Russia is teetering on the brink of falling into a defensive SovokMindset.exe pattern of behavior as a result of the pressure being brought to bear on the country by the war. We ought to be praying that this effort peters out and Russia moves on to better ideas instead of resurrecting the old.
As Dmitry Puchkov (a.k.a. Goblin), a popular media figure in Russia, a self made man with well over 2 million subscribers on YouTube before his channel was demolished last summer by Google for his unapologetic pro-Russian position keeps on saying: "USSR hater is always a russophobe". I don't agree with this guy on everything, but here he nailed it.
USSR was a complex system that stood on its own culturally, economically, industrially and scientifically. Just in civil aviation alone there were 5 competing brands of airplanes and helicopters - Tupolev, Yakovlev, Antonov, Ilyushin and Mikoyan.
Today's Russia, let alone Ukraine, where civilization has vanished rapidly, is a mere shadow of a former giant. The country is not able to produce a single civilian aircraft using locally manufactured components. Sukhoi Super Jet (SSJ-100) is just a hack job 80% made of Airbus parts. And now, because of sanctions, they are experiencing significant production issues. MC-21 despite the promises to have first planes supplied to the airline industry by 2023 just can't get off the ground and required Putin's recent personal intervention by publicly scolding responsible vice-premier Manturov for ongoing delays. It's not a fact that Putin's involvement is going to help as his orders are often ignored by the cabinet.
This just one example, civilian aviation, but this applies to every complex manufacturing industry, except for pumping oil and gas as well as atomic energy industry that is currently one of the most advanced in the world including newly built sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor BN-800, capable of creating a perpetual wasteless cycle in spending and generating new nuclear fuel.
What is interesting, during these times of heightened russophobia in the West, attacks on Soviet legacy were renewed with a vengeance. Talking recently to my much younger sister, born in Ukraine in mid eighties and raised there, she now, since the start of the war, lives in Austria. She suddenly started telling me how much her generation hates USSR. I tried to explain to her, but look at Ukraine - everything that matters that your country has, from being the biggest and potentially the richest country in Europe, the remnants of the industry, the infrastructure, up to the magnificent buildings that your government occupies in the center of Kiev - everything was built or is legacy of the USSR. So you don't have to love it, but at least you have to respect what your ancestors did. I was just wasting my breath... She is ethnic Russian, btw, that hates everything Russian. So coming back to Puchkov - "USSR hater is always a russophobe".
December 30th 2022 was a 100 year anniversary of the country that is no more. Special poll was conducted by the Russian state polling agency WCIOM. According to the poll majority of Russians look at USSR in a positive way, e.g. there was more positive in that country than negative they say. Though a lesser percentage sees return to USSR as possible. This is just another bit in understanding the real Russia and not the one depicted by the Western propaganda where even people that try to be objective have absorbed the cliches with mother's milk, as it seems.
The collapse of the USSR was a disaster and what came next was worse. There were also good things about the USSR like the spartan military ethic and the social conservatism.
Nicene Christianity is the same - good moral code. Kept society more or less cohesive. We are worse off without it.
And for most people that is all that matters - the code by which society lives. Clean streets. Quiet lives. Order and stability of a kind. So long as we all agree to not ask too many questions.
But it was all of it built on a lie. A foundation of half-truths and outright fabrications designed with a devilish purpose in mind.
Most people are unable to understand or have the conversation on this level though.
You are a reasonable man, Rolo - capable of carrying a civilized discussion. This is why I keep recommending your blog despite the fact we don't agree on everything and we don't need to. I'm far from idealizing USSR, btw. As a former dissident "antisovetchik" I studied its faults long and hard. I left the country in the eighties while Soviet Union was strong and it was my views on the system made me, or I can even say helped me, to leave the place even before the country fell apart. Overtime though, looking at what was becoming of now independent former USSR republics I had to adjust my criticism and recognize that not everything there was universally bad.
I frequently thought - what were the true reasons for the demise of once seemingly invincible country? In my view this boiled down to two key reasons:
1. Stagnant elites. Starting with the coming of Brezhnev to power in 1964 that coincided with the Soviet Union depending more and more on selling natural resources vs. going for more difficult, but more rewarding internal development. With time through negative selection these processes brought to power people like Gorbachev, Shewardnadze, Yakovlev, Kravchuk, Yeltsin etc. In part this understanding came to me after working in and for Fortune 500 companies for decades. At first I couldn't understand why upper management would periodically cannibalize a well established business model or a process, but gradually I understood that while tactically loosing this was giving the necessary energy for the company to reinvent itself and to keep staying on top. Soviet system lacked that characteristic during later years and always chose stability that led to stagnation and eventual demise.
2. Naive overprotected population. You mentioned half truth of USSR. Perhaps... However the favorite meme in Russia about those days is "we thought they were lying, but they were actually telling the truth". There were biases though. Propaganda was trying to hide anything negative inside of the country and was focusing instead on achievements, turning TV news into endless "harvested, produced, built, delivered" etc. In time this immersed the population into a form of a protected information bubble. They looked at the world in an unreasonably positive way being sure that everyone wishes them well. This is why almost nobody stood to defend the country when it was pulled apart in 1991 by petty nationalists. For all the shortcomings of modern Russia this naiveté is largely gone, and there are many people in the country now that are going to fight to preserve it from falling apart, even if the faction among elites that welcomes disintegration is going to win.
Faith first? Creation mythologies have their place, an artistic expression of a peoples soul. Problem is that the jewish shit has ruined the concept of god and spiritualism for so many. Sikhs practice a tolerant religion that says nobody holds the truth in full, the problem is that the jewish warrior cult of islam does not play this way. They inherited the jewish concept of religious supremacism and an angry volcano demon deity, so those tolerant sikh faith leaders got skinned alive...
A somewhat oblique takeoff on "spartan military ethic" - one account of the collapse of the USSR has it that it was (unintentionally) triggered by top military leaders after the catastrophe over Syria in June 1982 when the Israeli air force (using US fighters) shot down 88 Syrian (USSR made) aircraft without themselves taking any losses. The account goes: Russian generals were aghast, realized they had lost the military tech battle with the west;; and that led to Gorbachev - and that led to January 1991 - via the well known difficulty of reforming a failed system. I do not suggest this with any sense of triumphalism - perhaps just a suggestion that we need to locate the "disaster" much earlier - August 1914 ? Jan 22, 1905 ... Russia was fast becoming an industrial powerhouse at the time.
I sort of view people who endlessly yammer about the evils of the USSR the way I do people who never shut up about muh nazis. In the modern West the virtue of any proposition is measured by how much a caricature of Hitler would dislike it. Likewise there is a class of people, especially in Eastern Europe whose moral compass revolves around how much they think Stalin or Lenin would like or dislike something. Its so ridiculous that it comes to "NS Germany double plus good because against Stalin". Neither type of person is overly useful and you often come across those who combine both to peak cringe obnoxiousness.
Personally Im ambivalent about the post 20s USSR, it was indeed built on sand more or less, it was an anti Russian project at inception but paradoxically it spread Russians all over central Asia, the far east, the Baltics etc. Sure they spoke a lot about proletarian brotherly love in the USSR but in practice Tajiks stayed in Tajikistan, Kazaks in Kazakhstan but Slavs were spread everywhere.
Sure Alcoholism, abortion and apathy were becoming a problem in the late USSR but it was miloch compared to the 90s. IMO the same group of people who were behind the revolution are the same people that got the Soviet elite to dismantle the USSR. If the USSR was the triumph of Bolshevism than I would call glasnost and the fall of the USSR Kerenskys revenge and the triumph of Menshevism. People tend to constantly overlook that many powerful jews and anglo fellow travelers originally wanted Kerensky running Russia and for the Empire to transform into some gay social democracy. The reason the Whites lost is because they werent loyal to the Tsar they were fighting for Kerensky who was even more hated than the Reds.
The social democracy Menshevik model isnt as outright malicious towards Russians but would Russia be better off today if the Whites had won and Russia was transformed into a progressive social democracy instead of a brutal Marxist tyranny? Because despite its benevolent intent the RF has proven even less able to defend Russians and their interest than the overtly anti Russian USSR.
Its honestly a really complicated and nuanced subject and even Russians cant make heads or tails of it. Isnt the demographic catastrophe of the 90s just as evil as the Bolsheviks straight murdering millions and millions of Russians? Letting people die from alcoholism, despair, narcotics, not having kids because theres no future, all that is somehow more forgivable because it was a side effect where as the Bolsheviks murdering people is worse because it was with intent?
I really cant answer that but i can understand those who become Stalinist these days. They skip over or turn a blind eye to the malevolence of the early USSR because what came after really was better than whats going on now.
Ill probably get bullied for this and Russian Stalinist would strongly disagree with me but I see some Stalin in a good way in old school Putin. Speaking of the Russian Federation here, Putin was a bland functionary in an absolutely rotten system who decided for reasons we can't be sure of exactly to stop the worst excesses and give the Russian people a glimmer of hope. But despite his best efforts its looking like its not enough and what comes next very well might be even worse.
Deep remark. I can't agree with all of it, but I understand your way of thinking and why you come to certain conclusions. I was thinking of writing a Russian history 101 and make several posts of it on my blog. Probably I should do it, as there is definitely audience here capable of understanding complexities and the nuanced nature of history of a 1200 year old state.
Dont know if he ate it but it's true that Milchakov killed a puppy and filmed it when he was a young neo-nazi. Neither neo-nazism or killing puppies are acceptable but Milchakovs work on behalf of Russia since than expunges his sins imo.
As for the movies you haven't watched лучше в аду? Genuinely really good one about the Wagner guys. I wasnt expecting much but was impressed.
1. All the Wagner guys in the movie are Russian, no Chakkas or Mongols included.
2 the movie is mostly tactical porn but it illustrates counter battery battle, how important drones are, and how at the command level the war is like playing chess. It just gives a very good birds eye view of all the moving parts on the battlefield in Ukraine.
3. The Ukrainians are totally given their due. They are portrayed as just as competent and brave as the Russians. There are even close combat scenes where you cant tell them and the Wagner guys apart.
4. The ending hits hard in the feels and Im kinda suprised it got past the censors. Spoiler:
At the end of the film literally everyone is dead except 2 Wagner guys. Than we find out that regardless of completing their mission no break through was achieved. So identical blood baths will happen everyday for the foreseeable future.
Would recommend if you have the free time.
Personally the absolutely worst thing with the Sovoks is its like they take the absolute worst aspects of the Soviet era and keep them and dump what might be useful. I didn't know Cheburashkas creators were kikes but im not surprised given how weird and ugly the character is. And of course that's what the Sovoks would push, not Livci, not Captain Rungel, but that Jewish mouse who I think must be a product of Chernobyl.
Stalin for the sake of self preservation actually did open the Russian nationalism box to the extent that his life depended on it. The current Sovoks apparently think thats not necessary despite being sure there are Nazis everywhere. Likewise Stalin opened factories, shot people built infastructure, and mobilized society to the extent that his life depended on it. The current Sovoks don't insist on any of that either apparently.
My intent there is not to rehabilitate the USSR but just to point out that when its very existence was actually threatened the leadership of the USSR acted very differently than the leadership of the RF. But the Sovoks arent drawing any conclusions from that other than more Cheburashka. Useless people.
I have a different view about useless people, or rather, useless eaters as the current crop of global elites are imagining. In that these are people who don't know how to take care of themselves starting with growing the food they eat. Lots of those around now, all dependent on this economic system for payments of one type or another. All of them supporting the system.
Then we have the Holodomor. In the killing off the peasants yet again, in the same area no less as the last elite machination 1917, and the next (now).
What the hell is it about that geography? Something in the water? Oh, something they are smoking! I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't want to know.
The most blatant of those actual useless eaters, who accuse everyone else nearly correctly of what they are, rounding up to the last everyone to support the opulence, which has made them weak btw, are those at the top of this hierarchy going on now for 5500 years. Religion and ethnicity in that is in who can claim the dead end on the top prize.
I don't like Nazis because they attempted to wipe the Serbian nation & the Russian nation off the map reasons of "living space" & master race nonsense. The Nazi ideology in itself was a confused mess & made no sense, one minute Hitler was talking about righting the wrongs of Versailles, uniting German ethnic territories into Germany i.e. Sudeten, then he decided that Russia & the Balkans had to be colonised & the inhabitants (Slavs) exterminated. The "Holocaust" is, in addition to serving as an ideological foundation for Israel's existence, is also promoted ad nauseum to cover up the very real genocide of the Slavs - the real Holocaust, the Slavic Holocaust. As far as I am concerned, Germany should have been cleaned off the map for all time in 1945 for what it attempted to pull - kill all my people? Well, I just may do the same to you. But no, Stalin was too kind. What really offends me in the Kremlin's SMO rhetoric/terminology is how they insist always on how they are fighting "nationalists" in Ukraine, & equating them with Nazis. Putin himself has had to put the record straight on that one himself a couple of times, I think it was at Valdai, when he said a real nationalist loves his country & people. But the SMO rhetoric continues to claim Russia is fighting "nationalism" in the misguided idiotic belief that this will appease liberals in the west & convince them that no, we are on the same side really, you haven't yet figured it out but at some point in Davos someone, maybe Hariri, is going to say - yes, the Russians are against nationalism as well! Keep waiting for that day. That said, I don't believe the SMO was a mistake or that Russia is losing it, not because I believe in 5D chess, but because Russia was able to take control of 17% or so of territory in Ukraine, create a land bridge to Crimea, in about 1 month. Have the Ukrainians rolled the Russians back? What, Kherson? Kharkov? Do me a favour. The Ukro's are suiciding themselves on an industrial scale to basically stand still. At some point Russian forces will advance - when they decide to.
>The Ukro's are suiciding themselves on an industrial scale to basically stand still. At some point Russian forces will advance - when they decide to.
Are they though?
And even if they are, is this a good thing? Aren't these brotherly Russians who ought to be on Russia's side? Most are just conscripts being forced to die by Zelensky. How does the death of a million men in Ukraine help Russia if they intend to inherit these territories?
>> Naturally, the government busies itself subsidizes an entire parasitical class of “culture-makers” who make modern art garbage that offends the sensibilities of the average Russian with money taken from the Russian taxpayer. It would be better for Russian culture if the artificial state-subsidized fake culture died and the cultural nomenklatura left to fend for themselves on the free market.
Same in France. Tax money and tax free allowances fund a large useless film industry : more than 100 films produced every year, 90 of which are not even B-grade films, so pure rubbish. 10-15 are released into theatres, half of them having a few thousand viewers. Mostly comedies and progressive multi-cultural propaganda. Every other year a good film is released so that the press can claim that French cinema is "alive"; yes the word used by the press is "vivant", "alive". Of course, yidividuals play a large role in such an industry; albeit they are not the top guys.
Change of topics. The problem of the Russianness of Ukraine is the problem of Kiev ! Kiev was the original capital and the seat of the tribe of Rurik. They were the rulers. Even when conquered by the Mongols, by Poland, by the Tatars, and by Russia, Kiev and its rulers maintained dominance over the local area and had ambitions for their city and for self-rule. Odessa, Kharkov, Lvov do not harbour the same ambitions; Minsk does but to a lesser extent. The local pre-eminence of Kiev and the ambition for self-rule will not disappear. Rolo, as a Ukrainian, you should be more sensitive to this situation, even though you prefer to be a Russian patriot.
Kiev was run by the Russian intelligentsia who created this fake culture/identity of Ukraine. It is a progressive kind of alternative identity that is more "European". It is inherently anti-Russian. If it were just like a regional pride thing, I'd totally embrace it and lean into it myself. Like, think Texas identity. Nothing wrong with that.
Donbass identity would roughly be to Russian what Texan is to American. Ukrainian is just some totally fake abortion where the Neo-soviets say "noooooo the Austrio Hungarians and CIA made up Ukrainian thing the Bolsheviks didnt do it"!!!!!!! People who blame the Bolsheviks exclusively for everything sort of dont account for the fact that Ukrainianization vastly accelerated after the USSR was dismantled.
The Bolsheviks added to a problem created by Austrio Hungarian and Polish Imperialist, the CIA helped out a lot during the cold war, and the modern RF just let the problem fester. If the USSR was never dismantled the Ukraine issue wouldnt be a big deal, your Stalinist and soviet boomers are correct about that. But as Putin pointed out the USSRs foundations really were laid on a time bomb by Lenin. Giving the Republics a right to secede and also validating the petty nationalism in the Baltics and Caucasus was bad enough but agreeing and amplifying the entirely fake Ukrainian identity was just retardation worthy of the modern Kremlin.
But in general the fake Ukrainian identity was a truly "multivector" project that everyone had their hands in.
Carpathia and Chernovitsi are radically different from Kiev and mid-Ukraine because of Austria-Hungary and different ethnicities. People there do not care whether they are under Kiev or Moscow. They would prefer to be out or in autonomous regions. And without Jews. A status like Tatarstan may suit them.
Lvov and Ivano-Frankisk, I do not know, but, among the peasants, the Greek Catholic opposition to Orthodoxy is real. Again little to do with Kiev and mid-Ukraine.
If the patriotism of Kievan Ukraine is actually recently manufactured anti-Russianness then it is shallow. A decade or two of neutrality and it goes away.
You are over my head in details but are a interesting descriptive typist enough I want to follow along for awhile and learn what you think.
I cherry picked these two more easily understandable ideas: cultural nomenklatura left to fend for themselves on the free market. clever enough to take joy in crushing the peasants, but not smart enough to wonder why they are allowed to do so.
Stfu you don't even see movie, you just copypasted some dumb conspiracy shit about old cartoon and present it as valuable analysis from Russian, when you a fucking ukranian grown up in USA, that got kicked from Russia February 2022 (for no reason). This new movie has little to do with old cartoon apart from characters, story is completely different with message of kindness and that "you can't buy hapiness with money", there is none ussr nostalgy in movie, you making shit up
To remember and codify all shit you wrote for future generations, maybe oversee you final transition into hohol nationalist would be fun how 1,5 years ago you talked that we need to transfer all power to army and church, and now you shit both on army and church, that would be next logical step for you
"Me, I don’t particularly like Nazis, because the social stigma attached to the label and the aesthetic only attract people who are, for one reason or another, profoundly alienated from society. These types are not the kind of people you want in your populist movement in a large capacity because of their uncanny ability to put others off. Also, they tend to be broken in some way and I have no time or energy for putting up with freaks."
Yes.
"clever enough to take joy in crushing the peasants, but not smart enough to wonder why they are allowed to do so."
Nazis aka wignats are an unfortunate bunch. They know something is very wrong because they rely on gut instinct due to low IQ. This places them above the midwits who live in utopialand but also means that they cannot properly respond. Ironically they aid the enemy with their trashy national socialist larp like monkeys in suits.
I couldn't get through all of this. The fact of war hangs too heavily on my intellect. The death, the destruction, the huge waste of resources, the lowering emotional level of whole populations. I sicken of all the talk of "winning." How could any outcome of any war be a "win" when it has gone as far as this one - and most wars in history - has gone? Winning is for football and so forth. The losers live to try again. The winners get a pat on the back, then back to trying again as well. That's the way to play a game without ruining the lives of millions of people in the process. In some ways, blowing up a whole planet in a single flash seems more humane than a long lasting war. I wish we were saner beings.
The cartoon-enjoyers just want to be grilling, don't harsh their buzz. Let the children boogie.
Since the Culture Distorters (aka "secular humanists who just happen to have Jewish last names") start small and gradually ramp it up (like the frog in a pan myth), there's always the temptation to just go back to earlier iterations, which are objectively less poisonous. Compare Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" (which sells the idea of Christmas as a minor, Christ-less feast, like Hanukkah) with Seth Rogan's Santa Inc.
Not only is this easier than subjecting pop culture to a searching critique and working to dig out the poisonous elements, it also appeals to the nostalgia factor. You referenced remarks on your podcast about Soviet pseudo-peasant culture, but this also relates to your discussion of Mad Men's Don Draper. Part of the appeal of the show was a not entirely unsympathetic portrayal of postwar American triumphalism -- yeah, we beat those Nazis with all their "culture" and "discipline," now let's move to the suburbs and grill!" -- which in retrospect is so much more appealing than what came after. Yet Draper's "manhood" is still toxic, not tonic.
This might be the difference btw "conservative" and "rightist." The one wants to return to some past stage, usually their youth, but sometimes something like the antebellum South or even the Middle Ages (these are the real "misfits" and "weirdo" types; see Confederacy of Dunces); perhaps the Bronze Age even. The other tries to remove the distortions, figure out what's true or what works, and go forward on a new basis. Prussian aristos vs. National Socialist futurism.
I would suggest that American culture at its best had a high level of German Kultur, which had to be attacked by the Ellis Island newcomers so as to set the Golem up against Germany/Russia in WWI, WWII and, well, today. Postwar, anything "cultural" was still thought equivalent to "Nazi," since the "Nazis" were terrible people who liked Wagner and hard books like Nietzsche and Hegel and believed in requiring service to the public good, and despised "popular" (i.e., promoted by Culture Distorters) music and movies and "individualism" and general American lifestyle.
The Frankfurters were German Jews (not Ellis Islanders) steeped in German Kultur, so of course they despised America. Retrospectively, Adorno & Co. are basically "Nazis" and so have become the favorite target of "conservatives." This is also why Russia and the ex-Soviet Bloc are seen as "paradoxically" more "conservative" than the West. The Soviets promoted the Space Race but also ballet and chess, America's Space Race went along with sloppy clothes and the Beatles. Soviet economics left building alone, America's "vigor" knocked them down to erect Modernist crap.
Reconstruction of American culture will require a revival of the Germanic element. More Wagner, less Mylie Cyrus. Both the activity, and its content, will provoke cries of "this is exactly what the Nazis did and wanted." This is true, and will need to be overcome.
Speaking of which, re Sladkov: you may have discovered the Russian Mike Enoch.
>The other tries to remove the distortions, figure out what's true or what works, and go forward on a new basis. Prussian aristos vs. National Socialist futurism.
Yep. And often, although these two groups appear similar, they actually become implacable enemies.
>you may have discovered the Russian Mike Enoch.
I thought Enoch had become a walking caricature of a disheveled, slovenly, goose-stepping neo-Nazi a long time ago.
"Hi, I'll take an Egg McMuffin with a side of RAGE please, actually make that a double."
It is the prerogative of older generations to wist nostalgically about how what they grew up with was simply the best for society. There's nothing we can do about Sovoks, boomers, etc. They play with their grandkids, tell them how much their childhood was way better, and so on.
I didn't watch Cheburashka, but I had a Russian teacher show me some old Soviet-style cartoons to make a point about how violent Bugs Bunny by comparison was once. It was amusing. I don't know about downing the whole Russian film industry though. While I know all things "Orthodox Christianity" are a horrendous Yahwist bother to you, they're actually producing at least some decent stuff. "Ostrov" was great, as was the miniseries "Sophia" previously mentioned, and they're far from alone.
Unfortunately this is where that disconnect between you and Orthodoxy is going to come to a head. I'd wager that most Russian nationalists are also Orthodox Christians. Surely the ones I met were. Surely the groups I've studied and knew of people that were involved are. Yeah you might find some edgy atheist/neopagan Rusnats and probably like half of them are subbed here (welcome to the Internet) but a Russia without Orthodoxy I would think is largely unimaginable to most Russian nationalists because Russia's history itself is tied to Orthodoxy. So if you want to work in a serious factor in the movement it's us Church people, the Sovoks, or death-metalheads. Only one group is serious about restoring Russia, and that's because they're the only ones who care about what it looked like before Comrade Lenin.
P.S. Yeah they probably killed Bodrov. Can't go around making movies that straight up attack government policy about "national unity," can you?
>I'd wager that most Russian nationalists are also Orthodox Christians.
Not really. I was one of the people pushing for a reincorporating of a positive attitude towards Orthodox Christianity because its MORAL CODE kept freaks away, which are disproportionately found in the neo-pagan, White Army Larpers and Libertarian or Naz-Bol strains of Russian nationalism.
>but a Russia without Orthodoxy I would think is largely unimaginable to most Russian nationalists because Russia's history itself is tied to Orthodoxy.
You would be very wrong. Like I said, I think Russia ought to be Orthodox because of the MORAL CODE and the large family rhetoric and the aesthetic. Like the Germans though, I'd simply tweak the religion if I were in power to de-emphasize the Old Testament and create an imperial battle cult. This is what Dugin calls for as well, by the way.
Just like how the Christians subverted and Judaized the existing traditions that came before them, I'd do the same, and re-Russianize them. And just like it worked for the Nicene Christians, it would work on the masses just the same. Most Russians would prefer a less Jewish religion.
As for the Sovoks, I have tried to promote some sort of outreach to them, but it simply doesn't work. They refuse to compromise on anything.
"Not really. I was one of the people pushing for a reincorporating of a positive attitude towards Orthodox Christianity because its MORAL CODE kept freaks away, which are disproportionately found in the neo-pagan, White Army Larpers and Libertarian or Naz-Bol strains of Russian nationalism."
Fair, my information is dated, and I remember groups like this (in Russian) but they seem to be absorbed into other groups. (I don't know what "The Orthodox Army" is, etc) That said, you're missing out on huge groupings here, but it's a rabbit hole you may not be aware of and I'm not going to hold your hand.
"You would be very wrong. Like I said, I think Russia ought to be Orthodox because of the MORAL CODE and the large family rhetoric and the aesthetic."
The distinction between "what ought to be" and "what is" is always central to me.
*Skip fantasy religion paragraph, skip Sovok paragraph, Bodrov! more interesting*
A lot of Russians did-- and since I assume most are still alive, still do. "Voina" came out on the heels of the Chechen war. The Kremlin's official position was that this was a "regional operation", like stamping out some Antifags or J6boomers. Bodrov's position was "this is obviously a war", which literally bookends the beginning and end of the movie.
So it wasn't the chorniy (not nigro obv, but know your black men, I had so much fun calling myself a strong black man in Russia) American who came up with that, I just had to agree at the time it seemed pretty obvious.
>Fair, my information is dated, and I remember groups like this (in Russian) but they seem to be absorbed into other groups. (I don't know what "The Orthodox Army" is, etc) That said, you're missing out on huge groupings here, but it's a rabbit hole you may not be aware of and I'm not going to hold your hand.
By the time that I got involved, there weren't really many orthodox nationalists.
The ones that were around were schismatics who critiqued the Russian Orthodox far more harshly than I do as a KGB front, a racketeering operation, literally the whore of babylon and what have you.
There is one group I've collab'd with before called "Tsar's Cross" which is mainline Orthodox but also very anti-Putin and extremely critical of the SMO.
When I appeared on their show, I tried to convince them to chill out and wait, that because of the SMO, the state would be obliged to make concessions to nationalists eventually.
On the level of rhetoric, people like Putin certainly have.
"By the time that I got involved, there weren't really many orthodox nationalists.
The ones that were around were schismatics who critiqued the Russian Orthodox far more harshly than I do as a KGB front, a racketeering operation, literally the whore of babylon and what have you."
Spicy! Your Amerikanetz is showing. *You're talking to one of those schismatics.* I confessed to Metr Valentine of Suzdal-- and am a lucky recipient of his cooking. (He was an award winning gourmand in the Soviet period.)
Those crazies comprise literal millions of people. And if you went to my handy hashtag on Gab, give it long enough and you'll find them.
I have nothing against schismatics. But the mainline denomination believes that their souls are forfeit. I think they reply in kind.
There's a lot of criticism to be leveled at the Russian Orthodox church that rings true.
I try to just ask myself whether or not the organization is a net benefit for Russia or not. The only thing I concern myself with in this regards is the promotion of family-forming values, and resistance to Liberal perversion of the moral code.
If they want to steal from pensioners to buy themselves a Mercedes on the side, I figure it's worth the price.
Jan 24, 2023·edited Jan 24, 2023Liked by Rurik Skywalker
You can't really understand this stuff unless you experience it. The Raskol is mostly limited to Old Believers and comes back up when people fight over a building because in the mind of the mainline Russian PEOPLE, these arguments are mostly turf wars, and they aren't wrong. When I was in Russia, RPATs's main Sobor was a big beautiful Church with hundreds of worshippers.
Two years after I left Russia, the MP, with the power of the state took it. The Church moved most of the stuff outside the coffin-relics of the saint to the nearby and ample space of the Metropolitan's residence. Services continue.
The Church under His All-Holiness is open to visitors once a week, and they leave out the fact that most of the iconography is from the 90's. It's a Sovok move you can appreciate.
You see suck at the level of government. But government was only part of the problem. (Metr Valentine was, at one point, the mayor of Suzdal.) The suck goes far deeper.
We are not the same. But if you stop thinking you know it all, and start trusting your zemla, it will all make sense.
Before you start blahseblahing about schism, tell you a funny story. My priest in Pietere under ROAC (RPATs) said something funny when I was there. He showed me the candles at our tiny mission and said "see this? The Patriarch (Alexei then) says we shouldn't be charging our poor people for candles. And I'm the only one in the city who actually listens and take that seriously."
"Raskol" means a thing in Russia, and it's not "schism" in America. American Orthodoxy is a garbage mess and we survive through it. Orthodoxy is healthier there. I've even complained about this to the Kremlin via their "write the Kremlin" email. No idea if they still have that. Been busy for about a decade.
Don't Russian xtians have a cringy qanon type thing going on? Russia was not brutalized because yahweh hates her! He just need mo martyrs fo dem programs... holy shit LOL
As Dmitry Puchkov (a.k.a. Goblin), a popular media figure in Russia, a self made man with well over 2 million subscribers on YouTube before his channel was demolished last summer by Google for his unapologetic pro-Russian position keeps on saying: "USSR hater is always a russophobe". I don't agree with this guy on everything, but here he nailed it.
USSR was a complex system that stood on its own culturally, economically, industrially and scientifically. Just in civil aviation alone there were 5 competing brands of airplanes and helicopters - Tupolev, Yakovlev, Antonov, Ilyushin and Mikoyan.
Today's Russia, let alone Ukraine, where civilization has vanished rapidly, is a mere shadow of a former giant. The country is not able to produce a single civilian aircraft using locally manufactured components. Sukhoi Super Jet (SSJ-100) is just a hack job 80% made of Airbus parts. And now, because of sanctions, they are experiencing significant production issues. MC-21 despite the promises to have first planes supplied to the airline industry by 2023 just can't get off the ground and required Putin's recent personal intervention by publicly scolding responsible vice-premier Manturov for ongoing delays. It's not a fact that Putin's involvement is going to help as his orders are often ignored by the cabinet.
This just one example, civilian aviation, but this applies to every complex manufacturing industry, except for pumping oil and gas as well as atomic energy industry that is currently one of the most advanced in the world including newly built sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor BN-800, capable of creating a perpetual wasteless cycle in spending and generating new nuclear fuel.
What is interesting, during these times of heightened russophobia in the West, attacks on Soviet legacy were renewed with a vengeance. Talking recently to my much younger sister, born in Ukraine in mid eighties and raised there, she now, since the start of the war, lives in Austria. She suddenly started telling me how much her generation hates USSR. I tried to explain to her, but look at Ukraine - everything that matters that your country has, from being the biggest and potentially the richest country in Europe, the remnants of the industry, the infrastructure, up to the magnificent buildings that your government occupies in the center of Kiev - everything was built or is legacy of the USSR. So you don't have to love it, but at least you have to respect what your ancestors did. I was just wasting my breath... She is ethnic Russian, btw, that hates everything Russian. So coming back to Puchkov - "USSR hater is always a russophobe".
December 30th 2022 was a 100 year anniversary of the country that is no more. Special poll was conducted by the Russian state polling agency WCIOM. According to the poll majority of Russians look at USSR in a positive way, e.g. there was more positive in that country than negative they say. Though a lesser percentage sees return to USSR as possible. This is just another bit in understanding the real Russia and not the one depicted by the Western propaganda where even people that try to be objective have absorbed the cliches with mother's milk, as it seems.
The collapse of the USSR was a disaster and what came next was worse. There were also good things about the USSR like the spartan military ethic and the social conservatism.
Nicene Christianity is the same - good moral code. Kept society more or less cohesive. We are worse off without it.
And for most people that is all that matters - the code by which society lives. Clean streets. Quiet lives. Order and stability of a kind. So long as we all agree to not ask too many questions.
But it was all of it built on a lie. A foundation of half-truths and outright fabrications designed with a devilish purpose in mind.
Most people are unable to understand or have the conversation on this level though.
You are a reasonable man, Rolo - capable of carrying a civilized discussion. This is why I keep recommending your blog despite the fact we don't agree on everything and we don't need to. I'm far from idealizing USSR, btw. As a former dissident "antisovetchik" I studied its faults long and hard. I left the country in the eighties while Soviet Union was strong and it was my views on the system made me, or I can even say helped me, to leave the place even before the country fell apart. Overtime though, looking at what was becoming of now independent former USSR republics I had to adjust my criticism and recognize that not everything there was universally bad.
I frequently thought - what were the true reasons for the demise of once seemingly invincible country? In my view this boiled down to two key reasons:
1. Stagnant elites. Starting with the coming of Brezhnev to power in 1964 that coincided with the Soviet Union depending more and more on selling natural resources vs. going for more difficult, but more rewarding internal development. With time through negative selection these processes brought to power people like Gorbachev, Shewardnadze, Yakovlev, Kravchuk, Yeltsin etc. In part this understanding came to me after working in and for Fortune 500 companies for decades. At first I couldn't understand why upper management would periodically cannibalize a well established business model or a process, but gradually I understood that while tactically loosing this was giving the necessary energy for the company to reinvent itself and to keep staying on top. Soviet system lacked that characteristic during later years and always chose stability that led to stagnation and eventual demise.
2. Naive overprotected population. You mentioned half truth of USSR. Perhaps... However the favorite meme in Russia about those days is "we thought they were lying, but they were actually telling the truth". There were biases though. Propaganda was trying to hide anything negative inside of the country and was focusing instead on achievements, turning TV news into endless "harvested, produced, built, delivered" etc. In time this immersed the population into a form of a protected information bubble. They looked at the world in an unreasonably positive way being sure that everyone wishes them well. This is why almost nobody stood to defend the country when it was pulled apart in 1991 by petty nationalists. For all the shortcomings of modern Russia this naiveté is largely gone, and there are many people in the country now that are going to fight to preserve it from falling apart, even if the faction among elites that welcomes disintegration is going to win.
Can't really co-sign the USSR since the KGB encouraged Operation Bluestar.
So did Mossad & MI6 though, so it's a war between Sikhi & the enlightenment.
Not saying I like petty ethno-nationalisms better than brotherhood of nations stuff.
Faith first though.
Faith first? Creation mythologies have their place, an artistic expression of a peoples soul. Problem is that the jewish shit has ruined the concept of god and spiritualism for so many. Sikhs practice a tolerant religion that says nobody holds the truth in full, the problem is that the jewish warrior cult of islam does not play this way. They inherited the jewish concept of religious supremacism and an angry volcano demon deity, so those tolerant sikh faith leaders got skinned alive...
A somewhat oblique takeoff on "spartan military ethic" - one account of the collapse of the USSR has it that it was (unintentionally) triggered by top military leaders after the catastrophe over Syria in June 1982 when the Israeli air force (using US fighters) shot down 88 Syrian (USSR made) aircraft without themselves taking any losses. The account goes: Russian generals were aghast, realized they had lost the military tech battle with the west;; and that led to Gorbachev - and that led to January 1991 - via the well known difficulty of reforming a failed system. I do not suggest this with any sense of triumphalism - perhaps just a suggestion that we need to locate the "disaster" much earlier - August 1914 ? Jan 22, 1905 ... Russia was fast becoming an industrial powerhouse at the time.
I sort of view people who endlessly yammer about the evils of the USSR the way I do people who never shut up about muh nazis. In the modern West the virtue of any proposition is measured by how much a caricature of Hitler would dislike it. Likewise there is a class of people, especially in Eastern Europe whose moral compass revolves around how much they think Stalin or Lenin would like or dislike something. Its so ridiculous that it comes to "NS Germany double plus good because against Stalin". Neither type of person is overly useful and you often come across those who combine both to peak cringe obnoxiousness.
Personally Im ambivalent about the post 20s USSR, it was indeed built on sand more or less, it was an anti Russian project at inception but paradoxically it spread Russians all over central Asia, the far east, the Baltics etc. Sure they spoke a lot about proletarian brotherly love in the USSR but in practice Tajiks stayed in Tajikistan, Kazaks in Kazakhstan but Slavs were spread everywhere.
Sure Alcoholism, abortion and apathy were becoming a problem in the late USSR but it was miloch compared to the 90s. IMO the same group of people who were behind the revolution are the same people that got the Soviet elite to dismantle the USSR. If the USSR was the triumph of Bolshevism than I would call glasnost and the fall of the USSR Kerenskys revenge and the triumph of Menshevism. People tend to constantly overlook that many powerful jews and anglo fellow travelers originally wanted Kerensky running Russia and for the Empire to transform into some gay social democracy. The reason the Whites lost is because they werent loyal to the Tsar they were fighting for Kerensky who was even more hated than the Reds.
The social democracy Menshevik model isnt as outright malicious towards Russians but would Russia be better off today if the Whites had won and Russia was transformed into a progressive social democracy instead of a brutal Marxist tyranny? Because despite its benevolent intent the RF has proven even less able to defend Russians and their interest than the overtly anti Russian USSR.
Its honestly a really complicated and nuanced subject and even Russians cant make heads or tails of it. Isnt the demographic catastrophe of the 90s just as evil as the Bolsheviks straight murdering millions and millions of Russians? Letting people die from alcoholism, despair, narcotics, not having kids because theres no future, all that is somehow more forgivable because it was a side effect where as the Bolsheviks murdering people is worse because it was with intent?
I really cant answer that but i can understand those who become Stalinist these days. They skip over or turn a blind eye to the malevolence of the early USSR because what came after really was better than whats going on now.
Ill probably get bullied for this and Russian Stalinist would strongly disagree with me but I see some Stalin in a good way in old school Putin. Speaking of the Russian Federation here, Putin was a bland functionary in an absolutely rotten system who decided for reasons we can't be sure of exactly to stop the worst excesses and give the Russian people a glimmer of hope. But despite his best efforts its looking like its not enough and what comes next very well might be even worse.
Deep remark. I can't agree with all of it, but I understand your way of thinking and why you come to certain conclusions. I was thinking of writing a Russian history 101 and make several posts of it on my blog. Probably I should do it, as there is definitely audience here capable of understanding complexities and the nuanced nature of history of a 1200 year old state.
Dont know if he ate it but it's true that Milchakov killed a puppy and filmed it when he was a young neo-nazi. Neither neo-nazism or killing puppies are acceptable but Milchakovs work on behalf of Russia since than expunges his sins imo.
As for the movies you haven't watched лучше в аду? Genuinely really good one about the Wagner guys. I wasnt expecting much but was impressed.
1. All the Wagner guys in the movie are Russian, no Chakkas or Mongols included.
2 the movie is mostly tactical porn but it illustrates counter battery battle, how important drones are, and how at the command level the war is like playing chess. It just gives a very good birds eye view of all the moving parts on the battlefield in Ukraine.
3. The Ukrainians are totally given their due. They are portrayed as just as competent and brave as the Russians. There are even close combat scenes where you cant tell them and the Wagner guys apart.
4. The ending hits hard in the feels and Im kinda suprised it got past the censors. Spoiler:
At the end of the film literally everyone is dead except 2 Wagner guys. Than we find out that regardless of completing their mission no break through was achieved. So identical blood baths will happen everyday for the foreseeable future.
Would recommend if you have the free time.
Personally the absolutely worst thing with the Sovoks is its like they take the absolute worst aspects of the Soviet era and keep them and dump what might be useful. I didn't know Cheburashkas creators were kikes but im not surprised given how weird and ugly the character is. And of course that's what the Sovoks would push, not Livci, not Captain Rungel, but that Jewish mouse who I think must be a product of Chernobyl.
Stalin for the sake of self preservation actually did open the Russian nationalism box to the extent that his life depended on it. The current Sovoks apparently think thats not necessary despite being sure there are Nazis everywhere. Likewise Stalin opened factories, shot people built infastructure, and mobilized society to the extent that his life depended on it. The current Sovoks don't insist on any of that either apparently.
My intent there is not to rehabilitate the USSR but just to point out that when its very existence was actually threatened the leadership of the USSR acted very differently than the leadership of the RF. But the Sovoks arent drawing any conclusions from that other than more Cheburashka. Useless people.
Great post.
People like the USSR for the moral code that it had.
Worth a post.
I have a different view about useless people, or rather, useless eaters as the current crop of global elites are imagining. In that these are people who don't know how to take care of themselves starting with growing the food they eat. Lots of those around now, all dependent on this economic system for payments of one type or another. All of them supporting the system.
Then we have the Holodomor. In the killing off the peasants yet again, in the same area no less as the last elite machination 1917, and the next (now).
What the hell is it about that geography? Something in the water? Oh, something they are smoking! I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't want to know.
The most blatant of those actual useless eaters, who accuse everyone else nearly correctly of what they are, rounding up to the last everyone to support the opulence, which has made them weak btw, are those at the top of this hierarchy going on now for 5500 years. Religion and ethnicity in that is in who can claim the dead end on the top prize.
Thanks for the prompt.
I don't like Nazis because they attempted to wipe the Serbian nation & the Russian nation off the map reasons of "living space" & master race nonsense. The Nazi ideology in itself was a confused mess & made no sense, one minute Hitler was talking about righting the wrongs of Versailles, uniting German ethnic territories into Germany i.e. Sudeten, then he decided that Russia & the Balkans had to be colonised & the inhabitants (Slavs) exterminated. The "Holocaust" is, in addition to serving as an ideological foundation for Israel's existence, is also promoted ad nauseum to cover up the very real genocide of the Slavs - the real Holocaust, the Slavic Holocaust. As far as I am concerned, Germany should have been cleaned off the map for all time in 1945 for what it attempted to pull - kill all my people? Well, I just may do the same to you. But no, Stalin was too kind. What really offends me in the Kremlin's SMO rhetoric/terminology is how they insist always on how they are fighting "nationalists" in Ukraine, & equating them with Nazis. Putin himself has had to put the record straight on that one himself a couple of times, I think it was at Valdai, when he said a real nationalist loves his country & people. But the SMO rhetoric continues to claim Russia is fighting "nationalism" in the misguided idiotic belief that this will appease liberals in the west & convince them that no, we are on the same side really, you haven't yet figured it out but at some point in Davos someone, maybe Hariri, is going to say - yes, the Russians are against nationalism as well! Keep waiting for that day. That said, I don't believe the SMO was a mistake or that Russia is losing it, not because I believe in 5D chess, but because Russia was able to take control of 17% or so of territory in Ukraine, create a land bridge to Crimea, in about 1 month. Have the Ukrainians rolled the Russians back? What, Kherson? Kharkov? Do me a favour. The Ukro's are suiciding themselves on an industrial scale to basically stand still. At some point Russian forces will advance - when they decide to.
>The Ukro's are suiciding themselves on an industrial scale to basically stand still. At some point Russian forces will advance - when they decide to.
Are they though?
And even if they are, is this a good thing? Aren't these brotherly Russians who ought to be on Russia's side? Most are just conscripts being forced to die by Zelensky. How does the death of a million men in Ukraine help Russia if they intend to inherit these territories?
Think man, think.
>> Naturally, the government busies itself subsidizes an entire parasitical class of “culture-makers” who make modern art garbage that offends the sensibilities of the average Russian with money taken from the Russian taxpayer. It would be better for Russian culture if the artificial state-subsidized fake culture died and the cultural nomenklatura left to fend for themselves on the free market.
Same in France. Tax money and tax free allowances fund a large useless film industry : more than 100 films produced every year, 90 of which are not even B-grade films, so pure rubbish. 10-15 are released into theatres, half of them having a few thousand viewers. Mostly comedies and progressive multi-cultural propaganda. Every other year a good film is released so that the press can claim that French cinema is "alive"; yes the word used by the press is "vivant", "alive". Of course, yidividuals play a large role in such an industry; albeit they are not the top guys.
Change of topics. The problem of the Russianness of Ukraine is the problem of Kiev ! Kiev was the original capital and the seat of the tribe of Rurik. They were the rulers. Even when conquered by the Mongols, by Poland, by the Tatars, and by Russia, Kiev and its rulers maintained dominance over the local area and had ambitions for their city and for self-rule. Odessa, Kharkov, Lvov do not harbour the same ambitions; Minsk does but to a lesser extent. The local pre-eminence of Kiev and the ambition for self-rule will not disappear. Rolo, as a Ukrainian, you should be more sensitive to this situation, even though you prefer to be a Russian patriot.
Kiev was run by the Russian intelligentsia who created this fake culture/identity of Ukraine. It is a progressive kind of alternative identity that is more "European". It is inherently anti-Russian. If it were just like a regional pride thing, I'd totally embrace it and lean into it myself. Like, think Texas identity. Nothing wrong with that.
Donbass identity would roughly be to Russian what Texan is to American. Ukrainian is just some totally fake abortion where the Neo-soviets say "noooooo the Austrio Hungarians and CIA made up Ukrainian thing the Bolsheviks didnt do it"!!!!!!! People who blame the Bolsheviks exclusively for everything sort of dont account for the fact that Ukrainianization vastly accelerated after the USSR was dismantled.
The Bolsheviks added to a problem created by Austrio Hungarian and Polish Imperialist, the CIA helped out a lot during the cold war, and the modern RF just let the problem fester. If the USSR was never dismantled the Ukraine issue wouldnt be a big deal, your Stalinist and soviet boomers are correct about that. But as Putin pointed out the USSRs foundations really were laid on a time bomb by Lenin. Giving the Republics a right to secede and also validating the petty nationalism in the Baltics and Caucasus was bad enough but agreeing and amplifying the entirely fake Ukrainian identity was just retardation worthy of the modern Kremlin.
But in general the fake Ukrainian identity was a truly "multivector" project that everyone had their hands in.
Yeah, I was about to mention the austro-hungarian cop-out.
Sovoks lie as easy as they breathe.
Carpathia and Chernovitsi are radically different from Kiev and mid-Ukraine because of Austria-Hungary and different ethnicities. People there do not care whether they are under Kiev or Moscow. They would prefer to be out or in autonomous regions. And without Jews. A status like Tatarstan may suit them.
Lvov and Ivano-Frankisk, I do not know, but, among the peasants, the Greek Catholic opposition to Orthodoxy is real. Again little to do with Kiev and mid-Ukraine.
If the patriotism of Kievan Ukraine is actually recently manufactured anti-Russianness then it is shallow. A decade or two of neutrality and it goes away.
You are over my head in details but are a interesting descriptive typist enough I want to follow along for awhile and learn what you think.
I cherry picked these two more easily understandable ideas: cultural nomenklatura left to fend for themselves on the free market. clever enough to take joy in crushing the peasants, but not smart enough to wonder why they are allowed to do so.
Vapes are for teenagers and brown people.
Stfu you don't even see movie, you just copypasted some dumb conspiracy shit about old cartoon and present it as valuable analysis from Russian, when you a fucking ukranian grown up in USA, that got kicked from Russia February 2022 (for no reason). This new movie has little to do with old cartoon apart from characters, story is completely different with message of kindness and that "you can't buy hapiness with money", there is none ussr nostalgy in movie, you making shit up
lol why are you even subbed to my blog?
To remember and codify all shit you wrote for future generations, maybe oversee you final transition into hohol nationalist would be fun how 1,5 years ago you talked that we need to transfer all power to army and church, and now you shit both on army and church, that would be next logical step for you
>I'm here to snitch on you
For the record, I dont shit on the army and I think the Church is necessary to keep low-iq morons like you in line.
You are delusional. Cope and seethe more. It incentivizes me to write more.
I am but your humble servant.
But enjoy the comment ban in the meantime.
"Me, I don’t particularly like Nazis, because the social stigma attached to the label and the aesthetic only attract people who are, for one reason or another, profoundly alienated from society. These types are not the kind of people you want in your populist movement in a large capacity because of their uncanny ability to put others off. Also, they tend to be broken in some way and I have no time or energy for putting up with freaks."
Yes.
"clever enough to take joy in crushing the peasants, but not smart enough to wonder why they are allowed to do so."
Correct.
https://scholars-stage.org/culture-wars-are-long-wars/
If most of the hetero youth are nationalist then isn't that a whitepill?
As sovoks age out & libs run away doesn't Russia fall into their lap?
Obviously, they have to defend/prevent its partition.
Nazis aka wignats are an unfortunate bunch. They know something is very wrong because they rely on gut instinct due to low IQ. This places them above the midwits who live in utopialand but also means that they cannot properly respond. Ironically they aid the enemy with their trashy national socialist larp like monkeys in suits.
I couldn't get through all of this. The fact of war hangs too heavily on my intellect. The death, the destruction, the huge waste of resources, the lowering emotional level of whole populations. I sicken of all the talk of "winning." How could any outcome of any war be a "win" when it has gone as far as this one - and most wars in history - has gone? Winning is for football and so forth. The losers live to try again. The winners get a pat on the back, then back to trying again as well. That's the way to play a game without ruining the lives of millions of people in the process. In some ways, blowing up a whole planet in a single flash seems more humane than a long lasting war. I wish we were saner beings.
no, fuck YOU, pendos. Stop pretending and stick to baseball and popcorn. "slavskiy" my ass!
More evidence that the Bolshevik yidividuals managed to kill many of the best Russians?
The cartoon-enjoyers just want to be grilling, don't harsh their buzz. Let the children boogie.
Since the Culture Distorters (aka "secular humanists who just happen to have Jewish last names") start small and gradually ramp it up (like the frog in a pan myth), there's always the temptation to just go back to earlier iterations, which are objectively less poisonous. Compare Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" (which sells the idea of Christmas as a minor, Christ-less feast, like Hanukkah) with Seth Rogan's Santa Inc.
Not only is this easier than subjecting pop culture to a searching critique and working to dig out the poisonous elements, it also appeals to the nostalgia factor. You referenced remarks on your podcast about Soviet pseudo-peasant culture, but this also relates to your discussion of Mad Men's Don Draper. Part of the appeal of the show was a not entirely unsympathetic portrayal of postwar American triumphalism -- yeah, we beat those Nazis with all their "culture" and "discipline," now let's move to the suburbs and grill!" -- which in retrospect is so much more appealing than what came after. Yet Draper's "manhood" is still toxic, not tonic.
This might be the difference btw "conservative" and "rightist." The one wants to return to some past stage, usually their youth, but sometimes something like the antebellum South or even the Middle Ages (these are the real "misfits" and "weirdo" types; see Confederacy of Dunces); perhaps the Bronze Age even. The other tries to remove the distortions, figure out what's true or what works, and go forward on a new basis. Prussian aristos vs. National Socialist futurism.
I would suggest that American culture at its best had a high level of German Kultur, which had to be attacked by the Ellis Island newcomers so as to set the Golem up against Germany/Russia in WWI, WWII and, well, today. Postwar, anything "cultural" was still thought equivalent to "Nazi," since the "Nazis" were terrible people who liked Wagner and hard books like Nietzsche and Hegel and believed in requiring service to the public good, and despised "popular" (i.e., promoted by Culture Distorters) music and movies and "individualism" and general American lifestyle.
The Frankfurters were German Jews (not Ellis Islanders) steeped in German Kultur, so of course they despised America. Retrospectively, Adorno & Co. are basically "Nazis" and so have become the favorite target of "conservatives." This is also why Russia and the ex-Soviet Bloc are seen as "paradoxically" more "conservative" than the West. The Soviets promoted the Space Race but also ballet and chess, America's Space Race went along with sloppy clothes and the Beatles. Soviet economics left building alone, America's "vigor" knocked them down to erect Modernist crap.
Reconstruction of American culture will require a revival of the Germanic element. More Wagner, less Mylie Cyrus. Both the activity, and its content, will provoke cries of "this is exactly what the Nazis did and wanted." This is true, and will need to be overcome.
Speaking of which, re Sladkov: you may have discovered the Russian Mike Enoch.
>The other tries to remove the distortions, figure out what's true or what works, and go forward on a new basis. Prussian aristos vs. National Socialist futurism.
Yep. And often, although these two groups appear similar, they actually become implacable enemies.
>you may have discovered the Russian Mike Enoch.
I thought Enoch had become a walking caricature of a disheveled, slovenly, goose-stepping neo-Nazi a long time ago.
"Hi, I'll take an Egg McMuffin with a side of RAGE please, actually make that a double."
It is the prerogative of older generations to wist nostalgically about how what they grew up with was simply the best for society. There's nothing we can do about Sovoks, boomers, etc. They play with their grandkids, tell them how much their childhood was way better, and so on.
I didn't watch Cheburashka, but I had a Russian teacher show me some old Soviet-style cartoons to make a point about how violent Bugs Bunny by comparison was once. It was amusing. I don't know about downing the whole Russian film industry though. While I know all things "Orthodox Christianity" are a horrendous Yahwist bother to you, they're actually producing at least some decent stuff. "Ostrov" was great, as was the miniseries "Sophia" previously mentioned, and they're far from alone.
Unfortunately this is where that disconnect between you and Orthodoxy is going to come to a head. I'd wager that most Russian nationalists are also Orthodox Christians. Surely the ones I met were. Surely the groups I've studied and knew of people that were involved are. Yeah you might find some edgy atheist/neopagan Rusnats and probably like half of them are subbed here (welcome to the Internet) but a Russia without Orthodoxy I would think is largely unimaginable to most Russian nationalists because Russia's history itself is tied to Orthodoxy. So if you want to work in a serious factor in the movement it's us Church people, the Sovoks, or death-metalheads. Only one group is serious about restoring Russia, and that's because they're the only ones who care about what it looked like before Comrade Lenin.
P.S. Yeah they probably killed Bodrov. Can't go around making movies that straight up attack government policy about "national unity," can you?
>I'd wager that most Russian nationalists are also Orthodox Christians.
Not really. I was one of the people pushing for a reincorporating of a positive attitude towards Orthodox Christianity because its MORAL CODE kept freaks away, which are disproportionately found in the neo-pagan, White Army Larpers and Libertarian or Naz-Bol strains of Russian nationalism.
>but a Russia without Orthodoxy I would think is largely unimaginable to most Russian nationalists because Russia's history itself is tied to Orthodoxy.
You would be very wrong. Like I said, I think Russia ought to be Orthodox because of the MORAL CODE and the large family rhetoric and the aesthetic. Like the Germans though, I'd simply tweak the religion if I were in power to de-emphasize the Old Testament and create an imperial battle cult. This is what Dugin calls for as well, by the way.
Just like how the Christians subverted and Judaized the existing traditions that came before them, I'd do the same, and re-Russianize them. And just like it worked for the Nicene Christians, it would work on the masses just the same. Most Russians would prefer a less Jewish religion.
As for the Sovoks, I have tried to promote some sort of outreach to them, but it simply doesn't work. They refuse to compromise on anything.
You think they killed Bodrov? Interesting.
"Not really. I was one of the people pushing for a reincorporating of a positive attitude towards Orthodox Christianity because its MORAL CODE kept freaks away, which are disproportionately found in the neo-pagan, White Army Larpers and Libertarian or Naz-Bol strains of Russian nationalism."
Fair, my information is dated, and I remember groups like this (in Russian) but they seem to be absorbed into other groups. (I don't know what "The Orthodox Army" is, etc) That said, you're missing out on huge groupings here, but it's a rabbit hole you may not be aware of and I'm not going to hold your hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_National_Unity
"You would be very wrong. Like I said, I think Russia ought to be Orthodox because of the MORAL CODE and the large family rhetoric and the aesthetic."
The distinction between "what ought to be" and "what is" is always central to me.
*Skip fantasy religion paragraph, skip Sovok paragraph, Bodrov! more interesting*
A lot of Russians did-- and since I assume most are still alive, still do. "Voina" came out on the heels of the Chechen war. The Kremlin's official position was that this was a "regional operation", like stamping out some Antifags or J6boomers. Bodrov's position was "this is obviously a war", which literally bookends the beginning and end of the movie.
So it wasn't the chorniy (not nigro obv, but know your black men, I had so much fun calling myself a strong black man in Russia) American who came up with that, I just had to agree at the time it seemed pretty obvious.
>Fair, my information is dated, and I remember groups like this (in Russian) but they seem to be absorbed into other groups. (I don't know what "The Orthodox Army" is, etc) That said, you're missing out on huge groupings here, but it's a rabbit hole you may not be aware of and I'm not going to hold your hand.
By the time that I got involved, there weren't really many orthodox nationalists.
The ones that were around were schismatics who critiqued the Russian Orthodox far more harshly than I do as a KGB front, a racketeering operation, literally the whore of babylon and what have you.
There is one group I've collab'd with before called "Tsar's Cross" which is mainline Orthodox but also very anti-Putin and extremely critical of the SMO.
When I appeared on their show, I tried to convince them to chill out and wait, that because of the SMO, the state would be obliged to make concessions to nationalists eventually.
On the level of rhetoric, people like Putin certainly have.
"By the time that I got involved, there weren't really many orthodox nationalists.
The ones that were around were schismatics who critiqued the Russian Orthodox far more harshly than I do as a KGB front, a racketeering operation, literally the whore of babylon and what have you."
Spicy! Your Amerikanetz is showing. *You're talking to one of those schismatics.* I confessed to Metr Valentine of Suzdal-- and am a lucky recipient of his cooking. (He was an award winning gourmand in the Soviet period.)
Those crazies comprise literal millions of people. And if you went to my handy hashtag on Gab, give it long enough and you'll find them.
You want to be in a movement or a clique?
I have nothing against schismatics. But the mainline denomination believes that their souls are forfeit. I think they reply in kind.
There's a lot of criticism to be leveled at the Russian Orthodox church that rings true.
I try to just ask myself whether or not the organization is a net benefit for Russia or not. The only thing I concern myself with in this regards is the promotion of family-forming values, and resistance to Liberal perversion of the moral code.
If they want to steal from pensioners to buy themselves a Mercedes on the side, I figure it's worth the price.
You can't really understand this stuff unless you experience it. The Raskol is mostly limited to Old Believers and comes back up when people fight over a building because in the mind of the mainline Russian PEOPLE, these arguments are mostly turf wars, and they aren't wrong. When I was in Russia, RPATs's main Sobor was a big beautiful Church with hundreds of worshippers.
Two years after I left Russia, the MP, with the power of the state took it. The Church moved most of the stuff outside the coffin-relics of the saint to the nearby and ample space of the Metropolitan's residence. Services continue.
The Church under His All-Holiness is open to visitors once a week, and they leave out the fact that most of the iconography is from the 90's. It's a Sovok move you can appreciate.
You see suck at the level of government. But government was only part of the problem. (Metr Valentine was, at one point, the mayor of Suzdal.) The suck goes far deeper.
We are not the same. But if you stop thinking you know it all, and start trusting your zemla, it will all make sense.
Before you start blahseblahing about schism, tell you a funny story. My priest in Pietere under ROAC (RPATs) said something funny when I was there. He showed me the candles at our tiny mission and said "see this? The Patriarch (Alexei then) says we shouldn't be charging our poor people for candles. And I'm the only one in the city who actually listens and take that seriously."
"Raskol" means a thing in Russia, and it's not "schism" in America. American Orthodoxy is a garbage mess and we survive through it. Orthodoxy is healthier there. I've even complained about this to the Kremlin via their "write the Kremlin" email. No idea if they still have that. Been busy for about a decade.
Don't Russian xtians have a cringy qanon type thing going on? Russia was not brutalized because yahweh hates her! He just need mo martyrs fo dem programs... holy shit LOL
2 weeks to checkmate the satan trust me bros.
I just updated my Gab profile. Time to mess with some people.
Or actually it's just cigarette company lobbying.