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This October, I will be following the “advice” of some of my most ardent critics and literally “going back to Russia.”
I’m joking, of course. I don’t care for those trolls. That argument was always self-refuting because I had left in Russia in the early 1990s as a dependent. My parents had left because the Russian government had ceased to pay its scientists their salaries (i.e., Egghead Emigres). You could blame the pro-Western Yeltsinite kleptocracy for that brain drain, or you could blame the commies who had led the USSR into stagnation and ended up selling a superpower for some jeans, but you certainly couldn’t blame either Putin for that nor could you legitimately condemn my supposedly “Russophile” writings from abroad as hypocrisy or even a matter of “revealed preferences” for the West. (In any case as soon as I go back to Russia I am sure my critics and trolls will transition seamlessly from condemning me as a Putler stooge enjoying the good life in California and ignoring the plight of ordinary Russians to claiming that I am held hostage by the KGB and/or shilling for all I’m worth to survive the Russian economic collapse).
The more banal reality is that I have not lived permanently in Russia since the early 1990s – my last visit, for that matter, was a decade ago – so I am exceedingly curious to see for myself how it has changed since then. I suspect most of those changes are for the better, since most of the statistics seem to point that way and it’s not like I invent them or manipulate them. Still, it never hurts to see things for oneself, to become grounded, or “based,” as some might say.
I also like to think I will be fulfilling Richard Spencer’s dictum of “becoming who you are.” That said, I am under no particular illusions that I will ever truly belong to either Russia or the Anglosphere, and that my fate is to remain a rootless cosmopolitan until death or technological singularity. Charles de Gaulle is alleged to have said “He who does not love his mother more than other mothers and his country more than other countries, loves neither his mother nor his country.” A corrolary would be that he who has more than one country has none. In Guillaume Durocher’s essay on the phenomenon of Third Culture Kids (TCKs) – the highly mobile and frequently bilingual children of expats – it is pointed out that they have a number of “rather strange” characteristics: “They tend to be more educated, more likely to experience depression, more likely to commit suicide, more likely to feel alienated, and, paradoxically but perhaps unsurprisingly, more likely to be nationalistic (they often superficially embrace and advertise their nation of origin in response to identitarian unease).” So I suppose one could also view my repatriation as a sort of psychotherapy.
I will be leaving on October 3, but I will be stopping in London for a couple of weeks to a month, so blogging is likely to remain light until sometime in November. However, I expect to pick up pace once I’m settled down in Moscow thanks to the magic of purchasing power differences (aka shit is cheaper in Russia than in California), which will free up more time for blogging and pursuing my other projects. I suppose this also makes my move a case of “downshifting,” that quintessential expression of rootless millenial anomie.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Persian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Congratulations!
[I am under no particular illusions that I will ever truly belong to either Russia or the Anglosphere, and that my fate is to remain a rootless cosmopolitan until death or technological singularity]
So until death then.
I think much self-analysis on the identitarian question is always a mistake. Otherwise you become like a girl asking herself, “Do I really really really love him? and does he really really really love me?” all the time.
You will love our Steam prices.
Weird place for a photo shoot.
Come on, you can’t allow a few constipated trolls affect you. Aren’t you amazed how much (and increasing) support for Putin and Russia there has been on even mainstream conservative sites? Versus the neocon Russophobes. I’d guess it’s like 10 to 1. Certainly religious Christians have warmed to Russia based on the its unapologetic socially conservative policies and actions in Syria. Not to mention giving the middle finger to the globalists.
When the West and Anglosphere world becomes a third-world sh!t-mess Camp of the Saints, Russia might be the place to move (flee) to? Top radio talk show host Michael Savage said about a month ago, while discussing the insanity of the West in allowing the third-world savages and in, that he’d probably have to move back to Russia from whence his grandfather came (Savage is a Russian Jew). In other words, Russia seems to be the last sane white country (along with Hungary of course). But unlike Western countries, Russia doesn’t allow in refugees or asylum seekers.
Good luck! Will you be there over the New Year’s break and into the spring? Any chance of you seeing Ukraine for yourself? You are quite biased, but I have never found you to be deliberately misleading – your impressions would be very interesting.
I will visit Kiev and Odessa eventually, but now is not the best time for that.Replies: @Niccolo Salo
Good luck!
You do love your mother don’t you?
Indy Car driver Mikhail Aleshin back in and tweeting from Russia: https://mobile.twitter.com/mikhailaleshin/status/781464298946228224
Москва. Дождь. Пробки. Но люблю родной город до мурашек!/Moscow. Rain. Traffic.But love my home city to goose bumps!
Don’t eat in Cheburek Forever–the dough is usually not bad but the amount of meat in it is ridiculous. Be prepared, if and when going to Starbucks, to be interrogated on your preferences in coffee. If in Moscow–prepare to be overwhelmed with just about everything. There are some really good places to eat strung along Kamergersky Pereulok, very affordable too. Good luck in your endeavor.
Travel safe, have fun, post more!
Allowing the killing of tens of millions of Russian babies in the womb is not a “socially conservative” or Christian policy. But yes, compared to the USA’s constant glorification of homosexuality, homosexual “marriage”, and other evolutionarily pointless and psychologically confused practices, Russia isn’t as far down the road to perversion and the intentional destruction of the traditional family.
Good for you, Anatoly!
I wish that my wife and I had the resources to spend a chunk of time on Russia and get to know the people and their culture a bit. Someday I will definitely take the wife and children there for an extended vacation. Perhaps more than one, if money permits and our experiences there are positive overall.
Considering encouraging the kiddies, who are still quite young, to learn Russian as a third language, in high school if not available earlier where we live. (Their native language is English and they’ve been learning German since they were two years old, so they should be almost-native fluent in that.)
What do you think, Anatoly? Will the kids sound very good in Russian if they study it diligently in HS and college? Or is it like mandarin, which Chinese people tell us “must” be learned very early to avoid a lifelong terrible accent.
……….
Of course we will want to see Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but the price of hotels in particular seems daunting when we have checked, while dreaming about the future. Which cities could we visit where hotels are much cheaper but enough people speak some English?
Well, before the US dollar collapses for good (a frightening prospect for those of us paid on US dollars), there will surely be further engineered attacks on the ruble — we will save up and then, sometime when the ruble plunges, take the opportunity to buy, say, $30,000 or more in rubles. That will take a while! But Russia will surely be worth the wait.
………..
We wish you a safe trip and heartwarming reunions with family and friends, Anatoly. Please tell Russians that so many Americans respect them, wish them well, and absolutely do NOT support “our” government’s belligerence and dishonesty against everything Russian.
(aka shit is cheaper in Russia than in California)
I wasn’t aware that such a thing was to be found in stores, either in Russia or California.
It’s been legal for decades in Russia, but its prevalence has decreased a lot.
http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/11-countries-with-highest-abortion-rates-in-the-world-371288/11/
(ranking places Greenland as #1 but Greenland, population 56,000, is technically an autonomous part of Denmark).
Russia also has high rates of divorce, out of wedlock births, low church-going rates, highest HIV rate in Europe, etc.
Poland is far more genuinely conservative than Russia. As is western Ukraine (Donbas, in contrast, is worse than Russia in all those areas).Replies: @Glossy, @Jon0815
I wasn't aware that such a thing was to be found in stores, either in Russia or California.Replies: @iffen, @Anonymous
Speaking of shit, Isabella of Spain that you recommended belongs in the dictionary as the illustration for the word. Please provide more recommendations so I will know what to avoid.
My old neighborhood 🙂
I always liked the cheap bliny at the chain, Teremok. The cakes at Yeliseyevsky were great.
While the rate has declined, Russia is still the number one country in the world for abortions:
http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/11-countries-with-highest-abortion-rates-in-the-world-371288/11/
(ranking places Greenland as #1 but Greenland, population 56,000, is technically an autonomous part of Denmark).
Russia also has high rates of divorce, out of wedlock births, low church-going rates, highest HIV rate in Europe, etc.
Poland is far more genuinely conservative than Russia. As is western Ukraine (Donbas, in contrast, is worse than Russia in all those areas).
Polls show that Poles are far more accepting of homosexuality than Russians.
AP calls himself anti-Soviet, yet the late USSR was far more socially conservative than any of the states that replaced it. If AP really was a social conservative, he would be pro-Soviet.Replies: @AP
Good luck.
In regards to rootless cosmopolitanism, one should always try to look on the bright side of life, too roo, too roo too roo too roo.
You know more cultures than the average person. You can put them in a wider context and through that you can understand more things about them.
http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/11-countries-with-highest-abortion-rates-in-the-world-371288/11/
(ranking places Greenland as #1 but Greenland, population 56,000, is technically an autonomous part of Denmark).
Russia also has high rates of divorce, out of wedlock births, low church-going rates, highest HIV rate in Europe, etc.
Poland is far more genuinely conservative than Russia. As is western Ukraine (Donbas, in contrast, is worse than Russia in all those areas).Replies: @Glossy, @Jon0815
Everything AP says is Polish/Galician propaganda. At best half truth, often no truth at all.
Polls show that Poles are far more accepting of homosexuality than Russians.
AP calls himself anti-Soviet, yet the late USSR was far more socially conservative than any of the states that replaced it. If AP really was a social conservative, he would be pro-Soviet.
HIV rate, USA (2011): .6%
HIV rate, Germany (2011): .1%
HIV rate, Poland (2011): .1%Abortion rate, Russia (2013): 534
Abortion rate, USA (2013): 252.7
Abortion rate, Germany (2013): 150.7
Abortion rate, Poland (2013): 2.61 (this is not a typo)Homicide rate, Russia: 9.2
Homicide rate, USA: 4.7
Homicide rate, France: 1.0
Homicide rate, Germany: .8
Homicide rate, Poland: .8% who never attend religious services (2008)Russia 30%-40%
Germany 30% – 40%
Poland under 10%Percentage marriages ending in divorce (2011):USA: 53%
Russia: 51%
Germany: 49%
Poland: 27%I didn't provide links for all these in order to avoid the spam filer. Just use google.You see that Poland, not Russia, is the conservative leader. Indeed, Russia is less conservative in its behavior than the decadent West.Sky-high abortion rate and repression of religion are hardly markers of "social conservatism."Replies: @Glossy, @Anon 2
Calling the people who do not agree with you trolls will not make them trolls. Otherwise you are a troll yourself as there are a great deal of people who disagree with you and they have the same right to call you a troll.
But it is futile to hope that “you are not in Russia” argument will fade (btw, you could have used this against Western journalists). Instead you’ll face “you are a benefactor of the regime” argument. And your counter-argument “tis not your f* business who I am” is double-faced, because you do not follow it yourself. Do you really never care who your opponents are? Have you never been intersted who Bershidsky and all such types are and why they say things they say? Quite recently you’ve even created a dossier on one of the Western journalists (that guy Weiss). So do not pretend that who you are or where you have lived is never important. The background is always important.
[AK: kk]
Only from those who don't understand the meaning of the words benefactor and beneficiary.
Thanks. I’ll be there for a long time. Let’s just say I’m not bothering with a return ticket.
I will visit Kiev and Odessa eventually, but now is not the best time for that.
Never quite fitting in there, blood and soil is a real thing and I'm sure that you'll sense this in your return and more than that; you will see some advantages to having lived in the West since not only will it give you a greater sense of perspective, but that experience will also boost your standing in Russia because others will listen to your words all the more carefully due to said experience.
The Anglosphere is not for the European. It is now more than ever a place of hyperindividualism, transitory existence, and atomization. It only serves as a place to make some money and get out quickly after doing so.Replies: @JackOH
This stoical intelligence of yours is one of the reasons I keep following your weblog.
by way of summary: a student at Berkeley -> a freelancer in Moscow
This nimbleness and unconventionality you show are additional reasons I keep coming back here.
http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/11-countries-with-highest-abortion-rates-in-the-world-371288/11/
(ranking places Greenland as #1 but Greenland, population 56,000, is technically an autonomous part of Denmark).
Russia also has high rates of divorce, out of wedlock births, low church-going rates, highest HIV rate in Europe, etc.
Poland is far more genuinely conservative than Russia. As is western Ukraine (Donbas, in contrast, is worse than Russia in all those areas).Replies: @Glossy, @Jon0815
The “over a million abortions” statistic in your linked article is for 2009. The most recent statistic I can find is 880,000 abortions in 2013, and the number has probably declined further since then.
Trends matter, and I suspect that if I researched it, I would find that Russia is improving in all those areas.
Poland is a dying country, whose 2014 fertility rate was a dismal 1.3 children per woman (World Bank). Russia’s 2015 fertility rate was a post-Soviet high of 1.78, up from a low of 1.19 in 2000 (Rosstat). Maybe Polish women are still having fewer abortions than Russian women, but Russian women are having more children.
Polls show that Poles are far more accepting of homosexuality than Russians.
AP calls himself anti-Soviet, yet the late USSR was far more socially conservative than any of the states that replaced it. If AP really was a social conservative, he would be pro-Soviet.Replies: @AP
Acceptance of gays is the only measure on which Russians are more conservative than Poles. And even on that measure the difference is not huge.
Other stats are all true, not “half truths.” Glossy is lying again.
Here are the details:
HIV rate , Russia (2011): 1.1%
HIV rate, USA (2011): .6%
HIV rate, Germany (2011): .1%
HIV rate, Poland (2011): .1%
Abortion rate, Russia (2013): 534
Abortion rate, USA (2013): 252.7
Abortion rate, Germany (2013): 150.7
Abortion rate, Poland (2013): 2.61 (this is not a typo)
Homicide rate, Russia: 9.2
Homicide rate, USA: 4.7
Homicide rate, France: 1.0
Homicide rate, Germany: .8
Homicide rate, Poland: .8
% who never attend religious services (2008)
Russia 30%-40%
Germany 30% – 40%
Poland under 10%
Percentage marriages ending in divorce (2011):
USA: 53%
Russia: 51%
Germany: 49%
Poland: 27%
I didn’t provide links for all these in order to avoid the spam filer. Just use google.
You see that Poland, not Russia, is the conservative leader. Indeed, Russia is less conservative in its behavior than the decadent West.
Sky-high abortion rate and repression of religion are hardly markers of “social conservatism.”
to describe Poland. The word 'conservative' is
somewhat multivalent. Moreover, at least in the
U.S. these days, it is used as a putdown.
It's more descriptive to say that Poland has relatively
low rates of social dysfunction (as measured by murder
rate, divorce rate, HIV rate, etc) compared to either
Russia or the United States. It's a country that works
relatively well while Western Europe and the United
States are descending into chaos.
But Poland is also becoming more heterogeneous, what
with about one million Ukrainians and Belarussians
(typically on 6- month work visas), 10,000 Russians,
about 7,000 Chechens, and a couple of hundred thousand
Vietnamese. In this sense Poland never has to worry
about losing population. It can easily attract 2-3 million
Ukrainians and Belarussians. But that would mean
effectively resurrecting the old Rzeczpospolita (federal
republic that existed for over 200 years until 1795).
Whether this would be advantageous to Poland is right
now a matter of intense debate. I'd like to recommend
a current bestseller, The Demon in Democracy, by prof.
Ryszard Legutko, a Polish philosopher, that covers
some of these matters, and moreReplies: @neutral, @Latvian woman
It is, and maybe in 20 years it will become as socially conservative in its behavior as decadent Western Europe.
Yes, lots of child-bearing age Poles are in Western Europe. Of course, Poland doesn’t have as much of a 90s dip coming into the picture.
You don't seem to know how fertility rates are calculated.
Poland has had a severe drain of people leaving it and is now basically the prostitute of Europe you imbecile....and still it has a very high unemployment rate
But it is futile to hope that "you are not in Russia" argument will fade (btw, you could have used this against Western journalists). Instead you'll face "you are a benefactor of the regime" argument. And your counter-argument "tis not your f* business who I am" is double-faced, because you do not follow it yourself. Do you really never care who your opponents are? Have you never been intersted who Bershidsky and all such types are and why they say things they say? Quite recently you've even created a dossier on one of the Western journalists (that guy Weiss). So do not pretend that who you are or where you have lived is never important. The background is always important.
[AK: kk]Replies: @5371
[Instead you’ll face “you are a benefactor of the regime” argument.]
Only from those who don’t understand the meaning of the words benefactor and beneficiary.
[Yes, lots of child-bearing age Poles are in Western Europe]
You don’t seem to know how fertility rates are calculated.
Sellout.
By “biased” you mean “factually accurate” you lowlife sack of faeces liar…..hence why a POS like you will never be on a pro-Ukraine website……because there is sod all to be happy about
…yes…and 40 million “Irish” are in America and 20 million “Poles” in America too…….what relation does it have to people actually living in Poland you thick cretin?
Poland has had a severe drain of people leaving it and is now basically the prostitute of Europe you imbecile….and still it has a very high unemployment rate
HIV rate, USA (2011): .6%
HIV rate, Germany (2011): .1%
HIV rate, Poland (2011): .1%Abortion rate, Russia (2013): 534
Abortion rate, USA (2013): 252.7
Abortion rate, Germany (2013): 150.7
Abortion rate, Poland (2013): 2.61 (this is not a typo)Homicide rate, Russia: 9.2
Homicide rate, USA: 4.7
Homicide rate, France: 1.0
Homicide rate, Germany: .8
Homicide rate, Poland: .8% who never attend religious services (2008)Russia 30%-40%
Germany 30% – 40%
Poland under 10%Percentage marriages ending in divorce (2011):USA: 53%
Russia: 51%
Germany: 49%
Poland: 27%I didn't provide links for all these in order to avoid the spam filer. Just use google.You see that Poland, not Russia, is the conservative leader. Indeed, Russia is less conservative in its behavior than the decadent West.Sky-high abortion rate and repression of religion are hardly markers of "social conservatism."Replies: @Glossy, @Anon 2
Acceptance of gays is the only measure on which Russians are more conservative than Poles. And even on that measure the difference is not huge.
…
Sky-high abortion rate and repression of religion are hardly markers of “social conservatism.”
A high abortion rate was the only measure on which the late USSR was less conservative than its Western rivals or its modern successor states, including your beloved junta. If the “only measure” defense is good for you, I’ll use it too. Thanks. The late USSR did not repress religion. And during the Stalinist period it banned abortion.
I will visit Kiev and Odessa eventually, but now is not the best time for that.Replies: @Niccolo Salo
Like you Anatoly I was born in the homeland and found myself in North America at a young age thanks to my parents due to the system back home (Tito’s Communism) making life very difficult for us. And like you I made the choice to leave North America since it is not a good place any longer for decent European people. In Canada’s case my father told me as a young boy that it is a country that will serve to house to the overflow from the old British Empire and it’s fit only for 3rd Worlders and those of British stock (with the obvious Quebecois exception). So one had to make a choice: assimilate or flee. I chose the latter and am back in the homeland now since I left two years ago.
Never quite fitting in there, blood and soil is a real thing and I’m sure that you’ll sense this in your return and more than that; you will see some advantages to having lived in the West since not only will it give you a greater sense of perspective, but that experience will also boost your standing in Russia because others will listen to your words all the more carefully due to said experience.
The Anglosphere is not for the European. It is now more than ever a place of hyperindividualism, transitory existence, and atomization. It only serves as a place to make some money and get out quickly after doing so.
Agree. If my memory's okay, something like one-third of immigrants to the U. S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries returned home. I'd add to your list the abominable politics of the U. S., much of which we talk about on this site, which had me thinking half-seriously of emigration from the States back in the 1990s.
God bless, Anatoly, and I think many of us would like to read your observations about today's Russia when you get a chance.
What’s pushing you to make this move? Did you get cucked or something? Is it Beta Male Rage?
Where did you get that idea?
Do you mean the last years of perestroika, or the Brezhnev era?
So how many churches per capita were there in the late USSR?
I note that you chose to ignore the data abortion, church attendance, HIV rate, divorce rate that I provided.
On some parameters, Russians are indeed not very conservative at all - church attendance, abortion, belief in God, AIDS and drug addition, etc. (Though it is trending more in this direction).
In the American context, it is the genteel and politically correct conservatism of 100-105 IQ whites, of Utah, of Romney and Charles Murray.
However, on others, it is highly conservative relative to the European average - views on homosexuality, patriorism/nationalism, traditional gender roles (in the cultural if not so much economic sense), and politically hardline views on the right way to deal with social maladies. (Russia has been trending away from this direction during most of the 1990s and 2000s, but it seems to have been frozen since 2012).
In the American context, it is the populist and politically incorrect conservatism of 95 IQ whites, of West Virginia, of Trump.Replies: @AP, @TheJester
From your defense of the Polish attitude to homosexuality.
Do you mean the last years of perestroika, or the Brezhnev era?
The entire post-war period.
So how many churches per capita were there in the late USSR?
Fewer than now, but still a lot. My half-Russian cousins were baptized in a church during the Brezhnev period. It's my impression that most ethnic Russians who were born then were baptized. I would guess that the percentage of newborns who were baptized in Brezhnev's Russia was higher than, for example, in France of that time.
There was a church about a 15 minute walk from where I grew up. My grandma bought matzos in a synagogue in central Moscow when I was a kid. I'm sure that Central Asia was full of working mosques.Replies: @AP
So the problem is that conservatism isn’t a one-dimensional thing which is where a lot of the confusion I think is springing from.
On some parameters, Russians are indeed not very conservative at all – church attendance, abortion, belief in God, AIDS and drug addition, etc. (Though it is trending more in this direction).
In the American context, it is the genteel and politically correct conservatism of 100-105 IQ whites, of Utah, of Romney and Charles Murray.
However, on others, it is highly conservative relative to the European average – views on homosexuality, patriorism/nationalism, traditional gender roles (in the cultural if not so much economic sense), and politically hardline views on the right way to deal with social maladies. (Russia has been trending away from this direction during most of the 1990s and 2000s, but it seems to have been frozen since 2012).
In the American context, it is the populist and politically incorrect conservatism of 95 IQ whites, of West Virginia, of Trump.
Another analogy would be that if Eastern Europe would be people from the 1950s, Poland would the 1950s person idealized in family shows. Goes to church every week, doesn't engage in vices other than some drinks with friends after work, provides for the family, is a patriot, and has no sympathy for gays or feminism. Russia is the unsavory 1950s guy who doesn't go to church, cavorts with prostitutes, engages in criminal violence, gets an inconvenient pregnancy aborted, leaves his family - but, like the first guy, is also homophobic (even more so), has no time for feminism, takes traditional social roles for granted, etc.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
Where did you get that idea?
From your defense of the Polish attitude to homosexuality.
Do you mean the last years of perestroika, or the Brezhnev era?
The entire post-war period.
So how many churches per capita were there in the late USSR?
Fewer than now, but still a lot. My half-Russian cousins were baptized in a church during the Brezhnev period. It’s my impression that most ethnic Russians who were born then were baptized. I would guess that the percentage of newborns who were baptized in Brezhnev’s Russia was higher than, for example, in France of that time.
There was a church about a 15 minute walk from where I grew up. My grandma bought matzos in a synagogue in central Moscow when I was a kid. I’m sure that Central Asia was full of working mosques.
Wiki says by the late 1980s the USSR had 7,000 functioning churches, of which 4,000 were in Ukraine (skewed toward western Ukraine). I don't know how many of the remaining 3,000 functioning churches were in Russia vs. the Baltics, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, etc. but "optimistically" let's say 2,500 in Russia. In the late 1980s Russia had about 147 million people so that would be one church per 58,800 people in Russia. Exclude non-Christians (Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, etc.) and you get one church per about 52,800 "Christians" in Russia.
Very small number.Probably a false impression. In the 60s and 70s 40% to 50% of infants were being baptized (skewed towards rural people). The number rose considerably, and included more urban and educated people, during perestroika but I don't think the late 80s is the period you consider to be "conservative." Note that religious instruction church marriages in the USSR and were quite rare. What little "religion" was practiced, mostly began and ended with infant baptism.Replies: @Anonymous Nephew
Ways in which Brezhnev’s USSR was conservative:
There was no prostitution at all. Homosexuality was officially considered a mental illness. There was no porn anywhere. No gratuitous violence in movies or TV. Most entertainment was moralistic. The everyone-is-a-winner attitude was absent from education. If you were an idiot, a teacher would tell you that.
There were no drugs anywhere. No gender theory, no radical feminism, no Freudianism (which you’ve defended), nothing of that sort. One could go on and on. Healthy patriotism. No debt of any sort anywhere, no homelessness, no advertising – to me all of that is also conservatism. It’s certainly the opposite of libertardianism, which, as libertardians would tell you, is conservatism’s polar opposite.
There were drugs in Russia under the Tsars. There was prostitution. The arts were censored, but not repressed and forced to conform to government orders. Freudisnaims was popular in Russia under the Tsars: the Russian translation of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1904 was the first translation of Freud’s work in any foreign language. Are you going to claim that Russia under Brezhnev was more conservative than Russia under Nicholas II?
By equating "conservatism" with "repression" you demonstrate a leftist's idea of what conservative means.Replies: @Glossy, @Darin
Hard currency prostitute was a state endorsed career.
Classical music and classical 19th-century literature were heavily promoted and much better known by the populace than anywhere in the West of that time. Same thing with ballet and opera. Real poetry (the kind that has rhyme and meter) and realistic art were created in the USSR decades after they died in the West.
Divorce was rare. The vast majority of kids were brought up by two bio-parents.
I could continue this list indefinitely.
I’m afraid Moscow-based American journalist and editor wouldn’t agree with you. He says that Russia has far better freedom of press than in the United States – and there is less anti-Semitism than the AIPAC-controlled Uncle Sam.
In October 2004 – Mark Ames posted an article in the Jew York Times, entitled, “Save A Jew, Save Yourself”.
“The 65 million American Evangelical cultists love Jews for one simple reason: They hope to bundle every hairy Jewish ass up, air-freight them to the West Bank and East Jerusalem (once those areas have been cleansed of Muslims), and use the Jews as bait to bring upon the Rapture, as kindling in the Apocalypse, the final battle that will bring Jesus back to Earth. None of this can happen until every last Jew is penned into the occupied territories and the Jews won’t get there unless the far-right runs Israel and America. Currently 65 million American cultists are using everything in their power, from prayer to politics, to make this Helter Skelter scenario come true.”
https://rehmat1.com/2010/11/27/save-a-jew-save-yourself/
When someone calls himself anti-Soviet, as you have done, AP, he essentially says that he’s pro-drugs, pro-prostitution, pro-poverty, pro-sodomy, pro-crime, pro-corruption, pro-war, pro-homelessness, anti-art, anti-culture, anti-science, anti-education, anti-civilization, anti-natalist, etc.
Why do some post-Soviet people call themselves anti-Soviet then? Tribalism. Same reason why the colonial peoples of the world called themselves anti-colonial. The standard of living in Africa, India, Central Asia, Western Ukraine, etc. fell enormously after independence, but few there regret independence because humans, being tribal, would rather be miserable by themselves than prosperous under an enlightened colonial regime. At the extreme they’d rather be ruled by guys like the cannibalistic emperor Bokassa than by French civil servants.
BLM is run by Soros, but I’m sure it’s attractive to blacks. He just organizes their pre-existing sentiments into a coherent movement, gives it structure. Releasing a million black felons from prison would increase crime, which would kill a lot of blacks. Why would they want that? Because humans are tribal by nature. As I said above, they’d rather be more independent and more miserable than less independent and less miserable. That’s the human default.
And there’s evolutionary logic in this sort of tribalism. It’s weird of me not to be moved by it. Instead I have a nerd’s sci-fi-like fascination with civilizational progress and a wimp’s disgust for cruelty, which makes me a humanitarian civilizationist. This sort of a stance is rarely compatible with tribalism.
Anyway, you, AP, obviously root against civilization (the junta nixed all science funding) and for cruelty (the junta killed a lot of people) for tribalist reasons. That’s very common in life. And you lie about your motivations. You’ve denied being a nationalist. That kind of lie is also common.
The Central African Republic's independence under Bokassa wasn't real. I think he was actually overthrown by the French acting through surrogates.
The junta's independence is just as phony. Real independence is very difficult to achieve because it requires nuclear weapons and an independent information space. China, North Korea, Iran, Russia are some countries with various amounts of real independence.
So this thing for which you excuse all of this cruelty and savagery is an illusion. It's like a clumsy piece of advertising for a magical cure. The locals buy it because of the universal human tendency for wishful thinking. You want it to be real, so you've convinced yourself that it's real.
So no tribalism. You are projecting. The conservative cosmopolitanism of Austria-Hungary, or perhaps Rzeczpospolita, appeal to me, as does pre-revolutionary Russia, with some caveats. I have a strong sentimental attachment to Ukraine and its peoples, which tribe doesn't matter, though I have little sympathy for Sovok colonists.A lie.
http://www.nature.com/news/conflicting-laws-threaten-ukrainian-science-1.19470
"Ukraine passed its 2016 austerity budget, in the wake of widespread closure of mines and factories, inflation, debt and currency devaluation. The budget allocates a meagre 2.05 billion hryvnia (US$76 million) to the NASU — about 12% less than in 2015, continuing a trend of decline"
Interesting that you equate Yanukovich with "civilization."Speak for yourself, you who deny your Russian nationalism (your Jewish ethnicity is irrelevant, of course). Your Russian Nationalism has led you to lie, for example.Someone who regularly defends Stalin has no right to complain about others' supposed "cruelty."Replies: @Glossy
From your defense of the Polish attitude to homosexuality.
Do you mean the last years of perestroika, or the Brezhnev era?
The entire post-war period.
So how many churches per capita were there in the late USSR?
Fewer than now, but still a lot. My half-Russian cousins were baptized in a church during the Brezhnev period. It's my impression that most ethnic Russians who were born then were baptized. I would guess that the percentage of newborns who were baptized in Brezhnev's Russia was higher than, for example, in France of that time.
There was a church about a 15 minute walk from where I grew up. My grandma bought matzos in a synagogue in central Moscow when I was a kid. I'm sure that Central Asia was full of working mosques.Replies: @AP
You realize that basing conservatism (or not) on one dimension is absurd.
Nonsense.
Wiki says by the late 1980s the USSR had 7,000 functioning churches, of which 4,000 were in Ukraine (skewed toward western Ukraine). I don’t know how many of the remaining 3,000 functioning churches were in Russia vs. the Baltics, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, etc. but “optimistically” let’s say 2,500 in Russia. In the late 1980s Russia had about 147 million people so that would be one church per 58,800 people in Russia. Exclude non-Christians (Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, etc.) and you get one church per about 52,800 “Christians” in Russia.
Very small number.
Probably a false impression. In the 60s and 70s 40% to 50% of infants were being baptized (skewed towards rural people). The number rose considerably, and included more urban and educated people, during perestroika but I don’t think the late 80s is the period you consider to be “conservative.” Note that religious instruction church marriages in the USSR and were quite rare. What little “religion” was practiced, mostly began and ended with infant baptism.
Wikipedia, when it comes to politics-related subjects, is policed by what passes for the "left" these days - i.e. people who don't like Russia. See the comments here
https://www.unz.com/isteve/he-who-controls-the-wikipedia-controls-the-future-he-who-controls-the-present-controls-the-wikipedia/
Also see the contrast between these two Time covers
July 15, 1996 - "The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win"
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html
Sept 29, 2016 - "Russia wants to undermine faith in the US election. Don't fall for it"
http://time.com/magazine
Sounds like North Korea. Soviet “moralism” in entertainment included anti-religious and anti-capitalist propaganda. Priests in Soviet cartoons were objects of ridicule. The working class were glorified.
And no private property either. And no free religion.
There were drugs in Russia under the Tsars. There was prostitution. The arts were censored, but not repressed and forced to conform to government orders. Freudisnaims was popular in Russia under the Tsars: the Russian translation of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1904 was the first translation of Freud’s work in any foreign language. Are you going to claim that Russia under Brezhnev was more conservative than Russia under Nicholas II?
By equating “conservatism” with “repression” you demonstrate a leftist’s idea of what conservative means.
Yes, of course. And by a lot.
I've tired of arguing with you again. You repeat stale conventional wisdom as if it's true.
All conventional wisdom originates as propaganda, as partisan polemics. The partisan BS of the winning side in a political conflict becomes the conventional view that people begin to repeat without thinking, assuming it's the truth. If you want a chance to find the truth, you have to think for yourself. Since the conventional view of any time or place is one of an infinite number of possible views, the probability of you arriving at it after thinking about politics for yourself is near zero.Replies: @AP
Soviet communism was also a religion, and like any religion in power it ridiculed and suppressed other religions. No surprise.These things are very recent inventions of western liberalism, nothing conservative about them.Russian Empire of Nikky was about 300 years old at the time. Leonid's Soviet Empire was about 60-70 years old. The proper comparison is with time of Catherine the Great.
Another obvious point:
The Central African Republic’s independence under Bokassa wasn’t real. I think he was actually overthrown by the French acting through surrogates.
The junta’s independence is just as phony. Real independence is very difficult to achieve because it requires nuclear weapons and an independent information space. China, North Korea, Iran, Russia are some countries with various amounts of real independence.
So this thing for which you excuse all of this cruelty and savagery is an illusion. It’s like a clumsy piece of advertising for a magical cure. The locals buy it because of the universal human tendency for wishful thinking. You want it to be real, so you’ve convinced yourself that it’s real.
On some parameters, Russians are indeed not very conservative at all - church attendance, abortion, belief in God, AIDS and drug addition, etc. (Though it is trending more in this direction).
In the American context, it is the genteel and politically correct conservatism of 100-105 IQ whites, of Utah, of Romney and Charles Murray.
However, on others, it is highly conservative relative to the European average - views on homosexuality, patriorism/nationalism, traditional gender roles (in the cultural if not so much economic sense), and politically hardline views on the right way to deal with social maladies. (Russia has been trending away from this direction during most of the 1990s and 2000s, but it seems to have been frozen since 2012).
In the American context, it is the populist and politically incorrect conservatism of 95 IQ whites, of West Virginia, of Trump.Replies: @AP, @TheJester
A nice insight. So Poland and western Ukraine are “Cruz conservative” (clean-living, God-fearing, non-criminal, patriotic, traditional) whereas Russia is “Trump conservative” (not so religious, more criminal, patriotic, non-PC – though Trump likes gays, and Russia doesn’t).
Another analogy would be that if Eastern Europe would be people from the 1950s, Poland would the 1950s person idealized in family shows. Goes to church every week, doesn’t engage in vices other than some drinks with friends after work, provides for the family, is a patriot, and has no sympathy for gays or feminism. Russia is the unsavory 1950s guy who doesn’t go to church, cavorts with prostitutes, engages in criminal violence, gets an inconvenient pregnancy aborted, leaves his family – but, like the first guy, is also homophobic (even more so), has no time for feminism, takes traditional social roles for granted, etc.
(1) Social trust and civility in 1950s America was still, I suspect, far higher than in Poland or West Ukraine. (E.g., ordinary Americans left their doors unlocked back then. Doubt that happens anywhere in Eastern Europe.) This is still substantially true in the areas where 1950s America still survives in some form.
(2) Fertility rates - record high in the 1950s US, the lowest of any major country in Europe (!) in Poland. And yes, 5371 has a point. The fertility rate, like life expectancy, is calculated independent of age structure, so the big number of Poles abroad shouldn't be making much of a difference.Replies: @Glossy, @AP
It’s important to remember that the Soviet economy’s consumer goods sector was not wealthy enough to tolerate the kind of decadence and liberality we see in wealthier societies. Furthermore, it had to wage the Cold War for decades.
Poverty could not have been the cause of the USSR's social conservatism because the first post-Soviet decade was both poorer and more liberal than the late Soviet period. In other words, liberalism came to Russia together with the impoverishment of the 1990s.Replies: @Anonymous, @Andrei Martyanov
There were drugs in Russia under the Tsars. There was prostitution. The arts were censored, but not repressed and forced to conform to government orders. Freudisnaims was popular in Russia under the Tsars: the Russian translation of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1904 was the first translation of Freud’s work in any foreign language. Are you going to claim that Russia under Brezhnev was more conservative than Russia under Nicholas II?
By equating "conservatism" with "repression" you demonstrate a leftist's idea of what conservative means.Replies: @Glossy, @Darin
Are you going to claim that Russia under Brezhnev was more conservative than Russia under Nicholas II?
Yes, of course. And by a lot.
I’ve tired of arguing with you again. You repeat stale conventional wisdom as if it’s true.
All conventional wisdom originates as propaganda, as partisan polemics. The partisan BS of the winning side in a political conflict becomes the conventional view that people begin to repeat without thinking, assuming it’s the truth. If you want a chance to find the truth, you have to think for yourself. Since the conventional view of any time or place is one of an infinite number of possible views, the probability of you arriving at it after thinking about politics for yourself is near zero.
Soviet consumer goods were better and more numerous than Western propaganda told you.
Poverty could not have been the cause of the USSR’s social conservatism because the first post-Soviet decade was both poorer and more liberal than the late Soviet period. In other words, liberalism came to Russia together with the impoverishment of the 1990s.
The 90s were a collapse, decline, and transition period for Russia. It ceased fighting the Cold War, and was effectively being integrated into wealthier, more decadent societies.
Another analogy would be that if Eastern Europe would be people from the 1950s, Poland would the 1950s person idealized in family shows. Goes to church every week, doesn't engage in vices other than some drinks with friends after work, provides for the family, is a patriot, and has no sympathy for gays or feminism. Russia is the unsavory 1950s guy who doesn't go to church, cavorts with prostitutes, engages in criminal violence, gets an inconvenient pregnancy aborted, leaves his family - but, like the first guy, is also homophobic (even more so), has no time for feminism, takes traditional social roles for granted, etc.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
Yes, I think that’s a good first approximation. Though there are two almost cardinal differences:
(1) Social trust and civility in 1950s America was still, I suspect, far higher than in Poland or West Ukraine. (E.g., ordinary Americans left their doors unlocked back then. Doubt that happens anywhere in Eastern Europe.) This is still substantially true in the areas where 1950s America still survives in some form.
(2) Fertility rates – record high in the 1950s US, the lowest of any major country in Europe (!) in Poland. And yes, 5371 has a point. The fertility rate, like life expectancy, is calculated independent of age structure, so the big number of Poles abroad shouldn’t be making much of a difference.
(1) Social trust and civility in 1950s America was still, I suspect, far higher than in Poland or West Ukraine. (E.g., ordinary Americans left their doors unlocked back then. Doubt that happens anywhere in Eastern Europe.) This is still substantially true in the areas where 1950s America still survives in some form.
(2) Fertility rates - record high in the 1950s US, the lowest of any major country in Europe (!) in Poland. And yes, 5371 has a point. The fertility rate, like life expectancy, is calculated independent of age structure, so the big number of Poles abroad shouldn't be making much of a difference.Replies: @Glossy, @AP
When I was between the ages of 12 and 15 my parents rented a room from a friend of our relatives in a village house in the Moscow Region, near Khot’kovo, for a month each year. These were their vacations.
The house had no lock. We didn’t have a key. We just came and went. The owners lived in it while we were there. The village had about 40 houses.
I’ve said this before, but every kid I knew back in our neighborhood in Moscow had a bike. There were no bike locks. Such a thing couldn’t be bought. Bikes were never stolen.
There were no lockers in schools. You left your coat and your shoe bag on a peg in a huge dressing room. Coats were never stolen. Walking home in -20 C cold without a coat would have been really something. Never heard of it.
LOL. This is glossy’s way of describing disgust with Bolshevism.
I’m not a post-Soviet person; never lived there during Soviet times. One grandparent was a Soviet by residence in youth, one never lived under the Soviets, the other two spent maybe 2 years under Soviet rule. Ideologies of the family varied – Polish officers were “Gente Ruthenus, natione Polonus”, one grandparent’s Russophile family’s estate had served as a refuge for Whites fleeing west after the Revolution, and Ukrainian patriots. All were, however, anti-Soviet.
So no tribalism. You are projecting. The conservative cosmopolitanism of Austria-Hungary, or perhaps Rzeczpospolita, appeal to me, as does pre-revolutionary Russia, with some caveats. I have a strong sentimental attachment to Ukraine and its peoples, which tribe doesn’t matter, though I have little sympathy for Sovok colonists.
A lie.
http://www.nature.com/news/conflicting-laws-threaten-ukrainian-science-1.19470
“Ukraine passed its 2016 austerity budget, in the wake of widespread closure of mines and factories, inflation, debt and currency devaluation. The budget allocates a meagre 2.05 billion hryvnia (US$76 million) to the NASU — about 12% less than in 2015, continuing a trend of decline”
Interesting that you equate Yanukovich with “civilization.”
Speak for yourself, you who deny your Russian nationalism (your Jewish ethnicity is irrelevant, of course). Your Russian Nationalism has led you to lie, for example.
Someone who regularly defends Stalin has no right to complain about others’ supposed “cruelty.”
Early Bolshevism was like the 1990s in Russia and like the Kiev junta. There was a turn in the late 1930. After that Communism was the opposite of what it had been before.Replies: @AP
Yes, of course. And by a lot.
I've tired of arguing with you again. You repeat stale conventional wisdom as if it's true.
All conventional wisdom originates as propaganda, as partisan polemics. The partisan BS of the winning side in a political conflict becomes the conventional view that people begin to repeat without thinking, assuming it's the truth. If you want a chance to find the truth, you have to think for yourself. Since the conventional view of any time or place is one of an infinite number of possible views, the probability of you arriving at it after thinking about politics for yourself is near zero.Replies: @AP
Because you hold the leftist’s view of conservatism as being repression and conformity.
And you believe that an idea that is not “conventional” must be the “real truth” because it is not conventional. The banal, natural-born consumer of any conspiracy theory.
(1) Social trust and civility in 1950s America was still, I suspect, far higher than in Poland or West Ukraine. (E.g., ordinary Americans left their doors unlocked back then. Doubt that happens anywhere in Eastern Europe.) This is still substantially true in the areas where 1950s America still survives in some form.
(2) Fertility rates - record high in the 1950s US, the lowest of any major country in Europe (!) in Poland. And yes, 5371 has a point. The fertility rate, like life expectancy, is calculated independent of age structure, so the big number of Poles abroad shouldn't be making much of a difference.Replies: @Glossy, @AP
Do you know if these numbers only include actual physical residents or do they include official residents who are working abroad? Polish women working as maids in London, and not having kids while doing so, might “artificially” lower the fertility rate if they are counted in the statistics according to their home address. Poles I know who are married and settled down tend to have several kids, but I know many who are abroad, unmarried and thus childless (having kids out of wedlock isn’t as popular among Poles).
I know that a few years back (maybe 2011?) there were maybe 80,000 Hungarians living in Western Europe (according to the Hungarian statistics), but there were maybe double that number registered in London alone... Maybe statistics has gotten better since, I know for sure that it's easier now to officially register your residence abroad. But I still haven't reported my emigration. However, probably at the latest census they finally caught that I was abroad.
Still fertile people moving abroad (and maybe even having children there), but keeping their home addresses, could mess up fertility statistics a bit. (It was so difficult to register foreign born children in Hungary that many people didn't bother, especially those in possession of another passport. It caused a huge uproar last year, so the process is now somewhat simpler and smoother.)Replies: @5371
The joys of anecdote.Replies: @reiner Tor
So no tribalism. You are projecting. The conservative cosmopolitanism of Austria-Hungary, or perhaps Rzeczpospolita, appeal to me, as does pre-revolutionary Russia, with some caveats. I have a strong sentimental attachment to Ukraine and its peoples, which tribe doesn't matter, though I have little sympathy for Sovok colonists.A lie.
http://www.nature.com/news/conflicting-laws-threaten-ukrainian-science-1.19470
"Ukraine passed its 2016 austerity budget, in the wake of widespread closure of mines and factories, inflation, debt and currency devaluation. The budget allocates a meagre 2.05 billion hryvnia (US$76 million) to the NASU — about 12% less than in 2015, continuing a trend of decline"
Interesting that you equate Yanukovich with "civilization."Speak for yourself, you who deny your Russian nationalism (your Jewish ethnicity is irrelevant, of course). Your Russian Nationalism has led you to lie, for example.Someone who regularly defends Stalin has no right to complain about others' supposed "cruelty."Replies: @Glossy
LOL. This is glossy’s way of describing disgust with Bolshevism.
Early Bolshevism was like the 1990s in Russia and like the Kiev junta. There was a turn in the late 1930. After that Communism was the opposite of what it had been before.
Early Bolshevism was like the 1990s in Russia and like the Kiev junta. There was a turn in the late 1930. After that Communism was the opposite of what it had been before.Replies: @AP
Millions were killed in the 1920s and 1930s USSR, just like 1990s Russia and Ukraine in 2014-2015.
Yes, Lenin and his works were never idolized after the late 1930s. Private property that had been stolen in the 1920s and 1930s was returned to its owners. Churches were left alone now. Communism had become the opposite of what it had been before in glossy’s world.
The number of extra deaths, deaths above previous trend, above previous expectation in the 1990s was in many, many millions. The junta's just starting in this sphere, but I expect it to go far.
Yes, Lenin and his works were never idolized after the late 1930s.
Empty symbolism. If Lenin had survived till 1937, he would have been executed in that year.
Private property that had been stolen in the 1920s and 1930s was returned to its owners.
That didn't happen, but the enormous amount of housing that was built after 1955 gave the average person some very real property.
Churches were left alone now.
Stalin's 1943 "concordat" returned an important role to them.Replies: @AP, @Andrei Martyanov
Poverty could not have been the cause of the USSR's social conservatism because the first post-Soviet decade was both poorer and more liberal than the late Soviet period. In other words, liberalism came to Russia together with the impoverishment of the 1990s.Replies: @Anonymous, @Andrei Martyanov
Regardless of Western propaganda, the Soviet consumer economy was less significant than that of the First World economies.
The 90s were a collapse, decline, and transition period for Russia. It ceased fighting the Cold War, and was effectively being integrated into wealthier, more decadent societies.
Hi Anatoly – longtime appreciative reader of your writings here. If you want to get a drink with a twenty-something Brit engaged to a Bay Area Californian during your time in London, let me know.
Divorce being rare doesn’t imply that families were not fractured or dysfunctional in the USSR. Anecdotally, social maladies were as persistent as they are today, but in a less explicit form.
There were drugs in Russia under the Tsars. There was prostitution. The arts were censored, but not repressed and forced to conform to government orders. Freudisnaims was popular in Russia under the Tsars: the Russian translation of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1904 was the first translation of Freud’s work in any foreign language. Are you going to claim that Russia under Brezhnev was more conservative than Russia under Nicholas II?
By equating "conservatism" with "repression" you demonstrate a leftist's idea of what conservative means.Replies: @Glossy, @Darin
North Korea is probably the most religious country in the world, worshipping the Kim family as divine beings with supernatural powers. The “juche” faith is only few decades old, so you will probably not see it as conservative.
Soviet communism was also a religion, and like any religion in power it ridiculed and suppressed other religions. No surprise.
These things are very recent inventions of western liberalism, nothing conservative about them.
Russian Empire of Nikky was about 300 years old at the time. Leonid’s Soviet Empire was about 60-70 years old. The proper comparison is with time of Catherine the Great.
And then Soviet people sold this earthly paradise for blue jeans, Adidas, Coca Cola and chewing gum.
That is something I know about Hungary. Statistics are difficult to keep, because it’s possible to keep an official address in Hungary without actually spending much time there, and it’s quite convenient, too. Back in 2005 I wanted to officially register that I left the country, but the official literally talked me out of this. It also seemed impossibly difficult, I had to visit maybe three or four different government departments, each with several hours waiting times and limited opening hours, then – assuming I brought all necessary documents – wait for the response to come wizhin 30 days from each. All this while I was already living abroad, and spent only limited time (usually just long weekends) in Hungary.
I know that a few years back (maybe 2011?) there were maybe 80,000 Hungarians living in Western Europe (according to the Hungarian statistics), but there were maybe double that number registered in London alone… Maybe statistics has gotten better since, I know for sure that it’s easier now to officially register your residence abroad. But I still haven’t reported my emigration. However, probably at the latest census they finally caught that I was abroad.
Still fertile people moving abroad (and maybe even having children there), but keeping their home addresses, could mess up fertility statistics a bit. (It was so difficult to register foreign born children in Hungary that many people didn’t bother, especially those in possession of another passport. It caused a huge uproar last year, so the process is now somewhat simpler and smoother.)
[Poles I know who are married and settled down tend to have several kids]
The joys of anecdote.
If you came to the US at such a young age, how did you end up with such a strong thick Russian accent?
Getting so hard to find Weißbier in London.
The Soviets also ran a repressive dictatorship and killed millions of people.
Who did the watercolor of you? You?
I’ll miss your writings.
Millions were killed in the 1920s and 1930s USSR, just like 1990s Russia and Ukraine in 2014-2015.
The number of extra deaths, deaths above previous trend, above previous expectation in the 1990s was in many, many millions. The junta’s just starting in this sphere, but I expect it to go far.
Yes, Lenin and his works were never idolized after the late 1930s.
Empty symbolism. If Lenin had survived till 1937, he would have been executed in that year.
Private property that had been stolen in the 1920s and 1930s was returned to its owners.
That didn’t happen, but the enormous amount of housing that was built after 1955 gave the average person some very real property.
Churches were left alone now.
Stalin’s 1943 “concordat” returned an important role to them.
You must believe that there is an ongoing active genocide in America's ghetto communities and Indian reservations.Not quite. His works were forced reading; classes in Marxist-Leninist dialectics were forced in universities. Very conservative, according to glossy.All owned by the government. As in a real conservative society a la glossy.Diminished in importance (but at least allowed to survive) riddled with informants, as tools of an atheist state. Glossy-like conservatism.
The number of extra deaths, deaths above previous trend, above previous expectation in the 1990s was in many, many millions. The junta's just starting in this sphere, but I expect it to go far.
Yes, Lenin and his works were never idolized after the late 1930s.
Empty symbolism. If Lenin had survived till 1937, he would have been executed in that year.
Private property that had been stolen in the 1920s and 1930s was returned to its owners.
That didn't happen, but the enormous amount of housing that was built after 1955 gave the average person some very real property.
Churches were left alone now.
Stalin's 1943 "concordat" returned an important role to them.Replies: @AP, @Andrei Martyanov
Because dying from alcoholism/substance abuse or poor medical care is exactly the same thing as being shot, starved to death, or worked to death in a gulag.
You must believe that there is an ongoing active genocide in America’s ghetto communities and Indian reservations.
Not quite. His works were forced reading; classes in Marxist-Leninist dialectics were forced in universities. Very conservative, according to glossy.
All owned by the government. As in a real conservative society a la glossy.
Diminished in importance (but at least allowed to survive) riddled with informants, as tools of an atheist state. Glossy-like conservatism.
The joys of anecdote.Replies: @reiner Tor
For what it’s worth, I’ve known a couple of Polish women, both with exactly one kid, both divorced. However, one of them divorced (her Polish husband) before she had a kid in her second marriage (to I believe a Frenchman), and she’s still in fertile age, while the other had her only kid at a much earlier age with her previous husband. I once listened to a conversation by this second woman to her then boyfriend and some other acquaintances about how many brothers and sisters she had, but that in modern times people want to give “more love” to their children and how it’s impossible with many children. I didn’t feel like joining the conversation.
Both were and I think still are pretty, and otherwise nice people and pleasant companions, too.
Europe. For example,
Hungary 1.44
Italy 1.39
Austria 1.44
Germany 1.38
all way below the replacement rate of about 2.1
The white fertility rates in the United
States are also in free fall, deep below the
replacement rate. The white couples took
the ZPG slogan of the 1970s a little too
seriously, and overshot the dynamic
equilibrium way too far. With marriage
rates continuing to drop it's hard to see
how the system can provide its own
correctionReplies: @Anon 2
Poverty could not have been the cause of the USSR's social conservatism because the first post-Soviet decade was both poorer and more liberal than the late Soviet period. In other words, liberalism came to Russia together with the impoverishment of the 1990s.Replies: @Anonymous, @Andrei Martyanov
Glossy, explaining Soviet realities of 1960s through 1980s to people who are conditioned by western perceptions is like explaining differential equations to a 6th year old child. George F. Kennan was pretty vocal in his assessment: “Not everything that went in Russia in the name of communism was bad, nor were many people who believed it”(c) But then again, Russian history was so solzhenitsified that it is unrecognizable in the West. I agree with your opinion in your other post that should Lenin have lived through 1937 he would have been executed.
I've read everything Kennan wrote. He was an old crank towards the end of his life, and he wrote about how he was disappointed in American consumerism and the consumer economy and the decadence it engendered. He was nostalgic for the past and wished that trains were the primary form of transportation in the US. His assessment of Russia was informed by this outlook.
The number of extra deaths, deaths above previous trend, above previous expectation in the 1990s was in many, many millions. The junta's just starting in this sphere, but I expect it to go far.
Yes, Lenin and his works were never idolized after the late 1930s.
Empty symbolism. If Lenin had survived till 1937, he would have been executed in that year.
Private property that had been stolen in the 1920s and 1930s was returned to its owners.
That didn't happen, but the enormous amount of housing that was built after 1955 gave the average person some very real property.
Churches were left alone now.
Stalin's 1943 "concordat" returned an important role to them.Replies: @AP, @Andrei Martyanov
6% of Soviet GDP by 1952 was produced by…. cooperatives, including the ones which produced such things as first TVs. Cooperative property was in effect a private one. And then, by 1960s–cooperative flats, which were a very common thing, albeit not as numerous as others, were full blown private property. The official rent market, meanwhile, existed since 1950s. USSR simply outran the limitations of pure planned centralized economy precisely because of Soviet high level economic development. People simply started to live better and by much.
Fertility rates have collapsed throughout
Europe. For example,
Hungary 1.44
Italy 1.39
Austria 1.44
Germany 1.38
all way below the replacement rate of about 2.1
The white fertility rates in the United
States are also in free fall, deep below the
replacement rate. The white couples took
the ZPG slogan of the 1970s a little too
seriously, and overshot the dynamic
equilibrium way too far. With marriage
rates continuing to drop it’s hard to see
how the system can provide its own
correction
whites in the U.S. stands at 1.76, higher than in Europe
but still significantly below the replacement rate.
I've seen the state of male-female relations in the
U.S. deteriorate so much since the '70s that nowadays
70% of all divorces are initiated by women, and,
as someone said, seeing a man getting married in
America is like seeing a lamb being led to slaughter
- the divorce-industrial complex is so biased
against men. None of this is likely to make men
enthusiastic about putting more buns in the ovenReplies: @5371
I know that a few years back (maybe 2011?) there were maybe 80,000 Hungarians living in Western Europe (according to the Hungarian statistics), but there were maybe double that number registered in London alone... Maybe statistics has gotten better since, I know for sure that it's easier now to officially register your residence abroad. But I still haven't reported my emigration. However, probably at the latest census they finally caught that I was abroad.
Still fertile people moving abroad (and maybe even having children there), but keeping their home addresses, could mess up fertility statistics a bit. (It was so difficult to register foreign born children in Hungary that many people didn't bother, especially those in possession of another passport. It caused a huge uproar last year, so the process is now somewhat simpler and smoother.)Replies: @5371
The countries in eastern Europe can be divided into two groups. Group A does not show strongly negative net migration and a large decline in population over the last twenty or so years, while group B does. Group A includes Poland, Czech Rep., Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Belarus and Russia. Group B includes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia/Hercegovina and the Ukraine. What do you think is a more likely common element within each of the groups to explain the difference – greater economic strength in the countries of group A which enabled the population to hold relatively steady despite how easy it had become for people to leave, or a stronger and more accurate statistical service in the countries of group B?
Europe. For example,
Hungary 1.44
Italy 1.39
Austria 1.44
Germany 1.38
all way below the replacement rate of about 2.1
The white fertility rates in the United
States are also in free fall, deep below the
replacement rate. The white couples took
the ZPG slogan of the 1970s a little too
seriously, and overshot the dynamic
equilibrium way too far. With marriage
rates continuing to drop it's hard to see
how the system can provide its own
correctionReplies: @Anon 2
To be specific, the fertility rate for non-Hispanic
whites in the U.S. stands at 1.76, higher than in Europe
but still significantly below the replacement rate.
I’ve seen the state of male-female relations in the
U.S. deteriorate so much since the ’70s that nowadays
70% of all divorces are initiated by women, and,
as someone said, seeing a man getting married in
America is like seeing a lamb being led to slaughter
– the divorce-industrial complex is so biased
against men. None of this is likely to make men
enthusiastic about putting more buns in the oven
It’s simply a fact that the Soviet consumer economy was much less significant than the that of the First World economies. It doesn’t matter what Western propaganda said.
I’ve read everything Kennan wrote. He was an old crank towards the end of his life, and he wrote about how he was disappointed in American consumerism and the consumer economy and the decadence it engendered. He was nostalgic for the past and wished that trains were the primary form of transportation in the US. His assessment of Russia was informed by this outlook.
whites in the U.S. stands at 1.76, higher than in Europe
but still significantly below the replacement rate.
I've seen the state of male-female relations in the
U.S. deteriorate so much since the '70s that nowadays
70% of all divorces are initiated by women, and,
as someone said, seeing a man getting married in
America is like seeing a lamb being led to slaughter
- the divorce-industrial complex is so biased
against men. None of this is likely to make men
enthusiastic about putting more buns in the ovenReplies: @5371
And in the US all Arabs, Turks, Iranians, even Afghans are counted as non-Hispanic white.
I'll miss your writings.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
It was at one of Hank Pellissier’s H+ conferences. I don’t know the artist and didn’t get her name but she did allow me to snap a photo of it.
Make sure you get yourself down south and go skiing at some point; Elbrus or Dombai, skip Sochi. Gudauri just across the border in Gerogia is also good. Massive vertical drops, OK(ish) detachable lifts with reasonably short queues, and decent food.
Searched on youtube and this was the first thing that came up:
HIV rate, USA (2011): .6%
HIV rate, Germany (2011): .1%
HIV rate, Poland (2011): .1%Abortion rate, Russia (2013): 534
Abortion rate, USA (2013): 252.7
Abortion rate, Germany (2013): 150.7
Abortion rate, Poland (2013): 2.61 (this is not a typo)Homicide rate, Russia: 9.2
Homicide rate, USA: 4.7
Homicide rate, France: 1.0
Homicide rate, Germany: .8
Homicide rate, Poland: .8% who never attend religious services (2008)Russia 30%-40%
Germany 30% – 40%
Poland under 10%Percentage marriages ending in divorce (2011):USA: 53%
Russia: 51%
Germany: 49%
Poland: 27%I didn't provide links for all these in order to avoid the spam filer. Just use google.You see that Poland, not Russia, is the conservative leader. Indeed, Russia is less conservative in its behavior than the decadent West.Sky-high abortion rate and repression of religion are hardly markers of "social conservatism."Replies: @Glossy, @Anon 2
I wouldn’t necessarily use the term ‘conservative’
to describe Poland. The word ‘conservative’ is
somewhat multivalent. Moreover, at least in the
U.S. these days, it is used as a putdown.
It’s more descriptive to say that Poland has relatively
low rates of social dysfunction (as measured by murder
rate, divorce rate, HIV rate, etc) compared to either
Russia or the United States. It’s a country that works
relatively well while Western Europe and the United
States are descending into chaos.
But Poland is also becoming more heterogeneous, what
with about one million Ukrainians and Belarussians
(typically on 6- month work visas), 10,000 Russians,
about 7,000 Chechens, and a couple of hundred thousand
Vietnamese. In this sense Poland never has to worry
about losing population. It can easily attract 2-3 million
Ukrainians and Belarussians. But that would mean
effectively resurrecting the old Rzeczpospolita (federal
republic that existed for over 200 years until 1795).
Whether this would be advantageous to Poland is right
now a matter of intense debate. I’d like to recommend
a current bestseller, The Demon in Democracy, by prof.
Ryszard Legutko, a Polish philosopher, that covers
some of these matters, and more
Nobody here discusses Mali or Niger (which have huge fertility rates and no gay pride parades) being more conservative, because what really in the end matters is race. Which country will be more white in 2050 and 2100.
Poland does not have many whites but that will drastically change in a relatively short time period, they are where France and Britain were in 1965, mostly white but they have committed national suicide. It is part of the EU and has made itself a US lackey, that means even under its current regime that in 50 years time it will be in the same demographic position as France or Britain are now, in fact it could get there much faster and the camp of the saints has become official US policy and it will want to please the USA at all costs.
Russia has a lot of non whites because of its past history of creating an empire into central Asia, the Caucasus, and the the Far East. Add in their still high abortion rates and low fertility rates and they could also be at deaths door.
So which of the two will be more non white, I don’t know, but to guess I would say Poland, and if that does turn out to be the case, then I would not call it more conservative, because it failed to conserve its own people.
since, unlike Romania or Hungary, it has very few
Gypsies. 40 million whites is hardly a small number.
Poland (or other countries of Central Europe like
Czechia or Hungary) never engaged in colonialism
or slave trade. The U.S., Britain, Germany, etc did.
Therefore it carries no racial guilt. I think the
countries of Central Europe will be able to
resist the migrant invasion. This may require
building a wall or walls as Hungary has done, but it
can be doneReplies: @neutral
to describe Poland. The word 'conservative' is
somewhat multivalent. Moreover, at least in the
U.S. these days, it is used as a putdown.
It's more descriptive to say that Poland has relatively
low rates of social dysfunction (as measured by murder
rate, divorce rate, HIV rate, etc) compared to either
Russia or the United States. It's a country that works
relatively well while Western Europe and the United
States are descending into chaos.
But Poland is also becoming more heterogeneous, what
with about one million Ukrainians and Belarussians
(typically on 6- month work visas), 10,000 Russians,
about 7,000 Chechens, and a couple of hundred thousand
Vietnamese. In this sense Poland never has to worry
about losing population. It can easily attract 2-3 million
Ukrainians and Belarussians. But that would mean
effectively resurrecting the old Rzeczpospolita (federal
republic that existed for over 200 years until 1795).
Whether this would be advantageous to Poland is right
now a matter of intense debate. I'd like to recommend
a current bestseller, The Demon in Democracy, by prof.
Ryszard Legutko, a Polish philosopher, that covers
some of these matters, and moreReplies: @neutral, @Latvian woman
I think they have much bigger problems than having a few extra Ukrainians or Belarussians. That graph that Steve Sailer mentions (the one where there will be 4 billion Sub Saharan Africans by 2100), will impact Poland in a massive way. Since it is no longer behind the iron curtain, and the EU has opened a door that can never be closed, Poland will face an immigration tsunami. And before you dismiss this as some kind of ridiculous theory, imagine if somebody in 1960 said that Paris and London would no longer be white in 50 years time, Poland faces the same problem, it tied it self to the West (post West is more correct) which means it cannot say no, eventually it will relent and the millions of Africans will move to Poland.
I see you didn’t bother to read it. oh, well: you can lead a horse to water…etc.
Poland has 40 million people, practically all white
since, unlike Romania or Hungary, it has very few
Gypsies. 40 million whites is hardly a small number.
Poland (or other countries of Central Europe like
Czechia or Hungary) never engaged in colonialism
or slave trade. The U.S., Britain, Germany, etc did.
Therefore it carries no racial guilt. I think the
countries of Central Europe will be able to
resist the migrant invasion. This may require
building a wall or walls as Hungary has done, but it
can be done
since, unlike Romania or Hungary, it has very few
Gypsies. 40 million whites is hardly a small number.
Poland (or other countries of Central Europe like
Czechia or Hungary) never engaged in colonialism
or slave trade. The U.S., Britain, Germany, etc did.
Therefore it carries no racial guilt. I think the
countries of Central Europe will be able to
resist the migrant invasion. This may require
building a wall or walls as Hungary has done, but it
can be doneReplies: @neutral
Sweden, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Austria, Norway and probably some more did not have colonies or slaves as far as I know, yet they all are facing mass immigration from non whites. The thing what they all have in common is not colonialism, it is because they have all been under US/EU direction for decades longer than Hungary/Poland/etc. That is why I say they will share the same fate as all the others, there is no exception to this, not a single one, if you join the club you become non white.
Sweden was not very successful but did try. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. Before this during the Ascendancy, Ireland was involved in the slave trade. Many Irish emigrants were plantation owners. Paintings of the final days of the Irish Parliament show ladies in the gallery accompanied by Black Boys. Dublin was about as involved as Bristol.Replies: @5371
What good were predictions about 2000 written in 1916?
Birth rates are dropping everywhere, even in Africa
http://brilliantmaps.com/fertility-rates/
And the left understands necessity of population control in Africa – read the Guardian for the world’s left party line. Birth control is now about women’s rights and gender equality, not racism.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2016/sep/26/sugar-the-pill-tackling-taboo-family-planning-nigeria-in-pictures-world-contraception-day
The major forces again birth control were US religious right and Catholic church, but the pope is now calling Catholic stop breeding like rabbits, and turning around on contraception too.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/20/catholics-dont-have-to-breed-like-rabbits-says-pope-francis
http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2016/in-zika-outbreak-contraceptives-may-be-lesser-evil-pope-says.cfm
And the American “pro life” religous right was demolished by Trump. On the population front, doom and gloom is not necessary.
Projections from 1916 about world and especially African population in 2000 were wrong - because they vastly underestimated them.Replies: @Ivan K.
to describe Poland. The word 'conservative' is
somewhat multivalent. Moreover, at least in the
U.S. these days, it is used as a putdown.
It's more descriptive to say that Poland has relatively
low rates of social dysfunction (as measured by murder
rate, divorce rate, HIV rate, etc) compared to either
Russia or the United States. It's a country that works
relatively well while Western Europe and the United
States are descending into chaos.
But Poland is also becoming more heterogeneous, what
with about one million Ukrainians and Belarussians
(typically on 6- month work visas), 10,000 Russians,
about 7,000 Chechens, and a couple of hundred thousand
Vietnamese. In this sense Poland never has to worry
about losing population. It can easily attract 2-3 million
Ukrainians and Belarussians. But that would mean
effectively resurrecting the old Rzeczpospolita (federal
republic that existed for over 200 years until 1795).
Whether this would be advantageous to Poland is right
now a matter of intense debate. I'd like to recommend
a current bestseller, The Demon in Democracy, by prof.
Ryszard Legutko, a Polish philosopher, that covers
some of these matters, and moreReplies: @neutral, @Latvian woman
I certainly can’t speak for Ukrainians and Belorussians, or for the Poles themselves, but that’s not the worst scenario for the region. The idea of the Intermarium, while utopian, has been revived in some euroskeptic and nationalist circles. Not a bad idea at all – something that should definitely be discussed given the current geopolitical “atmosphere”. In that scenario, Poland could be the power center to which the Intermarium countries (whole countries, not just regions) would gravitate.
Sounds interesting. Thanks for the suggestion.
With regards to “who will be more white” (if we can put it so bluntly) or rather, the proper way of saying it would be “which European country will retain its indigenous population intact for the longest”, I’d argue that those will be the Eastern European countries (including the Baltic countries). Those are the last white countries left on the planet. What will happen within the next 50 years is not that certain, however, I harbor a hope – an alternative scenario. We have seen lately that history moves faster these days. Now more than ever there is a real chance that the Western political system will break. The fact that Trump is so close to the victory demonstrates this.
Eastern Europeans already know that the Western immigration policy is a failure. If nationalist parties gain more success in Western Europe, there is a real possibility that elites could be changed. In that case, we have a new political reality. That way, the E.Europeans skip the multi-culturalist insanity. This is, of course, the “ideal” scenario. But it is not impossible.
The big issue then is only geographic / demographic – what to do with the pressure from the south (which will not subside, that’s just the objective reality).
Because that is what your Latvia is going to experience.
Does “white” means dead and depopulated to you?
Because that is what your Latvia is going to experience.
Not in 50 years. Right now Latvia has as many Latvians as it did in 1950.
Another little tidbit: the refugees leave “for greener pastures” as soon as they arrive. Out of the 23 refugees who arrived 21 have already left for Germany. Rinse and repeat.
The problem is that eventually those green pastures will not be so green anymore, Germany will steadily degrade, there will come a point when suddenly the Latvian pastures will look very green.
I agree that that moment is very close. Personally, I’d prefer EE over WE these days for long term living. More and more people will. But by then most of WE will be a terrible place to live. What do you propose? I propose something like an Intermarium space with strict rules. By the way, Russia will not be protected from this either, because many Africans and Asians are interested in settling in Russia. The only stable country is Belarus.
Birth rates are dropping everywhere, even in Africa
http://brilliantmaps.com/fertility-rates/
And the left understands necessity of population control in Africa - read the Guardian for the world's left party line. Birth control is now about women's rights and gender equality, not racism.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2016/sep/26/sugar-the-pill-tackling-taboo-family-planning-nigeria-in-pictures-world-contraception-day
The major forces again birth control were US religious right and Catholic church, but the pope is now calling Catholic stop breeding like rabbits, and turning around on contraception too.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/20/catholics-dont-have-to-breed-like-rabbits-says-pope-francis
http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2016/in-zika-outbreak-contraceptives-may-be-lesser-evil-pope-says.cfm
And the American "pro life" religous right was demolished by Trump. On the population front, doom and gloom is not necessary.Replies: @5371
Your map is derived from fraudulent statistics, your whole comment ridiculous.
Projections from 1916 about world and especially African population in 2000 were wrong – because they vastly underestimated them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvytgOPYynAReplies: @JL
On what basis do you make this recommendation? Because mine would be the exact opposite; skip Elbrus, Dombai and anything in Georgia and go directly to Sochi.
Neither Putin or Medvedev went to the funeral of Shimon Peres. The sight of Putin in a Kippah has been averted for those of you who aren’t into seeing that. I don’t have a problem either way but it’s good that they aren’t following the crowd and falling over themselves trying to visit.
Hollande,Obama,Bill Clinton,the German President, Prince Charles,David Cameron,Trudeau all went.
This is interesting because Putin barely did anything yesterday, and Medvedev was top billing on the news because of the Sochi Small business forum.
Nowhere near as funny though as the reality that the artificial country of Ukraine , all these plastic Ukrainian, Nazi OUN scumbag retards who raped and killed the elderly all those years ago and now form these lobby groups in Canada that are helping to sink Ukraine….and they still point-blank refuse to offer Ukraine visa-free travel!
From a recent jamestown article:
In the next fifty years, Latvia will cease to exist and be replaced by Greater Riga.
That means the Latvian nation did not grow in the last 65 years at all.
I think part of the reason for Russia’s relatively high levels of societal dysfunction compared with Western Slav nations is the inferiority propaganda. It serves the same purpose as the slavery thing in America and the same actors are responsible for it.
In contrast to that, the propaganda directed at Poles, Croats, Baltics etc was nationalist. They had to feel bad, but only insofar as that they lived under Communism, rather than feel bad qua Poles, qua Croats etc.
Projections from 1916 about world and especially African population in 2000 were wrong - because they vastly underestimated them.Replies: @Ivan K.
(to Dorin)
I’d like to know more about that.
Will you explain that? (You can be brief if you like, or lengthy, I don’t mind.)
On one hand some sound hysterical over population control via vaccines (mainly targeting Africa), on the other hand some sound hysterical about (African) overpopulation. It’s rather tricky to get a balanced view.
[You can be brief if you like, or lengthy, I don’t mind]
It's scarcely worth being lengthy in discussing a disjointed collection of anecdotes about the attitude of outside parties which are not relevant to the actual behaviour of Africans anyway.
There’s no African country with a functioning birth registration system. Hence all the birth, and still more fertility rates that you read in the sources of maps like these are derived at best from woefully inadequate and unrepresentative survey data, more usually from nothing at all. The only way to estimate the actual birth and fertility rates is to use census data, itself of poor quality. But such as it is, it suggests no decrease at all in the one or the other.
[You can be brief if you like, or lengthy, I don’t mind]
It’s scarcely worth being lengthy in discussing a disjointed collection of anecdotes about the attitude of outside parties which are not relevant to the actual behaviour of Africans anyway.
“In the next fifty years, Latvia will cease to exist and be replaced by Greater Riga.”
What much of the country side looks like, is that there are very few people with very large, farmed areas. It’s called urbanization.
I’m not saying there is no population decline (even if the total number of the population is the same as before the war, and, yes, it’s not saying much), but to say that Latvia will cease to exist is another extreme. None of this changes the fact that EE will remain as the last white region on the planet.
In a country like Latvia where only one important population center exist, it means becoming a city state.
White and irrelevant.
Well, guess who else wants to live in that “Greater Riga”? It’s Russians like Sergei Svetlakov from Nasha Russia who moved his whole family to my native Yurmala. Or a Russian female millionaire from Moscow who just built a private school there. Artemi Troitsky has lived in Tallinn for several years now. There was a big influx of quality Russians starting 2012 (through the vid na zhytelstvo). I don’t know their exact numbers but I’m sure that number is higher than the non-European migrants. By the way, one can live in a city but still own country property or even an estate.
Irrelevant? We never had any illusions of grandeur of saving the world. What matters is the quality of life. But in a larger context, if you add up several countries, it can be relevant and in the European context, countries like Poland and Hungary are definitely relevant.
By the way, I see that religion in the SU was discussed – the main Russian Orthodox cathedral in Riga (probably one of the biggest ones outside of Russia along with the one in San Francisco with those beautiful patriarch paintings) at least some time in mid 80s used to host an art hall and a cafe – I have vague memories of sitting down for ice cream with some female relatives. Yea, that’s pretty scandalous, I’d say, even though I got a warm and fuzzy feeling. They turned it back into a church as soon as they could and renovated it, so it’s a normal Orthodox church now.
And I was talking about EE, not just Latvia.
Are they learning the language?Replies: @Latvian woman, @Latvian woman
Irrelevant? We never had any illusions of grandeur of saving the world. What matters is the quality of life. But in a larger context, if you add up several countries, it can be relevant and in the European context, countries like Poland and Hungary are definitely relevant.
By the way, I see that religion in the SU was discussed - the main Russian Orthodox cathedral in Riga (probably one of the biggest ones outside of Russia along with the one in San Francisco with those beautiful patriarch paintings) at least some time in mid 80s used to host an art hall and a cafe - I have vague memories of sitting down for ice cream with some female relatives. Yea, that's pretty scandalous, I'd say, even though I got a warm and fuzzy feeling. They turned it back into a church as soon as they could and renovated it, so it's a normal Orthodox church now.Replies: @Mitleser, @inertial, @5371
Countries like Hungary are definitely not relevant.
You need relevance to defend your interests.
And I was talking about EE, not just Latvia.
Irrelevant? We never had any illusions of grandeur of saving the world. What matters is the quality of life. But in a larger context, if you add up several countries, it can be relevant and in the European context, countries like Poland and Hungary are definitely relevant.
By the way, I see that religion in the SU was discussed - the main Russian Orthodox cathedral in Riga (probably one of the biggest ones outside of Russia along with the one in San Francisco with those beautiful patriarch paintings) at least some time in mid 80s used to host an art hall and a cafe - I have vague memories of sitting down for ice cream with some female relatives. Yea, that's pretty scandalous, I'd say, even though I got a warm and fuzzy feeling. They turned it back into a church as soon as they could and renovated it, so it's a normal Orthodox church now.Replies: @Mitleser, @inertial, @5371
“There was a big influx of quality Russians starting 2012.”
Are they learning the language?
Are they learning the language?Replies: @Latvian woman, @Latvian woman
I highly doubt it (one can get by with just Russian to a certain point), but if they send their kids to daycare they will have to eventually. Frankly, I don’t know what their plans are and if they will settle for good, I think most of them go back and forth. There is a Ukrainian woman who came from Luhansk (waiting for refugee status and hopefully gets it soon) and I know that she is taking language classes. I guess I overstated by saying a “big influx” – what I meant was, all of a sudden in 2012, it seemed that a whole bunch of them had come. It seems like a bigger number than the refugees – our quota for refugees is 500 in two years.
I live in one of the more prosperous cities in Poland and at ground level there seems to have been a baby boom going on for about 3 or 4 years (at least) with no signs of slowing.
It’s anecdotal but it’s a lot of anecdotes (fex: a friend says that when they do baptisms at his church each month, it’s gone from one or two a month to three or four, sometimes more)
It’s also very noticeable when going around the city.
I don’t know how long things like this take to become official or what the numbers will turn out to be when they do.
My point was birthrates could be understated in both.
Are they learning the language?Replies: @Latvian woman, @Latvian woman
Actually, one of the expatriates, producer Vitaliy Manskiy, said he would learn basic Latvian. The reason I bring him up, is because, if you know how Russians make TV and movies, you’d understand the caliber of some of these people. That kind of a person is an asset so I don’t care if he only speaks Russian. Not all of them are actors, artists, etc, of course, most of the Russians who bought “vid na zhytelstvo” were businessmen and former officials who probably buy property all over the world.
Regarding demographics, we are all in the same boat (Poles, Ukrainians, Balts, Belorussians), it’s very bad, but there has been an improvement in the last few years – slow, insufficient, but an improvement.
How, if record-keeping in the economically stronger countries is not actually missing people who left?
It's anecdotal but it's a lot of anecdotes (fex: a friend says that when they do baptisms at his church each month, it's gone from one or two a month to three or four, sometimes more)
It's also very noticeable when going around the city.
I don't know how long things like this take to become official or what the numbers will turn out to be when they do.Replies: @5371
Ridiculous nonsense. Poland has a well-functioning and up-to-date birth registration system. You are completely gullible and innumerate.
And a good day to you too!
"Poland has a well-functioning and up-to-date birth registration system"
Yes it does. And data from it agrees with me that birth rates have increased in recent years. A couple of articles at the bottom of this.
Again, I have no idea how (or if) the recent trend will affect TF numbers or how long it will take for them to do so (or how long the trend of increased births will last). But it is happening.
Also from anecdotal evidence, most Polish people migrate to western europe on a temporary basis (yes, plans change and some stay longer) purely for financial reasons.
But this also is one reason for Polish reluctance to follow Merkel's and the EU's lead on "refugee" policy - most people have either seen what muslim minorities in Europe are like first hand or they have family or friends who have and they don't want that in Poland.
http://praca.gazetaprawna.pl/artykuly/859371,w-polsce-wzrasta-liczba-urodzen-mpips-to-efekty-wydluzenia-urlopow.html?gclid=CPGcj6z0u88CFQQNcwodsgII5A
http://strategiapolska.salon24.pl/717996,sensacja-wzrost-liczby-urodzen-w-polsce-o-ponad-9
http://kontrrewolucja.net/wiadomosci/gus-rosnie-liczba-urodzenReplies: @Anon 2, @Anatoly Karlin
Irrelevant? We never had any illusions of grandeur of saving the world. What matters is the quality of life. But in a larger context, if you add up several countries, it can be relevant and in the European context, countries like Poland and Hungary are definitely relevant.
By the way, I see that religion in the SU was discussed - the main Russian Orthodox cathedral in Riga (probably one of the biggest ones outside of Russia along with the one in San Francisco with those beautiful patriarch paintings) at least some time in mid 80s used to host an art hall and a cafe - I have vague memories of sitting down for ice cream with some female relatives. Yea, that's pretty scandalous, I'd say, even though I got a warm and fuzzy feeling. They turned it back into a church as soon as they could and renovated it, so it's a normal Orthodox church now.Replies: @Mitleser, @inertial, @5371
As you know, Latvia is still the unchallenged leader in shady banking and asset hiding for Russians who remain in Russia.
I know (whether it is the number one in the world, I don’t know, but that is one of the issues on the government’s agenda and the US embassy takes interest in that too, of course). But I was talking about the residence program through purchasing real estate which I personally don’t support, but which has brought in some interesting Russian individuals (some of who you’d probably consider the 5th column).
“Ridiculous nonsense”
And a good day to you too!
“Poland has a well-functioning and up-to-date birth registration system”
Yes it does. And data from it agrees with me that birth rates have increased in recent years. A couple of articles at the bottom of this.
Again, I have no idea how (or if) the recent trend will affect TF numbers or how long it will take for them to do so (or how long the trend of increased births will last). But it is happening.
Also from anecdotal evidence, most Polish people migrate to western europe on a temporary basis (yes, plans change and some stay longer) purely for financial reasons.
But this also is one reason for Polish reluctance to follow Merkel’s and the EU’s lead on “refugee” policy – most people have either seen what muslim minorities in Europe are like first hand or they have family or friends who have and they don’t want that in Poland.
http://praca.gazetaprawna.pl/artykuly/859371,w-polsce-wzrasta-liczba-urodzen-mpips-to-efekty-wydluzenia-urlopow.html?gclid=CPGcj6z0u88CFQQNcwodsgII5A
http://strategiapolska.salon24.pl/717996,sensacja-wzrost-liczby-urodzen-w-polsce-o-ponad-9
http://kontrrewolucja.net/wiadomosci/gus-rosnie-liczba-urodzen
According to the article linked in your comment
there were 6,000 more newborns in 2014 as
compared to 2013 (the article is in Polish
so you need to have a reading comprehension
of that language which should be easy for
anyone who is a Slavic speaker). The article
attributes the increase to the new law passed
in 2013 that extended the maternity and
paternity leaves to potentially 52 weeks.
Another initiative passed a few months ago in
Poland is known as 500+. I'm not sure of the
exact details but it allots 500 zlotys a month to
a family for every additional child. The new
populist government is trying to build on the success
of the 2013 initiative to raise the birthrates to
an even higher levelReplies: @5371, @cliff arroyo
Wikipedia's articles on Demographics of [country] are actually a very good and convenient source for European countries and a quick glance at it shows that fertility rates are still stuck at ≤1.3 children per woman as they have been since the early 2000s.
There were 369,308 births in 2015. The projected "steady state" population is the number of births per year * life expectancy (of course this is just a very loose estimate since in practice both figures will change, and it doesn't take into account net migration). Polish life expectancy is now around 77 years. So at current natality/mortality levels, Poland's projected steady state population is 28 million, or 74% of its current population.
For comparison Russia's is around 1.9 million * 72 years = 137 million, or 94% of its current population. In some ways this is rather remarkable considering it is Russia that is supposed to be the "dying bear."Replies: @g2k, @Anon 2
[data from it agrees with me that birth rates have increased in recent years]
No it does not.
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mbs/app/DataView.aspx?tid=2&cid=616&yearfrom=2000&yearto=2016&p=A
[But it is happening.]
No it is not.
There has been a wave of “westernization” (for lack of a better word) in Moskwa recently. Local authorities have been showing an uncharacteristic level of competence, reconstructing streets, roads, minor infrastructure. A dull soviet neighbourhood can turn into something an alt-righter might describe as “SWPLy” over the course of a week. This is a very recent (post-Crimea) development. If you have an opportunity to land in one of these neighbourhoods, you should consider taking it. Seeing your soviet craphole turn into one of those feels like using a cheat code in real life.
Kreatives do not deserve spoiling like that. They are never grateful.
And a good day to you too!
"Poland has a well-functioning and up-to-date birth registration system"
Yes it does. And data from it agrees with me that birth rates have increased in recent years. A couple of articles at the bottom of this.
Again, I have no idea how (or if) the recent trend will affect TF numbers or how long it will take for them to do so (or how long the trend of increased births will last). But it is happening.
Also from anecdotal evidence, most Polish people migrate to western europe on a temporary basis (yes, plans change and some stay longer) purely for financial reasons.
But this also is one reason for Polish reluctance to follow Merkel's and the EU's lead on "refugee" policy - most people have either seen what muslim minorities in Europe are like first hand or they have family or friends who have and they don't want that in Poland.
http://praca.gazetaprawna.pl/artykuly/859371,w-polsce-wzrasta-liczba-urodzen-mpips-to-efekty-wydluzenia-urlopow.html?gclid=CPGcj6z0u88CFQQNcwodsgII5A
http://strategiapolska.salon24.pl/717996,sensacja-wzrost-liczby-urodzen-w-polsce-o-ponad-9
http://kontrrewolucja.net/wiadomosci/gus-rosnie-liczba-urodzenReplies: @Anon 2, @Anatoly Karlin
The birthrate is definitely increasing in Poland.
According to the article linked in your comment
there were 6,000 more newborns in 2014 as
compared to 2013 (the article is in Polish
so you need to have a reading comprehension
of that language which should be easy for
anyone who is a Slavic speaker). The article
attributes the increase to the new law passed
in 2013 that extended the maternity and
paternity leaves to potentially 52 weeks.
Another initiative passed a few months ago in
Poland is known as 500+. I’m not sure of the
exact details but it allots 500 zlotys a month to
a family for every additional child. The new
populist government is trying to build on the success
of the 2013 initiative to raise the birthrates to
an even higher level
Well that's one problem, the birth rate has become extraordinarily politicized (like everything else in Poland) and people are often talking about something else entirely when they start talking about it.
Nonetheless, the Central Statistical Office of Poland (Główny Urząd Statystyczny - GUS) reported around 10,000 more births for the first 6 months of 2016 than for 2015 which would back up the ground level perception of more babies around. Again, given general population trends that may not end up being significant but it's there.Replies: @Anon 2
According to the article linked in your comment
there were 6,000 more newborns in 2014 as
compared to 2013 (the article is in Polish
so you need to have a reading comprehension
of that language which should be easy for
anyone who is a Slavic speaker). The article
attributes the increase to the new law passed
in 2013 that extended the maternity and
paternity leaves to potentially 52 weeks.
Another initiative passed a few months ago in
Poland is known as 500+. I'm not sure of the
exact details but it allots 500 zlotys a month to
a family for every additional child. The new
populist government is trying to build on the success
of the 2013 initiative to raise the birthrates to
an even higher levelReplies: @5371, @cliff arroyo
Read the numbers which I provided for you …
And a good day to you too!
"Poland has a well-functioning and up-to-date birth registration system"
Yes it does. And data from it agrees with me that birth rates have increased in recent years. A couple of articles at the bottom of this.
Again, I have no idea how (or if) the recent trend will affect TF numbers or how long it will take for them to do so (or how long the trend of increased births will last). But it is happening.
Also from anecdotal evidence, most Polish people migrate to western europe on a temporary basis (yes, plans change and some stay longer) purely for financial reasons.
But this also is one reason for Polish reluctance to follow Merkel's and the EU's lead on "refugee" policy - most people have either seen what muslim minorities in Europe are like first hand or they have family or friends who have and they don't want that in Poland.
http://praca.gazetaprawna.pl/artykuly/859371,w-polsce-wzrasta-liczba-urodzen-mpips-to-efekty-wydluzenia-urlopow.html?gclid=CPGcj6z0u88CFQQNcwodsgII5A
http://strategiapolska.salon24.pl/717996,sensacja-wzrost-liczby-urodzen-w-polsce-o-ponad-9
http://kontrrewolucja.net/wiadomosci/gus-rosnie-liczba-urodzenReplies: @Anon 2, @Anatoly Karlin
5371 is basically correct.
Wikipedia’s articles on Demographics of [country] are actually a very good and convenient source for European countries and a quick glance at it shows that fertility rates are still stuck at ≤1.3 children per woman as they have been since the early 2000s.
There were 369,308 births in 2015. The projected “steady state” population is the number of births per year * life expectancy (of course this is just a very loose estimate since in practice both figures will change, and it doesn’t take into account net migration). Polish life expectancy is now around 77 years. So at current natality/mortality levels, Poland’s projected steady state population is 28 million, or 74% of its current population.
For comparison Russia’s is around 1.9 million * 72 years = 137 million, or 94% of its current population. In some ways this is rather remarkable considering it is Russia that is supposed to be the “dying bear.”
so quickly that long-term population projections
are essentially worthless. People respond to
incentives, and due to a new set of incentives
the number of births in Poland is indeed increasing.
However, as we all know, currently the fertility
rates in almost all European countries (and
the white portion of the U.S. except for the
Mormons, the Amish, and the Orthodox Jews)
are below the replacement level. And nobody
knows what to do about it.
My best piece of advice is for 20-30% of the
population to reject hedonism and/or career
seeking, and become intensely religious,
conservative, and dedicated to family formation.
Biological survival will be assured if women
start having babies in their mid-twenties, and
not 5 years later as they do now, at least in the U.S.
For Christians on this forum I recommend an
excellent blog by Rod Dreher who has a book
coming out on what he calls the Benedict Option,
initially proposed by Alasdair MacIntyre in his
formidable treatise After Virtue (1981). Dreher
essentially enjoins Christians to build intentional
communities dedicated to family formation and
the practice of Christian virtues. Such communities
would effectively be patterned after the Benedictine
monastic communities, except of course for celibacy,
hence the name Benedict Op.
Another option in Christianity is to base communities
on A Course in Miracles (1976) and A Course of Love(2000),
two texts that, according to many, combine the best
features of Christianity with the best features of Advaita Vedanta.
Many options are being debated, I only mentioned two.
Vertical drop, bang for buck (accommodation, lift passes etc.), food, lack of posers. Sochi seems like a kind of pastiche of the alpine places, the other two offer something a bit different; heliskiing-like skiing but from lifts, with the option of very steep, almost empty, very long pistes if wanted. Gudauri is all above the tree-line, but the food is unmatched and it’s only about 10km from the border along probably one of the most scenic roads in the world. Anyhow, the advice still stands: if in Russia for a sufficiently long time, go south at some point and ski.
Depends if you own or rent of course.
Wikipedia's articles on Demographics of [country] are actually a very good and convenient source for European countries and a quick glance at it shows that fertility rates are still stuck at ≤1.3 children per woman as they have been since the early 2000s.
There were 369,308 births in 2015. The projected "steady state" population is the number of births per year * life expectancy (of course this is just a very loose estimate since in practice both figures will change, and it doesn't take into account net migration). Polish life expectancy is now around 77 years. So at current natality/mortality levels, Poland's projected steady state population is 28 million, or 74% of its current population.
For comparison Russia's is around 1.9 million * 72 years = 137 million, or 94% of its current population. In some ways this is rather remarkable considering it is Russia that is supposed to be the "dying bear."Replies: @g2k, @Anon 2
I don’t have the time or inclination to seriously look into this myself, but it’s worth considering whether Sailer’s “affordable family formation” plays a role in this. Russia pretty much bans foreign freehold ownership and the general perception of it as a “bad place to do business” must put a damper on foreign property speculation. Moscow prices are insane, but what about the regions? The rest of eastern Europe has pretty much followed the opposite path, wanting to attract “investment”. If a good chunk of their economic growth during the past decade has been house price inflation, then affordable family formation is going to take a big hit.
Wikipedia's articles on Demographics of [country] are actually a very good and convenient source for European countries and a quick glance at it shows that fertility rates are still stuck at ≤1.3 children per woman as they have been since the early 2000s.
There were 369,308 births in 2015. The projected "steady state" population is the number of births per year * life expectancy (of course this is just a very loose estimate since in practice both figures will change, and it doesn't take into account net migration). Polish life expectancy is now around 77 years. So at current natality/mortality levels, Poland's projected steady state population is 28 million, or 74% of its current population.
For comparison Russia's is around 1.9 million * 72 years = 137 million, or 94% of its current population. In some ways this is rather remarkable considering it is Russia that is supposed to be the "dying bear."Replies: @g2k, @Anon 2
Everyone knows that birth rates can change
so quickly that long-term population projections
are essentially worthless. People respond to
incentives, and due to a new set of incentives
the number of births in Poland is indeed increasing.
However, as we all know, currently the fertility
rates in almost all European countries (and
the white portion of the U.S. except for the
Mormons, the Amish, and the Orthodox Jews)
are below the replacement level. And nobody
knows what to do about it.
My best piece of advice is for 20-30% of the
population to reject hedonism and/or career
seeking, and become intensely religious,
conservative, and dedicated to family formation.
Biological survival will be assured if women
start having babies in their mid-twenties, and
not 5 years later as they do now, at least in the U.S.
For Christians on this forum I recommend an
excellent blog by Rod Dreher who has a book
coming out on what he calls the Benedict Option,
initially proposed by Alasdair MacIntyre in his
formidable treatise After Virtue (1981). Dreher
essentially enjoins Christians to build intentional
communities dedicated to family formation and
the practice of Christian virtues. Such communities
would effectively be patterned after the Benedictine
monastic communities, except of course for celibacy,
hence the name Benedict Op.
Another option in Christianity is to base communities
on A Course in Miracles (1976) and A Course of Love(2000),
two texts that, according to many, combine the best
features of Christianity with the best features of Advaita Vedanta.
Many options are being debated, I only mentioned two.
According to the article linked in your comment
there were 6,000 more newborns in 2014 as
compared to 2013 (the article is in Polish
so you need to have a reading comprehension
of that language which should be easy for
anyone who is a Slavic speaker). The article
attributes the increase to the new law passed
in 2013 that extended the maternity and
paternity leaves to potentially 52 weeks.
Another initiative passed a few months ago in
Poland is known as 500+. I'm not sure of the
exact details but it allots 500 zlotys a month to
a family for every additional child. The new
populist government is trying to build on the success
of the 2013 initiative to raise the birthrates to
an even higher levelReplies: @5371, @cliff arroyo
“The article attributes the increase to the new law passed in 2013 that extended the maternity and paternity leaves to potentially 52 weeks.”
Well that’s one problem, the birth rate has become extraordinarily politicized (like everything else in Poland) and people are often talking about something else entirely when they start talking about it.
Nonetheless, the Central Statistical Office of Poland (Główny Urząd Statystyczny – GUS) reported around 10,000 more births for the first 6 months of 2016 than for 2015 which would back up the ground level perception of more babies around. Again, given general population trends that may not end up being significant but it’s there.
continuing to increase is certainly good news.
The life expectancy, while already respectable,
is also slowly rising.
Thank you for posting those links!Replies: @5371
Well that's one problem, the birth rate has become extraordinarily politicized (like everything else in Poland) and people are often talking about something else entirely when they start talking about it.
Nonetheless, the Central Statistical Office of Poland (Główny Urząd Statystyczny - GUS) reported around 10,000 more births for the first 6 months of 2016 than for 2015 which would back up the ground level perception of more babies around. Again, given general population trends that may not end up being significant but it's there.Replies: @Anon 2
The fact that the birth numbers in Poland are
continuing to increase is certainly good news.
The life expectancy, while already respectable,
is also slowly rising.
Thank you for posting those links!
continuing to increase is certainly good news.
The life expectancy, while already respectable,
is also slowly rising.
Thank you for posting those links!Replies: @5371
You can lead two very foolish horses to water, but you can’t make them drink.
And interacting with the chronically rude is a sucker’s game. Goodbye.
Wiki says by the late 1980s the USSR had 7,000 functioning churches, of which 4,000 were in Ukraine (skewed toward western Ukraine). I don't know how many of the remaining 3,000 functioning churches were in Russia vs. the Baltics, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, etc. but "optimistically" let's say 2,500 in Russia. In the late 1980s Russia had about 147 million people so that would be one church per 58,800 people in Russia. Exclude non-Christians (Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, etc.) and you get one church per about 52,800 "Christians" in Russia.
Very small number.Probably a false impression. In the 60s and 70s 40% to 50% of infants were being baptized (skewed towards rural people). The number rose considerably, and included more urban and educated people, during perestroika but I don't think the late 80s is the period you consider to be "conservative." Note that religious instruction church marriages in the USSR and were quite rare. What little "religion" was practiced, mostly began and ended with infant baptism.Replies: @Anonymous Nephew
While I’m not qualified to weigh in on Poland/Ukraine/Russia, I’d hesitate to use wiki as a source for anything which might be politically contentious – as “churches per capita in the USSR” obviously is.
Wikipedia, when it comes to politics-related subjects, is policed by what passes for the “left” these days – i.e. people who don’t like Russia. See the comments here
https://www.unz.com/isteve/he-who-controls-the-wikipedia-controls-the-future-he-who-controls-the-present-controls-the-wikipedia/
Also see the contrast between these two Time covers
July 15, 1996 – “The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win”
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html
Sept 29, 2016 – “Russia wants to undermine faith in the US election. Don’t fall for it”
http://time.com/magazine
At least in 2011 Hungarian statistics didn’t yet use data from the UK (or elsewhere), so a lot of people were counted in the denominator, while their children were either not registered at all or were only registered (correctly) to be born abroad, therefore are not added to the numerator. So the falsely too high denominator led to understated birthrates for those staying home. (Until maybe 2010 the effect must have been small, since emigration started in ernest shortly before.)
But maybe the Hungarian Central Statistical Office has already remedied the problem (should be easy, which is why I was so surprised they hadn’t already done that ten years ago), and I know nothing about Poland or other countries.
Anatoly, I know you don’t write so often now, but still… what is your take on the recent round of Syria-related warmongering in the West? It appears to me that the Russians are seriously prepared not to give ground in Syria (their overt threats to take down American planes bombing Syria, as well as the recent large-scale mass evacuation nuclear survival exercises), and I don’t think you need to be a Tom Clancy to find some ways this could all lead to an all-out nuclear exchange.
Essentially nuclear war is similar to a financial crisis. It was unlikely until everybody was dead frightened of it. Once people become complacent (“Ah, it hasn’t happened in my lifetime, it probably won’t ever happen…”), they start behaving carelessly, and the risk goes up. Way up.
I mean, apparently huge chunks of the bureaucracy in the Obama administration (not Obama himself) are now seriously contemplating a “military option” with regards to Syria. What would that mean? Probably, American planes bombing Syrian (pro-Assad) targets. This will inevitably lead to the Russians trying to shoot down some American planes. This might easily lead to further escalation, the Americans might try to take out Russian air defense batteries. Since the Americans are stronger, eventually they will win. (After a couple days? after a week? after a month? I have no idea.) But this will be a shooting war between Russia and the US, and Putin has no reason not to retaliate. He might attack, for example, Estonia. (Or Ukraine?) A Russian missile cruiser might try to take out an American carrier. It might even succeed. All this might prompt Washington to step up the escalation, and attack some more vital Russian military targets (e.g. in the Crimea, or something similar), which in turn might prompt a Russian tactical nuke.
I know none of these steps are sure things (though I’d find it likely that Putin will try to militarily retaliate for having his forces destroyed in Syria, so once escalation starts, further steps might come easily), and the probabilities have to be multiplied for each step, but still, I’d find it a non-negligible (definitely over 1%) possibility that tactical nukes might be used (once the military confrontation starts). The probability is probably way higher than that, precisely because everyone (at least, apparently, inside the DC Beltway) discounts the possibility of a nuclear war, so nobody is afraid of it.
On some parameters, Russians are indeed not very conservative at all - church attendance, abortion, belief in God, AIDS and drug addition, etc. (Though it is trending more in this direction).
In the American context, it is the genteel and politically correct conservatism of 100-105 IQ whites, of Utah, of Romney and Charles Murray.
However, on others, it is highly conservative relative to the European average - views on homosexuality, patriorism/nationalism, traditional gender roles (in the cultural if not so much economic sense), and politically hardline views on the right way to deal with social maladies. (Russia has been trending away from this direction during most of the 1990s and 2000s, but it seems to have been frozen since 2012).
In the American context, it is the populist and politically incorrect conservatism of 95 IQ whites, of West Virginia, of Trump.Replies: @AP, @TheJester
Russia’s issues with conservative government and social policy are simple to understand: 82 years in an atheistic communist dystopia governing all aspects of human life and only 25 years trying to recover its original culture, religion, and soul. It takes time. Putin is doing a miraculous job shepherding the recovery.
In the meantime, the West has chosen to flush itself down its own dysfunctional atheistic dystopia that ironically is coming to resemble the Soviet system.
Gorbachev —
Let’s generalize Gorbachev’s insight to include all countries in the Anglo-American Empire.
The former head of the Donetsk People’s Republic appears to hint that next week the two republics might be officially recognized by Russia or that a referendum will be announced or something. He’s hinting at something positive, and it doesn’t sound like military action.
https://twitter.com/myrevolutionrus/status/785179728143650816Replies: @5371, @Philip Owen
¡Ojalá!
Hard currency prostitute was a state endorsed career.
Sweden was not very successful but did try. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. Before this during the Ascendancy, Ireland was involved in the slave trade. Many Irish emigrants were plantation owners. Paintings of the final days of the Irish Parliament show ladies in the gallery accompanied by Black Boys. Dublin was about as involved as Bristol.
Idiot.Replies: @Philip Owen
As you know, I have been doing business in Russia since 1994 and have owned a business and employed people since 2007. Here are some observations on factors that I think dispose to culture shock.
Are you intending to earn money in Russia? English language skills are in demand but not well paid, ask our mutual acquaintance CD. You need perfect Russian as a complement.
The infrastructure in Moscow is not too bad but I would never contemplate moving to Russia to live permanently. Compared to the UK public sector provision of everything is very poor. Education, hospitals, roads are awful, certainly in the provinces. Living space is tiny if you are going to rely on a Russian income. At 64, I happen to be fit enough to take 3 successive loads of 40 kg of luggage up five floors in a building without a lift but I make a point of fitness training. Not everybody wants to face up to 9 floors of stairs. Also at 64, I do not want to rely on Russian medicine, which is not really state provided anyway. The element of payment turns Russian private sector Doctors into vampires on the US model. The state provision is extremely basic. Psychiatry is not well advanced but sometimes different in positive ways. Basket weaving is still a thing rather than ‘care in the community’ Regan style. Lots of pharmaceuticals are available over the counter if you have the language skills to cope with a pharmacy.
The Russian private sector is fast at early adoption of whatever is new. The leaders are at least as fast as the UK although followers are rather slower. The oil collapse may be affecting this.
While you are young, fit and single public services don’t matter much. If you intend to marry and raise children, there are a few schools in every city with excellent reputations. It is not coincidence that Russians associate entry into educational institutions with bribery.
Basically, Russia is poor, especially in the provinces. The difference between Moscow (not itself stellar) and the rest of Russia is substantial.
On the other hand, I find people are friendly (maybe they expect money to fall out of my pockets but not all of them). Some are good cooks but on the whole I find Russian food mushy and bland – but this is closer to US tastes anyway. Trains are great and only Saratov Airlines still flies the torture chamber known as the YAK 42 (albeit far safer than the Boeing of the same vintage). Public transport is very convenient and in Moscow the quality is not so bad. In Saratov the quality is appalling and the buses failed Austrian safety and environmental standards 20 years ago but they still haven’t removed the signage – no pride in being Russian amongst the working people. The Bad Boys in the Yard want to go to America. They are frightened of nothing except their sisters telling their grandmothers about their smoking habits. The top performers at the fee paying Gymnasium are practicing to be members of the United Russia Youth but then they would, wouldn’t they. Unlike Washington or Chicago or Boise or the Southern suburbs of Denver, I don’t wonder every time I turn a corner whether some one will shoot me. In fact, in the provinces I feel very safe because as a foreigner I am conspicuous so there are always people giving me attention. So there are lots of witnesses. Russians stare anyway. That said, people come up to me on the street and ask for directions so I can’t look too foreign (I dress Russian most of the time but I can’t walk Russian). Openness is my thing apparently.
In the middle of Moscow, fresh fruit and veg are probably easier to find than in London. In the Produce shop at the bottom of your block of flats in the suburbs in Moscow or elsewhere, expect Class II veg at best, certainly in Summer when there is a local crop. (You would have to look hard to find Class II in California). But Kefir is great. I like the Tvarog called Massa and my mate John Kopiski does great artisan cheeses. Chicken and pork are not so bad. Beef variable. Lamb is very bad quality. I have never understood continental sausages. 20 years ago, Russian bread was amazing. Now they bake using low cost British methods without the preservatives still … Not every new thing is progress.
For the Muscovite, living near Kiev station, Perekrostik’s ready made salads are rather good and there is plenty of cooked meat to add for a quick meal. Salads in cheap places can give you a bad stomach. For the homesick, there are MacDonalds, Burger Kings, Subways, KFC’s and even Arby’s. Once in over 20 years, I went into a MacDonalds (for the Wifi of course). Much more free WiFi than in the UK or US.
There are gyms all over. You won’t have to walk more than 500m to find one. In the winter, jogging is not an option anyway so its time to pump iron. I have seen evidence that kettle bells were once a Russian thing but in modern times, I have found classes harder to find than in the UK where they are popular. There are a lot of steroids around in gyms with mostly male clientele. the minority.
Most of my friends are quite well off and have some kind of interest in Church at the major festivals and high culture. It is very hard to find service times. Russian high culture is very well done, except perhaps Opera but very few companies match the Welsh National Opera or its feeders so I am biased. Ballet is superb. For something lower, start at 16 Ton in Moscow for Pub Rock and work outwards. I am sure you have good advisers on this. Russian Norwegian Death Metal is an unreal experience. Mostly the clubs for the over 30’s do 1970’s British rock or a derivative.
The drivers are not as aggressive as as Italy or Norway nor as laid back as Greece but a Russian man behind a wheel has something to prove. Defensive driving California style is non existent. There is the Russian attitude to risk and the road themselves. Dashcam is essential.
As a once exiled Welshman, my observation is that there is no homeland once you’ve left it. Time moves on. Good luck anyway. I hope you find what you are looking for (or she finds you 🙂 ).
Long ramble. Couldn’t stop.
The very first example of commie block architecture, the original Khruschevite 5-story building, lacked elevators. But I think most of them have been replaced in Moscow. All subsequent Soviet building types had elevators, usually several per entrance, and I'm guessing that all post-Soviet apartment buildings have them too.
Here in New York I live on the 5th floor of a 7-story building. I made a habit years ago of never using the elevator. It's a bit of exercise. When I'm feeling less lazy than usual I get out of my apartment and walk up and down the stairwell on purpose. Cardio, leg muscles, no fuss of siging up with a gym or having to go there and back.Replies: @Glossy
Go figure.
Gorbachaev means the Union treaty not the social and economic conditions of the USSR. Trying to rescue the Union Treaty destroyed Gorbachaev.
https://twitter.com/myrevolutionrus/status/785179728143650816Replies: @5371, @Philip Owen
Wishful thinking. Borodai hangs out with his Liberal hipster friends these days. He was a PR guy delivering agitprop not one of the believers.
Divorce was rare because physical separation after divorce was quite difficult with multiple generations living in very small flats. More or less immediately post Soviet, I met families of 6 people living in one room (plus kitchen and bathroom), in one case 10 in two rooms including a baby and an unrelated couple in their 90’s who slept on the floor in the bathroom; pensioners were valuable. That was Moscow.
In the early and middle Soviet periods lots of people lived in communal apartments. My father grew up in one. But enormous amounts of housing were built starting in 1955, and in the 1980s I didn't know anyone who knew anyone who lived in a communal apartment or in the way that you saw in 1994.Replies: @Philip Owen
Are you intending to earn money in Russia? English language skills are in demand but not well paid, ask our mutual acquaintance CD. You need perfect Russian as a complement.
The infrastructure in Moscow is not too bad but I would never contemplate moving to Russia to live permanently. Compared to the UK public sector provision of everything is very poor. Education, hospitals, roads are awful, certainly in the provinces. Living space is tiny if you are going to rely on a Russian income. At 64, I happen to be fit enough to take 3 successive loads of 40 kg of luggage up five floors in a building without a lift but I make a point of fitness training. Not everybody wants to face up to 9 floors of stairs. Also at 64, I do not want to rely on Russian medicine, which is not really state provided anyway. The element of payment turns Russian private sector Doctors into vampires on the US model. The state provision is extremely basic. Psychiatry is not well advanced but sometimes different in positive ways. Basket weaving is still a thing rather than 'care in the community' Regan style. Lots of pharmaceuticals are available over the counter if you have the language skills to cope with a pharmacy.
The Russian private sector is fast at early adoption of whatever is new. The leaders are at least as fast as the UK although followers are rather slower. The oil collapse may be affecting this.
While you are young, fit and single public services don't matter much. If you intend to marry and raise children, there are a few schools in every city with excellent reputations. It is not coincidence that Russians associate entry into educational institutions with bribery.
Basically, Russia is poor, especially in the provinces. The difference between Moscow (not itself stellar) and the rest of Russia is substantial.
On the other hand, I find people are friendly (maybe they expect money to fall out of my pockets but not all of them). Some are good cooks but on the whole I find Russian food mushy and bland - but this is closer to US tastes anyway. Trains are great and only Saratov Airlines still flies the torture chamber known as the YAK 42 (albeit far safer than the Boeing of the same vintage). Public transport is very convenient and in Moscow the quality is not so bad. In Saratov the quality is appalling and the buses failed Austrian safety and environmental standards 20 years ago but they still haven't removed the signage - no pride in being Russian amongst the working people. The Bad Boys in the Yard want to go to America. They are frightened of nothing except their sisters telling their grandmothers about their smoking habits. The top performers at the fee paying Gymnasium are practicing to be members of the United Russia Youth but then they would, wouldn't they. Unlike Washington or Chicago or Boise or the Southern suburbs of Denver, I don't wonder every time I turn a corner whether some one will shoot me. In fact, in the provinces I feel very safe because as a foreigner I am conspicuous so there are always people giving me attention. So there are lots of witnesses. Russians stare anyway. That said, people come up to me on the street and ask for directions so I can't look too foreign (I dress Russian most of the time but I can't walk Russian). Openness is my thing apparently.
In the middle of Moscow, fresh fruit and veg are probably easier to find than in London. In the Produce shop at the bottom of your block of flats in the suburbs in Moscow or elsewhere, expect Class II veg at best, certainly in Summer when there is a local crop. (You would have to look hard to find Class II in California). But Kefir is great. I like the Tvarog called Massa and my mate John Kopiski does great artisan cheeses. Chicken and pork are not so bad. Beef variable. Lamb is very bad quality. I have never understood continental sausages. 20 years ago, Russian bread was amazing. Now they bake using low cost British methods without the preservatives still ... Not every new thing is progress.
For the Muscovite, living near Kiev station, Perekrostik's ready made salads are rather good and there is plenty of cooked meat to add for a quick meal. Salads in cheap places can give you a bad stomach. For the homesick, there are MacDonalds, Burger Kings, Subways, KFC's and even Arby's. Once in over 20 years, I went into a MacDonalds (for the Wifi of course). Much more free WiFi than in the UK or US.
There are gyms all over. You won't have to walk more than 500m to find one. In the winter, jogging is not an option anyway so its time to pump iron. I have seen evidence that kettle bells were once a Russian thing but in modern times, I have found classes harder to find than in the UK where they are popular. There are a lot of steroids around in gyms with mostly male clientele. the minority.
Most of my friends are quite well off and have some kind of interest in Church at the major festivals and high culture. It is very hard to find service times. Russian high culture is very well done, except perhaps Opera but very few companies match the Welsh National Opera or its feeders so I am biased. Ballet is superb. For something lower, start at 16 Ton in Moscow for Pub Rock and work outwards. I am sure you have good advisers on this. Russian Norwegian Death Metal is an unreal experience. Mostly the clubs for the over 30's do 1970's British rock or a derivative.
The drivers are not as aggressive as as Italy or Norway nor as laid back as Greece but a Russian man behind a wheel has something to prove. Defensive driving California style is non existent. There is the Russian attitude to risk and the road themselves. Dashcam is essential.
As a once exiled Welshman, my observation is that there is no homeland once you've left it. Time moves on. Good luck anyway. I hope you find what you are looking for (or she finds you :-) ).
Long ramble. Couldn't stop.Replies: @Glossy, @5371, @Latvian woman
At 64, I happen to be fit enough to take 3 successive loads of 40 kg of luggage up five floors in a building without a lift but I make a point of fitness training.
The very first example of commie block architecture, the original Khruschevite 5-story building, lacked elevators. But I think most of them have been replaced in Moscow. All subsequent Soviet building types had elevators, usually several per entrance, and I’m guessing that all post-Soviet apartment buildings have them too.
Here in New York I live on the 5th floor of a 7-story building. I made a habit years ago of never using the elevator. It’s a bit of exercise. When I’m feeling less lazy than usual I get out of my apartment and walk up and down the stairwell on purpose. Cardio, leg muscles, no fuss of siging up with a gym or having to go there and back.
The stairwell is cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than the outdoors.
By the time I come back from work, it's usually getting dark. There's a park nearby, and New York is much safer than it was when I first got here, but still, I don't want to run there in the evenings. Half of all the horror stories that I've heard from acquantaces and saw in the tabloids happened to runners or bikers in the parks.
The very first example of commie block architecture, the original Khruschevite 5-story building, lacked elevators. But I think most of them have been replaced in Moscow. All subsequent Soviet building types had elevators, usually several per entrance, and I'm guessing that all post-Soviet apartment buildings have them too.
Here in New York I live on the 5th floor of a 7-story building. I made a habit years ago of never using the elevator. It's a bit of exercise. When I'm feeling less lazy than usual I get out of my apartment and walk up and down the stairwell on purpose. Cardio, leg muscles, no fuss of siging up with a gym or having to go there and back.Replies: @Glossy
Oh, and it’s better than running in a couple of ways:
The stairwell is cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than the outdoors.
By the time I come back from work, it’s usually getting dark. There’s a park nearby, and New York is much safer than it was when I first got here, but still, I don’t want to run there in the evenings. Half of all the horror stories that I’ve heard from acquantaces and saw in the tabloids happened to runners or bikers in the parks.
That didn’t exist in late Soviet times. The drop in living standards in the FSU between 1988 and 1994 was much larger than the drop between 1928 and 1934 in the West. The post-Soviet 1990s were worse than the Western Great Depression in terms of GDP decline, surely in terms of mortality, and everything else.
In the early and middle Soviet periods lots of people lived in communal apartments. My father grew up in one. But enormous amounts of housing were built starting in 1955, and in the 1980s I didn’t know anyone who knew anyone who lived in a communal apartment or in the way that you saw in 1994.
Are you intending to earn money in Russia? English language skills are in demand but not well paid, ask our mutual acquaintance CD. You need perfect Russian as a complement.
The infrastructure in Moscow is not too bad but I would never contemplate moving to Russia to live permanently. Compared to the UK public sector provision of everything is very poor. Education, hospitals, roads are awful, certainly in the provinces. Living space is tiny if you are going to rely on a Russian income. At 64, I happen to be fit enough to take 3 successive loads of 40 kg of luggage up five floors in a building without a lift but I make a point of fitness training. Not everybody wants to face up to 9 floors of stairs. Also at 64, I do not want to rely on Russian medicine, which is not really state provided anyway. The element of payment turns Russian private sector Doctors into vampires on the US model. The state provision is extremely basic. Psychiatry is not well advanced but sometimes different in positive ways. Basket weaving is still a thing rather than 'care in the community' Regan style. Lots of pharmaceuticals are available over the counter if you have the language skills to cope with a pharmacy.
The Russian private sector is fast at early adoption of whatever is new. The leaders are at least as fast as the UK although followers are rather slower. The oil collapse may be affecting this.
While you are young, fit and single public services don't matter much. If you intend to marry and raise children, there are a few schools in every city with excellent reputations. It is not coincidence that Russians associate entry into educational institutions with bribery.
Basically, Russia is poor, especially in the provinces. The difference between Moscow (not itself stellar) and the rest of Russia is substantial.
On the other hand, I find people are friendly (maybe they expect money to fall out of my pockets but not all of them). Some are good cooks but on the whole I find Russian food mushy and bland - but this is closer to US tastes anyway. Trains are great and only Saratov Airlines still flies the torture chamber known as the YAK 42 (albeit far safer than the Boeing of the same vintage). Public transport is very convenient and in Moscow the quality is not so bad. In Saratov the quality is appalling and the buses failed Austrian safety and environmental standards 20 years ago but they still haven't removed the signage - no pride in being Russian amongst the working people. The Bad Boys in the Yard want to go to America. They are frightened of nothing except their sisters telling their grandmothers about their smoking habits. The top performers at the fee paying Gymnasium are practicing to be members of the United Russia Youth but then they would, wouldn't they. Unlike Washington or Chicago or Boise or the Southern suburbs of Denver, I don't wonder every time I turn a corner whether some one will shoot me. In fact, in the provinces I feel very safe because as a foreigner I am conspicuous so there are always people giving me attention. So there are lots of witnesses. Russians stare anyway. That said, people come up to me on the street and ask for directions so I can't look too foreign (I dress Russian most of the time but I can't walk Russian). Openness is my thing apparently.
In the middle of Moscow, fresh fruit and veg are probably easier to find than in London. In the Produce shop at the bottom of your block of flats in the suburbs in Moscow or elsewhere, expect Class II veg at best, certainly in Summer when there is a local crop. (You would have to look hard to find Class II in California). But Kefir is great. I like the Tvarog called Massa and my mate John Kopiski does great artisan cheeses. Chicken and pork are not so bad. Beef variable. Lamb is very bad quality. I have never understood continental sausages. 20 years ago, Russian bread was amazing. Now they bake using low cost British methods without the preservatives still ... Not every new thing is progress.
For the Muscovite, living near Kiev station, Perekrostik's ready made salads are rather good and there is plenty of cooked meat to add for a quick meal. Salads in cheap places can give you a bad stomach. For the homesick, there are MacDonalds, Burger Kings, Subways, KFC's and even Arby's. Once in over 20 years, I went into a MacDonalds (for the Wifi of course). Much more free WiFi than in the UK or US.
There are gyms all over. You won't have to walk more than 500m to find one. In the winter, jogging is not an option anyway so its time to pump iron. I have seen evidence that kettle bells were once a Russian thing but in modern times, I have found classes harder to find than in the UK where they are popular. There are a lot of steroids around in gyms with mostly male clientele. the minority.
Most of my friends are quite well off and have some kind of interest in Church at the major festivals and high culture. It is very hard to find service times. Russian high culture is very well done, except perhaps Opera but very few companies match the Welsh National Opera or its feeders so I am biased. Ballet is superb. For something lower, start at 16 Ton in Moscow for Pub Rock and work outwards. I am sure you have good advisers on this. Russian Norwegian Death Metal is an unreal experience. Mostly the clubs for the over 30's do 1970's British rock or a derivative.
The drivers are not as aggressive as as Italy or Norway nor as laid back as Greece but a Russian man behind a wheel has something to prove. Defensive driving California style is non existent. There is the Russian attitude to risk and the road themselves. Dashcam is essential.
As a once exiled Welshman, my observation is that there is no homeland once you've left it. Time moves on. Good luck anyway. I hope you find what you are looking for (or she finds you :-) ).
Long ramble. Couldn't stop.Replies: @Glossy, @5371, @Latvian woman
[As a … Welshman … Long ramble. Couldn’t stop.]
Go figure.
Sweden was not very successful but did try. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. Before this during the Ascendancy, Ireland was involved in the slave trade. Many Irish emigrants were plantation owners. Paintings of the final days of the Irish Parliament show ladies in the gallery accompanied by Black Boys. Dublin was about as involved as Bristol.Replies: @5371
[Dublin was about as involved as Bristol.]
Idiot.
OT
Interesting POW on the US intelligence community’s meddling in the presidential election.
In the early and middle Soviet periods lots of people lived in communal apartments. My father grew up in one. But enormous amounts of housing were built starting in 1955, and in the 1980s I didn't know anyone who knew anyone who lived in a communal apartment or in the way that you saw in 1994.Replies: @Philip Owen
It wasn’t a communal apartment. Just crowded. My PA lives in a communal apartment. I have seen the difference. It was crowded because pooling irregular and small incomes made sense to them. I also met and meet people who have an apartment to themselves. But space is tight.
Idiot.Replies: @Philip Owen
Doesn’t fit the FF narrative?
Never quite fitting in there, blood and soil is a real thing and I'm sure that you'll sense this in your return and more than that; you will see some advantages to having lived in the West since not only will it give you a greater sense of perspective, but that experience will also boost your standing in Russia because others will listen to your words all the more carefully due to said experience.
The Anglosphere is not for the European. It is now more than ever a place of hyperindividualism, transitory existence, and atomization. It only serves as a place to make some money and get out quickly after doing so.Replies: @JackOH
“The Anglosphere is not for the European. It is now more than ever a place of hyperindividualism, transitory existence, and atomization. It only serves as a place to make some money and get out quickly after doing so.”
Agree. If my memory’s okay, something like one-third of immigrants to the U. S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries returned home. I’d add to your list the abominable politics of the U. S., much of which we talk about on this site, which had me thinking half-seriously of emigration from the States back in the 1990s.
God bless, Anatoly, and I think many of us would like to read your observations about today’s Russia when you get a chance.
Dear Mr. Karlin,
being a member of IFOR (the Fellowship for Reconciliation – a simple member, no functionary), I’m always looking for people who could be a counterpart for German IFOR contacts and who could perhaps build up a Russian IFOR group.
Russian Mennonites would be a possibility, but I’d prefer people who are not so much at the fringes. I understand that Russian pacifists are more or less opponents of Putin (because of the Chechen war), but of course I would like a counterpart who really has friendly feelings for his own people – if not for Putin, then at least for the Putin voters. The best chances would be, I expect, moderates of “United Russia” or supporters of “Just Russia”, but supporters of Communists or LDPR are of course not excluded.
If you perchance find any persons which match this decription, would you please tell me about them?
Sorry for the delay in new posts.
I’ll resume very soon.
Have been in London the past two weeks, settling various things and meeting people.
The only colour hetrosexual men seem to wear outdoors in winter is black. The time I took a camel overcoat was really embarassing.
Do you remember any Russian? If you can speak any at all, then a good dictionary (I use Collins or Oxford) on your phone is better than a translation programme. It's emotionally stronger to say it yourself, even if you've just looked up the word.
Yazh is a good Android app for giving yourself some drill while on the metro/bus/idle moment.
I'll resume very soon.
Have been in London the past two weeks, settling various things and meeting people.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Philip Owen
What are the chances of a nuclear conflict occurring until December 31, 2017? I’d put it right now at over 1%, which is probably the highest since the end of the Cold War.
@reiner tor
I’m seriously worried about that as well…watched a talk show on German tv today, with Peter Altmaier, one of Merkel’s chief minions. Totally in anti-Russia mode (according to him there’s a “democratic” opposition in Aleppo that just wants free elections, and all that’s wrong in Syria is just due to Russia’s and Iran’s meddling…whereas our “partner” Turkey has been so generous in taking in refugees…some journalist from Syria eventually told him pretty much he was telling bs). Western elites seem to be totally unhinged. I’m also disgusted at American liberals with their stupid, petty identity politics concerns who ignore or support Clinton’s dangerous hawkishness…their concern over Mideast policy seems to have evaporated after the end of W’s administration.
I posted a few weeks ago on FB about the risk of a nuclear war over Syria, and a couple acquaintances (both highly intelligent, but one is a libtard, the other a cuckservative) commented that the Russians will fold, because "they don't want to destroy the world and themselves over Syria". I don't like comment wars on FB, so I didn't reply, but apparently it didn't occur to them that the situation is quite symmetrical, in that probably the Russians also have reasons to believe that the US won't attack them over Syria for the very same reason: presumably the US also doesn't "want to destroy the world and themselves over Syria", and yet it is just about to attack Russian forces there. If the US is stupid enough to attack Russia, shouldn't the Russians be stupid enough to retaliate by escalating further? Especially since nuclear escalation was official US policy as long as they believed themselves to be militarily weaker in terms of conventional weapons in Europe. Now the Russians have all reasons to believe that.
I can easily see tactical nukes being used by the Russians, after which all bets are off.Replies: @Glossy
chances of a nuclear conflict … right now at over 1%,… anti-Russia mode…. Western elites seem to be totally unhinged.
two suggestions:
– it’s a bluster, a bluff to control and ultimately screw up Europe
– check “Uncertainty” by William Briggs: not every probability can be or should be quantified, and all are conditional (which looks like a trite fact until you examine the implications). For ‘chance,’ specifically … http://wmbriggs.com/?s=chance
I'll resume very soon.
Have been in London the past two weeks, settling various things and meeting people.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Philip Owen
You’ve missed the first flakes of snow but the heating season has started so you’ll be warm enough indoors.
The only colour hetrosexual men seem to wear outdoors in winter is black. The time I took a camel overcoat was really embarassing.
Do you remember any Russian? If you can speak any at all, then a good dictionary (I use Collins or Oxford) on your phone is better than a translation programme. It’s emotionally stronger to say it yourself, even if you’ve just looked up the word.
Yazh is a good Android app for giving yourself some drill while on the metro/bus/idle moment.
I'm seriously worried about that as well...watched a talk show on German tv today, with Peter Altmaier, one of Merkel's chief minions. Totally in anti-Russia mode (according to him there's a "democratic" opposition in Aleppo that just wants free elections, and all that's wrong in Syria is just due to Russia's and Iran's meddling...whereas our "partner" Turkey has been so generous in taking in refugees...some journalist from Syria eventually told him pretty much he was telling bs). Western elites seem to be totally unhinged. I'm also disgusted at American liberals with their stupid, petty identity politics concerns who ignore or support Clinton's dangerous hawkishness...their concern over Mideast policy seems to have evaporated after the end of W's administration.Replies: @reiner Tor
I think the problem is that one of the “Lessons of the Cold War” learned was that “it’s impossible to use nuclear weapons, so nobody will ever use them”. It was I think wrote by Martin van Creveld, among others, and is a true statement only as long as everybody is dead frightened of a nuclear war. Once you stop being frightened of it (because you’ve learned the Lesson, namely that nukes will never be used), this statement will no longer be valid, because you will take a lot of stupid risks (in the mistaken belief that there is no risk), it’s very similar to financial crises.
I posted a few weeks ago on FB about the risk of a nuclear war over Syria, and a couple acquaintances (both highly intelligent, but one is a libtard, the other a cuckservative) commented that the Russians will fold, because “they don’t want to destroy the world and themselves over Syria”. I don’t like comment wars on FB, so I didn’t reply, but apparently it didn’t occur to them that the situation is quite symmetrical, in that probably the Russians also have reasons to believe that the US won’t attack them over Syria for the very same reason: presumably the US also doesn’t “want to destroy the world and themselves over Syria”, and yet it is just about to attack Russian forces there. If the US is stupid enough to attack Russia, shouldn’t the Russians be stupid enough to retaliate by escalating further? Especially since nuclear escalation was official US policy as long as they believed themselves to be militarily weaker in terms of conventional weapons in Europe. Now the Russians have all reasons to believe that.
I can easily see tactical nukes being used by the Russians, after which all bets are off.
Russia did not attack Turkey after Turkey shot down a Russian plane on the Syrian-Turkish border. So Putin at least has breaks, so to speak. He can stop when things are escalating in a scary way.
I don't expect him to fall for neocon provocations during Hillary's term. He can step aside in one place and hit in another part of the globe, in a non-military way, or maybe in a military way in the Ukraine.Replies: @reiner Tor
Are you intending to earn money in Russia? English language skills are in demand but not well paid, ask our mutual acquaintance CD. You need perfect Russian as a complement.
The infrastructure in Moscow is not too bad but I would never contemplate moving to Russia to live permanently. Compared to the UK public sector provision of everything is very poor. Education, hospitals, roads are awful, certainly in the provinces. Living space is tiny if you are going to rely on a Russian income. At 64, I happen to be fit enough to take 3 successive loads of 40 kg of luggage up five floors in a building without a lift but I make a point of fitness training. Not everybody wants to face up to 9 floors of stairs. Also at 64, I do not want to rely on Russian medicine, which is not really state provided anyway. The element of payment turns Russian private sector Doctors into vampires on the US model. The state provision is extremely basic. Psychiatry is not well advanced but sometimes different in positive ways. Basket weaving is still a thing rather than 'care in the community' Regan style. Lots of pharmaceuticals are available over the counter if you have the language skills to cope with a pharmacy.
The Russian private sector is fast at early adoption of whatever is new. The leaders are at least as fast as the UK although followers are rather slower. The oil collapse may be affecting this.
While you are young, fit and single public services don't matter much. If you intend to marry and raise children, there are a few schools in every city with excellent reputations. It is not coincidence that Russians associate entry into educational institutions with bribery.
Basically, Russia is poor, especially in the provinces. The difference between Moscow (not itself stellar) and the rest of Russia is substantial.
On the other hand, I find people are friendly (maybe they expect money to fall out of my pockets but not all of them). Some are good cooks but on the whole I find Russian food mushy and bland - but this is closer to US tastes anyway. Trains are great and only Saratov Airlines still flies the torture chamber known as the YAK 42 (albeit far safer than the Boeing of the same vintage). Public transport is very convenient and in Moscow the quality is not so bad. In Saratov the quality is appalling and the buses failed Austrian safety and environmental standards 20 years ago but they still haven't removed the signage - no pride in being Russian amongst the working people. The Bad Boys in the Yard want to go to America. They are frightened of nothing except their sisters telling their grandmothers about their smoking habits. The top performers at the fee paying Gymnasium are practicing to be members of the United Russia Youth but then they would, wouldn't they. Unlike Washington or Chicago or Boise or the Southern suburbs of Denver, I don't wonder every time I turn a corner whether some one will shoot me. In fact, in the provinces I feel very safe because as a foreigner I am conspicuous so there are always people giving me attention. So there are lots of witnesses. Russians stare anyway. That said, people come up to me on the street and ask for directions so I can't look too foreign (I dress Russian most of the time but I can't walk Russian). Openness is my thing apparently.
In the middle of Moscow, fresh fruit and veg are probably easier to find than in London. In the Produce shop at the bottom of your block of flats in the suburbs in Moscow or elsewhere, expect Class II veg at best, certainly in Summer when there is a local crop. (You would have to look hard to find Class II in California). But Kefir is great. I like the Tvarog called Massa and my mate John Kopiski does great artisan cheeses. Chicken and pork are not so bad. Beef variable. Lamb is very bad quality. I have never understood continental sausages. 20 years ago, Russian bread was amazing. Now they bake using low cost British methods without the preservatives still ... Not every new thing is progress.
For the Muscovite, living near Kiev station, Perekrostik's ready made salads are rather good and there is plenty of cooked meat to add for a quick meal. Salads in cheap places can give you a bad stomach. For the homesick, there are MacDonalds, Burger Kings, Subways, KFC's and even Arby's. Once in over 20 years, I went into a MacDonalds (for the Wifi of course). Much more free WiFi than in the UK or US.
There are gyms all over. You won't have to walk more than 500m to find one. In the winter, jogging is not an option anyway so its time to pump iron. I have seen evidence that kettle bells were once a Russian thing but in modern times, I have found classes harder to find than in the UK where they are popular. There are a lot of steroids around in gyms with mostly male clientele. the minority.
Most of my friends are quite well off and have some kind of interest in Church at the major festivals and high culture. It is very hard to find service times. Russian high culture is very well done, except perhaps Opera but very few companies match the Welsh National Opera or its feeders so I am biased. Ballet is superb. For something lower, start at 16 Ton in Moscow for Pub Rock and work outwards. I am sure you have good advisers on this. Russian Norwegian Death Metal is an unreal experience. Mostly the clubs for the over 30's do 1970's British rock or a derivative.
The drivers are not as aggressive as as Italy or Norway nor as laid back as Greece but a Russian man behind a wheel has something to prove. Defensive driving California style is non existent. There is the Russian attitude to risk and the road themselves. Dashcam is essential.
As a once exiled Welshman, my observation is that there is no homeland once you've left it. Time moves on. Good luck anyway. I hope you find what you are looking for (or she finds you :-) ).
Long ramble. Couldn't stop.Replies: @Glossy, @5371, @Latvian woman
Absolutely. It’s actually the so called “black metal”, my favorite is Аркона (Arkona), it’s great if you’re into a bit of folk mixed in. I also really like Темнозорь (Temnozor’ – but that one is heavily ideological).
I wasn't aware that such a thing was to be found in stores, either in Russia or California.Replies: @iffen, @Anonymous
Other than organic produce and textiles, everything else IS shit, anywhere! Our economic system (capitalism) is based on cost-cutting…
I posted a few weeks ago on FB about the risk of a nuclear war over Syria, and a couple acquaintances (both highly intelligent, but one is a libtard, the other a cuckservative) commented that the Russians will fold, because "they don't want to destroy the world and themselves over Syria". I don't like comment wars on FB, so I didn't reply, but apparently it didn't occur to them that the situation is quite symmetrical, in that probably the Russians also have reasons to believe that the US won't attack them over Syria for the very same reason: presumably the US also doesn't "want to destroy the world and themselves over Syria", and yet it is just about to attack Russian forces there. If the US is stupid enough to attack Russia, shouldn't the Russians be stupid enough to retaliate by escalating further? Especially since nuclear escalation was official US policy as long as they believed themselves to be militarily weaker in terms of conventional weapons in Europe. Now the Russians have all reasons to believe that.
I can easily see tactical nukes being used by the Russians, after which all bets are off.Replies: @Glossy
commented that the Russians will fold
Russia did not attack Turkey after Turkey shot down a Russian plane on the Syrian-Turkish border. So Putin at least has breaks, so to speak. He can stop when things are escalating in a scary way.
I don’t expect him to fall for neocon provocations during Hillary’s term. He can step aside in one place and hit in another part of the globe, in a non-military way, or maybe in a military way in the Ukraine.
Anatoly, I hope you’re OK and that you can return to blogging soon.
Russia did not attack Turkey after Turkey shot down a Russian plane on the Syrian-Turkish border. So Putin at least has breaks, so to speak. He can stop when things are escalating in a scary way.
I don't expect him to fall for neocon provocations during Hillary's term. He can step aside in one place and hit in another part of the globe, in a non-military way, or maybe in a military way in the Ukraine.Replies: @reiner Tor
The downing of the Russian jet happened at the border while over Turkish territory, so from an international law viewpoint it wasn’t really aggression, besides it was more like a one-off event, quite unlike a deliberate large-scale bombing campaign against Russian forces in Syria, violating all international norms. Not to mention it was much easier to retaliate against Turkey in a non-military way, especially since the Russian armed forces cannot decisively defeat the strong Turkish armed forces without using nukes, also attacking Turkey would’ve meant all-out war against NATO. A nuclear war would have been quite over the top as a retaliation for the questionable downing of a jet which violated the Turkish airspace.
But you might remember the retaliation was very strong, and in a way disproportionate, cancelling all contact with Turkey.
Against the US, Putin will have more limited options. In economic terms, Russia is a non-entity compared to the US. In conventional military terms, it’s the strongest possible adversary for the US, but still much weaker. However, if the war turns nuclear, Russia is the only peer of the US, in fact, by some metrics, it’s stronger. So there is a certain temptation to escalate.