I arrived in Russia a little less than a decade ago and while living there I travelled extensively and talked to everyone that was willing to talk to me. At the time, I was an optimist and genuinely enjoyed meeting new people, hearing new perspectives, having adventures and so on. Like all people, I had many stereotypes about Russia in my head going in that painted my expectations that were quickly dispelled. More than anything, I wanted to see a race of stoic, sullen, semi-sober Slavs living in a modern-day Sparta.
To be fair, some creature comforts were lacking. The bedding situation in particular drove me up the wall. It was either some ancient soviet futon relics or a cheap, low, single mattress IKEA bed hastily thrown together that I sagged through. Either way, you wake up feeling like you’ve been mugged in your sleep and you carry that attitude with you through the first half of your day.
But, apart from the bedding crisis that no one seemed willing to do anything about, there was very little else in the way of Sparta. I found that the vast majority of people that I interacted with in the cities were Liberals, and the few suburbaners and rural folk that would visit the city on holidays were simply drunks. This characterization of the situation can be applied equally to all of the lands of Eastern Slavdom and the post-USSR - all territories that rightfully belongs to us by right of conquest and geo-strategic imperative, mind you. Actually, this characterization applies to America as well. The rural and suburban wastes of America are filled with morbidly obese, drug-addled, brutalized peasants that have been deliberately subjected to economic, political and psychological warfare.
Liberals will admit the same and sniff that only provincials support Putin because they worship strong leaders and believe what the TV tells them. In America, MAGA country starts where the megacity stretching from Boston to Richmond ends. There are a few differences, I suppose, but I realized that I had read about this urban v rural divide occurring all the way back among the Greeks, then among the city-dwelling Churchians who waged war in the name of Yahweh on the traditional heathen (a slur for provincials) countryside. And the various utopian political projects that came along later went out of their way to gut the traditional countryside as well. In England, the villages and the common land was destroyed first, followed by France where Parisian street gangs were unleashed on the monarchists in the sticks, and finally in Russia where the peasants were deliberately starved and then moved to the commieblocks to become proletarians.
Dugin says that all of history is the struggle between sea powers and land powers. So be it, there’s something to that, I suppose. But, I would add that the internal war in any country is always the struggle between the countryside and the city. Between Populism and Liberalism.
The city is a force, brother. An evil force. The strong come and become weak. It takes away their strength. As it did for you.
Even now, it is the provincials who are being tasked with fighting the war in Ukraine to defend their country from NATO’s aggression.
The city folk, in contrast, have decided to emigrate en masse, which is, roughly anyways, the topic of today’s post.
Reuters had some reasonable stats to share on the exodus:
The independent Novaya Gazeta Europe reported on Sept. 26 that 261,000 men had left since the mobilisation was declared, citing a Kremlin source. The report could be independently verified.
Russia has denied some reports in Russian media saying 700,000 Russians had fled the country since the announcement.
On Oct. 4, Forbes Russia reported that the number of people who have left the country since Putin ordered the draft could be as high as 700,000, citing a Kremlin source.
I have heard numbers as high as 1.5 million being cited. Also, it is difficult to understand how many have left for extended vacations and how many have left for good.
For the most part, this is Russia’s middle and upper-middle class. You need money to up and emigrate, especially with post-Corona prices for tickets, lodgings and the difficulty in accessing funds from Russia. A good portion of them were already halfway out both mentally and financially, having learned english and working already for Western companies.
There has been alternating reactions of shock and denial and anger expressed by the talking heads.
Talking point #1: How did we let it get to a situation when so many Russians are such implacable self-hating Russians? How was this allowed to happen?
Talking point #2: This is all British propaganda designed to demoralize and divide the Russian people.
Talking point #3: These people are “foam” that forms on the wave and that will be forgotten by history. Russia is better off without these people. They should be banned from coming back!
The first talking point is rarer and usually expressed by patriot media, which has been complaining about the prevalent and pernicious nature of Western media in Russian society that the Russian authorities have done NOTHING to prevent or curb until very recently and only partially.
The second talking point is what you hear more from the propagandists doing damage-control. Either that or they just ignore the problem.
The third talking point is the one I prefer myself. These people were the backbone of the Liberal opposition in Russia. It is good that they’re gone, but worse that these people were allowed to grow and metastasize in the megacities in the first place.
Again, Russia was on a course of integration with the Satanic, Nazi, Crusader West for all of its post-Soviet history. Also, if we are to believe the pronouncements of Russia at the G20 summit, a significant portion of the ruling elites is still dead set on the course.
This was official policy for decades following the break-up of the Soviet Union and, actually, in the late Soviet Union starting with Comrade Andropov through to Boy Scout Gorbachev and beyond.
Obviously, this war has thrown a wrench into the infernal machinery of this plan.
Just as obviously, Putin, who was mister integration and a leading Liberalizer himself for many years in Russia, has clearly soured on this plan. It started with Ghadaffi’s ouster and his brutal slaying. Putin supposedly watched the tapes of his torture and death several times. If the story is to be believed, Putin, not being an idiot, started thinking long and hard about the fate that awaited him and his.
But where are the reforms? Was Putin expecting to be able to postpone them for after the Kiev operation? Or does he think he’s powerless to implement them? Does he, perhaps, as he has stated himself multiple times in interviews, value personal loyalty to himself over any “ideological” convictions or strength of character in his underlings?
The path forward for Russia is quite clear actually. It’s been thought about, debated and formulated by some of the most well-known and intelligent Russian thinkers of the 20th century. I will refer to them from now on as the Big Three: Ilyin, Solzhenitsyn, and Stolypin.
And you know who likes to quote Ilyin, Solzhenitsyn, and Stolypin in his speeches? Well, that would be Mr. Putin himself. You have to understand that this is not a common thing in Russia. Either Putin skimmed the texts or some clever intern working for him did. No one else quotes these authors. At least no one else in power does. In fact, I find it hard to believe, looking at the faces of the people running the government, that many of them are even literate and I think that the stuff that I write about on this blog would be too high-level for them, frankly. There are no mathematicians, historians or philosophers in the Kremlin - just a bunch of shady businessmen, and they brought their wretched, shallow, miserly mindset to the hallowed seat of the Imperial Russian project for which tens of millions struggled, bled, toiled and dedicated their lives selfless over the centuries. When they are gone, the halls will have to be washed with rose water to do away with the taint.
Now, Putin quotes the Big Three, but the fact is that he does very little to implement any of the suggestions of these authors. Considering that their ideas aren’t really all that complicated, it’s a head-scratcher for sure. Unlike Dugin, who, God bless him, very few people understand, the Big Three are relatively understandable to even the simplest-minded people and already have a track record of success.
Ilyin: Russia has a proud Authoritarian tradition that can stand on its own two feet and defend itself from Western political systems that seek to impose themselves on her.
Solzhenitsyn: Russia ought to pursue its own civilizational model. Rapid urbanization led to a whole host of problems that haven’t been adequately dealt with. Russia ought to be like the Jeffersonian ideal for America - a vast agrarian empire.
Stolypin: Russia needs to take some of the technological advances of the West and none of the rest. Adopting a “best practices” approach, basically. And also, Russia needs to settle its vast hinterland with land-owning citizen-soldier-farmers.
The cherry on top is that all of these men were educated counter-semites who called out the crimes of the Tribe of Yahweh against the Russian people and warned of their machinations as well. This is a rather important and glaring detail that is studiously ignored for some reason. It’s remarkable really how much time Russian thinkers and artists have spent on this problem. And yet, nothing.
To be fair, thanks to Putin partially, these men are reputable and quotable in Russia. But their ideas have not penetrated the population, which is largely unfamiliar with them, and they certainly haven’t affected state policy.
Furthermore, coming back to the topic of subversive city Liberals and the war against the countryside, the problem in Russia is only getting worse. Over the last 20 years, the population has continued its internal migration to the megacities and the death of the countryside has accelerated. Also, Putin has not successfully convinced anyone to move to the East and take up the “free” land. The land was gobbled up by local oligarchs mostly and most of it is so undeveloped that no one could go and build anything but a log cabin on it anyways. You need a concerted government effort to provide roads, building equipment and so on to settle these areas. During Stolypin’s time, villagers moved as large family units with other villagers to work together on the land east of the Urals. It was a coherent and concerted government policy, unlike the farce that we see now.
Also, as another interesting case in point, the Boers, expert farmers and homesteaders in their own right, have not been resettled in Russia, even though it would be a huge PR win for the government. Disaffected Westerners, in general, have almost no recourse for moving to Russia and setting up shop there. There are a few mini-projects related to Orthodoxy that seem to be doing OK, but their work is truly tiny when compared to what could be done.
Point being: so long as the megacities are allowed to fester and grow like cancer, Russia will become more Liberal, less populated and less capable of fighting to defend itself.
By adopting the straightforward ideas and policy proposals of the Big Three, Russia could start making headway towards fixing this problem. But that would require the government doing something or, at least, not working so hard to actively hamper the efforts of anti-Liberal forces in the country.
Another case in point: Russia even has it’s own version of the ADL (SOVA) which monitors and reports Russians for being too red-pilled and based. It is run by the same people who banned Kanye West from everything in the West. Luckily, in Russia, they do not work hand-in-hand with the secret police like they do in America. But why not make an organization that fights back against this and monitors anti-Russian activists? This idea has been proposed and discussed among Russian patriots for nigh a decade now. No funds. No interest. No leeway from the government. It is left to patriotic volunteers (like myself) to organize Internet Hate Mobs to harass businesses and celebrities who come out for the West and its anal values.
Actually, the idea has finally started to gain steam and, hopefully, I will have some good news to report on this front soon.
Look. Listen. Perk up.
I like Russia. I really do. And, even if I didn’t I’d still support Russia on account of the blood that runs in my veins. My country and my people come first for better or for worse. God didn’t make any mistakes when he consigned my individual soul to the greater Slavic Oversoul. That means that I was born a Slav for a reason (life on hard mode) and who would I be if I didn’t work to make my people better? [A: a Liberal.]
But I want Russia to earn its victories. I want to see the necessary changes and the hard decisions being made. I see progress and I’m grateful for it - we’ve come a long way in just 9 months. But, frankly, we are starting to see all the underlying problems that Russian society has the longer this conflict drags on. It’s like a fat man sitting around all day and doing fine and then being asked to run only to start stumbling and clutching at his chest. If he doesn’t start trimming the fat, he’ll collapse and die.
In other words, it’s time to adopt the old Spartan values that made Russia a force to be reckoned with. We won’t be loved by our enemies, so we may as well be feared. Let the West hate us so long as we refuse to surrender our national and ethnic pride.
The Liberal exodus is a symptom of a sickness.
It’s like snot dribbling down your nose as your body tries to clean itself of germs or dead cells or whatever. It’s good that you’re getting all that gunk out of your system, but it’s also proof that you’re sick. It also doesn’t look very good from the side. It’s one thing to have refugees when a war is being fought on your territory, but when you’re losing around a million people when you’re the one on the offensive it beggars belief. For all their bluster, American Liberals never moved to Canada when Trump was elected. So, imagine how extreme the convictions (and economic incentives) for Russia’s Liberals are. They are a serious bio-threat. And, when a part of them returns to the homeland, they’re going to return with CIA and MI6 and Mossad connections this time around. They are a biothreat has to be dealt with systematically.
A robust anti-anti-Russian immune system has to be built in Russia.
But, because the government is overwhelmingly Liberal, they do nothing or take half-measures. Just take a look at the way this war is being conducted if you don’t believe me. This mentality did not come out of nowhere. If you see it during the war it is because it existed in peacetime as well.
“This’ll do.” Or, alternatively, “meh, good enough.”
If Putin’s government falls in the coming years, “meh, good enough,” will be a fitting epitaph for the fools who, either out of short-sightedness, treachery, lazyness, stupidity or ideological conviction decided to half-ass the future of the Russian nation and its people.
One funny aspect of liberals fleeing Russia for the west is that their images of the west are images of years earlier. Now, as they run to the EU/US they are entering a world that is in the process of collapse. They might be content in the short term, but as their funds deplete, and they realize they are considered foreigners by much of the local population, many will probably start longing for home. They might realize they jumped out of the frying pan, into the fire.
I saw another comment that says they should be banned from returning, but I think that might be a bad idea. If they return with a new understanding of the world, they might become a valuable asset for Russia.
If I were younger I would entertain the thought of visiting Russia, to see if moving there would be an option. C'est la vie!
Since Zogs sanctions mostly effect nobody's like me I need to live part time in Russia and part time in Belarus for financial reasons. Western oligarchs can still do business with Gasprom for billions but i cant transfer anything to a bank in Russia. But anyway as for bedding imo Belarusian made furniture is the gold standard. Fairly cheap considering the quality and just as comfortable as something I would have bought in the US for 4 times the price.
I was watching an interview with German Saduleav who is some guy semi well known with neo-soviet boomers in Russia and his idea is that to advance in the Russia government and society in general it should be mandatory to serve in the Donbass. Like if you want to be in charge of an oblast one day than you need to first serve in the administration somewhere in the warzone under NATO artillery and dodging SBU stay behind assasins. Naturally military service would also be mandatory.
He brought up the British Empire in its hey day as an example. I tend to loath the Brits but his point here was solid, back in the day British nobility really did serve in dangerous places before they could come back and hang out with Lord Rothschild and Benjamin Disraeli. Lots of actual British blue bloods were killed when the Russians savaged the light brigade. British nobles back than were on the sharp end of suppressing the natives in all far flung corners of their empire.
Of course Russia and most other European countries had this sort of expectation in regards to the nobility but it was much more pronounced and visible with the Brits back than. In Russias case for every noble that faithfully served you had 5 conspiring against Tsar, probably with the Brits. Maybe its just because Slavland is my home now so im more neurotic about it but God does it seem like there is something especially malevolent and evil about Russias elite and it goes back to well before the October revolution. The war going hot has just put the spotlight on that and made it apparent that the war is mostly about them vs Putin or the patriots and whoever. Its a war for Russias sole and the hohols and NATO are secondary players.
But yeah, God is absolutely not giving Russia any easy victorys. The liberals\servants of mammon need to be utterly uprooted and flushed down the toilet in totality or Russia is going to lose long term. Theres nowhere left to retreat and its getting down to do or die.