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One teeny tiny examples, Russian Empire has secured the lands which are now contested Southern Ukraine, from Donetsk to Odessa. These were nomad-raided steppes with barely any population. Russian Empire secured them and let Ukrainians settle these new lands alongside other ethnicities (Greeks, Jews and of course Russians), and just two centuries later, Ukrainians refuse to acknowledge that and seek to forcibly assimilate all other ethnicities there. Now it is obvious that Ukrainian autonomy during the USSR was a costly mistake. They were gifted these lands for settlement and now they tell fairy tales about centuries of genocide. They were permitted to settle there among others and now they have driven everybody else away.
But the situation with Baltic states is in fact even worse. What happened to Baltic Jews? Baltic Germans? Baltic Russians? :))
Russians exterminated them. When Russians invaded in 1939-1940, they abolished Jewish cultural autonomy, closed all Jewish institutions (schools, associations, etc), rounded up Jews into cattle cars and sent them in entire families to die in Siberian wilderness, because they saw wealthy Jews as kulaks and oppressors of the working man. Russians targeted the entire professional class that was capable of running a country (public administrators, lawyers, engineers, doctors, merchants, etc), but because Jews were overrepresented in middle-upper classes, they got hit the hardest. They were about ten times more likely to get victimized by Russians than anyone else.
> Baltic Germans?
Resettled to newly-occupied Poland between late 1939 and early 1940 under agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union. They were allies at the time and had divided Europe in the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Russians gave Germans free hands to do what they want with Poland and in return, Germany picked up Baltic Germans from the region (in an action called Umsiedlung) and left the rest for Russians to maul.
> Baltic Russians?
Exterminated during WWII by Russians. For example, one third of the pre-war population of Narva was Russian. Russians systematically destroyed Narva in WWII using the same methods we now see in Ukraine. Not a single habitable building was left. After the war, they banned the few surviving former inhabitants of Narva from returning. Instead, they resettled the area with ethnic Russians. This has caused incredible cultural discontinuity. I just finished reading memoirs of a Russian who grew up there in the 1960s. From his youth, he remembers no old men telling stories to kids "how things used to be". In fact, he knows no-one who had lived there before the war. The entire human (people, traditions, culture) and physical (buildings) history of the place got wiped away and replaced with depressing commie blocks and chauvinistic Russian settlers who are bitter that no-one treats them as liberators.
This is particularly striking considering that as a Hanseatic trading city, Narva had vibrant multiethnic population and immaculately preserved baroque architecture. It was a remarkably beautiful place that Swedes had once considered moving their capital to from Stockholm. Now it's a run-down shithole full of angry and miserable rootless Russians who don't understand where they are and why everyone dislikes them so much.
It's also notable how Baltic Russians came into existence. They were historic minority compromised of refugees who had fled religious persecution in the 17th century Russia. Some things never change.
The stupidity of "Russians has occupied Baltics and killed all Russians" will vanish once you call the former the Soviet.
But mostly, it is baltic people themselves who got rid of Jews and helped get rid of Germans, and then after 1990 tried to get rid of Russians too.
> This has caused incredible cultural discontinuity. I just finished reading memoirs of a Russian who grew up there in the 1960s. From his youth, he remembers no old men telling stories to kids "how things used to be". In fact, he knows no-one who had lived there before the war
That's the story of many places past WWII. There was an unprecedented cultural discontinuity. For starters, St. Petersburg is resettled practically anew because almost all of its population either perished in the blockade or was evacuated and was not encouraged to return. Don't get me started on Polish and German resettlements. Why blame Russians for anything here? Russians are the same victims of the war as Baltic people and Jews and Poles and Germans themselves.
> run-down shithole full of angry and miserable rootless Russians who don't understand where they are and why everyone dislikes them so much
Can you perhaps stop disliking your compatriots for who they are, and maybe they will stop treating you as a Nazi who you currently objectively are.
Whatever possible claims there were along the lines of "Hitler was ackchyually an Austrian", present-day Russians have willingly adopted that legacy instead of denouncing it like Germans, justify it and continue to pursue it further.
Present-day Woke LGBT socialists from California has adopted that legacy. Russians have no predisposition towards socialism, utopian cults or dictature of minorities. Soviet regime is a branchild of European Social Democracy and it's pathetic how they are trying to frame the victims of this crime for it.
Just ask all these young people from Italy, Spain or Seattle why so many hammer-and-sickles.
Most Russian people do not care that much about Stalin since it's all too old and they care much more about Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who are much more recent butchers of Russia.
Some people do, but then again, some Italians, French and US campuses also give a lot of shits about people like Trotsky. An absolute majority of humanity are politically clueless, and the worst of them are also opinionated.
But why should any Russian approve Stalin, spew the same toxic imperialistic view of the world in many different forms like supporting the genocidal war against Ukraine remains a mystery. Germans are not holding military parades under swastikas, erecting monuments to their Führer, telling Jews that Germans suffered the most, harassing and shutting down Holocaust researchers and threatening rest of Europe that if they don't do as told, "we'll repeat it".
In the end, by not taking responsibility for your past and present actions like Germans have done, you will simply live shorter and poorer lives than other peoples of Europe, making endless excuses for your own suffering and the suffering inflicted upon others, while leaders are robbing you blind and partying on megayachts. My hope is that this degenerate russki mir will never reach me.
There, I've fixed it for you. But even then, it's not the only game in town. "Democrats" (Yeltsin's band of US loving nomenclature and friends) practically killed or dispersed just as many people as Stalin & company did.
There's a very significant number of monuments devoted to tragedies of Soviet period, in Russia. I'm not even sure Germany would match that. I believe their general approach was to pretend that nothing happened between 1933 and 1945. In short, stop trying to confront other people on their history and first confront yourself on your own history. Which would be?..
It was your own mismanagement that reached such level by 1990 that the economy was unable to provide even food to the population, forcing people from all social classes to subsistence farming for survival.
The constant passive-aggressive snark towards the Americans is distasteful and ungrateful given how much they helped you then with food aid.
> There's a very significant number of monuments devoted to tragedies of Soviet period, in Russia.
Mostly from 1990s and early 2000s, before Putin began rehabilitation of Stalin and incorporation of Soviet legacy into modern Russia. The monuments are now vanishing at an accelerating pace and incidents like these have become common: https://sakhaday.ru/news/v-yakutske-snesli-pamyatnik-polskim...
> In short, stop trying to confront other people on their history and first confront yourself on your own history.
That's what Europe has done - confronted own history and learned from it, Germans in particular. They do not pretend that nothing happened between 1933 and 1945, far from it. Disagreements are now solved calmly in EU cooperation formats, which have brought unprecedented peace to Europe.
The peace is being violated by Russians, who keep trying to bring back history by sending tanks with hammer-and-sickle flags into foreign countries, to shoot at peaceful people living there.
When will you confront your history and present actions, learn from them, and become a normal country where people are not living in filth and despair?
I'm glad that you have implicitly agreed that Soviet regime wasn't "our own".
> Americans... helped you then with food aid
As you've noted, I grew my potatoes myself and subsisted on them. Why would I be grateful to Americans then? shrug
> living in filth and despair
I wonder when you've last set foot in any Russian city or town, since they're actually quite nice these days. Of course, as they say, a swine will always find filth.
Of course it was. You've made it your own by flying its flags, by marching under its banners, by celebrating its dictators, and by continuing its traditions in how you treat domestic population and neighbours alike. Germany, in comparison, has made a clear break with its past and you see nothing like that there.
> As you've noted, I grew my potatoes myself and subsisted on them. Why would I be grateful to Americans then? shrug
The billions from American food aid program stabilized prices and prevented the situation from deteriorating into widespread hunger. Of particular importance was the grain required to feed livestock. I vividly remember newspaper photos of grain ships when they first arrived. The aid program lasted until 2000, and it wasn't the first time for Americans to give food aid to prevent starvation in Russia.
> I wonder when you've last set foot in any Russian city or town, since they're actually quite nice these days.
2019, but since I mentioned Narva earlier, this Varlamov's video is better than any personal anecdote ands sums up very well what I meant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMSwO7lS5QY In 2014, the EU provided Narva and its Russian counterpart Ivangorod on the other bank of the river 5M EUR to reconstruct the riverbanks in an initiative to improve neighbourly relations. Estonian side built a modern and very popular public space with lighted walkways, open air gyms and playgrounds along the riverbank. On the Russian side, the money got stolen and fishermen continue to sit on piles of rocks between weeds.
And may I remind that Narva in 2024 is a run-down and declining provincial town, that is, nothing spectacular and no "model city" in any way.
All in all, I see no objective reasons why Russians couldn't share the same standard of living as Norwegians, if they hanged their Kremlin rat, dropped the idiotic and violent belief in Russian exceptionalism and xenophobia, and focused on improving life at home one step at a time instead of trying to drag everyone around them down the drain. This too is a Soviet legacy that Russians have adopted and willingly embrace. After losing the war, Germans gave up on their stupid world domination plans. When will Russians do the same?
That's just a great source, totally makes up for the the real thing. Have a nice day.
That experience in particular was like stepping into a time machine and arriving in 1980s Soviet Union. People in the west would never notice most details, like the way superiors yell, boss around and humiliate their subordinates in most mundane situations.
Another random detail was the way people treat their homes. Where I live, every apartment building has a legally established cooperative that manages jointly-owned parts of the building (parking lots, green areas, walkways, roof, exterior walls of the building and public spaces like hallways inside). Often this is delegated to professional management companies, but it's pretty common for someone from the building to take the management responsibility. Over time, from jointly collected maintenance fee, buildings have been renovated. New roofs, new insulation, solar panels, regular cleaning, etc.
In Russia, the concept of "home" seems to end at the front door. Even if people have made a modern yevroremont in their apartments, the hallways and exteriors are dirty, ugly, unmaintained and falling apart. When entering a typical commie block, the interior looks like it hasn't been renovated since it was built sometime during the Brezhnev era. Paint peeling, phone and internet cables dangling, electrical wiring unchanged since the 1970s. Nobody gives a shit about public areas. And it goes both ways. One of the first things Russian tourists in Europe notice and mention, especially in smaller places: how well maintained everything is.
While this may seem insignificant, I believe it is a key reason why Russia is still such a shithole. A cooperative means that people pool together their resources, democratically vote how to manage the building, choose people to act in their name and keep them accountable. It's the place where every homeowner learns how the entire country runs. How public finances are managed. How laws enable and restrict things that you can and cannot do. How to apply for things like renovation grants and coordinate them with government institutions. How to choose the right people for the job. How to analyze past performance and plan for the future. Capable people will quickly move on to local elections, becoming members of local government or council. The most capable will rise to become cabinet ministers and presidents. The most basic level of jointly taking care of the parking lot in front of the house or repairing stormwater drains is where the entire free society starts from.
I haven't seen that in Russia. Instead, I see people living in filth, with paint peeling and lights broken in hallways and cars parking on grass turning everything into a mud field, while shaking a fist at the Americans and "Gayrope" in jealousy and bitterness and unwillingness to admit your failures and in naive hope that by murdering enough people in foreign countries, you somehow gain the respect of the world and return to a past glory that never actually existed. And this is very convenient for the Kremlin rat and his cronies, because this way you will stay complacent, politically and societally inactive ("I am not interested in politics yada yada") and will never become a risk to their palaces and megayachts and NYC penthouses.
Sometimes I can't believe that people this stupid exist. If only the world knew how you actually lived outside of MKAD.