"Climax" year of each turning

[Kinser79]

(05-19-2020, 10:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(05-19-2020, 08:40 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Some are.  Some aren't.  I've been to Russia many times.  I love the country and speak the language.  Lets just say once you leave Moskva and Leningrad (I refuse to call it St. Petersburg, and the Oblast is still called Leningrad Oblast) the gopniks are less concerned with the west and more concerned with semichki, squatting and drinking kvass.  They are in short doing their own thing apart from the West like Russians have pretty much always done.  The obsession with the West has been historically and is today a disease of the elite and those who wish they were the elite.  

I won't argue with your characterization of the Russian people, but the elites were shaped by Genghis Kahn's invasion, and Napoleon's, and Wilhelm's, and Hitler's.  Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean somebody isn't out to get you.  Talk about never again.  Between drinking bouts, I would be surprised if even the general population has not forgotten the history.  The old Soviet glorification of the Great Patriotic War should guarantee that.

In many ways they have responded to invasion by becoming like the invaders.  They try to rule as an invader might, as Genghis did, by exploiting the population.  It was set deeply by the history, inflicted considerable if sometimes misdirected paranoia, and infected how Lenin and Stalin ruled.  I see an echo of this invade or be invaded mentality in how Putin behaves even today.

I won't deny that tendency within the elite of Russian society.  I won't deny that the Great Patriotic War still serves as a major cultural and historical milestone (for lack of a better term) in Russia.  Indeed one of the most recent soap operas I've been watching is about the Night Witches.  Soviet Female fighter pilots during the GPW.

Conversely, there is in Russia a reluctance to involve themselves with Europe, apart from trade, unless Europe involves itself first.  The obsession with the West is now and historically has been a phenomenon among the elite.  The people themselves are more concerned with what comes out of the East.  The whole point of having the Largest Country on Earth is not just resources, but to contain the Mongol Threat.