The state will dispose of disobedient people the same way it would dispose of rotten potatoes.
Russians had a real thing going in the 19th century. Turgenev [0], for example, wrote contemporaneously around when the serfs were freed [1]. Their history went in the direction of a series strongmen, similar to China today, but there was a balancing point when it could have been different.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sportsman%27s_Sketches
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_and_Sons_(novel)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_reform_of_1861
To take a step back and think about things (not that I'm suggesting what I think)... in most places for most of history it's been about the group. The collective. Being heavily individualized is a modern and western thing.
So, why is one way right and another way wrong?
Note, I do not agree with what's going on with Russia. I'm simply bringing up the higher level question that's often assumed but rarely looked at.
There are conventions. That countries agree to uphold. In this case not upholding them is the "wrong" way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_th...
More generally, I’d say that group based thinking should not be enforced by the government. A society based around “the group is most important” can enforce itself just fine based on societal norms and their consequences (who people are willing to interact with and hire for work). What a government stepping in and saying what sort of talk is acceptable does is freeze the society to what the government enforces. Instead people should be able to try and change society norms if they believe there’s a better way, rather than government forcing it to stagnate.
Obviously there's a balance to be struck. 100% individualism is just anarchy. But history has proven that allowing people an above-historical-average level of individual freedom leads to a more productive and secure society.
That said it's debatable whether strong-man dictatorships are "collectivist" at all. They're extremely individualist, but only for a select group of elite individuals. Otherwise they'd try and make decisions to benefit the group, and as Putin has shown in Ukraine, they often don't. Never mind the strategic decision to invade which might have had some initial merit, you would expect a truly collectivist nation to prioritize competence in its military. As it stands a full NATO conventional intervention could end the war in a month, the only thing keeping Russia intact is brutal suppression of internal dissent and a nuclear arsenal that, if it's been maintained as badly as its regular military, might very well explode in its silos on launch.
That doesn't sound like a very effective collective to me. Maybe it would have been effective 300 years ago because that level of organization is all most nations had, but that's the point. It's an obsolete model.
There is the tyranny of the group and the tyranny of the individual - we need to reject both.
On which way is right - I would say one should be able to choose the group and retreat from it if so desired.
Putin's regime is not communism.
Most Russians in the Tzarist Russian empire could go years or decades without being actively oppressed — people out in rural villages could at least survive through benign neglect.
There was no benign neglect in the soviet union. You were a gear in the system and if you failed to fill that part, you were liquidated or sent to a prison camp.
Like you would be sent to a prison camp in the 80s? Just stop...
Late soviet union was pure benign neglect.
I grew up in USSR. If you take late 70s and 80s (do not know how it was before) you would have to very actively open your mouth and be a dissident if you wanted to end up in prison camp even though it did not guarantee it. I left in 91 so have no idea how it later progressed from nearly absolute freedom at that time to what Russia has now with this maniac in power.
Democracies have decisively defeated dictatorships and oligarchies at every turn for the last century, the fact that dictatorships remain as a lesser category of nation is proof only that human potential has yet to be fully realized.
Problem is that "greener pastures" allow very limited level of immigration.
but then again, for sake of fairness, lest we forget that russia, as part of ussr, was a pioneer in workers, women and ethnic rights. so much so that during the 1920s if you were a trade unionist, a feminist or fighting for national liberation of your people you most certainly ran the risk of being labeled a russian agent.
Putin by contrast is a return to a 19th century Tsardom in everything but name.
is that what gets taught in american schools these days? i wonder how the black and natives feel
> Putin by contrast is a return to a 19th century Tsardom in everything but name
what does tsardom mean? if anything putinism is a caricature of the russian government in Red Alert 2. by that i mean a mix of soviet and tsarist symbolism and orthodox church. its so bizzare
That they’re better off than being slaves.
That isn’t what you said. You pushed back on the notion that people fought and continue to fight for others’ rights in America in a way they don’t in modern Russia (or China). That isn’t true, and it isn’t true that America Blacks or women are worse off today than they were two hundred years ago, as OP argued when you pushed back. Perfect is the enemy of good; you’re arguing against American values on a thread about modern Russia.
russia's war in ukraine: 25,000+ civilians killed
number of civilian victims in Vietnam killed by US armed forces: 100,000+
number of civilian victims killed due to US dropping two atomic bombs on Japan: 200,000+
number of civilian deaths due to war in iraq: 200,000+
need i point out more?
as i said, kitsch pigsty. understand the evils committed by your own government before you lecture others. after all you have more freedom than russian people, hence more personal responsibility too. if people do this across the world, world would be a much happier place
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/My...
> number of civilian victims in Vietnam killed by US armed forces: 100,000+
You do know the US involvement in Vietnam lasted 20 years, and Russia is barely past the 1 year mark in Ukraine, right?
during the same period, for a time span of 3 years, the us bombed cambodia and killed over 200,000 civilians as a result
im curious, when do you think was the first one? i mean there was the period of famine while ukraine was part of the ussr, but if thats what you mean lets get few simple facts straight
1) ukraine was an equal republic of the ussr
2) russia was a seperate republic of the ussr. russia had no authority about what goes on in ukraine
3) ussr at that time had a supreme ruler who was of georgian ethnicity
so even if we agree that systematic genocide did happen, it is very hard to argue that russia had anything to do with it
curiously, every time a russian ruled ussr, ukraine was rather well off. for example, under lenin ussr promoted ukranianization [1], under khrushchev ukraine got gifted crimea, while the ussr got a ukranian as its supreme leader [2]
I will be labeled as a brainwashed ruskie and downvoted into oblivion if I point out that it isn't really true, right?
The conscription has not reached Ukraine's levels yet, but only because 2024 is not far away, and Putin expects to get his 75% without too much trouble. After that, who knows.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/21/whats-behind-pro-ru...
Let alone that it is public knowledge that the "separatists" are and always have been under russian control. Little green men came from russia and made the war happen.
"it is public knowledge"
I suggest you read Wikipedia about anti-Maidan unrest in the Eastern Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_pro-Russian_unrest_in_Ukr...
Any violation of Ukrainian internationally recognized borders has been highly illegal and no matter how much whitewashing you want to do you are shilling for genocide. Also you will remove any claim that it was putins war after Ukraine has won.
Pointing out random events 9 years ago somehow justifies mass murder of civilians now? Also you need to go that far back to find anything at all is quite telling.
Whats not clear about that?
You are confused. You claimed that the sole reason of the war in 2014 was Russian meddling and I suggested you read how the events really unfolded. It's still not too late to do just that.
the people in the eu largely support ukraine because they dislike russia. but no one sees them as our freedom fighters. lol. everyone knows the us is behind it and when living standards accross europe deteriorate people will lose patience with both the ukraine and the us
You think in one thread that russia had the best revolution in the history and in an another you call Ukrainian revolution illegal.
Also even if you don’t like that another country shakes lose of autocrat cronies, how does any of that justify tanks and bombs and Bucha?
Your thinking is comparable to a common thug: you were speeding, therefore I can kill all your relatives, rape your wife and kids.
read about the russian civil war for a historical lesson about what can happen when there is a revolution. not just the russian civil war, but the ukranian civil war that followed the bolshevik revolution, as well as the heroic ukranian figures like Nestor Makhno and other noble ukranians that faught for a free and independent ukraine. but for some reason the ukranian nationalists in charge today glorify the nazi Stepan Bandera and made themselves and ukraine a vassal of us imperial ambitions. this is not the ukraine i want to support
You mean leaving the people of the Crimea, DNR and LNR to the mercy of nationalistic Ukraine?
As for DNR and LNR, it's as meaningful as saying that Russia is saving people in Ukraine from being burned alive by Ukrainian nationalists [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odesa_clashes#Trade_Union...
you really think that russians are scared of police when they walk down the road? i mean im not surprised. this is a very common misconception about how societies in e. europe work
> but at least we aren’t being conscripted and thrown into the meat grinder of a pointless war
given how brave people seem to be online i dare say, "not yet"