5 ms·

Watch ordinary Russians in the 1980s and you’ll understand the rise of Putin

8 points by irsagent 4y ago

irsagent 4y ago
https://archive.ph/rLFnf https://archive.ph/rLFnf
Gunax 4y ago
There's a genre of explaining Russia that is popular this year. Lets call it Kotkinism. We want to understand it, but we don't. We either admit we don't understand their motivations, or we conjure justifications that make sense to us because they fit our framework of the world, even if they are not true. Would I actually understand it after this 7 hour documentary? I think I might understand something of the Russian bitterness. The betrayal, the distrust, and the pride of endurance. But I don't think 7 hours of cold hands rummaging through bare store shelves, shuffling babushkas, and men making ad-hoc repairs to cars will help me understand Russian aggressiveness. Maybe Russian suffering.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  It seems to me like they as a people have just been used to authoritarian rulers of one flavor or another for a thousand years. That's a lot of momentum to overcome, they seem to just go along with whatever their leaders want, until the next revolution that installs yet another type of authoritarian.
- irsagent 4y ago
  > There's a genre of explaining Russia that is popular this year. Lets call it Kotkinism. Just out of curiosity, how are you deriving Kotkinism? What is it etymology? > We want to understand it, but we don't. We either admit we don't understand their motivations, or we conjure justifications that make sense to us because they fit our framework of the world, even if they are not true. How is it that we don't understand it? I would think there are studied perspectives that can give understanding to the patterns in Russian society. As a followup what would it look like to understand it? > But I don't think 7 hours of cold hands rummaging through bare store shelves, shuffling babushkas, and men making ad-hoc repairs to cars will help me understand Russian aggressiveness. Maybe Russian suffering. What would it look like if they did understand, and if so what would need to be known to understand Russian aggressiveness?
wrp 4y ago
This is about the 1990s, not the 1980s. Late Soviet life was bad but in a different way and degree. A minor aspect of the story given is the nature of organized criminality in Russia. Two good videos by Mark Galeotti: History of Russian organized crime (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J77TmCqOnS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J77TmCqOnS8) Relation of gangsters to the modern state (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2h-aKqoZME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2h-aKqoZME)
- irsagent 4y ago
  >This is about the 1990s, not the 1980s. It starts from 1985-1999
chmaynard 4y ago
Seems pointless to post an article here that's behind a paywall. I know this happens hundreds of times every day on HN, but I just don't understand why we do it.
- irsagent 4y ago
  > https://archive.ph/rLFnf https://archive.ph/rLFnf Isn't that the case for most of the news stories today.
simonblack 4y ago
I visited Moscow in the late 1980s. I expected to be harassed and followed according to all those 'What it's like inside Russia' books I'd read over the years. I discovered a bunch of people who were far more kind, moral and honest than the ones in New York that I'd visited a couple of weeks earlier. I hadn't felt particularly safe in New York, I felt safe in Moscow.
- nocoiner 4y ago
  It doesn’t seem shocking or even the least bit surprising that you didn’t feel safe in New York at the all-time absolute peak of crime, when the murder rate was 6x what it is now, but, as a foreigner, you felt physically secure in the capital city of a totalitarian surveillance state. Is there a more broadly applicable point here than your subjective experience of late-80s NY versus late-80s Moscow? Or am I just missing your point altogether?
  - simonblack 4y ago
    I suppose my point was that I had been convinced that the Russians were horrible people by all the stuff I had read in the West up to that point.When I actually had to interact with them in the flesh, I found that the Western stereotypes of Russians that we had been given were all wrong. On my first morning in Moscow, I asked the hotel concierge for my passport. She asked what I was doing that made that necessary. I said 'I'm going into the City. Don't I have to have it on me if somebody asks me for my papers?' She burst out laughing and said 'You don't need your passport for that. But you can take it with you if you want.' I replied 'No, don't worry about it then. It'll be safer here with you than with me.' But they DO think differently. One area that I discovered was in the deal-making process. Westerners tend to make deals quickly, and then try to find loopholes in that deal AFTERWARDS to reduce costs to themselves. Russians are painful for Westerners to make deals with as they will debate all the various points of difference, even tiny ones, BEFORE the deal is struck. Sometimes, there is no deal made. However, any deal that is struck with Russians will be followed both to the letter and the spirit of that deal. An example of this is that gas supplies were being made to the Europeans for years and years under existing deals that were in place, even as more and more sanctions were placed on the Russians by the Europeans.

8 points by irsagent 4y ago

https://archive.ph/rLFnf https://archive.ph/rLFnf

There's a genre of explaining Russia that is popular this year. Lets call it Kotkinism. We want to understand it, but we don't. We either admit we don't understand their motivations, or we conjure justifications that make sense to us because they fit our framework of the world, even if they are not true. Would I actually understand it after this 7 hour documentary? I think I might understand something of the Russian bitterness. The betrayal, the distrust, and the pride of endurance. But I don't think 7 hours of cold hands rummaging through bare store shelves, shuffling babushkas, and men making ad-hoc repairs to cars will help me understand Russian aggressiveness. Maybe Russian suffering.

stjohnswarts 4y ago
It seems to me like they as a people have just been used to authoritarian rulers of one flavor or another for a thousand years. That's a lot of momentum to overcome, they seem to just go along with whatever their leaders want, until the next revolution that installs yet another type of authoritarian.
irsagent 4y ago
> There's a genre of explaining Russia that is popular this year. Lets call it Kotkinism. Just out of curiosity, how are you deriving Kotkinism? What is it etymology? > We want to understand it, but we don't. We either admit we don't understand their motivations, or we conjure justifications that make sense to us because they fit our framework of the world, even if they are not true. How is it that we don't understand it? I would think there are studied perspectives that can give understanding to the patterns in Russian society. As a followup what would it look like to understand it? > But I don't think 7 hours of cold hands rummaging through bare store shelves, shuffling babushkas, and men making ad-hoc repairs to cars will help me understand Russian aggressiveness. Maybe Russian suffering. What would it look like if they did understand, and if so what would need to be known to understand Russian aggressiveness?

wrp 4y ago

This is about the 1990s, not the 1980s. Late Soviet life was bad but in a different way and degree. A minor aspect of the story given is the nature of organized criminality in Russia. Two good videos by Mark Galeotti: History of Russian organized crime (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J77TmCqOnS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J77TmCqOnS8) Relation of gangsters to the modern state (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2h-aKqoZME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2h-aKqoZME)

irsagent 4y ago
>This is about the 1990s, not the 1980s. It starts from 1985-1999

chmaynard 4y ago

Seems pointless to post an article here that's behind a paywall. I know this happens hundreds of times every day on HN, but I just don't understand why we do it.

irsagent 4y ago
> https://archive.ph/rLFnf https://archive.ph/rLFnf Isn't that the case for most of the news stories today.

simonblack 4y ago

I visited Moscow in the late 1980s. I expected to be harassed and followed according to all those 'What it's like inside Russia' books I'd read over the years. I discovered a bunch of people who were far more kind, moral and honest than the ones in New York that I'd visited a couple of weeks earlier. I hadn't felt particularly safe in New York, I felt safe in Moscow.

nocoiner 4y ago
It doesn’t seem shocking or even the least bit surprising that you didn’t feel safe in New York at the all-time absolute peak of crime, when the murder rate was 6x what it is now, but, as a foreigner, you felt physically secure in the capital city of a totalitarian surveillance state. Is there a more broadly applicable point here than your subjective experience of late-80s NY versus late-80s Moscow? Or am I just missing your point altogether?
- simonblack 4y ago
  I suppose my point was that I had been convinced that the Russians were horrible people by all the stuff I had read in the West up to that point.When I actually had to interact with them in the flesh, I found that the Western stereotypes of Russians that we had been given were all wrong. On my first morning in Moscow, I asked the hotel concierge for my passport. She asked what I was doing that made that necessary. I said 'I'm going into the City. Don't I have to have it on me if somebody asks me for my papers?' She burst out laughing and said 'You don't need your passport for that. But you can take it with you if you want.' I replied 'No, don't worry about it then. It'll be safer here with you than with me.' But they DO think differently. One area that I discovered was in the deal-making process. Westerners tend to make deals quickly, and then try to find loopholes in that deal AFTERWARDS to reduce costs to themselves. Russians are painful for Westerners to make deals with as they will debate all the various points of difference, even tiny ones, BEFORE the deal is struck. Sometimes, there is no deal made. However, any deal that is struck with Russians will be followed both to the letter and the spirit of that deal. An example of this is that gas supplies were being made to the Europeans for years and years under existing deals that were in place, even as more and more sanctions were placed on the Russians by the Europeans.