https://crimethinc.com/2022/02/15/war-and-anarchists-anti-au... (note: the disinformation section is especially relevant)
And yeah not everyone listens to propaganda, and there is going to be a lot of diversity of opinion, but propaganda does work and a large percent of the population are going to get duped.
See: “principle of charitable interpretation”
> What I mean is – well, take creationists. According to Gallup polls, about 46% of Americans are creationists. Not just in the sense of believing God helped guide evolution. I mean they think evolution is a vile atheist lie and God created humans exactly as they exist right now. That’s half the country.
> And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. Odds of this happening by chance? 1/2^150 = 1/10^45 = approximately the chance of picking a particular atom if you are randomly selecting among all the atoms on Earth.
You could live in a circle that unanimously opposes the war, and still be in a country that's 60% for it.
Thing is, given the propaganda machine in Russia and the lack of free (even non-guvernamental) organizations we can't really tell if that percentage is 6% or 60%.
There's two major axes, here.
The government is pushing the 'Ukranian neo-nazis' propaganda, because it's a convenient bullshit excuse (as is all the spilled ink in Putin's essay about long-dead history). Some soft-headed people obviously believe that wholesale. What isn't an excuse, though, is that Ukraine did take steps to restrict its Russian minority. Many Russians who don't swallow the neo-nazi nonsense are sympathetic to that view on the situation (for, uh, obvious nationalistic reasons).
Now, whether or not sympathy for that is sufficient grounds to do nothing and respect Ukrainian sovereignty, to prosecute a proxy war, a limited war, or a full war all depends on how much of a warhawk you personally are.
My highly unscientific feeling is that public support rests somewhere north of 'most Russians believe that Ukraine has been repressing Russians, and would support a proxy war', and somewhere short of 'drive the fascist swine out - prosecute a full war and occupation of Kiev'.
"Dialect for peasants" has its roots in Ruthenian language, that was a main language in Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
And no, Russians were not written wholesale as Ukrainians, anyone who can check Soviet records can attest that.
>> people hear the chant all the time - “Moskalyaku na gilyaku Well, if they would listen to Russian TV, they would hear that.
But exactly how many people are you ready to kill over your sympathies? Could you give a ballpark order of magnitude estimate? 10? 100? 10,000? [1] 100,000?
On a scale of cultural repression, I can't say that this situation elicits even a small fraction of sympathy from me as what's going on with say, the Uyghurs in China.
[1] We're past that mark already.
I guess you are speaking for majority of Russians. Is there an independent survey to back it up?