05-15-2016, 11:48 PM
a post from 2012:
Originally Posted by The Wonkette![[Image: viewpost-right.png]](http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/images/buttons/viewpost-right.png)
-- do you believe that Russians are/were on the same saeculum as Americans and Western Europe. Justin '77 would take issue with the assumption that a 1921 Russian cohort would be a Civic.![[Image: wink.png]](http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/images/smilies/wink.png)
me:
They might have been ahead of much of the rest of the world in the saecular cycle going into the Second World War because their mid-19th-century Crisis was the Crimean War instead of some the later Crises in some other countries (Britain and India -- Sepoy Rebellion in India, US -- American Civil War, Japan -- Meiji Restoration, China -- T'Aiping rebellion, Germany and Italy -- unification, France -- attempt to establish a client state in Mexico, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Paris Commune, Mexico -- Juarez' revolt against Maximilian, Canada -- its independence Crisis)... but the Great Patriotic War forced the Soviets/Russians back onto the cycle of the West.
In 1917 while other participants in WWI were still decidedly 3T, Russia was at a time analogous to the late 1850s in America, when political polarization peaked, political distress was extreme, and institutions failed due to corruption and cronyism. Russia was polarized between extreme plutocracy in defense of class interests and would stop at nothing to preserve a way of life.... and the most effective opposition was Bolsheviks who offered the most extreme leveling of social differences and the obliteration of institutions that seemed to enrich a few and do no good for anything else. Imagine the American Civil War in which the Union and Confederate sides had no trace of gentlemanly behavior in which every victory left a wake of mass executions and expropriations -- that is how I see Russia in 1917, a dangerous time in which any spark can initiate a premature Crisis of extreme severity, the 3T/4T cusp in which every adult generation is at its worst. Elderly Adaptives scared from being born into a Crisis world try to patch things together with compromises that satisfy nobody. Idealists are clearly divided into hostile, intolerant, exclusive camps that seek the annihilation of each other. Reactive young adults see war and revolution as opportunities for choosing the 'right' side and deriving profit. What might become a Civic generation endures a scarred childhood that enfeebles it. Such ensures a social implosion.
Russia/the new USSR got a short respite known as NEP -- but Stalin put an end to that with his Five Year Plan and imposed his severe collectivization and the ensuing Great Purge at roughly the same time as the Great Deprssion in the West. The Great Purge petered out and Russia seemed to be going toward a 1T... but the Nazi/fascist invasion of the Soviet Union imposed a Crisis Era from outside. If the Great Patriotic War isn't a Crisis, then what is?
A 1921 cohort in Russia might have been been an Adaptive cohort had it not been for the death struggle between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union.
Originally Posted by The Wonkette
-- do you believe that Russians are/were on the same saeculum as Americans and Western Europe. Justin '77 would take issue with the assumption that a 1921 Russian cohort would be a Civic.
me:
They might have been ahead of much of the rest of the world in the saecular cycle going into the Second World War because their mid-19th-century Crisis was the Crimean War instead of some the later Crises in some other countries (Britain and India -- Sepoy Rebellion in India, US -- American Civil War, Japan -- Meiji Restoration, China -- T'Aiping rebellion, Germany and Italy -- unification, France -- attempt to establish a client state in Mexico, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Paris Commune, Mexico -- Juarez' revolt against Maximilian, Canada -- its independence Crisis)... but the Great Patriotic War forced the Soviets/Russians back onto the cycle of the West.
In 1917 while other participants in WWI were still decidedly 3T, Russia was at a time analogous to the late 1850s in America, when political polarization peaked, political distress was extreme, and institutions failed due to corruption and cronyism. Russia was polarized between extreme plutocracy in defense of class interests and would stop at nothing to preserve a way of life.... and the most effective opposition was Bolsheviks who offered the most extreme leveling of social differences and the obliteration of institutions that seemed to enrich a few and do no good for anything else. Imagine the American Civil War in which the Union and Confederate sides had no trace of gentlemanly behavior in which every victory left a wake of mass executions and expropriations -- that is how I see Russia in 1917, a dangerous time in which any spark can initiate a premature Crisis of extreme severity, the 3T/4T cusp in which every adult generation is at its worst. Elderly Adaptives scared from being born into a Crisis world try to patch things together with compromises that satisfy nobody. Idealists are clearly divided into hostile, intolerant, exclusive camps that seek the annihilation of each other. Reactive young adults see war and revolution as opportunities for choosing the 'right' side and deriving profit. What might become a Civic generation endures a scarred childhood that enfeebles it. Such ensures a social implosion.
Russia/the new USSR got a short respite known as NEP -- but Stalin put an end to that with his Five Year Plan and imposed his severe collectivization and the ensuing Great Purge at roughly the same time as the Great Deprssion in the West. The Great Purge petered out and Russia seemed to be going toward a 1T... but the Nazi/fascist invasion of the Soviet Union imposed a Crisis Era from outside. If the Great Patriotic War isn't a Crisis, then what is?
A 1921 cohort in Russia might have been been an Adaptive cohort had it not been for the death struggle between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.