skipped an archetype like time before last?

[Kinser79]

(05-15-2019, 10:07 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(05-15-2019, 01:09 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(05-14-2019, 09:34 PM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(04-23-2019, 12:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Does he want to put Fyodor Dostoevsky in the Transcendental Generation?

Would fit his religiousness... then again, he was Russian, their Turnings might work differently. Sure, WW2 killed very many Russians, but it didn't change their political system. The Crisis ending with the Russian Civil War, OTOH...

Russia (and I've been there) is on a different saecular cycle than the West.  It could even be argued that the Orthodox East is a completely different civilization from the West as well.

The GPW occurred at the start of the 2T of the Soviet Saeculum and was probably why their 2T was so muted.  The majority of the trouble makers were killed off in the Trenches of the Western Front (from the Russian perspective).

My interpretation of Russian history from 1905 (Russo-Japanese War) to 1945 (end of the Great Patriotic War) is an over-extended Time of Troubles. There was a revolution in 1905 after the war -- and some horrible pogroms. Imperial Russia would have been wise to stay out of the First World War, but Imperial Russia bumbled its way into it and demonstrated its backwardness in social conditions and infrastructure. There was a liberal revolution in February 1917, but really too late for salvaging the system. Lenin staged his coup in November, and proved ruthless enough to put Russia back together -- as the world's first totalitarian order. It would take a monstrous civil war in which the Reds and Whites both slaughtered anything that got in their way.

With no concern about elections or a judiciary, Lenin could reform Russia practically at will... and along came Stalin. We all know of the horrors of forced collectivism and of the Great Purge, right? Stalin interpreted Hitler as the final stage of capitalist depravity, the sort that would implode of its own vileness while destroying liberal democracy, and chose to let Hitler divide eastern Europe with him. After that sordid deal, Hitler waited less than two years before invading the Soviet Union.

The Crisis of the West, the Crisis of 1940, came to a country that thought itself exempt from such. World War II was pure Crisis imposed from outside. The Crisis came to an end with the end of the war, and Stalin was weakened in his ability to act as a despot. Russia went into a 1T.

No one is really concerned with your interpretation--mostly because it is wrong based both on your lack of experience with Russia and Russians but also the documentation of the time period.

While I will agree that one could argue that the time period from the Russo-Japanese war until the end of the Russian Civil war was a 4T certainly.  I'd even argue that it was the Russian Mega-Crisis ending the Romanov Era (for lack of a better term).  That being said by 1922 with the establishment of the USSR itself the 4T was either over or over enough that Lenin felt comfortable establishing a new state (Much like the formation of the US under the current constitution ended the 4T in the Revolutionary Saeculum in the US.)

I think that you're blinded by the brutality of the purges and collectivization.  A 1T is a time of building, it is sometimes a period of general contentment, but that need not be the case.  Russians in particular do not expect contentment, much less happiness unlike Americans.  They are a pessimistic people, I believe their balmy climate leads them to this attitude.

This means that they 1T in the USSR started by 1928 AT THE LATEST, and I say it started far earlier, around 1924 or so.

As for Russia staying out of WW1, yes they should have, but they wouldn't have anyway.  Russia views itself as the protector of all the Slavic peoples, particularly those that are Orthodox Christians (which the Serbs are both Slavs and Orthodox).  In short Russia would have been pulled into the War either by its Serbian connection as happened in our time line or at a later date by their alliance obligations with the Entente.

ETA:

It should be noted that Stalin's purges actually should have accelerated the generational shift as he specifically targeted those connected with the Pre-Revolutionary Government, the Kerenskyites, Whites (Political Whites that is--race isn't a factor in Russia unless one is talking about Turkic peoples or Jews), and Old Bolsheviks.

In short he was targeting his own generation and the generations immediately preceding it. For many people, particularly in the cities, if they went along with the Soviet State they had what passed for a decent life in Stalinist Russia. I mean it was by no means what we'd consider pleasant but Beria was unlikely to knock at the door at 0400 and they had bread and sometimes Doctor Sausage.

A recipe describing Doctoritska Kolbasa
https://www.meatsandsausages.com/sausage...es/doctors