For anyone curious as to why crime in Russia seems to be so ingrained into the culture, this lecture from a finnish intelligence officer is quite informative.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw
This also has some context in the Finnish culture, especially in the military, having quite a fearful and resentful view of Russia due to the wars during WW2, involvement in the civil war during WW1 and an oppressive era when Finland was a part of the tsarist empire.
This is not meant as an apology for anything that Russia's regime is doing and how it is.
Its not even that I disagree per se. I simply would love to know more about how this thinking evolves within our allies (presumably, Finland is considered an ally to the US)
That would be a very interesting lecture. If anyone has something like this, send the link my way!
Finland only joined NATO in 2023; before then it was explicitly neutral. During the Cold War, East and West discreetly (and sometimes not so discreetly) fought for Finland's allegiance but, generally speaking, the Soviet Union had great influence over its foreign policy (cf. finlanization) while the West had great influence over its culture and economy.
Culture is very difficult to define, which makes it compatible with any claims - every listener perceive different meanings that make sense to us, so we can agree while meaning different things. Also, we have nothing specific to test. For example, if someone said crime is prevelent in Russia's economy, we might have data on the size of the black market, and data and information on how other factors generally affect black market size (such as, as a guess, authoritarian government, oligarchy, and of course poor delivery of goods and services by government and market).
Also, such claims are almost always made by outsiders, who know least about the 'culture' and at the same time are prone, being humans, to make broad, powerful claims about extremes in 'the other', who are slightly alien and thus might do anything.
Edit: I'm very familiar with the stereotype of Russian hackers, but stereotypes are very misleading. There are Russian government disinformation campaigns, where we do have specific claims and lots of evidence, but that seems like a different issue.
As an anecdote about russian culture, a russian coworker once told me how amused a shopkeeper was back in russia when he asked them if they could please give him something. Where in russia it is typically not done (and its not at all rude to simply instruct a shopkeeper to give you something without please or thank yous, and certainly not asking someone if they can do something but just telling them to do it). The shopkeeper thought it was endlessly funny to just say no, as though it was an earnest request. Living in the UK had changed how my coworker spoke even in their native language.
Sure some may regard these as aspects of language still, but imo the fact that it affected how my coworker spoke even in their native language perhaps shows its more a cultural thing.
Now I WOULD be very wary of making cultural arguments as relates to crime. Imo its only really appropriate for analysing individual interaction.
That depends on how we define culture - some ways it's defined in people's minds don't really exist, some do. Also, to the extent something called 'culture' exists, we also can say that alien lifeforms exist, but that doesn't mean we know anything about them.
I'd ask, 'how are you defining it', but that seems unfair on HN: Answers are far too long and complex to explore here - I'm certainly not trying! :)
> russian culture
That seems like two words for an incredibly large, diverse, complex collection of - of what? how is that part of the sentence accurately written?
> an anecdote
I think this story supports my point about our reasoning about culture. We infer about all of Russia and its 'culture' (whatever that is), based on a second-hand anecdote.
Of course, social customs depend somewhat on time, place, participants, and many other factors (language, participants' ages, recent events (don't be too cheerful after a tragedy), etc. etc.) and we have an instinct that helps us grasp what will fit in any moment. But that is a very complex, undefined thing.
It doesn’t take much to observe that Russian culture is largely accepting of bullying, dog-eat-dog mentality, and cheating to get ahead…Putin and the leadership is a reflection of that.
I live in a country known for cybercrime of a different kind (Nigeria) and will never deny that culture plays a part. Our local culture is largely accepting of corruption and cheating to get ahead, which is one of the reasons many engage in crime.
Don’t get me wrong…I’ve worked with and continue to work with some wonderful Russians. But, it doesn’t change the fact that the culture needs reforms for the good of the country.
Of course, I’m not in support of profiling. I’ll never like to be profiled as a cyber criminal because I’m from Nigeria, but I’ll never deny that our culture has a big issue with rationalizing corruption and theft and needs reform to make us better-behaved.
What about Trump and Biden in America? Point is, leaders don't often represent their people in toto, unless you count id as being the sum total of culture.
Trump represents a large part of Americans and so does Biden.
Democratic leaders are a representation of a significant percentage of their people. If you see an awful elected leader, then there's an awful large population that voted them in.
In a country with 166 million registered voters [1] and over 90% of them voting for one of these two. Yeah, they represent a big part of the population.
Similarly, in Nigeria, Buhari represented the region with the biggest population, which is also the dumbest, most illiterate, poorest, and most corrupt. Not surprising their man was a dunce too.
1- https://www.statista.com/statistics/273743/number-of-registe...
Your only argument is to make up disparagement of people who disagree.
True. The problem with insiders judging the culture is that they might be blind to it. But it’s best to not get caught up in narratives about “culture” and other such idealistic things.
> Edit: I'm very familiar with the stereotype of Russian hackers, but stereotypes are very misleading. There are Russian government disinformation campaigns, where we do have specific claims and lots of evidence, but that seems like a different issue.
There was a very strong interest in Russian government disinformation campaigns because Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election. And I don’t doubt that there is evidence of election interference. But the amount of money that was behind that seems like a pittance considering the big election advertisement industry.[1]
None should be surprised that you will find shady and underhanded things done by the more clandestine arms of some government. But we should be wary of people using that well-of-course-they-are as an outsized scapegoat to explain a big event like a federal election.
[1] Are run of the mill smear campaigns to be classified as “disinformation” or just regular ads?
> The third era that influenced Russian thought in a great manner is Mongol Russia. In the 1240s, the Mongols conquered Russia. They held Russia for 150 years. That time was cruel. There are a lot of words in Russian, related to torture, taxation and corruption, that come from the Mongol language. Dominance under personal authority was rooted in the administrative culture from the Mongols. That is, there is only one khan that leads. It is he who leads, no one else. Others are passive followers. That one guy leads and takes responsibility and the initiative. When the belief of divine legitimacy to lead is attached to this, the leader will appear as fairly tough in their world view.
> The corruption and cruelty also comes from the Mongol era. During the Mongol rule the only ways to survive were lying, corruption and violence. This still lives very deep in Russia’s strategic culture. When Mongol rule ended, the Mongols did not just pack their bags and disappear from Russia. Instead they mixed with the locals. So the traditions also stayed with the people. In particular, to the leading caste. The Mongols who had previously ruled the country merged into the ruling layers, which is still visible today.
One thing to note about Russia is it is not defensible in standard sense of it's hard to cross this river or mountain. This lead to Russia making distance it's defense. You go and capture a bunch of different peoples with no relations to each other and use them as a meat shield if anyone attacks. Meanwhile you want for the harsh winter to wear them out. But this also comes as a cost, you cannot allow any of these outlying territories to gain too much power or they could become a threat to Moscow, hence you tend to see a massive amount of Russia under developed and depopulated.
The problem is, assumed “corruption and cruelty” could only be mostly local. Mongols came, instituted all fashions of levies, grant themselves the authority to accept local rulers, and went back. They didn't help to defend their vassals from foreign armies, but they chose their side in inter-principality campaigns, ensuring that the winner is under their control.
Funnily enough, this critical view matches the view of nationalistic thinkers of old who firmly placed the stereotype of “200 years of Mongol yoke” and widespread desolation into the education curriculum. There are doubts that is was that bad, especially for the elites that served Mongols well (and therefore made their regions actual parts of Mongol empire, which is an unthinkable perspective to nationalists describing them as “independent” and spiritually “unconquered”) However, in the era of the tsars it was used to explain how Russia is a “real” European country with unfortunate fate, and why its tsars are equal peers to European kings, and now it is used to explain how it totally isn't. The catch-all stereotype of despotic Oriental rule is quite clear here.
The cost to black women to get their hair done is generally more than any other group.
Almost all black women (and probably black men) have had to develop some coping mechanism for the number of non-black people who want (or at times, demand) to touch their hair.
Digression-- I remember a black doctor who had a coping mechanism for the number of patients who assumed he was the nurse and asked him where the doctor was. He would spin 360-degrees and then present himself to the patient again. :)
As for the sibling comment-- my first three sentences are falsifiable.
Edit: clarification
My "coping mechanism" for the time before I just shaved it too short to matter was to simply say, "OK, go ahead." It's not a big deal and I don't have a problem with a natural curiosity.
[edit] Asking is fine, "demanding" I would have a serious problem with.
For example, there is a fairly widespread / rampant "cheating/copying/don't-bother-learning" culture in a lot of schools in India, especially as it relates to software development. I've seen it brought up and stated as truth by people from that region over and over. There are also many VERY smart, skilled, devoted software developers from that are. I've worked with quite a few. However, because there _is_ that culture, the "noise" (bad developers) to signal (good developers) ratio is really high. And, when dealing with developers from that area (especially, from my experience, those at various contract/churn companies), you need to be careful about the work they're doing. You need to check to see it's being done well ... at least until you're familiar enough with the people/team that you can trust them.
Culture _has_ an impact; but that doesn't mean it should be assumed... just that it may mean you need to pay more attention.
Neoslavery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA
Now, turning this back to Russia, is seemingly Russia has always had the idea that it's outer population is a gigantic meat shield to protect Moscow. There are a number of authors and videos on this topic and I'm not going to link any particular ones. This said in the current war with Ukraine we see this in practice, as huge amount of the soldiers being used are not from the Moscow area, but the more minority areas farther away from the capital.
tl;dr: Sowell contends that the "black ghetto culture", characterized by violence, a lack of ambition, a dismissive attitude toward education, and a casual approach to work, is not inherent to African-Americans. Instead, he argues that it is a cultural relic of white southern 'Redneck' or 'Cracker' culture, which was brought to the South by immigrants from the more lawless regions of Britain.
These immigrants, according to Sowell, came from areas that were marked by a resistance to work, a lack of education, a predilection for violence, and a general disregard for the law. These cultural traits, Sowell argues, were absorbed by the African-American population in the South during the era of slavery and have been perpetuated in certain communities to this day.
Sowell probably drew from Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer, which argues that US culture arose from four different British subcultures.
Thanks, I never came across this usage before.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/07/01/197644761...