11 ms·

Come on, there is no way they are that cartoonish.

markdown 4y ago
They're not. It's a massive country with many different races and cultures in it. Painting them all with one brush isn't very nice.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  This is Moscow though. I think it’s fairly likely the culture in Moscow is fairly homogenous.
  - carbadtraingood 4y ago
    Is it? Is the culture of Paris fairly homogenous? New York? London? Berlin? I would imagine the place has some shared cultural understandings, generally, but that a big city is going to be much more heterogenous. But maybe I'm thinking too micro scale.
    - smsm42 4y ago
      You need to realize though the West has embraced multiculturalism, largely. Russia has not. It does not mean there are no diverse cultures in Russia - or even Moscow, but it does mean there is one dominant culture, and closer you get to the places where power is accessible, the more dominant and more exclusive it becomes. There are various cultures found in Moscow (and any big city in Russia), but there is also the Culture. In the West, a lot of effort is taken for the old Western culture not to be the culture of Paris, New York, London, Berlin, etc. Some endorse these efforts, some decry them, but it is obvious they happen. In Russia, nothing of the sort happens, on the contrary, if you want to be in power, you will abandon whatever culture you came from and embrace the culture of power. If you do not, you'll never get to wield any power.
      - TylerLives 4y ago
        What is the "culture of power", can you give some examples? And what are your pronouns?
        smsm42 4y ago
        > What is the "culture of power", can you give some examples? I thought I did, in my comments uptopic. If you expect me to write a doctoral thesis on modern Russian culture, sorry, I am neither qualified nor it is the right place. While I have plenties of anecdotal data, and would be glad to share my experience to the extent I can, systematic treatment of a culture is not something one could do in a random comment on HN. I can name it, at best - Russian Imperial culture, and describe some of its qualities, but anything beyond that will have to wait for somebody who either has a PhD or wants to get one researching Russian culture. > And what are your pronouns? None of your business/None of your business.
        TylerLives 4y ago
        If you're talking about your first comment in this chain(about people refusing to take responsibility), I don't see how that's related to multiculturalism. I've never been to Russia, and I don't even watch Russian media often, but from what I can see, they're trying to promote multiculturalism a lot. It's not that I don't believe that Russia has a "culture of power" and that people at the top all share the same ideology, but this is happening everywhere.
        smsm42 4y ago
        The culture comment was an answer to the critique that you can not talk about culture in Russia because there are many cultures. There are, but one of them is dominant. They do not promote multiculturalism, at least not what is meant by that in the West. On the contrary, the staple of their official ideology is preserving Russia's uniqueness at all costs - even at the cost of rejecting humanist values that are considered "Western". Other cultures are allowed if they are subservient to the imperial culture - same story in every empire, really, take a book about any imperial culture, Russia's one would have similar traits, it's not unique in that regard. The main source of conflict now is that imperial culture needs much more of an empire than Russia currently is, thus obsession with territorial conquest, despite already having huge undeveloped and neglected territories.
    - carlmr 4y ago
      This seems like the old lumpers vs splitters issue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters There's definitely something different in Berlin vs New York culture, and me, a person that sees commonalities everywhere, i.e. a lumper, definitely sees a common/dominant culture in each of these places. On the other side you have splitters that always find a reason to differentiate more. There's no right and wrong on this discussion, it's subjective in essence, you can always lump or split by your own rules. That is a classification problem. Darwin talked about it at length, because he was annoyed by splitters denying any kind of classification, making it really hard to make a taxonomy. If you split too much, every human is an individual, you can't say anything about anything anymore. If you lump too much, all humans are the same, you can't say anything about anything either. The sweet spot is somewhere in between, where you can speak about Moscow, vs Berlin, vs New York culture. Because there's definitely something different about these places. And neither say they're all the same, or that you have to look at each individual before making a judgment. But most people can't agree where exactly this sweet spot is.
- smsm42 4y ago
  Well of course Chechen culture or Buryat culture or Tatar culture or Chukcha culture will be very different. But this is not the culture that dominates functionaries of federations in Moscow. "Imperial" Russian culture is. That's the one I am talking about. Of course on Russian territory there are many other cultures, but these are not ones I considered.
rrdharan 4y ago
If you consider how Chernobyl was handled it doesn’t seem that far off?
- swarnie 4y ago
  Wrong country, wrong establishment. Apparently a lot of you dont know the difference between USSR, Russia and Ukraine. Stay safe out there.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    In fact, it's the same country and the same establishment. While Chernobyl is currently, as everybody knows, Ukrainian territory - at the time it was the territory of the USSR, and the dominating culture was Soviet - which despite being theoretically "internationalist" actually meant "Russian Imperial". People who made decisions there may have been born anywhere, but they all spoke Russian, and they all looked to Moscow for authority. And the establishment largely did not change in Russia since then - while some people went away, naturally or forcefully, and some new people came in, the new people now in Russia were largely parts of the same establishment as in the USSR - they just went up a number of rungs on the ladder when the top elites had to retire. The classic case is Putin - who is ex-KGB - but if you look at his team, you'll see most of them have roots in the old establishment or have been brought in by the people from the old establishment. In contrast to Ukraine, where old elites largely lost power (new ones are far from perfect either, but that's a topic for another day) and have been replaced, in Russia this replacement never really happened - and that may be a good key to why what is happening now is happening.
    - baybal2 4y ago
      [dead]
hosh 4y ago
That jives with what I heard and the English translated Russian pop literature I have read. Besides, caveat venditor is more of an American thing, with most of the world being caveat emptor. Having said all of that, I don't think robotics and AI is the kind of thing we "move fast and break things".
- efitz 4y ago
- DS_Store_51927 4y ago
pc86 4y ago
I'm sure there are plenty who aren't, but these people in the Chess Federation certainly seem to be.
PontifexMinimus 4y ago
smsm42 4y ago
It's not cartoonish, it's the culture. Of course it's not homogenous - you can find a lot of people that go against the mainstream. In a hyper-macho culture you can find males who are shy and sensitive, in an introverted culture valuing privacy and closeness you can find people who are extroverted and exuberant, in a culture where accepting blame is not encouraged you can find a lot of people that will readily do that. When you describe the culture as if it were a single person, it will necessarily get a little cartoonish because we are reducing millions of people to one description. But I think this description matches the dominating culture quite well - though you of course always need to realize not everybody follows it to the same degree, and some people would eagerly defy it.
- foverzar 4y ago
  Dude, you are just projecting your spite. This would be laughable if I didn't know you were serious. So it's actually just scary how how you make things up.
  - krasin 4y ago
    >Dude, you are just projecting your spite. This would be laughable if I didn't know you were serious. So it's actually just scary how how you make things up. I lived in Russia for the first 27 years of my life (but I've been out for 11 years). The claimed phenomena definitely existed and was widespread back then. I was an odd duck by being ready to openly accept my mistakes / misdoings, and I was not alone, but that was not common.
    - foverzar 4y ago
      I dunno, I see it everywhere, really. Owning you mistakes seems to be a rare and cherished virtue everywhere. Besides, my point is that such way of reasoning and inducting from a broken finger towards a whole culture is nothing more than spiteful supremacism.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
palmetieri2000 4y ago
This videogame review from a YouTube channel called Warlockracy is actually also a really interesting perspective on at least some aspects of Russian subcultures and their prominence, I found it a surprisingly insightful social commentary wrapped up in an entertaining vid. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ_PiXLVaJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ_PiXLVaJ8 (~45mins) The second video is more serious but also rather interesting (clips from it became very popular at the beginning of the Russian invasion into Ukraine). It is a lecture from a Finnish University Professor whom spent most of his career in Intelligence specializing in Russian relations and now teaches intelligence and security. He talks extensively about the corruption hierarchies in Russia as well as Putin and Propaganda, well worth a watch (and more recent videos have been released since found on the same channel). 2. https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw (~60mins) Operating under the assumption that the video isn't misrepresenting the cultural aspects of Russia I think we would both be surprised at how "cartoonish" things can be.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  Video #2 should be required watching for anyone joining the conversation about the Russia - Ukraine war. Martti J. Kari (the lecturer) spent his whole career in the Finnish military studying Russia. The Russian mentality is _really_ hard to understand for a generic westerner. Russia has been lead by a conservative leader for 200-300 years. Lead by an autocratic leader (Tsar) for a good thousand years. The next Tsar will always be from the "Princes" - never a complete outsider. Trying to change that mindset is as impossible as it would be for the USA to not have a two-party system. Their whole culture and bureaucracy is based on the fact that there is an "us" and a "them". Three or four parties will never happen in the USA.
  - paganel 4y ago
    There was almost nothing “conservative” about Leninism. The same goes for Stalinism. Your comment actually just made me want to but “The Atheist Manual” (or something similar, can’t remember the exact title) that was published in 1950s USSR and which I found in a Romanian translation in an antique bookshop that I usually frequent.
superchroma 4y ago
Well, it is reflected in their position about Ukraine.
rich_sasha 4y ago
https://news.sky.com/story/russia-zorbing-accident-father-killed-in-fall-10458468 https://news.sky.com/story/russia-zorbing-accident-father-ki... I think it's true that health and safety are treated very differently there. The craziest part of the attached link is the quote "it's gone in the wrong direction again".
- xhevahir 4y ago
  The KHL, Russia's top hockey league, is known for its cavalier treatment of injured--even dying--players:https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/paul-kariyas-brother-latest-khl-medical-treatment-outrage--nhl.htmlThe https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/paul-kariya...
smsm42 4y ago
As in illustration, I'll relay you an actual story that I read from one Russian blogger (who witnessed it himself and I trust him that he did): The scene is a couchette car in an overnight train between two Russian cities (a very popular mode of transport in Russia). It's late at night, so most people are preparing to sleep or sleeping already, so it is pretty quiet. Except for the two slightly drunk guys in one end of the train, who are engaged in a lively conversation. After a while one woman next to them loses her patience and shouts "you two over there, would you shut up finally? People are trying to sleep here!". To which one of the guys answers, not missing a beat, with innocent indignation in his voice: "And why did you think it's us?!" That's how this culture works.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- beebeepka 4y ago
  That's nothing. I once read an actual story on a US aggregator site. The scene is a guy whose knowledge of anything outside his country is lacking. A relatively common occurrence around where he's from. After being bombarded with all kinds of propaganda for decades he'd easily believe almost anything on the topic. Especially after several months of extreme 24/7 antagonism due to a horrible war. That's how culture works. Supposedly
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    Point contextually not clear. "Be careful of sources?" That would be as generic as Cato's "Oh, and should I remind you that we should destroy Carthage".
  - smsm42 4y ago
    I assume you mean me. But which country do you mean? I lived in several. I grew up in a culture I am describing. I still maintain contact with many people living there. I base my conclusions on my experiences and data I gathered for decades. You base your conclusions on ignorance and stereotypes - you have no other choice since you don't know me. But you try to mock me - unsuccessfully, of course, because you don't know anything - maybe you should spend a bit of time on gathering your own information instead.
6figurelenins 4y ago
Allow me to suggest, in all seriousness, American government is not so different.
- smsm42 4y ago
  All governments do it to a certain degree. But usually when American government gets caught on it, it is considered an embarrassment, and people involved may have to apologize or, in very rare cases, even suffer some consequences. In Russia, it's how it is expected to work and there's no shame in it. It is very sad to observe that American government (and American politicians, and American press, and many other institutions) are sliding to that direction lately. Not there yet, but the vector definitely points to that direction.
dandanua 4y ago
It's the way how wild animals live. Strong eats weak. That's it. The wilderness of Russia should be apparent to everyone nowadays.
yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
Have you forgotten about a program called “the news” over the past six months?
foverzar 4y ago
There isn't. Either they didn't read the linked article, or they are projecting their own spite - I have no other explanation of how one could interpret really like that.

They're not. It's a massive country with many different races and cultures in it. Painting them all with one brush isn't very nice.

Aeolun 4y ago
This is Moscow though. I think it’s fairly likely the culture in Moscow is fairly homogenous.
- carbadtraingood 4y ago
  Is it? Is the culture of Paris fairly homogenous? New York? London? Berlin? I would imagine the place has some shared cultural understandings, generally, but that a big city is going to be much more heterogenous. But maybe I'm thinking too micro scale.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    You need to realize though the West has embraced multiculturalism, largely. Russia has not. It does not mean there are no diverse cultures in Russia - or even Moscow, but it does mean there is one dominant culture, and closer you get to the places where power is accessible, the more dominant and more exclusive it becomes. There are various cultures found in Moscow (and any big city in Russia), but there is also the Culture. In the West, a lot of effort is taken for the old Western culture not to be the culture of Paris, New York, London, Berlin, etc. Some endorse these efforts, some decry them, but it is obvious they happen. In Russia, nothing of the sort happens, on the contrary, if you want to be in power, you will abandon whatever culture you came from and embrace the culture of power. If you do not, you'll never get to wield any power.
    - TylerLives 4y ago
      What is the "culture of power", can you give some examples? And what are your pronouns?
      - smsm42 4y ago
        > What is the "culture of power", can you give some examples? I thought I did, in my comments uptopic. If you expect me to write a doctoral thesis on modern Russian culture, sorry, I am neither qualified nor it is the right place. While I have plenties of anecdotal data, and would be glad to share my experience to the extent I can, systematic treatment of a culture is not something one could do in a random comment on HN. I can name it, at best - Russian Imperial culture, and describe some of its qualities, but anything beyond that will have to wait for somebody who either has a PhD or wants to get one researching Russian culture. > And what are your pronouns? None of your business/None of your business.
        TylerLives 4y ago
        If you're talking about your first comment in this chain(about people refusing to take responsibility), I don't see how that's related to multiculturalism. I've never been to Russia, and I don't even watch Russian media often, but from what I can see, they're trying to promote multiculturalism a lot. It's not that I don't believe that Russia has a "culture of power" and that people at the top all share the same ideology, but this is happening everywhere.
        smsm42 4y ago
        The culture comment was an answer to the critique that you can not talk about culture in Russia because there are many cultures. There are, but one of them is dominant. They do not promote multiculturalism, at least not what is meant by that in the West. On the contrary, the staple of their official ideology is preserving Russia's uniqueness at all costs - even at the cost of rejecting humanist values that are considered "Western". Other cultures are allowed if they are subservient to the imperial culture - same story in every empire, really, take a book about any imperial culture, Russia's one would have similar traits, it's not unique in that regard. The main source of conflict now is that imperial culture needs much more of an empire than Russia currently is, thus obsession with territorial conquest, despite already having huge undeveloped and neglected territories.
  - carlmr 4y ago
    This seems like the old lumpers vs splitters issue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters There's definitely something different in Berlin vs New York culture, and me, a person that sees commonalities everywhere, i.e. a lumper, definitely sees a common/dominant culture in each of these places. On the other side you have splitters that always find a reason to differentiate more. There's no right and wrong on this discussion, it's subjective in essence, you can always lump or split by your own rules. That is a classification problem. Darwin talked about it at length, because he was annoyed by splitters denying any kind of classification, making it really hard to make a taxonomy. If you split too much, every human is an individual, you can't say anything about anything anymore. If you lump too much, all humans are the same, you can't say anything about anything either. The sweet spot is somewhere in between, where you can speak about Moscow, vs Berlin, vs New York culture. Because there's definitely something different about these places. And neither say they're all the same, or that you have to look at each individual before making a judgment. But most people can't agree where exactly this sweet spot is.
smsm42 4y ago
Well of course Chechen culture or Buryat culture or Tatar culture or Chukcha culture will be very different. But this is not the culture that dominates functionaries of federations in Moscow. "Imperial" Russian culture is. That's the one I am talking about. Of course on Russian territory there are many other cultures, but these are not ones I considered.

rrdharan 4y ago

If you consider how Chernobyl was handled it doesn’t seem that far off?

swarnie 4y ago
Wrong country, wrong establishment. Apparently a lot of you dont know the difference between USSR, Russia and Ukraine. Stay safe out there.
- smsm42 4y ago
  In fact, it's the same country and the same establishment. While Chernobyl is currently, as everybody knows, Ukrainian territory - at the time it was the territory of the USSR, and the dominating culture was Soviet - which despite being theoretically "internationalist" actually meant "Russian Imperial". People who made decisions there may have been born anywhere, but they all spoke Russian, and they all looked to Moscow for authority. And the establishment largely did not change in Russia since then - while some people went away, naturally or forcefully, and some new people came in, the new people now in Russia were largely parts of the same establishment as in the USSR - they just went up a number of rungs on the ladder when the top elites had to retire. The classic case is Putin - who is ex-KGB - but if you look at his team, you'll see most of them have roots in the old establishment or have been brought in by the people from the old establishment. In contrast to Ukraine, where old elites largely lost power (new ones are far from perfect either, but that's a topic for another day) and have been replaced, in Russia this replacement never really happened - and that may be a good key to why what is happening now is happening.
  - baybal2 4y ago
    [dead]

hosh 4y ago

That jives with what I heard and the English translated Russian pop literature I have read. Besides, caveat venditor is more of an American thing, with most of the world being caveat emptor. Having said all of that, I don't think robotics and AI is the kind of thing we "move fast and break things".

efitz 4y ago
DS_Store_51927 4y ago

pc86 4y ago

I'm sure there are plenty who aren't, but these people in the Chess Federation certainly seem to be.

PontifexMinimus 4y ago

smsm42 4y ago

It's not cartoonish, it's the culture. Of course it's not homogenous - you can find a lot of people that go against the mainstream. In a hyper-macho culture you can find males who are shy and sensitive, in an introverted culture valuing privacy and closeness you can find people who are extroverted and exuberant, in a culture where accepting blame is not encouraged you can find a lot of people that will readily do that. When you describe the culture as if it were a single person, it will necessarily get a little cartoonish because we are reducing millions of people to one description. But I think this description matches the dominating culture quite well - though you of course always need to realize not everybody follows it to the same degree, and some people would eagerly defy it.

foverzar 4y ago
Dude, you are just projecting your spite. This would be laughable if I didn't know you were serious. So it's actually just scary how how you make things up.
- krasin 4y ago
  >Dude, you are just projecting your spite. This would be laughable if I didn't know you were serious. So it's actually just scary how how you make things up. I lived in Russia for the first 27 years of my life (but I've been out for 11 years). The claimed phenomena definitely existed and was widespread back then. I was an odd duck by being ready to openly accept my mistakes / misdoings, and I was not alone, but that was not common.
  - foverzar 4y ago
    I dunno, I see it everywhere, really. Owning you mistakes seems to be a rare and cherished virtue everywhere. Besides, my point is that such way of reasoning and inducting from a broken finger towards a whole culture is nothing more than spiteful supremacism.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

palmetieri2000 4y ago

This videogame review from a YouTube channel called Warlockracy is actually also a really interesting perspective on at least some aspects of Russian subcultures and their prominence, I found it a surprisingly insightful social commentary wrapped up in an entertaining vid. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ_PiXLVaJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ_PiXLVaJ8 (~45mins) The second video is more serious but also rather interesting (clips from it became very popular at the beginning of the Russian invasion into Ukraine). It is a lecture from a Finnish University Professor whom spent most of his career in Intelligence specializing in Russian relations and now teaches intelligence and security. He talks extensively about the corruption hierarchies in Russia as well as Putin and Propaganda, well worth a watch (and more recent videos have been released since found on the same channel). 2. https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw (~60mins) Operating under the assumption that the video isn't misrepresenting the cultural aspects of Russia I think we would both be surprised at how "cartoonish" things can be.

theshrike79 4y ago
Video #2 should be required watching for anyone joining the conversation about the Russia - Ukraine war. Martti J. Kari (the lecturer) spent his whole career in the Finnish military studying Russia. The Russian mentality is _really_ hard to understand for a generic westerner. Russia has been lead by a conservative leader for 200-300 years. Lead by an autocratic leader (Tsar) for a good thousand years. The next Tsar will always be from the "Princes" - never a complete outsider. Trying to change that mindset is as impossible as it would be for the USA to not have a two-party system. Their whole culture and bureaucracy is based on the fact that there is an "us" and a "them". Three or four parties will never happen in the USA.
- paganel 4y ago
  There was almost nothing “conservative” about Leninism. The same goes for Stalinism. Your comment actually just made me want to but “The Atheist Manual” (or something similar, can’t remember the exact title) that was published in 1950s USSR and which I found in a Romanian translation in an antique bookshop that I usually frequent.

superchroma 4y ago

Well, it is reflected in their position about Ukraine.

rich_sasha 4y ago

https://news.sky.com/story/russia-zorbing-accident-father-killed-in-fall-10458468 https://news.sky.com/story/russia-zorbing-accident-father-ki... I think it's true that health and safety are treated very differently there. The craziest part of the attached link is the quote "it's gone in the wrong direction again".

xhevahir 4y ago
The KHL, Russia's top hockey league, is known for its cavalier treatment of injured--even dying--players:https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/paul-kariyas-brother-latest-khl-medical-treatment-outrage--nhl.htmlThe https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/paul-kariya...

smsm42 4y ago

As in illustration, I'll relay you an actual story that I read from one Russian blogger (who witnessed it himself and I trust him that he did): The scene is a couchette car in an overnight train between two Russian cities (a very popular mode of transport in Russia). It's late at night, so most people are preparing to sleep or sleeping already, so it is pretty quiet. Except for the two slightly drunk guys in one end of the train, who are engaged in a lively conversation. After a while one woman next to them loses her patience and shouts "you two over there, would you shut up finally? People are trying to sleep here!". To which one of the guys answers, not missing a beat, with innocent indignation in his voice: "And why did you think it's us?!" That's how this culture works.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
beebeepka 4y ago
That's nothing. I once read an actual story on a US aggregator site. The scene is a guy whose knowledge of anything outside his country is lacking. A relatively common occurrence around where he's from. After being bombarded with all kinds of propaganda for decades he'd easily believe almost anything on the topic. Especially after several months of extreme 24/7 antagonism due to a horrible war. That's how culture works. Supposedly
- mdp2021 4y ago
  Point contextually not clear. "Be careful of sources?" That would be as generic as Cato's "Oh, and should I remind you that we should destroy Carthage".
- smsm42 4y ago
  I assume you mean me. But which country do you mean? I lived in several. I grew up in a culture I am describing. I still maintain contact with many people living there. I base my conclusions on my experiences and data I gathered for decades. You base your conclusions on ignorance and stereotypes - you have no other choice since you don't know me. But you try to mock me - unsuccessfully, of course, because you don't know anything - maybe you should spend a bit of time on gathering your own information instead.

6figurelenins 4y ago

Allow me to suggest, in all seriousness, American government is not so different.

smsm42 4y ago
All governments do it to a certain degree. But usually when American government gets caught on it, it is considered an embarrassment, and people involved may have to apologize or, in very rare cases, even suffer some consequences. In Russia, it's how it is expected to work and there's no shame in it. It is very sad to observe that American government (and American politicians, and American press, and many other institutions) are sliding to that direction lately. Not there yet, but the vector definitely points to that direction.

dandanua 4y ago

It's the way how wild animals live. Strong eats weak. That's it. The wilderness of Russia should be apparent to everyone nowadays.

yakshaving_jgt 4y ago

Have you forgotten about a program called “the news” over the past six months?

foverzar 4y ago

There isn't. Either they didn't read the linked article, or they are projecting their own spite - I have no other explanation of how one could interpret really like that.