One thing you start noticing when you read commentary on Russia long enough is how the same discredited tropes arise again and again. Zombie-like, they refuse to die.
In 2011, for example, there was supposed to have been a “sixth wave of Russian emigration,” in which disillusioned Russians were said to have finally had enough with Putin and were bolting for the exits en masse. Perhaps this was so in the fervid imaginations of the RFERL staff, but in the real world, as proxied by things like numbers and records and statistics, Russian emigration had long collapsed to almost insignificant levels. All the Russians – actually, Jews and Volga Germans, for the most part – who were ever likely to leave Russia had already done so in the 1990s. As such, they picked an exceedingly bad time to come up with this “Sixth Wave of Russian Emigration” fable.
Incidentally, Nikolay Starikov’s deconstruction of how this myth came to be, translated by yours truly, remains a highly relevant case study in how the Western propaganda machine against Russia works: Russian liberals misrepresent or outright invent figures which are quoted by ever more “authoritative” sources and are eventually picked up by and broadcast by a MSM which doesn’t care for elementary fact-checking whenever Russia is concerned.
In 2014-2015, this particular myth is getting resurrected – articles on this have appeared in the RFERL (again), the Guardian, The Diplomat, the BBC, Business Insider, and most recently – in the Washington Post, in an article by Vladislav Inozemtsev on the “self-destructing” Russian economy.
Net emigration from Russia rose from 35,000 people a year from 2008 to 2010 to more than 400,000, by preliminary estimates, in 2015.
Finally! Some actual, concrete numbers are brought forth, which is a positive change from the typical pattern of quoting anecdotal individual cases (e.g. what a tragedy for Russia to have lost those intellectual giants Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Masha Gessen).
And at first glance they do not look good and actually appear to support the anti-Putin narrative.
But then we notice a strange thing: Immigration has grown in tandem with emigration. (Figures for 2015 here and below are based on the first 10 months of 2015 relative to the same period last year).
Well, surely it must then be the case that all the bright young Yuropean Russians fleeing Putin’s regime and getting replaced by Uzbek street cleaners, right? Right??
Wrong.
The increase in immigration to the (much poorer!) countries neighboring Russia has if anything been bigger than the increase in emigration to developed Western countries.
If you honestly believe that Russians are escaping Mordor to earn their keep in the cottonfields of the Fergana Valley then you will believe anything.
Even Russian emigration to Ukraine has soared. Apart from Masha Gaidar and a few hundred Neo-Nazis who to their horror are now realizing that they have outlived their usefulness to the Maidan regime, there are probably fewer real Russian emigrants to Ukraine than the number of times Poroshenko promised to sell his chocolate factory in Russia. It is self-evident that the increase in emigrants to Ukraine – from 19,000 in 2013 to a projected 44,000 in 2015 – was a function of the much greater intensity of border flows in general i.e. an approximate fourfold increase in recorded Ukrainian entries into Russia.
In contrast, the number of Russian “exits” to the countries of the so-called Far Abroad – especially the three that have traditionally accepted the most Russian immigrants, Germany, the US, and Israel – show much more modest increases between 2011 (the absolute nadir of Russian emigration according to official Russian statistics) and 2014. Germany: From 3,815 to 4,780; USA: from 1,422 to 1,937; Israel: From 977 to 1,139. Moreover, based on available statistics for the first ten months of 2015, the number of “exits” to all three of these countries fell by around 10% relative to 2014, and are now merely at the level they were at around 2008 (i.e. the very peak of Russia’s 2000s economic boom!).
Moreover, there is a very obvious reason for the “spike” in Russian emigration that did occur: A banal change in bureaucratic definitions. Here’s a summary from one of my commentators:
Briefly – in 2011, Rosstat has changed the way it counted migration – only those registered at an abode (a specific address) started to be counted for the “official” number. “Unofficial” number became very large because in addition to the above, those registered for 9 month+ stay in a particular place (city or town) started to be included. Before 2010, the number of incoming migrants was counted as those registered at an address plus registered at a place for 12+ months.
In 2012, a brief experiment with counting only those registered at a particular address was discontinued. The only reported definition in 2012 is the same as the “unofficial” definition in 2011, but year-to-year comparisons are done, as far as I could see, with the “official” 2011 results. This explains huge discrepancy.
The case for an Nth Wave of Russian Emigration (n=7) is now looking really weak, but one rejoinder that was made even during the n=6 period was that the countries receiving immigrants tend to keep better statistics than the country sending them. And besides, Tsar Putin wouldn’t exactly want the world to know that everyone is trying to flee his tinpot kingdom.
So let’s look at statistics from countries that receive Russian immigrants.
Canada is a a rich country with democracy, rule of law, and a climate that would be familiar to Russians. Not the worst place an exile could go to. It has never given out many permanent resident permits to Russians, and that number dropped to a record low in 2014, the year when Russia-West relations went south (the Israelis actually got marginally more permanent resident permits in 2014).
The US gave out 7,502 Permanent Resident permits to Russians in 2010; 8,548 in 2011; 10,114 in 2012; and 10,154 in 2013. (The average during the 1990s was around 45,000 a year).
Steve Sailer can write what he wants, but current Russian emigration to the US is ultimately very small scale. It’s worth pointing out that in per capita terms, Germany is getting as many Permanent Resident Permits as Russians, and Poles are getting them thrice as frequently. Russia accounts for less than 15% of the European total, and Europe as a whole gets 10% of the global total. Although DHS statistics only run to 2013, I see no evidence things changed cardinally in 2014 or 2015. As for illegal Russian immigration to the US, it has always been negligible.
Finally, here are some figures from the OECD’s International Migration Database in relation to inflows of foreign population by Russian nationality.
We do see a substantial uptick in Russian emigration into OECD countries in the early 2010s. This was primarily a matter of more Russians coming to Germany, which reached 31,000 in 2013. Even allowing for a further rise in 2014, however, it would only take it back to the levels of the early 2000s, and would remain quite modest in comparison with emigration from Germany’s Eastern European neighbors. The equivalent figures in 2013 were 190,000 for Poland and 60,000 for Hungary, countries with respectively less than a third and one fifteenth of Russia’s population. In other words, these are not the sort of emigration levels that mark a “brain drain” let alone create any noticeable detrimental demographic effect.
I do not intend to paint this as any sort of “achievement” on Russia’s part. To the contrary, low Russian emigration rates to the First World are explained at least as much by its lack of access to the Schengen free travel zone and poor foreign language skills as any success it has had creating opportunities and decent living conditions at home.
But facts are facts, and Vladislav Inozemtsev’s figure of 400,000 Russian net emigrants in 2015 are in the realm of pure fantasy. Russia’s total migration balance remains positive (whether that in itself is a good or bad thing is a debate for another day), so its number of net emigrants is actually negative. Even assuming this was a simple definitional mistake, I do not even see how he could have arrived at a total emigration figure of 400,000 even going by official statistics – the great bulk of which, lest we not forget, now essentially consist of tallying back-and-forth movements between Russia and its neighbors in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
What Inozemtsev means by “country of hope.”
Now to be sure, there are a lot of other tendentious arguments in Inozemtsev’s WaPo article. Contrary to what he implies, few people in Russia care much about the dollar value of their apartments since it has no relation to everyday economic life. His claims that the business climate has deteriorated are negated by Russia’s rapid rise in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings since 2012. His description of Russia in the 1990s as a “country of hope” that was attractive to investors is so utterly facetious that it is unworthy of further commentary. Suffice to say that by the end of Yeltsin’s reign even the Western media at large was begging to differ.
I would recommend Mercouris’ recent analysis of the Russian economy in 2015 for Russia Insider as an antidote, filled as it is with actual economic statistics as opposed to lazy ideological rhetoric and innuendo.
But the thing about his emigration claims is that they are just wrong on a direct factual level. One might think it remarkable that someone affiliated with Davosian-sounding institutions like the “Center for Strategic and International Studies” in Washington and “Center for Post-Industrial Studies” in Moscow would make such mistakes. Even more remarkable is that the Washington Post does not bother doing basic fact-checking.
But ultimately none of this is all that surprising.
Professional charlatans like Inozemtsev are a dime a dozen in Russia. They tend to participate or direct opaquely financed and “thinktanks” with these strange names in Moscow while being affiliated with other obscure thinktanks in the US and Europe. Publications like the WSJ and the Washington Post – the Guardian caters to the more “creative” types – solicit an article or two from them once a year, while in their day jobs they pump in neoliberal and pro-Western propaganda into Russia. Second rate bottom of the barrel Chicago School stuff that might have been fashionable in the 1980s but no longer gets any intellectual truck in economic debates in the US itself. But they continue to be wheeled out when it comes to debates on Russia because what they say, no matter how factually hazy or intellectually negligible, serves the purpose of giving an ideological backbone, and a conveniently pro-oligarch one at that, to the revolutionary Westernist opposition. Their aim is not to inform but to obfuscate.
What is perhaps the most terrifying fact of them all is that these people had a lot of influence in important Russian institutions all the way up until the start of Putin’s third term, from high level academia (the School of Higher Economics is a notable cluster) to the RIA state news agency. Inozemtsev himself taught at MGIMO in the 200s, a prestigious university specializing to churning out Russia’s diplomatic corps. That was when an effort was finally made to clean out the Augean stables of these agents of influence. Russia is not the dictatorship they universally proclaim it to be, so they remain free to propagandize all they want from Centers for Post-Industrial Studies or thinktank positions in the US or their media pulpits in WaPo or the WSJ or even Westernist Russian media portals like Vedomosti.
But at least fewer of them are now doing it on the Russian taxpayers’ dime. And consequently, more of them are doing it from overseas. But a few disgruntled aspiring revolutionaries does not an nth wave of emigration make.
“an effort was finally made to clean out the Aegean stables of these agents of influence.”
You probably meant to say “Augean stables”, unless that was a clever pun which I am missing.
AK: Thanks.
The depth of depravity of the western media is not terribly surprising anymore. The lies are so brazen and prevalent that in terms of Russian coverage I always assume that the opposite must be true. Served me very well so far. Kudos to the author for the tedious work of unveiling the real picture.
“This was primarily a matter of more Russians coming to Germany, which reached 31,000 in 2013.”
I imagine a significant number of these were ethnic Germans.
It would be interesting to know how many Russians of German descent are left in the country.
394,138 according to the 2010 Census.
This is versus 842,295 in 1989 in the RSFSR.
You are correct that a large fraction of Russian emigrants to Germany probably remain ethnic Germans.
By now they are almost all “ethnic Germans” less than half of whose ancestors were German and who do not speak a word of German.
http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/?p=509
Because of his cultural background, van Creveld has trouble seeing things from beyond a trade perspective. Russia doesn’t need to export industrial goods. It needs sufficient domestic industry to support its defense capability. Autarky supports resilience.
Another article that is supposed to “not to inform but to obfuscate”.
Is not it the same van Greveld that has disgraced Israel with his infamous pronouncements re the murderous Samson Option? Very humanistic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
“We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”
Putin is hated by Russian Muslims and not by Russian Jews. The American Jewish Lobby played a major role in the Jewish exodus from Soviet Russia in order to replace Palestinian Natives. There are over one million Russian Jew settlers in Israel and the West Bank.
Let’s not forget that first Bolshevik Russian government was 80% Jewish.
Since WWII, successive Russian governments have armed India and Israel against their neighbors.
In May, 2014, Scottish writer and author William Dalrymple during an interview at CNN had called Modi an Indian Putin. Well, Indian Muslims knows Narendra Modi’s long history of Muslim hatred and massacre in Gujarat state in 2002.
http://rehmat1.com/2015/12/28/putin-meets-twin-modi/
Note to author: while the first chart depicts emmigration with a green line, it is depicted with a red line in the next chart (and immigration is depicted with a green line). It would be helpful if emigration were depicted with the same color in both charts. Just a suggestion.
Did you mean to write: “The increase in emigration to the (much poorer!)…”
The numbers and the graphs are irrelevant. The fact is that the Russians who can are leaving. I do not know how many Russians emigrated in 2011 but I met quite a few new arrivals just in Vancouver alone. They spoke good English and three of them worked as IT administrators. What was interesting was the fact that even though they had left Russia for a better life they would defend their former homeland anytime somebody said something negative. I suppose they did not realize the irony. I suppose you belong to the same category. To hear somebody who emigrated himself trying to ridicule the fact is disingenuous. If Russia is so great why don’t you move back to defend it instead of doing it from the comfort of western living standard. Talk the talk and walk the walk or keep quiet.
{By all historical logic Russia, or the Russian Federation as it pleases to call itself, is doomed. The disintegration may well start with the thirty percent of the population who are not Russian. Against this historical trend, not even Putin’s attempts to shore up his country by flexing its military muscle is likely to be of much avail.}
According to CIA Factbook:
Ethnic Russians in RF: 77.7% (2010 estimate)
Jews in Israel: 75% (25% Arabs) (2013 estimate).
The prediction that Israeli van Creveld makes for Russia will come a lot sooner for Israel. When US runs out of money to prop up the little country, it will go bankrupt and implode.
And about the time US runs out of money to throw away, Arabs will most likely be majority in the formerly Jewish state. Either way pretty rich for an Israeli to predict the demise of country like Russia.
I came upon this article in NYT
“Swiss Question Use of Malaysian Sovereign Fund Run by Prime Minister ”
-http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/30/world/asia/swiss-question-use-of-malaysian-sovereign-fund-run-by-prime-minister.html?ref=world&_r=0
This is the same Swiss who lodges the ill gotten money from Russia and from India,Nigeria,Congo,Pakistan and houses them in US-proof vault . West including UK is the favored destination of the stolen properties from around the world . Russia’s demonization has got a lot to do with its attempts to stop the flow and to retrieve the properties . Any negative reference even body smell or facial look or the birth of the neck will do. Migration is seen same way .
But what is equally profitable is the hold the Swiss or through the Swiss. US and UK have got over those who have stolen the money and perked it in Swiss vaults . They can always be found corrupt at the discretion of Swiss government ( by mostly free court unless Swiss government wants it to be not free depending on the context ,need of the government) and can be threatened with confiscation of the money and deportation to the country of origin unless these looters support the causes of the Swiss AKA, US or UK. So these looters be one western pawn and player in the destruction of the mother country . It is the best Ponzi scheme ever invented . Because a nation can be indicted and threatened by the west if the country decides to act against these looters , very few dare to ask Swiss government unless they oblige Western interest in some other fashion.
Lantos of California exactly did that for the fleeing Russian mobster known as Oligarch.
Rest of the neocon friends took up the cudgel against Russia .
What about the silence of the Swiss people ,citizen ? Why don’t they hold their leaders responsible ?
But I guess that is a different question .
“…from the comfort of western living standard. Talk the talk and walk the walk or keep quiet.”
1. This is a free world
2. What is it wrong with pointing out towards the aggressive lies and propaganda on MSM? (Or as you wrote, “The numbers and the graphs are irrelevant”?! )
3. There are the Greeks and Irish and Italians that would have been offended by negative stereotyping of their nationals in no less degree than the former Soviets. Or you think that opportunism is the king of the land?
“To hear somebody who emigrated himself trying to ridicule the fact is disingenuous.”
It is not clear what you mean as “fact” in the above statement. The author, Anatoly Carlin, has actually took the efforts to demonstrate the falsehood peddled by Washington Post (and other Billingcats).
I apologize to others for reposting, but here is a former professional journalist and author of a bestseller,”Bought Journalists”, exposing the massive propaganda of falsehood directed towards the country that has been trying hard to pull herself out of the terrible economic and political crisis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adz-cLDZGBU
http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
{If Russia is so great why don’t you move back to defend it instead of doing it from the comfort of western living standard.}
Good question.
Then why are 6 million American Jews defending and supporting Israel from the safety and comfort of US, instead of moving to Israel and joining their 6 million or so kin in that great little Jewish country ?
And why are all those people in e.g. UK and Germany who are used to the comfort of western living standards immigrating to US * ?
{In 2014, Eastern Europe accounted for 44 percent (2.1 million) of all European immigrants in the United States (see Table 1). Western Europe (960,000) and Northern Europe (931,000) accounted for 20 percent each, followed by 16 percent from Southern Europe (775,000).
The top five countries of origin were the United Kingdom (679,000, or 14 percent), Germany (583,000, 12 percent), Poland (424,000, 9 percent), Russia (391,000, 8 percent), and Italy (357,000, 8 percent).}
What is your point?
The German Consulate in Saratov closed about 10 years ago as applications had dwindled to nothing. Most of those who stayed were older or very russified. One works for me. The biggest group is 80,000 in Engels. I cannot explain the peak in emigration by anything I know about the Volga Germans. The oil biz was already sinking but not much.
I need to do some blogging. I have a paper on the working age population which references immigration. Russia needs to attract a LOT of immigrants to maintain GDP.
You either get the point or you don’t
You don’t.
You are raggin on Mr. Karlin for living in US, and debunking the propaganda and disinformation being disseminated by anti-American scum.
I gave you several factual counter-examples proving that Mr. Karlin living in US is a non sequitur.
So that you really get the point: all these filthy Neocon warmongers are working against the interests of the American people. Nothing they do or advocate benefits the overtaxed, abused American taxpayer in the least. American people and Russian people have no quarrel.
None.
Our peoples are or should be natural allies.
If not for the vile interference of anti-American foreign agents who have infested our Federal Government.
It’s the un-American, anti-American warmongers and foreign agents that are agitating for war, by spreading lies about Russia and President Putin.
Authors like Mr. Karlin are debunking the Neocon MSM lies.
Hopefully I was able to make my point this time.
And again: THANK YOU Mr. Unz for providing a platform where anti-American shills of the MSM can be debunked and shouted down. God willing, some day the filth will be flushed out of America.
PS: these lines were written by real American patriots.
I challenge you to compare the Neocon scum you so admire to them.
[Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.]
Thomas Jefferson.
[It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…]
George Washington.
I get it now. By disputing the emigration claims he is debunking the propaganda and disinformation being disseminated by anti-American scum because as we all know it is the anti-American scum that is spreading disinformation about the levels of emigration.
I am sorry for being dumb but what does this fact has to do with the levels of Russian emigration.
These facts have everything to do with the tenor of your post where you questioned Karlin’s integrity and where you informed the UNZ readers that “The numbers and the graphs are irrelevant.” This is obviously a wrong forum for you.
Right.
You are not dumb: judging by your posts, you are quite smart.
You just pretend, because you cornered yourself, and can’t find a way out.
You criticized Mr. Karlin thus:
{If Russia is so great why don’t you move back to defend it instead of doing it from the comfort of western living standard.}
I gave examples of American Jews living in the safety and comfort of US, yet supporting and defending Israel unconditionally.
I gave examples of Germans and residents of UK (English, Scottish, etc) emigrating into US, and living here (2014).
No different than Mr. Karlin (…or me).
Yet Mr. Karlin, being a Russian, is advised by you to move back to Russia.
Not the Germans. Not the Brits. Not American Jews.
Just the Russian.
You criticize Mr. Karlin because of your bias against Russia and Russians.
And that illogical, irrational bias, sometimes hatred, of Russia and Russians has been carefully manufactured by un-American and anti-American 5th columns whose goal is unrestrained, endless wars, endless chaos, endless bloodshed in the world. All of which is of great benefit to their geopolitical goals and pocketbooks. None of which is of any benefit to the American people/taxpayers. All of which is accomplished at the expense and blood of American people.
Ex: $2 trillion of American taxpayer money wasted in Iraq; about 4,500 mostly young Americans dead; 1,000s wounded and maimed for life. Where is the benefit to people of America?
And again I challenge you compare what anti-American Neocons advocate to what genuine American patriots advocated.
How did I corner myself? Of course Russians are not the only ones who emigrate but they mostly emigrate for economic reasons, something you cannot say about the majority of Germans or Britons. What Anatoly doesn’t like is the implication that Russians emigrate because of the economic, or other deteriorating aspects of Russian society. He tries to convince us that Russia is doing just fine. Well perhaps Russia is doing just fine if you live in San Francisco. I would be more inclined to believe his praise of Russia if he actually lived there. As far as his criticism of US is concerned I know way too many foreigners living there who curse US policies on a daily basis but do not mind enjoying the affluent lifestyle which is the result of those policies and against these I do have a bias.
@Then why are 6 million American Jews defending and supporting Israel from the safety and comfort of US, instead of moving to Israel and joining their 6 million or so kin in that great little Jewish country ?
But why are so many Russian-Israeli Jews (all former “refusniks” who left Russia because “it could not go on like that anymore”) flocking back to Russia and Ukraine (100,000 in 2005).”Oleg Rostovtsev, a spokesman for the Jewish community, which has 50 000 parishioners, supports the renaming of Dnepropetrovsk to Jerusalem-on-the-Dnieper”.
Or (perhaps more ominous):
“Western European Jews fleeing anti-Semitism are welcome to take refuge in the Russian Federation, which is “ready to accept them,” President Vladimir Putin told a visiting delegation of Jewish community leaders on Tuesday.
In an exchange with Dr. Moshe Vyacheslav Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, in the Kremlin, Putin reacted to reports of stark increases in anti-Semitic violence by stating that Jews “should come here, to Russia. They left the Soviet Union; now they should come back.”
In response, Kantor called Putin’s proposal “a fundamentally new idea” that he plans on raising for discussion among European Jewish leaders at the EJC’s upcoming general assembly, adding that he hopes they would support it.
Kantor also came out in favor of Russia’s involvement in Syria, where it supports dictator Bashar Assad, stating that the congress “decisively supports the actions of the Russian Federation against Islamic State.” @http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Putin-calls-on-European-Jews-to-take-refuge-in-Russia-442175
It is true that Putin thinks that they might be settled in Birobidzhan!
There is always a missed point about Russians living in America. Alaska. The first Europeans to set foot in Alaska were the Russians. The first Orthodox Church in America was initially Russian, in Alaska. From a canonical point of view the whole territory of America belongs to the Russian Church. It became a diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. By the late 19th century, the Russian Orthodox Church had grown in other areas of the United States due to the arrival of immigrants from areas of Europe and the Middle East. Many of these immigrants, regardless of nationality or ethnic background, were united under a single North American diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. It remains so, despite the turmoils and splits which followed in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Russian Church in America is in the process (a lengthy one, admittedly) of remaking its unity.
A very interesting development is the recent appeal of the indigenous peoples of Alaska and Hawaii to the international community through the United Nations with a request to ensure their right to self-determination. In the address, the representatives of the peoples of Alaska and Hawaii urged UN members to raise the issue on May 11th in the framework of the consideration of the UN Council on Human Rights of the periodic review of the human rights and freedoms in the United States, according to TASS.
The appeal emphasizes that the sale of Russian Alaska to the United States in 1867 did “not mean the transfer of sovereignty over Alaska to the United States” and the “US invasion of Hawaii in 1893 was a violation of bilateral treaties and international law.”
“The territory of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959 were absorbed by the United States through deception and deliberate breaches of the mandate and UN principles, and the process of self-determination”, – stated the document.
Residents of the two U.S. States urged the UN “to fix the mistake” and use peaceful means to achieve a referendum for the self-determination of Alaska and Hawaii. For a more effective action in this direction, even set up a joint working group – “Alliance of Alaska-Hawaii for self-determination.”
“They’re taking our land and are mining mineral resources in huge quantities, causing damage to the environment. We believe that the Russians can help us. The year 2017 will mark 150 years since the sale of Alaska by Russia to the USA. If we could, working with the Russians, provide the truth about what really happened in history and to reject the distorted concepts about Alaska and our people, I think it would be a good way to rectify the situation,” – said the representative of Alaska in the working group “Alliance Alaska-Hawaii for self-determination” Ronald Barnes to the meeting in the Swiss press club in Geneva….
In an interview with TASS, Barnes stressed that Alaska and Russia have a lot of common in history, culture and religion. “I am Orthodox”, he said in Russian. Continuing in English, he said that many of his relatives have Russian names and Russian words are used, for example, “handkerchief” and “oil”. “We believe that the Russians could help us, said Barnes. “The year 2017 will mark 150 years since the sale of Alaska by Russia to the USA. If we could, working with the Russians, provide the truth about what really happened in history and reject the distorted concepts about Alaska and our people, I think it would be a good way to fix the situation.” According to Barnes, Alaska could become “a neutral state lying between Russia and the West”.@http://fortruss.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/alaska-and-hawaii-ask-un-to-recognize.html
I came to the West with my parents when I was 6 in 1994 i.e. during Yeltsin’s period that you probably worship.
Thank you for your suggestion. May I offer one of my one? Follow your own advice as regards my blog.
Yet you believe the propaganda and disinformation coming from the MSM in the west, staffed mostly by people who aren’t Russian and who have never been there. And you prefer this to Anatoly’s informed commentary using empirical evidence? You sound like another MSM victim.
In all fairness you did not have a choice at the age of six but you do have a choice now. As for me I live right in the middle of Eastern Europe with Russia as my next door neighbour. There is a growing feeling of dissatisfaction with deteriorating economic situation, corruption, and a feeling of betrayal by those who were promising a better life if only people abandoned socialism.
That’s usually why I find the Israelis the Jews I can actually understand and identify with, even if I find them aggressors and oppressors.. They prioritize their nation first. I recognize that.
If I were one of them, I would want my leaders to have Dayan’s attitude.
I’m not one of them, but if my own nation were under existential threat I would expect my leaders to take the view that the survival of our nation were their only priority and, if it could not survive, I certainly do not care about the survival of enemies, neutrals, or anyone else nearly as much.
Then again, I was once in a class on ethics of warfare in which I was literally the only one of thirty or so students in favour of the old ‘shot from the grave’ position in nuclear strategy. Our prof was also a Christian pastor and looked a little perturbed, though he maintained equanimity better than anyone else. He was at least willing to countenance a perspective in which universalist Christian humanism was not the main paradigm.
Twenty years on, I have mellowed on many such issues. But not that one.
[right in the middle of Eastern Europe with Russia as my next door neighbour]
A geographical impossibility.
One of the definitions just for your benefit.