I'm not planning to leave Russia just yet, due to being a Russian nationalist with a family, but I can sure answer any questions. The trend (or rather, reversal of previous trend) surely exists.
Upd: HN, the place where you get downvotes by agreeing to answer some questions. That's why I stopped coming.
From your insider's perspective, what's the probable cause/s for this happening? I'm guessing it's because there are better opportunities for a person's career in nearby Europe? And if there is stagnation in job development, is it because of the government's running of the country or are there other factors at play?
The atmosphere is totally unhealthy, wages stagnate or fall for most of workers, and there is no optimism for the future.
In some areas Russia still becomes a better place to live, but if you compare it to Europe proper it still lacks in so many ways and the gap is not closing anytime soon, if not getting wider.
And the only news which come is about new restrictions on public life and political free speech.
As my colleague said to me 5 years back, "all of my canaries are now dead"
I don't really know any LGBT in person so it's hard to say. I think nobody will bother you if you stay clandestine. I guess the public opinion in this area is shitty but it is universal quality of public opinion in Russia.
I was on internet before my first job so ot is hard to say. It's a mixed bag. There are jobs which are bureaucratic hell (especially in large Soviet-survivor companies outside large cities), there are jobs which pay peanuts and productivity is non-existent (government sector), but then there's modern economy with nice offices, passable atmosphere and fine work-life balance. If you're not in IT and not splurging on natural resources wealth somehow, the pay is low.
As for LGBT - once the society is truly free, tons of people come forward with it. You would be surprised how many around you would fall into this category. I could witness this trend in 3 different countries as it unfolded.
Another thing is, since this 'freedom' for LGBT is relatively very new, most of them experienced very troubled childhood/puberty. It must have been very hard to fit in, not disappoint parents etc. yet feeling so out of place compared to rest of the crowd. Russia as a nation would benefit greatly from such an openness in long term, but I can't see it happening anytime soon.
Been there once (Elbrus), generally common folks are really nice, but this soviet mindset of fuck-it-all-lets-drink-some-vodka (and other like that) are bane of a modern free Russian society. One of examples how just having a lot of smart people isn't enough if there is enough negative things to counter-balance it. World moved to greener pastures, but Russia still seems like stuck in 1991.
It is a real risk for your life to be "open gay" in Russia. Sometimes your father can kill you just to "wash out the shame" from the family. Sometimes government can take back adopted child if parents are gay. Russia is a wild country in a lot of aspects, and this one is the most wild.
1. What makes you stay?
2. Were you one of the people who gave Putya credit for fighting corruption and dreamed that he would invest in small business and education, but then those hopes and dreams were crushed?
Definitely. I am more concerned with Russian people and our culture, though, than with loyality to a country as a regime plus set of borders.
If there was other Russian state, like Taiwan is for China, I think I'd jump ship and go for it. There isn't.
Upd: HN throttles me so have to answer here:
Even before 2014, Ukraine put their bet on propelling Ukrainian language and culture. Which from my perspective put them in the same ballpark as Czechia or Croatia. Surely, most people in Ukraine still speak Russian but their culture is 2nd class citizen.
Belarus is a small and boring dictatorship. They're either going the way of Ukraine or, as rumors go, get annexed by Russia. Back to square one. But otherwise it could be an option.
As for placing interests of Russia above my own: aren't we all do it sometimes in any country? Actually this is a trick question since Russians as a nation way overspent on loyalty to regimes in XX century.
Thanks for your answers! I so rarely encounter educated people in the West who will admit to patriotism. Does your love of country oblige you to put Russia's interests above your own in any way?
> If there was other Russian state, like Taiwan is for China, I think I'd jump ship and go for it. There isn't.
Are Belarus and Ukraine too distinct from Russia to you? I realize that historically, these were part of Ruthenia and then Lithuania (and Poland-Lithuania), but ethnographically, they are still part of the Rus cultural spectrum like Novgorod and Muscovy were and unlike, say, Kazakhstan or Georgia.
That's a rather uncivil comment. You're replying to a commenter who's a self-proclaimed Russian patriot and nationalist. There's no need to go shouting about motiviations when they've already been laid on the table.
I don't believe it's a rude comment at all, given that:
1. Russia and Ukraine were the same country until 1991. The culture was exactly the same until that time. Until less than half a decade ago, Ukraine was led by a Russian puppet. Believing the culture is "different" is blatantly ignorant or deceitful, and it's unlikely the poster is the former.
2. Russia is stressing the difference between itself in Ukraine to rouse support for its take over of Crimea.
"... nationalist" sounds to me like somebody who wants to impose the power of their nation on other nations. I suppose that's why you got downvoted (I didn't).
A nationalist is someone who holds the well-being of their nation as a high-priority thing. This does not necessarily make a nationalist an enemy of other nations: nationalists are usually preoccupied with the well-being of their own nation, and just want other nations peacefully mind their business.
This is how a nationalist can strongly oppose a nation's current government, when the government is not caring for the nation's prosperity (in the nationalist's eyes).
Most liberation movements across the world were and are openly nationalist.
> Upd: HN, the place where you get downvotes by agreeing to answer some questions. That's why I stopped coming.
That may be because you wrote Russian nationalist (a person with strong patriotic feelings), when you possibly meant Russian national (a citizen of a particular country).
>Upd: HN, the place where you get downvotes by agreeing to answer some questions. That's why I stopped coming.
I think you might have meant "Russian national" instead of "Russian nationalist". Calling ones self a nationalist around here is highly unpopular because that term is loaded with negative connotations for left leaning upper middle class Americans that mostly make up HN. You say "nationalist" and people think of someone that stands for everything that's the opposite of they do and then they down-vote.
To me, as a German, doombolt calling himself a Russian nationalist is no signal for downvoting, but rather a signal that the answers that he will give could be from a pro-Russian perspective - so only ask if you are sufficiently open-minded to hear answers that might change your mind or are outside your echo chamber.
The political situation in western Europe in the 1930s was explosive, specially so in Spain. On the one hand there was the then quite new Soviet Union stoking unrest in a, by contemporary standards, shockingly poor, unhealthy and exploited working and peasant class. On the other hand, you had much of the rest of society scared out of their wits by the very real prospect of revolution at their doorstep, and more than willing to support and make do with a strongman that, first and foremost, promised to crush the communists. Either side would have crushed the other if victorious.
I recommend anyone to read good books about the Spanish Civil War (like for instance Hugh Thomas' very readable history) to understand the huge polarization of both extremes, the violence, and how those in the middle where totally swept aside. I doubt that the only possible outcome, given those conditions, could have been but one side exterminating the other, either the left or the right.
Our world is, fortunately, very different. Of late, given an increasing political polarization and rise of populism, comparisons have been made with the 1930s, but if you start investigating you will realize that current conditions are nowhere near as bad.
I don't know where you are from, and how familiar you are with European politics, but modern euro-socialism is much closer to pure capitalism than anything the stalinists would have created in Spain.
I strongly dislike Franco, and I am aware that thanking him for preventing a stalinist Spain may turn heads these days. But the fact is that this is exactly what the West thought at the time. Franco became a pariah right after World War II as the only remaining leader that had supported Hitler. However, as soon as the reality of the Cold War kicked it, all that was forgotten, and western leaders (and specially the USA) started toasting him, indeed, as the man who stopped communism in a country in a very strategic position.
I hardly think there was a unified Western view at the time (perhaps amongst governments but not individuals). George Orwell fought in Spain against Franco's troops in an anarchist unit (POUM) and he hated Stalinism as strongly as anyone.
His Homage to Catalonia is a superb account of his time in Spain (and just how chaotic things were politically):
Sure, I meant across decision makers. Realpolitik (the rest is propaganda).
Before and in the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, when the great Orwell fought, the left in Spain was extremely atomized: there were the anarchist (very active in the beginning), the socialists, the communists (actually a minority initially), and many splinter groups (like POUM). But, just like an equally varied right swiftly unified under Franco, so did the left, more slowly, under the "oficial" communist faction, which, although it decided to be mostly pragmatic until the war had been won, fought some of the other leftists as fiercely as it fought the right.
Yes, that was one factor for sure. But it was actually really complicated, quite mind boggling in fact. The thing is that, in spite of Stalin being pretty much the only effective external support the Spanish republic had, the communists inside Spain were pretty much a marginal group when the war started, and had to resort to all kinds of intrigues to get support from both the population and the, still, official government, and also to had get rid of rival groups, like the ones you mentioned.
Yeah - I read Homage to Catalonia again recently - I have read The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor a while back but as you say, it is quite complex - I need to read it again!
Please don't use powerful words at the wrong place, you are depleting them of their meaning.
A genocide has an actual definition according to the international law, and the Gulag system does not tick any of the boxes.
The Gulag system was a very harsh penal colony system (although on a far larger scale that what was done before), in continuation of the ones already existing during the tsarist times – and with death rates comparable to what could be found i.e. in the Cayenne penal colony.
It was neither aimed at killing convicts (with mortality rates under 10%, it would have done an awful job at it), nor was it targeting a peculiar ethnic group.
> The Gulag system was a very harsh penal colony system
This is incorrect - the purpose of a penal colony system is to host criminals, while most people who were imprisoned in Gulag were innocent. It looks like the real purpose of the system was to convert innocent Soviet citizens' bodies into energy needed for physical labor. People captured in the system got worked to the bone and were on starvation-level food rations. In the process of physical work, their bodies burned their tissues as fuel (in lieu of insufficient external calories being provided in food), which lead to death of malnutrition and starvation within a couple of years. Millions of people were used this way to complete great industrial projects at minimal costs. This is not a penal system, this is Auschwitz.
Please read what you just wrote. The Gulags killed vast numbers of people in an incredibly inhumane fashion (no gas there!), in many cases based on their ethnic religion, and here you are defending it.
Yeah I agree. This is tantamount to Holocaust denial, and to go on and compare the gulags to the American penal system really highlights the degree of nonsense.
But if you compare them to the turn of XX century, they don't look so nice. People may smile when zipping along her creations, but you can walk along some of Art Nouveau buildings every day for years and never stop smiling.
E.g. https://yandex.ru/maps/-/CBF84WbZ8D
This is architecture for car drivers who zoom past while burning carbon. Spend more than 10 seconds, it stops looking cool and becomes boring. Yet another example how car destroys our cities.
It is not walkable, it is not human-scale, it does not integrate with surroundings. I love how they do advertisement renders where their buildings stand in an empty field. As if the rest of the city never existed and should not be cared for!
You can't walk past these buildings every day and enjoy it. First of all, they are too large and far apart. It will be boring and long not to mention wind, rain and snow to which it offers no protection.
Moreover, it's a legitimization of awful 70s architecture with slightly more effort. Even her New York building looks like something people from 70s would build when they dismantle some beautiful neoclassical or moderne building.
Isn't her New York building a complete counterexample to your argument? It's built along Manhattan's elevated walking trail, the Highline and enjoyed by thousands of people [0]. Until the Vessel is completed, it's likely the main attraction on the walking path.
It looks passable, but as I have said any Art Noveau building would give more eye candy, and there's a huge number of such building around the world, it's not we praise each and every of their architects.
It also looks like a side of any cruise ship. Last time I have checked cruise ships were not considered masterpieces of architecture, and they also float.
Maybe "oppression" is too strong a word, but some definitely take advantage (in a negative context) of others because of their status. For example, I work on a gov't site where we are required to buy from minority-owned groups. Well they know this so they charge outrageous prices when selling to us and we can't do anything about it. This is with tax money to boot.
Are there forums / collections of Russian ultra-unrealism? Ideally with English transaltions -- would love to read some but I don't understand Russian.
Then nobody was sure that this judge had ever study law. She said she went to some college in Georgia (the country) which said she's not on their records.
I didn't know you could just skip this bullet point, get away with it.
Makes me wonder why we ever did it. After all, "Intellectual Property" is just a way to siphon money from my country while making our lives miserable. It's not like we ever got anything useful in the return.
Upd: HN, the place where you get downvotes by agreeing to answer some questions. That's why I stopped coming.