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I will never understand why it has to be this way and Russia cannot be a normal country that has the goal to join the EU and be prosperous instead of doing nons

I will never understand why it has to be this way and Russia cannot be a normal country that has the goal to join the EU and be prosperous instead of doing nonsense for over a hundred years now.

avidiax 9mo ago
Russia would first have to be a "normal country". It would need an educated populace and a non-extractive (manufacturing or services) economy. It suffers from both a resource curse and Dutch disease. It is difficult to form a middle class that's independent of state institutions and employment. It has poor demographics and brain drain. It has no independent elites (academics, journalists, judges, business people), so the only restorative force in the society is brutal punishment for non-alignment with a cult of personal power. Even if Putin wanted to join the E.U., the economy, social structures and institutions, and uneducated voting populace wouldn't allow it to be stable enough to join. Russia at this point can't even be a successful authoritarian state like China. It's hard to say that it will never be a democracy, but those with a memory of the 1990's find that idea traumatic. Looking far forward in time, eventually global oil independence and demographic decline may force economic reform.
- p1esk 9mo ago
  It would need an educated populace How do you measure that?
  - avidiax 9mo ago
    It's not just literacy, although that's nearly required to engage in the public discourse. It's really more like indoctrination. The voting populace has to have an implicit belief in public institutions, believe that attempting to vote or losing a vote is not cataclysmic (not a great reason for violence or retribution), and have patience that the system will gradually correct with future votes rather than require a authoritarian to restore order. I think you can also add a distaste for cults of personalities, and a willingness to vote in disagreement with religious leaders. Lastly, voters have to have a shared delusion that their vote matters, which it practically does not (economic value of voting is negative for the individual). Russia likely doesn't meet these requirements, and the U.S. has had many failed democratic experiments in places like Afghanistan where this culture is missing.
jgilias 9mo ago
Because then they’d have to recognise their failures. It’s like an alcoholic that keeps drinking in order to keep pushing back the reckoning of reality.
yks 9mo ago
When I think about this, I often come back to thinking that the societies that underwent some conflict or difficult times, absolutely cannot have a member of an older generation in charge, because the only thing they do is to continue that conflict, completely manufacturing it again if needed, just to get their "revenge". Current Russian attempt at genociding Ukrainians is all the more tragic in that the generations, that remember the previous hostilities, were almost all gone by now. Alas, that corner of the world is again poisoned for several generations ahead.
gpm 9mo ago
Because that wouldn't benefit Putin personally as much as the status quo? And he's the decision maker. Dictators routinely make decisions where they hurt their country to keep a much bigger slice of the pie for themselves...
kranke155 9mo ago
Nations make their own Logic. The US has to control or befriend the oil producing countries to maintain the petrodollar (which really maintains the dollar, which is the lynchpin of the global economy). This leads to “wars for oil” where the US doesn’t take any oil (it just needs the country to return to the dollar market - so price their oil in dollars). Russia is a continental state so it requires its Neighbors to be weak so they cant threaten Russia. As much as it tries to escape this logic, it can’t. Russia’s core interest is to dominate and subjugate its near abroad. It has to. It’s the only way for it to become a global power.
- dmix 9mo ago
  > It has to. It’s the only way for it to become a global power. Unless of course doing so makes them far poorer and isolates them culturally/economically, and completely embarrasses their image of having a strong military.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - somenameforme 9mo ago
    What is your logic or rationale for this view? I think the contrary view is easy to argue - Russia is one of the head states in BRICS which is the largest international union in the world both by population, and which has also economically surpassed the G7 as well. And militarily they're fighting a war against an endless stream of forcibly conscripted bodies being armed and funded by the entirety of NATO, Europe, and a few odd balls -- and they're winning, at a cost of < 10% GDP. What other countries could match that?
    - jquery 9mo ago
      What are they winning?
      - somenameforme 9mo ago
        The peace treaty will clarify that, but I think the more important thing is the establishment of a multipolar world order. That, in and of itself, can lead to conflict, but I also have some optimism that it might bring in a paradoxical peace in the same way that nuclear weapons did. The reason nukes have been good is because it makes it clear that war is unwinnable which effectively ended direct conflict between world powers. Yet of course proxy wars are alive and well with Ukraine being the king of them all. And the US may be unable to defeat Russia in this war, but it's also equally unlikely that Russia could defeat the US in a similar scenario. So, "The only winning move is not to play." Of course this says nothing at all about relatively small regional conflicts, but in the grand scheme of things I'm far more concerned about WW3 than I am about these. That's not to understate the impact of what can (and is) happening in these sort of conflicts, but at the end of the day I don't think humanity will ever 'evolve' beyond war, and so in the mean time I think the goal should be to not end our species over something that will inevitably look like a pointless waste of life in a few decades. Keep in mind that WW1 was unironically called 'The War to End All Wars' before we started attaching an ordinal to it.
joe_the_user 9mo ago
I think the reason Russia today is relentless anti-West is rooted the post-Soviet era in many ways characterized by (the alcoholic) Boris Yeltsin. Wikipedia gives the summary: "Yeltsin oversaw the transition of Russia's command economy into a capitalist market economy by implementing economic shock therapy, market exchange rate of the ruble, nationwide privatization, and lifting of price controls. Economic downturn, volatility, and inflation ensued. Amid the economic shift, a small number of oligarchs obtained most of the national property and wealth, while international monopolies dominated the market." and I'd add millions of people died (not an exageration). The Putin regime began with Putin using military force to arrest any disloyal oligarchs while formulating his anti-Western ideology. But sequence of event explains why most Russians today have zero faith/interest in joining the Western World. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin
- anticodon 9mo ago
  Russia is anti-west because traitors Gorbachev and Yeltsin (who was indeed an alcoholic) sold the country to the West for nothing, for promises that we would be treated as equals that were never kept. As you can see in many comments here (and on other sites such as Reddit this is more prominent), West consider Russian people subhumans. Something that Hitler and others said openly before, and this wave of Nazism is becoming stronger now again. Country was destroyed, markets were destroyed, industries were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands died in ethnical conflicts, hundreds of thousands died from hunger. It was all a huge mistake and I hope we'll never repeat it.
  - LunaSea 9mo ago
    Russia sold itself to its oligarchs and still does.
  - troad 9mo ago
    > sold the country to the West for nothing > Country was destroyed, markets were destroyed, industries were destroyed. And yet somehow, mysteriously, the exact same shock therapy that Russia couldn't handle produced a thriving and prosperous Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. > for promises that we would be treated as equals that were never kept Russia has an economy roughly the size of Benelux, and it is treated exactly as such. The problem is that the Russians have a perpetual and hilarious delusion that they're an equal to the United States. Russia can barely compete with individual US states, let alone the US itself. California alone has a larger economy than the entire Russian Federation. Texas alone has a larger economy than the entire Russian Federation. In fact, Russia has a roughly comparable economy to Canada, which no one thinks is even remotely a power equal to the US. Russia is treated fairly. The problem is that Russia has delusions of grandeur, so 'fairly' is not good enough. They feel slighted by being a 'mere' Canada. And instead of doing what the Chinese did, building up so their power matches their aspirations, they just awkwardly gnaw at their neighbours instead. And then they act all surprised when everyone correctly describes them as a bully and bands together for collective security. (But of course none of Russia's behaviour is actually aimed at getting other countries to respect them, that's just a regime narrative intended to distract the Russian people from their falling living standards as Putin and his cronies rob Russia blind. The more internationally isolated Russia gets, the more indispensable Putin can pretend to be.)
abraxas 9mo ago
A thousand years almost. As a Pole I have no faith in Russia ever becoming anything other than a savage hostile wart on this planet. It's not just their leadership. It's the nation. More accurately their culture. Their malice is a result of a rare combination of ineptitude and megalomania all in one package.
- left-struck 9mo ago
  Your enemy is not the people of the country you hate, it’s the government. If you believe it’s the people then you are a victim to propaganda, or some other source of highly biased information. Think about what war really is, it’s almost always a bunch of powerful people who have a disagreement with a bunch of other powerful people, who then have to trick a bunch of less powerful people to fight on their behalf. If you feel like fighting you’ve been tricked. When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.
  - phyzome 9mo ago
    It's a combination. Here in the US, a large chunk of the population supported Trump, knowing full well what kind of things he would do. And another large chunk of the population are trying to stop him. You can't blame the population as a whole. But I suspect it's uncommon for the government to be completely disconnected from (some portion of) the population's sentiments.
    - magicalhippo 9mo ago
      > But I suspect it's uncommon for the government to be completely disconnected from (some portion of) the population's sentiments. However, that sentiment is shaped by the media available to the citizens, and in places like Russia, that means primarily by the government itself. So it's not so clear cut what the sentiment would have been had it not been for the governments propaganda.
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
sneak 9mo ago
A “normal country” like the UK or Hungary or Switzerland? Really though it’s because Russia mostly has nothing going for its millions of people except petrochemical exports.
ridiculous_leke 9mo ago
A nation state's values should align with EU for them to be part of the group. I don't think Russia would ever choose to join the union considering that even UK(which is culturally closer to Europe) left it.
- scns 9mo ago
  Many Brits immediately regretted voting for leaving after Brexit. They started educating themselves when it was to late and said they would have voted for staying had they known (instead of believing Nigel Farage). The regions that voted for leaving where the rural economically weak ones that even received money from the EU.
somenameforme 9mo ago
Russia did inquire about joining NATO multiple times, as far back as the 50s as the USSR, in the 90s after USSR collapsed, and then again by Putin in the 2000s. It was rebuffed each time. Joining the EU would be somewhat nonsensical as they would gain very little from it and cede substantial sovereignty in exchange. It's the same reason places like Norway have no interest in joining the EU.
- andrewflnr 9mo ago
  (0) GP didn't mention NATO, (1) NATO exists primarily to defend against Russian aggression, so obviously they're not allowed to join, and (2) besides the incidental details added for flavor, the actual question is why Russia insists on being broadly hostile to the world rather than broadly cooperative.
  - somenameforme 9mo ago
    The logic of 'No of course you can't join us - we're organizing to fight you!' is a good way to create a self fulfilling prophecy. Beyond that, one of the big practical reasons NATO exists is to stop its members from fighting against each other. Europe had centuries of never-ending and ever deadlier warfare eventually culminating in WW2. NATO largely stopped that by putting them under a common umbrella. Of course a practical reality is that history has shown alliances need an external enemy, or they start to turn on themselves. If the US had foreseen had powerful China would be today, I expect Russia would have been 'enlisted' into NATO. And I don't think Russia is broadly hostile to the world. They cofounded BRICS which comprises near to a majority of the world's population, and also a greater share of the world's economy than e.g. the G7. Rather the "problem", and one that applies to China too, is that they will never behave in a submissive fashion to the US. They want a multipolar world, whereas the political establishment in the US still dreams of a hegemonic world order, akin to what we had after the USSR collapsed. This inevitably sets the stage for geopolitical conflict, and as the saying goes - when two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.
    - cosmicgadget 9mo ago
anigbrowl 9mo ago
Look at the map. It's huge. In order to maintain its territorial integrity it has to act like a super power, or it has no reason to exist in its current form.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  And yet somehow Canada manages to get by without all the drama. Brazil as well.
  - anigbrowl 9mo ago
    Not to talk down Canada, but they're not geographically comparable. Russia is almost twice as large and borders 14 countries. I don't mean this as an excuse for Russian behavior, but to explain why it has internalized the idea of imperialism.
- a96 9mo ago
  It has stopped existing several times. And each time, the next version has turned out to act exactly the same again.
tguvot 9mo ago
There’s a Russian joke that Russia’s mission in the world is to show other countries how not to be. Or if we get more serious: it's mix of imperial ambitions, feeling of been humiliated by west and desire of revenge, (cultural level) aggression, arrogance, ignorance and been sure that Russia is a special country with special pathway and superior culture and one of world superpowers (that been ignored and this is not "fair") A couple of days after russia started war, on it's official news agency site was auto published article that was supposed to be victory lap (after all it was supposed to be 3 day special operation). It was promptly removed but not before it was archived. You can read decent translation here and it will show you some glimpses of what I wrote above https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t2vz4v/ria_news_accidentally_posted_an_article_about/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t2vz4v/ria_news_ac... For reference: I was born back in USSR and lived there till my early teen years. Been closely following russian media, discussion platforms, etc ever since.
exogeny 9mo ago
The short, uncouth but Occam’s Razor answer is because Putin has a micropenis and/or his parents were incredibly abusive towards him.
NoMoreNicksLeft 9mo ago
For individuals, a person might ask "Why can't Rodney just behave himself" without accepting that Rodney is violently anti-social and likes to throw liquidy turds at everyone. And for species, a person might ask "Why can't spider monkeys just behave themselves" without accepting that spider monkeys are dumb animals and that's what they do. But if I point out that this same thing applies to the Russians as a whole, then suddenly I'm racist.
lovegrenoble 9mo ago
btw the unification of Europe was only made possible by the unification of Germany, which took place thanks to Russia's benevolent will.
- thyristan 9mo ago
  "Benevolent" more in the sense of "currently unable to order the next massacre". The German unification only went ahead because soviet troops didn't intervene like they did in many prior instances: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953 > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Georgian_demonstrations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Georgian_demonstrations Glasnost and Perestroika under Gorbachev were not benevolence but necessary because the centralized power of the Soviet Union was dwindling. The SU became more and more occupied with fixing its own problems and could no longer hold together the Eastern Bloc by influence or force. Which is why the Eastern Bloc then slowly dissolved. This didn't start with the German unification, but earlier, and encompassed Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 The SU (who are actually dominated by, but different from "the Russians") certainly would have liked to hold it together. And while under Yeltsin, there was a period of acceptance of the dissolution of the SU, currently Putin seems to want to revive it, at least in terms of territory.
- LunaSea 9mo ago
  German separation was caused by Russia in the first place.
  - drysine 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - thyristan 9mo ago
      Yes, and the three western allies agreed to let their occupation zones form a German state. Which the Soviets opposed and had their occupation zone form an East German state, thus dividing Germany at their zone boundary. The Soviets did the dividing, the other allies did no such thing.
usrusr 9mo ago
Because the ruling gang has plenty of prosperity in their lives and "us vs the rest of the world" is the only way they know to keep the other 140+ million content with the few scraps they get. The more violent attitude they keep up against the rest of the world the less violent oppression they need at home to stay in power.
- keernan 9mo ago
  >only way they know to keep the other 140+ million content with the few scraps they get. The same wealth disparity exists in the west. Are you suggesting Russia is the governing model in our future?
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    > The same wealth disparity exists in the west. This is not in line with reality. > Are you suggesting Russia is the governing model in our future? If Trump and his buddies have their way: yes.
  - com 9mo ago
    The same wealth disparity does not exist in the west. Travel 100km out of Moscow and compare how people live to the same distance from Paris. Then go to the Russian Far East. It’s overtly that not been seen in the west since the 1950s and WWII reconstruction.
    - keernan 9mo ago
      We are talking about two different things. You are talking about the nature of poverty. No doubt the most impoverished in Russia are much worse off than the impoverished in western countries. I, however, am talking about the gap between the wealth of the top 1 percent and the rest of society. When you have billionaires, the gap between a billionaire and every non-billionaire is the same - merely because of the nature of the size of a billion. It is so large that comparing a billion to a million is essentially equivalent to comparing a billion to a penny.
anticodon 9mo ago
Why would we want to join the EU? It's a government comprised of people that weren't elected that destroys countries it supposed to govern by forcing non-rational choices that people hate but too afraid to openly criticize. The level of life in EU is declining, while rising in Russia. What EU can offer us? Nothing.
- breppp 9mo ago
  As an outside onlooker I can see a lot in common. Russians are essentially a european people and has a lot more in common with the EU than BRICS. Also, both are headed full-throttle towards a demographic disaster so might as well do it together And of course your comment about unelected officials acting irrationally that people cannot criticize surely reminds you of home
  - koiueo 9mo ago
    > Russians are essentially a european people Stop forcing that bs. russians see themselves as a unique unicorn high above any other nation on the planet (because of Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, and the physiological ability to drink 1L of vodka without getting sick).
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
- ajmurmann 9mo ago
  > Why would we want to join the EU? Look at any chart that shows any useful economic metric or things like life expectancy of eastern/central European countries before and after they joined the EU. It's almost to good to be true. > The level of life in EU is declining, while rising in Russia. That's quite easy when your GDP per capita is behind Trinidad & Tobago or even Cuba.
- myvoiceismypass 9mo ago
  > The level of life in EU is declining, while rising in Russia. Citations, please. > What EU can offer us? Nothing. Right, what is clear from your messages in this thread is that Russia only sees value in other things it can take over / steal / destroy. May I ask what Russia has to offer to the rest of the world?
Gupie 9mo ago
Is one reason that Russia is an empire, created as the same time as the British and French empires, ruling over countries with their own long histories and separate cultures that would break apart without an autocratic government?
Etheryte 9mo ago
The error most people make on this front is thinking that Russia is just another country with regular country goals like any other. Grow the economy, make lives better for its people over the long term, that kind of thing. But this is not the case. Russia has been run by thugs for centuries in, centuries out, and they want thug things. Make the head thugs richer and fatter while everyone else suffers, both at home and abroad.
RuslanL 9mo ago
The majority of Russian population genuinely believes that if the country "becomes weaker", some evil Western soldiers would come and either (belief A) physically exterminate every last of them or (belief B) enslave for eternity. From that lens, loosing a few millions in a "pre-emptive strike" to save the bulk of population looks reasonable. Don't ask me how they ended up with this picture of reality.
- drysine 9mo ago
  [flagged]
petre 9mo ago
Because they had their own union called the USSR, which collapsed due to military spending, oil price drops and centralized inneficiency. This was before Putin's mafia took over. Maybe this could offer more insight: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-power https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/vladim...
sharts 9mo ago
They did want to join the EU in the 90’s. They’ve always been rebuffed.
lukashoff 9mo ago
the fun part is that they don't even have to join the EU - perfectly positioned and enriched by natural resources to become a northern version of a Dubai
throw-the-towel 9mo ago
Do you really believe the EU would have accepted a country with easily 1/3 of the population of everyone else combined (so, a third of the seats at the "European Parliament") and a huge territory requiring investment? Or that they would have risked a Russian immigration crisis? Put themselves on China's doorstep, voluntarily? With all due respect, it's extremely naïve.
drysine 9mo ago
>has the goal to join the EU Not joining, of course, but Russia did, both the people and Putin. The West had different plans, as we learned. 'From Lisbon to Vladivostok': Putin Envisions a Russia-EU Free Trade Zone - SPIEGEL ONLINE, 2010 [0] "We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros." [0] [0] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vladivostok-putin-envisions-a-russia-eu-free-trade-zone-a-731109.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vl...
oxag3n 9mo ago
It's way longer than hundred years. It started to expand to the east in 16th century, which was and is still cruel to indigenous people of Siberia (e..g highest level of current war participation per capita). South/Caucasus expansion was brutal and was displayed in Russian literature. European states suffered from Russia for centuries as well.

I will never understand why it has to be this way and Russia cannot be a normal country that has the goal to join the EU and be prosperous instead of doing nonsense for over a hundred years now.

avidiax 9mo ago

Russia would first have to be a "normal country". It would need an educated populace and a non-extractive (manufacturing or services) economy. It suffers from both a resource curse and Dutch disease. It is difficult to form a middle class that's independent of state institutions and employment. It has poor demographics and brain drain. It has no independent elites (academics, journalists, judges, business people), so the only restorative force in the society is brutal punishment for non-alignment with a cult of personal power. Even if Putin wanted to join the E.U., the economy, social structures and institutions, and uneducated voting populace wouldn't allow it to be stable enough to join. Russia at this point can't even be a successful authoritarian state like China. It's hard to say that it will never be a democracy, but those with a memory of the 1990's find that idea traumatic. Looking far forward in time, eventually global oil independence and demographic decline may force economic reform.

p1esk 9mo ago
It would need an educated populace How do you measure that?
- avidiax 9mo ago
  It's not just literacy, although that's nearly required to engage in the public discourse. It's really more like indoctrination. The voting populace has to have an implicit belief in public institutions, believe that attempting to vote or losing a vote is not cataclysmic (not a great reason for violence or retribution), and have patience that the system will gradually correct with future votes rather than require a authoritarian to restore order. I think you can also add a distaste for cults of personalities, and a willingness to vote in disagreement with religious leaders. Lastly, voters have to have a shared delusion that their vote matters, which it practically does not (economic value of voting is negative for the individual). Russia likely doesn't meet these requirements, and the U.S. has had many failed democratic experiments in places like Afghanistan where this culture is missing.

jgilias 9mo ago

Because then they’d have to recognise their failures. It’s like an alcoholic that keeps drinking in order to keep pushing back the reckoning of reality.

yks 9mo ago

When I think about this, I often come back to thinking that the societies that underwent some conflict or difficult times, absolutely cannot have a member of an older generation in charge, because the only thing they do is to continue that conflict, completely manufacturing it again if needed, just to get their "revenge". Current Russian attempt at genociding Ukrainians is all the more tragic in that the generations, that remember the previous hostilities, were almost all gone by now. Alas, that corner of the world is again poisoned for several generations ahead.

gpm 9mo ago

Because that wouldn't benefit Putin personally as much as the status quo? And he's the decision maker. Dictators routinely make decisions where they hurt their country to keep a much bigger slice of the pie for themselves...

kranke155 9mo ago

Nations make their own Logic. The US has to control or befriend the oil producing countries to maintain the petrodollar (which really maintains the dollar, which is the lynchpin of the global economy). This leads to “wars for oil” where the US doesn’t take any oil (it just needs the country to return to the dollar market - so price their oil in dollars). Russia is a continental state so it requires its Neighbors to be weak so they cant threaten Russia. As much as it tries to escape this logic, it can’t. Russia’s core interest is to dominate and subjugate its near abroad. It has to. It’s the only way for it to become a global power.

dmix 9mo ago
> It has to. It’s the only way for it to become a global power. Unless of course doing so makes them far poorer and isolates them culturally/economically, and completely embarrasses their image of having a strong military.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- somenameforme 9mo ago
  What is your logic or rationale for this view? I think the contrary view is easy to argue - Russia is one of the head states in BRICS which is the largest international union in the world both by population, and which has also economically surpassed the G7 as well. And militarily they're fighting a war against an endless stream of forcibly conscripted bodies being armed and funded by the entirety of NATO, Europe, and a few odd balls -- and they're winning, at a cost of < 10% GDP. What other countries could match that?
  - jquery 9mo ago
    What are they winning?
    - somenameforme 9mo ago
      The peace treaty will clarify that, but I think the more important thing is the establishment of a multipolar world order. That, in and of itself, can lead to conflict, but I also have some optimism that it might bring in a paradoxical peace in the same way that nuclear weapons did. The reason nukes have been good is because it makes it clear that war is unwinnable which effectively ended direct conflict between world powers. Yet of course proxy wars are alive and well with Ukraine being the king of them all. And the US may be unable to defeat Russia in this war, but it's also equally unlikely that Russia could defeat the US in a similar scenario. So, "The only winning move is not to play." Of course this says nothing at all about relatively small regional conflicts, but in the grand scheme of things I'm far more concerned about WW3 than I am about these. That's not to understate the impact of what can (and is) happening in these sort of conflicts, but at the end of the day I don't think humanity will ever 'evolve' beyond war, and so in the mean time I think the goal should be to not end our species over something that will inevitably look like a pointless waste of life in a few decades. Keep in mind that WW1 was unironically called 'The War to End All Wars' before we started attaching an ordinal to it.

joe_the_user 9mo ago

I think the reason Russia today is relentless anti-West is rooted the post-Soviet era in many ways characterized by (the alcoholic) Boris Yeltsin. Wikipedia gives the summary: "Yeltsin oversaw the transition of Russia's command economy into a capitalist market economy by implementing economic shock therapy, market exchange rate of the ruble, nationwide privatization, and lifting of price controls. Economic downturn, volatility, and inflation ensued. Amid the economic shift, a small number of oligarchs obtained most of the national property and wealth, while international monopolies dominated the market." and I'd add millions of people died (not an exageration). The Putin regime began with Putin using military force to arrest any disloyal oligarchs while formulating his anti-Western ideology. But sequence of event explains why most Russians today have zero faith/interest in joining the Western World. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin

anticodon 9mo ago
Russia is anti-west because traitors Gorbachev and Yeltsin (who was indeed an alcoholic) sold the country to the West for nothing, for promises that we would be treated as equals that were never kept. As you can see in many comments here (and on other sites such as Reddit this is more prominent), West consider Russian people subhumans. Something that Hitler and others said openly before, and this wave of Nazism is becoming stronger now again. Country was destroyed, markets were destroyed, industries were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands died in ethnical conflicts, hundreds of thousands died from hunger. It was all a huge mistake and I hope we'll never repeat it.
- LunaSea 9mo ago
  Russia sold itself to its oligarchs and still does.
- troad 9mo ago
  > sold the country to the West for nothing > Country was destroyed, markets were destroyed, industries were destroyed. And yet somehow, mysteriously, the exact same shock therapy that Russia couldn't handle produced a thriving and prosperous Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. > for promises that we would be treated as equals that were never kept Russia has an economy roughly the size of Benelux, and it is treated exactly as such. The problem is that the Russians have a perpetual and hilarious delusion that they're an equal to the United States. Russia can barely compete with individual US states, let alone the US itself. California alone has a larger economy than the entire Russian Federation. Texas alone has a larger economy than the entire Russian Federation. In fact, Russia has a roughly comparable economy to Canada, which no one thinks is even remotely a power equal to the US. Russia is treated fairly. The problem is that Russia has delusions of grandeur, so 'fairly' is not good enough. They feel slighted by being a 'mere' Canada. And instead of doing what the Chinese did, building up so their power matches their aspirations, they just awkwardly gnaw at their neighbours instead. And then they act all surprised when everyone correctly describes them as a bully and bands together for collective security. (But of course none of Russia's behaviour is actually aimed at getting other countries to respect them, that's just a regime narrative intended to distract the Russian people from their falling living standards as Putin and his cronies rob Russia blind. The more internationally isolated Russia gets, the more indispensable Putin can pretend to be.)

abraxas 9mo ago

A thousand years almost. As a Pole I have no faith in Russia ever becoming anything other than a savage hostile wart on this planet. It's not just their leadership. It's the nation. More accurately their culture. Their malice is a result of a rare combination of ineptitude and megalomania all in one package.

left-struck 9mo ago
Your enemy is not the people of the country you hate, it’s the government. If you believe it’s the people then you are a victim to propaganda, or some other source of highly biased information. Think about what war really is, it’s almost always a bunch of powerful people who have a disagreement with a bunch of other powerful people, who then have to trick a bunch of less powerful people to fight on their behalf. If you feel like fighting you’ve been tricked. When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.
- phyzome 9mo ago
  It's a combination. Here in the US, a large chunk of the population supported Trump, knowing full well what kind of things he would do. And another large chunk of the population are trying to stop him. You can't blame the population as a whole. But I suspect it's uncommon for the government to be completely disconnected from (some portion of) the population's sentiments.
  - magicalhippo 9mo ago
    > But I suspect it's uncommon for the government to be completely disconnected from (some portion of) the population's sentiments. However, that sentiment is shaped by the media available to the citizens, and in places like Russia, that means primarily by the government itself. So it's not so clear cut what the sentiment would have been had it not been for the governments propaganda.
    - deleted 9mo ago
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sneak 9mo ago

A “normal country” like the UK or Hungary or Switzerland? Really though it’s because Russia mostly has nothing going for its millions of people except petrochemical exports.

ridiculous_leke 9mo ago

A nation state's values should align with EU for them to be part of the group. I don't think Russia would ever choose to join the union considering that even UK(which is culturally closer to Europe) left it.

scns 9mo ago
Many Brits immediately regretted voting for leaving after Brexit. They started educating themselves when it was to late and said they would have voted for staying had they known (instead of believing Nigel Farage). The regions that voted for leaving where the rural economically weak ones that even received money from the EU.

somenameforme 9mo ago

Russia did inquire about joining NATO multiple times, as far back as the 50s as the USSR, in the 90s after USSR collapsed, and then again by Putin in the 2000s. It was rebuffed each time. Joining the EU would be somewhat nonsensical as they would gain very little from it and cede substantial sovereignty in exchange. It's the same reason places like Norway have no interest in joining the EU.

andrewflnr 9mo ago
(0) GP didn't mention NATO, (1) NATO exists primarily to defend against Russian aggression, so obviously they're not allowed to join, and (2) besides the incidental details added for flavor, the actual question is why Russia insists on being broadly hostile to the world rather than broadly cooperative.
- somenameforme 9mo ago
  The logic of 'No of course you can't join us - we're organizing to fight you!' is a good way to create a self fulfilling prophecy. Beyond that, one of the big practical reasons NATO exists is to stop its members from fighting against each other. Europe had centuries of never-ending and ever deadlier warfare eventually culminating in WW2. NATO largely stopped that by putting them under a common umbrella. Of course a practical reality is that history has shown alliances need an external enemy, or they start to turn on themselves. If the US had foreseen had powerful China would be today, I expect Russia would have been 'enlisted' into NATO. And I don't think Russia is broadly hostile to the world. They cofounded BRICS which comprises near to a majority of the world's population, and also a greater share of the world's economy than e.g. the G7. Rather the "problem", and one that applies to China too, is that they will never behave in a submissive fashion to the US. They want a multipolar world, whereas the political establishment in the US still dreams of a hegemonic world order, akin to what we had after the USSR collapsed. This inevitably sets the stage for geopolitical conflict, and as the saying goes - when two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.
  - cosmicgadget 9mo ago

anigbrowl 9mo ago

Look at the map. It's huge. In order to maintain its territorial integrity it has to act like a super power, or it has no reason to exist in its current form.

fc417fc802 9mo ago
And yet somehow Canada manages to get by without all the drama. Brazil as well.
- anigbrowl 9mo ago
  Not to talk down Canada, but they're not geographically comparable. Russia is almost twice as large and borders 14 countries. I don't mean this as an excuse for Russian behavior, but to explain why it has internalized the idea of imperialism.
a96 9mo ago
It has stopped existing several times. And each time, the next version has turned out to act exactly the same again.

tguvot 9mo ago

There’s a Russian joke that Russia’s mission in the world is to show other countries how not to be. Or if we get more serious: it's mix of imperial ambitions, feeling of been humiliated by west and desire of revenge, (cultural level) aggression, arrogance, ignorance and been sure that Russia is a special country with special pathway and superior culture and one of world superpowers (that been ignored and this is not "fair") A couple of days after russia started war, on it's official news agency site was auto published article that was supposed to be victory lap (after all it was supposed to be 3 day special operation). It was promptly removed but not before it was archived. You can read decent translation here and it will show you some glimpses of what I wrote above https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t2vz4v/ria_news_accidentally_posted_an_article_about/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t2vz4v/ria_news_ac... For reference: I was born back in USSR and lived there till my early teen years. Been closely following russian media, discussion platforms, etc ever since.

exogeny 9mo ago

The short, uncouth but Occam’s Razor answer is because Putin has a micropenis and/or his parents were incredibly abusive towards him.

NoMoreNicksLeft 9mo ago

For individuals, a person might ask "Why can't Rodney just behave himself" without accepting that Rodney is violently anti-social and likes to throw liquidy turds at everyone. And for species, a person might ask "Why can't spider monkeys just behave themselves" without accepting that spider monkeys are dumb animals and that's what they do. But if I point out that this same thing applies to the Russians as a whole, then suddenly I'm racist.

lovegrenoble 9mo ago

btw the unification of Europe was only made possible by the unification of Germany, which took place thanks to Russia's benevolent will.

thyristan 9mo ago
"Benevolent" more in the sense of "currently unable to order the next massacre". The German unification only went ahead because soviet troops didn't intervene like they did in many prior instances: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953 > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Georgian_demonstrations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Georgian_demonstrations Glasnost and Perestroika under Gorbachev were not benevolence but necessary because the centralized power of the Soviet Union was dwindling. The SU became more and more occupied with fixing its own problems and could no longer hold together the Eastern Bloc by influence or force. Which is why the Eastern Bloc then slowly dissolved. This didn't start with the German unification, but earlier, and encompassed Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 The SU (who are actually dominated by, but different from "the Russians") certainly would have liked to hold it together. And while under Yeltsin, there was a period of acceptance of the dissolution of the SU, currently Putin seems to want to revive it, at least in terms of territory.
LunaSea 9mo ago
German separation was caused by Russia in the first place.
- drysine 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - thyristan 9mo ago
    Yes, and the three western allies agreed to let their occupation zones form a German state. Which the Soviets opposed and had their occupation zone form an East German state, thus dividing Germany at their zone boundary. The Soviets did the dividing, the other allies did no such thing.

usrusr 9mo ago

Because the ruling gang has plenty of prosperity in their lives and "us vs the rest of the world" is the only way they know to keep the other 140+ million content with the few scraps they get. The more violent attitude they keep up against the rest of the world the less violent oppression they need at home to stay in power.

keernan 9mo ago
>only way they know to keep the other 140+ million content with the few scraps they get. The same wealth disparity exists in the west. Are you suggesting Russia is the governing model in our future?
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  > The same wealth disparity exists in the west. This is not in line with reality. > Are you suggesting Russia is the governing model in our future? If Trump and his buddies have their way: yes.
- com 9mo ago
  The same wealth disparity does not exist in the west. Travel 100km out of Moscow and compare how people live to the same distance from Paris. Then go to the Russian Far East. It’s overtly that not been seen in the west since the 1950s and WWII reconstruction.
  - keernan 9mo ago
    We are talking about two different things. You are talking about the nature of poverty. No doubt the most impoverished in Russia are much worse off than the impoverished in western countries. I, however, am talking about the gap between the wealth of the top 1 percent and the rest of society. When you have billionaires, the gap between a billionaire and every non-billionaire is the same - merely because of the nature of the size of a billion. It is so large that comparing a billion to a million is essentially equivalent to comparing a billion to a penny.

anticodon 9mo ago

Why would we want to join the EU? It's a government comprised of people that weren't elected that destroys countries it supposed to govern by forcing non-rational choices that people hate but too afraid to openly criticize. The level of life in EU is declining, while rising in Russia. What EU can offer us? Nothing.

breppp 9mo ago
As an outside onlooker I can see a lot in common. Russians are essentially a european people and has a lot more in common with the EU than BRICS. Also, both are headed full-throttle towards a demographic disaster so might as well do it together And of course your comment about unelected officials acting irrationally that people cannot criticize surely reminds you of home
- koiueo 9mo ago
  > Russians are essentially a european people Stop forcing that bs. russians see themselves as a unique unicorn high above any other nation on the planet (because of Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, and the physiological ability to drink 1L of vodka without getting sick).
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
ajmurmann 9mo ago
> Why would we want to join the EU? Look at any chart that shows any useful economic metric or things like life expectancy of eastern/central European countries before and after they joined the EU. It's almost to good to be true. > The level of life in EU is declining, while rising in Russia. That's quite easy when your GDP per capita is behind Trinidad & Tobago or even Cuba.
myvoiceismypass 9mo ago
> The level of life in EU is declining, while rising in Russia. Citations, please. > What EU can offer us? Nothing. Right, what is clear from your messages in this thread is that Russia only sees value in other things it can take over / steal / destroy. May I ask what Russia has to offer to the rest of the world?

Gupie 9mo ago

Is one reason that Russia is an empire, created as the same time as the British and French empires, ruling over countries with their own long histories and separate cultures that would break apart without an autocratic government?

Etheryte 9mo ago

The error most people make on this front is thinking that Russia is just another country with regular country goals like any other. Grow the economy, make lives better for its people over the long term, that kind of thing. But this is not the case. Russia has been run by thugs for centuries in, centuries out, and they want thug things. Make the head thugs richer and fatter while everyone else suffers, both at home and abroad.

RuslanL 9mo ago

The majority of Russian population genuinely believes that if the country "becomes weaker", some evil Western soldiers would come and either (belief A) physically exterminate every last of them or (belief B) enslave for eternity. From that lens, loosing a few millions in a "pre-emptive strike" to save the bulk of population looks reasonable. Don't ask me how they ended up with this picture of reality.

drysine 9mo ago
[flagged]

petre 9mo ago

Because they had their own union called the USSR, which collapsed due to military spending, oil price drops and centralized inneficiency. This was before Putin's mafia took over. Maybe this could offer more insight: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-power https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/vladim...

sharts 9mo ago

They did want to join the EU in the 90’s. They’ve always been rebuffed.

lukashoff 9mo ago

the fun part is that they don't even have to join the EU - perfectly positioned and enriched by natural resources to become a northern version of a Dubai

throw-the-towel 9mo ago

Do you really believe the EU would have accepted a country with easily 1/3 of the population of everyone else combined (so, a third of the seats at the "European Parliament") and a huge territory requiring investment? Or that they would have risked a Russian immigration crisis? Put themselves on China's doorstep, voluntarily? With all due respect, it's extremely naïve.

drysine 9mo ago

>has the goal to join the EU Not joining, of course, but Russia did, both the people and Putin. The West had different plans, as we learned. 'From Lisbon to Vladivostok': Putin Envisions a Russia-EU Free Trade Zone - SPIEGEL ONLINE, 2010 [0] "We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros." [0] [0] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vladivostok-putin-envisions-a-russia-eu-free-trade-zone-a-731109.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vl...

oxag3n 9mo ago

It's way longer than hundred years. It started to expand to the east in 16th century, which was and is still cruel to indigenous people of Siberia (e..g highest level of current war participation per capita). South/Caucasus expansion was brutal and was displayed in Russian literature. European states suffered from Russia for centuries as well.