Kostya's Boring Codec World

Yesterday russia had another missile strike on Ukrainian territory, leaving some cities without electricity, heating and water for a day. As expected from a terrorist state. But here I’d like to talk about all those spineless people and organisations that keep supporting russia indirectly by not expelling it because “X is outside politics”.

Nowadays the phrase “X is outside politics” where X is arts, sport, video games or whatever is mainly used as an excuse to do nothing against entities using that thing exactly in political reasons. Kinda like it is made to be outside politics by some natural force and nothing can change it—instead of keeping it outside politics. It is like saying that gas and oil are outside politics and ignoring all the conflicts that have happened in order to control its sources and transport let alone russian blackmail attempts where they drop prices and increase shipped volumes for their allies (like Hungary) and cut it off for the countries not agreeing to their political demands (like Poland or Ukraine).

And yet there are people claiming that other things are outside politics so you should not e.g. boycott russian art just because russians have started genocidal war and in their majority approves it (even if they don’t want to fight in it themselves).

Art

People forget that back in the day creating art was a long and costly process, so works of art were usually commissioned by wealthy people directly (or created to suit their taste in hope the potential patron will reward the creator for dedicating such work in his honour). Of course that meant that such works were often created in a biased way to either flatter the person or to push the favourable narrative. And the creator usually could spin own views into the book (a classic example: La Divina Commedia is famous not only for synthesising various beliefs on afterlife into a single system but also for its author’s views on his political opponents, some being placed in Hell already while they were still alive during the writing of the book).

Now take into account that the state can manipulate the works of art in its own interests—encourage art on a certain theme (like the various scenes from happy lives of Soviet workers and peasants), outlaw and destroy art that does not conform to certain criteria (there are many countries where mentioning LGBT+ themes is outlawed and when such laws are passed a lot of previously “outside politics” works become criminal offences). The work of art may be an abstract thing, but its creator is a human person that lives in a society and has to obey the rules (or suffer the consequences) let alone subtler filter bubbles created by the state (for example, there has nothing happened on 5th of June 1989 at Tiananmen Square, most of Lenin’s comrades were unpersons and Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia). And of course nothing prevents the state from taking those works of art and repurposing them later, giving new context and meaning (as I said previously, almost every russian symbol, starting with the country name itself, is stolen from elsewhere).

Ballet and gymnastics

One would wonder how such rather abstract forms of arts can serve political purposes. Like with sports (which is discussed below), it can be used as propaganda for outside usually pretending on peacefulness (“look, such refined people can’t be bad”) and for inside to unite the people behind something (“look, our performers are recognized in the whole world, we’re the greatest nation”).

Soviet Union used ballet for such purposes to the point that it got a memetic status (“…and as for ballet, we’re better at it than the rest of the planet”). North Korea has a mass gymnastics show called Arirang which is for impressing people how large North Korean collectives act like one person.

Dramatic art and literature

This is probably the most obvious example but Italian and European Commission officials do not understand it.

As mentioned above, plays and books are often written with some explicit political goals (even if they’re a good reading after all those centuries like Jonathan Swift’s), some works simply comprise political views of their authors even if it’s not the main objective (sometimes it’s just a passing remark on a group of people the author dislikes, but it’s still there). And of course the work can be repurposed later.

Soviet Union initially tried to push for the internationalism, the brotherhood of all people and so on, but after the attempts to expand have mostly failed (some countries were conquered but not the whole of Europe or Asia let alone Americas) they switched to the old rhetoric equalling USSR to a new russian empire (i.e. bringing civilisation to the outskirts, being the guide who knows the way to the future and other bullshit) while condemning it (for having a czar and not Polutburo as the ruler). This means that most of pre-1917 russian classics could be used not just to demonstrate how bad was life for a common peasant (alluding it has improved greatly under Soviets) but also the old rhetoric about empire, its strength and defeating the enemies could be used almost verbatim as well. And new works had to conform the so-called party line (the current outlook on the internal and external politics) otherwise it would not be published.

Now let’s look at the other parent of modern russia. Beside creating some of the best propaganda pieces, Nazi Germany has repurposed a lot of past art to its goals. The famous Deutschlandlied (the one that starts with words “Germany, Germany above all, above everything in the world”) was created in times of disunited German kingdoms, duchies and counties and the idea was that they all should unite to one single Germany instead of having petty squabbles between each others—and you know how those words are perceived after 1939. Richard Wagner created his operas because he was interested in the German past and writing epic music with no connection to the modern days (beside maybe some jabs at critics) and that’s why the Bavarian fairytale king supported him—but you know how his music was used in 1930 and what associations it brings now. One of the books by Strugatsky brothers contains the following passage about Nietzsche: “He was a great poet but he was very unlucky with the fans.” And indeed, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his philosophical works about individual men, how they should cope with the unwelcoming world and strive to become better—so when his idea of superhuman (in moral sense) were adopted by Nazis they still remained outside politics, didn’t they?

Video games

Video games are a work of art too (even if not all) and in many cases they tell a story and have a setting. So some games may push a certain narrative by having a “proper” version of history, “properly” behaving parties and so on. For example, Company of Heroes 2 had hostile reception in russia because you could commit the same atrocities with Soviet soldiers as in real life (like in East Prussia) and in russia they believe that there were no such things (the same way as they don’t want to hear about Bucha or Izyum now).

And considering how russian dictatorship controls all mass media, do you think they won’t try to “convince” game studios (with both money and threats of criminal prosecution) that they should make more “patriotic” games?

Sport

The Olympic games were initially conceived as apolitical competitions (that’s why Greek city-states even stopped fighting during the games). When they were revived in 1896, they tried to preserve the spirit—and then 1936 Summer Olympics happened.

Nazi Germany saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate its power and superiority of its people. In a sense it was the first modern Olympics and not just for the technical details: initially it was a competition between individuals for the sake of promoting sports and chivalrous rivalry. Afterwards it became a canonical show-off for a hosting country and it was state-sponsored teams taking part and not amateurs who trained at their own expense.

Consider the following: in the last decades hosting an Olympics (or often any other large sports event) does not bring profit to the hosting country (especially considering how the objects that had to be built to conform to the newer IOC standards are too large for any domestic use afterwards and have to be either demolished or maintained without a meaningful return). So the hosting country should be a wealthy country willing to throw away money for what? For prestige and show-off. That’s why nowadays large sports events happen in countries with dubious reputation (like Temporary Occupied West Taiwan, Qatar, russia or South Africa).

And you should remember the doping scandal for 2014 Winter Olympics—if the government used its state security in order to organise mass cheating at doping, do you think it hadn’t treated winning at the games as political goal?

There’s another fun fact: for both russia and Temporary Occupied West Taiwan the majority of males in their teams are not merely people training at the state expense, they are also on active military duty. There may be many possible explanations but some state politics is involved there as well.

So you may see all those sports events as apolitical but certain countries do not—and they act accordingly.

Conclusions

I hope it’s clear by now that “X is outside politics” is merely a suggestion and not an inherent property. Something stays outside politics only as long as no party is using it for some political purposes.

In my previous lengthy rant I described how I moved away from russian culture even if I’d been exposed to it long and extensively. For other people, who did not grow up in russian colonies unlike me, it should be even easier.

Similarly, still admitting russians to international competitions of any kind is allowing them to keep spreading their narratives both inside and outside the country (at least russia has thought in advance and bought enough people in various sports committees to keep allowing them even if not under their own flag).

And if you’re still asking why—believing russian narratives is exactly what made this war so horrible, long and devastating (and sadly not for russia). And it enables other parties (like Temporary Occupied West Taiwan) to influence your decisions as well. After all, convincing your enemy that he’s lost already is a victory indeed.

I might sound as a sidekick to Captain Obvious but some things are needed to be said again and again.

Life in its entirety is built on a feedback loop: if you react on external conditions to maximise positive output you’ll survive; it’s not just evolution, individual organism also would die if they don’t search for food when they’re hungry and don’t flee from danger. But when you have large systems with some resilience, some of the feedback may be ignored for some time. And sometimes all of the feedback gets ignored permanently and that is the start of that system downfall. It has happened before the humanity (dinosaur extinction most likely happened because they were unable to adapt to the changing conditions—because they could ignore the changes until it was too late so they were mostly replaced by more agile animals) but here we’ll review human-made systems (mostly social and political) and failures of those.

Essentially, the cycle works like this: at first a system emerges (or is created) to fulfil some purpose, it grows large, then it starts getting optimised for a target different from the initial one, and when the differences between its initial purpose and the goal it serves grow large enough for that system to face an uneasy choice—get reformed or get eliminated. This happens because the feedback from the wrong decisions at stage three (optimising for a different target) get ignored. So let’s start with reviewing how this happens.

You probably have heard about Goodhart’s law (and if not, it’s a shame) which essentially says that if you optimise something only for a certain metric, that metric will stop mattering. To give a technical example from the area I know: there are various ways to calculate how close lossy-encoded video is to the source and the higher the value of such metric the better video should look to human eye. So far so good, right? But every metric can be manipulated and some researches found that by applying some preprocessing the popular VMAF metric can be improved while the picture quality may feel degraded (it’s not purely theoretical, here in AV1 encoder source there’s some code based on their earlier ideas). Also I heard an anecdote about Korean researchers making an AAC encoder based on neural networks that gave excellent PSNR while sounding like garbage to human ear. Now that you have an idea on how it works, let’s move to less quantifiable things.

I can’t say I understand modern economics well, but essentially in the old days companies were supposed to bring profit by providing a product or service better than the competition (in the best case by being a monopoly). Then the companies became too large to be owned by one guy or family (there are exceptions of course) so the goal became to increase the worth of the stock that shareholders possess—by increasing its market value. Again, initially such stock prices were tied to the easily quantifiable things like assets, income and profit; now it’s more about expectations of growth. Somebody from the past simply would not understand how a company having losses for years still has its stock growing. My cynical view is that it works as long as there are enough people willing to believe that it works (which is also the case with modern economics in general IMO).

Now let’s look at the forms of government. Usually there are no clear goals in either of the systems and people often can’t predict the consequences of their actions (and when they can, they’re not willing to). And there is the usual human tendency to make things better for oneself no matter what consequences it bears for the others. Thus in order to keep system vital you need to get feedback from the people (even if it’s just to know where to send forces to squash rebellion like in today Iran). That’s why China keeps several systems (party members, state security and the state news agency) to report stuff from the regions to the centre. That’s why Winston Churchill said that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. Voting in sane(r) countries is a way to keep the authorities informed about what people want (even if the results of the voting are ignored afterwards). IMO the system could be improved by having a test on the basics (e.g. what parties are out there, what are their governing principles and key points of the programs—just to make sure you make a conscious vote) and account votes of those who passed the test and not separately (in order to do what the concise people voted for and if they’re indecisive—do what the majority wants). But of course such system can be exploited (plus it’s somewhat harder to implement) and we have Gresham’s law in action here (a voter is a voter and any populist would prefer a thousand people voting for him out of tradition to ten people voting because he served their interests but who might not vote for him the next time). The cases of what happens when feedback is ignored will be reviewed a bit later.

Now let’s have a look at social networks. From what I see, originally they were created to attract people by connecting them based on some feature (and make money off them of course). With the time though the goal has mutated to attracting advertisers and selling them audience based on some features. I’m not going to describe what tricks are used to make users behave in the way advertisers like the best but it seems to turn users off those platforms.

As we got to the point where not taking feedback into account has led us to a crisis, there are three possible outcomes: keep ignoring the feedback (aka Soviet Army approach), try to manipulate the metric in hope that it will improve things (shamanism) or do something to the reality to make it conform to the metric (Froogle approach). If you think that taking feedback into account is a possible option too you are an incurable optimist.

Ignoring feedback altogether is a rather simple thing to do. If you don’t like something just call it fake news or enemy propaganda and be done with it. Why I called it Soviet Army approach? Because for me it’s associated with the tradition that was common for the commanders in russian empire, USSR and current russia: keep doing what’s ordered no matter how pointless it is. There are jokes about e.g. painting grass green and asphalt in dark grey to conform the rules, but considering all the variations of it I’ve read in the memoirs and heard from people who served in Soviet Army I doubt it’s merely jokes. Similarly we can see how in this war russians are attacking Bakhmut (or Sieverodonetsk earlier) and how they made Chornobaivka a legend. Denying reality just prolongs the inevitable.

Manipulating metrics is another step, where you hope that by cooking the books and rigging the process you’ll get the desired outcome. As Richard Feynman said, nature cannot be fooled—but what about people? Maybe if we report that the majority supports us the majority will think they’re supporting us because everybody else does? This starts with rigging elections and ends with russia where the only feedback taken into account is what the führer wants to hear, so the election results are always falsified to have the ruling party get the “convincing” majority of votes, opinion polls are treated by population as “the authorities sent me to ask if you’re satisfied with everything, yes or yes?” and it is widely speculated that only good news about the war get to the führer-in-the-bunker (unless they’re too hard to hide, then they’re greatly delayed as it happened with their cruiser, fleeing Kharkiv region or Kherson). In theory this approach may work in some cases where you act in a system powered mostly by human beliefs and you have factual information yourself, otherwise it causes more damage than the previous case.

And finally we have the case where you not merely reject feedback from reality but rather try to force reality to give the feedback you want. I called it Froogle approach after one story (sorry, can’t find the link): when this search service for products on sale was still in development, the team encountered a case where a certain irrelevant product (a garden gnome) was showing up in the results for completely different things. No matter how they tuned their algorithms, it kept showing up—until one day one guy from the team went and bought it thus removing it from the search results. This is also reminding me of the final chapter of The History of One Town by Saltykov-Shchedrin where a satirical depiction of Arakcheyev sees a river on plains that does not fit into his world view and decides to remove it by filling it with rubble from the demolished town (he wanted to build a military-agricultural colony on its place anyway). As you can imagine, it worked for about one day and then the river found its way again. The famous whipping the sea by Xerxes the Great probably belongs here as well. Depending on the resources you have (and against what you fight) it may work out or not—but it’s fun to watch from afar (from close distance though it’s a horror).

We learn from the mistakes (preferably not made by us) and feedback is a very important part of that learning. Pain tells you that what you’re doing is hurting you and you’d better stop doing it, that’s how children learn not to grab hot objects and pointy things. Sadly nowadays in many cases you don’t suffer from the consequences of your mistakes (because the society values individuals a bit too much to allow that) and in some cases it leads to tragic results. Even worse when it happens to the whole countries (because Wesphalian sovereignty is an international counterpart to humanism).

In 2008 russia started a war on Georgia and what was the reaction? The famous EU report that stated essentially that the conflict happened and they don’t know the reasons behind it and can’t verify the claims of participating parties. A year later Obama government started with resetting the relationships. As the result it empowered the aggressor to do more of the same in the future (1938 called and sent its greetings from Munich).

In 2014 russia started essentially the Third World War (I wrote on this opinion of mine) by occupying Crimea and fighting in the East Ukraine using puppet “people republics” (like soviet russia did in 1917-1922). What was the reaction? Essentially it boiled down to “bad russia, don’t do it again—and you, Ukraine, should reconcile” (plus a couple of rather formal sanctions to show some concern). And in the same time russia tried to use its gas as a leverage (not for the first time though and not for the last). Baltic states took the hint and made their systems independent from russia: there were LNG terminals built and new legislation for controlling gas suppliers was passed (like requiring minimum storage fill level). Germany did nothing and as the result it met the second phase of war with near-empty storages (belonging to russia) and no means to transport gas but the pipelines from russia (mostly owned by guess which country)—all against the Directive 2009/73/EC. To me this alone is enough to start investigating Merkel (and preceding) government for high treason, but we all know this is unlikely. The lack of punishment for acting against national interests and in favour of another country will encourage others to do the same (see Scholz and China). And there’s still an issue of Hungary and its well-paid affection to russia…

The situation in the USA is not much better as both parties do not want to recognize that people might have a reason to vote for their opponents and it’s not just russia/China/big tech meddling with the elections. And instead of thinking what can be done to win more voters the parties mostly pass the blame and try to turn their views into a small religion. Also I find the calls to disregard the laws because the other party “cheated” rather disturbing. Thanks to this other countries see America as a laughing stock and, more importantly, withering power and expect to occupy Ukraine, Taiwan or Syria without repercussions.

I want to end this rant with a passage from Going Postal that resonates with me:

You see, I believe in freedom, Mr Lipwig. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.

This is another story that I simply had to write. It may be fun to seek parallels between this and free services of a certain privacy-invading company but the only common points there are that I stopped using them out of disgust and the company helped to make the process easier. So far no matter what it did it hasn’t done even a minuscule amount of harm russia did (and does) to Ukraine and the rest of the world.

So I’m finally writing about russian culture not in general but applied to me. Short summary: I grew up in both russian and Ukrainian cultures and I didn’t hate either, yet there were always some things in russian works that rubbed me the wrong way and I had been slowly drifting from it even before russia demonstrated what a loaded deal it is.

A bit about Kharkiv

Let’s start from my birthplace. I was born and spent two thirds of my life in Kharkiv, the large cultural centre of the East Ukraine. It was founded about four hundred years ago in a territory of border Cossack forces called Slobozhanshchyna (the word comes from the word “freedom” BTW). Kharkiv grew up a large trade and industrial city. First private bank in russian empire was founded there and the best known Soviet tank (along with several others) were designed and produced there, to give just two random examples. It was equally powerful scientific and cultural centre as well—all three Ukrainian Nobel laureates studied at Kharkiv University (which is over two centuries old), and a plethora of people who made great contributions to the Ukrainian culture, from from Kvitka-Osnovianenko to the group known as Executed Renaissance to the modern ones like Serhiy Zhadan (I have actually seen him once at our Literary Museum). There were people living in Kharkiv who later moved elsewhere to make great contributions to russian culture as well (actors, singers and even the scriptwriters of the best Soviet comedies).

As you can see, my home city had a lot to offer. And I sampled a lot of it like visiting a six dozen of different theatres (half of them repeatedly) but more about it later. The main negative property of Kharkiv is being located in less than 50 kilometres from the russian border (and it shows).

My early years and language

Anyway, let’s move to my childhood. I was born in a russian-speaking family, everybody was speaking russian and we had just one topic in school taught in Ukrainian (which is, not surprisingly, was Ukrainian language itself). Side note: during that time the Ukrainian grammar was reformed to make it closer to the actual Ukrainian language instead of russian, for example the letter “ґ” was reintroduced back into Ukrainian language (it’s called “Wallachian g” and used mainly in loanwords that have a sound different from real Ukrainian ‘g’). Yet despite all that people had nothing against Ukrainian language, I used to listen to the radio station “Промінь” that had various kinds of music in Ukrainian (and some retro music in russian as well), I read children magazines in russian or Ukrainian depending on in which language an issue was available (you can guess why Ukrainian periodicals often had versions in two languages; the same applies to books). It was the same in my university years: mostly people spoke russian and we had only two subjects taught in Ukrainian (Ukrainian history and Ukrainian language for business letters). So I could observe it myself that most of the time people spoke russian but nobody was against Ukrainian language (only complaining about not mastering it). The only time I heard somebody saying that she hates Ukrainian language was in Luhansk region…

I had relatives in Luhansk region, my grandparents were from Borivske village and they lived in Lysychansk. Of course I stayed with them in summer and heard different stories about the region. For example, during German occupation in 1940s German soldiers had better attitude to the locals than collaborators (my grandmother remembered how one of them commented it in broken language—”a russian beats brother, what idiot”). My grandpa was involved in building Sieverodonetsk Azot (the large producer of nitrogen-based compounds that became infamous this spring). He said that it started as a German chemical plant that was dismantled and rebuilt in two several sites, namely Sieverodonetsk and somewhere in east russia (maybe Kemerovo but I can’t be sure). Later it was expanded using an equipment bought abroad, so my grandpa worked with prisoners who were laying bricks for the future production sites and with Japanese experts overseeing other construction works. It seems to be a common story when russian or Soviet industry is built by foreigners and prisoners (sometimes they’re the same people). And it demonstrates the problem planted by USSR: since all those large construction works in Donbas area were performed mostly by prisoners, those prisoners had to be brought from somewhere (which means russia) and they were left there afterwards, creating an alien element. That is why this region had the population that refused to speak anything but russian and well-developed criminal culture culminating in yanukovych, the fourth president of Ukraine who still had manners and jargon of an ex-con, and his cronies from Donbas who helped him to rob the country—and a bang in 2014 when Ukrainians got finally tired of this and russia showed its true colours by occupying Crimea and sending people to start an uprising in Donbas. And yes, the pretext was oppression of russian-speaking population (which is probably was a need for them to learn even a bit of Ukrainian). Mind you, that person who said that she hated Ukrainian language was not speaking the perfect russian either. This reminds me also of French language attitude but I’ll leave comparisons of France/French and russia/russians to another time.

The slow move from different kinds of russian culture

That was all mostly about the language itself, what about the other aspects of culture: books, music, plays, mass-media? I’ve written already about radio station I’ve listened to but what about the rest?

Television

As for TV, I watched mostly humour shows (in russian, Ukrainian and even surzhyk which is a mix of both). One of my favourite shows was КВН (“a club of witty and clever ones” which grew out of student sketch shows and competitions where people asked random questions and others tried to answer with a witty response), which had a lot of Ukrainian teams as strong competitors and they even were winning tournaments more than once (two of those teams had a guy who became a famous and comedian, you might’ve heard about Volodymyr Zelensky). In the mid-2000s though the show degraded as it was no longer possible to joke about politics and everything in the show now essentially belongs to the host and his family (not just a trademark, broadcasting rights and the building where the shows are performed, teams wanting to perform in the show have to sign a contract making them virtually slaves)—and considering that this guy is over 80, tries to pretend to be young and shows no desire to leave, it feels like a history of modern russia in a nutshell.

Back in the day Ukrainian TV features a lot of russian soap operas (half of them being the local version of telenovelas and another half being about cops or criminals) and a good deal of them was shot in Ukraine because it was cheaper (in the same way as iconic American movies were shot in England). Once I’ve caught a bit of it while switching channels and acting was so bad that it made me want to puke. So I haven’t missed anything good by not watching them either.

Anyway, I’ve stopped watching TV completely around 2005 out of disgust. Advertisements may be annoying but when the same programme is interrupted with advertisements in five minutes after the first time, it’s too much. So I turned TV set off and haven’t regretted that since. I suppose I should thank certain Ukrainian TV channel for that.

Music

As for the music, I prefer instrumental music that is couple of centuries old (German baroque music played on harpsichord or organ is the best). I heard enough russian composers but I didn’t like their music (except for Glinka for some reason). Ukrainian traditional music, played on bandura, kobza and dulcimer, somehow resonates with my soul though (it was performed sometimes at our philharmonic). And out of many theatres I’ve visited, the russian drama theatre was the one I liked the least (not the repertoire though but the attitude to the watchers). So I’m mostly into classics yet there’s one Ukrainian song from my home city that I know by heart (and it sounds equally good both in russian and Ukrainian).

See, I haven’t had to stop listening to russian music because I haven’t listened much to it in the first place.

Literature

It’s not that I like reading, it’s more that I can’t live without it. We had all kinds of books at home, from russian classics (including two or three complete sets of works by Pushkin) to modern science fiction (including both books by Strugatsky brothers, works by foreign authors and even some science fiction in Ukrainian by local authors). Later I learned other languages and I’ve read a couple of books in each language I know (and probably couple of hundred books in English). I value content and ideas over the presentation so I can forgive some problems to a book if it’s an interesting reading (and not written by a completely illiterate person). Books in russian are plenty and easy to get access to in electronic form for free (and not even via means of piracy) so no wonder I mostly read those. The problem is that many of those books have issues with quality and they get worse every year.

One of the main problems is declining literacy: while the books are still being written, they’re written used poor language (limited vocabulary, primitive sentences, words used at random, lack of punctuation) and the topics are not good either. And it’s increasingly hard to find decent books among the thousands of mediocre and outright bad ones (yeah, like with the information in Internet).

Here’s a short review of the most popular russian genres of fiction (the ones I’ve heard of, most of them I’d rather never touch but reading comments on such works was sometimes entertaining):

• “ironic detectives” (it’s ironic to call them detectives)—pulp fiction oriented at women and produced in bulk (I still remember when you could rent such books for a nickel per day at some stalls). Considering that the best known author (allegedly) wrote over 250 books in two decades, you can guess how good they are. Pass;
• “female fantasy” (again, a genre of its own). Comes in three flavours: a young woman gets to study at some magical school where she marries a dean or a prince; a woman in fantasy world gets what she wants (often marrying a prince) by chutzpah; a woman is a wealthy heiress or possess special qualities which makes several powerful males (not necessarily humans or elves, dragons are popular too) compete for her hand. Pass;
• action—often features weapon porn (where a good deal of book is dedicated to the weapon specifications and what accessories are attached). The stories are usually primitive as it’s more about the amount of enemies killed and women courted with. Pass;
• popadanets genre (or isekai if you prefer it)—stories about somebody from one world transported/teleported/reincarnated into another (or the same but in different time). By itself it’s a good tool to show a conflict of traditions and beliefs for somebody put into an alien environment. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is still being read today and Futurama is still fun to watch. The problem is that in russia it degraded into two template stories: a Marty Stu with extraordinary abilities grows riches and harem or somebody gets into the past and does whatever needed to prevent russian empire from collapsing/taking losses in World War II/USSR dissolution. There’s even a saying that every popadanets should warn Stalin about German attack, invent intermediate cartridge and two-hatch version T-34 tank, and sing Vysotsky songs (yes, it’s that formulaic). There were some interesting books there but it’s very hard to find them among the rest;
• alternative history. The same notion as above: something in russian history does not happen (or happens differently) which leads to russia (in either form) to grow even stronger and larger and to take revenge on real and imaginary enemies. Pass;
• fantasy in boyar-anime stylistics. This is very alternative history with a setting involving russia staying in feudalism with boyar clans keeping power by having large magical talents (like shooting lightnings or sending storms on their opponents). You can guess from the name where they got some of the ideas. Pass;
• various “historical” “research” books trying to convince the reader that Stalin did not plan to wage a war and the fact that Soviet Union had very large forces concentrated near its (newly created) borders in June 1941 is just a coincidence. Yuck;
• the literary RPG genre of (sciency) fiction. The settings are usually either virtual reality MMORPGs where characters spend most of their lives (or even serve their prison sentences) or even “real-world RPGs” where something (nanomachines, son!) re-creates the system with RPG characteristics, levels and skills in the real world. Few adequate books are buried under the tons of usual Marty Stu fantasies and books mostly full of main character game logs and stat sheets printed after each update;
• there were also series based on a predefined setting of two games, namely S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Metro 2033 but it’s best to be left to the equivalent of Star Wars Expanded Universe fans.

I’ve missed something for sure (like books in more traditional genres) and there are exceptions but here are the reoccurring themes that turn me off even in more reasonable books:

• jabs at other nations, sometimes not merely chauvinistic but gratuitous too—it’s one thing when a brave russian protagonist uncovers a plot by evil Britain against his country and another thing when a brave russian protagonist encounters some Ukrainians without any reason and they start insulting him, still without any reason, and when this episode ends it gives absolutely nothing to the story;
• normalised prison traditions. I’ve written before that it seems to be the only natural part of russian culture (and the rest was invented to bind the empire together), a lot of people in russia believe that you’re not a Real Man™ unless you’ve been to prison, so of course it gets reflected in the literature. It’s not that uncommon to see protagonists enjoying speaking prison argot, to give one example;
• resentment and revanchist feeling (just look at how many books are about fixing something with the russian past);
• and finally, the attitude to plagiarism. For example, protagonist has some knowledge (technical or art), passes it as his (or her) own inventions/writings without having any regrets. Bonus points for having such protagonist offended when somebody else does the same with his (or her) stuff. I dropped reading one of the books in disgust after the author copied a well-known humoristic piece verbatim without giving credit.

Again, previously I could write these deficiencies off to the skewed views of individual authors. Now russia demonstrated to the whole world that chauvinism, resentment and thievery are the main virtues there. So why should I even attempt to read new russian books that cause only revulsion and disgust? Why should I read older russian books if they’re either the same or about the topics I have no interest about (i.e. russia and russians). And considering that most of the russian classics were imperialists and chauvinists why should I read them too? Fun fact: back in 1930s during Ukrainisation movement (started by Soviets to make their rule accepted by local population and cut off when it was no longer required) those classics were against their works being translated into Ukrainian (probably culminating in intelligentsia from Leningrad protesting against “traditionally russian” operas being performed in Ukrainian, including Aida). As for the foreign books translated into russian, considering the usual poor quality of the translation it’s better to find and read the originals.

Books were my main connection to russian culture, and this connection is being cut mostly without any efforts on my side. At least there’s enough good literature to replace it. If this makes you think about Nord Stream pipelines, it’s only because there might be something in common here.

Movies

russian movies suffer from the same problems as russian literature. Additionally since shooting a movie is not cheap (in general), one of the important parts of the process is securing funding and finding distributors. Because of certain peculiarities of russian political and economical system it essentially devolved into a system where a cabal formed from large studio owners (that may also act as directors and producers) “help” russian ministry of culture decide which movie to sponsor (usually one of their own). And they use their connections to advertise those movies in prime time on state media channels (or in some cases convincing that the movie should be mandatory to be watched by e.g. children from elementary schools and the orders are made at the ministry of education). The rest of the movies are usually something targeting lowbrow audience to be commercially viable.

As somebody put it, Hollywood movies are for making profit and all about the box office and russian movies are all about securing funding. Unlike Hollywood accounting where the idea is to make movie bring profit without paying taxes, here it’s like in The Producers—make a flop so nobody questions where money for production really went to. That’s why pitching the movie, actors lying how fun it was to shoot and exaggerated advertisement claims are usually the best part of those movies.

Are there exceptions? Yes, but most of those movies are either about criminals or depressing life, sometimes both. And the remaining couple of movies that are clever satire on russian reality I’m not going to re-watch because it’s still about russian reality.

Video games

I don’t play games much and when I find time for them it’s usually adventure games. I’ve made a short review of the games I’m aware of (or played myself). Some of them were actually decent (as they were made before the time when they started make and publish any garbage) but I’ve not played them for a long time and it won’t be hard not to play any them at all.

Internet media

Here the situation is rather simple: most of the sites I visit are in English and at the start of the war a lot of russian sites I visited closed in protest (some may have reopened since but I’ve learned to live without them). The main loss is a webcomic called Depth of Delusion (a deep passionate parody on popular movie franchises with toucans on top). Its author was from Chernihiv so in the best case he simply lost any desire to write it on a russian site (as he said in his last post) and in the worst case he lost his live during the initial state of the 2022 invasion.

As for the videos, I had no interest on what their bloggers can tell me about the russian lifestyle. I watch mostly the videos with humorous reviews of the movies or TV series (so I both be entertained and keep informed about what’s going on). Due to sanctions some of them went to greener pastures (i.e. video hostings that still pay money in russia), others disappeared entirely, yet another one made claims that made me stop watching them out of disgust (those claims may be either outright nationalistic or weaselly shifting the blame from russia). So the amount of channels I’m willing to watch is shrinking steadily and will reach zero eventually. Another thing is that considering the current situation I’m not eager to learn about new russian movies and how awful they are (I’ve explained above why they are) and I can find out stuff about foreign movies from native reviewers.

Meanwhile there’s a vast amount of channels in English offering content good enough for me. And there’s this catalogue for Ukrainian channels which helped me a lot.

Conclusion

There’s a phrase from Soviet times: I’ve not read Pasternak but I condemn him. My situation is opposite: I grew up in a multicultural place with a strong dominance of russian culture and have learned a lot about it. Nevertheless, I had alternatives to choose from and since I have some tastes (I’m not going to claim they’re all good, but they’re there) I don’t mindlessly consume everything but rather pick what I find interesting or entertaining and while I try something new in order to escape filter bubble, there are some things that would make me reject them immediately. And russian culture is one of the things the more you know about the more revolting it is.

As I wrote before, russian culture is an artificial thing created to bind the empire (be it called empire or USSR, doesn’t matter). Initially it was enforced by power (by both suppressing local cultures, including Ukrainian, and leaving the opportunities to work only at russian narratives), later by money (Ukraine has lower reserves of oil, so a lot of Ukrainians moved to russia to get significantly larger payments for their work as actors, singers, writers or even producers). It would be understandable but the imperialist agenda never left it (even in Soviet times they dreamed about uniting the whole world under the wise rule of The Party and praised the leading role of Soviet Russia). So it turned into a mental poison that tries to convince the whole world that Ukraine, Ukrainian language and culture do not exist.

Previously I could ignore those narratives and pick up the better bits, but in 2022 russia demonstrated that those idiocies about defending oppressed russian culture are actually their guidelines and if you do not purge it from your country there may be russian tanks and missiles coming next to “defend” it (again, it’s russian-speaking part of Ukraine that suffered and suffers the most from russian invasion). Taking all this into account, consuming russian culture is like drinking from a spring in Makiivka (this source of potable water at occupied Ukrainian territory got viral a couple of months ago after somebody took a dump into it; considering that this is a thing a russian soldier would do, it’s a very appropriate symbol indeed). Maybe I’m not so smart to cut all possible ties earlier but I can take a hint.

Here’s some random thoughts about how some subjects should’ve been explained at school to make understanding it easier. Or maybe they were and I was unlucky.
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So we have two major events going in parallel in two deeply undemocratic countries: Iranians having enough of their leaders and russians fleeing mobilisation. I can’t even pretend to have any knowledge on Iran so IMO the uprising there may lead to something or may be squashed like the previous ones, yet Iranians still have my respect for doing that. As for russians, even if I’d be not from Ukraine but know their history and current events, I’d still not expect anything good from them.

Here I’ll try to give a short review on russian history, culture and society to show how artificial it is, how those parts do not connect with each other, and why the population of russia mostly remained inert.

History

russian propaganda often claims that other countries (usually those having misfortune to border it) are artificial while in reality russia is the one artificial country more than any of its neighbours. If you look at e.g. Ukraine, Kazakhstan or Baltic States, the countries are formed around the nations which had been living in the corresponding regions since ages. If you look at russia, you’ll see a lot of territory grabbed from the natives by the invaders (the same applies to the USA but there are certain differences mentioned below that make them sufficiently different).

If you look at the origin of Ukraine, you’ll see that it formed itself on the trade route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” (i.e. from Scandinavia to East Roman Empire) and spread naturally around it assimilating various Slavic tribes living nearby. russia, on the other hand, takes it origin from a remote outpost on a completely different trade route in a territory populated by Finno-Ugric tribes (fun fact: Moscow originally was just a town in the principality of Suzdal and you won’t get an answer when it actually became the capital). For a long time it was a part of the Golden Horde (another fun fact russians don’t want to know: until XVIIIth century russia paid tribute to the Crimean Khanate, the successor of the Golden Horde, as its client) until it decided to become independent.

You probably have heard the title “czar”, some of you probably know that it comes from Caesar’s name but how many of you know that it was a self-proclaimed title not supported by anybody else? For comparison, Kings of Galycia-Volyn (now Western Ukraine) got their title from Pope Innocent IV as any other European monarchs did at that time. The ruling of the first czar Ivan IV was the example that set the course for russia since then: self-proclaimed titles (and history retconning), creating puppet states recognized by nobody else, limiting personal freedoms, hiding behind nominal figurehead, oprichnina, territorial conquests (and wars to squash democracies and gain seaports) and so on. This topic deserves at least a separate book so I’ll leave it at this.

To sum up the following centuries, russia behaved like an empire with the colonies being attached to it instead of being located overseas (because they could not control overseas colonies, that’s why they sold Alaska and Californian colonies for a rather measly sum). And running the empire required a lot of trained professionals—which usually were Ukrainians and Germans (usually from Baltic States area). Fun fact: even the transition of Myscovy Kingdom to russian empire was invented and proposed by a Ukrainian. So here’s one difference from the USA already: USA has not tried to pretend that it was a successor of British Empire or that its history spawned millennia.

Culture

Modern russian language is invented mostly by Ukrainians and sustained by Germans. Yes, russian empire started to invent russian language culture in XIXth century and had to rely on non-russians for that (before that elites spoke in French and russian-speaking common folk had various dialects closer to modern Ukrainian than to modern Russian; that’s why it’s easier to understand older russian or Old Slavic language if you know Ukrainian or Belarusian). And of course they tried to strangle down Ukrainian culture (the Valuev Circular and the Ems Decree are the most notorious examples) so that talented Ukrainians would have to write in russian in order to achieve anything. So when russians criticise Ukrainian language for being not as developed as russian it’s like mocking a person that you hit in a knee that he is lame.

It was no better in Soviet times: Ukrainian culture was developed by enthusiasts and the official government cared mostly about curbing the development. For example, there was a Ukrainian grammar developed in 1920 (so-called Skrypnykivka) which was less than a decade later replaced with something closer to russian language (and with subsequent reforms to make it even closer, many of those coincident with famines). Ukrainian movies were quite often forbidden to be released or were re-dubbed in russian before release (and Ukrainian originals were lost in the archives). And stealing things from the other cultures while passing them as their own is a very russian thing.

Of course borrowing is a normal thing that enriches culture. But when you take something not belonging to you, pretend that it’s your own and try to get rid of the original creator—that’s definitely bad (and only Di$ney is allowed to do so, just read the story about Kimba the White Lion). Fun thing is that is you look at any symbol associated with russia you’ll find that it’s been stolen from elsewhere with no credit given (except for the original words of USSR anthem).

Overall, russian culture is created for the needs of uniting the empire instead of coming from the common folk and thus it’s rather artificial one that still does not connect with the people (for the reasons clear from their society structure). So whatever is presented for the export is what you call classics (“something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read”) while what is popular is of a completely different type. The main source of their culture seems to be prison, so virtually everybody knows at least some of prison argot and traditions, and шансон (or блатняк) is their unique genre of music universally loved there (it’s about criminals as you can guess and quite often about them getting to prison too). Side note: while American culture is not that great either but at least it’s not ashamed about its burgers, rap and typical Hollywood action movies as they’re both consumed internally and exported worldwide.

Society

Anyway, now it’s time to talk about their society structure. As I said in the beginning, the principality of Suzdal was founded by Slavic people on Finno-Ugric lands which meant not so good treatment for the locals. The same applied to other conquered nations and no wonder that serfdom was common (and if it’s not slavery it’s pretty damn close). You had all varieties of serfs—private serfs (belonging to some landlord), state serfs (belonging to the state which was not much better) and even industry serfs (serfs that were supposed to work at some mine, fabric or plant without a right to leave it). By some estimations by 1861 three quarters of the russian empire population were serfs of some kind. After “emancipation” their state has not improved much. There was a great divide between elites (who spoke French before 1812 like in many other European countries), literate people living in cities and illiterate peasants (with legal barriers preventing them from getting higher education). Returning to the culture, no wonder that whatever citizens and rich landlords created was not sticking to the majority of the population.

Additionally there’s a theory that russians living on not very fertile lands had to create a community, but it was a kind of community where everybody had nothing (except for something you’ve managed to hide) so it could be a very dynamic community to which members belonged or not depending on the current goals. That’s why a russian may expect a help from a stranger since he’s included him into his community (while the stranger usually did not). That’s why they can claim they don’t leave their own behind while actually leaving people behind—they’ve been excluded from the community.

During Soviet times there was an attempt to build classless society of the future, so it was mostly the society of workers and peasants, a strata of engineers, scientists and teachers/librarians/whatever (who earned less than workers for more skilled work) and nomenklatura (people occupying high posts in The Party who managed everybody and everything else). Of course the ideology ruled everything so almost every unpopular decision like rising prices (there was no inflation in the USSR!) were justified by “the popular demands”. And the protests were put down in rather secretive way (Novocherkassk massacre is the best known example). So people lived in the nice state of doublethink: while they saw that not everything was good they were believing it’s just them and the rest of the country was fine. And of course state propaganda claimed in all possible ways (there’s an expression “from every [electric clothes] iron” to describe exactly how ubiquitous it was) that people were living in the best possible country with the best possible order of things and minor deficiencies are caused by enemy countries that are envious of the Soviet way of things. Of course decades of such brainwashing stuck to many people, especially poor ones.

And it’s worth noticing that there was a process of divorcing reality from the reports. Since Soviet Union had plan economy, on the one hand there was a shortage of goods demanded by the population (because they were either not put in plan or the quantity was mispredicted) and on the other hand the plants and factories had to meet the plan and go slightly over the top (you’d get punished for failing to deliver the demanded amount of goods and if you do too well the plans for the next period would be increased which might be an even worse punishment). So people started to build a parallel economy based on personal connections and bartering (e.g. you know somebody who works at shoe shop, he can reserve a nice pair of shoes for you when they’re available for something he can’t easily buy himself) with the various forms of theft and forgery required to cover up for the goods sold illegally (like diluting milk to have the required amount after your friends got couple of litres of fresh fat milk) and organisations started to lie in their reports about the amounts of goods they produced (because they were rewarded or punished based on the reports).

Plus during Andropov times there was an inflation of KGB and police numbers (my grandpa told once that back in his youth they had one policeman and he was formidable, later they had dozens policemen and they hardly got any respect), and those KGB/police personnel who had to maintain internal order were bored and started to get connections with illegal manufacturers or goods, smugglers and such leading to the famous fusion of criminals and law enforcement (especially in the 1990s). Other institutions were decaying as well, in the army soldiers were used as a free labour to build houses for the commanders and lying there was ubiquitous as well (for example, many memoirs and recollections tell how it was more important to make an impression of doing something big instead of doing something small properly; it is also said that a plane escaped USSR because anti-air defence reported plane movements after its regular schedule, i.e. always giving the same numbers instead of actually looking at the radar).

Modern times

After dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the situation was grim for many post-Soviet republics because of the destroyed economical ties (and the fact that most of the goods produced were acceptable only inside of the USSR and only for the lack of the alternative). In either case, 1990s in russia are nicknamed the cursed nineties and people don’t want to realise those were the times that made russia stronger and wealthier. But considering how the first president of russia had to protect himself and certain people around him from possible (well-grounded) legal persecution, he passed the post in semi-democratic way (i.e. there were elections but with mass media under proper control and virtually no time for the other candidates to prepare) to the selected successor, who was a former KGB agent and a member of Tambov Gang. During his rule all strategic companies were put under control of his friends, cronies or underlings. And of course since the führer missed USSR, he tried to reboot it including switching to the different economic model where everything important belongs to the state (i.e. his people acting in his and their own interests) and the rest of people live essentially in trickle-down economy where oligarchs get money from the state usually by being allowed to mine and sell natural resources or to fulfil state contracts, other companies get their share of money from serving those oligarchs, other companies get their money from doing work for them and so on. And law enforcement forces get their share for turning blind eye to it or directly participating in the illegal activity.

This of course corrupted people as they see the quickest way to get rich is to either have proper connections so you can participate in cut-and-kickback scheme or to join law enforcement (or some safety inspection) and get you money from bribes and “protection” money. Doing business in such condition is possible only if you have right connections to protect you from the people above (though people protecting you might want to take your business for themselves if it gets profitable enough). And if you’re too poor you just have to rely on the pity sustenance provided to you by the state (which paradoxically makes you love it).

So what are russians and what to do with them?

And that is how you get russians—not a real nation but rather a gathering of people (if you can call them people) who care only about themselves. Even with the current protests against “partial” mobilisation you can see that protesters in Moscow do nothing for the others and let them be detained while in e.g. Dagestan protesters fight against the police to prevent people from being arrested (similarly to the current Iranian uprising or Ukrainian Euromaidan of 2014). Similarly russians have never protested for defending their freedoms, there were several uprisings in the past but they were mostly a way to tell the czar that their living conditions are bad (or sometimes it was against a reform introducing something new).

Thanks to their imperial past they feel superior to other nations and despise them while still being afraid of any real nation—like Ukrainians or their Caucasian nations (Dagestani, Chechen and so on). This probably happens because of their disunity since they know nobody will fight for them while others may get help from their compatriots. And of course such people would be worse than professional executioners if they get a chance to get even on somebody else. The findings and testaments from places like Bucha, Yahidne or Izyum prove that. Similarly there are many accounts when russians hearing about mobilisation are outraged by the fact it affects them as they’d prefer somebody else to die instead of them, especially national minorities (“russian tank driver from Buryatia” has become a meme during the first phase of this war in 2014 already).

Probably another affect of their disunity is their volatility and unreliability. In the past centuries they’ve been trained well enough to support whatever is forced unto them by the authorities (either out of fear or in faint hope of reward) but they do it half-heartedly. That is why after the parade with photos of fallen WWII heroes (or whatever passes for them) as their current state religion demands all those photos gets thrown away to the nearest garbage heap. That is why they were putting half-swastikas onto their cars after the start of the war and that’s why they’re removing it after hearing the rumours that those wearing it would be drafted first (all while complaining “I’m a patriot so let all those prisoners and traitors fight instead”).

That is why I don’t think that accepting russian “refugees” (especially in large quantities) is a good idea neither from the strategic point of view (as those troops won’t make a large difference anyway, modern wars are fought not by large masses of unequipped people) nor for the receiving side. Thanks again to the imperial past, they hate other nations and refuse to learn local language let alone to fully integrate—Baltic states can tell a lot of stories and here in Germany it’s no better. Diaspora by itself is not a bad thing at all, but not respecting a host country while still expecting it to provide for you is. Now “good russians” (an oxymoron IMO) point at Mongolia offering Buryats a refuge and saying other countries should do the same but in this case we have a country offering a shelter to an oppressed national minority with a culture similar to its own and not somebody fleeing from the mess he helped to create (or she, if they start drafting women at large too). It’s like the saying I heard here that Austrians consider Austria to be the first victim of Hitler while Germans say it’s Germany (but guess who voted him to power).

I’m not a nice man and I believe that you should not try to save adults from their own mistakes. Of course it’s different for children but that’s exactly because they don’t know much and don’t realize what consequences their actions might have. If you’re a legal adult you don’t have such excuse and you should bear full responsibility. Giving those fleeing russians a shelter won’t stop the war, won’t eliminate the risk of a deranged dictator using nuclear weapons as the last resort and it won’t help russians to realize that what they’re doing is wrong. The opposite will probably have the same effect but would require significantly less efforts and resources. Save them for the occasion when you can finally make difference by teaching them that their ideology is bad and why. It had worked for the West Germany after all.

So while russia is trying to commit political suicide by recognizing its war officially and making it a criminal offence to evade it (or disagreeing with the official course in general), here’s a text I wanted to write for a long time but finished only recently.

In general I’m eager to look at some computer architecture and see how multimedia software can be run there (even if I’m no Måns). For a long time my primary development machine was PowerPC-based (before I could buy some decent x86_64-based laptop), I played with ARMv7 and NEON years before Raspberry Pi was created (but who remembers Beagle Board nowadays?), I had two laptops with Chinese MIPS inside (and tried optimising for Loongson 2 SIMD too), I own ARM64-based box too (and did some work on it as well). I’d like to try RISC-V hardware but the state of RISC-V gives me no excitement and here I’ll try to explain why.
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I’ve been wanting to write this for a long time and the russian terrorist attack on Sunday was the last straw.

There a saying: tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are. Of course it’s not always true but it hints on the usual way of choosing friends to have a lot of common with you. The same stands true not just for people but for whole countries as well and you can guess which countries we’re going to look at today.

First, here’s a list of countries that support or openly befriend russia (the list is composed from the countries that russia openly called friends or those behaving in that way):

• Afghanistan
• Belarus
• Burundi
• Cameroon
• Chad
• China
• Eritrea
• Ethiopia
• Guinea
• Hungary
• Iran
• Mali
• Myanmar
• North Korea
• Serbia
• South Africa
• Sudan
• Türkiye
• Uganda
• Venezuela
• Zimbabwe

So what’s common between those countries? They can be divided into two major groups—former colonies with a dictator ruling it (or demokratur, see that post for the explanation) or leftovers of former empires that dream of restoring their old glory (and have about the same government). The first group befriends russia mostly for the benefits (the same way many African countries befriended USSR), the countries from the second group usually went the same way as russia itself and thus they have some class solidarity, though it does not prevent them from (ab)using russia to their own benefit. Now let’s look at them closer.

Negotiable affection friends

Afghanistan. If you haven’t forgotten yet, this is a country where a corrupt weak government was forcefully replaced by a terrorist organisation recognized in the whole world (even russia, which led to a rather funny situation where they invited Taliban representatives to various forums and diplomatic talks while still not lifting a status of terrorist organisation). So you have the same terrorist mindset to keep them close. And in somewhat recent news they asked for a large oil shipments in return for something undisclosed. Considering how good Afghanistan is economically and that russia won’t be able to mine for natural resources there effectively it looks like typical Soviet-African friendship.

Belarus. A former Soviet colony (sometimes called “most Soviet of all Soviet republics”) with a dictator ruling it since 1994. Lukashenko had been using russia for his own benefits (like buying oil cheap from russia and selling petroleum not-so-cheap to Europe or even getting non-returnable loans for various purposes) for a long time, usually under pretence of making Union State something different from a bureaucratic fiction. But after the coup against Belarusian people in 2020 he has to rely on russia for everything and that’s why Belarus serves as a large military base for russian forces and that’s why he makes various bellicose claims (while not actually trying to engage his own forces because they’re more likely to turn against him).

Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe. I can’t say I know much about those countries so let’s look what’s common there. Former colonies (mostly French ones)—check, rather poor countries—check for many of them, dictatorship/demokratur—also check for many of them (or military junta like in Myanmar). So it seems to me they’re friends with russia because they behave the same or just use it to get cheap resources or military equipment.

Myanmar.—this country seem to go the same route as some African countries: former colony, low quality of life and civil war, recent military coup (after which it befriended russia).

North Korea

I think this country makes a category of its own. On the one hand it enjoys benefits from “befriending” russia as it can sell its resources there and send workers to earn good money (by their standards), on the other hand it’s russia that tries to resemble DPRK. And let’s not forget about the recent news about russia buying artillery munition from it (there are unverified claims that in the first months of war russian minister of war went there to beg for other Soviet equipment like missiles). Though the dynamic between North and South Korea reminds a lot about the current situation including the constant threats of using nukes to destroy Americans (in South Korea).

Countries resembling russia

China. This country has history resembling russian one a lot. Having an long-running proud history that’s mostly fake—check, being conquered by Mongols—check, getting rid of an emperor in the beginning of XXth century—check,this event being followed by creating a Western-type government that was deposed by communists—check, communist terror—check, reforms that tried to make the country more open to the West —check, a dictator who wants to bring country back to the glorious past—check. Territorial claims for the (pieces of) neighbouring countries—check. Rather passive population that does not care about anything—check. Not keeping their word, taking whatever businesses they like from the foreigners and not allowing them to de facto own anything—check (yes, China does it in a more refined way but you should remember how your business there should have at least 51% partnership by Chinese and how the stock of Chinese companies traded overseas is not actually a right of ownership in a company and what had happened to ARM China). And of course copying or stealing ideas and design from the West while pretending it’s their own (again, China is doing it much better and actually develops on it). Here’s a personal story: my great-grandfather worked at a local locomotive-building plant (mostly famous for creating the T-34 tank) which was founded by a French society (a fact not often mentioned in the USSR) and in 1950s he was sent to China to help them build their own industry (a fact not mentioned often in China).

Though you should not forget that some of the territories that China wants to return are those taken by russian empire. And you should not forget that China acts pragmatically so when russia threatened to sell its natural resources to China instead of Europe and make reserves in yuan, it essentially made itself dependent on China which can now dictate the prices for oil and gas (and doing operations with yuan also requires an approval of Chinese government). Currently China pretends to not support russia because Western sanctions hurt. But we’ll see if this stops them from attempting to conquer Taiwan.

Hungary. Former Kingdom of Hungary, later part of Austro-Hungarian Empire. Current regime relies on the same principle as russia—praising “traditional values” and hating everything not from the country. And of course they want to get back territories “lost” after 1918: you should remember how orbán asked for Croatian port and pipeline during the European sanctions discussions. And they’ve been giving away Hungarian passports to Ukrainians living in Subcarpathian Ukraine for years along with trying to dictate what Ukraine should do in its region (russia had been doing the same in various places that later it turned into puppet states like Abkhazia).

The related thing is that how the government tries to gloss over its wartime atrocities (for example, this, even if the English version of the article does not mention them) and have installed a hypocritical monument to Hungary being a “victim” to Nazi Germany (being its willing ally until 1944 does not count apparently). The same way russia always accuses Germany attacking it in 1941 while not mentioning that it happened in the Poland which both of them occupied in 1939 (and their co-operation went further than that).

And of course you should not forget that Hungary gets most of its energy from russia: oil, gas and even fuel for nuclear power. Seeing how Hungary sells Serbia gas from an unknown source and then their minister going to Moscow to beg for increased shipment of gas is disgusting. Seeing how a plane delivering nuclear fuel from Moscow lands at NATO base in Hungary or how Hungary allows russia to build a new nuclear power plant right after what they’ve done to Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is revolting.

Iran. While I have not heard about them having claims on trying to restore an old empire (which would be some extremely old empire in their case), they’ve been trying to conquer their neighbours (at least Syria) and destroy certain state for purely ideological reasons. They also have nominal democracy (i.e. you can vote for public officials but it’s certain people with religious authority who decide what will be done) and their rhetoric is the same as in russia (at least when russia does not repeat the speeches from Nazi Germany). And considering the recent news about their battle UAVs shipped to russia and a good deal of them being broken right from the start, Iran manufactures the goods (and lies about their quality) about as good as russia.

Serbia. This is a rather sad case. On one hand russian empire was seen there as the defender of Slavic nations in different lands (which has started the World War I among other things) and their historically significant territory Kosovo turned into Kosova. On the other hand Yugoslavia (both kingdom and SFRJ) was a mix of nations with significant differences (mostly in the religion) and typical highlander character that makes peaceful resolving of the conflicts less possible (just look how well various nations in Caucasian nations get along). So when the external pressure that kept them together was gone, the internal tensions made dissolution of Yugoslavian Federation a very bloody process that required an internation intervention to make the bloodbath end more or less. And yet Serbia seems to train its army for invasion instead of defence and considering recent moves on Kosov(a/o) and fuelling tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina there may be yet another tragedy brewing.

Türkiye. To condense its history, first there had been Ottoman Empire that grew around the Mediterranean Sea plus Central Europe and Mesopotamia, but after WWI it collapsed and was succeeded by Turkey, a country where army made military coups in order to preserve democracy since Mustafa Kemal himself (but sooner or later people elected autocrats anyway). (The) last coup in 2016 has failed and now we have Erdoğan trying to restore the old empire (and since he demanded to change the official country name to Türkiye I’m using it to denote the country under his rule and not the previous state). Of course he also wants to be a sultan and bring back the various pieces of land lost since 1922, from Albania to Yemen.

It’s hard to call him a complete friend of russia as he’s mostly using it for his own needs, but while he had closed Bosporus for their military ships and Turkish airspace for their military planes (mostly because he wants them out of Syria and to stop protecting Armenia as well), at the same time he does not support sanctions against russia and enjoys being an offshore. Recently it was agreed by two dictators that Türkiye will help russia to evade sanctions by allowing russian money in Turkish banks and russian oil to Turkish refineries (so later you can’t track the origin of oil and oil products). It is obvious that he’ll break any agreement with them as soon as it stops being profitable to him—but russia would do the same so they’re a perfect match.

South Africa. This one I can’t tell about but from random news I hear about it, it sounds a lot like russia—a corrupt government, main wealth coming from natural resources, and hardly any of this wealth reaches common people that have to live in shitty conditions.

Venezuela. Another country that resembles russia (and even more it resembles Soviet Union). You have corrupt non-democratic government that stifled all of the opposition, you have wealth coming from the natural resources (oil and gold) and thanks to the mismanagement the population is extremely poor and depends on the dole their government gives them.

Conclusion

I’ve not mentioned sympathisers like France or Italy that receive only russian tourists and oligarchs buying villas and yachts there so they don’t want to do anything against them and would rather have some peaceful solution, those countries are like a lighter version of negotiable affection friends. I’ve not mentioned current Germany that enjoyed cheap oil and gas for its industry and the position of main russian gas distributor for Europe and how this corrupted it on the border with high treason. I’ve not mentioned Armenia that has to be friends with russia because it “defends” it from Azerbaijan (while russia shipped weapons there as well). I’ve not mentioned Georgia that has a government elected on the idea “if you don’t elect us there will be a war with russia again, and here’s a bribe to make you feel less miserable”. I’ve decided to concentrate on the countries that are helping russia willingly (even if that will is compensated).

As you could see, most of russian friends are the countries expecting something (or a lot) in return for their friendship and (with one exception) none of them can be called prosperous. Misery loves company or birds of a feather flock together?

First of all, I’d like to say that xenophobia is a natural state of human beings introduced by evolutionary mechanisms (you never knew what to expect from a stranger after all) so it takes some nurturing to overcome it and teach you that you should not fight any unknown person right at the spot. It’s like there’s nothing wrong with defecating per se but you’d normally do it only at designated areas for a variety of reasons, most of them being social and neither being physiological. The problems with racism start where the society not merely abandons the duty of telling why you should not hate people that are different from you but rather starts encouraging hating certain groups of people.

Back in the day it was perceived as normal (and even helped to define the state): we are the beloved children of our god/land/world and any foreigners are just pathetic beasts not worthy of living here. Later it was discovered that foreigners might be useful for something (like trade or providing the skills your people lacked). A millennium or two later a good deal of people finally accepted the idea that all people are equally worthy of something, a couple of centuries later people even agreed that slavery is a bad idea. And yet less then a hundred years ago Germany showed that it’s not something that should be taken for granted and that people are easy to believe in their exclusivity. The lesson has not been learned at all, not even by Germany.

The term “Nazism” comes as an insulting shortening of “National Socialism” but it was socialistic in the name only. People forget that that in Bavaria the favourite first name for males was Ignaz with a diminutive form being… So “Nazism” sounds “an ideology of Bavarian peasants” which is an appropriate thing for self-entitled superhumans. In reality this ideology was based on an idea of racial superiority (and you should know which race was considered superior) and a need to “resolve the problem” that certain “impure” races still exist. And you know what? The chief ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg, came from russian empire when he was over 25 years old (and completing his studies in Moscow). So how was it there at that time?

russian empire was rightfully called the prison of nations (and Soviet Union was not much better either) as it spanned very large territory with many very different nations and they all had various limitations imposed on them (some sources claim that at some moment about 80% of the empire were serfs, after 1861 emancipation reform hardly anything changed for the majority of the population). And it had the famous Pale of Settlement: in the end of XVIII century as large territories (of modern Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Lithuania) were captured, the empress decided that Jews from those territories should not be allowed to move to the other parts of the empire; that ruling remained in action until the dissolution of the empire. And of course russian language gave the world the word pogrom. What’s interesting there is that those actions against them were not driven by any previous events—there were not so many Jews living in russian empire before to blame them for anything and expel (like it was common in Medieval Europe). In Ukrainian history there’s a sad episode that many Jews were massacred during Khmelnytsky uprising but it was not because they were hated just because they existed but rather because they often were the people hired by Polish nobility to run their estates and businesses and thus they were representatives of the oppressor (it was still wrong to kill them anyway). But whatever happened in russian empire was some ideological anti-Semitism and finally it was exported to Germany as well…

Of course after 1945 Soviet Union pillaged Germany and they took the enriched ideology back (giving such nice examples as “rootless cosmopolite”). Meanwhile the Soviet ideology praised the Soviet man as (ideologically, not biologically) superior to anybody else (and for some mysterious reason it was usually synonymous with russians, just look at the first stanza of the Soviet Anthem), while in reality there was some kind of racial hierarchy with russians on top and various East and Middle Asian nations at the bottom. There’s a rather famous chastushka (a short verse often with a comical meaning):

It’s good that Yuri Gagarin
Is not a Jew, nor he’s a Tatar
Not some (pejorative term for Middle Asians)
But rather he’s our Soviet man.

And it was a common practice to appoint some russian (or, for the lack of those, some Ukrainian or Belarusian) as the second party secretary in each Soviet “republic” so that he could oversee the actions of the first party secretary appointed from the titular nation (I wonder why that term was used almost exclusively in socialist countries).

In the eighties there was a rather curious society called Pamyat formed in Soviet russia. While normal nationalist organisations wanted to have their countries freed from the Soviet yoke, this one wanted to free russia from “Ziono-Masonic plot”—and it kept existing in more or less open form until the dissolution of the USSR. Not a reassuring sign.

In the (formally) post-Soviet russia the structure remained about the same from the Soviet times: there’s Moscow and St. Petersburg that are the only decent places to live, there are regions where common folks live and there are immigrants from Caucasian region and Middle Asia that should not be allowed, especially to Moscow. The longest-running mayor of Moscow is mostly remembered by his hate for those people and introducing special restrictions for people wanting to move to Moscow. A lot of what currently passes for politicians in russia had nationalistic ties as well, for example the former head clown of russian space agency made a political advertisement back in the day with a motto “Clean our cities from trash” alluding to non-russian people.

And of course since the war with Ukraine started they showed their true colours. Top people saying good things about Hitler and Goebbels, using the same terminology as NSDAP like “traitors of the nation”—and that’s between 2014 and 2022 when the war was in the cold phase. After the second phase had started, the whole country was starting to use accidentally created half-swastika everywhere, various writers started praising the war with suspiciously familiar words (one writer actually praised their dictator as the true successor to Hitler who should finish the eternal struggle against the Anglo-Saxon world by winning at last against them). And if you look what they do at war it’s not just genocide of Ukrainians in various ways (massacring Ukrainians, destroying Ukrainian culture at occupied territories and deporting Ukrainian children to russia to raise them in russian “culture”) but it’s also a genocide of various minor nations living in russia. From the statistics I saw their losses were over eighty people from Dagestan and over hundred people from Buryatia to one man from Moscow region (which has larger population than those two regions combined). People from the puppet states at occupied territories of Donetsk and Lughansk regions are also used as cannon fodder and they complained that despite having the same culture and being very closely related to russians (a lot of those people there are descendants of russians moved there in Stalin times) they are treated as inferior to them.

And yet russia accuses other countries of harbouring Nazism and having Nazi population (including Israel). If you look at the tell-tale signs of Nazism you’ll see only two countries conforming to it: russia and Hungary (though Hungarian prime minister said after his speech on Hungarian racial purity that Austrian chancellor thinks the same). So how do you explain the discrepancy between observed Nazism of russia and the countries that russia called so? The answer is simple: russia holds the trademark on it so it decides to whom it shall apply. After all, whom should you believe—your own eyes or their claims?