Internal Problems of Russia

[Stoyan]

He does mention how populations and fertility contract when people move to cities.

In Russia, Germany, and China, practically everywhere the cities had been existing only because there was a steady supply of new population moving into the cities from the country. I once read an article analyzing the demographics of modern cities. This article claimed that the overwhelming majority of the modern urban population in all the world's cities, their grandparents, or grand grand parents came from the village. In other words, almost all of the modern urban dwellers can trace their ancestry to rural dewllers who immigrated into the cities not more than three or four generations ago. There are almost no urban dwellers who can trace their ancestry to other urban dwellers for more than four generations. In other words, the urban dwellers of for example the early 19th century have no genetic continuity with modern urban dwellers.

The conclusion of this article is that the urban populations have been slowly dying out over the generations, and that the cities have been replenished only by new rural immigrants in each generation. This means that if there wouldn't have been any rural immigrants at all, then the cities would have slowly died out and become abandoned.

The cities are artificial constructs, existing only at the expense of the rural areas, relying on them both for food imports, as well as replenishing the population.

 

[thetruewhitenorth]

The most important prerequisite to the resurrection of Russia is the resurrection of it's rural communities. If we would restore the rural communities of Russia, then they would promote the Orthodox faith and the traditional Russian culture, "extended" families with many children, and they would give Russia food independence, and even turn Russia into a major exporter of food stuffs, as it was during the Tsarist rule.

I think that both the demographic decline of Russia, and it's necessity of importing food from Turkey, China, and Eastern European countries stems from the dysfunctional condition of it's rural communities and inability to establish good quality of life for the villagers.

The villager should own his land, and own the fruits of his labor. The Russian government should focus all their money, all their resources for supporting the villagers, for example free grants for construction of houses, wells, solar panels to individual families and providing farm machinery such as tractors and combines to the village as a whole. Siberia and even European part of Russia has a lot of free land, why not divide it among the peasants?

The government building Orthodox churches is a good thing, but it is not enough. During the 19th century villagers used to build churches by their own hands. Only village churches can bring Russia back to Orthodoxy, by the will of the free Russian farmers, not serfs, not collective farm workers. The Orthodox revival in Russia will succeed if it is a grass roots movement, supported by the government. The Russian villagers will do this, we just need to provide them the opportunities to thrive instead of being constantly in survival mode.

Many Russian thinkers were talking about the importance of rural communities, from Stolypin to Solzhenitsin.

They all stressed that for Russia to flourish, small communities should have more autonomy, should be self governed without unnecessary regulations imposed from far away such as country's or region's capitals.

That is how I believe America achieved its peak greatness - local governments with a lot of power. Decentralization.

I myself grew up in a small village. Thank God we left for a bigger city. Those who stayed, a lot of them, drunk themselves to death, got hooked on drugs or offed themselves.

 

[Stoyan]

The de-ruralization of Russia as well as other Eastern European countries, when villages become abandoned and the population becomes crowded into several dozens of cities, and having to import food stuffs from abroad is a ticking demographic time bomb. It doesn't take a particularly smart man to conclude that any country (state) cannot exist without healthy rural communities, who are not only self sufficient, both in food stuffs as well as population, but can also export their surplus food stuffs and population to the cities as well.

If you have a country where the de-ruralization process has gone so far that the country has to import food stuffs, despite having black soil one meter deep, and that the villages are so depopulated that they have turned into ghost towns, and the people on the top unable or unwilling to see this, then what do you expect?

Don't get me wrong, and don't say that Russia is a bad country. Look at Ukraine, the Baltics, I don't know about the Balkans but I suspect that it is something similar there as well. Only Belarus has a healthy rural community, a country which being many many times smaller than Russia, practically feeds it.

 

[Stoyan]

I agree, as all beauty comes from God, rejecting him will inevitably find its expression in architecture too.
Most Russian cities look quite unsightly, and the most beautiful parts are usually those preserved from the Imperial times.

By the way, I have posted about traditional 19th century Russian architecture in another thread. Great minds think alike.

The Traditional Architecture Thread

This is a counter to the modern architecture thread. Please post here pictures or links to pictures of traditional architecture of all kinds: Greko-Roman, Gothic, Byzantine, Ancient Russian, Victorian, Art Nouveau, and traditional Japanese, Chinese, Southeast Asian architecture, etc. Both...

www.rooshvforum.com

 

[Johnnyvee]

I just logged in this forum after years of not being here and it's hard to believe how most of the people here are brainwashed and delusional. I am actually from post Soviet country and know older people including my father who served in red army and know what kind of relations and nonsense happens there. It's just hard to believe how most of you are living in some fantasy that Putin is righteous man which is total nonsense, no one is discussing how many of journalists or critics were either killed or in prison, how his daughters including illigitimate live in corrupt west in multi million villas, how many illigitimate kids he has outside marriage who got government jobs, how many of his oligarchs bath in luxury and vacationing in western spots while corruption in Russia is everywhere, people can't even protest risking getting 15 years prison sentence.I am not saying there is liberty in the west or Hollywood is not satanic but this is just nonsense how you project this idealisation of Putin and his regime. Most of you here have no knowledge of experience interacting with real Russia or it's people and live in your dilusional fantasy instead of reality

Corruption is a part of human nature, it can never be abolished! You might as well define it as; cooperation within a closed sphere. There are only race differences in it's degree and form, but it has and always will be a feature of any society.

I think basically everyone here are well aware of these things that you mention. But the point is that all this is also true regarding western leaders. (Obama is just finishing up his latest mansion in Hawaii if I'm not mistaken. The Bush family...well, you get the point.) The reason that Putin is a better leader is that, in addition to his dominance and all that comes with it, he also has an eye for his own people and their culture/tradition etc. (Slavic Russian's) Simply due to his genetic bond to them. This is not true at all with the vast majority of current western leaders, most of whom are corrupted by a segment of another group hailing from the Levant. And they really don't give a damn about anyone but their own kin.

 

[Stoyan]

The death of the Russian village

Traditionally Russia’s agricultural land was subdivided into a patchwork of villages and fields, interspersed by forest and marsh. Now the villages are deserted and crumbling: the state closes them down, often on a whim, and young people leave to find work elsewhere. Matilda Moreton tells the...

www.opendemocracy.net

The lost churches of Russia: Haunting images of abandoned wooden buildings crumbling to dust in remote forests

One photographer has spent nine years photographing the few remaining churches built in the tenth century that now lay abandoned in north-west Russia.

www.dailymail.co.uk

These ancient Russian village churches have been abandoned because the people who used to maintain these churches have vanished. The only way that these churches will be restored is if we bring the villages back to life again. Bring the people back to the land again. But the government needs to help them at the first stage, to rebuild and organize the rural communities until they can ride the bicycle without the training wheels again.

 

[Bitter End]

Don't get me wrong, and don't say that Russia is a bad country. Look at Ukraine, the Baltics, I don't know about the Balkans but I suspect that it is something similar there as well. Only Belarus has a healthy rural community, a country which being many many times smaller than Russia, practically feeds it.

First of all, great idea of a thread.

The Balkans still have very fertile climate and fantastic geography, my country is a net exporter of wheat and other grains globally. However, the villages are still dying out.

Young people are moving to the main big cities because the universities and the opportunities are there. As it has been previously discussed, we have the same rate (if not higher) of female graduates as the West does. You don't need feminism for that to happen, sometimes it is just bare necessity. As a result you have the smartest people having less children and well-off women ending up single (without necessarily doing something too wrong, remember the marketplace in EE is different).

Ironically, it was the Corona hype that brought a lot of people back to the countryside. All the remote work had this one benefit. Instead of being atomized in a tiny communist flat with terrible air quality, you could escape to the villages or the small cities and buy a cheap house with a garden. Now that things are slowly coming to some sort of normal, I guess the long term future of the Balkans is lower population numbers. It does not necessarily mean an idiocracy type of scenario, I expect it to be more like the death of the middle class between the wealthy businessmen and the idiots and ethnic minorities such as the gypsies.

I believe the Balkans can be seen as a more mellow case study of Russian life. The federation's generational lack of male offspring is well documented on this forum. Sadly it seems that post-Soviet syndrome is just as destructive for the birth rates of a nation as is the abundant mundane life in Western Europe. If not even more so!

 

[Stoyan]

Many Russian thinkers were talking about the importance of rural communities, from Stolypin to Solzhenitsin.
They all stressed that for Russia to flourish, small communities should have more autonomy, should be self governed without unnecessary regulations imposed from far away such as country's or region's capitals.

Stolypin said, give me 20 years, and you will not recognize Russia. Meaning that he wanted to turn Russia into an agricultural superpower. His plan, to resettle landless peasants from the crowded western parts of the Russian Empire, such as Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland into Siberia, Kazakhstan, and the Far East. Peasants would be given free lands, free transportation by train, and free grants for farm equipment, all at the government's expense, at a time where Russia had zero petrochemical industry. Hundreds of thousands of families were resettled into these new territories. Unfortunately, Stolypin was assasinated in 1911 in the theater in Kiev, under mysterious circumstances. After that the beurocracy started robbing the resettled peasants, denying them their grands for self-enrichment instead. This provoked a massive rage of peasants against the Tsarist regime, because they sold everything that they had in their previous home, and recieved nothing which was promised, they had been cheated. These same peasants supported the communists during the Russian revolution, who promised to give them land. But actually these peasants were designated as "fists" and the communists gave them to the land.

When you start to realize that the rural communities were the soul of Russia, and that Stolypin wanted to give the landless peasants their own land to turn them into independent farmers, boosting the soul of Russia so to speak, but he was assasinated, we can conclude that the death of Stolypin was the beginning of the end of Russia. The dispossession of the Russian peasants by the beurocracy, WW1, the communist coup, and the execution of the Royal Family were side effects.

 

[Stoyan]

The other observable problem is the presence of palm oil in many products comonly sold in Russia such as cheese, yogurt, breads, cookies, etc. This product is apparently a cancerogen, and decreases fertility.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B5+%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%BE+%D0%B2+%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8+

 

[Stoyan]

I would be interested in hearing the reaction to this podcast of forum members informed about Russia. Here Peter Zeihan claims Russia is in a demographic collapse (discussion starts at about 9 minutes in):

Here are two articles that I found.

Russians Need Large Families & Many Children to Save Russia's Future

Our country is multinational; it is a large family. The land is our mother, and we — the people living in Russia — are brothers and sisters. But if we do not increase our average birthrates, then we will die out. If we could stop the current process — and to do this, there would need to be an...

russian-faith.com

The Lie That Russia's Population Is Falling - It's Rising

Editor's Note: In support of traditional family values, both the Russian Church and the Russian President often encourage people to marry, settle down, and raise lots of children. This consistent message is bringing about good results in Russia's demographics. Russia's fertility rate is growing...

russian-faith.com

So is the Russian population actually falling? Can someone provide an in depth view on this issue?

 

[Viktor Zeegelaar]

Here are two articles that I found.

Russians Need Large Families & Many Children to Save Russia's Future

Our country is multinational; it is a large family. The land is our mother, and we — the people living in Russia — are brothers and sisters. But if we do not increase our average birthrates, then we will die out. If we could stop the current process — and to do this, there would need to be an...

russian-faith.com

The Lie That Russia's Population Is Falling - It's Rising

Editor's Note: In support of traditional family values, both the Russian Church and the Russian President often encourage people to marry, settle down, and raise lots of children. This consistent message is bringing about good results in Russia's demographics. Russia's fertility rate is growing...

russian-faith.com

So is the Russian population actually falling? Can someone provide an in depth view on this issue?

And stop the absurd amount of abortions. Russia is by far the NO1 country by abortions.

 

[911]

I've listened to a recent lecture on Russian demographics, the outlook is quite good, much better than that of any other European country. There has been a big hit from the catastrophic 1990s, and what we have today is the echo from that period with a smaller number of young cohorts being born then, but there is a good recovery in the near future.


As you can see, the base is widening. Compare with typical western European countries (Germany):


GERMANY


ITALY

German, Italian pyramid base is tapering, Russian base is widening. The fertility rate in Russia today is 1.8, much higher than the rest of Europe, or in the US today (esp. for white women).

 

[Stoyan]

I've listened to a recent lecture on Russian demographics, the outlook is quite good, much better than that of any other European country. There has been a big hit from the catastrophic 1990s, and what we have today is the echo from that period with a smaller number of young cohorts being born then, but there is a good recovery in the near future.

German, Italian pyramid base is tapering, Russian base is widening. The fertility rate in Russia today is 1.8, much higher than the rest of Europe, or in the US today (esp. for white women).

Can you post me the link to that lecture? And also, where did you get those pictures from?

And 1.8 is still a very low fertility rate. The fertility rate has to be around at least 2 in order to keep the population from getting fewer. In my opinion fertility of around 4 is more ideal. And I just cannot believe that the fertility rate in the rest of Europe is much lower than 1.8 , apparently Western Europe is depicted as being more well off economically speaking than the former Soviet block countries.

 

[Samseau]

But how do you know what White Russian women's birthrates are? It's been known for a long time that Whites in Russia have been following the path of all Whites worldwide. Meanwhile the Muslims and Asians of Russia reproduce just fine.

 

[TooFineAPoint]

Canadian of Ukrainian ancestry here. And my ex-wife was Russian, and I spent a reasonable amount of time in Eastern Europe (not in Russia, but entirely hanging out with Russians), at which point I understood (nearly) basic Russian.

It's a simple choice to me, but marred by place and time. I'll explain:

Whoever inherited the former Soviet Union was inheriting a rotted, collapsing husk. And as anyone who has travelled to a communist or post communist country knows, it looks bleak and dilapidated (especially the more east you go). Sure there are some nice buildings in the EE Old Town sections, but for the most part it was incredibly depressing.

On the flip side, whoever inherited my country (Canada) in the late 80s / early 90s had it made. Tons of resources. Clean, growing, easy life. High trust. Our towns were sort of pathetic looking (they certainly weren't beautiful), and the urban sprawl was fairly soulless and "same". But we also had Old Town heritage buildings that were nice.

Now, about the leaders: both leaders jail opponents, silence speech they do not like, freeze assets, demonize, lie, and line their own pockets.

The difference is that when I criticize Trudeau, nothing much happens (for good or bad; it accomplished nothing). If I was in Russia and publicly criticized Putin, it wouldn't go well. But what would I criticize a leader for? How about PUSHING anti-white narratives, abortion, gay pride, trannies, endless victimhood, and so on. Which Putin doesn't really (at least publicly) do.

So my conclusion is that I would rather live in Canada with Putin as a leader, than live in Canada or Russia with Trudeau as a leader. Would I rather live in Russia with Putin than Canada with Trudeau? The honest answer is that my life is much easier here and I can (for now) mostly ignore Trudeau. But that is because we started so far ahead, we have a lot to burn off before it becomes apparent just how bad it is.

* I am using the leaders as stand-ins for the ruling parties and figures, obviously one person is not responsible for an entire country

 

[gat]

Putin has had the opportunity to ban abortion and fix Russia’s demographic crisis but he doesn’t want to

No he hasn't but he does give awards to large families.

 

[911]

Can you post me the link to that lecture? And also, where did you get those pictures from?

And 1.8 is still a very low fertility rate. The fertility rate has to be around at least 2 in order to keep the population from getting fewer. In my opinion fertility of around 4 is more ideal. And I just cannot believe that the fertility rate in the rest of Europe is much lower than 1.8 , apparently Western Europe is depicted as being more well off economically speaking than the former Soviet block countries.

Xavier Moreau is a Moscow-based French analyst, covered the topic:

Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100

Russian Federation - 2020

www.populationpyramid.net

 

[Bismark_Geist1571]

No he hasn't but he does give awards to large families.

That's practically useless as Scandinavians countries, France and even Hungary have shown already in practice (none of those countries has been able to raise birthrates to 2 children per women in their original populations). This is because the problem is cultural and even religious (feminism, secularism, atheism, cultural rot, etc.) not economic. Hence, those incentives have favored, in places like France or the Netherlands, the demographic growth of non-native populations boosting their birthrates as long as they don't partake the cultural rot the pervades the current western civilization (first and second generation muslim arabs, first generation turks, etc., first gen muslim Africans).

The same is happening in almost all the former Christendom, even in countries from Hispanic America. The most formerly Christian populations (whites, mestizos, and mullatoes) have undergone drastic reductions in birthrates (from 4 or 5 fifty years ago to barely 2 per women), while mostly heathen populations (most pureblooded Indians and Blacks) have seen their births soar or at least keep themselves above what's necessary to maintain their populations.

 

[Bismark_Geist1571]

The government building Orthodox churches is a good thing, but it is not enough. During the 19th century villagers used to build churches by their own hands. Only village churches can bring Russia back to Orthodoxy, by the will of the free Russian farmers, not serfs, not collective farm workers. The Orthodox revival in Russia will succeed if it is a grass roots movement, supported by the government. The Russian villagers will do this, we just need to provide them the opportunities to thrive instead of being constantly in survival mode.

What you point out is more important than many here (and elsewhere) think. Not only a religious revival is necessary but a cognitive revival as well.

I have been reading a book called "Intelligenz und ihre Feinde: Aufstieg und Niedergang der Industriegesellschaft" (Intelligence and its enemies: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial society) from Volkmar Weiss. The book follows the tradition of the Bell Curve and Sarrazin' s "Deutschland schafft sich ab" (Germany abolishes itself) trying to link and extrapolate IQ trends and its impact on society at large, as well as trying to determine the nature of this trait (heredity vs nurture) according to the state of the art research on this almost forbidden topic.

One of the most poignant topics touched in Weiss's book is what can be described as an effect of "cognitive stratification" a process where classes are not only built up on money and name but by cognitive performance. While in times past, a highly intelligent person born in a peasant family might live his whole life in his village, would apply his skills into the agrarian world, marry into village and pass his genes (as well as his expertise) into the future generations that lived in that village, nowadays, someone with an IQ >110 would be compelled if not forced to pursue a white collar job. Thus, he or she would have to emigrate into cities, pursue a career, get a Bachelor's degree and paradoxically have his/her fertility potential diminished if not destroyed by the new conditions (40% of all career women in Germany ended up childless by their 40s according to statistics cited in the book). Under the current conditions, cities have thus become IQ shredders, places where lineages go to die or be severely reduced. And according to the observations posted in the book (from previous research), the collective IQ of villages has dropped by several points, at least in Germany. Thus, the villages have not only been drained of people but its most capable people, leaving mostly people on the left side of the Bell Curve. This seems to be confirmed by the poor results in IQ tests performed in rural schools as well as the higher than average rate of people with cognitive problems.

If a country like Russia (or any other) is to survive, a return of many people, to the villages and the rural country is in order and is necessary. INcentives need to be created, otherwise coercion will not be enough.

 

[Stoyan]

This is because the problem is cultural and even religious (feminism, secularism, atheism, cultural rot, etc.) not economic.

Hence, those incentives have favored, in places like France or the Netherlands, the demographic growth of non-native populations boosting their birthrates as long as they don't partake the cultural rot the pervades the current western civilization (first and second generation muslim arabs, first generation turks, etc., first gen muslim Africans).

What you point out is more important than many here (and elsewhere) think. Not only a religious revival is necessary but a cognitive revival as well.

Indeed, a cultural, religious, spiritual, and cognitive revival. This is a theory that I have had floating around in my head for some time. That the western atheistic civilizational model is doomed to collapse sooner or later, whether by declining birth rates, ecological deterioration, transhumanism, or something else ... and it will drag down those people who are participating in the same frequency as itself. People succumb to the false ideology of westernism, or wokeism, or corporate consumerism, whatever you want to call it ... and eventually get as you say, "fertility potential diminished or destroyed".

The widespread of pesticides and toxic chemicals, family dysfunction, deforestation, and societal degradation ... are all but symptoms of an underlying disease in society which is the abandonment of traditional civilization, and acceptance of a new non-traditional modern western civilization, with all the worldview, behaviors, and all the rest of the baggage.

The underlying problem is basically atheism, the root of which is a rejection of nature. And any society which does not live in harmony with the laws of nature is doomed to collapse sooner or later. As Lao Tzu said, "one must go with the flow". My interpretations is that man shall not try to become in place of God. Man shall not attempt to modify the environment to his desire, GMO, change the sex that kids have when they are born. It is all a rejection of nature, and a rejection of God, and a rejection of objective reality. Western civilization knows about the laws of physics, but there are also philosophical, metaphysical laws which are omnipresent.

For all it's wealth and power, even China is headed for a demographic fall in perspective. While the reason maybe simply because traditional Chinese culture places more value on boys (as bread bringers) than girls, resulting in a sex disbalance, not a small part plays the transition of China into a "Western civilization", even if it is against "The Collective West" politically, the megacities, architecture, pollution, etc, bears witness to a cultural change within the Chinese civilization for worse, in my opinion.

See my critique of western civilization here:

Untangling the lies of modernity

Killing saves lives. That's the Modus Operendi the US has operated under abroad for at least 70 years. Why did we kill a million Iraqis? To keep us safe. Why did we wage wars and kill countless others in dozens of countries all over the globe? The bizarre notion is that by murdering...

www.rooshvforum.com

Sorry for all the maybe somewhat incoherent words.