Russian Thought
Sep. 11th, 2022 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis article explores Russian culture and thought.
The Russian mindset is characterized by cynicism and distrust.
Yep.
However, you can't just say that all distrust is bad. You have to consider how accurate it is. Consider this chart of trust and reliability. Russia has a lot of bad experiences. That tends to correlate with correct distrust. After all, their neighbors include central Europe, which has been a fomenting fiasco for centuries; and China, whose human rights abuses exceed even Russia's. And let's not forget their astronomical losses in WWII over a fight they didn't even start. It's also uncomfortable that Europe is trying to fumble its way toward unity, with a lot of faceplanting along the way and not enough skills to get it quite right -- and Russia has even less. Awkward.
For centuries, Russians have perceived the West as a nefarious force undermining the country's greatness.
Honestly, Russia trips over its own feet more than anything else. See above re: lack of important skills. But that's also uncomfortable, so they try not to think about that part. It does show in some post-WWII documentaries about how the country tried to uplift itself from mostly rural to more developed.
This mindset, in part, led Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, a country that he deems vital to Russia's national security.
That's only part of it. He wanted it and thinks he's entitled to whatever he wants. It was there and poorly defended so he thought he could take it, although that hasn't been as easy as he expected.
This catastrophic decision was based on four major miscalculations, all of which are united by a single fatal flaw in Putin's thinking: that the whole world is every bit as corrupt as he is.
The whole world? Probably not, because he's pretty horrid. But a lot of the world is corrupt, and there's not exactly a shortage of truly horrid leaders; he's not wrong on that part.
Besides, much of the time, Russians’ biting humor is a coping mechanism for living under an oppressive government that has casually violated human rights for centuries and habitually lies to the public.
True. But then again, there are plenty of other countries doing that. America is currently pursuing the enslavement of women, for instance. China is into organlegging. And so on.
Indeed, an old Soviet joke, which has taken on renewed significance, says, “The future is certain; it is only the past that is unpredictable” — a reference to the government’s long tradition of rewriting history to support the regime and its political ambitions.
LOL yes.
Angela Stent explains that Russians simultaneously have a superiority complex and an inferiority complex regarding their role in the world.
That's a good way to put it. This explains a lot of the crazy.
Poet and diplomat Fyodor Tyutchev once wrote, “There is not a single interest, not a single trend in the West, which does not conspire against Russia.”
One mark of mental illness is imagining that other people think about you all the time. No. Most of them think about themselves all the time. Russia's small neighbors? Probably do think about Russia all the time, worrying when the damn bear will try to eat them. Africa and South America? No fucks given. But then I doubt Russians think about them either. When they way "the whole world" they're usually thinking of Eurasia and the United States and maybe a few other players.
At first glance, Russia’s desire to claim Ukrainian land makes little sense. Russia is, by far, the biggest country in the world, nearly double the size of the U.S. Why could it possibly want more land from a relatively tiny neighbor?
As with any addiction, there is no "enough" -- there is only MORE. Imperialism is just an addiction that expresses itself in money and power. Besides, Russia's nearest big neighbor is another superpower with the same addiction. Of course they both want to snort all the coke off the table before the other one gets to it.
Vladimir Putin believes that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. He also believes that the former Soviet states, especially Ukraine, aren’t “real countries” and are crucial to national security.
Well yeah. Most imperialists think like that. China absolutely does. Their world consists of "currently mine" and "should be mine." They don't see anyone else as having a right to territory. Or existence.
Russia’s northern coast is on the Arctic Ocean, which is iced over.
Not for a whole lot longer, and the same is true of the Northwest Passage which is also creeping toward a political hotbed. Melting northern ice is just as much a tipping point politically and militarily as is General Winter going AWOL. Climate change is like the ocean, you don't dare turn your back on it. Nothing will kill you as quickly as things that used to be true.
“From the Grand Principality of Muscovy, through Peter the Great, Stalin, and now Putin, each Russian leader has been confronted by the same problems. It doesn’t matter if the ideology of those in control is czarist, Communist, or crony capitalist — the ports still freeze, and the Northern European Plain is still flat.”
You know, they could make it less flat. It's even a lot easier to make earthworks now with heavy equipment than it used to be. It'd take some work to corrugate the landscape, but it could be done.
If Putin was content with Russia joining NATO, then surely, he could not have had a problem with Ukraine joining, either. Indeed, he said as much in 2004. According to Simon Sweeney of the University of York, the Russians were not happy with NATO expansion, but it certainly was no “red line” issue. Putin himself said that “each country has the right to choose the form of security it considers most appropriate.”
That's an important point. If a country is free to choose its own politics and alliances, then it is a sovereign nation. If not, then it isn't; instead it's some sort of subsidiary to whomever makes those decisions. This is why it's unreasonable to demand that Ukraine give up its right to join NATO; that would mean agreeing it is not a sovereign nation, which would support Russia's argument of imperialism. Nobody should be asking Ukraine to do that -- but then, most countries just want the problem to go away, and they aren't picky how.
And the likely reason is that, as Angela Stent explains, integration with the West meant more democracy. Putin wasn’t fond of that part of the deal.
Plausible.
Confident that they would have substantial local support, Russia invaded Crimea in February 2014 and eventually annexed it. This successful mission also had the benefit of securing Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.
See, this is the problem with letting imperialists eat their neighbors. They think they can keep doing it. They will continue until someone beats the crap out of them, or they collapse under their own weight, or cultural change makes it unappealing to eat other countries.
He wrote that “Obama continued to echo [Angela] Merkel, [François] Hollande, and other European leaders talking about ‘finding a peaceful solution’ when there was already a war in progress.”
No shit.
So, what caused the second, larger invasion that began in February 2022?
He wanted it and thought he could get away with it, based on the circumstances at the time.
Instead, Putin seems to have been reacting to Ukraine’s ever-closer drift toward the West, particularly NATO. What’s ironic is that Ukraine’s chances of joining the EU, let alone NATO, were far smaller before the invasion began. Putin’s invasion accelerated the very scenario that he long feared.
True, but from his perspective he had to do something. Westward drift would eventually lead to western alliances. But if he could conquer and absorb Ukraine -- or gaslight people into believing it's not a real nation -- then he could force his choices on the hapless survivors.
In an interview with Big Think, geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer referred to Putin’s decision as the “single biggest geopolitical mistake made by any leader on the global stage since the Wall came down in 1989.” Bremmer adds, “The misjudgment was massive. The failure was immense and immediate. And the consequences for Putin and for Russia will be permanent.”
Only if he loses -- and he hasn't lost until he's kicked out of Ukraine completely and they've made their own alliances elsewhere. If nothing else, he's done a great deal of damage to the infrastructure and economy, which Ukraine can't afford to fix. How much foreign aid will they get? Some, but I doubt everything will get fixed before some other crisis boils over and the money pours over there instead.
1. Putin believed that Russia’s military was strong and capable.
Well ... he overestimated the quality. Trouble is, he can keep pouring people into the meat grinder as long as he wants. Ukraine can't, and the rest of the world won't. And history indicates Russia is willing to make a bridge of corpses if that's what it takes.
2. Putin neither expected Ukrainians to fight nor to rally around their national identity.
Russians aren't good at understanding how other people think. At all.
3. Putin believed that much of the world’s dependence on Russia’s natural gas and oil would make it impervious to any Western retaliation.
Most places can't afford to ditch Russian oil quickly or completely, that much is true. However, this would've been a much better bet if the world weren't already thinking about divesting from fossil fuels in general. Add Russian mayhem to climate change and suddenly people start caring more. Climate change will ultimately kill a lot more people, but it isn't the kind of threat most folks can grasp. Russia, they get.
4. Putin believed that Europe and the West were too divided to mount a strong, unified response.
I think he's more right than wrong. They'll send money and weapons but not soldiers. They're afraid of Putin's nuclear threats. That's a serious problem. It means Ukraine has to hold its ground against a much bigger opponent, indefinitely. And a smaller opponent will eventually get ground down. I suspect if the rest of the world ever does get off its ass and make a serious response, rather than expecting Ukraine to do all the bleeding for them, there won't be much of Ukraine left when they finally move. I'd be thrilled if Putin really loses. But I won't count those eggs until they're on the plate.
Everyone lies, cheats, and steals and always acts cynically in their own self-interest. Putin believes that, like him, the West has no principles and is every bit as corrupt as he is.
I think that's exactly why the rest of the world stood back and let him shoot up Ukraine instead of putting boots on the ground.
Putin clearly had no idea how awful his military is — likely because none of the corrupt officials who benefited from the system told him.
Probably true. But don't necessarily count on it staying awful. Now he knows; he could choose to improvement. Even if he does nothing but keep throwing bodies in the field, however, that will necessarily achieve the same end slower, through plain old survival of the fittest. War either kills you, or makes you skillful pretty quick.
The result of all this is that historians likely will remember the invasion of Ukraine as a pivotal turning point in Russia’s modern history — one that will accelerate the nation’s decline and trigger the downfall of Putin’s regime.
That would be great, but don't count on it until he's all the way out of Ukraine with no conditions.
“According to Putin, the special military operation is really a conflict between Russia and NATO about world dominance. What’s the situation now?”
“Russia has lost 15,000 troops, 6 generals, 500 tanks, 3 ships, 100 planes, and 1,000 trucks. NATO hasn’t arrived yet.”
To some extent this is true. But they're making Ukraine the battleground, and when elephants fight, the grass suffers. As long as Putin hasn't pulled out, he hasn't lost. And he's making it really bloody obvious the limits of world support for smaller countries in awkward situations.
The Russian mindset is characterized by cynicism and distrust.
Yep.
However, you can't just say that all distrust is bad. You have to consider how accurate it is. Consider this chart of trust and reliability. Russia has a lot of bad experiences. That tends to correlate with correct distrust. After all, their neighbors include central Europe, which has been a fomenting fiasco for centuries; and China, whose human rights abuses exceed even Russia's. And let's not forget their astronomical losses in WWII over a fight they didn't even start. It's also uncomfortable that Europe is trying to fumble its way toward unity, with a lot of faceplanting along the way and not enough skills to get it quite right -- and Russia has even less. Awkward.
For centuries, Russians have perceived the West as a nefarious force undermining the country's greatness.
Honestly, Russia trips over its own feet more than anything else. See above re: lack of important skills. But that's also uncomfortable, so they try not to think about that part. It does show in some post-WWII documentaries about how the country tried to uplift itself from mostly rural to more developed.
This mindset, in part, led Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, a country that he deems vital to Russia's national security.
That's only part of it. He wanted it and thinks he's entitled to whatever he wants. It was there and poorly defended so he thought he could take it, although that hasn't been as easy as he expected.
This catastrophic decision was based on four major miscalculations, all of which are united by a single fatal flaw in Putin's thinking: that the whole world is every bit as corrupt as he is.
The whole world? Probably not, because he's pretty horrid. But a lot of the world is corrupt, and there's not exactly a shortage of truly horrid leaders; he's not wrong on that part.
Besides, much of the time, Russians’ biting humor is a coping mechanism for living under an oppressive government that has casually violated human rights for centuries and habitually lies to the public.
True. But then again, there are plenty of other countries doing that. America is currently pursuing the enslavement of women, for instance. China is into organlegging. And so on.
Indeed, an old Soviet joke, which has taken on renewed significance, says, “The future is certain; it is only the past that is unpredictable” — a reference to the government’s long tradition of rewriting history to support the regime and its political ambitions.
LOL yes.
Angela Stent explains that Russians simultaneously have a superiority complex and an inferiority complex regarding their role in the world.
That's a good way to put it. This explains a lot of the crazy.
Poet and diplomat Fyodor Tyutchev once wrote, “There is not a single interest, not a single trend in the West, which does not conspire against Russia.”
One mark of mental illness is imagining that other people think about you all the time. No. Most of them think about themselves all the time. Russia's small neighbors? Probably do think about Russia all the time, worrying when the damn bear will try to eat them. Africa and South America? No fucks given. But then I doubt Russians think about them either. When they way "the whole world" they're usually thinking of Eurasia and the United States and maybe a few other players.
At first glance, Russia’s desire to claim Ukrainian land makes little sense. Russia is, by far, the biggest country in the world, nearly double the size of the U.S. Why could it possibly want more land from a relatively tiny neighbor?
As with any addiction, there is no "enough" -- there is only MORE. Imperialism is just an addiction that expresses itself in money and power. Besides, Russia's nearest big neighbor is another superpower with the same addiction. Of course they both want to snort all the coke off the table before the other one gets to it.
Vladimir Putin believes that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. He also believes that the former Soviet states, especially Ukraine, aren’t “real countries” and are crucial to national security.
Well yeah. Most imperialists think like that. China absolutely does. Their world consists of "currently mine" and "should be mine." They don't see anyone else as having a right to territory. Or existence.
Russia’s northern coast is on the Arctic Ocean, which is iced over.
Not for a whole lot longer, and the same is true of the Northwest Passage which is also creeping toward a political hotbed. Melting northern ice is just as much a tipping point politically and militarily as is General Winter going AWOL. Climate change is like the ocean, you don't dare turn your back on it. Nothing will kill you as quickly as things that used to be true.
“From the Grand Principality of Muscovy, through Peter the Great, Stalin, and now Putin, each Russian leader has been confronted by the same problems. It doesn’t matter if the ideology of those in control is czarist, Communist, or crony capitalist — the ports still freeze, and the Northern European Plain is still flat.”
You know, they could make it less flat. It's even a lot easier to make earthworks now with heavy equipment than it used to be. It'd take some work to corrugate the landscape, but it could be done.
If Putin was content with Russia joining NATO, then surely, he could not have had a problem with Ukraine joining, either. Indeed, he said as much in 2004. According to Simon Sweeney of the University of York, the Russians were not happy with NATO expansion, but it certainly was no “red line” issue. Putin himself said that “each country has the right to choose the form of security it considers most appropriate.”
That's an important point. If a country is free to choose its own politics and alliances, then it is a sovereign nation. If not, then it isn't; instead it's some sort of subsidiary to whomever makes those decisions. This is why it's unreasonable to demand that Ukraine give up its right to join NATO; that would mean agreeing it is not a sovereign nation, which would support Russia's argument of imperialism. Nobody should be asking Ukraine to do that -- but then, most countries just want the problem to go away, and they aren't picky how.
And the likely reason is that, as Angela Stent explains, integration with the West meant more democracy. Putin wasn’t fond of that part of the deal.
Plausible.
Confident that they would have substantial local support, Russia invaded Crimea in February 2014 and eventually annexed it. This successful mission also had the benefit of securing Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.
See, this is the problem with letting imperialists eat their neighbors. They think they can keep doing it. They will continue until someone beats the crap out of them, or they collapse under their own weight, or cultural change makes it unappealing to eat other countries.
He wrote that “Obama continued to echo [Angela] Merkel, [François] Hollande, and other European leaders talking about ‘finding a peaceful solution’ when there was already a war in progress.”
No shit.
So, what caused the second, larger invasion that began in February 2022?
He wanted it and thought he could get away with it, based on the circumstances at the time.
Instead, Putin seems to have been reacting to Ukraine’s ever-closer drift toward the West, particularly NATO. What’s ironic is that Ukraine’s chances of joining the EU, let alone NATO, were far smaller before the invasion began. Putin’s invasion accelerated the very scenario that he long feared.
True, but from his perspective he had to do something. Westward drift would eventually lead to western alliances. But if he could conquer and absorb Ukraine -- or gaslight people into believing it's not a real nation -- then he could force his choices on the hapless survivors.
In an interview with Big Think, geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer referred to Putin’s decision as the “single biggest geopolitical mistake made by any leader on the global stage since the Wall came down in 1989.” Bremmer adds, “The misjudgment was massive. The failure was immense and immediate. And the consequences for Putin and for Russia will be permanent.”
Only if he loses -- and he hasn't lost until he's kicked out of Ukraine completely and they've made their own alliances elsewhere. If nothing else, he's done a great deal of damage to the infrastructure and economy, which Ukraine can't afford to fix. How much foreign aid will they get? Some, but I doubt everything will get fixed before some other crisis boils over and the money pours over there instead.
1. Putin believed that Russia’s military was strong and capable.
Well ... he overestimated the quality. Trouble is, he can keep pouring people into the meat grinder as long as he wants. Ukraine can't, and the rest of the world won't. And history indicates Russia is willing to make a bridge of corpses if that's what it takes.
2. Putin neither expected Ukrainians to fight nor to rally around their national identity.
Russians aren't good at understanding how other people think. At all.
3. Putin believed that much of the world’s dependence on Russia’s natural gas and oil would make it impervious to any Western retaliation.
Most places can't afford to ditch Russian oil quickly or completely, that much is true. However, this would've been a much better bet if the world weren't already thinking about divesting from fossil fuels in general. Add Russian mayhem to climate change and suddenly people start caring more. Climate change will ultimately kill a lot more people, but it isn't the kind of threat most folks can grasp. Russia, they get.
4. Putin believed that Europe and the West were too divided to mount a strong, unified response.
I think he's more right than wrong. They'll send money and weapons but not soldiers. They're afraid of Putin's nuclear threats. That's a serious problem. It means Ukraine has to hold its ground against a much bigger opponent, indefinitely. And a smaller opponent will eventually get ground down. I suspect if the rest of the world ever does get off its ass and make a serious response, rather than expecting Ukraine to do all the bleeding for them, there won't be much of Ukraine left when they finally move. I'd be thrilled if Putin really loses. But I won't count those eggs until they're on the plate.
Everyone lies, cheats, and steals and always acts cynically in their own self-interest. Putin believes that, like him, the West has no principles and is every bit as corrupt as he is.
I think that's exactly why the rest of the world stood back and let him shoot up Ukraine instead of putting boots on the ground.
Putin clearly had no idea how awful his military is — likely because none of the corrupt officials who benefited from the system told him.
Probably true. But don't necessarily count on it staying awful. Now he knows; he could choose to improvement. Even if he does nothing but keep throwing bodies in the field, however, that will necessarily achieve the same end slower, through plain old survival of the fittest. War either kills you, or makes you skillful pretty quick.
The result of all this is that historians likely will remember the invasion of Ukraine as a pivotal turning point in Russia’s modern history — one that will accelerate the nation’s decline and trigger the downfall of Putin’s regime.
That would be great, but don't count on it until he's all the way out of Ukraine with no conditions.
“According to Putin, the special military operation is really a conflict between Russia and NATO about world dominance. What’s the situation now?”
“Russia has lost 15,000 troops, 6 generals, 500 tanks, 3 ships, 100 planes, and 1,000 trucks. NATO hasn’t arrived yet.”
To some extent this is true. But they're making Ukraine the battleground, and when elephants fight, the grass suffers. As long as Putin hasn't pulled out, he hasn't lost. And he's making it really bloody obvious the limits of world support for smaller countries in awkward situations.
