Comments by "LancesArmorStriking" (@LancesArmorStriking) on "Explaining Russian Civilization" video.
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@joeschmoe3665
Contributing little or nothing?
The entire reason nations today consider STEM achievement key to geopolitical primacy (as opposed to Jefferson's vision for a nation of yeoman farmers) is because the USSR beat the US to space and made it freak out.
That set a precedent which still hasn't been broken and dominates global politics and economies.
Also, most nuclear reactor designs today are Soviet, Russia was one of the first countries (after Germany and UK) to have public healthcare and the first ever to have a decimal currency (like 100 cents = 1 dollar).
Russia invented the modern helicopter, the electric tram (or streetcar), rollercoasters (Russian Mountains), the Periodic Table of Elements, the satellite, Tetris, and (as someone else mentioned) the Soviets invented the montage in filmmaking. They also discovered Antarctica, and the concept of viruses.
I agree that the list could be much longer (I only listed completely indigenous inventions and not one's are an improvement, like Edison's lightbulb) but to say "little or nothing " is just being petty and spiteful.
You're objectively wrong.
All countries have their contributions.
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@artoriassif3728
To be fair, for Russia to amass enough 'civilizational gravity' that it could become inward-facing and have indigenous political changes (otherwise they would be demonized as outside influence, and purged) it had to secure geographical points.
A border made of mountains— the Carpathians the in west, the Caucasus to the South, the Altai and Karakorum to the south, and the Gobi and Tibet to the far east.
Most of these were secured under the Russian Empire, but it was still missing a few key components:
a warm-water ocean port (wouldn't have been a problem if Alaska was kept, rip), and a buffer against the Black Sea.
This would have been Constantinople, and 7 European countries set aside their differences to stifle Russia's dominance by waging the Crimean War, which Russia ultimately lost.
Additionally, the European Plain remains a problem forever, unless it can be conquered or technology can mitigate the need for occupying it.
After Napoleon, Sweden, Hitler, Poland, the Teutonic Knights— Russia has never known a decade of peace where native development was possible.
I suppose the 1910s were the closest it got, but then Lenin came from his boxcar in Switzerland..
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