Russian Views On Poland and Vice Versa

Hollywood would be impossible without Russia... When they need a couple of bad guys ready to kill as easily as we can sip a cup of coffee and mingle iwith crowds to hide to chase, it's the Russians.

If it's ME Muslims, there is always an obligatory good Muslim somewhere to keep the woke DEI police happy...Bosch Legacy is the most recent example...

Oh my god - spare my ribs!

You are looking at your reflection in the mirror.


And you think I simply hallucinated the facts about the metaphysical nature of Russians? I almost want to say - "Read a book!"

Yes, this is uncanny how two nations that consider themselves so different from each other can sometimes be so similar.


This sentence is worthless without a recommendation (author, title, year).

I will not be original, and will recommend the Russian poet and diplomat Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev. The author of these famous lines:

Who would grasp Russia with the mind?
For her no yardstick was created:
Her soul is of a special kind,
By faith alone appreciated.

Though a contemporary of guys like Lermontov and Pushkin, he doesn't seem to be as well known outside the CIS.

He didn't write "books", unfortunately, but he wrote many poems. The years I would recommend are between 1820 and 1840. Before, he is still too young and romantic, and in the period afterwards he doesn't write anymore about the subject at hand. By that point, he's a big deal - and writes about geopolitics - BORING!

All the poems are worth reading, but I might try "Silentium" first.

Thank you very much indeed. I will definitely check him out, but now I gotta catch some z's (a lot of work tomorrow).

Good night, my favourite Asian.

Ekhem (from the top of my head):

@Paulina

You forgot the best one:

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@Bobko, "Red Heat"? OMG, that's an old movie lol I've seen it, but I very vaguely remember what it was about - it was long time ago... 🤔 But I remembered the Polish title - wow! lol Arnie is classic :)))

The movie is a walking meme. Highly recommend.

Even in your examples, Russians are always military, hacking, or being all suspicious.

How about a movie with chill and funny Russians?

HBO's "Barry" has some of that, but I'm not really a fan of the show in general.

It doesn't matter - they're positive characters - that's the point :)


RuSSians aren't exactly chill, are they now... lol :)))

I'd much rather have the Polish stereotype of a friendly neighborhood alcoholic. Maybe occasional wife beater. At least as depicted in American film.

Some guy named Krasinski is much better received in America than a guy named Krasinskov.

Come on, Chekov in the new Star Trek is adorable :)):




I'm guessing you're being sarcastic :)))

Yes, making jokes about how Russian cosmonauts always f*ck **** up, and then responsible Americans have to fix it.

We seen it.

Armageddon was one movie. I think in that movie they discovered a drunk and crazy Russian cosmonaut roaming around alone in the MIR station. Very funny.

As*holes.

Oh...please stop it....try to be a German in Hollywood!!!

(Okay....they make great Russians with their accent and all that :)

I'm not even sure if this is a dialogue from the movie - Chekov is a very intelligent and professional character (and likeable). Have you seen those films?


As for cosmonauts who like to have a drink... :) "Gravity" is literally one of two Hollywood movies where there's a positive Polish character (and not stupid)... or rather with Polish roots... that I can recall... And, of course, he dies:



And this one:



What they have in common is the surname Kowalski and that they both die :)) To be fair - they're sacrificing themselves for the right cause (which Novichok would qualify as "stupid" anyway :)))


Exactly :)))))

Did they find the vodka though? lol:

I read the poem. Looks like your Tyutchev was a fan of the Bard...

T: Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream, the things you feel.

S: Away, and mock the time with fairest show.
False face must hide what false heart doth know.

T: Let dreams move silently as stars,
in wonder more than you can tell.

S: Stars, hide your fires,
Let not light see my black and deep desires.

etc. etc.

... but then again, isn't all literature after 17th century just a commentary on Shakespeare?

Don't you have anything more substantial to support Russian megalomania? Because I can find a lot of concrete stuff (e.g. Mickiewicz, Słowacki, prophecies by Catholic saints, Polish and foreign) to justify Polish megalomania. Come on, Bobi, try harder - increase my Russophilia (if that's even possible).

Is this some kind of disease?

Well, it definitely tends to be contagious but I wouldn't call it a disease... a certain condition of heart and soul perhaps.

I respect Russia for several reasons. The first one that comes to mind is how they asked their royals to step down. Western Europe should do the same.

Do you copy and paste those stupid statements from somewhere else? As someone born in an European country you can't be that ignorant, can you?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_the_Romanov_family

"While waiting for the smoke to abate, the killers could hear moans and whimpers inside the room. As it cleared, it became evident that although several of the family's retainers had been killed, all of the Imperial children were alive and only Tatiana was injured.

The noise of the guns had been heard by households all around, awakening many people. The executioners were ordered to use their bayonets, a technique which proved ineffective and meant that the children had to be dispatched by still more gunshots, this time aimed more precisely at their heads. The Tsarevich was the first of the children to be executed. Yurovsky watched in disbelief as Nikulin spent an entire magazine from his Browning gun on Alexei"


He can't possibly be that ignorant. I think he's simply evil.

OK, so what was the problem?
I mean how would the Bolsheviks make sure that the royals would not want to come back and reclaim their royal possessions and standing? They had to be exterminated just as the US exterminated Saddam and his sons, and Nuremberg NAZIs. And now....Israel doing it to Hamas - including thousands of children. It works very well, doesn't it?

Lenka, as you can see - Novichok is simply evil.


No, they didn't. He was sentenced by an Iraqi National Tribunal.


Another of your detached comparisons. Saddam sons were adults and they weren't executed, but killed during a gun battle:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Qusay_and_Uday_Hussein

"The operation originally intended to apprehend them, but turned into a four-hour gun battle outside a fortified safehouse which ended with the death of the brothers, Qusay's son Mustafa, and a bodyguard, Abdul Samad al-Hadushi."


You're f*cked up.

You are right. Nobody is dying in Gaza.

I thought I was trying to find authors who spoke about the condition of the Russian soul.

For this, I have another book - it's closer to Yerofeev than Tyutchev - and you should enjoy it I would think.

It's «Географ Глобус Пропил», or "The Geographer Drank His Globe Away" by Alexei Ivanov.

It's a book that came out in the early 2000s.

----

Returning to your question... I'm not sure I can think of too many books that talk about Russia's special place in the world. I mean - classics. Of course, you could go and read Dugin all day - and it will probably be nothing but Russia's uniqueness - but I suspect it's not very good reading.

Tyutchev came to mind immediately because of his poem about how Russia could not be understood with the mind. But also, because he was a militant pan-Slavist, who along with his buddies fought tooth and nail against Western influences in Russian literature and art. Him, and others like Aksakov and Khomyakov saw Russia as a bulwark against a "rotting Europe", and thought it had a special role in uniting all the Slavic peoples. Read those guys, and you will get megalomania to your heart's content.

However, it's important to note that even then, Russian panslavists were to a great extent receiving their inspiration from Poles. Poland had a diverse panslavist space, which was closely tracked by Russian thinkers. Split between whether or not Russia would act as the unifier, or a resurgent Poland - it was the epicenter of megalomania ;)

On the pro-Russian side you had Stanisław Staszic and August Cieszkowski, and on the pro-Polish side Adam Mickiewicz and Kazimierz Brodziński.

The bottom line, my friend, is that even when Russian megalomania was peaking, it was drawing inspiration from Poland. So you may have us beat there.

Yes, it sounds like something Yerofeev might have written. Will definitely check it out, thanks!


There was (and still is) definitely the same current in Polish thought - I will have to investigate this as well. I suspect that once again the search will result in finding even more similarities between the "heart of Europe" and "Asian barbarians".


Well, we may be sh*tty in football and ice-hockey but in megalomania we are Undisputed World Champions. Perhaps it is for the better that things went the way they did in 1612. Imagine Poles having the largest country in the world and the largest nuclear arsenal at our disposal. Good heavens...

P.S. Talking about Panslavism - this is such a weakness of mine. I mean, my brain registers all the reservations, I can see all the difficulties and impossibilities of it. But still... it is such a lovely idea in itself.

You feel as a German felt in the beginning of the 19th century.

However, Germany managed this process - somehow. Bavarian, Swabian, Rhinelander, and Prussian were joined. Mutant Swiss and Austrians managed to skip out - but the majority managed to unite.

Of course, for the world, the results of German unification were a little bit scary. Maybe, the results of Slavic unification will be scary as well - but they'll get over it.

Officially! :)


Of course....they only used primary math:

one strong unit + another seemingly strong unit = one superstrong unit = scary

But unification of countries/peoples just doesn't work that way.....a good lesson! Could be that Russia will have to learn that too, should it add (former) ukrainian lands and people.

I have a friend from Saxony, that speaks fluent Russian, and he tells me it is probably easier for a Russian to understand a Belarusian, than it is for a person from Dresden to understand someone from the southern mountains.