Leading intelligence researchers have just forwarded me this graph from an upcoming article on the relation between cognitive ability and sentiment towards Russia that will soon be published in a high impact psychology journal.
Psychometric Correlates of Russia Sentiment
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for Russian Reaction on April 5, 2020
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It’s interesting that super-smart people appear to love Russia considering that here in the US, our pundit class (or a lot of them) are presumably super-smart and yet nevertheless strongly dislike Russia. Or are they the vocal minority of super-smart people whereas the silent majority of super-smart people are actually Russophiles?
Horseshoe theory is overblown, but it does make for funny memes, at least if you can include these faux IQ bell curves.
BTW, I am a critic of that covid one, with the hick and the suit, as I don’t think it carries over well to an “enriched” society, like the US, where the urban/rural divide doesn’t denote a clear hierarchy of civilization, though perhaps it works better in Russia.
I hate to say it, but if the House of Romanov were around today, they would probably be super-pozzed, and dressing little Alexei X in a pink dress and giving him hormone blockers and saying that blacks should win the Nika Award.
American pundits are a certain minority from a certain tribe
Most stories about Russia today from America are a lie. Russia is nothing. They do not have the muscle anymore. The US has 3 times the population that they have and throw in Nato and all of the military bases surrounding it…Vlad is nothing. The Soviet Union was yesterday. The only reason Russia gets any attention is because of the military industrial intelligence mafia in the US use it as a lie to feather their own nests…along with Congress people who have weapons plants and military think tanks in their district. And the irony of this is, the US should actually be making close freinds with Russia….we will need them when we deal with the epic scene of the 21 century…war with China. Donald should make a great deal with Russia, get out of the middle east and cut off all aid to them and Israel and save every penny to fight China.
I’m Brazilian and I have some unintentional love for Russia.
The cultural songs such as “Horse”, “Oy Stoga Stoga”, “Song of the Volga Boatmen”, “The Golden Rye”, “Black Raven”, “When We Were at War”, the Beloe Zlato girls, everything.
The marvelous architecture of places like St. Petersburg and Moscow, specially with its Russian Revival. Places like the Moscow Kremlin (every Kremlin, really. Izmaylovo is a marvel), every single Church, Monastery and Convent, the State Historical Museum… I could keep it forever, be wood and vernacular or some novel 18th, 19th century stone behemoths, everything smells like the place, its culture and people. Beautiful.
There are many marvel composers and writers, but now I’m more appreciative of all Slavdom, not of Russia only. There’s something very “dark” with the East’s music, something very “sad”, “lamenting”, “dangerous” that’s not found in any other Western composer. The Russian anthem is the most beatiful in the world, reeking of Red, be it of Communists or the Blood of its people.
The history of the place is sad and proud, it’s hard and enduring. The place saw the birth of the Indo-Europeans and the Tsarist expansions into Siberia (if anyone knows Paleo-history, the event would be seen as a reconquista).
The geography is beautiful, the countryside is pristine.
The Romanov Tsars (I like to say it “Zar”, sounds eerie) were GOOD MEN. They had to fight a century worth of wars waged upon them by jealous powers (with known “backers”), see their population die and be the victims of terrorism. They were great statesmen of the like only seen in the 19th century, when the European civilization peaked. The USA was a proud Nation, and our King Peter II was the only and best ruler Brazil has ever seen.
You see the same men of honor in the sciences and arts at the time.
Nicholas II was literaly Saint.
The Romanovs shifted to the American System of Economics to modernize, they had great men like Count Witte and Stolypin. The world banking power couldn’t allow that – the place would become the greatest civilization on Earth, truly the new Rome.
Finally, Slav girls are cute, everyone knows that, but Russian (and Ukranian, can I say that?) girls are the most beautiful in the world by a very comfortable margin.
(We have world-class beauties in Brazil as well, most in the 3 Southern States and in Espirito Santo, they’re a blend of Northern Italian with German, and the end result is stunning).
Godspeed, Anatoly.
By the way: love or hate him, Putin is the only stateman of worth in our time. If only he abandoned this shittt neoliberal economics and returned to the old American System. Hell, can’t he see that China has used it to become a world power? What is he thinking?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Three_different_nationalities_on_Kitaiskaia_Street.JPG
115+ IQ confirmed.
Russia has a fairly big economy and is one of the few countries in the world with the ability to develop advanced weapons systems in-house. I agree that America should be making friends with Russia though, China would be destroyed if this partnership were to materialise as China depends on White engineers to build most of its weapons..
I’ve never been to Russia so my opinion is very limited.
I like some of their writers and artists (Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tarkovsky).
Saint Petersburg and the Hermitage Museum seem nice (I have a book).
Putin is cool.
Some Russian women are beautiful. (Is it still possible to order a mail-order Russian bride?)
As a people, from the very few people I met, Russians seem a bit like Italian, i.e. disorganized, corrupt (low trust society), but also cheerful, gregarious, close to family enjoying life, etc.
Or am I wrong?
Are you attempting to list basic bitch murrican 56%er delusions over Russia or just demonstrating your superb punctuation skills here?
So, it’s only high-IQ Jews who are Russophobic but not high-IQ Gentiles?
You’re taking a funny meme too seriously.
Harbin?
I only like Russians for the cultural and racial similarities and certain shared historical experiences.
Of course, these are the best reasons to like a people. Not some lame (and faintly insulting) libtard crap like oh I just adore your cuisine.
My personal opinion is: Russian revolution was a disaster, but so was also Perestroika.
Better have kept the Russian Empire, but once CCCP was achieving some semblance of normalcy in late 1970 – early 1980 ies, they should have used Tiananmen square style tactics against the dissidents and should have never trusted their geopolitical opponents.
They’d be better off today if they would have somehow kept the union in place.
They’d be today around 300 millions of population and would be technically as advanced as China.
But I repeat: the Revolution was a disaster.
Just like Perestroika.
(Off topic: I like Pekevin’s take on both of these calamities.)
1920s Harbin not far from where my White Russian/Tsarist family use to live.
Wouldn’t a continued union with the Central Asian republics have been a major problem? Or do you think checks on internal movements could have been maintained?
In my humble opinion keeping only Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan would have been the ideal compromise.
https://youtu.be/iKa6ooXY5BQ
Western bourgeois and educated people still love Russian to Soviet classical music (in particular “Russian piano school”), Russian poetry and novels, Russian ballet, Russian art (mainly early modernist art is popular), Russian contributions to science and technology, and Russian athletics and sportspeople.
Look at the Prime Minister of the UK – I wonder why his educated family have called him “Boris”.
Accurate in the meme, is that the attraction to high IQ Westerners, includes to a large extent of the cultural production from the second half of the Russian empire – although the USSR has preserved and accentuated many of the best culturaly trends. For example, the intensive musical education in the late 19th has become even more intensive in the USSR (while institutional musical education has been most destroyed only in the last three decades).
The Soviet style external propaganda (i.e.. RT) is only effective, for using the anger of the losers and outcasts of Western society against their rulers, but without a positive model that the USSR had, or any ideology that could be interesting to “high IQ” intellectuals in Western countries.
Some Western pundit class also have nostalghia about intellectual opposition from Russia, like Marxism–Leninism was in their youth. So they invent theories about the importance of any weird scammer/clown (e.g. Dugin) they can find in Russia today.
The budget of RT is a waste which supports various parasite journalists, that could have been used to promote Russian culture in the West (like how the Japanese government activates cultural diplomacy). It should have provided something positive and which can improve your life, and the money should have been going to talented people.
As for ambitions about rusofilia – in Europe, this is mostly only existing in countries like Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Cyprus. I.e. Southern European countries of recent Orthodox traditions. Probably, there should have been far more investment in these countries e.g. school exchanges, joint university programmes (like Erasmus in the EU) – although Greece is quite difficult.
Russian literature is popular among educated Latinos, such as educated Puerto Ricans.
You’d be really well served spending a few days casually browsing /r/politics and /r/worldnews to get an idea of what the typical 105-110 IQ Western millennial Bildungsphilister thinks about Russia.
I guess I don’t really know enough about the “stans” to differentiate them much, except in a superficial way based mainly on land area and population. I’ve actually never met anybody from one.
It’d be pretty interesting to see a tabulation of every former Soviet Republic, listing its attitude to being in a union with each of the other former republics, one by one, on an individual level, not merely returning to the same boundaries of the USSR, but being able to list a preference for exclusion.
Heck, that sort of poll would be a pretty interesting to do world wide, if was about neighboring countries. And I guess there would be some implications there, like if France and Germany don’t want to conjoin, it is probably fair to say that neither wants a union with Africa or India.
imho one of the best ever relatively recent performances of traditional Russian folk song was this powerful mix of polyphonic choral with modern rock arrangement:
The problem is they don’t think they simply listen and then regurgitate. A most appropriate German description.
Lenín Moreno’s parents were huge fans of Russian literature.
It matches my experience – I met Mexican people which are huge literature nerds, including of all kinds of Russian writers.
It would be interesting to know which Russian writer is most popular in different Latin American countries.
For example, Indians particularly love the writings of Pavel Bazhov, which is surprising – his largest number of readers are today in India. Also, apparently, Chinese used to love all kinds of Russian literature, but it’s becoming less fashionable in recent years.
I didn’t read that Reddit sub, but I assume it will self-select the most fanatical unbalanced American students, whose existential project, is to win esoteric partisan debates between Democrats and Republicans? If Trump announces he loves Russia, they will hate Russia for ever; and vice versa?
That said, there are subs of Reddit like https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/ where I thought that it seems like a lot of clever students.
Are you Down Under, by any chance?
I’ve never met anyone rabidly anti-Russian and I have a feeling it might have to do with the fact that Russian stereotypes overlap a little with Australian stereotypes. Whether they’re true or not, vodka or beer, a bunch of pissheads probably will get along together.
If the West were more religious perhaps the close link between Russia and Eastern Orthodoxy might produce some sympathy, but considering how irreligious people are now it’s probably a downside. My father converted to the Eastern Orthodox church when I was young so that might have helped.
https://youtu.be/XfR9iY5y94s
I swear, you guys have such strange experiences with Latinos, esp. AP, who mentioned PR.
Are you really surprised after all of the Corona-chan memes that you’ve been posting in recent days and weeks? I mean, on the one hand I need to avoid getting infected by the coronavirus in real life and on the other hand I need to avoid getting a boner by looking at an anime version of the coronavirus (Corona-chan) whenever I am on the computer!
This is nice also:
In Ukrainian it is called “білий спів”:
Here is a more contemporary group using it, on Ukraine’s “the Voice” (song begins a minute in):
I saw Drakha Brakha about half a year ago at the MIM in Scottdale, AZ They’ve played there actually at least twice before, and when I saw them they showcased a quartet. I thought that they were a fun and talented group being very rhythmically vibrant – my date thought that they were a little bit too kooky and over the top. I’d go and see them again (if I could, now?). 🙂
BRBR,
Are you a Capixaba? In the 1970’s the best place in the world to appreciate feminine beauty was the sidewalk in front of the Vitoria post office.
I agree that Putin is the most admirable statesman on the planet. The last U.S. president comparable to him was Andrew Jackson, who fought the British in two wars, cleared the Amerindians from the South with less destruction than was later inflicted on those of the West, and defeated the banksters.
Abracos
LOL. If the West were more religious, it would be Protestant and Catholic, and hate Russian Orthodoxy with unbridled fury of thousands suns.
Nice alt-right scrawling, but I am afraid it have nothing in common with reality.
People who admire Soviet Union and Stalin (loud on the internets, but few in number) are usually not geniuses, but not low IQ dullards either. Typical “tankie” is someone literate with pretension to higher education. Sample tankie twitter, and you will guess about 100-105 IQ.
And if people who like Soviet Union are few, people who are still nostalgic about Czar can be counted on fingers of one hand.
As for general attitude about Russia, here are the hard data.
If loving Russia is for smart people, what happened in 2015 to massively enstupidate the population?
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1642/russia.aspx
https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/inmc5etn0ka057_s3yzeva.png
Audacious Epigone should have in his archives somewhere more precise survey sorted by education, but my guess is that people with higher education will have more negative opinion on Russia.
The Country That Stopped Reading.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/opinion/the-country-that-stopped-reading.html?hpw
This is a very interesting subject. Perhaps it can be best described as a large proportion of a very small subset of Latinos. My personal experience has been with South Americans of the leftist persuasion.
I know this isn’t what you were talking about but perhaps you might still find it interesting.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Soviet_Union_referendum%2C_1991_results.svg/964px-Soviet_Union_referendum%2C_1991_results.svg.png
Russia caused 80% of Wehrmacht casualties during WW2, the US and UK only joined the war after the Nazi’s were as good as gone, and were responsible for 20% of the Wehrmacht casualties, and those casualties were mostly old men and young boys, the cream of the Wehrmacht perished on the Eastern front.
But with Hollywood the perception was created that the US and UK was the ones who defeated the Nazis. Similarly with the US and NATO now bombing lots of other countries, the perception has been created that the US and NATO can actually fight. But they only fought those who couldn’t defend themselves, virtually only brown skinned slip-slop wearers with ak47’s. The US and NATO depend on air superiority for everything. In Ukraine the Neo Nazi’s there laugh at their American trainers, because the trainers cannot conceive of war without them having air superiority, as is the case in Ukraine. So American trainers and tactics are useless in the Ukrainian conflict.
Yes Russia might not have the manpower anymore, but looking at it from a hardware perspective, Russia is in the lead in any land conflict
tanks and armored vehicles – Russia
missiles and anti-aircraft weaponry – Russia
artillery – Russia
aircraft – Russia and USA
ships and sub – USA
So the US and NATO is all about BS perception, and perception won’t last after the first few minutes of a full scale conflict. Previous wars were based on the factory supply logistics, but with all the missiles both sides have at their disposal (non-nuclear) the only thing that matters is the already existing stockpiles because factories will be bombed, and Russia has the biggest stockpiles thanks to the old USSR. And those old weapons are easily upgraded to good enough modern standards (t-72 to t72b3, etc). And while Russian missiles can penetrate US and NATO airspace, based on the Syrian experience it is doubtful that US and NATO missiles can get into Russian airspace.
Russia also fights Eastern style, all troops and civilians are expendable total warfare style. Westerners cannot handle that type of conflict, as proven by Vietnam; and now the Eastern troops will not even be comparably equipped to the West, they will be better equipped than the West. The West is now nothing.
Be sure to read the fine print.
I find “Russia Today” to be the most sickeningly and blatantly leftist media outlet of the entire lot, and as RT is owned by the Russian government it doesn’t exactly give me a good impression of them. RT’s programming basically amounts to an endless stream of “West bad, Western whites are racist, poor immigrants are oppressed by Western whites, all the problems in the world are caused by Western whites”, etc.
RT seems to be mainly a Russian propaganda exercise in anti-white race baiting, it leaves me in no doubt that the Russian establishment is not on the side of the common white Westerner, but rather see an opportunity to use the immigrants and ethnic tensions in Western countries as a weapon against them for the benefit of Russia and its allies. It’s despicable and I’m surprised how few people realise what Russia is up to with RT.
I read somewhere that Russia is aware that one day they will probably have to fight Europe. It could be the current Christian Europe NATO that Russia will have to fight, or it may be the Sharia Law Europe NATO to be that Russia will have to fight. Either way Russia will have to fight, so in the meantime Russia will just let the Muslims and the Christians sort their hierarchy out in Europe while Russia keeps her armaments manufacturing and improvements going.
I’ve always been a bit confused by this vote, ever since I read Gorbachev’s memoir. Never sure what to make of it – whether it was even real. I guess it was real, but a little more complicated than the picture he drew.
RT does not exactly represent all of “Russia” anymore than Moscow Times represents all of Moscow.
That’s why I said Russian “government” and “establishment”, I doubt most Russians would agree with RT’s output if it was shown over there despite the fact the name “Russia Today” implies that their output represents opinions that are typical in Russia.
I find RT is very SJW-y, very much on the side of groups like BLM and other non-white groups with grievances against Western whites. From what I’ve seen they go out of their way to portray Brexiteers and British nationalists as racist bigots. A lot of nationalists in Western countries believe that Russia (Putin’s government) is on their side and against the EU and the globalists/leftists, yet if RT is anything to go by the Russian government has no interest in reaching out to Western nationalists as allies but only in attacking them.
Although frankly I shouldn’t be surprised, the Soviet Union was a prominent supporter of black rights movements in America and the anti-Apartheid movement and used this as a weapon against “the West” despite the fact they wouldn’t tolerate such movements in their own country and Putin as more or less a “Neo-Soviet” is continuing the same tradition.
The Russian State is on the Russian State’s side, and on no one else’s. It won’t even annex the pro-Russian shithole of Donbas (doing so would be good for the pro-Russians and ethnic Russians there, not good for the Russian State), why would it extend philanthropy to some American or British nationalists?
RT represents the interests of the Russian state and the interests of the Russian state are not the same as the interest of “the West.” It is useful for the Russian state for its rivals to be divided and angry; accordingly, its departments support both populists/nationalists and stuff like BLM. If America were consumed by some sort of genocidal race war that took the country off the world stage Russia would be in a better position, it would happily sell arms to both sides if they needed them. That is not going to happen, but if America is at least paralyzed by inner conflicts this would also be helpful. So of course Russia’s propaganda channel aimed at American audiences is going to emphasize topics meant to undermine and divide American society.
At the same time, Russian banks were giving financing to the French National Front and IIRC to the Austrian Freedom Party. But, for understandable reasons, Russia opposes Ukrainian nationalists and Russia’s propaganda insists they are all Nazis, while at the same time inviting actual Western neo-Nazis to observe the Crimean referendum. None of these behaviors are contradictory or complicated in any way, if you just understand that they all represent purely and simply the interests of the Russian State.
Putin on Mugabe:
https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/vladimir-putin-hails-mugabes-role-in-zimbabwes-independence-as-great-contribution-20190906
Superficially, the plan of RT is to undermine the confidence of the public in Western countries, so they become angry against the rulers of their countries. So they superficially, will just use any story or “journalist” they think will help to undermine Western governments, although focusing on speaking to the angry losers of Western countries.
But in reality, it’s just a way to cut steadily money from the budget, and getting some gullible people to fund them financially across many years.
The woman and her boyfriend who are managing the project, are the same people who have stolen millions of dollars to produce this:
( some tits around 25 minutes, but I don’t see it enough to compensate this otherwise crime against humanity)
Spanish RT is more extreme politically – mainly arguing that racist are “white”/European people of Latin America oppress Indians, and how wonderful are Evo Morales, Castro, Chavez, Maduro.
On the other hand, they stream to YouTube 24/7 free Spanish language speaking, with attractive Latin American women, speaking with beautiful Latin American accents, about predictable themes (racism against Indians, great leaders of Morales/Castro/Chavez/Maduro) which is therefore easy for people learning Spanish to understand the main topic of conversation.
It is the best Spanish language learning resource in YouTube, so they provided a lot of value to the world, although not on a political level from my tastes.
Even coronavirus is an opportunity to return Castro from being dead, and post his speeches about Cuban doctors (because Cuba is now sending doctors to Spain to help with coronavirus). For people who learn to speak Spanish though, how wonderful this channel is.
It’s not so simple. I think a compromise position of a Russian government would be to have America as not too successful, not too unsuccessful. Not too friendly, but not so unfriendly that there is war or more sanctions. In other words, the current situation of US-Russia relations is probably near the desired compromise situation in the Russian side (not really sure about the America’s ideal position, but it might not be too different).
Great picture.
A few years ago I read about the death of one of the last white Russian immigrants who somehow managed to survive in Harbin during the Japanese invasion, the Red Army intervention and the Chinese communist domination.
The old lady survived in a dilapidated slum, her husband and their son died many years before she passed away.
A very sad story.
I was reading then about Yellow Russia (Желтороссия) as was sometimes named the Russian sphere of influence in Manchuria.
According to some estimates, if the Empire wouldn’t have been destroyed by Kerensky and his cabal, Russia might have ended up annexing a third of north-west China. ..
Although even with Revolution and its disastrous effects, Russian influence on Chinese history in the XXth century has been immense.
Central Asia was developing a lot due to a strong funding from the Soviet government and Russian specialists being sent there.
There were jobs and career opportunities there.
Also, before the end of 1980ies Central Asian ethnic groups nationalism and islamism were kept under tight control by the KGB.
Just like Russian nationalism and Orthodox Christian church was also under constant control.
There was no mass migration of Central Asians to Russia, rather a migration of Russians and other Soviet Slavs to Central Asia.
The people in the Stans voted against the dissolution of the Union.
Non-Slav mass migration to Russian heartland became a major issue only after CCCP demise.
The referendum was real and considered important at that time.
But the heads of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus wanted less centralising power and more local sovereignty.
If we add to this the outright nationalism in Georgia and the Baltic states that refused to hold the referendum on their territories, we can easily see that USSR was in great danger.
Hence the attempt at the August coup by the hardline communist military to try ensuring the preservation of the Union through force.
This coup was a total and absolute failure in all of its aspects.
It definitely demonstrated that the Soviet military was not able to prevent the destruction of the Union and that communist ideology had no dedicated defenders left in USSR.
It allowed the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus to declare a de facto independence and dissolution of the Union a few months later.
In fact, if we omit the Baltic states and Georgia’s early move toward sovereignty, the real responsibility of USSR destruction lies almost completely with Yeltsin, Kravtchuk and Shushkevitch.
Notably, Nazarbaev was against it and so were the leaders of all the other Stans…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belovezha_Accords
Have I got bad news for you…
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1245858438392844288
You seem to have some really strange idea that we owe you something.
Casto and Che were white. I doubt RT would label them as “oppressors”.
The pundits dislike Russia because they are anglo/american chauvinists. Same reason they dislike anyone else who does not lick the boots of america.