Heh, a gerontocracy. We could call it the Senate.

Of course.

What people bashing GDP usually don’t understand is that it is defined as the total value of final goods. “Final” means that it is calculated as the total value of all goods minus total “intermediate consumption” (total cost of stuff that went into producing those goods.) In other words, GDP is a value-added measure.

So in your retarded example, the value of your “good” is $1 million but your “cost” is also $1 million, for the net contribution to GDP of zero. Same for the other side of the transaction.

Anti-Karlin at CNN:

Russia is better at propaganda than we are.

At first glance, RT’s interview with the two men accused of poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter and two other British citizens almost looks like a joke [...]

But at a second glance it’s a devious plot.

On another note, this is a great illustration that Russia’s bad luck is that they are white. 99% of the case against these men is that they are sketchy looking. But imagine they were black or “Asian” (in the Brit sense of the word.) They could look and behave as suspiciously as heck, no one would dare to point it out. Police will make sure to look the other way.

The moral is, if you want to do wetwork in UK use blacks or Middle Easterners. They have a cloak of invisibility.

A subset of white supremacy is Italian culinary supremacy:

I don’t have an opinion on Chinese GDP but you are the one who don’t understand what GDP means. You example with $1 million IOU will add zero to GDP. Market cap of a company is also irrelevant to GDP. Total revenue is a better measure but still not very good.

Perhaps this will happen. I can’t make predictions and neither can anyone else. I can only predict one thing – whatever happens, it’s going to look obvious and inevitable in retrospect.

Yeah, I know you’ve been a legitimate China booster since way back, and that’s fine. What worries me is that everyone had become like you. And I mean not so much bloggers and online commentators (who cares about them) but our wonderful corporate sector.

These guys have serious herd mentality and stampede hard. The convention wisdom at this moment is that no matter what your company does it has to “get an exposure” to China. This is what they all say right now, from a lowly management consultant to the “visionary” CEO. China is the future, blah, blah, blah. If you try to argue they look at you like you have two heads. Risk? What risk? Everyone knows that China will continue to grow, and grow, and grow, and grow…

This is what makes me uncomfortable. The parallels with the past instances of disastrous groupthink are obvious. In my mind, this makes it very possible that “something’s going to happen soon.”

Japanese culture today appears to be produced entirely by and for 11-year old girls, so no wonder it’s relatively more popular among young people. Even then, is it really more popular today among normie kids than during the times of Power Rangers, Tamagotchi, or Pokemon? Or, for that matter, during the time of Godzilla?

Among adults, Japan has been steadily losing mind share. Certain kinds of Japanese soft cultural power had all but collapsed in the adult world since 20-30 years ago. For example, this cartoon was painfully true back when it came out in 1991. Now, not so much.

It is only in the past decade that Japan has started generating significant cultural power, a generation after they became rich.

Wat? If anything, the Japanese cultural power has slightly declined in the past decade.

This is furthermore assuming that there is no serious US economic crisis during this period

Are we to assume there will be no major economic crisis in China?

I have to say that I am slowly drifting into the China skeptics camp. Not for any particular reason but due to posts like this. Everyone and his dog are Sinotriumphalists now. Gives me the willies.

Speaking of the racially stereotypical reactions, get a load of Naomi Osaka:

https://nypost.com/2018/09/08/its-shameful-what-us-open-did-to-naomi-osaka

When asked if her childhood dream of playing against Williams matched the reality, she politely sidestepped the question.

“I’m sorry,” Osaka said. “I know that everyone was cheering for her and I’m sorry it had to end like this.”

She turned to Williams. “I’m really grateful I was able to play with you,” Osaka said. “Thank you.” She bowed her head to Williams, and Williams just took it — no reciprocation, no emotion.

Apologizing for winning — isn’t that the most Japanese thing ever?

The cathedral will be topped with the pre-Mongolian invasion style helmet domes rather than the stereotypical onion domes. Interesting.

The Finns, who were the most enthusiastic (since they had their own reasons to fight) for example stopped their troops after reconquering the areas lost in 1940 (and some areas needed to secure those) and then stopped.

This myth has to die. Here is a map that shows the maximum advancement of the Finnish army compared to the 1939 borders.

We’ve been through it. There was no deliberate /i> Russification strategy for Latvia and Estonia (but for some unfathomable reason, not Lithuania.) No one in the Soviet government would’ve minded if the Russians Estonianized instead. In fact, Russian schools in Estonia had mandatory Estonian lessons. Same for Latvia.

Instead, there was a deliberate policy of industrializing Latvia and Estonia (but again, not Lithuania.) As you said yourself, Estonia produced many things that Russia needed. These things were mostly produced by factories built and staffed by Russians. Now, Estonia produces nothing that Russia or anyone else needs, aside from offshore services.

Besides, if Boshirov and Petrov (both of who had a Russian passport) have nothing to do with the Russian government, then it’d be easy for Russia to just show the two guys to the world.

Not if Russia has no clue as to who they are. Their names appear to be fake; if so, then their passports must be fake as well. Who supplied them with the fake documents? You are implicitly assuming it must have been the FSB but there are a quite a few of state or even non-state actors able to manufacture a convincing Russian passport. For all we know, “Petrov” and “Boshirov” aren’t even the actual Russians but instead are Ukrainians, or Hungarians, or French Canadians.

The Anonymous should be easy to find. All you have to do is to identify a government official who sabotages Trump’s policies. Piece of cake.

Brazilian homicides vs. the world:

the same habits that make you rich are conducive to health and longevity.

Being born to a rich family?

The Thai and Yemeni buildings reminded me of this beauty being built in the New York’s Hudson Valley.

But it looks awesome on the inside.

To make a point about how horrible American suburbs are, they always show the birds eye view. Because down on the human level they look fine.

At least I think skyscrapers will start getting better soon, because it is possible now to make them thinner than before.

Did you know that thin skyscrapers seriously sway in the wind? The floor under your feet is rocking, the furniture is creaking, the scenery beyond the windows goes back and forth, back and forth. If you are susceptible to sea sickness you will get it.

But the good thing about thin skyscrapers is a great ratio of window offices to the overall floor space.

because, you see, people of mixed descent will voluntarily give up identifying as non-white in order to cash in on that sweet, sweet White Privilege.

But White Privilege is not a choice. It’s something like an infectious disease that you get from White people. You mix with white people in school, or work, or neighborhood, one sneezes on you and you come down with White Privilege. At least that’s the idea behind school busing or Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.

Or perhaps White Privilege is an inborn trait like homosexuality. Growing up, you start experiencing inexplicable desires, like a need to camp in the woods, or listen to heavy rock, or crack open a book. You are embarrassed and don’t know what to do about that, but eventually you find people just like you, who explain to you that all of this is normal and in fact something to be proud of. Actually no, scratch that last part.

Thanks for the link. I can relate to that woman.

Our voice – the voice of those whose lives were improved by communism – is seldom heard when it comes to discussions of what life was like behind the Iron Curtain.

Instead, the accounts we hear in the West are nearly always from the perspectives of wealthy emigrés or anti-communist dissidents with an axe to grind.

Yes, exactly. The Western narrative on Communist experience is awfully one-sided. I am no fun of the Communist system but even so this relentless propaganda rubs me the wrong way.

Programming on Hungarian television reflected the regime’s priority to bring culture to the masses, with no dumbing down.

Also true about the USSR. I don’t believe it was such a good thing. Everyone wants to be entertained at his own level. Dumb people need dumb entertainment. You can’t just pour high culture down their throats, they will turn you off. In Russia, they will begin drinking.

In this light, kudos to the American culture. No one in the world is better at creating trash for dummies. People knock this but keeps the left side of the bell curve properly anesthetized.

Talbot was not wrong about Reagan. The policies of the first Reagan administration could’ve well ended in disaster, if the Soviet leader at the time were someone like Khrushchev.

Similarly, if Putin weren’t so almost super-humanly cautious and thick-skinned, American treatment of Russia would’ve resulted in a major blowback long ago. But no one in America’s elite understands this because they learned exactly the wrong lesson from the Reagan years.

My favorite part about that Wiki article is the warning, “This section possibly contains original research.”

Ya think so?

I know what they are trying to say but their using “original” and “research” to refer to that text is hilarious.

Suppose some Russian official issues a tweet that you like. It will be gleefully retweeted by every neocon or neolib. Why? Because to the 99% of Americans or Europeans who don’t already hate McCain it will make Russia look bad. This is a problem, unless you only ever want to talk to your echo chamber.

Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Your problem is Russia’s perceived lack of big stick. But speaking softly is always a good strategy. It’s called diplomacy.

This often sets off an anti-American nationalist reaction in the source country as the locals begin to feel shamed by the very nice Americans for their callousness toward their own unfortunates.

Actually, the locals get incensed by (some) Americans’ mistreating their adoptees.

None of this has anything to do with the true Homo Sovieticus, who is now long extinct.

This is exactly the right tone in an official reaction.

Do whites really routinely ask black people to touch their hair? There is a ton of such stories around and even a hit song.

The Wiki page for the song is a perfect example of Obama-era verbiage:

Experiencing micro-aggressions towards black women’s hair, and being the daughter of a hairdresser, lead Knowles to create a song based on how hair is “incredibly spiritual, and, energetically, it really encompasses and expresses who we are.”[1] She states the meaning of the song “is as much as what it feels like to have your whole identity challenged on a daily basis, although physically touching the hair is extremely problematic!” Hair has been used as a tool of oppression to black people in the United States because, et cetera.

In this play, Shakespeare themself is played by a woman. The cast is all-female.

The English – at the peak of their power – were highly civilized and well-mannered.

Some small proportion of them were well-mannered, sure.

I make no claims as to their origins. Although I suspect that this trait is at least partially inherited.

America has the most extroverts per capita in the world (according to Susan Can’s Quiet.) Extroverts are not trying to dominate or one up, it’s just the way they are. They don’t “demonstrate” energy, they naturally draw it from the conversation itself. Yes, they can be tiresome if you are not an extrovert yourself.

As you can see, most Moldovans don’t care and keep on calling themselves and their language Moldovan.

OTOH, I did say that Moldovans (minus Transnistria) are basically Romanians – I agree! – and that Romanians consider it such

Did anyone ask Moldovans?

Actually, someone did. In the 2014 Moldovan census respondents could name their ethnicity, with both Moldovan and Romanian being an option. Results:

75.1% Moldovans
7.0% Romanians
6.6% Ukrainians
4.6% Gagauz
4.1% Russians
1.9% Bulgarians
0.3% Roma
0.5% other

And what language do they speak?

54.6% Moldovan,
24.0% Romanian,
14.5% Russian,
2.7% Ukrainian,
2,7% Gagauz
1.7% Bulgarian
0.5% other

This, after 25 years of pushing the official line that there is no such language as Moldovan, only the Romanian.

Here is a good travelogue (in Russian) about the situation in Moldova:

https://varandej.livejournal.com/508716.html

Hey, wait a second. Lenin was not literally worshiped. You are using a word in a metaphorical sense. No one prayed to Lenin, or sacrificed animals, or whatever. He was not expected to help you from beyond the grave or smite your enemies. That would be weird.

I suppose because they considered Romanian actions to be an invasion and occupation of their territory and also a stab in the back. As Romanians themselves point out when they talk about their gold, Russia and Romania were supposed to be allies. You generally don’t expect an ally to send an army across your border and grab a piece of your territory, even if they think they could get away with it. So the Russians grew a little upset.

Main proponent of the Ashkenazi Marxist Theory of Revolution:

Jean Leopold Nicolas Frederic, Baron Cuvier (1769 – 1832.)

Romania sent its gold reserves to Russia in December 1916 – equivalent to 10 billion lei in gold – where they were, of course, confiscated by the Bolsheviks when they came to power.

Romanian gold was explicitly confiscated as the compensation for Bessarabia. Soviet Russia recognized independence of Finland and the Baltic states but it never recognized Romanian takeover of Bessarabia.

The Communist period is viewed very negatively. I would estimate that Ceausescu has a 10% approval rating.

Selection bias (aka Pauline Kael effect.)

From Wiki:

Praising the crimes of totalitarian governments and denigrating their victims is forbidden by law in Romania; this includes the Ceaușescu era. Dinel Staicu was fined 25,000 lei (approx. 9,000 United States dollars) for praising Ceaușescu and displaying his pictures on his private television channel (3TV Oltenia).[62] Nevertheless, according to opinion polls held in 2010, 41% of Romanians would vote for Ceaușescu[63][64] and 63% think that their lives were better before 1989.[64][65] In 2014, the percentage of those who would vote for Ceaușescu reached 46%.[66]

Old Slavonic/Russian was an (or perhaps even the) official language of the medieval Moldovan principality.

Let me give an illustration: the document that first mentions Chisinau/Kishinev.

Wikipedia explains:

Chișinău was mentioned for the first time in 1436, when Moldavian princes Ilie and Ştefan gave several villages with the common name Cheseni near the Akbash well to one feudal lord Oancea for his good service.

The Russian version of the Wiki page quotes the actual document:

«…и близь Быку, по тои сторонѣ, на долину што падает(ь) против(ь) Акбашева Кешенева, ѹ Кръници, где ест(ь) Татарскаѧ Селища, против(ь) лѣска. (…) А пѵстынѧмъ хотаръ, колко ѹзмогуть ѡживати таѧ села, що ѡсадит(ь), досыт(ь)»

I am not enough of a linguist to know if this is Old Russian or Old Slavonic but I can read this easily.

Moldova is an order of magnitude less fake or gay than the Ukraine. Separate Moldovan identity is centuries old, while Romanian identity is recent. With Ukrainian/Russian identities it’s the other way around.

The modern Moldova (Bessarabia) had been unified with Romania for only ~20 years, as opposed to centuries for Ukraine and Russia.

And then there are the special connections of Moldova to Russia. In the last 200 years, obviously; but even before that. For example, some sort of Old Slavonic/Russian was an (or perhaps even the) official language of the medieval Moldovan principality.

racism is what makes us white.

In other words, you are not white unless you are racist. This is a great message to promote in the media. What could possibly go wrong?

Pärt doesn’t appear to be much of an Estonian nationalist, considering that he had converted to Russian Orthodoxy. Perhaps he was too religious for the Soviet art authorities. Equally likely, he simply fell victim to politics (in the sense of professional rivalry, as in “office politics.”) A senior and influential Soviet composer didn’t like his music. At any rate, it’s a shame how they treated him. But –

Imagine a modern American or European counterpart to Arvo Pärt. Every bit as talented and yet for whatever reason never given a chance. Perhaps he is too white and male, or his music is not currently fashionable, or he never learned how to make friends in the art establishment. What would happen to him?

Well, there is no rival power that is interested in promoting him for propaganda purposes. So he’ll just settle into a quiet teaching job and we would never hear about him.

I know plenty of people (non-liberals) who both lived in the USSR and are anti-Soviet.

Yes, I know. For example, myself. Back in my Usenet days in the late 90s I used to argue a lot with sovoks (one of whom had become fairly famous later.)

Then I got older, wiser, and more empathetic. I got a better idea about the 2-3 generations that came before me – what their outlook was like, what they were trying to accomplish. Revisiting the old Soviet culture helped. I don’t think I was wrong before, except in some details. I am still not a big fan of the Soviet practice (you should look up my comments directed at Glossy.) It’s a matter of head vs. heart.

Another issue is that the new crop of the anti-Soviets didn’t live in the USSR and frankly don’t know what they are talking about. Soviet Union had many bad sides but it was not the zombie apocalypse of their imagination. When I see something like that it provokes a natural reaction.

Science – Lagging.

USSR was leading in some scientific areas and lagged in others. The same is true for every other major scientific center. You can’t apply Western metric to the Soviet scientific output, the systems were too different.

Culture – Maintained high culture in crystallized form, but failed to create novelties.

Considering the novelties created in the last 70 years, perhaps this was not so bad?

Ah, screw it. I’ll address specific items on this list at another time. And I don’t even disagree all that much. My point is that you could easily create a list like that for e.g. USA. Just ask an average Unz.com commenter. And such a list is going to be mostly true. But it won’t be the whole truth. And this is the crucial thing.

You cannot build any kind of popular movement, let alone a nationalistic one, while pissing on recent past. At best, you’d fail; at worst, you’d succeed and open the doors wide for the poz.

And yeah, creating working synthesis is hard. But it’s your job if you call yourself a nationalist. Or else you’d be the one in the dumpster.

AK: I am sure that the bulk of the literature on the Soviet economy (and one’s own lying eyes) is propaganda. I suppose Glossy’s parents must have been hoodwinked, having emigrated to the US in the 70s or 80s.

Have you ever wondered why every single of your commenters who has personal experience of the USSR is anti-anti-Soviet? Even though we are the ones who supposedly suffered the under the brutal Commie yoke.

Propaganda usually isn’t outright lies, it’s just not the whole truth. That’s how the Soviet propaganda worked too, only with the opposite sign. Anyway, the point is that there is a lot about the USSR that you don’t know because you weren’t told about it.

We already discussed the economy. It had major weaknesses but major strengths too. Overall, it provided a decent if not spectacular standard of living that generally kept up with the West but with no hope of catching up. And economy is not everything.

I know you believe that the alternative Tsarist Russia would’ve had all the good points from our timeline with none of the bad, but that’s just, like, you opinion, man. I am really skeptical of this fanboyism. To me, you are the exact mirror image of the folks who think that if the Soviet Union hadn’t been destroyed by traitors and foreign agents it would’ve been building space colonies.

As for Glossy, according to my calculations, his parents emigrated around 1992.

I got the impression though that you’re now some kind of nationalist activist, and while honest analysis and self-criticism is important, “Russia’s got no future, it all went to shit generations before we were born” isn’t really an inspiring sentiment.

There is absolutely no way of getting Russian nationalism off the ground without somehow incorporating the Soviet period in a positive way.

Well, Soviet SJWs abolished university exams in the 1920s, and with “class enemies” (read: intelligent Russians) effectively barred, they became dominated by Jewish ideologues and stupid Russian proles.

Somehow, this worked out pretty well. Would’ve been even better if the Soviet government in the 1930s didn’t get out a machine gun a started shooting itself in the foot.

After the war HUAC became aggressively anticommunist and also acted against Hollywood.

No, it acted together with Hollywood against certain low level Hollywood employees.

Russia in the early 20th century was a medieval-style absolute monarchy. Russian society, outside of the officialdom, was increasingly unhappy about this but the Romanovs showed no sign of yielding power. If you think that situation would not have ended up with some sort of blow-up at some point over the course of the 20th century you are kidding yourself.

And another thing. You keep assuming that if the Commies had been defeated in 1917 (or 1918, etc.) they would go poof and disappear. The Communist ideas were (are!) far too strong and attractive for this to happen. They would be back and likely more popular than ever (as the road not taken.)

Glossy’s rage is excessive but you have to consider that he lived in the USSR and Karlin didn’t. All Karlin knows about the USSR is anti-Soviet propaganda.

AK: I am sure that the bulk of the literature on the Soviet economy (and one’s own lying eyes) is propaganda. I suppose Glossy’s parents must have been hoodwinked, having emigrated to the US in the 70s or 80s.

Condensed Sarah Jeong: “My feelz > hard evidence.” How so very female.

If you subtract out processing and exporting of Russia’s vast natural resources of oil, gas, and minerals, there’s not much of an economy there.

Natural resources were only 11.5% of the Russian economy as of 2016.

This view of America is common all over the Old World, especially Europe. “We took America from the Indians and now it’s ours.”

English subtitles.

Voinovich’s most famous work is Moscow 2042

Adventures of Soldier Ivan Chonkin is Voinovich’s most famous work.

Also this song, an unofficial anthem of the Soviet space program.

I think that finally wound to an end by around 2010.

It’s not that the journalists had gotten smarter, it’s that someone had finally updated the style manual.

On the other hand, communist symbols are often used as the shorthand for Russia even today.

You can whine about it, or you can embrace it.

If an Unz.com commenter praised Ben Shapiro, what would be the reaction of fellow commenters?

Russia House restaurant in Washington D.C.

Since it’s in DC I had to check out Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide. Cowen is a perfect WEIRD and SWPL, so I was interested in what he had to say.

He has two entries under “Russia House.” From 5/20/06:

Some claim it [Russia House] is excellent, I need to check it out. I love good Russian food, despite its unavailability in Russia. The best places I know are in Helsinki.

The next day:

I drove to this place once, but it looked boring and overpriced. So, I reoptimized and opted for Peruvian chicken in a nearby strip mall, I think it was called Pollo Inka.

LOL.

Back when Trump was an unlikely contender for the Republican nomination, I was struck by his relative friendliness to Russia. In American election campaigns, there is no political downside to Russophobia and no upside to Russophilia, so all other other candidates competed with each other in bashing Russia. But not Trump. He even had a couple of kind words to say about the Kremlin Beelzebub himself. Why?

My best guess is that Trump visited Russia and liked it. He does believe horror stories about it, for one. And this is why Russia should get as many foreigners as possible to come and visit. Some of them may become important in the future.

I knew that I’d hear from the adepts of the Church of Holy AIPAC. You believe what you want to believe.

For the purposes of this discussion it doesn’t make sense to speak of separate lobbies because it’s all the same people at different points of their career. Call them nomenklatura.

You know about the Military-Industrial Complex? Similarly, there exists Government-Media-Academia-Lobbying Complex (connected to the MIC, of course.) There is a revolving door between various branches of the Complex. A Congressman who just lost an election, a researcher at a think tank, or a retired high level civil servant could be offered a job at a lobbying firm. After a stint as a lobbyist they could go back to their former occupations, or to something new, e.g. a talking head on TV.

Working as a lobbyist for Good Guys is a legitimate career choice. It will enhance you resume and you get to meet a lot of people just like you. But trying to lobby for a Bad Guy can destroy your career. Everyone knows who the Good Guys and the Bad Guys are – the group think is strong with these people.

So, Good Guys lobbies have no trouble hiring influential people. For example, in the late 90s there was a powerful Albanian lobby, which had a number of bigfoot American politicians working for it; for example Bob Dole and John McCain. On the other hand, Orban is a designated Bad Guy, so he has trouble attracting even the minor players.

The best public diplomacy right now is to get as many Americans and other Westerners as possible to come to Russia and discover that it’s not Mordor. Donald Trump himself could serve as an example of the success of this approach.

This means that Russia needs to introduce unilateral visa free regime with certain Western nations. I understand that this is humiliating but it’s necessary.

The only way to set up an effective Russian lobby in America is to hire a bunch of insiders – former senators, cabinet officials, and such. Of course, no insider will agree to work for the Russian lobby.

This goes back to what I’ve been saying. Ethnic lobbies don’t drive American policy. On the contrary, American Deep State determines which ethnic lobbies are allowed to exist and exactly how much influence they should have.

I don’t just mean low street crime, although that too. It’s the whole outlook. The world is bright, and sunny, and welcoming; and the people are generally decent and nice, and they will always help you if you are in trouble. Bad stuff exists out there somewhere but definitely not here. Nothing truly bad can ever happen here.

You can see it if you peruse Soviet popular culture of the 1960s-80s (which, incidentally, is almost totally unknown in the West.) It often looks as though it was made by elves for elves. Earnest, naive, bright, sometimes a bit boring. Think of smiling Eduard Khil.

No one born in the West (or in the post-Soviet Russia) has ever known anything like that. It’s because of the freedom thing. People crave bad news and want to be scared, or they get bored. Even during the best times in America like the 1950s there were plenty of voices wailing that things were going to hell. On the popular entertainment front, Americans were flocking to movies about alien invasions or horror movies. There were no horror movies in the USSR. That’s because the underlying philosophy behind every horror movie is that the world is horrible, even and especially the homey things. This kind of philosophy was anathema in the USSR.

Production in the USSR was mostly fine if basic, but distribution was wacky. A very common situation: you can’t find something in the stores but everyone has enough of it, one way or the other.

USSR in the 1960s through 1980s was the best time and place in history to be a kid. It was pretty good for many adults too. One thing that only those who lived there can understand is how safe it felt. Nothing bad happened, nothing bad could happen…

The electronic screens were produced exclusively by the military factories that also made radar screens for the Soviet Armed Forces. Why? Because none of the civilian factories had the requisite capital equipment to produce them.

I think you got it backwards. At some point in the Brezhnev era almost all military factories were ordered to produce some consumer goods on the side – so called shirpotreb. So tank factories made tractors, explosives factories made (according to the rumors I heard at the time) macaroni, and so on. I can easily imagine a military electronic factory manager scratching his head. “So, what kind of shirpotreb can we make? Hmm. Aha!”

Yes, ~60% of European (and so ~40% of American) income level sounds about right. I was there, I remember.

First off, I don’t know what data that chart is based of

The citation is right there in the chart. If you think the data is incorrect you should explain why.

Here is Russian/Soviet GDP per capita as a percentage of American

Piketty et al concentrates on INCOME per capita, not GDP. The distinction is often important. For example, the industry in the Russian Empire was growing fast but the growth income was falling behind that, partly because a large portion of profits from the industrial activity was going to the British and French banks.

Having said that, Maddison’s data is not inconsistent with Piketty’s. That growth spurt in the 1930 is there.

There is every reason to think that Russia was on the cusp of an industrial boom

Perhaps. Or perhaps Russia would’ve followed Argentina – rapid industrial growth followed by … not much. Or maybe it would’ve been rapid growth followed by 30 years of chaos and then followed by a Communist dictatorship – like China. What is certain is that Great Depression (or some event like that) would’ve hit Russia disproportionately hard due to its high dependence on foreign investments.

This is the first time I hear that Soviets became richer in the 1930s.

Rich is not the word, but in the 1930s life did get more ordered and more prosperous, at least in the cities. If the freaking statistics doesn’t convince you, you can get a sense of this by reading books written in this period. For example, Master and Margarita, no Soviet propaganda.

The early stages were, of course, punctuated by repeated mass surrenders.

Yes, some soldiers surrendered because they found themselves in impossible situations, due to novel German tactics. But the nation as a whole fought on, including both the army and the home front. And it continued to do so for four years. They must’ve thought they had something worth fighting for. The only other possibility was that behind every soldier or factory worker was an NKVDist with a gun to his head.

And no, don’t tell me that they were “for Russia but against the Communist regime.” Only the high IQ people are are able to separate these abstractions in their minds.

In 1917 the war lasted 4 years

My math tells me that 1917-1914=3. Anyway, comparing WWI, when armies had to march on their two feet (or on horseback,) to the highly mobile WWII with its tanks and airplanes makes no sense.

A few more observations about that chart.

- After WWII the Commie promised to catch up to and overtake the West. They never managed to do it. However, they kept pace. You know Les Trente Glorieuses, the 30 glorious pot-war years when economic growth was so rapid? Well, it was just as rapid in the USSR! In retrospect, that’s pretty amazing.

- Soviet people were used to decades of rapid growth in the living standards. When it slowed down in the late 70s they grew unhappy. Compare and contrast to today, whether in Russia or in the West.

- After Perestroika, Russian relative income plummeted to nearly Tsarist levels; but then, under Putin, they recovered to about the highest Soviet peak. Obviously, the Russians had never lived so well before. But we have to keep in mind that these are averages. As shown in the same paper, inequality grew exponentially in the post-Soviet period, which means that there are many people who are still below their Soviet level of consumption. I don’t like when some young punks bash those people for their pro-Soviet views.

Russian Empire was certainly shamelessly smeared, it’s true. But it’s also true that it was far poorer than Soviet Russia (which you always, ahem, “shamelessly smear”.)

Here is a chart put together by the BBC based on the 2017 paper by Piketty et al. For those who don’t read Russian: the chart shows mean per capita income in Russia as percentage of the Western European one (defined as the average of German, French, and British incomes.)

- During the Tsarist period Russian relative income was under 40% of the European one. This ratio didn’t budge much for 45 years and there is no reason not to think it wouldn’t continue like that indefinitely.

- In the early Soviet years the relative income continued to be about where it was under Tsars. The aftermath of WWI, Civil War, and the Commie repression was destructive but apparently not all that much more so than the income plunge in Western Europe.

- In the 1930s Soviet relative income takes off. Part of it is an artifact of Great Depression when the European incomes nosedived. But another part was a genuine improvement in Russian living standards. This is not something you hear often nowadays, yet I know it to be true (including from talking to people who were alive during that period.) The Soviets crushed the rich and the middle class but they did a lot to raise the poor. And the life in the 1930 really became “better and merrier” (as Stalin put it) for many people.

The last point can explain a few things about the Soviet history. For example, Stalin’s cult of personality. He was genuinely popular because people credited him with improving their lives. Or another puzzle – why, if the Commies were so bad, the Soviet people fought so loyally in WWII? One factor was a rapid improvement in their living standards.

Nicholas was a fine ruler. Russia achieved a lot during his reign and at least part of the credit has to go to the man on top. His biggest mistake was entering WWI in the first place, but even in that war he didn’t do such a bad job, considering what he had to work with.

Yes, at that particular moment in 1917 Russia might have been better off with a czar who was a bloodthirsty maniac – e.g. someone like Peter the Great (whose “severe crisis” was entirely of his own creation.) But the point is, do you want such men to rule Russia as a matter of course? Do you want someone like that to be in charge now?

How do you explain the relative popularity of Trotsky among the young people? This is not a sovok thing. Sovoks hate Trotsky.

Old-school medieval peasantry was like that everywhere. For them, it was the rational behavior. You work hard, save food or money, and then inevitably it’s all taken from you by your lord, or your king, or some passing army. So you produce exactly what you need, and when you are done you kick back. Your free time is yours; no one can steal it from you.

I like the street names – Vermont, Normandie. Can you get more white than that? Reminds me of Indian place names in Eastern US where Indians had been cleared out centuries ago.

With a population of 250,000 in 1519, the only demographically comparable European city at the time was Paris.

But there were many large cities in Europe at the time, even if a bit smaller than Paris. Same for ancient Mesopotamia. Whereas Tenochtitlan was one and only.

Incidentally, Constantinople/Istanbul was, at the time, at least twice as large as Paris.

This is way OT, so I’ll be super brief.

1. Reagan engineered nothing. To the small degree he did contribute to the Soviet collapse, it happened in the last couple of years of his second term. Had he continued with the first term’s policies (and rhetoric,) the USSR would still be with us.

2. We are not discussing Reagan but the superannuated deep statesmen on Theranos board. The alleged wise men who “won the Cold War.” How do we determine if they were really wise or just lucky? Well, what did they accomplish since then? These are the men who are directly or indirectly responsible for American post-Cold War foreign policy – such smashing successes as the bombing of Yugoslavia, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Arab Spring, the rise of China, and last, but no least, Cold War 2.0 with Russia. Oh, and in addition to that they got conned by a pretty broad with an unlikely story.

You realize that your complaints about Superjet have nothing to do with the plane itself? The cabin is furnished according to the airline’s specifications, so this is who you should blame for the lack of monitors and USB sockets. Even the creaking is most likely caused by the cheap-ass interior plastic.

What in the world Holmes saw in the untalented and unpleasant Balwani

What do women see in flashy, imperious jerks? A question for ages.

Hence, even the guys who won the Cold War were made fools

They didn’t win anything. They just happened to be in office when the USSR crashed for its own internal reasons. These men ain’t so wise as they were made out to be according to triumphalist mythology.

Incidentally, I consider that Kaliningrad should be remained to it proper name.

Korolevets?

I am sure it sounds weird to you, but what Kholmogorov is doing here, is telling the Stalinists that even by their own criteria their hero is a failure. What they say are his greatest achievements are not so great after all, even from the Imperial Stalinist POV.

Another way Kholmogorov likes to troll Stalinists is to take a Soviet accomplishment (like going into space) and credit Nicholas II.

Russians have the same problem that Germans had: they are visibly impatient with smaller nationalities. Americans are like that too. It eventually backfires.

Actually, Russians are generally not like that. Or at least they weren’t in the past. What you are seeing is a natural reaction to the messages the Russians were getting from the Eastern Europe in the past 30 years.

Even if that’s true, the “freeloader” accusation is still grotesque, since those countries would have been economically much better off and enjoyed a higher standard of living outside the Soviet orbit.

You have to realize that Kholmogorov argues here with Stalinists. What kind of argument is likely to get through to them? Certainly not any of the regular anti-Stalin bromides that have currency in the West.

This whole thing is so out of context, I don’t know why it was translated in the first place.

The title of the book should be another Harry Potter reference.

America’s Goblet of Fire?
America’s Chamber of Secrets?

I hope Steve won’t need to name it America’s Prisoner of Azkaban.

When I took math tests at school, all my answers were orders of magnitudes off. In my defense, I said that to be sure I multiplied instead of dividing in step 3, but my solution was still 85% similar to the textbook one.

After school I found a job as a computer programmer. The program that I wrote was full of bugs; it crashed our client’s system and cost them millions. But I told my boss that my code was 85% the same as the bug-free version, so what’s the big deal.

For some reason they fired me, so I found another job as a short order cook at a diner. They told me to make pancakes. The recipe calls for so many pounds of flour, butter, sugar, and oil, and a teaspoon of salt. Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I replace table salt with an arsenic salt. I guess not much: the recipe still remains 85% the same.

Incidentally, twitter user labeled “Ластик и Абырвалг” is Valentina Lisitsa, a pianist with eight fingers on each of her hands.

(especially starting from around the 6th minute.)

No dogs you say?

Can this really be the future of (liberal) journalism? Please?

You’d have to search elsewhere for that.

I can’t tell if Charlotte’s inner thoughts and emotions are rendered accurately, as I am not a college girl. But her actions, or, as you put it, “sexual adventures” – the seduction, the depression, the orbiting beta, the final choice – feel very true to life. Not politically correct, either.

But certainly the male characters are far better. The book is really about them.

The murder made Drudge Report, which means the Western media considers this event to be important enough. The headline is what you’d expect. “Anti-Putin Journalist Shot Dead in Ukraine.” (facepalm.)

Incidentally, Babchenko’s story is a great illustration of how the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is overwhelmingly political and not ethnic.

Apparently, you know what really happened to MH17 but I don’t. I can only judge by the openly available information. Here is what I see.

- Russia was declared to be the culprit five minutes after the plane hit the ground.

- Investigation has not been fair or evenhanded.

- Investigation has not been open. For example, why haven’t they released the black box recordings?

- The evidence, such as it is, appears to be a variation of “X (in this case, the missile) was Russian-made, therefore russiadunit.”

- The official story is as stupid a conspiracy theory as any.

Let me expand a little on the last one. The official narrative goes as follows: Russian government (or “Putin”) smuggled a Buk across the border, fired a missile at a civilian plane for some unfathomable reason, then smuggled the weapon back to Russia. This makes sense in the universe where Putin poisons random nobodies with a military grade nerve agent. In the real world, not so much.

It’s one thing if they said that the plane was shot down by a crew of incompetent LDNR clowns. I could accept that. But that’s not the story. Read the article linked by Reiner (as one example) and try to search for the word accident. You won’t find it. The implication is (and many people come out and say it explicitly) that Russia deliberately murdered the people on the plane. Is Russia immoral for refusing to admit guilt when any such admission will be taken as confessing the mass murder?

Agreed. It was an unfortunate accident, not a war crime, and our persistent denials only make us look guilty.

Whereas admission of guilt will not make Russia look guilty. Right.

What Russian behaviour?

Two of the four questions can be answered with “both.” Would that be a centrist position?