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We left off talking about the Soviet Generation last time. By the by, some commenters over on Unz got mad and accused me of promoting pro-Western talking points and being anti-Russian for being a bit harsh, admittedly, about the old-timers. Well, putting aside that some people seem incapable of seeing the world with any nuance and fall back on good vs. evil, black and white narratives, its also an amusing reaction when you consider that the Soviet Generation doesn’t really even see itself as Russian or Ukrainian or Belorussian for that matter. They see themselves as Soviets first and foremost and their allegiance and true love is for a dead political ideology and project, not for the country that they ended up in when the whole thing collapsed. There is even an entire movement of pro-Soviets that refuses to acknowledge that they are Russian and wave their Soviet passports around, saying that the USSR was never formally dissolved, therefore, they remain Soviets and not Russians. And just because these people are anti-Western because the West is supposedly an imperialist, capitalist, bourgeois project, doesn’t mean that they are Russian patriots. But whatever. Consider me what you will if you must, but I think my positions and worldview will become clearer as the blogging continues.
Some more qualifications and equivocating first though: generations are generally remembered and evaluated based on the culture and attitudes that they produce. That being said, there are always members of the generational cohort who do not participate in the defining culture of their time. Sometimes, they form a distinct sub-culture that is in opposition to the dominant culture of their time. Exceptions to the general rule, however, are just that. I realize that I am talking to dissident right-wingers for the most part, so please remember that we allow ourselves to generalize on other topics for good reason, and the same rules should apply to my generalizations here.
So, after the Soviets, we had the first “free” generation coming into mature adulthood while living in the ruins of the Soviet Union or spending their teenage years enjoying the free-for-all that was the 90s. These people are generally in their very late 30s and early 50s now. And if we were to compare the values and behavior of this post-Soviet generation with similar generations in the West, we’d have to look at Generation X as a useful template to compare and contrast to. On the one hand, both Gen X’er groups loved their angsty rock music and plunged headfirst into nihilistic self-harm, drug experimentation and a “burn it all down, man” sort of political platform. On the other, Eastern Gen X’ers were very pro-Capitalism and free markets and hustlin’ in a way that their drop-out Western counterparts were not, and this became the key defining driver of this generation and its values. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was this general idea in the heads of the youth that now was a golden opportunity to finally make some money. See, in the Soviet Union, there was no real path to making any money that didn’t include a party membership and a knack for embezzlement. Now though, there was a feeling that the looting was going to be democratized and the Eastern Gen X eagerly rubbed its hands and plunged in headfirst to eke out its share.
This is also why I, personally, refer to them as the Bariga Generation, which is a term worth a short explanation as well.
The term “bariga” is most often used to refer to dealers, but it’s also used for fast-talkers and scam artists. In contrast to the muscled, tattooed thug who simply beats money out of people, the bariga sweet-talks them out of it and generally does less physical forms of crime. Being a criminal, acting like a gangster, and getting rich or dying trying were the literal rallying cry of a large swath of this generation, helped along by Western ideals that they were so eager to adopt and mindlessly follow. Many died along the way, but a few succeeded in stealing a little something for themselves and their loved ones. To be fair, the whole FSU at that point was basically a carcass being looted by vultures and scavengers, and the social order largely collapsed once a faction of the ruling Party decided to chip in and help the West detonate what they had spent the better part of the century building up. So the Bariga generation was literally just monkey-seeing and monkey-doing and I’m not saying that they were metaphysically evil by dint of being born when they were or anything like that. But take racketeering, for example, which became a legitimate profession because, well, everyone from the KGB to the Georgian mafia to the Party Nomenklatura was doing it. Can we blame a significant part of the youth for trying to get in on the action as well?
Personally, I think it’s sort of understandable behavior in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was the FSU.
But as part of their rebellion against the Soviet Union, they also went to war against their socially conservative Soviet family and their values. Dealing drugs, burning and reselling punk rock and gangster rap CDs, tricking a granny out of her apartment, sitting around all day in the staircase and eating sunflower seeds, smoking cheap cigarettes and throwing up on the walls, sneaking into a factory and stealing the copper wiring in the walls — all favorite pastimes of the rebellious youth that were then immortalized in song and verse by their punk rock and gangster rap bards.
Ever hear of “Gopniks” and the infamous “gop stop”?
The “GOP” part is an acronym that refers to government-subsidized housing quarters. Their residents began to be referred to as Gopniks and their favorite pastimes were accosting random pedestrians and demanding cigarettes or sunflower seeds from them. Handing over a cigarette or two was no guarantee of being left unmolested though. Usually, as urban legend holds, one had to reply in a certain coded way and one “correct” answer that you could give was that you didn’t smoke because you were a sportsman. I never tried this password myself and either way, it seems like one’s mileage could vary.
It is hard to put into words just how demoralized the entire FSU was at the time. The Soviet Union had been locked in an ideological war with the Capitalist West that they had suddenly and unexpectedly lost without even putting up a fight. That meant that literally everything that was promoted yesterday became discredited today. The Soviet Generation, in particular, had a very hard time accepting that the Western bourgeois propaganda about the gulags and the actual, uncensored story of the Bolsheviks’ bloody rise to power had more than a kernel of truth to it. The youth, however, accepted it with zeal and became ardent anti-Sovoks to an extreme. This meant that they also eagerly lapped up everything else that the West had to share with the East simply because they were so thoroughly disenchanted with the ideals of their parents’ generation. They developed a mania for everything Western and that meant that no one critically assessed what was flowing into the country at the time — so long as it was Western, it was considered good. The lying, discredited Western news was accepted uncritically by them — after all, they were right about the crimes of the Soviet Union, weren’t they? That clearly meant they were the good guys and should be trusted about, say, the crimes of the Serbs against … well, whoever it was that they were being accused of being mean towards at the time. And this applied to all the pressing social, political and economic issues of the day. To this day, the Bariga generation harbors a fondness for America and the West, whom they see as liberators who freed them from the clutches of the USSR (and their parents’ stifling conservative values). While this has been changing (slightly) because of the events surrounding Crimea and now the war in Ukraine, many still remain hopelessly demoralized and supportive of whatever the West does and endlessly critical of “Rashka” — an insulting epithet hurled at their own country.
But you would be mistaken if you assumed that these people were entirely “liberal” in the same sense that we understand liberals in the West. While the Bariga generation generally wants to cargo-cult and import the West wholesale into the FSU, if not simply outright move there forever, that doesn’t mean that they are like modern SJWs who hate White people and Western culture. See, that’s the funny part — the Bariga generation, to their credit, are generally racists (or race-realists if you prefer) partly because of their rejection of the Soviet “Friendship Between Peoples” official propaganda platform and because of their lived experience with hostile, feral migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus that were unleashed on an unsuspecting and prostrate Soviet population after the collapse of the USSR.
Video Link
The film is a cult classic in Russia that depicts the bandit culture of the 90s well.
What’s worse, the prisoners from the Soviet Union’s massive archipelago of camps were also suddenly released/let loose on an unsuspecting, law-abiding population as well. There were, to be fair, undoubtedly, “Zeks” (prisoners) who did not deserve to be incarcerated in the first place, but there were, also, undoubtedly hardcore criminals who either deserved their hard labor sentence or who had turned feral during their time in the prison system. These prisoners were already being let loose during Gorbachev’s short reign, but the trickle became a flood under Yeltsin, who, like all good revolutionaries, made sure to empty the prisons to inflict as much terror on the people as possible. This influx of Zeks into society significantly contributed to the rise of gangster culture in Russia and the poor behavior of Generation Bariga.
On the slightly less bleak side, compared to the younger generations, the Soviet generation is far less likely to be woke on the race/ethnicity question, because, thanks to the Soviet Union’s internal passport system, the non-White populations of the Soviet empire were kept segregated in their own republics. The only real contact that the average Soviet citizen had with swarth was with the exotic and quaint watermelon salesman at the bazaar or from the Soviet movies, where they were depicted as eccentric, but amicable enough fellows who took pride in providing hospitality for any Soviet guest that might visit them. As a result, Soviets prefer to remember race relations this way and stubbornly refuse to be “red-pilled by reality,” thinking that the crime and the predation will end as soon as Communism is re-instated and the various ethnicities forced to become race-less Soviets again.
An interesting point worth mentioning: if you point out what the West actually stands for nowadays and highlight just how bleak the situation is for Western men who are basically openly hated on by their own companies, media, government, wives, and so on, you come up across a wall of denial that I have yet to ever break through with the generic West-obsessed Gen X’er. Any criticism of the West, even coming from a young man who lived there, comes off as yet another Sovok lie, which they, enlightened as they are, refuse to even consider for a moment.
See, the West is a utopia and Rashka is Mordor. End of discussion.
The Bariga generation, however, is archetypically liberal in the sense that they believe that holding the right political views makes them morally superior to all other people and generations. Even though their parents’ generation (with all its faults, admittedly) generally possesses the traits that we associate with morally upright people, the Gen X’ers believe that hating Stalin and Brezhnev gives them a carte blanche to behave however they see fit and still claim the moral high ground.
A typical conversation with a Gen X’er goes something like this.
- See these sneakers? Got ‘em from Poland. Can’t get them here. I know a buddy who got it for cheap there. Not like here in Rashka.
At that point, their parents overhear the conversation and butt in.
- In the Soviet Union, we had wonderful shoes. We used to make everything in the Soviet Union. Now … everything is just foreign junk. What a bardak. I saw someone littering the other day in the park. People wouldn’t litter in the Soviet Union. They’d be sent to jail for littering! Or not paying their fare on the bus! A strong hand — that’s how you deal with crime!
This riles up the Gen X’er, who enjoys littering.
- All you ever talk about is sending someone to prison. You Sovoks want to send us back into the dark ages. Shoes? Are you kidding me? We had to stand in line to get shoes. I remember you pulled some strings with your KGB friend back in the day to get some imported Italian shoes. What’s wrong? Was the Soviet shoe factory not good enough for you then?
This angers the Sovok, who denies the existence of lines as a rule.
- The agricultural output of our region alone was 77 thousand tons of wheat and barley. We had a 17% increase in urazhai (harvest) in 1982 alone! How many hectares are even being plowed now? We import everything. Everything!
Now that food has been mentioned, the friendly debate is about to devolve into a full-blown argument. We’re in the danger zone, folks.
- You remember Misha? He worked his whole life on a kolkhoz (collective farm) and you saw how he ended his life. Destitute. Drunk. At least they pay wages now. What you had before was slave labor. And you moved to the city and lived there your whole life which is why you can afford to romanticize the kolkhoz. You just filled your head with Soviet propaganda films and think this reflects reality. Wake up.
A hand slams on the table.
- And is this any way to live life now? Have you seen the way that the girls dress? The youth on the buses and the metro go around with those devices glued to their ears. They don’t talk to anyone! No respect for their elders!
Now he’s done it.
- Why don’t you just turn on the TV and fall asleep to Kremlin propaganda lullabies like you usually do. Me, I prefer living in the real world. Hold on, my ex-wife is calling. “Hello, yes? Stop yelling, Katya!” Ok gramps, gotta go. I’ll see you next New Year’s.
Touching, isn’t it?
But I suppose we’ve come to the part of the essay where, after having spent hundreds of words trashing an entire generation, I throw them a bone out of pity and to assuage the vengeful commenters who hound me so.
It is easy to just say that these people sold out their own inheritance to the West for a bowl of porridge in the form of blue jeans, Walkmans and sexual promiscuity, but…
Hmm…
Sorry, I lost my train of thought there. Where was I?
Oh yes, the Bariga generation sold out themselves and future generations for Western products and hide their greed and vanity with a narrative in which they are freedom-fighters and persecuted dissidents. They had few kids if they had any at all. The climbing divorce and abortion rate absolutely exploded as a result of their drunken end-of-the-world-party attitude. Times were tough, but no one held a gun to their heads and forced them to be degenerate. They could have borne their bad hand stoically. They could have found a compromise with their parents instead of violently lashing out. They can sober up at any time even now and realize that the dream of the 90s has died and that we now face a new reality.
What’s worse, to this day, many in this generation refuse to consider the fact that they might have gotten duped or trapped like a mouse in a trap going for the easy cheese. It’s much easier to consider themselves liberators and ardent anti-Communist political rebels fighting against the Stalin in their very own family who spends his days on the couch watching channel 1 and collecting his pension.
Much like their demographic counterpart in the West, there aren’t that many of these guys around and they have generally under-achieved as a generation, leaving their mark mostly in music and underground culture. Mentally, many of them remain trapped in the 90s, which they remember as a golden era of freedom, rebellion and financial opportunity that Putin, the Soviet scoundrel, snatched away from them.
After all, once upon a time, one could take a trip to Poland, buy some foreign sneakers and bring them back to Rashka where the other youths would nod with approval…
The Gen X’er lights up a cigarette and leans back with a drag and a sigh. “Ah, the good old days. Kids these days simply can’t understand. Don’t know how good they have it. If it weren’t for us, they’d still be living in the Soviet Union. We gave them punk rock and freedom.”
I have no problem admitting that many of their criticisms of the Soviet Union ring true. And an eccentric free-thinker like myself would no doubt have been thrown in the Gulag too. But how does blindly hating on one’s country and acting in a destructive manner benefit anyone other than the people who want you dead? They never seem to have an answer.
So, all I have to say to them at this point is: keep on fighting the good fight against mom and dad, Putin and the state, Soviet shoes, and the kolkhoz. History will no doubt look kindly on you and your generation.
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Like you don’t stand in line in the US. Go to a grocery store. Like you don’t sit on hold for literally hours. Like they don’t have shortages n the US. Like you can afford the shit that they do have on offer. Like they don’t put you in gulags for political crimes in the US. Like they don’t kill people who oppose them in the US.
Everybody talks about Stalin when they talk about the Soviet Union. Nobody talks about the moderately decent, moderately law-abiding, moderately middle-class, moderately self-sufficient polity they had after Stalin and until Gorbachev. (And it is incalculable how much better they could have lived without constant US sabotage and warmongering?) Certainly in comparison to the US with its ubiquitous tent cities and gulags (“called prisons”) ten times bigger than any the soviets had. And I like how he mentions how the overwhelming majority of the people in Soviet gulags were horrible criminals, not high-minded dissidents. Reality hurts simple-minded generalizations.
Metallica sucks.
Listen to the name.
This is true only insofar as it applies to Russians. On the other hand, Turks, Georgians, Balts never thought of themselves as Soviet, but still remained Turks, Georgians or Balts and the numerous ethnic conflicts that happened during the ’80s and/or shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union shows that 70 years of communist ideology did not actually break the nationalistic character of any ethnicity, not even Russians as anyone aware of the Chechen war can attest.
The Soviet Union simply is an extension of Russia for these people. They cling to the Soviet Union because it epitomizes an era when Russia and specifically Russians were the most dominant group who de facto ruled over all neighboring tribes.
And in Yeltsin Russia, there was no real path to making any money without being related or knowing any bankers.
I was under the impression that it is precisely contact with other races/ethnicities that increases rather than decreases prejudice and hostility. After all, those who speak most fondly of Muslim immigrants in Europe are usually those who never met one.
You have a very warped understanding of ’90s Russia. It was not at all a time of freedom, new choices and chances. Russia turned into a colony, controlled by a conglomerate of ‘Russian’ and Western bankers and businessmen who directly and indirectly ensured that the quality of life of the average Russian closely resembled that of 19th century Russia forcing thousands of young Russians to deal with drugs or scrap metal.
they do really, rather suck, i forced myself to watch that whole clip and kept thinking this has got be an outtake from “this is spinal tap”. i must admit, that i have so enjoyed watching the west be crushed into the sands of history, that i haven’t given much thought to what is coming next. now, at least i know, there’s no hope for the future.
It was rather grotesque, when the Wall came down in 1989, to see Berliners celebrating with Crosby, Stills, and Nash. What was their contribution to the Cold War?
Thanks for you still talking to the West. You are doing a really good job, for the common good.
The tables have turned. In the past the East was made to feel cut off from world (?).
Today the West seems to be getting cut off from the world – the American Zone – nevertheless RS is still talking with the western inmates. Thank you.
Regarding the 1967 Soviet comedy film that Rolo Slavskiy cites above, it is on IMDB as ‘Kidnapping, Caucasian Style’, or ‘Kavkazskaya plennitsa’
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060584/
On YT as ‘The Caucasian Prisoner’, here with subtitles 79m
Video Link
>You have a very warped understanding of ’90s Russia. It was not at all a time of freedom, new choices and chances. Russia turned into a colony, controlled by a conglomerate of ‘Russian’ and Western bankers and businessmen who directly and indirectly ensured that the quality of life of the average Russian closely resembled that of 19th century Russia forcing thousands of young Russians to deal with drugs or scrap metal.
Consider actually reading the article before commenting, retard.
I spent hundreds of words explaining and mocking the mentality of a certain subset of the population who believes the 90s were a time of freedom. Nowhere did I say that I myself support this rosy view of the situation.
When the Berlin wall came down I was working and living in West Germany with my young family. My American neighbor who had a small American Indian jewelry store shut down his little shop, loaded all his Jewelry and American Indian nick-nacks into the trunk of his large Cadillac and headed off to Warsaw. He left his German wife and 2 kids behind. I asked him why he was going, he said that this was the chance of a lifetime. I wasn’t impressed.
Several years later after Yeltsin came to power, I was working for a large bank on a large IT project. One of the project managers from the “business” side announced that he was quitting his job and heading to Moscow. This really baffled me. I pointed out that Russia was full of thugs and gangsters, and asked him why in the world would he want to leave a great paying job and risk getting robbed if not mugged. He said that it was the chance of a life time and that he was going to get rich.
Over a decade later, after 9/11 and after I became Jew-aware, it finally occurred to me that he must have had some kind of tribal connections that were drawing him to Moscow.
A few years after that, I was on a flight to Bucharest sitting next to a American father and son. They were headed off to Romania and Ukraine to investigate “business opportunities”. This was just before Romania joined the EU. I asked the father why they would want to do that, and he replied that it was the chance of a lifetime. I don’t know of he was Jewish, but I suspect that he was.
Carpetbaggers are as old as the bible, and just as they played a major role in the suffering of the old confederacy after the Civil War, and just as they played a major role in the suffering of the Germans during Weimar, I am confident that they played major roles in the suffering and deprivations of Russia and all of Eastern Europe after the Wende.
You’re not parodying and explaining the mentality of a certain subset because said mentality doesn’t exist. You would know that if you ever bothered to talk with Russians who actually grew up in the ’90s. For the majority involved in it, it simply wasn’t a time of freedom. It was a time of economic instability, dramatically rising rent prices, job insecurity, an enormous drug and alcohol black market that caused a solid third of those born in the ’90s to suffer from Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
I’m sorry. There are other mistakes in your article.
This is just bullshit. Russians don’t think that way and Soviet boomers most certainly don’t. Why else the nearly pathological focus on the Russian version of ‘Heim ins Reich’ by Putin’s party whose voters are mainly composed of Soviet boomers? This article is either false or it is meant as a joke. If it is a joke, I’m sorry for taking it seriously.
I enjoy any attempts of yours at disproving me. Considering your ad hominem attack and your failure to address any of my issues, I will continue trusting those Russians that I talked to over you. If I wanted to get insulted, I would go to 4chan or Reddit, but I don’t expect that kind of behavior on .unz.
Like other commentators have pointed out there is a number of deficiencies in this article.
For example the author’s failure to present an accurate portrait of the generation, and of the culture that this generation had fostered. For me it looks more like an outsider’s impression, not like one of a person with intimate knowledge of the situation.
To address the atmosphere of the post-USSR and its cultural uniqueness one should begin with the notion of Potsanchik – the main building block of the society.
During the first twenty years since the collapse of the USSR all of the population was divided into two main categories: the people, i.e. Potsanchik and the animals – the people who were not Potsanchik.
Now there were three degrees of Potsanchik. The first, and the ost common – a Normal Potsanchik. The next rank up the ladder was a Real Potsanchik. And finally, on the top of the food chain there was a Concrete Potsanchik.
Women were seen as an attribute of a Potsanchik rather than human beings, and basically were divided into two main categories as well, one of them being the general meat and the other – the fire bitches. A Fire Bitch was the highest rank among women.
Therefore, we can conclude that the author has a very superficial acquaintance with the post-Soviet culture of the Russian people. He surely was not a Potsanchik.
Video Link
A Brother on the left, a Brother on the right.
All for one, one for all.
Rolling tight.
I am a German who has come to love Russia in the Nineties. I travelled all over and a lot of what you say is right. But a lot is also wrong. My hardcore friends in Russia – as myself – drugs alcohol sex and crime – at least the ones that survived, have turned to the basics. That is in the Russian world – of the Orthodox church. Christianity. I think you are talking of the few that have become materially successful. A minority.
If Putin’s voters were “mainly … Soviet boomers”, he couldn’t win a national election, especially in recent years with many such people having died off.
Early in the year I had a long talk with a young Ukie Uber driver and he predicted that Putin would invade “after the Olympics”–the driver was firmly Team Zelensky. He said the Ukrainian “Nationalists” were social liberals and loved the European Union, while an old school segment of Ukraine argued that Russians are like the Ukrainians’ big brothers and and want the two nations to be close and friendly. He was a nice guy, very idealistic, intellectually curious, and had the sort of dreamy interest in philosophy that is not uncommon among bright, creative undergrad dropouts. I don’t know if he was representative of any generational zeitgeist trends in Ukraine, but I got that sense.
Sorry, Mr. Slavskiy, but it’s actually very bad style to use the comments from another article as “inspiration” – but then not to directly quote and challenge them. It feels rather arrogant.
It may actually not US having “cemented” opinions it’s actually YOU cementing your opinion by having a quip at our expense and then just… “moving on”. Totally ignoring the comments which may – or may not – have something to add to the discourse. IF… you’re actually interested in having a discourse. And not just stating your own conclusions as “fact”.
In this regard I prefer Andrew Anglin – no matter what his political beliefs may or may not be – who’s perfectly aware of his own failures and shortcommings. And doesn’t take himself too seriously.
Liberty. And a sense of community. Love. Education. Fairness. Their praise of (the lifestyle of) America the creative and generous and superfluous; California. A metaphysical – sense. Transcendence. A will to compromise, even: “We’ve had our ups and downs, but we’re still playing together.” Playfulness.
– A lot of important things they cultivated in the time of the Cold War. – Like singing’ in harmony/ unison (Lowell George).
That’s one good idea they had. I have no trouble keeping it as a partial temporary solution for when the USA starts actually wanting a real country again.
If you believe the late Dave McGowan, they were CIA assets/agents.
https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/inside-the-lc-the-strange-but-mostly-true-story-of-laurel-canyon-and-the-birth-of-the-hippie-generation-part-i/
The author has tried to intellectualize something that can best be summed-up rather easily in plain language.
A lot of East Europeans and Russians look upon the “West” the way that a poor peasant would look at a fancy storefront or a fancy restaurant from the outside. Noses pressed intently and longingly against the glass storefront, all they can think is “If only I could be in there buying all those goodies and eating that gourmet meal”. What these simpleminded folks, only a couple of generations separated from peasant or hard working class backgrounds, do not realize is that salespeople in those fancy stores toil at minimum wage, work long hours with no job security, and never get to buy the merchandise that they handle. Nor do they see the kitchen staff toiling in the background. All they see are those juicy steaks, which in their simple peasant minds they conflate with the “West”.
Country bumpkins suddenly exposed to bright city lights, their senses and commonsense overwhelmed by the razzle-dazzle of western cities, all they can do is to long for the “west”. And of course it doesn’t help matters any that communist-era life was rather drab, no razzle-dazzle was on display, and the whole system lacked seductive charms.
East Europeans long for the “West” for precisely the same reasons that many from the US South and the rust belt head to Yankeeland. Eastern Europe was historically poorer and less developed than Western Europe, and until that changes many East Europeans will continue to look longingly at the “West”.
This basic observation encapsulates a perennial phenomenon, of oscillating attitudes between generations, that also exists in other contexts, for instance between alternating political regimes, often with each being progressively worse than the previous one. It is similar to an underlying perceptual truism among restless people: the grass is always greener on the other side. However, those who yearn for greener grass tend to forget that it also entails lots of rainy weather to get that way, except at sunny but manicured golf courses. The irrational predilections of some commentators here, who reflexively glorify Putin and Russia – without even having been there – simply because they became disenchanted and frustrated by degrading circumstances in their own immediate environment, appear like an appropriate example of how this general dichotomous sentiment is openly expressed. So now they are lapping up Putin’s war at all costs.
Like you don’t sit on hold for literally hours. You got that right, lol. Or cry.
What is it with the Adidas obsession?
It seems to be all over Eastern Europe, not just Russia.
People use those tracking suits everywhere, but they don’t look as if they do a lot of running or exercise…
Come to Crimea and see, how this place is No way the same as Moscow, St. Pete’s or other places where the Bariga live. Although I never spent much time in Moscow and have only spent a few weeks in St. Petes,, I was raised on the North side of Chicago and worked and played on the South side, so I doubt if Moscow could scare me much. Of my decade + years Crimea – something Good must have drawn me to retire here , but it wasn’t criminal gangs but the easy going lifestyle , where the teenagers were Always respectful. And of course, this place was much more International back then and now it is Not. Yes, there was the Ukie Mafia here when I first worked here in 08, but they never bothered me, and everyone was either a pensioner or working stiff. The majority of Russians were in Sevastopol.
Maybe it’s because Crimea has more of a melting pot of Ukies, Tatar, Moldovans, Belarusian , Russians and others that made this place better. Things today are not as mellow , since we were cut off from the rest of the World and East Europe but that wasn’t Crimea’s fault.
My trips to Southern Russian have been fun and with no problems as an Американский, but there too I saw a melting pot. Since I lived my adult life in the middle of Alaska , flying, working construction, fishing, homesteading , I have no inclination to venture off to real cold places anymore. Plus, some people, that have lived in a few + places around the world, can acclimate to their situations – easier than those that haven’t.
Great article, Rolo. I learned Russian as a youth, visited the country three times, and over the years gave several thousand private online English lessons to Russians and other post-Soviets, so I’m fairly attuned to the culture. Your analyses of the sovok and bariga generations are spot-on. It’s striking how the sovki manage to reconcile socialism with a defective but impressive approximation of conservative values. Perhaps it’s Marx’s dialectical materialism in action: the contradiction between capitalism and Marxist-Leninism generated the new historical force of LGBT/BLM, which in turn confronts the wrath of both monarchists and Stalinists (the limp-wristed, kosher Hitlerites of Lvov are cool with it though). I anticipate the imminent reversal of this march of “progress,” when Christ the King will lead the reactionary partisans of retro-communism to smite the rainbow dragon on the sacred soil of Kievan Rus’.
There was a Russian millennial whom I knew for several years. The man was a specimen of a creature long-since extinct in the US: the racist liberal. He disliked blacks nearly as much as he hated Putin. He seemed to enjoy my cracks about the final minutes of George Floyd, but when I (half-)jokingly said that women should be housewives, nuns, or prostitutes, he broke off contact with me. Coming from Russia, where women are still expected to marry and feminine pulchritude abounds, he simply failed to appreciate just how devastating feminism has been to American men.
By the way: there’s no Russian word for Soviet in the sense of a Soviet national. Soviet (suh-VYET), of course, means council, and the people of the USSR are referred to as Soviet people.
This article matches exactly what I’ve seen and overheard living in Russia since 2014. I find the materialism of Moscow exhausting. The worship of iPhones and Mercedes is ridiculous. One of Russia’s biggest problems is that most people are living in the past instead of planning to build a new better Russian future. Russia has the golden opportunity to become a new west embodying traditional European values while looking to the future. Alas I fear the opportunity will be squandered as the people don’t have a vision of how amazing this country could truly be. Devoid of Nihilism, feminism and SJW dogma that plagues the west and is destroying it at the roots.
The existence of white Europeans has been the worst tragedy for humanity, with their disgusting greed they have turned even the Christian doctrine of love into something hateful.
From my experience living in Russia for 18 years (and hanging out more with Russians than expats), I think the author vastly understates the reaction against western trash since the first sanctions came about. The criticism of Russia stays, but it’s today eclipsed by criticism of the west. Even within the so-called creative class criticism and moquery of “gayropa” and america have been on the rise.
And, as usual with the topic of how Russians criticize their country, there’s no mention for the love of and sympathy for Russia shared by many of the Russian genxr’s. It’s real. And they also had been proud of recent achievements. The new sanctions fuel a rancour against the west among the very people which the west hopes to “convert”.
“History will no doubt look kindly on you and your generation.”
By the time American mafia (it’s the same one as in the Soviet Russia, i.e. the Jewish gangsters hiding behind the labels of other people for the purpose of obfuscation) is done, assuming that Putin can’t hold out against the onslaught, those “Bariga” boys and girls, now all grown up, would be sorry they ever laid their eyes on snickers, sodapops, blue jeans and rock music and it will be too late to atone for their sins against their motherland.
So, let’s all be grateful for the more humane mass-castrating Muslim slavers (Arab and indigenous) in Africa, the enlightened Aztecs ripping the hearts out of members of subjected tribes, and the kindly and industrious Africans who discovered the measles vaccine and shared it with the world (not forgetting their contribution to mathematics and philosophy, of course).
Oh the nostalgia for the cosmopolitan US of A!
David Crosby comes from the Vanderbilt bloodline (like Anderson Cooper) and a military family to boot. Stephen Stills also was from a military family. They were both MKUltra stooges who were put into Laurel Canyon for a purpose, and they were promoted to the top of the LSD mind control pushing pyramid for a specific purpose. McGowan wrote extensively about them.
Crosby later got into trouble for his pedophilia too.
That they showed up in Berlin just in time to flog their fading careers should not be considered noble in anyone’s estimation.
The fourth member of that mind control psyop was Neil Young, who lately became famous for leaving Spotify because Joe Rogan, spotify’s biggest hitter, denied the clot shot efficacy. Neil Young, like the rest of CSN&Y will go to the grave as a walking, talking mind control operation.
While the author does catch some aspects of the confused post Soviet generation I note that in his title he specifically mentions “Eastern Europe” but it appears the he is writing about the Russia proper experience in this article. Different kettle of fish.
I had the fortunate experience of traveling to an ex-SSR with a high high Russian population six times from Jan 1992 to 2000 staying for six months initially and a minimum of 2 months on every successive trip. It gave me a unique perspective on the evolution of the ex-republics as well as the inhabitants.
First off, every ex-Republic maintained a very high level of nationalistic consciousness. So his fictional conversations as I remember would have been only between Russians. The elders from the ex-Republics would have pined for historical glories and culture or of their years of independence before the Soviet occupation.
While the topic he embraces could only be covered properly in a book length dissertation, if I were to boil it down in a simple reply I would state that the unfortunate immediate post soviet youth were thrust into a situation (by no fault of their own) where they went straight from communism to consumerism without the civilizing and gratifying stage of developing a prosperous middle class. Instead ‘bizness’ for them was buy low and sell higher, full stop.
Add in the pining for Western goods, smash and grab makes more sense than working and saving. I could add much more as I became fascinated with with my observations during this time but I am under time constraints.
Did I misread in my haste, but is the author ignorant of when the Gulag system was dismantled?
Cheers-
How would some Nigerian scammer who sends spam e mails from Lagos have any idea what life in the USA was like?
There are no Wal Mart shortages for the working white poor you detest.
REAL RUSSIAN GEN X AGONY
Rolo leaves out the fact that back in the 90’s so many Russian women discovered capitalisms dankest product-sex work-and decamped from Chicago to Dubai to work the streets.
Russian Gen X males after the Wall came down saw a generation of Russian women become materialistic hardened prostitutes-not all of them of course-or mail order trophy brides to rich American women.
As a young man in the late 90’s it was shocking to be in the UAE & see white women wandering the roads of Dubai or Qatar offering sex cheaply who were about my age at that time (Twenties).
This doubtlessly had a demoralizing effect on Russian males.
Goys are toys of Jews.
I guess you didn’t hear me – since 1974 I only spent 4 years in America The other years were in Alaska, Vietnam, Europe, Central America and here. You need to get out more and find out that the melting pot is not always in the Western shit show.
If I were a young Russian, I’d encourage others to make a go of developing the Russian Pacific coast and Russian Far East. That’s a quite a bit of land south of Siberia out there that could be developed into a great place. Central Russia within 150 miles of the southern border is also not too cold to have a few cities come to life there. Russia has plenty of land and could use a positive (over 2.5 children per female birthrate).
Mulling around listening to modern music and posing in Western “fashions” is a pointless way to watch one’s life pass them by. Russia has chance to inspire the decadent West and the world out of their existential drug & decadence boredom-doledrums by making itself as great as she was meant to be. This starts with God, which many Russians have returned to. Getting the youth on board could facilitate the rest.
Indeed, we should talk about this more:
The genocide and mass murder of the Soviet Communists (rolled):
The Civil War period till 1922: 3,284,000
The NEP period till 1928: 5,484,000
The collectivization period till 1935: 16,924,000
The Great Terror period till 1938: 21,269,000
Pre-World War II period till June 1941:26,373,000
World War II period till 1945: 39,426,000
Postwar and Stalin’s twilight till 1953: 55,039,000
Post-Stalin period till 1987: 61,911,000
(R. J. Rummel: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917, Transaction Publisher, 1990.)
It can be seen for instance, that before Hitler got into power at all in 1933, the Bolsheviks had murdered or otherwise eliminated about 12,000,000 human beings.
Joe Rogan says he loves Neil Young and has no hard feelings towards him.
(Young is a blind eyed pro-vaxxer because he suffered from polio as a kid).
“It’s funny to consider how, in the West, nationalists rally behind LOTR. But in Russia, it’s the Liberals who use LOTR in their propaganda. Bizarre.”
That IS humorous.
Overall a pretty good article; albeit a bit verbose and repetitive.
Agree – ask any Soviet Boomer about their experiences after the fall when everyone was eating dog food , and the women – well – they did everything from sell shoes in the market place to other things to stay alive. Talking Soviet Boomers vs American boomers to an English speaking UNZ crowd is like trying to find out who has ties with Russia for the CIA. понимаю ?
I’m not expert on things Russian or Soviet, but enjoyed the film “Love in the USSR,” which deals with “rebellious” Moscow youth in 1970s, who, if film is accurate, were already infatuated with all things western, especially rock music. Entertaining film:
Video Link
this mostly apply to the Russia, Czechi and to a lesser extent Slovakia,Slovenia,Hungary,Poland ( yes even Poland) and Estonia , have become very pro-lgbt but they reject most of the race aspects of wokeness ( even among the youth)
It’s sickening to watch Soviet Russians piss on great Russian music composers (Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninoff (just to name a few) that would have saved their azzes from the filth known as rock n cRap.
(Voice in head), CQ, like helloooo, you sinks dat deyz duh onny peepooz dat hearz Rock n cRap? Nigga youz iz blin an def.
Sorry, I suffer from multiple personality disorder related to growing up white in a black hood and years of listening to rock n cRap.
I can’t help myself.
That despicable pig should have never been allowed to have kids. His only child is a retarted vegetable.
My guess is he’s anti abortion as well.
Neil young is just one reason why I’m pro abortion.
i like a lot of the music of CSNY, or just Y, but as politics it is just drivel. try listening to some flaccid ‘anti-establishment’ song like ‘almost cut my hair’, and compare it to ‘war pigs’ by black sabbath. most of the 60s flower power stuff is just goofy pop, or, worse, intended to undermine any political movement seeking equity or justice or that was opposed to vietnam. i forget his name, but the guy who was the president of the SDS suspects that the weather underground were a bunch of provocateurs, riding around in their ‘fuck van’ and blowing up toilets at the pentagon. same with leary, who escaped prison with the help of the weather underground and wound up in africa trying to ‘turn on’ the black panthers to acid.
The fight you describe is one that’s immorial. It has being waged between parents and teenagers forever.
In Russia (possibly Ukraine and other eastern republics too) this same narrative must have played out.
But there’s a crucial difference, this happens during the teenage years and in Russia, this happened to people in their 30’s and 40’s.
And now they have few kid if any at all.
So regime change won’t be so hard in Russia???
Having been into mid-60’s to mid 70’s rock n’ roll, with actual lyrics one could understand as well as tuneful, ariose melodies for the most part; I began tuning out by the end of the 70’s and cringed and screamed at the utter horror of heavy metal shit in the 80’s and into the 90’s. Since then, as the music scene is ruled by the ((usual suspects)), the inanity of most of rap and chick “music” simply sickens me in its vulgaritude.
This guy is the funniest independent journalist.
He reminds me of J. Wellington Wimpy in POPEYE.
Video Link
So Has-Been demonizes Putin at every possible opportunity. Why? He’s an agent and a tool.
I find it hilarious that lesbian rock dike Mellisa Ethridge insisted on David Crosby as primary sperm donor for her queer baby.
This Schitt gets weirder and weirder the more you dig into it.
Generational Divide, eh? There are always generational divides when a nation starts losing its grip on what is right and moral. Started with Boomers (and I’m a Boomer, okay?) in the US and the west. Not surprised it’s in Russia, etc. Too bad the rock in Russia then was so grunge-oriented, though.
As for CSN&Y, never liked them (But when Stills was with the band that did “For What It’s Worth”…Something Happening Here… Buffalo Springfield, that was worthy at least), and yes, the Laurel Canyon McGowan thing was true…and according to former Satanist (now Christian) John Todd of Zodiac Productions back then, Crosby partook in Satanic “master rituals” where albums being mastered would be Satanically “prayed over.” Sorry, don’t have link to video, but research this on YouTube anyway if you don’t believe me.
We are at the bottom of the barrel of centuries of Tikkun Olam, and all that is left is the stinky sludge. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about Russia and Eastern Europe or America and Western Europe, our peoples have been sodomized and abused by the same tribe of psychopaths. We are all re-living Weimar now.
– Captain Obvious.
I love both Neil Young and Joni Mitchel and their whole repertoire, but I don’t have to take their medical advice.
If they are idiots in certain spheres, it doesn’t make them evil, just a bit ignorant.
I like Rogan too, but he too can be an idiot at times and so can I.
If an article doesn’t mention the Jew I put it into the fiction section. Lightly skimmed over and discarded into the round file.
Unfortunately, traditionalist critics of rock tend to assume that all of it is blues-based, lascivious, chaotic, and melody-free. That applies only to about half of classic rock. Since I’ve been a practicing Traditional Catholic, I’ve had no desire to listen to carnal crap like the Stones, Aerosmith, or GN’R, but I still enjoy the Grateful Dead. Jerry was a supremely gifted and underrated melodist. Of course, the nit-pickers will inevitably say that even tuneful rock is compromised by the sex-and-drugs ambience that birthed it. The best response is to tell them they shouldn’t listen to The Magic Flute or La Traviata, which glorify Masonry and prostitution.
So all those Russian words I see in print and skim over are not synonyms of zek? Cool.
‘i’ll gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.’ heard his character was based on a drug addict.
Interesting analysis with some good points. However -unless I missed something – one very important factor or maybe a combination of factors is overlooked. The Soviet system ceased to function in no small part due to the fact that people who in the second part of the 1980-ties were between their twenties – early forties (which 40+ years on places them now in the 60 – 80 age group) Had enough of all things Soviet. They literally worshiped western products, music, etc.did not give a damn about official Soviet propaganda, but instead were listening to Western broadcasts, watching Western films and reading Samizdat literature (it was really widespread) and generally believed that once Sovietism ends things will be „Western” i.e. hat they will be having a life as seen in Western movies (by late 1980-ties Western video cassettes were widely viewed). However once the USSR ended instead of a dream they got a nightmare. Arguably that very fact: Instead of a dream come true, they got to live through a nightmare in the 1990-ties shaped them and their opinions. Due to what they experienced the USSR seemed like a paradise lost while anything „Western” equated with hell on earth or at the very best struggle to just get by. Their shattered illusions and unfulfilled hopes make them nostalgic for the USSR and uber-critical of things Western. I could go on but I think I made my point. Cheers
For me it was the other way round.
Started with hard rock – at age six a neighbor introduced me to AC/DC. Still like their Bon Scott era albums. But later the wave dragged me into metal, and for some time I was lost in it.
After few years I became disenchanted and did not want to hear any music at all, but then electronic sound came out of nowhere along with those pills, and I ventured into a long trip.
However all things come to an end, and so did my adventure. You name any underground techno or drum and bass record – I know it, any underground hip hop record – I heard it, but I don’t like them anymore.
As a matter of fact I erased all of my great underground rap collection with one click and have never missed it since. I still keep all the techno and ambient but never listen to any of it.
I discovered the sixties and the seventies. Had no idea how great music was back then, and how much I had not heard. Now I am into Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, early Neil Young and Bob Marley.
And though there is a number of good bands and songwriters today as well, who can write a simple and so beautiful and memorable song, like this?
Video Link
” His only child is a retarted vegetable.”
Neil Young has three children: two of them (males) have cerebral palsy, and the female has epilepsy.
“My guess is he’s anti abortion as well.”
I doubt it. Neil Young is as left as you can get. Cerebral palsy can happen when there is a difficult birth, especially the first born. Doctors don’t fool around anymore, and it helps that there are fetal monitors to signal if the babies are in trouble during delivery. If there is a problem, a C section is performed. Better to have a healthy baby.
Neil Young is a great songwriter, a pretty good musician, and his contribution to music is commendable. I’ll give him that.
Good points, and the author’s eagerness to throw an ad hominem insult was really pathetic.
I get the feeling that he’s just under-cooking various narratives from ten of twenty years ago, when they might have had some validity, and stuffing them into an outdated and inauthentic dog’s breakfast.
Yes there are, and it’s only just beginning.
it’s a far superior product to anything nike pushes
good stuff. what’s with all eastern bloc dudes looking exactly like the picture at top of article? bald, (always totally bald), psycho facial look, and some jewelry to signal he’s an upwardly mobile young man from the “east”, as he listens to his white russian rap music. they all look like post-malone if he shaved his head, which is funny, because this fresh new look is completely post-soviet. you mentioned how they are all “monkey see monkey do” types, and yea, that has been my experience. i mean, pavel d made vk a fagbook clone, and he’s some kind of genius?
May 19,2022 A crusade for NATO and the Western powers
For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Ukraine war is, in the immediate-to-short-term, a strategic defeat on the military, economic and political fronts. First and foremost, the Russian units sent into Ukraine were too few to mount a successful offensive, as the military high commanders did not stick to the iron-clad ratio of three-to-one for attackers to defenders.
http://jordantimes.com/opinion/michael-jansen/crusade-nato-and-western-powers
What’s old is now new…. and the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
I believe Dave…he was offed with a fast growing Cancer after being “tipped” he should “watch out for cancer” — this little “trick” is used quite a bit as to effective GAE opponents/dissidents– fast removal – (Senator Frank Church of the famous Anti-CIA Committee was taken out with this type fast moving cancer too….):
https://butlincat.com/2020/10/06/r-i-p-dave-mcgowan-google-refuses-to-allow-you-to-see-this-mans-work-and-he-was-given-cancer-to-shut-him-up-06-oct-2020/
Not true. People in Europe who have encountered Moslems as their local helpful shop keeper or quiet law abiding neighbours speak better of them than the legacy media. I read once in a source I have forgotten, a poll was taken of German citizens that compared those that personally encountered minorities with those that did not. Prejudice went up substantially with personal encounters with every minority except Moslems. That went down substantially. That kinda makes you speculate who control the media and their agenda. Incidentally we should now be in the long predicted clash of civilisations. That never happened. Instead we have this Gilbertian war in Ukraine.
Your average USer thinks Lagos is a town in Florida. The intelligent Nigerian scammer reads stuff on the internet from boasters and complainants in the US. Then e buys a coffee or a beer for someone who has actually lived in the US to fill in the details. Gotta do your due diligence.
This is a side issue which you choose to focus on.
It’s hard to know what in the name of hell you are saying…but you appear to be saying that you like Crimea because it’s a – so called – ‘melting pot’ of multiple ethnicities. That has been the scourge of the USA since the turn of the C19th. It does not a nation make, as in: “I’m an X-American”…”I’m an Y-American”…”I’m a Z-American” and so on ad infinitum. It’s a fake nation of contesting ethnicities.
Same Asian factory, different production line.
Most if not all Nigerian scammers are Israeli Yid.
But the “carnal crap” in “the” bible is alright? Here are some sources about the perversion, cruelty, and deviancy presented in a positive light in that book:
“An X-Rated Book: Sex and Obscenity in the Bible” by Ruth Hermence Green
https://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/23733-an-x-rated-book-sex-obscenity-in-the-bible
https://shop.ffrf.org/product/an-x-rated-book/
“A Born-Again Skeptic’s Guide to the Bible”
https://shop.ffrf.org/product/born-again-skeptics-guide-to-the-bible-digital-download-version/
The melting pot in America is 150 years old – the melting pot in Crimea and other places in the World is centuries old – you’re pretty dense when it comes to this. You better stay where you are – you will never understand the rest of the world – typ. American type.
I think Adidas was a sponsor for the Olympics in the later USSR or something and so that Western brand took off before others. Gopniks (Russian versions of British Chavs/NEDs) are extremely loyal to Adidas.
Very interesting article, thank you very much and keep on the good work.
Those Turkic🇷🇸Chetniks and their Mongolian🇷🇺Moskal cousins dindu nuffin! They be good boyz—just victims of rayciss white supremacist Western NATO Nazis!
Vukovar🇭🇷…Mariupol🇺🇦…the Serb/Russian cries out in pain as he shells your people and levels your cities to the ground!
Doesn’t matter what language they adopt or what religion they profess…one cannot take the nature of the Turk out of the Serb any more than one can take the nature of the Mongol out of the Russian.
I got to this just over the weekend – and the earlier companion piece. You have a very amusing style – lots of fun to read.
I am trying to think how this applies to the current war in Ukraine. Aren’t the Bariga generation most of the guys doing the dirty dangerous work? Tho lots of Boomer generals have paid the ultimate price as well.
At the top of the stack commenters are furious at the suggestion that Russian troops may be encountering morale problems (armchair generals to a man!) – I am not so sure. Do the Bariga guys think they have an important dog in this fight? Now that the sneaker supply line from Poland is disrupted?
‘Moskal’ is pure Banderite race hatred. Now we know exactly what you are.
The entire world has become a nightmare since the Real Evil Empire triumphed in 1989, and got the free hand to rule with Full Spectrum Dominance that it always craved.