PAPER REVIEW
Grigoriev, Andrey & Lynn 2009
Studies of Socioeconomic and Ethnic Differences in Intelligence in the Former Soviet Union in the Early Twentieth Century
Abstract:
This paper reviews the studies of socioeconomic and ethnic and racial differences in intelligence carried out in Russia/USSR during the late 1920s and early 1930s. In these studies the IQs of social classes and of ethnic minorities were tested. These included Tatars (a Caucasoid people), Chuvash and Altai (mixed Caucasoid-Mongoloid peoples), Evenk (a mixed Caucasoid-Arctic people), and Uzbeks (a Central-South Asian people). The results of these studies showed socioeconomic differences of 12 IQ points between the children of white collar and blue collar workers, and that with the exception of the Tartars the ethnic minorities obtained lower IQs than European Russians.
This is essentially a short history of psychometrics in the USSR/Russia.
(1) The first measurement of Russian IQ was performed in 1909 by A.M. Schubert, who used the French Binet test with n=229 children: “She concluded that the Binet test appeared to be too difficult for Russian children and the scale should be moved on 1 to 2 ages to be appropriate for them.” Since Mental age ÷ Physical age × 100 = IQ, this implies their average IQ was perhaps one S.D. lower than that of the French, though later researchers pointed out those children were drawn from lower socio-economic strata.
In 1930, now in the USSR, another study found the following:
They tested 414 children aged between 8½ and 11½ with the American Stanford– Binet (administered in Russian translation). The sample consisted of 200 children of peasants,141 children of blue collar workers, and 73 children of white-collar workers. All children were from Moscow or the Moscow region. The results were that the children of peasants obtained a mean IQ of 87 (the standard deviation=10), the children of blue-collar workers a mean IQ of 91 (SD=8.6) and the children of white-collar workers a mean IQ 98 (SD=8.4). The mean IQ (unweighted) for three groups was 92… Thus, the total weighted mean for Russian children in this study was 90.3 (these IQs are in relation to American Stanford–Binet norms).
This brings to mind a 1920s study quoted by Anne Anastasi in her book Differential Psychology (pp.524), in which Russian immigrant children to the US got 90.
This 10 point difference was presumably there because Russia was a more economically backwards country, with a more repressed average IQ due to gaps in schooling, malnutrition, parasitic load, etc.
(2) As in the West, consistent differences were found in the IQs of people from different socio-economic strata.
Another study of relation of IQ to social class was carried out by M. Syrkin (М.Сыркин)(Сыркин,1929) who compared the intelligence of fourth grade children (N=338, age approximately 10 years) belonging to six socio-economic groups. The lowest group was described as “ blue collar workers and at least one of parents illiterate”and the highest group was described as “white-collar workers and at least one parent educated in an institute of higher education”. Intelligence was assessed with five verbal tests measuring comprehension and verbal reasoning. There was a difference of 1.42d(equivalent to 21.3 IQ points) between the lowest and highest socioeconomic groups.
The USSR really did expel, kill off, or otherwise limit the reproductive fitness of its best and brightest.
In 1928, E.I. Zverev (Е.И. Зверев)(Зверев, 1931) tested the IQ of 114 children just admitted to school and aged about 7½– 8 years, in and around the city of Kursk, about 500 km south of Moscow. The children were tested with the Binet– Bert test (a Russian adaptation of the Binet). The mean IQ of these children was 80.8. This is much lower than the IQ of children obtained by Gurjanov, Smirnov, Sokolov, & Shevarev (Гурьянов, Смирнов, Соколов,&Шеварев, 1930) for Moscow and the Moscow region. Probably this difference was due to methodological and sample differences, but there is a possibility that the regional factor was also involved.
The latter hypothesis is likely the correct one.
In the 2009 PISA test, there was a 12 IQ point difference between Kursk and Moscow, which is an incredibly concentrated cognitive cluster.
(3) Now we go on to the most “controversial” part – ethnic differences in IQ.
Central Russia
There were also some studies of the IQs of non-Slavonic but predominantly Caucasoid peoples.I. Bektchentay (И .Бикчентай) and Z. Carimowa (З.Каримова )(Бикчентай &Каримова, 1930) tested the IQs of 380 Tartar children aged 8– 18 in fi ve Tartar schools in Moscow with the Boltunow–Binettest(aRussian adaptation of the Binet). The Tartars are indigenous to the Caucasus in the far south of Russia and the former Soviet Union, but a number of them live in central Russian towns and cities. The mean IQ of the Tartar children in this study was approximately the same as that of Russian children. The correlation between the Boltunow– Binet test and school achievements (assessed by teachers’ estimates) in their study was 0.84.
Yes, this is a pretty major distinction.
The Volga Tatars – the Muslim and Christianized Tatars of central Russia – have an average IQ of around 100 (about equal to modern Russia/Europe). Population genetics studies have found them to be basically acculturated Slavs.
The first of these was reported by F.P. Petrov (Е.П. Петров) (Петров, 1928) who tested the IQs of 1398 Chuvash children aged 3–13 in 1926–1927 with the French Binet–Simon test… The figures inTable 2 show a median IQ of 87 for boys and 84 for girls, and means (unweighted) of 89 for boys and 86 for girls. These are in relation to 100 for French norms, but no normative data are reported for Russian children. The IQs of the Chuvash children show a decline with age, with the lowest IQs among the 12 and 13 year olds.
Chuvashia is currently about average for the Russian regions.
Tundra
Also tests carried out on indigenous tundric peoples, such as the Evenks (Bulanov 1930):
The results are presented as typical for Evenk children, but because of the small samples, their IQs may not be regarded as reliable. The results are as follows. For the Binet test the mean IQ was 70.16 (for 5 children, and in relation to French norms). The results obtained with the Rossolimo test showed lower average IQs of the Evenk (Tungus) compared with a Moscow sample on some abilities, namely, memory for pictures and words, ability to comprehend combined pictures, ability to comprehend visual incongruities, and, according to Bulanow’s interpreta- tion, ability to retain a high level of attention. As regards memory for pictures, the results contradicted the sometimes described capacity of Evenk (Tungus) to remember exactly long routes on wild territory (Encyclopedic Dictionary by Brockhaus & Efron (Энциклопедический словарь Ф .А . Брок – гауза и И.А .Ефрона ), 1902, vol. 67, p. 66)….
Bulanow also reported some observations on Evenk (Tungus) children and adults concerning their great difficulty in understanding the concepts of measurement and number. He reported that when Evenk children were questioned about devices for measurement, they did not have the concept of an absolute unit of measurement. They thought that the unit changed with the material measured. Bulanow reported further that when he asked Evenk adults how many children they had “ It was difficult, almost impossible, to get from parents precise information as to how many of their children were alive, how many of their children had died, what was the age of their children, and so on.” (p. 198).
… and on the Altai (Zaporochets 1930):
The results for the Binet test were as follows: mean IQ for total group was 66.9 (sd. 8.5), mean IQ for children aged 8– 12 was 69.15, and the mean IQ for children aged 13–16 years was 64.8. As noted by Zaporojets, this test was tedious for the Altai children. Some tasks were especially difficult for them. These were tasks involving calculation, logical operations, and the fluency task to name as many as words as possible during 3 min. As for the Rossolimo test, the most diffi cult tests for Altai children were those requiring the ability to retain a high level of attention and to comprehend visual incongruities. Their mean IQ for the Pintner–Peterson test was 75.
Zaporojets noted that the Altai children did not have a clear understanding of units of measurement. He observed that when they were questioned about the length of a meter, the Altai would often ask: “Which meter?”They thought that the meter in one shop could be longer than in another. An adult Altai said about distance: “It is 100 big versts (approximately 100 kilometers)” (he apparently thought that the number of small versts must be more).
Zaporojets’ paper contains some interesting observations on adult Altai. Although adult Altai performed calculations poorly at the time of study, they showed a remarkable ability for visual estimation of large quantities. A herdsman, who could count only to 20–30, noticed very well the absence of one horse, cow or sheep in a herd of many hundreds. He looked at a huge herd and noted that a particular cow was absent. Another example of the great visualization ability of the Altai was that they could remember and showed the way through wild territory, where they had been only once many years previously.
Common theme: No numeracy (they’d have a very bad Whipple’s index), very premodern and non-abstract ways of thinking, but quite well suited for their environment.
In PISA 2009, Yakutia had the lowest score of any tested Russian region, including Dagestan (though Chechnya and Ingushetia were not included). Ethnic Yakuts, who probably have similar IQs to the Altai and Evenks, constitute 50% of its population, though probably more like 2/3 amongst the children taking PISA due to their higher fertility rates. This might imply that the average Yakut IQ is in the low-to-mid 80s.
Central Asia
First test was carried out in 1926 by A. Schtelerman: He did not give IQs but reported that the scores of the Uzbek children were lower than those of children in Moscow.
A series of studies by V.K. Soloviev on Russian and Uzbek army cadets and professionals found that “the test scores and the educational level of the Uzbeks were lower than those of the Europeans.”
The third study of the intelligence of the Uzbeks was carried out in 1931 by A.R. Luria (А.Р . Лурия ), at that time at the Institute of Psychology in Moscow. Luria did not use intelligence tests but gave a descriptive analysis of the Uzbeks’ cognitive abilities. He distinguished two modes of thought designated graphic recall (memories of how objects in the individual’s personal experience are related) and ca- tegorical relationships (categorisation by abstract concepts). He found that the thought processes of illiterate Uzbek peasants were confined to graphic recall and that they were not able to form abstract concepts. For example, they were shown a hammer, an axe, a log and a saw, and asked which of these did not belong. The typical Uzbek answer was that they all belonged together because they are all needed to make firewood. People who are able to think in terms of categorical relationships identify the log as the answer because the other three are tools (an abstract concept). Illiterate Uzbeks peasants were unable to form concepts of this kind. They were also unable to solve syllogisms. For instance, given the syllogism “There are no camels in Germany; the city of B is in Germany; are there camels there?” Luria gave as a typical Uzbeks answer “I don’t know, I have never seen German cities. If B is a large city, there should be camels there.” Similarly, Luria asked “In the far north, where there is snow, all bears are white; Novia Zemlya is in the far north; what color are the bears in Novia Zemlya?”. A typical Uzbek answer was “I’ve never been to the far north and never seen bears”(Luria,1979, p. 77–8). Thus, Luria concluded that these peoples were not capable of abstract thought: “ the processes of abstraction and generalization are not invariant at all stages of socioeconomic and cultural development. Rather, such processes are pro- ducts of the cultural environment” (Luria, 1979, p. 74). Luria proposed that the ability to think in terms of categorical relationships is acquired through education. He did not suggest that the Uzbeks have any genetic cognitive deficiency.
I wrote about Luria back in the late 2000s when I still agnostic about genetic racial differences in IQ.
Today those factors no longer really hold, but Central Asians do very poorly on international standardized tests.
Kyrgyzstan came at the very bottom of PISA 2009, with a PISA-equivalent IQ of around 75.
Table below is from David Becker’s database of national IQs:
| National | Ethnic | Age | N | Test | IQ | Study |
| Kazakhstan | 8 to 16 | 617 | SPM+ | 87.30 | Grigoriev & Lynn (2014) | |
| Kyrgyz | 85.60 | Lynn & Cheng (2014) | ||||
| Tajikistan | 13 to 15 | 674 | SPM+ | 88.00 | Khosimov & Lynn (2017) | |
| Uzbekistan | 10 to 15 | 51 | SPM+ | 86.00 | Grigoriev & Lynn (2014 ) | |
| Uzbekistan | 11 to 13 | 614 | SPM+ | 85.00 | Salahodjaev et al. (2017) |
Still, Luria has some of the best arguments against that position, so its a bit surprising that the blank slatists don’t cite him more.
(4) Or maybe not, because it still didn’t save him him from the SJWs’ ideological predecessors, Sovok Justice Warriors:
These early studies carried out in the years 1926– 1931 found that there were substantial socioeconomic and ethnic/ racial differences in intelligence in the Soviet Union. These conclusions were not consistent with Marxist orthodoxy which held that these differences would disappear under communism. Accordingly, these studies, particularly that of Luria, attracted a great deal of criticism in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s. This has been described by Kozulin (1984): “Critics accused Luria of insulting the national minorities of Soviet Asia whom he had ostensibly depicted as an inferior race. The results of the expedition were refused publication and the very theme of cultural development was forbidden” . In 1936 intelligence testing was banned in the Soviet Union. It was not until the 1960s and early 1970s that this prohibition was progressively relaxed (Grigorenko & Kornilova, 1997). Luria’s work was not published in Russian until 1974 and English translations were published in 1976 and 1979 (Luria, 1976, 1979).
As Lynn and Grigoriev point out, this was closely correlated to the suppression of genetics research, though at least Luria and Co. weren’t outright murdered like Vavilov.
The history of work on intelligence in the former Soviet Union parallels that of genetics, where mainstream Mendelian theory represented by Nikolai Vavilov in the 1920s was likewise suppressed in the 1930s and replaced by the environmentalist pseudo-genetics of Trofi m Lysenko. The domination of science by political theory was relaxed in the 1960s and 1970s, and in recent decades both intelligence research and Mendelian genetics have been rehabilitated in Russia.
Scientifically, there is real work being done on psychometrics in Russia, though in comparison to the US it is very meager and basically inconsequential.
Since it is not politicized in the US, it is neither promoted nor prosecuted.
If psychometric considerations were to move closer to politics, e.g. by tying them to the hot potato that is Central Asian immigration, things can go any which way. Although Russians have a more commonsense take on these matters – if 25% of Americans seriously think intelligence is a “social construct,” it’s probably more like 5% in Russia. On the other hand, the Leftists, Stalinists, and even many Eurasianists are aggressively opposed to the idea that intelligence is heritable and differs significantly between races, and in the event that the authorities side with them, Russian scientists don’t have the First Amendment or an fair and impartial court system to hide behind.
Honestly, it’s a shame that free speech is more restricted in Russia and Europe than it is in the U.S.; indeed, people should be allowed to speak freely–even about extremely uncomfortable topics.
Also, though, as a side note, I wonder what the genetic ceiling of the various Central Asian groups is in regards to their IQ. After all, I know that Kazakhstan’s PISA results have significantly improved over the last decade to the point that Kazakhstan’s PISA-adjusted IQ is something like 95. Even excluding the ethnic Slavs, my guess is that Kazakhstan’s PISA-adjusted IQ would be no less than 90 (and possibly with some additional room to further increase).
Considering that Kazakhs and Kyrgyz are very similar linguistically speaking (they were even listed together in the 1897 Imperial Russian census), I wonder if Kyrgyzstan’s IQ ceiling would likewise in the 90 range (or between 85 and 95, if you want a more specific range).
Indeed, any thoughts on this?
So the majority of their ancestry actually isn’t from the “original” Tatars in central Asia?
“He found that the thought processes of illiterate Uzbek peasants were confined to graphic recall and that they were not able to form abstract concepts.”
I taught English in Azerbaijan and found that to be the case. “Critical thinking” as a concept is something educators like to throw around, but I found that Azerbaijanis were incapable of it when you first met them. They were often wiley on a personal level but took information at face value. They were also incapable of using their imagination – exercises where you’d encourage them to think about their favorite places, an ideal place they’d like to go to, and so forth, never went anywhere, so you had to make your classroom exercises extremely concrete and literal.
Eventually, Azerbaijanis learned how to think critically and creatively once you interacted with them long enough and questioned their beliefs, but it took a long time and usually the Azerbaijanis needed to be intelligent enough to overcome their own lack of abstract thinking.
Granted, Azerbaijan is in the Caucasus rather than Central Asia, but they’re still a Turkic people, so the similarity there is striking.
It’s about 20%. The other 80% is mostly Slavs and Finns, as with Russians. Finnic component may be greater than Slavic than among Russians.
If the aristocrats and bourgeoisie were really “brightest”, why they lost the Civil War and let themselves be killed? Were the Bolsheviks even brighter (to make succesful revolution and win civil war against overwhelming odds needs some brains)? Are there any contemporary IQ tests of communist party members?
Bolshevik leaders were a mix of renegades/degenerates from among the aristocrats and bourgeoisie, and members of high-IQ minorities whose average intelligence surpasses that of even the brightest native subgroups. Intelligence doesn’t explain everything, there was also the element of surprise (including surprising ruthlessness).
I agree that Kyrgyzstan’s 75 PISA-equivalent IQ result is strangely low relative to what one might expect. Most aggregate estimates (Becker, Lynn, Rindermann) seem to peg Central Asians at the mid to high 80’s, 2/3 S.D. lower than Russians at around 97.
Central Asians are poorer than Russians (though Kazakhs are not), and may have suffered more from iodine deficiency until relatively recently, so that’s not implausible.
OTOH, Dagestan, a Turkic region of Russia, seems to have an average IQ in the high 80s.
There’s a huge gulf between ‘heritable’ and ‘genetic’.
Coal mining is highly heritable, but there is obviously no ‘coal mining gene’ or ‘coal mining race’.
The Whites and Reds in the Russian Civil War had an approximately equal mix of aristocracy, bourgeoisie and peasantry supporting them.
The divide wasn’t along class lines, the divide was between euro-friendly globalism (the Whites) vs the eurosceptic isolationists (the Reds).
About hereditary inequality of intelligence in Russia scientists can speak quite freely. Here Professor of Moscow State University lecture about hereditary inequality of different races
Warning: I am not a follower of this Professor is just an example of free speech on the topic of heredity
In Dagestan Turkic peoples are a minority http://images.sevstar.net/images/97422440711723709558.jpg
In Dagestan, the most numerous peoples speaking Northeast Caucasian languages
It would’ve been great if it did, but unfortunately it didn’t work nearly well enough, as illustrated by the rise of oligarchs in the 1990s.
Ha-ha, a good one.
Should have been reply.
Bolshevik leaders were a mix of renegades/degenerates from among the aristocrats and bourgeoisie, and members of high-IQ minorities whose average intelligence surpasses that of even the brightest native subgroups. Intelligence doesn’t explain everything, there was also the element of surprise (including surprising ruthlessness).
Yeah, in your world it is really too bad the Bolsheviks didn’t succeed in driving down Russia’s population to the point that only those with an IQ of 85 or below remained.
Not really. There were some aristocrats and bourgeoisie among the Reds but there were also a lot of Latvians and Jews among them. The Reds also had a lot of factory workers relative to the Whites. Peasants tended to be SRs, not Reds. Reds actually used poison gas against peasants.
Reds weren’t isolationists, they wanted to spread the Revolution globally. They didn’t want to cut themselves off from the world, but rather to destroy it.
In my world ‘psychometrics’ should be used as intended: to screen job applicants for fitness to perform specific tasks. Categorizing groups of individuals based on ‘psychometric’ stats is, in my world, considered distasteful.
So in a way it’s similar to Turks in Anatolia who are also mostly descended from the original inhabitants…interesting, I hadn’t known that. Thank you!
Science sucks when it goes against cherished ideology.
What ideology? If tendentious use of dubious statistics is called ‘science’, then yeah, science does suck. Or this sort of science anyway.
Outta curiosity: you indicated before that you’re a devout Christian. So, now ‘Science’ is your God too, and any doubt is sinful? Am I getting this right?
It’s “dubious” only because it goes against your leftist ideology.
Intelligent people don’t see a conflict between science and religion. Morons among atheists, and Christian fundamentalists do. I can guess which category of fool you are.
Are Tatars similar autosomatically to Cossacks? Or are the latter more Slav than Tatars?
Hmm…This is a highly arguable statement. And even assuming it stands (for some very special sort of ‘intelligence’) , it unlikely to include the folks who in all seriousness announce that “attending Liturgy is a sacrament necessary for salvation”.
Cossacks is estate in pre-revolutionary Russia which consisted of people of different nationalities. On pictures Tatars-nagabuchi which belonged to the estate of Cossacks. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Nagayback_Cossacks_in_Parizh_village,_circa_1900.jpg
Tatars are a few different peoples, with different (genetically) origin. Compare
Kazan Tatars: http://soundsbox.ru/uploads/images/t/a/t/tatar_ja_tatarin.jpg
Tatars Nogais: http://www.qiriminsesi.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/nogaylar.jpg
Cossacks ancestry depends on region, but they are pretty much all Slavs. Among the Don Cossacks Turkic impact exists but is slight, much lower than Tatars’ 20% Asian ancestry:
https://the-newspapers.com/2016/07/18/genetics-proved-that-the-cossacks-come-from-russia
There is some Caucasian ancestry among the Kuban Cossacks (who were originally from Ukraine) due to them living next to the Caucuses and intermarrying on occasion, but this too is far less than 20%.
In 17th century Poland-Lithuania Turkic ancestry was fashionable and like other Poles of those times, Ukrainian Cossacks claimed descent from Turkic peoples but this was basically just fantasy.
As a non-intelligent person you are not qualified to argue against this statement.
That’s the position of both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. In all seriousness. If one is capable of doing so one is expected to partake of the Eucharist.
So the IQ of these north Asian mongoloid groups above is among the lowest measured, more than a standard deviation below that of African-Americans.
How do you reconcile that with your theory that living in cold climates results in high IQ?
Also, has anyone measured the IQ of the mongoloid tribes that live in the Amazon rainforest? Why not?
Do you seriously think that the testing of the hunters of the stone age, shows their genetically determined intelligence (and not cultural level)?
There were minorities and Jews among the Whites too. Again, it wasn’t an ethnic or class conflict, it was a conflict centered around euroskepticism. (And globalism in general.)
The two don’t necessarily contradict. They were both. (And after Stalin they dropped the ‘spread the Revolution’ part.)
Not at nearly the same rate. It was clearly a class and secondarily ethnic conflict.
2 things wrong here, Anatoly.
Firstly, Tatars are not genetically Slavs(neither in terms of autosomal DNA, the most important aspect, or paternal/maternal haplogroups). Google “K15 genetic plot” in images or “Tatar PCA plot” to see just how far from Slavs they are. The Tatar/Russian difference is not solely a language one.
Secondly, no reason to speculate on Yakut IQ when we have modern Yakut IQ(there have also been studies done on Manchurian Evenks by Chinese researchers that go against these old Soviet numbers). Look up Vladimir S. Shibaev Yakut IQ, I’m surprised you don’t know about this study. He studied Yakut children(and ethnic Russians) from Sakha Republic, urban Yakuts had an IQ of 100, urban ethnic Russians(in Yakutsk) had an IQ of 101, rural Yakuts had an IQ of 100, rural ethnic Russians had an IQ of 97. The Chinese study had Evenks at 96(and various other northern nomadic Chinese ethnic groups at 100), then of course there’s the multiple very high sample recent studies on Mongolians that show the same.
Mongoloid(with the darker skinned, less sinodonty, diverged 15-20k ya Amerindians being an exception) IQ is rather stable from Siberia to Vietnam, with Han Chinese, Koreans, Japanese having a boost of around 5 from their extra civilizational selection. Central Asian and Indochina IQ can be explained by Middle-Eastern admixture in Central Asia(and high inbreeding rates) and Oceanian admixture in Indochina. I really don’t think these early 1900s more culturally biased tests the Soviets did are accurate. We can’t really get anything concrete from PISA either, Chita Oblast which does horribly is 90% ethnic Russian(descendants of Soviet era deportee criminals maybe?).
Native Amerindian IQ is very consistant around 87, from Canada to Peru(large sample sizes too). I’m not aware of any studies specifically on Amazonian tribes, but I would imagine they’re lower than US Amerindians or urban Peruvian Amerindians given that genetic analysis(RoH length on 5mb+) show tribes like the Karitiana are the most inbred population on earth, with Balochi Pakistanis coming in second. Central American nations like Guatemala also score around 80 rather than the 87 of less tropical Peruvian/US Amerindians despite Guatemalans having some Iberian admixture.
Volga Tatars are natives to the region with close genetic ties to Finno-Ugric and Slavic people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Bulgaria
There is ~20% Asiatic component, but mostly among Siberian and Astrakhan Tatars. And in Russian Empire most Turkic people were regarded as Tatars (Karachays, Azeri, Balkars, Nogays, Khakas, Shors, Altay, Kumyks etc).
Myth about Mongolo-Tatar invasion is nothing more but a myth, cause Mongol Tatar tribes had no relation to Volga Tatars whatsoever.
Intelligence doesn’t explain everything. Many of the Bolsheviks were ruthless psychopaths. Even in Nazi Germany many German soldiers couldn’t bear killing innocent Jews and were driven insane, so Nazis had to come up with other ways for mass killing and prisoners to assist in murdering other prisoners.
Yet, Bolsheviks had no problem killing millions and millions, taking away bread and starving tens of millions in 1921-22, 1932-33, watching people die and start eating each other. I’m not joking. My grandpa along with his brother was sent to find rotten potato in the field, collect weeds and cortex. Later grand grandmother stopped doing it, because there were incidents of people snatching somebody else’s children and eating them.
Such utter ridiculous blunders undermine credibility of the whole study. They have no idea about the people they are speaking about. What other blunders may have they done?
And also,
no, Evenks are not “Caucasoid-Arctic” (what a stupid term), they are pure Mongoloids (Siberian subtype) and their ethnic relatives live in Manchuria.
But doesn’t it contradict the idea that IQ is heritable and genetically preconditioned? If it’s heritable and genetic then Russians would be at the same lower level no matter what the conditions are. Or that the Russians from the provincial regions would be always below the Muscovites. If it depends on socio-economical factors, what does the measuring of IQ have to do with genetics? IQ then is just another socio-economic indicator of the well-being of the society. Improve the condition, give the good schooling and IQ will rise. If it is both, how do we know what points come from genetics and what from environment?
Believe me or not, but this latter answer seems more reasonable than the “right” one required by strict mechanical logic. Even if camels do not live in Germany naturally, but what if the city of B has a zoo where there lives a camel? Many logical tasks there seem to require a mechanical if not robotic and automatic way of thinking. But people are not robots.
And considering of the testing of non-Russians. I once said that about Africans and this also applies to non-Russians. All researchers always ignore the linguistic side of the question. How do we know in what language those tests were conducted? If it was in Russian, a language foreign for non-Russians (especially in the 1920s-1930s), then the language barrier obviously might have caused that lagging behind.
This is not a surprise if those Uzbeks must have been struggling with a foreign for them Russian. And their Russian classmates had an advantage of natively speaking the language of instruction.
Genetically/physically the majority of their ancestors came from the same Volga-Kama region, but their language obviously came from Central Asia from the Kipchak nomads. It is difficult to say, though, what genetic impact the Kipchak nomads have left on the local population, there are genetic studies but they are never 100% reliable. And, of course, they are not acculturated Slavs. If anything they are formerly Finnic tribes with a small Central Asian admixture who adopted a Turkic language and Islam. Even those Tatar enclaves in Central Russia (Kasimov, etc.) cannot be acculturated Slavs as they have come there only 500 or so years ago and Islam have prevented them from mixing with the surrounding Christian Russians.
To be clear we must always discriminate linguistic and genetic categories. One cannot be some %% of this and some %% of that. Tatars cannot be 20% Turkic and 80% Finnic and Slavic; they are 100% Turkic because they speak a Turkic language. Turkic, Finnic, Slavic, etc. are linguistic categories, and only. In theory, of course, they may be 50% or 33% or 25% Tatar, but in a sense that they are bilingual, trilingual, etc.
I wonder what was the language of instruction? Was it Azerbaijani? Or was it English? For the latter it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some problems with understanding. It might have been rather a language barrier than their alleged lack of intelligence. People who cannot speak/understand your language often seem more stupid than they are; it’s quite a widespread psychological false perception.
Yes, the level of ignorance among the HBD people and their regular blunders are appalling. And AK is not some stupid American who is even not aware of the existence of Daghestan, his low-IQ kebab granddad came from there.
Yet, he is speaking in private in some room and not openly lecturing students or TV audience.
This interview to the public (not shooting by hidden camera)
My colleagues and I tried leading creative exercises in Azerbaijani after we learned it well enough. No good. We also had Azerbaijani teachers who would translate our instructions. Again, no good.
There were people who spoke decent English but had little exposure to foreign cultures. They lacked critical thinking skills. After awhile they did start to think critically and creatively after being around people like me, but it was a gradual, months long process.
In general, Turkic peoples have never really been that creative. I could name you a half dozen works of Persian poetry that are universally renowned, but almost no Turkic ones. (Case in point: Nizami Ganjavi wrote in Farsi and lived in modern day Azerbaijan, just around the time the Turks started coming in. In contrast, I’d have a hard time thinking of any notable Turkic Azerbaijani poets.)
If there are no camels in Germany, there are no camels in zoos in cities in Germany. If there are camels in zoos in the cities of Getmany then, “There are no camels in Getmany” is false.
“There are no camels in Germany”
illiterate Uzbek peasants were confined to graphic recall and that they were not able to form abstract concepts
White this will show on any “intelligence” testing like IQ tests the difference is purely cultural. It gas nothing to do with potential intelligence that can be attained by Uzbek’s in modern society.
For person who lives in empirical world the concept of “all” like in “all bears in North are white” is abstract only in the sense that it is useless. In empirical world words like “all”, “always”, “every” are not very useful. It requires different metaphysics which is not empirical to have need for such words.
Then why do Tajiks, who easily have the most Middle-Eastern admixture of the above populations do so much better than the Kazakhs (who appear to be a mixture of Siberian/NE Asian and Caucasus/Steppe ancestries)? And Kyrgyz? Clearly the real factor here is nutrition and the relative isolation of Central Asia– if anything, the current situation bodes well for the genetic potential of Tajiks– Tajikistan is malnourished to the same level that some Sub-Saharan countries are. I’m still skeptical about such cut-and-dried explanations for the IQ gaps we’re seeing– lead, malnutrition, and poverty can all have dramatic effects.
AK,
What do you think the genetic IQ potential of the Central Asian groups is?
Absolutely right on the Evenks– I don’t think they have any West Eurasian admixture– and if they do, it’s very paleolithic (think ANE-type). HarappaWorld indicates >95% E. Eurasian admix, with very very little W. Eurasian imput.
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/paper-review-iq-of-peoples/#comment-1895604
German Zookeeper Killed By Camel
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-06-14/news/8702130621_1_camel-zoo-keeper
The cautious, pragmatic, illiterate Uzbek logics better than the ignorant, theorizing, educated Luria.
I know who I’d ask for travel directions.
If a person is incapable of abstracting from reality and grasping such basic syllogisms, I doubt said person is capable of solving even the most basic algebraic equations
Azeris are basically Caucasian with small inflow, while Kumyks had a larger turk input but are mostly caucasian autosome(https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/29/1/359/1750206/The-Caucasus-as-an-Asymmetric-Semipermeable, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17278621, http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1005068), clustering with azeris.
Nogais are predominantly central asian but have large amounts of scythian and caucasian ancestry(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2488347/), moreover, they are a tiny minority, about 1.5% of Dagestan’s population.
Because what seems increases intelligence is the climatic dynamic of tempered climate and not in very harsh climate.
Give me an example of syllogism that might be useful for a nomads or farmer?
I do not see how such constructs like:
are of any usefulness. They always include the word “all” which is a general quantifier that does not exist in empirical world.
Don’t you see that from the point of empirical metaphysics we have no reason to ever accept a major premise? We always proceed from minor premises that we verify empirically to expand the domain of validity of this premise. The empiricist will never accept the major premise. iT is impossible.
If Luria told the Uzbek that he travelled through North and saw all bears that live there and saw only white bears and and then ask the Uzbek if there are brown bears there the Uzbek would think this guy must be an idiot. He was there, he did not see any brown bears why he asks me who was not there if there are brown bears?
Low to mid 90s, like India.
(They are farther north so larger brains, but less history of agriculture and high population densities which select for IQ).
I am assuming the current estimates of mid to high 80s are basically accurate, and relative to the Greenwich mean of the 2000s (because in the future the UK will likely experience strong decline).
I assume Kyrgyzstan’s absurdly low PISA results are some weird anomaly. Actually all ex-Soviet countries perform unusually badly on PISA compared to both specialized IQ tests and other international standardized academic tests; Georgia in particular has something like an 80 PISA-equivalent IQ. I haven’t seen any good explanations of that yet.
I don’t think there’s huge gains to be made. Let’s be frank – Central Asia isn’t SSA, or even India. Mass literacy has existed there for two generations now. Malnutrition is somewhat of a problem in impoverished Tajikistan, but less so in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and insignificant in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
Above someone noted Kazakhstan’s great improvement in PISA 2015 (up to PISA equivalent IQ of 92).
Unfortunately:
.
Do you think, maybe, your (assumed from your screen name) heritage has a little bit to do with your skepticism? Because if they is one thing I can infer from 4 years on this site, it is that the lions share of Slavic Muscovites who’ve been to Astana would accept the genetic inferiority thesis with no prodding necessary.
AK— Central Asia did have a period of incredible intellectual output in the 800-1200s (think of all of the ethnic Persian/Tajik luminaries, Khwarizimi, Bukhari, Rumi, Farabi, Bukhari). What do you think changed? Might Tajiks have a slightly higher genetic ceiling relative to say Karakalpaks? And Timurid architecture was pretty impressive too. Obviously “Middle Eastern admixture” is no impediment to producing geniuses.
Even assuming your estimates/the sources you cited are accurate, why do Mongolians show an average IQ of 101 (according to Lynn). Isn’t that a bit strange considering the fact that Kazakhs allegedly only average 85 or so? What would explain the differential there? Colour me surprised to find that Lynn “cooked” some of his data.
PS: An anecdote here, I’m a Kazakh expat raised in a Western country, and I estimate my own IQ to be 125-130 based on standardized tests/conversion tables. And I’m by no means from an “elite” background.
My motive shouldn’t matter in assessing my argument’s validity. Sure, I think anyone would feel a bit attacked by the implication that their ethnic group was “genetically inferior”. I’m willing to consider the possibility that Central Asians (and Africans and Arabs and Indians) may be less intelligent than Europeans genetically, but I think alternative explanations need to be ruled out first. Kazakhstan’s salt wasn’t iodized until recently, in Tajikistan cousin marriages are even more common than they are in the GCC countries, and 40+% of Tajiks are acutely malnourished. Hell, UNICEF puts Tajikistan in the same category as the Congo. That’s pretty bloody malnourished.
Moreover if Central Asians (and Persians, and Arabs) are genetically less intelligent, how come we produced advanced urban civilizations while Slavs were very tribal/nomadic (I have Tajik and Uzbek ancestry too, btw :p)?
Sources:
http://data.unicef.org/topic/nutrition/malnutrition/
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Enlightenment-Central-Conquest-Tamerlane
Its not as if peasants with pitchforks rose up.
Rich enough to attend university when only the wealthy could afford it.
More Lenin:
Central Asia?
1200s?
Hmm
Yes, they did.
There was widespread sympathy amongst the upper classes for the revolutionary causes, just like there is now in our society sympathy for leftist causes and leftist radicals. See our own SJWs.
Most of the 1917 revolutionaries had been in prison or exile for their revolutionary activities. They were known to be working towards Communist revolution and all that would entail, but they were not executed. They only received short prison sentences or brief exile. A pre-Enlightenment medieval government would have tortured them to death for treason and punished their families too, as also the victorious Communist governmet would do. They acted like a villain that captures James Bond and rather than just killing him, straps him into a laser table and leaves so he can escape and come back later.
My great-grandfather considered it a prestigious form of philanthropy to have a bunch of socialist intellectuals living at the estate. He also happened to be the local White Guard leader so the local White Guard headquarters was transformed into the local Red Guard headquarters by the simple act of his Red “friends” moving from the servant house to the main building.
One of the Reds was kind enough to tip him off about the impending revolution so the family rode away just in time – landowners who failed to hide were murdered. Most of the blame of my hometown falling to the Reds falls simply on my great-grandfather failing to view the Reds as more than harmless idealists and rather many people died as a result. This naive attitude towards the Reds had spread everywhere.
Even worse was the tendency of the liberal and moderate leftist bourgeoisie to be so concerned about Tsarist aristocrats or the military taking back some of the power and liberties that they had gained after the abdication of the Tsar. Kerensky pulled the brilliant move of arming Bolsheviks to use them against general Kornilov; if he had instead unleashed the generals on the Bolsheviks he might have lost some power but he probably wouldn’t have been fleeing for his life.
White victory was only possible in Finland because the bourgeoisie in Helsinki had a front row seat to watch the disastrous example of what not to do in Petrograd and they briefly stopped treating “reactionary” officers as a threat worse than Bolsheviks.
I have had a different notion of the word “public”. The only public here I see is he had been shot on camera and the video is in Youtube, though, with only ~70k views which is not much by today’s Youtube standards. So it is not like he has expressed his opinion on many talk shows on TV which are popular today. Neither has he said anything specific like “Central Asians/North Caucasians have different brains than Russians, hence…” I’m sure if he said that really in public, to millions of people, it would be a scandal.
Still, it does not mean Daghestan is Turkic. To say that is just to show one’s utter ignorance.
I bet you had not learnt it enough. This why it was “no good”. When it goes to language learning it is English-speakers who happen to be the stupidest.
It is not enough. In ideal you need a bilingual teacher who has a degree in ESL, only then s/he can a normal communication.
Overall I think all this teaching English by native speakers stuff is a global scam. Many of those teachers has even no ESL diplomas. They are being paid just for being native speakers which is ridiculous. In most cases they teach nothing.
Exactly. Such questions even have no option of doubting them. You must simply comply by answering mechanically “yes-no” like a robot, otherwise you’ll be deemed to be stupid and not to understand logic. I have a suspicion why the Western people are so gullible and submissive. Their high IQ allows them only strict logical mechanical thinking.
Actually Tsarist authorities were quite capable of putting down revolts like 1905 with mass repression, including thousands of hangings, and striking workers were gunned down by soldiers or police, most notably on the Lena in 1912. If anything, the latter event revived the fortunes of Russian radicals because of the outcry.
Even the idea that leading revolutionaries were always treated with kid gloves is false. Perhaps it was because they were Poles, but both Pilsudski and Dzerzhinsky had teeth knocked out during Tsarist police “questioning”.
The total number of executions of civilians from 1905-1908 was a little over 2,000.
Bolsheviks terrorists surpassed this within a few months of rule.
A little under 300 victims in order to crush unrest at a goldfield.
In 1920-1921 about 240,000 Russian people were killed by Reds during unrest by Russian peasants in the Tambov region. Some of them were poison gassed.
How would their like have fared in Cheka custody?
The Reds took advantage of the Tsarist authorities’ relative decency.
They were used as currency after the Second World War:
https://economix.fr/docs/54/BignonCigarette.pdf
You people are like feminists, if generalizing “demonstrates” the superiority of women, it is all over the news, if does not, it just does not exist or matter.
Bring forth a more mature view of IQ and completely abandon any notion of “race” that is not based on hybridity. Until then, you will continue to be no more than a sideline joke.
Some estimates for hangings and somewhat more extra-judicial state killings in 1905-8 go up to 5,000 or more, with significantly more ruthlessness in non-ethnic Russian areas like Poland. Which might explain the dental damage Pilsudski and Dzerzhinsky suffered.
Most of the leadership of Russia’s revolutionary groups stayed abroad, and were wise to do so. Lenin was outside Russia throughout the whole period 1900-1917, except for a clandestine visit after the 1905 outbreak in which he mainly stayed in Finland, where the Tsarist state’s writ did not run completely.
Somebody once said the Soviet Union was the bastard offspring of Karl Marx and Catherine The Great. Tsarist apologists tend to forget the Catherine The Great bit.
“The USSR really did expel, kill off, or otherwise limit the reproductive fitness of its best and brightest.”
And the left dumb and stupid built nuclear stations and launched space ships into orbits not including other great fits and considering where Russia was in 1914 with some 80% of population being illiterate.
Something cheesy with this IQ study. I sense political prejudice based upon wishful thinking when it comes to Soviet history.
… and, while we mull over arcane details from these dodgy K places – Rome burns …
Sure. But compare those numbers to what the Cheka was up to. A low estimate of 10,000 in one month (September 1918-Ovctober 1918) when they didn’t even control most of the country. Pilsudski lost his teeth, but wiki states “according to documents cited by the late Alexander Yakovlev, then head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, priests, monks and nuns were crucified, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled, given Communion with melted lead and drowned in holes in the ice. An estimated 3,000 were put to death in 1918 alone.”
And an exponential increase since 1918. Here are estimates for 1917-1921; the go up to 1.7 million.
Lenin’s brother was executed for an assassination plot. He wasn’t. Would the Bolsheviks have been so lenient, enabling him to move abroad?
There is some truth in the quote, although you should add Robespierre to the list, and acknowledge that the offspring was even worse than he was.
First there was that weirdo, Razib Khan, then the others… sigh!
Seriously, do you “dimwits” with a spiritual quotient in the 50’s, never ever tire of debating about IQ’s.
Why don’t you fellows discuss SQ and work towards improving it? Let me tell you it’s one Q which can actually be improved with little effort.
😉
Perfectly intelligent questions for someone someone attending his first lecture on the subject of Intelligence, measurement of it and its heritability, but you have a lot of reading to do if you don’t know that absolutely know serious scientist or psychometrician thinks that whatever is measured or assessed as intelligence or a proxy for it is other than partly heritable and partly environmental or cultural. That is both Nature and Nurture count.
I am shocked to shsre a name with such a primitive. Perhaps, however, we share superior spirituality through shared inheritance from our witchdoctor ancestors.
That IQ has little to do with intelligence can be shown by various examples.
In Neurenberg the accused politicians were IQ tested.
Göring scored the highest, Schacht was next.
Göring made a mess of industrialisation and the Luftwaffe, Speer in 1944 organised German production is such a way that it was the highest ever.
Forgot the IQ of Speer, but he was lower.
Schacht in just three years reduced German unemployment from six million to one.
Richard Feynman’s IQ, someone wrote here, was 127.
Yet he was one of the best physicists ever.
It of course is difficult to separate intelligence from experience.
Yet the Polynesians were able to navigate over thousands of miles, no compass, no sextant, no chronometer.
European captains did not have the Polynesian skills, mainly reading the waves, and wave patterns.
Alexander Yakovlev ‘cited documents’ is plain Russophobic crap. While in Civil Wars many people die on both sides, the intellectual potential remains. If we take Poland, for instance, there was no Civil War, moderate losses in WWI and WWII – and with millions of population – still no spaceships, nuclear or electronic research, significant cultural developments. But the deathcamps were built in Poland, killing over 60000 people in 1919-1921.
Per capita, Poland lost more people in World War II than Russia did. It was also more devastated. After the war it was an occupied “protectorate.” And, it has less than 1/4 Russia’s population.
Deaths of ethnic Poles (2-3 mln) during WW2 were compensated by 1950. Concentration of population, necessary for societal advance, was higher in Poland. After WW2, Poland was given a privileged position in Soviet bloc. Poland had not to pay reparations like Germany, Polish students were welcomed in Russia’s universities, Polish industries got lucrative offers and technologies for free (e.g. MI-2 helicopters, shipbuilding, computers) and were in many ways sponsored and subsidized. Levels of political freedom, owning private properties, small-businesses in Post-war Poland were also unthinkable in USSR.
Critical thinking is something educators are always complaining that you need to teach American students because they never show enough of it. They’ll just sit in their classroom seats like bumps in the road unless you start demanding abstract intellectual analysis from them. It’s hardly confined to Russian villagers.
Critical thinking is not some innate capacity like IQ. IQ is what you have. Critical thinking is what you do with it. Critical thinking is a habit of mind that must be developed. You need to acquire the attitude that all new information must be actively examined and thought about relentlessly. It’s like brushing your teeth. It really is a habit. If you live in an environment in which other people make all the decisions for you, you never develop critical thinking. Children and liberals don’t have it because someone else is always doing it for them, (e.g. their parents and the ideological priestly cast of SJWers who lay down the law for their supporters.)
The neurons and synapses you need for criticial thinking skills must be created with the sort of willpower and mental self-pushing that stroke victims must use to grow new neurons so they can make unresponsive limbs work again. It’s nothing more than that. It’s just pushing the brain very hard to grow more neurons and make more connections.
If you grow up in a state of nature and every challenge you meet in life is environmental, never intellectually abstract, then of course you’ll have a tough time reasoning about abstract concepts. That part of your brain is just extremely underused, and the amount of brain matter devoted to it is very small, and it’ll grow less responsive with age if it’s not used. Synapses must be used and new neurons and synapses grown to make create the framework necessary for making new intellectual connections, and that’s a lot of brainwork.
The information given was not, “camels are not native to Germany”, the information given was “there are no camels in Germany.”
Assuming the information correct, (which is the entire point of the exercise) how would one logically answer the question, “are there camels in “blank” part of Germany?
IQ look like a passive condition…
If language is not innate, IQ either…
The instinctive structure that predicts IQ as well any other intelligence expression is innate or genetically transferable.
The same for language,
what happen with language as well its subsequent development with literacy and numeracy reflect in IQ scores.
Uzbeks, a South Asian people… I didn’t know they were smoking marijuana in USSR. I will tell you who the real SA are: the National Spelling Bee champions of the last dozen years or so. Get outta here!
“If the aristocrats and bourgeoisie were really “brightest…”
They were. Consider such abstractions as honor, honesty, dignity in the context of the known involvement of the foreign bankers in supporting the profoundly anti-Russian coup d’etat carried by Bolsheviks.
Camels are native to Winston-Salem.
People of Russian ancestry do better on the GSS wordsum test than any other group (with triple digit sample sizes). You know why, of course.
Shooting strikers and demonstrators was common in that era, Russia may have been worse but not exceptional. Other events include the Amritsar massacre by British troops in 1919 with 379-1000 killed and the American Ludlow Massacre in 1914 with 69-199 killed.
Pilsudski was arrested for being involved in a plot to assassinate the Tzar. Knocked out teeth is a more lenient penality than many other governments would apply. In any case, they both survived and were released so they could go on to play their role in the future revolution.
I will list the penalties applied to Piłsudski and Dzerzhinsky that you mentioned, plus Lenin and Trotsky.
Piłsudski:
The penalty for associating with a terrorist organization and plotting to assassinate the Tzar is:
Not even prison, but five years exile.
Dzerzhinsky:
First arrest:
One year in prison, sentenced to three years of exile, but escaped after only a year or so.
Second arrest:
Two years in prison, sentenced to five years exile, but escaped.
Third Arrest:
Five months in prison.
Fourth arrest:
Seven months in prison.
Fifth arrest:
Less than a year in prison and sentenced to exile, but escaped after less than a year.
Sixth arrest:
Four and a half years in prison and badly injured there.
Lenin:
Having a brother who is a terrorist won’t interfere with your life because of the Enlightenment’s rejection of corruption of blood.
At this point we have a man whose brother was executed for building a bomb to assassinate the Tzar, and is now matriculating in revolutionary circles. Later he is arrested:
Three years of exile.
Exile to Siberia? That sounds severe to us now.
Well, not exactly “Gulag Archepelego”. You get to hunt (with a gun?), live with your wife, and plot with your visiting fellow revolutionaries and even write a book advocating violent revolution.
Trotsky:
First arrest:
He also spent time in Siberia:
Four years in exile to Siberia, but he escaped after two.
Second arrest:
Looks like another short stint in Siberia:
Well, maybe not. Siberia is apparently easy to escape from if you can’t bear to serve all of your short sentence.
Penalties were very lenient and didn’t provide any deterrence from being a revolutionary.
Chernobyl, LOL.
With a little help from the German rocket program and scientists.
Communism was cruel in all the other countries is took over, even the ones without any Tsars.
I did not indicate I was a Tsarist apologist. I said the nobility had Enlightenment ideals and had sympathies for revolutionary causes and therefore wouldn’t supress them with sufficient force to prevent them from winning.
As an example, here is the Tsars liberal views on capital punishment:
Lol. Enlightenment ideals my ass. The system had rotted throughout; as Lenin said: the elites are unable and the low orders unwilling. Very similar to the Communist Party apparatus in 1989-91.
Russia c.1913 had a large concentration of people interested in and technically capable of developing rocketry technologies (starting with Tsiolkovsky, the concept’s father).
Without the emigration and bouts of imprisonment (Korolev, Glushko) of a considerable percentage of them, plus a decade’s advantage in industrial development, I think it’s likely the 20th century space race would have been dominated by Russia and Imperial Germany (just Russia if WW1 had ended in German capitulation to the Triple Entente).