h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...you come over as someone who's On The Side Of The Angels.

Which I can't say for everyone on that thread.

So...is one (or both) of you Russian? My brother-in-law and his wife lived in the CCCP for many years, in Kharkov and then in Moscow. He's now a lecturer in Russian Politics.

My only experience is three weeks as a victim of Intourist, two months after Gorbachev came to poewr,

Well of course I am On The Side Of The Angels.

Although it helps if the Angles are doing exactly as I say.

He's Russian, I'm a Brit. Which is clearly why the British annoy me so much.

Lived in Moscow from 1996 to 2004. Loved it, but really, the place was getting far to civilised there near the end.

They knocked down the Intourist hotel, you know. Shame. It was splendidly horrid. Now there's something tasteful and neoclassical in its place. Mind you' I've never stayed there, just nipped in to purloin the free English language newspapers in the lobby. what was that like? There are some great stories about the Rossiya.

Russian politics, eh? Rather him than me.

What? The old KOCMOC is gone? The one near the (?) BDNK? No surprise. I hear the old space pavilion has long since degenerated into a giant ad for BMW.

Ah...happy times. When some Brit and Slovenian travel reps took me back to their room, we feasted on caviar and Georgian champagne...and I was let in on the secret of why the CCCP invaded Afghanistan.

(Let's just say...good thing it wasn't a Non Smoking room. )


Somewhere I still have a photo of me holding The First Sainsburys Bag In Red Square.


I was up late enough that night to see all the hookers getting taken home in the Intourist minibus. So...believe me...Marxist though I may be - I'm under no illusions about the CCCP.

(Deary me. That's not a debate, that's an argument. And now I'm at it too. I think I'll slink back to the Atelier).

Oh not the KOCMOC. Thank god. I quite like that one. It has twinkly lights strung all over it and everything. Plus, it's in a highway, so you don't have to get up close to it unless you are staying there. the one in the centre on Tverskaya Street round the back of Red Square.

I love VDNKh (gosh that looks weird in English). I am afraid that one of the things I have found out about myself is that had I grown up there at the right time I would, absolutely, have been right in the thick of the whole Soviet lifestyle. Top Pioneer, busiest Comsomol member, the person who organised the earnest debates about the correct Soviet way to make a packed lunch at work, the whole bit. VDNKh makes me feel all starry eyed and nostalgic. Plus there's a really good wine and cheese dive in the grounds.

Well...maybe not. Would I have been Hitlerjugend? I *hope* I'd have neen Edelweisspirat. I doubt I've have had the balls to join die Meuten.

A3059255

But that's not the same thing _at all_. Is it? Hmmmmm. i shall have to give that some thought. the thing is, even people like Solzhanitsyn were starry eyed communists in their youth. And there was nothing wrong with a lot of it. It's the repression that did for it.

Still, what I find... difficult... is that a lot of what I like about Russia is probably a direct result of a society shaped by extreme and violent controls over everything. The downstairs neighbours had a party last night with exceptionally loud music until 2am. That simply wouldn't happen over there. Russians are extremely good neighbours. It's a habit they got into mainly because of the consequences of being antisocial, but also because they have rationalised their fear into a genuine belief that technomusic is not something one inflicts on others in the middle of the night. If you see what I mean. That's a frivolous eg I suppose, but still. Of course it helps tht the other thing the Soviet system beat out of them is the belief that what they as individuals want should trump everyone elses rights.

Although that doesn't explain your roman Abramoviches.

My grandad was in Germany in the 30s as a young man on some kind of exchange and came across the Hitler Youth. I've got his diary extract somewhere. He wasn't impressed, which is interesting to me. Still, context is everything. I daresay I'd have joined. Remaking the world is very seductive. Germany was utterly stuffed. And I don't have much faith in most people's ability to resit evil given the right circumstances. Certainly not mine.

Sorry. My shift key really is bleeped.

Well...I daren't say it on this site (and how!)...but I do believe there were many idealistic Soviet communists who were as let down by the system as anyone. Hell - remember Gorbachev came from the party!

Sure. There were idealistic Nazis as well. Some of them did good charity work. For 'Germans'. I shall refrain from commenting on whether this reminds me of anyone on another thread.

btw...the 2am thing...I once heard from a British guy living in Sweden that he got Hard Stares from his neighbours after flushing his toilet at night. Yet my recent experience of Sweden is of a pretty decent society.

(I'm hopefully about to be offered a part-time academic position there)

Gorbachov isn't much liked by Russians though in my experience. There's the total collapse of the country around their ears - and the eighties and nineties weren't a lot of fun for a lot of people although that said we were watching a programme called, umm, 'yesterday'? or 'yesteryear' or something like that a while back which basically showed the highlights of each year in TV clips since TV began and the adreniline rush of the fall and the sheer _potential_ afterawards looked like a real blast. Where was I? Oh yes, even if they could weather that, they are not impressed by the way he siphoned off quite a bit of cash into his private Swiss bank account.

He's a lot like Mrs Thatcher I find. People abread appreciate her a lot more than I do too.

The Swedish thing. Ha. And there's me assuming that the Ruskies are a bunch of barbarians who need a firm hand. Damn. I have been in the UK too long. (Practically the first sentence I came across when I picked up Koba the Dread to have a look for your British soldiers was 'the Russian earth loves blood' or something even more ridiculous).

It's interesting as to why Scandanvia is such a civilised part of the world. Lower population density? That would clearly explain why Russians give up their seats to people on public transport and why I've never met a Canadian I don't like too.

Mind you, it could be the cold.

(Gonna take it?)

Oh. Idealistic Nazis. The thing is, we get a lot of people who apply for the course I sort of still work on who say that the reason why they are doing it is because they want to help out their ethnic minority community. I mean, this is about as uncontraversial statement as you can get really. I can occassionally understand the frustration of people who want to do the same for a particularly run down branch of a not ethnic minority community and get a bit of stick for not considering anyone else. People of the first catagory are not, in my experience, particularly bothered about the woeful academic standards of poor working class anglos either.

Of course, where that does get dangerous is where it becomes oficial policy.

>>It's interesting as to why Scandanvia is such a civilised part of the world. Lower population density?

Basically...near 50% taxes -> investment in welfare, health, and especially education -> a happy, healthy, educated, productive population -> Massive GDP. GDP alone doesn't account for happiness (Stieglitz was on R4 saying this yesterday) - but they're also egalitarian societies so don't have to stress about out-competing their peers and keeping the braying mobs at bay. One theory is that they went straight6 from agrarianism to modernity without passing through Feudalism.

Gorbie...

Sure. But the imposition, post CCCP of the most brutal form of capitalism imagineable is hardly his fault. I agree, though, that people are, in many ways, worse off - materially and in terms of freedoms. And maybe this gives us a fresh take on the evils of Soviet communism vs the merits of free markets.

>>People of the first category are not, in my experience, particularly bothered about the woeful academic standards of poor working class anglos either.

Well...maybe not. Although that's not my experience...and it somewhat galls that I'm being given stick (elsewhere) for being one of those. As I keep saying...It's All The Same Struggle. And then we get people like the saintly (Researcher) HonestIago who's been working in Bradford on social inclusion for white kids.

But then...dare to mention the topic and you're labeled as 'obsessed'


At a Party 'education session' in Leningrad, I was told 'The Soviet Union is the only country to have solved the problem of racism. Hah!

>One theory is that they went straight6 from agrarianism to modernity without passing through Feudalism.>

So we're stuffed then?

I am a bad person. I just had a vision of being the person to suggest to the US that they introduce 50% taxes.

Actually, regarding the Fall and blaming Gorbachov and all, I often wonder whether China hasn't got the right idea regarding how to repurpose your governing system. I mean, yes, it would be nice of they went a bit more hell for leather towards certain changes, but look where changing everything fast got Russia and a lot of the Former states. Knocking over a country's infrastructure is a terrible thing to do. This is actually why I objected to the Iraq war. they never seemed to have the faintest idea what they would do afterwards having ripped the country apart.

Oh and I know not all people from one ethnic class or another are only interested in their own community. In fact, quite a lot of people from all sides of the equation are just generally benevolent. It's just that there is a slight tendency for people to say one group being only interested in... is ok, but another, not so much. Mind you, perhaps I am oversensitive, because I have always worked with people from different ethnic/ cultural/ national backgrounds to mine, and every now and again I have qualms about being a bit British Empire.

>>So we're stuffed then?

Not necessarily. If Marx is right (yes...that's a big IF) we emerge into communism through the inevitable dialectic of history. But it will be painful along the way. (and Scandiwegia is simply lucky to have avoided the painful legacy of Feudalism).

But maybe...we're getting more Scandiwegian. Things like Brendan Barber floating the idea that public sector cuts *aren't* a scientific inevitability: taxes could go up. (the great legacy of Thatcherism: no party dares advocate higher taxes. Not even the LDs.) Things like the Scottish Govt. advocating *more* immigration.

But...yeah...higher taxes. It's obvious:
'To each according to their needs from each according to their ability.'

Oh...and on another thread...the thought of being immersed in the latest English sounds great.

Am I oversensitive, or were people *fantastically* rude to me on 'that other thread'? You don't have to answer that.

I can't see Marxism happening I'm afraid. Just can't see it. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a libetarian at heart really. Blame Robert Heinlein. That's why I like Russia. They're all libetarians at heart too. In the end the Soviet state overreugularised things so much, and so much of that was contradictory, that the only way to live was by ignoring a lot it. Plus, there was a lot you couldn't buy into without completely losing your humanity, I guess. I always think that in basic outlook Russia is a lot more like the US than like the rest of socialised Europe.

Anyway, hence the teaching. Teach a man, or even a woman, occassionally, how to fish and all that. It is fun though. Plus I get to be really obnoxious and write snotty emails to ASDA about their inability to use the word 'fewer' correctly.

Actually, they were fantastically rude. I assumed you had been winding each other up for threads and threads, but still. Mind you, it really doesn't pay to mess with people's view of history. Very much linked to identity and all that.

>>I can't see Marxism happening I'm afraid.

Ah. You don't get it, I'm afraid. Marxism isn't a political programme. It's a way of explaining the world.

OK - agreed - Marxists like me do want a better world and work to achieve it. We can follow various political programmes to that end. Marxism-Leninism (big mistake!). Italian-style Euro-Communism Scandiwegian Social Democracy. Green.

Yes - we come up against libertarians. Fascists, even. This is what's meant by 'Dialectic'. But - if (IF!) Marx was right - history moves towards socialism. It has to. Anything else is unsustainable.

>>Ah. You don't get it, I'm afraid.

Oops. That possibly came over more patronising than it maybe would have in RL. Apparently that's a fault of mine.

Don't worry your pretty little head about it.





btw...it's also possible to pusue Marxist objectives alongside the SNP. That said...one of their founders - my favourite poet, Hugh McDiarmid - was expelled for being a Communist. At about the same time as he was expelled from the Communist Party for Nationalism.

Wasn't offended, but you have spoiled my fun. I was thinking up a really bitingly chastening reply. Boo.

Entirely prepared to believe that I don't understand Marxism, as have only come across it descussed in relation to the USSR and ceratin strands of historical investication.

Still, the withering away of the state? Is that Marx? Don't believe in it. Still, I'm a historian by training and I have to say that historians are not really very good at predictions or forward thinking. Probably a good thing our PMs have stopped being them. or not, really. At east historians are professional empithisers. mrs T sufffered from the affliction of being a scientist, I reckon. Tony Blair's a lawyer and their problem is that they are trained to put the blinkers on and only chase down one side of an argument.

The thing about libatarianism and (according to my... limited... understanding of) Marxism/ Communism and so on is that they would work just fine for resourceful, responsible and competent people. Soviet communism was terrible for that kind of person unless they manageed to pour their talents into the party. But it was good for giving the sort of people who are very lost in a world that requires quite a bit of self oomph to get on a very safe and directed and purposeful life. And that safety and purpose probably let them reach closer to their full potential than ours does.

But that requires big government.

I suppose Marxism would have it that everyone would be from a comfortable enough social background and well educated enough to have the suffcient self relient instincts, and there's something in that. But there must be some people who fall through the cracks and who would care for them?