil five Russians, get a Jew.
Boil five Jews, get an Armenian.
—Armenian folk saying
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/humour
OTOH:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Esther_(painting)
Turkey has been a bad influence upon the world and has done much evil, but Azerbaijan is okay. Azeris are Shiites rather than Sunnis and have maintained some pre-Islamic Persian traditions such as the old New Years’ celebrations. They even maintained their ancient fire temple, after losing their own Zoroastrian faith, allowing it to be a site of pilgrimage for visitors from India for many centuries. Compare this to what was done to the Hagia Sophia by the Turks.
Azeris were an integral part of the Persian world; this, and their later incorporation into the Russian world have been very good influences upon them. They are probably among the best of the Muslim or Turkic peoples. This pan-Turkism is clever for Azeris to exploit, and they may even believe it themselves, but they are better than most of the Turks. When this war settles down I encourage you to visit Baku, it’s a very nice place with hospitable people (as long as you are not an Armenian).
There was a nice takedown of military “expert” Martyanov by Twinkie a few years ago, concerning World War II. Thanks to Unz search engine I found the discussion in about 5 seconds:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/top-10-militaries-2015/#comment-1205938
Essentially, Germany could still have turned things around even in early 1943 by just bleeding the Soviets dry through “elastic defense” as in Third Battle of Kharkov, if the generals were allowed to do what they wanted, without Hitler’s interference. Stalin OTOH was smart enough to stop interfering eventually.
This might explain the difference with the other local Muslim populations.:
The filiation would be as follows:
1) Mazdakite Persians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazdak
2) Khurramites Persians and Turks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khurramites
3) Qizilbash Alevi Turks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qizilbash
The progressive acculturation of the local populations towards Turkish language and customs having accelerated after the disastrous centuries of Mongol domination and Mongol vs Turk warring in this area.
For those who never lived I the USSR, official Soviet propaganda always promoted “friendship of the peoples”. Here is a joke about it from late Soviet period:
What is friendship of the peoples, Azerbaijani style? It’s when Azeris, Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Georgians, and everybody else come together and kill accursed Armenians.
As a matter of fact, I was a witness of that attitude. When I visited Baku in 1989 (still Soviet period, before large-scale anti-Armenian pogroms), our tourist guide told us that you cannot tell Azeris and Armenians apart by their looks, but there is a way: if the person is good, it’s an Azeri, if the person is bad, it’s an Armenian.
I strongly suspect their attitude did not change.
If I recall, one of the jokes of that film is that Borat is from Kazakhstan, he hates Uzbekistan, and he views life in terms of a conflict between the two postsoviet countries, which is the film’s audience is supposed to be unable to distinguish between.
For most of the film, Caucasian countries would have been a more accurate location for the character Borat, rather than the Central Asian countries. Except the bride kidnapping ending of the film, which was indeed very Central Asian (it is mostly Central Asian tradition, although it is in the Caucasus as well).
–
If you re-wrote the famous musical West Side Story, in a Russian city instead of New York, and therefore with a plausible story of the Armenian immigrant falling in love with the Azerbaijani immigrant woman – one of the main problems would be that the audience will be unable to distinguish between the lovers’ nationalities.
They could insert some songs about “my nationality’s family names end with -an, while your nationality’s family names end with -ev “. Or such song about “We don’t go to church, while you don’t go to mosque”.
And try to avoid too much songs about “my grandparents lives in building from Khrushchev’s time, while your grandparents live in building built by Brezhnev” or “we both eat dolma”.
But it’s another reason for the wider world to be uninterested in the war, as how would the international audience choose their favourite side? – either you like all the Caucasian nationalities and their local culture, or you don’t like it.
I expect academics write articles about the “dolma war” between Armenia and Azerbaijan – if people were not too bored from the “hummus war” between Lebanon and Israel.
Some of these were provoked by anti-government elements which included instances of Cossacks being sent in to stop such action. The pogroms served as international trouble for the Russian government. Much of that sort of violence was societal, as opposed to something ordered from the top – which isn’t to say that there were some in government who were okay with that manner.
Kind of reminded of US situations, involving the issue of violence and dark complexioned people.
Who appears more astute between Aliyev and Pashinyan?
Looks like Padhinyan might have to either divert from a Sorosian outlook or get replaced. The fact that he has gone against pro-Russian folks in Armenia indicates that not all Armenians are gah-gah over him.
Watching those drone strike videos, it looks like if you are moving, it minimizes chances of a direct hit. Stationary vehicles are sitting ducks however.
I see a bright future for some innovative plastics and rubber company. For about $100 in materials you can probably make a good enough looking mock up inflatable tank. Throw in another $100 to install a barbecue pit with some coals to simulate thermal signature if that’s what the drones are looking for. Serbs did something similar in their war against NATO back in the 90’s.
It will be a cheap decoy that can be easily transported. Also, can be used to grill hot dogs, an important feature for an army in the field. Just look up in the sky before grabbing your meal.
Jews are one of the differences of Armenia, from Georgia and Azerbaijan. Armenian Jews are some small and quiet nationality, while the Georgian and Azerbaijani Jews are quite dominant diaspora nationalities.
For example, in Russia, despite all the complaints we hear everywhere on the internet about Armenian diaspora’s domination and nepotism – we can see that there are more Azerbaijani Jewish billionaires, than Armenian billionaires (even if you included half-Armenian people like Magnit owner Galitsky as Armenian). Azerbaijani Jewish businessmen probably control more capital in Russia, than all the Armenians, and even more do Azerbaijani Muslim oligarch (oligarchs like Alekperov or Agalarov).
–
Although it’s another question how much Aliyev has influence of the Azerbaijani origin oligarchs in Russia, Most will be more dependent on, or part of Russian government’s state capacity.
In 1989 I spoke to a Caucasus Jewish girl from Baku who studied in Leningrad where I was spending my summer vacations. The discussion happened after the Baku and Sumgayit anti-Armenian pogroms and I of course asked her what she thought of it all.
I was very shocked to hear her saying that Armenians had it coming through their nepotism and superiority complex towards the other ethnic groups She told me that everybody in Baku is fed up with the Armenians. I was really surprised, because I thought that Azeri were the savages, the murderous psychopaths and Armenians were the victims.
After the Perestroika, a lot of Azeris came to Moscow. Azeri mafia took control of many markets, I think Caucasus Jews played an important leading role among them. There was violence directed against ethnic Russians who did not want to fall in line with the Azeri lording over them.
One story I remember from 1992, some Ryazan glubinka muzhiks brought a big truck of potatoes from their Kolkhoz to sell in Moscow. In the market the Azeri ordered the Russians to sell them the lot wholesale. The Russians refused and started selling directly from the truck. During the night, while the Russian guys slept in the truck’s cab, the Azeri just threw a grenade under the truck killing the Russians on site. There were also rapes by Azeri, including rapes of children.
That’s why I say that I wish them both good luck sorting it out in Karabakh…
I have never heard of specifically Armenian Jews. I actually thought that Gorski (Caucasus) Jews were all the same across the region.
It is true that some Gorski Jews from Azerbaijan became very wealthy in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Armenians are more present among the intelligentsia, the liberal professions and the higher ranks of the administration.
Both diasporas have their own organized criminal circles. Although both mafias pale in comparison to the Georgians or Chechens.
Mother of the oligarch Aras Agalarov’s children was Jewish. So through his singer son Emin (https://www.instagram.com/eminofficial), who was husband and had children with President Aliyev’s daughter – two of President Aliyev’s grandchildren are “Jewish to the second generation” (in Israeli law). https://avderin.livejournal.com/914015.html
So from Israeli immigration law, President Aliyev’s grandchildren have a Jewish father, so should be able to receive an Israeli citizenship if they wanted to apply for it. (Although currently this family is just having Azerbaijani and Russian citizenship).
That reminds me of the episode when one Syrian terrorist group blew up some leaders of another. Russians responded with a joke: “we sincerely wish continuing success to both teams”.
Personally, I know only three Armenians and three Azeris. Two Armenians were my classmates at Moscow State. One is a Moscow Armenian, I am not even sure he speaks the language. He was a pretty nice highly intelligent guy. He still works in research, spends half his time in Moscow and the other half in Germany, publishes interesting papers (not exactly my field, he deals with evolution, but that makes it interesting to me). The other used to be a pretty girl, now she is an Assistant Professor in Boston. The third one I met in the US and collaborated with him on an evolution-related project. I am not sure he speaks Armenian: his wife is Russian, and his Russian is perfect. All three Azeris I know are from Azerbaijan, they were graduate students in my Institute in Moscow. One always was and still is a hard-working honest guy, now a Research Instructor (i.e., glorified post-doc) in the lab of my friend in Iowa. The other two are pretty flaky characters, now in California. Both dropped –ov and –ev from their family names, which tells me more than I want to know about them.
After having become familiar with Azeris and their activities in Moscow, I was shocked at how orderly, clean, safe and decent Azerbaijan itself was. I was there in 2017; I wonder how bad it had been in the 90s. Maybe Aliyev kept his house in order and the scum left for Russia?
The completely Russified intellectual types aren’t the problem, they are certainly nicer to be around than some Russian gopnik (a nod and a wink to our friend AltanBakshi).
Although Geydar Dzhemal and Sergei Kurginian are an exception to the statement above. I believe that both had a rather destructive influence on Russian society, despite being highly intelligent and deeply Russified persons. Both probably understood that they worked against Russian interests, both pretended otherwise…
I have also heard that Bsku greatly improved in the last decade. I have never been there. You might be correct that those who migrated to Moscow en masse after the fall of USSR were not the best representatives of their nation.
Or maybe Azeris are scum in Russia because it pays more to be scum there whereas Azeri scum in Azerbaijan get into huge trouble?
It’s worth noting that a lot of Muslim countries have low homicide rates but their diasporas aren’t always as peaceful and non-violent. For instance, Muslim crime in Europe is often a very serious problem. The Maghreb itself is relatively homicide-free; French Maghrebis, on the other hand, are a completely different story. I wonder why.
The old rules (constraints) which were violently inforced have been forgotten and the new societal rules norms are meaningless, literally treated as a joke.
Stalin has always seemed very grounded and realistic in his goals to me, I don’t think he really believed in Lenin or Trotsky’s ideas of a millenarian global revolution, and he fully conceded in private that America was indisputably the world’s most powerful country after WW2 and strenuously tried to avoid conflicting with them.
Homicide rates in western Europe are fairly low so it can’t be a huge problem, even though immigrants from Maghreb are more prone to homicide than natives in Europe.
Homicide rate in France is 1.2 (compared to 4.96 in USA), despite the presence of all those people from the Maghreb in France.
In Algeria it’s 1.36, Morocco 1.42, and in Tunisia it’s 3.05.
The issue is terrorism (which is shocking, but rare) much more so than daily street homicide.
The Jews there include different nationalities, with different languages. Mountain Jews speak a kind of Iranian language and originate from Ancient Southern Iran.
Georgian Jews speak Georgian language; Armenian Jews speak Armenian language.
Likud Georgian Jew politician Hotovely – looks like stereotype Georgian long face.
Likud Mountain Jew politician – Ze’ev Elkin. (looks like a stereotype of Southern Iranian nationality perhaps, even Pakistani?).
Negative attitudes in Russia to Armenians/Azerbaijanis (most netizens on the sites I go to, are spamming comments which are equivalent of “syphilis vs herpes” when this war is discussed), is also a bit trivial, ignorant and uninteresting.
When you are receiving country of annoying brown immigrants from a primitive tribal hinterland, and with almost open borders meaning there is no selection for higher quality immigrants – then it’s completely predictable that people will not have a positive view on the donor nationality.
Look at American attitudes to Mexicans, English attitude to Pakistanis, French attitudes to Algerians, German attitudes to Turks, etc. There is always the same kind of negative opinion, when you are more developed receptor country, of open borders type of immigration from a poor undeveloped, corrupt region.
If we wanted to objectively judge the pluses and minuses of the Mexican nation, we shouldn’t ask Americans – as they are victims of being a receptor country of Mexican gangsters and peasants, and their attitude of the Mexican nationality is coloured by the unfiltered immigration flow.
Similarly, if we wanted to be objective about Caucasian nationalities, we should send some unacquainted American, Chinese or Indian person to go live with them, and report to us. (And in the meantime we may pray that our researcher won’t die from food poisoning after eating their kebabs, or be murdered with a knife, for looking at their attractive sisters.)
The objective discussion of nationalities like Armenians or Azerbaijanis, will be more from the people who visit their countries, and do not have experience of being receptors of unfiltered immigration from there.
By the way, I’ve never been to Armenia or Azerbaijan. But my parents were on vacation in Baku and said they enjoyed the city.
Pashinyan in a not too distant BBC feature:
The particular journo interviewing him is known for being hard assed.
According to English Wiki, Kabaeva was born in Uzbekistan and is of Tatar and Russian backgrounds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alina_Kabaeva
Azerbaijan is those resource rich countries where all money is put into capital and rest of the country gets nothing and is very undeveloped. As its usual with you, you rarely can see the bigger picture.
Part of the issue, is the easy flow of immigrants across the borders. In open borders (where paperwork is not carefully verified) or in situations where the source country of the immigrants does not provide such verification, criminals become one of the most mobile professions in society, to the extent they are not in prison.
A lot of the criminals’ businesses is also based on exploiting movement across borders, and open borders can probably also result increasing the number of organized criminals from those nationalities, as it creates increasing demand for their work.
In 1980, thousands of Cubans flooded America, in the “Mariel boatlift”. It was also useful way for Castro to empty his prisons. Former residents of Cuba’s prisons, flooded into Florida claiming to be “refugees”. As a result of the high proportion of representatives of the criminal professions in the Cuban immigration, Miami becomes a crime capital of America.
Al Jazeera’s very recent features with Pashinyan and Aliyev:
Aliyev says that the prior Armenian leadership was more accommodating to a pace process than Pashinyan.
It’s certainly true that there were famines before the 1930’s in other parts of the Soviet Union that included other ethnicities than just Ukrainians, but none as widespread and devastating as the one experienced by Ukrainians in Ukraine during 1930-1933 (holodomor). Besides the sheer numbers involved of victims of starvation (4-6M), the fact that an enormous simultaneous extermination of Ukraine’s intelligentsia was taking place concurrently, indicates that Stalin’s actions in Ukraine were more than just the pacification of recalcitrant peasants that were resisting collectivization. Also, I’m not aware of any other famine that took place within the Soviet Union where a blockade was set up on the border between Russia and other republics as there was with Ukraine where starving Ukrainian peasants were captured and turned back to the starvation back at home. Apparently, at the very same time that the agricultural regions of the Russian heartland were not experiencing anything similar as regards food appropriation resulting in massive starvation. In Stalin’s own words:
It becomes apparent that in Stalin’s mind the famine was just another tool to be used against the Ukrainian peasantry, the bulwark of the Ukrainian national idea:
https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/great-ukrainian-famine-1932-33.html
It’s certainly true that there were famines before the 1930’s in other parts of the Soviet Union that included other ethnicities than just Ukrainians, but none as widespread and devastating as the one experienced by Ukrainians in Ukraine during 1930-1933 (holodomor). Besides the sheer numbers involved of victims of starvation (4-6M), the fact that an enormous simultaneous extermination of Ukraine’s intelligentsia was taking place concurrently, indicates that Stalin’s actions in Ukraine were more than just the pacifiation of recalcitrant peasants that were resisting collectivization. Also, I’m not aware of any other famine that took place within the Soviet Union where a blocaka was set up on the border between Russia and Ukraine where starving Ukrainian peasants were captured and turned back to the starvation back at home. Apparenly, at this bery same time the agricultural regions of the Russian heartland were not experiencing anything similar as regards food appropriation resulting in massive starvation. In Stalin’s own words:
It becomes aparent that in Stalin’s mind the famine was just another tool to be used against the Ukrainian peasantry, the bulwark of the Ukrainian national idea:
https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/great-ukrainian-famine-1932-33.html
https://youtu.be/kZgE_sUrXFY?t=95
I have seen figures of 20% or more. It would probably depend on which part of Anatolia.
Azerbaijan was hoping for a quick blitzkrieg victory, looks like that hasn’t worked out and they are increasingly losing the war of attrition to Armenia.
Dmitry is havering. Jews didn’t start to appear in Armenia until the C19th and later. They were few in number.
In 1828, the Russo-Persian War came to an end and Eastern Armenia (currently the Republic of Armenia) was annexed to the Russian Empire with the Treaty of Turkmenchai. Polish and Iranian Jews began arriving,
There were certainly Jews in Armenia in ancient times. Their descendants were assimilated by the Middle Ages. Armenia is one of those countries where this has happened. Any Jews present today are very few in number and the result of recent immigration.They are completely insignificant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Armenia
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRz9dzMw9Yn_goT12vYKG8oRvBP04NzDjhEHw&usqp.jpg
https://de.metapedia.org/m/images/a/a2/Sichelschnitt.jpg
Azerbaijan is a geographically small country with 10.1 million people. 2.2 million live within the Baku city limits. A little over 5 million people (half the country’s population) live in metro Baku. Baku is far more of a “bigger picture” of Azerbaijan than, say, Moscow is of Russia. That having been said, I do not pretend to be an expert on Azerbaijan, I’m just sharing what I saw.
It doesnt make sense that coastal populations have more East Asian admixture than those “Turks” who live on highlands of Central Anatolia, Central Anatolia was the heartland of the Turks when they arrived to Anatolia and more suitable to pastoral economy and coastal areas were definitely ,more densely populated by Greeks than arid highland regions. There is no historical proof of ethnic cleansing of Hellenic population by the Turks during the conquest, although there were Greeks who moved westwards or converted to Islam.
Yes even the Uyghurs and the Uzbeks are heavily mixed with ancient Indo-European people.
That’s questionable, since they lost a lot of time and used up their resources to destroy the Soviet grouping in Ukraine. This meant that when they resumed the attack in October, they had weaker forces at their disposal than they’d have had in late August, and also in October the rasputitsa stopped them for two weeks. Had they been able to continue, the Soviets would’ve had basically no forces to defend Moscow. Since even as it was, they managed to reach the outskirts of Moscow, capturing or at least encircling Moscow would’ve certainly happened. We don’t know what would’ve happened afterwards.
The German MIC was growing faster at the time than the Soviet one (the Soviets had already prematurely geared their economy to mass production of weapons, which were getting obsolete very quickly, while the Germans were arguably too late in ramping up production, and in 1940-42 were investing too much in new production capacity), so it’s not so sure. Again, it’s a “we don’t know” situation.
It’s not really a sucker punch, if the enemy has months to prepare. France had been in a state of war with Germany for over half a year, by the time Germany attacked, and the USSR should’ve known at least two months before Barbarossa about the attack. (Warsaw city traffic was almost completely shut down for over a week in April, 1941, because so many German military columns were marching through the city… The USSR had a consulate there, so if they didn’t know about it, it certainly wasn’t because of the clever German deception measures. By the way the USSR started partial mobilization already that time.)
The fact is, the German army was tactically better than any other army at the time, or ever since. It was at the top of its game in June, 1941, after which it started to deteriorate due to slowly losing its most experienced officers and NCOs.
However, at the big picture, you are probably correct. (With the above caveats that we really don’t know for sure, just have a high probability of it being true.) Probably Germany would’ve lost, no matter what.
And even if Germany could’ve won, they’d have had to do literally everything correct, with very little to no room for errors.
I have seen a few weird pictures of Azeris in recent days (some brown skinned muscleless unibrow guys training in the water, and similar), their beheading of Armenian soldiers (and posting it on social media), and similar things, though the funniest is certainly the mayor telling the Germans that “you, Nazis, must understand why we want to get rid of the Armenians, just like you did with the Jews,” it’s certainly a real life Borat moment.
But yeah, they might be way better than other Muslims. Still they behead corpses (?), which is not very nice. (Granted, probably Armenians commit atrocities, too.)
Turkish populations have probably been “open structures ” from their very inception. All Steppe Empires have been quite diverse from the ethnic groups point of view.
If we look at modern day Khakassian people who live close to the homeland of the early Turks we find a mix of different Y haplogroups. They are more diverse than the modern day Tuvan people.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21790006/
If we look at elite Hun clan paleogenetics from Mongolian burials, we find some haplogroup diversity even in the elite clans. I know that Huns were not Turks or Mongols, but they were probably a great example of a Steppe Empire.
https://indo-european.eu/2020/08/xiongnu-ancestry-connects-huns-avars-to-scytho-siberians/
We know that the Mongolian Horde also encompassed various other ethnic elements. The Mongol themselves were probably a minority in the Golden Horde.
Anatolian Turks are just the final and most extreme result of a similar cultural and ethnic evolution process.
But I’m pretty sure that Stalin didn’t think that his life’s achievement, the big, strong USSR and the “people’s democracies” in the eastern half of Europe would just crumble within a few decades after his death. (Let’s not even touch the possibility that he was actually murdered, or in a more charitable interpretation of events, allowed to die without medical treatment, which would not be a much better death than Hitler’s suicide, and politically certainly a failure, considering how much of his energies Stalin concentrated on not getting toppled or killed by his subordinates, and how many people he murdered to prevent that.)
Stalin probably thought or hoped that the USSR would continue to exist for a long time to come, and would’ve been disappointed to hear that his successors just dissolved the entity without much trying to defend it.
In the early 80ies nobody would have believed that USSR would not exist 10 years later. Around 1910 nobody would have believed that Russian Empire would succumb to a revolution and dissolve in a bloody civil war. Nobody knows what will happen after Putin. Unpredictability is a feature of the modern Russian history.
In some villages it gets higher than 20%. But overall it is around 10%. Please see my reply to Blinky Bill below.
Thanks
Azerbaijan is trying to conquer a territory Nagorno Karabakh.
As the name suggest, this is mountainous territory, and relatively uninhabitable as well, with cliffs and forests.
Therefore fighting for this uplands will be extremely slow, with very small territorial changes.
If Azerbaijan is successful, there would probably be months of fighting to conquer a significant proportion of the territory (and whether it is valuable enough to be fighting about, is another question).
The Russian Empire and Soviet Union, had applied efforts of Hercules to introduce enlightenment and civilization to the region. Still, we are talking about ultimately Caucasus here – i.e. cannibal territory.
Erdogan seemed increasingly noisy and aggressive this year. Maybe his gerontologist has overdone giving him testosterone injections.
This weekend, he has also had time to say something rude about the Saudi Arabia, and now Saudis are asking their citizens to boycott Turkey.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1583215/saudi-arabia-calls-upon-citizens-to-boycott-everything-turkish-following-erdogans-statement
Street violence in general from North Africans, sub-Saharan Africans and certain Asians such as Afghans in France is far more important than terrorism. It doesn’t normally result in homicide – though those are up an incredible 30% over last year – but in recent months daily random stabbings and other violent robberies (which have doubled according to a report I saw this weekend on TV5) on the streets and public transportation have become the #1 political topic in France, often relegating Covid news to the second half of nightly news broadcasts.
North African crime levels are lower back home because there they are rooted to family/community in a shame culture, unlike when in Europe, where they are often deracinated. When they commit a crime in Europe only the perpetrator is punished – and too often even that doesn’t happen – but in North Africa their family is also likely to be informally punished. The influence of Western cultural degeneracy – alcohol, drugs, media celebration of rebelliousness & delinquency – in an individualistic setting plays a role too.
To be fair, the Caucasus populations have very ancient and complex cultures, but they have been stuck into a medieval mindset before the Russian Empire. USSR tried to infuse them with XXth century progressive ideology, but the effort was abandoned before it yielded any durable results. This is why we have conflicts such as the one in Nagornyi Karabakh. If Russia leaves Caucasus entirely, this type of conflict will become more prevalent and the whole area will become a war zone.
We don’t know for sure, but we can reasonably guess. My opinion is grounded in the fact that Germans had to haul everything for hundreds of kilometres on trucks and horse carts. The reason the winter uniforms stayed in Germany while soldiers were freezing – fuel, food, ammunition and reinforcements were higher priority and the logistical chain couldn’t deliver all.
Lets entertain your proposal on moving onwards to Moscow and leaving the Kiev salient in the background. Moscow as the primary rail junction of the USSR was perfectly positioned to quickly receive Ural, Siberian and Far Eastern divisions, in addition to those raised in the European Russia (the majority of actual manpower which repelled Germans).
Furthermore – Moscow was an order of magnitude bigger city than Stalingrad, with extensive metro and sewer system.
Stalingrad devoured an army – Moscow could have devoured an entire army group. And force it to commit to urban, close range attritional struggle where the major German advantage of maneuver warfare proficiency and advanced tactics would count much less.
Finally, the 600 000 Kiev force was composed of very battle-worthy divisions and would prove a tough nut to crack in case the Panzer divisions went elsewhere. You would be risking Soviets consolidating Ukraine and reinforcing crucial river frontlines.
This is rather dubious if we take a look at the Soviet tank (A-43/T-34M, KV-3/4/6, T-50), plane (LaGG, Pe-2, MiG-3, Yak) and artillery (F-22, ZiS-2, 107 mm) destined to enter service en masse in 1941 and early 1942, as well as the end of the expansion, retraining and reorganization effort.
The issue you point out relates to 1930s designs which constituted the huge bulk of Soviet inventory on the onset of Barbarossa – T-26, BT-5/7, I-15/153/16, SB-2, 37 and 45 mm AT – which were confirmed as unsatisfactory already during the Winter War.
This was more of tongue-in-cheek comment. Every single country which fell prey to German attack had more than enough time to prepare, as well as ample proof of the impending attack.
Germany most certainly loses in the end, since the USA was actively looking and preparing for a war all the way to late 1930s, when they started commissioning 4-engine bomber designs, fast battleships and carrier task forces, culminating in July 1940 Two Ocean Act.
The USA alone could have taken on the Axis and annihilated it systematically, even discounting the nuclear bombs.
Medieval mindset, especially in the context of that part of the world, would be strongly religious. Taliban can be considered of that type. Azerbaijan is rather secular, it’s nationalism is probably more early 20th century in nature.
I agree. Through its interaction with Soviet progressivism, the medieval mindset was transformed into a petty minded aggressive nationalism. It happened in many places in former USSR.
The Azeri were called Caucasus ot Nakhichevan Tatars in Russian Empire. This appellation was used well into the 1930ies. When discussing Azerbaijan, Stalin usually calls its Muslim population Tatars. The Azeri nation is a byproduct of Soviet nation-building.
Anyway, my comment about Kabaeva was humorous.
After the Revolution my wife’s Russian great-grandparents “laundered” their status as Volga merchants by escaping down the Volga and settling in Baku. The process was successful, they escaped persecution had they stayed behind, and they moved back to Russia after a few years.
My wife says that her great-grandmother referred to Azeris derogatively as “Persuky.”
Probably being from the Volga region, your wife’s relatives saw Azeri as strongly influenced by the Persian culture as compared to the Volga region Turkic peoples.
Works the other way too.
Not many people in 1919 would have guessed that Russians would be storming Berlin, inventing ICBMs that could end the world, and putting the first man in space in a few short decades.
Similar, when Sweden wrecked Russian Army at Narva in 1700 and then destroyed Russian allies, I bet most people were thinking 18th century would be Swedish Imperial century. That didn’t quite work out that way.
An immigrant Ukrainian friend of mine has in his employ an Azerbaijani personal aide companion, that immigrated from the Baku region. Fishing and mushroom foraging trips to the lake country are often exchanged for undone housework. 🙂 He’s very proud of his Persian roots and his ability to converse in several languages, including Ukrainian and Russian. As a young man he served in the Soviet military and was stationed mostly in Western Ukraine. He appears to come from an upper class family and counts his father and grandparents as part of the Azerbaijani intellectual elite, being at one time university professors and writers. When I first met him, I christened him with his new name of “Persik” that was common among our circle of friends (having a nickname). Everybody thought that it was a cute name and understood that in Ukrainian “persik” means a “peach”. I’ll be bold and try the “persuky” on him the next time that I see him. 🙂
Here’s an interesting article about Erdogan, especially how he is openly compared to Saddam three decades ago…
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/clash-turkey-becoming-inevitable-170143
Also, it looks like diversity is not Germany’s greatest strength:
I wonder how perverse Ukies can get with straight face. So, here is my question: was the severe famine in Ukrainian areas of Poland, which occurred at the same time as alleged Holodomor, also Stalin’s fault?
Persuky might also be a wordplay on Persian and barsuky (Russian for badgers) = persian badgers.
I don’t know about today, but in 1989 they were ridiculously secular. When I saw a green Shia banner there, I asked them whether Azeris are Shia, and they answered that they don’t even know what it means.
Have you read Ali and Nino, now might be the time if you haven’t. The book predates the Soviet Union, but, with the exception of religion, attitudes don’t seem to have changed that much. The main character swaps between using Azerbaijani and Tatar to describe himself, though that might be down to translation. It’s a good read; every character in it is hateful. Not sure if they ever found out who wrote it.
A far as I know, there wasn’t any severe famine or hunger in either Polish or Romanian controlled Ukrainian ethnographic territories commensurate with what was going on in Soviet Ukraine. Crops during 1930-1933 were certainly not robust anywhere in Ukraine, but it was more the insane requisitioning policies instituted in Moscow to make the unrealistic grain quotas that was the real killer that was the greatest problem in Soviet Ukraine. Contrasting Western Ukraine and Eastern Soviet Ukraine is actually a good exercise that proves that with similiar crop outputs the populatons in the Western part of Ukrainian ethnographic territories were not subjugated to the massive starvation that one could find in Central and Eastern Ukraine. As the agricultural lands in the Central and Eastern parts of Ukraine included the most rich black earth agricultural areas that could be used, this should never have happened. It was the policies set in Moscow that resulted in the devastation in Soviet Ukraine. Galicians were actually trying to help their kin across the border by organizing relief efforts that were being turned down at the border, because guys like you would insist that there actually was no famine going on within Soviet Ukraine. You’re still trying to deny that what can’t be denied, Professor. 🙁
Correct. There was a period of crop failure and food deprivation in some parts of Polish Galicia between the wars which was bad enough that an estimated 20,000 people died of starvation or malnutrition. It is absurd to compare this to the scale of what happened across the border. Some Soviet apologists compare the Dust Bowl in USA to mass starvation too, so it’s not surprising that this was brought up.
They are very secular, but maintain a sense of modesty that isn’t found among Slavs. Even on a hot day in summer girls were wearing long rather than short skirts, and men often wore long collared shirts. This had more of an anachronistic formality to it, rather than a religious feel. The only hijabs I saw seem to have been worn by visiting Gulf Arabs. Probably because of the oil industry, there were a few of them with their families staying in the nicest hotels.
Wine was plentiful and Azeris were proud of their cognac – naturally they insisted that their Gold Baku was better than Armenian Ararat. I think Bagration from Dagestan beats them both.
Azeris struck me as nationalistic (they bragged about having the largest flag in the world) rather than religious, and this war seems to be more of a nationalistic one as in Europe 100 years ago than a holy war as conducted by Muslims in Syria, Iraq, etc.
The author of the book that you’re seeking is Lev Nussimbaum. His colorful, if
not checkered career began with his childhood in Baku. He was born a Russian Jew, became a Moslem sultan of sorts named Esam Bey, lived in Nazi Germany and even spent a good stint in Hollywood, hobnobbing with the local hoi polloi and royalty too. He wrote several books and ended his exotic career, if memory serves me correctly, taken to the pipe filled with opium somewhere on the Adriatic Coast of Italy . His colorful biography won several awards and was written by Tom Reiss, and is appropriately titled: “The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life.” A highly entertaining read, and very recommended.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zVHTdr95EJg/XJUObEAiE-I/AAAAAAAAjdA/4SJDGjW-n5o6QPjnpHnYFRjHBNuL5CmfwCLcBGAs/s1600/51f8OvUshwL._SX334_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg
“Kurban Said” was one of several pseudonyms that Lev Nussimbaum wrote under.
Do you know what years these crop failures took place? If somewhere in 1930-33, then one could definitely make some analogies and comparisons with Soviet Ukraine. From my research on the subject, the biggest cause of the severe famine was the draconian grain requisitioning that was ordered from the top by Stalin and his people in Moscow, that was never lessened during this period of time. They squeezed the peasants as hard as they could, and will live in eternal infamy as the perpetrators of this artificial famine.
I recall reading about it awhile ago. I quick search on google reveals a flood of information about the Holodomor so this will be time-consuming to find (I don’t feel like spending a lot of time digging this up).
The population of the three Polish provinces of Lwow, Stanislawow and Wolyn was 6.6 million in 1931. The population of the Ukrainian SSR was 31 million in 1931. So about 5 times larger. So 20,000 people dying of malnutrition in Polish-controlled Ukrainian territory would be about 100,000 dead on the scale of the Ukrainian SSR. However, the estimates of dead from the 1932-1933 famine in the Ukrainian SSR was 2.6 to 4 million. It was orders of magnitude worse.
Actually, I think that the “official” estimates range from 2.6M to 6M (some a high as 10M!). The mid-point of 4M seems to be where most modern scholars place the figures.
I realize that there’s a lot of new information coming out all of the time regarding the Holodomor. I too did some research on the same question and couldn’t locate any hard numbers as to Polish-Ukraine. That’s why I asked you, knowing that if anybody knows you might, you being very good with numbers and statistics. Please, don’t waste anymore of your time right now, but if you just happen to cross it later don’t hesitate to let me know.
There was a severe and organized famine in USSR at the time. My grandmother in Penza region had to sustain herself with bark from the trees and edible grass taken in the fields plus the usual mushrooms, which so often come to the rescue of the Russian peasant in the times of hardship. The famine was organized for several interesting reasons:
1) The civil war ended with the victory of the Bolshevik, but their victory was far from being absolute. On the major part of the Soviet territories the peasantry was in a state of armed rebellion and militancy with the so-called Green Armies (armed peasantry partisan militias) causing a lot of trouble to the Soviet regime. Suffice to say that Red officers, such as Tukhachevsky, needed armored trains, artillery and even chemical warfare to quell the peasant rebellion in some of the regions.
2) The Bolshevik were clever people and to calm the situation a bit declared the New Economic Policy (NEP) which greatly benefited the peasantry because it allowed them to sell the produce from the lands that these peasants violently expropriated from Tzar era landowners. The peasants became quite fat and happy and started to cozy up to the Soviet regime. The peasants thought that the worse was over and those among them who participated in the Green Armies militancy disarmed. In the NEP era the growth of the Soviet economy was absolutely outstanding in all its sectors with the significant outlier being the heavy industry and armaments.
3) NEP created an interesting situation: the countryside was actually growing rich6than the cities and this allowed the peasants to start again reproducing like rabbits, while toiling their lands without any motivation to join the proletariat in its fight for a Worldwide Shining Tomorrow.
4) Something needed being done to force the peasants out of the land and into the heavy industry workforce. Otherwise USSR was lagging behind compared to the Western Imperialist Predators, which would certainly sooner rather than later try to eat the Soviets for breakfast. At the same time, agriculture needed being modernized towards more productivity and mechanization. But peasants didn’t care for the Muh Tractors of the Bolshevik propaganda. Peasants were happy without any tractors, their horses and cows were more than enough for them.
5) To kill many birds with a single stone, the collectivization, extermination of the kulaks as a class and a heavy handed expropriation of the agricultural production were applied simultaneously by the Soviets, while the NEP was curtailed. The peasants who did not expect being fleeced again by the Reds, got caught by surprise and starved in the millions. The Soviet power was strong enough and it was impossible to rebel arms in hand like in the early 20ies.
6) The peasants (at the time the majority of the Soviet population) became Kolkhoz slaves, toiling the land without receiving much benefit from their work. They had no documents allowing them to leave their villages and the propiska system prevented them from moving to the cities. Except for the young and the brightest who could use the pretence of studying in the cities and working in the giant projects such as Magnitka to extricate themselves from the Kolkhoz slavery.
7) The agricultural production purchased at a very low cost from the Kolkhoz allowed for exports to generate the cashflow to purchase industrial equipment for the Soviet heavy industry and nascent MIC.
My grandmother was one of the young peasants who managed to extricate herself from the Kolkhoz slavery. She managed to steal her passport from the Kolkhoz administration and run away to Leningrad where her high grades at the village school allowed her to get into an iinstitute.Her relatives who stayed behind were Kolkhoz slaves well into the 1950ies…
That’s the story of why Soviet peasants got starved, enslaved and exploited to build an industrialized country at a breakneck pace.
And it all had nothing whatsoever to do with these peasants being specifically Ukrainian, Russian or Tatar…
Mostly correct, but policies were harsher in the Ukrainian SSR and Ukrainians were a disproportionate percentage of the dead (Ukrainians were about 30% of the Soviet population but about 50% of the victims of the Soviet famine). That this coincided with the mass executions of Ukrainian cultural figures suggests a decent but not airtight case that there was a national aspect to this. OTOH there is no order specifically targeting Ukrainians.
Remember that just because Nazis targeted Poles and other Slavs also, does not mean that they didn’t target Jews.
Demographers and historians poring through the archives arrived at a much lower estimate of 2.6 to 4 million; politicians such as Yushchenko have claimed much larger numbers.
From the University of Minnesota’s current website of “Holocaust and Genocide Studies”:
https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor
The 2.6M figure seems low. I’ve read somewhere that no less an authority than Khrushchev himself once estimated that upwards of 10M fell during the harvest of sorrows….
Good for your Grandmother and too bad for the rest of your family. I’ll have to agree with AP and many other dedicated scholars that because of the added element of purging Ukraine of 10’s of thousands of its intelligentsia, there was a slightly different emphasis in Ukraine that pointed to perhaps even more sinister foresight involved in the Ukrainian tragedy (also the numbers were quite a bit higher too). The eminent scholar Raphael Lemkin whose work underpinned the U.N.’s “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Soviet Genocide in Ukraine” wholeheartedly felt that what transpired in Ukraine constituted a classic case of genocide. He, being Jew, does not fit the description of your classic Ukrainian nationalist.
Having said this, I don’t think that there should be anything precluding Ukrainians from commemorating their great tragedy with Russians or other ethnicities within the Soviet Union or even beyond the borders of this truly historic “prison of nations’. The more all people reflect on the nature of these tragedies, the better.
Well, I remember Petliura’s troops being made of Ukrainian peasantry and petty bourgeoisie. Also these troops excelling at Pogroms. And the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR being disproportionately Jewish (even comparatively with the NKVD of the other republics, which higher ranking officers were frequently a product of the some shtetl lost somewhere beyond the pale of settlement), so there’s that.
But I don’t hear too many Ukrainian nationalists mentioning this strange correlation with the Holodomor statistics. Easier to just point the accusing finger at the accursed Moskals, even though these Moskals themselves were starved and sent to Siberia in the millions by the NKVD.
Another explanation I have read, was that Ukrainian peasants were the only ones who actually destroyed a large part of the reserves left by the Reds for the next sowing season. The rationale was that if the Soviets take nearly all the bread I sow, then I will make it impossible for them to take that much bread next year.
It actually made some sense, because the agricultural tax was calculated proportional to the production of each peasant. So if you produce less, then Commies take less. But the Commies took everything they found next year because they also got a plan to fulfill. So instead of dying of hunger one season and adapting the next, the Ukrainian peasants had the dubious pleasure of dying of hunger for two seasons in row, which might also explain their relative over representation among the starved.
By the beginning of the 30ies Russian intelligentsia was already massacred en masse. Ukrainian intelligentsia should have actually felt much happier to have survived a few years more.
At least Ukrainians had the korenizatsia to compensate for their cultural losses. Russians had nothing of the kind until the late 50ies and early 60ies with the rural writers (Shukshin a.s.o) remember how badly things turned up for Yessenin, despite him trying to suck up to the Soviets. Remember Bulgakov asking comrade Stalin to be either left alone, shot or allowed to immigrate.
Times were tough…
(But I understand that true compassion begins at home and that Ukrainian nationalists will always care more for the suffering of their people instead of recognizing that their suffering was nothing special).
The only time in the 30ies when a population loss is recorded for Ukraine is 1933 with around 1,5 million.
The loss for this year in RFSSR was around 1,9 million.
The 10 million figure you heard about is probably the total number of raskulachennye in the whole Soviet Union supposedly mentioned by Stalin during a conversation with Churchill. Whether one should believe Churchill about it is another matter.
Now, let’s look at numbers.
Ukraine population: 2020 (official number) – 41,785,800; 1989 – 51,700,000; 1970 – 47,200,000; 1950 – 37,297,600; 1944 – 33,500,000; 1941 – 42,000,000; 1922 – 26,200,000.
So, between 1922 and 1941 the population grew by 15.8 million (~60%) (how plausible does the holodomor narrative sound?). Between 1941 and 1944 it decreased by 8.5 million (~20%) – there was WWII. Under Soviet “oppression” from 1944 to 1989 it increased by 18.2 million (by 54%). After independence it decreased even by official count by ~9.9 million (~20%). Thus, hard numbers say that so called independence was a calamity comparable to WWII.
“Armenians have paid the ultimate price for their collaboration with the Russia. Hamidian massacres and Armenian genocide happened because Turks saw them as Russias fifth coloumn and Armenians would not have gotten as rebellious without Russia annexing neighbouring lands like Kars Oblast and treatening local Christians in much more civilized and egalitarian manner unlike Ottomans with their dhimmis.”
Congrats, you’ve managed to hand waive genocide. And, the Tutsis wouldn’t have been slaughtered and they not been the favorites of the colonial power, and not arrogantly been more successful than they’re 15% of the population warranted. And, teh Jews would not have been subject to the Holocaust had they not been the primary movers behind the Spartacist uprisings. And, the Ukranians would not have been subject to the Holodomor had they not had so many who harbored counter-revoluntionary sentiments. And, the professionals and intellectuals of Cambodia would not have been subject to the Killing Fields had they simply let go of their attachment to a pre-year zero world. The list of excuses for genocide goes on and on. Funny how the Turks managed to complete the trifecta, genocide of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians.
Erdogen is not foolish enough to send actual Turkish citizens to die in Libya or Karabakh. That would take the air out of any enthusiasm in Turkey for such foreign adventures.
The figure quoted by Syrian mercs is $2,000, who claim they were told they would be guarding oil pipelines, not fighting in a war.
You raise excellent points, especially about the intel advantage that comes from Turkish satellites and reconnaissance. I have a few quibbles.
The huge advantage in manpower only works if you’re actually willing to accept large numbers of casualties. I seriously doubt Azerbijian is willing to accept such a large number of body bags returning to Baku. All of the conflicts since 94 have been relatively minor and neither side has been forced to test the theory that they were wiling to fight to the death. There is a reason they are using Syrian mercs. Part of it is because they are battle-tested, but it is also because it keeps the tally of Azeri deaths low.
The issue of the terrain and the advantage is gives to the defending party should not be understated. It is already playing out. Based on force advantage alone, Azeri forces should be making bigger advances than we’ve seen.
While Moscow would like to see Pashinyan get his commeuppance, there is a limit to how weak it is willing to see Armenia become.
Turkey becoming more open about its involvement in the conflict is likely a bridge too far for Moscow. So, there is a limit to the aid that Turkey supplies, and I suspect that limit is in openly providing Turkish troops to the conflict.
Ultimately, I think Azerbijian will recover some of the corridor, but i seriously doubt it will end up with Karabakh or that it can succeed in encircling it. It will have changed the facts on the ground and weakened Armenia, but actually accomplishing its stated goal seems rather unlikely.
A beautiful book. Amazing how people can have such different responses.
Many pogroms in Ukraine were done by White armies from Russia, such as the Kiev pogroms; estimates range from 20% to as high as 50%
Total number of pogrom victims (highest estimate 70,000) was utterly dwarfed by the number of victims by communists (several millions)
Well, most of the killers in the German concentration camps were Ukrainian POW Sovoks. In other words, Holodomor survivors. This somehow is also not widely mentioned.
Ukrainian peasants saw who was killing them: largely Russians and Russian-speaking Jews from the city. They did not pay attention to what was happening far away in Russia, but were focused on what they were seeing in their area. A government was imposed on Ukraine due to an invasion from Moscow, and the killers doing that government’s dirty work were largely Russian-speakers from the city. And indeed within Ukraine, where Ukrainians tended to live in villages, and Russians/Jews in cities, Ukrainians were disproportionately hit.
I’ve written before that Russians do not deserve collective responsibility for Bolshevik crimes because Russia was essentially hijacked by a gang of criminals who then spreads their filth to Ukraine and elsewhere. But Ukrainian peasants didn’t think about these things, with their own eyes it was just urban Russian-speakers (Russians and Jews) doing this to them.
Somehow only they came up with this idea? Russians never did? It was a genetic thing, or a cultural thing?
Large-scale population growth in the 1920s (TFR 5.39 in 1925), plus annexation of parts of Poland and Ukraine in 1939 (approximately another 7 million people), plus settlement by Russian colonists. How stupid do you think readers are?
Because loss of population due to territorial losses, emigration, and lower birth rate is really the same as loss of population due to starvation and killing. So if you had one child rather than four, you “killed” three children. Hard numbers. Amazing logic.
Probably more of a cultural thing, given that they are largely identical from the genetic perspective. A Russian saying: быть Русским судьба, быть хохлом жадность…
BTW I have heard about the Ukrainian Concentration Camp Kapo thing. But there where also the Lithuanians. The reason was mostly the same; to exact revenge against the Jews, the Reds and the Russians probably in that order.
We both agree that Russia was hijacked. And given that you are a quite learned person, you probably know that this hijacking was long in preparation. And the “Western Partners ” as Putin calls them today had a hand in the process. Of course that was nothing personal and business only. Who could have prophesied then that one day the Marxist hordes would be unleashed on the West itself. That’s what happens with all this one eye for one eye thing: it sometimes becomes a self sustaining, nearly impersonal process.
It’s a geopolitically murky situation, which greatly explains Russia’s stance on the matter:
https://www.turkeyanalyst.org/publications/turkey-analyst-articles/item/652-turkey%E2%80%99s-commitment-to-azerbaijan%E2%80%99s-defense-shows-the-limits-of-ankara%E2%80%99s-tilt-to-moscow.html
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1313150575522045952
So its wrong to analyze motivations for genocide, how much one can be an ass?
Ottomans didnt commit large scale genocides or ethnic cleansings of minorities for hundreds of years, when they were the paramount power of the Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East and Mediterranean. So you claim that its futile to deduct and understand the motivations of Ottoman politival leaders? Hey ignoramus understanding something is not same as validating or accepting mistaken views or opinions.
The Ottoman empire was an ancient empire which was crumbling on many directions, both internal and external, it had minorities that truly despised their overlords, and often for justifiable reasons, minorities which could not be equal citizens of an empire which claimed officially to be a successor of ancient Islamic Caliphate. The empire during its long decay had endured over a one hundred years of revolts and wars caused by those rebellious populations, like the many Greek, Serb, Romanian and Bulgarian revolts, and almost always foreign powers helped or directly interfered on behalf of those non muslim minorities.
If that would be all, but no, the Ottomans were waging desperate war on three or four fronts against superior enemy. On the Caucasus, on the Iraq, on the Palestine and Arabia. So I am hand wawing genocide because I try to understand the motivations of the perpetrators?
How stupid one can be, really AK please block this clown.
What Ottomans did was exremely wrong, and most of the masterminds of the genocide were thankfully hunted down and assasinated by Armenians or they met very bad fates like Enver Pasha. But there is nothing wrong in trying to understand the reasons and causes that were driving the three Pashas who ruled the Ottoman Empire. Actually one can see growing sense of desperation by the Ottomans through the 19th and early 20th Century. For in the war of Bulgarian liberation in 1877-78 thry already started to commit acts of genocide but on a much smaller scale. Downfalls of empires are not nice thing and people who are cornered like a beasts and under a siege often start to spiral on the path of madness. Even Nazis commited their greatest atrocities in the last years of the war.
Actually I wanted to agree with you on this part:
But I accidentally clicked disagree, our many debates have clearly made some negative effects on my reflexes…
But still there is some truth in AnonFromTNs statement. Independence of Ukraine has not at least solved anything for Ukrainians in the spheres of economic well being and political security or stability.
The conversation at hand regards the Holodomor period, roughly from 1930-1933. You’re looking at a much larger swath of time, from 1922-1941, not really comparable. Also, it’s well known that the Komuna was not interested in announcing to the world the excesses and horrors that were experienced in Ukraine due to its own blatantly corrupt and inhumane policies that resulted in the deaths of millions of its own citizens and therefore could skew the stats to try and cover up their own crimes, and now it looks like you’re trying to continue their game of hide and obfuscate and continue the ruse – such a contemptible and heartless sovok you appear to be. 🙁
Thank you.
This is not wrong; here is Ukraine’s per capita GDP in constant dollars:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=UA
However the essential problem has not been independence but two related issues:
Ukraine’s leadership was pretty much the old Soviet comprador elite – a combination of traitors and those too incompetent to make it in Moscow so they were relegated to provincial Ukraine. The natives among them betrayed their people by becoming communists and then betrayed the communist regime by ending the USSR and cutting a deal with nationalist activists in which the nationalists acquiesced to let the elites keep political and economic control in exchange for getting the schools and trappings of statehood. Of course not all of them were even natives. Yanukovich’s PM Azarov came to Ukraine from Russia in the 1980s when he was in his thirties. Naturally the Soviet elites were horrible economic stewards, who got rich while driving the country into the ground.
(2) would have been impossible without (1).
(1) was resolved in 2014. So after about 25 years of being inherently crippled Ukraine finally had a chance for normal development. It will take a long time to recover from those 25 lost years but until COVID, after a difficult 2014-2015 the progress was clear. By 2019, despite low-grade war in the East, Ukraine’s GDP per capita in constant dollars had exceeded the Yanukovich years (see link) and was approaching the post-Soviet high of 2008. Wages in early 2020 were no longer the second lowest in Europe but the third lowest. In net terms they were higher than Belarus and Armenia (and tied with Georgia); adjusted for cost of living they were higher than Moldova and Armenia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage
The population’s geopolitical orientation is much more solidly oriented towards its westward neighbors, etc.
Maybe Galicia and Volyn is oriented towards Poland, but in my opinion Romania is even more “oriental” country than Russia, or do you mean Moldova? If we are speaking about geopolitical orientation and westward neighbours. What then if Belarus will be integrated with Russia? Then Ukraine would be a like a caterpillar midst of Russian lands and that western orientation would not make any sense then.
Still I believe that faith in Ukrainian nationalism and strong desire for rejecting close ties to Russia is important only for a minority of Ukrainians, with or without Donbass. Like i once mentioned to Mr. Hack, I dont believe that vast majority of Zelenskys voters had any strong nationalist or Russophobic intentions, even if Zelensky is not any friend of Russia, but he is no Ukrainian nationalist, nor are his voters.
If you “disagree” with my comment #253, at least have the decency of explaining what exactly about it you find disagreeable?
I did not want to go into that, but your Freudian slip of tongue made me. So, let’s look at the numbers before Ukraine lost any territory
1989 – 51,700,000
2000 – 48,838,000
2013 – 45,455,000
Simple math: Ukraine was losing 271,000 residents per year.
Let’s ignore the fact that war always reduces birth rate and increases death rate and linearly extrapolate to 2020. We get expected 43,554,000 in the whole of Ukraine’s former territory. It is widely known that the total number of residents in Crimea, Lugansk, and Donetsk People’s Republics is ~ 6 million (to be more exact, 2,362,000, 1,439,000, and 2,260,000, respectively). Not even counting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who ran away to Russia as war refugees or otherwise and got citizenship or permanent residency, 43.55 million minus 6 million gives 37.55 million maximum in the rump of Ukraine.
Thus, it follows that official number 41,785,800 is a lie, exactly like most statements of post-coup Ukrainian governments. Case closed.
Are the Armenophobes here keeping track of the azerbaijani losses? You all seemed so certain those roaches had the upper hand.
The only “lie” is your presentation of 41,785,800 as the official population. This number excludes Crimea but includes all of Donbas, including the separatist republics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine
“In July 2020 the total population of Ukraine was estimated to be 41,762,138[6] excluding the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, which were annexed by Russia in 2014. (If these two territories are included in the demographics of Ukraine, the population rises by approximately 2.25 million, to 44 million). During the 2014 Ukrainian Crisis, the Ukrainian Government also lost control of portions of the Donbass region, including major cities such as Luhansk, Donetsk and Horlivka. If the populations of these cities are subtracted from Ukraine’s current demographics, the total population of Ukraine falls below 40 million. In 2019 an electronic census estimated that Ukraine’s population, minus the lost Crimean and Donbass populations, to be 37.3 million.”
This is a good example of what your conclusions and assumptions of Ukraine are worth.
Simple truth (which Ukies will deny, as usual, because the truth is never “svido”) is that Kiev regime “counting” the population of Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics is about as credible and makes as much sense as me counting the population of Burkina Faso.
And Kiev. And the Right Bank (Vynnytsia, Zhytomir). Even a place like Odessa (much closer to EU Romania than to Russia) is divided in attitude, without a clear preference for Eurasia vs. EU.
A bit like Austria during the Cold War, though more extreme. This would be a problem in case of an economic blockade or a new Cold War between the EU and Eurasia, but otherwise not really. Ukraine still has a large border with EU members Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania and secure global ports in Odessa and Mykolayiv.
Zelensky works as a softer nationalist than Poroshenko, but he praised those who like Bandera and made clear that he would pursue ongoing integration with the EU. This idea that he or his voters are not pro-West is a cope by desperate Russian nationalists wanting some “good news,” and a portrayal by Poroshenko to try to get voters to overlook his own poor progress in combatting corruption.
There is a party in Ukraine that actually does want integration with Russia rather than the EU. It gets about 20% support. It is despised not only in Galicia and Volhynia but also in Kiev. It doesn’t win in Odessa, either, despite enjoying some popularity there, but only has success in Kharkiv.
Do you have links to a good source of up to date info about this war?
Unless either side shows intolerance to high casualties, the war will be long and bloody. No Western country will give real help to Armenia, the Empire and its sidekicks will do what they always do: raise stink.
My bet is that as long as the war is limited to Karabakh, Putin will be reluctant to interfere. If he ever does, Russia will protect Armenia form obliteration, as it did before (one can argue whether it was smart before and whether it would be smart now). If Pashinian and his sorosoids get deposed, it might stimulate Putin. If Turkey interferes openly, it might trigger Putin’s interference even while sorosoids are in power in Armenia. Whichever way the events develop, we can be sure about one thing only: a lot of Armenians and Azeris will die.
Magnus Carlsen is a more likely candidate for the greatest player of all time. Unlike in other sports and games, there is a way of objectively measuring it. They put the positions of the historic games of chess greats into a chess computer and found that Carlsen was the player who most often got it right, that is to say, the computer made the same move as he had done at the time.
Tom de Waal called out:
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1313596015908454401
A great on target shot.
Neither did uncle Adolf tbh.
https://www.sikhphilosophy.net/threads/the-sant-sipahi-tradition-flows-from-guru-nanak-himself.36543/
Thoughts?
https://imgur.com/a/x3U1Op3
In the tradition of Soviet military,thought, the Russians are great believers in overwhelming through numbers to an apparently excessive extent. So swarms of cheap drones being used for target spotting by massed artillery would be the style of warmaking they’d teach. However their allies probably don’t have (have not been supplied with) sufficient quantities of materiel to use Russian doctrine effectively.
What I could say? Everything in your citations is Dharma, although absolute justice in human institutions sounds far fetched in current situation, and there is not just battle against external enemies, but internal too.
On topic comments on the war are likely lost for this post. As frequently happens with
AK’s comment section, it has devolved into a Slavic slugfest over who were kangz then are who are kangz now.
One of korenizatsiya’s main benefits was to help the Ukrainian populace to better become acquainted with its own literary language, that had been neglected in deference to Russian that was favored during Czarist times. The Russian language was much more established at this time as the favored language of communication throughout the empire and did not need this special period of education within Russia itself. I don’t think that the subject of history was taught much in either republic during the 1920’s, but was being developed to a greater degree to emphasize the new ideological underpinnings of the new political system. Perhaps I’m wrong about this?
There’s also the important question of who wuz da innocentest victimz.
To which the answer is obviously Hungarians.
This I find greatly disagreeable, its other way round for AnonFromTN suffers from too great heart, which has made him maybe too pessimistic and melancholic…
PISA and SAT estimates are a crapshoot because if the overwhelming test prep and cheating going on in East Asia and India, because the College Board basically recycles tests, as for the Balkans maybe students tend to just not care.
This also goes for estimates of Armenian vs. Azerbaijan IQ, maybe Armenian and Azeri students just do not care enough about PISA test to waste time answering them, doofuses like Sailer and his culties just do not want to admit that mass East Asian and Indian cheating leads to any relationship between SAT scores and innate intelligence being inferred based on SAT scores being basically invalid. Or maybe acknowledging Asian privilege and test prep and cheating leaving to wildly inflated standardized test scores will lead the way to whites being questioned as how alledged white privilege lead to higher test scores? May may be Sailer’s and his ilk’s motive for ignoring Asian cheating in standardized tests. Basically you can’t explain Armenian and Azeri battlefield performance, or lack thereof, based on results of PISA tests.
The above was an adequate example of your approach to truth.
Ukraine counted Donbas to get its figure of 41 million, you made a false allegation that the 41 million was inflated because of the loss of Donbas. You even called the Ukrainian figure a “lie.”
And yet the number including Donbas matched your own estimate. Lol.
If this is your confession about your own credibility, it may be the most honest thing you’ve ever written that involves Ukraine.
Yes, the Caucasoids are reknown for their intellectual achievements as a culture.
To which the answer is obviously Hungarians.
Yeah, right.
From Wiki:
Can you say reparations?
To be fair they have had very ancient civilizations there and the Armenian is one of them. But modern day and age is certainly not a display of great achievements in the Caucasus region. Although their talents benefited other cultures that have been able to attract them. I don’t think the future has anything exceptionally bright in hold for the peoples of the Caucasus mountains. Of course their nationalists would disagree…
Surely their women were just drawn to the Magyars because of the impressive chests.
I’ve heard the same argument used for Celtic genes in Iceland, so why won’t it work for the Hungarians?
Let’s not even mention the Battles of Lechfeld and the Catalunyan Fields
Well the Basques were not known for much in Spain, except for the things they are infamous for, but are known are being very good in business in their colonies.
No doubt that by 1948 the Soviet system was using every tool within its arsenal to help indoctrinate the masses to its ideology and this would have included history textbooks. My point was that perhaps because the system was new in the 1920’s they might not have yet created history textbooks for students in the elementary and high schools? Koronizatsiya after all lasted only through the 1920’s and was a measure used of convenience to satisfy the needs of a blossoming, if not submerged new nationality.
Sure, one can dispute the number of victims that died during the Holodomor, but he seems to disparage the whole idea. He should know better, as he claims to have been born in Eastern Ukraine where this immense humanitarian crime took place. I have family that succumbed during this tragedy, so it’s personal for me, for him, perhaps, his family was a part of those that helped to carry out the orders from Moscow to requisition foodstuffs? My mother, who lived through this tragedy as a child, didn’t talk very much to me about any related details, but was clear, however, not to solely assign any responsibility on Russians or perhaps Jews when assessing any blame for this evil tragedy, but made it clear that there were plenty of our own “nashi” that were involved in carrying out the requisitioning. 🙁
There was widespread famine at the time, in Ukraine (actually, it was more severe in Eastern Ukraine and Donbass), Volga region of Russia, and Kazakhstan (where the fraction of the population suffering from hunger was greater than in Ukraine). Quite a few people died of hunger in all these regions.
From my perspective, three things are important. One, focusing on the famine in Ukraine disregarding everything else is a lie. It’s like saying that a single perforation tooth is the whole stamp. Two, periodic famines in all these regions happened in the Russian Empire long before Soviets. Three, the one in the 1930s was the last widespread famine in the USSR.
It’s a shame that for whatever reason, Kazakhstan and its diaspora has done very little to make known their very similar famine that also took place roughly during the same time period. I applaud any efforts to bring this immense tragedy to light and strongly feel that there’s no need for Ukrainians to monopolize these events. Having said that, harking back to our friend Anon4’s astute observation that “charity starts at home”, there’s no reason for Ukrainians not to commemorate their own tragedy and continue any scholarship to bring more needed facts to life. One difference between the two concurrent tragedies is that within Ukraine the added element of the destruction of its intelligentsia was perpetrated unlike any similar numbers/proportions in Kazakhstan. The similarities and differences need to be further studied and exposed wherever they took place. There’s a saying in Ukrainian that obviously doesn’t seem to apply to you, Mr. Professor:
It’s very hard for me to picture you ever proudly wearing a vishivanka!
In the 20ies the Soviet system was not stabilized yet. A lot of social disruption and cultural experimentation was taking place. Soviets were less dogmatic then, the only thing they considered paramount then was the annihilation of the remains of the previous Tsarist social system.
Korenizatsia played an important role in weakening the “Greater Russian Chauvinism”. The attacks against the Orthodox Religion and the attempted “Obnovlenie” of the Church life also targeted the cultural code of the majority of the Russian population. The sexual revolution of the early NEP era weakened the family life. It was in fact similar to the Cultural Marxism of today: reinforce the minorities to weaken the majority and reform the weakened society towards a greater uniformity under a dictatorial command.
Korenizatsia was the equivalent of the affirmative action of the current age. As soon as the Velikoross majority was weakened enough, the affirmation of the minority cultures was dialed down and Soviet cultural homogenization implemented.
By that time the pre-revolutionary Russian elites were either executed, starved to death or expulsed into emigration. The local minority cultural personalities often applauded the debasement of their Velikoross competitors. Once the Velikoross have been dealt with, the turn of the minority intellectuals came and they felt the tough love of the Soviet regime in all its brutal strength.
By then it was too late to cry…
Koronizatsiya was primarily the Bolsheviks response to a very nascent expression of Ukrainian nationalism that they encountered in Ukraine. Similarly, in 1920 a new Ukrainian Orthodox church was formed in Ukraine, not necessarily as an attack on the Russian dominated church, but as an expression of the Ukrainian people’s will to have their own church, to reflect more of its own culture and usage of the native Ukrainian language. This church, unfortunately was short lived and experienced great persecution and was completely liquidated by the 1930’s, including its hierarchy and priests. This photo gives you a good idea that the Ukrainian national idea was alive in thriving in Kyiv in 1919 (not a small gathering of Banderites in Lviv, but everyday Ukrainians showing their support for a new Ukrainian state uniting both the East and the West).
https://batyar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/%D0%B7%D1%83%D0%BD%D1%80.jpg
This element was present (arguably in even more severe form) in Russia, where educated people existed. It did not happen in Kazakhstan for one reason: there were so few educated people there, that there was nothing to destroy.
There is Russian saying with exactly the same meaning: “своя рубашка ближе к телу” (your own shirt is closer to you).
You are absolutely right there. It won’t happen for numerous reasons, mostly because I am not an idiot. First, embroidered shirts were part of folk outfits in so many nations that only a really stupid ignoramus would demonstrate it as a symbol of national pride. Second, wearing medieval outfits in the twenty first century outside of specialized folk festivals is hardly a sign of intellectual prowess. As one Russian blogger said, “tried to imagine Putin and Lavrov in kosovorotkas (nineteenth century Russian folk shirt) and couldn’t”.
BTW, when the current clown (of playing the piano with his dick fame) visited Estonia, he and Estonian president Kaljulaid exchanged gifts. A joke spread through Russian internet: “Kaljulaid presented Zelensky a bicycle, but he avenged himself and presented her vishivanka”.
Korenizatsia was not only an Ukrainian affair, it was a general principle applied everywhere across the Soviet Union. Everywhere the Russian culture was tossed aside and minority cultures were strengthened. It was a pure and simple divide and rule strategy. Under the pretense of freeing the minorities from the dominant Velikoross culture, the Russian majority was weakened and debased towards a Soviet citizenship. For a time there was even discussion about censorship of Pushkin and other classical Russian writers, with the notable exception of Tolstoy who was seen favorably by the revolutionary regime. Those who considered themselves as being part of the Russian cultural elites were denied the possibility to earn an income, their children denied education, their apartments forcibly filled with paysant and proletarian roommates. They were starved as Rozanov, shot as Gumyliov, forcibly expelled into emigration as the passengers of the “philosophers’ steamship”. Everything Russian was considered petit bourgeois: fairytales, songs, classical music, paintings. Russia needed being completely destroyed and reformed so Soviet Union could be built on its ruins.
If we are to believe news reports (which we shouldn’t w/o independent checking), the replay of 1994 is going on in the Karabakh war. Azeri troops are retreating in the South towards Iranian border. I can imagine Iranians letting Azeris in, but I cannot picture them letting Syrian jihadists in. It would be more logical if they mow down with machine guns Syrian jihadists they are fighting in Syria.
I don’t see any Bolsheviks with bayonets aimed at the backs of the Kyivan citizenry forcing them to stand up for Ukrainian political and cultural rights in the photo above, #290, that could also be viewed as negative support towards Czarist Russian (VelikiRos) cultural domination?….
I never visited those countries, so I can only have the most superficial knowledge and thoughts about the region.
But if we look at superficial things, perhaps were little less pessimistic indicators for those countries in recent years.
They have suffered from mass emigration, but in recent years population seems to be at least relatively stable. Azerbaijan actually has bypassed Belarus in population, while even Armenia’s population is not quite collapsing.
https://i.imgur.com/vgojyzM.jpg
In terms of recent fertility forecast generalizations (“total fertility rate”).
Georgia seemed quite stable almost around replacement rate of fertility forecast, which is usually considered ideal level for developed country (not that Georgia is developed) by demographers.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are slightly below replacement in forecast, almost twins in terms of this indicator. If you assumed no emigration, Georgia is not far from the idealized level.
(Chechen Republic’s fertility rate is much higher than neighbours in the region – its “total fertility rate” is usually somewhere above 2,5 – but this “contributing” to the Russian Federation).
https://i.imgur.com/dSO9LWd.jpg
In economy – if we look at GDP per capita on PPP basis (which is a bit of a joke measure, but won’t be completely untrue). They have all had some significant growth since the lowest base of 2000. (Azerbaijan has oil, so it follows a different pattern).
https://i.imgur.com/Z1k8lcJ.jpg
Before coronavirus and recent anti-Russian rhetoric, Georgia was having one of the world’s fastest growing tourism boom.
https://i.imgur.com/tkdN5Ui.png
Probably for Georgia, there is some potential for economic development, by being investment hub from Russia. Unlike Armenia, they have sea.
There is massive real estate investment in Batumi. This is primarily Russian property investment (although they are also receiving a lot of investment from Turkey).
But Armenia probably has less potential to copy Georgia’s tourism/investment model, due to lack of sea.
Only an idiotic Ukrainian would try to denigrate the beautiful Ukrainian embroidery emblazoned upon a shirt, and be ashamed to wear one in public. I realize that it must be difficult for you to separate yourself from you janissar upbringing. 🙁
the turn of the minority intellectuals came and they felt the tough love of the Soviet regime in all its brutal strength.
By then it was too late to cry…
First they came for …
I assume (without reading anything) that the panturkic nationalism views promoted in Azerbaijan currently, are presumably extremely recent (and more response to recent power of Turkey in the last three decades)?
In the Russian Empire, in the 19th century, Azeris were as high as General-Majors fighting against the Turks.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%85%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9,_%D0%9A%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8_%D0%A5%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%AD%D1%85%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%A5%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BB%D1%8B#%D0%A0%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE-%D1%82%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%86%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B9%D0%BD%D0%B0
And not just “ideology” – they received modern buildings, sanitation, education, opera halls, clean water, sewage systems, medicine, warm water, electricity, roads… even metro lines. In particular, Baku received a lot of beautiful architecture.
Baku and Erevan were even built metro lines. While Omsk, Chelyabinsk – still don’t have metro lines. They built Armenians’ a metro line even before starting the construction of the first line in Ekaterinburg (although to be fair, their one looks relatively low budget and unaesthetic in comparison).
The only two avenues to “make it” as a poor country without a fossil fuel bonanza and middling human capital is either become a tax haven (as Panama is learning) or become a tourist hotspot. For the latter, you really need to have a small population, which Georgia has. However, while their location is decent, it isn’t fantastic. There’s a lot of arid surroundings. It’s not like Vietnam, a stunning and gorgeous country. I’m quite pessimistic about the entire region.
The only meaningful prospect for prosperity is having a high human capital base. It isn’t enough – as North Korea ably demonstrates – but it is virtually impossible without it in the long run. The fossil fuel exceptions will stop being exceptions as EVs gradually take over. Incremental oil consumption increases is going to come to a standstill very soon and we’ll have “peak oil” this decade. It will be driven by demand rather than supply.
As that happens, countries like Russia will likely handle the transition better since they have decent human capital and have generally run a tight fiscal ship. I shudder to think of the chaos that awaits Saudi Arabia as their huge and expensive welfare state that was built on an oil price of $100 evaporates before their eyes. In the end, countries, like people, revert to the mean.
Armenia is more progressive on abortion than Russia or Ukraine are.
https://i.redd.it/qlp8n4vg3or51.png
P.S. Interesting how comparably liberal the Balkanoids are. Any sociological reason for this?
P.P.S. is it a Slavic thing to use roman ‘numbers’ to denote dates? I don’t see it among anyone else anymore. It’s hilarious and a bit backward at the same time.
With a little bit of study though we can determine that a lot of the support for this movement, BLM, is backed by Marxists and commies. Not so, with the Ukrainian movement in the early 1920’s in Ukraine. The Bolsheviks were primarily an import from the Russian north into Ukraine, and yes, I’m aware that a lot of the Bolshevik vanguard were not ethnic Russians, but this doesn’t negate the fact that it first came from the north through Russia into Ukraine.
Another poor analogy, as the Ukrainian national movement did not represent a “minority” viewpoint, but rather that of the majority. As AP has shown so many times here before, by the 1920’s Ukrainian political parties were the most ascendant, whereas those with a common Russian denominator were clearly on the wane. And this had nothing at all to do with any Bolshevik influence.
He actually looks better in this photo than I’ve ever seen him before. Also, he held some high positions within the Ukrainian government. I’m guessing that he was trying hard to score some points with his second wife that was Ukrainian, here in this photo. It also goes to show you that even Khrushchev had more sense than our resident “Ukrainian” professor! 🙂
Well, it’s the usual suspects who make every single thread about Ukraine. I have never met a prouder nationality with less in their history to be proud about than these people, with the possible exception of Albanians.
WOW!
I never imagined that so much development was going on within Batumi, the video highlighting so many beautiful and modern new buildings. I’ve always felt that Georgian wines were amongst the very best in the whole world, their cuisine is interesting, and I’m sure that the people are quite hospitable too. What’s there not to like? Any good videos highlighting the beach life that you’ve come across would be interesting to see too.
I do apologize for my part in this. It all started, however, with Altan Bakshi’s cheapshot meme in comment #130 that just couldn’t be overlooked. But then again, this thread has veered off in several different directions and Georgia seems to be up next for discussion. I hope that’s Okay (in many ways though the Caucuses region is in the same neighborhood as U_____e). 🙂
In Stalin’s court Khrushchev always played the role of a clown. That’s why he managed to trick his competitors into giving him the top job. They thought it’s a temporary compromise, stupid half-people (using Mandelshtam’s word).
Here is the best joke from Khrushchev’s period:
Correction: in yesterday’s issue of our newspaper there was a typo in the caption to the photograph of Khrushchev with the most productive pigs. Khrushchev is the third from the right, not the second from the right, as we printed.
see comment #307 in reply to your comment.
Yes, Russians. First person to mention Ukraine here was the Russian Altanbakshi. He provoked a response from Mr. Hack and then more Russians joined in (Anon4 and AnoninTN). What can one do, Ukraine is on Russians’ minds.
Yes, I don’t deny Russians join in on this too, no matter what the topic, the same damn arguments and again and again… ano4’s ‘toad and viper’ comments would be a bit more justified if Slavs had their own act together. Eventually all that sticks out is Gerard’s profanity-laden shitposts, honestly in AK’s position I’d consider just banning Ukraine-discussion on threads unrelated to the topic, but I guess then he’d lose an average of 20 comments per post, LOL.
I agree and I apologize. I shouldn’t have replied to Mr Hack’s comment. You are right, we should ignore Ukraine related comments in all threads that are not directly related to Ukraine with the obvious exception of the Open Thread.
Not sure that AltanBakshi would self identify as Russian, although I will leave it to his discretion.
Well I’ve never been in Georgia.
I have a friend who was on vacation in Georgia, and said they loved to visit, because of its lazy people and crazy, third-world, Dada atmosphere – where you can never predict what will be next. They recommend to go there because it was like some kind of mini-Africa or mini-India in terms of its spirit.
However, at 13:00 you can see they have a nationalist march, so you can see already an unstable situation for Russian tourism, if the proportion of nationalists is so high in Georgia (in the sense you might be wondering if Georgian nationalist waiter could spit in your food).
It will be interesting to see if Saudi Arabia could transition to a longer term of relatively lower oil prices.
It’s a country with almost feudal (and in that sense, almost romantically conservative) political and economic system.
Obviously, rulers will not be able to suddenly reform the economy, or try to modernize their education, without risking political stability.
I always admired lazy people as my fellow spirits, as all my school years were based about distracting the teacher and avoiding homework. I think there were few youth who had been more successfully lazy, than I was.
But when you’re an adult, and you need to succeed in a language exam as precondition for visas and jobs – the perspective of having such classmates, becomes a little different.
Turks do alot more good for Russia than our “Orthodox Brother” Greek (state) homos or any other western state has ever done
Russians practically own parts of Turkey, many millions of us go there and experience zero problems…I have gone there many times and had great holidays. As a counterexample, Russians own large parts of Montenegro but get nothing positive in return. Our citizens in Turkey are never in danger of getting arrested and deported to the US, always very safe and enjoyable…and as a civil engineer I have extra respect for Turkey because of the many excellent construction companies they have doing very high quality structural and geotechnical projects in Turkey, in Russia, everywhere.
I am from Kazan, and Turkey do lots of projects and investment there in culture, religion and infrastructure, and in all this time..nothing subversive about it at all, which is of course totally different to many ( not all) US -funded projects. Sure, they are abit paranoid about Gulenism , even in Kazan – but Gulenists do exist here.
We have disagreement over Syria but they still work far more positively with us in this serious war position than Pindossi/Gayropans do in peacetime or on small business issue. It was a disgrace when they shot down our Su-25 and killed our pilot- but we still do not know exactly which state engineered that situation and was responsible, and although it is unforgivable they make big efforts to repair the situation- in same situation Baltics/Polabd/Banderastan would just continue to act like freaks.
Erdogans team also appear to be very sane, sensible people in their public interviews…..compare them to the freaks in Poland, Baltics, GosDep, elites in Bulgaria etc. That’s why I think much of their negative reputation is undeserved ( their Foreign Minister also speaks fluent Russian and gives the impression of being a good guy)
Su-24
While Azerbaijan and Armenia, compete for some mountains as “can be expected from the brown people”.
Among the nationalities of Scandinavia, Finland has fought another battle in competition with rival powers Sweden-Norway, for a more noble territory: moral heights.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54450463
No I dont identify as a Russian, and I do have Slavic blood, but not much, still I have many, many relatives living in Russia and I have myself lived there and I do speak fluent Russian, but I make often grammatical errors when writing in Russian so Im maybe too self conscious about that. For I shudder from fear when I think how our Ukrainian friends here would murderously laugh at me, and I would feel like somekind of backwards hillbilly…. Still I see myself at least partly Rossiyane, if that makes sense. Also there have been many loyal servants and friends of Russia who themselves have not been Russian or Slavic, but German, Kalmyk, Tatar, Buryat, Georgians like the Bagrations, even some Poles etc… All before the Soviet nationality policy, which somehow just made different ethnicities less loyal.
My future solution for traitorous Georgia:
Mustafa Kemals Turkey had a diplomatic dispute about Adjaria in the 20s, for that region had belonged for a quite a long time to Ottomans and almost half of the population was Muslims there in the beginning of the 20th Century. In the end Soviets and Turkey agreed to leave the area as part of the Soviet Union, but Soviets had to give autonomy for Adjaria.
In the near future(2040’s, my earlier estimation was 2060’s but thank you BLM and the rest) when USA will not and can not uphold the unipolar world order, its time for the anchluss!
Thus historical unjustice would be redeemed by giving Adjaria to Turkey, which would sour Turkish-Georgian ties permanently, but sadly area around Poti is not mountainous, unlike Adjaria, so the border would be less secure in the case of war, but so what, its Turkey, not Deutches Reich! Then the the Armenian majority region of Samskhe-Javakhati should be given for Armenia, after all they would unite with their co-ethnics and once again Wilsonian self determination would be affirmed happily!
Many people here dont know that when Russia annexed Georgia, it was not united country, but multiple countries, with centuries long history of independence. Historically people of Western Georgia were called Mingrelians and their country as Mingrelia. Mingrelian is not mutually intelligible with Georgian and suffers from the dominance of Georgian, just like the poor Ukrainian language did suffer in the bckwards and cruel Russian Empire, so for the justice and the wellbeing of the Mingrelian nation they should have their separate and autonomous unit under the benevolent Russian rule, after all we must do our best against the petty and chauvinist nationalism! Of course new Mingrelian autonomous republic should be governed by local Mingrelian speaking Mingrelians, who would of course be rewarded for their sacrifices for their nation! Mingrelian Lukashenko? Then the eastern part of Georgia could be left alone, but only after annexation of Gori region/Shida Kartli to South Ossetia, after all historically that area was ethnically mixed area with many Ossetians, but sadly the ethnic composition has gone too homogenic and the area suffers from the lack of investment compared to Batumi, Poti and Tiflis, so benevolent Russia could bring some diversity in the form of 200k Slavs and other Rossiyane, which would bring rich culture, cuisine and workforce for the ageing Central Georgian region. In that way there would be left a landlocked Eastern Georgia, the historical heartland of Kartli-Kakheti, which would be left enjoying self rule and celebrate thei nationalism as much as they like! But oh no, there still would be Azeri majority areas in the new republic of Kartli-Kakheti, they too need some self rule….
Imperialism 3.1, excuse me what I did wrote? I mean self rule and justice, in the global fight against facism and nationalism!
Turkey is the best Nato country ever!
Eternal Mongol strikes once again! What can I do when dividing the Rus into fighting petty principalities just comes so naturally to me? By the way AP where is my Yasak?
Actually there were also quite many Finns and Swedes serving Russia, even in high positions.
That’s because Russian Empire was the Prison of the Peoples! And given the topic of this thread we will never emphasize enough that it was a terrible place for Armenians and Azeris (in alphabetical order to avoid any discrimination) to dwell in…
Incorrect there Anon. Ukrainian NATURAL POPULATION loss per year ( births minus deaths) is 200000-270000+, a number that itself is a huge disaster……. their actual population loss is many magnitudes higher because it is including migration.
Post evromaidan farce, the natural population loss is a disastrous 1.4 million+. That is ACTUAL genocide, not the laughable imaginary one propogated by retarded morons on here, plagiarising lies from subhuman banderist scum in America ( who of course were never even in that area affected to even make the fantasist claims!)
Russia has had natural population growth in that same time, all except one year being positive–so we are talking about the difference in population dynamics “only” being 1.2 million times better on Russian side for some years, LOL. That is something the authorities should emphasise more because it is incredible and also ridiculous. We are talking of 2 states that have lived as one people, one culture and suffered identical problems in 90’s, post-USSR world. There should be zero excuse for that high a disparity…. especially when climate, daylight, drinking habits and some ethnic issues should give Russia a big disadvantage on population dynamics compared to Ukraine. The numbers are that high and traceable to deliberately incompetent decision making….. I think that genocide is the only correct term to describe what has happened in Ukraine now.
And don’t forget that only starting now we are both going into period of after-effects from 90’s and low population born then directly forcing a low birth rate now for the next 5 years at least. Russia is significantly better position to reduce negative impacts from this…. and can also rely on immigration ( several hundred thousand Ukrainians a year in addition to other ex-USSR states) to partially reduce the problem. On the positive side for Ukrainians….. they will still be naming their kids names IDENTICAL to Russians in popularity, so they can just try and cheat by attaching themselves to our numbers.
Training conditions are different.
Apparently Russia has by far the highest abortion rate in Europe, so it would seem that their anti-abortion virtue signalling does not count for much in reality.
I find it bizarre how according to those stats a much lower percentage of people support abortion in Russia compared to say Sweden, and yet the abortion rate in Russia is many times higher than Sweden per capita.
That would suggest to me that a lot of Russians are bullshiters, and that their words and actions are two very different things. It seems if directly asked an opinion on an issue, most Russians will state the mandated “socially acceptable” opinion, but it doesn’t mean they’ll live by it.
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/dying-bear-still-not-dead/
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/russia-abortion-rate-1957-2016.png
It is true that for now Russia is largely offsetting its low TFR by encouraging immigration from neighboring former USSR republics that have either compradore or much dumber governments (often both). While mostly Slavs are immigrating from Ukraine and Belarus, a lot of civilized educated Asians are also running away from their stans, which become more and more medieval and uncomfortable for normal people.
However, this source of population replenishment is limited. Russian government should increase TFR of Slavs in Russia, using any measures that might help, regardless of the costs. I believe that in the long run this is more important than ambitious infrastructure projects Russian government actively works on. To target mostly Slavs, TFR increasing projects must be applied at the regional level.
If the Germans had gotten past the Urals, their forces would be surrounded and isolated in Siberia. Most importantly, Budenny’s armies from Kiev would have cut all lines of communications to Agartha.
Despite the very positive downward trend, Russia remains by far the world’s abortion leader:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country
IIRC Stalin was willing to surrender if Moscow was lost, rather than continue fighting from Siberia, but I may be wrong on this.
Turkey is blessed by the gods of the Internet, providing them with unlimited Chad powers.
https://youtu.be/48AbFwlXfFI
After 20 years of autonomy and fight against Greater Georgian chauvinism all Mingrelians will understand that they dont have anything common with Georgia(Kakhetians), after all those easterners got their Christianity from the Arabs of Antioch when Mingrelians were always western oriented and often even part of the Roman and Byzantine empires,and got their Christianity straight from the Cpole. This relationship started in Antiquity when Mingrelia was known by the name of Colchis and had numerous Greek colonies, unlike eastern more despotic Georgia, which was long time under the oriental tyranny of Persians and the Arabs. Even in the middle ages this western orientation continued and there were many Genoese colonies on the Mingrelian coast. I know that AP and Mr.Hack cant stand this heinous evil of Mingrelian culture and language being under control of the Great Georgian chauvinism and they would feel joy when there would be a free Mingrelia. For the parallels between Russian chauvinism and suffering Ukrainian nation are clear! Naturally even after 20 years of separate and free existence of Mingrelia, there still would be some Greater Georgian trolls insulting proud Mingrelians by claiming utter falsehoods, like denying the existence of the Mingrelian nationhood or even then Mingrelian language. Shame on them!
…. in a parallel reality where Russians are intelligent empire builders….
Looks a lot like many hustling and bustling large East European cities to me. There are probably some areas that house even more impressive historic buildings than shown here. Not as inclusive with new buildings as in Batumi that really impresses the eye (when will the “Novorossiya” in Crimea even begin to look like the “New Georgia” in Batumi?). It seems that there are a lot of Georgians in U_____e today, not just Saakashvili, that are looking for work opportunities. I don’t understand why, as these video clips indicate that there’s a lot going on in Georgia? Perhaps, U_____e is just a gateway further West?
We should follow the example of Romans. They borrowed practically all gods from Greeks, just renamed them. But there were things Romans invented that Greeks did not have, like sewers. So, Romans invented new goddess of sewers Cloacina. We should invent the god of internet. I think due to PC it should be a goddess, rather than a male god. I suggest two possible names: Browsina or Connectina. Does anyone have alternative suggestions?
The Russians realise they have a huge problem when it comes to abortion, that’s why so many are against it. Someone should ask them about binge drinking, do you think there would be massive support for it just so they wouldn’t appear “hypocritical” in your eyes?
If we also want to create a goddess of MSM, I believe the most appropriate name would be Bullshittina.
Romans mostly had native gods, its just that Roman and Greek cultures had same roots in the proto-indo-european culture. Theos-Deus-Deva-Daeva, Dyeus Piter-Zeus-Dyaus Pita-Iuppiter, but sadly Aryan Gods are mostly forgotten nowadays….
Does anyone have the statistics or graph concerning the change in Russian views about abortion over the relevant time period?
Yet they invented sewers (that proto-indo-european culture did not have) and created a goddess of sewers.
These drones are what the U-boats were in 1914. “The U-boat provided tremendous stealth. They would remain submerged until finding a target. ”
https://www.wired.com/2014/09/wwis-u-boats-launched-age-unrestricted-warfare/
Beach life in Batumi doesn’t impress me as much as its modern skyline. The same rocky beaches seem to abound everywhere (well, almost) as in Crimea. I couldn’t believe my eyes seeing the young Georgians running on top of the rocks on the beach (ouch!!)! The Georgian girls on the beaches certainly don’t have anything on the Slavic beauties that one can easily spot sunbathing on Crimean beaches. Maybe that’s why you can see so many Georgian men in U_____e today. 🙂
https://youtu.be/IROsOEKkp4U
https://youtu.be/3b0oCbNCldE
My favorite one is Svyatovit (personification of the Luminous Mind).
A summer in Crimea
https://youtu.be/GrJnb-yITh0
A nice pop sound, a little reminiscent of 80’s music…David Bowie ala the Police? 🙂
But we’re drifting again…need to comment only on the Karabakh war? 🙂
Dimwit. What is wrong with your brain?
Of course the abortion rate is lower in Sweden – that is what happens when the main form of intercourse there and in the rest of Scandinavia is d*ck to (male) ass, followed by Muslim couples. Obviously there aren’t going to be higher abortion rates with these behavioural dynamics you dummy.
Sweden fertility rate is much lower than Russias (OK, I’m assuming, can’t be bothered to investigate). Contraceptive pill in Sweden used regularly for decades ahead of Russia, where of course in Soviet times abortion was not discouraged as it is now. These things make your following statement extremely stupid:
It is a ridiculous comparison – like comparing Saudi Arabia’s low rape rates to western countries. Obviously it is lower, any slavic girl working there as a nurse ir whatever is very safe there… but you have to factor cultural issues into if you want to “praise” KSA for that, which I don’t think they should be.
Sorry, wrong post to reply to
It’s there any data on how early/late these abortions are? I’m off the “lesser of two evils in some circumstances” mindset with respect to this, but, without any religious preconceptions; very early abortion is pretty similar to contraception, late abortion is pretty similar to infanticide. If most are the former, it’s not something to worry about too much.
The link you provided claims to represent Abortion Rates by Country 2020. This is incorrect, the data for Russia is from the year 2004 and the data for the remaining countries dates from between 1996 – 2005. See link.
Does anyone have more recent data? AK, Ano4
Country or Area Subgroup Year Source Unit Value
Albania Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 9.6
Armenia Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 13.9
Australia Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 19.7 1
Austria Female 15-44 yr 2001 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 1.3
Azerbaijan Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 9.0
Bahrain Female 15-44 yr 2002 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 11.0
Belarus Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 31.7
Belgium Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 7.5
Brazil Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 0.0 2
Bulgaria Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 21.3
Canada Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 15.2
China Female 15-44 yr 1998 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 24.2
Croatia Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 5.7
Cuba Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 24.8
Czech Republic Female 15-44 yr 2005 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 12.2
Denmark Female 15-44 yr 2005 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 14.3
Dominican Republic Female 15-44 yr 1998 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 16.0
Estonia Female 15-44 yr 2005 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 33.3
Finland Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 11.1
France Female 15-44 yr 2002 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 16.9
Georgia Female 15-44 yr 2005 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 19.1
Germany Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 7.8
Greece Female 15-44 yr 1999 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 5.0
Hungary Female 15-44 yr 2005 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 23.4
Iceland Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 14.1
India Female 15-44 yr 2001 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 3.1
Israel Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 13.9
Italy Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 10.6
Japan Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 12.3 3
Kazakhstan Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 35.0
Kyrgyzstan Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 15.8
Latvia Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 27.3
Lithuania Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 13.9
Macedonia Female 15-44 yr 2001 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 18.4
Mexico Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 0.1
Mongolia Female 15-44 yr 1997 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 21.7
Netherlands Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 10.4
New Zealand Female 15-44 yr 2005 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 19.7
Norway Female 15-44 yr 2005 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 15.2
Panama Female 15-44 yr 2000 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 0.0
Poland Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 0.0
Portugal Female 15-44 yr 2002 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 0.2
Qatar Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 1.2
Republic of Moldova Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 17.6
Romania Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 27.8
Russian Federation Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 53.7
Seychelles Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 21.6
Singapore Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 12.6
Slovakia Female 15-44 yr 2005 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 11.7
Slovenia Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 15.2
South Africa Female 15-44 yr 2000 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 4.5
Spain Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 8.3
Sweden Female 15-44 yr 2005 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 20.2
Switzerland Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 7.3
Tajikistan Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 12.6 1
Tunisia Female 15-44 yr 1996 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 8.6
Ukraine Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 27.5
United Kingdom Female 15-44 yr 2005 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 17.0 2
United States of America Female 15-44 yr 2003 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 20.8 3
Uzbekistan Female 15-44 yr 2004 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 7.8
Vietnam Female 15-44 yr 2000 UNPD_World Abortion Policies_2007 Abortions per 1,000 women 35.2 4
data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=GenderStat&f=inID:12&c=1,2,3,4,5,6&s=crEngName:asc,sgvEngName:asc,timeEngName:desc&v=1
You linked statistics from 2004.
Good catch.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/866423/abortion-rate-europe/
For 2018 – Russia is in fifth place in Europe – Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia and Moldova beat it! However Russia is in a cluster with these countries, whose abortion rates are much higher than in Western Europe, Visegrad and even Slavic ex-Soviet Ukraine and Belarus (and also both Armenia and Azerbaijan- there is something rotten about Georgia in the Caucuses, on this measure).
The website claimed 2020 but the link for source revealed 2004. I found more recent comparative data for 2o18.
The abortion rate in Russia is going down year after year, although it is still quite high.
It seems that the latest statistics are available for 2018, at least I haven’t seen the 2019 numbers.
Year Thousands Per 100 births
2005 1501,6 117
2006 1423,7 107
2007 1306,8 92
2008 1268,4 81
2009 1161,7 73
2010 1054,8 66
2011 989,3 63
2012 935,5 56
2013 881,3 —
2014 814,1 —
2015 746,7 —
2016 737,9 —
2017 779,8 —
2018 567,18 —
I think this might be partially due to a more widespread use of contraception compared to the 1990ies.
Also, as the population is growing superficially more religious (many of the people I know in Russia become more religious in the last 5-10 years) it might also have an effect on abortion.
You are probably wrong about this. There’s a reason why the major part of the important Soviet industries have been moved beyond the Urals. The Soviets would probably have only surrendered if Japan would have attacked them in the Far East. IIRC that was planned as soon as Moscow would have been captured by the Nazis.
The reason why I suspect Russian women abort less simply because they use more contraception is that starting from 2017 the downward trend in total birth rates resumed in Russia.
The Russian statistics agency (RosStat) has warned that if nothing changes starting from 2025 the population of Russia would lower by an average of 400 000 people a year.
The only region in Russia where the birth rates did not decrease in the last few years is Chechnya.
That were the numbers before COVID-19. It is difficult to deduce what the impact of the Coronavirus epidemics will be.
It may be. I recall reading somewhere that if he lost and was forced to abandon Moscow, Stalin was planning to offer Hitler much of the European USSR in exchange for peace (sort of an enhanced Brest-Litovsk). I don’t have time to hunt down that info to see how credible it is so I make no claims for its accuracy.
Because abortion was for women one of the primary form of “family planning” in Soviet times, while in the West women used different methods of “family planning” (or contraception).
In postsoviet times, women increasingly use contraceptive pill, IUD and condoms, for family planning. (Although there is still some residue use of abortion).
There’s nothing very mystical – simply women in the USSR had such a different and more primitive choice contraception, than what was prevalent in the West.
If religion was causing people not to have abortions, then we would see an increase in birthrates per women – but we see that births per women has been constant (when measured by completed age-cohort) since the 1990s.
By the way, AP’s argument is a kind of American Republican view to condemn Russians or other countries morally, because of the high rates of things like abortion and HIV. But this measure it not very accurate.
HIV actually correlated inversely with American concepts of social liberalism (i.e. countries like Netherlands have the lowest rates of HIV in the world, while Africa has the highest), while the high abortion rate in Russia was a result of lower prevalence of more sophisticated methods of contraception (it’s not because women had more unplanned sex in Russia than in the West, but because there wasn’t the same prevalence of contraceptive methods in the Soviet Union). In the early 1990s, the most popular self-reported by women contraception choice was for “withdrawal method” and “douching” – so it’s quite clear what the effect of this style of contraception will be on abortion rates.
East Asia ( China, Japan, South Korea) Turkey, Afghanistan and the Gulf states all have lower rates than the Netherlands. Where do they fit on the scale of American social liberalism?
There won’t be reliable information from which you could create estimate for countries like Afghanistan, although Afghanistan’s position as the world’s largest opium producer might imply that we should expect relatively high rates of HIV there.
China seems to have much higher prevalence of HIV than Netherlands. (At least looking at limited indications from HIV surveillance )
For example:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7088640/
Or for example, compare blood donors.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/trf.15515
There could be difference in the method of surveying HIV prevalence – but clearly Netherlands records far lower figures in this HIV surveillance measure.
https://i.imgur.com/hYMR3DV.jpg
Source: https://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/2019-0007.pdf
This growing skyline in Batumi is built primarily from Russian (and smaller proportion of Turkish and Ukrainian) money, with the flood of people buying apartments there in the last few years.
I assumed you can buy apartment there quite cheap, and that it is outside of knowledge of the Russian (and Turkish and Ukrainian) government, which is one of peoples’ main motives to store money there.
Still, even if it is relatively cheap, I can’t see all these towers under construction as very aesthetically pleasant.
Look at 5:00 – concrete jungle.
https://i.imgur.com/hYMR3DV.jpg
Pure obfuscation.
Netherlands 23,000/17million equals a rate of 135 per 100,000
Compared to
China an overall prevalence of 34 per 100,000 was found.
15 million pregnant Chinese women screened is not a sample.
You post too much of this sort of thing Dmitry
I can see your point of view. At this angle the cityscape appears to suffer from a preponderance of horizontal and vertical lines, and definitely too much clutter too. In the first clip, driving down the wide boulevard, the buildings were more spaced apart and a lot of them seemed, at least to my eye, to incorporate some nice aesthetics into their design.
Any nice homeowner neighborhoods that you’ve been able to find? Once you have acquired enough funds to invest outside of Russia, you can build one of your dream homes there – I’d certainly be interested in visiting with you (not more than say a week). Anon4 seems to have just the right amount of hipster left within to make it an interesting get together too. 🙂
Hopefully, all of these silly wars will be over soon enough.
Dckhed Ano4, if you are going to plagiarism me, then at least have the good manners not to antagonize even more with your libtard, ultra-pompous, pseudo-intellectual , narcissistic, collaborationist BS . OK monkey?
This is what I said before:
I don’t want to then read the same things I have just written….in that idiotic narcissistic, pompous style of yours.
Seriously , do I have to inadvertently read your constant sh*t until flights resume to Vietnam? Get the f**k off this blog. Thankyou in advance. Dog
I personally think that graph is much more attributable to a dramatic collapse in living conditions, security and social morality after the USSR’s fall, then returning to something semi-normal today (though most of the perpetrators remain rich or in government), than any fundamental change in outlook. You’d be crazy to want to have children in that dark decade.
Gerard is a TRU Russian patriot and fixture of this blog, be nice to him.
She’s apparently going through menopause, hot flashes and all. Let’s try and be nice to her. 🙂
I have no idea why you’d come to this conclusion, as I didn’t even know anything about this culture until you forced my hand and I had to look them up (maybe you’ve been smoking some strange strain of hashish lately?). They seem to remind me of the Circassians that were also to be found in the general area at one tme, that I’ve found to have some redeeming features. Here’s a picture of one of their heroes:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Mingrelian.jpg/300px-Mingrelian.jpg
Looks a bit like Essad Bey, wouldn’t you say:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Nussimbaum.jpg
Just needs a beard and moustache. 🙂
Rocky beaches isn’t Batumi’s biggest problem. It’s their climate. The biggest selling point of a secondary home for someone in the Global North (outside of the US, which is much sunnier and warmer than Europe or North-East Asia) is how warm it is.
Batumi’s four-month average temp in the crucial winter months is just around 8.5 Celsius. You’d need at least thrice that for it to be even interesting.
What the Armenians have going for them:
Lebanese-Armenian opera singer Kevork Hadjian killed in Karabakh
https://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/286243/
They don’t have the natural resources and numbers like Azerbaijan. They do have a resourceful people who’ve some clout within the US and Russia. This includes individuals who’re willing to go the extra yard.
Interesting scenario where the likes of Russia bashing pro-Israeli Adam Schiff favors Armenia, while being mum on the Israeli support for Azerbaijan.
CEIP expert Tom de Waal is correctly called out by Bryan MacDonald, for suggestively ridiculing critiquing Russia as having a “middling” view on the Armenian-Azeri conflict:
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1313596015908454401
You’re right, the temperatures are definitely cooler than what I thought for the area. It looks warmer than it is. Still, I think that it would be nice as a destination for Dmitry’s future dream summer home.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Black_Sea_coast_of_Georgia_%28country%29%2C_with_skyline_of_Batumi_on_the_horizon.jpg/1024px-Black_Sea_coast_of_Georgia_%28country%29%2C_with_skyline_of_Batumi_on_the_horizon.jpg
I believe they smoke both opium and heroin in AfPak. Usually they don’t inject them. There might be other reasons for HIV there:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/afghan-tragedy-pashtun-practice-having-sex-young-boys-8911529.html?amp
You Americans never seem to understand how subtropical or warm your climate is. Atlanta has almost same average temperature as Delhi. Even Northern US has a mild climate outside of the rockies. Vancouver is warmer than Kiev, which has very temperate climate in my opinion.
I can’t decide if your comment supports the cold weather theory or not.
I wouldn’t say that the weather in Montana or Minnesota would be considered a “mild” climate, even though the winters have been milder now than in the past. As far as Batumi is concerned, I think it’s their world class Botanical Garden with its abundance of tropical plants and palm trees that threw me. The weather there looks close to a “Mediterranean” one somewhat similar to what one finds in San Diego, CA. Enjoy the clip:
https://youtu.be/5rpNZMX7aNs
One difference would be the much greater rainfall in Batumi than in San Diego.
Until quite recently, she was going under her nom de plume “Geraldine Mandela”?
Is Montana outside of the Rocky mountains? Minnesota and North Dakota are quite cold compared to the rest of the US, again, outside of the Rockies and Alaska., but still Minneapolis with average temperature of +7.4 C is quite much warmer than St. Petersburg that has av. temp. of +5.8C, and I dont think that Sankt Pete is particularly cold place to live.
Yesterday I read Pashinian fired his deputy Chief of Security, a young Sorosoid who has been caught by surprise by the Azeri onslaught because instead of monitoring the activities of the Azeri and Turk nemesis, he was too busy working to lower the degree of Russian influence in the post-revolutionary Armenian society.
Today the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia are meeting in Moscow to discuss a cease fire.
Not sure whether the two news above are related, but:
https://youtu.be/2DBQ6k4LXsY
https://sun9-16.userapi.com/impg/vLNSyPGZxDRtnO-UHdU3kg_x1HEZtMhYqpuOOg/8x-JU8aRlqw.jpg?size=1280×720&quality=90&proxy=1&sign=7f6205ba19bfc27a02ddcfdeeb3519db
But yes your overall point about the temperatures in all the main “cold” Canadian cities and all the main Northern USA, or higher altitude cities being considerably warmer than all Russian places (except Northern Kavkaz, Krim, Stavropol, Rostov etc) is correct. Our cities nowhere near the Arctic are much colder in winter than even all the Scandinavian ones. Southern Siberian cities and Far east are extremely cold in winter even with having similar latitudinal line to Rostov and several other Mediterranean, central European and Black Sea towns/resorts.
Its a near miracle that because of great Soviet and modern Russian work, millions of Russians are complaining about being too HOT in their homes during winter – a considerable feat in a high population, very low population density country.
It’s gone a bit seedy as of late. It’s unique selling point is the liberal visa regime. There’s legal gambling and quasi-legal prostitution, so it attracts a lot of people from the middle East who want to go there to “misbehave”. Gudauri is worth looking at, the mountains are comparable to Val Thorens if not the infrastructure; they recently extended the ski lifts down to the other side of the mountain, connecting another village to the network, (can’t remember the name, but the peasants there
with freeholds must’ve hit the jackpot) see if there’s still any low hanging fruit. Prices might’ve gone bubble-level stupid though, I’ve not checked for ages.
Poor thing. I will have to treat him like a lady then…
The French have also announced that they expect a ceasefire in Karabakh soon.
https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2020/10/09/haut-karabakh-une-treve-possible_6055426_3210.html
French president works with the Russians to stop the flareup.
Most of America is not subtropical. The climate of most of America is similar to that of Ukraine – milder than in Russia but more extreme (hotter and colder) than in Western Europe.
Not even close. Atlanta’s annual average temperature is 16c:
https://en.climate-data.org/north-america/united-states-of-america/georgia/atlanta-1607/
In Delhi it is 25c:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Delhi
Atlanta’s annual average is close to that of Baku (15.1c).
Very different types of climate. Minneapolis is continental; it’s summers are much hotter than in Peter but is winters are a lot colder.
A comparison to Minneapolis would be Volgograd, which has similar type of climate but is actually a bit warmer than Minneapolis- in Volgograd the average temperature is +8.3 c compared to +7.4 in Minneapolis.
Saratov’s +6.7 c is closest to Minneapolis.
The American northeast is known for having much harsher winters than Northern Europe, but also much hotter summers.
England has much milder winters than New York, for instance.
The coastal northwest has mild winters but is not very sunny at all, and inland places like Montana have extremely cold winters.
The southern half of the country is relatively mild outside the mountains, but subtropical only happens in Florida and some of the desert regions- the extreme south.
LMAO at this dumb, insidious, sociopathic BS.
LOL-STOP there.You have effectively killed your own BS argument before it has even started!
Your fake claims of a genocide caused by the targeted actions of a Soviet “regime” and “dictator” Stalin are based entirely by comparing it against the positive statistics before the “genocide”created by the policies in healthcare, administration, education, agriculture etc of ……. that exact same “regime” and that same “dictator” in the Ukrainian SSR!!! Seriously WTF? How much of an imbecile do you have to be to use such shameless argumentation as you do? Stalin in 1920’s makes Gandhi and Jacinda Ardern look like sadists.All this happening despite a very serious actual famine in the early 1920’s that affected Ukraine, you know, the one that near all the photos of the Golodomor are actually taken from
It’s impossible to call a genocide, anything that takes 2 seconds to recover and exceed the original population number, you m*ron. That is the exact position of Ukraine in the mid-30’s.It takes me longer to shave in the morning….than it did for Ukraine to recover it’s population level after the fictitious “Golodomor”. That ends the issue, as does the fact that in 1991 absolutely zero people in Ukraine gave a flying f**K about this fictitious event.Nobody was talking about it. Subhuman North American Banderetard Soros scum funded laughable BS revisionism in Galicia , making these fantasists try and impose this nonsense story on the rest of the state……even though absolutely none of these freaks lived in the area effected or was even part of the same state at the time.LOL!
War disproportionately kills men. Famine does not discriminate against men, women and children so alot higher percentage of woman and children die ( maybe war-time famine does discriminate….in that food to military is given priority so even higher percentage of women and kids die) . That reality should make the medium and long term effects on population demographics much worse when famine arrives because there is less women to give birth and there is less of the next generation to produce kids in 20-40 years later.None of this happened in Ukraine ( if subtracting WW2 loss)
Ireland is still suffering the effects of it’s famine from 150 years before on it’s population total,numerous other example around the world of the same thing….but the inverse for Ukraine.
LOL,what nonsense. Because AnonFromTN is a sane, intellectual normal guy who, completely different to a worthless bum like you, has lived in knows and speaks Russian& Ukrainian…he can be trusted to speak honestly and has no motivation to be a pedantic loser.Because you are of course a fraud and a liar with no knowledge or ability on these things ( clearly makes you jealous) the only “weapon” you have (LOL) it to be deceitfully pedantic to give the stupid impression that Anon is “misleading” . It is completely irrelevant and non-misleading if that 7 million from Gal/Buk are included because Ukraine has a population greatly exceeding its pre- William Randolph Hearst, Coca-Cola World Series Golodomor levels in the years immediately after it until 1941. 8 million or 15 million does not change the importance of the point. Like any sane person he is taking the numbers from 1941 because it is sensible to go to the start of Nazi invasion of USSR. Even a dumb person like you must know this but you choose to further misdirect
LOL. This is cretin logic and projection of the worst type. Creating false equivalences between Nazis and Soviets, or Soviets and other people by deliberately and falsely levelling the practical outcome from one side against the moral actions of the other are exactly what you have done a million times on here. Similar to your nutjob Polish/Galician/Austrian/Chechen/East Ukrainian/American troll views on here ( even when they all contradict each other) done for the purpose of wasting hours of your “life” on here. Seriously WTF? How strange do you have to be to shamefully accuse Anon of what is exactly your tactics on here? Difference being that AnonFromTN is 1. Speaking the truth
2. Started it by saying “in pure numbers” – which makes even trying to challenge him on it completely idiotic.
But of course the main, ridiculously embarrassing fact in his post is that “nationalist” policies of modern Ukrainian ( well, US prostitute) state kill more people than “deliberate genocide” of Russians.
I was wrong regarding Atlanta, maybe I confused it with Charlestown, but the Subtropical zone of USA is huge.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_50_states_K%C3%B6ppen_with_territories.png/800px-US_50_states_K%C3%B6ppen_with_territories.png
Minnesota is probably one of the coldest and northernmost large metropolitan areas in the US, so comparing it with Southern Russian Volgograd is little cheap.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Russia_K%C3%B6ppen.svg/800px-Russia_K%C3%B6ppen.svg.png
Do you see the difference AP?
Are the female hormone pills making you mad?
Whatever it is it is hot enough for Russians. Russians must be the most well adapted to cold weather: jogging bare chested in the snow, swimming in frozen lakes, skiing and snowboarding in bikinis.
https://cdni.rbth.com/rbthmedia/images/2018.04/original/5ac2388a85600a43f126caa6.jpg
Western Europe has Oceanic climate, winters in Norway are very mild. I can speak from experience, been there in the winter. But the Eastern Europe has more continental climate and Siberia and Mongolia have very, very cold winters and hot summers.
Which is also a lot cooler than Delhi. Average annual temperature in Charleston SC is 19.4.
Sure. But the map you posted from wiki is a bit strange. It labels even New York and Columbus Ohio as “subtropical.” New York’s mean temperature is +12.1 c. Warmer than Odessa (+ 10.2 c) but cooler than Varna Bulgaria (+12.2 c). Columbus has a mean temperature of +11 c, close to places like Kherson or Rostov on Don (+10). Columbus and New York get plenty of snow in winter.
A more realistic one, also from wiki:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/USA_map_of_K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification.svg
You are the one who brought Minneapolis up. I compared it exactly to parts of Russia it is most similar to. It’s climate is between that of Volgograd and Saratov. Comparing it to St. Petersburg with its different climate, as you did, was the cheap move.
Who compared the USA as a whole to Russia?
Who compared Americas climate with Ukraine, or “climate of most of America.” When Kiev has av temp of 8.4.
I brought up Minneapolis because Mr. Hack claimed that Minnesotas climate isnt mild, so I thought that Minneapolis is a good example of climate there. Also its relatively cold and large metropolitan area in comparison with the rest of the US. But if Americans think its a cold place to live, then St. Petersburg is also a very cold place to live. Its not so rare to have winters of -30C there, with a strong wind from the sea.
By the way AP what is that small tundra in Vermont or New Hampshire in your map?
There is Russian joke about that:
– What do Russians do when they wait for a city bus when it’s -40oC outside?
– Different things. Men drink beer, kids eat ice-cream…
While the two small proud Caucasus nations are killing each other for a few symbolic mountain villages, the modern warfare evolves towards the fight for the world domination between Ru-China and US of Israel.
Just like the Spanish Civil war was the early warning of what comes next, the local skirmish in Karabakh might well be the harbinger of things to come.
https://youtu.be/sqT8kQOV18s
I’m surprised that nobody here has mentioned the video clip of the impressive Botanical Garden in Batumi, and are instead disputing temperature data?
It appears that you’ve been to Batumi, did you venture inside this interesting park?
Mount Washington, which has had among the coldest temperatures in the USA and has had world record high wind speeds. In 2004 the place had a temperature of -42c but with wind it felt like -74c!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Washington
You sound pessimistic, but you might be right. The Empire firmly put itself into non-agreement-capable category. Its European sidekicks are rapidly sliding down the same slippery slope. They pretend to believe their own implausible story about alleged poisoning of that Navalny nonentity, even though it is clear to a 10-year old that he could have been poisoned only by someone in his coterie. There is a chance that the imperial elites retain enough sanity for the US to slide down from its perch and become a normal country w/o WWIII, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
This is not even a joke, I recall kids eating ice cream in January in the Urals.
For those who could have been misled: I meant minus forty degrees centigrade (pretty usual winter temperature in many Siberian cities).
As I mentioned above, the winters in Minnesota have gotten considerably warmer recently than what they were like 50 years ago. It wasn’t that unusual to see temperatures of -20/-30F (during the day!) there for 1-3 days in the month of January. Lots of cars stalled because their batteries wouldn’t deliver the necessary charge, a lot of real cold hurting feet that couldn’t handle the cold weather. Couple this with a lot of snow, and it looked like Santa’s home in the North Pole. 🙂
I’m writing about Minneapolis here, where I grew up. Northern Minnesota, of course, was even colder!
Kiev is in northern Ukraine, not far from the northern border. A place closer to the center like Dnipropetrovsk has an average temperature of +9.
Though I should have been more careful in my comment – the place with a disproportionate amount of America’s history, people and economy (the Northeast, Pennsylvania, Great Lakes, much of the Plains) have a climate similar to that of Ukraine. Obviously California, Seattle, the Rockies, Alaska, and the South are different.
Spain was a middle level regional power, with colonies in Africa. This current clash between two dwarfs(I don’t meant to offend) isn’t anywhere comparable to the Spanish civil war.
Ovalnyi (or is it Analnyi?) has probably been poisoned by Maria Pevchikh who is the British liaison officer with the FBK. She probably used something not too hardcore to produce the Navalnyi malaise, then put traces of UK (Porton-down) made novichok on the bottle that she smuggled to Germany.
Navalnyi is just one of the serial provocations against Russia that follow each other lately. The Empire sees Russia as the weak link in the Ru-China alliance. They want capture Russia to compete the encirclement of China and ensure that if the war happens, Russia is the battle ground between the Europeans allied with the US of Israel and the Chinese.
If they toss Putler aside and put an appeaser in his place, they will have succeeded in preparing for the coming war. In fact, they will probably be strong enough to avoid the war entirely and strike a deal with the geopolitically weakened China.
To strike a deal they could give the Chinese a piece of the Russian Far East.
I’m getting ready to go on a picnic today, and I’m packing my swim trunks too. The high should be about 97F (it’s cooling down). The good news is that you wont have to read any more of my off topic comments today. I bet that not many of you can go swimming today, 10/09? The fishing’s not bad either, croppies, bass, catfish and more. I’ll be up about 50 yards on a hill with bar-b-ques and shaded picnic tables from this exact beachfront. You’ll have to succeed with your own off topic comments without me. 🙂
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/84/f1/45/84f14576ebc7599bad242fdfa2317de1.jpg
I’ve heard stories like that. I experienced minus 42 centigrade once in my life in Moscow. From my perspective, it was awful. I tried to use a bus, but by the time I got to the bus stop from my dorm I decided that I don’t really want to go anywhere. Maybe growing up in much milder climate spoiled me.
I was only referring to the massive use of drones against armoured vehicles etc.
In Spain Soviet pilots and Nazi pilots met for the first time, bombing of civilian areas started etc.
The dry cold days in Moscow are not as terrible as the wet cold days in Piter, when the wind blows from the Gulf of Finland. Even though the temperature is higher in Piter, the cold moisture and the wind make going out in the winter a memorable experience on the banks of the Neva river. Luckily, both cities have a subway system.
BTW I used to eat ice cream (the Soviet plombir) in winter. It was delicious.
I will be swimming in my pool. Just fixed the heater that was acting up, so I want to test-drive it. No fish there, though (thank goodness!).
I have to confess, I never was in Piter in winter. Summer was bad enough, though: there were 5-6 rains every day, and often by the time you open your umbrella, the rain is already over. I was there for the entrance exams in Leningrad University. Thank goodness they did not take me: I ended up in Moscow State next year, and both the university and the weather are much better in Moscow. Still, I want to visit Piter soon: I was there last time ~30 years ago. I hear it was made much better with renovations of historic buildings and all. If it improved as dramatically as Moscow, I sure want to see it.
As to ice cream, Soviet was close to the best in the world. I know only one country – France – where ice cream is the same high quality. The rest ranges from middling to crappy.
It was “only” minus 30 when I was in the Urals. It is drier there than in Moscow. Moscow’s climate reminds me of Montreal’s, although Montreal is more humid in summer.
Once when we drove through southern Ontario we stopped at a small town (Stratford?) with a soft serve ice cream place that my wife swore was the only place comparable to the Soviet kind.
Ironic thing for people scared about cold and Russia – you will feel cold, for more hours of the day, in North West Europe, than even cold regions in Russia, since most of the urban areas in Russia are spoiled since the 20th century with such a very effective heating (boiling water pumped around).
On the other hand, in North West Europe, there is often insufficient heating, and living in 17th-19th century buildings without insulation.
Another thing in North Western Europe, there are people who don’t wear suitable clothes, and it’s easier to get wet in middle of winter because of constant rain and temperature above 0°C . I was shocked working in Ireland for a year, and shoes and trousers wet from permanent rain during walking home from our office. Then living in an apartment where there is almost no heating or insulation – until we put in electric heaters.
You can walk around feeling internally warm for hours in -20°C (although the problem is exposure of face, and feet/hands), if you have a good coat, dry and always kept moving. But you can feel very cold in 5°C if you were still and clothes are wet.
These are special events. In the colder regions of Russia (maybe in warm areas like Moscow it is different), you learn the importance of warm clothes from childhood, especially when it is a cold night.
It’s not something like anglosaxon women, who can dress like this in New Year outdoors, and survive from developing additional layers of fat.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255587/New-Years-Eve-2012-Shameful-scenes-booze-fuelled-chaos-cities-Britain.html
Winter is the best time for eating icecream, but this is nothing specifically to Russia.*
Just go to any supermarket in Western Europe, and it’s full of people buying icecream in winter. Western Europeans understand as much as in Russia, that icecream doesn’t taste any worse in the winter than in the summer. And supermarkets raise prices of icecream in the summer.
Icecream tastes best late at night after you have a few drinks of alcohol. The one thing I don’t get is people who order icecream in the restaurant, after the meal.
–
I saw recently a not very good autobiographical Louis Malle film, about childhood in 1950s France. The bourgeois French youth of this film were dedicating their life to smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and going to brothels (this latter is not part of youth in Russia).
My point was to say there will not be reliable information or HIV surveillance in Afghanistan. “Reliable data on HIV prevalence in Afghanistan is sparse.”. Reliable data on HIV prevalence in Afghanistan is sparse (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/07/10/hiv-aids-afghanistan).
I’m not implying there is a high (or low) HIV rate in Afghanistan – but rather that we won’t likely to know what the HIV rate is in Afghanistan in an accurate way.
HIV surveillance measures and abilities are radically different across different countries. You can compare countries where there is the same surveillance measure available.
For example, between HIV rates in China and Netherlands. We can see China has a much higher HIV rate in blood donors than Netherlands, while in pregnant women they are recording both more or less the same levels of HIV (although with much more widespread screening in Netherlands).
In both Netherlands and China, the rates in these measures are low compared to HIV hotspot areas.
If Afghanistan smokes opium, instead of injecting it – this is at least a very good point of good news for them from this perspective. The injection of opium from Afghanistan, is what spreads HIV so massively across Russian cities. Afghanistan custom of raping youth is terrible for other reasons, but we don’t know if it spreads widely HIV across a population, while we do know the effect of injecting opium does.
LOL, a triangle a freaks manufacturing “laughter” out of nothing.
Insecurity complex , while your algorithm tries to work out some more bullshit to try and escape from the fact that you have no answers to my points about the Golodomor ( strange how asking what the Russian word for it is like asking what is the french word for Deja vu)
Adice- if you are going to “insult” then at least try and pick a credible target for such an insult, not probably the least suited person on the planet to such a cretinous “insult”.
Which does remind me – because there is so much clueless BS you say, it gives you the “advantage” of me forgetting about much of it because it’s too much to remember. But I do now remember the most stupid thing you have ever claimed ( well, top 100 at least)
Everybody knows knows the whole West Ukraine and East Ukraine thing.In making one of your usual disinformation you made the idiotic claim that they were all eastern Ukrainians in charge in Ukrops calamitous post-Soviet independence. That isn’t the most stupid thing though. You then further compounded your idiocy by claiming that Krivoy Rog, the birthplace of Zelensky, is in the western part of Dnepropetrovsk and somehow tried to imply that the east vs West in Ukraine divide applies to Dnepropetrovsk itself….in other words a western part of Dnepropetrovsk is anti-Russian , and the geographical east is pro-Russian.
I’m almost injuring myself with laughter here. What type of wackjob makes up such instantaneous BS to try and cover up their fantasist , non-knowledge and experience on Ukraine? Bizarre.
You would think that any cretin who made a statement like that would just self-ban out of shame, but this is the internet……some real freaks on here.
Just to emphasise….that is even worse than the mir/svet disaster..it’s like the dumb blonde jokes about thinking a computer virus is a physical virus
If not hormone pills, is it your menopause?
It was indeed something terrible about the Russian 90s when it was commonplace to see 12 year olds smoking and drinking. Perhaps this phenomenon was also common in post-war France but not in normal places under normal circumstances:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/22/health/cigarette-smoking-teens-parent-curve-intl/index.html
“ In the United States and much of Europe, research suggests that regular lighting up typically begins between 15 and 16 years old.”
Plagirising my insults. LOL. How is that supposed to work you dummy.
Just link me to the wikipedia page you have inevitably created on the great East Dnepropetrovsk vs West Dnepropetrovsk wars over the centuries. Brutal stuff, millions dead…..one of the great ideological divides in history!
Even better……link me to the demented nonsense you wrote on here initially about it, just so we can fully “appreciate” it.
Although born and raised in Moscow, I’ve always had a soft spot for Piter. It is true that the weather there is dreadful, but the architecture is magical and in the Soviet times the people there were more polite and cultured than in Moscow.
It is not by chance that Putin’s team was mainly made of Pitertcy at the beginning. But as the elite clans have moved to Moscow, where money and power are, Piter was left behind a bit. Moscow has become in the last decade a bustling European megalopolis, while Piter even though considerably restored from the disrepair of the Soviet times, now clearly has the charms of a second tier middle sized town.
And for me it is fine that way. I prefer it be a true architectural masterpiece and historical gem it is, rather than a multicultural Imperial megalopolis.
I have been there last time in 2018, I wish I would be back there in the near future. I just love that town.
https://i.stena.ee/18/2018-09-14_155058.jpg
A rough period?
I visited Piter in December 1999 for the first time. Th impression was strange – a combination of Paris and Tijuana, but less active/ more “dead” than Tijuana.
The city had recovered significantly by the next time I visited, in summer 2004.
I know Paris, but I never been to Tijuana. But I understand what you mean. Piter in 1994 was absolutely amazing. A truly decadent place. There was something post-apocalyptic about it. If you saw the movie Brat – 1 it managed to capture some of that feeling.
Today I have the feeling that Paris starts feeling a little awkward, a little Tijuana-like sometimes, while Piter regained some of its respectability (not sure we can use that for a city, but I think it’s a good metaphor).
Without doubt as Russians we illogically spend more time moaning about being too hot, than too cold!
My assumption is that apart from being fat and ugly, the british ladies are able to dress like that because:
1.the brits drink alot of warm beer(???)
2. the culture there is for people at night with absolutely no alcoholism problem to get bloated and drunk from drinking all this beer. Everywhere on the planet has people drunk on nights out – but the British people it seems to be because this is considered an “honour” or a “requirement” for these non-alcoholics…..not from abit of naive carelessness as it is everywhere else.
So they are able to encounter the cold weather because of the masking effect from drinking the warm beer and also feel warmer from feeling bloated from the full stomach caused by drinking larger volumes of low alcohol percentage beer… because they don’t have the same habits on drinking non-mixed spirits and wine culture as most of the rest of Europe has. I am not saying they don’t have large wine sales in UK ( I have no idea) but I don’t think there is a “wine culture” as it is in the rest of the continent…and certainly not for them on their nights in the bar or nightclub
I was talking about 2000s when youth were as interested in cigarettes and alcohol as any other part of the world.
For example from Western countries – we have cultural portrayals of 13 year old youth’s interest in cigarettes and alcohol, from films about the upper class golden youth of France. 1971 portrayal of wealthy French youth in 1954, with this part of the film deriving purely on Louis Malle’s own childhood memories.
And similar themes of cigarettes and alcohol, in cultural portrayals middle class of provincial America (1986 portrayal of middle class American youth in 1959)
Cultural portrayal of youth’s attraction for cigarettes and alcohol, is quite not just extending across the 20th century, but also crossing continents in which there were industrialized societies, in which cigarettes and alcohol were the parents’ favourite enjoyments.
Presumably, these cultural portrayals are popular, because it reminds audiences of their youth.
I remember the same interest in cigarettes and alcohol in the early 2000s and so like millions of viewers of different countries, can relate to such films.
Apparently, English women do not need clothes to defend against the cold night – where there is beer and another layer of fat.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5457455/Women-Leeds-Birmingham-Newcastle-braved-snow-night-out.html
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/03/03/11/49C3651400000578-5457455-Fresh_snow_falling_in_Newcastle_last_night_could_stop_this_revel-a-88_1520076340765.jpg
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/03/03/11/49C3640500000578-5457455-image-a-91_1520076402275.jpg
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/03/03/11/49C3628200000578-5457455-image-m-64_1520075604820.jpg
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/03/03/11/49C2F64D00000578-5457455-image-a-66_1520075728626.jpg
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/03/03/11/49C2F71500000578-5457455-image-m-74_1520075866715.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/hYMR3DV.jpg
23,300 people in the Netherlands are HIV positive. 93 percent of them received treatment. As a result, the virus was no longer detectable in 96 percent of these patients.
I wonder if any of these people donate blood?
Come on, guys, a much larger proportion of British chicks are ugly than fat. Not ugly enough to make you puke, like baroness Ashton, but still. Beer comes in handy. As they say in the US, “good Lord created beer to help ugly people get laid”.
Yes, there were a few more casinos or discos in 1999 than in Brat, but it was pretty much the same, much of it felt dark and empty. Decadent, post-Apocalyptic, poor and seedy with a magnificent Parisian architectural backdrop (the last thing is something Tijuana does not have at all).
I haven’t been there since 1990, it was nice back then…
Well, as I posted, average first cigarette in the USA and most of Western Europe is 15-16. When I was a kid in the 80s it was this age also. I assume it was lower in ghettos or trailer parks. Maybe also in boarding schools for the very rich kids abandoned by their parents, and acting out. But such subcultures were not the norm And thus it was shocking to me to see 12 year old kids drinking and smoking around Moscow apartments in 1999. BTW I have not noticed this recently, Russia has improved.
Or it’s popular because it is less “boring.” Affairs, bank robberies, jumping out of moving cars, etc. are also more common in movies than in reality.
I’ve not been to Batumi, so these are accounts from people I know. I think the climate is such that it’s cold enough in the winter to make beach holidays unfeasible, but not sufficiently cold to kill the plants. There’s quite a few botanic gardens on the south coast of England that have subtropical plants, but I wouldn’t want to sit on a beach there all day in January. It’s also quite wet, as the prevailing wind blows in from the West off the black sea and dumps all of the rain when it hits the mountains which is why the West off the Caucasus is quite lush, but the east is Arid.
Isles of Scilly England.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRWDoL6gkzhBYMOs5itEKw4eJcuNQp7F7a6sw&usqp.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTp2rZGwnznNivn7bpQd2VTypHg4dIe-zDOcw&usqp.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRCmV4GWG5gbmbCcnHNRTMhqNZpd4FyG70Snw&usqp.jpg
Hahahaha….the idea a fraud, a pathological liar as you has ever been to the Urals is as plausible as the idea that Karlin is a 4-headed cat or something stupid like that. It has already been proven beyond doubt that you haven’t been to Ukraine which should mean that you have never been to Russia, and any serious scrutiny of your “knowledge” on Russia shows a vacuum, a complete fantasy with disturbingly fake anecdotes ( wikipedia -driven?). Can you stop this demented nonsense? The only thing it seems possible ( I hesitate to even say plausible) is that you are an American freak on the East coast – everything else is of course fantasist , sociopathic BS
On a side issue, Montreal has nowhere near the same level of low temperatures that Moscow can reach or number of snowbound days you dimwit
Did he make Azerbaijan an offer they couldn’t refuse?
Ugliness (for women) in Britain is a class thing.
Surely with the number of Poles in UK you would have to expect first generation polish ladies to start winning ” Miss UK” or Britain competition every 2 or 3 years starting from the next 5 years and after?
I thought Anglo women were considered the most ugly, after German ones.
As for your point about class and ugliness…….. I don’t understand it at all.
It is another world entirely. I remember discovering Paris in 1993 and how it felt then. Today it is completely different. Maybe it’s just me getting older. But a lot of people I know have the same feeling. Ethnic French, les Français de souche tend to complain about it, the Maghrebi Beurs also do. Many French Jews emigrate to Israel or the States, a lot of French try emigration to Quebec. The overall quality of life has deteriorated, while in Russia it has overall increased.
A couple of years ago I talked with a Frenchman who visited Moscow and Piter a few years ago with his family. Once he knew that I was born in Moscow he confided that he voted for le Front National and started waxing lyrical about how Putin was a true leader and all. I had the feeling that he would not have told that to another Frenchman. There is a feeling of unhappiness, cynicism and hypocrisy in the air. Feels a little like late Brezhnev era without Communism, but with le Jourmal Le Monde being the Pravda of a globalist kind.
Of course my feelings are very subjective, maybe I don’t know the French society profoundly enough…
My aunt and her husband used to visit Paris every five years or so. Their last visit was about four years ago, it had gotten so bad that they decided they would never go there again.
Are you experiencing an estrogen overdose?
I have a millionaire friend who is now retired and he and his sister have been traveling the world over for at least 10 years, many months out of the year (of course not this year). They love traveling all over Europe, but over the last few years their complaints about it always center around France and especially Paris. The city, according to them, is visibly run down full of migrants, squalor and crime. They too have scratched off Paris from any future visits. They like to travel around Scandinavia by car. Were you able to make your planned trip there this year? I remember you writing about wanting to go there this year.
I had no idea that such beautiful, tropical looking landscapes could be found within England. Thanks!
In Paris you still have the museums, the architecture and the cuisine, but I think that to fully appreciate France one should go somewhere deeper into the country. Despite centuries of unification and harmonization efforts, France is stull quite varied from one region to another; it is a transition zone between North Western Europe and the Mediterranean. If one avoided the large urban centers or at least limited staying in the big towns to the visit of the tourist attractions and museum walking, and spent more time traveling the smaller sized towns and villages instead, one might still have a very pleasant trip. And nature in France is also very beautiful, it doesn’t have about it the wild and rugged feeling you often have in Russian forests. French people are still rather nice, if one avoided the Parigot and the arrivist pseudo-elitist types. It is still an interesting travel destination in my opinion, although I prefer Spain for the Mediterranean aspects or Belgium for the north western European one.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Scilly_Isles_Locator_Map.png/384px-Scilly_Isles_Locator_Map.png
MVD released info that the bomb hoax phonecall received at the airport where Navalny landed originated from …… Germany! Sensational though non-surprising news.
It was received afew minutes before the pilot asked ATC to land there.
This fact would guarantee no departure flights from the airport at the time, presumably making it easier or more likely the pilot would request to land at that particular airport receiving the fake threat….. and emergency services immediately there at landing.
Coincidence? I think not.
2 events like that can’t be independent of each other…… a BS scripted play from. Navalny/West appears main probability.
BTW, LOL, trying to portray yourself as a Russian nationalist or Patriot. That is like Novodvorskaya portraying herself as Russia’s number one fashion model in the 90’s/early 2000’s or Venediktov calling himself a champion Greco-Roman wrestler. You’re a libtard, constantly covering your a*s
Be quiet honey.
No, COVID killed those plans. Apparently Sweden is opening up in November so hopefully I’ll go next summer. I expect to be in the first tier on a vaccine when it comes out.
Palm trees don’t need hot weather, they just can’t tolerate freezing weather. This is why there are palm trees in downtown Vancouver – the city is rarely gets below 0 c even though it’s not particularly hot. From wiki, the average high temperature on those British islands is only 68 degrees f in August, but the average low in January is 43 f.
Bizarre…… it’s like I am being physically attacked by a “dream team” of Kirkorov and Steven Hawking.
It’s obviously projection, because you mentally covering your a*s on here like the snake you are is a perfect metaphor for the physical sealing of your ass that I assume comes in your personal life from either wife wearing a strap-on or gay-lover. You’re just a weird man. ( Karlin- that’s just a bit of playful, harmless biography of Ano4, I will behave with the rules now)
As for the insult tried at me… it’s as stupid as calling Trump effeminate.
N. B. It was message not phonecall to the airport , and this anglo-russian woman was not carrying any liquids when going through airport security (Germans claim they analysed bottle of water taken from hotel alleged to contain Novichok)
If you can ignore the problem of too many cars (and noise and air pollution they bring into the city experience when walk around there – maybe electric vehicles will solve it in a couple decades), Peter is really smart and well dressed up in the centre nowadays. Well, in terms of building renovation and streets, much of city at the level of Spain or Italy.
Except in terms of giving them a loan, I can’t see much ideological connection of single-issue party anti-immigration party of France (Front National), and the architect of de facto open borders between Russia and Central Asia and the Transcaucasia.
I am very antiracist – i.e. someone who does not judge about any person’s nationality or skin colour, over their personality. But the issue is about the kind of people and conditions created by de facto open-borders.
In the last twenty years, places quite near where I had my youth – there are areas, which are nowadays described as “immigrants’ areas”, which I remember when they were just some boring hinterland zone of the city, and nobody ever imagined them as immigrants’ areas. At the same time, a lot of the streets became less criminal, and somewhere stored away a lot of the drunks.
But the “immigrants’ areas” are clearly problematic in its own way. Central Asian Islamist terrorist cells are liquidated, when it would have been easier to filter them from immigrating with a selective immigration system – and recall all the heroin smuggling is coming up through Central Asia, and distributed from the immigrants’ areas – is indirectly part of one of the main vectors of the HIV epidemic (which kills 21000 people a year in Russia, the same as coronavirus so far) from Perm to Krasnoyarsk.
There are also a lot of attractive English women – at least among university students’ age.
On the other hand, I remember thinking to myself, on train travelling between two cities in England – I never saw so many ugly people in my life.
So it’s kind of difficult to comment on this topic, as I had such mixed impressions myself.
You can’t say “English women are ugly” – because there are plenty of good looking English women (at least when they are 18-24). But you can’t say “English women are good looking” – after you were ever on a train full of ugly ones.
I defer to you here – you should know better as an insider. I was in the UK a few times, visited restaurants, supermarkets, and pubs, among other places, and saw lots of non-beautiful (sounds politer than ugly) chicks and women of low and middle class (admittedly, not as ugly as baroness Ashton). Even better-looking ones were homely, at best.
There is rude Russian joke that applies to most:
– Lady, did you ever serve in the cavalry?
– Do you mean to say I have bow legs?
– Not at all. But you have horse-face.
Probably even today, on average, proletarian English women at an earlier age will start to look unattractive, than middle class in England, and also have higher rates of obesity. Lifestyle of lower class people will be less healthy on average.
Still, working class people in England, live in very soft, wealthy and luxurious conditions by international standards (equivalent to middle class in most of the rest of the world) – it’s not going to be so much of a difference between the classes, as in lower income or less healthy industrialized countries, where the workers really can break their health in their 20s.
It’s likely because by the middle 19th century, Great Britain was one of the few countries in the world, where the urban population has started to receive adequate nutrition, sanitation, access to running water. London even opened the first centres for eliminating skin diseases.
Standards of beauty were much lower in the 19th century, and most women didn’t have foundation and eyeliner – and Dostoevsky probably rather surprised walking in streets and seeing all the women with clean faces.
There’s probably some echo of memory of the 19th century in “My Fair Lady” (based on 1913 play Pygmalion), when lumpen Audrey Hepburn is comically covered with mud, and the bourgeoisie have to force her into a bath -and everyone is then shocked how attractive she suddenly becomes.
You sure are obsessed with male asses. So trans it is.
Drones are relatively slow moving. What’s needed is a mobile laser weapon to target them and burn up their electronics. Why anyone would be using tanks when rockets are known to exist shows how inept the military mind actually, always fighting the last war.
Sooner or later, some NAVY is going to suffer a defeat by drone and / or missile swam. Those billion dollar aircraft carriers should be regarded as floating coffins by now but nations are still building them to display their phallic prowess.
Your experience of seeing such ugly British women everywhere in England, is reminds of some of my memories – but it’s probably because difference of the age groups in different areas, especially if you look at the women over 30 years old (median age in UK over 40 now).
I had the same memory of thinking there were the ugliest women ever, when I was visiting area where there were too many drunk office workers. Or when I travelled out into a different areas in a train.
But if just you stay in an area of Great Britain, where most of the people are students (18-24) in term time. You will think the English women were in the standard range of attractive, as young women are everywhere.
English young women are politically crazy extremists, but in terms of their appearance the university students look like this – just normal looking young women:
But a lot of women started to lose their appearance at 25 – alcoholic Northern Europe women especially – and majority of the women in North Western Europe are over 40.
Palm trees also do well in hot and dry climates too. They’re almost as ubiquitous as cacti in Phoenix, where in fact all sorts of plants have adapted from all around the world. I have some mature. beautiful crimson red bougainvillea’s (typically a tropical plant) in my backyard that are in “full bloom” right now. As far as palm trees go in Phoenix, the vast majority are imports too, however, there is only one variety that grows naturally in Arizona, the “fan palm”:
https://www.americansouthwest.net/arizona/photographs450/palms2.jpg
Palm Canyon, Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona
You truly are an attention seeker. Have you been neglected as a child?
I was in Oxford and Cambridge during the term. Female students are on average better looking than girls of the same age in a supermarket or pub. However, if you compare them to Moscow State University campus, or any Ivy League campus in the US, you can’t call them beautiful or even pretty. Tolerable would be the word I’d choose.
When I was a kid in the United States I never saw or heard about a single 12 year old smoking or drinking. For smoking, it’s hard for me to even imagine a kid doing that, and I wasn’t raised in an upper class environment. I have heard stories of grandparents deliberately letting a young boy try smoking as a way of turning them off the idea. The boy coughs a bunch and supposedly will never want to try again. But that was an older generation. I could conceivably imagine some kids smoking in an earlier generation before the ill effects of smoking were commonly known. But I don’t know anyone who has ever claimed to have done so. My dad used to visit family in rural Texas every year where men normally had chewing tobacco and smoking wasn’t uncommon. But I have never heard him describe young people smoking.
Hollywood films are made by dubious people, I wouldn’t trust their depictions of ordinary life in America if I were you.
Appearance of women university students in Russia and England? The difference between how we were as students in Russia, and how the students are in England – is not the appearance of the women, but there is a spiritual one. I.e. the students in England are spoiled with some inappropriately luxurious conditions, while we were treated like normal human beings (sometimes a bit worse than human being for the students unfortunate enough to be in certain infamous university “housing”).
Young women are young women – they are mostly attractive. I’m already at such an age (later 20s) to appreciate even the women we were thought were below average in our student days, were attractive.
This is one of the few areas (i.e. how women students look), where you have a least culture shocks going to West.
Travel 4000 kilometres to the West – women students in universities of England.
https://www.facebook.com/TheTabOfficial/videos/1014277185386657
What age did you first smoke cigarettes?
I was about 11 years old (maybe 10) when I smoked cigarettes. It’s more or less inevitable for a child of this age to do this, and you don’t need influence from peers or siblings.
In my case, I know where my parents leave a box cigarettes in the evening (on a high shelf near our kitchen), and I saw them smoking hundreds of times. Why wouldn’t a child smoke a cigarette when their parents (who they see smoking) are out?
And how “terrible” was it? I breathed a more kind of harmful air, walking to school in the morning. If smoking is so bad for children, what about all the air pollution then what about the fact our school playground was next to a road with cars and trucks polluting the air, and near to many factories as well?
Also psychologically, it was the same impulse to smoke cigarettes, as wanting to read books of literature, philosophy and religion, or wanting to stay up late. I.e. just copying adults. And as an adult, I don’t even smoke now.
So you are believing American children are very well-behaved and disciplined to not smoke or drink alcohol, contrary to their cultural portrayal (and the how children are in the rest of world)?
If your parents are normal family who drink alcohol – how would you even stop children from drinking (assuming you think that was important)? It would require very strict parents.
As for whether it is bad for children to drink alcohol? Not to say I am a representative sample, but I think I was less excited to become drunk as an adult, because I was drunk enough times when I was 13 or 14. I know I was even unattracted from red wine for many years, after I can remember drinking half a bottle of red wine, and the disgusting taste of the red vomit for hours when I was around 12 or 13.
No, it’s merely for an exchange of prisoners and agreeing to diplomatic formalities for PR reasons from Azerbaijan’s side (Armenia started sued for a ceasefire a few days ago), it was broken almost immediately afterwards. Of course The Saker has just made his usual Islamophilic, Putin-can-do-no-wrong, BS take on the situation.
This hit home hard.
Honestly not that hard where I grew up in the South, where the Baptists were dominant then and teetotaling was common in families. I do think that you take a lot of your ideas from American movies, which aren’t really an accurate portrayal of America – movies are after all, focused on trying to be edgy and exciting.
Most people(and children) lead rather boring lives.
Smoking is pretty cracked down on, at any rate. For better or worse, these days you’re much more likely to smell pot than nicotine. There’s even an entire subculture that promotes pot smoking and condemns nicotine smoking, and as a notion I’d say that it is fairly popular with the youth these days.
I agree that “boring” is probably an accurate description of the youth in the West, in the 21st century; perhaps this word will be remembered as a representative feature of Generation Z.
Overprotected, insulated, as well quite luxurious, childhoods – this is surely increasing with each generation. Part of it can be result of youth today, having older parents on average than ever before in history.
In my earliest memories, my parents were already younger than I am now (and I do not want children until the next decade). So my future children, will have far older parents, than I had.
When your parents are in their 20s, there is likely to be quite different atmosphere in the home, than when they are in their 30s. I remember noticing my parents became more fussy, conservative and started going to bed earlier, by the time they were 40.
But smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, as children, is neither something particularly “exciting” – it’s a natural copying of quotidian habits of your parents.
Although notice that a lot of things that you see when you actually walk in America, can be more “crazy” and “edgy” than in the American films.
When I’ve been in America, I found some things to be more extreme and exciting, than I expected from the cultural representations of them. For example, there’s always a shock when you see the crazy people in the street in American cities, or the levels of “public wealth and private squalor”, obesity and apparent racial divisions.
In some ways, American films and television provide us with a more “harmonious” impression of the country, than the reality.
Many years ago, of the most popular television programs I remember, was “Gossip Girl” (it was very popular in Russia in the 2000s). It is a television series for teenagers, about the golden youth of Park Avenue. It pursued a maximum of sensationalism in terms of sex and glamour. But there is no episode that their favourite shops on 5th Avenue, would be by African American pogromists – this American reality, rather more sensational than the fiction.
Some mistakes in the text I did not have to time to edit.
“private wealth and public squalor”
But there is no episode that their favourite shops on 5th Avenue, would be attacked by African American pogromists – this American reality, is rather more sensational than the fiction.
Its just not really common anymore. But yes, due to America’s evangelical history, at least in the South, such things were much more considered as signs of sin and it was seen as honorable to be abstinent(Stonewall Jackson, for example, one of the South’s major heroes was often praised for his religiously pure life and excellent generalship, making him a kind of holy warrior). Still quite acceptable, but not without at least some shame.
https://news.jrn.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/image-7.png
Movies will avoid focusing on the boring things, so even they dismiss even a lot of misery that happens because it is boring. Someone mentioned that mystery stories often have these elaborate setups for murders but in reality, many criminals take no precautions for being detected and really make no plans but are purely opportunistic. You’ll never see, for example, the druggie “muggers” in some parts of my city center who are so pathetic that they attempt to “rob” you by grabbing with shaking fingers, you just push them off and they whine a bit. They’re essentially harmless, but they serve to be excellent examples of decay.
Its too pitiful to be worth capturing.
Everything is quite reversed now, but really the most noticeable thing is the 70% overweight percentile and its associated effects(almost 40% severely obese).
There were race riots before, and during the 80s there were a lot of action movies that focused on cracking down on street crime or fighting against unimaginable large hordes of street thugs – Dirty Harry, Death Wish, Assault on Precinct 13, etc.
The recent looting focused riots and anti-fa violence, combined with total paralysis along with general moral support of the rioters are a rather recent development. Its almost certainly a sign that something is seriously wrong and likely a sign that the US is slipping into Brasil Del Norte.
He saw the same things with his own eyes in the USA that I did in the USA.
It never occurred to me at age 12 to try the alcohol my parents kept. Just as it never occurred to me, for example, to take their keys and drive around town at age 12.
Post-Soviet Russia was a rather sick place unfortunately, but it wasn’t normal
In the USA the only people who do that are from uniquely dysfunctional environments such as those where abuse occurs, or broken homes in urban ghettos or bad trailer parks. I never knew anyone who was getting drunk at 13 or regularly at 14 (maybe some tried at 14 or 15). Your experiences highlight how broken Russian society had been, that intelligent people from presumably normal backgrounds have had such experiences. and that they were so common that you think it was normal.
The little private school cliques at Oxford/Cambridge have the prettiest girls. The general population has a lot of provinicials etc. who dilute the quality.
My experiences somewhat mirrors Dmitry’s, and as you know I grew up in a Ukrainian family, and I grew up in a strict authoritarian type family. I fooled around with my father’s cigarettes at about 12-13 years of age and started to occasionally drink beer with some friends when I was about 14. Our “runner” was an old Ukrainian guy in the neighborhood who was an alckie and would get us the beer for a few bucks to help cover his own needs. I got caught once drinking before a school dance and paid the price dearly being grounded for several months. I was first offered some booze publicly by my father at a Christmas dinner with a friend of mine at about 18. I never got into any trouble with the law and don’t feel that my family was “dysfunctional”. Both my sister and myself somehow evolved and ended up as normal as most and have completed graduate school programs.
This is an absolutely bizarre take, you must have grown up in a different USA than I did.
myself somehow evolved and ended up as normal
You spend an inordinate amount of time commenting on AK’s blog. How could you possibly consider yourself normal?
Perhaps, like yourself I have acquired some bad habits along the journey.
BTW, it appears that you spend a lot more time here than I, having commented 10,411 times to my paltry 4,400. 🙂
you spend a lot more time here than I
I am retired, and when time and weather do not allow me to play outside, I “need” some form of low brow entertainment since I don’t watch TV. 🙂
Anyway, I make no claims of normalcy for myself.
Well, since the covid-19 pandemic occurred I’ve been sidelined or “retired” too. Don’t know when and if I’ll be retuning to “work”. I kind of enjoy sleeping in whenever I want and developing my day’s agenda as things evolve. 🙂
I don’t know you well enough to proide an opinion on any grade of normalcy or not, but you certainly haven’t provoked or irritated me here much with your comments.
Maybe things were different in the 1960s?
But even you were a little later than Dmitry. He was claiming that smoking and drinking beer were normal activities for 12 year old boys and he was getting drunk a lot at 13 and 14.
Grew up in the Midwest among normal people. I checked to see if somehow my experience was strange, but sure enough average age of cigarette use onset is 15 and 16 in the USA and most Western countries:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/22/health/cigarette-smoking-teens-parent-curve-intl/index.html
“ In the United States and much of Europe, research suggests that regular lighting up typically begins between 15 and 16 years old.”
Drinking:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4063311/
According to the 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, among people 12 to 49 years of age who began drinking in the past 12 months, the average age of first drinking was 17.1 years (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 2012). Among those 12 and older who began drinking before age 21, the mean age at first drink was 15.9 years.
(the article is about Hispanic patterns but this part from intro is about the general population).
So you didn’t drink any alcohol when you were that age, even though it was available?
Perhaps you were unusually well behaved as a child – lucky to be AP’s parents. However, that is likely to be idiosyncratic.
I don’t see the connection. I already had a far more insulated, well behaved and safe childhood, compared to my parents’ youth.
When I was a teenager, my father would say – “You are indoors so much. When I was your age we were chasing girls, fighting, climbing buildings, jumping into lakes, etc”. By comparison, half my youth was boringly on a computer.
Children in the past generations had more freedom than today. I feel like I was lucky to still have some adventures, but they are rather less exciting than what I could hear from past generations. Have you asked your grandparents about their youth?
Not really. My parents were not associated with “broken society” – I was fortunate to be born with well behaved nerds, as I myself and my siblings became ourselves such well behaved nerds.
I saw some crazy things in my school, and my classmate’s streets – but quotidian things like smoking a few cigarettes, on the walk home, or sharing a couple mouthfuls from a bottle of alcohol to fight against the morning ennui, are not part of that. Children are absorbing more toxins from the cars’ air pollution on walking to school, than from a couple of breaths not fully inhaled from a shared cigarette or a mouthful of alcoholic drink.
Those are special genre pieces though, with a lot of fantasy elements.
In the more normal American film and television, the background reality can seem less dramatic and sensational than the American reality you experience when walking the streets.
I agree with your point that some of sensational aspects of American life, can be too mundane to be interesting. But others are clearly more like “blindspots”. (Especially the issue of private wealth and public squalor).
Also some of the street life, is avoided by the bourgeoisie’s mode of transport. In Los Angeles, bourgeois people who produce the media content, are much more driving inside cars, than walking the streets. You don’t see some of poverty, when you driving inside the car – the car is creating a fortification against the lower class aspects of the city. Then there is also the distance created by the emphasis on distant suburban houses.
I perhaps received more of a culture shock from California a few years ago, because my holiday was based around walking all over the streets, or using the autobus (apart from Palo Alto, where I cycled all over). When you are walking, you are less insulated from the poor people of the cities – but the American upper classes would unlikely walk around like this.
As you say, these racial divisions are longstanding features of American society though, more significantly than the Latin American one. We could almost say that Brazil needs to worry about becoming “Estados unidos do sul”.
Another thing is that countries like Brazil clearly have quite extreme ‘private wealth and public squalor’, but the ratio in certain areas might be a lot less extreme than in the USA.
Brazil is far poorer than America, and yet at least they try to invest in some high-speed public transport between cities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio%E2%80%93S%C3%A3o_Paulo_high-speed_rail
Other than from a spoon at communion. I think at age 12 I was invited to try a sip of wine at one of my grandparents’ birthdays. Such examples are not really “drinking.”
As for taking alcohol from my parent’s collection and getting drunk – no. Or getting drunk in general at age 12 – no. Nor did anyone I know do that. Nor did I even hear of anyone doing that.
Well, data support my anecdotal evidence –
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4063311/
According to the 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, among people 12 to 49 years of age who began drinking in the past 12 months, the average age of first drinking was 17.1 years (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], 2012). Among those 12 and older who began drinking before age 21, the mean age at first drink was 15.9 years.
You are proving my point. The general Russian society at that time was so broken that even the child of “well-behaved nerds” who himself spent a lot of time on the computer was smoking at age twelve and binge drinking at age thirteen.
Or even middle and working classes. Yours is a very interesting perspective, but keep in mind that in the USA only very poor people are without cars (other than in very rare pockets such as Manhattan). So when you are in the USA without a car, walking around and relying on public transportation, you are adopting a lumpen lifestyle. This causes you to be around marginalized lumpens (in buses etc.) much more than upper or middle class people do, and perhaps to get an unrealistically view of the extent of “public squalor.”
No matter how much you repeat things are “quotidian”(really a rather awkward word for this), does not make them ao in America. Going back in time doesn’t actually change that much – remember that America actually imposed the Prohibition.
Puritan attitudes were quotidian at one point instead.
I might be unusual in this respect, but I occasionally enjoy walking about or riding on public transport in order just to get the “lumpen” perspective that is usually missing from my life.
I’ve walked around some very interesting neighborhoods in Kyiv, away from the center.
After having slept all night at the main airport in Mexico city I walked away to a bus stop and took the subway to an affluent area, where the main zoo and many museums were housed, a very interesting experience!
While in San Jose Costa Rica, more specifically in Corona on the outskirts of town, I was hiking down a meandering road near a beautiful river when I found a small shanty town with poor people poking their heads out the door looking at me. In the center of town (San Jose)I stayed overnight with a “middle class” family where although the house was clean and had some nice amenities (dining room table made of some sort of exotic hardwood, nice china cabinet) the bedsheets (although clean) were quite old and were actually shredding into dust due to age. I’ve also had the good fortune to spend time at a 5 star resort in Arenal.
I’ve even rode the new rail system within Phoenix Arizona to a basketball game in the downtown area, just to experience the ride and watch the lumpens in action.
I’ve lived to tell these tales and highly recommend doing so to help one get a fuller picture of the reality of life for many of our fellow world citizens. But always remember “berezhenoho Boh berezhe!
BTW, one of the great feature of reading Linn Dinn’s popular blog herein is that he often writes about the “lumpen” perspective that is too often missing from the average reader’s daily experiences.
I trust you , and the others saying that the wealthy clever ladies at Oxford and Cambridge Universities are good looking,…….are saying the truth.
Just one thing. Are you forming that opinion based on before they show their teeth to you or after?
It is my understanding that Brits have shockingly bad teeth, so bad as to make somebody pass out unconscious….particularly for a relatively wealthy nation, mainly because of their shocking eating habits and hygiene. It’s very easy for a beautiful poor person in Europe/Eurasia to have misaligned teeth ( though plenty of the poor africans are noted for great white teeth from using charcoal) , but I am not talking about that – I am talking about all classes of anglo-society having notoriously, shockingly yellow/orange, misaligned and half-sawn off teeth!
I’m sure if the Queen of Britain or one of her main relatives or the Prime Minister of UK open their mouths to show teeth…….you would see a monstrosity. Possibly the one good thing of being in the EU for them has been this pattern getting slightly not as bad over time ( wild assumption, based on nothing much)
Just thinking now, I don’t think in 20 years Putin has even showed any of his teeth in 1000s of hours of public speaking!
On the other side, I am not a fan of others, particularly Americans, having too extremely good, extremely white teeth – it looks very disturbing to me.
I’m not saying they look unusually good – they just look like a usual young women, and most young women usually look good.
I’m not especially looking at peoples’ teeth, but I doubt there is a different dental level in Great Britain and Ireland, compared to Russia or Europe. Most people in the industrialized world seem to have normal teeth.
Well, perhaps you as a well behaved child, were friends with other well behaved children?
If children copying their parents’ most quotidian and unexciting habits, is the sign of broken society? But drinking and smoking, are just the boring habits of parents. Children desire to copy at that age their parents’ habits, when they start to feel becoming adults themselves (it’s the same reading adult books, watching films instead of animations, etc).
That’s not to say my own experience is an especially representative one. But I can say it was just “copying of mundane adult activities”, which is typical of that age.
As for “broken Russian society” – certainly Russia has one of the worst public health crisis in relation to alcohol (which has been improving in recent decade). But if you go to restaurants in Italy and Greece, they will offer alcohol to the children.
One of the normal things for Italian parents, is to give wine for their children, even at early ages (they sometimes add water to the wine, if the child is very young). Yet Italy has a many times lower rate of alcoholism than the USA. So children drinking alcohol is not necessarily connected adult alcoholism rates across countries.
If I recall correctlty, that was sort of the argument of Francis Dvornik’s The Slavs in European History and Civilization (1962). Like him or not, Stalin brought the Slavs together and sure made it impossible to ignore them or their history. It has been a while since I read the book.