Russia Also Needs A Big Beautiful Wall

Here is why Russia also needs a BBW (Turkestan edition):

births-russia-vs-central-asia

Number of births: Red = Russia; Green = Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan).

In 1897, there were ten times fewer people in Russian Turkestan than within the modern borders of the Russian Federation.

Today, they constitute 50% of the Russian Federation’s population.

They have produced about as many children in the past thirty years as Russians, especially once you account for the mass emigration of Russians from Central Asia.

Therefore, later in the century, the population of dry, landlocked Central Asia may converge with or even come to surpass that of the Russian Federation.

(The usual disclaimers: No further regatherings of Russian lands, no radical life extension, no real life Fallout, etc.)

Open borders between Russia and Central Asia will probably result in Russia acquiring a permanent underclass of lower-IQ Muslims, and in the worst case, outright transforming it into Russabia (impossible with its current ethnic makeup, but the Turkestan demographic reservoir is an order of magnitude bigger than that of the Muslims in the North Caucasus).

The situation is very redolent of the challenges facing the United States vis-a-vis Central America and Europe vis-a-vis the Middle East and Africa.

One of the things I’m looking forwards to doing here is transmigrating HBD insights to Russian realities. On the plus side, it’s socially easier (no WEIRD “racism” taboos) and intellectually easier (since innovation is harder than copying, even if one does have to coin a lot of terms – e.g., “human biodiversity” itself – that don’t exist in Russian). On the negative side, there’s no First Amendment here, as in the rest of Europe.

Comments

  1. Daniel Chieh says

    One of the things I’m looking forwards to doing here is transmigrating HBD insights to Russian realities

    Clearly you need to begin to date one of the daughters of the silovik.

  2. Felix Keverich says

    The sorry state of the Russian economy will work better to deter migration than any walls.

    Kazakhstan is already a wealthier country than Russia on per capita basis. It will become a natural choice for central asians to immigrate. So thank God for sanctions and may they last for ever. 😀

  3. One of the things I’m looking forwards to doing here is transmigrating HBD insights to Russian realities.

    You could do a lot of good. Like, a lot.

    The main reason why the term HBD works in English ideologically is that the word diversity is promoted by the left as something positive. The term HBD flips the script in a cheeky way.

    Многонациональность is used in Russian politics, but разнообразие? I don’t think so.

    A catchy term would help, but it’s not necessary to recreate this English almost-joke in Russian, and it’s probably impossible to do it well anyway.

  4. Человеческий био-реализм. ЧБР makes me think of Чебурашка. You want to sound serious though, so that’s probably the wrong image.

  5. FWIW: Years before I heard of HBD for a first time, I used to think (and speak) of human differences using the metaphor of an archipelago (/ a group of archipelagos).

    That could hardly be the catchiest possible term in Russian. … A better option might be Лес? But, I’m an outsider, enough shooting in the dark.

  6. The situation is very redolent of the challenges facing the United States vis-a-vis Central America

    There’s one difference though. About a third of Turkestan’s population either has already achieved economic parity with Russia (Kazakhstan) or will soon if trends continue (in 2015 Turkmenistan was at 70% of Russia’s per capita GDP, both nominal and PPP, and from 2011-2015 its average PCGDP growth rate was 9%).

    So increasingly, migrants from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan may choose Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan as their destination, rather than Russia. Much as Central American migrants would probably prefer Mexico over the USA, if Mexico and the USA were equally wealthy per capita.

  7. There isn’t a First Amendment in the rest of Europe, either. Speech is generally freer in Western Europe than in Russia, but not as much as in the US. E.g. the Charlie Hebdo satirists had to be careful to frame their anti-Islamic criticism in anti-religious terms, since any hint of racism gets you in big trouble with the authorities.

  8. couple of thoughts:
    -the racism taboo isn’t weird per se, just the forms it takes. it’d be weird if a nation that started basically as a bi-racial settler colony didn’t have something to that effect, because the whole set-up is triggering and leads to neuroses.
    -Article 13 needs a rewrite. That’s how deep Uncle Sam’s hegemony goes (to be fair, all or most of European constitutions talk of race – why?) Nip in the bud all attempts to declare Central Asians a different race.
    -“they fought with us against the Nazis!”
    -“scrape a Russian, find a Tatar”. There are lots of people who will kvetch that the quintessence of abstract Russianness is to assimilate whoever comes.
    -the concept of the “national family” might be handy. Blacks are part of America’s national family. Mexicans aren’t and America doesn’t owe them jack (Ann Coulter said this, or something very similar, I think.) Same thing wrt minorities inside Russia and outside it.

  9. Would a lack of free speech protections in Russia likely be an impediment to the task of transmigrating HDB insights to Russian realities? I mean, these insights, which often point towards the advantages of group cohesion, seem mostly in line with the government’s pro-Russian tendencies. At least you could sell it that way.

  10. jimmyriddle says

    But Russia isn’t liberal – if the worst comes to the worst they’ll just round up people and expel them.

    The threat of that is generally a good incentive to behave well.

  11. WEIRD, as in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. Sir, you must read more Steve Sailer. Even if you read a lot, read him more (see link).

  12. read more Steve Sailer

    is everyday enough?
    still, for some reason I didn’t remember this particular acronym (the all-caps spelling should’ve been a hint)

  13. Outside of Moscow is there anywhere in Russia even when out of recession that is prosperous enough to provide lots of jobs for a lot of Central Asian migrants?

  14. Article 13

    19 and 29, too. man, the thing’s POZd.

  15. Article 13

    19 and 29, too. all the POZd bits where it says “race.” The US constitution says nothing about the status of Buryats, why should the Russian talk about Africans? East Europeans never cared about race anyway, the primary distinction was between Christian/non-Christian, which had more practical importance.

  16. “Outside of Moscow is there anywhere in Russia even when out of recession that is prosperous enough to provide lots of jobs for a lot of Central Asian migrants?”

    In St. Petersburg right now a lot of migrant workers

  17. Erik Sieven says

    Does the USA not owe at least as much to Native Americans as to African Americans? Mexican mestizos could work as proxies for Native Americans.

  18. “Wealthier” is a stretch. GDP (PPP) per capita is basically equal; GDP (nominal) per capita was marginally higher in Kazakhstan for a couple of years after Russia’s devaluation in 2014, but it has since followed suite, and will now again be considerably lower than Russia’s.

    Though you’re right that Kazakhstan is soaking up some of the inflow from places like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan that have zero chances of convergence in the next few decades.

  19. Heh, thanks.

    The term HBD flips the script in a cheeky way.

    Very apt observation. I need to do the same with an equivalent Russian term.

    Of course there’s the classic “race realism,” but its too aggressive and too prominently occupied by a свидофил + Neo-Nazi blog anyway.

    The term we (there’s a couple of HBD-aware people here whom I’ve developed contacts with) are using for now is just “biorealism.”

  20. Would a lack of free speech protections in Russia likely be an impediment to the task of transmigrating HDB insights to Russian realities?

    Probably not, since HBD is based on facts, psychometrics is not forbidden (there are Russian researchers who collaborate with Lynn and there was a big psychometrics conference in SPb half a year ago), anti-immigration op-eds are published in Russia’s leading tabloids, and I am not personally exactly anti-Kremlin though I am often frustrated with and cynical towards it.

    It is the Neo-Nazis who are undoubtedly the most prosecuted sort of Russian nationalists, followed by “liberal nationalists.” The common thread – Ukraine lovers.

    OTOH, it’s really hard to say. Konstantin Krylov was prosecuted – the case was dropped, thankfully – for something as utterly milquetoast as saying “It’s time to end this strange economic model” (i.e., of monetary transfers to the Caucasus).

    I think a lot of these prosecutions are bottom-up. Although there aren’t (yet) very many people here who could be properly called SJWs, there does exist a class of very aggressively anti-free speech Leftists who patrol the Internet, see fascism in everything to the right of Lenin, and slaver for the chance to write yet another complaint to the anti-extremism organs (I have already banned one such person from this blog; here is another one who might fit the bill).

    Still, my impression is that as long as you’re not overtly anti-Kremlin and don’t go hardcore 1488 mode you’re unlikely you’ll be charged under Article 282 or similar.

    … mostly in line with the government’s pro-Russian tendencies

    The government is largely pro-Russian state, but it is apathetic (some would argue negative) towards ethnic Russians.

    At the end of the day, for instance, it doesn’t seem that it considers Russians from Ukraine and Tajiks from Tajikistan as belonging to different categories of people (e.g., as regards immigration preferences).

  21. So Central Asians will go from something almost negligible on the Russian margins to equal demographically with Russians. Striking how fast these things can change! And how hard the inertia is to tackle once it gets going! A good time to apply the Precautionary Principle.

  22. The government is largely pro-*Russian state*, but it is apathetic (some would argue negative) towards ethnic Russians…At the end of the day, for instance, it doesn’t seem that it considers Russians from Ukraine and Tajiks from Tajikistan as belonging to different categories of people (e.g., as regards immigration preferences).

    Indeed, the complaints I’ve heard is that Russians fleeing the central Asian republics receive less help from the government than do Armenians or Chechens (though the latter are Russian citizens). I don’t know how accurate that is, but the impression must have some basis.

  23. Does the USA not owe at least as much to Native Americans as to African Americans?

    I don’t know… They don’t even owe to Blacks for all I care

    Mexican mestizos could work as proxies for Native Americans.

    do they identify with one another though? Central Asians and certain ethnic minorities in Russia identify because Islam.

  24. I don’t understand why Russia let Kazakhstan become independent state in ’90 when about half of population of that soviet republic were Russians (plus Ukrainians, Belorusians, Germans).
    It’s large territory and they just let it go all.
    But now let’s hope central Asian migrants will go there insted in Russia.

  25. Honorary Thief says

    That’d be a big fucking wall.

  26. The Kazakhs have been and still are outbreeding the Russians by a huge margin.

  27. Anatoly, please stop talking about “radical life extension”, no one; and I mean no one takes that bullshit seriously. It makes you sound like a globohomocorporatist as well, imagine the dystopian social implications if this pipedream ever came true.

  28. Philip Owen says

    Inequality is huge in Kazakhstan. Take the train there and compare it to a Russia-Russia one.

  29. Philip Owen says

    Yes. Even in the less prosperous Volga rustbelt the usual male immigrant jobs are done by immigrants, not always from Central Asia. Armenians and Georgians too. Female service jobs still get done by Russians.

  30. …and I mean no one takes that bullshit seriously

    This was true 5 years ago. Not today.

  31. Philip Owen says

    There is a resettlement scheme for ethnic Russians. A returning Volga German is quite famous in Saratov at the moment for leaving Germany with 10 children and going to Siberia, Novosibirsk, to take up the Russian government offer of free land. There are of course further subsidies for farmers. Most Russian embassies have details of the programme on their Russian language sections.

  32. So who are these people who were sane 5 years ago and have now lost their minds? Note: Cochran, “razib”, Jayman and hbd chick didn’t clear the first bar.

  33. I know. But in 1990 Russians (well not only Russians but we can add other Slavic and European people) were majority in Kazakhstan i think (at least they were about 50% of population). Also Kazakhstan had only about 15 milion people (half Slavic and German), Russia 148 milion. I just think Kazakhstan, or parts of Kazakhstan could have remained part of Russia.
    Now that train has passed of course.

  34. Cicerone says

    The European ethnicities’ share of the population however already peaked in 1959. After 1959, the migration of Europeans wasn’t enough anymore to offset the natural growth of the Kazakhs. From 1959, the share of Europeans in Kazakhstan declined from 60% to 50% in 1989 despite continuous immigration, while the Kazakhs grew their share from 30% to 40%.

    The Russians of course could have kept the very northern stripe of Kazakhstan, but even then there is the risk that it might have turned majority Kazakh in the future, with accompanying political ramifications.

    In general it is very dangerous to try to cling on territories when you as a people have already crossed your demographic peak of settler potential.

  35. True, true, I agree. Maybe it’s better this way.

  36. I am willing to consider giving up everything north of Lake Ladoga and everything east of Gorky and Voronezh in return for a 98% Slavic Russia.