The Dying Russians (she says it's from broken hearts)

NYU Review of Books blog ^ | September 2, 2014 | Masha Gessen

[mac_truck]

Big fan of Masha Gessen are you?

Lolz.

[1rudeboy]

How the heck would you know? By your own admission, you stopped reading after the second sentence, idiot.

[huldah1776]

Language says so much about a culture. ;-) Being a believer in the Bible, I just thought that maybe after Babel we came to develop our cultures because of our language. Hmmm. sorry, I always think of other things.

[SgtHooper]

An outstanding read! Thanks!! I have seen the symptoms and outward results, but never could derive one plausible reason for it all. It truly makes good sense. But how sad!

[huldah1776]

Yowza, Vladimir P, with all the communist social psychology you would think motivation would be easy by now. Money and time off to have children?

Find out why certain people aren’t dying. Find out what is keeping them motivated. Then make it a national policy, like our school lunch policy. You might have a problem if those who are living longer are people of faith. The joy of the Lord is my strength.

Good article. I’ve always had a thing for Siberia for some reason. Must be something in my genes. Half Hungarian. Could have had relatives there, I guess.

[Clemenza]

“Russian culture” is represented by the National Bolshevism of Putin. The Russians were “victims” of communism in the same way a junkie is a “victim” of heroin.

[wetphoenix]

Well, after reading it carefully, I have to admit that this piece is actually makes sense.
I thought a lot on this subject by myself and somehow had similar conclusions, though in not as refined form.
The lesson is however that the processes they are talking about aren’t limited to Russia and the Russians.
There are numerous misfortunes and failed practices in a row which leads to a broken society.
It seems like no one is going to learn from it and not only some people are actively obstructing Russian attempts to disengage from this row, they are actively brings these practices elsewhere.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

"Um... we were on the same side in 1914. And in 1917, the Bolsheviks essentaially took power against Russian culture and the Russian people. That's why they had a civil war, y’know? - Mrs. Don-o

Seriously? Okay, for the very literally minded, they've been our enemies for 97 years.

. . . and, depending on how you look at it, the US and the USSR were allies during WWII.

After the German invasion of the USSR, but before Pearl Harbor, there were some who considered that the only trouble with the Russo-German war was that both sides couldn’t lose. But FDR was friendly to the USSR long before that; his first diplomatic act after taking office in ’33 was to recognize the USSR - which hadn’t been done by prior (Republican) administrations. It’s not to be forgotten in that context that the USSR allied itself with the Third Reich in dividing Poland between themselves. I’m not so sure FDR was overjoyed at that - which, after all, was the start of WWII.

Of course the people of Russia had no real say in any of that, but Stalin et al certainly deserved to lose because of that, and the war he waged on the people and his own top military in the ‘30s. And in a toast "to American production, without which the war could not have been won,” Stalin admitted that without the help of the US he would have lost. Harry Hopkins was FDR’s right hand man, and he gave the Soviets whatever they asked for. Yea, unto uranium . . .

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

totalitarian rule is truly possible only in countries that are large enough to be able to afford depopulation.

Maybe the way to look at it is that the very idea of Russia is a megalomaniac concept at war with humanity. In order to attain its scale, it suppressed the “little platoons” which sustain civil society elsewhere - and particularly in America at its Tocquevillian best.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Thank you so much! I had no idea you were such a scholar!!

[Mrs. Don-o]

I didn't lecture you! When I lecture I do more than one paragraph!! :o)

You don't seem to have noticed that I disagreed with the author on her point of whether dying from AIDS and dying from cultual anomie are so "different." She said they're different. I said they're not so different at all: sterile sex, sterile culture.

[bert]

This phenomenon and those related are the problem Putin has set about to remedy. He has a country that is in serious decline and apparently has no desire to reverse the trend.

He can sell his natural resources to fund his government but he still faces the problem of people with little or nothing to do. Their production is almost nothing.

Those here poo poo the notion citing rockets and jets. Both are weapon related. His defense industry is about all he has. Putin Courts Assad because Syria is a customer and paying weapons customers are few and far between.

I don’t fear Putin because he lacks the ability to project

[mac_truck]

Masha Gessen is a well known radical lesbian feminist.

She wrote a book extolling the virtues of a Russian feminist punk band called Pussy Riot.

Since when do such proponents of the homosexual agenda get their views aired at all around here?

[Mrs. Don-o]

First of all, I posted this article because we are adults and we can read intelligently the views of whose whose worldview is different from ours.

Second, because this article isn't about the radical lesbians or Pussy Riot. It's about the cultural/spiritual Void of Russia which has sapped people's instinctive will to live.

She would say the two things are not related. I would say they are related intimately. Spiritual Void leads to sexual perversion. Sexual perversion leads to deeper spiritual Void. They are both part of the Culture of Death.

And don't think we don't see these things here as well. Our media industry has been promoting homosexual vice for at least 25 years; our birthrate (minus immigrants and the first-generation children of immigrants) has been below replacement since about 1968; we now have the highest percentage of atheists and "none of the aboves" in our history, and they are militantly scouring Judeo-Christianity out of every public venue; and more than 50% of the children born to women 30 and younger are born out of wedlock.

These are all signs of the Void.

[Lazamataz]

She wrote a book extolling the virtues of a Russian feminist punk band called Pussy Riot. Since when do such proponents of the homosexual agenda get their views aired at all around here?

.....when they write a clearheaded, non- (or at least low-)agenda-promotional article....?

Heck, this kind of author should be published just for the novel rarity of such an article. :)

[Drew68]

bfl

[free_life]

Gentics...breeding...Russia killed off most of the Russians with intelligence and morals in last 200 years; ... bullets, gulags, mass graves. Now they are left with such a high percentage of Neanderthals who are only happy fighting, killing, looting, invading, raping and being drunk. Look at who they are letting run their country, these thugs Putin and gang are robbing the Russian people blind, locking up or disappearing any who speak up, killing the Russian people and still little protest. Talk about stupid cattle being herded to the slaughter house. !