The General Russia Thread

I would not mind this thread being expanded to the CIS/Former Soviet Union, now that I think about it. Lot of interweaving things (like kremlins) and history make it hard to discuss when its just Russia alone...

Wholly support it.

We do have a Central Asia thread, btw.

I support this thread being about the entire post-USSR, actually.

That might have some unfortunate implications for people who belong to countries from the former Ud SSR and are pushing back against the idea that this defines their identity.

So a guy who wants to kick brown people and/or Muslims out of Europe because culture war wouldn't empower and finance the groups that are the closest to him ideologically? Hell, he'd probably support the exact same guys Putin supports, except he'd do it because he drinks their right-wing koolaid right up and thinks that a right-wing neocon Islamophobic Europe is the absolute tits.

True, but the post-Soviet framework is also important for understanding a lot of things, like migrant worker movements or... whatever Saakashvili is doing in Ukraine.

And it's not like we usually bring up the Baltic states or Trans-Caucasus in this forum outside the Soviet/Russian context, anyway; even in the Southern Caucasus/Nagorno-Karabakh thread, half the discussion is about how Russia and Turkey figure into things, rather than the two principal players themselves and their cultures or histories.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Nov 21st 2020 at 10:23:33 AM

He wouldn't do it if he also wants to improve relationships with the West and certainly not on the scale as Putin does right now.

To be fair, the historical context of the Azeri-Armenian conflict can be more or less summed up as "they've been bitter enemies since times immemorial, and hating each other is an important part of their national identity." Standard issue for the Caucasus, really, where everyone hates everyone else around them due to centuries of ethnic warfare.

At first, for sure. He'd ride the wave of "Not Putin, hooray!" lauding and headpats for a bit, establish something more democratic than what we have, and then he'd break out his right-wing neoconnery and do the Burma. His ethnic policies would get criticised by the non-right Europe, he'd disown those useless liberals and start sucking up to the Le Pen club specifically...

Edited by KnitTie on Nov 21st 2020 at 10:34:50 AM

BBC has a news vid on whether Russia has competition in its backyard.

Well the Armenian-Azeri conflict has been a big fat plus for Russia so far, given that it's now essentially in charge of Artsakh. And Belarus doesn't seem to be turning overly anti-Russian yet. I mean, the usual turbo-neocon clique of hipster dissidents is always there with their fervent desires to replace barbaric Russian culture with the blessed Western one, but the people on the ground don't seem to be buying it.

In the meantime, Russia's began distributing its own Coronavirus vaccine just yesterday. So far, it looks promising, but the trials are still ongoing.

Kind of random, but a fireworks warehouse in Rostov-on-Don apparently caught fire, with, uh, spectacular results:

At least it was a pretty sight.

https://www.facebook.com/worldscientific/videos/760593187876832

RSIS showed a recorded livestream of a Singaporean ambassador's book that has ties of Russia and Singapore. Had some Russian VIPs and one of them made clear his disdain of books written/published in the West (Americas/Europe).

Here's an interesting article about anti-government movement in Russia.

Twelve months since the publishing of the article and nothing of the sort of stuff the author writes about has happened. Not even with COVID rampaging around.

Hell, there's a lot of public discontent, that's true, but it's not doing anything. Russians are very politically passive, and this is compounded by the desolate political landscape where the only guys openly against Putin are the "liberal opposition," who are all hardline turbo-neocons that keep alienating everyone with their endless pontifications about how Russians need to abandon their barbaric Slavic culture and convert to Glorious Westernism.

Edited by KnitTie on Jan 4th 2021 at 8:17:31 AM

Russian vaccine seems to be okay, apparently. And the plan to push it as fast as possible seems to be working.

Edited by KnitTie on Jan 11th 2021 at 9:28:42 AM

Yet another tragedy of the Covid-Pandemic is that many poorer countries will have to resort to the barely tested Russian and Chinese vaccines.

Russian vaccine so far has performed very much adequately, given the reports that we have. It's not like it's been "barely" tested, it's simply been rushed into production before the tests could properly conclude. And the science behind it seems solid enough, too.

Didn’t Russia allegedly launch a cyber attack to steal data from one of the mainstream vaccine producers? If the allegation is true then the Russian vaccine may just be a different vaccine with Russian paint.

Which wouldn't be particularly bad, I feel like the vaccine for a global pandemic should be something everyone gets the recipe for for free and collectively we just churn vaccine doses out, with the inventors getting a Nobel prize or something.

Apparently, the Russian vaccine is still at least somewhat unique, because while it's a two-part viral vector vaccine, it uses different viruses for each part. This way, immunity to one of the viruses used to deliver the COVID spike protein doesn't lessen the vaccine's efficacy. It's also specifically designed for long-term storage and easy transportation.

So even if we did steal ideas, we still managed to put our own twist onto them and not just file the serial numbers off.

Edited by KnitTie on Jan 12th 2021 at 4:16:07 AM

For what it's worth I have to second Silasw, even if the Russian government did just steal ideas I wouldn't have any problem with it. Intellectual property is a concept with moral weight when it comes to compensating people fairly, when it clashes with human welfare it has no value in my eyes.

The whole IP talk oddly reminds me of how Alexandra Elbakyan once blocked Sci-Hub to users trying to access it from Russia because she felt like the Russian scientific community was too tied to the liberal opposition.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jan 12th 2021 at 4:54:25 AM

That's incredibly petty -_-