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Attitude toward Russian in Europe

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nway
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 Message 105 of 128
16 December 2011 at 6:20pm | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
In another thread nway argued that Russia is a hellish place to live

I was explicitly referring to life expectancy (particularly male), which isn't really a subjective matter of opinion.

Марк wrote:
and Russian goes nowhere.

I certainly never said that, and "____ goes nowhere" isn't even something I would say (that is, it's not part of my idiomatic lexicon).

canada38 wrote:
I agree very much with Solfrid Cristin; I don't see anything against the Russian language in nway's post. But to be fair, Merv did say, "faint".

To his credit, I suppose I'm—to a certain extent—slightly (or "faintly") a little "anti" of everything. :)

Марк wrote:
espejismo wrote:
Not long ago, a very good Russian author visited the journalism department of the Moscow State University. When asked by a student what are Russia's chances for progress, she replied "we're tumbling into the abyss, there can be no doubt about it and there's nothing one can do. All I can say in consolation is that this has been the distinctive historical feature of our country since its inception. When Muscovy began to expand eastward to Siberia, it acquired the kind of problems that come with conquering land where you're not welcomed. In the end it got endless stretches of impenetrable territory. Who would build the roads? We're not like the American pioneers with their drive to get to the frontier. We have a different climate, different peoples, different habits... Our population is not small, but we're all lazy. We know nothing about democracy. We have also been conquered by the Tatars. Americans were not. We ourselves have become Tatars. We actually are Tatars to some degree. At least I am. I can trace it on both sides of my family. But that's not the point. I want to say that Russia is quite a strange country. It's always perishing. It had completely perished in 1917. You may try to argue that, but to what end? A whole layer of culture perished. Take the city of New Orleans, for instance. Did it perish or did it not? It seems to remain standing, but after the hurricane it shall never ever ever be the same again. Likewise, Russia shall never be the same after it perished in 1917. But here we all are, sitting... Certainly, today the country is still very diverse. In the future, it will slip up, fall over, lose its limb or head -- God forbid if some other chunk of land chips off. The Soviet Union crumbled and, in theory, Russia can keep on crumbling further. I know the Soviet Union broke along the wrong lines; that was dumb and not very pleasant. But history took different turns in various parts of this huge country. Russia is definitely tumbling into the abyss, but I will repeat that this is its distinctive historical feature."

Boy did I get carried away translating this... Anyway, the point is that it's no use pretending that everything is fine, especially at a time when the political party in power pays teenagers to gather in swarms and attack the few dissatisfied citizens who dare to come out on the streets and protest.

espejissimo, don't start a political discussion! There is difference between denying that "everything is fine in Russia" and saying "Russia is a hellish place to live".

Frankly, the Russian author that espejismo quoted (and translated—good job!) seems to have a much drearier view of Russia than I've ever envisioned. And his words are far more damning—thanks to their specificity.

Edited by nway on 16 December 2011 at 6:39pm
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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 Message 106 of 128
16 December 2011 at 6:53pm | IP Logged 
"Frankly, the Russian author that espejismo quoted (and translated—good job!) seems to
have a much drearier view of Russia than I've ever envisioned. And his words are far more
damning—thanks to their specificity."
You can find such authors in any country. It means nothing especially when the author is
unnamed. There are Americans who thinks that America has no future etc. The author is
just crazy.
"We ourselves have become Tatars"
Tatars do not agree. In fact, the Russian influence on Tatar language, culture, way of
life are much more significant than vice-versa.

Edited by Марк on 16 December 2011 at 7:13pm
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espejismo
Diglot
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 Message 107 of 128
16 December 2011 at 7:26pm | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
"Frankly, the Russian author that espejismo quoted (and translated—good job!) seems to
have a much drearier view of Russia than I've ever envisioned. And his words are far more
damning—thanks to their specificity."
You can find such authors in any country. It means nothing especially when the author is
unnamed. There are Americans who thinks that America has no future etc. The author is
just crazy.
"We ourselves have become Tatars"
Tatars do not agree. In fact, the Russian influence on Tatar language, culture, way of
life are much more significant than vice-versa.


Tatyana Tolstaya is perfectly sane. I love her writing style and she is an excellent TV host.

Her opinion on Russia that I have posted here came from this audio recording.

Here is a relatively recent op-ed piece that she wrote in English for Bloomberg. Just imagine how cool it would be to read her in her native language. ;)


Edited by espejismo on 17 December 2011 at 4:54pm
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Марк
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 Message 108 of 128
16 December 2011 at 7:46pm | IP Logged 
"is perfectly sane."
Really? She doesn't seem so. She thinks that russians are assimilated by Tatars while the
reality is quite the opposite. All the Tatars speak Russian, but very few Russians speak
Tatarian. she writes about some "we". Who are those "we". Definitely not all Russians.
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espejismo
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 Message 109 of 128
16 December 2011 at 8:21pm | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:

"We ourselves have become Tatars"
Tatars do not agree. In fact, the Russian influence on Tatar language, culture, way of
life are much more significant than vice-versa.


I think she said that to emphasize the tremendous influence that the Mongol (-Tatar) invasion and rule of Rus' had on its historical development. By the time it cast off its foreign yoke, Russia (then the Grand Duchy of Muscovy) adopted their tradition of despotism and was at least 200 years behind in development compared to Western Europe. Ever since then, tsars, emperors, revolutionary leaders, dictators, general secretaries and presidents made huge-scale efforts to reform and Westernize Russia, always with huge death tolls. Serfdom was abolished as late as 1861, and one decree was not enough to change a feudal mentality that reigned for centuries. Even today people sometimes compare Russia's current social and political order to feudalism.

Edited by espejismo on 16 December 2011 at 10:10pm
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Oleg
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 Message 110 of 128
17 December 2011 at 7:22am | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
"Frankly, the Russian author that espejismo quoted (and translated—good job!) seems to
have a much drearier view of Russia than I've ever envisioned. And his words are far more
damning—thanks to their specificity."
You can find such authors in any country. It means nothing especially when the author is
unnamed. There are Americans who thinks that America has no future etc. The author is
just crazy.
"We ourselves have become Tatars"
Tatars do not agree. In fact, the Russian influence on Tatar language, culture, way of
life are much more significant than vice-versa.

No, you can't 'find such authors in any country', that's the point. What you can find in any country are illiterates with no reading comprehension skills, who always accuse everybody whom they're unable to understand of being 'just crazy'.
What she meant by saying 'we've become Tatars'? The answer you can find in history of Russia, specifically its imperialistic ambitions. And 'you' here doesn't mean you, Mark, because you can't, I know.
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Merv
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 Message 111 of 128
17 December 2011 at 8:29am | IP Logged 
What a load of BS I read here.

Despotism is not a uniquely Tatar/Mongol tradition. Despotism has existed in all sorts of societies, from
Byzantium (arguably as much an influence on Russian political philosophy as the Tatars) to France under Louis
XIV to China to the Sassanids, etc.

Second, there's nothing more imperialistic about Russia than about any of the other major European powers. It
just has a lot more land today to show for it. The "civilized" powers (I am putting this in quotes not because I
doubt it but because it is the unspoken undercurrent in this discourse that the West is civilized and Russia is less
than civilized or not civilized at all) of Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden,
Poland, etc. all built empires of their own. So did the non-Western powers - China, Japan, India, Persia, the
Ottomans, the Arab caliphate, etc. Craving an empire is not uniquely Russian, nor is building one.

If you're going to bash Russia because it's geographical continuity ensures that it survives as a neo-Empire after
the Western European powers have had their empires collapse - well, that's just sour grapes.

As for feudalism, it wasn't imported into Russia by the Mongols/Tatars. Rather, it was brought in by Roman
Catholic Poland-Lithuania, which had a pseudo-democratic political system at the time, with its Sejm. Feudalism
was not the system in Kievan Rus' and the was imported from the West, not the East.
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Solfrid Cristin
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 Message 112 of 128
17 December 2011 at 9:28am | IP Logged 
One of my pet peeves is to separate the feelings for a people from the feelings for their political sins of the past or present. There are many political systems I am sceptical of, the Russian one being one of them. That does not change my feeling for the country, the people or my admiration for their qualities.

I have little personal experience with Russians, but I have some experience with Ukrainians, and my guess is that they are not that different. Where they themselves sometimes see little value in their country and the way things are going,I see a people with an outstanding ability to overcome adversity, to help eachother out, and to show kindness and solidarity in the most difficult of times. In Norway we happen to have a "butter crisis" right now, it is almost impossible to get butter, and this situation has lasted for weeks. Now this is an event unheard of since the second world war, and if you read the papers, you might think a new war was on its way for all the fuss they are making over it. I doubt it would even make the papers in Ukraine.

As for Russia, it has given us some of the best writers and composers ever. If both Russians and non Russians would keep in mind that whenever something is critisized here, they are critisizing the system and not the people,the discussion might be a bit more civil. If anything, describing a faulty system pays all the more tribute to the people who are able to survive and cope. Am I particularly impressed by the people in Luxembourg, or for that matter Norway? No, I am not, because we have very good political systems, and in general we have an easy life. I am however impressed by the Russians who have seen so much turmoil over the years, and are still coping.

Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 17 December 2011 at 10:12pm


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