Holodomor.  Gulags.  Russification.  Thanks for playing.  If we purposefully exterminated Texans for being Texan, they’d damn well be right to leave.  Belarus has the same right as Poland (which they were a part of) to tell Russia to fuck off, as do the Georgians and the rest.

When Russia still sits on Old Prussia, they don’t have much right to complain about places “historically” theirs feeling aggrieved and telling them to piss off after generations of abuse.  The Germans deserved to loose Prussia after the war...just as much as Russia deserved to loose their abused former provinces.  History isn’t the only claim to land.  And that’s not in any way our fault - maybe they should have learned from the early 20th century that treating people like shit doesn’t end well.

Somebody previously mentioned how Russia was/is feudal.  They have always had a small ruling class, a small class of artists and intellectuals and a giant serf class.  There are actually some really good engineers and programmers in Russia but if what has been engineered has to be maintained by serfs than things break.  Serfs are going to be serfs...

So Slavery, Jim Crow, Using blacks for medical experiments means the the ethnic minorities in the ol' south should rise up and throw off the chains of the oppressors? Or perhaps the Chinese in CA because they were mistreated 100 years ago? How bout the Native Americans, I guess thats cool, they got some uninhabitable land in the middle of nowhere. I mean that's the crux your argument. The US deserves to loose its abused provinces if its going through a rough spell and a foreign hyper says, hey guys you can have your own country? And who do you think it was starving ethnic Ukrainians during Holdomor? Oh wait, it was ethnic Ukrainians that had been abused by those other ethnic Ukrainians. Or Kievan 'Rus as they used to be called for the few centuries prior.

Moreover its laughable to say they threw off their "oppressors" the first presidents of Belarus and Ukraine were very high level card carrying communists (and ethnically Ukrainian and Belorussian to boot). Soooo when ol James Baker proclaims to the world the US will back your new "republic" as long as its "democratic", and the number 2-3 guy running the SSR says after conferring with the local "brown cloud brigade", hey I'll take that new gig as president its all good in the hood, yup, meet the new boss, pretty much same as the old boss because he fucking was. I'll take your hysterics with a grain of salt. The US was rather complicit in the breakup like it or not.

And honestly I'm not saying it was necessarily a bad thing. The Soviets were dicks. And the way Regan and Bush1 brought down the USSR was nothing short of brilliant, not a shot fired. But I was answering the OP's question as to why it the current situation is what it is.

PS 2019? who's Honk Honk troll account are you?

The Russians I’ve met that are competent are extremely competent.  The idiots I have met are in the  “whoa, WTF” category. They’re either hard workers or lazy as fuck. There appears to be little between the extremes. Don’t have a large enough sample size to judge loyalty.

I will say that the Russians I have met are all hard, tough folks.

They edge out Koreans as the worst people to get drunk with, though. A drunk Russian, in my experience, is either looking for a fight or moping over his drink.  Not fun at all.

I’m sitting ten feet from a Russian as I type this. So far he seems like a pretty good dude - quiet, competent, and hard working.

Yes, so funny.  I’m a troll, obviously, because I don’t think we screwed the Russians.  That’s nice.  Go read my posts before spouting “hurr durr, retread troll”.

And we’re not talking “minorities” here.  Be clear - we’re talking the majority of those areas.  If the majority of Texas or Louisiana  wanted to leave because the US starved ten percent of their citizens to death, they’d have a case.  What was done to the blacks in the Antebellum and Jim Crow South was evil, but not the same thing - and the last Secession movement in this country was to PRESERVE that evil system, not end it.  Last I saw, the US has been working for generations to remedy all the things you mention, and (statistically) no one wants to leave the union over that.  If we were dumb enough to have lost to the USSR in the Cold War, and the Governors of Texas and California left the union after we starved people to death and tried to stamp out Texan culture and Californian nuttiness...I wouldn’t blame the USSR.

And, ha ha, nice deflection.  Stalin starved the Ukrainians.  For being an ethnic minority that bastard really despised ethnic minorities, including Georgians.  That he told local party members to do it doesn’t shift blame.  Nor is it surprising that members of the only government in place took over when the USSR collapsed.  What, you think leaders appear from thin air?  Look up denazification.  When everyone with ambition is part of The Party for generations, what do you think happens?

And if they deserved it...stop blaming the US.  The idea James Baker screwed the Russians is stupid - it pretends the heads of the SSRs had no volition, the people of the SSRs just ignored what was happening to them, and pretends the US is a secret puppet master behind all ill that befalls Russia - exactly what RT and Pravda have been whining for decades.  If the breakup was so bad for Ukraine, Belarus, etc...why did it take Russia sneaking military into Crimea for anyone to “want” to rejoin?  It’s what, Crimea under occupation, Transnistria, and some other weirdo commie cultists?  Why did the Russians have to spend tons of money and effort to try to bludgeon the SSRs into kow-towing to them and still fail?  Why have most of the SSRs of their own volition continued to go their own way?

They lost, the map changed, and if Russia is still sore over it they need to grow up.  Their problems today are all their own - and they haven’t really done much to solve them.  Still have tons of natural resources and some real scientific and engineering geniuses, still can’t run an economy worth a damn.  Still trying to bully their neighbors into giving them things, just like the ChiComs.  And this change in landscape isn’t exactly strange - countries that hadn’t existed for generations left Russia and joined others that were once lost - like the Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia...and more.  Did you miss the 20th century?  Or are you whining that the allies screwed Austria and Hungary too?  Maybe complaining about the end of Granada?  Complaining that the Ottomans were abused?  Miss the Free Cities and assorted countries that made up Italy and Germany?

That account is to Russia threads like CMJohnson was to fighter jet threads. Just some free entertainment to sit back and enjoy. lol

So I guess we know what primorsky's other account was...

Gives me a mild mental workout.  Relaxing to go back over the history...and amusing to see the old saws come up.

No, I have a clue how international politics has actually worked in the 20th century, not just some whitewashed shit that gets taught as "history" in the US. And the US is not exactly saintly, rather far from it, but that is how realpolitik works.

My only point in bringing up all of the various injustices in US history is to point out no nation is free of them, and that they are always used as some excuse by successor states to secede whether real or imagined or hundreds of years ago. So all the bad shit the soviets did was certainly real, but its no more of an excuse for the someone using it as justification for secession that usually is just for the benefit of a select few (oh wait, you mentioned the civil war right?).

The ugly reality is that your so called majorities were happily fucking each other for the whole historical period you are referring to and long before that. The SSRS were run by your aforementioned the ethnic majorities not some guy born in moscow. I'd opine you might actually have a clue on how that system actually worked before "splanin'" it to people.

Regan buddied up to Gorbachev (all the while fucking him in the ass and economically destroying the USSR) and Bush fucked him the moment he wasn't delivering "on the plan", I mean fucked him so hard he was making pizza hut commercials a few years later. I mean it takes a special sort of person to believe that in the span of a few months the great evil Soviet union SSRs basically happily and justly agreed to go their own separate ways just of their own happy volition. Of course headed by the same dudes that had been running they system for decades. The heads of the SSRs were at least sort-of loyal to the central government, it was always the #2 or #3 or whatever guy down the line that decided, hey I know! I'm ambitious and want to be president, and to pretend that the CIA didn't know who that guy(s) was is selling them way short. To think the CIA had nothing to do with any of this (and especially given the Bush1 was a former CIA director) is about as naïve as you can be, it either presupposes the CIA was totally incompetent or just saintly, neither of which is true. I'm sure we'll find out in 50 years if they don't wipe/bleachbit the records before then. I mean it had the optics of just being a happy accident on the surface, but lets be real, it was just waay too convenient.

As to your point as to why no one wanted to go back, once you have a country, you don't exactly want to give up power, But I guess Yanukovich was a saint and that's why they "unelected him". Belarus is more or less a satellite state so they have gone back, cuz well they realized it was probably in their best interests economically. Fun fact, about 50% of "ethnic" ukranians have family living in "Russia". Its barely a cultural identity if it ever was, and if it was it mainly defined haves and have nots.

On a side note the allies screwing Germany during Versailles coupled with 'lil Wilsons  treaty of Trianon that broke up the only counterweight to Germany on the continent were the 2 events that guaranteed WW2. Given Wilson's involvement in the second I hold him to be one of the largest pieces of shit in the history of the 20th century responsible for deaths of tens of millions. Also we can thank Britian and the allies for the "Gift" of the middle east which has been a fucking dumpster fire for the last 100 years and only knows how many deaths, massacres and so forth they have at their feet. So yes, I'll bitch about them as well.

Hey I found a picture of you!



Honk honk!

How bout this one...

"First, our historical work is limited to short periods—the history of our own country, or that of some past age which, for some reason, we hold in respect. Second, even within these short periods, the slant we give to our narrative is governed by our own vanity rather than by objectivity. If we are considering the history of our own country, we write at length of the periods when our ancestors were prosperous and victorious, but we pass quickly over their shortcomings or their defeats. Our people are represented as patriotic heroes, their enemies as grasping imperialists, or subversive rebels. In other words, our national histories are propaganda, not wellbalanced investigations. Third, in the sphere of world history, we study certain short, usually unconnected, periods, which fashion at certain epochs has made popular. Greece 500 years before Christ, and the Roman Republic and early Roman   Empire   are   cases   in   point.   The intervals between the ‘great periods’ are neglected. Recently Greece and Rome have become largely discredited, and history tends to become increasingly the parochial history of our own countries."

That is giving too much credit towards self-awareness with this topic...trolls like that one ('primorsky') did not actually believe their spiel.

Sadly, some types really believe the stuff RT (and similar outfits) puts out. Guys like that happily spread the derp around for free. You see it a lot on YT/Reddit and the former militaryphotos.net website. Cringey stuff but some people take it hook, line and sinker.

Russia has found out to their delight that it is as easy (if not easier) to dupe a certain segment of the American "Right" as it was to dupe the American Left in the 60s-80s. Their trolling/spam activity online isn't very high quality but it seems to work out well when applied the right American rubes and with the correct trigger topics/words. People buy it then spread it around online because it tells them what they want to hear. Some are enough of a true believer type to get into long arguments over that derp as we have seen here.

Anyway, the wave of those "Wannabe Russian" type retread troll accounts was someone that got their actual account banned (double account trolling) and came back multiple times...but still sucked at trolling after that many attempts surprisingly.

LOL, yup anyone that disagrees with whatever your viewpoint is must be Russian troll. Is conspiracy comrade! Communists everywhere! Derp Derp! Tell me, does your throat get dry breathing through your mouth as much as you do? Do you have to moisturize? Does CPAP work for that?

So...you get your history from RT?  Just checking, since I haven’t gotten my history from “whitewashed shit”, but a good bit of study.  And your cracks on the SSRs being “run” by the ethnic minorities are insipid.  Yes, “run”, just like the Supreme Soviet made decisions, Soviet elections were fair, and the National People’s Congress makes decisions in China.  And your review of the end of the Cold War....was it from Russia Today, Pravda, or maybe the US Communist Party?  The Norks?  Hard to keep them all straight.

And I’ll sit here and laugh while you moan about the 20th century.  It sucked, lots of people died, maps got redone, but it’s done.  You complaining about the Germans loosing WWI, the Austro-Hungarians being morons and getting chewed up, France not being nice, the Brits just about collapsing after WWII, or just change in general?  Wilson sucked, but he isn’t why old Europe collapsed into a heap.  Old Europe is, though.
Hooray!  Yes, The Fate of Empires, only work necessary for the sufficiently dismal.  Not dismissing it, mind, but does seem to be the book the “America is Done” crowd like to wave about like their own Little Red Book.  Hint: not the only historian out there, also not the last word.  But keep claiming Russia’s aggrieved by the evil West.  It’s worked out so well for them for the past centuries.

They killed the normal people

Russia has like 4 Florida's.

Nah, I got my historical education largely abroad, but a degree here too. Its funny when you actually go places and realize, they all have a different take on it and its not all wrong, actualy you know traveling the world and learning. I found Yasakuni as enlightening as the NSA museum as one example, and the Korean war memorial in Seoul instructive on many levels as well. And I particularly loved the glowing dedication the Austrians had for their Navy.  And honestly I think I've read 3-4 RT stories in my life, because well its shit. But so is the idiocy you are spewing its even less well crafted.

And yes, your made up "ethnic majorities" are about as accurate as your commentary about the supreme soviet. The sad truth is they didn't exist IMO until some historian decided they did and wrote some books. Just like your narrative that the soviet union, happily fell apart with no outside influence or interference from the US. I mean that's about as Derptastic as it gets.

As for Glub Pasha, he's right and he's wrong. I don't think America is done far from it, but I don't think history is taught here aside from whatever propaganda du jour passes for it from whoever is running the Ed establishment at the moment. And that's not  a happy coincidence either. And I don't think Russia is aggrieved by the west, their politics were  terrible, and with some outside help it rightfully collapsed. But to suggest it magically happened in a vacuum without any influence from the most powerful spy agencies on earth is laughable. Or maybe the CIA/NSA would never spy on Americans either? Or the FBI lie to the American people? The magical wonderland you live in must be a shiny happy place.

Well they only had like 3, but they really wanted 4 which is why they invaded Crimea.

Wow!  I’ve been outside the US too!  Seen cool historically significant monuments, met new people...but don’t want to get into a pissing contest.

So the ethnic minorities exist and run their own parts of Russia until it’s inconvenient and you say they don’t exist.  Funny how that works.  Funny how much work the Russian Empire and USSR put into suppressing their unique cultures and languages for minorities that didn’t exist.  Even arranged for millions to starve - awful lot of work for non-existence.  And you buy that the Supreme Soviet wasn’t a rubber stamp?  And you don’t read RT?  Just back issues of Pravda?  Sounds good.

Funnily enough, I also never said we weren’t part of it.  I did say that we didn’t magically arrange the entire post-Soviet order.  There’s a big difference between CIA puppet masters screwing the Soviets (Yes, “screwing” and “fucking with” their avowed enemies were your statements, like we stabbed those bastards in the back rather than kicking them in the teeth like they richly deserved, them watching as they’ve screwed themselves since ‘91 more ably than we could) and the US defeating the USSR  being one part of the equation of the post-Soviet world along with past ills, the personalities of leaders, and the desires of the peoples involved.

But hey, believing in CIA puppet masters running the world is fun.  Removes any responsibility from the Russians (or Iran, China, Pakistan, India, others) and plays into their inferiority/superiority complex.  I don’t believe a CIA/NSA/FBI cabal run the world.  Back to my first post, the world is too complicated for that.  And the CIA and NSA have messed up their attempts at interference far too often for me to believe they can hide crap like this.  But have fun blaming everyone else for your ills.  It makes life so easy.

How's that wall coming along?

That's the truth. Note the foil lids.
Once it's opened, it's over

Minorities/majorities are point of politics. Pretty much until the 20th century inside and outside observers didn't really didn't see them, until it was convenient to see them for political purposes during the revolution. Ethnic Ukrainians ran Ukraine for the most part, and the ugly reality they don't want to actually acknowledge. Much easier to blame boogeymen. But Kievan-Rus (you'll note that Rus part) were always a thing, and they have more in common with the boys in Moscow culturally than anyone else and westerners hard time admitting that. Turns out 50% of Ukrainians have family in "Russia", gee hard to figure since during soviet times they were basically the same people.

PS pretending the CIA doesn't exist and do shit in the much broader context of history, much less the NSA, is breathtakingly  derptastic. I'm sure daddy bush had nothing to do with anything CIA like, like nope never. He was an upstanding Christian In Action. And the sovietsky empire fell all by itself .

But I guess anyone that disagrees with your spoonfed CNN Francis Fukuyama worldview is of course some Russian troll. Its cool. The world must be an amazingly simple place for you to live, after all people that agree with you are patriots and any dissenters are dangerous trolls that must be defeated. I'm used to this level of Murica always right derp here. You would have fit right in the old soviet order. Glub was right after all in that regard, which is why I posted it, but of course you missed the cogent points of that post as I expected. And well by all accounts I'm the most successful one here, being here almost 20 years longer than you.

Not Francis Fukuyama!  I’m cut to the quick.

No, I don’t call everyone Russian trolls like some on here.  Not even you, Sherlock.  I just pointed out you parrot Russian propaganda.  Like Ukrainian being the same thing as Russian and not purposefully starved by Stalin.

And the Soviets fell because of us, if you didn’t get my earlier statement of that.  But kicking your enemy in the teeth isn’t “screwing them”.  You screw people who can reasonably expect decent treatment.  We didn’t screw the Nazis, the Japanese, the Iraqis, or the USSR.  They got exactly what they deserved, and they should have expected.

As for the CIA - sure they do nasty stuff.  That’s kinda their job.  But, again, not screwing people, just giving them exactly what enemies give.  They just aren’t puppet masters or world runners like the propaganda you buy into says.  They never were friends of the USSR, and a damn good thing too.  Even if you were right and they “made” the SSRs leave (without a military presence, hilarious idea, what’d they use, mind control?  Bribes or suggestions aren’t “making” anything happen, genius, even if I saw evidence of it, let alone, shocker, diplomacy), maybe Russia should have treated them better and they’d want to be a part of it.  They don’t.  And the sooner Russia stops whining about the “stab in the back” and starts trying to improve themselves, the sooner they may improve.

Bye now.

Shout out to "Bald and Bankrupt" for visiting shithole countries so I never have to.

His videos with Kolya the Belarusian hermit who lives in the Chernobyl exclusion zone are fascinating and sad. Tough old bastard who shakes like a paint mixer due to alcoholism and probably Parkinson’s.

And who exactly do you think actually did it? Did Stalin the boogeyman show up and confiscate the grain? Or maybe his evil twin brother. No it was Ukrainians that hated the Ukrainian Kulaks, who were dicks to the lower class Ukrainians. Class warfare is what made Stalin work, he took certainly took advantage of it. But it pre-existed him.

I'd argue that the Nazis were as bad or worse than the commies. The US gave them the marshal plan. Rebuilt what was left, let the least bad Nazis run their armies and airforce and government, and then exploited the fuck out of their scientists and stole what there was to steal. No moral equivalency you're gonna make is gonna run with that bit of historical reality there. PS all the commies that did that really nasty "soviet" shit were mostly long dead by the end of the cold war, you know, Stalin and his bro's. And the US "bought" whatever they could for pennies on the dollar that they found useful, not that you'll hear that here, cuz of course murica is always greatest!1!. And slavshit like RD180's that are used by ULA and that spaceX engines are derived from are clearly inferior (you know, the engines 'muricin engineers declared impossible to make in the 70's and 80's) just a bunch of retarded Russians after all.

That's the point, you don't think if some leftie commie Anifa flunkie of the governor of say Oregon or Washington wouldn't take the same deal those guys took if offered under the same circumstances, you're mostly delusional. The Soviet system was done in the 1990's and Kravchuk and Kebich being the good commie aparatchicks that they were and took advantage of it. They were well treated by the commies regardless, otherwise they wouldn't be in the positions they were in, unless you are under the delusion that they rose to power under the communist system but were dissatisfied along the way? But the CIA has a talent and a bagfulls of money for finding dissatisfied "tools". I mean it is what it is that's their actual fucking job, but my point at the start of this lovely conversation is that the US could have taken the high road. They didn't. End of story. If you want to believe in fairy tales about how the real world actually works, well that's your deal. The Russians whining about it, I guess is the RT talking point, but its more or less what happened, regardless of various deep state "fans" here trying to pretend the almighty US govt and its agencies aren't a bag of shit a good portion of the time. If the US actually gave a shit about "territorial integrity" it could have gone differently, the US could have easily had a policy of pre-19XX borders are considered "Russian". Maybe the US should have broken apart what was left of Nazi Germany into pre-Bismark states too, or maybe Ike took the high road. At the end of the day they fucked Gorby and paid off Yeltsin and then fucked him too to make sure the successor states didn't retain the nukes and that the US could basically run the house during the transition (hey look how well that worked out for Ukraine! US-Ukraine BFF's forever!). Personally I don't really care that the US fucked the former SU, but there were consequences to it which is what the OP asked about.

I mean it is what it is and the US did what they thought was best. And the US textbooks say what they say (you might want to check what they say in a decade or two versus what you were actually taught though LOL.)

This is the same pose my toddler adopts while playing with toys on the ground. Maybe she’s a Slav at heart?

Someone likes blaming other people for stuff.  And making things up.  I keep hearing “ours is better” coming from you (yes, we “stole” all the “slavshit”, maybe you need to do a little research into, ya know, who you’re blaming for things.  A South African entrepreneur didn’t steal your engines, dude.  Pretty funny theory, though), as well as this weird attempt to defend Stalin and his ilk from well-established charges.  Plus the, incredibly typical, anger over what happened to Germany post-WWII, neglecting both that we fought a damn war with them, destroyed their country, then founded NATO to “keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out”, and rebuilt them primarily to stop, oh, Stalin and Soviet expansion that, oh yeah, locked down half of Europe.  The US agreed the Nazis were worse.  That’s why we destroyed them.  Guess you’re mad we didn’t let the Soviets overrun Europe afterwards?

As to their scientists, funny thing, the Soviets used them at least as much.  Only, here we don’t deny it, as you appear to by neglecting the scientists and entire factories the USSR dismantled from the Nazis while saying the US “exploited” those bastards by giving them the choice of working for us or, oh, staying and having fun in a Soviet Gulag.  Or the Soviet’s own rebuilding of the DDR as a client state with the most intrusive secret police then known.  See, funny thing, West Germany actually didn’t build a wall to keep its citizens in, and generally treated its people better.  So sorry I’m not sorry.

Keep repeating to yourself that the Holodomor was the purging of the evil Ukrainian Kulaks (funny Soviet talking point, blaming the evil Kulaks who generally just had two cows rather than one, they were behind everything: not meeting quotas, equipment breaking, even offing themselves it appears) and not at all the fault of the guy who cut off food supplies, rejected foreign government aid while they printed up anti-cannibalism posters, and pushed the entire collective farm fiasco.  It’s a myth, just like the Great Leap Forward didn’t kill tens of millions of Chinese the same way, and just like dekulakization wasn’t official Soviet policy involving  mass execution and concentration camps.  Or the Armenian Genocide, another total myth.

And ooh, pick borders that gave the Russians most of  what they wanted!  They totally lost but should have kept...what, Poland?  Prussia?  Ukraine?  The losers get to decide what they should keep for reasons?  Not how it works.  And guess what - the people they “lost” have nice military treaties to keep it that way.  And are doing well.  Funny, your crack about Ukraine - you know who’s responsible for their ills?  One hint: the name ends with “utin” and he’s a KGB lifer who won’t give up power or dreams of an empire while his country crumbles.  Not Trump - you complain about the holding up of supplies to Ukraine like they weren’t necessary because of that NeoSov who’s been running the Kremlin since the year 2000.

And it’s funny: for someone who “doesn’t care that the US fucked the former SU” you really care.  Hint: you don’t “fuck with” your enemies.  You crush them.  We did to that slime ball Gorbachev (innocent little lamb that one, sure), and Yeltsin simply couldn’t keep things together.  Didn’t take secret plots - the USSR was a basket case.  Communism kinda does that.

And dude, you think I’m parroting text books?  Funny, what gave you that idea?  Mine pretty much wrote Russia off and mainly treated the end of the Cold War as a foregone conclusion.  I don’t.  But Ronnie Reagan, the supposedly Alzheimer’s-ridden idiot actor, did manage to do his job, as did many others.  Plus communism takes its tolls. The Evil Empire now whines about lost days of glory and stolen wonders.  I really wish they would stop, and maybe come into the 21st century.  But they keep play acting at being a major power and blaming their ills on the secret machinations of the evil CIA.  It’s pitiful.  They screwed up, pissed people off, and isolated themselves pretty well.  And now their friends on the word stage are, what, China until they get into a border dispute, and the Iranians?  Great.  Hope they enjoy that.

Well since your entire argument has now jumped from saying stupid to making up shit I never said and attributing it to me I think we can be done. PS you seem to think you know an awful lot about me personally there capn troll for being here for a few months.

For anyone else that's interested, the only real reason I bother to post in these threads is that I tire of the derptastic dehumanization of entire peoples by a certain odious segment of our posting population. I don't really like modern Russia, or the FSU, but I dislike folks that propagandize and dehumanize entire groups of people as this guy and others have done and continue to do. Ironic given the topic interestingly enough.

It was only very recently in historical context that Russia had a big meeting and said "Hey guys, look, we have to stop wearing all these dumb furs and acting like retarded savages. The people West of us stand upright and have art and culture, let's do our best to imitate it"

Ukraine is not Russia, but yet it is.

I say that to say this:
My father does a lot of charity work in the former at churches, orphanages, and special schools for the blind and deaf.

It has been his observation that anyone who can get an education as a leg up to get out of the country...is. Especially the women. They groom themselves to find husbands abroad. And these are otherwise educated, moral people who do what they have to to better their lives.

It used to be that their go-to source of employment pools was the universities. Now several of them might work for a few months post graduate and marry off to western men

Take it for what it is

The issue becomes all the more mired when you take in account for the massive relocation efforts that took place. You ship off the native population to one of the other SSRs and replace them with good upstanding ethnic Russians who will vote for the party.

Just keep relocating people and putting them in a foreign land. Oh but it’s ok, we are all part of glorious USSR family

Yup. I work(ed) with a fair amount of well educated Russians, Ukranians etc. Most of them got out while the getting was good, and are/were variously in the process of getting their families out. Russia/Ukraine any former SSR really has a very strong brain-drain effect going on, and has for decades.

Sorry, none of those states are historically Russian.  Yes, Russia conquered them before Ww1,
But that does not make them forever Russian.

I can comment on the statement you made about the kulaks.  the people who went around the countryside confiscating any and all foodstuffs were called shocktroops and they were overwhelmingly Russian.  you probably won't believe this either but hundreds of thousands of kulaks were also shipped to the gulags in cattle cars. again, almost exclusively Russian guards and prison staff.  how do I know?  my great grandparents.  this took place well before ww2,  and even during the darkest days of the war,  kulaks and other political prisoners were being stuffed into cattle cars.   any occupied territory after ww2 like the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Hungary and so on had puppet heads of state and were totally controlled by the Kremlin.  this was the MO of the dictator Stalin, but it seems all tyrants follow the same playbook.  much later, the police state in East Germany had a KGB officer by the name of Vadimir Putin making sure the population was well subjugated.  he made the statement the day the wall fell that it was the worst day of the Soviet Union.   the top echelon of the military and security forces simply exchanged their military uniforms for suits, and expropriated as many state owned factories and enterprises as they could.  Russian society is completely and utterly dysfunctional, having had the rug pulled out from under them, losing all of the former satellite states which were a source of material goods and labor for the motherland.  time for them to swim or sink on their own. if you get a chance, read the Gulag Archipelago which was written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Its funny, one of the Ukrainian guys I know told me a fair portion of those guys round people up were Ukranaian, you know be on the right side of the genocide/famine (which was far more widespread than Ukraine) and all that. How did he know? It was his grandfather doing it. Not really proud of that, but at the same time he likely wouldn't be around either. As for the Kulaks they were by definition a small portion of the population that had wealth and property from the old happy Tsarists times, you know when they owned serfs or derived their wealth from their labor. So yes the communists that sought to redistribute all that wealth went after them. I'm not defending it, the took their shit and murdered them, it happened and it sucked but as usual there is a bit more to every story. If the slaves in the south rose up and went after the former plantation owners who would be the bad guy? What I've learned over the years from these folks that I've known is that its never as simple as some modern day political cause celebre wants it to be.

Sending daughters off to universities in search of wealthy husbands is a worldwide phenomenon. One only need look at one of middle Tennessee’s more expensive schools to see that in action.

You can't vote your way out of socialism. You can replace SOME people in power to proclaim victory. But the population that voted for socialism is still around. They're still in the bureaucracies, media, leadership, etc. You either have to start from scratch on a blank piece of land (none left), like the US, or fight a civil war and apply genocide liberally.

They've lost the brightest people to communist purges a few decades prior, as well. Plus Stalin murdered a lot of educated and capable brass due to paranoia.

Like Japan? Italy? Germany? Mexico?

"The people West of us stand upright and have art and culture"

And who's laughing now?

Probably the countries west of Russia that have functional economies. lol

The Russians I worked with were a hell of a lot smarter than your average Indian or Chinaman.

That’s nice.  I think others can read your earlier statements well enough.  And follow the dots, along with your sudden attempts to declare victory by having an account for longer, then declaring me a troll...just like you claimed I declared you.  Only you actually said it.  I also never dehumanized anyone.  Did express my views that Russia was in the wrong, though.  As for you...I can read your statements.  Like below...
So, his great-grandparents were involved, he points to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and you...point to a Ukrainian you knew and say it’s a cause celebre.  Read “The Harvest of Sorrow“ too.  And “Hungry Ghosts”, which documents how Mao did the same thing.  You say you despise the old USSR, then try to vindicate Stalin and Russia for atrocities committed by them.  And bring up the Communist propaganda about the Kulaks.  They got “rich” within a decade before the Revolution, and most had a couple cows or five or six acres of land.  They weren’t slaveholders.  They weren’t landed gentry.  Just slightly less poor.  And Stalin happily killed them.

Careful, you are now a RT propoganda organ according to the derpsters.

rich kulaks? a small percentage of the population?  these were peasants with maybe a couple of cows, a couple of horses, chickens and so forth.  subsistence agriculture.  Stalin's plan was to seize Ukrainian farmland and go all out industrial agriculture on it.  the kulaks didn't want to join the collective farms so they had to be eliminated.  joining the collective farm meant you had to give up your land and livestock, and most likely meant a meager existence for the rest of your life as a laborer if you were lucky.  a lucky few some got jobs on the collective farm. a few were murdered, but most were deprived of food and starved to death,  the rest were sent to Siberia.  very very few ever returned.

An old saying is umom Rossiyu ne ponyat’.  Rough translation - you can’t use your brain to understand Russia.  It’s like trying to explain what love is to chair.

These threads are always a fun read.  Vodka, czars, mongols, zee Germans, more vodka, Putin, communists.  It’s even better when people are like “my cousin married a Russian chick” or “I sat on a plane next to a Russian once”.  You’re all full of shit.  I mean, I didn’t see many posts here that I’d disagree with on facts, but you still don’t get it.  And you won’t get it.  It’s impossible to explain Russia to anyone not born there.  To a great extent, this applies to Belarus and Ukraine as well.  No matter how much they try to differentiate themselves from Russians, they are way more alike than they’d like to admit.  A person from another country, any country, could move to Moscow, learn the language, the customs and live there for 20 years and they would only be scratching the surface of Russian psyche.  Or psychosis.  Whatever you call it.

By the definitions of the day they were "rich" they owned land, had "property" etc. Remember this is a few short years after the civil war. And realistically there were richer ones as well. Ukraine wasn't the only place it happened either. And I'd call getting starved to death murder, or sent to some gluag. Communism was all about pitting the guy with less against the guy with more, no matter how little that actually was. And all managed by some "party asshole" quite often a local who was happy to sell his people down the river so he and his had it better, thats how communism worked, join the party and you get taken care of, and its by invitation only. Thats the sad shitty history of communism.

The broader context was also that there was a potential revolt brewing against Stalin, and being the dick he was he figured take the food, and send it to the "loyal to him" parts of the USSR that were undergoing famine as well, win win for him. Ironically enough the areas that were actually in revolt fared far better than the ones that weren't. And there is also some of scholarly research in the west that calls into question the assertions that it was politically motivated. My personal opinion is that it likely was on some level, cuz well Stalin was a probably the worst dictator of the 20th century but the implementation was on some level local.

All platitudes of a romantic patriot. Slavs are not special, beyond characterization by an outsider, than any other ethnic group.

Russians suffer from their entire history of being battered spouses. This is what makes them Russians. There exists a minority who wish Russia to be the functional equivalent of European nations but 85% of their countrymen are too corrupt,lazy,suspicious and insecure to behave like Europeans,let alone treat their neighbors as do Europeans.

There is an old Russian story of how a poor villager finds a magic fish who grants him one wish. The villager ponders if he should ask for a thousand gold bars or a sailing ship to travel the world and other things until the fish tells him that whatever he wishes for,his neighbor will receive 2. The man says “OK then,poke out one of my eyes”

I wish,greatly,that more Russians were like Kasparov,Navalny,Yashin et al but it’s just unrealistic to think Russians as a whole can make themselves behave in a way that betrays their national character. Of course I have ethnic Russian friends but there is a huge,huge gulf between the portion of Russians that truly want to be integrated not just with us but with the West in general and the portion that just can’t shake being Russian.

Americans don’t tend to know a great deal about Russia in my experience but it’s too far away and the important things that shaped much of what they are happened so long ago that there is no interest and very few Americans are of Russian ancestry so there is no connection. I’m sure most have heard of people like Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great but don’t really get why they are terrible or great. This leads to mostly having an entirely Cold War understanding of Russians when it goes far deeper than that.

@Ironhandjohn - fantastic youtube rabbit hole thanks for posting!!!