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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   21703 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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As a Russian I can say that as long as Russia exists, there will always be people willing to risk their lives for freedom and truth.

Not a Russian, but the history of Russia seems to be that all such people lose their lives in vain.

Solzhenitsyn made it, somehow.

Actually compared to Eastern and Central European neighbors Russian Empire wasn't particularly bad, and there were a number of improvements, in no small part thanks to the some in the past that were similar to Navalny. Of course after First World War and revolutions everything went to shit for the next century.

Actually compared to Eastern and Central European neighbors Russian Empire wasn't particularly bad

which ones?

Uh, I don’t know that that’s true. Austria and Germany were both meaningfully freer(although less free than the Anglosphere) in the run up to the Great War; Austria had to make real concessions in the ‘48 revolutions and Bismarck eventually backed down on his kulturkampf program without executing or imprisoning very many people. The ottomans might have been as bad as tsarist Russia, but they’re a non-central example; Russia has much more in common with its Eastern European neighbors than with Turkey.

At the start of the 20th century, if you were forced to pick a country that you think would carry out a Holocaust-level atrocity in the next fifty years, everyone would have picked Russia. (Not necessarily with Jews as the target, they were just the most obvious target). No other state in Christian Europe was nearly so repressive.

And they were right! Maybe not by the path anticipated but it did happen!

You mean that German SS entered territory of former Russian empire and killed Jews there?

I think he’s referring to the holodomor, which was indeed on the same scale as the Holocaust.

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