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talkpoliticsGreetings, comrades & comradesses, and fuck the EU viva la revolucion! The revolucion that apparently hasn't ever ended in the minds of a good chunk of my very local populace over here in the God-forgotten corner of the world that we call Buggerland, aka Absurdistan. See, Im'ma occupy you today with a few observations of this weird phenomenon called Russophilia. I've been following its development since the first years after the explosion of post-communist democracy here. For that time, Russophilia has undergone a number of curious transformations, and is definitely enjoying a revival in recent years.
Of course, the reasons for all that are plenty, but the main ones could generally be traced back to the pre-modernist, probably even Medieval mentality still persisting among my people, and the cliches that've been ingrained at the back of their skulls for generations - like the well-known cliche of the "Russian brothers" (we lovingly call them "bratushki", i.e. brotherlings) - a meme that's been funnelled into our heads ever since we first sat at the school bench, up to the point where hordes of students and adults were required to jubilantly praise the achievements of the then great Soviet Union, and Russia's positive role in our history (the Liberation from 5-century-long Ottoman yoke, et al). If we're to go even further back, the deeper roots of that unique phenomenon could be spotted among the peasantry during the pre-modern so called Revival Period, when we had started asserting our national identity.
And, while the poor majority were unequivocally investing all their hopes for liberation in "Grandpa Ivan", the kids of the wealthier Bulgars were spending their time studying at the high schools of West Europe. And thus, the seeds of the post-Liberation rift between Russophiles and Russophobes were planted. A division which we can witness even today among us, despite its illogical nature.
In the first years after the spectacular implosion of the communist regime, Russophilia seemed to have almost disappeared from our political landscape (save for a minor resurgence during the Moscow Putsch events). It even disappeared at a purely everyday level, and that of course was in synch with Russia's ever diminishing role in the world affairs - after all, it was a defeated country, having lost the Cold War, and moreover Gorbachev and then Yeltsin did their best to align it with the West. What's more, a large number of Bulgarians were now fixated on the West with the hope that that'd help us drag ourselves by our bootstraps out of the dire economic predicament, and get rid of the crisis that communism brought us - the naive hope was that we'd catch up with the rest of Europe, and fast. Those people didn't care so much about democracy and the freedom that the peoples of the West were enjoying, as much as to have the same income, their cars, their houses, furniture, lifestyle, etc. Naturally, when this pipe dream eventually failed to materialize, many got disillusioned with the lagging so-called "Transition Process", and by association, with the Western dream that came with it.
And this coincided with the time when Russia started looking for its place in the new world, demonstrating stances and opinions that sounded increasingly emancipated from those of the West. Maybe the catalyst for that Russian upsurge was Putin himself, or it could be that its new manifestation was a mere consequence of the drive for revanchism that never completely went away from the Russian soul - a coveted revenge for the infamous collapse of the USSR. Doesn't really matter that much. The worse part is that Russia again took on a path toward its own internal reshaping that was fundamentally incompatible with the rest of Europe - as had happened so many times throughout history. Today, this path is called with the PC term "sovereign democracy" among the Russian rulers, which is essentially a clumsy attempt to conceal an ever hardening autocratic rule, viciously suppressing the liberties of its own people. It could now be observed in virtually all spheres of public and political life: the "president for life" institution, the astroturf NGOs, the servile media, the weak, hollow parliament, the complete dependence of judicial power from the central government, the very way the Constitution is structured, and let's not forget a pronounced foreign policy of blackmail, arm-twisting, and outright aggression on the lesser neighbors.
Of course, much of the responsibility for this pseudo "sovereign" path falls on the overwhelming majority of the Russian citizens, whose worldview is as divorced from any modern notion of democracy and the freedom of the individual as it could be - even more so than the time of communism, I daresay. For instance, a recent poll shows that only 5% of the Russian citizens define themselves as complete, useful citizens, capable of affecting and/or controlling their own rulers. On a side note, I suspect a similar result would turn up here in Buggerland, as well. But more about that, a bit further down.
So, throughout the years, with the resurgence of Russian imperialism, the forgotten chorus of Russophile voices wasn't late to follow at this side of the Danube. The culmination was of course at the time of the Crimea annexation. Back then, some Bulgarians surpassed even the Russians in their attempts to justify and praise that blatant grabbing of sovereign territory of proportions that Europe hadn't witnessed since the time of WW2. Another moment when an increased activity (mostly around the Interwebs) of various Russophile apologetics was observed around the time the infamous South Stream pipeline was being cancelled (I wrote about this here), and before that, during the Russian aggression in Georgia. Turns out, Russophilia hadn't died out here at all, it had only stayed dormant, in wait for Moscow to rear its mug yet again - which inevitably happened.
So let's get to the point already. Based on my personal impressions that I've gathered during interactions with acquaintances, colleagues, friends and relatives, and from observing our local media, I'll try to lay out a few general types of Russophile that tend to stick out to the neutral observer - even though, admittedly, putting people into categories is not necessarily the most constructive approach to addressing the issues underlining cultural and political specifics. Nevertheless, here they are. Granted, these are not necessarily absolutely defined, there's a good deal of fluidity between them, as people are like that - when they start believing in nonsense and propaganda, they just can't stop at a certain point and say to themselves, "Hey, what the hell am I actually doing?" So what we get in result is the following diverse zoo of Russophilia...
1. First and foremost, there are those hating the Western lifestyle in their guts. For those people, the free way of life is something alien, incomprehensive and even repulsive. Very often, those people are homophobic, xenophobic and racist. Their fave terms are "Eurofags", "tolerasts", "Eurabia", "the PC police", etc. For them, Western society is rotten from too much tolerance, depravity and over-sensitiveness. Which is why they admire Russia, because for them the Russian society is the epitome of tough spirit, masculinity, and "gutsy" righteousness. Some'd even go as far as to justify the actions of Islamic terrorism if it's directed at some of these loathsome Western societies. Out of sheer spite.
2. The leftist intellectuals. That sort of species sprout from a variety of backgrounds, often from some of the other categories - but due to the fact that they're well educated, these intellectuals tend to shine among the mass of their semi-literate fellow ideologues, therefore they deserve a separate group of their own - because they wouldn't like to be associated with the layman. The bulk of them are of leftist, even communist persuasion, they're quite literate in Russian, in fact many have studied in Russia and keep close relations to Russian citizens. They consider themselves protectors of "family tradition", and could be considered hereditary Russophiles.
3. Pro-Russia businesspeople. Their Russophilia is mostly caused by material interest, as their livelihood largely depends on the Russian markets (mine does too, btw). They're always prepared to defend the Russian interests, which naturally match theirs. They seldom come into the spotlight, and usually act from behind the stage, through proxies, many of whom are well-known public figures in our political and business elite. It's not in their interest that our country should be part of what we're used to calling the free world, because a lawful and normally functioning state is by definition a major threat to them and their business, and to their established connections ("Fish is best caught in muddy waters", as the local proverb goes). In their majority, those originate from Bulgarian or Russian criminal circles, or the former communist secret services, or both.
4. The Russophile nationalists. That's a species that's full of paradoxes and enigmas. Because the nationalist very often harbors totalitarian ideas (interestingly, I haven't met a nationalist liberal so far, which kind of sounds like an oxymoron really), they naturally love what's happening in Russia today, and are hoping that it could happen here too, some day. The Russophile nationalist always views their national interests through the prism of the Russian ones, and it never occurs to them even for a minute that those might not coincide at some point. It's even hard for them to imagine that Russia is capable of harming this tiny country in any way. For them, NATO and the EU are enemy organizations, the Ukrainian government is fascist, and the Eurasian Union is the highest form of political utopia. A major shift toward outright Russophilia was observed in our domestic version of Le Pen's Front Nationale here, called Ataka - that's part of a more general trend in Europe, btw. Now they don't even hide any more being Putin's mouthpiece around these frequencies.
5. The rabble Russophile. Those are people whose freedom boils down to the question who feeds them, who waters them (or wines them, or rakia-s them), who dresses them, and who could probably help them refurbish their home before it completely falls apart. They recall with nostalgia of the times of the USSR and the People's Republic of Bulgaria, when everybody (well, almost everybody) were equal in their misery, insignificance, mediocrity and squalor. For them it's unbearable to see people wealthier than themselves on a daily basis, and it's impossible to conceive of the idea that the specialist doctor who has studied medicine for a decade should be paid more than the miner who's pushing carts out of a tunnel. They're incapable of perceiving the very notion of freedom, because it threatens their fake sense of security. They're incapable of taking responsibility for their own actions, and they prefer that the state take that burden for them. In their mixed-up mind, the USSR and today's Russia are pretty much one and the same thing. For them, the Red Army was unconditionally an army that brought freedom and not dictatorship here back in the 40s, liberty and not terror and blood, eternal prosperity and not a lost future.
6. Russophiles-conspiracy theorists. Those are people believing in any sort of global imperialist, Jewish and other conspiracy. It's a category of people who've existed across the world for generations. It's a specific inclination of the mind. A main prerequisite for the swelling of their numbers these days is the presence of the Internet, where a maximum number of illiterate people and outright psychopaths have instant access to any sort of outlets, share them with others like them, and get applause for it. They're suspicious to any form of representative democracy, because for them it's a den of evil imperialists who torture innocents, greedy Jews and "Sorosoids" aiming to destroy everything that the good pious Christians hold dear, international mega-corporations wanting to exterminate their customers (contrary to any logic of the market), and shapeshifting reptialian extraterrestrials who've infiltrated all important institutions with the one purpose of destroying humankind from within (where they could easily, you know, just do it). No need to comment any further on this, I believe.
7. Traitorous Russophiles. Those are agents of the Russian intelligence who usually genuinely believe they're working for their homeland, the way the former agents of the communist State Security still insist they had been working for their country during commie times. Often, the current Russian agents are the same people as the former communist Secret Service employees. They tend to get activated on cue, every time Russia's interests are threatened. I don't much feel like commenting much more on those, because I tend to get a bad taste in my mouth every time the topic is raised.
8. The Orthodox fundies. The main driving motivation for those is not so much genuine religious faith, but organized Orthodox religion, its institutions, and the sense of "pan-Slavic brotherhood" that comes with all that. Based on this, they perceive all Orthodox Christian people their relatives, and a community that's detached and independent from the rest of the world. For them, Russia is the flag-bearer of the Orthodox cause around the world, which is why they're convinced and sincere worshipers of that state-empire, no matter what it does. The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is particularly active in that respect, they've held a strict pro-Russian line ever since the time the patriarchical dignity of the Church was restored under the watchful gaze of the Mother Party (but not before that same party had destroyed dozens of churches across the country, and exterminated hundreds of clerics in the years immediately following the communist coup in 1944). That type of Russophiles usually detest all other religions, but the Catholics and Protestants they hate more than anybody else, even more than the Muslims and Jews - as is the tradition dating back to the time of the Byzantine admiral Loukas Notaras, who famously said, "Better a Turkish turban on my head than a Papal tiara!" That type of Russophiles reject the secular state, and are deeply suspicious to anything secular, humanist, or remotely scientific.
9. And lastly, the fans of the rich Russian culture. Those are people who've come to love the Russian poets, writers, composers, scientists and painters and their works... They don't necessarily like the totalitarian Russian state in any of its forms throughout the centuries, but they're convinced that the world culture couldn't have reached its current level without giants like Tolstoy, Gogol, Tchaikovsky, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Repin, Solzhenitsyn... Maybe the real, genuine Russophiles among us could be found among that group. But because the term "Russophile" has taken very nasty connotations as of late, it'd hardly be fair to call them that any more.
Of course, the reasons for all that are plenty, but the main ones could generally be traced back to the pre-modernist, probably even Medieval mentality still persisting among my people, and the cliches that've been ingrained at the back of their skulls for generations - like the well-known cliche of the "Russian brothers" (we lovingly call them "bratushki", i.e. brotherlings) - a meme that's been funnelled into our heads ever since we first sat at the school bench, up to the point where hordes of students and adults were required to jubilantly praise the achievements of the then great Soviet Union, and Russia's positive role in our history (the Liberation from 5-century-long Ottoman yoke, et al). If we're to go even further back, the deeper roots of that unique phenomenon could be spotted among the peasantry during the pre-modern so called Revival Period, when we had started asserting our national identity.
And, while the poor majority were unequivocally investing all their hopes for liberation in "Grandpa Ivan", the kids of the wealthier Bulgars were spending their time studying at the high schools of West Europe. And thus, the seeds of the post-Liberation rift between Russophiles and Russophobes were planted. A division which we can witness even today among us, despite its illogical nature.
In the first years after the spectacular implosion of the communist regime, Russophilia seemed to have almost disappeared from our political landscape (save for a minor resurgence during the Moscow Putsch events). It even disappeared at a purely everyday level, and that of course was in synch with Russia's ever diminishing role in the world affairs - after all, it was a defeated country, having lost the Cold War, and moreover Gorbachev and then Yeltsin did their best to align it with the West. What's more, a large number of Bulgarians were now fixated on the West with the hope that that'd help us drag ourselves by our bootstraps out of the dire economic predicament, and get rid of the crisis that communism brought us - the naive hope was that we'd catch up with the rest of Europe, and fast. Those people didn't care so much about democracy and the freedom that the peoples of the West were enjoying, as much as to have the same income, their cars, their houses, furniture, lifestyle, etc. Naturally, when this pipe dream eventually failed to materialize, many got disillusioned with the lagging so-called "Transition Process", and by association, with the Western dream that came with it.
And this coincided with the time when Russia started looking for its place in the new world, demonstrating stances and opinions that sounded increasingly emancipated from those of the West. Maybe the catalyst for that Russian upsurge was Putin himself, or it could be that its new manifestation was a mere consequence of the drive for revanchism that never completely went away from the Russian soul - a coveted revenge for the infamous collapse of the USSR. Doesn't really matter that much. The worse part is that Russia again took on a path toward its own internal reshaping that was fundamentally incompatible with the rest of Europe - as had happened so many times throughout history. Today, this path is called with the PC term "sovereign democracy" among the Russian rulers, which is essentially a clumsy attempt to conceal an ever hardening autocratic rule, viciously suppressing the liberties of its own people. It could now be observed in virtually all spheres of public and political life: the "president for life" institution, the astroturf NGOs, the servile media, the weak, hollow parliament, the complete dependence of judicial power from the central government, the very way the Constitution is structured, and let's not forget a pronounced foreign policy of blackmail, arm-twisting, and outright aggression on the lesser neighbors.
Of course, much of the responsibility for this pseudo "sovereign" path falls on the overwhelming majority of the Russian citizens, whose worldview is as divorced from any modern notion of democracy and the freedom of the individual as it could be - even more so than the time of communism, I daresay. For instance, a recent poll shows that only 5% of the Russian citizens define themselves as complete, useful citizens, capable of affecting and/or controlling their own rulers. On a side note, I suspect a similar result would turn up here in Buggerland, as well. But more about that, a bit further down.
So, throughout the years, with the resurgence of Russian imperialism, the forgotten chorus of Russophile voices wasn't late to follow at this side of the Danube. The culmination was of course at the time of the Crimea annexation. Back then, some Bulgarians surpassed even the Russians in their attempts to justify and praise that blatant grabbing of sovereign territory of proportions that Europe hadn't witnessed since the time of WW2. Another moment when an increased activity (mostly around the Interwebs) of various Russophile apologetics was observed around the time the infamous South Stream pipeline was being cancelled (I wrote about this here), and before that, during the Russian aggression in Georgia. Turns out, Russophilia hadn't died out here at all, it had only stayed dormant, in wait for Moscow to rear its mug yet again - which inevitably happened.
So let's get to the point already. Based on my personal impressions that I've gathered during interactions with acquaintances, colleagues, friends and relatives, and from observing our local media, I'll try to lay out a few general types of Russophile that tend to stick out to the neutral observer - even though, admittedly, putting people into categories is not necessarily the most constructive approach to addressing the issues underlining cultural and political specifics. Nevertheless, here they are. Granted, these are not necessarily absolutely defined, there's a good deal of fluidity between them, as people are like that - when they start believing in nonsense and propaganda, they just can't stop at a certain point and say to themselves, "Hey, what the hell am I actually doing?" So what we get in result is the following diverse zoo of Russophilia...
1. First and foremost, there are those hating the Western lifestyle in their guts. For those people, the free way of life is something alien, incomprehensive and even repulsive. Very often, those people are homophobic, xenophobic and racist. Their fave terms are "Eurofags", "tolerasts", "Eurabia", "the PC police", etc. For them, Western society is rotten from too much tolerance, depravity and over-sensitiveness. Which is why they admire Russia, because for them the Russian society is the epitome of tough spirit, masculinity, and "gutsy" righteousness. Some'd even go as far as to justify the actions of Islamic terrorism if it's directed at some of these loathsome Western societies. Out of sheer spite.
2. The leftist intellectuals. That sort of species sprout from a variety of backgrounds, often from some of the other categories - but due to the fact that they're well educated, these intellectuals tend to shine among the mass of their semi-literate fellow ideologues, therefore they deserve a separate group of their own - because they wouldn't like to be associated with the layman. The bulk of them are of leftist, even communist persuasion, they're quite literate in Russian, in fact many have studied in Russia and keep close relations to Russian citizens. They consider themselves protectors of "family tradition", and could be considered hereditary Russophiles.
3. Pro-Russia businesspeople. Their Russophilia is mostly caused by material interest, as their livelihood largely depends on the Russian markets (mine does too, btw). They're always prepared to defend the Russian interests, which naturally match theirs. They seldom come into the spotlight, and usually act from behind the stage, through proxies, many of whom are well-known public figures in our political and business elite. It's not in their interest that our country should be part of what we're used to calling the free world, because a lawful and normally functioning state is by definition a major threat to them and their business, and to their established connections ("Fish is best caught in muddy waters", as the local proverb goes). In their majority, those originate from Bulgarian or Russian criminal circles, or the former communist secret services, or both.
4. The Russophile nationalists. That's a species that's full of paradoxes and enigmas. Because the nationalist very often harbors totalitarian ideas (interestingly, I haven't met a nationalist liberal so far, which kind of sounds like an oxymoron really), they naturally love what's happening in Russia today, and are hoping that it could happen here too, some day. The Russophile nationalist always views their national interests through the prism of the Russian ones, and it never occurs to them even for a minute that those might not coincide at some point. It's even hard for them to imagine that Russia is capable of harming this tiny country in any way. For them, NATO and the EU are enemy organizations, the Ukrainian government is fascist, and the Eurasian Union is the highest form of political utopia. A major shift toward outright Russophilia was observed in our domestic version of Le Pen's Front Nationale here, called Ataka - that's part of a more general trend in Europe, btw. Now they don't even hide any more being Putin's mouthpiece around these frequencies.
5. The rabble Russophile. Those are people whose freedom boils down to the question who feeds them, who waters them (or wines them, or rakia-s them), who dresses them, and who could probably help them refurbish their home before it completely falls apart. They recall with nostalgia of the times of the USSR and the People's Republic of Bulgaria, when everybody (well, almost everybody) were equal in their misery, insignificance, mediocrity and squalor. For them it's unbearable to see people wealthier than themselves on a daily basis, and it's impossible to conceive of the idea that the specialist doctor who has studied medicine for a decade should be paid more than the miner who's pushing carts out of a tunnel. They're incapable of perceiving the very notion of freedom, because it threatens their fake sense of security. They're incapable of taking responsibility for their own actions, and they prefer that the state take that burden for them. In their mixed-up mind, the USSR and today's Russia are pretty much one and the same thing. For them, the Red Army was unconditionally an army that brought freedom and not dictatorship here back in the 40s, liberty and not terror and blood, eternal prosperity and not a lost future.
6. Russophiles-conspiracy theorists. Those are people believing in any sort of global imperialist, Jewish and other conspiracy. It's a category of people who've existed across the world for generations. It's a specific inclination of the mind. A main prerequisite for the swelling of their numbers these days is the presence of the Internet, where a maximum number of illiterate people and outright psychopaths have instant access to any sort of outlets, share them with others like them, and get applause for it. They're suspicious to any form of representative democracy, because for them it's a den of evil imperialists who torture innocents, greedy Jews and "Sorosoids" aiming to destroy everything that the good pious Christians hold dear, international mega-corporations wanting to exterminate their customers (contrary to any logic of the market), and shapeshifting reptialian extraterrestrials who've infiltrated all important institutions with the one purpose of destroying humankind from within (where they could easily, you know, just do it). No need to comment any further on this, I believe.
7. Traitorous Russophiles. Those are agents of the Russian intelligence who usually genuinely believe they're working for their homeland, the way the former agents of the communist State Security still insist they had been working for their country during commie times. Often, the current Russian agents are the same people as the former communist Secret Service employees. They tend to get activated on cue, every time Russia's interests are threatened. I don't much feel like commenting much more on those, because I tend to get a bad taste in my mouth every time the topic is raised.
8. The Orthodox fundies. The main driving motivation for those is not so much genuine religious faith, but organized Orthodox religion, its institutions, and the sense of "pan-Slavic brotherhood" that comes with all that. Based on this, they perceive all Orthodox Christian people their relatives, and a community that's detached and independent from the rest of the world. For them, Russia is the flag-bearer of the Orthodox cause around the world, which is why they're convinced and sincere worshipers of that state-empire, no matter what it does. The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is particularly active in that respect, they've held a strict pro-Russian line ever since the time the patriarchical dignity of the Church was restored under the watchful gaze of the Mother Party (but not before that same party had destroyed dozens of churches across the country, and exterminated hundreds of clerics in the years immediately following the communist coup in 1944). That type of Russophiles usually detest all other religions, but the Catholics and Protestants they hate more than anybody else, even more than the Muslims and Jews - as is the tradition dating back to the time of the Byzantine admiral Loukas Notaras, who famously said, "Better a Turkish turban on my head than a Papal tiara!" That type of Russophiles reject the secular state, and are deeply suspicious to anything secular, humanist, or remotely scientific.
9. And lastly, the fans of the rich Russian culture. Those are people who've come to love the Russian poets, writers, composers, scientists and painters and their works... They don't necessarily like the totalitarian Russian state in any of its forms throughout the centuries, but they're convinced that the world culture couldn't have reached its current level without giants like Tolstoy, Gogol, Tchaikovsky, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Repin, Solzhenitsyn... Maybe the real, genuine Russophiles among us could be found among that group. But because the term "Russophile" has taken very nasty connotations as of late, it'd hardly be fair to call them that any more.
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(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 12:30 (UTC)A phrase in refrain "Да ты же - Путин!" means "You are Putin!", but doesn`t sound quiet normal. Normally one would say: "Ты - Путин". Other words ("да", "же") are used to enhance expressiveness and even surprise. E.g. "Да ты же упоротый!" means "You are stoned out!" in case when one didn`t see that before and couldn`t even suggest the fact before seeing obvious signs.
So, the song is very very very specific.
(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 13:02 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 22:28 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/2/15 06:49 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 13:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 13:21 (UTC)Which doesn't mean that they do, now. Or that for some reason we should automatically assume that they always will.
We're not entitled to each other's alliance, and the notion that one side will forever owe something to the other is dishonest and counter-productive to international relations.
We're not a puppet to be tossed around, no matter how much we resemble one most of the time.
(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 15:42 (UTC)One more proof that, the same way there aren't eternal friends, only temporary interests, there aren't eternal enmities.
(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 22:28 (UTC)I don't know...you've never played Australia at cricket, have you?
(no subject)
Date: 11/2/15 06:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/2/15 05:06 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/2/15 07:39 (UTC)Plus, I'm a tennis and volleyball fan. Just because I seem kinda European-ish to you doesn't mean I'm automatically a soccer fan. Ugh, those Amurkins and their proneness to assumptions about the world probably existing outside the shadow of their noses and the reach of the remote control, duh!
(no subject)
Date: 11/2/15 06:49 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/2/15 16:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/2/15 18:53 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 13:31 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 15:30 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 15:35 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 16:51 (UTC)In the Balkans specifically the ethnies should rally together against the russian national identity, and this could be accomplished if Greece is given a chief role as the orthodox mecca. If Greece was allowed to emerge from its European identity crisis it could serve as a powerful alternative to russophilia. Germany of all countries should understand this perfectly, without Protestantism they would have never reached their level of development, likewise an alternative Orthodox identity would strengthen the Balkans and make it less attached to its Russian 'brothers'.
(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 17:14 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 17:38 (UTC)But seriously. I see so many problems with this, I'm not sure where to begin. First of all, Russia has been lashing out exactly because it feels being threatened and pressured - and you're proposing more of that. It'll only fuel their paranoia and justify their conspiracy theories of a global plot against them, and create a martyr complex and rally the troops even more, and make them more unpredictable and aggressive than they already are now.
And then, there's this. You speak of beasts that need to be contained. But what about the other beasts, some of which you mentioned? Other beasts are hungry, too. China, Turkey, Central Asia - all of these are potential beasts. You're inviting a few unknown and unpredictable beasts whose motivations little is known of, in hope to contain another one. Spells disaster, the way I'm reading it.
As for Greece, well, they've seemed so far to be pretty content of eating their fill on someone else's expenses, what makes you think anyone would want to follow them now? And conversely, what makes you think they'd want to play the role you're proposing for them at all?
And because there's been a lot of complaining here recently that people only tear each other's proposals down without coming up with anything in their stead, what Russia and the West needs is to sit on the table and put all the cards down, and talk real honest about what everybody wants in the whole game, as opposed to yelling through their respective propaganda outlets at each other and spinning the hell out of all this. Also, what Russia needs is another Gorbachev - and something tells me they'll get him, but not before things have become really bad for them, and they've gone through yet another painful catharsis. But that should be someone that the Russians experience on their own, without external meddling. Otherwise the whole process will be contaminated again, and we'll be back to square one in no time.
As for splitting Russia apart into its constituents, I'm sure you're aware of the precedent that this will set, and which many other "beasts" would be either eager to exploit to their respective purposes, or wary of experiencing themselves, having harboured a number of similar skeletons in their closets.
(no subject)
Date: 11/2/15 11:56 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/2/15 12:22 (UTC)What you and I think Turkey would benefit from, and what's actually happening, might be two very different things. Turkey is already allying with Russia in a very profound way.
The necessity of a more normal government for Russia is what I agree with.
Ultimately, it all depends on how Putin will handle the economy. If the Russian elites figure out he's incapable of doing that, he'll instantly become expandable.
(no subject)
Date: 12/2/15 10:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/2/15 11:17 (UTC)I'm not sure what Russia's means of directly aggressing the US is.
(no subject)
Date: 12/2/15 17:24 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 13/2/15 02:53 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 18:14 (UTC)Greece can't sort its own matters out, what's left for becoming a chief anything.
(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 18:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 19:12 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 19:28 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 19:10 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 19:30 (UTC)Further encircling Russia by making more inroads into their buffer zone would be perceived as a direct act of war. It'll result in anything but stability.
Do not underestimate a wounded beast when it's pressed against the wall. You don't want to go down that path.
(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 19:32 (UTC)Oh wait.
(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 20:21 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/2/15 12:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/2/15 12:24 (UTC)I suppose you wouldn't mind Catalonia, Scotland, Wales, North Italy, the Basque country and half a dozen other new countries popping up all around Europe as well, eh?
(no subject)
Date: 11/2/15 12:25 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/2/15 12:25 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 18:39 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/2/15 22:36 (UTC)Rum old game, isn't it?
(no subject)
Date: 14/2/15 16:51 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/2/15 18:54 (UTC)