Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "The Russian Psyche | Konstantin Kisin" video.

"They want what we have, and they're coming." Can we help them understand that we have what we have because we do what we do, and we can all have what we have if we all do it correctly?
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@DieFlabbergast There's nothing they can do about their geographical and historical situations. Their economic and cultural situations, on the other hand, can and must change if they want to be as productive and prosperous as the West. And don't believe for an instant that gospel of envy, that claims that the West is only prosperous because of exploitation. That's an excuse that resentful people use, and it's the biggest obstacle to human prosperity there is.
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My experience with Russia is limited to reading literature. A couple of points seem to be worth noting: - Chechnya was the setting of the Tolstoy story, "The Cossacks", which is about the war in Chechnya. (Yes, the war in Chechnya has been going on for that long.) The Caucasus Mountains are presented as a sort of Wild West, Russian-style, where a young man could have the adventure of his life. - I can find few examplars of the "honest shopkeeper" in any of the (admittedly limited) literature I've read. Mostly, intelligent / honest / hardworking people are expected to go into government service or to be faithful peasants. - People engaged in trade, industry, or similar money-making venture are portrayed almost entirely as ruthless or dishonest. I think there was an honest businessman in "The Idiot", but Dostoevsky seems to have absolutely no idea what an honest businessman actually DID in a day. There is a similar ignorance and suspicion about the activities of people who manage land on behalf of nobles. It seems to me that Russians don't have all that many role models when it comes to capitalism.
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"Russians who were captured by the Germans during the war were killed or imprisoned when they got back to Russia, because they were traitors or whatever" There is a twisted logic to this. The Naxis had something called the "Commissar Rule", which ordered Germans who captured Russians to summarily execute any of them who showed any enthusiasm for Communism. "Obviously if you survived German captivity, you were not an enthusiastic Communist, and therefore should be jailed or killed", was apparently the thought process there.
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@VHSKacceta Contrast this with the honest (Christian) small-time, hardworking shopkeepers portrayed in English literature -- both American and British. I'm speculating that Tolstoy or Dostoevsky were describing what they saw. I'm also pretty sure that English and American writers were describing what they saw, as well. The common-law tradition in English commerce, as well as the highly Christian frontier culture of Americans (where we really did get to build up a society from nothing) is the basis of a more honest form of capitalism. Continentals have always seemed to have problems developing this culture, as strong-men with interests other than scrupulously honest business obligations tended to dominate. Napoleon described England as "a nation of shopkeepers". I think that was the secret of their success.
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@VHSKacceta I've spent a good deal of time in Silicon Valley myself, and there's an enormous amount of leftover generosity, goodwill and forthrightness from America's Christian roots, even though they cut themselves off from them. For every diabolical Rogozhin or Scrooge, there's at least one saintly Joe Gargery or Fezziwig. Mark Twain's work - especially his only-somewhat-fiction - is full of references to hardworking and honest silver miners, riverboat pilots, and pineapple farmers. It could be that you're simply seeing what you expect to see, and not prepared to see anything else.
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@VHSKacceta You remind me of my family from North Dakota (and other Midwesterners.) They pull together when they need to, and are deeply skeptical of urbanized values. A couple major differences - there's less mystical attachment to the land, and more trust in people doing honest business with one another. If you happen to like the connection with the land, feel free, but I would really encourage you to build up a sense of honest business. Respecting that your shopkeeper has expenses like supplies to buy and payroll to meet, same with your local craftsmen, is a great way to build up a culture of honest and fair business dealings at a local level. That way, you'll have people who understand business who aren't just black marketeers, which is as I understand it what went so badly wrong with Russia in the 1990s.
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