How Odd Is Putin's Russia?

[mikkel_the_dane]

No, but they can benefit from living in peace as opposed to dying in a war they can't win.

We don't know who will win that war.
If you told me to bet on it, I would bet on Russia, but that is a bet.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I understand that Ceausescu's regime was even more extreme and atrocious than most of the other Eastern European states, including the Soviet Union itself. If you don't think Americans can understand the processes you're describing here, then maybe you don't know enough about America.

Which processes do you have in mind here? I think there's considerable truth to the view that most people who haven't lived under extreme dictatorship will not fully understand the ramifications and nuances of life under such a system, so I'm interested to know how most Americans would be familiar with those nuances (beyond theoretical knowledge or second- and third-hand accounts at most).

I have come across a lot of comments from people living in democracies about Russian and Chinese people in particular—but also people living in dictatorships in general—that seem to me to reflect a major disconnection from the realities of living under a dictatorship, sometimes to the point of venturing well into naive territory. Those are comments in the vein of, "Why don't Russians rise up against Putin and overthrow him if they oppose him?" or, "Chinese people would have democracy if they weren't so obedient," as if such brutal, highly pervasive dictatorships were that simple to overthrow or organize protests against on an individual level.

Another tendency I have noticed in some of those comments is to downplay the effect of systemic order and proper rule of law on societal issues, instead attributing issues like child labor and lack of animal welfare mostly or exclusively to the individual, average citizen. Realistically, how effectively could individual citizens tackle those problems when there are such issues as severe corruption, insufficient or even almost nonexistent law enforcement, and little to no education or awareness-raising about said problems? It's not that they can do nothing at all on an individual level, but it usually isn't enough, doesn't fix the overarching problems, and is a drop in the ocean compared to systemic, appropriately structured solutions.

Many who are unfamiliar with the nuances of living in a highly corrupt dictatorship could dismiss any or all of these factors, if they're even aware of them in the first place. It reminds me of a facetious comment an American friend made to me about her experience of living in western Europe versus living in a third-world dictatorship: "One of the benefits of my travels is that I now know what to do if I get scammed and the scammer has friends in high places or bribes law enforcement, or if my purse gets randomly searched on the street by the police. I will call the American embassy."

 

[Magic Man]

NATO has expanded and encircled Russia. That is why Russia attacked Ukraine.

Not even close. NATO has expanded, because countries want to have protection against Russian aggression. They have not "encircled Russia". That's not even really possible. Russia attacked Ukraine because they want to control them and not let them join NATO, which just shows exactly WHY Ukraine wants to join NATO.

Now Ukraine is trying to push back Russia at the instigation and help from NATO.

No, Ukraine is defending their country against the invasion by Russia. NATO didn't instigate anything. Russia instigated and started the invasion.

That is a foolish enterprise. That is not going to succeed. Ukraine will suffer more losses.
NATO is sitting pretty. The war can end only through dialogue.
Zelensky should take full advantage of Modi visit to Ukraine around 8th August.

There have been plenty of attempts at diplomacy already before and during the invasion. Putin wants the war. He won't end it unless he gets what he wants (or unless NATO gets directly involved and turns the tide against him).

Putin should end the invasion. That's the solution.

 

[Magic Man]

I cannot blame Russia alone.

YOU cannot, because of your bias toward them. Those of us viewing in objectively can definitely blame them alone.

The real cause of the war is NATO. Ukraine was foolish to wish joining NATO.
Has this wish protected them?

The real cause of the war is Russia. There is no good reason for them to care of Ukraine joins NATO. They don't control Ukraine, and they shouldn't. Ukraine wasn't foolish to wish to join NATO. The invasion only proves their wish right. They were perfectly justified in wanting to join precisely because of this exact thing.

 

[Magic Man]

I am neither a Putin apologist nor a NATO apologist. I think independently and these are my views.

You are a Putin apologist. You do not think independently. You have a bias against NATO and for Putin and Russia. The views you express here show that deep bias at work.

There cannot be peace without addressing Putin's concerns.

Putin's concerns are he wants at least part of Ukraine, and he doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO. He is in the wrong here, and he should end this.

NATO can continue the fight at the expense of Ukraine. NATO soldiers are not fighting this war.

NATO is not continuing the fight. Ukraine is, and because they don't want to give their country to Putin. NATO has no direct involvement.

 

[Magic Man]

"Ukraine joined NATO's 'Partnership for Peace' in 1994 and the NATO-Ukraine Commission in 1997, then agreed the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan in 2002 and entered into NATO's Intensified Dialogue program in 2005. In 2010, during the premiership of Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian parliament voted to abandon the goal of NATO membership and re-affirm Ukraine's neutral status, while continuing its co-operation with NATO."
Ukraine–NATO relations - Wikipedia

That was OK. They could have continued with that. But Ukrainians were short-sighted. They chose to remove Yanukowych and install Poroshenko. Sort of 'slapped' Russia and immediately got a war in return. We can debate NATO's involvement in the Orange revolution.

They chose to remove Yanukovych because he was very pro-Russia. He was essentially doing Putin's work for him. They elected Poroshenko because he wanted to go back to aligning with the EU and move away from Russia. That's not short-sighted, and it's not a "slap" to Russia.

All you keep doing is pointing to Ukraine wanting to do things that Russia didn't like and then Russia getting angry. You have yet to address the fact that none of that is a defense of Russia or a condemnation of Ukraine. So what if Ukraine wanted to align with the EU and not with Russia? Russia doesn't control them. Ukraine is its own country and can make its own choices. If it makes choices another country doesn't like, as long as it's not harming that other country, then they're perfectly allowed to do that.

If Russia gets upset, that's their problem. Them getting aggressive against Ukraine isn't remotely justified.

 

[Stevicus]

True, to some extent, especially from the 80s on (when there was less to eat). Nostalgia kicked in in the 90s though, and those old ways of thinking are still there.

There’s just a level at which people can be fooled, even when they are fully aware they are being fooled, and not just accept it but embrace it like a return to the womb that is particular to the post Soviet world, at least in comparison to most of the rest of Europe. Maybe there’s something similar in the US. Do you think it would be possible to get the general public to embrace a movie about the Vietnam war that painted it as a heroic and victorious humanitarian endeavour? That might answer the question. I’ve only been to the US once, and it was a bit strange. I did get the sense that the stereotype ‘Americans don’t get irony’ might have some truth to it.

Well, one could say that the US did embrace a movie which painted the Vietnam War as a heroic humanitarian endeavor. It's an old classic called "The Green Berets" with John Wayne. In fact, U.S. attitudes towards Vietnam and the overall policy of interventionism and containment have shifted considerably, especially since the end of the Cold War. Any semblance of a peace movement or widespread anti-war sentiment was pretty much gone by the 1980s. American foreign policy and the public's attitude towards it took on a more "mechanical" approach, as if a robot obeying instructions. No one really wanted to talk about the philosophy or the morality behind it anymore, and as far as I can tell, they still don't. People tend to approach political discourse in a rather superficial and mechanical way.

As far as the public "being fooled," that can also be kind of tricky. One thing I've seen as a constant phenomenon in political discussions is that there is rarely much dispute or disagreement over the bare bones, raw "facts" of a given situation or event. It's more a matter of disagreement over how different factions perceive and interpret events. One can see how things are phrased and presented. What kind of adjectives and adverbs do they use when they describe events? What word choice do they use? Do they take on a more explanatory and educative tone, or do they come across as more confrontational and passionate? That seems to be the greater focus in political discussions these days.

 

[Magic Man]

No, but they can benefit from living in peace as opposed to dying in a war they can't win.

Sure, just like you can benefit from living in peace, as opposed to dying trying to save your wife from the intruder who took her. Just let him have her, and you can live in peace!

"Living in peace" is meaningless if the "peace" is just giving the person attacking you what they want.

 

[Stevicus]

About lying do you mean? No, the claim of there being no crime was a Soviet Russian thing. When crime was allowed to be officially recognised, it was as part of a diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder, as in no sane person in the perfect society would commit a crime, hence this person who did must be insane. Kruschev blew up that thinking a bit, but for most Russians Kruschev is the fool and Stalin the hero.

I remember having a chat with an Armenian fellow who immigrated to the US after the fall of the USSR. He told me that, back in Stalin's era, a person could leave their wallet on a table in a bar or restaurant, and come back hours later and find that it is still there, untouched. I was a bit skeptical, but I did know that it was relatively safe on the streets. I could sense that they kept foreigners like myself at bay, and I was certainly in no mood to cause any trouble.

On the other hand, when you think about it, who's going to mug or rob someone? What are they going to steal? Rubles?

 

[Tomef]

I remember having a chat with an Armenian fellow who immigrated to the US after the fall of the USSR. He told me that, back in Stalin's era, a person could leave their wallet on a table in a bar or restaurant, and come back hours later and find that it is still there, untouched. I was a bit skeptical, but I did know that it was relatively safe on the streets. I could sense that they kept foreigners like myself at bay, and I was certainly in no mood to cause any trouble.

On the other hand, when you think about it, who's going to mug or rob someone? What are they going to steal? Rubles?

That changed in the 90s. I still remember a guy eyeing my bag the moment I put it down, then giving me a ‘yeah ok’ grin when I spotted him. Lot of chaos, Putin to be fair managed to get that mostly under control, essentially by getting those who benefited most from the pillaging of state companies to think he was the guy they needed in charge - modest, pliable (or so they thought). Those people in turn had other otherlings, who had other underlings, and so on down. That was a scary period for a lot of Russians I think, and helps explain why they cling on to Putin. Facing the realities of 20th C Russia and building on the ruins is a pretty scary idea. Ukrainians have the stomach for something like that, but most Russians want someone to tell them everything is ok and just keep on drinking the koolaid.

 

[Stevicus]

If you mean the ‘terror’ then no, I wasn’t alive at the time, but the arrest, torture, imprisonment and murder of millions for literally no reason at all in Soviet Russia is well-documented. Complainers, journalists, political opponents are still routinely intimidated, jailed, exiled, beaten up, murdered etc, albeit in smaller numbers.

Yes, I've read about that, too. Even Khrushchev denounced Stalin's atrocities, took down all his statues, changed everything that had his name on it, and introduced a period of thaw and reform.

I wasn't around during WW1 or the 1920s and 30s, but from what I've read, WW1 led to a great deal of fallout and far-reaching consequences, many of which are still with us today. I have no personal frame of reference, or even something I can compare with my own family history, to be able to truly understand how it must have felt to be living in Russia in 1917 or in the years that followed. I've read a good deal about it, and it was pretty bad overall. And, unlike the U.S. Civil War, there was no sense of amnesty or "forgive and forget" when it was over.

I've noticed it to be a familiar pattern in some cases, though, particularly after a civil conflict or some other internal seizure of power. Anyone who was on the wrong side in a power struggle ends up on somebody's enemies list.

 

[Stevicus]

Which processes do you have in mind here? I think there's considerable truth to the view that most people who haven't lived under extreme dictatorship will not fully understand the ramifications and nuances of life under such a system, so I'm interested to know how most Americans would be familiar with those nuances (beyond theoretical knowledge or second- and third-hand accounts at most).

I have come across a lot of comments from people living in democracies about Russian and Chinese people in particular—but also people living in dictatorships in general—that seem to me to reflect a major disconnection from the realities of living under a dictatorship, sometimes to the point of venturing well into naive territory. Those are comments in the vein of, "Why don't Russians rise up against Putin and overthrow him if they oppose him?" or, "Chinese people would have democracy if they weren't so obedient," as if such brutal, highly pervasive dictatorships were that simple to overthrow or organize protests against on an individual level.

Another tendency I have noticed in some of those comments is to downplay the effect of systemic order and proper rule of law on societal issues, instead attributing issues like child labor and lack of animal welfare mostly or exclusively to the individual, average citizen. Realistically, how effectively could individual citizens tackle those problems when there are such issues as severe corruption, insufficient or even almost nonexistent law enforcement, and little to no education or awareness-raising about said problems? It's not that they can do nothing at all on an individual level, but it usually isn't enough, doesn't fix the overarching problems, and is a drop in the ocean compared to systemic, appropriately structured solutions.

Many who are unfamiliar with the nuances of living in a highly corrupt dictatorship could dismiss any or all of these factors, if they're even aware of them in the first place. It reminds me of a facetious comment an American friend made to me about her experience of living in western Europe versus living in a third-world dictatorship: "One of the benefits of my travels is that I now know what to do if I get scammed and the scammer has friends in high places or bribes law enforcement, or if my purse gets randomly searched on the street by the police. I will call the American embassy."

I do understand that, when comparing democracy and dictatorship, it's not an either/or, black-and-white comparison. It's more a matter of degrees along a spectrum. While it's true that I haven't actually "lived under" a dictatorship, whatever that might mean, it doesn't mean that Americans are strangers to political actions and various scourges sometimes associated with dictatorship. It's simply a matter of degree. Political power itself can be rather fluid and dynamic, even within a dictatorship.

The processes one might identify in the American political consciousness might be those related to excessive patriotism and a certain militaristic, national security mindset which has dominated US thinking for generations. It doesn't mean that America is a dictatorship, but it puts people in a certain frame of thinking which can still serve the same purposes. It's how they can become susceptible to lies, which is the process I was referring to in the portion you're quoting. Why have a dictator when a good salesman can simply talk them into compliance? Of course, keeping the people well-fed in the land of plenty overflowing with luxury and consumer goods also helps quite a bit. That's what keeps people in line more than anything else.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Not even close. NATO has expanded, because countries want to have protection against Russian aggression. They have not "encircled Russia". That's not even really possible. Russia attacked Ukraine because they want to control them and not let them join NATO, which just shows exactly WHY Ukraine wants to join NATO.

No, Ukraine is defending their country against the invasion by Russia. NATO didn't instigate anything. Russia instigated and started the invasion.

There have been plenty of attempts at diplomacy already before and during the invasion. Putin wants the war. He won't end it unless he gets what he wants (or unless NATO gets directly involved and turns the tide against him).

Putin should end the invasion. That's the solution.

Your views, not mine.
Putin does not seem to be doing that.

 

[Aupmanyav]

YOU cannot, because of your bias toward them. Those of us viewing in objectively can definitely blame them alone.

The real cause of the war is Russia. There is no good reason for them to care of Ukraine joins NATO. They don't control Ukraine, and they shouldn't. Ukraine wasn't foolish to wish to join NATO. The invasion only proves their wish right. They were perfectly justified in wanting to join precisely because of this exact thing.

Ah! Your views are objective and mine are not.
If Russia is the real cause, then erase them from the world atlas.
They were justified and then got sa two and a half year war.

 

[Aupmanyav]

You are a Putin apologist. You do not think independently. You have a bias against NATO and for Putin and Russia. The views you express here show that deep bias at work.

Putin's concerns are he wants at least part of Ukraine, and he doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO. He is in the wrong here, and he should end this.

NATO is not continuing the fight. Ukraine is, and because they don't want to give their country to Putin. NATO has no direct involvement.

Yes, I am against NATO machinations. Their purpose is to perpetuate American hegemony. Ukraine is just a tool for them.
But that will not come easily. China is helping / will help Russia.
Putin does not seem to be ending this.
Direct involvement is not much different from indirect involvement. It is called 'proxy war'.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Ukraine is its own country and can make its own choices

Yeah, they made a choice and got a devastating war in return.

 

[Magic Man]

Your views, not mine.

Well, yes, my views based on the actual reality of it, not yours because yours aren't based on the facts.

Putin does not seem to be doing that.

 

[Magic Man]

Ah! Your views are objective and mine are not.

Correct. I'll admit I might have a slight bias, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm basing things on the facts of the situation, not an affinity for Putin.

If Russia is the real cause, then erase them from the world atlas.
They were justified and then got sa two and a half year war.

I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean.

 

[Magic Man]

Yes, I am against NATO machinations. Their purpose is to perpetuate American hegemony. Ukraine is just a tool for them.

NATO's purpose is to protect member countries against aggression, mainly from Russia, but others too. Their purpose is not at all to perpetuate American hegemony. That's a very odd claim considering America is only one of dozens of countries involved.

Ukraine is not a tool for them. Ukraine wanted to join precisely to be protected from exactly what is currently happening.

But that will not come easily. China is helping / will help Russia.
Putin does not seem to be ending this.

Of course he's not. He wants this. He's getting exactly what he wants. He'll only end it if there's an agreement to give in to his demands.

Direct involvement is not much different from indirect involvement. It is called 'proxy war'.

Direct involvement is much different. That's the entire point of not getting directly involved, because that would risk actual WWIII.

 

[Magic Man]

Yeah, they made a choice and got a devastating war in return.

Yes, because Putin and Russia did a horrible thing they shouldn't have. And yet you're defending them and blaming Ukraine. The same as blaming a rape victim. "Well, she chose to wear that revealing outfit. Of course the guy was going to rape her."