Botond173
2d ago
As the linked OP correctly states, Western governments are happily on board with multiculturalism and cultural diversity, as long as that cultural otherness is only expressed in the form of funny clothes and exotic foods. It seems that in this they are not that different from Stalin.
Botond173
2d ago
The question is whether this level of abundance will remain sustainable on a level where average women are practically self-sufficient.
Botond173
2d ago
the eligible men don't poach the femcels too much
I'm skeptical as to the true extent that so-called femcels even exist in modern society but this is by definition impossible.
Botond173
2d ago
Wiping out national identity had been the official policy everywhere - everywhere any sense of national identity beyond funny ethnic dresses and composing odes to Stalin in national language had been brutally repressed.
Plus the exotic food and drinks. You forgot about that part. But yeah, it's perverse! Surely we'll never see democratic, enlightened Western nations display such a callous attitude towards cultural minorities. That'd be a scandal!
Botond173
2d ago
As I was reading your argument I wasn't sure what it's reminding me of. Then it occurred to me: the Montana Meth Project memes.
This is not genocide. But under Stalin, it is.
This is not a tool of intended mass murder. But under Stalin, it is.
And so on. I mean...really?!
Botond173
3d ago
That 1988 report is somewhat curious. For one, the summary does not even make reference to Soviet Kazakhstan, where the famine mortality rate was regionally the highest. I also suspect that the authors and Soviet officials at the time were simply using a different definition of the word ‘sabotage’. The summary also leaves some questions open. Was there a drought after all or not? As far as I know, yes. Was the official Soviet response implemented after all or was it just BS?
Botond173
3d ago
The forced resettlement of so-called traitor nations was done as an act of collective punishment after they were declared to be German collaborators, not as a genocidal measure to dissolve their nationality. Had they been deported on an individual basis and scattered all over the country and not as a nation as a whole, that would be the case, but this is not what happened. Had the regime intended to genocide them, the simple truth is that they would not exist today.
Botond173
3d ago
If it were the only evidence, sure. But there's plenty of other evidence to the deliberate character of food confiscation, and to extreme hostility with which Soviets viewed the kulak class.
The kulak class does not equal the Ukrainian people. Not all Ukrainians were kulaks and not all kulaks were Ukrainian. There was no case of either Stalin or any other Soviet official claiming otherwise.
That somehow he only wanted to build communism, and accidentally took all food from them and accidentally they died because they had no food?
Nobody is claiming that. Yes, everyone broadly agrees that "Stalin did it", "it" being involuntary agricultural collectivization, grain confiscation and the dissolution of the kulaks as a class, the key words being as a class. Stalin was also clearly intent on continuing these policies (although not without alterations) even when their unintended consequence, also due to drought and other factors, was famine. That much is true. But the three main related claims of Ukrainian nationalists, as we discussed in another thread, are a wholly different matter.
Botond173
3d ago
Well, duh. Of course they do. Decades of propaganda will do that to you. I'm also sure a great number of African Americans earnestly believe their ancestors built the pyramids.
Botond173
3d ago
I’m still baffled. Deportation – to be more precise, the involuntary resettlement of a people – does not equal genocide. The Gulag system was set up not with the aim of mass murder but for the purpose of extracting important natural resources through forced labor. The majority of the victims of political purges were imprisoned or deported, not killed. I have to assume that you’re also aware of all this.
Botond173
3d ago
Frankly I find these claims increasingly baffling. The "Soviets had actually perpetrated other acts of genocide on purpose"? Other acts of genocide? Where? When? Their "ideology explicitly allowed and endorsed mass murder for political purposes". Fair enough, there were cases where this applied. But against entire ethnic groups? Which is what genocide is? Also, the elimination of nationalism necessarily entails genocide now?
Botond173
4d ago
Yes, I believe most of the goons in leading positions in the EU, most heads of state and members of government of EU member states are convinced that Ukraine will be able to push the Russians out of the occupied territories and de facto restore the pre-2014 border.
Botond173
4d ago
As far as I can see, it’s not Galician nationalists wanting their own Central European country that Putin objects to. It’s rather them wanting to control the entire territory of the former Soviet Ukraine, including the Crimea.
Botond173
4d ago
I'd wager the OP was referring to the future consequences of 50 years of American/Atlanticist/globohomo (and not Russian) hegemony over the Ukrainian people (or at least over the great majority of them). To illustrate what I guess is the same point, I ask you to consider the difference between A and B in the following two cases:
One:
A: The effects of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Germany on the national identity and patriotic sentiments of local Germans, as evidenced by their average propensity to vote for right-wing nativist parties since 1990
B: The effects of US hegemony in Western Germany on the national identity and patriotic sentiments of local Germans, as evidenced by the displayed level of their willingness to preserve themselves as a nation since 1949
Two:
A: The effects of Soviet hegemony in Poland on the Catholicism and patriotic sentiment of the locals
B: The effects of US hegemony on the same in the last 25 or so years
I’d say there’s clear evidence that it’s US and not Soviet hegemony that has the larger detrimental effect on national identity and survival.
Botond173
4d ago
To interpret the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 as a) artificially engineered (i.e. done on purpose) b) by 'the' Russians against 'the' Ukrainians c) with genocidal intent, as if this was self-evidently the one and true possible interpretation is a clear case of consensus-building. I'm pretty sure you yourself are aware as well that all three arguments are questionable at best.
Botond173
5d ago
It’s funny you should mention that. I vaguely remember the bygone days when ISIS captured the attention of the Western media for a relatively short period of time, and the antics of the ISIS executioner ‘Jihadi John’ were getting plastered all over television and online news. There was one TV report after another, segments, outrage, basically just an insane amount of attention, at least for a short time and I was like…really?! Not even 50 or 100 miles away from some of these TV studios, Mexican cartels were torturing, beheading, dismembering and flaying their victims on camera like it was just another Tuesday, and still pretty much nobody in the West cared besides the regulars of a few gore websites. I get it that their victims weren’t white but the imbalance was still sort of crazy.
Botond173
5d ago
The new weapon that was a game changer and only required a short period of instruction was indeed the matchlock gun, not the longbow.
Botond173
5d ago
We're probably in an intermediate period when combat drones are an almighty game changer. No one has come up with an effective countermeasure to them so far. I'm sure this 'll soon change though.
Botond173
5d ago
Are you practically asking how to gain information about a female partner's sexual past?
Botond173
5d ago
To rephrase/edit a comment I posted here 3 months ago: I think this whole sh*tshow is yet another consequence of Western Europeans generally lacking a perspective on their own continent’s history and acting accordingly. It has been true in almost all cases that the Russian army blunders and stumbles during the initial phase of any war, even regardless of it aggressing or defending, but then shows itself to be capable of gradually learning and adapting even if the final outcome is defeat, as in WW1 for example. See the Brusilov offensive of 1916 in that case, characterized by John Keegan as “the greatest victory seen on any front [of WW1] since the trench lines had been dug on the Aisne two years before” (as quoted in Wikipedia). And there are cases when the important lessons are only learned after the war, such as the war against the Japanese in 1904-5 (which, by the way, wasn’t a cakewalk for the Japanese army by any means). I assume this is the consequence of the intellectual sloth and naïve romanticism that generally characterize the Russian people, the legacy of languishing as slaves for centuries etc., probably the Mongol yoke also has something to do with it, but this is largely beside the point. There are also a few cases when that initial period of incompetence is rather short, like during the naval war against the Ottomans in 1788-91, whom were soundly beaten.
In the case of WW2, the Red Army clearly demonstrated an ability to gradually gain competence, although the results generally appeared only in the final phase of the war. The offensives in the territory of present-day Belarus, Moldova, Romania and Poland in the summer of 1944 or the invasion of Manchuria in 1945 were impressive by anyone’s standards. The Russians are slow to learn maybe, but they do learn. Even the Afghanistan war wasn’t just a series of one blunder after another, just look at the battle for ‘Hill’ 3234 for example.
It seems that Western Europeans apparently have this usual tendency to concentrate on Russian blunders while ignoring every other factor and then assume that winning against them will be easy, and also have a way of convincing their big American brother of this.
Botond173
5d ago
As far as I know, throughout the developed women generally live longer than men on average while also retiring earlier than them on average. In my view, the maximally cynical take on this is that most citizens share the unspoken consensus that 1. old women generally remain socially active and perform socially beneficial tasks in ways that men generally don’t (this mostly entails looking after the children of their daughter especially if she happens to be a single mom and/or divorced; plus being matchmakers for young singles in their social circle) 2. most women don’t focus on their careers as much as men do so we can’t expect the majority or even a significant minority of them to have high-status, well-paying etc. jobs and remain employable at the of 60 or so. Am I correct in this?
I’m of the view that words have meaning and are, when possible, to be used accurately. Deportations are deportations, and genocides are genocides. There are multiple cases in history of groups of people getting transported before getting genocided, but that do not count as cases of deportation, because a deportation is a different act of the state with a different purpose. It’s also unfortunately true that ‘deportation’ is often the word used in the West for forced national resettlements under Stalin even though the Western definition of it is something entirely different (but also something unrelated to genocide).
They did the same thing to Russians as well, didn't they? The destruction of village communities and religious traditions, forced resettlement for the purpose of industrialization, collectivization, erasure of national heritage and the old culture - it was all done. (With the exceptions of funny Russian dresses, funny Russian music and traditional Russian dishes, of course.) We can't say that the Russians were doing this to the Ukrainians as a whole and other nationalities.
More options
Context Copy link