Thoughts from the Russian Federation

[pbrower2a]

(11-25-2019, 02:15 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(11-20-2019, 03:14 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: It makes sense re: the Crises, but I still think it's odd that Stalin, his purges and the Holodomor constitute a High. And even if it's true, how is the first half of Stalin's rule a High, but the second one an Awakening? What happened?

Also, many Russians joke that their history can be concluded in one sentence: "Things got worse." Does their cycle only have two seasons (of different length), Crisis and everything else?

It is a particularly American thought process that first turnings must be "high" and "euphoric".  Probably due to the poor name choice S&H chose and the rose colored glasses many wear about the 1950s.  1Ts need not be idyllic, what they do need to be though is a time where the consensus that arose out of the previous 4T is enforced--brutally if necessary.

A 1T can be quite nasty; consider the post-Civil War South. The solution for the South was something closer to free-wheeling capitalism which was going to solve more problems (people recently freed from tyranny need a free market, even if they have just overthrown an aristocratic or crony-capitalist system) than the agenda of the racist agrarians who eventually prevailed. Freedmen may have been euphoric about getting economic freedom and the right to participate in politics -- but they lost both, and any euphoria was gone. If the war utterly destroys the infrastructure and destroys the intellectual leadership and a large part of the people who own and operate the businesses (I think of Poland), then the 1T at the least begins nasty. Even in western Germany, life could be nasty while much of the activity was either becoming a field hand to make sure that people got fed or picking up the pieces to rebuild the wrecked buildings, roads, sewers power lines, and rails, etc.

Not even Crises must be calamitous, but the mad forced collectivization, the Holodomor, and the Great Patriotic War complete with Nazi atrocities on a huge scale certainly look like Crisis altogether. Can a Crisis Era last nearly thirty years? Maybe, if leadership is mad enough and a war takes on Crisis characteristics. Whether one considers the Great Patriotic War an extension of an earlier Crisis Era or a new one imposed largely from outside is moot in my argument. A Crisis can be imposed upon a country not ready for it. 

Let's put it this way: the certainty of a random person born in Russia in 1913 surviving until 1946 was unusually low by historical standards. War, starvation, executions, persecution -- I can think of few places that I would less rather have been in inhuman history than in Russia from 1913 to at least 1946. China from about 1920 to 1950 was horrible, too.