https://t.co/ZdWnb3CDZ6 pic.twitter.com/bsUCudBIPt
— Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes) December 18, 2020
I wasn’t able to watch it yesterday, but I was amused to see its main highlight: BBC hack Steve Rosenberg getting owned with facts and logic by PUTLER!
There wasn’t much new or interesting:
- Navalny is a tool of American intelligence services, his investigations are a way of laundering their findings… “Our security services keep on eye on him, but that doesn’t mean we have to poison him.”
- Not so based: “Russia was founded as a multifaith state.”
- “When it comes to China, we have coinciding interests in many areas. I have a very warm, professional of course, friendly relationship with Xi.”
- “You can be a COVID dissident until you get sick yourself.”
- “Why was China able to beat the pandemic?” “They had harsh restrictions and the ability of the authorities to realize them.”
- Hasn’t decided if he’ll run in 2024 or not.
Full transcript in Russian here, partial English translation here. Let me know if you found anything interesting.
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What do you mean by not based? Should there be in your opinion a state church or something? And in my opinion the Orhodox Church is already de facto state church.
In my understanding Putin believes that Russia is multiconfessional country, but within limits, that such religious faiths or movements that dont have common history with Russia, like Jehovah’s witnesses and Wahhabis, are not welcome.
Thus it can be said that Putin walks the middle road in regards of religious freedom.
Prince Vladimir adopted Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy while remaining a pagan?
Prince Vladimir did not found the Old Rus or modern Russia, but Peter I, who was the founder of the Russian Empire, was extremely tolerant of different faiths followed by his subjects, except with Judaism naturally.
“Was founded” is weird thing to say. But the reality is that Russia conquered many territories with different religions and I think it is the best to let the locals worship as they please. That makes Orthodoxy, some forms of Islam and Buddhism, and many varieties of shamanism the native religions.
But this absolutely does not mean that imported religions like various Protestant sects and Judaism should be tolerated. OK, I do not know the history well enough – maybe if there are some Jews left from Khazaria they could also be included.
Almost all Russian Jews come from the areas of former Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, but small minority of Russian Jews have their origin in the ancient Jewish communities of Crimea and Northern Caucasus, but all three communities are not Ashkenazim.
But where did I say otherwise?
Calling Judaism tolerated in Imperial Russia would really really really be a stretch, maybe in comparison to Germany in 1938?
How were Jews tolerated by the Russian government, relative to how they were treated in the US, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil, or Sweden in 1910?
Most European countries emancipated their Jews in the 19th century, the situation of Russias Jews was not so bad, they could not settle outside the former lands of the Polish Commonwealth and New Russia, and had small quotas to universities. But by serving in the army they could gain more equal status with other subjects of the Russian Czar or if they converted.
Then there were the Karaite Jews of Crimea, who enjoyed equal status in Russia.
You know the plot of the old Disney cartoon An American Tail? My perception is that women tend to do a lot better in fields which require a fairly high IQ and good social skills at the same time, like law, medicine, or finance.
What?
Does this sound tepid to you in the context of expectations of converging towards military alliance by 2025?
Do you think this was due to the increasing number of Tartars from the conquest of Azov + Siberians/Turanics gathered from the push into the more populated parts of the Russian Far East?
I recall reading in a history book that I’ve long forgotten that the Streltsy Uprising against Peter could be charitably read as an expression of Russian nationalism in the face of having millions of asiatics added to the state in a short timespan.
Russia had big Muslim population already centuries before Peter I, and lots of Finnic and Siberian Pagans. Remember that Kazan , Astrakhan and Sibir Khanates were already conquered during the rule of Ivan IV. Though Pagans and Muslims were not repressed like in the more civilized Europe, they were not equal subjects of the Czar or official religions of the lands, but after Peter I they quickly gained official status and protection of the empire, not pagans though but Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims.
Then there was a Muslim Qasim Khanate that was already established vassal state of Russia in the mid 15th century, but one thing must be remembered, nomad Turkics of the Russian steppes, were not anyway followers of fundamentalist forms of Islam, and looked more Asian or Finnic than Middle Eastern or Anatolian turkish.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Akhmetov_Rinat_Leonidovich.jpg/800px-Akhmetov_Rinat_Leonidovich.jpg
Rinat Akhmetov, one of the richest man of Ukraine and a Volga Tatar.
Also we shouldn’t forget that Cossacks were from very beginning quite mixed ethnically and religiously, and then there were long tradition of “serving Tatars” in high positions of the Russian state.
Russia, unlike western countries, is organically multicultural and imperialistic state, just like the Roman Empire predating it. If Russia will not regain its former lands then it will have the same fate as the lands of medieval Romans had after the Manzikert and Fourth Crusade…
Peter I was a tough persecutor of Islam, the toughest of all the rulers of Russia. But he was quite indifferent to Judaism (about which he spoke directly in private conversations)
This is some kind of fantastic alternate history.
As for the Muslim nobility-quite the opposite. Peter I deprived them of their status, as Peter forbade Muslims to have a noble rank. the muslim nobility had to either be baptized or turn into commoners
Where you have heard so? Ivan IV did try to convert some Tatar nobles forcefully, but I have never heard that Peter I repressed Russian Muslims, maybe you mean those Muslims who were enemies of Russia like the Muslim subjects of Ottoman or Persian empires?
http://islam-info.ru/obchestvo/1596-pyotr-i-i-musulmane.html
And it seems that Peter I treated quite well Persian Muslims too.
That maybe true, but I dont believe that he persecuted common Mussulman subjects of the empire.
Fuck! The Schlomo-1000’s Disney subroutine is acting up again! I told you not to let Zuck subcontract it to Bangalore!
Romania or Byzantium was not ‘organically multicultural or imperialistic’. It was monocultural in that it only supported Orthodoxy and Greek speaking/written culture. There were times when it conquered Armenian or Bulgar territory but it never issued edicts in these languages. It tolerated these people but if they wanted to participate in the operation of the Roman state, which many did, they had to become Romanised.
Arguably, it was a Roman ethno-state which on occasion expanded its borders to include other ethnies but it is a stretch to call it multicultural and imperialistic.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674365407
The Greek was the common language of the empire, but its a quite stretch to claim that the empire was Hellenistic in some way, in some time periods almost all Hellas was lost to the Slavs, and Armenians and Isaurians were crucial part of the army and administration.
I think this is more Greek nationalist propaganda, the modern concept of Greekness is very different or foreign from the Romanness of the empire, its true that during Palaiologos Emperors rule the empire became more Greek, but no wonder, the only lands left were Peloponnesos and small parts of Thrace and Aegean Isles.
I am quite sure it was some diaspora jew that wrote it, and that is the business they’re in, regardless of whether they have a History Ph.D or the Creative Writing MFA.
Hence why I ask real people in the Russosphere.
Rosenberg highlighted Putin apologizing to the BBC hack for asking a question of him (Rosenberg).
Another gem is CNN hack Clarissa Ward, saying that Putin was quite evasive on the claim of a Russian government involved poisoning of Navalny.
RFE’/RL has this:
https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-s-press-conference-what-he-said-and-didn-t-quite-say/31006354.html
A name like “Rosenberg”, yet I’m sure most will still say he represents “Anglos” in general.
I think you have difficulty reading. Did I make any claim the Byzantium was Hellenistic? My point was that Romania or Byzantium was not ‘organically multicultural or imperialistic’.
The common people of the Muslims were of course not persecuted, but they were very limited in the rights in comparison with Christians. it is believed that before Catherine the Great, the legal situation of muslims in russia was worse than the situation of christians in the Ottoman Empire.
“The policy of “limiting” Islam, thus defined in the reign of Fyodor Alekseevich (1676-1682), was continued by his younger brother Peter I (1682-1725)….. The Petrine government strongly encouraged the expansion of the number of Muslims who converted to Christianity (a vivid example is the Yusupov family).
The tsar’s special attention was paid to the reduction of the size of Muslim landowners ‘ land ownership. According to Peter’s decree of 1713, the ability of Muslims to own serfs of the Orthodox faith was severely restricted. the tsar demanded: if such owners in the kazan and azov provinces wanted to keep christian workers, then “these busurmans of the mohammedan law” had to accept orthodoxy within six months. While maintaining their Islamic faith, they were obliged to “give” their Orthodox peasants, along with their “arable land and all the land on the sovereign.” … At the same time, it should be emphasized that the decree of 1713 did not affect those landowners of the “Mohammedan law” who owned co-religionist peasants, and these owners continued to retain all their ownership rights…peter i attached particular importance to the organization of active “anti-muslim” propaganda…” etc, etc..
Д.Ю. Арапов
ИСЛАМ В ПЕТРОВСКОЙ РОССИИ
Compared to Spain, Habsburgs and Italian countries, that is very mild
Wasnt it more like that if you follow our faith and pay taxes, we dont care about the rest? It seems to me that outside of Balkans the problems that Medieval Romans had in administering others were more connected to religion and not to culture.
Perhaps Putin considers Yeltsin to be the founder of the current state.
Yeltsin did make Putin his successor.
OT: I wanted to make sure you saw this:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/results-us-elections-2020-predictions/#comment-4353032
Compared to other European rulers in the centuries before and after his rule, he was closer to Golda Meir in levels of Judophilia.
4.5 hour long press conference……….followed by an immediate 20-25 minutes unofficial press-conference. That’s impressive, although the Rosenburg idiot question represented an easy 10 minutes for VVP – he gets asked near the same question every year at the press conference by western “journalists” ( the end of the “regime” because of the Khabarovsk arrest of Furgal, as expected,is easy to forget for them)
Yes, I had the stupid meme virus. (Along with dozens and dozens of other people in my immediate circle.) This is why I am a COVID dissident now.
During the rule of Pyotr I, Jews had much better situation in England, the Netherlands, Italy and in the Ottoman Empire than in the Russia. I think that even in France they had it better?
Don’t be a cretin. Look at the (perfectly decent and humane laws at the time) laws for Jews in the Russian empire, look at their non-discriminatory or non-inferior living conditions,- Pale of Settlement ( western and temperate climate), Black Sea coastline and major cities as places of their massive settlement is not exactly “mass repression” you dummy , look at Chekhov ( and 1000s of other examples) – a great Russian icon who had Jewish fiancee, jewish lovers and had Jews as dominant characters in his plays and short stories ( Tina – which is nearly semi-autubiographical and about a Jewish woman …and Ivanov). That’s jews positively promoted in popular culture to a mass audience in Russia……can you find any comparable role in western culture or popular culture at the time? Of course not
Dickens did Fagan , an obscene Jew, every part of the negative stereotype, Shakespeare had Shylock, Wagner and Lizst – their non-Zionists credentials don’t need further explanation, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece Romania, Germany and nearly everywhere else in Europe it is the same thing…but at the same time Russian Empire there are scientists, artists, engineers, composers and performing artists teaching, socialising and helping jews in a normal way without sucking jewish d**k, or talking falsely about how much they “love Israel” as many famous Americans have to do.
Western “pro-jewishness” from 1700/1800’s was mainly just from a small section of their elites…..and derived from Jewish banking control……that itself were created from the anti-Jewish restrictions on jobs they were implementing.
Sure, alot of poisonous jews who emmigrated to the west after the Pogroms have a massive inferior complex towards Russians that they have passed on through the generations and like promoting lies ( Rosenburg in Karlin’s post must be a huge example, though Miriam Elder/Julia Ioffe are human excrement anti-Soviet 70s/80s diaspora)………..though I would still say that more Jews are positive to Russian history than are not.
Given that in the time of Peter, migrants of all nationalities were invited to St. Petersburg, except for gypsies and Jews (these two nationalities were banned from entering), I would strongly doubt in comparison with Golda Meer
How can that be real?
The interesting thing is that if Chinese GDP is overstated by up to 30% due to improper classification of bad assets, then Chinese defence spending relative to GDP may actually be closer to 2.5% of GDP rather than 2.0% of GDP.
Religion was a major part of the culture of the Medieval Romans and their contemporaries.
You can’t separate them.
I very much agree with you, still there were lots of problems with Orthodox Slav subjects of the empire, actually I think that there were more problems with Balkan Slavs than with the non-Chalcedonian/schismatic Armenians.
Navalny is a tool of American intelligence services, his investigations are a way of laundering their findings… “Our security services keep on eye on him, but that doesn’t mean we have to poison him.”
If US intelligence helps spread information about the misconduct of Russian officals, is this not a good thing for the Russian public? Assuming the information is truthfull.
AK said:
Unfortunately marred by Putin stupidly bragging about how little Russia spends on its military (using doubly misleading figures), apparently not recognizing that portraying yourself as weak is not a good strategy for deterring aggression.
According to SIPRI and IISS, Russia’s total military spending in 2019 was actually either $62 or $65 billion, ranking fourth in the world (if it were $46 billion, Russia would actually rank tenth, not sixth).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
I’m guessing the $46 billion refers only to the MoD budget, and excludes National Guard, etc.?
Regardless, given Russia’s much lower troop salaries and weapons procurement costs, any figure is meaningless until adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity, which would make $65 billion equal to about $170 billion in real terms.
Late response, but anything Byzantium gets me to bite. Apologies if I’m stating stuff you already know.
The Byzantine state was more like a modern nation-state than an empire in the classical Roman sense. That inclusive imperial Roman identity ended when the Arabs ended classical antiquity. In order to survive, the Byzantine state re-defined what “Romanness” was, and the result was something much more insular: a chosen people rather than lords of the earth. What was left of the empire was almost uniformly Chalcedonian and Greek speaking, so the transition was possible.
Now, it’s important to not slap on modern thinking to the pre-modern mindset. “Roman” wasn’t a racial characterization. It meant someone who was civilized, i.e, spoke Greek, was Orthodox Christian, and conformed to Roman rather than “barbarian” habits. Outsiders could and did assimilate into “Romanness” all the time, with their children being as “Roman” as anybody. When the final wave of bubonic plague decimated Constantinople to the point where it needed an immediate influx of settlers to continue to function, I’m sure that a lot of people from Slavic backgrounds were swept up and settled there after the invasions of the previous centuries, and nobody argued that their descendants weren’t proper Constantinopolitans. Even emperors from Slavic, Christian Arab and especially Armenian backgrounds appeared regularly through the centuries, though by the time they held office, they had to have been distinctly Orthodox Christian. (Part of the controversy surrounding the Isaurians, I suspect, was that Leo III had been exposed to distinctly heretical ideas in his childhood and had little use for the capital’s clergy and elites after the siege.)
But the reconquests under the Macedonian Dynasty show just how clearly the mindset had shifted. That’s not to say the Byzantines were un-pragmatic when dealing with non-Chalcedonian, non-Greek speaking populations for the most part: Armenian and other “Eastern” Christians, Latin Christians, and even eventually Muslims were regularly found on the payroll of the emperors. (Everybody except for the Jews. It’s always the Jews, eh?) But they weren’t Roman unless they adopted the very specific things that were considered Roman. That sort of inclusiveness was very different from late antiquity, let alone the Roman Empire of old. The reconquests were not about expanding and bringing Roman civilization to the outsider world, they were about protecting the already existing Romans more effectively. And how could they have? Islam was a permanently reality to the east, and to the west, culturally distinct identities had evolved by then. The emperors knew that, which was why they weren’t interested in going beyond Antioch or the Danube.
In a way, Rome had gone back to its pre-Punic state.