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Prosvirnin is the most talented writer. Limonov has by far the most colorful personality. Dugin has been the most effective at promoting himself in the West. Prokhanov probably has the most name recognition in Russia. Galkovsky created the most powerful memes. Krylov provided the esoteric flavoring.
And yet out of all of Russia’s right-wing intellectuals, there is perhaps none so unique as Egor Kholmogorov.
This is ironic, because out of all of the above, he is the closest to the “golden mean” of the Russian nationalist memeplex.
He is a realist on Soviet achievements, crimes, and lost opportunities, foregoing both the Soviet nostalgia of Prokhanov, the kneejerk Sovietophobia of Prosvirnin, and the unhinged conspiracy theories of Galkovsky. He is a normal, traditional Orthodox Christian, in contrast to the “atheism plus” of Prosvirnin, the mystical obscurantism of Duginism, and the esoteric experiments of Krylov. He has time neither for the college libertarianism of Sputnik i Pogrom hipster nationalism, nor the angry “confiscate and divide” rhetoric of the National Bolsheviks.
Instead of wasting his time on ideological rhetoric, he reads Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century and writes reviews about it on his website. And about 224 other books.
And this brings us to what makes Kholmogorov so unique: He is an extremely well-read autodidact.
This allows him to write informed and engaging articles on a very wide variety of different topics and breaking news.
In my opinion, Kholmogorov is simply the best modern Russian right-wing intellectual, period.
Unfortunately, he is almost entirely unknown in the English-speaking world; he does not angle for interviews with Western media outlets like Prosvirnin, nor does he energetically pursue foreign contacts like Dugin. Over the years I have done my very small part to remedy this situation, translating two of Kholmogorov’s articles (Europe’s Week of Human Sacrifice; A Cruel French Lesson). Still, there’s only so much one blogger with many other things to write about can do.
Happily, a multilingual Russian fan of Kholmogorov has stepped up to the plate: Fluctuarius Argenteus. Incidentally, he is a fascinating fellow in his own right – he is a well recognized expert in Spanish history and culture – though his insistence on anonymity constrains what I can reveal, at least beyond his wish to be the “Silver Surfer” to Kholmogorov’s Galactus.
We hope to make translations of Kholmogorov’s output consistently available on The Unz Review in the months to come.
In the meantime, I am privileged to present the first Fluctuarius-translated Kholmogorov article for your delectation.
***
A New Martin Luther?: James Damore’s Case from a Russian Conservative Perspective
Original: https://tsargrad.tv/articles/triumf-gendernyh-sharikovyh_79187
Translated by Fluctuarius Argenteus:
Google fires employee James Damore for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.
– You persecute your employees for having opinions and violate the rights of White men, Centrists, and Conservatives.
– No, we don’t. You’re fired.
A conversation just like or similar to this one recently took place in the office of one of modern information market monsters, the Google Corporation.
Illustration to the Google scandal. James Damore fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes”. Source: Screenshot of Instragram user bluehelix.
Google knows almost everything about us, including the contents of our emails, our addresses, our voice samples (OK Google), our favorite stuff, and, sometimes, our sexual preferences. Google used to be on the verge of literally looking at the world with our own eyes through Google Glass, but this prospect appears to have been postponed, probably temporarily. However, the threat of manipulating public opinion through search engine algorithms has been discussed in the West for a long while, even to the point of becoming a central House of Cards plotline.
Conversely, we know next to nothing about Google. Now, thanks to an ideological scandal that shook the company, we suddenly got a glimpse of corporate values and convictions that the company uses a roadmap to influencing us in a major way, and American worldview even more so. Suddenly, Google was revealed to be a system permeated by ideology, suffused with Leftist and aggressively feminist values.
The story goes this way. In early August, an anonymous manifesto titled Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber was circulated through the local network of Google. The author lambasted the company’s ideological climate, especially its policy of so-called diversity. This policy has been adopted by almost all of US companies, and Google has gone as far as to appoint a “chief diversity officer”. The goal of the polity is to reduce the number of white cisgendered male employees, to employ as many minorities and women as possible and to give them fast-track promotions – which, in reality, gives them an unfair, non-market based advantage.
The author argues that Leftism and “diversity” policies lead to creating an “echo chamber” within the company, where a person only talks to those who share their opinions, and, through this conversation, is reinforced in the opinion that their beliefs are the only ones that matter. This “echo chamber” narrows one’s intellectual horizon and undermines work efficiency, with following “the party line” taking precedence over real productivity.
In contrast to Google’s buzzwords of “vision” and “innovation”, the author claims that the company has lost its sight behind its self-imposed ideological blindfold and is stuck in a morass.
As Google employs intellectuals, argues the critic, and most modern Western intellectuals are from the Left, this leads to creating a closed Leftist clique within the company. If the Right rejects everything contrary to the God>human>nature hierarchy, the Left declares all natural differences between humans to be nonexistent or created by social constructs.
The central Leftist idea is the class struggle, and, given that the proletariat vs. bourgeoisie struggle is now irrelevant, the atmosphere of struggle has been transposed onto gender and race relations. Oppressed Blacks are fighting against White oppressors, oppressed women challenge oppressive males. And the corporate management (and, until recently, the US presidency) is charged with bringing the “dictatorship of the proletariat” to life by imposing the “diversity” policy.
The critic argues that the witch-hunt of Centrists and Conservatives, who are forced to conceal their political alignment or resign from the job, is not the only effect of this Leftist tyranny. Leftism also leads to inefficiency, as the coveted job goes not to the best there is but to the “best woman of color”. There are multiple educational or motivation programs open only to women or minorities. This leads to plummeting efficiencies, disincentivizes White men from putting effort into work, and creates a climate of nervousness, if not sabotage. Instead of churning out new ground-breaking products, opines the critic, Google wastes too much effort on fanning the flames of class struggle.
What is the proposed solution?
Stop diving people into “oppressors” and “the oppressed” and forcefully oppressing the alleged oppressors. Stop branding every dissident as an immoral scoundrel, a racist, etc.
The diversity of opinion must apply to everyone. The company must stop alienating Conservatives, who are, to call a spade a spade, a minority that needs their rights to be protected. In addition, conservatively-inclined people have their own advantages, such as a focused and methodical approach to work.
Fight all kinds of prejudice, not only those deemed worthy by the politically correct America.
End diversity programs discriminatory towards White men and replace them with non-discriminatory ones.
Have an unbiased assessment of the costs and efficiency of diversity programs, which are not only expensive but also pit one part of the company’s employees against the other.
Instead of gender and race differences, focus on psychological safety within the company. Instead of calling to “feel the others’ pain”, discuss facts. Instead of cultivating sensitivity and soft skins, analyze real issues.
Admit that not all racial or gender differences are social constructs or products of oppression. Be open towards the study of human nature.
The last point proved to be the most vulnerable, as the author of the manifesto went on to formulate his ideas on male vs. female differences that should be accepted as fact if Google is to improve its performance.
The differences argued by the author are as follows:
Women are more interested in people, men are more interested in objects.
Women are prone to cooperation, men to competition. All too often, women can’t take the methods of competition considered natural among men.
Women are looking for a balance between work and private life, men are obsessed with status and
Feminism played a major part in emancipating women from their gender roles, but men are still strongly tied to theirs. If the society seeks to “feminize” men, this will only lead to them leaving STEM for “girly” occupations (which will weaken society in the long run).
It was the think piece on the natural differences of men and women that provoked the greatest ire. The author was immediately charged with propagating outdated sexist stereotypes, and the Google management commenced a search for the dissent, with a clear purpose of giving him the sack. On 8th August, the heretic was revealed to be James Damore, a programmer. He was fired with immediate effect because, as claimed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, “portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace”. Damore announced that he was considering a lawsuit.
We live in a post-Trump day and age, that is why the Western press is far from having a unanimous verdict on the Damore affair. Some call him “a typical sexist”, for others he is a “free speech martyr”. By dismissing Damore from his job, Google implicitly confirmed that all claims of an “echo chamber” and aggressive Leftist intolerance were precisely on point. Julian Assange has already tweeted: “Censorship is for losers, WikiLeaks is offering a job to fired Google engineer James Damore”.
It is highly plausible that the Damore Memo may play the same breakthrough part in discussing the politically correct insanity as WikiLeaks and Snowden files did in discussing the dirty laundry of governments and secret services. If it comes to pass, Damore will make history as a new Martin Luther challenging the Liberal “Popery”.
However, his intellectual audacity notwithstanding, it should be noted that Damore’s own views are vulnerable to Conservative criticism. Unfortunately, like the bulk of Western thought, they fall into the trap of Leftist “cultural constructivism” and Conservative naturalism.
Allegedly, there are only two possible viewpoints. Either gender and race differences are biologically preordained and therefore unremovable and therefore should always be taken into account, or those differences are no more than social constructs and should be destroyed for being arbitrary and unfair.
The ideological groundwork of the opposing viewpoints is immediately apparent. Both equate “biological” with “natural” and therefore “true”, and “social” with “artificial” and therefore “arbitrary” and “false”. Both sides reject “prejudice” in favor of “vision”, but politically correct Leftists reject only a fraction of prejudices while the critic calls for throwing all of them away indiscriminately.
As a response, Damore gets slapped with an accusation of drawing upon misogynist prejudice for his own ideas. Likewise, his view of Conservatives is quite superficial. The main Conservative trait is not putting effort into routine work but drawing upon tradition for creative inspiration. The Conservative principle is “innovation through tradition”.
The key common mistake of both Google Leftists and their critic is their vision of stereotypes as a negative distortion of some natural truth. If both sides went for an in-depth reading of Edmund Burke, the “father of Conservatism”, they would learn that the prejudice is a colossal historical experience pressurized into a pre-logical form, a collective consciousness that acts when individual reason fails or a scrupulous analysis is impossible. In such circumstances, following the prejudice is a more sound strategy than contradicting it. Prejudice is shorthand for common sense. Sometimes it oversimplifies things, but still works most of the time. And, most importantly, all attempts to act “in spite of the prejudice” almost invariably end in disaster.
Illustration to the Google scandal. A fox sits gazing at the Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber exposing the ideas of the fired engineer James Damore. Source: Screenshot of Instragram user bluehelix.
However, the modern era allows us to diagnose our own prejudice and rationalize them so we could control them better, as opposed to blind obedience or rejection. Moreover, if the issue of “psychological training” ever becomes relevant in a country as conservative as Russia is, that is the problem we should concentrate on: analyzing the roots of our prejudices and their efficient use.
The same could be argued for gender relations. Damore opposes the Leftist “class struggle of the genders” with a technocratic model of maximizing the profit from each gender’s pros and cons. This functionalism appears to be logical in its own way, but is indeed based on too broad assumptions, claiming that all women are unfit for competition, that all of them like relationships and housekeeping while all men are driven by objects and career. And, as Damore claims biological grounds for his assumptions, all our options boil down to mostly agreeing with him or branding him as a horrible sexist and male chauvinist.
However, the fact that gender roles historically developed based on biology but are, as a whole, a construct of society and culture does not give an excuse to changing or tearing them down, as clamored by Leftists. Quite the contrary: the social, cultural, and historical determinism of these roles gives us a reason to keep them in generally the same form without any coups or revolutions.
First, that tradition is an ever-growing accumulation of experience. Rejecting tradition is tantamount to social default and requires very good reasons to justify. Second, no change of tradition occurs as a result of a “gender revolution”, only its parodic inversion. Putting men into high heels, miniskirts, and bras, fighting against urinals in public WCs only reverses the polarity without creating true equality. The public consciousness still sees the “male” as “superior”, and demoting “masculinity” to “femininity” as a deliberate degradation of the “superior”. No good can come of it, just as no good came out of humiliating wealth and nobility during the Communist revolution in Russia. What’s happening now is not equal rights for women but the triumph of gender Bolshevism.
Damore’s error, therefore, consists in abandoning the domain of the social and the historical to the enemy while limiting the Conservative sphere of influence to the natural, biological domain. However, the single most valuable trait in conservative worldview is defending the achievements of history and not just biological determinism.
The final goal of a Conservative solution to the gender problem should not be limited to a rationalist functionalization of society. It should lead to discovering a social cohesion where adhering to traditional male and female ways and stereotypes (let’s not call them roles – the world is not a stage, and men and women not merely players) would not keep males and females from expressing themselves in other domains, provided they have a genuine calling and talent.
The art of war is not typical of a woman; however, women warriors such as Joan of Arc leave a much greater impact in historical memory. The art of government is seen as mostly male, yet it makes great female rulers, marked not by functional usefulness but true charisma, all the more memorable. The family is the stereotypical domain of the woman, which leads to greater reverence towards fathers that put their heart and soul into their families.
Social cohesion, an integral part of it being the harmony of men and women in the temple of the family, is the ideal to be pursued by our Russian, Orthodox, Conservative society. It is the collapse of the family that made gender relations into such an enormous issue in the West: men and women are no longer joined in a nucleus of solidarity but pitted against one another as members of antagonistic classes. And this struggle, as the Damore Memo has demonstrated, is already stymieing the business of Western corporations. Well, given our current hostile relations, it’s probably for the better.
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It would be a great gift to the world if more of these writers works got translated into English.
He seems like a very interesting writer. I would like to see more of his work.
I like the sacrifice picture. I always thought making humorous video shorts (with a budget) of sacrifices to a diversity god would be powerful satire. But I always pictured an ancient Greek setting with oxen, and those who benefit from diversity drives eating those oxen. That or in an American setting with piles of money being first expropriated at gunpoint and then burnt and maybe inhaled.
this has been bugging me for a long time: I think отнять и поделить is better translated as confiscate and distribute.
Thanks for translations of Russian authors. Russian is a hard language to learn and its grammatical subtleties are often difficult to convey in English.
I think that Martin Luther received a more respectful and impartial hearing at the Imperial Diet of Worms in 1521 than James Damore got from Google.
“Here I stand. I can do no other.”
Dream on it would take a Henry 8 Lenin and Trotsky type revolution to get rid of affirmative action.
If it ever happens, the first thing to do would be to put every judge and their families in some kind of detention center, close down every state and federal courthouse and completely re write the constitution to give all power to the elected executive and legislative branches.
Every woman and minority organization would have to be treated the way Henry treated the monasteries and Lenin and Trotsky treated the Russian counterrevolution.
I’d say only White men with 4 grandparents born in the USA be allowed to vote, but the damage was done between 1964 to 1973 or so by native born American White men.
The feminazis are just fronts for the cannibal capitalists who used them to destroy the private sector unions, lower wages for everyone and create a docile work force eager to work 80 hours a week for 40 hours wages.
I’d love to be the commissar in charge of ending affirmative action and punishing those who created and enforce it.
He does know history well for a polemicist, certainly better than anyone else on AK’s shortlist. Not surprisingly, he’s also the only monarchist among them. But that in itself marks him as detached observer, ineffectual intellectual to put it more harshly, not part of a practical movement or party.
Egor certainly deserves much more publicity than he is getting right now. I wouldn`t agree on the other Egor being the most talented, but he did his own important thing, creating a first real media platform for the russian nationalism.
EXACTLY. The innovation and productivity of a company are disproportionately due to the conservatives who work there, yet perversely the less productive liberals set the ideological tone. Why?
Feminist are federally entitled because of Male oppression
Jewish are federally entitled because of Gentile oppression
Queers are federally entitled because of Straight oppression
Muslims are federally entitled because of Christian oppression
Disabled are federally entitled because of Healthy oppression
Afro-blacks are federally entitled because of White oppression
Latinos are federally entitled because of Gringo oppression
Hispanics are federally entitled because of Gringo oppression
Military Veterans are federally entitled because of Militia oppression
Native Americans are federally entitled because of Paleface oppression
Asians are federally entitled because of Occidental oppression
International Socialist are federally entitled because of anti-Totalitarian oppression
Crony Capitalist are federally entitled because of Honest Businessmen oppression
Zionist are federally entitled because of Anti-Neocon oppression
Diversity people are over 95% of the US voting population and are 100% of the Israeli population.
“but is indeed based on too broad assumptions, claiming that all women are unfit for competition, that all of them like relationships and housekeeping while all men are driven by objects and career.”
Damore doesn’t say that – he explicitly says the opposite:
” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.”
https://diversitymemo.com/
The author of this piece has made the same error as much of the Anglo MSM.
Damore has been a victim of liberal arts people not being able to understand that he is talking about population averages, not individuals.
That’s a fairly eloquent argument right off the bat.
“Damore opposes the Leftist “class struggle of the genders” with a technocratic model of maximizing the profit from each gender’s pros and cons. This functionalism appears to be logical in its own way, but is indeed based on too broad assumptions, claiming that all women are unfit for competition, that all of them like relationships and housekeeping while all men are driven by objects and career.”
He said no such thing.
He said that as a group more women than men fit these stereotypes, percentages undetermined.
I thought the adjective Google chose to use to describe its rejection of his suggestion that there may be some genuine, irreducible core of difference between sexes that is biological in nature.
That adjective was “outmoded.” Not inaccurate, or untrue, or invalid. Outmoded.
Outmoded simply means unfashionable or out of date. It says nothing at all about accuracy or truth.
IOW, Google fired him for saying something that is unfashionable. Unintentional truth.
I think that Martin Luther received a more respectful and impartial hearing at the Imperial Diet of Worms in 1521 than James Damore got from Google.
"Here I stand. I can do no other."Replies: @Logan, @anonymous
Quite right. ML got something resembling due process.
A focused and methodical approach is at least arguably not the key to innovation. Quite the opposite.
Such an approach is, more or less by definition, working within the box. It can locate and exploit all possibilities of the space inside the box.
But true innovation, the kind that changes companies, industries and the world, is often created by those who aren’t really aware a box exists. They envision a new box.
Once that innovation has been made, then the focused and methodical approach can expand on and implement it. Build the box.
Don’t know whether it’s accurate or not, but there’s a stereotype that East Asians are great at exploiting and elaborating on and implementing the inventions of other groups. This would make the EAs classic focused, methodical, inside the box types. But for that same reason not likely to invent world changing ideas.
Had a very interesting experience at a new company 20-some years ago. The CEO had a big thing about psychological testing. Ran me through three days of standardized tests scored by computer, which was state of the art at the time.
I just about broke the computer. I scored waay on the right on certain things (beliefs, values, etc.) and waay on the left for being open to new ideas.
You see, the people who wrote the programs saw those two issues as the same thing. To over-simplify (some) the authors thought the only possible reason why a man might reject the idea of cheating on his wife is that he’s not open to new experiences. That belief in traditional moral values must spring from the same spring as an unwillingness to try a new cuisine.
To my mind, this tells us a lot more about the people who write the programs than it does about those who take the tests.
“and, given that the proletariat vs. bourgeoisie struggle is now irrelevant…”Only to those too blind to see.
“The final goal of a Conservative solution to the gender problem should not be limited to a rationalist functionalization of society. It should lead to discovering a social cohesion where adhering to traditional male and female ways and stereotypes… would not keep males and females from expressing themselves in other domains, provided they have a genuine calling and talent.”
Excellent point. Allow people to do what they are good at. If a woman is good at & enjoys STEM then give her a fair go — but don’t agitate & force women (or anyone) to do things they lack the enthusiasm for (while discriminating against those who actually may have ä genuine calling & talent”.
“It is the collapse of the family that made gender relations into such an enormous issue in the West: men and women are no longer joined in a nucleus of solidarity but pitted against one another as members of antagonistic classes.” A lot of truth here: although what is cause & what is effect is a knotty issue.
Credit to Vox Day:
This type of diversity politics is stupidity to the Nth degree, offering up us white guys as sacrificial lambs for any and all insults, crimes and sins of the last 400 years, real or not.
It’s a shrewd trick by the ones in the USA who really control our nation and I don’t mean Trump or Congress or the CIA.
It’s that ethnic group that controls the FED, the US Treasury, those TBTF banks we get to bail out every 10 years or so, the MSM, where they keep agitating for endless wars that do nothing for America, but do protect Apartheid Israel from a reality check.
They also control Hollywood, pumping out brain-numbing slop (mostly) filled with over-the-top violence, sex and nudity and most of the music business, letting artists–mostly rap–sing indulgent songs about violence, sex, nudity and drugs.
They also have Congress begging to do anything for their Master, while we get told to PO when we ask for help.
And they control the two biggest Internet outlets, Google and FAKEBOOK, both of whom are into being self-appointed cops protecting us feeble ones from allegedly fake stories, but actually shutting down stories that don’t goose step to the glorious future they envision, which doesn’t contain us white guys.
After nearly 16 years of non-stop war, tens of thousands of dead American troops, hundreds of thousands horribly wounded, a monstrous debt and a falling apart infrastructure with good paying jobs disappearing, Americans are rightly PO and want change, but instead outfits like GOOGLE are directing that anger elsewhere and protecting the guilty.
Yep, we can discuss it in what the Libs consider to be our own little conspiracy-theory echo chamber. Sometimes you have to accept that there is evil and then decide what to do about it.
The last sentence is my own main sentiment regarding this affair. It’s something of a pity, but if they want to make each other more a little more miserable and poor, then fine by me.
The Martin Luther analogy is, in my mind, vastly overblown (Google is not the Church, this guy is not some radical rebel but a very mild internal critic, his – honestly somewhat surprising – current level of notoriety is probably as far as he is going to get), but I suppose you have to compare it to something BIG or you don’t have an article.
Maybe the Unz Review should consider offering him a platform from which to write a follow-up by inviting him to submit a blog, or at least to contribute as a commenter on a thread such as this one. It would enable him to take his arguments further and also to submit them to the critical responses of the commenters here - which would be more respectful and less trivial than the ones he has encountered in the Google "community".
It might also attract people to the Unz Review who have not yet benefited from the "interesting, important and controversial" perspectives available here.
I agree. (Button out of work)
Egor Kholmogorov is a very intersting new voice – – thanks – all – for your efforts.
(James Damore is no Martin Luther: Luther is the person in world history, that is written about the most. By putting Damore in such oversized boots, no wonder Kholmogorov after a while finds, that his subject doesn’t walk properly. What Damore tries to do is not, to understand our times, or to reform modern society or some such: He simply takes a position in a debate over role models – and a debate about a pretty Marxist question, if you think about it: Just how many of our character traits have a material (=biological) basis. That task Damore solves clear and well, I think. But more, he doesn’t, – – whereas Luther for example (or Brenz from Schwäbisch Hall & Melanchthon from Bretten) really tried – and (mostly) achieved)).
So called contemporary left has nothing in common with old Marxism/ Leninism. It is artificial led from the top movement to divide population to rule it and fleece more efficiently. In short, it is not left.
Perfect overlap then.
Once a company hits some success and starts growing beyond the start-up of tech geeks they hire lawyers, PR, marketers and leftism gets its foot in the door. Once the old techie core cedes hiring and firing to some human resources department the company starts hiring more leftists and minority puppets. The techies that brought the initial success are likely to be politically inept and uninterested individualist personality types and eventually some clique of leftists realizes that the old guard of the company is a bunch of pushovers when faced with a tight-knit group of political plotters.
They may realize that profits die in the process of converting a successful company to the leftist agenda but it doesn't matter to them - they might even see it as a benefit, after all, the original success of the company was likely due to white men with insufficiently progressive views so they get to both destroy something their enemies created and use the accumulated resources for their agenda.
Once upon a time socialists dreamed that the proletariat would spontaneously rise up to break its chains and overthrow the capitalists, then they got bored of waiting for that and invented the radical vanguard to lead the proletariat into the revolution and then eventually they realized that the proletariat is superfluous and they just need the vanguard.Replies: @Miro23
This is why we need a *highher* power to put these “masters of the universe” in their place. Google is a utility and it should be treated as such. End of story.
This is turning out to be the most incendiary firing since James Comey.
Damore’s essay is an expression of his self-interest in retaining male dominance in software engineering and his anger that his employer is making moves of artificial reverse-discrimination in order to try and reverse the dominance. It is guised in intellectual terms but that’s really all there is to it. His company’s management supports the attempt to shift power from men to women – and are worried Damore or the likes of him will succeed in organizing a male rebellion – which would bring the company down because of its dependence on the male workforce. That’s why they panicked and fired him. And to top it off, Google is run by a foreign feminized beta male – which – being a member of a minority – is unable himself to take on The Powers That Be in America. Because a being a Hindu he’s presupposed to need reeducation himself to fit in American society.
Good article, Anatoly. Thanks for the translation.
Not quite. Cultural Marxists actually seem to reject biology as such, believing that everything is merely cultural. (And of course, just for good measure, they hate our culture, too.) As we all know, they definitely do not reject prejudice; on the contrary, they loudly endorse reverse-prejudice as a ‘necessary corrective’. But the author doesn’t live in the US, so he may not be aware of this.
Prejudice is simply the layman’s empiricism — i.e., learning from experience. When you don’t know the individual in question, you are always going to fall back on assumptions based on known patterns. That’s why prejudice is impossible to get rid of: you would have to get rid of human nature.
I agree with commenter #10 above that this is not a fair characterization of Damore’s argument. Damore spoke of statistical averages. He never said “all men” or “all women”.
So true, and I wonder how you reacted to reading that, Anatoly. This is what Dugin (like Heidegger before him) is getting at: a working, enduring civilization requires more than mere “rationalist functionalization”. It also requires a proper culture, which includes a worthwhile aesthetical and moral system. Maybe you might consider such a thought to be ‘obscurantism’, but it is very hard to imagine a whole civilization premised exclusively on means-reasoning and efficiency lasting very long … or even being a civilization worth living in while it lasts.
Don’t do any more translation. Leave the original in Russian where it belongs, and summarise. Parse the nuggets of gold into bullet points. Two or three should do it.
God help the Russians if this pedestrian essay was written by their best man.
Leftist set the ideological tone because entitled-by-law diversity people (aka leftist) are a organized super-majority of the voting populace in the US and Israel:
Feminist are federally entitled because of Male oppression
Jewish are federally entitled because of Gentile oppression
Queers are federally entitled because of Straight oppression
Muslims are federally entitled because of Christian oppression
Disabled are federally entitled because of Healthy oppression
Afro-blacks are federally entitled because of White oppression
Latinos are federally entitled because of Gringo oppression
Hispanics are federally entitled because of Gringo oppression
Military Veterans are federally entitled because of Militia oppression
Native Americans are federally entitled because of Paleface oppression
Asians are federally entitled because of Occidental oppression
International Socialist are federally entitled because of anti-Totalitarian oppression
Crony Capitalist are federally entitled because of Honest Businessmen oppression
Zionist are federally entitled because of Anti-Neocon oppression
Diversity people are over 95% of the US voting population and are 100% of the Israeli population.
“Instead of churning out new ground-breaking products, opines the critic, Google wastes too much effort on fanning the flames of class struggle.”
In the long run, this is good. Natural selection will ensure that in a few decades Google and many other big Western corporations who follow these lines will fail due to incompetence of their managers and employees, and more pragmatic ones will appear and replace them, usually from more traditional and rational societies in Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Russia) and East Asia (China, South Korea, Singapur).
Martin Luther succeeded only because there was money to be made. Catholic Church had property and money. Princes of German states went after Church property. This is why and how Protestant Revolution succeeded. W/o the princes the Protestant Revolution would fizzled out and grass root movements would be squashed and destroyed like Thomas Muntzer peasant rebellion.
We still have peasants. But we do not have princes who are not part of the Church. So do not raise your hopes.
We know a lot about Martin Luther private life but we know less about James Damore. Is there also the issue of getting laid?
As Logan noted, its not entirely true. Conservatives do indeed tend to rank lower to openness and some other useful traits. As in most things, a balance is probably ideal.
Moderation in all things, save moderation.
Anatoly,
Good read. Good examples to support an emotionally spirited article. Keep writing.
That could be read as just the usual conservative “antiracism”. Now admittedly there certainly should be moral and ethical limits regarding those issues, one should take care not to end up at the same conclusions and deeds as the Nazis…but still, in the present intellectual climate of the West bashing “Conservative naturalism” would be very misguided imo. All this talk of Burkean conservatism, tradition, religion etc. will be totally ineffectual against the progressive juggernaut.
As for that Google memo…is that really important?
It is artificial led from the top movement to divide population to rule it and fleece more efficiently.
Perfect overlap then.
Why did you omit the original title, “Triumph of the Gender Sharikovs”?
We hope to make translations of Kholmogorov’s output consistently available on The Unz Review in the months to come.
Great!
As in most things, a balance is probably ideal.
Moderation in all things, save moderation.
That applied to Martin Luther as well. He was quite mild compared to rebels like Calvin.
Kholmogorov: “First, that tradition is an ever-growing accumulation of experience. Rejecting tradition is tantamount to social default and requires very good reasons to justify.”
I’m born and raised in late 20th century South-Eastern Europe and haven’t seen a single thing that fits this description. Things called traditions in my part of the world are exactly at odds with ever-growing accumulation of experience.
If Russia is preserves such traditions, I can only say it’s a society such as I have never seen and have trouble even imagining.
Kholmogorov: “[T]he prejudice is a colossal historical experience pressurized into a pre-logical form, a collective consciousness that acts when individual reason fails or a scrupulous analysis is impossible. In such circumstances, following the prejudice is a more sound strategy than contradicting it. Prejudice is shorthand for common sense. Sometimes it oversimplifies things, but still works most of the time. And, most importantly, all attempts to act “in spite of the prejudice” almost invariably end in disaster “
Following traditional prejudices was the choice of Nazi Germany toward Slavs.
Good point.
In that they ended up in a war of annihilation, could we say that each was served by their respective prejudices?
What strikes me is how “unrussian”, and for that reason, uneuropean, Mr Kholmogorov’s arguments sound. He’s just repeating the arguments and the jargon of the US alt-right. For example, he unquestioningly accepts the US idea that there is something called “the West”, which consists of the US and the whole of Europe except Russia, where everything is the exactly like in the US. He really needs to devote more time to getting to know his fellow Europeans. We are not very different from Russians but are very different indeed from Americans. As for Fluctuarius Argenteus, the only reason why anyone needs to conceal their real identity is that if we, the readers, knew who he really was, it would diminish, if not destroy, the credibility of the article he is presenting.
He is not an European and modern Europe is increasingly an extension of America, and not something independent.
The notion of the Russian soul has always existed as a contrast to the rest of Europe, and to be fair, most of Europe is assimilated heavily to what their idea of America is. I know of quite a few Russians who would be annoyed if you called them "fellow Europeans."
That’s not saying very much.
I’m born and raised in late 20th century South-Eastern Europe and haven’t seen a single thing that fits this description. Things called traditions in my part of the world are exactly at odds with ever-growing accumulation of experience.
If Russia is preserves such traditions, I can only say it’s a society such as I have never seen and have trouble even imagining.
Kholmogorov: “[T]he prejudice is a colossal historical experience pressurized into a pre-logical form, a collective consciousness that acts when individual reason fails or a scrupulous analysis is impossible. In such circumstances, following the prejudice is a more sound strategy than contradicting it. Prejudice is shorthand for common sense. Sometimes it oversimplifies things, but still works most of the time. And, most importantly, all attempts to act “in spite of the prejudice” almost invariably end in disaster “
Following traditional prejudices was the choice of Nazi Germany toward Slavs.Replies: @iffen
Following traditional prejudices was the choice of Nazi Germany toward Slavs.
Good point.
In that they ended up in a war of annihilation, could we say that each was served by their respective prejudices?
The SJW’s (Maoists) have been taught to hate everything white and/or male including the entire history of white culture. Damore’s supposed conservatism is not the issue. He was punished for bringing it out of the closet. White men who will not bend their knee to Maoists are being hunted in Maoist controlled environs. This article is well reasoned. But there is no reasoning with zombies. Even if they are former friends or family. White men have the same options as soldiers in the field. Fight, flee or fortify. Or surrender. Avert your eyes and shuffle to the back of the bus.
Fellow Europeans? They are not his fellow Europeans.
He is not an European and modern Europe is increasingly an extension of America, and not something independent.
I think that Martin Luther received a more respectful and impartial hearing at the Imperial Diet of Worms in 1521 than James Damore got from Google.
"Here I stand. I can do no other."Replies: @Logan, @anonymous
The Worms “Hier stehe ich” (“Here I stand”) comment may have been a convenient shorthand for a much more long-winded speech, so Luther may not have actually uttered those words. Nevertheless, point taken.
This is not without historical precedent.
The notion of the Russian soul has always existed as a contrast to the rest of Europe, and to be fair, most of Europe is assimilated heavily to what their idea of America is. I know of quite a few Russians who would be annoyed if you called them “fellow Europeans.”
This guy is ok, but I still prefer the ‘obscurantism’ of Dugin.
There is little point arguing from a ‘common sense’ stance against the leftists.
This is war, not an argument.
Liberalism must be destroyed.
He even denies the concept of race.
The Alt Right's infatuation with him is utterly bizarre.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov, @ussr andy
Seeing Orthodoxy and Martin Luther mentioned in the same place reminded me of the amusing history of early Lutheran contacts with the eastern Church:
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/aftoday/early_lutheran_orthodox_dialog_after_the_reformation
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/aftoday/early_lutheran_orthodox_dialog_after_the_reformation
Long story short, the western reformers were too argumentative and lawyerly for the Patriarch of Constantinople to take. He essentially said “please stop writing to me”.
Basically the Left is in denial of science … DNA.
So in your world Bolsheviks didn’t divide the population and loot the country?
Clearly Google should acquire the status of a public utility – like the Ma Bell telephone system was regulated in the 1950’s.
Google is too powerful – it should not have the cultural monopoly power it has over our society.
“The people” and their mass interests are preeminent in the hierarchy things. Like it or not – Google is a product of our culture – therefor our culture has a valid claim on its actions.
It comes down too private ownership vs. public interest. As a pure libertarian I do not like it – but as a realist, the mass interests of the people counts.
The “golden mean” must win out. A compromise must be reached.
Google’s actions must be regulated.
Peace — Art
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/27/steve-bannon-wants-facebook-and-google-regulated-like-utilities/
STEVE BANNON WANTS FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE REGULATED LIKE UTILITIES
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/27/steve-bannon-wants-facebook-and-google-regulated-like-utilities/
I’ve abandoned Google and gone over to Duckduckgo. They seem just as good.
This contemporary Leftist strategy is pretty Lenin-like. It’s not a top down strategy, it’s vanguardist takeover. These corporations that promote leftism don’t usually start off that way, they get taken over, and tech companies have proven extremely vulnerable to this.
Once a company hits some success and starts growing beyond the start-up of tech geeks they hire lawyers, PR, marketers and leftism gets its foot in the door. Once the old techie core cedes hiring and firing to some human resources department the company starts hiring more leftists and minority puppets. The techies that brought the initial success are likely to be politically inept and uninterested individualist personality types and eventually some clique of leftists realizes that the old guard of the company is a bunch of pushovers when faced with a tight-knit group of political plotters.
They may realize that profits die in the process of converting a successful company to the leftist agenda but it doesn’t matter to them – they might even see it as a benefit, after all, the original success of the company was likely due to white men with insufficiently progressive views so they get to both destroy something their enemies created and use the accumulated resources for their agenda.
Once upon a time socialists dreamed that the proletariat would spontaneously rise up to break its chains and overthrow the capitalists, then they got bored of waiting for that and invented the radical vanguard to lead the proletariat into the revolution and then eventually they realized that the proletariat is superfluous and they just need the vanguard.
The English title was suggested by the author himself, likewise, he didn’t object to my removal of the Sharikov allusion in the text proper. Our joint opinion is that it would have been lost on 99% of readers and taken unnecessary effort to explain in a footnote.
That’s a fair comment, and I imagine that most people commenting here would be aware of Damore’s limitations as a thinker. But what he wrote, and the context in which he published it, has attracted that “surprising notoriety”: he appears to have sparked different kinds of reaction in different kinds of people and inspired levels of debate beyond the limitations of his thought.
Maybe the Unz Review should consider offering him a platform from which to write a follow-up by inviting him to submit a blog, or at least to contribute as a commenter on a thread such as this one. It would enable him to take his arguments further and also to submit them to the critical responses of the commenters here – which would be more respectful and less trivial than the ones he has encountered in the Google “community”.
It might also attract people to the Unz Review who have not yet benefited from the “interesting, important and controversial” perspectives available here.
What is often forgotten is that whenever the term “intellectual” is used it must be the measure of correctness (supported by empirical evidence, both prior and after) not just the measure of the knowledge (historic, economic, military, scientific etc.) base one operates in order to sound “intellectual” and “sophisticated”. This principle is long gone from Western “humanities” field and it goes both ways: for so called progressives and so called “conservatives”. I liked you using the term polemicist.
Ooookey Dookey! And how about other two fundamental signs of impending revolution? I agree with vanguard argument, after all school in Longjumeau was doing just that–preparing the vanguard. But what about economics of revolution? What about political crisis?
Why you think United States Googlemaster General would be more friendly to free speech than current Google leadership?
The exstreams of Google Today and United States Googlemaster General will not work for us – there can be something in between. A golden mean can be reached.
The best situation would be for Googles users, to each set the policy for themselves.
This is doable. They get to choose the what algorithms they want and the viewing policy they want.
Googlemaster General must see that ALL information is collected and made available to users.
Peace --- Art
Darin,
The exstreams of Google Today and United States Googlemaster General will not work for us – there can be something in between. A golden mean can be reached.
The best situation would be for Googles users, to each set the policy for themselves.
This is doable. They get to choose the what algorithms they want and the viewing policy they want.
Googlemaster General must see that ALL information is collected and made available to users.
Peace — Art
“Polity” should be “policy”. “Diving” should be “dividing”.
I stopped noticing after that.
Give the new Russian translator a break. Read his copy before posting it.
If men and women are in fact NOT different by nature, then what’s the business advantage in hiring more women? What do they bring to the table that men do not?
This same observation applies to all “diversity” hiring. If one denies the differences among groups, there can be no business justification for diversity – aside, that is, from Lefty boycotts.
Once a company hits some success and starts growing beyond the start-up of tech geeks they hire lawyers, PR, marketers and leftism gets its foot in the door. Once the old techie core cedes hiring and firing to some human resources department the company starts hiring more leftists and minority puppets. The techies that brought the initial success are likely to be politically inept and uninterested individualist personality types and eventually some clique of leftists realizes that the old guard of the company is a bunch of pushovers when faced with a tight-knit group of political plotters.
They may realize that profits die in the process of converting a successful company to the leftist agenda but it doesn't matter to them - they might even see it as a benefit, after all, the original success of the company was likely due to white men with insufficiently progressive views so they get to both destroy something their enemies created and use the accumulated resources for their agenda.
Once upon a time socialists dreamed that the proletariat would spontaneously rise up to break its chains and overthrow the capitalists, then they got bored of waiting for that and invented the radical vanguard to lead the proletariat into the revolution and then eventually they realized that the proletariat is superfluous and they just need the vanguard.Replies: @Miro23
This did come out of the 19th Century with awful factory conditions, decadent upper classes (pre WWI) and their unexpected collapse along with the whole Belle Époque in WW1.
There was plenty of fuel for socialism with 1) a fashionable new intellectual left 2) political fluidity 3) politically bankrupt Ancien Regimes.
In my opinion fashionable radical vanguards saw the possibility of harnessing these forces to take power – some of them acting idealistically – some not. The key point was that Ancien Regimes were weakened by WW1, with a good example being Russia with its military failures and its decadent and ineffectual Czarist government.
In these unusual circumstances, the self appointed Bolshevik Radical Vanguard could exploit the disaffection of Russian soldiers in Petrograd and Lenin could unilaterally issued General Order Nº1 as the self appointed head of the Council of Soldiers and Workingmen’s Deputies (ignoring the Provisional Government) with all military units ordered to remove their existing officers and elect new ones. This was coupled with promises to stop the war and give all peasant soldiers their own private farms, which predictably went down very well and wrecked army discipline.
Source: “Russia from the American Embassy” by David Rowland Francis, U.S. ambassador to Russia for 5 years from March 1916 to March 1921. https://www.amazon.com/Russia-American-Embassy-April-1916-November/dp/B00B6ZE8NI/ref=cm_cr-mr-title
Francis also went on to say, “The Bolshevik leaders here, most of whom are Jews and 90% of whom are returned exiles, care little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution.”
The Bolsheviks of course used the arms against the Provisional Government, and when the elections to the Constituent Assembly eventually came at the end of November 1917, they filled the assembly hall with soldiers and rejected the result of the vote (Social Revolutionaries 20,893,743, Bolsheviks 9,023,963 out of 36,257,960 votes cast). The Bolsheviks declared that Constitutional Democrats were to be arrested and Lenin established his dictatorship.
The Bolsheviks didn’t spare the proletariat. All dissent was crushed and whole social “classes” were transported and mass murdered on a scale far exceeding anything the Germans did in WW2.
http://polit.ru/article/2007/12/11/repressii/
“…In fact, the number of prisoners for political reasons (for “counterrevolutionary crimes”) in the USSR in the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. after 33 years was about 3.8 million people… during this period ( 1921 to 1954 ) has been convicted 3 777 380 people, including to capital punishment – 642 980, to the contents in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below – 2 369 220, into exile and expulsion – 765 180 people“.Replies: @Sergey Krieger
Very good, although I wish people would stop using the ideologically loaded term “gender” instead of “sex.” Conservatives should use traditional language if possible, especially when backed scientifically in this case by chromosomal evidence. Recall Solzhenitsyn’s observations on the totalitarian control of language to further their agenda.
The Bolsheviks disgusting, but this statement (“on a scale far exceeding anything the Germans did in WW2”) is an obvious lie
http://polit.ru/article/2007/12/11/repressii/
“…In fact, the number of prisoners for political reasons (for “counterrevolutionary crimes”) in the USSR in the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. after 33 years was about 3.8 million people… during this period ( 1921 to 1954 ) has been convicted 3 777 380 people, including to capital punishment – 642 980, to the contents in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below – 2 369 220, into exile and expulsion – 765 180 people“.
Agreed.
Anatoly, thanks for introducing some Russian writers. My experience of reading outsiders who write about America is that they sometimes offer startling viewpoints that are helpful to those of us “in-country” who are too close to the subject matter.
BTW-RT used to have, or maybe still has, an American-born presenter-opinionizer, a guy from Cleveland, Ohio. I think he’s an ex-pat in Russia now, and he used to offer folksy, sharply worded critiques of life in the States. I couldn’t find his name, but he might be worth looking up to see if he wants to contribute.
You are the one that lives in echo chamber. Bolsheviks looted the country. It is the dumbest comment I have ever heard. You cannot have what Soviet people used to have in looted country . Bolsheviks actually saved and built the country and current regime has been living from what was built by Commies ever since. I just pointed that so called left is not left. But you asked for this. You do not even mention great theft and looting of Russia by current elites which reveals who you are amptly.
So you can take his commentary on Russia with a grain of salt.Replies: @AP
Russia was looted in the 1990s by...the flower of Soviet society, the Soviet elite and their children.Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Sergey Krieger, @Hector_St_Clare, @utu
http://polit.ru/article/2007/12/11/repressii/
“…In fact, the number of prisoners for political reasons (for “counterrevolutionary crimes”) in the USSR in the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. after 33 years was about 3.8 million people… during this period ( 1921 to 1954 ) has been convicted 3 777 380 people, including to capital punishment – 642 980, to the contents in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below – 2 369 220, into exile and expulsion – 765 180 people“.Replies: @Sergey Krieger
Exactly. I am tired of all this BS. We lived free lives and I have never seen armed milicioner / police officer outside of movies. Be the state clearly cared about majority that is until the top got all rotten. I’m hoping, right to vote is not sign of freedom… Isn,’ t it obvious by now?
Damore doesn’t seem too conservative to me. If he were a conservative, he would be arguing against Google’s policies on the basis of cultural tradition. No, Damore is simply a scientist arguing on the basis of science. Nothing wrong with that, but it isn’t conservatism.
Yes, it’s funny, isn’t it. Liberals loudly proclaim their allegiance to evolution, but only to attack Christianity. But as soon as the concept of evolution upsets their non-scientific theories of ‘gender fluidity’ and ‘racial equality’, they close their eyes, cover their ears, and stomp their little feet.
Yes, I’ve been using DuckDuckGo.com for over four years now, and no regrets. No filter bubbles either!
I agree. The term ‘gender’ is for Latin nouns, not living beings.
In case you haven’t ‘met’ him already, AP is a Maidan-apologist from Western Ukraine. He apparently has no problem with the oligarchs in Kiev who are currently looting his country, and never tires of giving us all glowing reports of the fabulous economic growth that is now occurring there (at least according to Ukrstat).
So you can take his commentary on Russia with a grain of salt.
“He is a realist on Soviet achievements, crimes, and lost opportunities, foregoing both the Soviet nostalgia of Prokhanov, the kneejerk Sovietophobia of Prosvirnin, and the unhinged conspiracy theories of Galkovsky. He is a normal, traditional Orthodox Christian, in contrast to the “atheism plus” of Prosvirnin, the mystical obscurantism of Duginism, and the esoteric experiments of Krylov. He has time neither for the college libertarianism of Sputnik i Pogrom hipster nationalism, nor the angry “confiscate and divide” rhetoric of the National Bolsheviks”
Dammit. I miss the “confiscate and divide” stuff.
How are the NatBolos doing these days?
I was recently at a beautiful museum in the USA full of classic Russian art that was looted by Bolsheviks and sold for cheap to foreigners.
You had a country of mostly Europeans, poorer than all of the non-commie European ones. You did however manage to sink some places upon whom you imposed your system, such as Czechia or eastern Germany, down closer to your level. Good job.
So called left is not left, as 21st century is not early 20th.
“And in America they persecute blacks.” You are too predictable.
Russia was looted in the 1990s by…the flower of Soviet society, the Soviet elite and their children.
LOL, I vaguely remember this as an old joke. But it's true the rhetoric of some USSR orphans and nostalgists here at unz.com sometimes resembles this joke.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov
So you can take his commentary on Russia with a grain of salt.Replies: @AP
Thanks for proving your ignorance yet again.
Russia was looted in the 1990s by...the flower of Soviet society, the Soviet elite and their children.Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Sergey Krieger, @Hector_St_Clare, @utu
Just curious, what museum in the US did you visit that included lots of Russian classic art? Was it perhaps ‘the Museum of Russian Art’ in Minneapolis?
Russia was looted in the 1990s by...the flower of Soviet society, the Soviet elite and their children.Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Sergey Krieger, @Hector_St_Clare, @utu
Even if it was true, having industry to build 100000 + tanks and other weapons was far more important considering what happened. Did you get receipts for those pieces of art? Might have been looted by whites. Also, you cannot build the country by just selling some art. You say USSR was poorer than other European states. Do you really have a clue how much it costs in the West to pay for everything Soviet people were having as a right? Free education all level and better than in the west, kindergartens $1500 per month here, free medicine and damn good at that, free accommodation, annual month paid vacation, guaranteed job and retirement pay. You forget about peace of mind that came with all above mentioned. You know, good sleep without chemistry and all. There is always bad people and unfortunately their time came. However, they were as much real Communists as I am ballerina.anyway, not a pop from you about this…
In the grand scheme of things I suppose it's understandable in the context of a civil war, and basically irrelevant set against their other crimes, but it happened.Free education throughout school is standard in the West (and university too outside the Anglosphere). It wasn't worse than in the West, at least in the non-ideological technical subjects, but you'd have a hard case to make in arguing it was significantly better. The shares of Nobel, Fields, etc. winners paint a different story.
Soviet healthcare was okay for basics, but extremely bad for any complicated ailment (if you did not belong to the Soviet elites).
In practice, unemployment is not an issue for any minimally competent and conscientious worker in countries with reasonable labor regulations.Replies: @iffen, @Andrei Martyanov, @AP, @Andrei Martyanov, @utu
Google wants to be
Ein Land
Ein Volk
Ein Führer
https://www.hillwoodmuseum.org/russian-collection
http://tmora.org/
I’d been in western Europe and visited the USSR in 1990. USSR was much poorer than any western European country, the USA or Canada. It wasn’t a third world country, but that’s a very low bar.
Materially speaking Soviet middle class lived liked poor Americans on medicaid, with free public housing, free need-based tuition, etc. One difference – unlike residents of American housing projects, Soviets could afford free vacations to sub-Western resorts, I’ll give you that. But then middle class Soviets drove worse (or no) cars, and had worse TVs and radios then even poor Americans. There were some Soviet families even living in communal apartments.
Obviously culturally it was a different story from poor Americans. But your argument is with respect to material conditions. By that measure – in the end, performance of the USSR was pathetic for a high IQ country of white people.
Yeltsin who presided over the looting spree of the 1990s was elected as a full member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1981. As for the looters – Berezovsky was head of a department in the Institute of Control Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Khodorkovsky was deputy head of Komsomol (the Communist Youth League) at his university, the D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia. Gaidar was from a Soviet elite family and in the 1980s an editor of the CPSU ideological journal Communist. Potanin, another one from an elite commie family, attended the faculty of the International economic relations at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), which groomed students for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Upon graduating MGIMO in 1983, he followed in his father’s footsteps and went to work for the FTO “Soyuzpromexport” with the Ministry of Foreign trade of the Soviet Union. Etc. Etc.
Sure, none of these members of the Soviet elite, the top human products of the Soviet system – were “real Communists.”
Russia was looted in the 1990s by...the flower of Soviet society, the Soviet elite and their children.Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Sergey Krieger, @Hector_St_Clare, @utu
East Germany was certainly not ‘dragged down to Soviet level’. It had a higher GDP/capita growth rate than the Federal Republic every decade between 1950 and 1989, was always much richer than the soviet union and by 1989 was the 19th highest HDI country in the world. They advanced from 40% of West Germany GDP in 1950 to 55-57% of West German GDP in 1989.
That said, yes the Soviets did massively strip the country of assets between 1945-1950, and that probably did set it back for the entire course of its existence as a state, so its correct to say they dragged it down somewhat. The way you present the situation is exaggerated and misleading however. Central planning actually worked reasonably well in East Germany although probably not as well as a mixed planning/market economy would have worked.
It's true that quite a few East Germans later became somewhat nostalgic for the GDR era, given how badly handled the transition was and the mass unemployment of the 1990s which blighted the lives of millions of East Germans (somewhat similar in some ways to events in Russia, though obviously the situation there was much worse and more traumatic). But one shouldn't have too rosy a view of the GDR or other Eastern bloc states because of the manifest defects of today's West.Replies: @Darin
Unfortunately Angus Maddison doesn't have data for the separate Germanys, but East Germany was at less than 40% of West Germany around 1990 according to the Federal Interior Ministry.
http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/290-width/images/print-edition/20120331_EUC844.png
Also as you yourself point out East Germany would have been more impacted by reparations to the USSR.Replies: @Hector_St_Clare
The planned economy worked there pretty good. It took Germans to show it. They had problems with energy supplies when USSR reduced export to Germany and had to start to use very inefficient and very polluting brown coal.
Probably Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the next in terms of socialist economy success in 1970's. Poland was always very uneven and unequal country where plan economy did not work and where private sector still existed with lots of corruption and criminal shenanigans that let some people got rich also in the state apparatus.Replies: @Hector_St_Clare
Living standards in East Germany in the 1980s were really pretty meh compared to the west though. Most private households didn’t even own a telephone, and you had to wait years to get one of those crappy Trabant cars. Housing also wasn’t great from what I’ve heard. And that’s just the material conditions, the political repression and the socially corrosive effects of the state maintaining a vast network of informers obviously weren’t conducive to general wellbeing either.
It’s true that quite a few East Germans later became somewhat nostalgic for the GDR era, given how badly handled the transition was and the mass unemployment of the 1990s which blighted the lives of millions of East Germans (somewhat similar in some ways to events in Russia, though obviously the situation there was much worse and more traumatic). But one shouldn’t have too rosy a view of the GDR or other Eastern bloc states because of the manifest defects of today’s West.
In Czechoslovakia, next door country with comparable size population, the secret police watched about 60,000 people (i.e. VIP's and active dissidents), and it lasted about week longer than DDR.
This doesn’t sound right to me.
Unfortunately Angus Maddison doesn’t have data for the separate Germanys, but East Germany was at less than 40% of West Germany around 1990 according to the Federal Interior Ministry.
Also as you yourself point out East Germany would have been more impacted by reparations to the USSR.
The "55-57% of west german GDP/capita by 1989" numbers I'm using (which are the also the ones used by the Wikipedia on the GDR) come from the former East German statistician Gerhard Heske in a 2009 study. The actual study is in German so I can't read it (maybe German Reader might be interested), but his numbers have been cited by a bunch of other papers I found which were quite critical of the GDR but didn't really take issue with his numbers. The reason people disagree about the size of the GDR economy in 1989 is, I think, because they weren't a market economy and so there was no way of assigning market values to the products they produced, other than by making 'quality adjustments' which are going to somewhat of a judgment call. Heske claims his methodology uses quality adjustments that are fairly standard, though.
Your series also starts in 1991 rather than 1989. It's worth pointing out that this fairly balanced treatment of German reunification by a Polish author both cites Heske's numbers for the 1989 GDP and also claims that in 1990 the East German economy was hit by severe recession as a result of excessively fast free market reforms and collapse of the central planning mechanism, and that GDP shrank "by at least 20% compared to the previous year." Of course an assessment of the East German economy in 1991 will look worse than it did in 1989, so that accounts for part though not all of the discrepancy.
https://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/prace_35_en_0.pdf
The Bolsheviks financed a huge part of their war efforts off the proceeds of Tsarist gold and cultural (art) reserves until they ran out around 1922.
In the grand scheme of things I suppose it’s understandable in the context of a civil war, and basically irrelevant set against their other crimes, but it happened.
Free education throughout school is standard in the West (and university too outside the Anglosphere). It wasn’t worse than in the West, at least in the non-ideological technical subjects, but you’d have a hard case to make in arguing it was significantly better. The shares of Nobel, Fields, etc. winners paint a different story.
Soviet healthcare was okay for basics, but extremely bad for any complicated ailment (if you did not belong to the Soviet elites).
In practice, unemployment is not an issue for any minimally competent and conscientious worker in countries with reasonable labor regulations.
The white working class in the US did not become incompetent and un-conscientious in one generation. Employment at less than a living wage is not "employment."Replies: @Andrei Martyanov
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yIpW5BAQdSg/V7-AEA1H8HI/AAAAAAAAAiE/djQ8BHM4Zss5P7vm81DeWZFjy6b7UENwACLcB/s1600/9th%2BGrade.jpgYep, neither Korolyov, nor others were awarded Nobel Prize (of course, Krush is to blame) bit when one looks at an actual fundamental and applied science Soviet contribution, one has to really start thinking. Somehow Russians produce a lot of state of the art technology without getting all those awards.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
Could you recommend a reading material on the subject? Thanks.Replies: @German_reader, @Darin, @Anatoly Karlin
Looks interesting. The one in Minneapolis is a 3 floor renovated church devoted to Russian art. Lots of Soviet Realism on display and occasional films too. They even had an exhibition of Aleksander Bulavitsky’s art on display a couple of years ago, a local Ukrainian emigre that I’ve mentioned to you before (his work can be seen in Kyiv too). Several years back they had an impressive collection of religious art including icons and frescoes from as far back as the 14th century, many pieces from the northeast part of Russia. A philalately exhibit of Russian stamps that I once saw there was quite impressive too. If you’re in the area, I recommend that you give it a visit. A nice gift shop too.
http://tmora.org/
It's a shrewd trick by the ones in the USA who really control our nation and I don't mean Trump or Congress or the CIA.
It's that ethnic group that controls the FED, the US Treasury, those TBTF banks we get to bail out every 10 years or so, the MSM, where they keep agitating for endless wars that do nothing for America, but do protect Apartheid Israel from a reality check.
They also control Hollywood, pumping out brain-numbing slop (mostly) filled with over-the-top violence, sex and nudity and most of the music business, letting artists--mostly rap--sing indulgent songs about violence, sex, nudity and drugs.
They also have Congress begging to do anything for their Master, while we get told to PO when we ask for help.
And they control the two biggest Internet outlets, Google and FAKEBOOK, both of whom are into being self-appointed cops protecting us feeble ones from allegedly fake stories, but actually shutting down stories that don't goose step to the glorious future they envision, which doesn't contain us white guys.
After nearly 16 years of non-stop war, tens of thousands of dead American troops, hundreds of thousands horribly wounded, a monstrous debt and a falling apart infrastructure with good paying jobs disappearing, Americans are rightly PO and want change, but instead outfits like GOOGLE are directing that anger elsewhere and protecting the guilty.Replies: @Fidelios Automata
Agreed. Here’s a place where the original author was wrong. The class struggle isn’t over. Income inequality is bigger than it’s ever been. Identity politics are a misdirection used by elites like Hitlery to divide us so we don’t realize who the _real_ enemy is.
In the grand scheme of things I suppose it's understandable in the context of a civil war, and basically irrelevant set against their other crimes, but it happened.Free education throughout school is standard in the West (and university too outside the Anglosphere). It wasn't worse than in the West, at least in the non-ideological technical subjects, but you'd have a hard case to make in arguing it was significantly better. The shares of Nobel, Fields, etc. winners paint a different story.
Soviet healthcare was okay for basics, but extremely bad for any complicated ailment (if you did not belong to the Soviet elites).
In practice, unemployment is not an issue for any minimally competent and conscientious worker in countries with reasonable labor regulations.Replies: @iffen, @Andrei Martyanov, @AP, @Andrei Martyanov, @utu
unemployment is not an issue for any minimally competent and conscientious worker in countries with reasonable labor regulations.
The white working class in the US did not become incompetent and un-conscientious in one generation. Employment at less than a living wage is not “employment.”
In the grand scheme of things I suppose it's understandable in the context of a civil war, and basically irrelevant set against their other crimes, but it happened.Free education throughout school is standard in the West (and university too outside the Anglosphere). It wasn't worse than in the West, at least in the non-ideological technical subjects, but you'd have a hard case to make in arguing it was significantly better. The shares of Nobel, Fields, etc. winners paint a different story.
Soviet healthcare was okay for basics, but extremely bad for any complicated ailment (if you did not belong to the Soviet elites).
In practice, unemployment is not an issue for any minimally competent and conscientious worker in countries with reasonable labor regulations.Replies: @iffen, @Andrei Martyanov, @AP, @Andrei Martyanov, @utu
Last time I was in Sate Hermitage (among other places) I didn’t notice any signs of Bolsheviks “running out” of Tsarist “cultural (art) reserves”. If my Alzheimer’s doesn’t fail me–last time I checked Hermitage can give Louvre (not to speak of Prado and other lesser galleries and museums) a run for its money. How could this be?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_sale_of_Hermitage_paintings
The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums. Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great. About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists. Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Otherwise -
Apparently Russian treasures could be bought in American department stores in the 1930s:
https://www.hillwoodmuseum.org/russian-collection
From the 1920s, the Soviet Union had been selling off many of the art treasures it had confiscated from the church, the imperial family, and the aristocracy in an effort to fund the new government’s industrialization plan. American businessman Armand Hammer and his brother Victor acquired enormous numbers of these Russian treasures and, in the early 1930s, began to sell them in American department stores and later in their New York gallery.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov, @Darin
The white working class in the US did not become incompetent and un-conscientious in one generation. Employment at less than a living wage is not "employment."Replies: @Andrei Martyanov
True, this “living wage” issue has become now America’s chronic illness. Once one begins to look at the real estate dynamics, even for a good earners living in such places as Seattle, Portland (not to speak of L.A. or SF) becomes simply not affordable, forget buying anything decent. Hell, many rents are higher than actual mortgages, however insane they already are.
In the grand scheme of things I suppose it's understandable in the context of a civil war, and basically irrelevant set against their other crimes, but it happened.Free education throughout school is standard in the West (and university too outside the Anglosphere). It wasn't worse than in the West, at least in the non-ideological technical subjects, but you'd have a hard case to make in arguing it was significantly better. The shares of Nobel, Fields, etc. winners paint a different story.
Soviet healthcare was okay for basics, but extremely bad for any complicated ailment (if you did not belong to the Soviet elites).
In practice, unemployment is not an issue for any minimally competent and conscientious worker in countries with reasonable labor regulations.Replies: @iffen, @Andrei Martyanov, @AP, @Andrei Martyanov, @utu
Looting one’s own country’s cultural treasures to finance a violent overthrow. Sounds familiar. I suspect that if some of these Commie apologists had been born as Sunni Arabs rather than Russians, they would be defending ISIS.
Yes, they did not run out. But the looting was massive, even within the Hermitage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_sale_of_Hermitage_paintings
The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums. Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great. About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists. Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Otherwise –
Apparently Russian treasures could be bought in American department stores in the 1930s:
https://www.hillwoodmuseum.org/russian-collection
From the 1920s, the Soviet Union had been selling off many of the art treasures it had confiscated from the church, the imperial family, and the aristocracy in an effort to fund the new government’s industrialization plan. American businessman Armand Hammer and his brother Victor acquired enormous numbers of these Russian treasures and, in the early 1930s, began to sell them in American department stores and later in their New York gallery.
If you want to talk about "heritage", you might have point about icons, but what makes Rembrandt and Titian "Russian heritage"? If works of art belong to country where they were created, then all Rembrandts of the world shall be returned to Netherlands. If works of art belong to all mankind, what difference it makes whether Rembrandt painting is in museum in Petersburg or Washington?Replies: @DNC
In the grand scheme of things I suppose it's understandable in the context of a civil war, and basically irrelevant set against their other crimes, but it happened.Free education throughout school is standard in the West (and university too outside the Anglosphere). It wasn't worse than in the West, at least in the non-ideological technical subjects, but you'd have a hard case to make in arguing it was significantly better. The shares of Nobel, Fields, etc. winners paint a different story.
Soviet healthcare was okay for basics, but extremely bad for any complicated ailment (if you did not belong to the Soviet elites).
In practice, unemployment is not an issue for any minimally competent and conscientious worker in countries with reasonable labor regulations.Replies: @iffen, @Andrei Martyanov, @AP, @Andrei Martyanov, @utu
Want to try some Kholmogorov’s Math And The Beginning Of Analysis for the 10th Grade? Here is the 9th Grade Algebra (Geometry does the same but in purely geometric framework) with basic trigonometric identities, as an example. Do you need me to present to you any US math textbook for 9th grade?
Yep, neither Korolyov, nor others were awarded Nobel Prize (of course, Krush is to blame) bit when one looks at an actual fundamental and applied science Soviet contribution, one has to really start thinking. Somehow Russians produce a lot of state of the art technology without getting all those awards.
Wedged between Taiwan and Belgium. Pretty sad.
Russia is legitimately strong in a few specific spheres like nuclear power and military technology. In many other spheres (e.g. pretty much the entirety of biotech) it is a minnow.Replies: @inertial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_sale_of_Hermitage_paintings
The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums. Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great. About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists. Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Otherwise -
Apparently Russian treasures could be bought in American department stores in the 1930s:
https://www.hillwoodmuseum.org/russian-collection
From the 1920s, the Soviet Union had been selling off many of the art treasures it had confiscated from the church, the imperial family, and the aristocracy in an effort to fund the new government’s industrialization plan. American businessman Armand Hammer and his brother Victor acquired enormous numbers of these Russian treasures and, in the early 1930s, began to sell them in American department stores and later in their New York gallery.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov, @Darin
But wasn’t it the point? Listen, I get it–you have some accounts to settle with Soviet Union, hey fine with me, but please do not try to convince me about all ills and good which USSR was in 1960s through 1980s–I lived there and I experienced a lot of it on very many levels. Including some about which I am still reluctant to talk much about. I do not treat seriously most of Russian “nationalist” so called “thinkers”–most of them still don’t understand why people such as Prosvirnin or said Kholmogorov have very bleak political prospects in Russia. The reason being for them not knowing or realistically experiencing the Soviet period. Said Kholmogorov, despite being born in 1975, missed, as an adult, realities of Soviet period. Russia was, is and will remain this very “left”–not in LGBTQXYZ “western” meaning–nation and there are reasons for that, which are beyond the grasp of people who do not understand nor can feel continuity (preemstvennost’) of the Russian history.Alexandr Zinovyev–a real thinker of the scale which dwarfs any Kholmogorovs or Solzhentsyns correctly assessed inevitable, both external and internal, Sovietization of Russia, on a completely new foundation. In fact, it is happening as I type this–by 2017 by different data from 70 to 75% of Russia’s strategic industries were returned under the control of Russian State. Overwhelming majority of Russian people, including, what is most inspiring, many youngsters are loving it. Just one example.
So you are a socialist at heart?
(Not in the bad commie sense.)Replies: @Andrei Martyanov
Unfortunately Angus Maddison doesn't have data for the separate Germanys, but East Germany was at less than 40% of West Germany around 1990 according to the Federal Interior Ministry.
http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/290-width/images/print-edition/20120331_EUC844.png
Also as you yourself point out East Germany would have been more impacted by reparations to the USSR.Replies: @Hector_St_Clare
Anatoly,
The “55-57% of west german GDP/capita by 1989” numbers I’m using (which are the also the ones used by the Wikipedia on the GDR) come from the former East German statistician Gerhard Heske in a 2009 study. The actual study is in German so I can’t read it (maybe German Reader might be interested), but his numbers have been cited by a bunch of other papers I found which were quite critical of the GDR but didn’t really take issue with his numbers. The reason people disagree about the size of the GDR economy in 1989 is, I think, because they weren’t a market economy and so there was no way of assigning market values to the products they produced, other than by making ‘quality adjustments’ which are going to somewhat of a judgment call. Heske claims his methodology uses quality adjustments that are fairly standard, though.
Your series also starts in 1991 rather than 1989. It’s worth pointing out that this fairly balanced treatment of German reunification by a Polish author both cites Heske’s numbers for the 1989 GDP and also claims that in 1990 the East German economy was hit by severe recession as a result of excessively fast free market reforms and collapse of the central planning mechanism, and that GDP shrank “by at least 20% compared to the previous year.” Of course an assessment of the East German economy in 1991 will look worse than it did in 1989, so that accounts for part though not all of the discrepancy.
https://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/prace_35_en_0.pdf
That being said, “(slightly) faster GDP growth rate than West Germany” isn’t as impressive as it sounds since they were starting from a much lower base: an economy 40% as rich per capita as West Germany, with an industrial base and educated/skilled workforce, *should* be growing much faster, not slightly faster.
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yIpW5BAQdSg/V7-AEA1H8HI/AAAAAAAAAiE/djQ8BHM4Zss5P7vm81DeWZFjy6b7UENwACLcB/s1600/9th%2BGrade.jpgYep, neither Korolyov, nor others were awarded Nobel Prize (of course, Krush is to blame) bit when one looks at an actual fundamental and applied science Soviet contribution, one has to really start thinking. Somehow Russians produce a lot of state of the art technology without getting all those awards.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
We’ve been through this. 🙂
It’s not like there aren’t any programs for especially gifted US schoolchildren.
Not that much, and their share is declining: https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2016/country/all
Wedged between Taiwan and Belgium. Pretty sad.
Russia is legitimately strong in a few specific spheres like nuclear power and military technology. In many other spheres (e.g. pretty much the entirety of biotech) it is a minnow.
What percentage of schoolchildren could solve problems like that? Great majority, after some training. They are not that hard.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov
what is most inspiring
So you are a socialist at heart?
(Not in the bad commie sense.)
In the grand scheme of things I suppose it's understandable in the context of a civil war, and basically irrelevant set against their other crimes, but it happened.Free education throughout school is standard in the West (and university too outside the Anglosphere). It wasn't worse than in the West, at least in the non-ideological technical subjects, but you'd have a hard case to make in arguing it was significantly better. The shares of Nobel, Fields, etc. winners paint a different story.
Soviet healthcare was okay for basics, but extremely bad for any complicated ailment (if you did not belong to the Soviet elites).
In practice, unemployment is not an issue for any minimally competent and conscientious worker in countries with reasonable labor regulations.Replies: @iffen, @Andrei Martyanov, @AP, @Andrei Martyanov, @utu
The Bolsheviks financed a huge part of their war efforts off the proceeds of Tsarist gold and cultural (art) reserves until they ran out around 1922.
Could you recommend a reading material on the subject? Thanks.
https://www.amazon.com/Historys-Greatest-Heist-Looting-Bolsheviks/dp/0300135580/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
(no idea how good it is, haven't read it myself, and McMeekin seems to be somewhat controversial).
https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/116/1/246/43921/Sean-McMeekin-History-s-Greatest-Heist-The-Looting
Apart from the book which two people here have already referenced, he recently published a history of the Russian revolution which incorporates his research on the art looting.Replies: @utu
So you are a socialist at heart?
(Not in the bad commie sense.)Replies: @Andrei Martyanov
No, I am economic realist, which is more mixed economy vector but for Russia specifically–it could be called as “socialist”.
LOL, sure–when Taiwan or Belgium will have a viable space programs (the list of cutting edge technologies which goes into this is colossal, not to mention educational and design schools) or will be able to produce something remotely comparable to MS-21 or SU-57, then we may talk. FYI, I work in aerospace industry so, let’s put it this way–I never heard superlatives about Belgian or Taiwanese Aerospace . The “other” one? A lot.
Life in DDR in 1970s and 1980s was pretty decent. Perhaps the highest standard of living in the Soviet Block. If people did not know that the West exist and that you can get still more goodies there they would be very happy to be like East Germany.
The planned economy worked there pretty good. It took Germans to show it. They had problems with energy supplies when USSR reduced export to Germany and had to start to use very inefficient and very polluting brown coal.
Probably Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the next in terms of socialist economy success in 1970’s. Poland was always very uneven and unequal country where plan economy did not work and where private sector still existed with lots of corruption and criminal shenanigans that let some people got rich also in the state apparatus.
Hungary was doing pretty well from 1968-1989 based on the economic growth data I've been able to find (although less well than their great years from roughly 2000-2007 or so). The graph I found barely showed any inflection around 1989 at all.Replies: @utu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_sale_of_Hermitage_paintings
The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums. Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great. About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists. Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Otherwise -
Apparently Russian treasures could be bought in American department stores in the 1930s:
https://www.hillwoodmuseum.org/russian-collection
From the 1920s, the Soviet Union had been selling off many of the art treasures it had confiscated from the church, the imperial family, and the aristocracy in an effort to fund the new government’s industrialization plan. American businessman Armand Hammer and his brother Victor acquired enormous numbers of these Russian treasures and, in the early 1930s, began to sell them in American department stores and later in their New York gallery.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov, @Darin
This (selling of art) is no crime at all, but reasonable and praiseworthy business decision. USSR in the 1930’s certainly needed tractors, locomotives, machine tools and industrial equipment more than Rembrandts. If the Tsars sold the art and jewels and invested into industrialization of the country, there would be no need for revolution.
If you want to talk about “heritage”, you might have point about icons, but what makes Rembrandt and Titian “Russian heritage”? If works of art belong to country where they were created, then all Rembrandts of the world shall be returned to Netherlands. If works of art belong to all mankind, what difference it makes whether Rembrandt painting is in museum in Petersburg or Washington?
Russia was looted in the 1990s by...the flower of Soviet society, the Soviet elite and their children.Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Sergey Krieger, @Hector_St_Clare, @utu
“And in America they persecute blacks.”
LOL, I vaguely remember this as an old joke. But it’s true the rhetoric of some USSR orphans and nostalgists here at unz.com sometimes resembles this joke.
LOL, I vaguely remember this as an old joke. But it's true the rhetoric of some USSR orphans and nostalgists here at unz.com sometimes resembles this joke.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov
You have no idea what meetings in support of Angela Davis were, LOL! 😉
She, and others were American commies that were used by the Soviets. Whether they were okay with this or ignorant of it is a factual matter than lends itself to investigation.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov
It's true that quite a few East Germans later became somewhat nostalgic for the GDR era, given how badly handled the transition was and the mass unemployment of the 1990s which blighted the lives of millions of East Germans (somewhat similar in some ways to events in Russia, though obviously the situation there was much worse and more traumatic). But one shouldn't have too rosy a view of the GDR or other Eastern bloc states because of the manifest defects of today's West.Replies: @Darin
East German Stasi spying on 1/3 of population was German efficiency run amok, objectively useless waste or resources. It made no difference at all for the survival of the regime.
In Czechoslovakia, next door country with comparable size population, the secret police watched about 60,000 people (i.e. VIP’s and active dissidents), and it lasted about week longer than DDR.
Could you recommend a reading material on the subject? Thanks.Replies: @German_reader, @Darin, @Anatoly Karlin
There’s a book by McMeekin about this subject:
(no idea how good it is, haven’t read it myself, and McMeekin seems to be somewhat controversial).
Could you recommend a reading material on the subject? Thanks.Replies: @German_reader, @Darin, @Anatoly Karlin
Sean McMeekin: History’s Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks
https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/116/1/246/43921/Sean-McMeekin-History-s-Greatest-Heist-The-Looting
I don’t get your point.
She, and others were American commies that were used by the Soviets. Whether they were okay with this or ignorant of it is a factual matter than lends itself to investigation.
https://youtu.be/Lrle0x_DHBM
That would have been, quoting Mike Meyers, a Communist Party;-)Replies: @iffen
She, and others were American commies that were used by the Soviets. Whether they were okay with this or ignorant of it is a factual matter than lends itself to investigation.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov
What’s not to get here? It was a joke, apart from being a commie, she was also a black activist and by the end of 1970s very many Soviets had some good info about specifically American blacks. By early to mid-1980s it was a common knowledge that blacks in US were creating problems. What is not understood here is the fact that USSR itself was becoming at that time a society which valued law–this is, of course, a separate topic, but Russian attitudes towards blacks in general is very complex, especially when one considers the fact of Russian cultural icon, Pushkin, being essentially black. So, let’s not read in my post more than is in it. I just wondered if Angela Davis support meetings could have been like that:
That would have been, quoting Mike Meyers, a Communist Party;-)
https://youtu.be/Lrle0x_DHBM
That would have been, quoting Mike Meyers, a Communist Party;-)Replies: @iffen
?
OK, let’s try from the other direction. From Merriam-Webster:
Definition of irony: a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irony
Now, anyone, I underscore–anyone who lived in the Soviet Union in 1960s and 1970s knew it–I underscore it again, they all knew it–among shortest anecdotes one of the most popular was “Communism”–it was about incongruity. Angela Davis was and is, including by association with Black Panthers movement–a black terrorist. She was NOT what she was portrayed she was in USSR. And as in this anecdote “Communism”, she became a definition of irony–being a result of complete incongruity between what was expected (anticipated) to be and what she really was. In effect, USSR was supporting a terrorist, while later everyone learned that she was a terrorist. Listen, if my manuscript gets accepted for publication (there is some publisher who is “fascinated” by it, by Tuesday I hope to know ) I elaborate there on this issue. The reason you cannot understand me is precisely a complete ignorance in US on the Soviet realities of 1970s and 198os.
I know that there are a lot of Russkies here, so maybe one of them got the joke.
I was here in the US, not the USSR.
She was a big deal.
Terrorism was a small deal, in fact and actuality, but gigantic in propaganda value.
Google her name, ten or twenty hits for speaker.
She makes big bucks for speaking today. (More than you or me.)Replies: @German_reader, @Anon
Wedged between Taiwan and Belgium. Pretty sad.
Russia is legitimately strong in a few specific spheres like nuclear power and military technology. In many other spheres (e.g. pretty much the entirety of biotech) it is a minnow.Replies: @inertial
Skanavi was used in elite math schools but those problems are far from Skanavi. These are precisely the kind of problems we were doing in my non-elite prole school. I remember them.
What percentage of schoolchildren could solve problems like that? Great majority, after some training. They are not that hard.
Well, let’s hope you get a good editor.
I know that there are a lot of Russkies here, so maybe one of them got the joke.
I was here in the US, not the USSR.
She was a big deal.
Terrorism was a small deal, in fact and actuality, but gigantic in propaganda value.
Google her name, ten or twenty hits for speaker.
She makes big bucks for speaking today. (More than you or me.)
The West was too soft and liberal during the Cold war, much harsher measures should have been taken against subversives.Replies: @iffen
What percentage of schoolchildren could solve problems like that? Great majority, after some training. They are not that hard.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov
In Soviet NON-elite schools trigonometric identities were solved very often for fun and on speed among students. However, today’s (and yesterday’s) entrance exams problems in Math or Physics for such institutions like MGTU, MGU or MAI, among many others, may put some MIT undergraduate students in stupor.
I know that there are a lot of Russkies here, so maybe one of them got the joke.
I was here in the US, not the USSR.
She was a big deal.
Terrorism was a small deal, in fact and actuality, but gigantic in propaganda value.
Google her name, ten or twenty hits for speaker.
She makes big bucks for speaking today. (More than you or me.)Replies: @German_reader, @Anon
Also in East Germany, they made a big deal of American racism and campaigned for Davis’ freedom (kind of funny for a state that just shot citizens attempting to leave). I just googled her…apparently she’s still spewing her poison among German lefties and campaigning for the rights of “refugees”.
The West was too soft and liberal during the Cold war, much harsher measures should have been taken against subversives.
The West was too soft and liberal during the Cold war, much harsher measures should have been taken against subversives.Replies: @iffen
I have assumed that you are (were) West German. How could you know what was a big deal in E. Germany in the 60’s?
I wasn’t referring to personal experience (which in this case I’m much too young for anyway); but it’s well-known that the East Germans in the early 1970s had a really huge solidarity campaign for Angela Davis. She visited there several times in the 1970s and 1980s, being greeted by mass rallies.
The planned economy worked there pretty good. It took Germans to show it. They had problems with energy supplies when USSR reduced export to Germany and had to start to use very inefficient and very polluting brown coal.
Probably Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the next in terms of socialist economy success in 1970's. Poland was always very uneven and unequal country where plan economy did not work and where private sector still existed with lots of corruption and criminal shenanigans that let some people got rich also in the state apparatus.Replies: @Hector_St_Clare
Czechoslovakia is interesting: both halves made the transition to modern capitalism without all that much increase in inequality. Czechoslovakia was the second least economically unequal country in the world before 1989 (the GDR was lowest) and the Czech Republic is second or third least unequal country today.
Hungary was doing pretty well from 1968-1989 based on the economic growth data I’ve been able to find (although less well than their great years from roughly 2000-2007 or so). The graph I found barely showed any inflection around 1989 at all.
During communism they had one of the highest rates of summer homes (dacha- often just a shack) in Europe. They have and always had the lowest religiosity in Europe.
They clearly have pretty smart and well connected to centers of power in the West political elites. They were the only country in Europe that not only avoided fighting against Hitler but also for Hitler unlike Hungary. The occupation by Germany there was the mildest because there was zero resistance. They seem to be one of the most pragmatic nations. They unlike Poles can't be manipulated by invocation of honor and other imponderabilia. They will not resits but then they may take awful revenge for the indignity they suffered by not resisting. So watch your back when they regain power as Germans have found out in 1945.
After 1989 they did not fall for neoliberalism scam that lead to deindustrialization which happened to Poland and Hungary. Hungary managed to snap out of it under Orban or at least is trying.Replies: @JL
Of course you know that people on mass rallies were there cheering because they were brought there and told to cheer, without knowing and caring what are they cheering for. Angela Davis might fall for the charade, but you sure know better.
But Angela Davis apparently believes even today that it was all entirely due to authentic enthusiasm for her cause...which must be a sign of pretty stunning stupidity/delusion.Replies: @iffen
That’s a good point, though I suppose at least a few of the people at the rallies did buy the official propaganda (there was a non-trivial number of true believers in the GDR).
But Angela Davis apparently believes even today that it was all entirely due to authentic enthusiasm for her cause…which must be a sign of pretty stunning stupidity/delusion.
There was “authentic enthusiasm” for Davis and others like her in the US and the elite fear was authentic. She failed to bring her first love, communism, to the US, but seems happy enough toiling for the elite now.
Hungary was doing pretty well from 1968-1989 based on the economic growth data I've been able to find (although less well than their great years from roughly 2000-2007 or so). The graph I found barely showed any inflection around 1989 at all.Replies: @utu
Hungary was doing well under Kadar’s goulash communism. And Czechs always were doing well. They had the best industrial base, a leftover of Austro-Hungarian empire. Better than Austria. Before WWII standards of living in Bohemia and Moravia part were one of the highest in Europe.
During communism they had one of the highest rates of summer homes (dacha- often just a shack) in Europe. They have and always had the lowest religiosity in Europe.
They clearly have pretty smart and well connected to centers of power in the West political elites. They were the only country in Europe that not only avoided fighting against Hitler but also for Hitler unlike Hungary. The occupation by Germany there was the mildest because there was zero resistance. They seem to be one of the most pragmatic nations. They unlike Poles can’t be manipulated by invocation of honor and other imponderabilia. They will not resits but then they may take awful revenge for the indignity they suffered by not resisting. So watch your back when they regain power as Germans have found out in 1945.
After 1989 they did not fall for neoliberalism scam that lead to deindustrialization which happened to Poland and Hungary. Hungary managed to snap out of it under Orban or at least is trying.
A Goggle search of “No Such Agency” used to direct its first hit to: https://www.nsa.gov/
Your mileage may vary.
So how much of a hold did Jews have over the Soviet Union? There’s a lot of propaganda on the Net pushing the story that they were running the show entirely. Where should I look to find the truth?
I know that there are a lot of Russkies here, so maybe one of them got the joke.
I was here in the US, not the USSR.
She was a big deal.
Terrorism was a small deal, in fact and actuality, but gigantic in propaganda value.
Google her name, ten or twenty hits for speaker.
She makes big bucks for speaking today. (More than you or me.)Replies: @German_reader, @Anon
You too belong in the Goolag.
If you want to talk about "heritage", you might have point about icons, but what makes Rembrandt and Titian "Russian heritage"? If works of art belong to country where they were created, then all Rembrandts of the world shall be returned to Netherlands. If works of art belong to all mankind, what difference it makes whether Rembrandt painting is in museum in Petersburg or Washington?Replies: @DNC
A country should be able to manufacture trains and tractors without the need to finance them through sales of priceless works of art. Only a completely bankrupt ideology would consider peddling Rembrandt for tractor parts as “reasonable and praiseworthy”
Could you recommend a reading material on the subject? Thanks.Replies: @German_reader, @Darin, @Anatoly Karlin
Yes, I was going to mention Sean McMeekin as well.
Apart from the book which two people here have already referenced, he recently published a history of the Russian revolution which incorporates his research on the art looting.
Is this Игорь Бунич. Золото партии by Bunich any good?
During communism they had one of the highest rates of summer homes (dacha- often just a shack) in Europe. They have and always had the lowest religiosity in Europe.
They clearly have pretty smart and well connected to centers of power in the West political elites. They were the only country in Europe that not only avoided fighting against Hitler but also for Hitler unlike Hungary. The occupation by Germany there was the mildest because there was zero resistance. They seem to be one of the most pragmatic nations. They unlike Poles can't be manipulated by invocation of honor and other imponderabilia. They will not resits but then they may take awful revenge for the indignity they suffered by not resisting. So watch your back when they regain power as Germans have found out in 1945.
After 1989 they did not fall for neoliberalism scam that lead to deindustrialization which happened to Poland and Hungary. Hungary managed to snap out of it under Orban or at least is trying.Replies: @JL
This comment looks like it was written by someone who hasn’t read The Good Soldier Svejk.
Is this very Svejkian?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn5vHIKSlAkReplies: @German_reader
Leaving aside the fact that I am apparently too dense to get AM’s Angela Davis joke, I want to tell my own.
In the 60’s the ruling elite feared Russia, communism, socialism and black rebellion and most of all they feared that Russia would catch the wave of those movements for a long and successful ride. Angela Davis was viewed as a mortal threat by the elite because of her ideology and politics and its promotion. Governor Ronald Reagan tried to get her fired from her academic position in California. During this time she scrapped along on fellowships, internships and academic positions secured for her by fellow travelers, not to mention contributions of leftist organizations partially or wholly funded by Russia. The ruling elite made sure that everyone, and I mean everyone, knew that Angela Davis was a real threat.
Today, like an aging rock star, she scrapes along on speaker fees.
Okay, now the punch line.
She promotes the ruling elite ideology of SJW themes like intersectionality, etc., etc., blah, blah. The ruling elite no longer fears socialism. They no longer fear black rebellion, in fact, that have co-opted black rebellion and manipulate it for their own benefit and purposes.
Yet, they are still deathly afraid of Russia.
But Angela Davis apparently believes even today that it was all entirely due to authentic enthusiasm for her cause...which must be a sign of pretty stunning stupidity/delusion.Replies: @iffen
But Angela Davis apparently believes even today that it was all entirely due to authentic enthusiasm for her cause…which must be a sign of pretty stunning stupidity/delusion.
There was “authentic enthusiasm” for Davis and others like her in the US and the elite fear was authentic. She failed to bring her first love, communism, to the US, but seems happy enough toiling for the elite now.
Novels are not history, certainly not military farces regarding the history of industrialization.
If it ever happens, the first thing to do would be to put every judge and their families in some kind of detention center, close down every state and federal courthouse and completely re write the constitution to give all power to the elected executive and legislative branches.
Every woman and minority organization would have to be treated the way Henry treated the monasteries and Lenin and Trotsky treated the Russian counterrevolution.
I'd say only White men with 4 grandparents born in the USA be allowed to vote, but the damage was done between 1964 to 1973 or so by native born American White men.
The feminazis are just fronts for the cannibal capitalists who used them to destroy the private sector unions, lower wages for everyone and create a docile work force eager to work 80 hours a week for 40 hours wages.
I'd love to be the commissar in charge of ending affirmative action and punishing those who created and enforce it.Replies: @Sowhat
Guilty as charged…As many immature, uneducated Whites in the sixties, I too was played like a fiddle. If I only knew then what I know now…
There is little point arguing from a 'common sense' stance against the leftists.
This is war, not an argument.
Liberalism must be destroyed.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
I’ll reveal a terrible secret to you: Dugin is not actually a nationalist. He is the Russian equivalent of a Western multiculturalist.
He even denies the concept of race.
The Alt Right’s infatuation with him is utterly bizarre.
Apart from the book which two people here have already referenced, he recently published a history of the Russian revolution which incorporates his research on the art looting.Replies: @utu
Thanks. I will look it up.
Is this Игорь Бунич. Золото партии by Bunich any good?
He even denies the concept of race.
The Alt Right's infatuation with him is utterly bizarre.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov, @ussr andy
Nor is he an “intellectual”–ability to use many big words, and “knowing” Heidegger, in demagoguery is not a sign of anything other than of being extremely full of sh.t. Which is precisely the case with Dugin. Having said all that–ANY discussion on Russia’s history without profound knowledge of the warfare is a waste of time. Without it–it is already Gabriel Charmes’ and Jeune Ecole all over again. Averchenko has a superb (I use it often) short story The Specialist In Military Affairs. Applies here across the board (with some minor exceptions). Actually, Edik Limonov has a superb expose on Dugin.
1990 not the best time frankly. How is western middle class is doing now? Again, you ignored my points and continued pressing own agenda. Soviet people basically were free, provided with all things necessary for fullfilling, happy and protected life which cost them nothing, while western middle class producing outword looks of prosperity was actually I’ll iving life of stress, uncertainty and unhappiness. Hence, how is western middle class doing now? Up to nostrils in debt to mantain illusion of prosperity with no room for mistake. Many are no longer middle class. 50 million in USA alone on food help. Drud and various psycho meds in use to just get sort of temporary relief. What price one would put on having what we had? I would say it is priceless. After 1985 fifth column took control of CPSU central commity and top media. What was after 1986 hardly can be called Soviet Union , same as providing lines in stores in 1991 is not representation of what we really had before government Gorbachov and his inner cycle destabilized and destroyed my country. Without Gorbachov there would be no Yeltsin who was nothing but opportunist of the worst kind. To be fair comparison should be made for Brezhnev period which was the most prosperous time Russia ever seen and things were going in right direction before unworthy people without abilities and merit took over the power.
Actually, I read The Good Soldier Svejk several times. But what exactly in my comment does not jive with the image of Czechs you got from Svejk? How much more you now about Czechs beyond Svejk?
Is this very Svejkian?
Is this very Svejkian?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn5vHIKSlAkReplies: @German_reader
Interesting…I have a negative opinion of the BBC on the whole, but sometimes they produce surprisingly frank documentaries about WW2 issues.
But he got the beard! The beard you see. Just like Solzhenicin. It looks like every hack thinks that adding beard increases one’s credibility. Correlation is unmistakable .
He even denies the concept of race.
The Alt Right's infatuation with him is utterly bizarre.Replies: @Andrei Martyanov, @ussr andy
last thing Russia needs is a cold race war (not to be confused with cold war race, lol), like in America. IMO.
Irony definition is very subtle. My heard hurts. I would definitely prefer to have some sense of humor to reading the said definitions.
If you wish to worship an anti-scientific multikulti promoting nutcase who has successfully marketed himself to the dimmer Western radicals (nobody in Russia itself cares about Dugin), then be my guest, but I’m more interested in facts and reality.
um I don’t worship Dugin, if only for the reason I don’t know much about him (he was on Red Ice and Alex Jones once, that’s all I remember) and yeah, he’s a bit of a self-promoter and an obscurantist.
ditto, but I think everything over and above the narrow population-genetic definition of race are American hang-ups due to America’s history as a bi-racial slave-holding settler colony.
I don’t know why Dugin even went there. That’d be like an American taking a stand on Russo-Chukchi internal relations.
What about Russia needs the concept of race with all the attendant baggage, rather than, say, ethnicity?
I think everything over and above the narrow population-genetic definition of race are American hang-ups due to America’s history as a bi-racial slave-holding settler colony.
Absolutely. This is Anglo-American construct. Being white it was something Southerners talked about. This construct was foreign to normal Europeans who were not slave drivers. 19 century European immigrants to America did not have racial identity. Most of Europeans still do not have racial identity. But this will change with the influx of immigrants if the influx continues. Just as it changed for Irish, Italian and Polish ethnic neighborhoods in Northern cities when they became forcefully integrated and Blacks started moving because of various government housing programs. See E. Michael Jones “The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing.”
Unfortunately Karlin got infected with this toxic heresy of race. Are we suppose to be learning from the slave drivers? We in cultures and countries who never practiced it? No, we do not need their racial identity constructs. The emphasis should be on the traditional ethnic and national culture and the fact some groups are not assimilable because of their incompatible cultures. Your culture is your true and the only identity. You are who you are because of your culture and not because of your race. Race does not make you into anything.
Most importantly Blacks can’t assimilate not because of what is under their skin or in their head (like low IQ) but because of their skin color. Yes, it is simple like that. To assimilate you must start practicing mimicry. Mimicry is the most critical part of assimilation. That’s why Jews were successful in assimilating into Western societies and cultures. They were like other, like majority or at least pretended to be and others could be fooled by it. Blacks cannot do it. Blacks can never forget they are black. And you can’t forget they are black. Thus the mimicry is impossible. So there will always be otherness and separateness. Yes, it is skin deep but it is enough. And with otherness and separateness a harmonious society is not possible. The reason that Blacks are a problem in America is because they are black and not because they have low IQ. There is equally large if not larger white sub-population in the US with as low IQ like Blacks. You could call them Wiggers. But this sub-population is integrated. And Blacks cannot integrate because their skin color is black which forces them to have separate identity and sub-culture. Karlin and his mentors in Ulster Institute and Pioneer Fund can shove their IQ bs up theirs. This is not about racial IQ. It is about skin color. The bottom line is to stop letting people who are different then you into your country. America is too far gone. The birth defect of slavery won’t be erased. Russia also pays or will pay for its imperial appetites when it swallowed too many other peoples. Actually she already paid for swallowing Poland in 18 century with its poison pill, the Jews that gave her the hecatomb of Bolshevik revolution from which she has never recovered.
Drivel.
The IQ-ists like yourself underestimate the fact that separate identity formation and the persistence of this identity is not caused by IQ but by the external phenotype like a skin color. The separate racial identity groups will not dissolve into one even if there are no IQ differences between them. This is all about the external phenotype. We all heard since kindergarten that down below the skin we are all the same. The IQ-ists say it is no so, the IQ's are different but they agree with the kindergarten teacher that the skin color does not matter. But I say it does not matter whether we are the same or not under the skin. What really matters is what is on the surface not what is under the surface. What is on the surface is responsible for the separate identity creation, separate group and sub-culture creation and their persistence which leads to polarization resulting in reduced social harmony. In another words lots of problems that you do not need and that would never appeared in the society with a uniform external phenotype.Replies: @sinotibetan
Drivel?
The IQ-ists like yourself underestimate the fact that separate identity formation and the persistence of this identity is not caused by IQ but by the external phenotype like a skin color. The separate racial identity groups will not dissolve into one even if there are no IQ differences between them. This is all about the external phenotype. We all heard since kindergarten that down below the skin we are all the same. The IQ-ists say it is no so, the IQ’s are different but they agree with the kindergarten teacher that the skin color does not matter. But I say it does not matter whether we are the same or not under the skin. What really matters is what is on the surface not what is under the surface. What is on the surface is responsible for the separate identity creation, separate group and sub-culture creation and their persistence which leads to polarization resulting in reduced social harmony. In another words lots of problems that you do not need and that would never appeared in the society with a uniform external phenotype.
I think the problem with many native "Western" Europeans(or rather their ruling and political elites) is that they are beholden (or perhaps envious of?) to the success of the USA as the lone superpower and its economic and technological might. More so with native 'Western' Europeans than Asians or Africans(although every nation cannot escape the ubiquitous American influence) because in their mind it was mostly 'white Americans' , kinsmen of their forefathers , who 'made' America as it is now. I think ideas like the European Union ('United States of Europe') and multiculturalism and the demonization of nationalism in Europe by the ruling elites may partially be explained by their desire to usurp American hegemony(by emulating the USA). Perhaps they actually believe losing their native identities and becoming multiethnic ( eg being 'European' regardless of ethnic origin or country of origin, European nations being reduced politically to like states within the USA) will make them rulers of a new superpower.
There is no exceptionalism for any nation...including the USA. It is a young nation in the process of (multiple) ethnogeneses, so happened it became the lone superpower and most influential nation. In the process is perhaps the ethnogenesis of a new ethnic group called 'Americans'(the melting pot/assimilation of 'whites'/ Hispanics/blacks/'Asians' in varying proportions) ...or will there be civil wars and internal strife within this group and other 'non-assimilated 'groups in future or breaking up into multiple 'nations' after internal strife..who knows?
I think the ruling elites and literati who associate American success with multiethnic society and blurring of traditional concepts of ethnic identity are making mistaken associations. The success of America is not because it is multiethnic or plural. Perhaps the reasons for America's success can be a topic of discussion - if Anatoly is keen on writing on the subject.
I think the multiculturalism and immigration of different ethnic groups into America is a recipe for ultimate internal strife and civilizational collapse in that nation as it has been throughout human history.
Is the fox supposed to represent to alternative browser Firefox ? If so , Firefox is just as sickeningly PC as Google , just far less competent .
The IQ-ists like yourself underestimate the fact that separate identity formation and the persistence of this identity is not caused by IQ but by the external phenotype like a skin color. The separate racial identity groups will not dissolve into one even if there are no IQ differences between them. This is all about the external phenotype. We all heard since kindergarten that down below the skin we are all the same. The IQ-ists say it is no so, the IQ's are different but they agree with the kindergarten teacher that the skin color does not matter. But I say it does not matter whether we are the same or not under the skin. What really matters is what is on the surface not what is under the surface. What is on the surface is responsible for the separate identity creation, separate group and sub-culture creation and their persistence which leads to polarization resulting in reduced social harmony. In another words lots of problems that you do not need and that would never appeared in the society with a uniform external phenotype.Replies: @sinotibetan
Interesting comments. I agree with your observation. Even though it is possible that the mean IQs of different ethnic groups may indeed be different, it is the external phenotype that is one of the main determinants of “ethnic identity”. Then followed by ‘cultural traits’ like language, customs etc. A blond Pole who learns to speak impeccable ‘Queen’s English’ , changes his name to sound ‘English’ may assimilate so well that his foreign origin would probably never be suspected but for a Chinese like me, my “East Asian phenotype” gives away my foreign origin. On the other hand, if I learn Japanese ways to perfection, I might fool native Japanese I am one of them, but never can the Polish man do that.
I think the problem with many native “Western” Europeans(or rather their ruling and political elites) is that they are beholden (or perhaps envious of?) to the success of the USA as the lone superpower and its economic and technological might. More so with native ‘Western’ Europeans than Asians or Africans(although every nation cannot escape the ubiquitous American influence) because in their mind it was mostly ‘white Americans’ , kinsmen of their forefathers , who ‘made’ America as it is now. I think ideas like the European Union (‘United States of Europe’) and multiculturalism and the demonization of nationalism in Europe by the ruling elites may partially be explained by their desire to usurp American hegemony(by emulating the USA). Perhaps they actually believe losing their native identities and becoming multiethnic ( eg being ‘European’ regardless of ethnic origin or country of origin, European nations being reduced politically to like states within the USA) will make them rulers of a new superpower.
There is no exceptionalism for any nation…including the USA. It is a young nation in the process of (multiple) ethnogeneses, so happened it became the lone superpower and most influential nation. In the process is perhaps the ethnogenesis of a new ethnic group called ‘Americans'(the melting pot/assimilation of ‘whites’/ Hispanics/blacks/’Asians’ in varying proportions) …or will there be civil wars and internal strife within this group and other ‘non-assimilated ‘groups in future or breaking up into multiple ‘nations’ after internal strife..who knows?
I think the ruling elites and literati who associate American success with multiethnic society and blurring of traditional concepts of ethnic identity are making mistaken associations. The success of America is not because it is multiethnic or plural. Perhaps the reasons for America’s success can be a topic of discussion – if Anatoly is keen on writing on the subject.
I think the multiculturalism and immigration of different ethnic groups into America is a recipe for ultimate internal strife and civilizational collapse in that nation as it has been throughout human history.