Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23

Everyone who thinks that the two Maidans were the greatest manifestation of liberty ever.

There is a huge difference, isn't there?

You wouldn't put the fall of the Berlin Wall in the same category as the revolutions by Stalin or Pol Pot either! :)

People rising up and doing away with the Stalin's and Pol Pot's of today are to support, they want their lives back!

russian lie


a democratically elected government can lose legitimacy

russians can't imagine that people can live without an oppressive big daddy threatening to spank them when they misbehave.... self-infantilization combined with self-importance is a very dangerous combination

Because I know Russians. They are kind-hearted, generous and noble people. That's why I am such a huge Russophile and can't stand to see them suffer under the government of thieves and crooks turning them into a pariah state reliant on North Korean ammunition supplies (what a disgrace!).

That's one thing. Another thing is, we owe them something. Soviet Union under Stalin was not noble Gondor but they did rid us of the genocidal nazi maniacs who wanted to slaughter and enslave us in more or less equal proportion (see Generalplan Ost for more detail). Now, it's our time to return the favour and rid good Russian people of the putinist mafia.

With my own eyes I saw Poland transforming from a post-communist, gray, sad sh*thole into the country that it is today, and I want the same thing for Russia. For the sake of ancient blood ties, for the sake of Slavia, for the sake of Christ and Svetovid. So help me God.

*wipes tear from eye*

Oh Torqi....even as a non-slavic....that was moving...count me in! *snif*

I've always known you are a decent guy, BB. *high five*

There is a train leaving Warsaw for Moscow at 9 am tomorrow.

By any chance, when you said "our time", did you mean the US or Poland?

If you meant the US, don't ever do it again.

As a reminder how oppressed they are:

What evidence do you have that they're suffering for that reason?


What percentage (roughly) of Poles were glad to see the end of the PRL?

What percentage of russians were blad to see the end of the cccp?

The books I suggested him to read.

We've been suffering from thieves, idiots, and bad roads for the best part of a thousand years.

This does not mean anyone externally is able to save us from this.

Historically, Russians begin fixing things in their country only after losing a war disastrously.

Peter modernized Russia and turned it into a European country - in response to humiliating losses to the Swedes.

Alexander abolished serfdom (1861), modernized the military, reformed the judiciary, expanded railroads, and experimented with local self-governance (zemstvos) - in response to the Crimean War. In that war, Russia lost to a Western alliance; exposing its backward logistics, serf-based economy, and outdated army.

Lenin, and then Stalin, led a violent reconstitution of the national economy - following the loss in WW1 and the Polish-Soviet War. They nationalized industry, collectivized agriculture, and built a command economy. The Red Army was rebuilt virtually from scratch after near-total collapse - around a groundbreaking new vision of mass mechanized warfare.

Putin started modernizing the army after the embarrassing performance in Georgia, where it took nearly two weeks to disable a military that had a fraction of the firepower of a single Russian military district. In Georgia, we were saved only by our overwhelming mass vs the Georgians.

In the same way now - no Torq can save Russia from itself. If it's to reconstitute itself in a new and more powerful form, it must fully internalize the lessons from its recent embarrassments.

The answer is certainly not in a lack of democracy... per se. The answer lies in breaking free of a culture of total lies. Lies are the center of Russian problems. Everybody lies. The private lies to the sergeant. The sergeant lies to the lieutenant. The lieutenant lies to the captain. The captain lies to the major. The major lies to the colonel. The colonel lies to the general. The general lies to the general staff. The general staff lies to Putin. In result - the system is f*cked.

If Russia can defeat the total culture of lying at every step, for no logical reason whatsoever, it will be the greatest country in the world.

I know Western people are loathe to consider such options, but when you deal with a problem such as lying and corruption - shooting people is not a bad option.

We eked out 40-50 years of moderate competence, on the memory of the Stalin purges.

Modern Russia is to a large extent the country Stalin has created. The man is larger than life itself. His shadow still hangs over the Russian government. Grown people - adults - still say his name in hushed terms. The fear - 75 years later - still has some residual hold.

But it was his approach that worked. Fear of Stalin, worked wonders on the average Russian fraudster. His omnipresence and omniscience, gave even the most cynical piece of sh*t fear of God.

Famous poet. Famous artist. Famous ballerina. Famous engineer, and so on and so forth. Stalin didn't care if you were about to invent teleportation - he would kill you if you were seen as not being a team player.

We need someone like this - today - to remind the people that get fat and rich while others die in the trenches, that there is still God for them. That there is punishment.

I would love to believe you,....but if I believe you it means you're lying. 🤔

Oh shut up....

A Pole is gonna teach me about lying.

You lie as hard and as frequently as we do.

This lying and scheming - it sits deep in our Slavic genes.

Some kind of natural allergy against a day's honest work.

@Bobko

You are a veritable treasure chest of knowledge about Russia, and your wisdom confirms and deepens what I already knew.


Amen to that. Sometimes, when I have a bad day, I wish someone would conduct similar purges in Polish politics. The problem is: what will stop the guy with such power from becoming an even worse thief and crook himself?

Violence is not the answer. Well, not that kind of violence anyway. South Korea was a corrupt poor sh*thole for many years; our engineers had been going there for decades to help them with their industry, road/railroad building, factories etc.; these days it is South Koreans who are selling us their cars, tanks and rocket launchers. How did they do that? They strengthened laws against corruption and conducted major legal and judicial reforms, increased overall transparency and greatly reduced opportunities for corruption. Simple as that, and look at them now.

If people are not internally oriented towards honesty and integrity (as neither Poles nor Russians are) they need laws, sometimes draconian ones, to push them towards the right direction. South Koreans did this, and to a lesser extent Poland did this thanks to the EU. People think that it is the EU funds that helped Poland the most. It is not the case. It was the forced conformity of Polish legal and economic systems to the EU standards that caused most of the transformation miracle. We became more honest, thrifty and hard-working becase we were forced to it by the new circumstances and because we saw that it pays off.


Of course we shouldn't. We plot, we scheme, we concoct and we lie. But we also love you (believe it or not), and we won't let them hurt you. We are to Russians, in case of the inevitable Western victory, what Serbs would be to us in case of the unlikely Russian victory - a friend and an advocate. We, Poles, have memory of an elephant - we remember all and we remember that, all things considered, we are brothers.

You mistrust us, and you have every reason to. But we love you. Fear not.

Haha!

This is such a silly thing to say...

To kill like Stalin did, you cannot be mortal man. None of our categories apply to him. Nothing that makes sense to you - small, bourgeois man.

It's not some Hitler, who acted like a coward hiding behind a huge faceless bureaucracy - maintaining deniability.

Stalin sat late into the night - responding to letters containing pleas from distraught mothers and fathers at the edge of suicide. He signed hundreds and thousands of execution orders. This takes a level of steel that I cannot even fathom.

Stalin had no understanding of money. At the end of his life, they opening his cabinet, and a hundred sealed envelopes with his salaries came pouring out.

He did not understand luxury. He lived like a Spartan officer. Desk, chair, cabinet.

He definitely was not pained by conscience.

He only thought about the power of the state.

Such people show up once in a thousand, or two thousand years.

He was certainly not a man, but something more. A demon, some Soviet demiurge.

You said it as if it was something bad but - hear me out - even we, petits bourgeois, have souls.


A de...


... oh, you beat me to it.

Not to him.

To some extent, not to Putin. What a lot of my compatriots don't understand.

If you had not ever been close to these siloviki - it's hard to understand how they view us as less than insects.

Life undeserving of the description.

--///--
I respect them deeply, and their work, but I cannot agree with this description of the state of things - of course.

I think others have something to contribute too.

But they see in us only potential traitors and - fundamentally - weaklings.

It's hard to talk to them.

So what?

At the end of the day, it is us - small shopkeepers - who die surrounded by our loved ones, and whose souls fly up to Christ to enjoy eternal bliss, while the demons swallow poison in their bunkers or lie for hours on the floor of their offices, in a pool of their own p*ss, deliberately neglected by those around them.


Who wants to talk to them? Not me. When the time of a tyrant comes to relocate to hell and have his anus stretched for whole eternity, his time comes. Talk to them?

In Russia you have to talk to them.

Like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, they've turned into some version of the Janissaries.

They think only they preserve Russia, internally and externally. They think we all owe them fealty - for the sacrifices they make.

Like the IRGC, they've grown far outside their official jurisdiction. Into business. Into media. Even into sport.

--//--

They walk around like knights or monks.

We are all vulgar next to them. Spiritually bankrupt. Grotesque in our lifestyle decisions.

They look at us (my cousin, for example), as some kind of family donkey that has tuberculosis.

Every mafia does, eventually.


You talk about them with way too much reverence, kiddo.

If you cut them, do they bleed? If you shoot them, do they die?

So there.

.
They have the uniform. The badge. The gun. They have the mandate.

They are able to strike quite the pose - when they need to. Believe me.

--//--

One day I'll share my personal view on this dynamic. Regarding who supports whom, and who owes who.

--///--

I've been witness to a thousand boastful conversations by these assh*les. But you should see how they crawl around on their knees, when they need to borrow $10K to send their family to Egypt or Turkey (a trip they can't join them on).

Looking forward to it. Always a pleasure to read your prose.

As for the tyrants and their dogs, let me quote a fragment of my favourite Irish poem...

I speak to my people, and I speak in my people's name to
The masters of my people:
I say to my people that they are holy,
That they are august despite their chains.
That they are greater than those that hold them
And stronger and purer,
That they have but need of courage, and to call on the name of their God,
God the unforgetting, the dear God who loves the people
For whom he died naked, suffering shame.
And I say to my people's masters: Beware
Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people
Who shall take what ye would not give.
Did ye think to conquer the people, or that law is stronger than life,
And than men's desire to be free?
We will try it out with you, ye that have harried and held,
Ye that have bullied and bribed.
Tyrants... hypocrites... liars!

en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rebel_(Pearse)

... the Irish, of course, are a lost tribe of Poles, who wandered too far away from the camp; but that's another story.

@Torq

This poem, is the stuff of the Pugachev Rebellion, the Streltsy Riot, the Decembrists, and the January revolutionaries.

All these people, however well intentioned, caused us so, so much pain.

Russia does not do well with such things. We don't know the limits, or where the the boundaries lie.

It's either full slavery, or complete anarchy - when we begin to listen to these bright, Paris, London, New York educated people.

This is why I know I have no place to even raise my voice.

It will come from inside, or it won't come at all. I'm a passenger. They won't listen to me, and my arguments will not make sense to them.

I know. That's why you need us.

It would all be so much better if things had turned out differently in 1612.

Yes, of course, everything that happens, happens according to the sovereign will of God... I accept that; but some of His decrees are difficult for me to comprehend and accept. I suppose one day we will understand more, and I sure hope we both end up on the same side of the afterlife to discuss it then.


Here's where we differ.

Gotta catch some z's. Good night, Bobi.

Russia is not Poland.

It's 150 million people - instead of 38 million.

It's as diverse as America or China.

There's no such sense of unity, as a country the size of Poland can muster if necessary, and within a short period of time.

All Poles, largely, love other Poles (huge oversimplification, I know).

Not so in Russia. Not even close.

The contradictions within Russia, if given the oxygen and the time - will lead to a full blown implosion.

Russia is only held together by strength, and it's been that way since before the Mongols.

If you don't have an emperor, the thing falls apart.

Basically what I said...



Then maybe that's what should happen.... ethnic russians can cobble together an ethno-state and the rest can manage on their own.

... and because the Emperor preserves and protects - it is suicidal to fight him.

He is the father, and the teacher, and the disciplinarian.

In this sense we are an infantile race. Never grew up to take care of ourselves.

We always look to the leader, to tell us: how long we must suffer before he leads us to the next oasis or ungrazed pasture.

It doesn't matter if you have a Bobko or a Kania as part of the crew - the geologically deep Russian way will dictate the further evolution of events.

If there is another dimension, a different Russia exists, one that originated in Novgorod, not Moscow. A democratic, mercantile Moscow ruled by a Merchant Oligarchy, a one that took over Moscow and discarded its Mongol system.
It is a good place for business opportunities and a decent place to live.
Russia in our dimension is and will remain a trashcan of bad ideas and half-baked promises never kept.

And Ukrainians, like Poland, are not stuck in perpetual cranky infancy.... so let them go.

Yeah well, in that episode we did kill the bright and creative ones.

But that's what allowed Moscow to rise above the other cities, and eventually the other duchies. It was always led by ruthlessly pragmatic people, that were willing to go so far as to sell their soul to the Tatars, just to gain further leverage over other princes.

This is how Moscow came to control everything, and every other romantic and Prince Charming ended up eating the dust.

Even under Mongol occupation, Moscow planned its eventual rise to the top of the ranking of vassals, and then eventual domination over its master. You gotta take your hat off to these guys.

These warlords married their son to the daughter of the last Byzantine emperor - and the rest is history.