The General Russia Thread

Well the Republican people like you. It's only Trump and his political squad that likes you. Most republican leaders still don't like you guys but they'll do what Trump tells them to.

And the EU cares that Trump wants to pull out of NATO and to break up the EU.

Iaculus - The last proper study about the extent of domestic violence in Russia has been in 2003, which, if we look at how much our crime rates have changed since then, makes that number you've cited extremely outdated, if it even comes from that study. Which it might not, since I cannot find any direct, named sources for it.

@KnitTie: Even cutting the Russian (and American, these deals are two way usually) arsenal in half wouldn't really impact the country's nuclear deterrent; it's still more than enough for Russia's second strike capability to remain credible, and no arms reduction treaty would go that far.

Which means this would more or less be a symbolic gesture done in exchange for Russia getting sanctions relaxed. And Trump will get to tweet about how this makes him so smart and how he presidents good.

It'll be symbolic until nukes actually start flying. If that eventually ever comes to pass, we'll have reason to be thankful for each and every warhead dismantled.

Iaculus - I cannot find any data on the number of deaths from domestic violence in Russia, but we can probably extrapolate that this number has fallen greatly since 2003 given that the overall number of murders has fallen several times since then, from 31600 to 11500 in 2015, while the overall number of grievous bodily harm inflictions has fallen from 57100 to 30200.

edited 16th Jan '17 2:57:13 AM by KnitTie

If things actually get to that point...we're pretty much screwed.

Hope you're right about the numbers dropping because goddamn, how awful would that be otherwise.

edited 16th Jan '17 3:06:17 AM by M84

Yes, but there's still a tangible difference.

Armageddon in large, medium, and small sizes?

The number itself looks fishy anyway, what with there being no named source and it comprising almost half of all cases of murder in 2003 and all.

edited 16th Jan '17 3:15:26 AM by KnitTie

It might seem like a cold comfort that a few more people live to experience the post nuclear hellscape, but it's still a meaningful difference.

edited 16th Jan '17 3:15:51 AM by CaptainCapsase

I should stress that the 14,000 number is for deaths from injuries inflicted by husbands or partners, not for the specific criminal offence of murder. Under-reportage, under-prosecution, and the perps getting charged with lesser offences like manslaughter or GBH could all explain the disparity.

Honestly, from inside the EU, Putin has a golden opportunity to strengthen his ties with Europe by capitalizing on Trump rejection, which is bound to happen considering how volatile, crass and dumb he is. Since Syria is still fresh in memories it might not be instant, but when it will fade, if he toned down his imperialistic rhetoric and stopped promoting the most disgusting politicians our countries have to offer, then it wouldn't really be hard for EU leaders to pick him over Trump.

It's either that, or him bonding with Trump to screw us. Which he might pick because so far he really sounded more like he wanted to dominate, instead of being a partner.

Then that number is an estimate, which makes it likely to be inaccurate and even more fishy in the absence of any information about the method and the sample(s) used.

And regardless of how accurate this number is, it doesn't affect my point that the number of domestic violent crimes has likely gone down in the last decade because we can see that the number of all types of violent crimes in Russia has gone down in the period of 2003-2015.

edited 16th Jan '17 4:43:37 AM by KnitTie

How is the rate of alcoholism doing? I'd guess that if you see that drop DV will also drop, it would also partly explain Russia's high rate of DV, as it has a high rate of alcoholism.

It is a plausible correlation, the police officers I used to hang with always hated Saturday's and Sunday's because those were the days the domestic violence occurrences would skyrocket, because of all the men drinking during Friday and Saturday and then getting violent on their spouses.

The consumption of alcohol per capita is dropping gradually, but the people are switching from vodka to beer, so the incidence of alcoholism is going down much faster. Give me three or so hours to get to my computer and I'll find some numbers on the issue.

Mind you, there is the counterargument that the murder rate hasn't actually been dropping, and the police have simply been finding new and interesting ways to massage it. Examples mentioned in the article include wildly different MVD death statistics within a single report (the number of fatalities almost triples between the body and the summary), a spike in 'unidentified dead bodies' that happened precisely as the murder rate fell, and the gradual narrowing of the definition of 'homicide' - only attacks that instantly kill and are clearly intended to kill count as homicide, while everything else is 'intentional grievous bodily harm leading to death'. According to their data, Russian police have become more and more fond of classing violent deaths as 'intentional GBH' over the years. This may well be where the 14,000 stat comes from - a lot of intentional GBH that doesn't show up in the murder stats.

edited 16th Jan '17 9:23:10 AM by Iaculus

Intentional grievous bodily harm numbers have also been falling in the last decade, though they only halved by 2015 instead of decreasing three times like murder numbers did, which might be explained by the crime classification antics you mentioned. But in general, there're too many correlated indicators - deaths from external causes, overall crime rates, average life expectancy, quality of life, unemployment rates, personal income, poverty rates, homelessness rates, etc., etc. - that have changed in a direction that is associated with deceased criminality in a society for the fall in murders to be entirely an artefact of our police being lazy.

Edit - In addition, the article you cited itself raises questions - in particular, I think that their basic assumption that there's been a "decivilisation" process going on in Russia in false, since all the factors bar xenophobia that they associate with said "decivilisation" have at least not worsened since the (notoriously crime-free, I must add) Soviet times and in many cases the situation has improved.

In fact, the theory of "decivilisation" itself seems questionable to me, since most of the correlation between the factors they describe as pertaining to "decivilisation" and high homicide rate can be explained much more simply by bad governance and the associated poverty and low quality of living. Russia certainly had a spike in crime rate after the USSR fell, but I seriously doubt that this is better explained by "decivilisation" than by a collapse of society and ideology driving people to crime and the disappearance of the overbearing Soviet big brother creating an illusion of permissiveness.

Edit 2 - Facts about alcoholism in Russia, as promised.

The biggest one seems to be that the amount of alcohol consumed in Russia per person per year fell from 18 to 10 liters, according to our Surgeon General. Our chief narcologist, however, says that it has decreased less, from 18 to 12 liters.

In addition, mortality from alcohol poinsoning has been falling sharply since its latest peak in 2003◊, according to Rosstat, and the trend appears to continue, especially seeing how our vodka production has been decreasing◊ for quite some time, also according to Rosstat, and started outright tanking ever since the recent economic crisis began.

And finally, it appears that significantly less dangerous beer and wine have been eroding hard liquor's position as the alcoholic drink of choice in Russia - here's a graph◊ of WHO data that puts alcohol consumption in Russia as significantly lower than our Ministry of Healthcare does, which I think is an incorrect figure, but notice the pattern in vodka vs. non-vodka consumption - and here are two articles describing how the current crisis isn't doing vodka any favours.

edited 16th Jan '17 2:01:53 PM by KnitTie

I still have my doubts about the alleged Russian interference in the elections, but for me, it's the Anti-Western mentality prevalent in the country and symphatization with almost any decision made by Putin, which usually go against my ideals.

As for this new agreement, I do not see any harm in it, it's a good deal even for just the symbolic value of it and helping normalize relations between the US and Russia, as well as decreasing nuclear arsenals are the right steps towards prosperity.

edited 16th Jan '17 12:08:37 PM by Grafite

We actually tend to very much not like most of Putin's internal decisions. His foreign policy, now that's another story.

As for the anti-Western attitudes, I'd like to remind you that for most Russians, political Westernism is associated with a bunch of very unpleasant 1%-er sycophants and non-political Westernism, with the exception of LGBT rights, is mostly viewed as a positive thing.

edited 20th Jan '17 8:47:43 AM by KnitTie

How did being anti-LGBT become part of Russian political identity?

I mean sure Russia is fairly socially conservative compared to much of the West, but why did many in Russia start seeing being against LGBT rights (and possibly anti-feminist? not as sure about that) as being a quintessentially Russian position and worthy promotion and protection?

Because they want to apply Shut Up Elves in real life.

...LGBT people are elves? I guess that explains why some of the gay people I've met are good at baking. Must have Keebler elf heritage.

edited 20th Jan '17 8:02:23 AM by M84

You misunderstand. The West, in this use of the term, are the elves. They go on about it a lot, Russia thinks its fun to be anti-LGBT because it pisses the west off. That sort of thing.