Russian political psyche: history and modernity

**kaur** · 05-21-2014

mirhond, what can I answer if Russians dream about era that had serious systematic errors. Memory is tricky thing that picks out usuallly good things. Freud may think other way. Do you still like Жигули beer or prefer Carlsberg? What about those Sovet ice creams that were dreams of childhood? What about Magnum ice cream? Did you like riding Десна-2 bicycle, or Scott would be better? Oh, I forgot that those NATO/EU guys are producing those things in Russia now together with Russian oligarhs ...

Nice example about golden age, that should remind childhood

http://blog.t30p.ru/post/A-vi-znaete...-izdeliya.aspx

Some 61 percent of respondents polled by the Public Opinion Fund (FOM) in 2006, when Brezhnev’s 100th birth anniversary was marked, recalled the years of his rule as good times for the country and only 17 percent - bad times. Some 50 percent of Russians believe that Brezhnev played a positive role in the history of the country, 16 percent, think he played a negative role.
Meanwhile, only 36 percent of respondents wanted “to return the country to that historical period, when Brezhnev ruled it, with all typical features and peculiarities of the life in those years,” 42 percent opposed such comeback in the past.

According to the recent public opinion poll conducted by the Levada Centre, 45 percent of young people in the age brackets between 16-18 years stayed undecided about their evaluation of Brezhnev’s era. 44 percent of school students are unaware about the manhunt of dissidents in Brezhnev’s era, 54 percent of respondents do not have the slightest idea about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

http://in.rbth.com/articles/2012/11/...era_19001.html

**mirhond** · 05-21-2014

Originally Posted by kaur

mirhond, what can I answer if Russians dream about era that had serious systematic errors. Memory is tricky thing that picks out usuallly good things. Freud may think other way. Do you still like Жигули beer or prefer Carlsberg? What about those Sovet ice creams that were dreams of childhood? What about Magnum ice cream? Did you like riding Десна-2 bicycle, or Scott would be better? Oh, I forgot that those NATO/EU guys are producing those things in Russia now together with Russian oligarhs ...

Exactly, not to mention that almost all they produce is BS, because almost no one follow technical requirements and standards. That is why customers usually prefer Belorussian dairy, meat and other staple, which is usually way better then Russian stuff. So when Belorussians lament about tirannical Lukashenko most Russians answer like: "You don't want him - excellent, we take him, we need such kind of a guy" So, if mass and public executions make business to follow the standarts, bureaucracy to obey the law and both to work for common good - we'd support it, because it's a part of a dream, along with free health care, free edication and ridiculously cheap housing we had in the days of yore. Class society is acceptable - unjust class society is unacceptable.

**kaur** · 05-21-2014

Why Russians need this Lukashenko guy? If I remember correctly Russian state pays every year 20 billion to support this system. 10x more than to Crimea in the future.

**kaur** · 05-21-2014

Originally Posted by kaur

Why Russians need this Lukashenko guy? If I remember correctly Russian state pays every year 20 billion to support this system. 10x more than to Crimea in the future.

My bad with numbers. Bad memory

Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov told Reuters in March that Belarus and Kazakhstan received about $6 billion annually from Russia in direct and indirect support and said that could increase by $30 billion if all trade restrictions were lifted in 2015 after the union is created.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9BO06S20131225

In 2012 support was 6 billion. Belarus budget was 16 billion. First chapter here

http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/...us_ang_net.pdf

Here are some numbers about Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria for comparsion.

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...kraine/284197/

Armenia.

Russian cumulative investment in Armenia currently exceeding $3 billion, or approximately one half of total foreign investment in this country whose total annual total GDP was reported at $9.8 billion in 2012 (Interfax, Armenpress, September 3, 4).

http://www.jamestown.org/regions/rus...8#.U3zb7doaySM

**mirhond** · 05-23-2014

Originally Posted by kaur

Why Russians need this Lukashenko guy?

Answer is obvious - quality of Belorussian goods, fair pentions and working factories are strongly assosiated with his ironfist rule.

**Dayuhan** · 05-23-2014

Originally Posted by kaur

Why Russians need this Lukashenko guy?

I suspect it has a lot to do with fear that any move to replace him could get out of control and put a pro-western government in... the old "he's a bastard, but he's our bastard" attitude.

Of course if Putin comes out of the Ukraine mess feeling very confident, he might try destabilizing Lukashenko to create a pretext for outright annexation, but that is of course very speculative.

**mirhond** · 06-06-2014

Specially for kaur

a good article about cossaks http://lurkmore.to/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B8

Аннотация: Казак - это костюмированный кубаноид.

**kaur** · 06-08-2014

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Russians Back Putin Because He Offers Illusion Russia is Again a Superpower, Levinson Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, June 8 – Much of the public support in Russia for Vladimir Putin reflects the fact that his actions allow Russians to believe if only for a time that their country is once again a great power even though they fully understand that Russia is not in a position to be one the equal of the United States, according to Aleksey Levinson of the Levada Center.

In short, the supposed unity of the Russian people behind Putin is just as fragile and ultimately illusory as the supposed return of the Russian Federation to the status of a super power and could disappear more rapidly than many, including Putin and his supporters, now think possible.

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.be/...ack-putin.html

**Ray** · 06-17-2014

Originally Posted by kaur

Do you still like Жигули beer or prefer Carlsberg? What about those Sovet ice creams that were dreams of childhood? What about Magnum ice cream? Did you like riding Десна-2 bicycle, or Scott would be better?

I am not a Russian but I come from a country that has seen and lived socialism in its worst form.

Do I like Carlsberg or western goods?

Sure. There is quality control.

Do I like my country over Carlsberg.

You bet I do.

Can I still be what I am with this dichotomy?

Yes I can.

Do i reject my country for the Western way?

Never.

Therefore, your argument is false.

Further, may I ask why do you forsake your country's products for Chinese products?

What about the crave for Russian vodkas and Beluga and Iranian caviar and Cuban cigars?

In short, what is good and if one can pay, then one enjoys it beyond petty nationalist considerations.

Any answer?

Jingoism has limits.

This is what Patrick O'Brian said:

“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”

**Ray** · 06-17-2014

Kaur and others,

This maybe of interest about revolutions and movements

ISIS has not emerged from nowhere. They were not ‘fading away’ before the onset of the Syrian civil war; rather, they were regrouping, cleaning up their house (imagine the rooftop discussion between Ali La Pointe and Ben M’Hidi in The Battle of Algiers when he declares that before they take the fight to the French they’re first going to sweep up the pipes and dope dealers in the Casbah). Up to July 2013, at least in Salaheddin province, ISIS’s attacks were paid for by the Turkish government, not private donors from the Gulf as is commonly mistaken. ISIS’s presence in Syria did not ‘just happen’; rather, it was orchestrated by Turkey, which then decided to back up the wrong horse–Nusra, in the Spring of 2013. This last aspect of Victoria’s strategic diagnosis is, in my view, the most worrisome.

What we are seeing is not ‘just’ a civil war but an incipient schismatic war with thick tentacles linking it abroad in a patently ominous manner...... While speaking with Victoria the first thought of the near future of the Middle East which sprang to mind was one akin to the Balkan tragedy of the 1990s–only on a larger scale, with more money for weapons and willing suppliers, and with even less scope for external mitigation.
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...556#post157556

Time to smell the coffee and not get dreamy eyed and hallucinate on a dose of poppy induced govt and jingoistic public delusions .

**kaur** · 06-17-2014

Ray, why you dragged my point from context? Mirhond was talking about Soviet golden age. What was golden there, when Eastern Europe was under Soviet military occupation? During that age was started also Afganistan war, that should be closer example about golden age for you. During that age Indian politics was manipulated by KGB as they liked, if I belive what Mitrokin wrote. Do you want this age back?

**mirhond** · 06-18-2014

Originally Posted by kaur

Ray, why you dragged my point from context? Mirhond was talking about Soviet golden age. What was golden there, when Eastern Europe was under Soviet military occupation? During that age was started also Afganistan war, that should be closer example about golden age for you.

I think you need better explanation. Soviet era is considered golden age because life was predictable, social protection was available and just, everyone had jobs and decent income, the wery existence had a noble goal. Eastern Europe occupied? Fu(k it, until we have Polish rags, Romanian furniture and Czech appliances. Eight years of war in Somewherestan? Fu(k it too, besides our guys are kicking lots af asses there.
During Perestroika and first post-Soviet years we had illusions about capitalistic Elven kingdoms and Empire of Good and Light, but they didn't survived rough reality. That's why collective unconscious full of frustration, unmeet needs and low expectations was so easily hijacked by "bigtime, magor league bull#### story" of Putin's Russia, which is going to reclaim the past. Now almost everything is measured by Soviet scale.
So, your lamentations about occupation would fall into the deaf ears, the fact is irrelevant to the narrative of newfound paradise.

During that age Indian politics was manipulated by KGB as they liked, if I belive what Mitrokin wrote. Do you want this age back?

Outlaw-stile posting without any links and arguments? Come on, provide at least what you've read.

**Ray** · 06-18-2014

Originally Posted by kaur

Ray, why you dragged my point from context? Mirhond was talking about Soviet golden age. What was golden there, when Eastern Europe was under Soviet military occupation? During that age was started also Afganistan war, that should be closer example about golden age for you. During that age Indian politics was manipulated by KGB as they liked, if I belive what Mitrokin wrote. Do you want this age back?

I want that age where we are not manipulated by external powers.

It is not that India is not flush with western covert funds being funnelled through for dubious purpose.

As the saying goes in India - Hamam men sab nanga hai (in the hamam (turkish bath) all are nude) i.e. not much to chose from.

To be frank, Eastern Europe or any other issue does not impact us, except the worry of the Cold War being revisited.

The Chinese proverb goes - When big fish fight, little fish eaten!

mere
Look at the chaos in Iraq and Syria. It has its roots in the Mandates of the League of Nations where arbritary boundaries were drawn to suit colonial interest with total disregard of ground realities. And now were are wondering what to do and what would be the effect.

I wonder if there was any 'golden age' in any country. It is all a figment of imagination and poetic imagery to indicate an era better than another. The travails remain merely comparative.