Russia was ruled by tyrannical czars for centuries before Communism - does that mean the actions of Communist leaders like Stalin were really the czars' fault?
For how long can you blame the czars when they're no longer in power? And who does it serve?
It seems to me blaming the long gone czars mostly serves as a distraction from corruption in the successor government.
>For how long can you blame the czars when they're no longer in power?
As long as their power structures still remain you can continue to blame them. However in the case of Russia, the Soviet Union pretty much hit the reset button on power and the elites of the Russia were thrown out.
AFAICT (I'm not very well versed in South African history), the elites of SA are the same and are largely inheritors of the pre-apartheid power structures. To me, any "solution" would have to address the deficiencies of the power structures that were setup 70-80 years ago.
>As long as their power structures still remain you can continue to blame them.
This is the cognitive problem in a nutshell. If the power structures of the current government are the same as the old government, the problem lies with the current government.
If the new government does the exact same thing as the old government, the fact that the old government did it is not a defense
> This is the cognitive problem in a nutshell. If the power structures of the current government are the same as the old government, the problem lies with the current government.
Why? Because the current government didn't hit a Soviet-style reset button?
> Why? Because the current government didn't hit a Soviet-style reset button?
Ironic that Mandela was so loved because he chose not hit the Soviet-style button. IMO he should have used all the political capital he had gathered to make some difficult decisions (not a reset, but major changes). Unfortunately for South Africa, he (and every subsequent ANC leader) just coasted, and here we are.
It’s really both though. You blame the “czars” and you blame the revolutionaries that can’t seem to do a great job because they’re both part of the problem. Also I don’t know why you’re holding Russia up as a paragon, yes they had their brief heyday with the USSR but they’ve been in shambles every since.
Most functioning democracies slowly expanded voting rights until everyone could vote. At first only the aristocracy could vote, that was the norm, then you add nobles, rich people, land owners, then go down to soldiers, women and eventually every adult.
Going from no voting to every adult can vote is probably too much. Having elites create a parliament and make the foundation before full voting is how basically every well functioning modern democracy was formed.
Didn't Apartheid South Africa effectively have the exact same kind of limited franchise you're discussing?
IE, it didn't go from "no voting" to "every adult can vote". Millions of people voted in every single election from '48 onward.
There was a massive jump in voters in the first multiracial election of '94 (10+ million). But that's not the same as going from zero to full franchise.
I think the difference is that South Africa expanded the voting population such that the election results completely changed. It replaced the entire government in a single election and the old rulers haven't gotten any power since, that isn't what happened when other democracies expanded the voting population.
Not sure how it should have been done, the old rulers were associated with apartheid so of course the population would want to replace them, but totally replacing a government in a single election and starting over from basically scratch doesn't seem to lead to good outcomes.
I don't think there would have been any alternative. Given how overdue the change of government was, the political pressure to change and the need for a full change from white minority rule to black majority rule, I don't think there's any other politically and morally acceptable transition other than totally extending the franchise to everyone.
The years 1990-1994 could even be regarded as some type of unofficial transitionary government though.
To the credit of the '94 administration they did extend an olive branch to those existing pre-94 staff to remain/join their government. In fact FW De Clerk (president before Mandela) was Mandela's Vice President.
As a South African those early years of the ANC government still have a rosy tint as I still genuinely believe the ANC of that era (Mandela, maybe Mbeki to some degree) did try their best to move the country forward. The later Mbeki years and obviously JZ years are were things went backwards a few decades.
> As a South African those early years of the ANC government still have a rosy tint as I still genuinely believe the ANC of that era
I'll argue that Mandela and Mbeki gathered up all that goodwill and did exactly nothing with it. Zuma was more publicly corrupt, but policy-wise, I don't think there was any daylight between him and his predecessors.
Yeah I see the distinction you're making here. I believe this is the path Ian Smith advocated for Rhodesia. Wonder how effective it would have been.
I suppose the gold standard for smooth regime change in Southern Africa would have to be Botswana. Don't know enough about their history to understand how they got it right when it was so bloody for all their neighbours.
>I wish we could discuss things without zingers or memes.
If a zinger or meme effectively and accurately communicates the message, why not?
>Like what is your point here?
This is your way of avoiding actually addressing what the "zinger or meme" in this case communicates, which is that life in Zimbabwe is immeasurably worse across the board since Mugabe took power.
Japan has a long history of national government prior to the introduction of democracy. Even during the shogunate Japan had an elaborate national government with delegation of responsibility to elites. It’s worth remembering that the British “Parliament” arose from the king’s advisory body of nobles. The Meiji period saw further sophisticated administration and delegation of power to the imperial diet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Meiji_Japan.
By the time Japan became a democracy, the people were already accustomed to functional and orderly governance.
By the time Japan came into conflict with the USA, it was essentially a military dictatorship.
Afterwards it became a one-party democracy to an unusual extent. I am not sure what could or should be made of that, other than perhaps that one should be wary of general theories of political development.
> The Lower House, or House of Representatives was directly elected by all males who paid at least 15 yen in property taxes, effectively limiting the suffrage to 1.1 percent of the population.
That 1.1 percent was expanded over the years. Then after WW2 USA just needed to finalize the expansion and you got a well functioning modern democracy.
For a modern nation to function requires the efficient deployment of capital and technology. That is what ultimately drives up the quality of life, makes people happy and prosperous. It doesn't even require democracy in the political sense.
Incompetence and corruption are likely the enemies of such progress that are incredibly hard to root out. A lack of competition in politics is also a problem. Sure, the current mega party sucks, but who's going to do better?
I would think historical czar-dom does in fact play a significant role in explaining the state of Russia today. As it is, Putin very much appears to aspire to czar-dom, and it's not impossible to believe the Russian people will grant it to him.
I don't support blaming current woes on the past however, as it carries the implication there's nothing can be done to improve things now, which is almost never really the case.
"Putin is trying to be a czar, this is bad and Putin is bad"
Vs
"Putin is good, everything wrong with Russia is the fault of those perfidious czars! Citizens are reminded that any criticism of Putin is illegal czarist sentiment, and to report all czarist sentiment to Putin's secret police. They know where to find you."
When South Africans realized their public funds were being looted by the Gupta family, and the latter paid PR firm Bell Pottinger to come up with a campaign to blame everything on white people ... that starts looking a little more like the latter situation.
But you could argue that the ANC only gets away with blaming everything on white people because the narrative that the country was historically screwed up when it was run by them actually has some credibility to it.
Again, not defending that blame-culture at all, it's completely counter-productive.
I don't "blame" either! But I would expect the period of Mongol rule left its mark too, particularly in how it led to the rise of the czardom, though I'm way out of my depth there.
Putin is a nationalist dictator whose foreign policy seems to be driven by some combination of a persecution complex, an inferiority complex, and a Mafia-like need for "respect", and perhaps to distract from the domestic situation. I do not think there are any signs that resurrecting the Czarate is one of his motives; it is merely that they have resulted in something that resembles it (or the Soviet Union without the nominal socialist theory, for that matter.) One might as well compare him to a Byzantine emperor or a shogun.
I feel like you chose the wrong example, because the communists did manage to transform Russia into a modern state very quickly (I don't propose to ignore Stalin's atrocities), whereas South Africa doesn't seem to have a plan.
Clearly the mean UV exposure of my ancestors dominates my disposition towards others.
If I spend more time in the sun do I become less white, and therefore a more acceptable, kinder, and all together better human?
I mean, I am usually a little happier if I remember to get some sun. Maybe I won't find an equatorial people to oppress today, that's really a winter-time activity.
I am not OP (they seem to have been downvoted to oblivion) but a fascinating book I read recently on this topic was "The Invention of the White Race" by Theodore W. Allen.
The book traces the historical development of the concept of whiteness from early Britain, where the Irish were considered non-white as a means to "other" and impoverish them, to pre-revolution Haiti, where people of mixed race could attain certificates of Whiteness that would grant them the same rights and privileges as non-mixed French people.
Those are just two of the anecdotes I remember from the book. It's really worth a read if you're into the whole "race as a social construct" thing, since it digs into the mechanics of how that social construct was created.
Haven't read this book, though it's on my list now.
You can go back and find writing from the USA's so called Founding Fathers that makes quite clear most of them didn't view the Irish, Spanish, or Italians as white. Then if you look at the history of immigration waves in the US, you see a clear pattern where the definition of whiteness was expanded to groups previously discriminated against as a form of solidarity against the newly arriving group.
This is what all the rhetoric about being colorblind misses. Whiteness is not the same as other ethnicities, and policy that pretends it is will have problems as a result.
Intersting. Growing up in South Africa I vaguely remember Indian people being given "white" status. Didn't know that about the Irish who are pretty much the whitest people I can think of.
I'm not the author of that comment, but going by the HN credo that we should steelman (assume the most charitable interpretation of) their remark, "whiteness itself" has nothing to do with people's inherent genetic makeup, but with the creation of "whiteness" (and other modern day races) as a category. In other words, that a lot of problems started when people in the 15th-16th centuries developed philosophical, moral, and religious (and centuries later, scientific) frameworks under which racism could be formalized as a part of the political economy, justifying the horrors to come, such as genocide, chattel slavery, anti-miscegenation laws, lebensraum, apartheid, etc. Perhaps it's debatable as to whether philosophical racism is responsible for later atrocities, or if it was more of a post-hoc excuse, a way to resolve the cognitive dissonance resulting from humans continuing to treat great swathes of other human beings like scum even while our understanding of universal human rights developed in leaps and bounds.
In comparison to the Arab, Ottoman Empire, Chinese Empire, Japanese Empire, Ethiopian Empire, Aztec Empire etc.
Human history is one continuous tale of rise and fall of empires with colonisation, subjugation, slavery and exploitation of other people of all kinds of colors by people of all colors.
I'm sure the ~1.5 million white europeans captured and sold into slavery in North Africa, balkans and Middle East would also take exception to the narrow definition.
>Russia was ruled by tyrannical czars for centuries before Communism - does that mean the actions of Communist leaders like Stalin were really the czars' fault?
Absolutely yes, a thousand times. Maybe Nicky wasn't responsible for the colors Stalin picked for his office walls, but most of the important, nation-wide decisions were obviously affected by how (dismally) Nicky ran things.
>For how long can you blame the czars when they're no longer in power?
I'd say a very long time, probably centuries. I'm sure there's a PhD thesis or other publication somewhere estimating how long each economic/social policy impacted the country. Note that this isn't the same as saying "meh, we found it like this, let's not do anything".
>And who does it serve?
Anyone who's interested in learning from history and not repeating mistakes from the past?
>It seems to me blaming the long gone czars mostly serves as a distraction from corruption in the successor government.
It seems to me blaming the successor government mostly serves as a distraction from the very real, very recent despotism and absolutism of semi-medieval tsardom.
From a Russian history class long ago, we were taught that Russia has essentially had bad luck with their rulers _forever_, but they also typically have had strong/brutal centralized governments, it is all they know. It seems logical that would really affect the current state of things.
I think your claim is ridiculous. Please explain why stalin's purges in the 30s, the decision to occupy and install puppet governments in eastern europe, and the failure to reform the economy in the 80s (perestroika) was the fault of the tsars.
Please read my statement again, perhaps without vitriol this time:
>but most of the important, nation-wide decisions were obviously affected by how (dismally) Nicky ran things.
Observe the word most. Just as I was saying the tsars definitively were responsible for most (note the word carefully again) of the momentous decisions later, it should be painfully obvious that they weren't responsible for 100% of all actions forever after. This is ridiculously obvious in any non-insanely polarized debate, which unfortunately isn't always the case of HN.
Most is at least over 50% (I would say "most" implies 70-80%). Your statement as written implies that 50+% of the important decisions made during soviet times were influenced by the tsar's previous actions. That is (still) ridiculous.
For how long can you blame the czars when they're no longer in power? And who does it serve?
It seems to me blaming the long gone czars mostly serves as a distraction from corruption in the successor government.