[badpun]

Russia was always the weird case of a country with a cruel, Asian steppe mentality (early in the days of the Dutchy of Moscow, they were conquered and thoroughly subjugated by the Mongols, the Mongol mark of cruelty and disdain for human life is still there in XXI century) that is also Christian. The Christianity has confused Western leaders throught the ages, who thought Russia is like any other European country, and can be reasoned with.

[leviliebvin]

Right. The English, the French, the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedish, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Romans, the Greeks, the Austrians, the Belgians, ..., the Cossacks ... none of those ever did anything to show any kind of "cruel mentality". Right.

This kind of completely unhinged dehumanizing nonsense is bordering hate speech.

[aguaviva]

The English, the French, the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedish, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Romans, the Greeks, the Austrians, the Belgians, ...,

All gave up their psychotic empire-building games (or at least sublimated into forms not involving large-scale military conflict) long ago.

Russia's current regime, for some reason, has not.

[meiraleal]

> All gave up their psychotic empire-building games (or at least sublimated into forms not involving large-scale military conflict) long ago.

They did not. They were subjugated by the current empire, the US and are all just fiefdoms nowadays, some of them are even occupied by military forces, called bases.

Russia isn't in that list.

[aguaviva]

They're all just fiefdoms nowadays

Those countries are not "fiefdoms", by any stretch or interpretation.

Nor are they occupied, in any meaningful sense.

That's just delusional.

[badpun]

I am not dehumanising Russians, merely their political culture and political traditions. A country can have a lot of decent people and, at the same time, be a hate and death-monger - just see the Nazi Germany. All depends on current leadership and their policies, which in large part depends on country's political culture and history (e.g. Putin wouldn't really fly as a leader of Canada, and Trudeau would get murdered in no time if he somehow became a leader of Russia).

[gsf_emergency]

I agree with a slight patch-- the Asian cruel steppe mentality is called "meritocracy" (which the Mongols, or at least Chinggis & his direct successors down thru Kublai, iirc, was enamoured of..)

Russians, ironically, defeated the tartars when they managed to out-meritocrat the greatkhanless hordes somescore later,

-Then they basically reverted to divine right of kings*, aka the mandate of heaven..

-until the time of Lenin, when the cycle began anew..

*Apologies for ignoring the slight detour of Peter the Great** (known to be enlighteningly cruel) whose table of ranks could have been said to have set "his Excellency" (Prevoskhoditel’stvo) Ulyanov up for life

**but we should also pay attention to the current phenomenon of lionizing Catherine as a monarch more Christian than Peter

[Recall that the christians did not meritocracy until roughly... 1848 (again, ignoring the Glourious Revolution) over thence we had Weber retconning for his tribe]

(

[082349872349872]

Note that Catherine gets a late soviet mention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_IObE7MIqs#t=143s

...and that Goldstein basically writes about the meritocracy* of the Inner Party, as set out in the non-fictional The Managerial Revolution (1941).

* Smith is in the outer party precisely because he did poorly on his A-levels.

[gsf_emergency]

First American-Russians got left high & dry.. and meretocrat A2T (TiGR! Revisit the trial of his assassins) ?

https://sine-or.livejournal.com/60717.html

[082349872349872]

To be fair, NVR may have sung the lines and sat in the Duma, but I think (я думаю?) the songwriter (IIM?) was probably more of a thinker than a sitter and knew exactly what they were doing.

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUCs_c643qU

(not sure if the russian fleet really kept the royal navy away during the US Civil War; my impression had been that the Confederacy had waited too long to revolt, and the second-cheapest supplier of cotton [egypt?] for british mills was not much more expensive than the CSA would've been in any case)