My article on the history and present reality of Russian IQ has just been published at Sputnik i Pogrom, with its trademark beautiful graphics:
The pièce de résistance:
Without undue exaggeration, I believe this is the most comprehensive popular article on this topic in the Russian language.
I will write a summary of it for The Unz Review in due course.
The Russians have overtaken us in graphic design. Somebody call John McCain!
According to the latest data this is not true. Northern Russian were (according to recent genetic research) genetically close to the Germans and the Balts (and not Finns and “real” Slavs) . That is, the descendants of some unknown tribes close to the proto-Balts and proto-Germans, who later adopted the Slavic language, and mingled with the neighbouring Finnic peoples
I am not a geneticist, but I believe “genetically close” and “descended from” are not always the same things and, in fact, two different (but sometimes related) genetic phenomena.
In your article you claimed Ukrainian performance on TIMMS was worse than for Russians, comparable to the Balkans and the Caucuses.
Well, it was worse than for Russians but higher than those regions:
Page 42 of your link:
https://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2011/downloads/T11_IR_M_Chapter1.pdf
Russia – 539
Ukraine – 479
Armenia – 467
Romania – 458
Georgia – 431
Macedonia – 426
There are more stats on the comprehensive report:
https://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2011/downloads/T11_IR_Mathematics_FullBook.pdf
Page 344, hours spent teaching the subject. Apparently the Ukrainian kids don’t get as many hours of math teaching as the other ones do. This would probably cause their math result to underestimate their cognitive performance. Ukrainian kids get 132 hours of math instruction per year; Russian ones get 142, Romanians 145, (but Georgians 123). If math is an hour a day, that’s two weeks fewer classes for Ukrainians vs. Russians or Romanians.
Page 354: Number of math topics covered by TIMMS (out of 19) intended to be taught to the kids: all 19 in Russia and Romania, only 14 in Ukraine. Ukrainian kids aren’t being taught data and probability at all and are only taught 4 of the 6 geometry topics.
Finally there is age at time of testing (page 450). The Ukrainian kids were tested 5 months earlier than were the Russian kids and 7 months earlier than were the Romanian kids. This means about half the school year.
These factors all suggest that for the purposes of determining cognitive ability, TIMMS scores underestimate Ukrainian IQ relative to Russian and Romanian. The Ukrainian kids spent 2 weeks a year less learning math, learned fewer subjects covered by TIMMS, and were tested about a semester earlier in the school year than were Russian and Romanian kids.
I’m not sure, numerically, how much Ukraine’s TIMMS-derived estimated IQ would have to be adjusted relative to that of Russia and Romania in order to account for these factors. But, it would have to moved closer to Russia and further from Romania.
Sure. Becouse of this genetic (and anthropological) the similarity of the North Russian with Germans and Balts apparently explained by descent from a common ancestor (who lived in ancient times, probably before the spread of Indo European languages)
Just to add – Romania and Russia are matched by hours of instruction, age at testing, and curriculum coverage so TIMMS would be an accurate measure comparing the students from these two countries ion terms of intelligence.
But to make Ukrainian TIMMS performance congruent with that of these two countries, you would have to calculate what the performance would have been had the Ukrainian kids gotten 2 weeks a year additional math instruction, had they been taught all 19 subjects covered by TIMMS as were Russian and Romanian kids and had they been tested halfway further in the school year.
Specifically, northern Russians are genetically close to Finnic Balts (though not so close to Finns). They are close to Estonians.
No. North Russian by the paternal genetic lineage are closer to Latvians and Lithuanians (“true” Balts ), the smaller the closeness with the Estonians (Finno-Baltic mestizo) and even less closeness with other Finnish peoples.
http://s018.radikal.ru/i521/1711/9e/9824d41f0ae8.png
By the maternal genetic line the North Russian are close to Norwegians and other Germanic and very far from the Finns.
It is noticeable in appearance – the Russian North are more similar to Scandinavians
http://s018.radikal.ru/i515/1712/a5/d3247c0cb302.jpg
than to the “true” Finns (i.e. representatives of “Lapоnic race”)
On the chart:
I have read your discussions with AP about Balanovsky’s latest research with interest.
Please note that I submitted this text several months ago, so I didn’t have an opportunity to incorporate those findings.
Might be without those findings article even better, to make people think for themselves and not to repeat the propaganda. Commentators on the website of SIP suspect you in a clever trolling of the “svidomih” Ukrainians
It would be probably good to mention the Mongols, with their biggest (among the peoples of the Earth) brain, and high (for a poor and backward country) IQ. If I remember correctly, the Mongols IQ superior to Ukrainians.
(For non Russian-speaking readers – the Russians as racially inferior hybrid of Finns and Mongols, it’s a cliche of Ukrainian propaganda.)
Thanks, these are all very good points.
I have to note (just as I told melanf) that I submitted this text several months ago, which I believe happened prior to you making the point about Ukrainians being younger than Russians on the TIMSS test.
Another quick note: Apart from the Balkans and the Caucasus, also compared it to Kazakhstan, which does better than the Ukraine by 8 points in Math.
Anyhow, since TIMSS is more of an academic test, the fact that Ukrainians cover only 14/19 topics (versus 19/19 in Russia and Romania) would appear to be a very significant point. Do you know if subscores available for separate topics? If so, we could just add them up, and see whether they change relative to the aggregate ones.
Now that I check it, I also note that the Ukraine does 11 points better than Kazakhstan (and 36 better than Romania, 81 better than Georgia), though still 40 points worse than Russia, in TIMSS-2011 Science [PDF]. They are also 0.5 years younger than Russia and 0.7 years younger than Romania there, though the same age as Georgia (pp. 44).
Possibly the Ukrainian science curriculum coverage is more comprehensive than for math? On further review, this seems to somewhat be the case. Ukraine has 901 hours to Russia’s 880 and Georgia’s 883, though still lower than Armenia’s 979 and Romania’s 984 (pp.).
OTOH, whereas Russia teaches 20/20 intended topics, for the Ukraine it’s only 12/20 (Georgia: 9/10, Romania: 20/20) (pp. 362). It would appear that reality – Percentage of Students Taught the TIMSS Science Topics (pp. 358), Percentage of Students Taught the TIMSS Mathematics Topic (pp. 350) – correlate well with the statistics on intended topics, with Ukrainians and Georgians having been taught less of the material than Romanians and Armenians in both Math and Science.
“all populations from Archangelsk province are included in the vast “northern” cluster, along with Vologda Russians, Baltic speakers (Latvians and Lithuanians), Finnic speakers (Komi, Finns, Estonians, pooled group of Karels, Vepsa and Izhors) and Germanic speaking Swedes. Note, that North Russians are more genetically similar to geographically distant Baltic populations rather than to Finnic speakers: the similarity with Baltic populations was revealed for each North Russian population, while degree of similarity with Finnic speakers and set of similar Finnic populations do vary. The genetic similarity among linguistically heterogeneous but geographically united (from Baltic to Pechora) populations might indicate the Paleo-European gene pool persisting in this area, which preceded the split of the Balto-Slavic and Finnic linguistic branches. The mitochondrial DNA data (reflecting the maternal lineages) demonstrates the similarity of the Russian North to the widest set of populations from northern half of Europe. Norwegians and Germans appear to be the most genetically similar to the Russian North.”
That is, the original “proto-Germanic-Balts” (with this having rogly equal share of Baltic genes for each North Russian population), population is mixed later with different Finnish peoples (depending on which Finnish people lived in the neighborhood).
Mr. President, we must not allow a vector graphics gap!
I think that would be funnier still if you said “vector” as “wektor” with the emphasis on “tor,” while on a wheelchair and doing the Nazi salute.
Back when I was in school in New York City, I had a recent immigrant Polish math teacher who would make the class snicker whenever she said “wektors.”
Interesting. I would have guessed Primorsky would have been higher rather than lower.
Numbers with decimal points on the map are pretty amusing.
Yes, there is a discrepancy between the raw data and the authors’ conclusions. Perhaps if this paper had undergone external peer review, rather than being published in-house, this would have been cleared up.
“Because Ukrainian nationalists say something like it, it can’t be true” is a stupid argument by those people commenting.
It’s interesting that those parts of the Russia with the highest Finnic (though not Finnish) component have higher IQs than do other regions.
Curious to see Saakashvili back in the headlines and accused of being a Russian asset … especially in light of the recent exposé by Italian journo Gian Micalessin, who claims interviews with several of the Maidan snipers, gunmen from Georgia tied to Saakashvili
https://sputniknews.com/interviews/201711271059469124-journalist-interviews-maidan-snipers/
Related video, click on the little box on the bottom row to get the English subtitles
“Russians as racially inferior hybrid of Finns and Mongols” yeah, yeah
Blue line – Finnic component and higher IQs
Red line – No Finnic component and higher IQs
http://s019.radikal.ru/i644/1712/9c/7d6ba108a6c1.jpg
The “red” part surpasses “blue” part about 20 times by population
The results for PIRLS 2016 came out today.
News story: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/05/english-pupils-improve-results-in-international-reading-exams
The website: http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/pirls2016/international-results/
We need real IQ tests with good representative samples throughout Russia’s regions, not these inferred approximations based on PISA results.
While I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if Finno-Ugrian (actually more “northern” rather Finno-Ugrian as such) admixture did in fact correlate with higher IQ, but the data you’re using doesn’t really support that. Regions like Tula and Lipetsk are definitely much less Finno-Ugrian than Vologda, yet score substantially higher.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in these figures, to be quite honest. For example, how is Tula oblast above Moscow oblast, which is much richer and better off? Moscow oblast is an elite “hub” similar to St. Petersburg and Moscow city (though not on the same level, of course). If we go by your reasoning, extrapolating from pre-revolutionary literacy rates and such, you would expect the opposite to be true. This suggests that, at the very least, there are some serious problems with the samples used.
I have never understood this thing with Neo-Nazis (apparently even some fringe Russian Neo-Nazis) supporting Ukraine against its northern Russian neighbor. Was there really less Mongol/Tatar admixture in the Ukrainian steppes than in the forests to its North? Are Ukrainians not closer to Balkans and Kubanians and thus less Nordic than the heartland Russians? I am at a loss here.
Russians and Ukrainians are completely devoid of Mongol admixture
“As for the second major migration associated with the Mongol conquest of the medieval Russian principalities, its genetic traces is impossible to detect. This conclusion is mutually confirmed by the analysis of mtDNA and Y-chromosomes, and the data of anthropology. For example, the total frequency of Eastern-Eurasian mtDNA haplogroups in Russian populations of less than 2%: the same frequency is typical for the Western European Nations. For the Y-chromosome typical “Mongolian” marker is haplogroup C (the medium was believed to be Genghis Khan, – this haplogroup is most common among Mongols and related peoples). However, for the Russian population this haplogroup almost completely absent (frequency below 1%, i.e., from the formal standpoint of genetic polymorphism on this basis, the Russian population can be considered fully “genetically European”).”
E. V. Balanovskaya And O. P. Balanovsky. Russian gene pool of the Russian plain. M., 2007. P. 296
The same according to anthropology:
“Thus, the Russian population of Eastern Europe in the anthropological indicators or coincide with the average Western European , or deviate from them, remaining within the limits of variability of the Western European groups…”.
Bunak, V. V., the Origin and ethnic history of the Russian people according to anthropological data. M., 1965
The Ukrainians have a weak admixture of Turkic associated with the Turkic tribes who lived near Kiev in the earlier middle ages (these tribes were carrying military service in the army of the princes of Kiev). Among Russian there is no such admixture .
Russian (average) of course more Nordic than the Ukrainians. Russian anthropologically/genetically divided into two cluster – North and South (of different origins). South Russian anthropologically/genetically similar to the Ukrainians, poles, Slovaks (in appearance – the average between Northern and southern Europeans). Northern Russians are close to peoples of Northern Europe ( Scandinavians, Balts, Finns), this part of Russian is very “Nordic”. The girl in the message No. 2 of this debate – it is a typical “North Russian ”
Or this typical “North Russian”
:
http://s018.radikal.ru/i507/1712/de/ba95b0feaa1e.jpg
Anatoly, any thoughts on why Eastern European countries lag? It doesn’t appear to be related to lack of cognitive capital in my opinion. When you look at something like the International Math Olympiad, Russia is probably the 3rd highest performing country historically behind China and the United States. And on various other international competitions, my general impression is that Eastern Europeans do decently well.
Southern Europe, in my opinion, doesn’t seem to possess the same cognitive capital as Northern or Eastern Europe, yet the region is still decently more developed compared to Eastern Europe. Since China righted the ship after the disaster that was the Cultural Revolution and ignoring the obvious outlier case of North Korea, Eastern Europe has to be considered the biggest under-performer relative to cognitive capital.
I pointed out in an earlier comment that when you look at 3 countries of comparable populations, Russia, Mexico, and Japan, the fact that Russia is more comparable to Mexico than it is to Japan on so many country level metrics has to be considered perplexing.
We do have something like that: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/yaroslavl-brights-buryat-patriots/
Unfortunately, this being the military, getting permission to publish detailed results is not… straight forward. But it will probably be worked out.
I actually noted in my article that outside Moscow, Moscow oblast, and SPb there are substantial margins of error since typical sample size is 100-150, so results for any one region can’t be treated as very accurate. That said, they correlate very well with historic literacy and other tests (including the military data linked to above), so they are obviously quite valid.
As per above, results for any one Russian region are not very reliable. That said, one can venture an explanation. Moscow oblast gets sucked dry of talent by Moscow – there are very real benefits, including material ones, to living within the city boundaries, as opposed to outside them.
Tula has been one of Russia’s major armaments centers for the past three centuries, so is hardly a backwater.
First, China is more of an outlier than Eastern Europe, even today.
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/graph-iq-gdp-per-capita.png
Second, yes, I consider Communism responsible: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/our-biorealistic-future/
You can hardly reverse things in a year or even a decade. Around the late 1980s, the socialist world was at an “inefficient but stable” equilibrium at around 33%-50% of the high IQ developed world level. 1990s were wasted (collapse, transition); 2000s were merely about climbing back to their old relative positions.
If in another three decades Eastern Europe still lags the West like it did 30 years ago, then we could say there’s a big puzzle of underperformance. But that moment is not yet here.
You don’t consider very, very different labor intensity. Work load which is normal for the Japanese (Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese) – beyond wildest nightmares for the Russian .
Russian Koreans (which in Russia have reputation of workaholics) in South Korea could not withstand the local labour standards. About one Russian Korean I heard the following story: he had rich relatives in South Korea who invited him (providing a good position in the firm). The hero of the story escaped back to Russia with the words, “In Russia I have a three-month summer vacation, cottage, forest, lake and mushrooms, what the fuck I need to work like an ant in your firm”
This was once true, but it is now somewhat dated. Russians work longer than Japanese, and not much less than South Koreans or Mexicans.
“Americans.work 1800 hours per year, while the Japanese — 1780, and the Germans — 1440. But in this case, official statistics are not completely reliable, because a large part of overtime is not reflected in it. Work issued as a “voluntary unpaid work for the benefit of the company”. According to opinion polls, those who work more than 50 hours a week in Japan, almost 2 times more than in England, 8 times more than in Belgium, and 20 times more than in Holland. ..
In accordance with established practice, the Japanese employees at the end of the day do not leave their jobs until then, until the chief will not submit one way or another to signal that the overtime can be completed. To get up and leave early under the gaze of colleagues and superiors — that few dare. Except that aliens who have no fear in front of other unwritten laws…
In the spring of 1995 in the Tokyo district court heard the case of the suicide of 25-year-old employee of a large advertising company. At the hearing it was established that the victim had processed a monthly average of 147 hours. At 6-day working week, this means almost 6 hours overtime every day, including Saturdays. Since joining in April, in August, he often came home in an hour or two at night. In November — already four or five o’clock in the morning. In March of the following year he stopped coming home, staying overnight at work or in the nearest hotel. 10 days before the suicide, he admitted to a colleague: “to me something strange. I probably insolvent”.
The company has submitted to the court evidence that was interested in the health of the employee and provided some help. He was advised to go to the doctor, the company gave out coupons for a taxi, paid for the hotel, etc.
The only thing she could do is to reduce the amount of work..”
https://royallib.com/read/prasol_aleksandr/yaponiya_liki_vremeni_mentalitet_i_traditsii_v_sovremennom_interere.html#0
all the authors (known to me ) who write about countries of the far East say something like that . People who worked in Japan and Korea told me something similar. But maybe things changed.
Although Sakhalin Koreans (who do not return to their historical homeland, unlike Germans and Jews) seem to me living proof of the difficulties of life in South Korea.
Thanks Melanf. So do you happen to know the rationale (mythical or otherwise) for many Neo-Nazis siding with Ukraine against Russia?
I don’t know why but this has been the general pattern since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Southern Europe lagging behind Northwestern Europe and Eastern Europe even further behind, with parts of the Balkans in the latest positions.
In terms of per-capita GDP this was the case at the end of the 19th Century and this continues to be the case today. Nothing much has changed in relative terms, except for Ireland that has gained a lot of ground but is only a nation of 5 million inhabitants.
This long-term stability of the relative progress of the different European regions suggests that there may be some permanent factors at play. As Anatoly says, Communism must have reinforced the relative lag of Eastern Europe but a quarter of a century is a pretty long time and not all Eastern European countries suffered the same difficulties in the 90s as the former Soviet Union. Czechia has already achieved a per-capita GDP similar to the most prosperous Southern European countries while Poland is still well behind: again, a return to the relative positions of the late 19th – early 20th century.
Perhaps some cultural/behavioral factor unrelated to IQ?
In Ukraine the neo-Nazis (in Alliance with local oligarchs) seized power in the country (and got the opportunity to form their own troops).
This is kinda my thought process as well. It seems likely that some of the same things that held China back, i.e. Communism, affected Russia as well. On the other hand, although China isn’t quite at a first world developed level, from the extremely low starting base it began at at the end of the Cultural Revolution it’s clearly made major strides over the past 25 years or so. Hence my comment about China having righted the ship.
Russia on the other hand seems to have gone backwards since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Its science output today is negligible and I believe even lower than what it was at some 15-20 years ago. My general impression has been that Eastern Europeans in general, but Russians specifically are smart people, especially in quantitative areas. Russia does fairly well on competitions like the International Mathematics Olympiad or the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. It’s usually up there with China and America among the top 3 countries in these sorts of quantitative competitions. Which is why its stagnation seems somewhat puzzling. I made a comment earlier that Russia compares more to Mexico than it does to Japan on many major national metrics, yet if you look at Mexico’s performance at the IMO, it’s been historically mediocre, as has been the performance of most Southern European countries.
Yet Eastern European seems to lag countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal, despite in my opinion clearly superior cognitive talent.
Well, according to Lynn & Vanhanen there isn’t much of a difference in IQ among European countries, especially if we exclude the Balkans, and Italy actually scores high in that and other data sets that I’ve seen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#/media/File:National_IQ_per_country_-_estimates_by_Lynn_and_Vanhanen_2006.png
But I don’t know how accurate these estimates are. I would tend to agree with you that people in Northern Europe appear to be smarter on average than Southern Europeans but I also suspect that there are other factors at play besides IQ. And, leaving Communism aside, China would be a good example of how a high IQ genotype does not translate to economic success per se. The very low starting point was already there before Mao.
Thank you for this link for reading. I’ll have to use Google Translate, but it looks excellent.
Because of this, numbers with decimal points in IQ, reduce the information value of maps.
Anatoly,
Any idea why Kaliningrad’s average IQ is so high? AFAIK, the ethnic Germans were basically wiped out/expelled from Konigsberg. Was the region primarily resettled by party elites or military types or some other “cognitive elite” subgroup? 102.8 ain’t low…
-CK
This is probably correct.
This type of IQ-nerdism is pretty extreme, particularly when taken to the provincial level.
1) Correlation is not causation. If you had a time machine and went back to the 19th century, and demanded that peasants (in Russia, in this case) take the test, most would show up with an IQ of 50 or so, even if they are genetically the same population as today. They just have not received the requisite schooling, and are not in the habit of test-taking. The same would be true if one when to America circa the 1780s.
2) The question Karlin never answers is how IQ accounts for economic growth. If a country (any country) experiences 3%, 5%, or 7% real GDP growth in a year, did the IQ of the country rise in 12 months? Since the answer is ‘no’, this complicates the oversimplified notion of ‘IQ maps’.
The point here is that may countries with IQs of 90 today have the same per-capita GDP that countries with 100 IQ had 10-15 years ago.
Since 2010, China’s GDP per capita has grown 100%, India’s about 80%, and Russia’s about 15%. Did the IQs of each country rise by that amount?
Curious to see how strongly correlated it is with prosperity of the regions, suggesting a social influence as much as genetic.
That is obviously the bigger factor than genetic. Mainly due to the GDP per capita growth rate point in my comment #41 above.
IMO Russia just doesn’t have the hardcore respect for education and the scholarly class that China and the rest of East Asia do. Both Russia and China were (and are) negatively impacted by Communism, but their respective national characters have remained rather unchanged.
The relative importance of civil and martial skill is reversed in China respective to Russia.
Russians have a strong cult of national defense. Their historical experience makes it so that being able to do math or business always comes second to being able to — on a moment’s notice — go to the recruitment office and receive your marching orders.
Chinese by contrast have respected civil refinement over martial strength since at least the time of Confucius. Chinese are able to fight and die in large numbers for their country, but the cultural status of these heroes is about on the same level as peasants.
It takes more intelligence to be a teacher or a businessman than it does to be a good soldier, so Chinese people overall, no matter what their social class, try to teach their children to be smarter and sharper lest they be stuck in the village forever. If they can’t study well then at least they will try to go into business. But low-class Russians are fine with drinking, doing drugs, or otherwise not working or improving themselves.
There is also more intact patriarchy in China which indirectly provides young Chinese with a better educational environment.
It was one of the main problems of Russia in the past. But now the education in Russia is highly valued. Of course you need to compare statistics, but most likely in modern Russia education is valued no less than in China.