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Surviving political repressions in Communist regimes is one of those rare problems that don’t seem to be at all g loaded.
When someone like spandrell talks of “IQ shredders” he refers to the role of modern cities as fertility vortices for society’s best and brightest. But in the 20th century those shredders could be all too literal. One can’t help but shudder reading through the lists of scientists and intellectuals judicially murdered under Stalin in the 1930-40s. (The Old Bolsheviks at least usually had the minimal decency to allow them to emigrate).
This “aristocide” was replicated on higher IQ groups further down the social ladder, including the liquidation (to varying extents) of the kulaks, the priesthood, and the national intelligentsias of the countries that fell under Red dominion.
To what extent did this unravel the gains of centuries spent under the Malthusian grindstone? What was the cost in terms of national IQ?
The only people who ask such questions tend to be, almost by definition, anti-Communists (self-explanatory) and far right (by dint of their indulgence of the hereditary theory of IQ).
Therefore, unsurprisingly, their answers tend to be extremely pessimistic.
Fortunately, James Flynn has Done The Math on Cambodia, the country where Communist bloodlust far surpassed that of any other by about an order of magnitude.
Rulers can cause mass exterminations that have dysgenic effects no matter what their intent. Between 1973 and 1976, Pol Pot killed millions of Cambodians (Kampucheans). His criteria were purely political but discriminated to some degree against those with superior genes for IQ. He tried to eliminate urban dwellers (mildly superior because people abandon impoverished rural areas when they find they can be viable elsewhere) and anyone with “elite” qualifications (superior because access to education is to some degree competitive favoring those with greater talent). Those who wore spectacles were used as a criterion: they needed spectacles for a literate occupation and they had the money to afford them. He also destroyed all bicycles.
How much did Pol Pot do to lower the mean IQ of the Cambodian people? Sunic (2009) puts Croatians at a mean IQ of 90. He asks whether the communist massacre of hundreds of thousands of the Croat middle classes in 1945 was the answer. He accuses communists in general of “aristocide” in the sense that much killing, whatever the rationale, was motivated by hatred for those more successful and intelligent than oneself. He generalizes (p. 3/5) that communist aristicides have crippled the whole of Eastern Europe: “A large number of intelligent people were simply wiped out and could not pass their genes on to their offspring.” None of these nations suffered massacres anything like the scale of Cambodia. It is hardly surprising that there has been public speculation about how much Cambodia’s average IQ was reduced (Learning Diary, 2009).
This question can be settled by a few calculations. Pol Pot killed somewhere between 1.7 and 2.5 million people. I will put this at 2.1 million or 26% of Cambodia’s 8 million people (Kiernan, 2002). If he had done it using IQ tests, eliminating the top 26% would have lowered the IQ of the remaining parents by 6.4 IQ points and a good portion of this deficit would have been handed down to their children. However, as we have seen, he in fact used occupation as his criterion.
We do not know the correlation between the occupational status of the parent and the IQ of their (no longer to be born) children, but in a semirural society it would be below that of the United States. At that time in the United States, it was 0.300 (Flynn, 2000b). If you eliminated the top 26% of the US population by occupation, the mean IQ of their children would drop by only 1.92 points. Moreover, Pol Pot did not really use a pure criterion of occupational status. For example, a lot of his henchmen doing the killing were intellectuals (Pol Pot attended the Sorbonne, although he did flunk all of his courses). When he tried to eliminate everyone who lived in the capital city of Phnom Penh, this included many in humble occupations. The genetic capital of the Cambodian people was lowered by not much more than an IQ point. The people were hardly stripped of intellectual talent. …
Pol Pot provides not only an estimate of the quality of Cambodia’s genes but also something more. He sets a probable limit on the dysgenic consequences of even the most horrific events of world history. …
Sunic (2009, p. 2/5) speculates about negative selection of genes for other behavioral traits: “Did communism … give birth to a unique
subspecies of people predisposed to communism?” For example, did it produce people who felt comfortable only with little personal freedom? I may be excused for not addressing that question.
One can rejoinder that the impact must have been heavier on individuals who were more effective at converting their intelligence to scientific/artistic eminence (“The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” is perhaps nowhere truer than under totalitarian Communist regimes).
And it seems likely that this was further amplified by the “family responsibility” and guilt-by-association principles that many Communist regimes operated under, meaning that the consequences of repressions would reverberate most strongly against the clusters of interest groups and blood relations that surrounded its prime targets; that is, against those people who most helped society cultivate eminence, and who had the highest chances of becoming eminent themselves.
Nonetheless, even those caveats aside, since even the Khmer Rouge couldn’t have cardinally dented Cambodia’s national IQ, it certainly couldn’t have done anything substantial to Russia, where the scale of Stalinist aristocide didn’t exceed 1% of the Soviet population. (The Soviet famines, with far higher numbers of victims, would if anything have been marginally eugenic; one wonders if some bold Communist will ever try to tout this argument?).
In the Communist world as elsewhere, the main eugenic/dysgenic driver must have been fertility patterns.
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It’s interesting that, in spite of all of his damage, Pol Pot only managed to lower Cambodia’s IQ by a point or so. Indeed, this appears to bode well for Cambodia’s future (though I suspect that its IQ is closer to Thailand’s than to Vietnam’s–thus making full convergence to First World living standards pretty much impossible without IQ-enhancing technology).
Also, out of curiosity–have you tried calculating the IQ damage that World War II–including the Holocaust–did on the countries which were most affected by it, Anatoly?
It is not just about the mean.
Flynn is a joker. The Khmer Rouge’s years long bloodbath was directed at any one who showed an inkling of independent thinking. Wearing glasses? – too bookish. Listening to French on radio – too bourgeois. The mass murder of those with some intelligence is an intentional feature of these regimes. For that matter the bloodbath unleashed by the Russian Revolution killed off the native intelligentsia as represented by the children of priests, teachers, the striving middle class and the aristocracy. There was as usual a Jewish angle to it, as they just happened to be, purely by chance as we are told, in the vanguard of the proletariat to replace all the corrupt of the ancien regime.
The autocracy was inept and incompetent. It lost a war to Japan and terribly mismanaged WW1. That's why it was overthrown.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Felix Keverich
A Croat talking about massacres by the communists is like Dracula saying that donating blood causes anemia.
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/01/20/jasenovac-the-cruelest-death-camp-of-all-times-26/
Russia never had a significant native intelligentsia. The Kremlin was built by foreigners who were imported for the task, and for a long time a foreign quarter constituted the bulk of Moscow’s population. Peter the Great’s program and the building of St. Petersburg involved the importation of Western Europeans. The autocracy and nobility intermarried with foreigners and became Germanized over time. This continued into the modern period when for example in 1869 British steelworkers led by a Welshman named Hughes were imported to establish a steel industry in Russia. The cotton industry was established in Russia by another Briton named Charnock in 1903.
The autocracy was inept and incompetent. It lost a war to Japan and terribly mismanaged WW1. That’s why it was overthrown.
Japan nearly went bankrupt fighting Russia in 1904/05, that war was anything but a cakewalk for Japanese.Replies: @Sam Haysom
But why focus on the mean? Isn’t the absolute size of the “smart fraction” the more important metric in this scenario? Hypothetically, if you eviscerate everyone in the +3 SD bracket, scientific progress will grind to a complete stand-still for a generation at the very least, whilst the mean of the iq distribution will be negligibly affected.
The mean was relatively unaffected, but the percentage of smart fractions must have dipped to an appreciable extent.
One wonders which had the greatest relative effect: The emigrations/expulsions of the Civil War, Stalin's purges, or the wave of emigration in the late 1980s-90s.Replies: @Felix Keverich
The autocracy was inept and incompetent. It lost a war to Japan and terribly mismanaged WW1. That's why it was overthrown.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Felix Keverich
This is so patently untrue that it’s not worth addressing.
Yeah, this is nonsense. The population of Moscow was 200,000 in the 17th century. Are you suggesting that around 1% of the then German population decamped there?
Most of the royal houses in Europe were Germanic to a considerable or main extent.
The first part (Japan) is true, the second is not. Russia was in a winning position as of February 1917. The “aristocracy” was not overthrown, it lost its nerve and chose to abdicate.
The population of Moscow declined significantly in the 17th century due to plague and was much less than 200k well into the 18th century. The "German" quarter didn't just house Germans but various Europeans. "German" was used to refer to Western Europeans in general.
The Tsar's government did mismanage the war, and there was a famine in 1917. This incompetence led to demoralization, and the Tsar's guards refused to fire on rioting crowds demanding bread in Petrograd, and the Tsar was deposed soon after.Replies: @Cicero, @Mao Cheng Ji
This is a very good point.
The mean was relatively unaffected, but the percentage of smart fractions must have dipped to an appreciable extent.
One wonders which had the greatest relative effect: The emigrations/expulsions of the Civil War, Stalin’s purges, or the wave of emigration in the late 1980s-90s.
The same is true for late Soviet emigration: the people leaving Russia at the time were disproportionally Jews. Julia Ioffe may be a smart Jewish girl, but Russia is better off without her.Replies: @utu, @Cicero
The autocracy was inept and incompetent. It lost a war to Japan and terribly mismanaged WW1. That's why it was overthrown.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Felix Keverich
To put things in perspective, Russians were a nation the size of Japan that by 20th century controlled 1/6 of the world’s landmass. We had to maintain a large standing army in Poland just to keep that stupid country from rebelling. We probably had more soldiers in Poland than facing the Japanese – talk about getting overextended.
Japan nearly went bankrupt fighting Russia in 1904/05, that war was anything but a cakewalk for Japanese.
If you don't like the taste of other people's boots stop acting like this.Replies: @Cyrano
The mean was relatively unaffected, but the percentage of smart fractions must have dipped to an appreciable extent.
One wonders which had the greatest relative effect: The emigrations/expulsions of the Civil War, Stalin's purges, or the wave of emigration in the late 1980s-90s.Replies: @Felix Keverich
My impression has always been that Stalin’s purges disproportionally affected Jewish members of the elite. Obviously, destruction of the country’s intelectual class was regrettable, but there was a silver lining in the removal (“culling”) of Jewish intellectuals.
The same is true for late Soviet emigration: the people leaving Russia at the time were disproportionally Jews. Julia Ioffe may be a smart Jewish girl, but Russia is better off without her.
Old Bolsheviks were disproportionally Jewish. Stalin purges were not about Jews. It was about getting new apparatus with less seniority than Stalin. Long Knives Night had a similar motive.Replies: @Felix Keverich
Yeah, this is nonsense. The population of Moscow was 200,000 in the 17th century. Are you suggesting that around 1% of the then German population decamped there?
Did “Russian” Germans not occupy the “Jewish slot” in Russia until they were gradually replaced by Jews after emancipation?
The same is true for late Soviet emigration: the people leaving Russia at the time were disproportionally Jews. Julia Ioffe may be a smart Jewish girl, but Russia is better off without her.Replies: @utu, @Cicero
My impression has always been that Stalin’s purges disproportionally affected Jewish members of the elite.
Old Bolsheviks were disproportionally Jewish. Stalin purges were not about Jews. It was about getting new apparatus with less seniority than Stalin. Long Knives Night had a similar motive.
USSR ceased to be a revolutionary power that served the interests of international Jewry, and became an empire, led by a bona fide Asiatic despot.Replies: @Greasy William
Flynn assures us that killing all the lawyers will not make a dent in mean IQ.
Killing is a bit extreme, but just suppressing intellectuals, as well as financial/business/scientific/etc geniuses (regardless of the ethnic background, obviously) – and even subjecting them, permanently, to forced manual labor – is never a bad idea. The society – nay, humanity – has to defend itself.
Old Bolsheviks were disproportionally Jewish. Stalin purges were not about Jews. It was about getting new apparatus with less seniority than Stalin. Long Knives Night had a similar motive.Replies: @Felix Keverich
Stalin’s motives for purges are completely unimportant here. What matters is the outcome: Jews were sidelined within the Soviet elite. This changed the character of the regime in a big way.
USSR ceased to be a revolutionary power that served the interests of international Jewry, and became an empire, led by a bona fide Asiatic despot.
: I got the impression that Tsar Nicholas II was essentially forced to abdicate; are you suggesting that this is untrue?
You haven’t refuted anything I’ve said.
The population of Moscow declined significantly in the 17th century due to plague and was much less than 200k well into the 18th century. The “German” quarter didn’t just house Germans but various Europeans. “German” was used to refer to Western Europeans in general.
The Tsar’s government did mismanage the war, and there was a famine in 1917. This incompetence led to demoralization, and the Tsar’s guards refused to fire on rioting crowds demanding bread in Petrograd, and the Tsar was deposed soon after.
The same is true for late Soviet emigration: the people leaving Russia at the time were disproportionally Jews. Julia Ioffe may be a smart Jewish girl, but Russia is better off without her.Replies: @utu, @Cicero
Completely untrue. Jews formed a greater share of the Soviet elite in the 1920’s and 30’s than at any other point in that nation’s history, and many were killed in purges, but they were not particularly targeted compared to other ethnic groups. Records on political arrests are incomplete and patchy, but my own research suggests that Jews composed no more than 5% of the purged elite, and more likely somewhat less. Most of the executed victims were from other ethnicities, and ethnic Slavs composed a clear majority of the victims even at the highest levels. Take a look at the link Anatoly included about executed scientists in his post, and you can clearly see most were ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. You can further see the trend at this website about repressed scientists.
http://www.ihst.ru/projects/sohist/repress/
One group that was really decimated was the ethnic Polish population, especially around major cities like Moscow or Leningrad or in sensitive border regions. I found one record of a poor pianoman at a restaurant in Leningrad being shot for spying for fascists around 1937. It struck me as exceptionally petty when I viewed it at the time. I think Stalin executed about 1/6th of the Soviet Poles in a single year, and sent many others to labor camps or isolated regions where they succumbed to illness and mistreatment by the local authorities. Children were sent to orphanages where they faced an uncertain future. It had all of the hallmarks of a genocide and it probably has been buried only because even greater atrocities against Poles were to be inflicted across Eastern Europe only a few short years later.
Another group that stands out during the purges were the ethnic Latvians. In the Dec 1926 Census they numbered only a little over one hundred fifty thousand people, but they provided a very large number of senior officials in the Red Army and Soviet bureaucracy due to certain trends before and during the Revolution. Stalin wiped out this ‘Latvian clique’ with great energy; they ceased to have any meaningful role in the central government organs after 1938. The survivors were either Russified or were shipped into occupied Latvia after 1940 to serve a middlemen for the LatSSR, sometimes both. The Estonian and Lithuanians of this period suffered a similar fate.
I think the Stalinist Purges were by and far the worst of the disruptions to the elite of USSR. The initial chaos of the Civil War was devastating, and the loss of the White Emigres an additional blow. The loss of the emigres in the 90’s was bad, but many of them were from disaffected groups like the Jews and Volga Germans. The real damage had been done decades earlier.
By 1928 a new consensus was being formed in the wake of the NEP and there were stirrings of a greater understanding between the surviving Pre-war elites, the “Right Opposition” Bolsheviks, and the NEPers. A real artistic and technological renaissance was starting to develop in the somewhat lax political control of the period. Stalin promptly destroyed this new trend just as it was being born, so we will never truly know what it could have led to, but in my own opinion it could have created a Soviet Union that while still flawed would have endured into the 21st Century due to greater scientific and cultural development, stronger demographics, and a greater social cohesion that went beyond Stalinist terror and the cult of the Great Patriotic War.
This would take a much longer post to discuss, but Stalin’s fixation on heavy industry, his personal interference with the cinema industry and literature, his suppression of research into genetics, cybernetics, and computer programming, and the collectivization of agriculture all worked to make the Soviet Union profoundly unviable as a nation state as the 20th century dragged on. That all of his successors before Andropov were still more or less living in his shadow and were compromised by his actions compounded this even more, because by the time reform was on the table the fissures were well-formed and had undermined both society and the civil government. That the KGB and the Army were still effective could only cover up the problem for so long, since they needed a healthy economy to cover their ever-growing budgets and functional, patriotic civilians to recruits from. Stalin crippled the Soviet Union so that he could rule over it with no limitations, and while in the short run he achieve remarkable personal and political gains from this, he left very little cultural capital to his successors, and it still haunts Russia and the other post-Soviet states to this day.
She didn't live in the USSR, but went to visit her grandchild in Tbilisi (after learning that her daughter had died), and on her way back to Latvia, she visited the Latvian theater group in Moscow who asked her to stay for a while, then they all got shot, including the wardrobe assistant.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.530857Simply saying that "Jews formed a greater share of elite" seriously underscores the degree of their domination of early USSR - I honestly wonder what you were doing with all your "research" to miss this obvious reality about Bolshevik regime.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/25/russia.booksStalin erased most of this Jewish elite, and Russia was better off because of it - can you at least agree with me on this?Replies: @Cicero
The population of Moscow declined significantly in the 17th century due to plague and was much less than 200k well into the 18th century. The "German" quarter didn't just house Germans but various Europeans. "German" was used to refer to Western Europeans in general.
The Tsar's government did mismanage the war, and there was a famine in 1917. This incompetence led to demoralization, and the Tsar's guards refused to fire on rioting crowds demanding bread in Petrograd, and the Tsar was deposed soon after.Replies: @Cicero, @Mao Cheng Ji
It is hard to refute you because you refuse to accept the generally accepted literature about this. Moscow was always considered the heart of traditional Russian cultural life and values in comparison to ‘Western’ St. Petersburg. This is something remarked upon in primary sources in the 18th and 19th centuries by both native Russian scholars and Western European observers with remarkable consistency. Census records would most likely support this as well. I had never even heard of someone suggesting Moscow was primary populated by Germans in the 17th before you brought it up, and I doubt you will find too many others willing to support your theory because it is completely unfounded.
The population of Moscow declined significantly in the 17th century due to plague and was much less than 200k well into the 18th century. The "German" quarter didn't just house Germans but various Europeans. "German" was used to refer to Western Europeans in general.
The Tsar's government did mismanage the war, and there was a famine in 1917. This incompetence led to demoralization, and the Tsar's guards refused to fire on rioting crowds demanding bread in Petrograd, and the Tsar was deposed soon after.Replies: @Cicero, @Mao Cheng Ji
What you wrote there @5 in response to Ivan doesn’t need any refutation. It was not an argument, it’s an attitude. It starts with “Russia never had a significant native intelligentsia”, but then everyone (even you, I’m sure) understands it isn’t true in any meaningful sense. It’s just a pose. In fact, by 1917 Russia arguably had more significant (certainly more unique) native intelligentsia than any other European culture.
Interesting post. Btw, they shot a whole Latvian theater group in 1937, including a rather well known actress at the time, Marija Leiko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marija_Leiko
She didn’t live in the USSR, but went to visit her grandchild in Tbilisi (after learning that her daughter had died), and on her way back to Latvia, she visited the Latvian theater group in Moscow who asked her to stay for a while, then they all got shot, including the wardrobe assistant.
I feel that you’re making the same mistake utu was making: I never said that Jewish elite was targeted specifically for its Jewishness, however they were clearly disproportionally affected by purges.
The early Soviet regime was Jewish-dominated. Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev were Jews. Early comissars were Jews. The first Soviet government was 80% Jewish according to Putin.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.530857
Simply saying that “Jews formed a greater share of elite” seriously underscores the degree of their domination of early USSR – I honestly wonder what you were doing with all your “research” to miss this obvious reality about Bolshevik regime.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/25/russia.books
Stalin erased most of this Jewish elite, and Russia was better off because of it – can you at least agree with me on this?
1) First of all, I question how much of the Jewish elite Stalin managed to destroy. The Politburo of 1933 was looking a lot less Jewish than its 1923 predecessor. Stalin mudered a sizable faction of the Jewish elite, and a lot of scumbag anti-Gentile Chekists too, but as a group the Soviet Jews still composed some 3 million people going into World War II. Even with the decimation of their community by the German invasion they maintained a powerful presence in Soviet society right until the fall of Communism in 1991, even if they were informally blocked from occupying the high posts in government they had in the pre-Purge era. The failure of the Doctors' Plot could be considered one of the few stumbling blocks Stalin hit in his domestic policies in the post-War period of his rule.
What Stalin did manage to succeed at was drive the elite faction of the Jewish population out of the government and security organs, and make them even more ethnocentric and hostile to their host society. The Soviet Jews became the heart of the dissident movement in the decades after Stalin's death, and worked with Western governments to isolate the Soviet state from an increasingly globalized economy. They continued to have a major influence in the Soviet Arts and Media complex, and often inserted subversive messages about the nation's leadership into their works. They also managed to take over a large chunk, if not the outright majority of the Grey and Black economies, and with this new clout they bribed numerous ethnic Slavic politicians to help them in their looting of public assets in the chaos that followed the collapse of Communist authority.
Considering how even to this days Russian Jews manage to dominate large swaths of both the Russian and Ukrainian economies and even get promoted to high office, all in spite of widespread emigration and the occasional political backlash, what Stalin managed to accomplish in the end was keep them away from the table for a few decades, nothing more.
2) Secondly, Stalin was not simply targeting the Jewish elite during his purges. He eliminated wide swathes of the intelligentsia from all groups, including the Russians. As a proportion maybe the Russians came out a little better than most due to the fact they composed +50% of the population and therefore destroying their elite faction was much harder, but the long term damage to their civic values and strategic vision was incalculable. I am of the opinion that the rather grasping, mercenary, and short-sighted behavior of many of today's Russian politicians is due to Stalin culling families with long-standing ties of devoted service to the Russian state: the Old Aristocracy, the Priesthood, the Merchants, career military officers, intellectuals, and others. The survivors were blacklisted from entering the government in the same way their Jewish counterparts were. Stalin probably did not lower the IQ of the nation much in the conventional sense, but he may have eliminated most of the of the genetic lines for self-sacrifice and devotion to higher loyalty to the Russian World and its values. In particular, his outright destruction of the traditional clergy of the Orthodox Church harmed the moral character and self-identity of the Russian nation greatly, in a way the Russian Jewish community was mostly spared. Individual descendants of the peasants have filled in some of the gaps in leadership (e.g. Putin), but you cannot rebuild something that valuable in only a few short decades.
3) Lastly, and this ties into the latter point: in what way was Russia improved after Stalin purged the Jewish members of the Old Bolsheviks? He left the Soviet Union a stagnant swamp intellectually, economically, and spiritually. His immediate successors were all men promoted for their competence at handling the day-to-day work of running the government, and a total lack of charisma and vision in all other areas. Any one who tried to break this mold, like Khrushchev and Kosygin were stymied in their reform efforts and later pushed out. In this way Stalin's role as supreme political authority outlasted his death. Knowing that odious figures like Kamenev, Zinoviev, Yagoda were executed may make us feel a little better, but remember that Stalin personally protected the utterly vile Naftaly Frenkel from any punishment for his actions, and allowed Frenkel to retire as a wealthy and influential man.
The purges cannot be explained in a simple dialectic narrative as you want to view them, but I am not sure that even this argument is going to change your mind about it. I learned a long time ago it is very hard for a man to change his beliefs if he gives any value to them, but I hope that I may have at least broadened your perspective on the issue.
One interesting question is the effect of the start of the war.
Barbarossa saved quite a few of the intellectual elite – eg Sergei Korolyov, who narrowly avoided being shot during the Yezhovshchina, and was near death in Kolyma when he was sent to a “First Circle” camp at the outbreak of war.
What makes you think it was not intended for just that purpose?
In the early 1920 Gorky was looking froward to 35 million dead ‘The half-savage, stupid, difficult people of the Russian village will die out”
Doubtful. Gorky was merely expressing his personal prejudices against the “unwashed masses”. Think of National Review writer Kevin Williamson, and his “white working class communities”, that “deserve to die” – classism, sure, but hardly a call for genocide.
I see a complete equivalence to what Williamson wrote. Before you’re going to needlessly vilify all things Soviet, consider the fact that your own intellectual and cultural elite shares many of the same sentiments that Gorky had.
Gorky was of the common people, none knew them better than he, and from an initially sympathetic position, he quickly moved to advocating extermination of useless sectors of the population, which was the non industrial workers who were eating up the surplus as the rural overpopulation problem. He defended the death penalty for 12year olds who ate food without authorisation. The Soviet famines were the onlyrational solution to useless people, as the Nazi economists recognized.Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji, @Stephen R. Diamond
Gorky continued “and their place will betaken by a new tribe of the literate, the intelligent, the vigorous”..
What makes you think so ?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4761458/Ex-Facebook-exec-says-society-collapse-30-years.html
In a couple of generations there is every reason to expect half the workforce (the half that is most of those in “white working class communities”) to be made redundant. The old robber baron monopolists such as Carnegie and Rockefeller could not eliminate democracy because large numbers of workers were still needed for productive capacity, but machines will soon make half of the common folk redundant The ethnic majority mass are heading the way of horses and the existence of the alt right Putin ect fans is being magnified to justify the eventual removal of political rights along with livelihoods from the whole community.
The billionaires portray anyone who opposes them as the Alt-Reich. Kevin Williamson ect are laying the ground for the removal of political rights from the majority. In the future winning the election will not work because the economically redundant and already de-legitimised democratic majority will be put under a state of emergency. Eventually they’ll be exterminated.
Since ethnic minority folk have lower IQs than whites, a greater proportion of them will be rendered “redundant”. Don’t you think these groups will be exterminated first?
The immigrants will always be on the bosses side, as a reserve army, and not merely in the labour market sense. Armed main force violence will be necessary to control a country where most of the traditional population are suddenly superfluous.Replies: @Felix Keverich
If you read the whole thing, it goes something like this: ‘the steel plow of revolution has cut so deep into the masses, that peasantry can hardly return to the old, forever shattered into dust ways of life. Like the Hebrews led by Moses from slavery in Egypt, the half-savage, obtuse, and dull dwellers of Russian towns and villages — all those almost frightening people I described above — will go extinct, replaced by a new tribe of literate, intelligent, lively people.’
Not too bad, actually.
What he means, of course, is that the cultural archetype will be replaced…
Well Williamson was talking about changing the culture, which is is similar to the thoroughgoing Lamarckian stuff Trotsky was writing before he had any power
Characters like Williamson put all their faith in culture like Trotsky did when still at the Lamarkian panacea stage, but when push comes to shove a few decades hence, those in charge will move to extermination and the Williamsons will not demur any more that Trotsky did. .
Gorky was of the common people, none knew them better than he, and from an initially sympathetic position, he quickly moved to advocating extermination of useless sectors of the population, which was the non industrial workers who were eating up the surplus as the rural overpopulation problem. He defended the death penalty for 12year olds who ate food without authorisation. The Soviet famines were the onlyrational solution to useless people, as the Nazi economists recognized.
2. Trotsky was thoroughly Darwinian, and I understand that Soviet genetics made serious strides in the early 20s. Trotsky was predicting that there would be a eugenics program under communism. Remember, childcare is to be collectivized.Replies: @Sean
Gorky was of the common people, none knew them better than he, and from an initially sympathetic position, he quickly moved to advocating extermination of useless sectors of the population, which was the non industrial workers who were eating up the surplus as the rural overpopulation problem. He defended the death penalty for 12year olds who ate food without authorisation. The Soviet famines were the onlyrational solution to useless people, as the Nazi economists recognized.Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji, @Stephen R. Diamond
Your fantasies have nothing to do with reality.
No because these people are being brought into the West to be an electoral counterweight against the non-affluent community. The aim is to destroy electoral majority even if whites as such begin to act as bloc.
The immigrants will always be on the bosses side, as a reserve army, and not merely in the labour market sense. Armed main force violence will be necessary to control a country where most of the traditional population are suddenly superfluous.
I'm pretty sure ghetto people will be the first to go, if the elites ever get serious about population control. Besides, mass murder is not the cleanest way to go about it. Instead, think about mass sterilisation programs. People could be encouraged to undergo sterilisation in exchange for a daily allowance of food. It will be almost voluntary.Replies: @Sean
Yeah, and the Soviet regime never published this essay in Russia – they recognized how embarrassing it was. It didn’t fit into this cult of Gorky they were building.
Anyone who wants to can read what he said HERE
The immigrants will always be on the bosses side, as a reserve army, and not merely in the labour market sense. Armed main force violence will be necessary to control a country where most of the traditional population are suddenly superfluous.Replies: @Felix Keverich
They could build an automated army. Duh. And it will be more effective than a horde of angry niggers. 🙂
I’m pretty sure ghetto people will be the first to go, if the elites ever get serious about population control. Besides, mass murder is not the cleanest way to go about it. Instead, think about mass sterilisation programs. People could be encouraged to undergo sterilisation in exchange for a daily allowance of food. It will be almost voluntary.
Well, if you want to understand Gorky, perhaps you should read Gorky, not some immigrant named Dobrenko…
Oh, come on. So, he’s badmouthing the peasants, sure, but clearly the quote I translated @30 speaks for itself. No return to the old ways, Moses, 40 years in the wilderness. Surely you understand.
How do you know? Are there any studies comparing IQ of the winners and the losers of the great game of commissars?
This was something Orwell noticed:
'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'
'Except-' began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped.
It had been on the tip of his tongue to say 'Except the proles,' but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.
'The proles are not human beings,' he said carelessly. 'By 2050 earlier, probably -- all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron -- they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking -- not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.'
One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.
The terror was doled out in an very arbitrary manner, but intellectuals, as a class, irrespective of their ideology, were clearly one of the targeted groups.
This was something Orwell noticed:
‘Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?’
‘Except-‘ began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped.
It had been on the tip of his tongue to say ‘Except the proles,’ but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.
‘The proles are not human beings,’ he said carelessly. ‘By 2050 earlier, probably — all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron — they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’
One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.
Japan nearly went bankrupt fighting Russia in 1904/05, that war was anything but a cakewalk for Japanese.Replies: @Sam Haysom
If anyone wonders why people love kicking Russia when it’s down (as it so often is) need look no further than this comment.
If you don’t like the taste of other people’s boots stop acting like this.
As for the Polaks, I agree, they are certifiably stupid. Wen USSR intervened in Afghanistan, there were no Polaks among them, and consequently, no Polish casualties. Now there are, Polaks serving and dying there. Who is protecting whom from what? You know what NATO real moto is? To paraphrase Kennedy, Ask not what US can do for you, ask what you can do for US.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.530857Simply saying that "Jews formed a greater share of elite" seriously underscores the degree of their domination of early USSR - I honestly wonder what you were doing with all your "research" to miss this obvious reality about Bolshevik regime.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/25/russia.booksStalin erased most of this Jewish elite, and Russia was better off because of it - can you at least agree with me on this?Replies: @Cicero
No, I cannot. There is no way you can convince me that this statement is the least bit correct. I will break it down into three parts.
1) First of all, I question how much of the Jewish elite Stalin managed to destroy. The Politburo of 1933 was looking a lot less Jewish than its 1923 predecessor. Stalin mudered a sizable faction of the Jewish elite, and a lot of scumbag anti-Gentile Chekists too, but as a group the Soviet Jews still composed some 3 million people going into World War II. Even with the decimation of their community by the German invasion they maintained a powerful presence in Soviet society right until the fall of Communism in 1991, even if they were informally blocked from occupying the high posts in government they had in the pre-Purge era. The failure of the Doctors’ Plot could be considered one of the few stumbling blocks Stalin hit in his domestic policies in the post-War period of his rule.
What Stalin did manage to succeed at was drive the elite faction of the Jewish population out of the government and security organs, and make them even more ethnocentric and hostile to their host society. The Soviet Jews became the heart of the dissident movement in the decades after Stalin’s death, and worked with Western governments to isolate the Soviet state from an increasingly globalized economy. They continued to have a major influence in the Soviet Arts and Media complex, and often inserted subversive messages about the nation’s leadership into their works. They also managed to take over a large chunk, if not the outright majority of the Grey and Black economies, and with this new clout they bribed numerous ethnic Slavic politicians to help them in their looting of public assets in the chaos that followed the collapse of Communist authority.
Considering how even to this days Russian Jews manage to dominate large swaths of both the Russian and Ukrainian economies and even get promoted to high office, all in spite of widespread emigration and the occasional political backlash, what Stalin managed to accomplish in the end was keep them away from the table for a few decades, nothing more.
2) Secondly, Stalin was not simply targeting the Jewish elite during his purges. He eliminated wide swathes of the intelligentsia from all groups, including the Russians. As a proportion maybe the Russians came out a little better than most due to the fact they composed +50% of the population and therefore destroying their elite faction was much harder, but the long term damage to their civic values and strategic vision was incalculable. I am of the opinion that the rather grasping, mercenary, and short-sighted behavior of many of today’s Russian politicians is due to Stalin culling families with long-standing ties of devoted service to the Russian state: the Old Aristocracy, the Priesthood, the Merchants, career military officers, intellectuals, and others. The survivors were blacklisted from entering the government in the same way their Jewish counterparts were. Stalin probably did not lower the IQ of the nation much in the conventional sense, but he may have eliminated most of the of the genetic lines for self-sacrifice and devotion to higher loyalty to the Russian World and its values. In particular, his outright destruction of the traditional clergy of the Orthodox Church harmed the moral character and self-identity of the Russian nation greatly, in a way the Russian Jewish community was mostly spared. Individual descendants of the peasants have filled in some of the gaps in leadership (e.g. Putin), but you cannot rebuild something that valuable in only a few short decades.
3) Lastly, and this ties into the latter point: in what way was Russia improved after Stalin purged the Jewish members of the Old Bolsheviks? He left the Soviet Union a stagnant swamp intellectually, economically, and spiritually. His immediate successors were all men promoted for their competence at handling the day-to-day work of running the government, and a total lack of charisma and vision in all other areas. Any one who tried to break this mold, like Khrushchev and Kosygin were stymied in their reform efforts and later pushed out. In this way Stalin’s role as supreme political authority outlasted his death. Knowing that odious figures like Kamenev, Zinoviev, Yagoda were executed may make us feel a little better, but remember that Stalin personally protected the utterly vile Naftaly Frenkel from any punishment for his actions, and allowed Frenkel to retire as a wealthy and influential man.
The purges cannot be explained in a simple dialectic narrative as you want to view them, but I am not sure that even this argument is going to change your mind about it. I learned a long time ago it is very hard for a man to change his beliefs if he gives any value to them, but I hope that I may have at least broadened your perspective on the issue.
Removing Jews from the party apparatus and NKVD was a big, BIG deal. Remember, Soviet Union was a highly centralized top-down totalitarian society. It was nothing like the American system where political leaders are taking cues and seek approval from the Jewish-owned media. In Soviet Union it worked the opposite way.
You aren’t saying that satirists like Zhvanetsky brought down Communism, are you? Come on! Sure, the Jews retained some presence in Soviet cultural life, but their ability to shape the direction of the country was gone.
Stalin didn’t do it, Communism did. It was bad system, that could never work. I see no logic in decoupling the Soviet dictator from the system that spawned him. Stalin was but a product of the Communist system, who in fact helped curb its most destructive element – the fanatical revolutionary Jews.
Jewish Bolsheviks were the most committed Bolsheviks, and also most willing to overlook the costs to Russian population. Removing them really took the revolutionary zeal out of the regime. “Draining” the Soviet Union in this fashion was not a bad thing.
I see Stalin’s purges as a watershed moment in evolution of the Soviet Union: it began to function less like a bizarre social experiment, and more like a convential state. Of course it was still failing, but with considerably less stress and disruption for the Russian poeople.
If you don't like the taste of other people's boots stop acting like this.Replies: @Cyrano
It’s easy to seat at home and conjure up images of somebody putting the boots to Russia. Why don’t you try to walk a mile in the boots of anybody who has ever attempted to do that – before you draw any conclusions?
As for the Polaks, I agree, they are certifiably stupid. Wen USSR intervened in Afghanistan, there were no Polaks among them, and consequently, no Polish casualties. Now there are, Polaks serving and dying there. Who is protecting whom from what? You know what NATO real moto is? To paraphrase Kennedy, Ask not what US can do for you, ask what you can do for US.
USSR ceased to be a revolutionary power that served the interests of international Jewry, and became an empire, led by a bona fide Asiatic despot.Replies: @Greasy William
The pre Stalin USSR did basically nothing for the Jews except for defeating the Whites. Stalin’s USSR , in contrast, did a ton for the Jews.
Huh? USSR was but a vehicle for the Jewry to seize power, nationally and internationally. Stalin originally presided over a Jew-dominated system. He made it less Jewified over time, with the Great Purges being a major watershed event.
I would also like to note that unlike FDR, Stalin did not rush into war with Nazi Germany. He actually made an effort to avoid it.
So, it’s not at all clear to me what you’re talking about.
2. Stalin was a lifelong critic of antisemitism, had at least one affair with a Jewish woman and promoted a useless hack like Kaganovich all the way up to STAVKA. He had a lot of other Jewish friends/hatchet men as well.
3. Stalin prosecuted/killed 10s of thousand of war criminals after the war.
4. Stalin supported the partition of Israel/Palestine in the UN which was pivotal to getting the British out.
5. During Israel's war of independence, Stalin sold Israel crucial weaponry, something even Truman didn't do.
Stalin was a true friend of the Jewish people.Replies: @Felix Keverich, @Anatoly Karlin
I'm pretty sure ghetto people will be the first to go, if the elites ever get serious about population control. Besides, mass murder is not the cleanest way to go about it. Instead, think about mass sterilisation programs. People could be encouraged to undergo sterilisation in exchange for a daily allowance of food. It will be almost voluntary.Replies: @Sean
First the context
You objected
That would be difficult to disguise, and likely to provoke an armed uprising. If the objective is to neutralise the potentially formidable power represented by whites. Sterilisation targeting the birthrate whites as such would be counter productive.. Bringing in immigrants is a better way. They have already achieved strategic parity, inasmuch as Trump won electoral states, not the population. African Americans plus immigrants and the affluent whites who serve the oligarchy are already a majority over-against whites as such. There is no insuperable political roadblock on the road to whites being in physical danger and they will remain the greatest danger to the systen as it moves to a techno oligarchy.
I expect a half century hence, the oligarchs will face an armed uprising, and use advanced technology to exterminate about a third of the white population, it will be presented as a moral necessity to.
1. How would going to war with Hitler earlier have helped the Jews? The Holocaust didn’t kick off until after the war started.
2. Stalin was a lifelong critic of antisemitism, had at least one affair with a Jewish woman and promoted a useless hack like Kaganovich all the way up to STAVKA. He had a lot of other Jewish friends/hatchet men as well.
3. Stalin prosecuted/killed 10s of thousand of war criminals after the war.
4. Stalin supported the partition of Israel/Palestine in the UN which was pivotal to getting the British out.
5. During Israel’s war of independence, Stalin sold Israel crucial weaponry, something even Truman didn’t do.
Stalin was a true friend of the Jewish people.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-lawyer-reznik-resigns-stalin-plaque-moscow-academy/28583453.html
These Jews still remember the purges LOLReplies: @Greasy William
https://izhevsk.ru/forums/icons/forum_pictures/asyncupload/thm/1456560346U103359THbj9081228465_800.jpg
2. Stalin was a lifelong critic of antisemitism, had at least one affair with a Jewish woman and promoted a useless hack like Kaganovich all the way up to STAVKA. He had a lot of other Jewish friends/hatchet men as well.
3. Stalin prosecuted/killed 10s of thousand of war criminals after the war.
4. Stalin supported the partition of Israel/Palestine in the UN which was pivotal to getting the British out.
5. During Israel's war of independence, Stalin sold Israel crucial weaponry, something even Truman didn't do.
Stalin was a true friend of the Jewish people.Replies: @Felix Keverich, @Anatoly Karlin
Don’t be absurd. I know for a fact that Jews in Russia do not see Stalin as a friend.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-lawyer-reznik-resigns-stalin-plaque-moscow-academy/28583453.html
These Jews still remember the purges LOL
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-lawyer-reznik-resigns-stalin-plaque-moscow-academy/28583453.html
These Jews still remember the purges LOLReplies: @Greasy William
Well I’m Jewish and I *do* see Stalin as a friend. Lazar Kagonvich certainly saw him as a friend, as did Molotov (Jewish wife). I don’t care what some liberal Russian Jew thinks.
This kind of argument is seriously logically flawed. The author equals high IQ to occupation. This might be true only in homogenized society with all the social lifts working overtime. The Tsarist Russia had very limited social mobility while 90% of population being rural and many of them illiterate. In this settings some losses on part of Red Terror were covered many times over by new vast gene pool opened up for high IQ occupations in new industrial Soviet Union.
Elites did turn to things like aristocratic titles pass on status to their sons but in a pre-contraception world large families were the norm even among the upper classes and most elite men would have a surplus of sons. A landowner can't pass his whole status to his sons if he has more than one; dividing the estate means downward mobility for all sons while concentrating inheritance on one son means sending the others to either lower status or some risk-taking quest like military service to take their chances at maintaining status.
Still, it is not entirely fair to blame a loss of high IQ individuals in the Civil War terror on the Reds without considering the alternative scenarios - there would have been purges of some kind regardless of which faction ended up on top and a purge of leftist leaders would have still been a purge of high IQ individuals. It is not even fair to blame the communists for starting it because the February Revolution started it all and a "reactionary" right-wing regime would not have limited itself to going after far leftists, they would have also gone after the bourgeois liberals and center-leftists that had their regime between February and October 1917, again a set of smart (but deluded) people.
Stalin's later purges and crazy projects like dekulakization might have been avoided under another regime, of course.
The lack of social mobility is also a discredited Communist myth. As pertains to higher education, there was more of it in Russia in 1914 than in contemporary Germany or interbellum France. It was also the most progressive European country as pertains female higher education.
(Saprykin 2009, Educational Potential of the Russian Empire, pp.20)Replies: @Mr. Hack
Stalin and Jews
if Stalin culled his way through the Soviet elite for power retention reasons and Jews were a high proportion of the Soviet elite then Stalin would have killed a lot of them without necessarily needing to be anti-Jewish.
You’re forgetting downward mobility of elite families. In a traditional rural society there are of course high IQ individuals in the peasantry who never get a chance to rise in ranks but a lot of elite individuals are going to have chances to fall in ranks. The upper classes are going to maintain a higher average IQ if they’re constantly shedding less capable individuals.
Elites did turn to things like aristocratic titles pass on status to their sons but in a pre-contraception world large families were the norm even among the upper classes and most elite men would have a surplus of sons. A landowner can’t pass his whole status to his sons if he has more than one; dividing the estate means downward mobility for all sons while concentrating inheritance on one son means sending the others to either lower status or some risk-taking quest like military service to take their chances at maintaining status.
Still, it is not entirely fair to blame a loss of high IQ individuals in the Civil War terror on the Reds without considering the alternative scenarios – there would have been purges of some kind regardless of which faction ended up on top and a purge of leftist leaders would have still been a purge of high IQ individuals. It is not even fair to blame the communists for starting it because the February Revolution started it all and a “reactionary” right-wing regime would not have limited itself to going after far leftists, they would have also gone after the bourgeois liberals and center-leftists that had their regime between February and October 1917, again a set of smart (but deluded) people.
Stalin’s later purges and crazy projects like dekulakization might have been avoided under another regime, of course.
2. Stalin was a lifelong critic of antisemitism, had at least one affair with a Jewish woman and promoted a useless hack like Kaganovich all the way up to STAVKA. He had a lot of other Jewish friends/hatchet men as well.
3. Stalin prosecuted/killed 10s of thousand of war criminals after the war.
4. Stalin supported the partition of Israel/Palestine in the UN which was pivotal to getting the British out.
5. During Israel's war of independence, Stalin sold Israel crucial weaponry, something even Truman didn't do.
Stalin was a true friend of the Jewish people.Replies: @Felix Keverich, @Anatoly Karlin
The original Stalinbus (Haifa, 1949)
There was 80% primary enrolment in Imperial Russia by 1913. Full scale literacy was inevitable; all that the Revolution did was set it back by about 5 years due to the disruption of schooling during the Civil War.
The lack of social mobility is also a discredited Communist myth. As pertains to higher education, there was more of it in Russia in 1914 than in contemporary Germany or interbellum France. It was also the most progressive European country as pertains female higher education.
(Saprykin 2009, Educational Potential of the Russian Empire, pp.20)
To be fair, Williamson said that white communities that were no longer economically viable deserved to die out because the white inhabitants left to go somewhere they had a future.
This is very different indeed from saying that the white people living there deserve to die.
There are a multitude of ghost towns scattered across the country, especially the western half. Communities that died because there was no way to make a living there anymore.
My own father moved around the end of WWII from a small town in east KS that died slowly over the latter half of the 20th century as its economic function vanished. There’s really nothing left there now. But it’s because the people left, not because they died.
The lack of social mobility is also a discredited Communist myth. As pertains to higher education, there was more of it in Russia in 1914 than in contemporary Germany or interbellum France. It was also the most progressive European country as pertains female higher education.
(Saprykin 2009, Educational Potential of the Russian Empire, pp.20)Replies: @Mr. Hack
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Anatoly, but it appears that the ‘fascistic’ Kyiv government has finally finished its project of ridding the nation of all commemorative statues of Lenin. This movement is in stark contrast to the one in the Crimea and other parts of Russia where such memorials are still being erected anew. I read your earlier rant about this topic and wasn’t too particularly moved by the pathos that you evidenced for elderly babushkas and papushkas who might feel some remorse over this whole ‘dirty business’. A lot of city and street names were also changed. I, would definately feel more comfortable living on a street named ‘Lennon’ in honor of the deceased Beatle, rather than ‘Lenin’. How about you? Somehow, I feel that you’re not being totally honest here, and if this project had taken place in Russia with Putin’s blessings (or even without), you wouldn’t be shedding such huge crocodile tears? 🙂 Anything to criticize the ‘junta’ in Kyiv, eh comrade?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/lenin-statues-removed-soviet-union-russia-crimea-ukraine-bolshevik-communist-petro-poroshenko-a7903611.html
Reconstituting Greater Russia around sovok ideals might have been plausible up until 2014, but since then it has become a walking corpse, best put out of its misery. For before the UkSSR, there was the Russian Empire.Replies: @Mr. Hack
What, exactly, should I be sad about? To the contrary I am perfectly fine with Ukrainians voluntarily doing away with one of their founding fathers.
Reconstituting Greater Russia around sovok ideals might have been plausible up until 2014, but since then it has become a walking corpse, best put out of its misery. For before the UkSSR, there was the Russian Empire.
Yeah right, Lenin was a Ukrainian nationalist who stitched together a Ukrainian state out of lands that were predominantly of Ukrainian ethnicity out of a love and sentimentality for the Ukrainian people?
AND NOONE IN UKRAINE IS EVEN AWARE OF THIS ‘FACT’?
You should write a fuller historical account of this occurrence, being the astute student of history that you are, Anatoly!
Reconstituting Greater Russia around sovok ideals might have been plausible up until 2014, but since then it has become a walking corpse, best put out of its misery. For before the UkSSR, there was the Russian Empire.Replies: @Mr. Hack
I’m surprised that somebody as seemingly intelligent as you are has no problem in seeing that the formulation of a new Greater Russia around outdated and warn out sovok ideals has no future, but yet is harping back to an even more distant past in trying to promote a reconstituted Russian Empire? Did you even take a look at the latest Ukrainian polls that you refer to in your newest open post? Take a close look at how Ukrainians today (after 3 years of war with Russia!) feel about their neighbor to the North. In light of the negative reaction to Russia or the CIS by Ukrainians, how in the world can you cling to your warn out notions regarding a reconstituted Russia Empire? Time to wake up to the realities of the new world, Anatoly!
Moreover, modern national ideas have a sort of critical period. Once established, they cannot be undone. Premodern people in Ukraine could have adopted a Little Russian sort of Rus identity (Karlin mentioned Cantonese and Mandarin speaking peoples considering themselves to be Chinese), and stuck with it. But they did not, and now it is too late. AFAIK there are no examples of a people changing their national identities once these have been established by the end of mid 19th century.
In the 21st century the best Russia could hope for from Ukraine would be that Ukrainians and Russians would be like Danes and Swedes. Prior to the events of 2013-2014, over 60% of western Ukrainians had positive feelings towards Russia. EU was popular in Ukraine, but NATO was not. So Russia could have had a friendly country within the EU. Sure enough, Moscow screwed this up too. But they got Crimea out of it.Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Cicero
I don’t get it, why do you care about about Ukraine so much? Aren’t you American born and raised? I know people who are actually from Ukraine who are less interested in it than you are.
What’s your problem, with my interest in Ukraine? Do I ask yt a long time now. e
If Karlin is going to promote his ideas about a reconstituted ‘Greater Russia’, I think that he needs to provide his readers with more information about how he sees this evolving. I don’t think that this is possible in light of current events between Russia and Ukraine, and is against the flow of history between these two countries, for quite a long, long time now.
Gorky was of the common people, none knew them better than he, and from an initially sympathetic position, he quickly moved to advocating extermination of useless sectors of the population, which was the non industrial workers who were eating up the surplus as the rural overpopulation problem. He defended the death penalty for 12year olds who ate food without authorisation. The Soviet famines were the onlyrational solution to useless people, as the Nazi economists recognized.Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji, @Stephen R. Diamond
1. Trotsky wrote this in 1924, which was after he was in power.
2. Trotsky was thoroughly Darwinian, and I understand that Soviet genetics made serious strides in the early 20s. Trotsky was predicting that there would be a eugenics program under communism. Remember, childcare is to be collectivized.
No problem, I just don’t get it. It is very unusual for a white guy who was born in America to identify so strongly with his parents country.
I thought you were Jewish? If so, this it shouldn’t be unfamiliar to you. Many Ukrainians in the diaspora are like Jews or Armenians.
The UNZ Review seems to attract the ‘unusual’ views of many ‘white guys’, wouldn’t you agree? 🙂
He thinks that if the layer of Sovok filth is removed, he will find a treasure underneath. The problem is that his view of what preceded the Bolsheviks is too optimistic. The Russian Idea (as anything capable of being a mass movement) had died a few decades earlier in Ukraine, in no small part to the Russian government’s own bungling.
Moreover, modern national ideas have a sort of critical period. Once established, they cannot be undone. Premodern people in Ukraine could have adopted a Little Russian sort of Rus identity (Karlin mentioned Cantonese and Mandarin speaking peoples considering themselves to be Chinese), and stuck with it. But they did not, and now it is too late. AFAIK there are no examples of a people changing their national identities once these have been established by the end of mid 19th century.
In the 21st century the best Russia could hope for from Ukraine would be that Ukrainians and Russians would be like Danes and Swedes. Prior to the events of 2013-2014, over 60% of western Ukrainians had positive feelings towards Russia. EU was popular in Ukraine, but NATO was not. So Russia could have had a friendly country within the EU. Sure enough, Moscow screwed this up too. But they got Crimea out of it.
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2017/09/2/7153864/
We really do not know how national identities that were built in the 19th century are going to fair over the next 50 to 100 years, or if the paradigm will be relevant in a world where the center of power is shifting away from the ideas of the Western Enlightenment. In countries like France we are likely to see major shifts that would have seem inconceivable when we were young.
You know, part of the reason the Russian Empire did so well for the first 300+ years of its existence (roughly from when Ivan the Terrible conquered the Tatar Principalities up until the Crimean War) is because nationality is the way we currently understand it did not exist. Nations did exist of course, and when a power that was too alien or intolerant came into power over a nation that would not tolerate it, conflict occurred. So the Tsars could rule over dozens of other ethnic groups, recognize the difference of these group, and still find a way to work them into the framework of society regardless. I think it is understood that one of the reasons the Empire broke down was because modern European-style nationalism was not compatible with Tsarist Autocracy, and the clumsy attempts by Alexander III to try to meld them together was yet another miscalculation that weakened the system.
When the Western system does break down completely sometime in the next 100 years, and the political borders set after the Cold War ended do not seem so sacrosanct anymore, it will be interesting to see where this all leads. I have no doubt Ukrainians will still exist as a people at that point, but the idea that being a distinct people warrants having your own national government may not hold up. Of course the Russian Federation may break down into pieces before it can capitalize on this new political reality, or become the victim of another greater power that swallows it up.
What I am trying to say is that we are making these assumptions about the long term development of nations based on what we currently know, but that our assumptions are just as shaky as those who just a few decades ago predicted that the world would continue to be split between the United States and the Soviet Union.
For my part, I feel like after 2050, the world is in for a pretty volatile ride in terms of who controls what. It might even happen by 2030. The center is giving away, and our order at this time is mostly a mirage that survives because people accept it as the way it has to be.
Actually, it is really depressing when you think about it. We might all turn out to be wrong and this talk we seem meaningless to those who come after us. It will just be another chapter in the book of History.Replies: @AP
Moreover, modern national ideas have a sort of critical period. Once established, they cannot be undone. Premodern people in Ukraine could have adopted a Little Russian sort of Rus identity (Karlin mentioned Cantonese and Mandarin speaking peoples considering themselves to be Chinese), and stuck with it. But they did not, and now it is too late. AFAIK there are no examples of a people changing their national identities once these have been established by the end of mid 19th century.
In the 21st century the best Russia could hope for from Ukraine would be that Ukrainians and Russians would be like Danes and Swedes. Prior to the events of 2013-2014, over 60% of western Ukrainians had positive feelings towards Russia. EU was popular in Ukraine, but NATO was not. So Russia could have had a friendly country within the EU. Sure enough, Moscow screwed this up too. But they got Crimea out of it.Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Cicero
I appreciate you bringing me up to speed with some of Karlin’s apparent past feelings regarding a reconstituted Russian Empire. You seem to do an adequate job of debunking his ideas, however, I would appreciate the chance to view his own ideas from Karlin himself. I hope that those that run Russia are content with their Crimean acquisition, for it’s going to continue to bear enormous costs for Russia. Today, I came across this Ukrainian language news item regarding some heavy handed Russian intrusion into one of the few (I presume) UOC KP churches remaining on the isthmus. I haven’t been able to locate any English language citations regarding this dark event?
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2017/09/2/7153864/
Moreover, modern national ideas have a sort of critical period. Once established, they cannot be undone. Premodern people in Ukraine could have adopted a Little Russian sort of Rus identity (Karlin mentioned Cantonese and Mandarin speaking peoples considering themselves to be Chinese), and stuck with it. But they did not, and now it is too late. AFAIK there are no examples of a people changing their national identities once these have been established by the end of mid 19th century.
In the 21st century the best Russia could hope for from Ukraine would be that Ukrainians and Russians would be like Danes and Swedes. Prior to the events of 2013-2014, over 60% of western Ukrainians had positive feelings towards Russia. EU was popular in Ukraine, but NATO was not. So Russia could have had a friendly country within the EU. Sure enough, Moscow screwed this up too. But they got Crimea out of it.Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Cicero
This is not a rebuttal to your point about Russians and Ukrainians specifically, but about modern nationalism in general.
We really do not know how national identities that were built in the 19th century are going to fair over the next 50 to 100 years, or if the paradigm will be relevant in a world where the center of power is shifting away from the ideas of the Western Enlightenment. In countries like France we are likely to see major shifts that would have seem inconceivable when we were young.
You know, part of the reason the Russian Empire did so well for the first 300+ years of its existence (roughly from when Ivan the Terrible conquered the Tatar Principalities up until the Crimean War) is because nationality is the way we currently understand it did not exist. Nations did exist of course, and when a power that was too alien or intolerant came into power over a nation that would not tolerate it, conflict occurred. So the Tsars could rule over dozens of other ethnic groups, recognize the difference of these group, and still find a way to work them into the framework of society regardless. I think it is understood that one of the reasons the Empire broke down was because modern European-style nationalism was not compatible with Tsarist Autocracy, and the clumsy attempts by Alexander III to try to meld them together was yet another miscalculation that weakened the system.
When the Western system does break down completely sometime in the next 100 years, and the political borders set after the Cold War ended do not seem so sacrosanct anymore, it will be interesting to see where this all leads. I have no doubt Ukrainians will still exist as a people at that point, but the idea that being a distinct people warrants having your own national government may not hold up. Of course the Russian Federation may break down into pieces before it can capitalize on this new political reality, or become the victim of another greater power that swallows it up.
What I am trying to say is that we are making these assumptions about the long term development of nations based on what we currently know, but that our assumptions are just as shaky as those who just a few decades ago predicted that the world would continue to be split between the United States and the Soviet Union.
For my part, I feel like after 2050, the world is in for a pretty volatile ride in terms of who controls what. It might even happen by 2030. The center is giving away, and our order at this time is mostly a mirage that survives because people accept it as the way it has to be.
Actually, it is really depressing when you think about it. We might all turn out to be wrong and this talk we seem meaningless to those who come after us. It will just be another chapter in the book of History.
Why would the Russian Federation break into pieces? There are no separatist movements in Russia outside of the Caucasus.
The US is definitely gonna break up. Spain probably will as well. Scotland will eventually leave the UK. Belgium should break up. Canada too.
We really do not know how national identities that were built in the 19th century are going to fair over the next 50 to 100 years, or if the paradigm will be relevant in a world where the center of power is shifting away from the ideas of the Western Enlightenment. In countries like France we are likely to see major shifts that would have seem inconceivable when we were young.
You know, part of the reason the Russian Empire did so well for the first 300+ years of its existence (roughly from when Ivan the Terrible conquered the Tatar Principalities up until the Crimean War) is because nationality is the way we currently understand it did not exist. Nations did exist of course, and when a power that was too alien or intolerant came into power over a nation that would not tolerate it, conflict occurred. So the Tsars could rule over dozens of other ethnic groups, recognize the difference of these group, and still find a way to work them into the framework of society regardless. I think it is understood that one of the reasons the Empire broke down was because modern European-style nationalism was not compatible with Tsarist Autocracy, and the clumsy attempts by Alexander III to try to meld them together was yet another miscalculation that weakened the system.
When the Western system does break down completely sometime in the next 100 years, and the political borders set after the Cold War ended do not seem so sacrosanct anymore, it will be interesting to see where this all leads. I have no doubt Ukrainians will still exist as a people at that point, but the idea that being a distinct people warrants having your own national government may not hold up. Of course the Russian Federation may break down into pieces before it can capitalize on this new political reality, or become the victim of another greater power that swallows it up.
What I am trying to say is that we are making these assumptions about the long term development of nations based on what we currently know, but that our assumptions are just as shaky as those who just a few decades ago predicted that the world would continue to be split between the United States and the Soviet Union.
For my part, I feel like after 2050, the world is in for a pretty volatile ride in terms of who controls what. It might even happen by 2030. The center is giving away, and our order at this time is mostly a mirage that survives because people accept it as the way it has to be.
Actually, it is really depressing when you think about it. We might all turn out to be wrong and this talk we seem meaningless to those who come after us. It will just be another chapter in the book of History.Replies: @AP
A very thoughtful comment as usual, and one I don’t disagree with. When I wrote “there are no examples of a people changing their national identities once these have been established by the end of mid 19th century” I meant that Ukrainians are not going to turn into Russians, Danes or the Dutch will not turn into Germans. I did not, however, mean that the idea of national identities is permanent. Erosion is very possible, all such identities may indeed disappear and the fairly new idea of nationalism and concomitant love of nation states may turn out to be a temporary phenomenon – not as brief as Communism, but far less long-lasting than the idea of “Christendom.” This erosion of national ideas in the West seems to be taking the form of self-hatred and results in replacement by other peoples. Eastern Europe seems to be quite immune to this particular phenomenon, but post-nationalism may take some as-yet unknown form there one day.
Personally, as a non-nationalist with admiration for conservative pre-nationalist entities such as Austria-Hungary, or aspects of the old Rzeczpospolita Polska (minus Counter-reformation Roman Catholic chauvinism) and Russia (minus its centralizing, modern Russian Nationalism) the end of nationalism doesn’t disturb me, as long as it is not accompanied by the end of local traditions, cultures, and peoples. So Western self-denigration and replacement is a tragedy, but some future post-nationalism may not necessarily be.
Any mortality-based estimate would have to be the lower limit. Some who were sent to prison survived, but were secluded from their wives for many years. I imagine fertility dropped off quite significantly for smart people for many additional reasons, as well. Even just housing shortages. And, if I’m not mistaken, women probably worked more in the Eastern Bloc.
Even though it was a command economy for decades, I think the economic effects (even just considering the smart people killed) must have been profound. So many officers and scientists were killed. Even in areas that became key, like rocketry. Would the USSR have reached the moon first without Stalin? It’s possible.
2. Trotsky was thoroughly Darwinian, and I understand that Soviet genetics made serious strides in the early 20s. Trotsky was predicting that there would be a eugenics program under communism. Remember, childcare is to be collectivized.Replies: @Sean
Earlyon Trotsky thought that industrial workers would be unbeatable soldiers. He ended up having to take Tsarist officer’s families hostage and using them to fight for the Red Army. He thought the living conditions of the Soviet proletariat would make them better at stuff.
That is Lamarkianism. By the way the Lamarckians were ok with eugenics, those whites who had failed to improve despite living in America for centuries (like the Appalachians) had shown themselves to be degenerate in the book of leading physical anthropologists Ales Hrdlicka (and Earnest Hooton) who were Larmackians . Even within biological science, very very few people were truly Darwinist before the mid thirties.
The Russian revolutionaries included people with the most fantastic ideas on improving man Peasants were seen negatively compared to the industrial workers (the Soviet peasants being equivalent to the Appalachians while the proletariat were the counterpart of the Yankee New Englanders) in the minds of Trotsky and Gorky. The peasants were not only economically unproductive, they were biologically degenerate by virtue of being non-susceptible to Lamarkian improvement, and thus unable to profit from uplift in the Soviet system. That is why they had to go.
Classical marxism is perfectly clear on the nature/nurture thing: “social being determines consciousness”. Man is born tabula rasa, and then formed by his social environment, his social interactions. Which also explains the collective childcare – taking children away from culturally undesirable (reactionary) family influence, to be raised in (and formed by) the new collectivist culture. Some mature individuals could also be re-educated by brainwashing (as in re-education camps in Vietnam). It’s very simple, and has nothing whatsoever to do with anything “Lamarckian”.
Classical Marxism, eh?
Your father could find something else to do. The established populations (the white community of the West whose denizens expect to be paid a living wage) will be the first to become economically non-viable . Robots will be doing everything and I’m not just talking about production in factories, clerical jobs will soon be extinct. Where are men like your father of the next generation going to go and what are they going to do when no one wants them for anything? Horses after the car.
Williamson is objecting to the first stiring of political rebellion by the community he derides, but it won’t stay political. Gunnar Heinsohn’s theory of war and revolution centres around competition for prestigious positions by third and fourth sons. But where there is nothing for even only sons they will fight (they won’t win of course, because it will be men against machines).
Why, yes, classical marxism. As opposed to Lysenko’s botany.
Moreover what was called eugenics in the Soviet Union and America was Lamarkian in inspiration see http://racehist.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/hrdlicka-on-old-new-englanders.htmlReplies: @Mao Cheng Ji
This post is about Soviet mass culling of the least valuable members of society. Krasin, Gorky, Lunacharsky , Bekhterev and Stalin were no more classical Marxist ( or Darwinian than) Lysenko was.
Moreover what was called eugenics in the Soviet Union and America was Lamarkian in inspiration see http://racehist.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/hrdlicka-on-old-new-englanders.html
It's true that those, among the current generation, who were deemed incurable, where to be repressed or even executed, but that had nothing to do with biology. Children of repressed parents (Gorbachev and Yeltsin among them) had no stigma attached to them. Any new person is simply a new person, the blank slate, like I said. It's really that simple.Replies: @Sean
Moreover what was called eugenics in the Soviet Union and America was Lamarkian in inspiration see http://racehist.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/hrdlicka-on-old-new-englanders.htmlReplies: @Mao Cheng Ji
How is this Dr. Hrdlicka relevant here? What I’m telling you is that your fantasy of Gorky (or anyone among the Soviet elite) thinking of exterminating peasants has no basis in reality. The idea was (and still is, I presume) to try to re-educate (as much as possible) the current generation, and to indoctrinate the future ones from the early childhood.
It’s true that those, among the current generation, who were deemed incurable, where to be repressed or even executed, but that had nothing to do with biology. Children of repressed parents (Gorbachev and Yeltsin among them) had no stigma attached to them. Any new person is simply a new person, the blank slate, like I said. It’s really that simple.
It's true that those, among the current generation, who were deemed incurable, where to be repressed or even executed, but that had nothing to do with biology. Children of repressed parents (Gorbachev and Yeltsin among them) had no stigma attached to them. Any new person is simply a new person, the blank slate, like I said. It's really that simple.Replies: @Sean
Trotsky was the only important personage who, in his theoretical writings at least, thought that nonbiological way–he wanted Freud’s work to be given official approval. But in practice Trotsky did persecute the families of Tsarist officers.
The clear meaning of the quote from Gorky I give above is biological, and entailed his approval of the extermination of a population held in low regard by the communists. And perhaps not coincidentally, many millions of them were killed by the Soviet government. I have explained the motives for eugenic measures were more Lamarckian than Darwinist in the US as well as in the Soviet Union.
What! That the families of those who conspired to assasinate the Tzar were not harmed by his government was cited by Solzhenitsyn as a crucial difference with the Soviets.
Sure Sean. Especially relevant and convincing is Solzhenitsyn’s (one of the main pillars of the anti-communism industry) opinion of the Soviets.
Solzhenitsyn convincingly detailed the effectual nature of the Tsarist repression with a number of cases taken at random. Again, nothing happened to Lenin despite his brother’s attempted assassination of Alexander III. Lenin continued as a supporter of terrorism and even when he was sent to Siberia it was actually quite luxurious. He went hunting wearing kid gloves –literally. Any relative of someone who tried to kill Stalin would, even if completely innocent and politically uninvolved, at the very least have been sent to a camp with little hope of ever getting out alive
I've read hundreds of pages written by Solzhenitsyn. Hell, I even read (time's wasted) a bunch of pages written by Anne Applebaum. Question: have you read any book written by Gorky? Anything by Marx, Lenin? Che Guevara diaries? Anything by Sartre? Bakunin, perhaps? Anything?
So then, again: how did sons of repressed (Gorbachev and Yeltsin, for example) manage to get to the very top of the pyramid?
I’ve read hundreds of pages written by Solzhenitsyn. Hell, I even read (time’s wasted) a bunch of pages written by Anne Applebaum. Question: have you read any book written by Gorky? Anything by Marx, Lenin? Che Guevara diaries? Anything by Sartre? Bakunin, perhaps? Anything?
Here are a couple of references for you professor.
Gorky was articulating Soviet contempt for peasant life
Gorky and the Bolshevik God-builders.
Gorky was articulating Soviet contempt for peasant life Gorky and the Bolshevik God-builders.Replies: @Mao Cheng Ji
Have you read anything Gorky himself wrote? I’m sure all is translated; why rely on tendentious interpretations?
How many of these communists were Jews?
None. Jews had Bund.