recently came around this
first publishing date 2006 (self fulfilling prophecy)
it's literally the kremnlin playbook
> isolation form europe
> everything own, made by chinks
> national hubris skyrocketing
It's a wonder the book is not outlawed in RF.
p.s. i read the original, it's mind blowing. don't know about english translation though

>>24589159 (OP)
Ukraine lost
West lost
/k/ lost
Kikes lost

>>24589170
They really should have accepted the Turkey deal

>>24589159 (OP)
Russia has to be a permanent shithole while simulteanously having hubs of art and culture so that we may continue to get great literature out of it.

>>24589170
According to the book, Ivan has the buck broken by Batya at the banya, meanwwhile being sold to chinese with potrahami.
Also: the west only lost in Ivan's state issuded opium pipe dream.
Pls Anons suggest similar books.

>>24589159 (OP)
You're Russian? Whats your problem with Putin man ?

>>24589159 (OP)
>It's a wonder the book is not outlawed in RF.
It would've been in the USSR because they cared about literature then, but from what I've read, the Kremlin nowadays cares about the boomer tube and audio-visual methods because that's the most effective way to zombify most of the population, and doesn't care about the written word because the people who will read that stuff is relatively small and aren't going to do anything anyways. They're actually taking after us, Americans :)
https://youtu.be/ZD2mzRHDCog

>>24589233
no, just a lithuanian jew,
the fate would have it that i was schooled in a paйoн where i had to run for life from шпaнa that threw rubbish and кoнчики on me as they chased me with their гнилoй lada Кoпeйкa.
The teachers,цapcтвo им нeбecнoe, were no better, they only screamed to me in russian and always made sure i never learned anything.
The fortuna would have it that our local police department began with drug trafficking (intervenuous amphetamines mostly) so that the yesterdays hooligans mostly found themselves in a gutter with arm sticking from their needle.
I also left the place for good. Nevertheless i harbor warm feelings for вeликий pyccкий нapoд.

>>24589311
whats being jewish like? what do you think of all the conspiracy theories? does your family have outsized influence on anything

>>24589311
>lithuanian jew
Hi, Andrei

>>24589319
as the only child of country doctor and second grade musician-alcoholic i have not seen "influence" or whatever. I guess i'm from the "stupid jews". I earn my keep doing odd jobs at IT. I'm rather parsimonious.
Jewish women are kinky perverts though.
>all the conspiracy theories
they're mostly true, tbqh

>>24589337
>Jewish women are kinky perverts though.
This is true.

>>24589159 (OP)
reading "Гoлyбoe caлo" rn. Sorokin is hilarious. Is he trying to larp a russian Pynchon? The subtle sarcasm against slavic urban legends and conspiracy theories is ... just what's needed.

>>24589159 (OP)
This is the worst book I ever read.

>>24589337
>Jewish women are kinky perverts though.
tell me more

>>24589693
4 rubles have been deposited in "sit on the bottle torn ochko" OF account.

>>24589700
If you unironically enjoy reading about gay sex and rape on every page, then God help you.

>>24589706
That's just Russian culture

>>24589706
Will it help me understand the complexity of power expressed via gay rape or is it just gay rape for gay rape?

>>24589956
There's no gay sex in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy

>>24589961
>There's no gay sex in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
Gay rape* might not be explicitly portrayed in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but there's a strong argument on it being a strong (if not the main) theme surrounding their works. The Slovenian psychoanalytic school of literature has explored these themes for a few decades now.

>>24589960
As far as I understand it's done to antagonize popular sensibilities in Russia along with portraying the elite in an irreverent manner. So you may not necessarily get very much out it.

what's the endgame for Vladimir Sorokin?

>>24589956
Reading translations of Russian warbloggers has informed me they have many slang references to anal sex in their language, and meta-references about asses fucking themselves or something like that. It's hard to translate. Awhile ago, I saw Alexander Nevzorov describe (misplaced) Russian enthusiasm for Trump as like a man implanting himself on a dick and then spinning around in a circle. Nevzorov was against the war and left the country but was a strange red-brown imperial revanchist who made gonzo war documentaries in the 90s and a film based on the fighting in Chechnya called "Purgatory" that depicts Chechen female fighters blowing the balls off a wounded soldier with a sniper rifle (kind of like Full Metal Jacket but worse), castrating the dead and wounded after battle, and Chechen jihadis cutting off the head of a Russian prisoner, strapping the head to an RPG warhead, and then firing it.

Was also playing a Russian community mod for the old game Operation Flashpoint. It kind of survived there longer than it did elsewhere, and they did an elaborate amount of work to accurately depict the Soviet Army in the 1980s. There are many custom missions, but they're all in Russian. I randomly selected one and the mission put me in the character of a downed American helicopter pilot who had already been captured, and I was driven around to several locations and forced to stay in a tent at a base until finally being led out into a field and executed. That was the mission.

>>24589159 (OP)
Russia isn't isolated, in fact Greece just affirmed it's still buying Russian oil and NAFO can go commit suicide. Russia has been winning since they went to attrition. The war has supercharged domestic manufacturing and innovation.

>>24590574
>Greece
Kek

>>24589337
Thoughts on the state of Israel? Just interested in how a random jew feels about it, pro or anti doesnt matter. Interestingly enough you don't get to talk to many Jews in a non-loaded way or maybe it's cause I dont live in new york

So wait, russian is just a gay anal language?

>>24589195
As if there were any other scenario for Russia

>>24589691
>Гoлyбoe caлo
i'm kind of trying to stretch the point that Sorokin's prose is better than say Cixin Liu's.
His 'three body problem' was astroturfed beyond reason, the only merit to it being a catchy plot line.

>>24589159 (OP)
>дeнь oпpичникa
I don't disagree with you that it's good, but also I wouldn't call it a prophecy.
If you are driving on a highway and the signs say "Cityname, 100km", "Cityname, 90km", "Cityname, 80km", do you deserve to be called a prophet if you predict that you will arrive in Cityname?
> It's a wonder the book is not outlawed in RF.
Afaik, it's on track to being that. Eksmo (biggest Russian publisher) already does not sell his books. He's probably not cracked down on that badly because from a propaganda standpoint he is not dangerous: the high-brow literature enjoyers who can read Sorokin and not be disgusted, and agree with him, are already out of Russia. The average citizen won't read it and understand what Sorokin is criticising, he'll be filtered by the disgusting/obscure parts.
>>24590770
It has a lot of swearwords that deal with anal sex, but they're usually not understood to mean anything gay in most contexts. That is probably lost in translation. Similarly to how when liberals say "fuck Trump" they do not express desire to have sex with Trump, consciously or subconsciously.
>t. belarusian, also jewish, in Europe

>>24590212
>Alexander Nevzorov
the guy's obsessed with rape metaphors, and generally describing sadistic tortures and killings for dramatic effect. Very adolescent edginess.
Russia itself is a Freudian cesspool filled with incest, repressed homos, compensatory hyper-masculinity etc. Pretty cringe.

> first publishing date 2006
> It's a wonder the book is not outlawed in RF.
It's because that wave of Russian postmodernism has hit a wall around then, and is largely forgotten by everyone in Russia. Back then it was used as a battering ram against the Soviet ideological system where what is allowed and what is not (consequently, what is good/bad) were clear cut, and one of the walls of that system was the sanctity of the symbols, sorta. Pioneers pioneer the future, so they're clean and good and nice, the political leaders do not have their personal/private moments and work for the good of the state, Russian writers are infallible etc. What Sorokin, Pelevin et al. brought to the newborn post-Soviet society was transgression, allowing to twist and mutilate the state-mandated history and time, making people crack these pillars against their knees. Russia's Gen X loved these books. There are references to Sorokin's more mellow works in some of the study books in my university. Sorokin is a "45 year old married woman" type writer nowadays.
What defused this wave is also time. When Russia's society became truly "post-Soviet" and people who don't remember the USSR at all started graduating from schools, they found themselves to be a part of the world in its entirety, kinda. There is a *world* of literature, and you either know English already to just get e-books from the Internet or have a slick stack of AST Exclusive Classics or Ad Marginem-published translations of modern philosophy or world literature in general. Pitted against the world, the "postmodernists" were found lacking. Their transgressions are not up to standard, their critiques do not offer any actual solutions and it all has a heavy case of The Master and Margarita syndrome where the mirror world through which you make an allusion is more interesting than the allusion itself. The modern Russian likes weird history, likes comedy, likes critiquing the State once in a while, but it can do all these without the need to sprinkle in gay orgies, so they don't read Sorokin. I did, and the only interesting thing in it was considering how Russians use alternate history as a storytelling device. No one uses that book as a "wow guys we're arriving in this future!!!" because there isn't really anything of value to talk about besides "if the State starts cracking down on crime a bit harder, we're gonna start gay raping each other in 30 years!!!", which was a hilarious point to make in fucking 2006 when you still have 70 IQ beard havers suicide bombing metro stations in the capital.
This energy was either redirected to describing next ideologically bizarre thing (the entirety of the West, which is Pelevin's shtick now) or going through people's own experiences with the State. Those who continued doing so now feel hopelessly outdated compared to the classics, the modern ones or even USSR-era writings by both anti- and pro- USSR writers, which is sort of a feat in itself.

>>24590770
It's due to the pervasive gopno speak and ideology that dominates the contemporary Russian world - imagine if the inmates at Alcatraz and their behaviour and their mental illness and their language shaped a society of hundreds of million of people. That's the Russian reality. Which is a result of the past.
The Revolution is the starting point of the Russian disaster. Intelligent people (think Nabokov) emigrated from Russia at the moment of the Bolshevik revolution. The intelligent people who stayed were killed by the new regime, composed of common peasants and factory workers who had immense resentment for the cultured and the rich. So you now have a totalitarian state run by people who had no capacity for any work outside menial jobs with a psychopath churka at the top. The language suffered.
Let's speed up to the nineties. Due to internal reasons the USSR fractured. In the ensuing chaos, for some reason I can't fucking understand and nobody I asked also can't, the death row inmates - pedophiles, rapists, thieves, terrorist, sex maniacs, serial killers - managed to keep the whole Eastern Bloc in control for about 10 years and influence the whole of society, from the bottom to the very top, with inmate and criminal ethics. The language suffered, too. The crime jargon was present in USSR, but it was very culture bound, like nigger speak. After the fall of the USSR, it became the de fact new language. Usually spoken in very aggressive intonations that makes the language very harsh on ears.
Contemporary Russians, and their language and culture, are the end result of an eugenics experiment aimed at eliminating the smartest and advancing the most mediocre and psychopathic. Hence, Russians are so fucked they don't even understand the concept of tenderness and love - it's all commercial transactions in which a female specimen searches for the male specimen with most power, that is, one who has money and can beat up others - and friendship, where prosocial behaviour is considered gay and non stop ribbing, banting, and violent jokes, all fueled up by alcohol, the norm. Russia is what happens when the reality of the most violent inmates on death row becomes the new normal. Believe me, even American niggers are more cultured and angelic than the gopnik Russians.
>t. immigrant who, for family reason, had to return to Estonia and spend 7 years among these gopnik born sub bestial demonic sadistic cruel anticosmic monsters in a Russian school who should've been raped, killed, and then raped again, both in the real world and the afterlife
>>24591669
If you keep in mind that Russian culture is inmate culture - that of pedophiles, rapists, dope slingers, sex maniacs, serial killers, and other assorted Cluster B disorders - it all makes sense. What in every other country in the world is considered unnatural and abnormal became the de fact standard in Russian society.
Russia proves it's better to kill criminals than let them rot in prison.

>>24591695
Continuing on the state of censorship in Russia, there aren't really a lot of rules concerning what gets published and what doesn't. There are people who try to censor more things (like trying to ask whether the Russian Academy of Sciences should have its funding cut because one of the people who may become a member of it translated Zizek and some other critics of the State), but they don't actually achieve anything.
Russia's government is incredibly reactionary in a literal sense: it only bites if you bark, so the target selection may appear arbitrary. I hate that a lot about it. There are scandals about books only if someone decides that there should be one. Some people had roared a bit about a book in which a gay teen relationship is shown, but no one can forbid you from going to that bookstore near you and grabbing a tome of Berserk or Blood Meridian or whatever Chinese "totally not BL!!" YA slop is currently popular. I've bought a Bhagavad Gita translation made by a singer who called the people who started the war complete madmen and was also declared a foreign agent by the government from a large publisher in a large bookstore network without a hitch. Generally, there are several rules:
> don't be a loud loud LOUD motherfucker about supporting people who are currently at war with you, DO NOT brag about sending money to their armed forces
> don't do gay shit, especially between underaged people
> don't be loud about saying you want to genocide ethnic groups or justifying child murder because you'll become an easy target for your compatriots who will cancel you for savagery
I was talking to a friend who's into the Middle Ages some weeks ago and she was reading this Bulgakov-bait book about this incurable nerve disease epidemic which only targets children and causes them to die in horrific pain, intertwined with a plot about an ancient Christian commune which was persecuted for their unyielding belief. The main catalyst of the plot was that the government and Putin expies have decided to cut funding for treating the dying children, which leads to problems in building hospices for them and all that, and another side plotline was that the Russian doctors HATE treating foreigners, so there's that Israeli guy who's wounded and his Russian GF tells him to NEVER speak a foreign language or they'll rip their asses. I was honestly surprised they still do shit like this, so we talk a bit more, some weeks pass, I go to my university's library to print some things and would you fucking believe it it's on the front shelf in the NEW RELEASES section.
Russia is a free society, sorta. You can have art exhibitions which are just "funny skinhead gets in funny situations", tattoo ME NE FREGO on your forearms, paint your nails black as a guy, beat up gopniks in a mall with your weeb classmates shouting FUCK YEAH ANIME, walk around in a Gothic Lolita cosplay, whatever. Just don't burn down conscription offices while you're at it.

>>24591704
>In the ensuing chaos, for some reason I can't fucking understand and nobody I asked also can't
they would be the obvious choice to place your bets on when a society and its institutions, and the state's authority and people's instinctive respect for law and order disintegrates (when it dawns on them that anything goes now). The criminals are most adept at violence and practicing the law of the jungle, and they're connected among each other and have something like a functional network that runs on mobster honor codes and so on, so they can organize and establish a sort of order.
Usually whenever civilian governments collapse crime gangs take over at least for a while. The same probably looms on the horizon for future Russia, especially when the Ukraine veterans go home and find a demolished economy, why not reconnect with the old comrades and go take whatever you feel you're owed?

>>24591602
euphemisms, obscurity , this is how you get the story through
>>24591695
>mirror world through which you make an allusion is more interesting than the allusion itself
many such cases although it makes life more interesting
>>24591704
>among these gopnik born sub bestial demonic sadistic cruel anticosmic monsters in a Russian school who should've been raped, killed, and then raped again
you should check out Beнeди́кт Epoфéeв (author of moskva-petushki), his university memoirs are expressive albeit overwhelming (i couldn't finish them).
>>24591734
>beat up gopniks in a mall with your weeb classmates shouting FUCK YEAH ANIME
lol.lmao.close your eyes when you dream golubchik.

>>24589159 (OP)
>>24591602
>>24591704
>Lithuanian
>Belarusian
>Estonian
Am i the only ethnically russian russian speaker on this board?

>>24591695
If you Ruskis can be this clear sighted about your literature you guys will end up alright. I have no more diagnosis about the state of modern American literature other than a few old fucks recycling the pomo shit played out by the 70s and identity politics for the rest as far as the eye can see for the foreseeable future. I will say that when Putin does go or there is some sort of paradigm shift in your state politics as surely there must be one day then literature should start getting interesting again

>>24593280
>Am i the only ethnically russian russian speaker on this board?
They're all busy wink wink
>быть cpycким

>it's a thread about contemporary Russian /lit/ and the contemporary state of Eastern Europe

Well, fuck, this is kind of a nice treat.

What are the thread's thoughts on Vodolazkin? Laurus is one of my favorite books of all time. I think it's the best book written so far in the 21st Century. I know he has another book that's supposed to be pretty good but I haven't read it yet.

>>24590766
I don't like it, israeli jews are weirdos and the whole thing is a dumb larpfest

Man, from an American perspective, Russian politics are very difficult to wrap my head around. You see so many Russians with utterly reactionary views like monarchism and Catholic nationalism who also long for the "good old days" of communism and far-left politics and who talk about Stalin like he was a saint. It'd like if "MAGA Communism" was actually a real thing here and not just a grift.

>>24593797
>Russians
>Catholic
least retarded mutt

>>24593797
Russians want a red tsar, always have always will. What the bolsheviks achieved was actually doing the things the previous regimes wanted to do but couldn't, and with Stalin you got rid of most of the uncomfortable parts of the Bolsheviks, that's their ideal form of governance. Putin at his absolute best is a lesser version of Stalin, that's why he's still popular.

>>24593900
Do the Russians care much about the actual titles and trappings? Would they prefer if Putin actually declared himself tsar, and had Patriarch Kirill crown him? Or do they not care as much about all that?

>>24593931
Putin is a commoner. There is basically no nobility left in Russia thanks to commies. Little pockets of Russian nobility exist in France and Spain. He is also obsessed with formalities and will continue the Augustus route of being king in all but name.

>>24593894
Orthodox Christians refer to themselves as Catholics afaik

>>24593797
there is no "politics" or "views", just weak authoritarian rulers and strong ones. When they're weak and try to be nice, they're usually toppled. When they're strong and brutal, they're obeyed and even admired. Then some combinations of words are made up by professional word-combiners to produce something that looks like "ideology", which can easily change overnight once the power balnce changes (see ardent Marxists turning free-market neolibs overnight in the 90s).
People seem to not get that there's no civil society as understood in the West, with the abstract conceptions of laws, rights, and leverage the citizen has against the government. There's only archaic top-down rule, and personal connections valued by closeness to the autocrat, as in baroque courts. Tacked on is a postmodern, post-truth "discourse" that will justify anything ordered from above.

>>24591695
>>24591734
This desu. I wrote a similar thing in the last Srkn-thread:

Performing out their authoritarianism anxiety is really the only meme that the Russian 80s underground scene ever had.

They remember how avantgarde it made them in the USSR:
>"Oh my Lenin did you hear about Petya? Apparatchik told him to join the komsomol and he vomited all over apparatchik's suit!"
>"Sweet Marx everyone talks about Vitya he got a draft letter delivered to his work and when he heard about it he tore off his clothes in the conference hall, defecated on the cathedra and smeared himself in it!"
>"Stalin save us Borya is the talk of the block - when a party official demanded that all the employees at Borya's sewing needle factory turn in reports on ideological purity of their work, Borya turned in his severed penis with 200 needles sticking out of it!"
It used to make them unique, brilliant, authentic. Now they are confused by public receiving them with a shrug instead of roaring resonance. They can't figure out what is it that they are doing wrong, so they go on the internet to bitch about how le society is dead because the only time when it was in any way alive was that brief period in their early 20s when they could loudly shit their pants in public and everyone around would gasp in horror.

>>24593797
>Man, from an American perspective, Russian politics are very difficult to wrap my head around.
The picture is really not that complicated. It uses a much weirder palette, but most of the weird elements have no functional differences from those which would be quite familiar to to any American.

>>24589159 (OP)
I thought the ice novels were really bad, any of his other books worth reading or are they more of the same?

>>24594080
>People seem to not get that there's no civil society as understood in the West, with the abstract conceptions of laws, rights, and leverage the citizen has against the government. There's only archaic top-down rule, and personal connections valued by closeness to the autocrat, as in baroque courts.
And here he is, the quintessential lib, trying to impress the Civilized Public with his Mongolian interpretive dance, meant to deliver the Biblical myth of mysterious Russian soul inventing the concept of corruption and thus bringing the Original Sin on the political stage.

>>24593797
>>24593931
This anon >>24593900 is close to being correct in my opinion.
No, Russians don't really care about titles. They are also very cynical about ideology. The Russian social contract is pretty much the opposite of the American one. Russians accept that their ruler (the title doesn't really matter - tzar, general secretary, president, whatever) is a despot and a stationary bandit. Their ruler steals, enforces his will with violence and enriches his cronies. In exchange he keeps crime (low-level, like robberies, scams, gang shootouts or drug-dealing) at bay, and keeps out of citizens' business as long as his will is respected. The war is putting strain on this system because the contract is being unilaterally changed from the authoritarian one ("Respect the ruler's will, but otherwise do what you want") to the totalitarian one ("Actively buy into the ruler's ideas and lay your life down for them.") The more reactionary Russians see Putin as the continuation of Stalin and Ivan the Terrible (this is a line of iconic totalitarian russian rulers, as opposed to authoritarian ones). But they are rarer than the average. The average don't mind the war ("well, our ruler's decided we need to fight, so we fight"), but they wouldn't want to fight in it themselves.
For now Putin's managed to somehow keep dissent at bay by paying (compared to the Russian cost of living) huge sums to military who go to fight, which sort of sweetens the deal. How long it will hold nobody knows.

> They are also very cynical about ideology.
Just to explain to you how much, here's a short story. When in the 90s Sobchak became the mayor of St. Petersburg, he threw out most of the nascent democratic city governance institutions, district councils and so on, and started city-managing unilaterally. His political advisor asked him "This sounds very much like the Communist Party. What about democracy?" to which Sobchak reportedly answered "I am in power now, not the Communists. That is democracy". This is very representative of general political demeanor of Russians.

>>24594099
Honestly I admire the cynicism. Americans are too idealistic. The United States has not been hit upside the head enough by history to know better than to trust to sound political governance.

On the other hand, Americans still believe they can change the nature of things on a world-historical level. I am an American and I think that myself. Maybe it's good for a nation to believe it can crack the Firmament itself, even if the price of that is it being very naive.

America also seems to hate its great artists more than Russia does. Pic absolutely related, the United States had to be dragged kicking and screaming into loving Melville. In Russia he'd have been a god from the outset.

>>24594096
The very point is that there's no "mysterious Russian soul", it's all much simpler.
It's the West that developed institutions that transcend ordinary, natural "corruption", ie the deference to strength and authority and the reliance on personal connections to power.

Russia managed to succesfully imitate the most flashy and spectacular Western creations, like the literary forms, orchestral music, ballet, research institutes; but since that came top-down, it didn't include the kind of soil all those nice things naturally grew in: an active public that gives a shit about the country and society it's living in, and wants to have a say in what direction it's going.
Its lack is not something "special" about the Russians, it's ordinary and should be expected, just like it should be expected that "nation-building" doesn't achieve anything and populations simply revert to their traditional archaic lifestyles. The only special thing are the aforementioned cultural achievements. But the elite responsible for them was basically an extension of European spirit into Russia, no wonder St Petersburg was central to it. If, say, China had had a Western-oriented ruler that built a city to connect to Europe, they probably would have had their Pushkins and Dostos.

>>24593797
The modern Russian government's both internal and external strategies are extremely predictable once you see it in its post-1991 entirety and anything unpredictable or anomalous to it can be reliably ascribed to a dismal state of Russian studies abroad, where the funding for reliable specialists who are interested in eventually adding Russia to the list of friends after the defeat of their government was cut, so the states started relying on people with anecdotal and shallow experiences with Russia instead. I don't believe that it's a good thing.
A very compact telling of how the Russian Federation operates boils down to several points.
Internally, RF is an extremely reactionary state in a literal sense: it sets up plans and all, "this time there'll be a school and a miniclinic and a neat bureaucracy center", but a lot of change is made in response to bad stimuli. It expects things to be the same until they cease to do so. When it fights limited conflicts for 25 years, it sets up a small elite army. When it cannot, it scales up massively. When there's a migrant scandal, it starts massive raids and crackdowns. When the demographic wound goes in deeper, they make more "concessions" to families with many children.
It is also flexible, but very risk averse. It had a good relationship with everyone in the Middle East because it saw no *necessity* to take a stance. It started talking with Taliban as soon as possible after their victory because it saw no necessity to start caring about women's rights in Afghanistan. It desires a lot to keep its flexibility. It may start talking to Europeans again after months of silence because it sees no need for another eternal war, but right now the stimuli is not that good for them to react accordingly.
Russia's political system is a reflection of that system. If you were to hold elections in Russia tomorrow, at least 3/4 of the candidates would already be in the parliament or in the government. The actual fault line in the State is whether Russia should be less flexible and risk averse or more malleable, with the latter being in the minority. Different positions for less flexibility arise from Russia's contested history. the Liberal Democratic Party believes that an ontological offensive on Russia is more or less inevitable so trying to be flexible is useless, the Communist Party believes that this flexibility is what caused Russia's greatest catastrophe in the first place and must be excised, the Just Russia Party believes that there should be no flexibility with regards to the existence of Russian people. The New People Party, who I vote for, believes that the State can be easily reconstructed into a leaner, less interdependent, "cleaner" entity and even they demand that Russia has a firm position on the world arena. You consciously vote for Putin if you believe that there is no good and evil but things that are effective and ineffective and if you don't, you vote otherwise. That's what it is, really.

>>24589159 (OP)
Everyone and their mothers were "predicting" Russia was a police state since the 90s and this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombings
https://www.hudson.org/human-rights/the-mysterious-deaths-of-russia-s-journalists-
It's just that the current power sees itself as strong enough to not show any care for public image at all

Cioran warned everyone about Germans and Russians 70 years ago:

>Might the solemn nations be meridionalized? The future of Europe hangs on this question. If the Germans return to their labors as before, the West is doomed; similarly if the Russians fail to recover their old love of sloth. With the former as with the latter, we must encourage a taste for the farniente, for apathy and siesta, luring them both with the delights of versatility and decay.
>… Otherwise be resigned to the solutions which Prussia, or Siberia, will inflict upon our dilettantism.

Cioran, All Gall is Divided

Also due to climate change Russian glaciers are going to melt in the next 50 years which is going to bring back some sleeping ancient forces and more natural reserves. Russia will have new rivers and lakes. But they are bunch of self destructive faggots so you never know

>>24594142
>there's no "mysterious Russian soul"
>Russia managed to succesfully imitate
Hmmmmmmmm

>>24594154
>"the unique character of Russian government is that it reacts to the issues before it"
A risk averse government that doesn't really believe in ideology it promotes, and is driven by pragmatic preservation of the status quo in which it is powerful? My God, these Russians are so weird and exotic!

>>24594154
>The actual fault line in the State is whether Russia should be less flexible and risk averse or more malleable
I never heard any of the parties you list -aside from New People's Ostrovsky - actually raising this "actual point of contention" in their rhetoric ever.

>>24594209
how soulful is imitation?

>>24589170

I really don't get pro-Ukraine Americans.

>Sure, monsters like the Cheney clan and warmongering Jews like David Frum and Bill Kristol have always lied their heads off and steered the country into unwinnable wars but they're right this time!

>>24594204
Pseud for halfwit redditors. Get better taste.

>>24594487
You are a retarded. Go read his book History and Utopia then talk.

>>24594502
>can’t think for yourself
>ummmm erm go read his book
Thanks for proving my point, halfwit

>>24594508
>can't think for yourself
No such thing as "unconditioned mind" you're a product of your environment and what you consume.

>>24594218
Exactly!
My most radical take is that Russia is an ordinary European country inhabited by ordinary people who aren't special in any way.
I should've worded it better. I don't believe reacting to things in a stupid way is unique to Russia too, just a bit of observations from here.
Like, the "beat up gopniks with your weeb friends" part was not only real, but a part of an actual media panic for some time. Some hooligans in a mall demanded some weebs to cede them some chairs and criticized their long hair to which they replied "how bout we square up here bitch" and they actually fucking squared up and wanted another match, so the State's top minds were like "oh shit, there's a group of neo-Nazi Hunter X Hunter fans beating up people in malls!" and a bunch of people got arrested for a bit, practically willing the Organized Aggressive Weeb into existence to the point the thing somehow erupted in Ukraine as well. That whole debacle was *impressively* stupid but it's a sign of the times, sorta. The amount of alt girls/boys out there on the streets is like 10x higher in my town.
https://lenta.ru/articles/2024/12/19/chvk-redan-chto-eto/#a26-xroc0lusqcy5
>>24594222
Alright, you got me here. I'm not degenerate enough to actually follow Russia's current internal political discourse outside of IR journals where you can read nice parallels from foreign diplomats and "should we nuke Poland?"-type discussions from Russia's top political studies guys. I'd rather kill myself than hear more "Putin has sold the country to the oligarchs!!" slop again. When I did, however, the argument for there being lines that cannot be crossed and positions that cannot be adjusted was both ubiquitous (communists, nationalists, "system liberals", "more-Putin-than-Putin" state radicals) and had anything of substance. Everyone in Russia agrees that there should be smaller taxes, fewer migrants, higher wages and cleaner forests, and the rich should be more modest. Not everyone would agree that Putin's waiting strategy is effective, and not everyone would agree with Putin deciding to honor Emperor Alexander III (but some would), for example, so for me these are the actual points of division which define how exactly you oppose the State.

>>24594525
Anon you need to stop. You have brain rot.

>>24594567
> You have brain rot.
Tell me something I don't know. I have an indexed academic article on how "brainrot" slang is entirely inconsistent and cannot be actually attributed to "Gen A" or "Gen Z" as most people talk about it because what it actually is an approximation of how most people think of youngsters on the internet because they don't actually know anything about how young people behave on the Web. I'm going on a ru-PhD path this autumn and that thing will help me with cutting the costs for attaining the degree lmao. I'm just using 4chan as a way to dump my thoughts on things without my "colleagues" recognizing me and because I don't know a single person who'd be interested in my actual non-academic "essays" IRL.
If you think *that* was bad, I'm considering writing an article on how Fallout 1 wasn't really *supposed* to be scary but it makes it look like so anyway because of the soundtrack composer misunderstanding the assignment at times and half the game being just empty because of production cuts and dumping it on a hobbyist site with an audience of like 50 people in my spare time.

>>24594605
You got a substack? Where can I read more of your stuff

>>24594610
I tried doing a personal Telegram channel in Russian to test if I can put out a post a week, but I write like a mentally deficient highschooler in Russian (seriously, even worse than in English, like "sentence is half a page" type bad), so I feel like I need to look over it and remaster all of the things I did there to even have the courage to show it to another person. Substacks and all that stuff require "marketing" through a Twitter account or something else and my brain is honestly too fried to be a part of the discourse instead of observing it again. I'd rather lock myself in a room and write about temporal anomalies haunting the protagonist as a narrative device in modern British literature for three years than post about this Jubilee thing and that big guy saying this and that girl having a take on marriage or something.
4chan is great because I don't have to come up with things to write about myself and can just reply to people, talk to them, get new information, don't have to inquire into their personalities and all that. I like dialogues more than monologues, if that makes sense. I may do a Substack or Medium one day, but it would either be a collection of replies made on here or I'd have to act like a pickme-girl/reply guy to every favorite author I had on there, "please discuss" and all. Not that I'm above it, anyway.

>>24594610
>You got a substack?
This board is so fucking lame. Full of halfwits

>>24594705
A TG channel in English would also be nice, just as a store of your kolonkas.
Kashin makes books out of them by just merging it all

>>24594610
It is a literal graphomaniac schizo who slashes together narratives just to sound cool, with no regard for actual reality. You could find a bunch of them at any russian community hub. Now they can do it in english thanks to chatgpt.
He did eat his dog at alternative history department though.

>>24594730
>>24594713
Listen, I come to /lit/ to read graphomaniac stuff
It's literally what the board is made for. For reading text. Written word. Sentences.
I am NOT satisfied with single sentence one liner replies. Plus his analysis of how Bolshevik revolution dysgenically thrown USSR/Russian Empires population down the drain is on point, something that is notoriously overlooked by anyone discussing it's consequences and how it degraded Russian human capital, which is the only thing that matters to explain any abnormalties. This coupled with an explanation of how it manifested into prison culture that spilled out on a wide scale in the 90's should be the background preparatory understanding for anyone who wants to discuss state of affairs in my country.

>>24594740
>Sentences.
Well, then you're in for a treat. Every russian community hub has been flooded with ai and ai tier slop for a while now. And some say russian literature too. What you can' take, is that we're kind of hilariously progressive at those lazy but effective things. Not unlike any other asian nation

>>24594778
it isn't ai, doe
>russian community hub
Those do not exist. Ruso internet sphere has been a desert of anything intellectual since forever. That's why I lost my Russian identity in particular, since it's only been upheld, and I realized it quite late, by me never engaging with authentic Russian 'culture' and substituting it with western website where we were presented in a completely made up fantasy light for the same reason that anon described it above: westerners and right wingers in particular with whom I intermingled are unaware of how prison Urkagan culture (early examples of it are fleshed out well by Varlam Shalamov) defines it.

If these 'hubs' really started using AI en masse, I wouldn't be surprised. Toкa пиздить yмeeм c зaпaдa

>>24594730
Agreed on all counts, really. I even did some alt-hist stuff when I was a teenager for that The New Order mod for Hearts of Iron. My writing "style" has some immeasurable hoe-scaring abilities, so I keep it to myself and 4chan.
>>24594740
I'm sorry, anon, but I wasn't behind >>24591704. I'm just an ordinary white negro of the Siberian steppe and I like these Alexandra Zheleznova paintings because they really feel on topic with "people experiencing their encounters with the State". I wouldn't go as extreme here. I'm too tired to make a "real" response, so I'll greentext my take on the same topic instead.
> The Emigration was indeed one of Russia's biggest tragedies, practically burying the possible cultural supernova of Russia's Silver Age and turning it to dust
> 1920s to 1950s Russian science was fucking insane (maybe literally) partially because of that: imagine having Stalin take over the field of linguistics and it being an improvement because whoever led it before was obviously out of their mind according to every other linguist out there
> the rise of organized criminal groups and other such things was caused by both the failure of the USSR to dissolve identity barriers and the alienation of the common man inside their own cities, so both "fuck you got mine" and "i'm a man of my district and others suck" attitudes rose as a response
> the USSR actually falling also amplified that and made "fuck you i want it my way" approach to things appealing enough we still have buildings out there looking like a chewed up pack of fucking Toblerones because doing things by the book wasn't cool anymore
> looking back, the "eyyy come here freier" and all that was more of a gopnik homebrew phenomenon than a GULAG shockwave, they are an urban-rased animal first and foremost
> the whole thing faded away when these gopniks had to marry and find a job, the current subcultures may look like the part but draw from different identities
> the whole situation's gonna get much better with the newer generations abandoning localized identities for worldwide identities, expect more people to LARP like LA gangsters than Russian criminals
> low trust societies are low trust societies and aren't really special
> commercial and transactional relationships aren't special as well
Sorry If I disappointed you, anon.

>>24594142
Very dark-pilled and big if true.
I kind of cached myself when Lermontov was whining in 'contemporary hero' about imitations of lord Byron, at the same time nearly being one himself.

>>24594713
Its called livejournal in Russia you noob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvonRMSuFpw&ab_channel=MIGMAG

>>24594808
>are unaware of how prison Urkagan culture (early examples of it are fleshed out well by Varlam Shalamov) defines it.
It is not though.
Shalamov was okay, but I think it was Solgenitsyn who injected the thought of prison culture rewiring russian society into tender liberal brains. And he was a storyteller. Same as Dovlatov who wrote about prisoners being some kind of modern language gurus.

The actual truth is that there is no modern russian culture. There are no cool things happening here. There is no "Gulag" prison language rewiring russian people brains. There are no pedophiles, rapists and terrorists put at the helm of a country as a result of some twisted evolutional selection experiment. At least not anymore than at any other country. There are no cool gopnik vs weeb events, which wouldn't turn out to be a nothingburger. There is certainly no flood of alt teens, at least not anymore than in the rest of the world, where the youth subcultures are at all times low due to everyone being pretty much the same. There is no shady capitalist purely transactional social contract, at least that which would be unique to Russia. There wasn't even anything cool at the time of USSR. USSR itself was a way blown out of proportion myth. And, yeah, that guy >>24594142 nailed it too.
There is zesty foul talk in other languages. Sorokin is just a text arranger, and mid one at that. Russia is just another stupid third world country ruled by hereditary elite. Even Russian thinking nothing special of himself or his culture is nothing special. Every self aware Serbian, Argentinian or Indian thinks the same about their stupid bullshit hellhole.

Abnormal interest in alternative history is something truly unique in a "special" way to Russia though, that is true. Could we offer it to the rest of the world, like Japan does it with Iyashikei or US with their metaverses? That is the question I'm not sure I want the answer to

yeah, this thread just reaffirms my belief that allying with the soviets instead of the germans in world war two was the greatest mistake of the twentieth century

>>24595258
>le prison culture
The chances to "be sent to sanatorium " or "work for free" in Siberia, were significant to the extent everyone and his aunt had someone serving "in the city above clouds" or in taiga or uranium mines. Many returned, many did not.
My family also witnessed 58 statue.
Being ZK sold higher in the virtue signalling market than being the brown nosed "narod hero" apparatchik or kolhoz udarnik bootlicker , for many.
Our parents listened to Visotsky (see the movie white nights if your clueless) and his voice is captivating till this day.
Also: see the movie nochny dozor and you'll understand , that taking side with "forces of light" or "forces of darkness" is just taking sides, prison culture or no prison culture.
Also see Shalamov or Solzhenitsyn, they're mostly correct.

>>24589693
>>24589159 (OP)
I am a pro-Putin Z-fascist Russian, and I really like this book.
>>24590147
>what's the endgame for Vladimir Sorokin?
Sorokin is a typical member of the late-/post-Soviet noviop intelligentsia caste, most of whom hate Russia in general and Russians in particular with burning passion. However, he's definitely got great talent, and he's probably the most skilled literary stylist among living Russian-language authors.

>>24595466
>noviop
Hold on, so Z was manufactured by ethnic Russians? I thought it was THE ideology of rootless noviops who rallied behind Putins Eurasianism because if multiethnic stability he promotes

>>24595410
Oh, god, spare me. I'm not denying any atrocities, I'm reaffirming that prison cultural trace isn't as big as some urban cave dwellers claim it to be. It's just hard truth, the state is that way not because of some vague cultural narrative reasons but because of natural social economical ass factors that determine why every piece of land that is historically ruled by a minority is that way.

>>24595514
You are only partially correct. Yes, there is a lot of this мнoгoнaциoнaлoчкa (multi-ethnic shit) going on right now, with all these Buryats and Yakuts praised as war heroes. However! Due to the war, the situation is slowly shifting in the desirable direction. Kremlin realizes that, without the support of ethnic Russians, it will not win the war, so there are more and more overtures aimed specifically at ethnic Russians - from support for Pyccкaя oбщинa ("Russian community", whether they're good or bad is irrelevant now) to campaings of bullying migrants. The situation is somewhat similar to how the Soviet government started to invoke Russian nationalism during WW2 when it became clear that solidarity of the workers of the world is not something Red Army soldiers would be willing to fight for. Yes, now most of these overtures are pure populism, but, first, they do shift the Overton window, and, second, as time goes on, there are more and more people sympathetic towards Russian ethnonationalism on all levels - government, law enforcement, military, FSB, etc. And foreigners, especially swarthy ones, must feel uncomfortable in Russia, at any rate. In any case, all of this would have been impossible if Russia turned globohomo liberal or even if the SMO never began. Yes, there are also negative trends, but politics is the art of the possible, so, out of all the realistically possible variants, a prolonged war with Ukraine resulting in Ukraine's defeat is the best one.

>>24595668
I will not engage with state funded lahtoviks praising SMO. Although I already low key did, but I stop now.

i keep seeing this idea that russian culture was permanently changed during the mongol rule such that lying, deceit, corruption, etc. became more common as a result of it and it never really went away
are there any books or articles or anything substantiating that idea?

>>24594525
>>24594605
I liked your posts, thanks anon. Too bad I don’t have anything too intelligent to say myself because I’m not knowledgeable about modern day Russia or modern Russian literature. But I like people thoughtful posting like this, it’s what the board should be.

Loosely related, what do people on this board think of Pelevin? I read Omon Ra a couple years back and enjoyed it, I plan sometime in the future to read Homo Zapiens/Generation P

>>24596225
I think that one quote where he said that he was following the news every day, got tired and nervous, then one day bought a PS1 instead of a newspaper and then always felt happy ever since is the best overview of him. He thrived in Russian society when it felt like a ball of anarchy, and once he woke up in a "normal" country, there was nothing to do for him but try and describe the "other" crazy thing out there, which could only be reflected in these crazy gays and women activists and other people to the west of us. Pelevin is entirely harmless and is loved by Russia's establishment for that reason. He adapted very well to modernity in this way. He's much more of a guy who writes "in 60 kilometers we'll arrive to this city" and five years later 45 year old Gen X women are like "Goddamn, we really did!! He's a genius!!". He's a good writer, though, can't take that from him. All the works of note have already been translated to English. I didn't really like Omon Ra personally, but Homo Zapiens is awesome, the translation is done very well.

How do I get a russian gf thats into literature bros all the russians in my country dont seem to be into literature at all

>>24593280
Don't you know why there are no liberals in Russia? They are all in Israel lol or in this case Lithuania

>>24595410
>The chances to "be sent to sanatorium " or "work for free" in Siberia, were significant to the extent everyone and his aunt had someone serving "in the city above clouds" or in taiga or uranium mines. Many returned, many did not.
At no point in it's history did USSR have more incarcerated populace - in absolute values or per capita - than USA has right now.

Point being not that USSR was le gewd and US is le bad, but that if the myth of unique cultural imprint of prison on Russia was true, we would see an even greater prison imprint on current American culture.

>Also see Shalamov or Solzhenitsyn, they're mostly correct.
Only one of them can be correct, not both. Otherwise LARP.

>>24594605
I thin kit bears repetition:

Anon you need to stop.

>>24594096
Also this, thread is full of cucks taking out their anger through these overly cynical characterizations of Russia that turn the country into a parody. No, most of Russia is very normal it is not mayhem and russian culture is not some ridiculous nigger gang culture like that faggot said, it isnt any more thuggish than american culture is

>>24595522
>I'm reaffirming that prison cultural trace isn't as big as some urban cave dwellers claim it to be.
Gulag-yapping is the exact Russian equivalent to parasitic DEI culture
>We wuz repressed geniuses n' heroes n' sheit!
>Everything that sucks 'bout out lives suck 'cause of da red man putting us down, nothing is ever my fault!
>The modern culture is dominated by institutionalized Sovietism, we need spehshalized anti-sovoque and victim-sensitivity training in workplaces and maximum representation of victims in leadership positions to overcome it
>Gib rehpereishnz

>>24597140
>we would see an even greater prison imprint on current American culture.
Doesn't follow, it's the conditions that matter, and conditions of a Russian prison are slightly you know a bit more kinda somewhat uh dehumanizing or something? How do you even compare them

>>24594705
Do a podcast, I personally wanna re-create cumtown eventually

>>24597154
You know nothing about Russia, god talking to you retards is such a waste of time. Russia is a shithole but you're not even close to understanding why you fucking idiots.

>>24594483
I am an anti-Russian American

>>24591309
he writes scifi. what did you expect?

>>24597299
So a redditor?

glowniggers ITT are seeing in the casket with white slippers NLG.
Alas, for the money not to cry.

bump for Sorokin
>>24593771
thanks for suggestion

>>24593771
i think it would be better if it was translated by Max "Maximus" Lawton

>>24595466
>fascist Russian
come see us at pribaltiks, fascism is at good price RN.
The shinings are on the streets 24/7 to make sure every babuska gets raped in the ass for a word in russian (not that they don't like it, interesting).
Fascism big time good, yeah.
Anyhow, best regards and pls some good book recomendations from a big boy like you are welcome.

Russians are Slavic Nordic Tatar mystery meats traumatized by Mongols and never recovered. They are the victims of Mongolian cruelty and barbarism like Arabs and Chinese. Adding to the trauma, they also become soulless after the log periods of communism, the serf system, distorted orthodoxy and the oligarchic capitalism.I don’t think there are any hopes for Russians. They are a cursed people, really.

>>24599947
Sounds edge as fuck, I'm in.

>>24593771
Dude why the hell do you always post this same book everywhere. You're the only person that talks about him, kek. I got to dox you because you spam this same shit in your other socials. Anyways, I truly hope it's good because it made me wanna buy it.

Slavs rosi...ack

>>24594049
No we don’t. Russians say пpaвocлaвныe, which is the literal translation of Orthodox. Catholics in Russians are кaтoлики and Protestants are often bundled together with the Catholics because to us you’re just the same shade of heretic.

>>24602465
Stfu
This is tangent but
Catholics are Orthodox. Any catholic can have penance sacrament in orthodox church and vice versa.
нeдopaзyмeниe exists regarding what is the real head of church, Rome or Istanbul (lol).
And you better not begin on what are considered heretics by orthodox.
Anyhow, what's the public's opinion on the movie "4" where Shnurov is depicted as inmate? Wasn't that ironical? Also what books would you suggest in the milieu of that movie?

>>24594204
>sleeping ancient forces
Sounds positively lovecrafty

>>24603590
>Le ancient russian forces
Russians are nice and plushy from afar but utterly disgusting and loud when they're your neighbors. They're the worst Dostoyevsky's nightmare. Poor mother babushka stealing aluminum from your dacha , with only son bright ex student now turned into drunkard working at graveyard with a scar over his face from (some recent "war"), nihilism and poverty everywhere , and mind the faces they make, a spectacle. Plus they hate each other meanwhile disguising it with smile and will go greath lengths for " a question of "family" "honor" ".
For anyone thinking that " underground man" is a caricature should come and live among those clowns.