I grew up in the Cold War (my father was in the CIA). Russians were considered brutish, non-creative, and untrustworthy.
Then, the Berlin Wall came down, and everything changed.
I started to see amazing creativity come from Russia. Music, technology, art, actors, dance, all kinds of stuff. I loved working with Russian engineers. They were some of the best techs I'd worked with. I have a lot of Russian music in my iTunes rotation. I've enjoyed a number of Russian shows, on Netflix. At one time, that would never have been the case.
It really seems as if the door has been slammed on that.
Most of the brightest ones have left the country, so I do wonder if it might result in being a net positive for the world, moving a million brightest people from a decaying autocracy into the functional countries with good management, potential investors and a culture of innovation.
Russian culture in Russia might be done for though, at least for a while.
>> Most of the brightest ones have left the country
I feel like that needs to be qualified? Maybe ages 20-40 and of a certain social-economic class can leave fairly easily, but it’s gotta be much harder to leave if you’re too young, too old, too poor, have too few connections, or have aged parents, young children, etc.
Well, that's what I mean, a million of the 20-40 age group of a certain socioeconomic class, with relevant skills, a lot of ambition and not many dependents. Those are the exact group to start new things and do a lot of good, and my point was that maybe the world is better off with them in the more productive countries vs even the pre-war Russia.
You’re conflating a group of pro-western enterprise software developers - with little to no adulthood responsibilities aside their work, due to their age - with a group of the brightest folks.
Software developers make up maybe a third of that wave, if that. There's also artists, scientists, teachers, journalists, political activists and all kinds of other folks that simply don't see the future in the country. A lot of them are families with kids, so it's often not the lack of responsibilities but a higher willingness to take the risk.
Political activists and journalists are hardly the brightest group of people either, so you’re just assigning the opposition group that you prefer to align with, with a token of “the brightest” because it makes you feel good about it. How about you look at the rest of the society who couldn’t or weren’t willing to leave the country and who still run projects in Russia despite the sanctions. Are they not the brightest because they work and associate their career within - let’s say for the sake of the argument - Rosatom? That’s just one hard science sector of the vast energy industry of the country, for starters.
There's lot of smart people left, that's no doubt, but there is an obvious filter that the ones left behind are on average less risk taking, more conservative, often older, often the ones with the national motto of "от нас ничего не зависит/there's nothing I can do", and the next google or the next scientific breakthrough is much more likely to come out of the young risk taking ones now living in a functional country and not from the aging engineers living in a dictatorship and working at a bureaucratic rosatom making "up to $720 a month" (actual number, I looked up their open engineering vacancies).
> but there is an obvious filter that the ones left behind are on average less risk taking
Where’s that clarity come from? The opposite could be argued as well: those who’ve left are seeking safety and safety isn’t associated with risk taking. There are fewer risks in leaving Russia than in staying in.
> breakthrough is much more likely to come out of the young risk taking ones now living in a functional country and not from the aging engineers living in a dictatorship and working at a bureaucratic rosatom making "up to $720 a month" (actual number, I looked up their open engineering vacancies).
Here, you did it again: “those who work at <this company> are less likely to make a breakthrough, because I don’t align with them, and therefore I assume that only aging engineers uncapable of breakthroughs would consider staying and working there. Look, even salaries prove that they are less likely to have it.”
>Where’s that clarity come from? The opposite could be argued as well: those who’ve left are seeking safety and safety isn’t associated with risk taking. There are fewer risks in leaving Russia than in stayin in.
It's not about safety, it's about agency. Because action > inaction. Staying put does not require anything, just making excuses why nothing can be done to either change things or move.
The ones that stayed and are trying to change things might be the brightest and bravest of all, but they are few and might not even survive that decision. Most other ones simply lack any agency and float down towards some not very bright future they have no control over, making excuses why nothing can be done and hoping to lay low and "авось пронесет". Those are less likely to accomplish much.
It’s the second time you’re deliberately avoiding answering where else is your clarity about the second group come from, except from your imagining things.
> It's not about safety, it's about agency. Because action > inaction. Staying put does not require anything, just making excuses why nothing can be done to either change things or move.
When a person has an option to leave but decides otherwise, they exercise their agency and the action is described as a conscious decision based on an act of volition. You are free to attribute it to - as you said - “making excuses” or “actually lacking agency”, but that would be the same biased simplification of reality that you’ve already done a few times in other comments.
I did not IQ test the million people on the border and I have no objective way to evaluate and compare the brightness of the people that have left vs the rosatom engineers, if that's what you're asking for.
"Biased simplification of reality" sounds like a description of essentially any opinion, we are all biased and reality is too complex to argue about without simplifications, so that's not a great argument. Anything outside of a few math formulas is a "biased simplification of reality".
I'm curious, what exactly are you arguing for? Do you really think that a loss of that million is insignificant and that the roskosmos/rosatom/rostech/etc will accomplish more than all the people that have left? If so, could you explain why you think that?
> we are all biased and reality is too complex to argue about without simplifications, so that's not a great argument.
However it's a good argument for distinguishing between simplifications introduced by feelings and the ones introduced by omission while trying impartial judgement, as these simplification premises would have different value to your listeners.
> Do you really think that a loss of that million is insignificant and that the roskosmos/rosatom/rostech/etc will accomplish more than all the people that have left? If so, could you explain why you think that?
We must first establish and agree on the dimension by which you're willing to evaluate that significance. What would be a unit of measurement of the significance that you're mentioning in your comments?
>However it's a good argument for distinguishing between simplifications introduced by feelings
It's not based on my feelings but on the personal experience and some research I did. All the smartest people I personally know and worked with have left the country. I also looked up the top 10 AI researchers at Yandex, and out of the ten I looked at only one was is still in Russia, that's a 90% loss for the top talent in the hottest industry at the (arguably) most innovative company in the country.
>We must first establish and agree on the dimension by which you're willing to evaluate that significance
Sure thing, let's take two, scientists and entrepreneurs as their accomplishments are the easiest to quantify. The unit of measurement would be the influential papers written for scientists (measured by the number of citations) and for the entrepreneurs the market cap of the companies they started, obviously both of those are not perfect metrics but they generally track with the value created.
Do you think the million people like the "MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates" that have left the country that the other guys are mentioning will do better on those dimensions versus the ones staying at rosatom/roskosmos/etc?
> It's not based on my feelings
> All the smartest people I personally know
> I also looked up the top 10 AI researchers at Yandex
> in the hottest industry at the (arguably) most innovative company in the country.
All of that is actually based on your feelings that (1) the people you know are smart enough to be qualified and counted among the brightest, (2) the AI software research and the researchers you personally know are more relevant to the points you make, than other research and the researchers you haven't met in other industries that Russia is excelling in.
> Sure thing, let's take two, scientists and entrepreneurs as their accomplishments are the easiest to quantify. The unit of measurement would be the influential papers written for scientists (measured by the number of citations) and for the entrepreneurs the market cap of the companies they started.
I disagree with the market cap metric because it's useless to compare without other constraints on the kind of businesses we're allowed to compare directly. For starters, a hypothetical company involved in the derivatives market may easily be evaluated higher than a profitable energy-producing company purely because of a higher speculative capacity of the former, since the markets allow for derivatives to exist as assets in the books. I disagree with that premise purely on a basis of the 2008 crisis that showed that those had never been assets manifested in reality.
I disagree with the influential papers' citation count too, because that measure would be subject to interpretation of influence. Are AI papers influential? Are all AI papers influential? You could get thousands of meaningless citations for a parroting AI architecture for every single meaningful citation of Perelman's proof of the Poincare conjecture. Which one of those would you value as more influential? I assume no one could seriously suggest that citations for AI software papers would have the same nominal value as citations of the fundamental proofs in mathematics or physics.
> Do you think the million people like the "MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates" that have left the country that the other guys are mentioning will do better on those dimensions versus the ones staying at rosatom/roskosmos/etc?
You are conflating two groups again: the million people left aren't all the kind of "MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates". Not all of them are the Techies in the first place. The right question to ask would be if I think that those who left have better chances to excel at science and business (regardless of their qualifications) than those who stayed. My answer to that question is no, I don't think so, because there's no hard evidence for that. There only is a hint that they might be better off financially if they dedicate their lives to making money in the industries that are known for generating loads of cash, like finance and tech. That's about it. Switch the roles and try comparing artists and less technical folks in their respective places at home and abroad, and the odds are suddenly opposite.
Alright, if we're talking fundamental research, what about the number of the Fields medal recipients? I feel safe taking that bet, in the last 30 years for one Perelman there's 6 russian-born mathematicians that received it who are in the US or Europe.
I can disagree and question everything all day too, but you gotta nut up or shut up, pick an objective metric and I'll take a bet on it. Gdp, citations, number of patents, number of users of the product, number of Nobel prizes, anything measurable that would work for you? Literally anything measurable not based on your feelings.
How many emigrations have you done? Because if the answer is "zero" I'm not sure your opinion counts.
Taking your entire life, your family, kids, urgently moving to another country at a time when your bank card don't work internationally, you can't reliably wire money out, and there are visa restriction placed on you even when you have a visa. Then learning how to live in a different country, where you understand nothing: from how to pay taxes to using their version of self-checkout kiosks.
Emigration is the ultimate risk-taking.
I now have friends who have a position ready for them in the US, in business and academia, yet they were put on administrative check and have spent almost a year just waiting for their visa. They put most people with technical education on this check.
People who left the country are not just software developers. We have seen the exodus of musicians, scientists etc, which after some very painful decision process just packed their things and took next flight anywhere. Many took their families.
> As a MSU CS alumni I can tell you, it is pretty clear the brighter, the more likely to leave.
How does your alumni status’ anecdotal evidence bring clarity on the matter of the predominant intellectual capacity of those who’re leaving Russia? Aren’t there any other MSU graduates who consider themselves as bright as your CS peers and yourself, and who are staying in? What’s the respective left/stayed ratio among them?
I can add one more data point to it as MIPT graduate. Number of people among MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates I know personally who emigrated in the past 12 months is remarkable. It’s somewhat similar to early 1990s when whole labs were relocating to the West.
Basically everyone (that would be 10+ people) I know who was still staying back left after Russia unleashed full scale war with the exception of the ones that have to care for very old relatives. There are two people who stayed for other reasons, and they aren't brighter than average peers.
Prior to the war maybe slightly under 50% stayed. Now it is under 10%.
> Prior to the war maybe slightly under 50% stayed. Now it is under 10%.
Just to clarify your point, are you suggesting that only 10% of MSU gradutes are staying in Russia after receiving their respective degrees, or are these the numbers among specific people with specific degrees you know personally?
What does being pro- or anti-West has to do with the topic? There are many Russian expats in Germany who openly manifest their support for Putin's war on the streets of Berlin. You can be anti-Western and at the same time pragmatically leave Russia to avoid draft and being killed for basically no reason.
That’s a fair point. I was trying to exemplify the conflation point between two groups with the assigned traits (“the brightest” vs “rest of them”) with bringing my own selection of people everyone would clearly disagree with to be a valid representation.
In many ways, Russian culture has been preserved better outside of Russia than inside. Russians have had a tendency over last few hundred years to absorb other cultures rapidly, thus changing their own. French, Italian, English, now American. Watching Russian TV now by someone who left in the 1990s is quite strange because almost every other word is taken from English, while a different word was used in Russian 30 years ago.
The preservation of rural everyday culture, dress and habits is a nice thing, but Russians in general are an urbanized nation whose culture is in books, music sheets and moving pictures.
I doubt that Latin American Old Believers produce, or even retain, much of these.
Russian food, language, and religion are better preserved by Russian communities outside Russia. Immigrants that left in 1990s as adults speak purer Russian than TV news people.
“Preserved” in the original state, like in museum - yes. Russian communities outside Russia rarely contributed anything new to it. Russian culture actively developed in last 30 years, against all odds and efforts of the state, which coincidentally wanted to freeze it or roll back in time too.
Russian language indeed borrowed a few words, but this is not a bad thing, it’s a common reflection of Zeitgeist that happened to the language before.
Russians outside Russia for the last 100 years have contributed literature, music, movies, and helped to introduce Russian cultural aspects to the West. In the past 30 years this only accelerated. Even before this war there were huge numbers of Russian intellectuals, artists, etc living in the West, but contributing to Russian culture.
I’ve been reading a lot of books in Russian, watched lots of movies and attended a lot of contemporary art exhibitions in Moscow and St.Petersburg. I’m struggling to find any traces of such contribution of emigrant communities in the last 30 years (well, maybe Akunin or Sorokin?). There are a few names from Soviet times, but they represent a fraction of what’s been happening and emigrants usually reflect on the past.
It is true that in the last 30 Russia has been absorbing American, particularly African American culture as far as music, movies, and dress are concerned. Russian culture in Russia is in decline generally.
As Russia opened more to the world, it indeed started absorbing elements of many other cultures (I do not know, why you focus on African American culture here and call its influence a decline - it sounds racist). However it does not mean it lost its unique identity and did not develop over the time. Probably, as an emigrant you just missed it and now so disconnected from the motherland that you have no idea what's actually going on there. It's much bigger than what you can find in TV news (who watches TV nowadays?!) or on a few YouTube blogs. How many contemporary Russian artists or writers do you know? What do you know about the modern internet culture of Russians, which is bigger than everything else?
Do you know what modern Russians eat and where they go for a date? Are you familiar with TV ads that were so popular that they found their way into the language? Do you know what's going on on the roads and what part of life of modern Russian is dedicated to driving a car and everything around it? What do you know about national theatrical awards and have you ever seen any winning performance?
Yeah one of the two is constantly brutalising its neighbours, while the other is busy building tech and defending smaller, but freedom loving, countries. Our grandparents told us stories about the russian army that many found hard to believe. And here we are proven that they were right all along.
The US has been proven to meddle in democratic elections in every single continent, except Africa I think, at this point. But meddling in Africa will surely be made public at one point or another.
Actually, Ukraine was forcing an ethnic, language and religious cleansing on its people in the two regions that petitioned for sovereignty. Read about this several years ago before all this stuff blew up and propaganda made stuff murky. Their current leader was put in place by a coup. The old regime was corrupt but that doesn't mean the new one is better. Ukrain was already in a civil war.
By that standard, the UK, Spain and France are also in civil wars.
IMHO, once military forces reach rough parity, civil wars should never be a justification for external involvement, because it always ends badly.
Internal problems need internal solutions.
If Russia and NATO had both stayed out of Ukraine, it would have been better for all Ukrainians. But we zoomed past the Rubicon on that when Crimea was invaded with actual Russian troops.
“By that standard, the UK, Spain and France are also in civil wars.”
Nice try. How do these compare at all to the Ukraine Donbas conflict? During the span of 2014-2022, the war in Ukraine (pre Russian invasion) between Ukraine and Donbas region resulted in the following:
wtf, this is just a lie. Have your looked at actual casualty numbers in 2016-2021?
i.e after the initial bloodbath that Russians started in 2014 and that finished in 2015.
it's been around 100 killed per year (both civilians and army) for 5 years before the current war - still 100 more than should be, of course, but it's less than the number of DAILY casualties since February 2022.
Also, what you call a "Ukrainian Donbass conflict" is called a Russian military aggression, if you're not a pro-putin shill
Well, I'm basing my next statement on a statement from an ex military individual from Crimea, but he said that the Crimea business was a backend deal and that the military in Crimea was explicitly ordered to not engage under any circumstance. The Crimea government had no desire to stand. I do agree that Russia and Nato should keep their noses out, but then I also think so should we. Russia being bad guys doesn't make Ukraine good is the point I was trying to make.
> Read about this several years ago before all this stuff blew up and propaganda made stuff murky.
No you didn’t, since the allegation is directed at the post-Maidan Ukrainian government and there has been no time since that government existed that it has not been the target of intense Russian propaganda (and, also, war, the Russo-Ukrainian war having been launched by Russia as a direct and immediate response to the Maidan Revolution.)
Multiple actors can be horrible at the same time. The US is pretty horrible when it invades other countries, so is Russia.
As far as I know, Ukraine never had a military big enough to actually do any invasion of other countries, but if Ukraine was the size of the US with the military of the US, I wouldn't bet on them not being horrible when invading other countries.
Multiple actors can be horrible (<0 ethics), but that doesn't mean that their absolute ethics value is irrelevant, or their relative horribleness to others.
Russia is systematically deporting Ukrainian children to Russia and integrating them into Russian families as a matter of state policy.
They're also indiscriminately bombing civilian targets weekly.
Even during the worst days of Fallujah, the US and UK didn't pull back and just arbitrarily pound the city to dust with standoff munitions out of spite.
Ukraine inherited a substantial amount of Soviet materiel after the collapse of the USSR, as well as the personnel trained in its use, however this quickly deteriorated as the support industrial base was in tatters (in Ukraine and Russia).
But in the early 90s they absolutely could have made a very credible invasion against most of their neighbors. [0,1]
Especially, say, the Cobasna ammunition depot in Moldova that's right on their border with up to 20,000 tons of Soviet munitions. [2]
> defending smaller, but freedom loving, countries
Lol.
> Our grandparents told us stories about the russian army that many found hard to believe. And here we are proven that they were right all along.
This is true for any military power, read stories about areas under occupation from "freedom loving" or "non-freedom loving" (?) military groups, and you'll find it is equally horrible no matter what country the groups are from.
Obviously unfortunate, but tiny, isolated and unintended incidents. Handful of victims. Widely condemned by the society. Meanwhile, Russia is bombing countries and killing millions as a strategy of conquest, while most Russian are clapping approvingly.
I'm not sure if "killing millions" is on purpose a exaggeration or not, but again, Russia is not alone in doing killing and bombing as a strategy (civilians be damned), the US is very familiar with that strategy. Do you think the initial night raid on Iraq was only targeting military targets? They were dropping random bombs on Baghdad. Multiple campaigns of Vietnam were just dropping a ton of bombs all over the country, no matter who it hit (Look up "Christmas bombings").
And lastly, don't forget about the only nuclear bombs that have been dropped have been dropped by the US military. That was indiscriminate killing at a scale never seen before, or since.
Look, Russia is horrible, the invasion is super fucked up, I wish they weren't do that and it'll take a long time before I'll ever forget about the horribleness that Russia put others through, as I've personally helped people being received from Ukraine into the country where I currently live. But that doesn't mean other military powers aren't as horrible as Russia, all of them are, it's their purpose so that's what they do.
Oh, since you had to go all the way to the Second World War to find some arguments, here in Eastern Europe we remember too. We remember the grandparents gone to Siberia never to return. The hunger. The Red Army atrocities. The Nomenklatura they left behind. The cleansing of anybody with the "wrong" past or connections. The tinpot dictators they propped up. The “wonders” of communism - more hunger. Chernobyl and atomic war rhetoric. Paying with blood to get rid of them in the 90s. The corruption they left behind. Then Georgia. Polonium tea. Novichok. MH17. Syria. Ukraine.
No, millions is not an exaggeration. It’s an understatement. The only thing we reproach the USA: that they didn’t intervene. They were no angels, but there is no comparison. They are not the same and any attempt to muddle the waters and make them all seem the same is a desperate strategy of a falling imperialist power to throw the blame around. But we are immune to this, we grew up with the KGB monitoring jokes and pillow talk. We know this dirty game and here in Eastern Europe your tricks don’t work anymore. We have eyes to see and we know who are the good guys making the unfortunate occasional mistake and who are the pure evil ones.
The fact that most of Latin America was or is under non-democratic, rightwing governments is unfortunately not tiny, not isolated, totally intentional, with lots of victims and ignored by society.
I think the problem is more along the lines of which particular Russians the Russian state allows to be considered ... and less changes in the individuals, either on the sending or receiving end of considerations.
Correlation is not causation. Russia’s political decisions have a great influence on both geopolitics AND the decisions of individual Russians on whether they stay in the country.
90ss Russia I grew up in wasn't pretty, it was indeed dangerous. But still less dangerous than current Russia. It was free, full of hopes, developing.
By 00ss we got to much better life.
Last 10 years, while regime got worse and worse, people started to do interesting and succesfull projects in many areas. It was not just copy west as before, something unique started to happened.
So yes, USSR before it's fall was stagnant, hopeless swamp of misery. And it's gravitating to the same direction now.
Last quarter:
-45% oil and gas revenue.
$29 Billion deficit.
Ruble losing ~1/3 its value.
GDP is still doing somewhat fine with that booming war economy. I guess all
those white ladas have to be build somewhere.
You can vote yourself into authoritarianism, but you cannot vote yourself out. And when that authoritarian you love so much makes a major blunder, invading Europe for example, he takes everyone with him, and that's by design.
Russia has become totalitarian, not just authoritarian. That’s an important distinction, totalitarian societies have much less capacity for independent action.
Romania was totalitarian. Ceausescu was a bloodthirsty dictator. Bucharest was wormed through with underground tunnels that the Securitate would use to move around. He'd murder political opponents by summoning them to a waiting room with a radiation source, giving them cancer and then letting them leave. He was overthrown only after he massacred a ton of students, mowing them down with machine gun fire during a protest.
Usually you can't realistically vote the dictator out long before they invade somebody. For example Łukaszenko in Belarus made it impossible to vote him out in 90s already. Putin in early 00s.
Russians and Belarusians made their mistakes back then. Now it's just a consequence of not fighting for their democracy strongly enough when it was still possible.
This is the thing that kills democracy - it is taken away from you very slowly, step by step, and at any given moment it looks like it's not a big deal. And then when it's a big deal - you realize it doesn't matter what people think. You can't change anything.
In my country (Poland) the fight is still going on, but I'm not optimistic.
On the contrary this war is Putin's multiyear bet on Russia's useful idiots in the West.
US Republicans overwhelmingly supported US military aid to Ukraine in the beginning of the war. However Tucker Carlson and other populists spend the next 12 months lowering that support to less than 40%.
The only reason Russia started this war is because they believed their useful idiots in the West will save them. They are yet to be proved wrong.
Enough to defend. Not enough to win decisively. Timing matters. If EU and USA provided the help that they did but in the first 6 months - Ukraine would have already won. But the help is drip-fed to Ukraine, supposedly to "not escalate". The result is that the war that could be already over is dragging on, and eventually people will stop helping for one reason or another.
If we want a quick win for Ukraine we should send weapons much quicker and without silly distinctions like (offensive vs defensive weapons in 2022 or like long vs short range missiles now).
It's like instead of curing people with antibiotics in 2 weeks you split the pills into 1/64th parts and cured them for 1 year. You're not really curing them - you're growing antibiotic-resistant bacteria at that point.
A quick win would mean Russia would hold on to a lot of military resources. By providing Ukraine just enough to deny Russia any wins, and Russia stupid enough to not pull out, they are basically draining Russia to death.
Right now Russia is sending T-54's to the battlefield. Their 'storm the front' tactics is killing their soldiers at a crazy rate.
Now this is the military standpoint, there is also a humanitarian side. Now on the humanitarian side, I agree a quick win would be better and save a lot of lives. I'm a proponent for NATO to control the skies, at least West from the Dnipro river.
But claiming it's a military failure on the Western side is just plain wrong. This right now is NATO's ideal military scenario.
Russia has nukes, it doesn't matter how much we drain its military, it can just freeze the war, go back and rebuild. Let's say it takes 10 years. It's not solving the issue, just pushing it back to reappear later.
On the other hand a decisive win for Ukraine followed by western-integration success story there - would directly contradict Putin's core internal justification for keeping his power (west is lying ,democracy is bullshit, ruskie people are different and if we try democracy it would just be 90s again). If Ukrainians have democracy and are more successful than Russians (and Russians would know - they have families and travel) - this whole system (not only Putin - but all his FSB friends, oligarchs, orthodox church, state media etc) - break down.
Remember that they are constantly telling their people that Ukraine doesn't exist, Ukrainians are just Russians brainwashed into believing "western lies". If these western lies WORK - it's the end of putin & company.
This is the most likely road to a democratic, constructive Russia. Such Russia would be a massive boon for EU and NATO, both Russia and its neighbors wouldn't need to waste billions of dollars on weapons. And of course it would be a massive improvement for Russians. Actual rule of law. Local self-government with reinvestment of oil money into infrastructure & education. The possibilities are endless. But it would require Russia to go through the imperial cycle to its conclusion - decisively losing a colonial war, realizing we're the bad guys, dealing with the history, etc. You need the defeat for that.
If we keep Russia alive we're making this very hard. Much more likely it will become a big North Korea.
Why would a quick win of Ukraine suddenly change the political landscape in Russia? Russians don't protest now, so why would they suddenly start doing that?
However, a weak Russia cannot keep regions that want to break away. Russia as we know it now is not going to exist anymore. Not because they would suddenly overthrow the current government (which they won't). But because plenty of 'friendly' neighbor states might cut connections, and controlled regions might see a brighter future on their own. They are not going to nuke them because of this.
Russia turning into a new North Korea is unfortunately almost a given right now, since the Russian public doesn't seem motivated to protest and demand another government.
There's not many regions in Russia that would really break away.
If we speak about regions with russian majority then it's unlikely because despite Russia being very big russian ethnicity culturally is quite uniform.
And as for other ethnicities then for most of them it's not economically or politically viable to separate: either their country will become enclaves surrounded by large mass of russian territory or will occupy territory with harsh environment where it would be hard even in the long run to establish sustainable modern economy without tight economical integration with russian territories.
So if we speak about regions with reasonable potential to break away then they are republics in Northern Caucasus and maybe Tyva.
And that not very much.
I think so as well. All the ones who really wanted to already have. Most likely Russia will withdraw with Crimea and become a Chinese vassal state because they ruined any good will they had in the rest of the world.
Quick win allows Ukraine to integrate with the west (EU and hopefully NATO) and be a success story. The whole "social contract" in Russia is based on the assumption that "ruskie" people (which they say includes Belarusians and Ukrainians) can't prosper in a democracy. That you need dictatorship. Anything else is a western lie that lead to a "failed state" (the favorite russian name for Ukraine) and 90s-like situation.
Ukrainians have families in Russia and vice-versa. They travel, talk, watch the same videos, etc. Currently there's censorship, but it won't go on forever, it won't block everything. People knew they can't call it a war but it was a war. Propaganda can't lie about everything all of the time.
If Ukrainians have a successful democracy, if Russians migrate to work in Ukraine and not the other way around - that would be the ultimate blow to the core of the russian social contract.
Imagine if Mexico turned 100% communist and became obviously richer than USA in 5 years. So rich that Americans migrated there in millions. What would it do to Republicans in USA?
This is BTW the real reason Putin invaded Ukraine - because it started on this road. And that was the ultimate threat to Russian authocrats.
That's why Russia will try to prolong the war, freeze and unfreeze it, threat Ukraine to scare the foreign investors and EU countries, etc. This is why they target cities and infrastructure even more than the army. As long as people in Russia are wealthier than in Ukraine and Belarus - Putin's fine.
It's often claimed that US policy is to take advantage of the war to grind down Russian military capability, and that the USA will fight to the last Ukrainian.
I must say, I find the reluctance to supply missiles that could be used to hit targets inside Russia seems to support that view. I mean, it's not as if Russia is hitting targets inside Ukraine, is it? /s
It's completely normal in war to attempt to disrupt enemy operations by targeting logistics behind enemy lines; which in this case is the border between Ukraine and Russia. Western vetoes on that activity, supposedly with the aim of "not escalating", look very cynical.
The Kerch Strait Bridge is seen by Ukrainians as a gross national insult; its destruction would be a huge morale booster for Ukraine.
I don't know how much reliance Russian forces in Crimea place on the bridge. It seems rather fragile to rely on that bridge to supply the entire peninsular. Crimea can be resupplied by sea; it has several ports, including a huge one at Sevastopol.
However Crimea lacks its own water supply; Crimean water supplies come by pipeline from the Dniepro. My guess is that Ukraine would love to control that pipeline.
Rail >> sea. Especially given that Russia doesn't have full sea control outside of Sevastopol, at least not enough so as to guarantee continuous cargo transport.
Or if they deploy their fleet regularly outside of the harbor... well, we saw how that last went when atmospheric conditions aligned against them.
My understanding is that the Dniepro to Crimea water canal was one of the reasons for the invasion. After Ukraine cut off water supply after Russia invaded Crimea (you could see the canal dried up on Google Maps satellite), they were having to spend $$$ to ensure the peninsula had enough fresh water.
Which should already be in Ukrainian artillery range from the opposite bank, but I imagine it's hard to stop a gravity fed canal from flowing with artillery...
The Sec of Defense has said this several times. The primary goal is to degrade Russia’s war fighting capability so that it is no longer a threat to its other neighbors.
> The US is free to do whatever it likes, but Europe won't accept a Russian-ruled Ukraine.
Won't accept in the sense they will continue with some sanctions indefinitely (significantly watered down by multiple parties) or in the sense that they will significantly and rapidly expand their production of ammunition and armored vehicles in order to fully sustain the Ukrainian military? Because if Biden loses they will need to have the production running in less than two years and I'm not sure they are _really_ prepared to invest the necessary resources.
We know for a fact that Putin thought it will take less than a month. There were russian propaganda articles posted russian state media accidently that celebrated the "succesfull take-over of whole Ukraine" stating that it only lasted few days.
So yes - it was a blunder.
And yes - they are counting on useful idiots in the west now, but that wasn't the plan, it's russians trying to save whatever they can after that initial blunder. You can know that by looking at how long it took for russian propaganda targeting the west to catch up after the start of the invasion in 2022. Usually they prepare the western audiences. This time they didn't bothered because it was supposed to be a quick thing and it was secret even for many russians in the government.
Also - useful idiots are in many countries, not just in USA. EU is hugely important in this war, especially Germany, and they were ruled by useful russian idiots for last 30 years. I'm not sure they stopped being them even now.
> The only reason Russia started this war is because they believed their useful idiots in the West will save them
Putin was planning on the useful idiot in the oval office up unto the point he got replaced. Had Trump remained in office Ukraine would be a vassal state now.
> On the contrary this war is Putin's multiyear bet on Russia's useful idiots in the West.
It's not even that complicated. His bet was that the West would respond the same as we did with Georgia, Chechenya, and the Donbas/Crimean invasion of 2014.
It was 'safe' to assume that the West would react the same with a complete invasion of Ukraine. Seems like not.
If Putin was smart, he would have gracefully pulled out of this. But seems like he much rather want to turn his country into a new North Korea.
Russia killed a lot more than just its tech industry. While the real impact of this won’t show up for 20 years the impact will be severe.
I’m pretty sure Russia will try very hard to attract foreign labor and immigration in the next years to fill some of the gaps that the country has to fill now.
their treatment of their existing ethnic minorities will make that fairly difficult. the obvious immigrants for them to take would be refugees from the middle east, but I doubt many of them will want to go to Russia.
The obvious source of immigrants are the CIS countries, that's where 90%+ of the current immigration comes from. Also in the past it had no problem attracting millions of immigrants as long as the currency exchange was favorable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Russia
Low skilled labor is never going to be a problem while Russia maintains good relationships with Central Asian dictators. Before pandemic Russia had more than 2 million immigrants from that region, all sending money home — it is a major source of cash for those countries. Russian society is racist, but not to the extent when it will make the life of those immigrants unbearable.
Why do you say the real impact will take 20 years to appear? I’d say it will be even less, but the market and salaries for IT will grow higher as the brain drain intensifies.
If this abomination of a war will continue for a few more years, they (I cannot say “we” anymore, even though I’m Russian), they will have to resort to bona fide gulags to maintain their workforce. This is how it has happened before.
> I’m pretty sure Russia will try very hard to attract foreign labor and immigration in the next years to fill some of the gaps that the country has to fill now.
While Russia's reputation is in shatters in the west, I'm not sure if this is true for India, China, Pakistan and other countries. Also Russia's Wagner troupes are currently kicking out European ones in Africa, so I wouldn't be surprised if the reputation of Russia will be good enough for immigration in Africa either. This might very well be a solvable problem for Russia if they really want to.
Tbf, it’s not welcoming for everyone. The issue you pointed out is of little to no importance for educated people. For uneducated - yes, but mostly in “the center”. If you understand russian names, you may see yourself in TFA that most of those interviewed aren’t even of slavic origin, at least by father (neither am I, if that’s important for some reason).
The greatest Russian writer ever was black, Alexander Pushkin. Further the Russians tend to sympathise with subjects of racism as they for the most parts of the previous centuries were subjected to racism by countries to the west of them.
Is this a joke in Russia, i.e. people referring to him as black in order to lessen the view of Russia's outlook to foreigners? I've never heard people refer to Pushkin as being black (and his parents indeed aren't), besides his great grandfather.
In America it seems to have more to do with culture than ancestry. I would bet that there are lots of people that think of themselves as white whose ancestors came over on slavers ships.
Of course if you could trace ancestry back far enough we are all black.
Oh, the great old anti-imperialism and victimhood of r-country. This story flies much better with people not exposed to russian language and prevalence of ethnic slur in it.
Yeah, because they talk about racial identity, not just ancestry.
Is there any evidence that Pushkin identified as black, rather than being selected as the historical “black friend” to dismiss criticism of a modern state that is actively sponsoring global white supremacy?
Yup, and so am I. I'm also a Viking, when it suits me (I look more like a Viking although it's much further back in my ancestry than my Native American great grandfather. I get to be a French Gaulois and a Romney Gypsy too. The real question is how can I profit by what I identify as...
Nigeria and Ethiopia are both brimming with tech workers that are happy to relocate for money and better prospects. Whether a post-war Russia can offer either remains to be seen.
Russia's attractivity to foreign workers depends the availability of convertible money (sending money out of Russia is currently probably a bit of a problem and will stay so for a long time) and their security (which is probably not a given, with the rise of fascist state the security of foreign workers will not be the highest item on the list). So while everyone likes oil money, not many people will be likely to immigrate to Russia for that.
2/3 of world's population won't have any issue converting currency to yuan if BRICS decide to use it for mutual commerce (though I doubt a WW3 won't happen before this happens).
Russian Federation as a sovereign state is barely 32 years old. You are talking about some impact being visible in 20 years, but that is an impossibly long planning period for RF.
What's the incentive for a person in tech to be a FSB asset? FSB has no money.
They'd often go to school and try to recruit students who excel in math and computer science. But they'd never be able to match the salary and conditions of any tech startup.
The primary way hackers and developers end up in their hands is when they go blackhat and get arrested. Then FSB can keep you free as long as they cooperate. Still very different from a frontend developer working for Meta.
I could understand the point of them attacking your family but I haven't heard of any cases like this in Russia.
It's only mentioned briefly but a large percentage of emigres ended up in the same place, Cyprus. My wife's Russian dev team all slipped away to Cyprus. Cyprus was once very cozy with Russia and pitched itself as a vacation spot for Russian tourists. It cost them a lot to sign on to sanctions but they found a silver lining by acquiring a whole tech sector almost for free.
Cyprus is not a cheap place to live. Some people went there, but many more ended up in Georgia, Armenia, Serbia, Montenegro, Turkey and Kazakhstan. Why there? Well, these are the countries which let Russian citizens stay...
There never was any real high tech industry. Everything good was done in gulags which my Russian schoolbook called "Nauki Gorods" ie science towns. Everything else was substandard garbage.
However under harsh military rule labor camps work well to produce high tech. German V2-rockets and Curta calculators prove that. But there is time limit for that. You will run out of people.
Very much so. But there was hierarchy. Top scientist had all the freedoms.
You can clearly see in the Netflix-movie that cosmonauts were living in a creepy military camp, while american astronauts drove home to their family after hard day of space flying.
Well... first cosmonaut candidates (and many after that) were military pilots. So no wonder that they lived in military camp.
Also about appointing first cosmonaut by looks is not something strange. After all strict selections there's almost no difference among final candidates in health condition, skills or cognitive abilities. They are all as healthy as human can be and quite smart and trained. So final pick by these criterias would be pretty random anyway (even now for modern candidates it still is).
And given that sending first human in space was a big deal about political prestige it's no wonder that it was made by the looks of candidates.
I'm one of those Russian engineers that fled, and I'm very grateful to my multinational employer for helping me with the relocation. I wanted to leave Putin's dominion since my freshman year, but life kept getting in the way until the last moment.
If we open Human Right Declaration, Articles 2, 6, 7, 10, 18, 19, 20, 21, 26 at least are not available to anyone in Russia, including young professionals.
You forgot to mention amortization of IP costs and net value intangibles. Basically, you have all the same rights like in all other countries. Plus an itch to complain about Russia. When you are done, check the list of countries with the death penalty and intercession rates, for a meaningful view of what truly affects everyday life.
Both cities have a lot of affluent people with an income much larger that the country's average and access to multiple source of news and information. It could be my bubble, but my friends are heavily opposed. Most of them and myself have left the country. Some weren't able to (depends heavily on age and their family situation).
Yes, there are some younger professionals who for some reason are OK with the war. Stopped talking to them completely.
> with three-quarters of Russians still saying they support the war
The link that statement refers to doesn't mention that polls like that have huge percentage of people who refuse to answer. Given that expressing anti-war opinion is dangerous in Russia, most of non-supporters may simply stay unrecorded, giving incorrect share to the supporters. Supporters do not have such strong reason to refuse to answer.
> “I’m ready to come back to Russia, but under certain conditions,” she says. “I don’t want to live in a country where Putin is the president. I don’t want to live in a country that starts wars.”
You are living in a fantasy land, turn off Fox News. Those cities have problems but by and large are healthy and thriving. You are declaring the whole state Oregon a wasteland? Come on, snap out of it.
Your link says that as many as 354,000 Russian _and_ Ukrainian soldiers have been killed _or_ injured in the Ukraine war, but you present it as a number of people killed in a single country. Why doing that?
Also, you are citing numbers of war casualties. I am not referring to Putin's war agenda, I am refering to his state agenda that affects the society at large, aside from the war.
I lived in a small Sanctuary city with double the crime rate than New York city which, in itself has skyrocketed. 1 in 143 chance of being victim of a violent crime besides the terrible stuff that goes on in the schools. Drug and Prostitution cartels run everything and get no jail time. Burglary statistic is 1 in 43. Shoplifting is a career. Nobody stops them from walking in and just taking because the state will just bounce them back on the street and nobody wants to get shot. The end result is businesses close an society and culture break down to ghetto status. Everything is held in place by fear and intimidation and gang rivalries.
Drug and Prostitution cartels run everything and get no jail time.
No they don't
The end result is businesses close an society and culture break down to ghetto status.
This has not happened
Stop soaking up whatever propaganda you are hooked into and realize that an entire country is being destroyed and cities are being reduced to rubble. If you think about it more you might decide teenagers stealing from walgreens is not the same as hundreds of thousands already being dead and millions of people with their live shattered.
Would you care to explain why you feel like that? Since you are an inhabitant of this planet, your thoughts and actions affect us all. If you hate a country so much we ought to know at least why.
Among many, many things, why I think that there should be far fewer Russians in this world, I remember one situation, that I still vividly and unpleasantly see from time to time.
It was in the middle of the night during one of many air, rocket, and shelling attacks. There was a sound and a feeling of rocket strikes, then the air alert signal went off. And I had to run with the child in my arms to the basement of the neighbor's apartment building, hoping that we are lucky enough and fast enough to not get hit, and hoping that if there were a direct missile hit, there would be another exit in this basement. So we would not get trapped there under layers of concrete, as has happened to less fortunate people in my hometown.
Thank you for the explanation. From that I would infer you wish there be less people from every country that has done the same as Russia. Would that be correct? Do you wish, for example, that there be less Americans, French, Germans, Italians, and Japanese? Also, have you thought of ways how our society could implement your recommendation and reduce the number of people from these countries? Would you suggest a quota of mass extermination for each country, perhaps to be agreed by an international panel? How about the logistics of that? Perhaps something like the Nazi camps with incinerators? I’m genuinely curious about your desires because, as a fellow citizen, your wishes and desires affect us all.
As a russian dev who actually stayed in Russia I find it both hilarious and sad that this horrible piece of propaganda found a way to MIT Tech Review.
Firstly, how many IT workers fled the country is an interesting question with no definite answer. We have some figures from "ministry of IT" which Masha linked. She conveniently forgot to add that 80% of IT workers who left actually continued to work for Russia. Admittedly any number here will be a rough estimate at best. Still better than nothing. Another point is that though some experienced IT guys left the country juniors and interns are in insane competition for jobs.
Another important point left out by Masha is that the incentive program contains a guarantee that qualified (finished uni with appropriate specialisation and works in IT company) IT guys are exempted from the draft.
Secondly, Yandex. It is presented as if it was that democratic and freedom-driven company and national success but then the war started and it was forced to censor the content blah blah blah. This is a blatant lie. Yandex censored search and news results before. We have good reasons to believe that Yandex cooperates with FSB regarding user content (emails and yandex drive).
Moreover, IT companies in Russia are not limited to Yandex and VK. There is Sber. It is a government-controlled bank that now is more than a bank. Sber has its own ecosystem (streaming, location, delivery services, marketplace, AI department, AI assistants etc). You ain't seen nothing yet! There is a cluster of big b2b companies that work on the domestic market and CIS. Thousands of people work there but most russians don't even know that they exist.
Speaking of VK and social networks. Telegram is an interesting thing. It is not a Russian startup and government tried to ban it earlier. As far as I know in USA and Europe it is mostly used by people with more radical views. But in Russia everyone (I mean everyone who try to be modern, since VK is not cool) uses it now. Goverment, opposition, radically pro-Russia guys and ordinary people. It is more than a messenger now and something like social network. Telegram is a gray zone in terms of banned content.
Btw I have a strong opinion that Durov reached an agreement with the russian government.
While tech giant in Russia are undeniably influenced/controlled by/depend on the state and hence censor their content and spy on customers, there are no compelling arguments that "Russia killed its tech industry".
I'm sad that this kind of sentiment towards russian industries and people (as if all the brights have left the country) is the default in western media. It should be especially pleasant to think that russians are brutish, non-creative, and untrustworthy. I mean we are from jungle, and you are enlightened intellectuals living in your beautiful garden.
But content like this lacks intellectual honesty moreso depth. It worsenes the chances to understand each other.
I wish I read on that page about the ways how russian IT industry is not actually dead (because it's the truth). How people living in autocracy manage to do cool tech things. I wish there was an analysis of russian government attempts to control the IT industry and media that would take into account worldwide trends in goverment and big tech relations (and no, that's not "whataboutism").
Instead there was another RUSSIA BAD.
Of course Russia killed its industry. No reasonable person will launch a startup in Russia. It was hard even before, but at least you had the hope of attracting capital from global VCs, expanding internationally. Now it's gone.
I know entrepreneurs who sold companies to Yandex and VK (when it was MRG). It's a miserable outcome. You have only a few potential buyers in Russia, which means prices for startups are cheap. All then went to launch companies somewhere else so they might have a chance of a better exit.
For a Russian-based startup there are two ways to sell their "cool things" globally. Exit the country or be very diligent about hiding your roots. Still, people will find out sooner or later.
Yes, Russia will still have a few big tech companies, which are almost and government oligopoly already. Their employees shouldn't really expect too much competition for their talent (and corresponding salaries).
That's true. It was always hard for startups in Russia. And to try and go global meant one had to register company somewhere else (e.g Dubai, Cyprus) and promote it as multinational company or smth like that.
But why would "big gov tech" companies lower salaries? They still need IT workers with expertise.
Well, if you did not understand it before, in the non autocratic western world some (many?) people simply get their lips sealed so tight, they cannot physically (well, more or less) utter a word. In return, though, you get to live under democracy.
> We have some figures from "ministry of IT" which Masha linked
Even judging by the official numbers, 100k is a lot of professionals in a rapidly slowing down economy in the need of said professionals. Unofficial numbers range up to 1 mil total left with 500.000 of them being from tech sector. Possibly even worse than official numbers that are always a conviniently crafted lie, like it was in 2020 with covid death downscaled 2 times.
> She conveniently forgot to add that 80% of IT workers who left actually continued to work for Russia
But not participating in russian economy directly and in futurre possibly working on local tech sector projects and not russian ones. It is not a 1 year story, we are in a long haul
> some experienced IT guys left the country juniors and interns are in insane competition for jobs
That somehow disproves the point? That the tech sector lost its best heads so now they struggle to replace them with other professionals for high qualification jobs which juniors arent ready for? Besides its not just tech sector, the whole russian economy is shrinking rapidly. Even in non-technical positions there were changes with layoffs, lower pay, half-schedules and unpaid leaves [1]
> IT guys are exempted from the draft
The fact that it is even mentioned is . Yes, thats what people are running from for either reason (to not be killed, not kill or both). And tech sector is the closest to internationally viable opportunity so it had the most people leave
> Yandex censored search and news results before
True, since about 2011 as mentioned in the link but way noticeably since 2016. Yet while it was censoring results, it wasnt a blanked war time censorship on anything opposing the government. You could've searched for meduza and dozhd. Now you cant
> AI department, AI assistants
All scaled down because of the sanctions [2][3] and leaving professionals. They wont dissapear just because, but they also wont grow as much.
> Durov reached an agreement with the russian government
The agreement was that TG would stay in that gray zone indefinitely using alternative financing sources like crypto scams and later ads and subscribtion. Gray zone means nobody can censor it, neither russians, nor nato/otan. And this is preferable to russia than local-only service like vk (because of said radicals in other countries). Yes, some people will still access some anti-gvmt channels, but its a minority. Propaganda already changed the nation into 1/4 lunatics supporting the war and 2/4 "having no opinion"
> there are no compelling arguments that "Russia killed its tech industry"
That it drove away more professionals while disconnecting itself from global economy that helped prosper said tech sector in the first place? Sure, okay, mhm
> It worsenes the chances to understand each other
Guys, you dont understand, full controll over your population with military ideology and silencing any opposition is actually good. Look at all the achievements USSR has made while being same totalitarian regime. Just ignore the quality of life for majority of the time under communism, look, we have a first person in space. It costed us just most other economic sectors like computers, farming equipment, production machinery, car industry, trains industry, local municipalities growth in general and developing independent culture
This down vote parade is nothing more than proof of how poor information diet certain people have, while reality bubbles are so thick and adversarial, it is almost impossible for them to get out of it or for different perspective to get in.
“Some 70% of the information on Yandex News was coming from state-controlled media sources pushing propaganda”
This article reads like US propaganda.
“Russia imposed increasingly restrictive laws, arresting social media users over posts, demanding access to user data, and introducing content filtering.”
The US performs similar actions. The Twitter files have shown demanding access and content filtering by the government with Twitter and likely other social networks. Recent arrest of left wing US citizens for criticism of the Ukraine war and social media blocking criticism or demonetizing contributors for criticizing the US role in Ukraine war. An attempt to install a Czar of disinformation into the Department of Homeland Security was thankfully stymied mainly due to the character of the individual chosen. Many other examples abound in the US of attempts to control opinions and access to social networks.
> The Twitter files have shown demanding access and content filtering by the government with Twitter and likely other social networks.
They show no such thing if you actually read the content, of course the person hired by Elon (Matt Taibbi), who can't even criticise him for the most simplest and basic things is not going to write an article saying he is wrong.
You have to wonder what is in Taibbi's contract with Musk such that both parties are unwilling to make it public.
Your view on the content of the Twitter files is false. There were clear communications demonstrated by the investigation including the hiring of an FBI lawyer as a top legal employee of Twitter.
Further, Taibbi and Musk are currently feuding over Musk trying to strongarm Taibbi into using Twitter instead of Substack. Taibbi has openly criticized Musk for this and is no longer associated with new dumps from Twitter. Taibbi is a credible journalist and is one of the few willing to expose major corruption within the government and corporate realms. We need more like him.
> Taibbi is a credible journalist and is one of the few willing to expose major corruption within the government and corporate realms. We need more like him.
Why the super secret contract then?, why the unwillingness to criticise musk on some of the even simplest things?.
Mehdi Hasan proved nothing in the “debate” other than he is a shill for the security state trying to score a hit for the losers that watch bloviating garbage like MSNBC. You keep going on about a super secret contract like that means anything significant in comparison to the mountains of damning evidence presented by Taibbi and several other actual journalists.
Russia was not accepted to integrate with EU. The position of EU pretty much being "you stay here and sell us oil while we integrate all your new neighbours".
Exactly. Half of those achievements are space related and the guy responsible for them (Korolev) spent 6 years in the Stalin's gulag that he barely survived, his life was cut short at 59 probably as the result of the traumas he received there and who knows how much more he could have achieved if not for that.
You're right it could've been a lot greater however you should apply the same analysis towards the USA as well.
If you're black you're all but barred from participating in the space program. This was only recently acknowledged in a Hollywood feel good movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures
That is a travesty and a loss for everyone, but you cannot compare those two things in good conscience.
>All the while they were actively preventing 399 men from receiving the same treatments.
And:
>The emergent consensus among scholars is that, of the 14 million prisoners who passed through the Gulag camps and the 4 million prisoners who passed through the Gulag colonies from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million prisoners perished there or they died soon after they were released.[
I just picked one egregious example to compare to Korolev and other researchers that suffered. If you want to compare systemic examples like the Gulags then the Jim Crow system that effectively instituted slavery [1] and likely killed way more than 1.7 million people. Alabama alone imprisoned 200,000 blacks as effectively slaves[2].
Again I am not trying to dismiss the crimes of the Soviet Union but I almost never see the same analysis applied to the US.
USSR achieved around a century of advancement under capitalism in the west a few decades after USSR was formed. Despite US having vastly more resources than USSR, the Soviets were able to keep ahead of US in many technological advancements. Maybe you yourself should think of what the west could've achieved if it wasn't run by oligarch kleptocrats.
Indeed. That's the point here. Russia was high up on the axis of overall innovation. But by adopting the bolshevist/communistic terror system, the direction of progress was permanently set into a downward direction. It is a loss for all of humanity at 100% certainty.
Every single of the innovations the OP listed was attained under "the bolshevist/communistic terror system". Prior to the 1917 Revolution, Imperial Russia was an Agricultural backwater that was widely derided as the least industrialized part of Europe.
Honest question: Don't they teach history in school these days? The level of ignorance displayed in some of the comments in this thread is staggering.
I understand. You literally don't know what else to say, so you have to at least attempt to say something that you think might sound witty. A real pity.
And yes, compared to Imperial Russia that was a Near-Absolute Monarchy with an Hereditary Emperor whose imperial style/form of address was "Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias" the Soviet Union was a beacon of progressiveness.
Maybe you should read it again: he is 1/4th russian and born in Ukraine. His father was half russian half Belarusian, born in Belarus. His mom not russian at all, she was Ukrainian. That makes him max 1/4th russian. So no, he's not Russian.
It clearly states he was born and raised in Ukraine.
But hey, Russians like to claim everything is theirs, nothing new here. Good to see which side you are on.
And again the same mistake of claiming USSR == Russia.
Yes, he was born in USSR, not Russia. Yes he received Soviet education, not Russian education. He made achievements in the communist system, not Russian.
Also, look up in a dictionary what "racist" means.
Nowhere was I talking about Russia in this thread. I made a point that USSR developed a lot faster than western capitalist nations, and that it made a lot of inventions ahead of the west. You're the one who started bleating about Russia and making weird comments about what percentage of heredity makes a person Russian.
Russian news is control by the state. US/Western mass media news are control by "private company" that also have to align with the either the democrat party narrative or republican narrative. Both party must also align with the state.
I grew up in the Cold War (my father was in the CIA). Russians were considered brutish, non-creative, and untrustworthy.
Then, the Berlin Wall came down, and everything changed.
I started to see amazing creativity come from Russia. Music, technology, art, actors, dance, all kinds of stuff. I loved working with Russian engineers. They were some of the best techs I'd worked with. I have a lot of Russian music in my iTunes rotation. I've enjoyed a number of Russian shows, on Netflix. At one time, that would never have been the case.
It really seems as if the door has been slammed on that.