New Levada poll shows Russians decreasingly willing to identify Russia as a European country:
From 52% in 2008 (vs. 36%) to 29% in 2021 (vs. 64%).
However, perhaps even more tellingly, this percentage goes DOWN with age.
Just 23% of 18-24 y/o’s identify Russia as Europe, vs. 33% of 55%+ y/o’s.
Could it be that young Russians just have a self-hating “racist” vision of Russia as an oasis of “Asiatic barbarism” (and other Western tropes) while considering themselves to be “cultured Europeans”?
Nope, doesn’t appear to be the case either.
Speaking of themselves personally, 23% of 18-24 y/o Russians identify as European, vs. 31% of 55%+ y/o’s. That is, virtually the same figure as they give for Russia the country.
This suggests that anti-Putinism, which does become more pronounced at younger ages (though not really reaching any kind of solid majority), is not necessarily interlinked with increased Occidentopholia.
(This would make Russia unlike both the Ukraine and Belarus in that respect).
My own personal take is that Europe is for the most part a constructed identity. “Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong. Europe is a geographical expression.” – Bismarck.
However, to the extent that it exists, obviously Russia is far closer to it than to similarly constructed/artificial “Eastern” or “Asian” identities.
That said, it is often the more closely related cultures and nations that have the most acrimonious relations, and that is especially true with respect to modern Russia/European relations. With some minor exceptions in the Far Left and Far Right, who tend to use Russia as a blank canvass for their frustrations with their own regimes, Europeans and Americans are deeply hostile to Russia and Russians. Moreover, despite a much greater degree of economic policy convergence – the USSR is long gone – the cultural/values gap between Russia and the modern West of SJWism and CRT is arguably greater than during the Cold War. A degree of “social distancing” from them (in the current lingvo) and what passes for modern European identity is the optimal policy.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Commenting rules. Please note that anonymous comments are not
These data are consistent with the recent “Russians are POC” designation by one of US universities, funny that.
In the past being “European” implied being world conquering superpowers with excellent culture and philosophy
Now it just means being liberal and gay
I wonder how much this has to do with perceptions of Western Europeans being pozzed and how much it has to do with feelings about about what the true nature of the EU is.
Not to mention allowing an adult male refugee to sleep in between you and your wife. Remember those Guardian articles about refugees in England?
The survey clearly lacks the answer option – “I’m not interested in such nonsense”
and on the topic-the perception of Europe in Russia
https://zvetnoe.ru/upload/catalog/2018/10/VL09.jpg
Yet the Western liberalism still conquers the world, through cultural victory rather than the barrel of a gun. See the latest example out of Asia.
Polls I’ve seen of Turkish youth shows that despite almost 20 years of Erdogan, they are not more religious and by all measures are more liberal. Same trends can be seen in Saudi Arabia (recently began to allow women into the army).
China is losing the race, too, with the government haphazardly trying to create cringe “masculinity” classes for its boys. Gay marriage will be legalised in India within a decade, at most.
Rightoid fantasies aside, the world we live in is becoming increasingly liberal. A common mistake is to presume nationalism is inherently illiberal, but there have been many kinds of liberal nationalisms in the past. Indeed, German nationalism was often accused of being liberal in the 19th century for erasing local identities and promoting a homogenous vision with fewer differences. French nationalism was most definitely liberal post-revolution. So I think we may see more nationalism in the future, but that doesn’t preclude more liberalism at the same time. Socially, the mores all over the world are becoming less strict.
But do Russians see themselves as whites? Or do they like to think of themselves as diverse Turkics?
I am German and I came to Russia first in 1985 from China. I was studying Chinese in Beijing university. In the dormitory for foreign students there were students form all over the world. As I had noticed already in North America (Canada and the US where I had spent part of my childhood) Europeans all have something in common. In North America I could spot children of immigrants after a few minutes. They might talk perfect English and certainly looked indistinguishable from people who had been many generations in the States but still there was something unmistably different.
At the dormitory in Beijing there were Russians and Americans. The Russians had something which is called Bildung in German. They had an allround education and immediately grasped certain concepts which their more narrowly educated (and more specialised) American colleagues didn´t understand.
Naturally I gravitated to the Russians. They were EUROPEANS. They also had a sense of the tragedies of history which the more fortunate Americans utterly lacked.
I was a young man when I came to Beijing and I found the lack of freedom in China terrible. In fact I cannot conceive of a less free society as China then. Everybody belonged to a Danwei called collective unit and they knew when, how and if you screwed your wife. And of course whether you used contraceptives.
After a year in China I knew that I would never devote the rest of my life to a country that epitomised tyranny, the total effacement of the individual. I broke of my studies and breathed a sigh of relieve when I entered the Transsib that brought me back to Germany. Later I studied Russian and worked there as a journalist. I can say with absolute conviction that culturally Russia is Europe. It is the politics of the West (and especially the US) that created the disenchantment of Russians with Europe. We will all lose because of it. The Russians – who cannot stand alone – have had to enter into a devils bargain with China and Europe will not be able to keep her civilisational achievements asshe bows to the US. Finis Europa
All identities are constructed – including the Russian one. Identities merge, change meaning and entirely new ones spring up all the time throughout history.
It is more fruitful to look at where most of Russia’s population is geographically located. By such measure, they are unquestionably European. As long as Europe remains a collection of subcolonial puppet states of the US empire, any rapproachment would be nigh on impossible. But over the longer term, if Europe ever grows a spine (big if), and truly severs the imbilical cord to the US empire, then there is a natural convergence between the two.
China may provide geopolitical cover for Russia but the economic benefits outside of colonial-style trade patterns are miniscule, as detailed in other threads. Given Chinese isolationism/mercantilism, I doubt that will meaningfully change. That leaves aside the fact that Russian culture, especially High Russian culture, has next to nothing in common with Asia.
You do realize the former and latter are actually contradictory.
Our host agrees and needs gibs
I’m not actually sure if it is just a question of “spine.” From an economic perspective, Europe doesn’t seem to be very innovative anymore, largely missing out on the major gold mines of software technology, digital e-commerce, electric car manufacture, etc. One way to see it is that the US is a leader, Asia is a fast follower and Europe is…no idea really what they’re doing tbh.
This isn’t universal, of course. Nokia was a leader in handsets, SAP was and may remain dominant in the realm of ERP software, and Airbus remains impressive, but there’s a very real sense of stagnation to me.
Without economic dynamics, any bargaining power is much reduced.
For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
Russia is better than Europe. Huge, brash, and full of resources. Much better than old buildings and quaint coffee shops.
Seit 1985 hat sich viel verändert.
You are welcome to think of us as mindless ants. Europa may be overran one day by the barbarians, and there will be only East Asians who are left to preserve the civilization of Bach, Beethoven and Kant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1prweT95Mo0
I have another view of liberalism. I think that there is natural level of it, and unnatural level.
I believe that current levels of it, in some countries, may be unnatural.
It is possible it is the same as communism. When there were powerful backers of it, communist activity was widespread in the world, and working class vs the rich was the central debate of times.
When these powerful backers dissapeared, or changed tune, communist activity mostly disappeared too, or was much more marginalised. Thus, now we live in a world where working class vs the rich is not the central debate of times, even though inequality between rich and poor has increased significantly.
Instead, liberalism and identity politics has replaced class struggle. Why is that? Because the same powerful forces that were backing class struggle before moved onto liberalism and identity politics, seeing that the working class was too conservative or nationalist in many cases, to serve their interests.
What does this mean? That current levels of liberalism may be unnatural, and only exist because powerful forces are backing it. Without these forces backing it, liberalism levels will be lower, and will reach its natural level.
That is, many of those activities will disappear or be significantly weakened just like communism disappeard or was significantly weakened without powerful backers.
.
I am Canadian. I lived in Asia, where I regarded Europeans as fellow whites, if only because that was how the locals saw us. After this I moved to a country in Northern Europe and after a few months was shocked by differences. I left feeling that I was a North American and that for all our cheap chauvinism about them, Canadians were very much Americans.
Part of the shock was that Europeans were so superficially similar to us. There is a sense of respect for authority that they have that we don’t pick up because of this. Steve Sailer has a story about visiting west Berlin as a teenager and walking around at 4 am. He ran into a scary looking punk, safety pins, black leather jacket etc and was intimidated. Then the two of them happened to get to a cross walk and the punk, at 4 am in the morning, street deserted, obediently waited for the lights to change. Things like that were always happening to me.
Europe is to drop to about 10 % of the global economy compared to more than 50 % for Asia (with 5 billion people). It will be a much more marginal economic player in the future. Russia will be much more dependent on Asian integration in the future.
Even now, the top countries for russian tourists are now non-european. Trade is being reoriented towards Asia. Asian consulates in Russia overtook european consulates. I think you underestimate the willingness of russians to swim in an asian sea.
https://twitter.com/DarrenJBeattie/status/1372274983423127561
https://twitter.com/DarrenJBeattie/status/1372590457331593217
To me Russians always seemed like cousins of Slavic / Polish people. And Slavic / Polish people are definitely European.
I don´t believe Chinese are mindless ants. In fact I was and still am fascinated by Chinese culture and yes, Chinese music. Without the impact of Europe on China, China would have evolved much like she did all those millenia before. Take the Taiping revolution. Without European fire power the Qing dynasty would have fallen much earlier than she did and China would have entered yet a further stage of her civilisation. In some respects China was ahead of Europe back then. Sounds crazy, doesn´t it? Let me assure you that China had back then (and still had when I was there) the most productive agriculture in the world. Productive not in the primitive sense of industrial logic that is output per worker. Productive as in output per acre. An achievement bar none in the world. The writing of the Qing on agriculture fills libraries and they were looking for ever so small feedback loops in the natural world. Totally different from Europe where the thinking was purely cause and effect. It is a bit like comparing Chess and Go.
Anyhow the impact of Europe on China was terrible. It completely upended the ancient Chinese civilisational model and caused not only external but more importantly internal upheavals. China had to pull itself up by her own bootstraps if she wanted to survive and the price was terrible. There was no other way though and who knows where Chinese civilisation is heading in the future. Maybe my grandchildren will live in a China dominated world and wonder, what that thing freedom was that grandpa was always harping about. Maybe they will be totally happy. As to me I wouldn´t for any price like to live in such a world. And surely not the Russians who are at the moment more free in their daily lives than either Europeans or Americans. By free I mean being able to say what you think in public and go about your daily life unmolested by corporations or the government.
As to China I wouldn´t exclude the possibility that she will find a new balance and finally grant her citizens the kind of freedom Russians have. But I don´t see that at the moment. I see a new technotyranny that delves into people and their minds to an extent that would have gladdened Mao and which is even worse than what we have in the so called free West.
Russian culture is largely European. Semi-alliance with China or Iran is unnatural, caused by suicidal imperial policies.
In my view, the key to the disenchantment is that Europe seems to have lost its steam. In the past Europeans could have been perceived as mighty heroes who went all over the world, subjugated locals everywhere, including North America. Today Europeans appear to be spineless cucks lacking balls, obsequious powerless vassals of the US. Russia, both the government and the people, have balls and dare to do things that anger the Empire. Dignified policies are the only reason for Russian respect for China, Iran, Venezuela, and other defiant thorns in the side of deteriorating Empire.
Political aspect is also important. Many bad things can be said about ruthless US imperialism, but at least the US is trying to act in its own interests (or whatever its elites perceive as its interests, which is not necessarily the same thing). The EU, like Aussies, obediently follows the US dictate, often acting against its own interests. Naturally, the image of a stupid subservient slave does not inspire.
As Satanovsky (one of political commenters in Russia) aptly said, RIP Europe, we are going to miss you.
According to Hajnalists, slavs do not show very european behavior. That is, moving to the East of Vienna means gradually moving into “another” Europe. The more to the East you go, the more “uneuropean” it becomes.
Russians in particular are much more collectivist than Western Europeans.
https://imgur.com/a/jKPSAnX
Well said.
Btw i have lived among “europeanised” turks and i can tell you that these people are not european. That is, they do not behave in a european way.
You will see higher levels of nepotism, corruption, honor based violence (offending such people is more dangerous, and if you offend one of them or if your kid has a problem with some of their kids then the whole extended family (20 – 30 people) may come after you), more classical families where the old relatives live with the younger relatives, instead in elderly care homes, more clannish behavior (gangs), distrust towards outsiders, higher levels of ethnocentricity, etc. All the boys get circumcised. Cousin marriage. Its dirtier. Lots of satellite dishes and people who watch turkish TV. European locals leave such areas (white flight). Their properties are then bought on the cheap.
If you are looking for liberalism in non-european cultures i suggest you have a look at those who already live in liberal environment in Europe and you will not like what you see. And you wouldn’t want to live there.
Why is it I find myself thinking Europe and Russia could get along if only the USA was out of the picture?
Why does Eastern Austria rank so high on collectivism, are a lot of them Germanised Slavs?
I have no idea.
There is also an equal and opposite reaction in the Sinosphere towards those who are perceived as too obsequious towards Russia, or to much of a proponent of Russia-China alliance. The epithet used is
黄俄
Жёлтороссия
To the point that in the Anglo heartlands of Liberalism we seem to be seeing the gradual emergence of ‘Positive Liberalism’, Liberalism in its more prescriptive, authoritarian and narrow minded form. This is being accompanied by the rise of related but openly anti-liberal ideologies like CRT. Maybe what is being seen here is the beginning of some kind of decomposition of Liberalism from within.
Жёлтороссия initially was the Russian term for the Northern Chinese territories colonized by the Tsarist Russia in the nineteenth century. Harbin was part of it.
On this topic the values gap within Western countries around SJW issues and things like CRT is significant, I think unusually so compared to the past when there was a more genuine consensus around liberal democratic ideals. The consensus now has to be maintained via censorship and cancel culture, stuff like that.
The Rus are Vulcans with a romantic streak. Blunt, to the point, bored with emotion – when it isn’t called for.. but I’m an alien to Russian culture really – maybe that’s just my family and their friend circle.
Still, as an almost life long Londoner, it is a breath of fresh air to sit on a bench outside of Moscow and open up a conversation on whatever flows, and get thought rather than emotion from the other side!
This isn’t really unique to Russia, most British people don’t see themselves as European either, and that’s more or less equally true for both anti-EU and pro-EU types.
There’s arguably a type of pro-EU Remainer who would see themselves as European, but definitely would not regard the country as a whole as European and compare British culture unfavourably with the Continent.
The distinction I find is the children of immigrants, even with perfect English and totally immersed mannerism, tend to work HARDER/SMARTER than your average North American or European.
It’s how I know that Europe, US, Australia, Canada, UK, all these shitholes are not going to be white much longer. It seems like that is the plan. The original immigrants are shit but their kids will have both adaptations. The hard labour of the third world with the hard rule following of the first world.
Richer white people (you know, the ones that OWN the economy) would rather have 10 working non-white employees who seem to be Westerners in everything but skin colour than 10 white employees sitting at home collecting union-mandated pay cheques leeching off the economy. Growing fat to levels that would warrant suicide.
Yet when I try to explain this to people they get all pissy because truth hurts. Then they follow it up by illiteracy such as “muh white genocide”
The funny thing is in multiple settings (including a public hospital as an administrator) it’s the Eastern Europeans that fully abuse and take advantage of unions, labour laws, and other avenues in the hopes of getting paid without working. The irony that the shitholes these ‘people‘ come from don’t even recognize human rights, but they come here and DEMAND they get treated like kings.
Great response. Thanks.
That makes sense. Russia has the resources like natural gas.
The main thing that the unquestionably European nations have in common is Roman Catholicism.
The Orthodox nations of Eastern Europe and Asia can pass for European, sometimes easily, but they aren’t quite really European. That includes, of course, Russia.
Turkey is another interesting illustration of this. It’s almost Europe, and the Turks even look quite European, but it’s Muslim, and for all Ataturk’s mighty efforts (and the EU’s make-believe), it still feels more Arab than European.
People may correctly point out that half Europe is Protestant. But all of those nations were entirely Roman Catholic until about four centuries ago, and very deeply so in the case of England. The Protestant nations do feel different, but no-one argues that they aren’t Europe.
You are reifying the map.
It is a speculative map made by modifying outdated data (Eupedia map uses 2011 data whereas Hofstede’s last changes seem to have been in 2015, though to be fair to the map-maker it was current when made) compiled from IBM employees (corporate engineers/technology guys, that is to say, not necessarily a group representative of broad national psychological conditions).
Believing that Hungarians and Germans are/were concentrated in the northwestern border regions rather than in the centre of Romania, is of course also a bit embarrassing.
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/26956-Map-of-Individualism-(vs-Collectivism)
Examining the data we also get what would be strange results if we assume that a) the Hajnal hypothesis could be appropriately applied here and that b) the selection of subjects was a nationally-culturally representative sample.
(Individualism – high, collectivism – low, using only validated scores)
Croatia: 33
Russia: 39
Portugal: 27
Spain: 51
Italy: 76
Latvia: 70
Norway: 69
Switzerland: 68
Austria: 55
Germany: 67
Luxembourg : 60
Poland: 60
https://exhibition.geerthofstede.com/hofstedes-globe/
I am not opposed to collecting ethnographic data in general or ethnographic data on corporate work cultures specifically, but comparative cultural surveys ex. the strange World Values Survey Karlin posted about once should be evaluated in a realistic sense.
“Europe is the faith and the faith is Europe”
Belloc
I’ve always thought that the Church of England seems more like an offshoot of Catholicism than a truly Protestant church. In fact quite a lot of them even call themselves “Anglo-Catholics”.
Iran is Indo-European, so Iranian orientation towards the West is the historic norm. It may be Islamic, but its clearly not Arab.
Alliance with China is a choice between either them or India. As India has moved away from state socialism, it now has considerably better relations with the West. Indian irredentism is towards Pakistan, but its not improbable that Indian elites would like to plant another diaspora in Russia.
Gets me thinking about the 2nd and 3rd generation Stakanovite Pakistanis, Jamaicans and Somalis that can be found toiling in all corners of the UK these days.
Are Russians white, Christian, originating on the west side of the Urals and North of the Caucasus? Isn’t Moscow supposed to be the “Third Rome?” It’s much easier to discuss these things when you’re not bowing down to shitlib idiocy.
Actually, Russia and the USA could have had better relations if it were not for the Eternal Anglo.
If Europe is an identity where is the language of such an identity? What’s the “European religion”? Masonry? I can talk in Italian, Spanish and English and I know something about Russian. I can´t talk in “European”.
Europe as a concept imposed by Brussels’s nomenklature is simply… trash.
Yea, they have enough excess population to plant a sizable diaspora in every country.
There was a joke in the USSR about Sino-Soviet war.
Chinese military leader reports to their Politburo:
Day 1. We surrendered 100 million as prisoners of war.
Day 2. We surrendered 200 million as prisoners of war.
Day 3. We surrendered 400 million as prisoners of war. Let them figure out who is whose prisoner.
I wonder if these means that Russians wouldn’t identify as white? Given that European and White are intertwined, would Russians put “Asian” down on an American census?
Also I wouldn’t say the fringe ramblings of some campus SJWs are the “modern European identity”.
LOL. You are going back so far in time that the terms Caucasoid and Mongoloid loses their meaning, much less Russian and Han.
That region is so close to both The Great Game and AA-Linie that no one dare takes it lightly.
Its not like you guys didn’t try take it back, Reds and Whites together no less. Incidentally that contributed to Chiang’s overreaching and defeat in Operation Ichigo, and later against CCP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ili_Rebellion
We Wuz Changz
Maybe add in the Eternal Ronin too, they still want the Kurils back.
Also I wouldn’t say the petty ramblings of some blue haired campus SJWs define modern European culture.
No one in Western Europe really likes woke or SJW ideology.
Depends on how you define liberal. The likes of Carl Benjamin (anti-woke) describe themselves as Classical Liberals.
Moscow and SPB have more than their fair share of old buildings and quaint coffee shops.
What makes you think it’s a given? A lot of perfectly white Americans, Canadians, Aussies, New Zealanders, and apparently even Brits (see comment #37) won’t call themselves Europeans.
Russians do identify as whites, and put “Caucasian” in the US census. But they won’t kneel in honor of BLM bandits. The ancestors of most Russians were slaves (indentured peasants). Russian indentured peasants were freed in 1871, the same year American Civil war started. If I blamed my problems on the fact that my ancestors were slaves 150 years ago, other Russians would consider me a hopeless loser, and they would be absolutely correct.
Nein, nein, nein. Das ist so ein flaches Verständnis, dass ich nicht antworten werde.
Wie hat Deutschland reagiert, als sich herausstellte, dass die Kanzlerin Telefon abgehört wurde? Ja, gar nichts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_mistreatment_of_Soviet_prisoners_of_war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG#Compromised_machines
Ist dies der liberale Wert, von dem Sie sprechen?
These people were Europeoid. The Europeoid populations actually dominated Central Asian steppes until the Kuchans were defeated by the Hephtalite Huns allied with Sassanian Persians. It was fifth century CE.
The earliest Mongoloid culture in the Steppe was the Okunevo culture.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pJ4T5An3s8g/V7nJDKeE9VI/AAAAAAAA8rs/fb6cw1gVLB03lCqkYtR8ziGDFlj1n97_wCLcB/s1600/Okunevs-culture%2Bstones.jpg
While your Mongoloid brethren in Southern Siberia were drawing these funny monsters, the Europeoid R1a people in the now Chinese territory of the Shaanxi province produced these types of ceramics:
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/AX9X9P/neolithic-chinese-pottery-hong-kong-museum-of-art-hong-kong-china-AX9X9P.jpg
Which might nearly be mistaken for the Cucuteni Tripolye ceramics of the neolithic culture which flourished in modern day Ukraine a bit earlier.
http://www.danel.com.hr/images/ik507548cc.jpg
In fact these both types of ceramics, found thousands of km away from each other are so similar that when placed near each other they are often impossible to distinguish and separate.
https://i0.wp.com/cucuteni-trypillia.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Cucuteni-yangshao-1.jpg?resize=768%2C509&ssl=1
https://i1.wp.com/cucuteni-trypillia.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Cucuteni-yangshao-2.jpg?resize=768%2C488&ssl=1
Interestingly, in the neighboring province of Gansu, around the same period, the Majiayao culture produced also very similar ceramics. Han Chinese population in Gansu is still around 15% Y haplogroup R1a today. That is after some 5000 years.
That might have been a coincidence, if not for the Y haplogroup R1a found in the burials of both cultures and the millet cereal which was the basis of the subsistence of both populations. Basically, we are talking about people who had the same patrilinear descent, but the mothers of the Majiayao and Yangshao culture people were mainly Mongoloid, hence they were already Eurasian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majiayao_culture
Now, if we move to Xinjiang, the Uyghurs are around 35% Y haplogroup R1a and 25% Y haplogroup R1b. More than 50% of the male Uyghur people are of Western Eurasian descent.
Closer to our days, if the USSR would have wanted to seize Eastern Turkestan from China in the 1940ies it would have not been a problem for the Red Army that steamrolled the Japanese Kwantung Army in a matter of a couple of months. The same Japanese Kwantung Army that terrorized the poor Han Chinese for decades.
Don’t forget who freed your land from Japanese Imperialism. Display gratitude and respect to those who vanquished your enemy and gave you back your lands that your ancestors have lost in their times of weakness.
Harbin, Dalin (Dal’nyi) and the neighboring areas were retrocessed peacefully by the Soviets to Communist China with all the buildings, military and civilian infrastructure and equipment given free in a brotherly manner.
For you people only to turn against USSR in the 60ies and the 70ies and backstab the Soviets in Afghanistan hand in hand with the CIA and ISI.
But you’re right, let bygones be bygones.
I don’t see what taking the knee to BLM has got to do with Russian identity. Many Western Europeans and white Americans are against BLM aswell, especially those on the right.
VW is ahead of any other legacy car maker in the US on EVs. Tesla is a pioneer (I’m a big fan) but their lead has dramatically shrunk and will continue to shrink in the coming years. Sales numbers are evident of this. They only really dominate in the US market. In China, NIO/Xpeng and others are catching up. In Europe, the legacy carmakers have essentially caught up. Unlike in the US.
I’m agnostic at best about the effects of ecommerce. To the extent that there is any innovation coming from those firms, it tends to be non-ecommerce related (e.g. Amazon’s custom silicone chips for AI) where ecommerce is merely the engine that produces the profits to pursue such ventures. But such progress can be seen in other commercial areas as well as univerisities.
I agree on digital services, but this is largely related to what I wrote about earlier. Europe essentially allowed itself to be colonised by US firms. If you want to build world class firms, you need to have scale, and it needs to start domestically. Crucially, firms need to be protected from the hegemonic US firms. China understood this early, which is why it protected its domestic market in a way that Europe just did not.
This dilemma is related to India as well, which is why the current government is wisely putting up various regulatory barriers for outsiders. Hence, US firms are increasingly teaming up in de facto joint ventures with their Indian partners, e.g. Facebook’s tie-up with JIO. Europe does lack the spine to do this, most of the harassment is tax-related but little else. So yes, it goes back to this question. China could never have built their hegemons without a walled garden. And India is realising the same thing. Flipkart was bought out by Walmart and Amazon has prevented any local competitor since. With Jio’s entrance into this space, India is determined to prevent a repetition of the same mistake.
Europe did not protect its firms the way China did, nor did it sufficiently create an enabling framework (goods exports are still subject to much more liberal rules than services across Europe). India made many of these mistakes early on too but are reversing them since a few years back, and this is inevitably causing a lot of tension now with the US empire. China never made these mistakes but in fact pursued a hard-nosed industrial policy for internet firms, protected them zealously, and has now reaped the benefits. It isn’t more complicated than that. In other words, you confuse innovation with industrial policy.
Russians, on the right, left, and center, have nothing but contempt for BLM bandits and cucks taking the knee to them.
That’s kind of true but it’s not western liberalism (which is basically healthy) that is triumphing but American liberalism (which is very unhealthy indeed). American liberalism is more of a bizarre Christian heresy than actual liberalism. American liberalism works in practice like a crazy religious cult. American liberals resemble fanatical religious cultists more than they resemble European liberals.
Others have labelled this aggressive form of liberalism, ‘hyper-liberalism’. Whatever it is called, we are seeing the contradictions of the post-Enlightenment play out in real-time. Hopefully, we will come to realise that each nation must have an overriding ethos propagated by a dominant ethnos and an ethno-centric elite male within that ethnos and everyone else must in some way accommodate themselves to their worldview. Not everyone can be fully emancipated.
That’s a lot of self back-patting, but inaccurate to the situation of the Japanese.
KMT was doing quite fine by the end of WW2. Soviet intervention played kingmaker for Mao, but did not determine the defeat of the Japanese. By 1940, the war has already was increasingly a war of attrition that the Japanese would likely not survive (thus ultimately motivating their entrance into WW2). Their forces in China after WW2 were pretty much bogged down and ultimately collapsed after their supply situation worsened further.
The vast support of the Communists world determine the winner of the Civil War, of course.
We will see, I suppose. VW is impressive in that they do seem to be making an entrance, but I have a feeling that Telsa will remain ultimately dominant due to their brand and genuine innovation. It is, of course, possible for Telsa to fumble the ball due to their long and persistent quality problems.
I mean, one can argue that a healthy e-commerce segment heavily promotes the Just In Time industries as a whole, but I think it just concentrates a lot of capital and that in itself is valuable as it can be used for reinvestment, such as Amazon’s really dominant SASS offerings now with AWS or Steam just basically executing their wipeout(Valve is the most profitable company per employee in the US!). Thiel’s Zero to One is a significant influence on how I see the world, and having monopolistic profits allows for moonshots. That’s a lot of Google’s philosophy, of course, and so we’ve seen a lot of failures e.g. NEST & Stadia, but its also why Google is a leader in artificial intelligence. Indirectly it also has positive network effects for others nearby: Google glass hasnt’ quite taken over the world, but I think Vuzix just might get a respectable chunk, and the infrastructure for smartglasses wouldn’t have existed without Google Glass.
There’s an argument for this(and I’m generally supportive of Listian economics, which makes a lot of sense), but by and large, I don’t really see Europe seeing themselves as a single economic entity in a way that allows them to put up regulations in such a manner. If individual companies are encouraged to defect, so much more would individual nations. Off the top of my head, for example, I know that France has been putting up a couple of lawsuits against Steam, but its unlikely that it’ll be an unified EU front on something like that.
But yes, I do agree that innovation is a function of economic policy. I just disagree if Europe is capable of implementing such an unified economic policy, and I think the cause of that is more elaborate than just “spinelessness,” but more to do with the nature of individual nations with independent politics having more independence on their policy than any single nation(like the USA) would.
China basically ruled its part of the world. So did Persia. So did Russia.
Alright, alright. In 100 years time, we have another great Eurasian War between Greater China and Baron Ungern von Sternberg’s Russo-Mongolian Empire, and we see who wins.
Winner claims Central Asia (including Tibet), all of East Siberia, Inner and Outer Mongolia.
The isolationist and peaceful Federacione del Norte Americano will sit peacefully on the sidelines, working to integrate Columbia.
After defeating the Japanese in Burma, Chiang’s Nationalist Army was already steamrolling the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) which had been ceding territory and hastily withdrawing from China in the last year of the war in 1945. Remember that the Soviet Red Army invaded Manchuria on Aug 9th AFTER the US military had dropped the atomic bombs on August 6th and 9th on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, which ‘forced’ Hirohito to surrender on August 15th. Without the CCP’s control of Manchuria made possible by the Soviet invasion, the Japanese Kwantung Army would have surrendered to Chiang’s Nationalist Army which would then have proceeded to prevent Mao’s CCP from occupying Manchuria. That would imply a victory by Chiang over Mao in the Chinese Civil War which would have turned the Republic of China against the USSR during the Cold War.
If Japan had NOT invaded China, the Japanese would have invaded the Russian Far East as they were allied to Nazi Germany. The fact that the Chiang’s Chinese Nationalist Army tied down 80% of the IJA in China meant that Stalin didn’t have to worry about fighting a second front against the Japanese in the Russian Far East during WWII. Ask the Europeans what happened to their Western colonies in Southeast Asia after the Japanese launched a second front against them in the form of the Southern Campaign in December 1941.
The Soviets needed Communist China as a bulwark against the USA in East Asia when the Cold War started after WWII. Both the Soviet Union and Communist China became allies in 1945, split up in 1960 and then patched up in the period (1985-1989) before the Fall of the USSR. Mao didn’t betray the USSR; that was Deng who started supporting the Mujahideen rebels in 1980, just one year after China had established diplomatic relations with the USA in 1979. But China did patch up its relations with the USSR during the Sino-Soviet Rapprochement of 1985-1989. Please don’t blame China for the Fall of the USSR which was hastened by Gorbachev’s Perestroika/Glasnost policies.
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/183/sino-soviet-rapprochement-1985-1989
You bet.
The English Reformation was, in much of the country, very unpopular, and it nearly came to full-scale civil war; a number of rebellions and uprisings were crushed, with much blood shed, before it stuck. Indeed, English anti-Catholicism is one of the great triumphs of state propaganda and educational corruption, three centuries before Gramsci.
Anglo-Catholics are regarded with a mixture of bemusement and suspicion by their fellow Anglicans and Catholics alike. They are a little like the Orthodox, wanting Catholic Christianity, but without the Pope.
They are not very numerous — like John Henry Newman, they occasionally become actual Catholics, and recently a few of them were peeled away by the Ordinariate. The remainder are the immovable core, God bless them. They are sometimes trotted out to show what a very big tent Anglicanism is, but otherwise ignored or kept out of sight.
As our friend, Thulean Friend, likes to say, “statistics are our friend.” And the statistics don’t bare out this claim.
Not surprisingly, if one wished to talk up the productivity of Chinese agriculture, one wouldn’t highlight the woeful productivity of collectivized agricultural labor, but even in terms of agricultural yields (“output per acre”), China wasn’t any kind of world leader in 1985 (the time period presumably referred to by “when I was there”).
If we consider the three main crops, maize (“corn”), rice and wheat, numerous countries had yield’s greater than the China’s in 1985, and most of them achieved those yields much earlier than the year 1985.
China’s averages for the years in1984-1986, yield (kg/hectare) and total production (tonnes)
Maize 3,760 – 69,643,000
Rice 5,313 – 175,711,000
Wheat 2,982 – 87,888,000
(Averages are preferred to single years because crop yields are subject to significant fluctuations based on weather conditions.)
A non-exhaustive list of countries that produced globally significant totals (based on being a top 25 producer) of any of the named crops who beat Chinese yields over 1984-1986
Bulgaria
Maize 4,530 – 2,397,000
Wheat 3,667 – 4,076,000
Canada
Maize 6,016 – 6,552,000
Egypt
Maize 4,677 – 3,664,000
Rice 5,710 – 2,330,000
France
Maize 6,253 – 11,514,000
Wheat 5,967 – 29,411,000
Germany
Wheat 5,915 – 14,176,000
Italy
Maize 7,126 – 6,476,000
Japan
Rice 6,320 – 14,661,000
Mexico
Wheat 4,203 – 4,829,000
Poland
Wheat 3,636 – 6,657,000
Spain
Maize 6,256 – 3,122,000
United Kingdom
Wheat 7,001 – 13,642,000
United States
Maize 7,100 – 209,758,000
Rice 5,987 – 6,155,000
Yugoslavia
Maize 4,754 – 11,246,000
Wheat 3,663 – 5,076,000
All stats taken from the Food and Agriculture Organization’s database, faostat; averages calculated in Excel.
Focusing on (somewhat mystical) natural feedback loops (themselves still subject to the laws of cause and effect, of course) didn’t matter much back when yields were almost completely reliant on the quality of the soil as it was found (great soil, great yields; shitty soil, shitty yields). But eventually much maligned European cause-and-effect thinking went on to make a huge difference.
This is not quite true. Most people in Russia (like most people in any country) have no interest in history or culture at all. If we measure the relative interest in the history/culture of China (that is, compare the interest in the history of China with the interest in the history of England, Germany, etc.), then there is a significant interest in China. Another thing is that the cultural tradition accumulated over centuries is Eurocentric. Whether this changes or not depends on the success of Chinese cinema / literature
Here is an illustration for my favorite book in my childhood (about Shi Huangdi and Jing Ke) – “the story of the great wall” by Olga Guryan.
https://libmir.com/i/26/152026/i_040.png
But in Russian literature this is a rare exception
Your statistics is misleading. It only shows one crop per acre. But Chinese traditional agriculture relies on an ingenious mix of animal husbandry and different crops through the year. In 1985 China was desparately poor and had to make due almost without artificial fetilizer or pesiticides (which aren´t sustainable on the long term anyhow). Still with the smallest agricultural acreage per person she managed to feed herself. Farming anyhow wasn´t collective by then anymore. (The reforms of Deng Xiao Ping)
I will give you an example from the Pearl delta where a friend of mine studied rice cultivation:
Nonsensical western agricultural statistics don´t even begin to show the sheer ingeniousness of traditional Chinese agriculture.
Finally a quote from Wikipedia:
Although China’s agricultural output is the largest in the world, only 10% of its total land area can be cultivated. China’s arable land, which represents 10% of the total arable land in the world, supports over 20% of the world’s population.[22] Of this approximately 1.4 million square kilometers of arable land, only about 1.2% (116,580 square kilometers) permanently supports crops and 525,800 square kilometers are irrigated. The land is divided into approximately 200 million households, with an average land allocation of just 0.65 hectares (1.6 acres).
These things can be relative, especially today.
For example in much of China small businesses are free from protection rackets or from having to bribe the local “big men” to operate.
In China today (at least the Han areas not covered by various insurgency acts) if you start filming a policeman doing his duties, his reaction, mandated by law, is to face your camera and quickly recite “My name is X my rank is Y I am doing Z. You have the right to film this situation, but if you edit the footage in any way you will be prosecuted.”
Likewise, unless there’s an obvious hostage situation or anything of this magnitude, the Chinese police can’t just break into your home. You have to open the door yourself.
With 60-70 million communist party members out of a population of over 1.3 billion, the non-political 95% of the population are just doing their things. They’re not marching in columns or undergoing mandatory self-criticism sessions.
Even the social credit system itself, as of this year, is still in a vastly different shape than imagined by most outside observers.
https://zen.yandex.ru/media/raysikh/socialnyi-reiting-v-kitae-kak-eto-na-samom-dele-rabotaet-6016ed8b7fd0a5390f5d1dee (this will need online translate from Russian but is worth it)
What they do have is western-style cancel culture paralleling official censorship–if a celebrity says something “bad” (for example that some historical tragedy wasn’t really that much of a holocaust), they’re dropped by everyone instantly, and when possible scrubbed from existing vids and pics.
Today Russia and China are different from the 20th century in many identical respects:
1) Borders are open
2) Internal movement is free
3) Work choice is up to the worker
4) Private initiative is OK
5) Owning foreign currency is OK
6) Reading, watching, or listening to anything is whatever
7) Dressing like a slut or a fag is fine
What Russia has and China doesn’t, is political pluralism, but if you ask the West, Russia is only pretending to have it as well.
Again you with your Nordic racial fantasies, Indo-Europeans of Tarim Basin were more related to modern day inhabitants of Afghanistan and Tajikistan than with the modern day Europeans.
Here is a mid 7th century Tang painting of a man from Scythian Kingdom of Khotan.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/%E4%BA%8E%E9%97%90%E5%9C%8B_Yutian_Khotan_in_Wanghuitu_circa_650_CE.jpg
See? Turkic migrations to Altishahr had not yet even started in that period.
Living in a dream world, are we? How pathetic for a Slav to believe in old Anglo-German racial theories.
Here’s a Khotanese painting from 7th century.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/British_Museum_silk_princess_painting.jpg/1280px-British_Museum_silk_princess_painting.jpg
See, do you see? Are those Germanic or Slavic facial characteristics?
Catholic history always amuses me, mix of statist propaganda and educational corruption, actually Protestantism took very quickly because Lollardy was dominant in most places already. There was no war like the French Wars of Religion, indeed the brief and unstable rule of Bloody Mary was quickly reversed.
Wasn’t Putin extolling BLM, blacks are oppressed in America and going on about American Indians being exterminates in America in his Biden comments? Low grade SJW, ex KGB stuff I am afraid. Of course all such comments could be applied to Russia(blacks, Siberian peoples). The smarter choice would to have talked about the persecution of Trumpists after the election or the real, not imagined, restrictions placed on Whites in America, the one group that is actually amenable to better relations with Russia.
I agree identifying as European doesn’t change whether one is European or not. For Russians, or indeed English, or even Swedish, Europe is at times just seen as that landmass over there from which trouble arises from. The attempt of the EU to monopolise European identity, and impose values with their origins in Jewish far left thought as being somehow defining of Europe, further complicates matters.
This just shows that people are dumb & inarticulate.
The real question is whether you belong to the historical European civilization and identity, or any other civilization. European or Western civilization has four pillars:
Christianity
modernity & rational spirit in past 400 years, especially after the 18th C Enlightenment
white race, Caucasians
There are core lands of this (France, Italy, England, Switzerland, Germany,..) and those on the edge. Russia is Europe’s edge. The US is a continuation of European civilization.
Other areas defined by historical religious cultures are not European, although they reside in Europe- for instance, Muslim Albanians. Islamic culture lands do not belong to the Western civilization (they have their own distinctive traits); far east also is different; Africa is also not a part of it; Hindus and Buddhists certainly are not.
Evidently, Latin America is a mixture- whites there, who identify with things listed above, are Europeans settled around the world, while Mestizos are not.
Being Christian is also not enough, because black and Arab Christians don’t have that memory-emotional link to Greece and Rome, or to the spirit of the Enlightenment.
So, Europe is a state of mind plus population genetics.
Only in 1945 did KMT forces start winning against Japanese, or how Operation Ichi-Go did go in 1944? In 1945 Japan’s economy and navy was in tatters, their supply lines were cut, Japan was extremely weak, it’s no big deal if Chiang made some victories against Japan in such a late stage of war.
Without huge American and British pressure it’s possible that Soviet Union would not had declared war against Japan. Also Soviets gave lots of help in form of arms shipments, advisors and natural resources to KMT in their war against Japanese invaders.
But overall you are quite right.
Agree with a lot that except America is no longer European, and it is a big mistake to still think that they are.
https://i.imgur.com/CDg8Dae.png
‘Гейропа’ (‘Gayrope’) slur started to appear well before 2014.
(there’s also a spike (not shown) around 1820-1830 but that’s probably an artefact of OCR :))
Doesn’t that have more to do with political beliefs than cultural identity?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/%E4%BA%8E%E9%97%90%E5%9C%8B_Yutian_Khotan_in_Wanghuitu_circa_650_CE.jpg
It is curious that the Japanese of the last years of the shogunate drew Europeans in the same way
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Anonymous%2C_The_Black_Ship_Scroll%2C_1854.jpg
I am not saying that America/US is European as a whole. It has never been (Indians, blacks). You have to distinguish between ideology and civilization. The US is, re defining factors, a country of European heritage:
That goes for visual and music arts. It still is the Western tradition.
science & reason-check. Whichever idiocies are taught in schools, they are framed as a continuation of philosophical, scientific & legal thought originating in Europe in past 400-500 years.
Christianity- check. Christianity as a culture completely permeates the US, from calendar to holidays to way of life, normative ethics and legal systems.
What non-whites want, feel, know, communicate … is another thing.
Yes, Southern and Eastern Austrians are genetically predominantly of Slavic ancestry. In fact the capital of ancient Slovenians was in modern Southern Austria and Graz means small town in Slavic dialects. Of course, it’s complicated because part of the genes in the east could be Hungarian, as Hungarians are genetically also mostly of Slavic ancestry with only a few percent input of ethnic Huns (well, I mean it’s obvious – do Hungarians look ethnically Central Asian to anyone??)
So yes, Germanized Celts then germanized the local Slavs. (the original Germanic peoples are Scandos and Northern Germans, the rest are mostly Germanized Celts or in a few cases Slavs).
Agree but with some comments/caveats:
Parts of America were settled prior to the adoption of the Enlightenment and maintain pre-Enlightenment Protestant values. Anatol Lieven’s book abut American nationalism highlights this, quoting a Scotch-Irish US general during the Iraq war, Boykin: “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was the real God and his was an idol.” This was compared to Cromwell’s “God of Warre.” Lieven observed that British, French and Russian officers often enjoy elements of the post-Enlightenment 19th century (Britshave a passion for horse breeding, apparently); this American stuff is rather alien.
If not for Peter I’s efforts, Russia would be about as European culturally as Armenia or Georgia.
Mestizos are half-European, speak a European language and follow a European faith. There may be pre-Enlightenment strand to them (albeit of the Catholic sort, not the Protestant one in the USA’s Appalachia).
Mexican Baroque:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD6b7yt5y8A
More:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2upDFVdCc&list=PLoyaHqWXSqF16uG_va1SjnetmQ-4slSIJ
So, basically, most of potential emigrants are about the temperature ….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKlHKH2iFo4
I am not talking about fringe issues, nor about atypical elements, nor about frog perspective.
Latin whites & light Mestizos are, of course, Western or European. Indians and dark Mestizos, who don’t identify with European heritage are not. Bolivian Indians are not “Europeans”; neither was Pancho Villa.
As far as Puritans go, they are part of history. Western culture was fully crystallized in the 19th C, and Puritans’ descendants, whatever they may have thought, are of European Western heritage in all respects.
Heck, I certainly stopped considering myself European. As a matter of fact I believe we (Serbs, but also others in similar predicaments) should carve out their own civilizations, and make them as distant from the existing ones as possible. Fuck ’em, all they do is give you globohomo.
Skipping that, I do believe that there are 2 Europes. Neo-Europe (aka the West) and Paleo-Europe. Eastern Europe, despite being much “younger” than western Europe, seems closer socially to the ancient societies of Greece, Rome and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, Neo-Europe is just Germanic tribalistic genetic libtardism with an antique veneer that’s slowly being torn off due to that genetic libtardism. And it’s what’s considered “Europe” today. Note that the med nations despite being in the western sphere are very much Paleo-European, therefore based.
Some guy on twitter proved this – something about how civilized (and mountain) peoples are more stress resistant and brachycephalic. Meanwhile the average westoid can’t handle simple banter without breaking down into hysterics and being mortally offended, like the pansies they are.
TLDR: It’s not the Jews, it’s not whatever scapegoat of today, it’s those God-damned barbarians.
This “If not” is meaningless, since there were many points in history when “If not” would mean that history would have gone on a different path, and there would not have been Europe as we know it. It is necessary to compare what is in reality, and not what would be ” If not”.
By the way, Armenians and Georgians will probably say that their countries would be the same Europe as Switzerland if it did not happen “If not” (the Ottoman Empire will most likely be mentioned later)
Armenians & Georgians are also Europeans, whatever one may think. They fulfill all the criteria.
And culture or collective identity can have three, say, gradations, circles, stages, … identity-wise: eso/inner, meso/middle, exo/outer.
Inner West is France, Switzerland, England, Germany,…
Middle West is Poland, Greece, Romania,…
Outer West is Ukraine, Russia, Armenia, …
And there are possible mixtures as regards historical periods etc.
“Not West” are most Syrian Christians, as well as Bosnian Muslims.
There you are.
I don’t see similarity, but then to me Asians look very different from each other, just like Europeans.
You are absolutely wrong. Until Corona I lived in Mongolia where I met many Chinese and Mongolians who were doing business in China. I am in the tourism business myself and knew tour guides leading tours in China as well as going to China myself.
As you probably believe official Russian channels your picture of China is much to rosy. I also travel a lot in Siberia and know for a fact that there is unease among the general population regarding China. The demonstrations in Khabarovsk were at least partly caused by anti-Chinese feelings. Therefore official channels will do everything to present a rosy picture. In Krasnoyarsk for instance it is a well known fact that local vegetable productin is by now in Chinese hands. Officially they return to China in the winter but in reality they stay. Locals know that and resent it.
Anyhow back to China: I read Russian and can confidently state that the Russian internet at worst is no more censored than the internet in the West but probably less. If you want to you can easily get access to a Sim card without revealing your identity. It is maybe not quite legal but really simple. At least it was that way when I was there last in November 2019. You can access any kind of information if you want to. Skype, Youtube, Facebook, Google i.e. websites the government doesnßt control work-
In China you have to register your phone; your identity is established by biomarkers. If you post something on Weibo on any critical subject you will be quickly found out and punished. Skype, Youtube, Facebook, Google don´t work. In fact employees from German companies refuse to go to China as they can´t access their local news anymore. Let alone contact their friends by Skype.
On the Chinese internet there´s a huge database of forbidden terms and these terms get expanded all the time. As AI censure has limits there ´s also an army of censors who are watching in real time what people are posting. As soon as a new critical trend is appearing the database of forbidden terms is updated.
I agree that if you keep your head down and never utter anything strictly forbidden you can go about your business as you want. But if you want to get ahead in any big organisation (all big companies have party cells who can veto any decision by the CEO) you have to become a party member and then you are subject to even more stringent controls. Then is is not enough anymore to keep your head down. They load the collected wisdom of XI Jin Ping on your smartphone and then measure the time you stare at it. You also have to show that you have understood and read whatever official wisdom is spouted. It is not like a party conference of old where you just had to stay awake. No, you have to type in something and the better whatever you type in is judged the better your valuation.
Finally and this is strictly personal: already 8 years ago I spent two weeks on a reconnaissance trip in the Chinese province in Inner Mongolia. A travel company from the US had asked me to. I can´t help it but I am a political person and so I brought up topics like the forced settlement of Nomads, environmental degradation a.s.o. I am old enough to remember the USSR and East Germany. I never, ever met there the kind of fear that I met in Inner Mongolia. Since then things have become much worse.
By now the fear has spread to Mongolia. Ever since the Ukraine crisis has forced Russia into the arms of China the Chinese pressure on Mongolia has increased. People there will not talk about certain things on the phone anymore.
And finally about Russia: probably you don´t know or don´t care that Chinese pressure is already being exerted in Russia herself. Not only is the Dalai Lama not allowed into Russia anymore to visit the Buddhist Buryats and Kalmycks; under Chinese instruction the FSB is also putting pressure on Buddhist students who go to India for religious instruction. The end game is clear: once China has mastered the military – technological areas where Russia is still ahead the tables will be turned.
Europeans, but not like the Swiss, because for various reasons they were isolated from the “main” Europe
Well, such a Russia would still be deeply Christian but you are correct in principle.
???
Ukraine was heavily influenced by the centuries spent as part of Poland and is thus more central than Armenia or Russia. And post-Petrine Russia is more Western than Armenia or Georgia.
Armenians and Georgians are Indo-Europeans but generally they don’t seem more “European” than, say, Lebanese Christians. The Chaldeans (Iraqi Christians) I’ve known in the USA behave a lot like Greeks or Christian Caucasians.
You are nothing else than a propaganda maker in the service of NATO, I have Russian Buryat, Mongolian Mongol and Inner Mongolian Mongol friends living in Inner Mongolia of PRC, and I have visited multiple times that region, and I have never met attitudes like that, some of my friends study there traditional Tibetan and Mongolian medicine, they are taught traditional Mongolian letters and literature in schools of Inner Mongolia, unlike in Russian federation or Republic of Mongolia, I have myself visited these institutions, talked with teachers and students, drank with locals, visited the countryside, visited Buddhist monasteries, and I’ve absolutely never felt that locals are live in fear. It’s true that there are quite a many Mongols who are chauvinist towards Han, or Han who think that Mongols are less civilised, but never I met with any fear that you describe among ethnic Mongols in Inner Mongolia. You are a lying scoundrel, only one thing is true, Mongols of Mongolia fear Chinese domination, just as Central Asian Kyrgyz and Kazakhs fear, but their countries are politically and militarily more aligned with Russia. Though Inner Mongolia is majority Han, the Han live mostly in cities and have a horrible TFR unlike Mongols who live in countryside, the Han TFR in Northernmost Chinese areas is oddly extremely low.
What the fuck are you talking? I’ve stayed and lived multiple times in those great Tibetan monasteries in exile in India where Buryat, Kalmyk, Mongol, Tuvan and Russian students come, absolutely no one of them has ever been contacted by FSB. I know dozens of them. What is your motivation with spreading such lies?
Here people you see the nature of our enemy, the endless lies and falsehoods, mixed with partial truths.
I think you are right. The Han Chinese “peaceful arising ” is nearing its completion. They will try the Imperial way after that. But they will most probably fail, because all around China people will band together against them.
Regarding China and Russia, I think that the Far East and Priamurskyi Kraj are probably already nearly lost for Russia. It was a neglected region since the Perestroika and the Chinese know that very well. The locals get economically increasingly dependent on China with every passing year. After the economic dependance, the political is bound to follow.
Perhaps the good folks in Vladivostok will one day vote on a referendum to reunite with the motherland China, from which they were unjustly separated by Moscow’s Imperialism. Of course it will be done under the friendly protection of Chinese “Green Men”. Then they will learn to be good Chinese citizens as the Uyghur are learning nowadays.
Georgians are not Indo-European at all. They are the direct descendants of the Neolithic Farmers that migrated into Europe.
You are right.
I think we have arrived a reasonable conclusion we can both agree to. I suppose my interpretation is less charitable than yours by terming it cowardice, rather than simply political preferences. Nevertheless, I am fairly skeptical of Europe ever doing the political work required to truly gain the network effects necessary for a Big Tech behemoth. As long as Europe is so splintered, with so many wills pulling in all directions, it can forget about any global champions of any note, in any field.
Well, well our Russian “nationalist” once again repeating state department propaganda.
Hilarious nonsense.
Problem is, if you ask Western official or MSM about anything, you get a lie in response 99 times out of 100.
Why should Putin talk about what even Trumpists are too cucked to talk about?
What does Russia owe to White Americans, the American racial demographic that is most markedly hostile to Russia?
Not so much state propaganda as the usual weirdo paranoia typically of WN adherents.
There’s always the chance that subsidies can pull it through; and I think Europe is trying, to some extent.
https://www.game.de/en/german-games-funding/
This amused me, of course along with https://www.game.de/en/diversity/.
Little surprise in the dominance of liberal wokeness given the amount of money that it gets. At the maximum fund here, its around 4 million dollars to support anyone who wants to make their next iteration of Praise for Wokeness.
Like the Baltics and Ukraine have become politically depend on Russia, Australia and North Korea have become politically dependent on China, etc.
Well, I cited lack of economies of scale as perhaps the most important factor in Europe’s lack of Big Tech: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/europe-cant-into-big-tech/
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ2_EX6-3HGJWceBbkUO2loZvu2sm7qbrZ1Tg&usqp.jpg
As someone who has visited Inner Mongolia and clearly looks like a foreigner, this is the gayest troll ever. I can’t take anything you say seriously after that statement.
Some of your past gems.
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/number-of-russians-preparing-to-emigrate-reaches-record-low/#comment-3586036
I can’t believe nobody remembers this guy, half of you have replied to his comments in the past.
Of course, unashamedly so, and it feels great.
But our Han friend above was writing something about the Chinese Communists and the Soviets disagreeing about Taiwan and the Chinese Communist backstabbing of the Soviets starting from that. AFAIK, Soviets helped both the KMT and the CCP, of course they helped the Commies more after WW2. Anyway, if one wants to use historical revisionism to back one’s claims to a potential future domination, one will always find (actually invent) useful narratives.
As the French saying goes: “Qui veut tuer son chien, dit que la pauvre bête a la rage“.
Re. Soviet intervention in the Chinese affaires in the 30ies – 50ies: no good deed would pass unpunished. The Soviets did a lot of good to the Chinese, but the proud Han imperialists of the 21st century will not care about it. The past is easily forgotten when the future appears so appealing and the urge to reassuring oneself is felt so strong.
Han Chinese are also human after all…
Especially this news https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/scientist-coronavirus-shot-target-cancer-76553722?cid=social_fb_abcn&fbclid=IwAR3vFoKgZMgDZfGjqr61cvnqI4qYGkDRdxb43Gzuf8fSicAvgmslOVObpUI
I agree that the Norks are a good example of staying independent under pressure. But Russians are not Norks.
Anyway, поживём увидим.
You clearly are implying that those lands belong somehow to Europids or to the white race, even though those Indo-Europeans who populated those areas were probably as different from modern Europeans as Iranian people of Central Asia nowadays are.
Those people were more genetically similar with Russians than with the Han, but then Punjabis and Bengalis are more similar to Russians than the Han, in other words you are trying to steal foreign cultures history for your own racially motivated dreams.
Red hair is extremely recessive, it’s possible that there were red haired Mongols in the past, just like there were lots of red haired Thracians and Celts in the past according to the writers of the Classical Era, but now its extremely rare to see red haired people in France or Bulgaria. My old Buryat relatives claim that there were red haired Buryats in some remote villages in the past and they have themselves seen such people, I don’t know, but they really say so, Buryats and Siberian people have some rare phenotypes left, it’s a fact, I have a cousin of second degree, Western Buryat, from Irkutsk oblast, and she is Asian woman with fair hair, also my Buryat Great Grandfather was an Asian man, but had grey eyes. Even in Europe red heads are slowly but surely disappearing.
I am all for European race, I have great respect for European people and culture, and I do believe that forced mass migration is absolutely wrong. But lies and chauvinism never help, Chinese turned extremely xenophobic and chauvinist in the 19th century, Chinese literati started to make stories how all European inventions were really invented by the Chinese of the past, and other such bs, did that help them? No Chinese lost their traditional culture, and are now slowly, slowly rebuilding themselves morally and spiritually as a nation, they really became too inward looking in the past and lost their capability to adapt and change, similarily Europeans will lose their power to change if they only gaze upon the achievements of the past.
Sorry about rambling, I’m somewhat drunk, and in company of my friends, who are now puzzled why I’m writing furiously on my phone. Oh well, I hope my thoughts can help little bit all people who believe in good, even Americans…
Europe tends to build better hardware than the Americans.
I mean Europeans (or Germans) build better cars that run on American OS.
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/number-of-russians-preparing-to-emigrate-reaches-record-low/#comment-3587296
And Erin Brokovich supplies the explanation: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/18/toxic-chemicals-health-humanity-erin-brokovich
Not much of a narrative, Japanese intervention in the Second Sino-Japanese War was triggered by the Mukden Incident arranged by junior officers – hardly the only major conflict triggered by actors not high in the political chain. Japanese documents(I remember going through quite a bit in John W. Dower’s War Without Mercy) show that they were pretty aware that getting into endless, ever escalatory wars was unsustainable for their population level. Of course, there ultimately wasn’t much they could do given the basically dysfunctional culture of the military at the time, which wasn’t even cooperating with each other.
https://qr.ae/pGXXG3
In terms of direct support, my family(and the KMT as a whole) was much more affiliated with Germans, with significant cooperation well before the war( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-German_cooperation_(1926%E2%80%931941) ) and served in the German-trained divisions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German-trained_divisions_of_the_National_Revolutionary_Army ).
As evidenced by your fondness for fabrication for self-reassurance, yes.
Absolutely not. I just replied to the Han Chinese friendly commenter’s insinuations about the Желтороссия. He was implying that Chinese have been wronged by Russians and there is some resentment among the Chinese (as he wrote: “behind closed doors “). That is why I posted my long comment above, to show him that history of that region is way more complex than the majority of people are aware of.
Central Asia is not Russian, it is not Chinese, it belongs to the people of that region: Turkic, Dardic and Indo-Iranian natives. Half of them have the roots in the same ancestry as Slavs, but we diverged thousands of years ago. They were Aryan, but not since Hephtalite Huns ended-up the Indo-Scythian empire and the Turks acculturated the rests.
I wish them good fortune in their interactions with their Han neighbors. I hope they don’t end up assimilated and digested by the Han Civilization as many of past Barbarians, including Indo-European ones.
Russia will not be able to do anything about it if the Chinese decide to extend their “New Frontier” further West into the Central Asian Stans’ lands. I know that the Stans’ people overwhelmingly voted for the maintaining of the Soviet Union, but that train has left the station a generation ago and will never be back.
It is over. There will be no more Russian Imperialism, been there did that, never more, thank you very much.
I am impressed by your capability of producing essays on your phone. Perhaps it speaks to my age, but I can’t write paragraphs like that without a proper keyboard…
Russia is a hell of a lot more European than the U.S. or Canada with their third-world interlopers!
Be that as it may be, lack of economics of scale means that those could still end up commanding an unacceptable premium. I’m skeptical of the thesis though: I’m not aware of competitive processor fabs in Europe, European military exports are pretty meh, and I think Catapillar outsells Germany for construction equipment (might be wrong).
VW entrance into the electric vehicle market is impressive and something to watch for, I agree.
Oriental civilization
Confucianism and Taoism from China, Buddhism from India, and the syncretism of all three in the form of Neo-Confucianism
Chinese characters — tradition form of communication between elites, like Christianity has fallen by wayside in some regards, e.g. Korea
Path to modernity in the past 200 years, process of learning from the West. Japan modernizing first by fully adopting Western ways. China finding her own way and still in the process
I don’t put Mongoloid race here since that was an imported concept from West.
Core is China, Korea and assimilated Inner Asian peoples. Japan somewhat periphery (bushido, shinto is entirely their own)
Mongolia is outside. India is outside but the progenitor of Buddhism. Vietnam is periphery. Rest of SEA outside.
You are funny!
The Dalai Lama is forbidden to come to Russia although the Buryats, Kalmyks and Tuvans ask every year. The Dalai Lama is to these people what the Pope is to Poles. Four years ago Mongolia invited the Dalai Lama. China then applied such pressure that Mongolia promised never to let him in again.
Either you are Chinese or Russian. If you are Russian you must behave in such a way that nobody trusts you.(A Chinese will never be trusted in any case in a Buddhist monastery in Russia) . I happen to know the descendants of the only high Lama who survived the Stalin years and then became one of the (re-)founders of the Ivolginski Dazan. I know them very well. With one of them – a tour guide – I led several trips in Siberia. Of course the FSB puts pressure on the Lamas. First not to clamor to loadly for the coming of the Dalai Lama as the authorities fear that this will alienate Buryats. And second they want informers. Not for their own sake and they are half hearted about it. They do it on behalf of the Chinese. Finally I doubt that you know Mongolian. I happen to also speak Mongolian and understand quite a bit of Buryat. (Burayt and Mongolian are like Russian and Ukrainian). People will be much more open when you know their language and customs. Things that dicey will not be discussed with strangers.
Maybe you were really in Buddhist monasteries in India. Who knows. If you really were then what you are talking about is many years past. Yes , indeed twenty years ago things were much, much more liberal in China. Now in all Tibetan monasteries monks have to recite the works of Xi Jin Ping and there are cameras everywhere. Probably you also think that these self immolations are propaganda. Think about how desperate people must be if they kill themselves to awake world consciousness. Finally you must be either not very smart or have an agenda if you think that this doesn´t influence all adherents of Lamaism where ever they are. And that means Russia as well.
Finally this isn´t about NATO. This is about facts. You can´t just wish them away because they might be useful for somebody.
I’m a sinicized admixed Mongol myself and don’t expect humanity to maintain stability anyway, so none of that bothers me. My point was that Japan was likely going to fail out of China sooner or later, so claiming credit for the ultimate Japanese defeat is really quite arrant and fallacious.
Anyway, China historically wasn’t particularly expansive in that sense and practiced influence in a significantly different way, and though the past is no significant guide to the future, land itself isn’t a major producer of capital anymore and I’ve discussed the population dynamics within China before.
Why would he go on about black Americans being oppressed, or Americans exterminating Indians, which isn’t true anyway. Who does he think this will curry favour with?
Jews are most hostile to Russia by far, then blacks.
You seem never to have been in a dictatorial country. People will never ever talk openly to a local they don´t know.But they will open their heart to a stranger who will be gone the next day. Especially if he is a foreigner who can´t be pressured by the authorities.
Local audience.
A very small one, came across as weak, parroting your opponent’s propaganda lines when you don’t believe them anyway.
This map seems plausible, except for Hungary. Never been there, but I imagine that Hungarians support their society more than individuals.
Anyway, this is a possible explanation: Two Europes, as shown on the map. The individualists are more Protestant (or historically / nominally Protestant).
2021 view. Things change: any large country with exposed borders has to project power in its neighbourhood if it doesn’t want to be taken apart. Russia is in a reawakening phase; they just woke up to the danger of staying passive. Soon they will rediscover the eternal imperial dilemma: protect or expand. It is hard to maintain the right balance, Putin has been unique and even he is being outrun by events.
The utterly clueless Biden’s “killer” remark is an accelerator. West has foolishly put together all of its designated enemies. It is also obvious that they can’t fight a real war because of casualties; you don’t win wars if you can only kill, but are unwilling to die, it is massive vandalism: destruction without a win. That’s why they invented the virtue nonsense to hide behind. But only a fool dies for others’ virtue.
Europe has never had a single identity and the Brussels liberal dream is unworkable. You can’t put all zoo animals in the same cage no matter how much you sedate them. The people who still dream of Europe are now mostly in Senegal, Bangladesh and Tunis. (And of course the hapless Ukrainians who would probably volunteer to be castrated if Europe would let them in. In a way they already have. El Paso here they come :).
Agree with that. That is why I only care about my genetic lineage and populations that are related to it. I don’t care about Empires, nation states and geopolitical conundrums, I care about the survival and well being of populations.
Claiming that Red Army did not contribute to the defeat of Imperial Japan is also fallacious, as is claiming that the Soviets somehow wronged the Chinese.
Speaking in population increase and diffusion terms, the Han population was extremely expansive. Their expansion in Central Asia was stopped by the climate, nomads and Islam, their expansion in Siberia was stopped by climate, Jurchen/Manchu and then Russian influence. Their expansion outside of main Han population clusters was always first economic, second cultural and then political and/or military. Imperial China was able to densely populate a large country and nearly completely assimilate many different ethnic groups. A very impressive achievement. If it wouldn’t for the rebelions and nomad invasions it would certainly had achieved the “Bromance of Japan, Korea and China” under the Han cultural and economic dominance. A kind of “Great East-Asian coprosperity sphere” with Chinese characteristics.
I agree that this time it might be different. Technology is paramount nowadays and I am sure that Han Chinese do realize this perfectly, much more so than Slavs do.
I said this. Not about anyone backstabbing anyone. Russia and China’s interest align in many ways. But neither wants to be entangled in problems in each other’s backyard, we know that’s how WWI happened. This is true for China visa-vie Ukraine, Russia visa-vie Taiwan.
The 2nd Sino-Japanese War was really a three-sided war between 1. CCP, 2. KMT and 3. Japan. The main outside interested parties are
Germans— wanted KMT allying with Japan against CCP and Soviets. But failed to make this work
Soviets— wanted CCP and KMT allying to war against Japan, so that all parties are tied down and they can focus on European interests. This was what took place.
US— had altruistic interest to help China initially but did not take action from 1937-40. Finally acted in 1940 when Japan got too uppity. Mainly supported KMT, but there was a significant left-wing who also sympathized with CCP.
Saying anyone altruistically „helped“ anyone in this is bit of a reach. This is politics and everyone looking out for their own interests.
I mention Желтороссия in response to insinuations of PRC having unwanted designs on Russia; and that there are those in PRC who insinuate the opposite. A China-Russia partnership is desired by both sides as of currently. It’s not like PRC is some lecherous old man making unwanted advances on a beautiful Russian girl.
And is not meant as expression of past grievance. As my handle implies I bear little resentment towards even Japan, much less Russia. We can open a discussion about nuances of Sino-Soviet Split. I’ll promise to turn off any snark since this is a huge can of worms.
Russia is not Europe or Asia. Russia is a world in itself, it is a civilization in itself. It might become nearly self – sufficient if not for its usual corruption and mismanagement.
I dream of Russia as a stable and neutral country, obsessed with the well-being and developing of its own people. A kind of gigantic Switzerland with nukes able and willing to obliterate into oblivion anyone who tries to cause it harm. But I do not want Russian blood spilled fighting idiotic wars around the world and I don’t want Russia to conquer anything anymore. Even Belarus and Ukraine should be left alone, if not for NATO and Atlanticist meddling.
Russia for Russians: we don’t want what does not belong to us, we will not give up on anything or anyone that are ours. If one day I see Russia living by that principle, then I will be very much satisfied with my motherland.
Hardly. There is nothing specifically Russian that is not a part of a broadly defined West.
Japan has more “Japanese substance” in her culture, but it is not enough to classify Japan as a different civilization.
The main thesis in Art of War is
Whereas Nietzsche,
There are no philosophers in 3500 years of Chinese history who writes anything similar, that which justifies conquest. Duely noted in practice there are obvious violations of this, e.g. visa-vie Vietnam.
Perhaps if China had adopted more a conquest/explorer mindset they would have started in Industrial Revolution. And all of North Asia and Alaska was closer to Beijing than Moscow, but it was the Russians who tapped there first, fair and square.
But there are obvious blowbacks to conquering as seen in today’s West.
Out of curiosity, what is your take on Brian Wang’s Tesla ultra-bullishness? (To be worth $4 trillion by 2025 or something like that).
The Chinese do not particularly practice ethnocide, unlike certain Turkics in the region:
Han assimilation, such as it is, may be cultural genocide, but it rarely is genetic genocide, unless you consider admixture as such.
AltanB can correct me on post-Qing, but actually not so much after the initial explosion of conquest by the Tang Dynasty(which was pretty explicitly military). Once China got massive enough, energies were largely directed at internal conflicts, often literally via civil wars. Chinese centralization is actually negative for expansion, since literal expansion would result in one or more power broker gaining an advantage over others, further stimulating internal conflict(one can also see this in late Rome, with similar fears of military commanders) and as I noted before, China had low mobilization rates. The Song mostly disbanded their military, for one example.
Ultimately, having basically captured the commanding heights for some time in Asia, China setup a tributary system, became a local “superpower” and basically did quite little. Without going too deep into it, decentralization and local independent actors are ultimately important for expansion, which is why China kinda screwed around and didn’t even colonize Taiwan officially, but a random exiled self-styled Ming general would. Centralization is surprisingly hostile to expansion.
Unfortunately, the Chinese are more hostile to genetic engineering than Indians are. One must update one’s preferences accordingly:
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1369077552975855619
In current reality of many nations living in the RF, this is truly idiotic. Historically, “Moronia for Morons” (“Засрания для засранцев”, if you prefer Russian equivalent) is viable only in small inconsequential ethnically homogeneous (one tribe) countries. Anything of this kind would never work for a large country that aspires to some significance. It can destroy it, though, as the example of Ukraine shows.
Chinese language policy in Mongolia is less restrictive than in Ukraine wrt Russian:
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1301898665544560640
Russia for Russians does not mean Russia only for Russians. Overwhelmingly Russian population is made of Russians and other genetically and culturally similar populations. Obviously all ethnic groups native to Russia should have exactly the same rights and obligations.
About the the “Moronia” I do not think you want to imply that the majority of Russians are somewhat more moronic than the average human on this planet.
https://otvet.imgsmail.ru/download/268002364_06bfec0c938763227bf23d354e4a9344.jpg
Hindustan is a complex topic. I prefer leaving it to our Sikh friend and Altan as both see themselves as fighters for the triumph of Dharma. Perhaps the triumph of Dharma might be hastened through genetic optimization. Perhaps that is how Kalki will be incarnated (just kidding).
As expected, most comments have gone off the rails. A mixture of personal projections, everyday observations, sympathies & antipathies, … I’m not too interested in that, so:
a) as regards darker Caucasians like Georgians, they are still lighter than most Iranians or Arabs. They are not very different from various Greeks & Southern Italians. Their national cultures are their own; but, a broader cultural matrix is definitely European & nothing else
b) one should not confuse elements of broad Western culture (democracy, metric system, Gregorian calendar,..) that have become global/universal with the essence of cultural identity. Islamic, East or South Asian cultures are not the West, although many of their elites are Westernized in outlook & current popular culture.
c) also, one should not confuse elite & popular cultures.
d) as I’ve said: global West is light Caucasian phenotype plus European cultural traditions (the Antiquity, Christian cultural codes, modernity & rational orientation to the world).
If you want keywords, apart from white race, these are: individualism, the idea of progress, secularism & secularization, anthropocentric & not theocentric orientation, Western cultural codes mutually recognizable among peoples of Western tradition, …
And forget about the fringes like Amish
The Chad Russian Tsar vs the virgin RusFed President.
In the last six months there’s been a number of new electric cars released which are roughly comparable to one of Tesla’s models. This is a list which becomes longer every month. Tesla’s performance lead is becoming marginal. Exactly what is their competitive advantage?
Russia is part of Greater Europe.
The issue is that Europe is increasingly defined as Little Europe, better known as EU which makes it harder for Russians to identify themselves as Europeans.
Whataboutism is pretty powerful when someone is trying to pull the morality card on you.
YOU’VE TRIGGERED THE TRAP CARD.
This is correct, and it directly contradicts “Russia for Russians” thing.
Of course not. Russians cover the same spectrum as everybody else: from total morons to geniuses. I don’t think the distribution is any different from other nations. I’ve met bright and hard-working people and lazy morons of every nationality, race, and gender. Never noticed any correlations.
How do you define being a Russian?
Was Anna Akhmatova Russian, or Sergei Rakhmaninov ? What about Pasternak or Levitan? Or Vladislav Surkov? Or Potemkin, Vrabel and Gogol? What about Aivazovski ? What about Struve?
It depends on how you define it.
If you define “Russkost’‘” in the right way, a lot of people would applaud the “Russia for Russians ” slogan.
Which brings back the question whether Russians are European or not. It depends on the way we define it. My point of view is that historically Russians are an unique population that have built a major and original civilization in Northern Eurasia by attracting and assimilating the most capable among the neighboring tribes and ethnic groups.
For me “Russkost‘” is a state of mind, a psychologicsl and spiritual category, just like “Nerus’‘” and “Noviopy” is a state of mind and a spiritual category.
You know the whole : “Здесь Русский Дух, здесь Русью пахнет “. You literally feel it in the older parts of Moscow and in the Russian glubinka.
Today this Russian Spirit is strongly impacted by “Nerus’“, by its corrupting influence. Russian political and business class is mainly maid of “Noviopy“. It is weakening Russian people and threatening its culture.
If and when the offspring of “Nerus’” assimilate into Russians or leave the country, Russia will become healthy again. It’s not about being genetically or culturally a Slav, it is about being mentally and spiritually Russian.
Here is a test to see if someone is (or is capable of becoming) a Russian:
https://youtu.be/pBx-tr1FDvY
If you feel something moving deep inside when you hear that, then you are most probably compatible with Russian mentality.
Of note, Maiakovski despised Rakhmaninov. When young, he was a typical representative of aggressive “Nerus’“. Then he became an ultra-Sovok and finally killed himself. A typical evolution of “Nerus’” forced to live in Russia. He should have emigrated like Kerensky did, he would have died old.
This a feeling that a lot of people who do not know Russians and Russia get when they meet Russians or travel to Russia. It is a very superficial impression. When they start to dig deeper, they often start to write idiotic stuff about “scratch a Russian – find a Tatar” or more poetically about “l’énigmatique âme Russe“. But this is not enough. You have to learn to feel it, it is not rational. And Russians themselves know this. That’s why they reply that they are not part part of Europe. FWIW, even in a very Russified place, such as Odessa, in Ukraine, I did not get this feeling that I immediately get as soon as I get of the plane in Russia. Russia is truly unique despite all the (failed) westernization attempts.
Somehow you want to sweeten Chinese policies towards ethnic minorities by citing some comparison to Ukraine. I.e. you want to claim that it isn´t so bad because supposedly Ukraine is worse. Not very logical. As far as I know though at least there are news out of Ukraine and you can travel there freely.
You can call Ukraine and people will tell you on the phone what they see. People will not even in Mongolia itself talk on the phone about what is happening in Inner Mongolia. They are simply afraid and with reason.
Apart from that I wonder why you trust Chinese statistics? Nobody and absolutely nobody does. Just call the economics department of MGU and ask them whether they trust Chinese economic statistics. They will laugh in your face. So why do you trust even more policitally sensitive statistics coming out of China?
Censorship about things Chinese are unfortunately also the norm in the Sinological departments of the West. You study 5 or 6 years to become absolutely proficient and then you need access to China to further your career. The Chinese authorities know that and dole out access accordingly. Write something they don´t like and they will barr you for life. Never heard that of people critical of Russia.
So we have an epistomological problem. You will cite official Chinese statistics and or the experiences of some person without language skills who was to China, talked to some random Chinese in English and then came back and claims everything is great in China. Just like that guy who wrote that he met all kinds of people in Indian monasteries and they all said things are great.
Surely if you would have asked a random person on the streets of Berlin during the Third Reich nobody would have told you the truth. Same in Stalin´s Russia. Which doesn´t mean that a lot of people weren´t happy with the way things were in either Moscow or Berlin in the 30s. But to approach the reality of either of those countries in those times just by what the authorities told you would be terribly wrong. Know people well enough that they would tell you the truth. That is the only way in countries like China.
But believe what you want and continue to cite official statistics. Especially Chinese statistics.
“Everything I don’t like is fake.”
Some of us have family who live in or regularly visit China on business. China has plenty of problems, but your rambles haven’t touched on any of them.
When I hear statements like this, I’m inclined to think that the person making them simply doesn’t want Europeans to have a “single identity.” (Meaning, a primary identity.)
This identity may be difficult to create, but I don’t think it would be any more “impossible” than a single/primary Chinese identity. Not everybody in China shares this identity, and not everybody who shares it thinks it’s particularly important, but enough people do that the concept works.
It didn’t happen automatically. It required real effort to overcome real obstacles. It didn’t happen overnight. It seems to have taken hundreds of years. But they eventually got there.
You wrote this in response to Beckow’s saying: “Soon [Russia] will rediscover the eternal imperial dilemma: protect or expand.”
I agree with him, although it’s not strictly an imperial dilemma; it’s just that larger nations and empires are generally the ones for whom expansion is an even an option. For smaller nations, even if the desire is there, the ability to expand is non-existent. (It doesn’t stop some of them from agitating for expansion though, eg the Serbian contingent on this site, who have been quiet of late.)
Now, the idea that what’s yours is yours, and what’s mine is mine is very attractive from the standpoint of international relations. If everybody abided by it, you imagine there would be far fewer wars. So why don’t things tend to work this way? Well, firstly, people can (and do) inquire into just how it was that “what’s yours” became yours – and find themselves highly dissatisfied with, even enraged by, the answer. So that’s one reason. But even if people were dissatisfied, they might still choose to bite their tongues in the interests of peace – which is also something that happens fairly regularly (to the consternation of hardcore nationalist types).
There is yet another dynamic in play, however, that subtly pushes powerful countries towards the said defend-or-expand dilemma, one that seems “built-in” to human nature itself. Consider billionaires. Think how easy it is for you or I to say, hah, if I were a billionaire there is no way I would ever work myself into a stress-related heart condition, right? We could probably imagine a thousand better things to do with our time. But actual billionaires don’t see it this way. They continue to overwork themselves (supposedly, anyway), saying things like “it’s not the money, the money is just a way of keeping score.” In other words, it’s some inherent drive to compete that prevents them from taking a more relaxed path through life. I would suggest there is a similar such drive that pushes people with political power to wonder why shouldn’t my great and glorious country be even greater and even more glorious – indeed, the greatest and most glorious there ever was?
I am a 100% devout whataboutist, meaning I am determined to do precisely what people who scream “whataboutism!” don’t want me to do, which is to highlight their moral double standards. If I try to tell you it’s moral for me to kill you, but immoral for you to kill me, the double standard is obvious, and you would immediately object and you wouldn’t be deterred no matter how much I accused you of “whataboutism.” Moral double standards are not always this obvious, but some people still catch on anyway. The concept of “whataboutism” was invented in order to confuse people who catch on to the moral double standard – and dissuade any bystanders from catching on too – and thus more effectively slip it under the radar.
How’s your Esperanto?
If the example of the west is anything to go by, if you abandon Russia for Russians, you’ll eventually get to Russia for everyone but Russians. It’s only a slight exaggeration today to say that America is for everyone but (real) Americans – WASP/white/founding stock, call them what you will.
Russians, I’m sure, would love to imagine themselves immune to such historical processes, but if they insist on depriving themselves of any form of genetic – ie race-based – self-defense, I predict they too will eventually succumb. The kind of “spiritual” Russianness or Russian “essence” arguments advanced by Bashi are woefully inadequate to deal with this issue, given how undefinable and subjective they are. It would be a cinch for lefties to argue that the only objective definition of a Russian is a holder of Russian citizenship; once that is done, the only thing that remains is hand out citizenships to as many former non-Russians as possible, and thus goodbye actual Russians.
A Russia without actual Russians may seem a wild prediction, given how far away from such a state of affairs they are today, but that is precisely the problem – the doomsday scenario is so far in the future that virtually nobody pays it any heed. And in the meantime, it’s very easy to fool yourself with stories of “muh wonderful black lab assistant” (yeah, I’m looking at you cuckboy) when the Cassandras try to forewarn you.
Exactly.
Imagine if a Swede and Spaniard can read the same newspaper and acquire the same meaning, only they would pronounce the script in their own respective languages.
This is the unifying power of Chinese characters. Is that it decouples language from script, pronunciation from meaning.
And there is no theoretical issue with using Hanzi to write English. It’s somewhat troublesome by the fact that English has many more multisyllabic morphemes than Chinese.
https://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm
A better question is: how’s my Latin?
Btw, aren’t there mutually unintelligible Mandarin (or other Chinese) dialects to this day? From what I’ve gathered, other Chinese can’t understand “Shanghai-ese” even though it’s still Mandarin, is that right? At least that’s what I remember reading, which means I could be totally wrong but I can’t be bothered looking it up. If the Chinese somehow learned to make do, I think Europe could too.
To avoid sounding Sinocentric, what I mean is logographic script rather than alphabetic scripts.
Yes, Chinese is a language family and Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese are each its own mutually non-intelligible languages with its own separate dialects. (I myself speak standard Mandarin AND a dialect of Mandarin which is intelligible to standard Mandarin speakers)
But the entire Chinese language family is unified by a logographic script.
Modern Japs use this logographic script about 40%, and the rest hiragana/katakana. For formal settings it can be 100% logographic script. For example Khubilai Khan wrote to King of Japan entirely in Classical Chinese
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_of_Japan#/media/File:LetterFromKhubilaiToJapan1266.jpg
The benefit of this is that you get to keep your entire vernacular without any bastardization. You can use the logographic script in conjunction with your alphabetic script, as the Japs do.
Whereas the current system is Anglicization of every European language. For example the word for „Start-up“ is the same in German and French https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up. In Jap it is simply the mimic’ed pronunciation of the term „venture“. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%BC
In Chinese logographic script takes its own individual turn, 初创企业 literal translation „Initial Start Enterprise“
Is Slavic neo-paganism alternating between claiming you’re Indo-Iranian and claiming all Aryan above X latitude are really Slavic?
It is not about what we want. It is about what is and what isn’t: to create a single European identity requires a massive level of social engineering for a few generations. Everything in people’s lives, things people value, would have to change.
For what? So a small group of detached losers in Brussels can push their retarded ideological priorities? So the French can feel validated and Germans can hide in a new identity? It is not worth it. With the massive demographic changes in Western Europe what they are dreaming off is not any longer “European identity”. I don’t share anything with a recent arrival from say Senegal, we are not a part of the same “identity”.
If Brussels wanted to create a European identity they should have kept their own identity European. That way it would have a chance. But with this gay-mulatto nonsense that they are promoting they are bound to fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14-WcOegnAc
This is a Singh openly challenging Modi to send 1,25,000 soldiers to fight one alone.
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
Yes, I was aware of that. I first heard about it some 15 years ago from a couple of Chinese friends, one a Hong Konger the other Taiwanese. In reference to a movie or in reference to something they were reading (I forget what exactly), I said “but I thought you guys spoke different languages,” to which they replied they did but that the written script was the same. I thought that was pretty cool.
I wonder if it could actually be standardized across European languages, though, in a way that when, say, a Spaniard and a Dane both read a certain character, they both translate it the same way into their spoken tongues.
Anyway, AI translators are pretty accurate nowadays (and only growing more so), so it’s hard to imagine anyone going to the trouble of creating a logographic system for Europe if the point is just to enhance written communication across language barriers.
China conquered China, and ruled over most of the world’s population for most of time, with large portions of the world’s population centers paying it tribute.
That is conquest and expansion. Not always violent. Not always bloody. Not always forever, but it is conquest. Also, while I love Sun Tzu, he literally wrote the book on war, which hurts your point, and though his notion is right, it certainly didn’t stop China from massacreing rebels or having brutal conflicts.
Persia also ruled through peace and clever trickery. Russia did, too. So did America and the British. It wasn’t all war, slaughter, and civilization-at-gun-point. Oh, so many merchants and priests and mandarins and local elites, all hand-in-hand. China’s done it longer, of course, and admirably for the modern age, is really sticking to the Soft-Power while the West’s Rulers are trying to go full Qing in suppressing this slow-motion Taiping Rebellion (or maybe 1911? Maybe the analogy just isn’t that good.)
Anyhow, I like China and the East. I’m just not putting them on an unrealistic pedestal. Ashoka talked a pretty game about being Buddhist, but it was convenient he converted after slaughtering the last independent kingdom.
Yeah, no shit. But this is completely about what people want, not about what “is.” If we simply judged it from the perspective of what is, then clearly most people right now are not interested in it – or even aware that they have this option. That says nothing about its long-term viability or desirability. If it’s both viable and desirable, then some us need to make that point and to swat away salty naysayers like you.
Well, Alexander III was a patent придурок who did a lot of damage to Russia. So in relation to Alexander III, Putin’s opinion is absolutely correct Alexander III – he was really a worthless and harmful to the state jerk
Clear lie, Mongolian is an official language of Inner Mongolia, and they use more traditional form of Mongolian there than in Republic of Mongolia.
Sadly true, but the question of HHDL is quite complicated.
Fucking дебил, I’m half Buryat, and a Buddhist man born to a Buddhist mother. Ivolginsky Datsan has no old history, it was established in 1945 by orders of Stalin, and was full of KGB informers during the Soviet years. So there was no reopening you liar! I know rudimentary Buryatian and little bit Khaklha, but all Buryats speak Russian and most use it as casually as they use Buryatian, actually I think that around quarter of Buryats speak Russian at home, maybe even 1/3, in Mongolia and especially in Ulan-Baatar almost all old educated people know some Russian. Ну давай общаемся тогда по-бурятски, сайн бэнэ. Харьи шадныш буряар дуугарха али угии. I’ve never studied how to write Buryatian, but you should understand.
I’m no stranger to my own blood, блять!
Ну вот у наш настоящий немец педераст!
I visit India and holy Buddhist places there quite often, I have even liven in that blessed land.
There was a crackdown by Chinese authorities during and after Beijing Olympics, and many Tibetan areas were then under a strict surveillance, but such state of affairs ended in 2010.
The self immolation incidents have been quite rare for past 4-5 years, and they mostly happen in regions inhabitated by Khampas, who are the most turbulent of all Tibetans, before they fought against Lhasa’s rule, now they fight against Beijing’s rule, but yes it’s quite sad.
Lamaism? That’s quite an outdated term, we are (Tibetan);Buddhists and we have various schools and lineages, I myself am an adherent of H.H. Dalai Lama’s Gelug school.
How and what is affecting our Buddhism? Situation in China, Mongolia and Russia has gotten inherently better and better for the last forty years, not long time ago in the 80s we had just two Buddhist temples in whole Russia, now we have a few hundred, not long time ago 99% of Buddhist temples of Tibet and China were in ruins or abandoned, now most have been rebuilt or renovated. I myself have seen this to happen.
Unlike you I and my family has strong and religious connection with multitudes of monks, temples, monasteries and Buddhist laypeople.
No one else has any power
⁸As I wrote, genetics prove beyond doubt that certain populations are more related than others. It is also a known fact that Vedic Hinduism and ancient pagan European religions are related. But Slavic neopaganism is nothing but a very limited, imperfect reconstruction of what might have been a central European spiritual tradition goung back millenia.
Many things have been lost and probably will never be rediscovered again. Our ancestors have not had the stubborn courage and the inspiration needed to keep the tradition alive. It took around 500 – 600 years between the initial inroads of the Semitic theism into the Slav lands and the final destruction of the Slav spiritual tradition. But eventually all that remained were chronicles written by the Christian priests themselves and the folk fairy tales.
You are very lucky to have a strong native spiritual tradition in Hindustan. It is a precious gift your ancestors managed to keep for your generation. I for one understand to some extent the value of what we lost and what you have managed to keep.
And to answer your question directly : nobody claims that Central Asian and/or Hindustani populations have Slavic roots. But some people among these populations have a common ancestry and had for a time a common spiritual tradition. That was a very long time ago.
What kind of damage did Tsar Alexander III cause to the Russian Imperial state?
Also, I hope you realize that a great number of people in Russia itself strongly disagree with what VVP has said.
The attempt, guided by religious fundamentalism, to preserve the Middle Ages in Russia (the medieval rural community, the division into noble and commoners with different hereditary rights, the restriction of secular education, the obsolete Orthodoxy as the state religion, the absolute monarchy) had disastrous consequences
China basically kept wiping itself out to get itself into its present state. I’m skeptical that Europe is willing to engage in that level of auto-massacre and cultural genocide but I may yet be wrong.
Incidentally, strength of dialects does roughly correspond with lack of identity with China, which is why they’ve mostly been eliminated. The HKers are Cantonese and that’s another piece of why they were so rebellious.
You are very wrong.
BTW, do you like Rakhmaninov?
I remember that you strongly disliked the classical Russian literature. What you about classical Russian music?
There were multiple Lamas who survived the Stalin years, but the highest was a great Lama known by name Bidia Dandaron. So you claim to know Dandaron’s children or grandchildren? He repeatedly sent letters to Stalin, asking him to allow Buddhists to practice freely, but it was Lubsan Nyima who established the Ivolga monastery by Stalin’s permission in 1945, so if you are speaking truth, you probably mean Lubsan Nyima, he after all was the first abbot of Ivolga and 17th Pandita Khambo Lama of Buryatia.
(Buddhist monastics should never have children, except in exceptional circumstances when monks are actively hunted and persecuted, then it’s permissible to hide and live as a layperson, but when situation normalises, then Monastic community and it’s codes of conduct should immediately be re-established)
Yes
I very much dislike “serious” novels. Classical literature is not limited to this
I love it, just like I love classical music in general
https://youtu.be/qXK9YLqgo3E
What about Russian religious music, I personally very much enjoy the pre-Raskol znamennyi chant:
https://youtu.be/ppAT0f2YCyM
Hierodiacon Hermann was for many years (perhaps still is) the choir master of the Valaam Monastery that you might have had a chance to visit given that you live in Saint Petersburg.
AFAIK the znamennyi chant was typically Russian and what somewhat different from the other Orthodox chanting traditions.
As for Chinese dynasties they had a common pattern of territorial expansion during the early period followed and consolidation in the later periods, although this may be due to deterioration of the quality of governance in the later periods of dynasties, and China’s borders had a habit of shrinking and expanding based on the military strength of dynasties, see the Tang vs. the Song vs. the Ming. The Tang expanded all the way to the Ferghana, and would have probably gone even further West if not for An Lushan.
Are you saying that you would change others’ identity by force? Because you want the resulting “new identity” so much?
First of all, that has been tried and usually doesn’t work. It causes a lot more disruption, pain and suffering than most societies can tolerate. As with all “new man” dreams it eventually fizzles out.
Second, you sound like a madman with a plan. Are you possibly Polish?
a la capella – a little boring for me
Agree. And not only Little Europe, but also a Shallow Europe with only a thin layer of acceptable culture and thought. This is done to handle diversity that Brussels so eagerly creates.
Something similar happened in US, and also in Latin America – everything was homogenised and stripped of meaning in order to be able to live together. It is a sad process and it impoverishes humanity.
There is an imperfect analogy to personal life: having multiple wives is only good if they could be truly equal. We all know that is impossible, the dynamic is unsustainable. Therefore a deep monogamous relationship is the best way to live; biology, gods and common sense all agree.
When we create a messy and shallow multi-cultural collage, all it does is create new vectors of inequality. Today it is white, European males who are shunned, in the past there were others. There will always be a pecking order among multiple wives, and there will be one in places like EU. Russians are delegated to be the designated cellar dwellers – who else could fill that role?
A beautiful dream, but hardly achievable. Why? Well, Russians aren’t Swiss. They don’t have their work ethic, their culture, their mentality.
We still have a common ancestry & spiritual tradition.
We value our Guru first, without him we are lost.
Stop focusing so much on blood as the fat gamer nerd is as much your “blood” as the Hero.
You don’t live in a part of the world where Negro BLM & mutt worship is the norm, so stop pretending.
Funny the way you describe the lack of freedom in China in 1985 since they learned most of that stuff from the Soviet Union.
In any event – it’s not what you think about Russians – but about what the Russians think of themselves.
Melanf is highly educated and intelligent, but has a mainstream Soviet approach towards history and culture. He hates peasants (or at least, has a lot of contempt for them), thinks what Stalin did to them was necessary, and hates pre-Revolutionary Russia. Naturally he would have a bad opinion about a reactionary like Alexander III. I don’t think he is a nostalgic communist, but he seems to take their attitude towards the world for granted.
Good comment overall… But just note a fixture of Chinese culture. China doesn’t want or expect others to be like them. For instance – Japan used to send envoys to China – it wasn’t that China imposed itself on Japan. Even the new political slogan “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. It is another way of saying the same thing in the past – what works in China doesn’t work other places because we are different. Socialism is a European concept – but China isn’t Europe and can’t be. So I wouldn’t be worried about exporting the Chinese model. Even during the Mao days when they did support revolution in other places – they didn’t expect them to be like China. None of us knows the exact way the future will play out – but if I was a gambler I would bet there is no need to worry.
When I wrote about Switzerland, I was referring to the neutral geopolitical politics, the high level of democracy and the functional federal organization.
I agree that Russia will never be as rich per capita as Switzerland is today. But we have to remember that Swiss were rather poor compared to other Europeans until the second half of the nineteenth century.
Regarding the work ethic, Russian Old Believers had and still have an excellent work ethic. Russian work ethics were corrupted by serfdom under Tsars and the collectivisation under Soviet totalitarian statism.
I think that if Russia stopped wasting its energy on geopolitical competition, organized its regional politics and economy in a less centralized manner and left Russians to work for their own benefit, instead of prioritizing always the interests of the bureaucracy, the state and the oligarchic minority, then the majority of Russians would have a decent living standard.
Nothing that drastic. Just “suggest it” long and hard enough to plant some seeds, which might some day sprout into something worthwhile. I have no (or try to have no) illusions about the difficulties involved. But if I think it’s better, I think it’s better, right? Ultimately, that’s what we’re all left with.
The emergence of new identities is both destructive and creative – something old dies, but something new (and hopefully better) is born. Sticking to the example of Rome, which is the closest Europe ever came to a unified identity (aside from WWII Germany, which wasn’t directly aimed at that goal, but which is something that might have resulted anyway in the event of a German victory – with plenty of suffering in between, of course), even just the unification of Italy into a Roman identity involved the destruction of identities and cultures that the people alive at the time presumably cared about, but a hundred (or whatever) years later, probably no one bothered to mourn the past (or perhaps even remembered it). One difference between now and back then is that it’s much simpler to plant that idea in people’s minds just through communication, whereas formerly the “idea” had to be imposed at through force of conquest. So I’m not sure that “auto-massacre and cultural genocide” is quite the right way to put it, although people who care deeply about existing identities and cultures would have plenty worry about.
I thought that this designation was made by the city of Portland–NOT by a US university?
“Russia for Russians, Belarus for Belarusians, Ukraine for Ukrainians, Kazakhstan for Kazakhs, Israel for everyone!” 😉
Alexander III made a mistake in not militarily intervening in the Ottoman Empire during the Hamidian massacres in 1894, though. Ditto for his son Nicholas II in 1894-1897.
My first visit to Piter was from Moscow, in in 1999. My impression was that it was un unpleasant combination of Paris and Tijuana, although the Hermitage was really impressive. I preferred Moscow, which my Muscovite in-laws liked to hear.
My grandmother’s oldest two brothers moved from Galicia to St. Petersburg/Petrograd during World War I, in order to avoid getting hanged as Russian spies. They studied at the Military Medical Academy. One of them married a ballerina from the Mariinsky Theater and moved to Moscow, another stayed where he survived the blockade. Neither of them left descendants but by fate my wife’s family dacha is in the town where my grandmother’s brother settled outside Moscow. So we found his grave which was overgrown and crumbling, and fixed it. Otherwise some New Russian would have just been buried over top of it.
“Iran is Indo-European, so Iranian orientation towards the West is the historic norm. It may be Islamic, but its clearly not Arab.”
Where do you get the idea Persians were western oriented….???
Given what we now know, they should have never intervened at all against the Turks. Russia should have kept centering on its own development and should have avoided all these foreign interventions. Of course the hindsight is 20/20.
I can imagine what kind of SJW meltdown would happen if some US university did try and put that forward at the moment.
Possibly it is something for James Lindsay to try though, he has attempted it for the Ashkenazi Jews.
Piter was terribly hit under Sobchak patronage. All the usual suspects, starting with Putin, preyed upon the city from 1990 to 1998. They nearly ruined it before moving to Moscow.
Zapolskyi was a witness of these times.
https://rusmonitor.com/dmitrijj-zapolskijj-putin-kontroliroval-ne-kokain-on-kontroliroval-v-peterburge-vse.html
In the late Brezhnev era Leningrad was ruled by Romanov, whom my maternal grandfather, who knew the Leningrad communist politics well, held in highest esteem. He was sometimes viewed as the informal leader of “Russkaya Partya” inside the CPSU. That is why “Жиды города Питера” (to use the title of a comedy written by the Jewish brothers Strugatsky better known for their SciFi) hated his guts and had a sigh of relief when it was this cuck of Gorbachev who was selected to lead the USSR instead of Romanov who was sometimes seen as the future head of the Soviet state.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%93%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%92%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87
Under Romanov Leningrad was evolving in the right direction, and with the politics proposed by Russkaya Partya, the USSR still had a chance to survive into the 21st century. But the “Russian nationalists” inside the CPSU were a minority, unlike inside the Chinese nationalists inside the CPC. The rest is history.
My grandfather fought on Leningrad and Karelian front during all the WW2. He studied in Leningrad just before the onset of the war, that is where he met my grandmother. My mother was born in Piter, but my grandfather was moved to another professional position in Moscow a few years before I was born where my mom finished the MGU. My dad finished the LGU. I love both cities, but I would prefer living in Piter even though Moscow is now 10 years ahead of Piter in urban development.
You are an obvious liar. Mongolian has not been stopped in schools. The government mandated that some subjects have to be taught in Mandarin so that students can be well versed in the national language in addition to their own ethnic language. Stop with the lies. As others have pointed out your other folly already.
As to the protests – you will find more people lining up for a new Chick-fil-A in Texas. But even still – you claim Mongols are afraid – so why would they bother to protest?
As to the Dalai Lama – he is a perfect example of why China is much softer than you propagandists could paint. Almost any other major country would have had him assassinated no later than the end of the 1960’s. The fact he is still alive is because China isn’t as evil and brutal as you make it out to be.
Tesla market value is only matched by the insanity of bitcoin value. Neither one is realistic in the long run. Tesla has good 0-60 numbers and range – but their long term longevity of those batteries are unknown – and every other automaker is stating that – like a combustion engine – Tesla is extracting range and power with a disregard for longevity. Any engineer will say you can’t have everything in a design. One thing has to be sacrificed for something else. For some reason Tesla cultists think batteries magically have no drawbacks and that you don’t have to compromise with any characterstic like you would an internal combustion engine (Strange they should have had experience with phones and laptops to know batteries have different performance limitations). Aside from that – the quality of their construction and many pieces of the vehicle itself are subpar. Once the cultists all get one – most will opt for a legacy automaker that actually knows how to build cars and doesn’t have to construct tents to speed up production to meet a number to make the stock price jump.
Bitcoin is another insane valuation. Do people really think governments aren’t going to regulate cryptocurrency?
I don’t think Rachmaninov, in piano concerto, is especially Russian, although he throws on some Russian trademarks, which some of which had earlier been perceived as “oriental” in the 19th century (like in the fashion for chromatic descents which Tchaikovsky began originally for oriental themes in his program music).
In the solo piano works, Rachmaninov uses some Russian folk influence and was inspired by the peasants around him (or things like e.g. church bells, in Preludes in C-sharp minor)- but is one of the most distinctive and individual artists, where you know it’s him after three chords. And it’s because since he was a teenager, he is using his own trademark chords and voicings, which are able to express his own distinctive moods and personality. (There are often chords in Rachmaninov that were so modern, that they like post-1950 jazz piano if you play them individually ).
The “texture” of his piano languages is reflecting a lot of an idiosyncratic pedagogical history in imperial music schools in Russia. For example, if you know the exercises of Hanon, Czerny and Tausig, which Rachmaninov has to wake up at 5am every morning to practice for hours, in his boarding school.
And then there is Rachmaninov’s favourite exercises as a child – composed by Henselt. In the music schools at the late 19th century, studying Henselt exercises was for hours each day. And the exercises of teachers like Adolf von Henselt, that was imported to the late Imperial Russian music schools, there is already a lot of “texture” of the left writing we know often when you play Rachmaninov. It’s not a co-incidence, as Rachmaninov was woken every morning in the boarding school to practice hours of these studies as a boy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrkV9crSEBE
Notice the “stride”, in the left hand of Adolph von Henselt: then think about the “stride piano” everyone knows from Rachmaninov (e.g. the famous prelude g minor)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boBz0d4dvhE
There are many such examples of Rachmaninov texture, being influenced from the piano exercises of that time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2GKgFZ_ioQ
There are a lot of distinctive “Russian trademarks” that are self-consciously famous in classical music, although many are somewhat “self-consciously created” in the second half of the 19th century, and musical world probably today likely don’t attribute them as being Russian anymore, and neither would it have sounded Russian to our ears if we were living a century before they were introduced.
There are other aspects in music which are more ahistorically Russian, as some melodies which are common in Russian speech, and it is perhaps why non Russian-speaking pianists occasionally could confuse melodies of some pieces.
So,there are examples of playing this early Scriabin melody – where the pianist is talking to himself; after dotted semiquaver descent of the whole tone at the end of the main phrase, the demisemiquaver should be repeated like it is a single two syllable word (imo) – because it is just like in the Russian intonation of a single word. This is like a single two-syllable word that Scriabin is repeating (at 4th higher intervals each time).
But quite often international pianists are playing it not like a single word (She starts to sometimes on the second day of practising)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5QxnMPwWzI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xyZy8KsCLU
For comparison, Horowitz playing it like a single word
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSsKJIzwapA
Of the local influences on Rachmaninov’s piano concerto writing, there is one of the large ones being Anton Rubinstein, which is ironic in the context of this topic about Russia’s Westernizing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLpg39XnBaQ
Different centuries have different viewpoints: in the 19th century, Anton Rubinstein’s piano concertos was hated as a kind of not-Russian, antinationalist, foreign Westernizing, influence, by Balakirev et al. But today, in the early 21st century, his concertos reminds us of Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky’s concerto writing, and a century of “Russian piano school” that emerged.
In his time, Rubinstein was a supporter of the Westernizing, “pan-European piano tradition”, and the nemesis of Russian anti-Westernizing composers.
But this Westernizing is where I would assign Rachmaninov, as he is a uniquely a product of obsessionally perfectionist, Imperial Russian music schools, that felt a inferior need of Russia to “catch up” with France and Germany – this inferiority resulting in an insane level of formal perfectionism, waking their piano students at 5am to practice Hanon and Czerny exercises.
In music such definitions are completely ridiculous
Russian Imperialism is the real Russian nationalism and genuine Russian nationalism is Russian Imperialism, all other forms of Russian nationalism are fake and gay, or against the interests of the Russia and therefore her enemies. Similarly Chinese Imperialism is Han nationalism, and all other forms of Han nationalism are threat to the Chinese state.
Bashibuzuk if Russians would have followed your deranged logic, the slave raids of Kazakhs, Crimean and Khivan Khanates would have continued for much longer, the (Central) Siberia would belong to Turkic Khanates, Finnic people of Urals would have developed national consciousness, and they would now be a collection of petty states. Oh and not forgetting that if the Ottoman rule would have continued longer in the Balkans, there would now be twice as many Muslims there. Majority of Bulgaria’s Muslims left after Russia’s attack. The Bulgaria of 1870 had probably 1/3 of its population Muslims (btw imagine Muslim southern Ukraine and Crimea?), but maybe your nomen est omen?
One more, without Russian interventions it would be highly likely that the lands of present day Armenia would have now Muslim majority, and Georgia could very likely be half-Muslim. Btw Abhkazia and Adjaria had Muslim majority or plurality before the coming of Russians, same case with Mingrelia and Southern Georgia.
That the Chinese want to annex the Russian Far East or that there is a problem of Chinese immigration there, is an old cliché repeated ad nauseam by some foreign policy circles of the West. It’s easy to guess why they spread such lies.
Almost everything that occurred after Peter the Great consolidation of power was some kind of westernization. Of course Rakhmaninov and the other great Russian musicians have been formed in that westernized matrix, there was no other left to produce complex cultural or social manifestations.
But as you have noted, there are some “idiosyncrasies ” in the Russian music. This is an echo of the eras long gone. Russia had a very interesting culture just before the Time of Troubles. It nearly achieved a perfect balance of the Oriental and Western influences on a Slav basis. St Basil’s Cathedral is a fine example of what was since lost under the westernizing influence of the Romanov dynasty.
Someone commented above that Russia is nothing particular compared to more exotic destinations such as for example Japan. If not for the Times of Troubles, Raskol, Peterine reforms and the ensuing deeply rooted westernizing influence, Russia would now seem to a Westerner almost as alien or exotic as they feel Japan is. A 400 years of westernizing by force and propaganda have nearly torn apart and definitely twisted this important aspect of the Russian psyché.
But fact is, Slavs are a quite old population, all the official historical bullshit not whitstanding. Their ancestors have inhabited that land for some 10 000 years. And just like you have felt something special in Israel, someone who has the intuition for it, the 6th sense (so to speak) will feel it in Russia. The egregor, the genius loci is different, but it is weak in the westernized towns and among the westernized people. It is faint, but it is still there, for a time, but it is fading away.
If and when the westernization is complete, Russia will die.
They can try. “Try” being the operative word.
This also makes me more bullish on Tesla.
Altan, with all due respect (and you must know by now that I appreciate your comments) you are wrong in projecting your Empire-building fetishes onto Russian people. The Russian muzhik couldn’t give two hoots for all the Empire-building bullshit. He was forcibly enrolled into it and could not opt out.
Just like the North American Red Neck could not opt out from the vain Empire-building entreprise imposed upon him by the Atlanticist elites. He’s caught in a bind, he is corralled into a trap from which his kind has no other exit except the slaughterhouse (armed, psychological, chemical). Same for the Russian muzhik, enslaved, enregeemented and send to die for a bucket full of BS from the “Christian Faith ” to “International”.
Russians are not Jews with their Tikkun Olam or Arabs with their Futuhat. Not even the Great Steppe nomads with their great Imperial Confederations. When left to ourselves we are a peaceful people of forests, glades, rivers and lakes. We just had to always fight and kill because we have never been left in peace since times immemorial.
https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/thumbs/site_0544_0001-750-0-20090925172613.jpg
This is Russia without Empire-building.
Yeltsin was the most consummate muzhik to rule Russia in the past few centuries. There’s a reason you don’t want to let mud-footed peasants into the palaces.
As AP has pointed out, 20% of deaths in the Slavic pagan era were violent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpm4m3ELhvo
St. Basil’s Cathedral is a strange phenomenon, since this cathedral has virtually nothing to do with ancient Russian architecture, but was created out of nothing by the architect’s imagination.
In the capital, the old forms of architecture died before Peter the Great.
A sample of pre-Peter Moscow architecture:
https://cdn.photosight.ru/img/6/879/3111061_large.jpg
In the province, the old architecture existed until the 19th century (the cathedral in Tula of the late 18th century)
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/1986vv/75225542/34395/34395_900.jpg
Of course, there is no “civilizational” difference. Russian folk melodies were used by Rossini and Beethoven, so this is not an indicator
Can you feel the difference between these two musical pieces by the diferent composer?
Can you feel the difference between these musical pieces by the diferent composer?
These two is inspired by the Russian/slavs tradition
https://youtu.be/ZSpPj5GVWsA
https://youtu.be/vl1eev9NzVg
And this is created based on Catholic medieval music
https://youtu.be/pXr0m7SaGvs
can you name the authors of the first two songs without Google?
You do know that Kizhi is situated in historical Karelian(non-Slavic) lands and that Swedes and Novgorodians fought for hundreds of years for those lands?
https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/thumbs/site_0544_0001-750-0-20090925172613.jpg
The original example. Do you know that the local population considered the architect of this church to be Peter the Great?
«… Император Петр Первый, путешествующий из Повенца Онежским озером, остановился у Киж-ского острова. Тут заметил он множество срубленного леса и, узнав причину его свалки, собственноручно начертил план предполагаемой церкви.
Пред этим временем прежняя церковь сгорела; она стояла не там, где теперь стоит теперяш-няя церковь, а подальше — версты на полторы, на месте, называемом Нарьина Гора». (Олонецкие губернские ведомости / 1892. № 93).
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A6%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%8C_%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%B2%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%86%D1%8B_(%D0%92%D1%8B%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82)
And here:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B8%D0%BF%D1%8B_%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%85_%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D1%85_%D1%85%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B2
What that has to do with my argument?
What does propaganda have to do with it? This is common folklore. The “historical” memory of the common people well remembered Ivan IV and Peter I – so they attributed everything in the world.
And what are these links conceived of?
“Ancient Russian wooden churches…” – the church in Kizhi was built in 1714, it is NOT Ancient Russian church
It is a continuous line of an architectural evolution. Saint Basil’s is in the same line, only made of stone. The reason why it survived in the north western Russia was because it was mainly Old Believer. This tradition of building was discontinued in the Nikonian Church.
Also you might find it surprising, but the German literati writing about Wends notice their skill in woodworking. There were up to three storey houses in Radigosh and Arkona and their wooden temples were also quite impressive. Quite logical for a population that built in wood since times immemorial.
Sure, like Sovok folklore about Stalin “building thousands of factories” had absolutely nothing to do with Soviet propaganda. (I am being of course ironic).
St. Basil’s Cathedral has no predecessors at all. This cathedral did not “continue the line” it is completely against the line
Funny, considering that the church in Kizhi is a Nikonian church
Photo of killers from Donbas in 2014:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bx9iJPECEAAEK25.jpg
🙂
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nkRVorVJ_88/VkhYKzUjrkI/AAAAAAAAfr8/9i9YE4zMuBs/s1600/P023_resize.800x600w.jpg
What does this have to do with the church in Kizhi?
A wooden Greek Catholic church, built in the traditional way without nails, in the mountains of New York State by western Ukrainian immigrants:
https://eyewashere.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Ukrainian-Church-Hunter-NY-14-EyeWasHere-Commercial-Projects.jpg
https://www.marianafeely.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Ukrainian-Wedding-Hunter-NY-photo-44.jpg
(just following Hack’s Law)
This is great for the Georgians and Armenians (and Bulgarians) but would a Russian peasant care? As a Christian I support these efforts in the Balkans and Caucuses but if one is only focused on Russia, this stuff is irrelevant.
Moreover, Georgia supplied Russia with Stalin.
You seem to be ignorant about how serious problem the slave raids were for the denizens of the 18th century Ukraine proper? But Ukrainians (nationalists) are extremely shortsighted and greedy people, in Russia they see only bad, and have no gratitude for the stopping of slave raids and the lands gained from the Ottoman Empire and Crimean Khanate. The stopping of slave raids helped Russian peasants too, even in 19th century Kazakhs and Khivan Khanate enslaved Russian peasants of bordering regions. Without Russia there would be no Ukraine, just lands colonised by Poland or owned by Tatars, but you would probably enjoy that?
Comrade Stalin was an Ossetian, in other words he was a Scythian man.
The Slav/Wend were master wood builders from times immemorial. AP is right, the smaller Ruthenian churches are part of the same cultural landscape going back to Lusatian Culture and its Gord fortified settlements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gord_(archaeology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biskupin
A medieval Ruthenian Church (probably also designed by Tsar Peter, sorry for the sarcasm).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/St.Jura%28002%29.jpg/200px-St.Jura%28002%29.jpg
These people built 2-3 storey wooden structures 3000 years ago already. Why would it be a problem for their descendants to build a wooden church in Peterine Russia?
Why would they need Piter the Great single handedly drawing the plans for them?
Also the wooden houses in Old Ryazan, conceptually reconstructed after archeological digging, were nearly identical to Wester Ukrainian Hutsul wooden homes still built in the early twentieth century.
http://ttolk.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/mng3.jpg
http://ttolk.ru/?p=11838
And if you take the higher part of these Northern Russian wooden churches, the multidomed part, and put it squarely on the ground, while also making it bigger and building it in stone, then you get St Basil’s Cathedral.
If you see no link between all these informations and the evolution of Russian wooden architecture, then I am sorry, but there is not much that I can do.
Now, going back to the question of whether Russians are European: Slavs are geographically European, Russia is geographically larger than Europe. Slav culture was rooted into the very archaic cultural landscape that predated classical European Civilization and has been nearly completely erased by the Judeo-Christian cultural expansion. In the most remote areas of Russia and the Ruthenian mountain strongholds the mentality and culture remained less affected.
LARPing, just like their Azov opponents.
Sorry AP for my harsh words. You are a good guy.
But where are the traces of their activities? Buildings are destroyed, but small wooden objects are found. Among these items, there is nothing that can confirm the exceptional level of the Wendish civilization
Of course, I also love the fantasy genre, but it must be distinguished from reality
https://youtu.be/t2mP0P9n5fM
https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/5013/86441892.c4d/0_13a27a_cdaf2970_orig.jpg
Built in the 16th century, it is a contemporary of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome
About Peter, of course, the legend. But it is ridiculous that the object that you chose as a symbol of Non-Petrine architecture, the common people to whom you appeal considered the creation of Peter.
It remains to convince architectural historians in this/s
” Но как раз Василий Блаженный скорее одинок в русском искусстве, нежели типичен для него. ”
Грабарь “История русского искусства”
the idea of multi-colored wooden buildings is funny, of course, but it has no confirmation
https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/96803/86441892.c4a/0_13a1d7_ca0ea490_orig.jpg
It’s called trolling.
It’s not clear at all what you’re trying to prove. The rejection of the medieval architectural tradition in the capital’s architecture occurred even before Peter the Great. We do not know what the architecture would have been without Peter, but we can say for sure that it would have been one or another version of the European Baroque.
If there were no time of troubles? Boris Godunov (presumably) wanted to open a university in Russia, sent nobles to study in England, and tried to find his daughter a suitor among the Scandinavian ones . royal dynasties. That is, without the time of Troubles, Westernization would probably have been carried out by the Godunovs. It probably would have happened 100 years earlier
So that of course it is interesting to fantasize about a special “wooden-Slavic” civilization, but in reality this could not happen
https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/242441/86441892.c49/0_13a19e_45209ada_orig.jpg
From Georgia, Armenia or Bulgaria?
This is as silly as giving credit to Communists for universal human achievements such as electrification or antibiotics. As if the end of the Crimean raids would not have happened inevitably and eventually by the end of the 18th century anyways, if not by Russia that included Ukrainians, than by PLC that included Ukrainians. Moreover, the Khmelnytsky uprising that brought Muscovy to Ukraine itself produced an extreme resurgence and increase in Crimean slave raiding.
This is where Russian and Ukrainian nationalist myths join forces for a shared fantasy.
IIRC he was only 1/4 Ossetian. Now, had his family been Islamisized, would he have managed to rule Russia?
Annexation of the Caucuses provided Russia with Stalin and Beria. Annexation of Ukraine gave Russia Trotsky (but also Gogol). The PLC lands taken by Russia as a whole provided Russia with all of its Jews, and thus a huge percentage of its disruptive, angry radicals. Annexation of the Baltics gave Russia the Latvian rifles. There were some advantages of taking each of these places but also some grave consequences. Maybe Russia should continue in this tradition and grab Syria, Iraq, etc. What could go wrong?
By Stargorod you probably mean Oldenburg in Germany? If so then you couldn’t be anymore wrong. Slavs lost control over Stargorod only in the 12th century, in 1076 AD Adam of Bremen tells us how Stargorod was flourishing and prosperous Slavic town. So when was the Novgorod established?
I don’t know anything about Slavic architecture predating Christianity, but Germanic people had no great architecture before Christianity.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/The_tempel_of_Uppakra_Sweden.jpg
Here is how Norse Pagan temple of Uppåkra looked like, only few archeological remains of Norse Pagan temples have been found. Not very impressive, right?
Just your speculation and nothing else. Qirim Khan of Crimean Khanate made huge slave raids to Ukraine in 1760s(he had lots of Polish allies, lol) and Budjak horde made slave raids to Moldova and Odessa area still in the 1780s, do you think that Cossacks and Russian peasants who lived near Caucasus and Kazakh horde territories lived in peace even in 19th century? Yup the Khiva and Kazakh Khanates continued slave raids in Russian lands in 1830s and 1840s, you are naive if you think that Russians would have stopped such behaviour by just sitting on their land. Even Volga Germans were often captured. Oh I almost forgot to write that Qirim Khan invaded PLC in the 1740s or 1750s, but retreated after PLC paid him a generous indemnity, so to me it seems that PLC of the 18th century was quite weak towards the Tatar slave raiding, but then they were not as directly affected by it as Russia, which had much longer frontier with Muslims than the PLC.
His father was probably of Ossetian origin, but yes probably 1/4 or 1/2.
I was sarcastic with my “when was the Novgorod established” -comment. Because it’s very clear that Novgorod was established long before German conquest of various Slavic “Old Towns” of Southern Baltic coast.
The conquest started under Charlemagne. The Wends lost territory with each generation. They also got baptized in increasing numbers. Those who did not want to become baptized had to move somewhere else. The final blow came in the twelfth century:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Arkona
Although their Lithuanian cousins remained staunchly pagan for a couple of centuries longer and even finally prevailed against the Teutonic Knights. Of course by that time they have became exemplary Christians in the PLC. AP can tell you more about it.
Basically, if you were a Slav pagan in the Wend lands at the time, you had a strong incentive to run for your life somewhere, anywhere beyond the reach of the ongoing Drang nach Osten. Same if you were Baltic or Finn pagan. Hence the ethnic makeup of the early Velikyi Novgorod.
Just common sense. Europe was advancing too much vis a vis the Islamic world. This problem inevitably would have been solved by someone, if not Russia than PLC.
As I explained, Khmelnytsky’s war that resulted in the expansion of Russian-ruled territory also extended the Crimean problem for decades (it’s why the Tatars were his allies).
Khmelnytsky’s uprising and transfer of much of Ukraine from PLC to Muscovy was the PLC’s Manzikert.
Will be interesting to see if Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary can continue their current path of progress, increase economic prosperity AND maintain their current population and ethnic levels as they have done over the last 30 years.
On a different level the same is true with Belarus which has done OK,maintained demographic levels much better than other ex USSR, and not received anywhere near the same rate of cheap labour Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Tajiks as us in Russia.
All those crackpot imperialists obsessed with landgrabbing would rather say the mistake was just not cleansing those places by expelling/genociding (kinda Circassian style perhaps) all those unwanted nations, like Altan was lamenting how overgenerous Stalin left too much Latvians in Latvia, instead kicking them out from their own homeland.
So by your logic people who are genetically similar should care more about each other, than of those who are not so similar, and if there is a strong genetic link to ancient inhabitants of some land, then their genetic relatives have a better claim to those lands(Israeli logic)?
There’s nothing wrong to think so, but I’m myself a follower of Golden mean, it’s the best if your kin shares your ideals and principles, but if not, then better to be with foreigners who share your faith. Sometimes your kin can believe in madness like great part of Russians did during the civil war. Also we as humans have a cultural and learned side of our behaviour, which is only partially dependent on blood, though there are extremes outside of Eurasia, people who are very different and may have some cognitive limitations.
I believe that CWC were speakers of Indo-European, there’s good case for it, for Balto-Fennic languages have a substrate of very ancient Indo-European words, and their lands were originally inhabited by CWC.
Isn’t your wife a French and therefore your children are half-French? In my opinion French are more of descendants of Neolithic Anatolian farmers and of those who were once called by the name of Mediterranean race than the Slavs and Germans, so they are not very closely related with the Ancient Indo-Europeans.
Hey now you are purposefully misinterpreting me, I did not advocate expelling/genociding of Latvians, just tinkering little bit with Latvia’s demographics. In 1989 Latvian SSR had 2.7 million people, of those 52% were Latvians, so if Soviet authorities would have relocated just little bit more other fraternal peoples to Latvia(and if little more of Latvians would had found work from other parts of their great Socialist Motherland), Latvians would now be a minority in their lands and that geopolitically conveniently located country could now be part of its natural hinterland.
Off topic, but aren’t you Lithuanian? Lithuania is quite a nice little country, with it’s own history, unlike Estonia and Latvia, though I did not like your “zeppelins,” Trakai castle was very picturesque, and the view from the castle hill in Vilnius is beautiful. I was surprised how many lakes you had, and how hilly the terrain was in comparison with the neighbouring Latvia and Russia.
LOL – the huge level of correspondence of Russian leaders from the time of Ivan Grozny to before Peter the Great- between them and British/other royalty seeking deals, the huge level of these European states sending their businessmen and technical specialists to Russia like Danish shipbuilders, Italian designers, Germans, French, Swedish whatever, a long time before Peter, make the idea of “europeanisation” occurring in Russia because of him….. particularly with the extensive European interaction after and before him……. a very braindead theory – even for an imbecile as yourself.
The huge value at the time of the furs, wood , known raw materials, huge value of exploration of the largely unstudied land for potential valuable raw materials, plus Russian state being a Christian state expanding in North, east and southern directions…….make it entirely logical to any non-dumb attention-whore, multiple sock puppet cockroach- that Russia was going to attract extensive “western” interaction and business – and with that comes some of their practices, technical skills, customs other influences and so on.
I can’t dismiss the idea that a pseudo-ukrop retard as yourself will claim the “Ukrainians” built the Suez canal in the 5th century….. but in the real world, most European states were travelling by land to get to trade with China/India, and there is no indication they find russians or Russian rulers as alien to them as Chinese… so further European close integration was always guaranteed because of this trading route.
In reality, as Russians we have always been able to develop and keep our great culture and identity…. while learning from the best of European influences – this is different to Poland which outside of its geographic location and being Catholic…. is about as European as Lesotho, certainly equal in contribution to European culture.
If we go to talk about the European civilisation and values, then in addition to Christianity, WTF do you think Zemsky sobor was you dumb prick? (rhetorical question as expecting more subroma, instantaneous BS, and copying of BS off Wikipedia or some other garbage)
Zemsky Sobor was as democratic and sophisticated as anything in Europe at the time you idiot….. certainly compared to the Authoritarian blackhole PLC.
Anna Russkaya marrying King of France half a millenium before…… and you are trying to equate all this with Armenia and Gruzia you dumb, mentally sick excre*ent? LMAO
Right, that’s the definition of “better”. I am not seeking better or best, those are for each individual to ponder. What I oppose is the never-ending ambition to change and control others. Any conservatism has to be of eternal nature, pre-enlightenment…pre-ideologies.
Yes, if everyone did that the World would be a saner place. First care about your kin, then your neighbors, then the whole village/community etc.
An old Jew from Piter that I knew well once told me : “Даже Христос говорил : любите ближнего своего и ничего не говорил про дальнего. ” He was obviously right.
That’s what I also thought before, but Carlos Quiles got me doubting.
https://indo-european.eu/haplogroup-is-not-language-but-r1b-l23-expansion-was-associated-with-proto-indo-europeans/
My wife is mainly Celtic. Of North-Western French and Irish descent. Her ancestors name is found in Bretagne, Normandy and Scotland.
I have cooked a Guinness Beef yesterday for the St Paddy’s day that was on March 17th and we listened to Celtic music. Just a way to amuse the kids – they like Celtic music better than Slav.
https://youtu.be/GRrZFL3z0aY
I will cook bliny for Maslenitsa.
The French are very diverse depending on the regions, but mainly either Celtic or Mediterranean or a mix of both.
The Celts also got admixed a lot while they migrated from Central Europe to all the different places they settled later on.
It should be pre-nations as well. It should be based on the law of blood and soil.
Indeed, the Ming’s founding Emperor once considered invading Japan and thought better.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%83%E5%AF%87
そのうち、朱元璋は軍事恫喝を含んで、明への朝貢と倭寇の鎮圧を日本の懐良親王に要求した。ところが懐良親王は、もし明軍が日本に侵攻すれば対抗する旨の返書を送って朱元璋の要求を受け付けなかった。この返書に激怒した朱元璋であったが、クビライの日本侵攻の敗北を鑑みて日本征討を思い止まったという[421]。
Among them, Hongwu Emperor demanded the tribute to Ming and the suppression of Wokou from Prince Kaneyoshi of Japan, including military threats. However, Prince Kaneyoshi did not accept Hongwu Emperor’s request by sending a reply stating that if the Ming army invaded Japan, he would counter it. Hongwu Emperor was furious at this reply, but he stopped conquering Japan in view of Kublai’s defeat in the invasion of Japan. [421]
If.
Christ is not my master and teacher, so how this is relevant to me?
Insular Celtic people of Bretagne and British Isles are quite far removed from the R1a Aryans, but clearly you love to make ad hoc conclusions that are more suitable for your goals, in this you very much resemble communists, there is an ideological truth for you and all other truths must be in harmony with it, if it’s not then you will twist other truths for as long as necessary, until they fit to your fundamental worldview.
“Blut und Boden,” now I understand what you are and why you defend Vlasovites. Oh, well still better than a SJW.
Isn’t that “I with my brother against my cousin, I with my cousin against our rival tribe,” a way of the Arabs, and not of the White men? In the history of Arabs and Jews one can see what too much only caring about one’s kin brings upon people, the current state of the West is one extreme that is true, very true, but going from one extreme to another does not and will not help.
Must I say this sounds very charming, Lol
Do you also believe that the US made a mistake in importing millions of Ashkenazi Jews since 1880? Because if not, then this would suggest that the problem was not so much with Ashkenazi Jews as with Russia itself. Had Russia treated its own Ashkenazi Jews comparable to how the US treated its Ashkenazi Jews, maybe Russian Ashkenazi Jews would have been less likely to engage in extremely subversive activities such as Bolshevism.
Interestingly enough, Manzikert wasn’t actually too devastating for the Byzantine Empire for the next 110 years. The Byzantines never managed to recover the Anatolian interior but they did manage to recover coastal Anatolia–with some Crusader help–and to hold it until Emperor Manuel’s death in 1180 with no adult son to succeed him created a power vacuum in the Byzantine Empire that ultimately led to a lot of instability and regime changes and to the 1204 Sack of Constantinople a couple of decades later.
Or Bulgaria? Or Serbia?
But maybe I’m wrong about you, often your thinking is very nuanced, and sometimes I don’t notice some small but critical details, ending up myself with wrong conclusions.
“Regarding the work ethic, Russian Old Believers had and still have an excellent work ethic.”
Do Russian Old Belivevers really exist in any meaningfull sense?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Russia#Old_Believers
Expanding on the initial comment. Proportionally Old Belivers have declined dramatically since the Russian Revolution, is there a possibillity that this can change in the future? Are Old Belivevers still successfull in business and culture?
Perhaps. Or perhaps Jews were more compatible with Anglo American culture (which based on Protestantism and emphasized the Old Testament more) than with Russian culture, and thus felt less alienated.
Russia was probably large and powerful enough to withstand Westernization, if it wanted to.
Yes, and after the loss of Left Bank Ukraine the PLC under Jan Sobieski managed to destroy the Ottomans at Vienna. But like Byzantium after Manzikert, a critical piece was missing, there was a hole in the dam. It could only be held together so long…
They are a minuscule minority. But iy took 400 years of oppression to reduce them to this. FWIW there is today a kind of reconciliation between the Old Believers and the Nikonian Orthodox Church. There are Orthodox Churches under the Moscow Patriarchate that celebrate Old Believer liturgies etc.
What I wanted to convey by referring to the Old Believers, was that the subpar work consciousness is not a natural state of Russian people. It was induced during the time of serfdom and totalitarian oppression. When Russians were free (before the complete enforcement of serfdom umder the Romanov) they worked better and were more productive. They stayed that way in the regions where serfdom was less prevalent and Old Believer communities more numerous.
In business yes. In culture probably not, but in Tsarist times they were mainly supportive of Russian art, not creating art themselves.
Those Westerners who visited Muscuvy in the era of Ivan IV did not see it as an European country. And it was indeed not an European land. It took a lot of blood and sweat to become relatively westernized. My personal opinion is that it was perhaps not worth it.
Russian Orthodoxy doesn’t emphasize the Old Testament as much? As of right now, Russians’ views on homosexuality are much more Old Testament-style than those of either most US (Ashkenazi) Jews or Americans in general.
Also, Jews in the US weren’t as oppressed as they were in Russia. The US had Jewish quotas for a time (a form of affirmative action for gentiles), but obviously nothing comparable to the Russian anti-Semitic Pale of Settlement. The US did have the Leo Frank trial in the 1910s, but he was likely on track to get exonerated (in the view of Georgia’s then-outgoing Governor) before he got lynched by an angry mob, so …
IMHO, the “Jewish problem” in Russia could have been solved by treating Jews better–similar to how the US treated its own Jews–and also encouraging both secularization and mass intermarriage between Jews and gentiles–similar to the situation in the US over the last several decades. It worked for my own Jewish paternal grandfather, after all. He married a Russian woman and refused to circumcise his two children. My half-Jewish dad likewise married a mixed Russian-Belarusian-Ukrainian woman.
Ironically, Hitler engaged in the Holocaust because he wanted to make Eastern Europe Judenfrei and Judenrein, but this wasn’t even actually necessary to achieve this goal. After all, Eastern Europe–especially, but not only, the Soviet Union–had plenty of surviving Jews at the end of World War II and yet its Jewish population rapidly dwindled over the next 76 years and will continue to rapidly do so, up to the point where by the end of the 21st century Eastern Europe is likely to indeed become Judenfrei and Judenrein as a result of massive Jewish emigration (primarily to Israel and the United States of America), low Jewish birth rates, high Jewish death rates, massive Jewish assimilation, and massive intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. In the absence of the Holocaust, this identical process would have likely still occurred under Communism, but simply on a larger scale due to there being more Jews.
Interestingly enough, nowadays Russia has 3-4 times as many Jews as Ukraine has, a significant reversal from back in 1897, when Ukraine (in its present-day borders) likely had something like 10 times Russia’s (in its present-day borders) Jewish population. (Specifically around 2.5-3.0 million Jews for Ukraine in 1897 versus around 250,000 Jews for Russia in 1897.)
Left-bank Ukraine is east of the Dnieper, right? If so, I’d like to point out that, even right now, it is still considerably less populated than right-bank Ukraine is. So, it doesn’t strike me as actually being a particularly crucial loss for Poland. Perhaps comparable to a victorious Russian Empire or non-Communist Russian Republic losing Poland after the end of World War I. Not pleasant, but not exactly a mortal threat by any means either.
Would Russia have then been a white, Eastern Orthodox version of China, Japan, and/or Korea?
Left Bank went with the city of Kiev and was the more populated and developed than the Right Bank. It had about 2 million people (just under 20% of the PLC)
Even though PLC retained the Right Bank, the the war ruined much of the Right Bank too. In total, PLC probably lost around 20% to 25% of its population as a result of the lost war, and lost many Cossack troops from those lost lands. This was critical, given PLC’s numerous external enemies.
Well, it would not have been quite as alien as those. It would have been like a huge Georgia, or Armenia in terms of difference from Europe.
A funny fairy tale, given that the army near Vienna on 3/4 consisted of Germans, and the attempts of the Poles after Vienna to act independently ended in failure
WTF? How weird and disturbing is this. Fresh from you recently being even more deranged in the head to copy my Deliverance insults as if your own…..you just plaigirise my very recent comment here,talking about Americans:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/wokeness-as-white-supremacism/#comment-4540927
…..
To make things worse from a hideous POS like you…in addition to the fraud you then write incoherent heratic BS like “Anglo-American culture, Protestantism, which emphasised the Old Testament more”….a statement never written by any sentient creature in history. Complete nonsense…….and an also moronic analogy with Russian culture, which is ridiculous considering the struggles of jews throughout Europe and Russian treatment to them as among the best by comparison.
Although, LOL, arent you the same moron who thought Prince Vladimir “chose” Orthodoxy in place of Catholicism…….showing shocking ignorance of when the schism occured? This is almost as bad and as dumb as “typical western ukrainian culture”
This interpretation underplays the shared heritage of Inner Asia on both Russia and China. To this day the Sinosphere frequently refers to Russians unironically and affectionately as „The Mongols“ 蒙古人, as in different from us but in the familiar way.
Analogously, the Slavs refer to the Hans as „Khitans“, a Mongolic people.
Then what is your take on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?
I believe that everything depends on circumstances, that every opinion has its effect, to claim that opinions have no bearing or effect into reality is not objective and truthful way to see reality, in such way I do believe in objectivity, every act has it’s own particular results.
There is not a single country in the world that has managed to avoid “Westernization”. The difference, however, is that some (comparatively few) countries have Westernized themselves (Japan as an example), while others have Westernized as colonies (Korea). That is, the question was exclusively in the ways of” Westernization ” of Russia
This is not quite true. Sully (minister of Henry IV) drew up a plan for the unification of Europe, while he did not know where to attribute the Russian kingdom (to Europe or not-Europe). With Turkey and everything further to the east, he had no questions. There were projects of marriage unions of the ruling families, and the Russian tsars were considered as candidates for the Polish throne. with the same Turkey, all this was unthinkable
Funny enough, I’m reading “The Years of Salt and Rice” and the Qing Empire apparently goes and completes the task.
Anyhow, a good call on the Hongwu Emperor (one of my favorites. The irony of his philosophy and existence matches my own philosophical contradictions.) The Mongols already tried it once as you said, and at some point, one just has to ask “Is it worth it? Can’t we just get rich trading with them? We’ve already taken over China, and the world (besides Japan, and some distant barbarians) are our tributaries.”
Some people apparently just are aghast at the idea someone made a nice building out of wood.
It’s not like its Gobekli Tepi going on here, or the Lost City of Z.
I just don’t think any country does well with large territorial losses. Once you lose one piece, the next follows.
The only alternative was to become a colony or disappearing
The truly westernized part of the Balto-Slav cultural realm. As I wrote above, the (proto) Balto-Slav (Wend) culture can be reliably traced to the Lusatian Culture that predated classical Greco-Roman Europe and was contemporary with early Celtic Europe further West.
Italo-Celtic Europe become nearly completely absorbed into the Roman Empire built on a Hellenic foundation. While the Greco-Roman Europe evolved further, the north-eastern part of Europe remained archaic at the level of development of early iron age and even underwent some simplification as the bulk of economic activity was concentrated south-west.
Under the influence of Roman Empire’s expansion, and then subsequent Germanic and Hun invasions, this cultural area fluctuated, diversified and fractured. After the Christianisation of the western part it was assimilated into Germanic cultural area and mainly assimilated. The central part, that would become the PLC was Christiansted and westernized by not assimilated by the Germans. The Eastern part that would become Muscovy was not westernized, but influenced by Byzantium and the Great Steppe as it extended further and absorbed the neighboring smaller Ugric and Turkic tribes.
By the early twelfth century the difference between the Poles and the Rus was already significant. By fifteenth – sixteenth centuries, the PLC and Muscovy became respectively the competing Western and Eastern centers of the Eastern Slavdom.
Are your opinions objective?
That was not due to some “European” character of the Muscovites, but to the fact that Turks were Muslim, while Russians were Christian. The religious identity was more important than the ethnic one. That is the reason why all those “projects ” did not move forward – Russians being Orthodox, while the European powers were Catholic or Protestant.
Sure. Russia’s pre-Petrine differences from Europe are not identical to those of the Christian Caucasians. But it was about as different (and the same) as Europe as those divergent peoples who shared a deep Christian heritage and in the case of Armenians an Indo-European language with Europeans.
In those days, Christian=European
“Tinkering little bit” would not have achieved desired outcome, because if Latvians managed to install supremacy of their own language and removed the citizenship from Soviet colonists, while being just barely over majority, quite likely they would have been even more motivated and able to do that while being barely under.
The only option was going full hardcore and there is no need to sweeten things up much here, cause honesty, even if hostile, is way more interesting and valuable than some wussy sugarcoating, like virgin holocaust denialism, lol 🙂
Does modernisation equal westernisation?
We have already discussed your Soviet-legacy historical fairytale about the Siege of Vienna:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-92/#comment-3532630
Number of forces at Vienna:
https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2895
The combined relief army of approximately 80,000 troops consisted of roughly 27,000 Polish soldiers (among them 3,000 highly trained “Winged Hussars”); 19,000 Austrians; 10,500 Bavarians; 9,000 Saxons; and 9,500 soldiers from the southwestern German principalities. Under Sobieski’s command, imperial forces scored a decisive victory over Ottoman troops at the Battle of Kahlenberg on September 12, 1683, and thereby lifted the siege. The people of Vienna embraced Sobieski as their liberator
27,000 Poles
19,000 Austrians
10,500 Bavarians
9,000 Saxons
9.500 soldiers from other German principalities
Poles were largest group.
Is your Polonophobia so strong that it has even made you unable to count?
So Poles were largest group, plus Polish king led the entire army.
It’s good for modern anti-Muslim rhetoric, but judging in hindsight from purely geopolitical standpoint it seems not worth doing, cause less than hundred years later those same various Germans, just allied with Russians, were dividing up whole PLC.
No. People were not self-identofying as European back then. They were of X ethnicity + Y religion + Z religious denomination. Remember that it was the time of religious wars. Moscovites did not have the same X + Z as most Europeans, even the alphabet was different. You think other Europeans ignored these important differences?
I disagree. A mighty Ottoman Empire in control of Vienna and surging onward would have been no less of a threat, and the prospect of Ottoman rule would have been worse than rule from Vienna et al.
Exactly. When the Rus imposed the Greek form of Christianity upon the Slavs whom they ruled they drove a real wedge between these Eastern Slavs and their western brothers who had adopted Western Christianity a generation earlier.
I suspect that if both of these peoples had belonged to the same Church, integration into a massive Slavic superstate would have been much more likely.
Yes, but the Rus were interested in trade and Byzantium was the most profitable among the accessibile markets. They chose Orthodox Church as a convenient way to get closer to the Byzantine. Also, at the time of the Christianisation of the Rus lands, the separation between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian denominations was not yet as clearly cut as it became a few hundred years later.
Also, we should not forget the role played by the Golden Horde, which offered a model of power organization of large territories that Muscovy and later Russian Tsardom adopted and used. This model was very different from what was done further West.
Bottom line, before Peter the Great, Russia was quite different from most European countries including Western Slavs and Balts, although a thousand years ago these Western Slavs and Balts were quite similar to the Eastern Slavs that ended up becoming the bulk of the Russian population.
No one thought in the 15th century that Greeks were somehow not Christian or not part of Christendom, even though they had different letters and church. AP’s agenda is very 19th century Catholic and anachronistic. In practice Russian Church was seen as a part of the Greek Church during and before the 15th century, did not Metropolitan Isidore of Kiev attend the council between Eastern and Western churches in Florence?
Ironically Polish Szlachta thought that they are ethnically and culturally different from the Slavs they ruled, AP probably has heard of Sarmatism? How Western, or how European or Christian of them, ha ha ha!
I have also heard of Sarmatism. It is irrelevant to the topic we are discussing. Already in twelfth century, Catholic Church started destroying the Christian documents written in Greek and Glagolithic in the Balkans. They saw the Orthodox as schismatics and heretics and the Orthodox returned them the favor.
You have probably heard of the Teutonic Knights ? They started by the Baltic pagans, but were also eager at conquering and assimilating the Orthodox. The Florence council did not fix the problem and Muscovy opted out of the Unia anyway because it did not see Papal authority as useful and profitable.
Later on the Tsars preferred trade and intermarriage with the Protestants and have basically always seen the Uniate and the Catholic among their subjects as a potential fifth column. Only Old Believers were treated worse than the Uniate. That is one of the reasons that reintegration of Ruthenian populations proved somewhat difficult : suspicion and resentment do not make for a great basis for coexistence.
and
Decide what point of view you advocate. These statements are mutually incompatible
You don’t see the differences between being able to recognize some subset of ethnic, cultural and religious characteristics and and self-identifying with it ?
Now that I think of it, perhaps that’s one of the problems with Russian западники. Monkey see, monkey do ?
Maybe, if Ottomans just replaced Habsburgs it the equation, but perhaps probability of agreement between Germans, Russians and Turks against PLC would have been lesser, than the actual agreement of divisions when all ruling heads were ethnic Germans at the time? Even Swedes could be still in the overall picture if Ottoman empire stayed stronger during the time of Northern war as it was in reality after 1683?
We were discussing of the self identification of Polish and Russian civilizations before the modern era, Polish nobles often felt closer kinship with nomad Tatars than with common Slavic farmers, therefore there are quite big holes in AP’s thesis of Russia’s cultural foreignness. Past was universally less universal and identities were more local and regional, but still in constant flux.
Well, yes. They had good reasons to do what they did. The point is that it created a major source of division between their Slavs and the Slavs to their West.
Correct. Although I can’t help but think that is the Slavs of Rus had been Western Christians they would have maintained a closer link to those not under the Horde during those years, and perhaps would have even gotten out sooner due to more assistance. I also think that without the religious division there would have been a much higher chance of a longer lasting and deeper union between the western and eastern Slavs, likely one that would be unstoppable.
It is ridiculous, considering that according to the Soviet narrative, the Poles at Vienna saved the “ungrateful” Germans. Analogous to the legend of the “Polish” victory at Vienna, the legend that the outcome of the Battle of Grunwald was decided by the regiments from Smolensk. And here, too, we can speculate – if the soldiers of Smolensk knew the future, they should have turned the front and hit the Polish army together with the Teutons
Yes, I wrote about it awhile ago. Polish szlachta thought they were descended from Sarmatian tribes who had conquered the Slavs. They erroneously believed that the Sarmatians had been Turkic and that they, the szlachta, were equals and peers to the mighty Turks but unlike them were redeemed by their Christian faith. Ukrainian szlachta adopted a similar ideology (Rus were Sarmatian Roksolan tribe or something) and Ukrainian Cossacks claimed to be equal to szlachta because they were supposedly descended from the Turkic szlachta.
This did not prevent the Sarmatians from adopting Western technology and architecture, though it resulted in some exotic Turkish-inspired clothing.
There is no reason to think that Muscovite boyars wouldn’t have integrated to this strange system like Rus nobles did.
btw, considering Vytautas the Great had quite troublesome rule over Smolensk at the time, it is not completely out of the ballpark that those regiments could have been non local or even non-ethnic Russian garnisons temporary recalled to the great battle.
https://swordmaster.org/uploads/2012/russian_armour/Helmet_Rus17.jpg
Muscovy cultural foreignness.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%BF%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%9C%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B0_%D0%A4%D1%91%D0%B4%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B0
In the fifteenth and sixteenth century the majority of Muscovite nobles were fluent in Church Slavonic, the local Rus dialect and Turkic. Some were also fluent in Greek, but they were rather rare. And those who were also fluent in Latin were even less numerous. Moreover, a substantial number among them were of Tatar descent.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Simeon_Bekbulatovich.png
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B8
Although that was also the case in the PLC, the overall proportion of higher level PLC aristocracy of Tatar descent was way lower than in Muscovy.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Droryanskaya_konnitsa.jpg/300px-Droryanskaya_konnitsa.jpg
This is how the Muscovite nobility looked like during the wars against the PLC in the sixteenth century.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B8_%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%8F%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5
How could Western Europeans ever see them as identical to themselves?
Of course they knew perfectly well that Muscovites were alien and exotic.
Very superficial take Bashi!
Here’s how East Roman princesses looked like
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bxSpNf-U0R0/WmqoWjyNHlI/AAAAAAACIAM/MFY9dSnnQnsS8Rn2OODwK-WcWVzAtTHUgCLcBGAs/s1600/11sophia.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/62/8d/97/628d97db548d717987a1464801f007eb.jpg
https://www.pallasweb.com/deesisassets/p/constantine-eirene-small.jpg
And their armies
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CCZ3uPlbeas/Xbz0P33vavI/AAAAAAACb48/8ayrGvIOuiIvmPIzDWW-lh2zktRLNPlDQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/11byzantine%2B10th%2Bcen.png
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5f/94/75/5f947583d117717f5999847f4d41c9b3.jpg
https://i.redd.it/6vhlyt5jz9721.jpg
https://larsbrownworth.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Cataphract.jpg
And high officials
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5c/ae/05/5cae0556fc32a5b60fce396fcc12c3e1.jpg
https://www.pallasweb.com/p/2018-fancyhats.jpg
Similarly you could find strange and exotic fashion among Poles and Hungarians, or at from a Western perspective.
“In this battle, the Russian knights of the Smolensk land fought hard, standing under their own three banners, only they alone not flight, and thus earned great glory. Although under one banner they were cruelly cut down and their banner was trampled into the ground, yet in the other two detachments they emerged victorious, fighting with the greatest bravery, as befitted men and knights, and finally joined the Polish troops; and they alone in the army of Vitovt won glory that day for bravery and heroism in battle…”
Polish chronicler Jan Dlugosz
Russian knights of the Smolensk land – these are the soldiers of the Smolensk principality. It is impossible to interpret this passage of the chronicle in any other way
Of course the Byzantine lived side by side with the Saracen and the Turk for 800 years, just like the Moscovite lived side by side with the Tatar for 800 years (if we include the Volga Bulgarian and Khazar before the Golden Horde).
OTOH in the eleventh century the Normandy and Brittany warriors looked like:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Odo_bayeux_tapestry.png/1200px-Odo_bayeux_tapestry.png
Similar to their Rus colleagues of the same period.
But by the sixteenth century thry evolved into:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/tBIAAOSwHwdc~QeI/s-l400.jpg
https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/154349149871_/ARM%C3%89E-FRAN%C3%87AISE-SOLDAT-LANSQUENET-au-16e-si%C3%A8cle.jpg
Muscovy was different from Western Europe and it was way more Oriental than the ancient Rus. I don’t even understand what is there to argue about.
If it’s all about clothes – here are the Polish nobility of the 17th century
https://r4.mt.ru/r25/photo6A46/20444346041-0/jpg/bp.jpeg
Sure, these guys dressed funny and had wild ideas about being ancient Sarmatians, equal to the Ottomans, but they all spoke Latin, belonged to the same Church, had Western ideas about contracts and a generally Western legal system (i.e., cities enjoyed Magdeburg Law as in Germany and Bohemia), had regular contact with Rome, and built towns and palaces with similar and recognizable architecture to that of their Western Catholic peers. The same could not have been said of the equally exotic-looking Muscovites.
Problem being Jan Dlugosz’s chronicle not the contemporary source of the information as contemporary sources – Polish chronicle, written in Latin, named “CRONICA CONFLICTUS WLADISLAI REGIS POLONIAE CUM CRUCIFERI SANNO CHRISTI 1410” does not contain such information. If I’m not completely mistaken, Russian contemporary sources are also silent?:
Also contemporary German sources and even private correspondence within Teutonic knights order do not mention that:
https://www.lituanus.org/2010/10_2_06%20Ekdahl.html
See the post above. PLC provided the single largest group of soldiers (about a third of them) and the supreme commander of the combined forces was the Polish king. The largest cavalry charge in history involved about 3/4 Polish cavalry led by the Polish king, which broke the Ottoman army. This was why the people of Vienna welcomed the PLC as their liberators.
Your legends, on the other hand, were that Poles were only 1/4 of the forces and that they were mere auxiliaries.
Was I wrong in describing your fantasy as Soviet-legacy historiography? Is it a personal anti-Polish hangup instead?
It’s not about clothing only: language, religion, mores, architecture, folklore.
In Muscovy it was halfway between Persian and Tatar styles and Polish styles.
Everything was different from Western Europe.
Why pretending otherwise ?
http://ttolk.ru/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/12.jpg
BTW this is how looked the late fourteenth, early fifteenth Novgorod people. The bearded guys with pointed hats and the long hair.
http://ttolk.ru/articles/baltyi_finnyi_normannyi_-_iz_kogo_sostoyal_drevniy_novgorod
And this is how Western Europeans looked like at the same period.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Codex_Manesse_Johannes_Hadlaub.jpg
Again completely different.
Russia was nowhere close to European culture before Raskol and Peterine reforms.
Protopop Avvakum was once nearly killed because he refused to bless a young Moscovite noble who shaved his beard and wore Polish style clothing. Instead of blessing him, Avvakum insulted him, calling his style “блудолюбивый” (whoring). The servants of that noble family then threw Avvakum off the boat where they invited him to offer his blessings and he nearly drowned.
Yup I don’t understand why changing fashion is so important for you. Also Byzantines got mostly esthetic influence from Persians, not from Turks. Russians, Poles and Byzantines used Kaftans which had their cultural origins in Persia. Did Greeks become more oriental than their Hellenic forefathers after half millennia of Turkish rule? What was the Rus Khaganate? What was Hellenic Alexandria and Antioch?
“Panta Rhei”
-Heraclitus
.
That is possible, but we will never know. In our time-line this did not happen. BTW now that I think about it, given the antagonism of the Wends against the Latin Catholic Church, another reason for Rus to adopt Orthodoxy might have been the need they felt to distinguish themselves from the “Nemtsy”. And they also knew that thd Byzantine being far away and having other vital priorities on their south-eastern front will never attempt to invide them or submit them in any manner.
Stop, stop, stop. If you are talking about the” decisive role ” of the Smolensk regiments in Grunwald, I wrote above that this is a legend. If you are arguing about origin of the Smolensk regiments, then everything that you have written is irrelevant.
Leaving aside the question of “decisiveness” in battlefield related to Smolensk regiment action, nowhere else is mentioned exact origin of the warriors, just in Dlugosz’s chronicle, which itself is way later and relatively dubious source about this particular battle.
How I dislike essentialism, but sadly to most it’s beneficial, lest they do not fall into clutches of nihilism. Lack of permanent and independent nature is not same as nothingness, nor does it mean that things lack of meaning. Our mentality and culture arises from interaction, not from some magical essence that we innately possess.
I have not claimed that Rus was not different from Britain or France, but that identities have always been under a constant change. Ancient Hellenes, and even Byzantines thought that inhabitants of Syria and Egypt were culturally closer than barbarians of Gallia and Germania, now situation is completely different. Ancient Italians had a stronger cultural bond with inhabitants of Tunis and Libya, not with ancestors of Irish and Poles, who are now Catholic. I sound now like a fricking relativist multiculturalist…. Oh well whatever…. Though we have a lack of fixed identity, it does not mean that we can’t use our changing cultural identity beneficially, or try to control in which direction our identity develops.
Because it is meaningless due to the lack of a definition: by what criteria “Europe” can be distinguished from “non-Europe”. Until you agree on such criteria the discussion is meaningless
LOL – So in a battle with absolutely no significance for the major military, expansionist powers of that time in Europe – the Spanish Empire, Dutch, British and French- all with their own disagreements with the HRE, and too busy involved in exploration ,conquest and keeping control of land, people and resources to the east, south and new west of the world…a demented retard as yourself is placing some “importance” in Poles being used as human shields, lead by a cretin with many important defeats to his name and no historian of any reputation claiming him as a military tactician of any skill …over a great cultural city that had no special place to or for Poles before or after this battle?
Nothing to do with Britain, France, Netherlands and Spain but is “critical” for western christianity at a time when many in Europe are breaking from Rome anyway?
It “killed” the Ottoman empire immediately. Within 230 seconds. Sorry, 230 years, with much more important wars between the Ottomans and various european states like Russia, French, British occuring later.
Even Dzerzhinsky has more prestige in Austria than this prick Sobieski you cretin.
This the same Holy Roman Empire that could not even bring some proper war to Britain after the Henry VIII breakaway and subsequent reversal and counter-reversal of Protestantism and Catholicism as the ruling religion in Britain
Melanf said 1/4 were Poles. That figure does not contradict that they were the largest group you dumb POS……just that they were a pitiful 1 in 4 of the military. As maths that even a tramp like you might understand, Russia is 1/10 th of earth’s landmass, but still the largest country in the world. WTF is so hard to understand? (rhetorical question as fully understand it is just more attention-whore misdirection from a loser as yourself)
Anyway 27000 out of 80k is 34%. Estimates from other historians could easily give the size of the army as 90k or 100 or 110k. It’s just misdirection from a creep as yourself as 25% is sufficiently close enough ( and probably accurate) to the ethos of the post
Said by a clown fantasist with absolutely zero knowledge of soviet history education. Your accusation doesn’t even make sense you imbecile as to why they would place Poles in that role. It’s an incorrect instantaneous BS accusation
HAHAHAHAHA! “Not” at all creepy you wackjob. We are on open-thread 145……you have open-thread 92 comments stored in your sick, spamtroll memory! Why does this illness not extend to your much more recent “western ukrainian traditional culture” or equally retarded infamous language “lessons” LOL.
BTW are you doing with the totally implausible and braindead “protestant focus on the Old Testament”? A comment with no sense or intellect behind it at all.
Very funny. 3 of your last 4 posts were replies to my posts. You are really desperate for attention. I won’t bother reading this one either, but it looks like your usual display of ignorance and desperation.
Interesting.
Were Serbia and Bulgaria as distant from Europe pre-1700 as Russia was? I mean their Christian populations–not the Muslim Ottomans who were ruling over them during this time.
What % non-Latvian do you think that Latvia would have actually needed to become before this would have no longer realistically been possible? As in, a Latvian monopolization of power in Latvia post-Soviet collapse?
LOL – “dont read them” (BS), but count the “earth-shaking” figure of 3 out of 4 – while sociopathically having the open thread 92 ( 2 years old?) immediately ready? LMAO.
Of course I don’t need to justify anything to human garbage like you.You literally need to justify everything because it’s highly disturbing in both volume, content and your general sick mind. You make attention-whore idiot comments , I reply to 0.1% of this freakshow, 0.0000001% if we include all the sockpuppets on other forums and other missed stuff. This most recent one because I am trying to read the excellent and informative melanf comments , but have your deranged nonsense poison in the way replying with BS to melanf’s post…..and another time because you have just blatantly plaigirised my comment you idiot!
Anyway, how is that “Protestantism more follows the Old Testament” BS going? WTF
It’s hard to see by what criteria in , say 1890, Russia is not European. Direct advanced development in science, engineering, art, music, philosophy, literature and so on was occurring throughout Russia, France, Spain, UK, Italy, Germany, Holland and Scandinavia …..that were all either closely concurrent with each other ( e.g Bessemer process and Siemens-Martin), or interlinked ( too many to list scientists in Europe in regular correspondence with eachother either working as rivals or derivative off each other). This all happened exclusively across the European space. 3 of the main pillars of Civil Engineering study/mathematics ( Euler,Timoshenko and Bernouilli) were all in Russia.
I don’t see French and Italians reacting to Russians making ballet our own as if it is not the highest form of European development……as they regularly do to the orientals in classical European music and performing arts. There is alot of disdain to these Asians, like they are big imposters – even if technically they are very strong.
So we are at, what, 80% of your posts being replies to mine? LOL. You are as desperate as you are ignorant.
Westernization meaning
1. Technological modernization. Industrialization.
2. Liberal Western Institutions, e.g. Multi-party democracy, American/French Revolutions
1 has taken place across Europe and East Asia. As you said, by themselves or as colonies.
2 was forced upon on Japan and Germany. And only Russia and China are independent of this
There’s a parallel to this in East Asia, as Ming and Qing dynasties under Inner Asian influence would be much more effective under the more pure Han Chinese Song dynasty in managing large multi-ethnic territories.
What if any material differences are there between Slavic and Germanic/Nordic pagans? Obviously the latter Christianized earlier
It seems that you are speaking of Westernization in this context as Britain+France+Germany.
But the Teutons themselves had their conflicts and insecurities with regards to Westernization. E.g. Frederick the Great saying that he’s never read a book in German. And this brings the mind the German Sonderweg and Romantic feelings resisting material Westernization
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Sonderweg
If I understand correctly, despite these conflicted feelings, the Teutons would be the main transmitter of Hard Westernization i.e. Industrialization, and Soft Westernization i.e. Liberalism, to Slavic lands, by way of Baltic Germans.
But despite the shared feelings of being torn being between East and West, in WWI and WWII the Teuton and the Slav would turn against each other. I opine more of the fault has to be attributed to Germans. Bolshevism was evil but was at least sane with regards to self-preservation; whereas Nazism was the former but not the latter.
I contend that the core of Western ideas is based upon Thalassocracy (hegemony by sea power) as opposed to Tellurocracy (hegemony by land power). And that the main conflicts in the 20th Century is Thalassocracy pitting Tellurocracies against each other, i.e. Teuton against Slav, Han against Samurai
Btw, in looking up Sonderweg I found AK’s old piece with these themes
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/return-of-the-reich/
Excellent stuff. Most the predictions ring true. But China’s ascendency was the wild card. Today’s most/only of Germany’s economic growth comes from China.
無
Kazakhs SSR had around 40% Kazakhs in 1989, so sudden death is possibly correct, but I do believe than in such demographic situation joining NATO would have been impossible, Latvian TFR after all has never* been anywhere near Turkics.
*I mean from 1980s to present.
Interesting thing to note is that ‘Europe’ can be split along a cultural West/East division, and a North/South division. But what does that capture? Well, just the normal ethnic supergroups. ‘Nothern Europeans’ are really just Germanics, ‘Southern Europeans’ are Romance-speakers, and ‘Eastern Europeans’ are the Slavs. All 3 have their own particularities that cannot just be crammed into 1 identity.
理性之风吹散掉了言语的落叶, 春天终于回来了
It was a great essay, especially the part about the Belief Matrix.
You have asked Anatoly a question above about the differences between the Norse/!German and the Balto-Slav cultures prior to Christianisation.
While we wait for his response, which I am also very interested in, I would like to note that Tacitus writings about Germanic tribes is possibly a later day fabrication, as are many texts of supposedly antique Latin and Hellenic origin. But even if Tacitus Germania is genuine, it would confirm that the Iron Age cultures of Northern Europe were quite similar to each other and somewhat difficult to tell apart for a Southerner from a Mediterranean culture.
In Jordanes’ Getica we read about the conquest of Antes (Wends) by the Goths and the migrstion of the Huns. By the time of the Hun migration to Europe, the Balto-Slav and the German cultures were very close despite the linguistic differences. If not for the Huns, North-eastern Europe would have probably evolved towards a more unified and harmonious Germano – Balto-Slav culture and possibly a strong statehood under the Goth domination.
This evolution is confirmed by the emerging Chernyakhov Culture which combined the Germanic (Goth), Slav (Antes / Wends), Sarmatian and romanized Dacian (Vlakh) characteristics. The Huns destroyed this culture, started the Great Migrations period and allowed the Slavs to expand towards the West. Attila’s Huns’ hordes were multiethnic, with the Slav being probably numerous among his men. The few words recorded by the Byzantine as Hunic are easily identified as Balto-Slavic.
復次，須菩提！菩薩摩訶薩復有摩訶衍，所謂內空、外空、內外空、空空、大空、第一義空、有為空、無為空、畢竟空、無始空、散空、性空、自相空、諸法空、不可得空、無法空、有法空、無法有法空
It gives me no pleasure to say this, but you’re going to tin foil hat conspiracy levels of thinking. You’re a smart guy and better than that.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/02/ancient-text-has-long-and-dangerous-reach/
https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/the-forged-texts-of-the-middle-ages-why-europes-holy-men-turned-to-counterfeiting/
I don’t say it is a forgery, but it was only rediscovered in the 15th century, which makes it a little suspicious.
Also I vaguely remembered that the adventures of the Germania manuscript did not end in the 15 century and that this book actually had quite a an interesting history afterward.
https://nazigermanyguide.blog/2018/05/06/tacitus-germania-and-the-codex-aesinas/
Draw your own conclusions.
I don’t know much about Germania, but for a moment I thought that you have started to believe in Fomenko’s New Chronology. Isn’t there some writer here on unz.com who believes in a such utterly moronic theory that our chronology has completely been falsified?
Really hard to say what is that concrete lower threshold percentage as the lower it would be in fact, the larger the resentment and desire to overturn situation. Latvians obviously are not as wild or quickly multiplying as Muslims, but I’d say that after 19th century national revival in comparison they looked more capable to go into relative hardcore themselves, no matter the ideology (Red Riflemen/Waffen SS) than neigbouring Lithuanians.
You say it as if was some bad thing 😉 Such situation is near best available in real and not so perfect world, Baltics being just bigger equivalent of West Berlin during Cold War. Ofc, absolutely ideal would be a docile economic superpower RF without revanshist ambition in a Western camp, like modern Germany/Japan are, but it’s not like they really voluntarily arrived into such situation 🙂
Yes, finlandization is another variation, which is not entirely bad, but it is needed to remember what were the actual precursors of such thing being available for Finland, but not for Baltics – ability to withstand military Soviet assault twice, remaining indepent and thus being able to avoid the joys of “little tinkering” with native population.
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but perhaps it wouldn’t be much overexaggerating to say main content in this very site we are posting is dedicated exactly to screaming bloody murder about evil ZOG perpetrated and ongoing white genocide in USA 🙂
I bear no ill towards the Baltic people, I highly esteem Estonians, they have an exceptionally large and vibrant ethnically Estonian Buddhist community, but Balts should understand that Russia is not the USSR and that they lost a historical chance to redeem their relations with Russia by being so overtly hostile towards Her in her time of weakness. (Hyena like behaviour to harass lion when he’s weak and sick) Both sides have done wrongs, but still Estonian and Latvian cultural awakening could have never happened without benevolent Imperial Russian authorities, and those who cynically claim that it was just power politics, are wrong, Baltic German nobility was extremely loyal to Russian Emperor, there was lots of bad blood because of pro-Estonian and pro-Latvian policies among loyal German gentry and nobility. This all bad blood is fault of Soviets, and Russians and ethnic minorities which supported them(like Latvians).
The greatest European Buddhist monk ever to exist is the great venerable Vahindra Lama, or in Estonian Karl Tõnnison.
http://www.estonica.org/media/files/images/25/258866397539-karlis-tennisons_jpg_600x800_q100.jpg
http://www.estonica.org/media/files/images/99/991617098633-karl-tonisson_jpg_600x800_q100.jpg
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/XRKThS2qQNLKtYKWUEnYMjBFIBhlpmgmiS-SaVm8f5W9q_Q_VXacd0feRfpxrHSQa319V8Ulsg53QGpRzRx8irzwkrLtY6MWDZ9H5xCRcLm7IJ2dPNvWV2MKyuJak3qkMkCTXlnITbGnsGXUVscwacPkvBXlhXthr0QqrWs9YtehiELGQHlw5qUSDA
http://docplayer.net/docs-images/57/40957828/images/9-0.png
But he is usually known by his Latvian name Karlis Tennison, there’s a common misconception that he was Latvian, but after the revolution Estonian government denied his entry to country, because of his Pagan beliefs, but Latvia gave him citizenship, so that’s why he is known by a Latvian name. Anyhow he was not just any mendicant, but a Siddha, a wandering great seer and yogi, a true Bodhisattva, he died in Burma in 1960s. Everywhere he walked barefooted, no matter how cold it was, and everywhere he helped anyone, even hundreds of stray animals. He is very affectionately remembered in our Inner Asian Buddhist circles.
Btw Bashibuzuk are you some kind of White nationalist or pro-European racialist? I bear no ill will towards people like you, but I have my natural reservations as a mixed race individual, though strictly speaking 3/5 of my genome is European. My mother is little bit less than 20% Polish and Belarussian, rest is Buryat-Mongol. The Polish-Belarussian heritage that I have mentioned previously, remember? There were many Poles exiled to Siberia and some mixed with locals. It’s an irony of fate that I have Polack in me, and very likely not just any Polack, but a someone who fought for Polish liberty… Oh well at least I have little bit a Slav in me…
http://tradition.lv/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tenisona-graamata.jpg
http://tradition.lv/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/K%C4%81rlis-Tenisons.jpg
I am a race-realist. That is, I consider that different races have different characteristics. But I do not consider that some races are inherently and absolutely superior. I think that they all have their positive and negative characteristics.
About mixed-race or ethnicity people : I think it would be hard today to find someone who is not “mixed ” genetically speaking. In the Andaman Islands or some Papua New Guinea landlocked inner valley perhaps ?
Perhaps if history had been different, into the 19th century. But with the fashion for nationalism that emerges from German romanticism in the second half of the 19th century, there was an expectation that composers of different nationalities should occupy different musical techniques and identifiable national trademarks.
This introduction of a19th/20th century fashion for nationalism into musical life, was probably symptom of decline in music history, but it could be a final fertile inspiration for some composers: people like Janacek, Dvorak and Verdi we would to imagine a very different careers, without the nationalist fashions that inspired them at various stages.
That said, if 18th century had listened to their music, they would not have necessarily have been able to identify the nationality of the composers. But we today can identify the national components, even in musical pedagogy – for example, “Russian piano school”, whose trademark characteristics was perceived as being German in the time of Anton Rubinshteyn, but has resulted in amazing pedagogical successes in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union.
Both sides of 19th century westernizers and nativism, were symptoms of Westernization. The nativism movement was like a local subsidiary of the fashion for German romanticism and its framework is based in writers like Herder.
–
Rachmaninov, both as pianist and composer, is one of the latest products of successful Westernization in musical education, and in particular that Russian 19th century was incorporating the fashion for using local elements as material for composition.
There is a very specifically Russian national element in his musical background – that he could in no other country have had such a rigorous musical education, and this harsh and demanding standards of achievement originated in especially Russian sense of insecurity and feeling of backwardness relative to other European countries.
“Russian piano school” is an import from Germany, via Anton Rubinshteyn and Leschetizky, but Russian soil is the world’s most fertile one for this style of piano pedagogy. It is in Russia, where the musical exercises and piano technique, becomes worshipped almost religious strictures. Czerny and Hanon were like daily religious prayers, for Russian music students.
By the way, there is a secret of Russia and America, in this sense of insecurity to Europe, and a lot of the second half of 20th century Russian/American cultural contests are in this sphere, with Russia as the better student than America.
Hence, the American cult around Van Cliburn, and the highest honour for 20th century American culture, was when Van Cliburn won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958. This is when American culture felt like they had finally succeeded in the world, and today American classical musical culture and pedagogy remember it as their ultimate moment of glory: one of their “native guys” from Texas has been recognized Russia, the better and even more high-achieving, because insecure, strict and hardcore student of European culture.
Out of that thousand years, Lithuania was not ruled by the Rus in many of its forms roughly 83% of the time, so more like the rest was anomaly, while independency from the East and strife was the norm 😉 Also it can be said that the whole nuclear age is anomaly, so the actual line between anomaly and new reality is quite blurry.
As for USA situation, increasing amplitude of internal political oscillation is a certain potential risk for ability to project power, but yet USA is a relatively young force in a worldwide arena, which lately even gained some material interest by becoming able to export oil&gas into Europe (including Baltics) instead of just abstract geopolitical atlanticism. Those are reasons for cautious optimism, even when considering the possibility of more domestic American hybrid versions of Shroeder/Berlusconi coming to power while stoking isolationist strain of USA political tradition.
Yet in geopolitical military realm, capabilities are more important than intentions and the capability and potential for such sacrifice is remaining real for the foreseeable future. The script where today’s Lukashenko is tommorow Putin is also quite real, except Luka had no real chance to use external expansion as a lifeboat in case of sinking popularity, while Putin (or any other RF ruler) can try to do it.