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Samizdata quote of the day Russia’s main problem is that no one smart or rich wants to live there. Their talent has been drained for 80 years. Their chief export now is herpes and orphans.
– Commenter ‘Solidar’ on an article over on Reuters called ‘Do you suffer from Russophobia? The Kremlin thinks you might‘.
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You have to feel for Russians. They had the beginnings of a parliamentary system just before WWI, but then came revolution, war and disaster. The communist system spent its first 30 years starving and murdering millions of its own people, and then the next 40 years forcing them to conform in its lies, stupidity and grey drabness. It is hardly surprising that the “human capital” of that country is so severely depleted. The question is will it ever recover?
“A thousand years of negative selection” as I once read in The Economist.
By the way, nasty things always happen when you move from monarchy to republic.
But they have vodka.
I don’t think they stopped murdering people after the first 30 years. Just slowed the pace a bit.
I’ve been reading Steven Pinker’s book about long term declines in the trend of violence and though I have no doubt he’s correct in his general theme, I can’t quite get my head round a central definitional point.
1. You slaughter a lot of people to show them who’s boss
2. After a while the survivors decide to kowtow, so you don’t have to slaughter so many
3. Violence has declined. Yippee !
I suppose less slaughter is a good thing, but how do you measure it, in the great scheme of things, against its cause – more surrender ?
A quibble: wouldn’t that have been better as “Their chief exports now are“…?
(And yes, I’m being pedantic.)
Sometime back Brian Micklethwait of this jurisdiction posted some invaluable references to the scholarship of Emmanuel Todd, as well as links to Brian’s website for more details on that work. They are pertinent here.
How the social orders within that land, and among its peoples, shape the initial formations of individual motivations is crucial to comprehending the extent conditions. What Todd determined earlier appears to continue.
It’s worth taking another look.
It is always a mistake to underestimate an adversary. The Russians, as well as many of the other potential competitors with the west, and the U.S. In particular, were handicapped by one of worst political/economic systems the world has ever see, and, even when they threw that monstrosity over, they were, in turn, quickly enveloped by a thoroughly corrupt authoritarianism.
Much the same can be said for China, for example, whose natural development after they rid themselves of the imperial system, was short-circuited by variously formatted corrupt tyrannies, a handicap which continues to the present day.
The west did not create the world wide economic and military and political society that has evolved because of some special brilliance or other superiority intrinsic to them, but because they managed to discover the enormous creative energy that free societies unleash from within their members.
Once again, it is liberty that is the key to success, and repression that stunts and malforms human potential into corruption and stagnation.
On the subject of the Russkies.
I saw a brief bit of something on Russia Today, where an interviewer was interviewing some ex RN chap, or possibly ex MOD civil servant, who had apparently been involved at some very low level back in the 1980s when Maggie was in the process of swapping Polaris for Trident. Apparently we’re now looking at replacing or renewing Trident (sorry, haven’t been paying attention) and Mr Corbyn is against. This ex RN chap was saying that Corbyn should stick to his guns, so to speak, and keep on opposing a renewal of the British nuclear deterrent. In his view it had been a horrid mistake in the 1980s, and it was an even horrider one now.
This is wonderful because it has saved me from having to read hundreds of pro-articles in the Torygraph, and thousands of anti-articles in the Graun, BBC, FT etc. Now that I know for sure that Mr Putin cares enough about it to wind up his propaganda arm on the anti side, is there anything more- at all – that I need to know on the whole question ?
@Patrick Crozier:
Vide the terrifying dystopia of Iceland, where they ditched their royal sovereign in 1944.
You have to feel for Russians.
Why?
but then came revolution, war and disaster.
Perpetrated mainly by Russians against one another.
The communist system spent its first 30 years starving and murdering millions of its own people
Which they were able to do because so many Russians went along with it and supported it. At what point to we ask Russians to accept some responsibility for their own state of affairs?
Russia is fucked up because the percentage of people willing to kill, injure, steal from, or otherwise fuck over their fellow Russian is just too damned high, and the numbers willing to support the thugs indirectly also too damned high. I would like to think that if a vicious, murdering thug opened a restaurant in a small UK town most people would avoid it. In Russia, a vicious, murdering thug will maim somebody in order to take over his restaurant and the public nonetheless flock to it, enriching him in the process. If Russians want change, they need to change. Or leave.
I seem to remember somebody saying of Russia (maybe it was Gogol)… “Russia is a great country with only two problems: roads and idiots.”
Hi Tim,
I’m sure you’d have been the guy to say no to the Commissars. Why didn’t those damned Russkies think of that? You have convinced me, they are a bunch of losers who deserve everything they get.
Kindly don’t as it is a waste of pixels.
A critical mass of Russkies supporting the commissars is what made it all possible, and there really is no escaping that.
John, they don’t deserve what is the result of the actions or failures of their parents and grandparents. Problem is, too many of them continue following the same model of thought and behavior vis a vis Putin and Co. And for that they do deserve whatever is coming (which is nothing good whatsoever, as we are seeing right now).
Speaking for myself only, I don’t know if I would have had the courage. But if I didn’t, I would be the one to blame, not ‘the rest of the world who hates Russia and has been bent on its destruction, or at least humiliation, for god knows how long’, or things to that effect.
It’s very easy to criticise Russians from our position of safety, I doubt in 1917 many had the slightest inkling of what lay in store for them. What was Lenin’s slogan? “Peace, bread, land”. Hardly sophisticated was it? No mention of forced collectivization or terror famines there.
As ever, most people end up doing what the men with guns tell them to do, which is why in a civilized society all should have guns.
It takes more to put totalitarians in power, but it only takes about 15% or so of the population to keep them there. I’ve no doubt that 15% exists in nearly every western country, waiting for an opportunity to arrange events.
I’m sure you’d have been the guy to say no to the Commissars. Why didn’t those damned Russkies think of that?
I might not have said “nyet” to the Commissars, but I’d like to think I would not have gone running to them every time I witnesses a “transgression” in the workplace. The excellent film The Lives of Others made the point that the Stasi in East Germany were few in number, but they were able to do their work thanks to a network of informers running into the hundreds of thousands. It was much the same in Russia: a handful of people pulling the triggers, but hundreds of thousands assisting them believing they could steal a march on their friends, colleagues, and neighbors.
It takes more to put totalitarians in power, but it only takes about 15% or so of the population to keep them there. I’ve no doubt that 15% exists in nearly every western country, waiting for an opportunity to arrange events.
This is something I have often thought about. I often wonder if there is a country where the 15% would not come forward. I have little faith that Britain would be one of them: if a modern-day Hitler took us over, it is remarkably easy to spot which of our contemporary commentators would be eagerly herding people onto the cattle wagons.
Not sure our contemporary commentators would be doing any herding, that’s grunt work and rather beneath them. They’d be more likely, in sequence, to :
1. completely ignore any reports of cattle wagons
2. write scathingly disdainful articles about the gullibility of the believers in cattle wagon stories
3. write serious and stentorian articles announcing that all official investigations in cattle wagons had proved that they didn’t exist
4. opine that while opposing the regime was distasteful, but permissible, one had to draw the line somewhere, and “hate-opposing the regime” was well past that line. In such cases cattle waggoning was fully justified
5. note that though there may have been a few isolated, unauthorised, cattle wagon incidents in the past, this was very old news and had been reported ad nauseam at the time
6. besides which cattle waggoning in the old “Tory” years had been much worse
7. write history books, omitting any mention of cattle wagons
“…it is remarkably easy to spot which of our contemporary commentators would be eagerly herding people onto the cattle wagons.”
There is a lady that attends our local swimming pool who gets very cross when other people fail to swim in the direction shown by the little arrows on the signs at the end of the lanes. Even when it is quiet, there is loads of room, and the only problem is being caused by her insistence on following the arrows to the letter.
Following up on Eric and Tim, and Stony too, there’s a narc on every block. I know the type–I lived next door to one for 30 years (still do, in summers) and I and others are turned in regularly.
There will be no difficulty in finding enthusiastic cattle-wagon herders.
. . .
I do wonder. I should think that if a Stalin, a Hitler, a Mao took over, either he would have to be successfully resisted and killed at the first sign of herding, or we so-brave folk would be faced with the problem of deciding whether to save our child (or parent or grandparent or other greatly-loved one) but help with the herding or become a narc ourselves, or else stand on our “principles” and let our child be taken, or tortured, or murdered.
By the bye, I should add good old Saddam to that list.
Maybe I should say. There’s no snarkiness hiding in the quotation marks. It’s just that “I will fight the enemy of freedom/decency, though I die” is one principle, and “I will save my child even if I have to send my neighbors or my friends to the camps” is another. And “I would rather die than face the possibilities that every day will present as long as this goes on” is still another.
And not everyone would see all three of those positions as “principled.”
I doubt that in the US it could play out the way it did in Russia or Germany – if for nothing else (culture etc.), then for the abundance of privately held weapons. But that does not mean that an attempt by a would-be blood-thirsty dictator would result in his/her peaceful removal. It would not look pretty either way, and so it’s best to avoid finding out how it would play out in reality.
Alisa, I can’t tell you how much I hope you’re right. I’m kind of pessimistic about the chances, even if we’re able to keep our arms. Clearly guerilla fighters can do a lot, but how many arms-owners are trained for that, or have the talent to pick it up quickly, or the physical capacity either?
While writing my comment above, I realized that apart from the Jews in Nazi Germany, I have more real sympathy for the Russians (Volodya Six-Pack, that is) than for Herr Budweiser.
I really don’t know why.
We did have Waco, after all. We did have Ruby Ridge. We did, quite recently, have the shooting of LaVoy Finicum. The country seems to be pretty sure that Waco and RR were inexcusable assaults–the government with murder on its mind–and a lot of people say that Finicum was plain murder. An eye-witness gave an interview that I heard; she says it absolutely was.
There was a story on the Net today that the teachers in some school district or town or somewhere have been instructed to report children who are, or seem to be, “anti-government.” And don’t forget not to chew your sammich into what some hysterical grownup will think is the shape of a gun, little girl. Or point your finger at anybody either, even if you don’t go “bang!”
The problem with Russia is that if Mr Putin takes a dislike to you (even if you have been a devoted toady of his for years) he murders you and steals your stuff.
It really is that simple.
There are plenty of talented people in Russia – but while Mr Putin and his pals control the government, they can murder the talented people and steal their stuff.
As for history – let us not go overboard here.
Russia did not have serfdom “a thousand years ago” – it actually emerged in the 16th century (as late as that).
And serfdom did not apply to the Cossacks (if you wanted to run away and become a free person how was your master going to track you in a land that went from Poland to China?) nor did it apply to the “Free Peasants of the North”.
Also Russia got rid of serfdom in 1861 – and most of the population were free before that.
Russia was no oriental despotism before the First World War – it was not like Ottoman Empire.
There was Trial by Jury in Russia – and there was no bleeping harem (never had been) with armies of captured slaves whipped (literally whipped – like Tolkien’s orcs) into battle. As the Ottomans whipped their slave soldiers to try and take Vienna back in the 1520s (the German mercenary Great Swords flung back the slave-soldiers of the Ottomans even after a great section of the wall collapsed – they stood on the rubble of the breach and flung back the armies of Islam hand-to-hand – Chancellor M. please take note).
Russia was also the forth greatest industrial power in the world in 1914.
Only the United States, Germany and Britain had higher industrial output – and Russia was growing fasting than of of them.
And Nicholas II was not in the habit of murdering industrialists and merchants and stealing their stuff – indeed the very thought of doing so would have sickened him.
Yes Russia had its dark side (a very dark side – especially for Jews), but Russia was a GREAT CIVILISATION – it really was, not the den of bandits it is under Mr Putin.
And it could have been again – as such things as an independent press and trial by jury were coming back in Russia.
If only Boris Y. had kept off the drink – and had not let a criminal KGB man (by the name of Putin) manipulate him.
Paul:
These are all valid points. The rise to power of the grey chekist Vladimir Putin is one of the stranger tales which history may struggle to answer.
Russia’s problem is that since 1917, with a small chink of light in the 1990s, the Russian government has either murdered anyone who stood out from the crowd, or merely cowed them into keeping their heads down and not making any waves.
This assault on its own population must be at the root of the current problems Russia faces. No government can treat its people this way for 100 years now and expect a vibrant economy or a rich seam of political thought. Things like that have been shot, bashed and starved out of the Russian people. As you say, they might just have changed in the 1990s, but then the steel trap of the authoritarian state snapped shut again.
Putin will never give up power, but as he gets older and feebler he may well be bumped off by his inner circle. But whoever replaces him could well be worse. That’s why I feel sorry for ordinary Russians. No wonder they drink.
Paul,
I don’t think you’ve been to Krakow. They have a lot about the Siege of Vienna and the Polish Hussars who lifted it. Including the “wings” they wore. I always thought they were a bit daft until I read in the museum that they created the most dreadful noise which scared the living daylights out of the Ottomans. Much like the Wagner in “Apocalypse Now”. In ’91 the Allies played, “Rock the Kasbah” very loud. They’d be denounced as “Islamophobic” now. Fuck that. If you get into a war you get in to win and it is largely psychological. At Lepanto (Mr C Biggins as Dame – sorry) the Ottomans tossed in the towel when the head of Ali Pasha was paraded by the Tercios on the end of a pike.
You win by unleashing ultra-violence beyond comprehension. Our enemies in the Islamic World understand this. Even Putin groks this. We don’t. You have to astonish with violence that feels like the dial is at 11. Having the dial at 7 does nothing but prolong the bloodshed.
Ask in Hiroshima if you doubt me.
“You win by unleashing ultra-violence beyond comprehension. Our enemies in the Islamic World understand this. Even Putin groks this. We don’t. You have to astonish with violence that feels like the dial is at 11. Having the dial at 7 does nothing but prolong the bloodshed.”
Absolutely correct. If you’re not prepared to do so don’t go to war. And no criticism after your victory, either.
“Their chief export now is herpes and orphans.” They cut the flow of orphans to the US a while back, so it’s only the Herpes the Love Bug that is trading freely