My name is Vit, short for Vitaliy.
I am a Ukrainian national, who lived in Russia for 3 years, fled Ukraine 2 hours before the full-scale invasion, worked for the Ukrainian Army from abroad and ended up in Poland as a result. After years of reading this sub I came to a conclusion that it is my duty to share my thoughts about Russia as a system, since it's very much unique and dangerous.
Please, indulge me.
For the fourth year in a row, I listen to a podcast called “Ukraine: the Latest” by London’s Telegraph almost daily.
In almost every dispatch the journalists point out the staggering number of soldiers Russia sacrifices as it inches into Ukrainian territory.
Hearing this again and again, I suddenly remembered a story I read ages ago — I don’t recall when or where. The story offered an explanation of how a swarm of locusts manages to cross vast stretches of water without access to an energy source.
The answer was as simple as the USDC price chart: they simply eat each other mid-air.
When, say, three hundred kilometers into the journey, a particular insect starts feeling hungry, it picks a weaker target, jumps on top of it, and starts devouring it. As a result, only the stronger half reaches the destination, while the remains of the rest fall into the sea and become fish food.
I don’t know whether this is true, whether it really happens this way — but I do know that once I heard this story, I could no longer see Russia as the creation of individual actors. “Putin this, Prigozhin that” — these are fairy tales for amateurs.
In order to understand what is happening in Russia, how and why, one must learn to view it as a system with roots deep in the Middle Ages.
One should not look at Russia as a state. Not even a totalitarian one. Russia is a swarm of locusts, devouring both enemies and friends for the sake of its own survival. Clawing one’s way upward and joining the ranks of the strong is the national sport. Some are luckier — they get the yachts and mansions. Others are less lucky and get to learn what defenestration is in the most unpleasant of ways. And some have it worst of all — they become expendable material like those who get thrown into the meat grinder.
Another feature of this game is the accessibility of the lift. Pushilin, Prigozhin, Poklonskaya, Stremousov — this is not even the tip of the iceberg of names that have achieved some degree of success while participating.
And yes, Putin is not a criminal who seized power and ruined everything. Not at all. Putin is a product of this system, pushed to the very top as the person who best suited its needs.
Climbing the ladder as an educated liberal is simply impossible. To hold your position and keep moving upward, you cannot afford to do "good thigs", like fighting corruption, carrying out reforms, democratizing or liberalizing. To survive, you must kill and eat. And if you don’t kill and eat, others will kill and eat you.
This structure of Russian public consciousness took centuries to form — and nothing about it is accidental. Through literature, cinema, mass culture, and the school curriculum, it reproduces the same archetypes: the strong are right, the cunning survive, morality is weakness.
This logic goes back not just to Soviet times, and not just to the empire, but even further — to the era of the Golden Horde, when the princes of Moscow, instead of resisting, became loyal vassals of the khan and learned to play by their rules. That was when the cultural mutation began: submissiveness to the strong and cruelty toward the weak became the ONLY survival strategy.
Sorry if it's clunky. Hope it helps.
by vit-kievit
8 comments
[deleted]
As we like to say in Poland: “Russia is a state of mind”. I agree with Your conclusions and I have similar thoughts about “Russian soul” myself. It’s a larger cultural phenomenon. Muscovy, Russian Empire, Soviet Union and finally modern Russia – You name it. Every Russian state is just another incarnation of the same old mindset, no matter if monarchy or republic, capitalist or communist. It’s only an outer layer. Deep inside it’s always the same and I don’t think it will ever change.
Russia is extremely easy to understand, it’s just that westerners are too dumb to see it.
Start some shit -> threaten -> make demands -> make more demands (unless someone takes a stand and kicks your ass, which will never happen, remember it’s the West we’re talking about).
It’s not that the Russians are master manipulators, it’s that other countries won’t reign them in.
I think in Poland we get it. You should post this on Western European reddits bro.
Not a theory unknown to Poles, some track it all the way back to ( as you did ) Russia’s past with the Golden Horde and the royal arsefcuking that they received then.
Others will point towards a somewhat non-politically correct quote from George S. Patton, a renowned general and apparently an astute observer of human nature, who once supposedly said:
*”The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian have no regard for human life and is an all out son of bitch, barbarian, and chronic drunk.”*
At any rate, we know what we’re dealing with in Poland, it is mostly Western Europeans that should be enlightened on this.
Now the problem is how do we defeat centuries upon centuries of this system, the West tried introducing Russia to democracy in the 1990s, we all know how well that went, they quickly moved towards an oligarchy and then back to a new re-incarnation of Ivan the Terrible.
Best bet is probably bankrupt them like Reagan did, but a) there seems to be no will to do that in U.S. at least currently, b) China and India ( amongst others ) are actively supporting Russia economically, giving them a lifeline and finally c) the Russians still have nukes.
If a peace plan that the US is pushing does go through, and sanctions on Russia are lifted, then World War III is just around the corner, my Polish friends. This locust swarm will only grow hungrier.
Sorry if off topic
It looks like the apple falls not far from the tree of Stepan.
I understand your rage against the imperialist force, but this is an untranationalist take and you really are just feeding into the stereotype/narrative of Ukrainians being extremely right wing.
Oh, we know that, believe me. It’s westerners who for years were memeing Russians, thinking they’re based and ignoring their flaws. Which is why a lot of them don’t even know how bad (Soviet) communism was and what Stalin had done when he was in power.
You should post this on western sub. You’re Ukrainian so they won’t call you a russian bot lmao.
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