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For anyone curious as to why crime in Russia seems to be so ingrained into the culture, this lecture from a finnish intelligence officer is quite informative.

• smilespray 3y ago
  +1, this video is a must-see
• AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  For those of us who aren't going to watch a video of unknown length to find out what your point is, would you provide a summary?
  • mattbruv 3y ago
    The length is known, it's 1 hour long.
  • swsieber 3y ago
    Here's a transcript: https://the-culture-shocks.blogspot.com/2022/03/evaluation-of-russia-by-finish.html https://the-culture-shocks.blogspot.com/2022/03/evaluation-o...
  • TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
    And in a foreign language.
    • RugnirViking 3y ago
      there are 18 languages of manual translations subtitles provided
    • 4gotunameagain 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • TurkTurkleton 3y ago
        Can't speak for any other Americans, but for me, the objection is rooted in having to watch a video at all. Reading the subtitles in a video is still more time-consuming than reading a transcript (which, mercifully, someone else here in the comments did provide).
        • 4gotunameagain 3y ago
          [flagged]
        • Dylan16807 3y ago
          The second reply got flagged for being rude, but it's right. Not wanting to watch a video is valid. Complaining about "foreign language" when there are dubs, subtitles, and transcripts, all human translated, is not valid. And did the first reply seriously get flagged to death for saying "Dear american"? I can't see any other words in that sentence that I could construe as offensive...
      • gjvc 3y ago
        [flagged]
  • hn8305823 3y ago
    tl'dr, this seems to be the most important point but the video/transcript is full of insightful info: > The third era that influenced Russian thought in a great manner is Mongol Russia. In the 1240s, the Mongols conquered Russia. They held Russia for 150 years. That time was cruel. There are a lot of words in Russian, related to torture, taxation and corruption, that come from the Mongol language. Dominance under personal authority was rooted in the administrative culture from the Mongols. That is, there is only one khan that leads. It is he who leads, no one else. Others are passive followers. That one guy leads and takes responsibility and the initiative. When the belief of divine legitimacy to lead is attached to this, the leader will appear as fairly tough in their world view. > The corruption and cruelty also comes from the Mongol era. During the Mongol rule the only ways to survive were lying, corruption and violence. This still lives very deep in Russia’s strategic culture. When Mongol rule ended, the Mongols did not just pack their bags and disappear from Russia. Instead they mixed with the locals. So the traditions also stayed with the people. In particular, to the leading caste. The Mongols who had previously ruled the country merged into the ruling layers, which is still visible today.
    • bigbillheck 3y ago
      The Mongols conquered an awful lot of places, but only with Russia are they used to explain "ingrained culture". Nobody's going to have a seminar about, say, Iran, and say that a large part of the way they are today is because of the Ilkhanate, and even the least-hinged China commentator isn't going to start invoking the Yuan and their permeating influence.
      • pixl97 3y ago
        I mean yea, you can discount anything by comparing things that are not alike. One thing to note about Russia is it is not defensible in standard sense of it's hard to cross this river or mountain. This lead to Russia making distance it's defense. You go and capture a bunch of different peoples with no relations to each other and use them as a meat shield if anyone attacks. Meanwhile you want for the harsh winter to wear them out. But this also comes as a cost, you cannot allow any of these outlying territories to gain too much power or they could become a threat to Moscow, hence you tend to see a massive amount of Russia under developed and depopulated.
• wolverine876 3y ago
  Broad claims about 'culture' set off alarm bells for me and is sort of a classic error of scholarship (not to hold a random HN post to the standard of 'scholarship' - my point is it's a signal of flaws). Culture is very difficult to define, which makes it compatible with any claims - every listener perceive different meanings that make sense to us, so we can agree while meaning different things. Also, we have nothing specific to test. For example, if someone said crime is prevelent in Russia's economy, we might have data on the size of the black market, and data and information on how other factors generally affect black market size (such as, as a guess, authoritarian government, oligarchy, and of course poor delivery of goods and services by government and market). Also, such claims are almost always made by outsiders, who know least about the 'culture' and at the same time are prone, being humans, to make broad, powerful claims about extremes in 'the other', who are slightly alien and thus might do anything. Edit: I'm very familiar with the stereotype of Russian hackers, but stereotypes are very misleading. There are Russian government disinformation campaigns, where we do have specific claims and lots of evidence, but that seems like a different issue.
  • unsupp0rted 3y ago
    “Slowmads”, I.e. slow digital nomads who stay in places for a long while but ultimately see many different places, wouldn’t have much difficulty relating some “culture” things about one place vs. another. Often it’s plain to see. The causes maybe aren’t. But the effects are.
    • femiagbabiaka 3y ago
      An expat by their nature will have a completely skewed and subjective view. Empiricism is possible, and much better than random anecdotes.
    • deleted 3y ago
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  • RugnirViking 3y ago
    cultures do certainly exist. Consider for example the difference between high-context and low-context cultures. As an anecdote about russian culture, a russian coworker once told me how amused a shopkeeper was back in russia when he asked them if they could please give him something. Where in russia it is typically not done (and its not at all rude to simply instruct a shopkeeper to give you something without please or thank yous, and certainly not asking someone if they can do something but just telling them to do it). The shopkeeper thought it was endlessly funny to just say no, as though it was an earnest request. Living in the UK had changed how my coworker spoke even in their native language. Sure some may regard these as aspects of language still, but imo the fact that it affected how my coworker spoke even in their native language perhaps shows its more a cultural thing. Now I WOULD be very wary of making cultural arguments as relates to crime. Imo its only really appropriate for analysing individual interaction.
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• pseg134 3y ago
  Cool, now do black Americans. Or maybe this whole idea isn’t good.
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  • jancsika 3y ago
    It takes black Americans way longer than everyone else to wash and do their hair. (Guessing 2-5x longer for doing hair, and perhaps an order of magnitude longer to do a full wash.) The cost to black women to get their hair done is generally more than any other group. Almost all black women (and probably black men) have had to develop some coping mechanism for the number of non-black people who want (or at times, demand) to touch their hair. Digression-- I remember a black doctor who had a coping mechanism for the number of patients who assumed he was the nurse and asked him where the doctor was. He would spin 360-degrees and then present himself to the patient again. :) As for the sibling comment-- my first three sentences are falsifiable. Edit: clarification
    • HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
      > (and probably black men) have had to develop some coping mechanism My "coping mechanism" for the time before I just shaved it too short to matter was to simply say, "OK, go ahead." It's not a big deal and I don't have a problem with a natural curiosity. [edit] Asking is fine, "demanding" I would have a serious problem with.
  • RHSeeger 3y ago
    It is entirely possible for a culture in an area/country to promote a behavior that many of the people there agree with. That doesn't mean that all the people in that area/country agree with (or exhibit) it, just that it's common. For example, there is a fairly widespread / rampant "cheating/copying/don't-bother-learning" culture in a lot of schools in India, especially as it relates to software development. I've seen it brought up and stated as truth by people from that region over and over. There are also many VERY smart, skilled, devoted software developers from that are. I've worked with quite a few. However, because there _is_ that culture, the "noise" (bad developers) to signal (good developers) ratio is really high. And, when dealing with developers from that area (especially, from my experience, those at various contract/churn companies), you need to be careful about the work they're doing. You need to check to see it's being done well ... at least until you're familiar enough with the people/team that you can trust them. Culture _has_ an impact; but that doesn't mean it should be assumed... just that it may mean you need to pay more attention.
• cwillu 3y ago
  Money quote: “And we're pleased with ourselves for seeing this influence on information, when, in fact, Bäckman's job (and that of people like him for Russia) is to draw our attention away as a diversion in order for the skillful information to take place somewhere else more effectively.”
  • lapphi 3y ago
    The firehose of the internet has been a boon for Putin in this way
• no_wizard 3y ago
  I'd love to see a presentation like this about the US, in which it is casually mentioned in this lecture, that the US is engages in imperialism in a different way. Its not even that I disagree per se. I simply would love to know more about how this thinking evolves within our allies (presumably, Finland is considered an ally to the US) That would be a very interesting lecture. If anyone has something like this, send the link my way!
  • TMWNN 3y ago
    >(presumably, Finland is considered an ally to the US) Finland only joined NATO in 2023; before then it was explicitly neutral. During the Cold War, East and West discreetly (and sometimes not so discreetly) fought for Finland's allegiance but, generally speaking, the Soviet Union had great influence over its foreign policy (cf. finlanization) while the West had great influence over its culture and economy.
• jampekka 3y ago
  For context, the theory of the (sadly recently passed) lecturer Martti J. Kari is somewhat controversial. He presents an extremely damning view that the Russian area culture and even genes have been fundamentally authoritarian and imperialistic for ages. This also has some context in the Finnish culture, especially in the military, having quite a fearful and resentful view of Russia due to the wars during WW2, involvement in the civil war during WW1 and an oppressive era when Finland was a part of the tsarist empire. This is not meant as an apology for anything that Russia's regime is doing and how it is.
• cryptoegorophy 3y ago
  Crime is integrated not because of some Mongols. But because of collapse of USSR, having grown during this time it was a struggle for survival and you are either with “majority” stealing, killing, robbing or with “minority”. At the very young age you were told not to tell on others that do crime, and you were educated by peers about prison life which was highly romanticized. It has changed dramatically in the past years. Now you can’t even buy a driver’s license where before it was the other way around. Nothing to do with Mongols…
  • lapphi 3y ago
    Yep that’s covered in the video if you watch the whole thing
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