Compared to before, no, there aren’t.
Well, that can be said about Greeks and Armenians in Crimea as well as Crimean Tatars. That's because after Stalin's forced movement to Kazakhstan (which is barbaric act, of course) or wherever, when descendants of those people were allowed to return, they were more likely to move elsewhere in the union. And after 1991 Greeks would often repatriate, well, to Greece, changing the ethnic character of the whole Russian and Ukrainian Black Sea coast, and Crimean Tatars to Turkey.
I think you also underestimate the role of Sevastopol. Purely due to strategic importance there'd be people coming from all parts of the empire and the union, and the "melting pot culture" there was Russian.
There has been an ongoing genocide since the tsarist times,
That's a weird way to say this, before Crimea becoming part of the Russian Empire the actual Crimean Khanate didn't exist for too long. It seems you have a misconception of Crimean Tatars being some sort of the native population of Crimea. They were not. They were a nomad vassal state to the Ottoman Empire, conquerors themselves. They weren't the majority there ethnically under that khanate either.
That’s why people are “wary” of Russia - because it is a genocidal state since time immemorial.
That's gross from someone who's likely a US-American or a European. Also "time immemorial" doesn't quite mean what you seem to think.
Tell me, why are there no more Tatars in Crimea?
There are, in fact, Tatars in Crimea.
You are literally saying "fucking moron" to something you imagined yourself and I didn't write.
You are right.
So basically what they’re doing to every other western nation.
You mean western nations' government policies are all perfect and people pushing against them are Russian shills? And making their politicians look bad?
Maybe those governments and politicians are Russia-infiltrated, and these complaints are resistance.
I don't think there's any need to evict it to pressure it to vote the right way.
So Hungary blocking things is a collective performance.
Or maybe not, then the leverage they gain from veto is more than the pressure put at them. In such case that leverage is apparently damn big and they are a small country.
I suppose they shut down mobile internet. That doesn't make news because wire is normal here.
Also there seem to be tests of DPI and filtering systems now by many ISPs in many places, because apparently Russia is going GFW.
Narcissism (NPL) is inherited and it's not learned. It's a DSM condition.
If you mean just being a jerk, then that doesn't look like this. That looks like Eichmann.
Must be something with psychopaths, for all I know about it was very important to have many children.
Stronger primal instincts maybe, and not augmented by responsibility or fear or love.
In appearances he seems to be real. Culturally quite typical for those jerks who are Russia's elite now, except their older generation holding power kinda hides that.
Durov is the intermediate generation, gross, but trying to pretend. I don't know if he was born to such a family (KGB/FSB/nomenclature relatives, getting a good education as a mathematician would check out then) or accepted into their, eh, society seems too strong a word.
It's like a network of thieves recognizing each other by their particular kind of behavior. There's too many of them to firmly know they are talking to one of their own, so that behavior and approach to life is all it takes to be perceived as one of them.
(I know you won't believe me, but they think that signature behavior is aristocratic or whatever, talking in Esopean language, dropping hints, not looking you in the eyes, cold faces, being silent and not talking a lot, fish eyes ; there are people with actual noble ancestry in Russia, they do have sort of a common approach to right behavior, and that's basically the opposite of this - talking to the other person directly, if making hints, then making it obvious that it's a metaphor, not trying to show contempt or threat in their face, being clear and honest, at least in appearances.)
Their part of my generation is just shit from the ass. Cunning and more evil, but no class or wisdom at all. I mean, there's a saying "order beats class", but they can have order only in ideal conditions too. Using bigger expense to imitate an achievement by smaller expense, which wouldn't be a compliment to their abilities even if it were real. What's worst is they don't even understand it.
Though this is where I must share one thing I've learned from them - you can imitate a level much higher than yours. You may have no taste, but read and imitate the taste of people who you want to deceive, and succeed. You may not know some domain area, but deceive those who do. Not have deeper understanding of some important mechanism, but imitate a person who does to those who do.
A thought similar to LLM bots in some sense. So - they are dangerous.
In many cases it's both.
This is wrong. Psychopaths feel themselves just fine in the society and usually don't become school shooters.
Shooting up bullies is a very crude solution, one that a psychopath usually doesn't need.
In any case most of school shootings I've read about were connected to bullying, and bully lives don't matter. Don't bully, don't get killed.
A psychopath usually plans their murders, so they'll do just fine with a heavy sharp object or a reactive not intended for food getting into food. A psychopath will also be on the convenient side of any socially approved action.
I've recently fully realized that I've met a high quality psychopath once.
School shooters usually use it as their last resort. Bullying of autistic kids is the main problem. Them finding such an exit is a secondary one.
The world would be a safer place if not only every country had nukes, but also every adult citizen had a farm of combat drones.
I personally don't want to hear of NATO&allies lecturing everyone else morals. Tired of that. And I understand why in ex-USSR the perception of them like some global good guys was common - the reaction to very invasive and obnoxious and irritating Soviet propaganda.
I don't understand how people in the west can believe that.
Anyway, no intelligent person from the west I've talked to did, so ... kinda as it should be.
Who asked fags?
It would seem that I'm arguing in the direction opposite of what you're claiming, but I don't care, I think I've met you before.
You are an idiot, go fuck yourself.
Closest they got to ending that cunt was Prigozhin attempting a coup in a drunken rage, but he sobered up and chickened out before it was done.
No. Prigozhin was a spoiler. A demining attempt, because Putin probably got afraid enough of a coup in the military and decided to use Prigozhin to try and detect people in the high command who'd assist Prigozhin or react favorably, or at least not do enough to impede.
Russians keep gravitating towards authoritarians over and over again. Can’t think of any other country that reverted back to it multiple times in a century. Weak people want strong man leaders, just how it is.
Russia has special services. They work all the time, work very well, and "entrapment" is not a problem for them, similar to "fruit of a poisoned tree". When you detect people likely to wish for a change early enough and neutralize them, either by silently jailing or intimidating or disrupting them, the society is much more amorphous.
It's not about gravitating anywhere, wishes or sympathies.
But there’s still a reason why you’re having these particular kinds of dreams, and not different ones.
I dunno, if we are going to that level, then I see plenty people not from Russia in the interwebs having this. In case of MENA people - much stronger.
It's a problem, but not such a deep one. Even among ex-military people from older generation.
Do you think it’s even constitutional for Putin to deputise people with presidential powers? That any court would challenge him? Law in Russia was, and is, subordinate to the powers that be.
No, Putin has been logically fully described in the "Dolls" show. He just wants to torture and kill people better than him, and the law he's interested in only as long as he can call whoever he wants destroyed "state criminals".
I'm saying that the Russian empire was different, and even the USSR was different.
That’s the attitude of those considered strong, yes. You either become them or you break and end up with a tattoo saying “slave” on your forehead or something.
Yup, I'm saying it's not the only idea of morality in the whole of Russian society and not even the dominant one.
It definitely is the one emanating from the state.
Part of the same ethos, with maybe slightly different dances, clothing, and they can continue pronouncing things with h instead of g as long as they admit they’re Russians, that they accept, as you put it above, the father’s authority
In this case no, it's not the father. It's the same master. Slaves replace their own dignity with their master's importance.
So those really thinking Ukraine shouldn't be independent are the people terribly irritated by Ukrainians not willing to have a master. If Ukrainians wanted to have a master, that master would have a lower status than their master, in their opinion, so it would all be fine - Ukraine is a separate country, but Ukrainians are in the same general status. It's envy - why can they have this and we can't. A typical village thing by the way.
Like that anecdote about hell and a Jewish cauldron, guarded by three imps to throw those escaping back in and prevent them from helping others, a Ukrainian cauldron guarded by one imp to just throw those escaping back in, and a Russian cauldron unguarded.
It’s not. It destroys social cohesion, it breeds neurosis.
Yep, in this regard we agree. It also breeds idiocy and cowardice with all participants certain they are being wise and brave and sacrificing.
The reason is simple: Without the people neurotic, distrustful, and accustomed to bowing to authority, the central authority would fall, because people would actually be able to organise bottom-up. The central authority knows that, and thus does nothing to combat it, the people, well, it’s Russia’s only way to greatness, isn’t it? Any alternatives?
That's where you are wrong.
As you might have guessed, one can't punish FSB for entrapment, they are the ones doing the punishing. So that's what they were doing since Soviet times. Everyone trying to "organize bottom-up" will just be detected by FSB before being visible for anyone else.
They are proactive. They have their agents of various kinds in youth groups, in hobby groups, everywhere. They even provoke such "organizing".
They literally lure teens into "political" groups. Just for everyone with potential to be under control.
It would be problematic, say, in the US, if FBI tried to put someone in jail for being a member of a group the leader and half other members of which are state agents, and which approached that someone first. In Russia it's not. They are always fishing for people willing to do something.
I've literally heard of more cases where a (say, anarchist) group had such agents, but it all became known because of some other crime (a murder in that case), than in "extremist" sense. Meaning this happens very silently.
So, about distrust. It's well-substantiated. Russians can't organize in Russia and can't, frankly, trust a Russian in such things.
Similar to Armenians TBH, it sometimes seems there are more agents of various intelligence services and oligarchs in Armenia and diaspora than people really interested in changing something.
Which brings me to Navalny’s balls of steel, returning to Russia: Yes, that’s impressive. That’s strong, “virtuous suffering”. But it’s also accepting the status quo. You can’t be a revolutionary against a system by holding onto the ethos that fuels it.
Absolutely! That's exactly what his action communicated.
I think he was trying to send a signal to that layer of deeply skeptical people that he's one of them and not of those like Sobchak and Nemtsov and similar. And he was successful, he's seen very differently from them.
Except see my previous part about special services' work. The real problem is not in nobody willing to organize. Without it, whether Navalny would do his sacrifice or not, Russia's government would have changed around 2012.
Snokhachestvo and the cultural approaches similar to it are prevalent in those people who are Russia's elite now, but generally seem very rare as far as I can see.
And that stuff about Europe and homosexuality seems for me a kind of "the hungry doesn't understand the full", more of jokes and separation than of really thinking that's true. It's just that there are people outside the prison and inside it, and those inside can't afford to behave freely. It's almost envy, except without even negative feelings. More like alienation - "they live so much easier that for them homosexuality is a real concern".
Also there's the criminal culture homosexuality, as a marker of status in the criminal hierarchy, which is demonstrably non-consensual, and one can see a psychological parallel between living freely in general inside a prison and being gay in a place where people get raped. A nonsensically careless behavior, something like that. And being nonsensically careless is weak.
The Tsar and the viceroys, plundering the country and living the good life.
They followed their own laws. If a law was too cumbersome to make, they didn't. It was an absolute monarchy, but if you compare today's Russia's judicial system to the imperial one - the latter seems very humane. By stats, by procedures, by stories of people who witnessed it.
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
The kind of peasant communes and huge families where such things happened wasn't actually natural. It was becoming the more common, the more people were becoming personal serfs. That is, there was that transition during Catherine where state serfs (which in practice meant almost a free man) were given to nobles en masse, she considered that a better arrangement. Sort of a privatization.
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.
Nah, not that. If we make this comparison, for them it's the father's right, and you are subordinate. It's not about fear of punishment, it's about enduring for endurance's sake. Almost morality.
The Siloviki do indeed want to free Ukrainians – so they bomb cities.
No, they don't. They want to kill and loot and subjugate.
People who you are maybe looking for here are not those who try to somehow explain the state's justifications for this war. It's those who think that this has to be finished anyway regardless of whether the war should have been started.
Free them from their “European gayness”, that is. Such is the perversity of the Russian psyche.
I haven't met such real people. OK, to be honest, probably I didn't realize but I have.
The point is - almost nobody really thinks that about gayness and what not, but everybody thinks it's smarter to play along, that's what I meant by the amorphousness of mind of Russians.
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.
It does, but it's more of a culture of virtuous suffering, like doing your work the hard way instead of loosening up a bit and doing it better, but with less "honest labor" or something. And lies. The virtuous suffering thing is often stupid, but sometimes a strength. The lies however are usually stupid, yet Russians somehow always start with lies and then maybe work it up to saying the truth.
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.