President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that Ukraine and its allies are very close to the moment when Russia can be forced to end or at least halt the war, but this would require the United States to impose tough sanctions on Russia.
Russians like strong men, it’s a weakness in their society.
No, it’s not any more a Russian weakness than an American one, even less than a Japanese or a Chinese one.
Especially unwise to judge Russians by American stereotypes of Russians.
Everyone outside Russia wanted it to continue to be a democracy
How’s that compatible with supporting Yeltsin in his 1993 coup and in stealing 1996 elections?
Russia even had a brief association with NATO while it was.
No it didn’t. Yeltsin wanted that, yes, and Putin wanted that too. Both wanted to be a big, scary country accepted to NATO and with NATO weaponry. Like Turkey, but with nukes. What both didn’t want is dropping the bullshit about spheres of influence and being an equal of the USA, apparently got told by NATO that beggars are not choosers. Also wanting an association with NATO has plainly nothing to do with being a democracy or not.
But Yeltsin drank too much (alcoholism being another weakness in Russian society) and that allowed a guy like Putin to make himself a Czar.
I think you skipped the part where I was educating you that Yeltsin made himself Czar in 1993 and just passed it on to Putin.
I don’t really care that it breaks your narrative. Putin is a natural continuation of the western-supported and consulted regime in Russia installed in 1993. That Yeltsin presented himself as some liberator and Putin presented himself as ex Soviet intelligence are campaign pictures that mean nothing. All the trusted people around Putin are the same that Yeltsin had even before 1991. Including Putin himself.
Alcoholism is not a bigger weakness in the Russian society than in British ones or in Sweden or in Finland.
No, it’s not any more a Russian weakness than an American one, even less than a Japanese or a Chinese one.
Russians don’t have the “fuck the feds” grassroots rebelliousness of Americans, they don’t have a honour/respectability culture like the Japanese not to mention that Russians have basically no civil society while Japan (as a stem family culture) has a very strong one, and unlike the Chinese Russians are fatalist AF, don’t really have expectations about things becoming better for them. If the CCP had started this shit they would’ve lost the mandate of heaven quite a while ago.
But I agree, it’s not so much a strong man fetish. It’s an acceptance of might makes right combined with social acceptance of tyrannical behaviour on the individual level and, consequently, high distrust among individuals stopping the formation of a civil society.
Russian society hasn’t fundamentally changed since the days of the Tsars, they’ve gone through various paint-coats while sticking to the same overarching organisational structure: Central power delegates exploitation of people, the environment etc to viceroys in exchange for loyalty, meanwhile acquisition of new colonial subjects is ongoing as, being built on terror, the imperial core can never feel safe and needs to bash something to distract itself from its vulnerability.
Russians don’t have the “fuck the feds” grassroots rebelliousness of Americans, they don’t have a honour/respectability culture like the Japanese not to mention that Russians have basically no civil society while Japan (as a stem family culture) has a very strong one, and unlike the Chinese Russians are fatalist AF, don’t really have expectations about things becoming better for them. If the CCP had started this shit they would’ve lost the mandate of heaven quite a while ago.
All wrong.
There’s just one thing that Russians really lack - understanding of the importance of truth. It would seem the Orwellian amorphousness of mind is a legacy Russians have carried from the USSR, except one can see signs of it all over the Russian literature school course. Russians really love “grey morality”, ambiguity and nihilism.
For an American or a German it takes belief in a propaganda device to follow it. For a Russian - just acceptance that it’s likelier to be better in some way.
It’s an acceptance of might makes right combined with social acceptance of tyrannical behaviour on the individual level and, consequently, high distrust among individuals stopping the formation of a civil society.
No. Just the belief that there’s some deeper grey wisdom, a secret, and you’d be an idiot to just give yourself to some specific idea.
A whole country of cynics thinking they know better. Thus extremely skeptical about any initiative.
But that might not be wrong course of action too, Westerners don’t seem to comprehend that today’s Russia is not USSR, and that solving the problem of making Russians, say, rebel en masse is not going to achieve much. That rebellion will be predicted, easily disrupted and the people involved will regret they were born. It’s probably perpetually happening - new and new people who’d eventually have done something finding yet another FSB trap and going to a secret jail silently before they would do anything.
Russian society hasn’t fundamentally changed since the days of the Tsars
It has and to the worse. Except, of course, back then the majority consisted of illiterate peasants.
Central power delegates exploitation of people, the environment etc to viceroys in exchange for loyalty, meanwhile acquisition of new colonial subjects is ongoing as, being built on terror, the imperial core can never feel safe and needs to bash something to distract itself from its vulnerability.
No. That’s not how central power functioned back then, and what happens now is a mafia group gratuitously using its vast human resources to just have fun. Their fun in this case is conquering Ukraine to feel themselves more powerful. Only it doesn’t quite work out, but I think the feeling of being able to mobilize people and send them to the grinder is good enough.
There’s just one thing that Russians really lack - understanding of the importance of truth.
Now that is a universal human trait.
For an American or a German it takes belief in a propaganda device to follow it. For a Russian - just acceptance that it’s likelier to be better in some way.
Americans don’t believe in, whatnot, manifest destiny, their exceptionalism, they live it. Germans certainly don’t believe in classism, yet we’re living it. Generally speaking: The stuff that people are actually following is not found on the propaganda level, but on a level below that, on a cultural carrier wave so to speak. Why propagandise something that people are doing, anyway? Doesn’t make sense.
No. Just the belief that there’s some deeper grey wisdom, a secret, and you’d be an idiot to just give yourself to some specific idea.
That’s just bug-standard metamodernism collapsed into fascism, that is, regressed into modernism. Just to explains terms: Modernism is the age of grand ideas, “one true path to absolve humankind”, while postmodernism is the “yo all that stuff is BS anyway we don’t know shit”. You see those forces oscillating throughout history, metamodernism means their co-existence.
That belief might very well what people are telling themselves, but it’s a shallow analysis. The “deeper grey wisdom” (interesting that you used “grey” btw, “it must be ancient” – why?) is Snokhachestvo, and not the practice itself but the cultural attitudes that enable(d) it. Russia made some progress overcoming that shit, e.g. normalising nuclear families instead of communal ones (the one crucial achievement of the USSR), but the underlying cultural beliefs stay uninterrogated, able to perpetuate themselves. Thus men do to their sons what their fathers did to them, think that’s what being a man is all about, and if you don’t use whatever power and might you have to be cruel, you’re obviously gay. Like Europe.
That is what I meant with “a belief in might makes right”.
A whole country of cynics thinking they know better.
Germany has 80 million national football team trainers. There seems to be a pattern here: Declaring universal human traits as specifically Russian. Those traits are true, no doubt, but they’re not unique.
That’s not how central power functioned back then, and what happens now is a mafia group gratuitously using its vast human resources to just have fun.
It didn’t? The Tsar and the viceroys, plundering the country and living the good life. The General Secretariat or even Secretary and the Nomenklatura, plundering the country and living the good life. “Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others”. In either case, highly authoritarian societies, with varying levels of totalitarianism. Such a setup requires cruelty and ruthlessness, and there’s no shortage of either because, according to Russian culture throughout the ages, good fathers make sure that their sons are strong men by raping the son’s wife. Metaphorically speaking, at least: The “sons” might be subordinate soldiers, and the “wife” their pay checks and materiel. In the position of son, you’re just expected to take it, otherwise you’re weak, and the “father” will make sure that’s an even worse fate. The Siloviki do indeed want to free Ukrainians – so they bomb cities. Free them from their “European gayness”, that is. Such is the perversity of the Russian psyche.
Or, differently put: You sure you’re looking at the water you’re swimming in? I’m not Russian, I only lived there, and I was able to see the water. Swimming feels quite a bit different in Russia than it does virtually everywhere else.
No, it’s not any more a Russian weakness than an American one, even less than a Japanese or a Chinese one.
Especially unwise to judge Russians by American stereotypes of Russians.
How’s that compatible with supporting Yeltsin in his 1993 coup and in stealing 1996 elections?
No it didn’t. Yeltsin wanted that, yes, and Putin wanted that too. Both wanted to be a big, scary country accepted to NATO and with NATO weaponry. Like Turkey, but with nukes. What both didn’t want is dropping the bullshit about spheres of influence and being an equal of the USA, apparently got told by NATO that beggars are not choosers. Also wanting an association with NATO has plainly nothing to do with being a democracy or not.
I think you skipped the part where I was educating you that Yeltsin made himself Czar in 1993 and just passed it on to Putin.
I don’t really care that it breaks your narrative. Putin is a natural continuation of the western-supported and consulted regime in Russia installed in 1993. That Yeltsin presented himself as some liberator and Putin presented himself as ex Soviet intelligence are campaign pictures that mean nothing. All the trusted people around Putin are the same that Yeltsin had even before 1991. Including Putin himself.
Alcoholism is not a bigger weakness in the Russian society than in British ones or in Sweden or in Finland.
Russians don’t have the “fuck the feds” grassroots rebelliousness of Americans, they don’t have a honour/respectability culture like the Japanese not to mention that Russians have basically no civil society while Japan (as a stem family culture) has a very strong one, and unlike the Chinese Russians are fatalist AF, don’t really have expectations about things becoming better for them. If the CCP had started this shit they would’ve lost the mandate of heaven quite a while ago.
But I agree, it’s not so much a strong man fetish. It’s an acceptance of might makes right combined with social acceptance of tyrannical behaviour on the individual level and, consequently, high distrust among individuals stopping the formation of a civil society.
Russian society hasn’t fundamentally changed since the days of the Tsars, they’ve gone through various paint-coats while sticking to the same overarching organisational structure: Central power delegates exploitation of people, the environment etc to viceroys in exchange for loyalty, meanwhile acquisition of new colonial subjects is ongoing as, being built on terror, the imperial core can never feel safe and needs to bash something to distract itself from its vulnerability.
All wrong.
There’s just one thing that Russians really lack - understanding of the importance of truth. It would seem the Orwellian amorphousness of mind is a legacy Russians have carried from the USSR, except one can see signs of it all over the Russian literature school course. Russians really love “grey morality”, ambiguity and nihilism.
For an American or a German it takes belief in a propaganda device to follow it. For a Russian - just acceptance that it’s likelier to be better in some way.
No. Just the belief that there’s some deeper grey wisdom, a secret, and you’d be an idiot to just give yourself to some specific idea.
A whole country of cynics thinking they know better. Thus extremely skeptical about any initiative.
But that might not be wrong course of action too, Westerners don’t seem to comprehend that today’s Russia is not USSR, and that solving the problem of making Russians, say, rebel en masse is not going to achieve much. That rebellion will be predicted, easily disrupted and the people involved will regret they were born. It’s probably perpetually happening - new and new people who’d eventually have done something finding yet another FSB trap and going to a secret jail silently before they would do anything.
It has and to the worse. Except, of course, back then the majority consisted of illiterate peasants.
No. That’s not how central power functioned back then, and what happens now is a mafia group gratuitously using its vast human resources to just have fun. Their fun in this case is conquering Ukraine to feel themselves more powerful. Only it doesn’t quite work out, but I think the feeling of being able to mobilize people and send them to the grinder is good enough.
Now that is a universal human trait.
Americans don’t believe in, whatnot, manifest destiny, their exceptionalism, they live it. Germans certainly don’t believe in classism, yet we’re living it. Generally speaking: The stuff that people are actually following is not found on the propaganda level, but on a level below that, on a cultural carrier wave so to speak. Why propagandise something that people are doing, anyway? Doesn’t make sense.
That’s just bug-standard metamodernism collapsed into fascism, that is, regressed into modernism. Just to explains terms: Modernism is the age of grand ideas, “one true path to absolve humankind”, while postmodernism is the “yo all that stuff is BS anyway we don’t know shit”. You see those forces oscillating throughout history, metamodernism means their co-existence.
That belief might very well what people are telling themselves, but it’s a shallow analysis. The “deeper grey wisdom” (interesting that you used “grey” btw, “it must be ancient” – why?) is Snokhachestvo, and not the practice itself but the cultural attitudes that enable(d) it. Russia made some progress overcoming that shit, e.g. normalising nuclear families instead of communal ones (the one crucial achievement of the USSR), but the underlying cultural beliefs stay uninterrogated, able to perpetuate themselves. Thus men do to their sons what their fathers did to them, think that’s what being a man is all about, and if you don’t use whatever power and might you have to be cruel, you’re obviously gay. Like Europe.
That is what I meant with “a belief in might makes right”.
Germany has 80 million national football team trainers. There seems to be a pattern here: Declaring universal human traits as specifically Russian. Those traits are true, no doubt, but they’re not unique.
It didn’t? The Tsar and the viceroys, plundering the country and living the good life. The General Secretariat or even Secretary and the Nomenklatura, plundering the country and living the good life. “Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others”. In either case, highly authoritarian societies, with varying levels of totalitarianism. Such a setup requires cruelty and ruthlessness, and there’s no shortage of either because, according to Russian culture throughout the ages, good fathers make sure that their sons are strong men by raping the son’s wife. Metaphorically speaking, at least: The “sons” might be subordinate soldiers, and the “wife” their pay checks and materiel. In the position of son, you’re just expected to take it, otherwise you’re weak, and the “father” will make sure that’s an even worse fate. The Siloviki do indeed want to free Ukrainians – so they bomb cities. Free them from their “European gayness”, that is. Such is the perversity of the Russian psyche.
Or, differently put: You sure you’re looking at the water you’re swimming in? I’m not Russian, I only lived there, and I was able to see the water. Swimming feels quite a bit different in Russia than it does virtually everywhere else.
Gorbachev was the only rational guy they had during that period. He could have had a chance to do something if the West had supported him.