Since the Russians began active military operations in Syria on behalf of the Syrian government I’ve read so many poorly informed things about Russia, the Russians, and Russia’s capabilities that I thought I’d try to add a little information to all of the disinformation that’s out there.
First, a few thoughts so you might have some idea about where Putin is coming from and why what he’s doing is so popular in Russia. The Russians have a very high degree of societal paranoia. We do, too, but their paranoia puts ours to shame. If you asked, they’d say it goes back to the Mongol invasion 800 years ago. Whether that’s the actual cause or just the explanation I couldn’t say. However, one of the effects of the Mongol invasion was to separate and isolate the Slavic peoples. Prior to the Mongols there was one Slavic language, one Slavic people. There’s a bit of mythology in that statement, too, but bear with me.
Although it was an idea that had been percolating beneath the surface for years, “Pan-Slavism”, the idea that the Slavs and their languages should be re-united, gained some steam in the middle of the 19th century. Stepping back a bit the Slavic peoples are the:
- Russians
- Poles
- Ukrainians
- Czechs
- Slovaks
- Serbs
- Croats
- Slovenes
- Macedonians
- and other, smaller Slavic groups, e.g. Sorbs, Swabians, etc.
Pan-Slavism generally took the form of an anti-foreign rule nationalist movement during the years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when Slavs were ruled by Germans, Hungarians, etc. After World War I, between the Russian Revolution (which saw itself as internationalist) and no more Austro-Hungarian Empire, the impetus behind Pan-Slavism died out. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it’s been making a bit of a resurgence. Most Slavic countries use variations of the Pan-Slavic flag (horizontal stripes of blue, white, and red) with the notable exception of Ukraine.
And then there’s Orthodoxy. The Russians, Serbs, and Montenegrins are Orthodox; the Poles, Ukrainians (mostly), Czechs, Croats, and Slovenes are Catholic. (The Bosnians are Slavs and Muslims but that’s another story.)
The bottom line is that many Russians see both Slavic identity and the Orthodox Church as expressions of Russian identity. But Slavs aren’t the only Orthodox. In addition to the Slavs the Greeks, Syrian Christians, Armenians, and Copts (among others) are Orthodox, too.
The result is a sort of hierarchy of nationalism for Russians with ethnic Russians being the most vitally important and non-Slav Orthodox Christians further down the list: ethnic Russians, Orthodox Slavs, non-Orthodox Christian Slavs, non-Slav Orthodox Christians.
Putin imagines himself not only a hero of the Russian people but of the Slavs and the Orthodox.
Now to the pyramids. Here’s the present Russian demographic pyramid:
Open up a full-sized image for a clearer view. Note the many imbalances in the population pyramid, both in the number of people and the balance between men and women. The reason there are so many more old women than old men in Russia is World War II. The cyclical nature of births and deaths is caused by sharp downturns in the economy, the most recent being the economic collapse in the 1990s.
If the pyramid broke the Russian population out showing ethnic Russians alone, it would be even more stark. What’s happening in Russia is that ethnic Russians are, quite literally, dying out and being replaced by Central Asian and Far Eastern “Russians”, many of them Muslims. It’s not hard to see that the ethnic Russians see themselves as being under attack, mostly by Muslims. It’s their recurring nightmare. A return of the Mongols. It might not be reasonable but that’s how they see things.
For comparison consider the U. S. population pyramid:
Again, there are several things to note. The first is how regular it is. Without immigration the population of the United States will remain remarkably constant, at least for the next 75 years. If your economic plan is GDP growth through population growth, you need immigration.
The second thing is that if life expectancies were to increase we’d have a lot more old people. Given what passes for social planning here lowered life expectancy might be the best thing that could have happened. As long as it’s not your life that has a lower expectancy.
But is it any wonder that the Russians see us as a threat? Unless something dramatic changes for us we’re headed for remarkable stability while they need to run twice as fast (and fight as hard as they can) just to stay in the same place. It wouldn’t be impossible for ethnic Russians to be extinct in a century.
I assume to some extent this is a subjective, but I do find the Mongol invasion premise credible. The Inglehart–Welzel Cultural Map shows that Russia and China, which do not really share a discernable root culture both strongly exhibit “Survival values,” which emphasize economic and physical security; which are generally linked to a relatively ethnocentric outlook and low levels of trust and tolerance. I think the common factor is both were exposed and at times conquered from the people of the Eurasian Steppe.
In the case of Russia, their location also put them at risk from the West. In particular, the Polish-Lithuanian state almost destroyed Russia in the 17th century and the mass destruction of the NAZI invasion, which seemed to genuinely shock and unhinge Stalin.
The outward projection for security makes sense historically, but aside from a few Slavic or Orthodox countries like Belarus and Serbia, Russia is seen as a national security threat in Eastern Europe. From the perspective of “realism,” the Russian invasion of Ukraine causes counter-balancing, with neighboring countries seeking to withdraw from relations with Russia, to form mutual support groups, and to seek outside powers to intervene or offer deterrence.
The Nazi invasion is what unbalanced Stalin? I dunno, PD, he was pretty damned evil prior to that, too.
Yeah, I guess what I meant to convey was that someone as hard-nosed as Stalin was so taken aback by the betrayal and the initial vulnerability to the German attack, that he withdrew, thought that all was lost and anticipated his arrest and presumably his execution. And I don’t think this was completely private, Stalin made a speech that admitted that the army was not prepared. Trust issues.
So you are saying I need to find a hot ethnic Russian lady.
For the cause.
“Open up a full-sized image for a clearer view. Note the many imbalances in the population pyramid, both in the number of people and the balance between men and women. The reason there are so many more old women than old men in Russia is World War II.”
False. For the top-top most part(90+), that is true, but if this is a current demographics map, note that an 80-yearold in 2015 was only 10 in 1945. Among 90+yearolds, the WW II hypothesis is reasonable, but for children who were younger than 10 in the peak years of the war that’s an improbable reason for the sex difference. Alcoholism and general misery during the collapse of the soviet union is a far better bet, together with the usual amount of russian alcoholism.
The Red Army fielded significant numbers of child soldiers during World War II, the youngest known age 8 in 1944. It was officially discouraged but well known.