Russian Chauvinism is Disgusting

the insanity of Russian Soul

Russia is home to hundreds of different ethnic groups. Often, the terms 'ethnic group' and 'nationality' are used interchangeably, but consider a map of Russia to see how vast it is. Naturally, the country did not get to its current size one magical day. Like any colonial power, the land was taken by conquest and subjugation.

The English language reveals one of its shortcomings by only having one word for Russian. In the Russian language, русский (russkiy) refers to someone whose ethnicity is that of a Slavic Russian, the dominant ethnic group of the Russian Federation. Meanwhile, россиянин/rossiyanin (which is also translated as Russian in English) refers to someone who lives in the state of the Russian Federation, regardless of their ethnic identity, whether it is Tatar, Chechen, Buryat, or Slavic Russian.

ethnic Buryats in the Russian armed forces

Nenets people of Russia

the Circassian people

According to the 2021 census, Slavic Russians (Russkie) comprised approximately 72 percent of the total population. While you can see they are the dominant ethnic group, Russia is far from being a homogenous ethnostate. However, whether it was during the time of the Tsars, the USSR, or Russia in its current form, an ethnostate is something Russia has tried to be and enforce. Throughout its history of conquest, other ethnic groups have been subjugated, had their lands taken, their languages suppressed, and were forced to assimilate to become Russian.

In the war in Ukraine, ethnic minorities have died disproportionately on the frontlines in proportion to how much they make up the total population. This is intentional. Putin and his русский мир are just as happy to ethnically cleanse their own minority groups as they are to kill Ukrainians, or better yet, kill two birds with one stone.

While Chechens and Tatars and Mordvins and Tuvans may be Russian citizens and technically have all the same rights as the dominant culture, they are still disadvantaged by being the wrong ethnicity. Take a look at this propaganda video (I'm Russian!!) that came out during the war. At around the 1:16 mark, you'll see manly men of different ethnicities declare, "I'm German, and I'm Russian. I'm Dagestani, and I'm Russian. I'm Armenian, and I'm Russian. I'm Kazakh, and I'm Russian. I'm Azeri, and I'm Russian."

Now, notice which word they were all using for Russian. They were not saying "rossiyanin"; they were using "russiky". Essentially, what this video shows is that despite these individuals having varied ethnic backgrounds, they've decided to accept the dominant culture; they've assimilated. To become a Slavic Russian is to abandon your lesser, more primitive, less desirable culture behind. The intent of this clip is clear: the Slavic Russian culture is the correct one, and all other cultures are inferior. This is the message Russia has been propagating for centuries. Keep your ethnic cuisines and silly languages behind closed doors. Be Russian! This would be akin to Black, Latino, and Asian folk in the US saying “I’m Asian, and I’m white” in order to prove they are “real” Americans.

Russia (cleverly?) uses such videos to compel disenfranchised minority groups to feel part of the community and to want to fight the fascist Ukrainians and decadent West. Sure, they might face continued abuse and discrimination and be limited to where they can rent apartments, but the enemy isn't the state that discriminates against them; the enemy is elsewhere. The enemy are fascist Ukrainians, gays, the woke!

While such videos might encourage these ethnic minorities to identify as Slavic Russians, will the Slavic Russian population ever see them this way?

Russia has an image problem. It’s easy to point out all of Russia’s shortcomings, with its numerous human rights violations and disregard for international treaties and ceasefire agreements, but the image problem in question is a self-imposed one. Russia is obsessed with how the rest of the world views it. There’s an old anecdote along the lines of “Americans love their country and hate anyone who disagrees. Russians hate their country and hate anyone who agrees.”

For centuries, Russia has been engaged in this constant battle between being the strongest military force in the world, a country bestowed by God to fight for Eastern Orthodox Christian values and save the world (really, itself and its neighbors it feels entitled to) from the decadent, morally bankrupt West. Simultaneously, this strong nuclear superpower, which has won every war it's ever fought (but never started), is the perpetual victim, the victim who the rest of the world is either invading or threatening to invade. Russia is always compelled to defend itself (usually by means of invading sovereign nations).

What explains this strange dichotomy? To understand how Russia thinks the world perceives it in contrast with how Russia wants the world to see it, one has to look at what Russia actually is. Russia is a country fueled by and run by chauvinism.

Check out another video where vlogger Yuriy Dud interviews Masha Gessen. Masha Gessen Interview

At 32:16 in the video, Yuriy says, "There's a popular opinion in Russia that Americans think they won WWII."

Now, this phrasing is already quite revealing. Russia is obsessed with America, but this obsession is one-way. This also points towards American chauvinism (or ignorance), but that's a conversation for another post. The average American doesn't give a fuck about Russia. The average American can't point out Russia on a map. The average American cannot differentiate Russia from Germany.

When I used to live in Russia, I'd return to the US to visit family, and people from my small town would say, "Oh, I haven't seen you in a while; where have you been?" I'd answer Russia. They would say, "Oh, can you say something in German?"

This might all sound like I'm about to support the points Yuriy and Masha are about to make, but I'm not. I'm illustrating that while the US is a constant in Russian minds, the US doesn't think about Russia at all. Russians are, once more, obsessed with how others view them. Almost every "stereotype" about Russia from foreigners was actually created by Russians themselves. Russians thrive on being an uncrackable, enigmatic, and deep culture that no outsider could ever grasp.

Watch any interaction Russians have with foreigners in their country; it's almost as if they've all emerged from the factory with the same settings. You can count down their line of questioning like clockwork, "Oh, what do you think of Russia? Did you come here thinking there would be bears on the street? Balalaikas? Voda? What do you think of Russian women? Why do Americans think they won WWII?"

Bears, vodka consumption, beautiful women, these are all myths Russia has made about themselves and convinced themselves that these are conceptions foreigners have about their country. They eat this shit up.

So Yuriy asks Masha, who lives in the US if it's true that Americans think they won World War II. She responds with, "It is (true). This is horrible chauvinism. This is dumb."

The subtitles the video provides don't precisely match word for word what is being said in Russian, but they give a general idea of the conversation.

It’s easy to point out American chauvinism. I do it every chance I get, but we’re talking about Russia here.

Do you know what's not taught in Russian schools about World War II? The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It's simply eliminated. Most Russians had no idea that the USSR and Germany were allies before one of them would inevitably turn on the other. They agreed to carve up Poland together as well as the Baltic States. Ask a Russian why the USSR invaded Poland in 1939, and they'll tell you this event never happened. The same was true with the Winter War when the USSR invaded Finland; this event also never happened. The Katyn Massacre, when the USSR executed over 20,000 Poles, also clearly never happened. The USSR blamed it on the Germans until archival evidence came out proving it was the Soviets who did this.

Russians love to point out that they lost 27,000,000 people fighting the Germans. This is a number so large it’s difficult to truly comprehend. Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle of the war and is viewed as the turning point where German defeat was all but assured. The Germans suffered the bulk of their losses against the Soviet front. It was the Soviets who took Berlin. All these things are true. The Soviets definitely won the Second World War. But what’s the opposite of losing?

I think Russians have a hard time grasping that two things can be true at the same time. The US, Britain, and France were undoubtedly on the winning side. The Russians use the Second World War as the holiest of achievements in their country's history. So long as you can keep a populace distracted by its glorious past, you can keep them content and unfocused on the problems of the present. Their victory shows the holiness of their spirit and culture, so any future conflict they get involved in will have precedent; it's for a just cause.

Stalin was slow to react when the Germans invaded, not even addressing the nation for several days after the fact. While Russians may look at the loss of 27,000,000 lives as the price of their sacrifice, others may see it as a regime throwing lives at bullets because Stalin had no value for human life and would gladly let 27,000,000 more die to stay in power.

In places like Czechia, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, etc, they didn’t view the Soviets as liberators. It was one hostile occupying force simply replacing another. The Soviets did not save any of these countries from the Germans; they merely replaced them.

This next segment is anecdotal, so do with it what you will. My buddy from Saint Petersburg told me a story about his time at university. This would have been around 2011 or 2012. A veteran of the war was brought in to give a lecture to the students. He mentioned how hard the early days of the conflict were. He mentioned how he and his unit would not have survived if it weren’t for the supplies and food sent by the Americans under the Lend-Lease Act. His lecture was cut short, with those who invited him apologizing for letting someone who “didn’t know what he was talking about” come on stage and spread falsehoods about The Great Patriotic War.

During the Lend-Lease Act, the USSR received over 11 billion dollars in aid. Rounded up to the dollar's current value, they received approximately the same amount of money that the US has sent to aid Ukraine.

When Russians talk about the 27,000,000 dead, they conflate Soviet numbers with Russian numbers. When it’s convenient for them, the terms Soviet and Russian are used interchangeably, but millions of those dead were Ukrainians and other ethnicities.

In terms of population size and proportion, Poland is the nation that lost the most people, losing twenty percent of its pre-war population.

So, why do Americans think they won World War II? It's because they did win. It was a combined allied effort. While the USSR was in shambles after the war (most of Russia is in shambles today. Leave Moscow and Saint Petersburg and you’ll see homes sinking into the ground, homes without indoor plumbing, but sure, lets blame all this on Ukraine and Obama), the US emerged as the sole superpower of the twentieth century. For better or for worse, the Second World War is what made the US the country it is today.

I still stand that the US is the biggest threat to world stability, and current trends lead me to believe the US will continue to go down a more cynical path, but I'm picking on Russia today because the general Russian populace lacks introspection. They are incapable of perceiving any wrongdoing on their part or in their history. They are perpetually the victim; they've never aggressively attacked or occupied another sovereign country. They never start wars, and the wars they do(n't) start are holy because the victory of the Second World War justifies all their invasions.

For the abundance of faults in Western culture, at least those with brains can look at the colonization of the Americas and the genocides of indigenous populations that followed for the human tragedy that it is. As much as the current administration might want to sugarcoat US history, nobody with half a working brain would ever think the indigenous populations invited the European settlers to come rule over their lands. In the US, you can find school textbooks that explain the tragedy of locking up Japanese American citizens in concentration camps during the war. I'm not saying the US or other Western powers have fully reckoned with the damage they've done, but even some introspection is better than none.

This lack of introspection or ability to accept responsibility on the part of Russians is why so much of our criticism against Russia involves using kid gloves. Russians are quick to scream ‘Russophobia’ against any attack lobbed their way. Russia can’t be held to the same standards as Western colonial powers. Colonialism and racism are bad, just not when Russia does it. A critique against them is simply because the outsider can’t comprehend the Russian soul and it’s due to bigotry, not because Russia is an imperialistic, xenophobic, racist, dystopian, despotic hellhole.

The lands they took by conquest in Siberia, or the Caucasus, can't be called colonialism because the natives invited them to invade and take over their lands. They were tired of ruling over their primitive selves and called the Russians over to be their overlords.

Russia is a post-racial state. Racism exists only in decadent Western countries. Russia is tolerant of all races so long as they abandon their own ethnic heritage and assimilate into the dominant Slavic Russian culture.

For more about the Russian mindset commemorating the victory of the Second World War, I highly recommend this video, which details the hysteria around their Victory Day parade.

The Psychosis of Russia's Victory Day