Could there be a grain of truth in the Ukrainian propaganda? (repost with new introduction)

Foreword by the Saker

My article about 2016 being a year of triumph for Russia has elicited a number of outright bizarre comments in reaction to my statement that there was no such thing as a “Russian ethnicity”. Some commentators even made it sound as if I was denying the existence of a unique Russian nation. Others were shocked by my statement (repeated many times over on this blog) that Russians are not Europeans. Frankly, it would take a PhD thesis to explain it all to those who clearly have no clue as to what I am talking about and I cannot allocate that much time to it. What I will do is to submit a bullet-point list of theses which clarify, albeit in a one sentence format, what I mean and then I will conclude by re-posting my article about some grain of truth contained in the Ukrainian propaganda. I hope that these these will be useful leads which will encourage the curious to further explore this issue and, hopefully, look at it from a different prospective. I fully realize that for people raised in a western worldview of history it will be difficult, if not impossible, to set aside a long list of truisms and understand that they are simply not applicable to Russia. I won’t bother arguing with those really stuck in the traditional western paradigms of historiography: if you want to think of Russians as “White” and “Europeans” – be my guest, I honestly don’t care. Just don’t come crying in frustrated despair if Russia makes no sense to you and you end up concluding that she is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. The problem is not Russia, the problem is you.

Okay, now let’s turn to the bullet point list.

Russia is the heir to the Roman Empire. No, not the western Roman Empire which fell in 476, but the Roman Empire which survived the fall of Rome for a full millennium and which fell in 1453. And just as “Roman” was never an ethnic category, neither is “Russian”. These categories are civilizational ones.
Russia is the product of the mix of three phenomena: the Ancient Kievan Rus (culturally), the Orthodox Faith (spiritually) and the Tatar-Mongol occupation (politically). When the Ukrainians claim that the Russian state was created/founded by the Mongol Khans they are essentially correct.
Russia never had natural borders and her immense plains, steppes, forests and long rivers favored the rapid and constant flow of a multitude of tribes, ethnic groups, peoples and even entire nations across the vast Russian expanses. If you think of the immense Russian landscape as a kind of “dry ocean” filled with scattered cities-islands you will get a much better picture than if you think of Russia as a bigger version of France or Germany. In a way, Russia was much more similar to Indonesia (thousands of islands and hundred of languages and dialects).
The people from the Kievan Rus were already an ethnically mixed group including Polians, Drevlians, Severians, Tivertians, Ulichians, Volians, Scythians, Khazars, Polovtsians, Pechengs, Varangians and many others. Right from its foundation, the people of the Kievan Rus were of Slavic, Germanic, Iranian, Turkic, Semitic, Finno-Ugric and many other ethnic stocks. Then they began seriously mixing with others :-)
Russia did not live through the European Dark Age (aka “Middle-Age”) (remember – Russia is the heir to Rome for over 1000 years longer than western Europe), there was no “Russian Renaissance”, there was no “Russian Reformation”. Of course, Russia did exist during these key events which shaped Europe, but she did not participate in them nor was she affected by them. To repeat: the key historical events which shaped modern Europe never happened in Russia! In a way you could almost say that we when from antiquity to modernity in one jump or, which I prefer, that we modernized antiquity :-)
Southwestern Russia, or “small Russia”, in the sense of “central Russia” was exposed to the European civilization for much longer than the rest (northern or eastern) Russia. The part which was exposed to the Papacy and Feudalism is nowadays identified as “the Ukraine”. Alternatively, a immensely important event like the “Old Rite” schism was a pure “Great” (or, better, “Greater”) Russian thing and it did not affect what is today the Ukraine.
A quick survey of the last names of the old Russian nobility (as opposed to the Europeanized “nobility” created by Peter I) will reveal the undeniable fact that most noble Russian families are, in fact, descendants of Tatar-Mongols (including yours truly). A closer look to the facial features of many Russians, not only from the nobility, will reveal more or less strongly expressed Asian facial features.
As Russia grew she followed the traditional Roman model an incorporated other nations and religions into her civilizational realm. Russia being an empire in the Roman sense of the word, racial or ethnic categories simply made no difference and, frankly, no sense. This is also one of the reasons why Russia easily incorporated many European emigrants and immediately began viewing them as “Russians” even when their last names were clearly German, Italian or French. It is thus not surprising to a Russian that the most famous Russian poet, Pushkin, had both Russian and African origins. Again, this is typical of the Roman civilizational model.
Culturally and socially, Russia has always been profoundly different from the western civilization. Russians have always been far closer socially to the Confusianist collectivism than to the western individualism just as they have been far closer to the Indian/Hindu mysticism and asceticism than to western scholasticism and rationalism. These traits are expressed particularly strongly in the Russian soldier whose willingness to suffer and die has always astounded western invaders.
It is true that since the reign of Peter I (which some call “the Great” – I don’t), the old Russian elites have been largely replaced by Europeans. In fact, the Peter was not the first one to embark on a program of suppression of the Russian national identity which really began with the vicious repression unleashed not so much by the Russian Orthodox Church as by the Russian state against the Old Ritualists which, at the time, represented the vast majority of the Russian people. But under Peter the repression soon turned not only against the Old Ritualists, but against Orthodox in general. Soon thereafter a tragic process of separation of the Russian ruling elites from the Russian masses began with terrible consequences in the 20th century.
During the imperial period (which began with Peter I) two very different “Russias” appeared: one of the thoroughly Europeanized elites, intellectuals, aristocrats, authors, composers, etc., mostly residing in Saint Petersburg and Moscow and a “deep Russia”, composed primarily of farmers, traders, pre-Petrine nobility, etc which was mostly alienated from and hostile towards the Europeanized elites. Paradoxically, Kiev was in many ways the most Russian of Russia’s big cities.
During the Revolution and subsequent civil war the vast majority of Russian remained neutral, neither White nor Red as they (correctly) saw that conflict as a conflict of elites, not of people standing for their interests.
If it is absolutely true that a typical 19th century Russian aristocrat had much more in common with a Prussian aristocrat than with a Russian peasant, that does not at all imply that a German peasant had much in common with his Russian counterpart. The sad fact is that about most of the books written by Russian about Russia was written by members of the post-Petrine Europeanized Russian elites even when some of them were so-called Slavophiles who were generally positively inclined towards the “common” people and who even sought their roots in the “deep Russia”. The people in the West mainly form their opinions about Russia based on the writings, biographies and personal interactions with the former group, hence the mistaken conclusion that Russians are “Europeans just like us”.
The Ukrainian propaganda is basically correct when it claims that Russians are much more Asian than European. What they fail to realize, that this is also quite true of the Ukrainians who are no more Europeans that Russians. Their other mistake is when the conflate non-European with “Asian”. While Russians are much closer to Asians than to European, they are not quite Asians either – they form their own, unique, civilizational realm.
The true ancient Russian culture survived mainly in the remote areas of Russia (Siberia, Cossack lands in the south), in monasteries and in parts of the old, pre-Petrine, nobility. By the late 19th century and early 20th century this revival of Russian national identity, strongly supported by the Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II eventually developed into a political movement variously represented by people such as Ivan Solonevich, Lev Tikhomirov, Ivan Illin and others only to be crushed by the Bolshevik revolution.
During the Soviet era, an initial revival of the Russian national consciousness began during the rule of Joseph Stalin and during WWII. This slow moving revival continued under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and the rest of them and eventually resulted in the rise of various “Russian” personalties such as the “village-authors” like Valentin Rasputin or Victor Astafiev, directors such as Andrei Tarkovskii, painters like Ilia Glazunov, singers such as Vladimir Vysotskii, political figures like Igor Ogurtsov and many, many others. This Russian revival culminated in 1999 when Vladimir Putin was appointed and then elected as President of Russia.
The author Alexander Solzhenistyn is arguably the best example of the “old Russia”, not because of his age (he was born in 1918) but because during his life he had been exposed to old Russians on the front and the camps and because he became the carrier of their ethos, worldview and spirituality (not to mention uncompromizing anti-Communism). As for Vladimir Putin, he is, I submit, the perfect expression of the New Russia. Yet on the following photo, the former “zek” (Gulag inmate) is greeting the former KGB officer with his face radiating with joy and we can see that the feeling is very mutual. See for yourself:

Old Russia (Alexander Solzhenitsyn) meets New Russia (Vladimir Putin)

So what do these two man (both with strong Asian facial features, by the way) have in common? Their common dedication to the Russian *masses* as opposed to the Russian elites, a common belief in a unique, distinct Russian destiny and a common rejection of the European civilizational model. They have that in common with the million of Russians who for 1000 years refused to accept any one of the various western invaders who tried to conquer, submit, subdue or otherwise incorporate Russia into Europe.
There most definitely is a Russian identity and it is a very strong one, reaching across regional, cultural, ethnic, religious and even political differences. In fact, it is remarkable that the Russian national identity survived 300 years of aristocratic oppression, 70 years of Communism and another decade of “democratic capitalism”. So no, I am definitely not denying the uniqueness and reality of the Russian people. I just don’t fit it in racial, ethnic and other western categories.

That’s it for today. I hope that the above makes sense or clarifies what I mean.

To those celebrating it in a couple of day – Happy New Year and all the best for 2017!

Cheers,

The Saker

——-

Could there be a grain of truth in the Ukrainian propaganda? (original article here)

We have all heard the Ukrainian nationalist line: they are the true Slavs inheritors of the Kievan Rus while the modern Russians are really either Tatars or Ugro-Finns or God knows what else. And then there the famous quote by, I think, Napoleon, who said “scratch the Russian and you will find the Tatar”.

The interesting thing here is that there might well be some truth to that, and more than a grain only.

But first, what is a “Tatar”? Well, in modern times, a Tatar is a well defined category, both in historical terms and in modern terms (see Wikipedia entry for “Tatar” here). The problem with this is that was is missing from these definitions is the ancient usage of this word. Even nowadays, the various people referred to as “Tatars” have very little in common. They have even less in common with modern Mongols. So why do Russian books speak of a “Tatar-Mongol Yoke”? Who were these “Tatar-Mongols” in reality?

Official Russian (and western) historiography more or less agrees that the “Tatar-Mongols” were a mix of nomadic tribes from Asia (modern Mongolia) who swept across Siberia and the steppes and invaded Russia and many other countries (as far as Poland and Austria). In fact, these Tatar-Mongols built the biggest empire of all times and they did so just in a few decades. The following French map shows the huge size of this empire:

But there is a problem with this official narrative. Tatars are not Mongols. Worse, the term “Tatar” was applied to various totally different ethnic groups who had very little in common. There is even very strong evidence that the word “Tatar” was even applied to Russian populations!

Check out this detail of an icon of the famous Russian Orthodox saint Serge of Radonezh which shows a famous battle between Russians and Tatars and see whether you can tell these two groups apart:

click on image for higher resolution

and now let’s take a closer look at a detail of this (very large) icon:

Can you tell the combatants apart? If not, don’t feel bad. Neither can the historians. Not only are the two sides equipped exactly the same way, but both sides have icons of Christ as their banners!

This is just one example amongst many, and I will not bore you with the multitude of many others out there. What I will simply say is this: there is very strong evidence that the “Russian” forces were full of “Tatars” and there is also very strong evidence that “Tatar” forces were full of “Russians”. Some Russian historians go as far as saying that Russians are Tatars (in the 13th-15th century usage of these words, not in our modern ones!) and that what 18th and 19th century historians describe as a “Tatar Yoke” was in reality a Russian civil war. Now, before you throw up your hands in disgust, please remember that “Russian” is not (and never was!!) an ethnic category. In fact, the confusion here comes from the fact that neither Russian nor Tatar are ethnic categories. Mongol is, but the Mongols were never sophisticated enough and numerous enough to conquer such a huge landmass by themselves. Still dubious? Okay – try finding out who the modern descendants of the “Tatar-Mongols” are? Candidates to that title include Mongols, Turkmens, Slavs and many other ethnic groups form all over the former Empire of Genghis Khan. The amazing bottom line is this: we don’t know who the 12th-14th century “Tatar-Mongols” really were, but there is very strong evidence that “Russians” (speaking in a purely cultural, not ethnic sense) were very much part of that. Another way to put that would be to say that Orthodox Slavs were a key component of the civilization which later historians have labeled “Tatar-Mongol” empire. Some of these Orthodox Slavs were clearly subjects to the invading hordes from the East, but others were official of these hordes. What evidence is for there for that? Plenty – including the fact that the invaders used almost exclusively Russian in their administration, that a lot of Russians had Tatar names and vice-versa, or that if you look at the genetic stock in the regions supposedly colonized for 300 years by Mongols from Asia you will find an overwhelming preponderance of Slavic and Europeans genetic markers even though history records that a lot of Russian families were founded by Tatars (including, by the way, my own).

Confused?

Good, that is exactly how it should be. I am confused too. And so are many historians. The evidence for the simple narrative offered by 18th-19th century historians simply does not add up. But what the true story is has yet to be discovered.

What about the Ukraine in all that?

First, remember that the “Ukrainian nation” is a 20th century invention. But what is true is that the Orthodox Slavs who lived in what is today the Ukraine have some very salient differences with the Orthodox Slavs who live in what is today the Russian Federation. Let’s call the first group South Orthodox Slavs and the second group North Orthodox Slavs. These are some of the important differences:

The South Orthodox Slavs were much further away from the Tatar-Mongol centers of power than the North Orthodox Slavs.
The South Orthodox Slavs spent many centuries invaded by the Polish and Lithuanian armies.
The South Orthodox Slavs did not live through the Old Rite Schism (see here for details).
The North Orthodox Slavs did not suffer Papist persecutions.
The South Orthodox Slavs did live a long time under the Greek Orthodox Church (while the North Orthodox Slavs had their own, independent local Orthodox Church)

There are, of course, other elements, but these few do already point a possible and real differences in ethos. Of course, acting powerfully to nullify these differences is the truly massive and centuries long mixing of North and South Slavs. To claim, like the Ukrainian nationalists today, that Russians and Ukrainians are totally different people is absolutely ridiculous and to say that the Ukrainians are descendants of ancient “Ukrs” who are, I kid you not, the ancestors of the Aryans, who built the pyramids in Egypt and were the first to settle the Black Sea coast is plain crazy, of course. But it is undeniable that South and North Slavs *have* had historically very different experiences and that the North Slavs’ integration in, and acculturation to, to the civilization we now erroneously called “Tatar-Mongol” was very deep, possibly much deeper than suspected until now.

In conclusion, please don’t flame me for what I wrote. As I said, I am not a historian and there are enough thoroughly confused historians out there to make even a very ignorant person like myself feel bold enough to raise interesting questions without providing any answers at all. I just wanted to share with you that the history of the people living in modern Ukraine and, even more so, modern Russia is very complex and in many ways very mysterious and obscure and that those nationalists (on both sides!) who have it all figured out and reduced to once-sentence slogans are almost inevitably wrong.

The Saker

Bankotsu on December 30, 2016 · at 8:46 am EST/EDT

Chapter 7 of Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley — Creation of the Russian Civilization

In the nineteenth century most historians regarded Russia as part of Europe but it is now becoming increasingly clear that Russia is another civilization quite separate from Western Civilization.

Both of these civilizations are descended from Classical
Civilization, but the connection with this predecessor was made so differently that two quite different traditions came into existence.

Russian traditions were derived from Byzantium directly; Western traditions were derived from the more moderate Classical
Civilization indirectly, having passed through the Dark Ages when there was no state or government in the West.

Russian civilization was created from three sources originally:

(1) the Slav people,
(2) Viking invaders from the north, and
(3) the Byzantine tradition from the south.

These three were fused together as the result of a common experience arising from Russia’s exposed geographical position on the western edge of a great flat-land stretching for thousands of miles to the east.

This flat-land is divided horizontally into three zones of which the most southern is open plain, while the most northern is open bush and tundra.

The middle zone is forest. The southern zone (or steppes) consists of two parts: the southern is a salty plain which is practically useless, while the northern part, next to the
forest, is the famous black-earth region of rich agricultural soil.

Unfortunately the eastern portion of this great Eurasian plain has been getting steadily drier for thousands of years, with the consequence that the Ural-Altaic-speaking peoples of central and east-central Asia, peoples like the Huns, Bulgars, Magyars, Mongols, and Turks, have pushed westward repeatedly along the steppe corridor between the Urals and the Caspian Sea, making the black-earth steppes dangerous for sedentary agricultural peoples.

The Slavs first appeared more than two thousand years ago as a peaceful, evasive people, with an economy based on hunting and rudimentary agriculture, in the forests of eastern Poland.

These people slowly increased in numbers, moving northeastward through the forests, mixing with the scattered Finnish hunting people who were there already.

About A.D. 700 or so, the Northmen, whom we know as Vikings, came down from the Baltic Sea, by way of the rivers of eastern Europe, and eventually reached the Black Sea and attacked Constantinople. These Northmen were trying to make a way of
life out of militarism, seizing booty and slaves, imposing tribute on conquered peoples, collecting furs, honey, and wax from the timid

Slavs lurking in their forests, and exchanging these for the colorful products of the Byzantine south. In time the Northmen
set up fortified trading posts along their river highways, notably at Novgorod in the north, at Smolensk in the center, and at Kiev in the south. They married Slav women and imposed on the rudimentary agricultural-hunting economy of the Slavs a superstructure of a tribute-collecting state with an exploitative, militaristic, commercial economy.

This created the pattern of a two-class Russian society which has continued ever since, much intensified by subsequent historical events.

In time the ruling class of Russia became acquainted with Byzantine culture. They were dazzled by it, and sought to import it into their wilderness domains in the north.

In this way they imposed on the Slav peoples many of the accessories of the Byzantine Empire, such as Orthodox Christianity, the Byzantine alphabet, the Byzantine calendar,
the used of domed ecclesiastical architecture, the name Czar (Caesar) for their ruler, and innumerable other traits.

Most important of all, they imported the Byzantine totalitarian
autocracy, under which all aspects of life, including political, economic, intellectual, and religious, were regarded as departments of government, under the control of an autocratic
ruler.

These beliefs were part of the Greek tradition, and were based ultimately on Greek inability to distinguish between state and society. Since society includes all human activities, the Greeks had assumed that the state must include all human activities.

In the days of Classical Greece this all-inclusive entity was called the polis, a term which meant both society and state; in the later Roman period this all-inclusive entity was called the imperium. The only difference was that the polis was sometimes (as in Pericles’s Athens about 450 B.C.) democratic, while the imperium was always a military autocracy.

Both were totalitarian, so that religion and economic life were regarded as spheres of governmental activity. This totalitarian autocratic tradition was carried on to the Byzantine Empire and passed from it to the Russian state in the north and to the later
Ottoman Empire in the south.

In the north this Byzantine tradition combined with the experience of the Northmen to intensify the two-class structure of Slav society.

In the new Slav (or Orthodox) Civilization this fusion, fitting together the Byzantine tradition and the Viking tradition, created Russia. From Byzantium came autocracy and the idea of
the state as an absolute power and as a totalitarian power, as well as such important applications of these principles as the idea that the state should control thought and
religion, that the Church should be a branch of the government, that law is an enactment of the state, and that the ruler is semi-divine.

From the Vikings came the idea that the state is a foreign importation, based on militarism and supported by booty and tribute, that economic innovations are the function of the government, that power rather than law is the basis of social life, and that society, with its people and its property, is the private
property of a foreign ruler.

These concepts of the Russian system must be emphasized because they are so foreign to our own traditions.

In the West, the Roman Empire (which continued in the East as the Byzantine Empire) disappeared in 476 and, although many efforts were made to revive it, there was clearly a period, about 850AD, when there was no empire, no state, and no public
authority in the West.

The state disappeared, yet society continued. So also, religious and economic life continued. This clearly showed that the state and society were not the same thing, that society was the basic entity, and that the state was a crowning, but not essential, cap to the social structure.

This experience had revolutionary effects. It was discovered that man can live without a state; this became the basis of Western liberalism.

It was discovered that the state, if it exists, must serve men and that it is incorrect to believe that the purpose of men is to serve the state. It was discovered that economic life, religious life, law, and private property can all exist and function effectively without a
state.

From this emerged laissez-faire, separation of Church and State, rule of law, and the sanctity of private property.

In Rome, in Byzantium, and in Russia, law was regarded
as an enactment of a supreme power. In the West, when no supreme power existed, it was discovered that law still existed as the body of rules which govern social life. Thus law
was found by observation in the West, not enacted by autocracy as in the East.

This meant that authority was established by law and under the law in the West, while authority was established by power and above the law in the East. The West felt that the rules of economic life were found and not enacted; that individuals had rights independent of, and even opposed to, public authority; that groups could exist, as the Church existed, by right and not by privilege, and without the need to have any charter of
incorporation entitling them to exist as a group or act as a group; that groups or individuals could own property as a right and not as a privilege and that such property could not be taken by force but must be taken by established process of law.

It was emphasized in the West that the way a thing was done was more important than what was done, while in the East what was done was far more significant than the way in which it
was done.

There was also another basic distinction between Western Civilization and Russian Civilization.

This was derived from the history of Christianity. This new faith came into Classical Civilization from Semitic society.

In its origin it was a this-worldly religion, believing that the world and the flesh were basically good, or at least filled with good
potentialities, because both were made by God; the body was made in the image of God; God became Man in this world with a human body, to save men as individuals, and to establish “Peace on earth.”

The early Christians intensified the “this-worldly” tradition,
insisting that salvation was possible only because God lived and died in a human body in this world, that the individual could be saved only through God’s help (grace) and by living correctly in this body on this earth (good works), that there would be, some day, a millennium on this earth and that, at that Last Judgment, there would be a resurrection of the body and life everlasting. In this way the world of space and time, which God had
made at the beginning with the statement, “It was good” (Book of Genesis), would, at the end, be restored to its original condition.

This optimistic, “this-worldly” religion was taken into Classical Civilization at a time when the philosophic outlook of that society was quite incompatible with the religious outlook of Christianity.

The Classical philosophic outlook, which we might call
Neoplatonic, was derived from the teachings of Persian Zoroastrianism, Pythagorean rationalism, and Platonism. It was dualistic, dividing the universe into two opposed worlds, the world of matter and flesh and the world of spirit and ideas.

The former world was changeable, unknowable, illusionary, and evil; the latter world was eternal, knowable, real, and good. Truth, to these people, could be found by the use of reason and logic alone, not hy use of the body or the senses, since these were prone to error, and must be spurned. The body, as Plato said, was the “tomb of the soul.”

Thus the Classical world into which Christianity came about A.D. 60 believed that the world and the body were unreal, unknowable, corrupt, and hopeless and that no truth or success could be found by the use of the body, the senses, or matter. A small minority, derived from Democritus and the early Ionian scientists through Aristotle, Epicurus, and Lucretius, rejected the Platonic dualism, preferring materialism as an explanation of
reality.

These materialists were equally incompatible with the new Christian religion.

Moreover, even the ordinary citizen of Rome had an outlook whose implications were not compatible with the Christian religion. To give one simple example: while the Christians spoke of a millennium in the future, the average Roman continued to think of a “Golden Age” in the past, just as Homer had…

…These ideas which became part of the tradition of the West did not become part of the tradition of Russia. The influence of Greek philosophic thought remained strong in the East.

The Latin West before 500AD used a language which was not, at that time, fitted for abstract discussion, and almost all the dogmatic debates which arose from the incompatibility of Greek philosophy and Christian religion were carried on in the Greek
language and fed on the Greek philosophic tradition.

In the West the Latin language reflected a quite different tradition, based on the Roman emphasis on administrative procedures and ethical ideas about human behavior to one’s fellow man.

As a result, the Greek philosophic tradition remained strong in the East, continued to permeate the Greek-speaking Church, and went with that Church into the Slavic north.

The schism between the Latin Church and the Greek Church strengthened their different points of view, the former being more this-worldly, more concerned with human behavior, and continuing to believe in the efficacy of good works, while the latter was more otherworldly, more concerned with God’s majesty and power, and emphasized the evilness and weakness of the body and the world and the efficacy of God’s grace.

As a result, the religious outlook and, accordingly, the world outlook of Slav religion and philosophy developed in quite a different direction from that in the West.

The body, this world, pain, personal comfort, and even death were of little importance; man could do little to change his lot, which was determined by forces more powerful than he; resignation to Fate, pessimism, and a belief in the overwhelming power of sin and of the devil dominated the East.

To this point we have seen the Slavs formed into Russian civilization as the result of several factors. Before we go on we should, perhaps, recapitulate.

The Slavs were subjected at first to the Viking exploitative system. These Vikings copied Byzantine culture, and did it very consciously, in their religion, in their writing, in their state, in
their laws, in art, architecture, philosophy, and literature. These rulers were outsiders who innovated all the political, religious, economic, and intellectual life of the new civilization. There was no state: foreigners brought one in. There was no organized
religion: one was imported from Byzantium and imposed on the Slavs.

The Slav economic life was on a low level, a forest subsistence economy with hunting and rudimentary agriculture: on this the Vikings imposed an international trading system.

There was no religious-philosophic outlook: the new State-Church superstructure imposed on the Slavs an outlook derived from Greek dualistic idealism. And, finally, the East never experienced a Dark Ages to show it that society is distinct from the state and more fundamental than the state.

This summary brings Russian society down to about 1200. In the next six hundred years new experiences merely intensified the Russian development. These experiences arose from the fact that the new Russian society found itself caught between the
population pressures of the raiders from the steppes to the east and the pressure of the advancing technology of Western Civilization.

The pressure of the Ural-Altaic speakers from the eastern steppes culminated in the Mongol (Tarter) invasions after 1200.

The Mongols conquered Russia and established a tribute-gathering system which continued for generations. Thus there continued to be a foreign exploiting system imposed over the Slav people.

In time the Mongols made the princes of Moscow their chief tribute collectors for most of Russia. A little later the Mongols made a court of highest appeal in Moscow, so that both money and judicial cases flowed to Moscow. These continued to flow even after the princes of Moscow (1380) led the successful revolt which ejected the Mongols…

http://www.carrollquigley.net/books.htm

248 Comments

Dušan on December 30, 2016 · at 12:14 am EST/EDT

Greatly appreciate the history lesson.

Regarding your observation that Russians are not White, I too speak of Greeks, Persians and other Ancient peoples and even Serbs (myself) as not being White. When people are confused, i tell them that “white” and “black” are Western constructs (perhaps used as justification for enslavement of African people and conquering the Americas and other continents).

I believe that the Ancient civilizations like the Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans never referred to people as “White” or “Black” but simply as being from such and such a place. I don’t have confirmation of this, I would like to consult a linguist of the Ancient languages and cultures.

I learned more about Russia in this article than I would have ever hoped. Thank you.
- The Saker on December 30, 2016 · at 12:25 am EST/EDT
  
  When people are confused, i tell them that “white” and “black” are Western constructs
  
  Absolutely! You know what is really funny? In the USA they call Whites “Caucasians” but in Russia “Caucasians” are (disparagingly) called “Blacks”. Not to mention that there is no such thing as a “Caucasian” anyway, unless you mean “habitant of the Caucasus” since the Caucasus is a region with a rich and amazing mix of ethnicities, nationalities, tribes, call them whatever you want but while there is such a thing as a “Chechen”, there really is no such thing as a “Dagestani” (again, unless you mean inhabitant of Dagestan).
  There are 185 different nationalities inside Russia and, according to Wikipedia, In 2007, there were 6,260 schools which provided teaching in altogether 38 minority languages, and over 75 minority languages were taught as a discipline in 10,404 schools
  Amazing, no?
  Russian politicians now speak more and more of declaring Russia an “also Muslim” state with a right to speak in the name of the millions of Muslims in Russia in various Islamic conferences and organizations.
  And then we you look at any footage of Russian soldiers you always see the ones who like “Chinese” to those unused to seeing Asian faces. The fact is, Asians can be found all over Russia and they are no less Russian than Slavs. Russians are completely used to that mix of racial types in their midst. An African sticks out in the Russian street. An Asian never does.
  In this context the very notion of “White” is simply laughable.
  Cheers,
  The Saker
  - Dušan on December 30, 2016 · at 12:38 am EST/EDT
    
    I appreciate your response, thanks again. It appears that there is much to learn about Russia and it’s diversity.
    When I lived in the States, I would always fill out my race as “other”. I didn’t see myself in any of the categories they offered. Caucasian? I’m not from the Caucasus.
    “White” is laughable indeed.
    Happy New Year!
    - The Saker on December 30, 2016 · at 12:49 am EST/EDT
      
      When I lived in the States, I would always fill out my race as “other”. I didn’t see myself in any of the categories they offered. Caucasian? I’m not from the Caucasus.
      “White” is laughable indeed.
      
      Same here. Though my wife has Georgian (the country) and Mingrelian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingrelians) blood, so at least my kids can write “Caucasian” I suppose. But if anybody calls them “Black” they will be both quite confused and quite amused by that, especially my oldest son who is a typical Nordic blond with blue eyes (while my other two kids are rather dark).
      
      Me? Most of my DNA is Dutch. Germanic & Aryan, LOL. But I still have more “Russian” blood than Tsar Nicholas II :-)
      
      Russia is fun!
      - Scott on December 30, 2016 · at 7:18 am EST/EDT
        
        Tsar Nicholas was 100% German and his wife was 100% Dutch.
        She didn’t speak a word in Russian language.
        The “Romanovs” were 300 years of European yoke,
        good riddance to all of them.
        
        BTW, my ancestors were first mentioned in Russian Letopis (the life chronicles of the Ancient Rus and other Slavic states that existed up until the 17th century) in 15c.
        http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/letopis/
        
        They were those Russian nobility that gathered the Russian lands together, only to be pushed out by the European newcomers, like you say.
        
        WizOz on December 31, 2016 · at 2:18 am EST/EDT
        
        Alix Viktoria Helene Luise Beatrix von Hessen und bei Rhein, (aka Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova) was German and English and she did speak Russian. Tsar Nicholas was fluent in five languages.
        
        Anonymous on January 02, 2017 · at 12:26 am EST/EDT
        
        Scott, you know better than I do. I always thought Nicholas wife was Danish. Some of my children are more Russian than Nicholas. However, I resemble him. A heritage from the Scandinavian nobility, I presume (it is in the family tree, not that I care much). It served me well in Russia. We are interrelated in the North and people in the North don’t know how much.
        
        WizOz on January 03, 2017 · at 12:30 am EST/EDT
        
        Nicholas’ MOTHER Marie Sophie Frederikke Dagmar was Danish. She was the second daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse-Cassel. When she married Tsar Alexander III, converted to Orthodoxy and received the name Maria Feodorovna. So, Nicholas was Danish.
        
        As it is Scott doesn’t know better than you did. Alexandra, the WIFE of Nicholas was German and ‘English’ (she was Queen Victoria grand-daughter. She was in other words 100% German. But even her not quite sympathetic (British) biographers had to admit (and pointing to it as a flaw of character) that becoming Empress of Russia ‘she became more Russian than the Russians and more Orthodox than the Orthodox.
      - Anonymous on January 03, 2017 · at 12:23 am EST/EDT
        
        Pardon, but I dont understand what that is suppose to mean, why does one soldier with an asian face mean the rest of the white russian troops in the group are not white?
      - Vox on January 05, 2017 · at 1:23 pm EST/EDT
        
        White means of European descent, if you are of European descent, you are white, Blacks means of sub-saharan descent, if you are of sub-saharan descent you are black, yellow means of east asian descent, if you are of east asian descent, you are yellow.
        
        ad hominen statement removed …. mod-hs
    - G on May 17, 2017 · at 4:06 pm EST/EDT
      
      I am from Russia. When they call me “white”. I think: “How do the know that I am an opponent of the red Army?”
  - Jeffrey Coley on December 30, 2016 · at 3:39 am EST/EDT
    
    Every country has its own set of descriptors to identify the different identifiable racial and ethnic groups in their mix.
    
    It’s always humorous in America when a person being sought by police, for example, is described as a “black male, with black hair and brown eyes”. That narrows it down to all of them!
    
    When I worked for a company in Mexico my work permit included a physical description of my face. It seemed bizarre, as a white American I had always thought about hair and eye color, but I never considered if my forehead is “wide” or “narrow”.
    
    I presume it was some kind of shorthand to describe a person who looks more Indian or more European.
  - Ivan Pomidorov on December 30, 2016 · at 10:27 pm EST/EDT
    
    This was my first conclusion in about 2000 as I arrived to Germany. I,being a russian gu, came to the conclusion it would be better that germans treat me if I would be black. Because their politcorrectness based on the colors would optimally help them to find better style to me. The same for me. I realized that e.g. russian/jewish sense of humor is a different planet for europeans. Or how a guy picks up a girl…. ummm… being black would automatically set the “rules” understandable for parties. …
    - Whatever on December 31, 2016 · at 1:55 am EST/EDT
      
      I agree with that comment, expanding on it I would say it goes something like : Thesaker has a warped contradictory mess of an ideological system, even more twisted then the original liberal one. He is some sort of racial quasi-liberal. Copying the racial aspects of liberalism, his ideology is something like this, white people are no good, responsible for everything bad, responsible creating racism, slavery war, rape pretty much everything bad in human history, but – here is his problem – Europeans are white and Russians are Europeans, so Russians are white, but whites are bad, which would mean Russians are bad.. Soo, that doesnt work… To get his twisted ideology to match up he must circumvent the obvious fact that Russians are white, even more white then many other Europeans.
      
      To do this he claims that Russians are racially mix and dont exist, “no ethnic Russian identity”, and thats why Russians are not white but instead victims of whites, like all other races on earth(liberals believe this). His ideology runs into the minor problem of course that ethnic Russians believe they exist and has a several thousand years of heritage and history of living and protecting their homelands in eastern Europe, long before they even founded Russia.
      
      After spending some time search for this type of articles his racist liberal ideology is painfully obvious, this site riddled with divisive racial-moronic liberal propaganda that might as well have been from CNN/BBC/Salon or any George Soros, SJW MSM outlet. See example below.
      
      For example : Thesaker even,and this will be hard for some to believe, refers the black nazi Malcom X as greatest american that has ever lived.. That is right – a racial supremacists, that would make any Azov nazi look gentle, whose OPEN stated goal is to create a racially pure homeland for blacks – is the greatest american that ever lived..A man that refers to people born with the wrong skin color(white) as a diease on humanity… Makes sense? Only if you are a liberal, remember, liberal logic : whites are bad, whites are racism. And all racism towards whites is therefore anti-racism. Besides whites dont really exist, they are just social construct of oppression or whatever, and ethnic Russians are not white because they are mix and therefore does not exist(liberal, ukronazi and him logic)
      
      So this is what we have here, a racial liberal. He sits privileged in America and tries to delegitimize the thousands of years of history that ethnic Russians the founders and creators of the Russian country, state, culture and history has.
      - Franz on December 31, 2016 · at 8:52 pm EST/EDT
        
        You should try to broaden your colour palette. No one is ‘White’, unless they suffer from late stage leprosy, and no one is ‘Black’ unless they fell, or were pushed, into a vat of tar.
        
        Your weak grasp of the topic at hand is that of a person hanging off a cliff by their fingers. In your case, I would have a hard time not stomping on them.
        
        Vox on January 05, 2017 · at 1:36 pm EST/EDT
        
        @Franz
        
        White is an colloquial terms for people of European descent, white does not actually mean that person is question is precisely white, infact I doubt there exist any human that is precisely white, nor does black mean that you are totally black or yellow mean that you are absolutely yellow.
        
        The reason white is colloquially used to describe Europeans is because Europeans generally whiter than sub S. africans east asians.
        
        Franz on January 05, 2017 · at 9:03 pm EST/EDT
        
        To me, it seems like some kind of content-free stage buffoonery.
        Why not say European and African? Would that not achieve the same descriptive effect without sounding silly and, forgive me for saying this but, also racist.
        I do not mean to target you, just the practice.
      - Anonymous on January 01, 2017 · at 4:47 am EST/EDT
        
        He sits privileged in America …
        Jealous?
        
        Russia – that far stretching country – had been multi-ethnic for a long time. It’s similar with Europe. Even before the arrival of the Ruhrpolen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhrpolen) people moved in all directions and intermarried. What do you suggest what the citizens of today’s countries should do? Expel the unwanted? Where to? Maybe we should start with Mr. Thomas de Maizière (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_de_Maizi%C3%A8re). His surname indicates that he’s surely not of Germanic origin. Should we kick him across the Rhine?
        
        … liberal propaganda that might as well have been from CNN/BBC/Salon or any George Soros, SJW MSM outlet. …
        
        According to that logic all countries should abolish highways (Autobahnen), because Hitler picked up on that idea (the first plans for highways date back to around 1929) and realized that project. Soros indeed is responsible for many things that have hurt lots of people, but the idea of peacefully living together isn’t that bad at all.
        
        S113 on January 01, 2017 · at 7:32 pm EST/EDT
        
        Well, there’s ideology (words, arguments, he said/she said, game theory, and so on), and then there are practical application of ideology, and the results that are produced. In terms of approaches to creating peaceful living conditions, we can examine the Soros-directed approach in Ukraine, with the Putin-led, Russian government-directed approach to Chechnya. For me personally, this ends the arguments. Although, (I know, I know) game theory lasts forever. I’ll let someone else reply to the next post.
  - FOHP on January 02, 2017 · at 9:51 am EST/EDT
    
    “there is no such thing as a “Caucasian” anyway, unless you mean “habitant of the Caucasus””
    
    The correct terminology to describe European of “white” descent is caucasoid.
  - Wyett on January 02, 2017 · at 11:22 pm EST/EDT
    
    That is not really an good argument, everyone knows on earth knows that white means “of European ancestry” black means of “african ancestry” and yellow means of “asian ancestry”
    
    And everyone, at least in USA knows that USA’s definition of white is nonsensical, as the USA definition includes hispanics and arabs, which often dont want to be listed as white. And the USA state knows the nonsense of its classification system and has promised to revise it by 2020 so white only refers to people of European ancestry.
    
    Saying that identity doesn’t matter because different regions uses different words or the same word for different things, is like saying temperature doesn’t matter because US uses fahrenheit and Russia uses Celsius.
    - Penelope on January 08, 2017 · at 5:18 am EST/EDT
      
      Wyett, thank you. Excellent post. I personally would identify all the men in the Putin/Solzhenitsyn photo as European, judging by their facial features.
      
      I’ve noticed a few distinctly slavic features in the Ukrainians and in many Russians:
      –The head is less deep, front to back. It’s instead wider side to side. That is, if you viewed the skull from above it is closer to being round than a European skull. Of necessity then the forehead is broad.
      
      –A LOT of hair on their heads. Frequently a “widow’s peak” hairline in front, but the widow’s peak is much wider than the little pointed one of some Europeans. Baldness is rare.
      
      –Among this frequent “slavic type” the nose & chin are never tiny.
      
      –I wonder if there is not a frequent stoic temperament. In some way that I cannot name, many Russians seem to be “like the Germans” in temperament.
      - Anonymous on January 08, 2017 · at 7:59 pm EST/EDT
        
        The chin size is related to historical development of speech and verbal communication. The size of the nose to historical climatic environment, big nose with narrow nostrils – cold climate, short nose with wide nostrils – hot.
        The Saker attempt to define Russians is both interesting and amusing. What are then the Spanish, Italians and Portuguese as descendants of all sorts of races from the Roman state, not to mention the Moors? And Hungarians who clearly are a mix of Asians – Huns and local Germans and Slavs? Oh, and the Island whhich claims to be from pure Viking decent, but actually the majority is from the Irish slaves that Vikings picked on the way?
        Actually, in ancient times, Asia was inhabited by white people who gradually were replaced and pushed to the West.
        
        I partially share Saker’s sentiment to Peter the Great, who also brought from “Europe” to the Russians smoking and drinking alcohol, before him Russians used alcohol as a remedy only and smoking was considered a heresy.
        
        R
  - Wyett on January 02, 2017 · at 11:37 pm EST/EDT
    
    Is that suppose to be an argument?” Look at any picture of Russian soldiers and see an Chinese?” Awful, awful argument, typical of people when they want to something to be true, so they carefully avoid any actual real facts that would quickly debunk what they want to believe.
    
    Well, here we have “any” picture, asians you say? Looks more like like Norwegians to me. Seems ethnic Russians are “too white” to meet your racial standards. Which says a lot given that all we needed was to see one single asian face. Most armies in the world could probably do a lot better then that.
    http://www.defence24.pl/uploads/images/8292077ecf6926c028b4c99abc431027.jpg
    
    If anything it seems that USA and UK/Germany/France has more asian and africans among their personnel than Russia, I assume this is because Russia’s probably not recruiting personnel from Chechnya and similar regions due to extremist threat. While the western armies would never dare suggest it would be a bad idea to fill their armies with salafist infiltrators.
  - Anonymous on January 05, 2017 · at 5:02 pm EST/EDT
    
    #An African sticks out in the Russian street. An Asian never does.In this context the very notion of “White” is simply laughable.”
    
    1. Yes, an Asian sticks out in Russia, at least European Russia(west Russia), it sticks out as it would in Germany, Finland or UK…
    
    2. Yes, ethnic Russians reacts to an Asian among them, just like all other populations react to someone that looks different among them. There are an endless amount of racist slur from ethnic Russians to describe Asians.
    
    3. No, it is not normal for Asians to be in European Russia, Asians are not majority in west Russia, nor are they even a sizable minority, not even in Siberia are Asians a minority of any size, in Siberia 95% of the populations are white, only in central Russia can you find any number of Asians, those few Asians that are in w.Russia are most often illegal immigrants involved with huge unauthorized markets and criminal activity. Where they typically commit various crimes against the ethnic Russians and then bribe the police to get away with it. Which is also why Russian ethnic identity is so strong in Russia and why there are more skinheads in Moscow then all of the western countries put together. And I can tell you if Asians started to get normal in European Russia due to say mass-immigration, there would be instant uprising from ethnic Russians all over European Russia.
    
    ” 70% of rapes are committed by immigrants from Central Asia”
    http://en.news-4-u.ru/mia-in-moscow-almost-70-of-rapes-are-committed-by-immigrants-from-central-asia.html
- Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 2:27 am EST/EDT
  
  “Regarding your observation that Russians are not White,”
  
  -Then Swedes, Poles, British are not white either, it seems thesaker has rubbed shoulders with liberals in USA and has copied parts of their ideology straight off. The most disgusting part too.
  
  Denying the existance of native ethnic groups is modus operandi for liberals all over the world, no matter if you live in Sweden, Germany, USA or Russia, liberals will tell you if you are European that your ethnic group does not exists.. Swedes will be told that they are “mixed” and Sweden is a country of immigrants, a multi-ethnic country, and naturally such a country must be flooded with immigrants.
  
  Whites in USA will be told there are no “whites”, that white is just a racist construct, there are however blacks, and hispanics, and asians, of course, and these are all oppressed by the non-existing “whites.” Yes, liberal logic.
  
  Personally I find it utterly disgusting on every level to try to deny and delegitimization existance of a people. Reminds me not only of what liberals does to Europeans but also that you often hear “There are no palestinian people”,whenever you hear someone trying to deny the existence of an ethnic group, you know you are dealing with a rotten person with a fanatic ideological beliefs.
  - Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 4:23 am EST/EDT
    
    Would you describe Barack Obama as black, white or mixed? To a “white” he may look black. To blacks he may look “white”. What’s all that fuzz about?
    
    By the way: Probably “Barack Obama” isn’t the first “black” / mixed US president. Have a look at pictures of Abraham Lincoln. He does neither look white, red nor black. Some historians even think he may’ve been tri-racial.
    
    With regard to “race” people should also check the story of Sandra Laing.
  - The Saker on December 30, 2016 · at 4:37 am EST/EDT
    
    it seems thesaker has rubbed shoulders with liberals in USA and has copied parts of their ideology straight off. The most disgusting part too.
    
    What is disgusting is your inability to operate without sophomoric cliches, labels and categories. Your mind is like a procrustean bed which has to shrink or extend anybody and everybody to a dimension you can comprehend. Go back to Fox news :-)
    - Kent on December 30, 2016 · at 5:10 pm EST/EDT
      
      “What is disgusting is your inability to operate without sophomoric cliches, labels and categories. Your mind is like a procrustean bed which has to shrink or extend anybody and everybody to a dimension you can comprehend. Go back to Fox news :-)”
      
      Sorry my friend (couldn’t help it,) The above remark would have got me (or you) banned on several forums. Made my day, short and sweet.
      
      I, off-course, would have done “The Blue Eye” depiction or similar along with it. Not here though, as both some moderators and the various stiff-necks on this forum probably would have had a fit of sorts.
      
      Thank you!!
      
      Take Care
      Kent
      - Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 9:30 pm EST/EDT
        
        re: ” Sorry my friend (couldn’t help it,) The above remark would have got me (or you) banned on several forums.”
        
        Ridiculous. The most difficult word in what he wrote is ” procrustean ” – just an adjective based on Greek mythology. Did you mistake that word for some vulgarity?
        
        Kent on December 30, 2016 · at 11:37 pm EST/EDT
        
        “Did you mistake that word for some vulgarity?”
        
        Been around much have you?? I don’t think so.
        
        I, on the other hand has been banned more times than I care to count on other forums.
        
        Even though I did promise (privately) not to post the “Blue Eye” on this forum, half a bottle of whisky, and appr. 1/2 hour of contemplation changed my mind- (contents of contemplation’s remains private for now).
        
        So, here it is in all it’s beauty?? http://telemarksporten.no/Tegneserier/BlueEye.jpg
        
        P.S. Sorry Blue, not for you obviously.
        
        Take Care (and please do not take above depiction to personally).
        
        Kent
        
        blue on December 31, 2016 · at 4:37 am EST/EDT
        
        Back in NJ one of my neighbors had those damn ‘blue eye’ things infesting his tomato patch. Just spray a little tobacco juice on them and they shrivel up.
        
        Frankly, I just don’t get this race and ethnicity thing at all. It feels like when I took freshman algebra and the new teacher (only lasted one year, but it took me unitl I was 18 before I learned algebra) said division by zero is undefined. I asked what that that mean — “undefined”. He said undefined is undefined. “What does undefined mean?” “It means undefined”.
        
        It took years after even learning basic algebra when 18 that I learned what undefined means, and years after that — only a few years ago — that I heard a professor say it’s better termed indeterminate’ — which I agree with, because the whole system is based on definitions and assumptions, etc. and sometimes x/0 indicates infinity, and sometimes 0, or maybe anything else — because it’s not defined ‘in the algebraic system’.
        
        And in the meantime I also learned about ‘radial categories’, which applies to just about every word or category we have. Like maybe a seat is a chair of any sort, or a rock, or a log, or anything that we can sort of sit on. Also a little about calculus and limits and sets and closure, and it turns out everythng is undefined when you get out of abstraction and into reality.
        
        A hamburger is better than nothing ;
        nothing is better than filet mignon ::
        a hamburger is better than filet mignon.
        
        I learned algebra in electronics school. While there I met a guy and we were sort of friends. One day I noticed he had an NAACP button on. ‘How come you’re wearing that’ I asked. He said it was because he was a member. …. Oh — right — of course — you’re a colored person. Somehow I hadn’t noticed or forgot — he was just my friend in the electronics lab. Not the only time I was embarrassed because I forgot to put someone into a race or religion category.
        
        Some of my cat friends are mulatto or mixed colors — but they don’t seem to notice. I think maybe the gray female is Jewish, although I’m not sure, and she seems to have picked up some Buddhist ideas. And some others are bilingual, speaking both Meowndarin and Catonese.
        
        Just color me confused.
        
        WizOz on January 01, 2017 · at 3:09 am EST/EDT
        
        @A hamburger is better than nothing…
        
        A classical amphibology, the ambiguity fallacy. It is not that things are ‘undefined’ in reality. There is the medium term of the syllogism that is wrongly or incompletely defined.
        
        blue on January 01, 2017 · at 4:49 am EST/EDT
        
        Not quite.
        
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity
        Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of meanings of single words, but from the relationship between the words and clauses of a sentence, and the sentence structure underlying the word order therein.
        
        In the example, ‘nothing’ — the word itself — has different meanings: ‘no other thing’ or ‘non-existent thing’. The point is that in reality, nothing is defined because systems in which definitions have meaning are not real but abstract.
        These underdefined and overdefined words are all we have — all abstractions within radial categories, which can never encompass reality.
        
        (I recall an old cartoon with people worshipping a null character and a passerby asks “Is nothing sacred?” — about the same joke as the hamburger.)
        
        I can refer people to Korzybski’s ‘the map is not the territory’. which refers to a very fundamental problem with abstraction (which he goes into at great length) — and has some echoes in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.
        
        Race, for instance, exists only in an abstract context, which is artificially and culturally created, and fluid. Thus we hear of the ‘Irish race’, for example. There is a wide range of color, not only of skin, but of teeth, even, which is why dentists have charts for the color of dentures and crowns. ANd skin tones vary widely even on one person. Ethnicity and such is even more diverse where important characteristics of individuals must be ignored and subsumed into broad classifications.
        
        The more detail we include in observations (which are always very limited themselves) the more deviation from abstraction and classification we get — and the more identity politics breaks down — as well as gender/sex, nationality, religion, ideology, and most everything else.
        
        WizOz on January 01, 2017 · at 11:07 pm EST/EDT
        
        Yes, one comes to a point when he can’t see the forest for the trees.
        
        Anonymous on December 31, 2016 · at 1:00 pm EST/EDT
        
        You shouldn’t need a bottle for the courage to offer what you have or what’s native to you. Post away, party on and keep up the good work with your offerings
    - Dani on January 09, 2017 · at 1:28 am EST/EDT
      
      “What is disgusting is your inability to operate without sophomoric cliches, labels and categories. Your mind is like a procrustean bed which has to shrink or extend anybody and everybody to a dimension you can comprehend. Go back to Fox news :-)”
      
      No offense, but calling someone stupid and then telling them to stop watching fox news is likely one of the most standard liberal retorts imaginable.
      
      And just because most do not reject the existence and rights of ethnic Russians does not mean they are unable to ” operate without sophomoric cliches, labels and categories.” That is a very dishonest response from you I think.
  - Baerlas on January 01, 2017 · at 11:09 pm EST/EDT
    
    Can’t finish reading all these rubbishy versions of people trying to save some of their US-white supremacy thinking. What the Saker wrote in the above article absolutely gels with what I thought and knew about Russia and I consider this simply as correct as can be. All this diversity is a wonderful thing and indeed, kind of like in the Roman Empire all these different cultures and traditions come together in the unity of Russia. Any view of this which is tainted by the (“white”) American world view can’t fathom a country and culture like Russia. With regard to this I would like to add that racism is about the stupidest thing humanity has come up with. Genetically we are all homo sapiens with a little Neanderthal and a little Homo Erectus in our genes (and maybe another race we don’t know about yet) and this is so close a family trait that all the differences are rather minor and insignificant.
  - Leo on January 02, 2017 · at 5:41 am EST/EDT
    
    You said it pretty well
- Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 2:36 am EST/EDT
  
  ” i tell them that “white” and “black” are Western constructs (perhaps used as justification for enslavement of African people and conquering the Americas and other continents). ”
  
  -That is just anti-white propaganda spewed out from liberal MSM outlets. Obviously anyone can tell different colors of various people, liberals like to rant that “whites invented racism.”
  
  The notion that whites invented racism or slavery or that whites are extra racist or has an “extra racist culture” is of course just racist lies in itself. Here are for example a few quotes from China regarding whites.
  
  “毛子 (máo zi) – literally “body hair”, it is a derogatory term for Caucasian peoples. However, because most white people in contact with China were Russians before the 19th century, 毛子 became a derogatory term that refers specifically to Russians.[81][82]”
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_China
  
  “American telegrams reported that certain Uyghur mobs in parts of Xinjiang were calling for White Russians to be expelled from Xinjiang during the Ili Rebellion, along with Han Chinese. They were reported to say, “We freed ourselves from the yellow men, now we must destroy the white”. The telegram also reported that “Serious native attacks on people of other races frequent. White Russians in terror of uprising.”[11]
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_China
  
  In the 1930s, a White Russian driver accompanying the Nazi agent Georg Vasel in Xinjiang was afraid to meet the Hui General Ma Zhongying, saying “You know how the Tungans hate the Russians.” Tungan is another name for Chinese Muslim. Georg passed the Russian driver off as German to get through.[74]
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_China
- Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 2:44 am EST/EDT
  
  Regarding your claim that whites invented blacks to enslave them. Europe was under occupation by african, arab and asians invaders long before black slavery, from Russia to Italy, to Spain and UK millions of whites were enslaved by african/asian/arab slavers.
  
  So following your PC logic, blacks invented whites to enslave them.
  - The Saker on December 30, 2016 · at 4:51 am EST/EDT
    
    Europe was under occupation by african, arab and asians invaders long before black slavery, from Russia to Italy, to Spain and UK millions of whites were enslaved by african/asian/arab slavers.
    
    Thank you for providing us all with a genuine example of how ignorant racists/racialists typically are. Your sentence deserves to be listed in some “dictionary of bigotry and ignorance”. Now please go away and don’t come back as you are wasting everybody time here. Cheers!
    
    @EVERYBODY (including the mods)
    
    I have the strong feeling that the various “anonymous” posted who today and yesterday (in the comments section under my 2016 Triumph year for Russia article) is just one guy. He is recognizable by his monothematic and sophomoric style.
    
    Mods: if you could please check the IPs of that guy and ban him if he comes back that would probably clear the air for a more intelligent discussion. Thanks a lot.
    
    The Saker
    - Kent on December 30, 2016 · at 5:26 pm EST/EDT
      
      You are aware that IP’s and mac addresses can be changed at will?? (5 to 20 seconds).
      
      Also, that even for amateurs, there are software available to allow even a person with very limited skills and no real clue/info, background knowledge etc. to “perform” with quite different (key point) personalities (more than two, five+ is a little bit kinky though).
      
      One of the reasons I am opposed to Anonymity on serious blogs and web-sites. A persons credentials does not have to be public in any shape or form to readers, or other participants in debates/discussions, but only to certified and trustworthy individuals on the forum (Owner/Mods, whatever).
      
      Take Care
      Kent
      - The Saker on January 01, 2017 · at 12:17 am EST/EDT
        
        You are aware that IP’s and mac addresses can be changed at will?? (5 to 20 seconds).
        
        Yes, of course, but low IQ folks rarely deal with IPs or proxies.
        It ain’t foolproof, but it’s a first step :-)
        Happy 2017 Kent!
    - J on January 01, 2017 · at 2:48 pm EST/EDT
      
      While you at it saker, please take care the one before him as well. There is one poster seems has habit of drag china thrugh mud. I saw it on previous post too, is he feeling inferior, and has to knock some one down to prove his worthy?
      
      Since some 2300 year go, chinese emperors routinely married their daughters to barbarians to secure peace at borders, to entertain their inlaws and take in their grand children. They routinely give their surname to black, white, brown come over from obor. Purity of bloodline is obviouly not a concern. It is one of main reason i believe chinese keep peace within borders and with our neighbors. We do not feel we are superor and need to beat sense out of some one to prove it.
      
      Saker is on right track. It is not liberal view of race relation that is problem, but the whites’s consistant needs of aserting superity, the habit of fighting each other for who is whiter, and degrading others to prove it.
      
      If saker’s view reflect russia as whole, i am glad russia is getting out of the rat race.
      - Jac Cuse on January 03, 2017 · at 11:33 am EST/EDT
        
        People of many different races suffer under this problem. Remember the brown paper bag test?
- Jeffrey Coley on December 30, 2016 · at 3:06 am EST/EDT
  
  Your white/back Russia story reminds me of a funny thing that happened while I was in college, around 1990.
  
  A guy I knew was learning Russian, and did a study abroad trip to Russia. When he returned to Texas he was telling us about what he had learned. He was very amused that the “polite” word for Russians of African descent (“blacks”) is “nyegar”.
  
  One of the Texas pipes up, “that’s my word, too!”
  - Anonymous on January 08, 2017 · at 8:55 pm EST/EDT
    
    “nyegar” simply means “black” , from latin word “negrus”.
    
    R
- Cathy on January 06, 2017 · at 6:07 pm EST/EDT
  
  (if you want to think of Russians as “White” and “Europeans” – be my guest, I honestly don’t care. Just don’t come crying in frustrated despair if Russia makes no sense to you and you end up concluding that she is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. The problem is not Russia, the problem is you.)
  
  I am afraid I cannot agree with that, Russia behavior has nothing to do with the genetics of her population, Russia is not behaving “mysterious” or “enigmatic” in anyway, she is not behaving white or non-white. She is just behaving like an independent country, that is all.
  
  The same goes for the western countries, their behavior is not linked to genetics, the fact that western leaders cant understand Russian behavior is because they are indoctrinated, globalist stooges that are so corrupt they have no idea of anything, and I mean this seriously, the level of incompetence of the western “leadership” is breathtaking. These people are not leaders, but errant boys and girls, with no clue of anything beyond taking bribes and nodding when the right people speak. The EU politicians follow USA dictate and the USA leadership follows the dictate of the international oligarchy – to simplify it greatly.
  
  To the old W. European leadership, Russia’s actions would be no surprise, to the Prussians there would be nothing strange with Russia reacting in Ukraine, or not invading Turkey when they shot down her plane. Russia is just behaving like a country with a capable government.
  
  And to many of the more competent leaders in W. Europe, Russian behavior is no shock either. And this has nothing to do with Russia being white or non-white, it just means, as I said, Russia behaves as if it actually has a functional government that cares about its people and knows the consequence of its actions. To attribute this to racial factors is way off. If anything, Russia behaves the way old-European countries used to behave. Russia is a remaining bastion of European civilization reasoning. Whereas, the western leadership has descended into sheer idiocy.
  
  And I’d like to add that if you are using racial reasons to justify behaviors of peoples and governments, you are going to find the world to be a very confusing, strange and frustrating place after the western governments get displaced by leaders that care about sovereignty. At that point they will be behaving exactly like Russia.
Internal Exile USA on December 30, 2016 · at 1:01 am EST/EDT

Thanks again for posting such great holiday presents for the new year. I can’t help adding some stream of consciousness additions:

1) Anyone who studies Chinese Martial Arts will sense, fairly quickly, some heavy influence on what is now called Systema. The Russians, like the Chinese, are always into adapting good ideas. Systema looks (to me — I don’t practice it myself) much like an internal asian art without the animal forms and poetry (used as memory aids for people who couldn’t write Chinese). I’d love to learn more as there’s very little info on the subject — martial arts history is under-documented and the vast majority isn’t translated into English — imagine that… the British denigrated some very brave men by calling their anti-imperial struggle a mere “Boxer Rebellion”.
The methods of practice and even battlefield medicine/repair have different names but sure look similar.

Martial arts history is mixed with legend and myth (Shaolin temple, animals, heroes) and the Chinese don’t seem to mind. Taoist/Confucianist common sense — a good wrist break or kick is exactly that, no need to re-invent the wheel. I believe, without proof, there was cross-fertilization between Russia and Chinese and Mongols when it came to medicine and fighting skills two sides of the coin of Life, I suppose).

2) Comparing Tarkovsky’s Solaris (a mediation on love and loss and family that happens to be a sci-fi film) with 2001: A Space Odyssey (great special effects and ape costumes, one must admit, but human love is not addressed) is another example of the civilizational differences you discuss. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
- Anna on December 30, 2016 · at 3:08 pm EST/EDT
  
  Thank you!
- GrandmaR on December 30, 2016 · at 9:01 pm EST/EDT
  
  Yes. VVP has what I call a kungfu brain. He is an adept.
- Karak on December 31, 2016 · at 1:40 am EST/EDT
  
  I believe, to most of us, in both west and east, but specifically west as we live under PC-fascism everyday, we not only struggle against it but live under it, to us, the fact that thesaker is PC-fascist is a great disappointment, I believe most readers come here to read about the Ukrainian civil war, and assumed this site was anti-PC, a traditionalist site that supports all peoples and reject racism.. Instead we find ourself showered with PC-fascist nonsense.. “Ethnic Russians dont exist”, “etnic Russians are not white”, “whites should feel guilty”, “whites did this”, “whites did that”, “it is beautiful when anti-white apologizes on behalf of the white race for its crimes against native americans”.
  
  This is the sort of anti-white racist nonsense that rules the western world, and I am greatly saddened to see it has such as strong influence here, which I might add, is a exception on pro-Russian sites, both based in east and west. And for natural reasons, as PC-fascism is intensely hostile to Russia, as Russia is correctly seen by the western PC-fascist elites as the last free conservative country in Europe. So to find this site being allied with PC-fascist ideology is sad.
- elsi on December 31, 2016 · at 12:18 pm EST/EDT
  
  I’d love to learn more as there’s very little info on the subject — martial arts history is under-documented and the vast majority isn’t translated into English
  
  Yesterday I posted for you a series of documentaries on Mount Wudang which I thought could be uselful not only for you but for other people to see during these Christmas holidays, but, I do not why, even when asked the mod/mods for two times in the interval of eight hours, was not published.
  
  Since took me a while get all the documetaries here, I do not feel like to repost them to the risk of finishing again wasted in the trash bin, only I will post only one part in Chinese with English subtitles, which I find incredibly in tone to hear the narration in original Chinese with the surrounding of the documentaries:
  
  Wudang Documentary ( Part Six )
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4cPEZkCTqI
  
  From there, I hope, you will be able to find the whole series of 9 documentaries doubled into English. They were in CCTV Channel.
  
  Good luck!
  Happy New Year!
  - Internal Exile USA on December 31, 2016 · at 10:22 pm EST/EDT
    
    Thank you so very much Elsi for this marvelous present for the New Year! Have a great evening!
- Anonymous on January 08, 2017 · at 9:56 pm EST/EDT
  
  The author of Solaris is the famous polish writer Stanislaw Lem, I highly recommend all his books, examples of high civilizational standarts.
  
  R
Kristine Odegard on December 30, 2016 · at 1:43 am EST/EDT

Cock a doodle do!
My dame has lost her shoe,
My master’s lost his fiddlestick,
And knows not what to do.
Talks-to-Cats on December 30, 2016 · at 2:04 am EST/EDT

Excellent, Saker !
- Laika von old Monkshusen on December 31, 2016 · at 10:00 am EST/EDT
  
  Yes, I agree. I looked into it a bit, but Tatar-Mongol seems to be a myth, as so many crap told in ‘history’ books, which most of the rest then parrots.
  It is rather only Turko-Tatar, meaning the Kazakh/Siberian-like Asians. There’re hardly Mongols in Russia, except south of Baikal, and one small area west of the Caspian sea (where they possibly stayed after the raids). I don’t believe in mass migration of hordes either. Rather small hordes, raids, gangs of plunderers on horseback, who terrorized, tyrannized vast territories for a while.
  
  Historically Russia seems to be mostly Kazakh/Siberian-like Asians in the south & east, Slavs in the west, and Finnish-Uralian people in the middle and north.
  
  The eastern part of Germany is historically also Slavic, by the way. East of Hamburg, and also west of the Elbe. Many old names (e.g. towns) there are clearly Slavic.
Peter AU on December 30, 2016 · at 2:41 am EST/EDT

” I fully realize that for people raised in a western worldview of history it will be difficult, if not impossible, to set aside a long list of truisms and understand that they are simply not applicable to Russia.”

Not only Russia Saker. In the US “west” there is a near total intolerance/disrespect of any cultures that are not their own.

The Russian Federation. A federation of diverse cultures, religions and language groups. For Russian leadership to be successful it must have a good understanding and respect for all. Syria similar. I think that is why Russia has been so successful in Syria to date.
- fds on December 30, 2016 · at 3:00 am EST/EDT
  
  “. In the US “west” there is a near total intolerance/disrespect of any cultures that are not their own.”
  
  -Really? Is that why the west allows tens of millions of people of the most alien backgrounds to move into their countries to the point they become a minority in their own capitals? Today, the English for example are a minority in their own capital, total intolerance of other cultures huh? Is that that why when British or German girls are raped by these non-whites, they are told by the media and police to shut up or they are racists?
  
  “Census reveals white Britons as minority in capital for first time ”
  http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/census-reveals-white-britons-as-minority-in-capital-for-first-time-8405998.html
  
  “Anger at the sexual abuse of teenage girls by Pakistani grooming gangs is tearing a town apart with racial tension, a Sunday People investigation has revealed. Multi-cutural Rotherham in South Yorkshire was rocked by a damning report this summer, which showed that 1,400 vulnerable youngsters have been targeted for sex since 1997.”
  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rotherham-child-grooming-scandal-tearing-4508666
  - Peter AU on December 30, 2016 · at 3:51 am EST/EDT
    
    Nope. It is why the US “west” generally goes off to war to bomb the darkies in far flung parts of the empire.
    What do you say about Syrian government buying oil from ISIS, ISIS providing power for government held Aleppo ect ect…. water supplies… Headchopping – plenty of pics of units on Syrian government side after a successful hunting trip, seems like a national passtime at times.
    The US west is phoney tolerance. Hairy fairy rainbow tolerance. No pragmatic respect for other cultures.
Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 2:50 am EST/EDT

Yes, of course, ethnic Russians exist, I didnt even know that was something this site opposes lol weird
Vasco da Gama on December 30, 2016 · at 3:01 am EST/EDT

For those interested:

full saint Serge of Radonezh panel

higher res detail of the battle

the only banner I see with a figure on the right side lacks a visible “christian” crown (auréola)
Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 3:05 am EST/EDT

Russians not white? I am pretty sure there are more blonde blue eyed people in Russia than in Germany.
- The Saker on December 30, 2016 · at 3:21 am EST/EDT
  
  Russians not white? I am pretty sure there are more blonde blue eyed people in Russia than in Germany.
  You are missing the point: the Russians, “White” as they might be, do not think of themselves as “White”. I don’t even think that most Europeans feel “White” either, at least not until recently when things with immigration got infinitely worse (I left Europe in 2002). This is not a matter of skin color, it is a matter of self-identification. Just as the “Greeks” or “Illyrians” or “Macedonians” of the Byzantine Empire saw themselves as “Romans”. And nobody in France before the Revolution saw themselves as “French” either, by the way.
  Even though I am 100% “White” I only began to feel “White” when, as a student in Washington DC between 1986 and 1991 I was exposed to Black anti-White racism. Yup, US Blacks made me discover that I was “White”. Weird, no?
  - vot tak on December 30, 2016 · at 4:52 am EST/EDT
    
    Saker
    
    “when, as a student in Washington DC between 1986 and 1991 I was exposed to Black anti-White racism. Yup, US Blacks made me discover that I was “White”. Weird, no?”
    
    And WHO set that up? I encountered the same sort of bs in Berkeley when the control of the city transfered from a people orientated administration to that of one beholden to zionazi subhumaniods (bates, by name), divisisive interests that worked to make sure the city was divided, mainly white vs black, the zionazi Jew favourite divide and conquer routine in pindoland. Needless to say Berkeley has yet to recover.
    
    Keep in mind the most segregated, the most supremacist, based society is the israeli freakshow. The whole thing is based upon religious dogma, first, psychotic religious dogma, actually, and skin colour. Very much like the pindo confederacy faggotry, where skin colour, where who your parents are who you determined how far you would go in life.
    
    Before in pindoland, one had to be of the “right” racial background, now things have changed. It’s who is subservient to israel/zionazi interests, the “right” zionazi interests, that determines how the “godsteins” will determine how “thee” will progress.
    
    IE: capitalism/colonialism, post 19th century.
  - Sir Humphrey Appleby on January 01, 2017 · at 10:06 am EST/EDT
    
    Happy New Year!
    
    Lots of discussion about this “white” theme, and it has puzzled me for some time.
    
    If we consider the term as a literal descriptor of pigmentation, we get nowhere. Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, Russians have more or less the same skin pigmentation. A descriptor putting them in the same racial category – through melanine content – has as much meaning as describing cars just by their color (that is, if we accept the concept of race, which biology puts under scrutiny). The literal use of the term to describe pigmentation is absolutely meaningless, just as it is meaningless to use the term “black”. I have an Indian colleague whose color is darker than that of Rihanna or Obama. Would we describe him as black? What would that make Rihanna and Obama, “gray”?
    
    Then is is a cultural term? If we consider it to mean “European”, in the broad sense, is it useful in describing grouping a Swede with an Albanian? A Portuguese with a Finn? A Scotsman with a Pomak? It is equally meaningless, as the EU experience has shown: there is no “European culture” to speak of.
    
    Then we can consider the term as a disambiguator. But what does it distinguish between? The most straightforward response is to distinguish “whites” from “blacks”, with the caveat that “whites” are Americans of European descent and “blacks” are African slaves. Then things fall into place. Through the concept of the “white/black” divide, one group (“whites”) could consider another (“blacks”) as subhumans, and use them like animals without the “white’s” basic decency being in question: if they subjugate something less than human, they are just like farmers with cattle. They can still tell their kids: “Daddy is a nice guy that has sheep, cows, and black slaves and treats all his animals well. He feeds them and puts a roof over their heads”.
    
    In that sense, Polish, Greek, Italian, Irish, German or Russian immigrants BECAME “white” only the moment they set foot on US soil, not a moment before.
    
    Testing this hypothesis could be the object of a PhD thesis, which would examine the literary use of the terms “white” and “black” when they refer to race, where “whites” had regular contact with African “blacks”. Were these terms in vogue in the ancient Mesopotamia, the ancient Mediterranean, the Byzantine empire, the Dark ages? Or did they appear with that meaning on the American continent of 17th-18th century?
    
    I suppose that this is a conceptual device applied each time one group needs to subjugate another, and it serves the same psychological mechanism: “We are good people. We are not mistreating another human being, we’re merely making use of an animal”.
    
    In a similar case, Ottoman Turks used the term “reayah”, meaning “flock” to describe the non-Muslim subjects of the empire that were subject to taxes. Their social status was similar to that of animals. Even if they had temporary property rights and they could even be rich, these rights were revocable at a moment’s notice. A Christian subject was considered inferior to the poorest Ottoman Muslim, a situation that defined the economy and property structure of the time. E.g., rich Greeks were rarely manufacturers but merchants, i.e always agile, without fixed capital capital. The family’s legal centre of activities and money would be situated outside the Ottoman empire, (e.g. Vienna, Odessa) where property rights were guaranteed. Some members of the family lived there, while others did business in Greece and Asia Minor. This is why Greeks developed a hydrocephalic merchant sector, including ship owners, but never developed an extended manufacturing base.
    
    In one sense, “reayahs” were the “blacks” of the Ottoman Empire, and Ottoman Turks the “whites”. Similar examples can, I suppose, be found in other times and places.
    - Jac Cuse on January 03, 2017 · at 10:59 pm EST/EDT
      
      “Then we can consider the term as a disambiguator. But what does it distinguish between? The most straightforward response is to distinguish “whites” from “blacks”, with the caveat that “whites” are Americans of European descent and “blacks” are African slaves. Then things fall into place. Through the concept of the “white/black” divide, one group (“whites”) could consider another (“blacks”) as subhumans, and use them like animals without the “white’s” basic decency being in question: if they subjugate something less than human, they are just like farmers with cattle. They can still tell their kids: “Daddy is a nice guy that has sheep, cows, and black slaves and treats all his animals well. He feeds them and puts a roof over their heads”.
      
      In that sense, Polish, Greek, Italian, Irish, German or Russian immigrants BECAME “white” only the moment they set foot on US soil, not a moment before.”
      
      Interesting line of thought, but maybe you will have to (re-)consider the -who actually were the lion’s share of slaves or serfs- besides Africans, and rephrase the former somewhat.
      
      You may want to do some reading up here:
      
      http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=44940
      - Sir Humphrey Appleby on January 04, 2017 · at 11:14 pm EST/EDT
        
        I admit that I wasn’t aware of the issue of white slavery and that I haven’t looked into it enough to judge its basis.
        
        But even assuming it so, I refuse to accord my sympathy on an “either, or” basis. I don’t believe we are judging a contest for “the most victimized color”, where there is just one worthy winner of the “pity prize”.
        
        And you entirely missed my point. Like in the “black”/”white” divide, or with the Ottoman/”reayah” divide, there can always be some difference, sufficient to distinguish between “human” exploiter and “subhuman” slave. Remember when the Aryan super-race looked to subjugate the equally white and blond Poles and Slavs… You know, the “untermenschen”?
        
        Color in that case was incidental. The disambiguator can be anything, so long as it serves its basic psychological mechanism.
the pessimist on December 30, 2016 · at 3:15 am EST/EDT

Interesting. For the critics remember that Homo sapiens have (at a minimum) Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA intertwined with their own. There are and have been many human cultures, some quite unique, but humans are specialists in interbreeding, adapting, and assimilating, inventing, imagining.

The Saker – what do you think of Empress Catherine?
- The Saker on December 30, 2016 · at 3:25 am EST/EDT
  
  The Saker – what do you think of Empress Catherine?
  
  I don’t like any of the figures which official historians label as “great”.
  Also, I don’t like Empires, including the Russian one.
  Besides we owe her the survival of the Jesuit order.
  Hardly something praiseworthy, at least in my opinion :-)
  - the pessimist on December 30, 2016 · at 5:13 am EST/EDT
    
    Too simple an answer isn’t it? Both Peter and Catherine contributed significantly to the historical stream that is Russia today and the legacy is neither completely black nor white – correct? Of course we can say that Napoleon and Hitler’s Germany also contributed something but that is not what I am after here.
Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 3:57 am EST/EDT

I’m writing my comment from the perspective of a layperson, too. A few years ago I started reading a multivolumed copy of German history. (I’ve got still a few centuries to go …) One of the first impressions that I got was that all the attempts at carving out distinguishing features with regard to race are pure BS. Over the centuries people / tribes had moved from east to west, from north to south and reverse. If people didn’t try to kill each other and thus invaded the territory of other tribes, they were engaged in trade or were invited to foreign countries (for examples: Volga Germans). It’s only natural that due to these forms of contact people mixed with those of other groups. Probably mixing was the best idea, otherwise they would’ve faced the same problems the Amish in the US are facing today. Many years ago I had seen a documentary about those communities in the US. In that documentary it was mentioned that probably due to too close intermarriage with other Amish they contracted genetic disorders.

With race it’s the same as with religion. It’s an excellent tool to exploit others (Middle East, Africa, …) and divide the masses. If people would realize that they’re being played then we would probably witness French Revolution 2.0 in many countries around the globe.
vot tak on December 30, 2016 · at 4:04 am EST/EDT

Saker

A lot of interesting material. About race based supremacist thinking upon skin colour, this is a fairly recent historical civilizational degenerneration, and is the result of intrusive dominance policies of people of one skin colour subduing those of another.

The only places I can find where this took place involved the aryan take over of India, where the darker skinned existing population was marginalized to facilitate an intrusive total takeover of the existining society by the invaders.

And the European colonizations which for the most part depended on the false narrative that the “darker races” living in the colonies were less valuable than the buggered parasites sought to fraudulently consolidate their criminality.

People otherwise, while differentiating their differences, didn’t consider skin colour much of a factor, but were more concerned about cultural/religious differences.
- The Saker on December 30, 2016 · at 4:44 am EST/EDT
  
  About race based supremacist thinking upon skin colour, this is a fairly recent historical civilizational degenerneration, and is the result of intrusive dominance policies of people of one skin colour subduing those of another.
  
  Indeed. And, likewise, the “White” pseudo “identity” is what is left when everything cultural, spiritual or social has been completely emptied of any real substance, when a person becomes a rootless orphan, then the last thing which remains to that person is a pseudo-identity based on skin color. It is always amazing to me how those who operate with the category “White race” are long on slogans and short on arguments or, for that matter, even basic historical knowledge. The idiot above who accuses me of being a “liberal” is a typical example of that kind of militant ignoramus.
  
  I firmly believe that being a color is the last spasm of an agonizing population bereft of any real civilization.
- The Saker on December 30, 2016 · at 5:09 am EST/EDT
  
  The only places I can find where this took place involved the aryan take over of India, where the darker skinned existing population was marginalized to facilitate an intrusive total takeover of the existining society by the invaders.
  
  But do we know that the Aryans were “White” at the time of their conquest of India? I think I remember that one theory say that they came from the Caucaus or from modern Iran while another says that they came from the north, i.e. southern Siberia. If either one of these theories is correct, then the Aryans might not have been as “White” as Adolf and his cohorts imagined them to be.
  - jiri on December 30, 2016 · at 7:41 am EST/EDT
    
    There is also the theory that it was the other way around- that the people in India migrated outwards.
    
    This is plausible as the “Aryan invasion” theory was coined by British scholars and there may have been a large element of projection in this theory.
  - Scott on December 30, 2016 · at 7:58 am EST/EDT
    
    “But do we know that the Aryans were “White” at the time of their conquest of India?”
    
    Here is article titled “Hunza tribe phenomenon” This tribe lives between India and Pakistani in Himalayas.
    
    Russia had a mission there in 19c. but even back then a handful of Russian troops deployed there thought that the locals were somehow related.
    
    https://cont.ws/post/459512
    
    Look at these faces and how much they look Russians.
  - vot tak on December 30, 2016 · at 3:33 pm EST/EDT
    
    Saker
    
    “But do we know that the Aryans were “White” at the time of their conquest of India?”
    
    By that time they were probably a mixed group. I wasn’t implying Aryans were white, anyway, just lighter than the Indians they conquered. I was using the name aryan in the historical linguistic and cultural meaning, not the popular one of hitler and white supremacists and all that nonsense. Btw, the name Aryan is what the name Iran derives from. I would imagine if the knuckle dragging sods of “aryan nation” found out they were actually calling themselves “Iranian nation”, this would cause them a bit of anxiety. :D
    
    A great book on indo-europeans is Mallory’s “In Search of the Indo-Europeans”, it provides an excellent over view of what was known about these peoples and their origins (as of 1990s). He relies upon researchers from Russia for a lot of the material.
- Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 7:31 am EST/EDT
  
  The ‘Aryan takeover’ was most likely not the way it is represented. It seems unlikely that there was a whole scale invasion at any point. More a trickle of incoming tribes (plural- they also warred amongst themselves) at just the point that there was a civilisational decay in the ‘Indian’ (land of the Indus) lands.
  
  The earlier civilizations (The Indus Valley – though it existed well beyond that; and the Chalcolithic era) show evidence of various different ethnicities/races/tribes.
  
  It is also highly doubtful that skin colour was the basis of exclusion. (This again seems a later imagining) The evidence I have come across suggests that the contempt the ‘Aryans’ felt for the subjugated classes was expressed more in terms of linguistic (they referred to as people with poor/bad tongue) and facial features (snub nose) You could argue that the latter is racial in character but it does not refer to skin colour.
  - gT on December 30, 2016 · at 10:11 am EST/EDT
    
    This has been discussed on the Saker previously. Indians moved north and became Aryans over time, and became European over time, hence the meaning of the Indo portion in the definition of the Indo-European and Indo-Aryan language groupings. Most European languages fall into the Indo-European grouping, because they originated in India.
    
    There was indeed no Aryan conquest of India. Its just that the Indo’s who went North came back a bit paler later on as Aryans. The more North you go the less sun you get, so the paler mutations are able to survive and reproduce. In the South the paler mutations just die of skin cancer. Of course the paler Aryans were lucky to have been able to wear full cotton garments when they came South again else they would have died of skin cancer also. Only clothes, sunscreen and being able to stay indoors most of the day enable pale skins to survive when close to the equator.
    
    The Indo’s all came from Africa originally, as Africa is the birth place of the hominids.
    - Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 12:06 pm EST/EDT
      
      I’ve studied Indian history and have never come across any real evidence to suggest that Indians moved north and came back. Of course migration would have constantly happened in all directions, but it is the issue of timing and numbers.
      
      The Aryans are supposed to have come around 2000-1500 BC, after the decline of the Indus Valley civilization, which had its peak around 2500 BC. Some suggested the Aryans as a cause of this decline, but this seems unlikely to me. The Indus Valley civilization had trade links with Mesopotamia, and through them Egypt, and either traded with or colonized parts of Northern Afghanistan and Central Asia (they mined semi precious stones from there) So if the argument is that these same people who went there then called themselves Aryans and came back, it is possible. Though it would have had to be a massive emigration to justify calling them as returning home, and why would so many go out into what is harsher territory?
      
      The problem I have in thinking in terms of racial stock is that India (I suspect like Russia) has had such a long history and has been at the crossroads of so much civilizational movement. It is almost meaningless to think in terms of racial purity or history. We’ve had Greeks, Romans, Huns, Scythians, Mongols, Turks, Persians, and later, Europeans such as the British, French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, etc all come and settle here.
      
      As for the Indo-European branch indicating it originated in India. I don’t know. I thought it was the other way round. Some surviving tribal languages are not of the Indo-European group of languages. Those that do belong on that linguistic branch, such as the Dravidian languages of today spoken in the south, as well as most of the Northern languages, have a clear link from Sanskrit, which of course is what the Aryans brought with them. The flow of information from there to India is also clear in religion, though some of the Indus Valley religion also survives to this day (such as the swastik, which was not Aryan to begin with)
      
      The problem with studying this period of migration is that there is a lot of modern day politics tied into it as psuedo religious supremacists seek to mark themselves as the original inhabitants. My personal opinion is that unlike the European narration, there was no large scale Aryan invasion and Aryans weren’t a racial identity per se, and that the link to call the Aryans as original inhabitants who only returned ‘home’ is tenuous and driven by an agenda of fostering a racial identity, which has no basis in reality today but serves a political agenda.
      - johnm33 on December 30, 2016 · at 6:38 pm EST/EDT
        
        As to the Aryan invasion, Tilak wrote a book on his studies of the Sanscrit stories called ‘Arctic homeland in the Vedas’ in which he based his thesis on the prolonged ceremonies surrounding the welcoming back of dawn, and the numerous consecutive dawns, this after a period iirc of 6 weeks darkness alluded to in the stories. That would put their origins firmly above the Arctic circle, quite possibly by the ocean. Like Velikovsky he was both vilified and ignored though no one could dispute him on the facts. Again iirc the Yakut have a story which has them migrating south long ago, returning only when the Mongols ruled Asia, and there’s some genetic evidence to back this up.
        Tilak states that long ago the Arctic had a climate like permanent springtime, and that these people were the first to domesticate cattle and live off their various products.
      - gT on December 30, 2016 · at 7:33 pm EST/EDT
        
        Though I am no expert on these matters by any means; since the language grouping is called Indo-Aryan that suggests that the Aryans had their origin in India. Were the Indian languages to have had their origin in Aryan territories then the language grouping would have been called Aryan-Indo, which is not the case.
        
        Likewise the language grouping to which most European languages belong is called Indo-European because its origin lies in India. It is not called European-Indo because Indian languages did not have their origin in Europe. The British Empire was not impressed on colonizing India to find out that their superior English language had its roots in India, so they liked to suggest that the Indian Languages had their origin in Europe. The Nazi’s were the most vocal in the belief that Indian languages had their origin in Europe, they couldn’t tolerate the thought of the super race’s language having originated from brown skinned people.
        
        Until such time until the languages groupings accepted by academics internationally are renamed from indo-european and indo-aryan to european-indo and aryan-indo, both the European and Aryan languages have their origin in India. “Sanskrit is a standardised dialect of Old Indo-Aryan, originating as Vedic Sanskrit and tracing its linguistic ancestry back to Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-European”.
        
        WizOz on December 31, 2016 · at 1:27 am EST/EDT
        
        In actual fact, a new academic consensus is emerging that India was not the cradle of the “Indo-Europeans”. The ‘Indo-Europeans’ (a term that certainly should be discarded) originate in the Mediterranean and Black Sea areas. That was the original ‘Europa’. From this region groups of people migrated in different directions, reaching India as well.
        
        India was a receptacle of diverse influences coming from different directions (principally from beyond the Himalayas and from Austronesia), which combined in what is called ‘Hinduism’. Migrations from India took rather the maritime ways. Relations of Harappan civilization with Mesopotamia have been observed from the first days of the excavations. Mesopotamian myths explicitly talk about man-fish creatures coming from the sea, bringing the elements of civilization.
        
        gT on December 31, 2016 · at 5:19 am EST/EDT
        
        Fine, I shall await with bated breath the decision from the “new academic consensus” to rename the language groupings of indo-european and indo-aryan to something more appropriate in the future.
        
        But its not just evidence from the linguistics front, there is also evidence from the biological front that suggests Indo origin. And for the record, I actually don’t like Indo’s, because they can’t play rugby, only cricket.
        
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjBlZl8RON8
    - Jac Cuse on January 03, 2017 · at 11:23 pm EST/EDT
      
      Nope, it’s the other way around. The paler skinned people synthesize significantly more vitamin d at higher latitudes and are thus less prone to deficiency related diseases. Even back down south they will ward off cancer because of high systemic vitamin d.
      
      Look up the numbers for skin cancer and lethal percentages for sunny Australia and Sweden for instance. You will be very much surprised.
Jeffrey Coley on December 30, 2016 · at 4:07 am EST/EDT

The cultural differences between Russians and Americans are profound.

I recall reading some books written by a Soviet defector (allegedly), a former GRU officer writing under the pseudonym “Viktor Suvorov”. He described the difference between American “Hollywood romanticism” and Russian “realism”.

Note from the Saker: Suvorov (aka Rezun) wrote a lot of very interesting and good stuff and a lot of nonsense just to sell more books. His example of famine and Russians sound like what you would read about Klingons in a Star Trek book. It is nonsense. Russians are tough, but not because they are willing to eat the weak but because their history has made them tough as the sole means of survival. But there is plenty of solidarity amongst suffering Russians, even in the camps or during the siege of Leningrad. My2cts. The Saker

He cited as one example that Americans celebrate stories of people in a famine who share their food with others. A Russian hearing such a story remarks it must not have been much of a famine, then, because in a real life or death situation not only would you kill weaker people and take their food, you might eat them as well.

In every regard, according to Suvorov, the Russian mindset is much tougher than the American. The Hollywood movie cowboy gradually works up to violence, beginning with insults, progressing to fisticuffs, and then finally to a gunfight. A Russian would walk in and shoot his enemy without warning, in the back of possible.

Well, it is true that Russians see threats as a sign of weakness, here Suvorov is correct

One really striking passage described wolf pups. According to Suvorov, the stronger pups will turn on the weakest sibling and kill it. I don’t know if that’s true, but the point is Russians BELIEVE it is true.

The wolf is a Chechen national symbol. The Russian one is the bear and in Russian culture the wolf is NOT a respected animal.

I don’t think Americans are quite as soft as Suvorov suggests (although the people who make movies certainly are), but I do have tremendous admiration and respect for the Russian people.
- _smr on December 30, 2016 · at 11:50 am EST/EDT
  
  “The Hollywood movie cowboy gradually works up to violence, beginning with insults, progressing to fisticuffs, and then finally to a gunfight. A Russian would walk in and shoot his enemy without warning, in the back of possible.
  
  Well, it is true that Russians see threats as a sign of weakness, here Suvorov is correct”
  
  Hollywood is Jewish and not American. What too many people do not comprehend fully is that their self-image as Europeans and Americans has little to do with what they originally were – Viking, Celts, Saxons, whatever, and everything with what they were conditioned with through their zionized media, art, entertainment, schooling. The rabbit hole goes very, very deep.
  
  In other words: When Saker says Russia is not ‘white’ – whatever such a non-term should mean – all he says that vast Russian hinterlands were never sucessfully Romanized and Zionized.
  
  Long live Russia!
  Long live Europe!
  Long live America!
Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 4:34 am EST/EDT

Thank you, great article and great insight!!
- Ivanka on December 31, 2016 · at 1:01 am EST/EDT
  
  If you think that is great you should start reading ukronazi sites, they post this type of nonsense trying to undermine Russian identity all the time.
SanctuaryOne on December 30, 2016 · at 4:43 am EST/EDT

On the topic of propaganda has anyone viewed this BBC documentary piece called HyperNormalisation?

https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/

In its earlier parts (it is almost 3 hours long) it mixes together just enough deception and distortion with grains of truth to appear seductively believable, especially to those who are uninformed, but falls badly apart near the end with its smear messaging of Putin, Trump etc. And of course Assad.

Near the disingenuous end it does show a couple of barrel bombs being dropped just to reinforce that meme but I didn’t spot any White Helmets.
Question: In the same elapsed time, how many Syrian government barrel bombs can be dropped compared to rebel mortar bombs or shells from even a single artillery piece?

It deserves analysing its murky depths if only in order to bring the techniques used to the surface and innoculate against them.

It uses components such as this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/hidden-author-putinism-russia-vladislav-surkov/382489/

It is has many outright whoppers, is rife with non sequiturs, inverting cause and effect and ignores much of geopolitics that is relevant but is far deeper than the usual crude BBC tabloid level propaganda. As a piece of hypocrisy the BBC has exceeded itself with this one.
- elsi on December 30, 2016 · at 7:48 pm EST/EDT
  
  Well, I found that article from The Atlantic quite interesting, in fact, this comrade, Mr Surkov, is quite disturbing, and it´s a fact that he has worked for both, Mr. Khodorkovsky and Mr. Putin….
  
  I, precisely, felt quite disturbed when read his supposed short story, “Without Sky”, which I found around there in the net.
  
  http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue582/without_sky.html
  
  That of the non-linear war sounds quite plausible, could explain quite well all what many here do not understand from the Kremlin´s sometimes unexpected moves, I am referring to what we are witnessing related to Turkey, Qatar, and even with the US, from time to time….
  
  I was going to ask you why is that you read so much BBC, since so biased, but, then, I understood….
  Thanks for bringing in here.
  - Eimar on December 30, 2016 · at 10:58 pm EST/EDT
    
    Elsi, you should read this article on the author of The Atlantic piece, Peter Pomerantsev:
    
    https://pando.com/2015/05/17/neocons-2-0-the-problem-with-peter-pomerantsev/
    
    You should also be aware he is currently working for the Legatum Institute.
    
    His ‘perceptions’ – well-written, and quite compelling in a literary kind of way – should therefore be viewed through the prism of his own politics – standard Western ‘liberalism’.
    
    I consider his article on Sukarov to comprise roughly five parts envy to five parts projection.
    
    Things are not always how they seem – as Pomeranstev himself personifies.
  - SanctuaryOne on December 31, 2016 · at 5:34 am EST/EDT
    
    Sorry Elsi, I should have warned you about Pomerantsev; i incorrectly assumed that everyone here knew of his manipulative ways. I included his piece as an indicator of some of the source for the BBC propaganda documentary.
    
    As far as the BBC goes, people keep telling me about their pieces and I find myself unable to not confront the propaganda and reveal it. It’s a kind of catharsis for me, if you will.
    - elsi on December 31, 2016 · at 11:27 am EST/EDT
      
      Thanks to both, but I am able to make myself my own idea of these issues, and so, as the author linked by Eimar clearly states, there are a lot fo true in Pomerantsev analysis on how the elites ( all, not only Russian of course ) manipulate all what we see at propaganda levels so as to many times fool the average tax payer.
      
      This is why, despite, even when Pomerantsev could be a neocon mouthpiece, one can not but to feel disturbed by, not only his analysis on Mr. Surkov character but also the writtings of the later, especially this available by its shortness and freeness in the net “Without sky”.
      
      I fact I have already discussed this issue of these writting by Mr. Surkov with the “old strategist”, since he is always talking about the wrong way of seeing reality as a black/white paradigm, even betting that he could be Mr. Surkov himself, what did not give place to merriment as other guessings of mine about his identity, btw..
      
      From all this I can only conclude that I feel mainly like the bidimmensionals in that short story, since I have clear what is wrong and what is right, what is good and what is evil, and do not like any people trying to fool me.
      This is why, perhaps in a not so distant future, the bidimmensional ( i.e. the proles ) could well be fed up again and so revolt against the elite who fool them all the time till being fed up, and then, again, some, the mouthpieces in payement of the elites, will write every book and every paper telling that what really took place was “a judeomasonic conspiracy”, again, to start fooling again.
    - Eimar on December 31, 2016 · at 12:31 pm EST/EDT
      
      Sanctuary One:
      
      Just direct those ‘recalcitrants’ to the Mark Ames piece.
      
      Not only does it expose Pomerantsev himself, it is also useful as a an introduction to how widespread and insidious the anti-Russian propaganda is ( though the piece also reflects some propagandist tropes – like the real story behind Maginsty, who was in reality a dubious character, a kind of ‘fixer’ and was not murdered by the Russian state.)
      - elsi on December 31, 2016 · at 2:29 pm EST/EDT
        
        Anyway, I wonder why did you post these articles, since the effect could well be the illustrated by my reaction, i.e. spread doubt in a moment whne Russia is being grossly hitted every week, since the article posted by Sanctuary One is dated in 2014, why now, and why in this form and, besides all, why on Earth it was not deemed off topic….
        
        Eimar on December 31, 2016 · at 5:30 pm EST/EDT
        
        At the risk of being ‘off topic’….
        
        Like you say Elsi, you have to make up your own mind. As do we all.
        
        I oersonally am not perturbed by the Sukarovs of this world, whom I view as po-mo bs ‘artists’ for the most part, though some are intelligent, and provide ‘focus for thought.’ Most of these ‘ avant garde ‘ types I’ve met myself are pretty shallow and egotistical, and rarely amount to much more than failed actors.
        
        As a high-profile figure, Putin inevitably comes into contact with a huge range of characters. Many are people no doubt he would not choose as friends or close confidantes. And the role of president requires dealing with ‘unsavory’ elements, including heads of brutal regimes like KSA. He has a country to run – he can’t just pick and choose according to his own value-system.
        
        That’s one aspect of ‘realpolitik’ I ‘get’, though I tend to be cynical about the way it has excused moral compromise ( like the deal with the oligarchs.)
        
        He is also an ex-intelligence officer – perhaps he never ceased being one.
        
        From that, I myself conclude that Sukarov’ is ‘useful’ as he brings knowledge of a way of thinking that is probably alien to Putin himself.
        
        But Pomeranstev’s insinuation that Sukarov is some kind of ‘sevengali’ pulling, among others, Putin’s ‘strings’ I find simply laughable.
        
        Maybe I am naive – but I personally have faith in Putin’s bulls**t detector.
        
        And his ability to conceal those ‘detections.’
Jose Garcia on December 30, 2016 · at 7:41 am EST/EDT

Thank you Saker. A great concise history of the great Russian people. As for the tolerance of Russians to other races, I would like to recommend this story to you and for your thoughts.
http://www.valexandrov.com/summary/.
- Vin on January 06, 2017 · at 3:07 pm EST/EDT
  
  I doubt Russians are more tolerant of other races then other European peoples. This is not the 1960s anymore, what European is not accustomed to seeing blacks or arabs in their towns or cities?
  - Nussiminen on January 06, 2017 · at 3:54 pm EST/EDT
    
    “/…/what European is not accustomed to seeing blacks or arabs in their towns or cities?”
    
    Psheks, Balts, and Ukros spring to mind immediately. It’s hilarious as their beloved EU “lets it be known” to them that no displays of domestic Russophobia, however genuine and avid, on the part of the “true believers” will spare the latter the horrors of seeing The Great Unwashed settle among them. Lord the Almighty works in strange and wondrous ways.
Locutus on December 30, 2016 · at 7:41 am EST/EDT

very interesting view! it would be interesting to say something about western orthodox church, and in this context about patriarchate of aquilea with jurisdiction from grenoble over salzburg to hungary. do you know something about that?
Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 7:43 am EST/EDT

Having only studied Russian history through a Western lens (and that too very briefly), it does feel like a mystery. But a lot of what you are saying makes perfect sense to me as an Indian. It’s tough to explain the difference between the Western thinking (which has its pluses too) and Eastern thinking. For me at least. And especially difficult to do so to the completely Western educated brain.

One thing that does confuse me about your brief introductory sentences, is the identity based on race or ethnicity. I get the mixing of various groups over a long civilizational period, and how it blurs the lines, but in the Indian context, though we divide ourselves by other means, race/ethnicity doesn’t really enter into it.

By the way, I found this site a year or so ago, and have been visiting at fairly regular intervals to get better information, and a break from the media’s worldview/propaganda. Informative and interesting. Also often confusing because I am new to some topics and the combination of views on various topics is not the straightforward agreement or disagreement. Sign of a healthy discussion.

PS. Any suggestions for a book/article (not too technical or complicated) to begin to understand Russia through the ages would be welcome.
Bankotsu on December 30, 2016 · at 8:46 am EST/EDT

Chapter 7 of Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley — Creation of the Russian Civilization

In the nineteenth century most historians regarded Russia as part of Europe but it is now becoming increasingly clear that Russia is another civilization quite separate from Western Civilization.

Both of these civilizations are descended from Classical
Civilization, but the connection with this predecessor was made so differently that two quite different traditions came into existence.

Russian traditions were derived from Byzantium directly; Western traditions were derived from the more moderate Classical
Civilization indirectly, having passed through the Dark Ages when there was no state or government in the West.

Russian civilization was created from three sources originally:

(1) the Slav people,
(2) Viking invaders from the north, and
(3) the Byzantine tradition from the south.

These three were fused together as the result of a common experience arising from Russia’s exposed geographical position on the western edge of a great flat-land stretching for thousands of miles to the east.

This flat-land is divided horizontally into three zones of which the most southern is open plain, while the most northern is open bush and tundra.

The middle zone is forest. The southern zone (or steppes) consists of two parts: the southern is a salty plain which is practically useless, while the northern part, next to the
forest, is the famous black-earth region of rich agricultural soil.

Unfortunately the eastern portion of this great Eurasian plain has been getting steadily drier for thousands of years, with the consequence that the Ural-Altaic-speaking peoples of central and east-central Asia, peoples like the Huns, Bulgars, Magyars, Mongols, and Turks, have pushed westward repeatedly along the steppe corridor between the Urals and the Caspian Sea, making the black-earth steppes dangerous for sedentary agricultural peoples.

The Slavs first appeared more than two thousand years ago as a peaceful, evasive people, with an economy based on hunting and rudimentary agriculture, in the forests of eastern Poland.

These people slowly increased in numbers, moving northeastward through the forests, mixing with the scattered Finnish hunting people who were there already.

About A.D. 700 or so, the Northmen, whom we know as Vikings, came down from the Baltic Sea, by way of the rivers of eastern Europe, and eventually reached the Black Sea and attacked Constantinople. These Northmen were trying to make a way of
life out of militarism, seizing booty and slaves, imposing tribute on conquered peoples, collecting furs, honey, and wax from the timid

Slavs lurking in their forests, and exchanging these for the colorful products of the Byzantine south. In time the Northmen
set up fortified trading posts along their river highways, notably at Novgorod in the north, at Smolensk in the center, and at Kiev in the south. They married Slav women and imposed on the rudimentary agricultural-hunting economy of the Slavs a superstructure of a tribute-collecting state with an exploitative, militaristic, commercial economy.

This created the pattern of a two-class Russian society which has continued ever since, much intensified by subsequent historical events.

In time the ruling class of Russia became acquainted with Byzantine culture. They were dazzled by it, and sought to import it into their wilderness domains in the north.

In this way they imposed on the Slav peoples many of the accessories of the Byzantine Empire, such as Orthodox Christianity, the Byzantine alphabet, the Byzantine calendar,
the used of domed ecclesiastical architecture, the name Czar (Caesar) for their ruler, and innumerable other traits.

Most important of all, they imported the Byzantine totalitarian
autocracy, under which all aspects of life, including political, economic, intellectual, and religious, were regarded as departments of government, under the control of an autocratic
ruler.

These beliefs were part of the Greek tradition, and were based ultimately on Greek inability to distinguish between state and society. Since society includes all human activities, the Greeks had assumed that the state must include all human activities.

In the days of Classical Greece this all-inclusive entity was called the polis, a term which meant both society and state; in the later Roman period this all-inclusive entity was called the imperium. The only difference was that the polis was sometimes (as in Pericles’s Athens about 450 B.C.) democratic, while the imperium was always a military autocracy.

Both were totalitarian, so that religion and economic life were regarded as spheres of governmental activity. This totalitarian autocratic tradition was carried on to the Byzantine Empire and passed from it to the Russian state in the north and to the later
Ottoman Empire in the south.

In the north this Byzantine tradition combined with the experience of the Northmen to intensify the two-class structure of Slav society.

In the new Slav (or Orthodox) Civilization this fusion, fitting together the Byzantine tradition and the Viking tradition, created Russia. From Byzantium came autocracy and the idea of
the state as an absolute power and as a totalitarian power, as well as such important applications of these principles as the idea that the state should control thought and
religion, that the Church should be a branch of the government, that law is an enactment of the state, and that the ruler is semi-divine.

From the Vikings came the idea that the state is a foreign importation, based on militarism and supported by booty and tribute, that economic innovations are the function of the government, that power rather than law is the basis of social life, and that society, with its people and its property, is the private
property of a foreign ruler.

These concepts of the Russian system must be emphasized because they are so foreign to our own traditions.

In the West, the Roman Empire (which continued in the East as the Byzantine Empire) disappeared in 476 and, although many efforts were made to revive it, there was clearly a period, about 850AD, when there was no empire, no state, and no public
authority in the West.

The state disappeared, yet society continued. So also, religious and economic life continued. This clearly showed that the state and society were not the same thing, that society was the basic entity, and that the state was a crowning, but not essential, cap to the social structure.

This experience had revolutionary effects. It was discovered that man can live without a state; this became the basis of Western liberalism.

It was discovered that the state, if it exists, must serve men and that it is incorrect to believe that the purpose of men is to serve the state. It was discovered that economic life, religious life, law, and private property can all exist and function effectively without a
state.

From this emerged laissez-faire, separation of Church and State, rule of law, and the sanctity of private property.

In Rome, in Byzantium, and in Russia, law was regarded
as an enactment of a supreme power. In the West, when no supreme power existed, it was discovered that law still existed as the body of rules which govern social life. Thus law
was found by observation in the West, not enacted by autocracy as in the East.

This meant that authority was established by law and under the law in the West, while authority was established by power and above the law in the East. The West felt that the rules of economic life were found and not enacted; that individuals had rights independent of, and even opposed to, public authority; that groups could exist, as the Church existed, by right and not by privilege, and without the need to have any charter of
incorporation entitling them to exist as a group or act as a group; that groups or individuals could own property as a right and not as a privilege and that such property could not be taken by force but must be taken by established process of law.

It was emphasized in the West that the way a thing was done was more important than what was done, while in the East what was done was far more significant than the way in which it
was done.

There was also another basic distinction between Western Civilization and Russian Civilization.

This was derived from the history of Christianity. This new faith came into Classical Civilization from Semitic society.

In its origin it was a this-worldly religion, believing that the world and the flesh were basically good, or at least filled with good
potentialities, because both were made by God; the body was made in the image of God; God became Man in this world with a human body, to save men as individuals, and to establish “Peace on earth.”

The early Christians intensified the “this-worldly” tradition,
insisting that salvation was possible only because God lived and died in a human body in this world, that the individual could be saved only through God’s help (grace) and by living correctly in this body on this earth (good works), that there would be, some day, a millennium on this earth and that, at that Last Judgment, there would be a resurrection of the body and life everlasting. In this way the world of space and time, which God had
made at the beginning with the statement, “It was good” (Book of Genesis), would, at the end, be restored to its original condition.

This optimistic, “this-worldly” religion was taken into Classical Civilization at a time when the philosophic outlook of that society was quite incompatible with the religious outlook of Christianity.

The Classical philosophic outlook, which we might call
Neoplatonic, was derived from the teachings of Persian Zoroastrianism, Pythagorean rationalism, and Platonism. It was dualistic, dividing the universe into two opposed worlds, the world of matter and flesh and the world of spirit and ideas.

The former world was changeable, unknowable, illusionary, and evil; the latter world was eternal, knowable, real, and good. Truth, to these people, could be found by the use of reason and logic alone, not hy use of the body or the senses, since these were prone to error, and must be spurned. The body, as Plato said, was the “tomb of the soul.”

Thus the Classical world into which Christianity came about A.D. 60 believed that the world and the body were unreal, unknowable, corrupt, and hopeless and that no truth or success could be found by the use of the body, the senses, or matter. A small minority, derived from Democritus and the early Ionian scientists through Aristotle, Epicurus, and Lucretius, rejected the Platonic dualism, preferring materialism as an explanation of
reality.

These materialists were equally incompatible with the new Christian religion.

Moreover, even the ordinary citizen of Rome had an outlook whose implications were not compatible with the Christian religion. To give one simple example: while the Christians spoke of a millennium in the future, the average Roman continued to think of a “Golden Age” in the past, just as Homer had…

…These ideas which became part of the tradition of the West did not become part of the tradition of Russia. The influence of Greek philosophic thought remained strong in the East.

The Latin West before 500AD used a language which was not, at that time, fitted for abstract discussion, and almost all the dogmatic debates which arose from the incompatibility of Greek philosophy and Christian religion were carried on in the Greek
language and fed on the Greek philosophic tradition.

In the West the Latin language reflected a quite different tradition, based on the Roman emphasis on administrative procedures and ethical ideas about human behavior to one’s fellow man.

As a result, the Greek philosophic tradition remained strong in the East, continued to permeate the Greek-speaking Church, and went with that Church into the Slavic north.

The schism between the Latin Church and the Greek Church strengthened their different points of view, the former being more this-worldly, more concerned with human behavior, and continuing to believe in the efficacy of good works, while the latter was more otherworldly, more concerned with God’s majesty and power, and emphasized the evilness and weakness of the body and the world and the efficacy of God’s grace.

As a result, the religious outlook and, accordingly, the world outlook of Slav religion and philosophy developed in quite a different direction from that in the West.

The body, this world, pain, personal comfort, and even death were of little importance; man could do little to change his lot, which was determined by forces more powerful than he; resignation to Fate, pessimism, and a belief in the overwhelming power of sin and of the devil dominated the East.

To this point we have seen the Slavs formed into Russian civilization as the result of several factors. Before we go on we should, perhaps, recapitulate.

The Slavs were subjected at first to the Viking exploitative system. These Vikings copied Byzantine culture, and did it very consciously, in their religion, in their writing, in their state, in
their laws, in art, architecture, philosophy, and literature. These rulers were outsiders who innovated all the political, religious, economic, and intellectual life of the new civilization. There was no state: foreigners brought one in. There was no organized
religion: one was imported from Byzantium and imposed on the Slavs.

The Slav economic life was on a low level, a forest subsistence economy with hunting and rudimentary agriculture: on this the Vikings imposed an international trading system.

There was no religious-philosophic outlook: the new State-Church superstructure imposed on the Slavs an outlook derived from Greek dualistic idealism. And, finally, the East never experienced a Dark Ages to show it that society is distinct from the state and more fundamental than the state.

This summary brings Russian society down to about 1200. In the next six hundred years new experiences merely intensified the Russian development. These experiences arose from the fact that the new Russian society found itself caught between the
population pressures of the raiders from the steppes to the east and the pressure of the advancing technology of Western Civilization.

The pressure of the Ural-Altaic speakers from the eastern steppes culminated in the Mongol (Tarter) invasions after 1200.

The Mongols conquered Russia and established a tribute-gathering system which continued for generations. Thus there continued to be a foreign exploiting system imposed over the Slav people.

In time the Mongols made the princes of Moscow their chief tribute collectors for most of Russia. A little later the Mongols made a court of highest appeal in Moscow, so that both money and judicial cases flowed to Moscow. These continued to flow even after the princes of Moscow (1380) led the successful revolt which ejected the Mongols…

http://www.carrollquigley.net/books.htm
- Anonymous on January 01, 2017 · at 7:23 pm EST/EDT
  
  Just for your information, the early Celtic church in Britain (formed it is believed by the witness of Roman legionaries that had been converted by the witness of Paul and others) believed most strongly in the total depravity of man and the total reliance on grace & Christ’s finished work for salvation.
  
  Sadly, the invasion of roman catholicism brought pseudo-christianity to Britain – and the dark ages. The re-discovery of the fundamental truths of scripture thanks to the translation of it into the common tongue is still considered most welcome by those not blinded by the god of this world. Incidentally, the millennial view is considered by many (but not all) christian scholars to be a mis-understanding of scripture although we tend to agree to differ as the book of Revelations isn’t easy to interpret!
  - WizOz on January 01, 2017 · at 11:47 pm EST/EDT
    
    Yes, the Anglos (or the Brits?) came suddenly to the belief that they have been appointed the sole interpreters of the fundamental truths of the scriptures (God is an English gentleman, isn’t he? and he speaks English, doesn’t he?) and given the mission to wipe out ‘pseudo-Christianity’ all over the world.
DanC on December 30, 2016 · at 8:58 am EST/EDT

Hi Saker,

There’s one contribution to Russian culture you didn’t include. That of the Scandanavians, the Vikings.

Viking culture is surely one of the most unique to arise in all of history, and couldn’t be characterized as “typically European.” During the period Europeans insist on calling the dark ages though, Vikings emigrated to many principalities in what would become Russia, merging with the poulation, while introducing many new features, and loanwords, into the developing culture.

A little-discussed feature of Scandanavian history is the fact that people from the principalities in the future state of Russia also moved in the opposite direction, trading and even settling in what is now eastern Sweden.
- Max on December 30, 2016 · at 9:43 am EST/EDT
  
  I would disagree with the term dark ages,
  
  ”dark ages” is more of a protestant term which you will find in anglo countries to delegitimise the roman church who was ruling during that period, so not exactly european,
  
  It is very common in england, but you will not hear it in France, italy or spain that much (age sombre)
  - Frankie on December 30, 2016 · at 3:11 pm EST/EDT
    
    You might have sense with those ideas. In fact warmer climate made 11th, 12th and first half of 13th century relatively better for most Europeans. Things got worse after climate change in 14th and 15th century until early 19th century of recovering.
    - DanC on December 31, 2016 · at 12:28 am EST/EDT
      
      @Frankie,
      
      There is indeed a correlation between climate warming trends and expansion of empires and of trade, and collapse of empires and economies during periods of climte cooling.
      
      You might find this article interesting:
      
      https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/nature/climate-change-history-the-fall-of-empires-come-when-warming-turns-of-cooling/
- The Saker on December 31, 2016 · at 2:08 am EST/EDT
  
  There’s one contribution to Russian culture you didn’t include. That of the Scandanavians, the Vikings.
  
  Actually, I did. I just called them Varangians. Also, there is a lot of dispute about who they really were and where they came from. To speak of a substantial cultural influence on modern Russia is, I think, an exaggeration.
  Cheers,
  The Saker
  - MarkinPNW on January 01, 2017 · at 8:25 pm EST/EDT
    
    Well, I still have an old set of World Book encyclopedias and the Sweden entry shows a typical “cottage in the country” that most urban Swedes have for weekends and vacations; hmmm, isn’t that called a “Dacha” in Russia?
    
    Also, with my own Swedish heritage, why do I feel somewhat of a kinship, if not “brothers”, then perhaps “cousins”, with Russia and the Slavs? It’s that feeling that has contributed to my interest in, and feeling somewhat at home, here at this site.
gT on December 30, 2016 · at 9:25 am EST/EDT

Ok, since the cat has been let out of the bag, ‘Russians are no more European than are the Tatars’

http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/06/09/tatar-historian-russians-are-no-more-european-than-are-the-tatars/

Yes, its on the euromaidan website, but even the Saker asks “could-there-be-a-grain-of-truth-in-the-ukrainian-propaganda”?

Glad its finally out that Russians are neither European nor Asian “While Russians are much closer to Asians than to European, they are not quite Asians either – they form their own, unique, civilizational realm.” which is the reason why Russia is so confuciusing to the rest of us, throughout history.
Aram Mirzaei on December 30, 2016 · at 10:37 am EST/EDT

Great piece by the Saker as usual. A wonderful history lesson! Thank you. I think Alexander Dugin’s view of Russia identifying as Euro-Asian is a rather correct assessment of Russia as a nation and where it should look for its identity.

We should not forget that a vast majority of Russian territory lies in Asia and that a huge part of Russian history is influenced by Asian peoples. Throughout the millenias, several different peoples have passed through and settled on modern Russian territory, including Schytians, Huns, Alans, Mongols, Tatars and Slavs etc. The Russian identify is formed not on the grounds of ethnicity but on the grounds of a common but rather on cultural, regional snd religious grounds.

I think many Asian countries form their identifies on these traits rather than the Western traditional ethnic trait.
WizOz on December 30, 2016 · at 11:28 am EST/EDT

@Just don’t come crying in frustrated despair if Russia makes no sense to you and you end up concluding that she is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. The problem is not Russia, the problem is you.

Indeed, the problem is the people who don’t want to make any effort to try to solve the “riddle…” that is Russia and stop at midway. Because what the man who dominated the catastrophes of the 20th Century from a state of quasi-permanent inebriation (starting almost single-handedly two World Wars), Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, the last embodiment of the British Empire, had really said was this (keep in mind that he said that on the 1st:

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest of the safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea, or that it should overrun the Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic peoples of south eastern Europe. That would be contrary to the historic life-interests of Russia”. The old fox understood Russia better than anyone else, no matter that he was a perverse drunken bastard politician (or perhaps because of that, he carved that ‘south eastern Europe’ with Stalin over many glasses of vodka and Champagne from the Imperial cellars that Sir Winston knew very well!).

Apparently unrelated, a story (real history, I assure you) came to my mind. It is about Antiokh Dimitrievich Kantemir (in Romanian Antioh Cantemir), the son of the polymath Moldovan Prince Dimitrie Cantemir, exiled to Russia and counselor of Peter the Great in matters of the emerging ‘Oriental Problem’. Antioh was an erudite as his father (he is considered as the father of Russian poetry) and served as Ambassador to England and France, where he made acquaintance with Voltaire. Voltaire, in admiration for his erudition, wrote an encomium explaining his qualities by his Greek origin. But to Voltaire’s bafflement, the Ambassador rebuked him and reminded him that he descend from Genghis-Khan! Indeed the Cantemirs were a Tartar family, baptized and elevated to the nobility status in Moldova. Prince Dimitrie Cantemir, who spent a long time of his life as a hostage to the Ottoman Porte, the exiled to Russia for his alliance with Peter against the Turks (where he wrote a small treatise about the inevitability of the growth of the ‘Boreal Empire’) wrote the first scientific treatise about the antiquity of the Romanians of which he took much pride: “The Chronicle of the history of Romanians-Moldavians-Vlachs”.
Cantemir is the author of the first manual of Turkish music and to this days the tunes of ‘Cantemiroglu’ are played in Turkey almost on a daily basis.
So, where would you place the Cantemirs? Tartars, Romanians, Russians? What glues together these ‘ethnicities’? One thing: their indefectible Orthodoxy, “this vineyard which your right hand has planted”!
- ioan on December 30, 2016 · at 6:48 pm EST/EDT
  
  Thanks WizOZ for this contribution, really appreciated.
  - Franz on December 30, 2016 · at 8:12 pm EST/EDT
    
    I second that. A remarkably valuable historical corrective and completion.
    The dumbing-down of the population and misrepresentation of Churchill has been going on for almost a century now.
  - WizOz on December 31, 2016 · at 12:31 am EST/EDT
    
    Thank you! I HOPE that we all will have a much better year ahead.
    
    Wish you all a Happy New Year!
  - notsosimple on January 01, 2017 · at 12:38 am EST/EDT
    
    Ioan, a simple search in romanian would have let you know so much more about the complexity of the story. D Cantemir’s origins? at least 3 variants on father’s side:, from Crim , free peasant(razesh), small land owner ennobled by the moldavian king. mother’s side moldavian aristocracy. if you look at the paintings of the males Cantemir none have any tatar features(wide face and narrower eyelids.)
Mike Munford on December 30, 2016 · at 11:37 am EST/EDT

This is fascinating. I wish you would write a proper book about it. Long ago, when I was learning Russian in the Army, I read both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky in Russian and was very much struck by the totally different ways in which they used the language. It seemed to me that Tolstoy, for all his peasant antics, wrote Russian as if it was not his native language. So did Turgenev. But Dostoyevsky was a Russian all right, and wrote like one.

To Russians, Russian poetry means Pushkin. But Pushkin was an aristocrat like Tolstoy and he shows it. Yet he was also the origin of the Russian poetic tradition. From my limited view as an outsider, I would say that the modern Russian tradition is a blend of the old pre-Petrine and the Petrine, perhaps as we English are both Saxons and Normans. But whereas the fusion of Saxon and Norman in us happened a very long time ago, the fusion of pre-Petrine and Petrine in the Russian mind has only happened recently. In the Soviet period, the country was at first governed by aristocrats and foreigners like Lenin and Stalin and the many Jewish Bolsheviks, but it gradually came to be governed by people of peasant origin who were and are undilutedly Russians. The Purges and the War were horrific, but they both had also that positive effect.

My favourite Russian poet was and is Simonov, whose poems I’ve translated. Simonov’s mother was an Obolenskaya. But in the War, he wrote:

Ты знаешь, наверное, все-таки Родина –
Не дом городской, где я празднично жил,
А эти проселки, что дедами пройдены,
С простыми крестами их русских могил.

Не знаю, как ты, а меня с деревенскою
Дорожной тоской от села до села,
Со вдовьей слезою и с песнею женскою
Впервые война на проселках свела.

(www.simonov.co.uk)

Many thanks for all your great stuff. I don’t often disagree with you!

Поздравдяю с новым годом!

Mike Munford
_smr on December 30, 2016 · at 11:40 am EST/EDT

Great article.

“there was no “Russian Renaissance”, there was no “Russian Reformation””

That makes sense and explains a lot. The Venetian bankers (Jewish) were the main force behind the financing and orchestration of the Renaissance and the Reformation – ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Reformation’ both being clever Jewish NLP terms like ‘color revolution’, ‘freedom and democracy’. The Jewish bankers goal was to break the power of the European aristocracy (Renaissance) and the Catholic church (Reformation).
- mundanomaniac on December 30, 2016 · at 3:26 pm EST/EDT
  
  They are the reformators, the opposition always, good
  with a bad kaiser, bad with a good terrible Zar
  and what a formidable opposition
  leaders Uranus
  always humanitarian
  while strictly endogam
  
  the managing ‘race’ of the
  discussion
  on discernment
  
  and I see their malfunction
  on the planet dark places
  likewise being a bonfire
  associated with the bright side
  
  an man can choose
  in his heart
- WizOz on December 31, 2016 · at 1:48 am EST/EDT
  
  Renaissance and Reformation came to Russia in the form of the subversive heresy of the Judaizers’ (Zhidovstvuyushchiye), a subject still treated with kid gloves.
  - The Saker on January 01, 2017 · at 12:29 am EST/EDT
    
    Well, I would agree to call it a spillover from the Reformation, but I would still say that Russia did not undergo a Renaissance or a Reformation. The Judaizers came darn close to seize power, but they were uncovered and eventually defeated.
    Kind regards,
    The Saker
    - WizOz on January 01, 2017 · at 7:21 am EST/EDT
      
      This is certainly a question which requires more studies (Renaissance and Reformation are themselves the effect of a Judaizing process). Judaizers were defeated but they went underground. Molokans, Dukhobors, Khlysty, Subbotniks (who relapsed into open Judaism), Bezpopovtsy, continued the rejection of the Church, priests, icons, saints, ritual. Even the pre-Nikonian reforms Church was tinged with Judaizing beliefs (millenarism) and lapsed into heresy so easily.
      - Franz on January 01, 2017 · at 8:46 pm EST/EDT
        
        You omitted one cult, the most dangerous and radical one of all, South Slavs (so-called ‘Ukrainians’) left behind by the relocation of the capital to Moscow. They are the product too of the Judaicizers and their Judaism, secularized, is the Russophobic Zionism now prevailing on Grushevksy street in the old capital, Kiev.
        
        WizOz on January 01, 2017 · at 10:43 pm EST/EDT
        
        I talked about that in previous posts. But let’s remind again what they believed about themselves, enshrining it in their first ‘constitution’ (The Bendery Constitution, of Pylyp Orlyk, 1710):
        
        “Let it be to the eternal glory and memory of the Zaporozhian Host and the Ruthenian [Rossiacae] people.
        God, who is wondrous and unfathomable in his judgments, merciful in forbearance, just in punishment, has ever since the beginning of this visible> world elevated some kingdoms and peoples according to his most equitable judgment and humiliated others because of their offences and iniquities, reduced some to slavery and liberated others, exalted some and cast down others. In the same way, the valiant and ancient Cossack people, formerly called Khazar, was at first exalted by immortal glory, spacious territory, and heroic exploits which inspired fear both at sea and on land not only among neighbouring peoples but even in the Eastern Empire, so much so that the Eastern emperor, wishing to make lasting peace with it, joined his son in matrimony to the daughter of the Khagan, that is to say, the Cossack prince…
        Whereas among the three theological virtues faith is the first, one should in this first article deal with the Orthodox faith of the Eastern confession, with which the valiant Cossack people was enlightened under the rule of Khazar princes by the Apostolic See of Constantinople, and to which it has remained unwaveringly faithful then and now, without straying from it to any alien religion…
        Whereas the people formerly known as the Khazars and later called Cossacks trace their genealogical origin to the powerful and invincible Goths, and, moreover, whereas the laws of friendly neighbourhood connect and join together that Cossack people by the deepest ties of affectionate affinity to the Crimean state, with which the Zaporozhian Host many a time entered into military alliances, and from which it obtained assistance for the protection of its fatherland and its liberties; His Grace the Hetman shall endeavour, as far as is possible at present, to renew through his envoys to His Most Serene Highness the Khan the old brotherhood and military alliance with the Crimean state and to confirm perpetual friendship, so that the neighbouring countries, taking note of it, will not dare to strive to subjugate Ukraine or inflict any harm on it…
        
        Erudites are wondering where the Khazars disappeared!
johnm33 on December 30, 2016 · at 11:42 am EST/EDT

I’ve often wondered whether the “mongols” began as a apparently oriental ‘race’ or if they aquired their current look from two or three generations [or more?] of raiding into China and bringing home wives/concubines/slaves.
“I kid you not” After they raided Jerusalem the Samarians [Samaritans] were confronted by the Assyrians they had a simple choice they could fight the emerging empire or they could allow their army to be posted to confront the enemies of empire on the northern borderlands. They chose the latter and were [just the army and their close family] moved to Crimea where they were known as cimmerians or to the greeks kimmeroi. They prospered despite the emnity of the locals they displaced, and grew rapidly in numbers, they were mostly young unencumbered by obligations to elders, well organised and efficient fighters and farmers. So much so that after a few generations they were so numerous that when the Assyrian empire fell they decided to split into two groups one of which, around 200K strong, migrated south then west, sowing and reaping as they moved slowly across Turkey arriving fortuitously just in time to assist Brutus grandson of Aeneus free the Trojan slaves from their Grecian masters. They then decided it would be best to leave the area[recorded on the lemnos stele] before the Greeks could recover and retaliate and became the ‘Celtic’ invasion of the Bitish isles. The Cimmerians mainly settling the west coast the Trojans and their allies the east, reflected in the Cymri/ Cumri/Cambri names in the west and by the Troinovanti and familial names of troian allies of tribes in the east.
A number of people have independently over the years discovered that using medieval ‘welsh’ Cymric/Cymreag on a simple say as you see basis is the key to reading the hieroglyphs, unfortunately their translations call for a complete rewrite of history, into a far simpler and coherent form, and is met with either vitriol or silence from mainstream historians.
Of interest to some may be that the works of Homer are probably the only extant example of Druidic composition, where a multi layered narrative based on a real event is suffused with hidden information, the account of Achilles childhood for instance is the only reference anywhere to Tutankhamens upbringing as a hostage prince. Read ‘Homers secret Illiad’ for more.
Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 1:30 pm EST/EDT

In the past, river an shallow sea routes were traditionally more significant trade routes than land routes, particularly land routes through dense forest. Witness the focus of empires around the Mediterranean, the North Sea as a center of north European trade. This changed a little with the introduction of the robust Roman road system, but reinstated itself once the Roman empire failed in north Europe and the roads fell apart. This would not necessarily apply to the open steppe of the Russian territory, but rivers such as the Volga were important for bulk trade. This is one of the reasons the Khazars set themselves of as gate keepers over this area, controlling and taxing land trade east-west and river trade north-south.
Peter Watson on December 30, 2016 · at 2:21 pm EST/EDT

God bless you, thank you for your teaching. God bless Russia and President Putin and let us pray for Mercy in 2017 and to be delivered from the hands of evil men. I hope the US and Russia can be friends again under President Elect Trump.
- mundanomaniac on December 30, 2016 · at 3:12 pm EST/EDT
  
  God bless you for these simple words
Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 2:50 pm EST/EDT

“The Ukraine”(which simply means borderland) is an invention of German imperialists to divide and conquer Russia. You can make up “borderland people” in every country if you want to break it up.

“Germans Taught Russian Prisoners of War the Idea of Ukraine”
http://tarpley.net/metaphysical-doubts-concerning-the-existence-of-modern-ukraine-a-1918-creation-of-the-german-general-staff/

“As a “means of struggle against Russia,” the “rebellion of not only Poland, but also of the Ukraine” was sought, according to the decree handed down August 11, 1914 by the Chancellor of the German Reich.[4]”
http://german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/58703

Himmler in 1940:
“In the treatment of the foreign people in the East, we must look to recognize as much as possible individual peoples, that is, in addition to the Poles and Jews, the Ukrainians, the White Russians, the Gorals, the Lemks, and the Kashubians. If there are still somewhere to be found, there are also people. I will say that we are not only most interested in dividing the population of the East into one, but, on the contrary, into as many parts and fragments as possible.”
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/untermenschen/himmler-fremdvolk.php

Even in 2006 the German ambassador and advisor of Yushchenko Dietmar Stuedemann promoted Ukrainian nationalism:
“It is not so important in my view to answer the question whether you share the same roots with Russia from Kyivan Rus. It is more important that you have something distinctive in your traditions, customs, in the variety of your regions and in something modern, for example, when people went into the streets to fight for their prospects [during the 2004 Orange Revolution].”
https://web.archive.org/web/20060613010844/http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/24609/

“In fact, the diverse nomenclature for the Ukrainian ethnic group caused a great deal of confusion not only at the turn of the century but also at a later period (through the 1930′s). The people of the province of Galicia and Bukovina, generally called themselves “Rusyny” (Ruthenians), Galicians, Bukovinians and Austrians… the Greek Catholic Church, to which at that time the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian immigrants adhered, preferred the term “Ruthenian”…both within the Austrian and the Russian Empires where the term “Ruthenian” and “Little Russian” respectively had begun to give way to the new, but at the same time old term, “Ukrainian”(person on the borderlands), as a national designation…The paper (Ukrainian Voice) was really a pioneer in transforming the “Austrians”, Ruthenians”, “Galicians” and “Bukovinians” into Ukrainians.. It popularized the term “Ukrainian” as a replacement for “Ruthenian.” Wasyl Veryhas Masters of History Thesis”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-congress-and-president-obama-officially-recognize-donbass-public-law-86-90-1959/5467942?print=1

“One CIA analyst judged that, “some form of nationalist feeling continues to exist [in the Ukraine] and … there is an obligation to support it as a cold war weapon.””
http://www.archives.gov/iwg/reports/hitlers-shadow.pdf
Frankie on December 30, 2016 · at 3:08 pm EST/EDT

And in case of Finns, Finnish language and Finland as a new nation it’s not just Academician Professor Matti Klinge who has mentioned tens of times that Finns under control of imperialistic Swedish Kingdom lived more than a hundred years nightmare and it was actually Russian Empire which saved the whole Finnish culture, people and perhaps even language by cutting Finland off from Sweden. Sweden became “peaceful nation” after that cut off. Compared to bloody decades of Gustavus Adolphus the Great (Gustav II Adolph) and Charles XII (Karl XII) they years under rule of Russian Empire (1809-1917) were if not paradise but era of growing economy and most important steady peace and fast growth of population.

Those interested in parties of Swedish Empire (18th century) check these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hats_(party) …… a party of pro west (France) warmongers (Nato of that time)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caps_(party) ….. a party searching better relationship with Russia (popular especially among Finnish aristocrats)

There were surely lots of good things (etc body of laws) Swedish Kingdom brought to Finland. However terrible foreign policy made reality gloomier for most of Finns.
- Carl Lundström on January 02, 2017 · at 11:26 am EST/EDT
  
  You seem to say that Sweden was a temporary occupier of Finland, which I something I hear for the first time. When do you meant that the Swedish “nightmare” began?
bernie on December 30, 2016 · at 3:31 pm EST/EDT

Dear Saker and Saker community,
Best Wishes for the New Year.
It interesting to know where we came from, to discover our roots (It is not always profitable to expose the roots to the sun). or background but..or so what….
What seems more interesting is to have an idea of where we are going, towards what are we heading, Where do we want or need to go. What is our “fore-ground.Let not the past hinder our common future. As a side note, I was in Peru’ s sacred valley some years back. The ceremony the Inca “priest “did, did not differ much of what you see here in India. I was not alone other Indians were also surprised.to notice the unmistakable similarities, blowing the conch for instance. It is not so difficult to see the possibility of Oneness. “What should he fear he who sees everywhere Oneness”
nikk on December 30, 2016 · at 5:03 pm EST/EDT

The origin of Tatars is a mystery but what about the Scythians ?

Ukraine in ancient times was mainly inhabited by Scythians, tribes that were close to Ossetians, Iranians and Persians linguistically. Not Slavic but Scythian…..

And Crimea was called Tauris (Ταυρίς , Ταυρίδα) by Greeks because of a scytho cimmerian tribe called Tauri. Greeks established a few important Greek colonies in Tauris that survived hundreds of years .

Roman empire (” byzantium”) held this territory for hundreds of years too. Goths had a presence there too.
Later the latins established trade posts . Then the Crimean khanate emerged and engaged in a major slave trade abducting and selling numerous Slavs to ottoman empire…..
S113 on December 30, 2016 · at 5:28 pm EST/EDT

Thank you to The Saker for taking time to post this! When these discussions get started, I can’t help but wander through some of my personal family history. So we’re these Germanic people, without land, relocating to whatever region offers us the best life. Opportunities are a bit scarce. I am told that in the 19th century, we settled in what is now called Ukraine. And Germans were not welcomed by the local population. This is what I was told. We were doing okay in terms of making a living, but moved to Russia because of hostility from the locals. In Russia, life was good for us serfs. :-) Everyone got along. Then, when Russia started to get revolutionary, Canada offered the chance to actually own land. Another move. If there is any truth in this, then even back then one region was inclusive and another was not. And I’m always fascinated by my ancestors reaction to the brewing revolution – they were happy, prosperous (for peasants), yet they stayed as far away from it as possible. Shatters some of my romantic ideas about the Russian Revolution. :-)
- Talks-to-Cats on December 30, 2016 · at 8:08 pm EST/EDT
  
  Since we have all these knowledgeable historians, IMO it would be good to include some of the recent discoveries that are well known to Russians but nearly inaccessible to non-Russian speaking people — known under the heading “Chronological Revision.” That way, facts are not being connected to fictions. Example : Russians are not “White” because they are significantly _______ (Eastern). Yet the ancient mummies in the Gobi desert (East) are blondes (!) . . . So who exactly were Huns or Mongols before silly propagandists decided they had dog faces and were cannibals ? “Whites” ?
  - S113 on December 31, 2016 · at 1:22 am EST/EDT
    
    TTC, yes, many interesting, at times, conflicting views on various peoples at various times in history. When I reflect back on my own lineage (with the limited understanding of it that I have), it seems like “once a pawn of the Empire, always a pawn of the Empire”. Sigh. :-)
    - S113 on December 31, 2016 · at 4:12 pm EST/EDT
      
      A quick add-on to appease my conscience: my father gets very upset about this. He has spent much time researching both our personal family history, and also the history of Ethnic Germans Living in Russia (I believe this is the proper term for it). It’s as if attempts are made to erase these people from history.
      
      You know that saying, “more Catholic than the Pope”?? I think of our German ethnicity that way – although back more than a hundred years ago, most all peoples in Europe felt this way about their ethnicity, I guess? Anyway, we’re totally German, and totally settled in Russia. No conflicts. Cooperation instead!!
Julia on December 30, 2016 · at 6:25 pm EST/EDT

Saker,

I believe in you commentary you are missing a very important aspect not just of Russian ethnicity but also heritage and culture. That is what I would call the “Slavic factor” if you will . Being Polish, I’ve looked into the history of the ancient Slavic people as well as the mythology and legends. It is one of those things that binds all of us Slavs at a very deep level. It has influenced our traditions, foods and even the way we perceive the world. I would even argue that the Slavic heritage supersedes the religious heritage. The history of Slavic peoples is deep and was born in Asia. It is different from the Western European culture and heritage that I will agree with as well. In fact Slavic languages are the closes languages to Sanscrit. Now, of course, in the course of history different people have been mixed. Russia has done an extraordinary job incorporating these people into the state. At the same time, Russia managed to retain that predominant Slavic heritage.
- Franz on December 30, 2016 · at 8:00 pm EST/EDT
  
  One of the great achievements of the pre-Zionist (and Zionist) Anglo Empire has been the division of the Slavic people into synthetic nations, ethnicities, languages and religions.
  “Divide et Impera” was the motto of the First Reich (Rome) and all the Reichs since, even unto this, the Fourth.
  The Russian historian, Solovyov, posited that even the German and Russian tribes are part of one tribe, divided. When I foolishly, once, told a fellow young German that I, as a Russian, felt a strong affinity for Germans and that we were in essence, one tribe, the German was horrified and disgusted by the thought as a Roman patrician might have been at the idea of standing in Church, shoulder to shoulder in faith, with plebeians.
  - S113 on December 30, 2016 · at 8:29 pm EST/EDT
    
    Franz, I share your sentiment. I was raised with this belief – that Germans and Russians are natural allies or partners (as in, made that way by nature – not very PC, but there you have it!!). I still have a hard time accepting the many attempts of the German nation to conquer Russia. Shocking news for me.
    - Franz on December 30, 2016 · at 8:49 pm EST/EDT
      
      The first time (WW1) was a huge mistake and practically an accident of personalities. Then international hyenas moved quickly enough to turn a war, which was almost over, into the first Color Revolution (coup d’etat) – the Red one of 1917.
      The second time (WW2) was a massive conspiracy involving the Global Anglo-Zionist banks and US Oligarch Elites who funded the illegal rearmament through Prescott Bush and his cronies while doing an end run around the Versailles Treaty.
    - Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 10:46 pm EST/EDT
      
      With all that I’ve said, I don’t mean that Russia and Germany are not natural allies. They probably are. There is a big difference in saying that they are allies or that both peoples have common interests and that they are the same ethnic group. They are definitely not the same people meaning the same tribe as you quoted Sokolnikov? as saying. Completely disagree with that last statement and I don’t believe you would find many Russians agreeing with that. Sokolnikov said that possibly for political reasons. Can’t say because don’t really know anything about him. Just a supposing. Many of those intellectuals come up with all kinds of theories. That theory is definitely not acknowledged by Russian society. Furthermore, in Russia, the aristocracy was and wanted to be very Western European. They had very strong desire to be part of the Western European salons. Many of them saw the traditional Russian culture as “peasant” culture. That could have also been part of the reason for his theory. However, it is not true historically.
  - Julia on December 30, 2016 · at 8:48 pm EST/EDT
    
    There is a division among Slavs but the division is political not ethnic. Poland was originally a union of 7 tribes. Russia if I remember 28 tribes. The division between the different nations goes back 1000 years. Even 1000 years ago there were differences noted between Polish and Czech languages as well as Polish and Russian languages. The political differences have occurred over time partially due rivalries between the nations and partially due to foreign interference both Anglozionist and German. The idea that Germans and Slavs are the same group is ridiculous. The languages alone that. Although they are both Indio-European,they are a completely different root. Add to that, that neither the Slavs nor the Germans recognize any commonality other than maybe one or other intellectual possibly for political reasons. All Slavs, be it Russians, Poles, Serbs, Czechs etc recognize each other as members of one family. Be it, that as in many families there are often disagreements and even bitter feuds. Every Pole deep down will see disagreements with Russia differently than with Germany. With Russia is a family feud. Germany is an outsider. In short the national division among Slavs are not exactly synthetic. They are the result of more than a 1000 years of history. Anglozionist have used many of the historic divisions to achieve various geopolitical goals. Katyn for example. Germans did that many times before.
  - Eimar on December 30, 2016 · at 10:20 pm EST/EDT
    
    Franz – you were right :
    
    http://eurogenes.blogspot.ie/2015/01/a-little-more-teasing-half-of-our.html?m=1
    - Anonymous on December 30, 2016 · at 11:01 pm EST/EDT
      
      Step ancestry? and Central Europeans? Maybe more specific. Hungarians are Central Europeans and also have “step ancestry” and yet are very distinct by language and culture from Slaves, Germanic and Romanic people. There have been studies done that show that Slavic people have links to the Aryans that invaded Indian about 4000 years ago and have links to the Vedas. I think DNA proved it to not to mention linguistic studies. You can check that out.
    - Franz on January 02, 2017 · at 8:37 pm EST/EDT
      
      I am not always right… But good to hear I am this time.
      Credit goes to Solovyov, probably the greatest European Historian in history.
      Solovyov is one of the best-kept secrets in international academia.
      The Bolsheviks were not too interested in understanding or preserving.
      Like the vandals of Palmyra, they were more into destroying culture.
      - Eimar on January 03, 2017 · at 3:25 pm EST/EDT
        
        Sounds interesting.
        
        While I detest the ‘divide-and-conquer’ politics of race-theory/genetics, the ancient stories of immigration and passage of peoples throughout the world is fascinating from an anthropological point of view.
        
        Do you have a good introductory link?
- Dragan on December 31, 2016 · at 12:22 am EST/EDT
  
  I agree with you, Julia. Missing aspect that is not touched by the article, and would clarify things greatly, are not just Russian ethnicity, heritage and culture, but view on those aspects in general. Religious part is quite clear, on that topic he said much and i eagerly await the results of the project he announced a while back regarding Orthodox Christianity. But i would add to that category tradition and nationality. Especially when we know how the Zionists, modern day Pharisees, skillfully conflate ethnicity, religious affiliation and nationality to hide among the people and sow hatred and wars.
  - Julia on December 31, 2016 · at 1:35 am EST/EDT
    
    You are right Dragan. Having come here from Europe, I’ve found that the understanding or lack there of, even the very definition of ethnicity and nationality is different in Europe than in N. America. I have found that Americans define ethnicity and ethnic groups in quite a strange way. I’m not sure Poles, Russians or Czech would consider themselves different ethnic groups. Different nationalities yes. Different ethnic group not sure. There is a definite recognition that we are one family. Saker’s view of history is very much informed by the history of the Church, Orthodox Church in particular. There is more to Russian history than the history of the Orthodox Church. I’ve also disagreed where he seemed to create some division between Russian and Ukrainian “ethnicities”. Smells of Americanism to me. Historically and culturally speaking they are one people. One people that share the same heritage. The division is only political. The people of Ukraine have been taken hostage by anglozionists through the bandarite movement. That does not negate their historical and cultural origin. To do so is to play into the anglozionist propaganda of divide and conquer.
Tony_0pmoc on December 30, 2016 · at 6:45 pm EST/EDT

I got half way through reading The Saker’s potted history of Russia, and then read the UK’s media’s latest interpretation of the news (changed as I was commenting on it on The Independent) this morning.

I then wrote this…it might be crap but I do my best and played the Chinese Go board game with my Brother-in-Law 50 years ago after beating him at Chess. He realised he had to educate me. Go looks simple but is really complex.

I thought I pressed send, but it is entirely possible I made a mistake, Sorry about that. I am getting a little bit worried about Putin. He is being far too nice. I know he is great at 3D Chess – when the Americans can’t quite get the art of playing Draughts…(Checkers in US(English) Go in Chinese (much harder))

But what’s with the Russian Boot at Breakfast

That was Really Taking The P1ss – yes I understand – about camping – and getting the fire going..but look at the body language. Putin ain’t thick – and oh come on – so he doesn’t speak English too well??? I reckon he understand every word.

This is Really Funny – even I couldn’t work it out for ages when I saw it last night…

I thought wtf re the Russian Boot at Breakfast…

Even Obama probably thought the same – and handled the situation well – by talking nonsense – whilst Putin doesn’t say anything – and looks at the food – and puts it back.

This is a Classic re US vs Russia Diplomatic Relations.

“Obama & Putin Breakfast – No comment”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P1q3IDjBaI

Tony
- Franz on December 30, 2016 · at 8:10 pm EST/EDT
  
  Obama has never talked anything but nonsense.
  So, I am not sure what point you are making.
  Obama is an empty suit, at best.
  And in the echelon of world leaders, he is at the bottom, hovering near Cameron and Hollande.
  The disconnect between reality and his own false self-image must be the source of endless torments for Barack.
  
  When the band is not playing, and the mandarins kow-towing, and the marines saluting, Barack is less than nothing. He is a mediocrity playing at greatness.
  
  No one sees this better than Russia and Putin.
- Anonymous on December 31, 2016 · at 12:18 am EST/EDT
  
  And, this comment is not off topic?
johnm33 on December 30, 2016 · at 6:55 pm EST/EDT

I forgot to say thanks for this Saker, I have an insatiable curiosity about ‘our’ past but feel as though l’ve got the peices from 4[at least] different jig-saw puzzles when trying to peice it together, so more perspective is always welcome.
Stiv R. on December 30, 2016 · at 6:55 pm EST/EDT

Dear Saker, thank you so much for providing this mini history essay in support of what it means to be a Russian. I submit that this essay is one of your most important contributions to understanding, ever. I send you my highest regard and best wishes to you and your family for the new year about to unfold.
Waqas on December 30, 2016 · at 8:34 pm EST/EDT

<>

the above statement many times is used by Russians with some Racist pride as well (with apologies Saker).

The truth is the people of mother Earth are “the same”. So there is nothing special about Russians. Its simply some people are stupid or they have some other agenda.

To understand any nationality or race it is best to learn their language. So in order to best understand Russians its best to learn Russian language and there is no enigma wrappaed in another enigma.

Winston Churchill was an idiot and neocon mass murderer how could he know about anyone all he cared was to kill as for him “without war its boring”.
- Franz on December 30, 2016 · at 9:04 pm EST/EDT
  
  “The people of mother earth” are certainly not “the same” (thank God!) but they share some similarities.
  
  To learn another language well is to acquire another personality, and allegiance.
  The Venetians knew this well and said of translators: “Tradutori – Traditori” (Translators are traitors).
  Pardon my spelling. Italian is not a language I know.
Ryan Langemeyer on December 30, 2016 · at 8:57 pm EST/EDT

I, too, have greatly appreciated being educated on Russia by The Saker. History honestly told allows me to replace the propaganda of the so called history books of my ” exceedingly questionable education”.

Thank you, Saker.
Tony_0pmoc on December 30, 2016 · at 9:12 pm EST/EDT

I know nothing much about you Russian guys – but I have worked with loads of Americans when I was young and thought American’s were Brilliant (I am not joking – I really liked them)

but that was in the 1970’s

The way Lavrov handled it (and I am not knocking it – maybe he just woke up with a hangover – and gave the natural response to these stupid American Idiots)

Putin Literally Terrified Them with his Response..(the evil losers didn’t know how to handle it)

I thought that was Sheer Class..

Instead of chucking out all the American Spies in Moscow – he invited them all and their Children to Breakfast at The Kremlin For New Year’s Celebrations.

Well Done Russians (We Like You here in England – the Americans and The EU are Rubbish)

(Samantha Power is Crying with Hilary Clinton – doing Weird Satanic Stuff – on Their Way With Their Fellow Neocons To Hell). Nothing Christian about Them. They are EVIL Psychopaths.

Tony
Roman on December 30, 2016 · at 10:26 pm EST/EDT

Dear Saker:
If you have the time and inclination over these holydays could you please explain what you take to be the crucial differences between Roman Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy (and Greek Orthodoxy)? I read a number of days ago your claiming that the Goth-Norman invasions into the SE of Europe transformed Christianity there “politically.” And I do also recognize that seats of power are attractive the spiritually and morally impoverished (e.g., a number of people sought the Papacy solely because it was a seat of secular power)

But I am interested in the theological and spirituality differences.
Theologically, as far as I am aware the one crucial difference is what in the West is called the “filioloque” issue = the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father bold textAND from the Son.
This is conceptually very tidy and coherent (and I do also recognize the importance of noesis). I have had two Greek friends in times of my life who endorsed that difference and volunteered that in their younger days they were admonished “Believe, don’t investigate!”

Otherwise, (spiritually)… I don’t know what the difference is.

If you can enlighten me, I would be grateful.
- The Saker on December 31, 2016 · at 8:10 pm EST/EDT
  
  The list of differences is very long and ranges from central dogmatics to the ethos and praxis. In reality the two religions have very little in common. The Papacy has been departing from the original Christian tradition for 1000 years now and it has been constantly innovating and “modernzing” Christianity.
  
  “On the Papacy” by the Abbot Vladimir Guettee is a pretty good book: https://www.amazon.com/Papacy-Abbe-Guettee/dp/1117872424
  
  you can download some of it from here: http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/Guettee_ThePapacy.pdf
  
  This volume written by monastics of the Dormition Skete is excellent:
  https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Pillars-Orthodoxy-Dormition-Skete/dp/0944359043/
  
  This website is very good too: http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/inq_rc.aspx
  
  I hope that this helps. Cheers!
  
  The Saker
Lennart Mogren on December 30, 2016 · at 10:27 pm EST/EDT

Let me tell you I appreciate your articles a lot and admire your efforts to bring more clarity to the discussion about Russia and the West.

In your description of the origins of Russia I miss the fact that the early vikings from Sweden played a pivotal role in the making of Russia. The word Russia may even be derived from the Swedish word “ro” meaning row. That’s what vikings do.
Contrary to vikings going west (Denmark and Norway) who were brutal and fierce, those going east (Swedes) were much more vulnerable and had very strong defense but were not aggressive. They tended to be more interested in trade. They were called Varangians.

To me it’s symptomatic that Norway and Denmark are NATO members but Sweden is not. One may argue, and rightly so, that Sweden is a de facto member of NATO. Problem is that it’s still politically impossible to join in spite of very heavy scare mongering to make Swedes change their mind.

More on this phase of Russia’s early history can be found on the homepage for the Consulate General of Sweden in St.Petersburg:
http://www.swedenabroad.com/sv-SE/Ambassader/Sankt-Petersburg/Landfakta/Sverige-och-nordvastra-Ryssland/Vikingar-i-Osterled/
Too bad it’s in Swedish and a Google translation is no fun to read.

Just one example is the chronicle by the monk Nestor. Wikipedia has this
“The early part of the Chronicle features many anecdotal stories, among them those of the arrival of the three Varangian (Varangian=Swedish vikings, my comment) brothers, the founding of Kiev, the murder of Askold and Dir, ca. 882, the death of Oleg in 912, the “cause” of which was reported forseen by him, and the thorough vengeance taken by Olga, the wife of Igor, on the Drevlians, who had murdered her husband. Her actions secured Kievan Rus’ from the Drevlians, preventing her from having to marry a Drevlian prince, and allowing her to act as regent until her young son came of age. The account of the labors of Saints Cyril and Methodius among the Slavic peoples also makes a very interesting tale, and to Nestor we owe the story of the summary way in which Vladimir the Great (ruled 980 to 1015) suppressed the worship of Perun and other traditional gods at Kiev.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Chronicle

There is a lot to say about this. Sweden has been taken over by western interests of course. Russia bashing is extreme here these days. But deep down Sweden and Russia seem to be related in a positive way and I look forward to that old mutual respect coming to life again.
Hoyeru on December 30, 2016 · at 11:13 pm EST/EDT

“Russia is the successor of the Roman Empire”? Wow, Romania also says exactly the same thing. Pure BS.
The Roman Empire ceased to exist over 2000 years ago. Russia has NOTHING to do with The Roman Empire. Neither the culture, the language, nor the Russian people ethnically have anything in common with the Roman Empire.
Thanx for the great laugh. Need it.
The same BS the Saker posted claiming 95% of Europeans are not Europeans.
It’s true, anyone can say any idiocy on the Internet but that doesn’t make it true.
- Joanna on December 31, 2016 · at 5:06 am EST/EDT
  
  This Roman Empire business seems to be some Orthodox patriotic something. Similar to the Polish thing that Poles are the chosen people by the Virgin Mary. Doubt that many modern Russians take it very serious. It may be part of their heritage/cultural ideology but I doubt it is the centre of their identity the way Saker describes it. As I mentioned, he forgot to mention the core part of Russian identity which is the Slavic one.
- Franz on January 03, 2017 · at 6:35 am EST/EDT
  
  I wonder, would you take such umbrage at the Anglo-Zionist Empire labeling itself the Third Reich in 1939? What they meant is ‘The Third Rome’.
  Or, how do you feel about them now, assembled on the borders of Russia, as the Fourth Reich.
  I suspect that you are OK with that.
Isabella on December 31, 2016 · at 12:58 am EST/EDT

There are a couple of contradictions I’m not solving in here Saker. So — please?

1. You appear to be saying, if you are “European” [whatever that is, When I was child and young woman growing up in the British Isles, there was no “Europe” apart from an historical abstraction. We called it “The Continent”] then you have no ethnicity??. Is this correct??
So, there are no “ethnic French, ethnic Germans, no ethnic Spanish” [and good luck getting that one past elsi !! :-) ].
Or does it only apply to Russians? You can be an ethnic Frenchman, but not an ethnic Russian??? He is a European??
When I was at school in the country we called the British Isles, there was a geologic entity, a projection of a huge land mass, which was called “The Continent”. On this continent, were several unique distinct countries, each with their own language, history, customs, myths, money, and social habits.
Moving East, were some vague border land countries, sort of half way, They weren’t “on the Continent” but they hadn’t quite made it to the major landmass. This land mass was called the Asian landmass, incorporating Asia minor and Asia major. Russia was in Asia Major.
None of these countries was “The Continent”, nor indeed that vague, sort of historical place called by a few academics [so well called quacademics by John West] “Europe”.
Then came the CIA, NATO, American Expansionism, and the rest: — it’s recent “History”. Calling the Continent “Europe” was a neat brainwash move designed to remove any sense of national Identity, in order to destroy the individual countries, and make them easy to turn into a sort of ghastly porridge of seething, meaningless, rootless, hating humanity which it is well on the way to being today.
So – I dont see where in all this Russia today fits, not withstanding its 1000 yr history which you so nicely summarised.
I dont see quite what that history has to do with The Continental Nations from 1950 on and Russia’s relationship to them.
As to “seeing” Asian features in Solzhenitsyn and Putin – for heavens sake!! You can’t ascribe anything to what you personally think you see, as you should I am sure, know.
I can see nothing but an old man in the picture there of S. But V.V. has nothing of the Asiatic in his features, which trace if anything to the Nordic.
Asiatic, as far as such a thing can be said to exist: dead straight hair, jet black; no male baldness pattern; no greyness, or v. little; dark brown to black eyes, without exception; epicanthal fold; yellow to dark brown swarthy skin, thinning lips.
V.V. pale pink and white complexion, gold hair, male pattern baldness, pale blue eyes, no epicanthal fold [in fact deeply set “hooded” eyes’] full lower lip during childhood. In fact, all his life, a very “Nordic” facial feature set. How we change as we age is down to many factors none of them “racial”.
I’d be interested to know your response to my query regarding Nationality and its links to ethnicity and some vague arbitrary construct called “European”.
- The Saker on December 31, 2016 · at 8:03 pm EST/EDT
  
  You appear to be saying, if you are “European” [whatever that is, When I was child and young woman growing up in the British Isles, there was no “Europe” apart from an historical abstraction. We called it “The Continent”] then you have no ethnicity??. Is this correct??
  
  No, I never wrote that. Please do not try to find out what it appears to you I am saying and, instead, simply read what I said. Thank you.
Douglas Winget on December 31, 2016 · at 1:21 am EST/EDT

Dear Saker,

You have played the right chord for me. Opened the right door at the right time.

I moved from California to the Philippines 9 years ago. This new setting has given me the time and inclination to examine my beliefs about almost everything. I found most of what I thought I knew wanting and lacking.

No history as I had been taught or absorbed is accurate and almost all is false. I read daily to correct that lacking.

Your writing of the history of Russia and its people is a welcome portal to my next exciting adventure to learn as much as I can about Russia.

I and my friends here, mostly Westerners, admire Vladimir Putin as one of the few great leaders in the world today. Several of us have discovered the contribution of Vladimir Vernadsky’s contribution to science. And now on to Russia’s culture and history.

Please recommend to me the books and sources which will be helpful in understanding all the points in your article.

Thank you,
paul on December 31, 2016 · at 1:40 am EST/EDT

Just seems so obvious that Russian ethnicity and culture – let’s say civilization – involves some sort of combination of eastern and western – which is a wonderful thing.
WizOz on December 31, 2016 · at 3:33 am EST/EDT

I suspect that The Saker threw the (black) cat among the (white) pigeons to provide us with some comic relief for the New Year.
Cheers!
Anonymous on December 31, 2016 · at 4:55 am EST/EDT

This is an interesting piece. I want to start off by saying that I believe the concept of ‘whiteness’ has value to it, by helping a large number of widely different (and often warring) nations to find some commonality with each other. However, the ‘white nationalist’ ideology, which is generally a cover for Neo-Nazism, is not in Russia’s interests. In fact, it would not surprise me in the slightest if Western intelligence agencies were funding various crypto and overt Neo-Nazi groups in Russia to try and divide and rule the country (to turn the ‘white’ parts of Russia against the ‘non-white’). For that reason, writing material that argues against ‘white nationalism’ ideology (like your most recent essay) is useful in helping to counter the West’s divide and rule tactics targeting Russia.

And before any lurking Neo-Nazis accuse me of being “a Jew”, I am not. Half of my ancestors were part of Russia’s German minority during the Russian Empire.
- WizOz on December 31, 2016 · at 7:59 am EST/EDT
  
  ‘White nationalism’ is by and large a combination between the ‘Eugenics’ of Sir Francis Galton (a cousin of Charles Darwin, whose ideas about natural selection he wanted to apply to human societies), British imperialism, and the ideology of slave-holders WASPs in America.
  - Laika von old Monkshusen on January 02, 2017 · at 3:14 am EST/EDT
    
    ‘White nationalism’, Eugenics, and lots of other pseudo-scientific crap, comes 100% from the ‘British’ Empire & Zionist Pharisaic Talmudism (former trans-Atlantic slave traders/exploiters), both led by the Roth-childs (recently seen as plain as day in Ukraine).
    Anonymous is possibly from Germany, where this obvious fact is an absolute taboo, and more so than anywhere else. Hitler was a Roth-child. That’s as far as I’m concerned, even beyond a shadow of a doubt. But it actually seems very likely that Merkel is Hitler & Eva Braun’s daughter. All the while many Germans don’t even have the slightest idea, because they’re thoroughly indoctrinated by their Nazi-Marxist government
    That might sound absurd. But as a matter of fact that’s exactly how these Roth-child bastards work. (They run/control the West, and most of the rest of the world, since the 17th c.)
- Helen on December 31, 2016 · at 6:39 pm EST/EDT
  
  In Britain there is a long history of the intelligence agencies sponsoring various white supremacy groups, to sow a bit od civil discord and disorder. Divide and Rule is forever pertinent.
  - Franz on December 31, 2016 · at 8:17 pm EST/EDT
    
    The Anglo-Zionist Empire is the greatest ‘White Supremacy’ group ever.
    - Helen on December 31, 2016 · at 8:53 pm EST/EDT
      
      I was referring to particular, grass-root extremist groups such as Combat 18, not the Empire in general.
- The Saker on December 31, 2016 · at 8:00 pm EST/EDT
  
  However, the ‘white nationalist’ ideology, which is generally a cover for Neo-Nazism, is not in Russia’s interests. In fact, it would not surprise me in the slightest if Western intelligence agencies were funding various crypto and overt Neo-Nazi groups in Russia to try and divide and rule the country (to turn the ‘white’ parts of Russia against the ‘non-white’)
  
  I can absolutely confirm this. Some patriots in Russia began tracing the origins of the posts of various White supremacists, Nazis, and other racists and most of them, the vast majority, were traced back to USA and, especially, Canada. It is little known that besides giving the boot to many Jewish Zionists Putin *also* cracked down, much more brutally, in fact, against various breeds of Russian nationalists and, especially, of the racist kind. He did that very deliberately because he fully understands how dangerous racism could be in a country like Russia. The western media, of course, never mentions that part of his political agenda, but most people in Russia know about it.
  By the way, this also goes for the “Putin-bashing from the right”, so to speak, the folks I call the “hurray patriots” – they constantly criticize Putin for being a “sell out” for “backstabbing country X or Z”, for being a puppet of the NWO, etc. I am certain that these guys are also paid and organized by western intelligence agencies who realize that attacking Putin from liberal positions is a no starter.
  
  As for being accused of being a Jew, I also had that honor: I was called a Jew, a Jew-lover, a crypto-Zionist along with a rabid anti-Semite of course. So no worries here, been there done that. Those who label in lieu of arguing do that because they are unable to formulate an argument. A label is much more within reach of their IQs.
  
  Cheers,
  
  The Saker
  - Anonymous on January 01, 2017 · at 2:56 am EST/EDT
    
    For some mysterious reason several topics seem to reappear over and over again. For example the subject of academics having too few offspring makes the headlines in “regular” intervals. In 2005 Daniel Bahr (member of the party FDP) started this topic. Four years later – in 2009 – the topic was picked up again. This time journalists handled the whole matter more subtle. Journalists of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung complained that the actions of then family minister von der Leyen didn’t have any effect and that the “wrong people” (those who could least afford it) got children: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/wirtschaftspolitik/geburtenschwund-wo-kommen-die-kinder-her-1782695.html
    
    This whole topic of Social Darwinism isn’t entirely new. A short while ago I discovered some very interesting documentaries on youtube. It’s worth watching them. The time specifications in brackets point to – in my opinion – especially enlightening statements that may help in understanding history:
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaH0Ws8RtSc
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FmEjDaWqA4
    (ca. 41:20min; 51:20 min; 54 min)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjU3Bob8IFA
    (ca. 38min)
    
    I’ve come to the conclusion that sooner or later our actual monetary system will lead us to revisit the “old times” again. Who did never hear the barroom cliché of teachers earning too much whilst having too much free time? Another cliché is that the fees for health insurance could be much lower if it weren’t for those pesky smokers: raise the fees for smokers or even better them out, along with alcoholics, those who’re eating unhealthy food, those with genetic defects … (the list can go on and on). This monetary thinking of attaching a price tag to everything will sooner or later lead to a revival of Nazi Eugenics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics) and/or something Aktioin T4 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4). It will be a feast unscrupulous scientists – like in the “old days”.
    
    Let’s hope that people have learned from history and will be smarter this time.
Earthrise on December 31, 2016 · at 7:30 am EST/EDT

Depends on your definition of “White” is. If you mean Celtic or Nordic/Germanic, then we are certainly white. But if you mean Caucasian/Aryan, then you need to expand your palette immensely. Pakistani, Iranian, Greek, even parts of North African falls under this banner. And especially the Slavs, the original Aryans. I understand and appreciate what The Saker is trying to do, but the Russians are Aryan, and the original Rus were Vikings, the purest of Whites.
larry, dfh on December 31, 2016 · at 3:18 pm EST/EDT

This question is probably too late for this forum, but I am curious about how the Gypsies, the Roma, fit (or not) into all of this. A good friend of mine, a Czech, used to complain about them in regards to his experiences in school. He left the impression that Roma were universally disliked. I think the Roma have ancient origins, but don’t seem to get acceptance or any kind of positive recognition anywhere in Europe. The ‘governments’ of the EU seem to have more animosity toward Roma than the muslim ‘migrants’.
As an aside, my Czech friend had pretty obvious mongol facial features (and not much facial hair). His father was the same way. When I first saw a picture of V.V. Putin smiling, I thought “that’s Milos’ (his father) smile”.
- The Saker on December 31, 2016 · at 7:50 pm EST/EDT
  
  This question is probably too late for this forum, but I am curious about how the Gypsies, the Roma, fit (or not) into all of this.
  
  I remember reading that the Gypsies/Roma/Tsigans are actually from India. I am not at all sure that what I read (a long time ago) is true, but that is all I remember. I am sure that more knowledgeable than myself will provide the missing details and correct me if I am wrong.
  Cheers,
  The Saker
  - WizOz on January 01, 2017 · at 1:01 am EST/EDT
    
    Yes, definitely Gypsies are from India.
  - Dimitar on January 01, 2017 · at 7:23 am EST/EDT
    
    I can speak for the Roma/gypsies of Macedonia because I am very familiar with them, a close family member lives in a suburb where there is a large gypsy ( gjuptin ) population and they are very fine featured, compact/petite people with the same colouring as Indians of today. I should mention too, that there is also a very fat or obese variant just as in India, once again.
    
    Among Macedonians it is said today’s gypsies are the descendents of peoples who came back to the Balkan peninsula along with Macedonians that gradually made their way back after Aleksandar’s campaigns. As a side note, today’s Hunza claim DNA, cultural and language affinities with contemporary Macedonians, due to intermarriage with ancient Macedonians in the Hunza Valley over 2 millenia ago. In spite of Western propaganda, both ancient and contemporary Macedonians were a non “Greek” people. Linguists such as Mario Allinei and others place the origin of the Slavic laguage in the southern Balkans, precisely in Macedonia. Other independent sources, such as medieval Croation monastic Vinko Pribojević, wrote that Aleksandar’s native tongue was “slavic”. Russia also contends, unlike Western Europe – today’s primary proponent of a “final solution” for the Macedonian people – that Aleksandar Makedonski was non-Greek, in fact a “Slav”.
    - Earthrise on January 02, 2017 · at 10:49 pm EST/EDT
      
      Dimitar,
      
      The Slavs came after, pushed West by the Huns/Turks. Accounts of the time talk about Celts on Macedon’s northern border, they stretched along the spine of Europe from Spain to Turkey. Reports say Alexander had red hair, so if he was non-Greek, he would have been a Celt. But he was Greek, culturally if nothing else.
- Anonymous on January 01, 2017 · at 4:24 am EST/EDT
  
  Last year I learned that the description Gypsie is derived from the word Egyptian. At first people believed those darker skinned folks came from Egypt, thus the wrong appellation. Whilst the term isn’t entirely PC it’s far less derogatory than the German word: Ziegeuner – derived from “ziehende Gauner” which literally translates into “moving crooks”.
  
  History isn’t that fair to Gypsies. Like several other groups they had been victims of the Holocaust, but that seems to be forgotten in the west. In 2009 the French president Sarkozy – ironically from Hungarian origins – ordered the deportation of 10000 Roma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Roma_migrants_from_France).
  
  Concerning the acceptance of Muslim migrants in Europe you can clearly see differences. In each and every country people are complaining, but the citizens of Eastern European (Czech, Hungary, Poland, …) countries are complaining far more intensely than those of Western Europe. Several politicians of Eastern European countries even invoked the threat to their predominantly Christian heritage. To sum it up: In my opinion Muslims are disliked even more than Gypsies in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless the situation for Sinti and Roma isn’t that positive at all. I had seen several documentaries of their life in Czech, Slovakia and Romania. Many of them are excluded from society. The journalists who had filmed the documentary accompanied a young Gypsie girl on her job search. She had successfully completed vocational training as shop assistant, but no one would give her any chance. The dislike of Gypsies showed also in the comment section the videos on youtube. Many of the comments were really disgusting. The lesson that I learned from those documentaries was that it’s the system (the system of running a society) that affects destiny. Some older Gypsie managed to phrase it quite comprehensible when he said that “During socialist rule life was difficult and people lacked many things, but at least everyone had been integrated”.
  - Anonymous on January 01, 2017 · at 11:20 am EST/EDT
    
    I should’ve proofread the comment before posting:
    
    … German word: Ziegeuner
    German word: Zigeuner
    
    … comment section the videos on youtube. …
    … comment section of the videos on youtube. …
    - Laika von old Monkshusen on January 02, 2017 · at 2:15 am EST/EDT
      
      The people in eastern europe are generally more shocked by alien mass migration because it is new to them. West Europeans have been betrayed by their own treacherous (‘Bilderberger’ Nazi-NATO) governments for far longer.
      Gypsis were actually the nomadic immigrants of the past (from India), and no doubt they often behave as moving (nonevil) crooks, but the real Zigeuner (evilly crooked nomadic immigrants) were the talmudic Jews.
      - Anonymous on January 02, 2017 · at 10:37 pm EST/EDT
        
        As descendant of expellees (who had lived for centuries abroad) myself I’m pretty sure that fear of some alien people always had been present. Thanks for the call for migrant workers from Italy and Spain the expellees got integrated more quickly. Suddenly Italians and Spaniards were looked at as foreign body. This situation should change again when guest workers from Turkey arrived some time later. Ever since then this group was looked at as outsiders. Chancellor Kohl even tried to send back Turks. Irony of fate is that one of Kohl’s sons married a woman of Turkish roots.
  - WizOz on January 01, 2017 · at 12:23 pm EST/EDT
    
    You have a very ‘politically correct’ view of the Tziganes. Those who actually lived side by side with them do not share it.
    - Anonymous on January 02, 2017 · at 10:22 pm EST/EDT
      
      Maybe I should add the “politically incorrect” information that criminal acts of the newly arrived Migrants in Germany are declining whilst criminal acts of “Eastern European” (Balkans) criminal gangs are quite high. (Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans are comparably less conspicuous; Syrer, Iraker und Afghanen werden vergleichsweise selten auffällig ; http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/fluechtlinge-bka-bericht-fluechtlinge-begehen-weniger-straftaten-1.3315641)
      
      Several other reports state that especially criminal Georgian gangs are committing many burglaries:
      http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/fluechtlinge-in-deutschland-wie-viele-wie-teuer-welche-folgen/12524682.html
      http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/dramatischer-anstieg-mit-dieser-asyl-masche-schleusen-sich-diebesbanden-aus-georgien-in-deutschland-ein_id_4742808.html
      
      Instead of tackling this problem Germany tries to pull Georgia even closer to the EU?!?
rgl on December 31, 2016 · at 3:22 pm EST/EDT

Thanks Saker. This is undeniable history. And you say you’re not an historian … some stuff you mentioned is new to me, so thanks for the history lesson.

May you go from strength to strength in the coming year.
BH on December 31, 2016 · at 7:34 pm EST/EDT

A very good article. Thanks Saker.

This was my thinking as well. Russia is NOT created by some slavic or nordic tribes but these tribes (as Saker names them in this article) were part of the mixture, as much as the many eastern tribes. A Russian ethnicity is literally a “EuroAsian”, defined by his/her genetical admixture. However his/her social consciousness of a common history, language and religious belief, makes him/her the “real” Russian. This is an undeniable fact proven beyond doubt by genetical research and social/cultural realities. Just look at some examples, the ones I am aware of and almost everyone knows: World famous ballet Nurayev and composer Rahmaninov are both of Tatar origin. However they are Russian both in terms of both genetically and socially. A random sampling from Moscow and Leningrad would probably show that the DNA is much closer to Rahmaninov or Nurayev than let say to an English man from London. The head of the army Gerasimov is of tatar origin as well. Just look at his picture. He has both european and asian characteristics. He perfectly fits to what a Russian means by definition. There are many more examples like these. My own ancestral background is Crimean (tatar) on one side and Caucasian (Osetia-Georgia) on the other side. Tough, I am NOT a Russian as I was raised in a different country with a different language and my ancestors adapted the culture/customs of that country centuries ago. If I was living let say in Moscow and was raised in Russia, I would without any doubt consider myself a Russian. My admixture indicates that I am 70% of european stock (with germanic,slavic and south european traces). So, in short, what Saker is saying makes total sense and what makes a Russian is his/her “Euroasian” roots but most importantly his/her history, language and belief system.
- Franz on December 31, 2016 · at 8:22 pm EST/EDT
  
  “A random sampling from Moscow and Leningrad would probably show that the DNA is much closer to Rahmaninov or Nureyev than let say to an English man from London.”
  
  Thank God for that! I know several “English men from London”. One is a Lithuanian Zionist Jew and the other is an Irishman descended from the Botany Bay convict transports.
  Not so ‘pur laine’ either are they?
- The Saker on January 01, 2017 · at 12:39 am EST/EDT
  
  I wish I could post photos of my maternal grandmother and her sister: they looked almost like Kazakh women. But that is also private so I don’t think I will. All I can say is that for me an Asian face feels “rodnoi”, which can be translated as “dear” or “familiar” but I would translate “kin-like”. I know that I personally feel far closer to my Kazakh friends than to central European Slavs. For one thing, the Kazakhs don’t have an inferiority complex and a compulsion to constantly prove (mostly to themselves) that they are “Europeans too”.
  - J on January 01, 2017 · at 5:06 am EST/EDT
    
    ‘For one thing, the Kazakhs don’t have an inferiority complex and a compulsion to constantly prove (mostly to themselves) that they are “Europeans too””
    I like it.
    I know you have be on this topic for a while, and I think you are on right path. If anyone trying to flaunt their bloodline, or degrade you because your ethnicity, you can reply to them “So what” without batting a eye.
Anonymous on December 31, 2016 · at 8:59 pm EST/EDT

Cet essai est une merveille . Bravo Faucon !

This essay is a marvel! Bravo, Saker! – fk mod
Bente Petersen on December 31, 2016 · at 11:48 pm EST/EDT

agree, not Europeans, true closer to the East to Confucius – to the Vedas – and the Gitas…
- The Saker on January 01, 2017 · at 12:41 am EST/EDT
  
  In terms of dogmatics Hinduism and Orthodoxy are far apart. But in terms of ethos or in terms of praxis, Orthodoxy and Hinduism are much closer than, say, the Papacy and Orthodoxy. One day I might write a book about that :-)
Earthrise on January 01, 2017 · at 7:58 am EST/EDT

If ‘Russia’ becomes Turkic, turns to face east and south, this should remove the threat of the Stans breaking away into Islamic republics, while controlling most of the world’s under-developed energy resources. All right next door to half of the world’s population. Game, set and match. This shift in Russia’s centre of gravity will necessarily make her more Islamic.

I defer to The Saker when it comes to knowledge about Russia, but I have some questions. Rome is always on the cusp of East and West, but always on the European side. To me, the Third Rome is the Slavs. It seems The Saker is saying that Russia was always Turkic, but Europeanised elites have whitewashed their mythology. Then the empire Russia would represent is not Rome, but the Mongols.
- gT on January 01, 2017 · at 6:36 pm EST/EDT
  
  I’ve said countless times on this website before that Putin should just declare himself Khan, and that he doesn’t even have to be Muslim to be a Khan because Genghis Khan, the Khan of all the Khan’s, wasn’t Muslim either.
  
  Then Russia can not only rule the ex Soviet Stans, but also Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Afghanistan, whatever. And if some of the Muslims in those regions complain, then Putin Khan can just chop their unruly heads off, and they won’t mind because they would expect nothing less from a Khan. Most Muslims in those regions would welcome Putin’s rule anyway. But alas, Russia just wants to stick to her current territory and not expand at all. Tragic.
  
  By the way, notice above how the Saker mentions the closeness between Orthodoxy and Hinduism in terms of ethos or in terms of praxis – now that is just scandalous :-)
  - J on January 02, 2017 · at 3:18 am EST/EDT
    
    Amazing.
    Just about everyone comment here is reflect from lens of its own culture. I wonder what that Mongolian right wing singer who was beaten up by a Russian diplomat a little while ago would have said or joked here…
  - WizOz on January 02, 2017 · at 4:42 am EST/EDT
    
    The real solution would be the re-Christianization of the countries lost to Islam and continuation of the Christianization of ‘Tartaria’, interrupted by the intrusion of Islam.
    - J on January 02, 2017 · at 5:57 am EST/EDT
      
      Logical, after we settle the war on race, lets get on with one on religion.
  - Earthrise on January 02, 2017 · at 8:51 am EST/EDT
    
    gT,
    
    I have heard that after Alexander there was a hellenisation of Indian iconography, and there is a strong Hellenistic and Buddhist thread through the original Christian philosophy. Ironic how the work of a violent conqueror connected all our major philosophical centres. Something amazing happened in Alexandria where all the roads led, philosophical heights we may not have yet matched.
    
    If Orthodoxy is closer to the original (pre-Nicean/gnostic) Christianity, then maybe there is a stronger Indian connection. There are non-canon gospels which mention India, and a story of Jesus travelling there before his ministry. And in reverse, if Hinduism is based on Vedic/Aryan sources, then culturally this joins us (Indo-European).
    
    The thing that worries me about the Saker mythology is it is setting up a clash of civilisations. The Aryan and the Turk have been dancing back and forth across the Steppes for centuries; Russia as we know her represents the truce. This is why China no longer needs a Great Wall, and we are not constantly defending Vienna. Modern Russia is essentially a Slavic-Turkish marriage, which has kept the Eurasian peace for longer than any time in recorded history. Russia is the cornerstone of world peace; if it is not broke I would not fix it.
    - WizOz on January 02, 2017 · at 12:22 pm EST/EDT
      
      The story of the travels of Jesus to India was a literary hoax perpetrated by Shulim or Nikolai Aleksandrovich Notovich, known in the West as Nicolas Notovitch, a Crimean Jewish adventurer who claimed to be a Russian aristocrat and journalist and very likely a spy in Kashmir at the hight of the ‘Great Game’ between England and Russia. He published “La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ (Unknown Life of Jesus Christ)” in 1894, in which he claimed that while at the Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, he had learned of the document “Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men”.
      What we know from history is the story of the travel of the Magi from the East to Bethlehem to pay hommage to the Son of Man.
      - Earthrise on January 02, 2017 · at 10:51 pm EST/EDT
        
        What about the lost gospels which spoke of India? And the strong connection between the Essenes and the Indian monastic tradition?
        
        WizOz on January 03, 2017 · at 2:12 am EST/EDT
        
        How do you know what the ‘lost gospels’ were talking about if they were lost?
        Anyhow information about India was current at least since the ‘Histories’ of Herodotus (5th Century BC). Knowledge about the Indian ‘gymnosophists’ was current since Alexander. By the time when Strabo (63 BC-24AD) wrote his Geography there were few thing not known about India. He acurately describes the differences between Brahmanes and Buddhists. And that was public knowledge, not secret teachings of ‘lost gospels’.
        
        Earthrise on January 03, 2017 · at 2:49 am EST/EDT
        
        Good Wiz,
        
        We are in agreement then that there was an awareness of Indian philosophy in the Holy Land. The ‘lost’ gospels are well known from secondary sources. I am much more interested in what was left out of the Council of Nicea than what they put in. Gnostic sources, studies of the “real Jesus” hold a strong fascination for me, as well as a study of the Bible looking at the original source documents. This study showed me a link to Buddhist philosophy in the original Christianity, which I felt links to The Saker’s proposition that there is a link between Orthodoxy and Hinduism.
        
        WizOz on January 03, 2017 · at 4:02 am EST/EDT
        
        I can’t congratulate you for your preference for Dan Brown’s type of historical approach when it comes to the search for the ‘real Jesus’ (a very Jewish endeavor, who actually is behind all the ‘gnostic’ apocrypha and more modern crass forgeries like the ‘Gospel of Barnabas’, ‘Gospel of Judas’, ‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’ and various ‘original source documents’ of the ‘Bible’, which invariably are known from ‘secondary’ sources or just from hearsay).
        But quite from the time of the Apostles many people could “not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires. So they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4, 3-4).
        
        Earthrise on January 03, 2017 · at 6:30 am EST/EDT
        
        As I suspected, your issue is heresy; you are welcome to that curse. I will always light that dark place.
        
        WizOz on January 03, 2017 · at 11:15 am EST/EDT
        
        Could you possibly made it a bit more clear to me what the curse is?
        
        Earthrise on January 03, 2017 · at 11:16 pm EST/EDT
        
        Heresy and dogma are a curse to both the adherent, and the people around them who suffer from their shuttered minds. A Truth can handle all the questioning and attacks we can muster, otherwise it is not True. Your quote from Timothy is pertinent, but also useful in preventing people from thinking for themselves. Your God gave us free will for a reason, to not use it goes against his Will. This kind of thinking is what puts me off the Right and adherents of organised religion; there is an crushing paternalism that says we are all weak children who are incapable of making informed and responsible choices, and we need to follow people who know better. You don’t.
grrr on January 01, 2017 · at 4:45 pm EST/EDT

Very interesting essay, thanks. I feel that claims about the influence of “Old Rite Schism” on Russian history is exaggerated here. However, I do not know nearly enough about it (all meager knowledge comes from official historiography), so it is emphasis on what I feel, not what I think.
With regard to Ukrainians, their real prob. is not different ethnicity or whatever they were inventing or will invent in the future (if their “state” will exist long enough), but simple geography: nobody can be hostile to one’s neighbour and live independently without strong natural borders.
USA could arrange a “fortress America” if they wish. Ukraine does not.
vera on January 01, 2017 · at 5:11 pm EST/EDT

A very enlightening essay, Saker. One of your best thought provoking ones, IMO. I am a history buff and a central European, and most of what you say makes complete sense to me. I did have to look up Pushkin’s parentage, :-)

I wanted to ask… you speak of rejection of the “European civilizational model”. Yet you say that Russia is more modeled on the Roman civ model. So I would love more thoughts on what exactly you mean by “european civilizational model.” Many thanks!
Qadar on January 01, 2017 · at 6:32 pm EST/EDT

Seasons greetings to the Saker and Community.
This is an excellent essay and quite informative.
As a “Third Culture Kid” i was raised in 2 different cultures outside of my own.
I am from an African ethnicity , grew up in the middle east and the west.
I consider myself both Arab culturally and Western at the same time, which i know can be weird,
but it must be more common these days.
Despite assimilating into both host cultures and i can appear indistinguishable from anyone else
“apart from my very dark skin tone”, i never had any identity issues or conflicts, because for me cultures are like clothes i wear.
I am grounded in my native culture, i know who i am and where i come from and this is my primary
identifier.
I find this black and white issue to be simplistic and quite insane really,
how can you narrow down all the complex cultural aspects to just a skin tone?

Is it just me or is this a US thing,
with all the european immigrants thrown into one white melting pot, and the descendants of african slaves and all other africans into another black melting pot.
Maja on January 02, 2017 · at 1:11 am EST/EDT

What is Asian in Putin’s features ?
- Nussiminen on January 02, 2017 · at 7:48 pm EST/EDT
  
  Q: What is Asian in Putin’s features?
  
  A: Short stature and considerably high intelligence :-)
  
  Q: What is European in the Ukronazis’ features?
  
  A: Drooling, ugly, panting slobs — British football hooligans come to mind immediately, LOL
Carl Lundström on January 02, 2017 · at 11:27 am EST/EDT

“When the Ukrainians claim that the Russian state was created/founded by the Mongol Khans they are essentially correct.”
The rulers in Kiev where descendents of Rurik and spoke Swedish during several generations. Does the Saker forget the dynasty that gave Russia its name?
- J on January 02, 2017 · at 5:59 pm EST/EDT
  
  Carl,
  IMHO,
  Had Russia stayed within its boundary after mongol invasion, or had west accepted Russia, we would not have this debate here.
  
  As Russia expand outwards, It gradually lost its original identity. Rejection of the west, and prosperity of east helped the fuel this debate. But I personally think it is a progress…
- Anonymous on January 02, 2017 · at 6:09 pm EST/EDT
  
  There were both Swedish and Finnish Vikings in Kiev and Konstantinopel. We are related with the Russians and so a Russian tells me. When I visited Yaroslav, I saw Sweden of old. We are victims of fake history. I took a Russian lady to old Upsala and told her Rurik may have been there. The Russian Christian religious influence in Sweden has been downplayed.
  
  The Finns call Russians venalainen, the boat people. Mogren says the name Rus may refer to boats. I can well believe it, since I see the connotations.
  
  Ukrainians protest against the second Tatar Khaganate and refer to Russians. They are completely wild. They do all they can to make Russians look Asian, so they can be despised. I have nothing against Asians, I have more problems with Western elites.
  
  Carl, I follow you in Sweden. Thanks for your contributions and congratulations for being mentioned in Sputnik News.
Sergey on January 02, 2017 · at 11:20 pm EST/EDT

Usual Sacker. Some good ideas with a lot of delusions. Where would his old Russia have been without such as Peter the Great, Lenin and Stalin? I will tell. Another Western colony.
Who is Solzhenitsyn? Leo Tolstoy wannabe? The guy who lied and had no idea what he was talking about. Sore loser.
Anyway, I see some good points too. Sacker should refrain form criticizing Russia greatest leaders like Peter, Lenin and Stalin and stop smearing Soviet period as without Soviet period Russia would be finished by Nazis in short order and Russian population would have continued to live in abject poverty ruled by people from whom Sacker claims ancestry.
Isabella on January 02, 2017 · at 11:23 pm EST/EDT

Earthrise, can I point out to you that it is an error to treat “Celts” as a heterogeneous group.
We are not.
We are different peoples. For example, you speak of “Alexander having red hair” and thus possibly a Celt.

NO Welshman ever born had red hair.

The Welsh have been shown to have a different and unique DNA pattern to any other group in the British Isles – at least, those of Gwynedd, or North Wales. Not from the south.

It is now claimed by archaeologists that the North Welsh were the first Britons, driven north by invading Franco-Germanics [the term Anglo’s is an error].
There is strong evidence that Scots and North Irish Celts in their slow move West, turned north travelling through Scandinavian lands, before landing in the BI. The Welsh moved South, were noted by Julius Cesar in his notebooks as having come from “The Sea of Grass” [now northern Ukraine and the Circassias], and have not only physiology very similar to Circassians, but an aberrant Y Chromosome has now been discovered shared between them.

Physiologically we are different. The Scots and most Irish have a Nordic appearance, with reddish and light brown or blond hair, pale skin with freckles, greenish grey eyes and can be quite tall.
The Welsh are the opposite, mostly of dark hair, even black, dark eyes and many dark blue eyes along with black hair [as I have / had] and not tall. The myth that the Welsh are from Iberia has been dispelled by DNA studies – a thing we all knew was an English stupidity anyway.
The languages of Ireland and Scotland differed from each other and very much that of Wales. We have different mythologies [The Welsh Mabinogion, for example, and the Irish Tir Nan Ogg].
So I think, if you want to argue “Celts” you need to specify which branch you mean.
- Earthrise on January 03, 2017 · at 1:01 am EST/EDT
  
  Hi Isabella,
  
  I am overly-proud of my Irish ancestry, even though the vast majority of my ancestors are Anglos. I do carry brown eyes and freckly skin, so while I am Anglo, the Celt is strong in me. I agree Celtic is not an homogenous race, but more of a cultural designation. We are the older ‘white race’, sandwiched between the Germanics and the Mediterraneans. Ironically, while the Mediterraneans almost wiped us out (culturally at least), by piggy-backing with the Anglos we have spread all over the world from the brink of extinction. The fact the Celts were in Asia Minor (Turkey) I always found strange. Seems there was a massive migration wave around 1200 BCE, and these ‘Aryans’ may have been what became the Celts in areas without strong existing cultures. We do judge race by what cultural remnants remain, and modern scholars see Celtic now as a cultural rather than racial phenomenon. The Macedons by this standard are certainly Greek, regardless of which ‘race’ they came from.
- WizOz on January 03, 2017 · at 3:35 am EST/EDT
  
  Isabella,
  
  I wonder whether you know about: “THE PALEOLITHIC CONTINUITY PARADIGM FOR THE ORIGINS OF INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES@http://www.continuitas.org/intro.html
  
  Just a few articles about the origins of the Celts:
  Mario Alinei – Francesco Benozzo, The Atlantic Celts: Evidence of Continuity from Palaeolithic: outline of the paper given in Brest (8-9 June 2011).
  Mario Alinei – Francesco Benozzo, Megalithism As A Manifestation Of An Atlantic Celtic Primacy In Meso-Neolithic Europe, “Studi celtici” 6, 2008, pp. 13-72
- Eimar on January 03, 2017 · at 3:11 pm EST/EDT
  
  Interesting.
  
  Of course stereotypes are reflections of ancestral tribe dominance.
  
  But the passage of peoples can’t be so neatly corralled into ‘types’, as there are many ‘anomalies’ at the local level, especially in ‘heavy traffic’ areas of the world.
  
  My father – Irish – would certainly fit your Nordic ‘type’: you could put him in downtown Stockholm and he would not look out of place. Or Moscow, for that matter.
  
  But my mother – also Irish – is olive-skinned, black- haired and almost ‘black’ eyed – very dark brown. She could be in downtown Damascus and pass for a native. Many people think her Spanish daughter-in-law is her actual daughter, so strong is the resemblance. P
  
  As for no red-haired Welshmen – my brother-in-laws sister in Cardiff is married to one. And he is definitely Welsh.
  - johnm33 on January 05, 2017 · at 12:51 am EST/EDT
    
    “the Celts were in Asia Minor (Turkey)”
    http://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/texts.php?text1=1577_0136 then check out their arrival in ‘turkey’ in wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatia
gT on January 03, 2017 · at 5:39 am EST/EDT

what the West thinks of Russians

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/10/09/slavs-and-oriental-are-niggers-brutes-and-beasts-in-the-eyes-of-western-empire/
Earthrise on January 03, 2017 · at 6:28 am EST/EDT

Firstly, I appreciate what The Saker is trying to do, to rebuild a Russian mythology free of European influence. I have posted elsewhere that this is what Tolkien was trying to do when he created the mythology behind the Lord of the Rings. He wanted to (re)build a mythology for the northern Europeans (Nordic/Germanic) not influenced by Greco-Romantic philosophy; for England as if the Norman Conquest had never happened. Problem is, there was no Russia before the Mongols, just a Aryan-Turkic free-fire zone which shifted back and forth across the Steppes. It was the reaction against the Mongol occupation which created Russia, not Peter ‘the Great’. Russia is inherently anti-Turk as its raison d’etre; The Saker has his work cut out for him.

Part of the mythology The Saker is trying to develop is a rejection of the “European”. I have posted above the contradiction between his vision of Russia as the Third Rome, and then his subsequent rejection of Europe in favour of the Tatars. What The Saker seems to be doing is repositioning Russia to face East, to lead the Central Asian Republics and join with Asia away from a dying Europe. All great reasons. Part of his motivation too seems to be opposition to the Anglos, which he seems to be conflating with European. I think this a flaw in his mythology, and an area it could be improved.

What makes Europe Europe is not the colour of our skin, but our cultural genesis in Athens. This grew in opposition to the Persian Empire; remember Dear Saker Empire is an Eastern idea born in the River Civilisations. Europe doesn’t have a River, so we developed decentrally, which explains our more Individual characteristics. Hellenistic culture joins Russia and Europe, and I would argue that it was European influence which allowed Russia to expand to encompass Eurasia (the Third Rome). The Saker is not rejecting Orthodox (Hellenist) culture, so the anti-European part of his mythology is really anti-Anglo/West underneath (The Fourth Rome?). Much of what separates Europe and the Anglos is the influence of the Tribe, the same Khazarians The Saker wants to enshrine in the new (Mongol) Russian Federation. So many contradictions to overcome.

Another flaw in The Saker mythology is his stark delineation between Orthodoxy and Papacy. What The Saker needs in his mythology is to highlight the ‘Eastern’ elements in Russian culture, to separate them from the West. He sees Orthodoxy as one of these pillars, as original Christianity is mainly Eastern with Hellenism mixed in. I think he hopes the Stans will accept Russian leaderships as fellow Turks, and the Middle East will accept Russian/Orthodox leadership as indigenous. If Orthodoxy still retained Gnostic, Coptic or Syriac elements, this might work; pre-Old Rite schism. But anyway I blame Constantine directly for the Council of Nicea, the deification of the Christ and the imperialisation of Christianity. The Papacy is not the original sin, Orthodoxy is, the Papacy just made it worse. Constantine added the ‘Rome’ to Christianity, not St. Peter. You could argue that Islam is a reaction to the imperialising of Christianity.

I wish you the best of luck Dear Saker, you have quite the task ahead of you. Maybe what you are better off trying is to find a more modern Islam that fits well with indigenous (Eastern) Christianity, and have the two coalesce. Then ‘Russia’ and the ME can become the true Turkic/Arab/Persian Islamic “Middle Kingdom” with the West on one side, and the East on the other.
- WizOz on January 03, 2017 · at 11:59 pm EST/EDT
  
  This is a short exposé of the main themes of the anti-Christian, anti-Roman and anti-Russian Jewish, Gnostic and Islamic propaganda mythology. All gobbled line, sinker and hook by the Anglo-Saxon Protestantism (actually, Protestantism is nothing but ‘pork-eating Judaism’ – by the definition of Heinrich Heine). Gobbled also by the recent “white pagan” “natives”, incapable of discerning the Jewish flavor (which they vehemently they denounce in Christianity), under their pseudo-Norse/Slavic/Shamanistic/Gnostic mythology or Tolkien fantasies.
  - Earthrise on January 04, 2017 · at 1:08 am EST/EDT
    
    Seeing “Jews under the bed” is not only lazy debating, but self-destructive. If we are allowing a parasitic sub-group to control and debase our society, that is our fault, not the ‘Jews’. If this parasite is playing on our own prejudices and flaws, work on fixing ourselves. Constantly blaming the ‘Other’ only covers our own crimes. ‘Jew’ is a construct, the Hebrew people died out a long time ago. Are there ‘Jews’ in China, in India, in Japan, in Iran, causing the same problems? Only in countries controlled by Europe.
    
    I feel sorry for the modern people carrying the burden of the label ‘Jew’, as they are being used and led to destruction by an evil power structure. It is like they are, due to their Talmudic upbringing, the perfect patsies. They are so easy to control, keep telling them they are under attack, trigger their Ghetto Complex, and they well do and submit to anything. Israel is not a benefit to the ‘Jewish’ people, it is their tomb, the ultimate extermination camp. We are using them for their fanaticism, setting up our own scapegoat in the process. Yes there are a disproportionate number of ‘Jews’ in our ruling class, but I would argue that is because the Talmud more easily allows them to slip into Sociopathy. The evil structure they inhabit is ours, not theirs.
    - WizOz on January 04, 2017 · at 8:27 am EST/EDT
      
      Jews were not ‘under the bed’ but at the forefront of the fight against the Church. They only believe that they can deceive us with the “Jew is a construct’ mantra. “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
Jerry on January 03, 2017 · at 6:42 am EST/EDT

During the imperial period (which began with Peter I) two very different “Russias” appeared: one of the thoroughly Europeanized elites, intellectuals, aristocrats, authors, composers, etc., mostly residing in Saint Petersburg and Moscow and a “deep Russia”, composed primarily of farmers, traders, pre-Petrine nobility, etc which was mostly alienated from and hostile towards the Europeanized elites.

I am curious to know if it is possible if these two very different “Russias” bear any resemblance to the two very different political movements in Russia today, the Atlantic Integrationists and the Eurasian Sovereignists? If so, did the two “Russias” persist in some form through the Soviet period, or were they reconstituted after the dissolution of the Soviet Union? If they were reconstituted, that is really curious and remarkable, almost as if Russian paradigms were like crystals forming out of a solution; or perhaps it tells us that the Soviet system wasn’t able to leave a lasting imprint on Russian culture.
- Earthrise on January 03, 2017 · at 7:15 am EST/EDT
  
  Good point Jerry,
  
  It seems The Saker is accepting the loss of White Russia/the Ukraine to Europe. Maybe even preferring it if it will quarantine the Russian Atlanticists. If this results in a Russo-Islamic middle kingdom, it might be worth it. The West is the past, gravity is shifting East.
Anonymous on January 03, 2017 · at 12:59 pm EST/EDT

I find this articles (and whole blog) very useful for people as me totally encircled by “western” values and media, so you can better understand the facts and russian culture.

As a communist I do not agree with: “During the Revolution and subsequent civil war the vast majority of Russian remained neutral, neither White nor Red as they (correctly) saw that conflict as a conflict of elites, not of people standing for their interests.”

It might be true in some way, but also I think it´s undeniable that revolution was heavily supported by large parts of russian society, including the vast masses.

The thing missed in this explaining is social classes, I think that “russian vast majorities” were formed by poor, medium and rich peasants in the villages, and “proletariats” in the big cities (among others).

Revolution was heavily supported, at least, by poor peasants and proletariats, and that was a respectable part of “genuine russian” masses, they were main characters of this part of history, not just passive viewers of fights between “foreign elites”. I.e. agriculture collectivizations could have never been done without strong support from peasants in villages.
ToivoS on January 03, 2017 · at 7:45 pm EST/EDT

Saker’s list of peoples that became what is now known as Ukrainian left out the Swedes (or Vikings). My understanding of the history is that it was the Swedes that founded the first big trading cities on the Dniepr River (Kiev itself?). They were a sea faring nation that traded with the Mediterranean. They discovered that the Dniepr River could connect them directly with the Black Sea and hence the wealthy markets of Turkey, Persia, Greece, the Adriatic, etc. At that time the trip from Scandavia to the Mediterranean exposed them to French, English, Spanish and North African pirates, the Dniepr was much safer. From my experience some of the blondiest, blued eyed people I have met came from Western Ukraine (and my ancestors all came from Finland).
- WizOz on January 05, 2017 · at 4:29 am EST/EDT
  
  There are little solid reasons to doubt the Primary Chronicle’s story that Kiev was founded by three brothers Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv along with their sister Lybed, sometimes in the 5th Century AD.
  There are little reasons to doubt the apparently ‘rival’ traditions transmitted by the Chronicle, one that Kii was just a ‘ferryman’ at an important crossing of the river, and the other that Kii was a prince of the Poliani who went to Tsargrad, where he was received with honors by the Emperor. It is perfectly likely that Kii was a ‘prince’ who dominated the waterways of the Dnieper and was ultimately under Byzantine control.
  The Swedes did not found Kiev. The Chronicle tells clearly that the Swedes were called by the Slovenes to put an end to the anarchy and lawlessness prevailing at the time, and reign over them. The Viking chieftains Askold and Dir in their way to Constantinople passing by Kiev, liked it and helped to liberate it from the Khazars. That was then four hundred years after the foundation of Kiev.
Chele on January 03, 2017 · at 8:55 pm EST/EDT

What do you think about the current “hype” on Channel One Russia (1tv) over the film “Viking”?
Isabella on January 05, 2017 · at 1:28 am EST/EDT

I have studied the history and movement of the real Welsh going back over 1000 yrs quite a bit. I can assure you, that recent DNA studies across all of Britain show NO difference in DNA between those in Scotland, S.E Kent, and south Wales – where Cardiff is.
They ALL have the same 45% Franco 35% Germanic distribution and the same haploid groups.
Only the North Welsh – Gwynedd – and a small group of in the inland of Yorkshire have notable differences.
Once clear distinct characteristic is that NONE of the “true” Welsh have any characteristics of the Scots or North Irish, which most definitely includes the Scandinavian red hair and green eyes.
I offer my studies in DNA and archaeology plus genealogy plus history against your

“– my brother-in-laws sister in Cardiff is married to[a red head]”. .

I dont know or care if at some point in his history some roaming Scotsman got friendly with a lady whose kids migrated to South Wales, and now he speaks with a Welsh accent.
If he has red hair, he is not a pure blood Welshman of a distinct, Celtic heritage with its differences to the Celtic lines found – once – in Scotland and Ireland.
Anonymous on January 05, 2017 · at 7:31 pm EST/EDT

Genetic studies are always interesting: http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/russians.html
- Franz on January 05, 2017 · at 8:24 pm EST/EDT
  
  Other than some anachronistic references to ‘Ukrainian’ populations, which could not have existed prior to 1917, the study seems sturdy and serviceable enough… for a rainy day.
Eimar on January 06, 2017 · at 1:12 am EST/EDT

An interview with Prince Vladimir of Serbia, whose grandmother was the Grand Duchess of Russia:

http://katehon.com/article/interview-his-royal-highness-prince-vladimir-karadjordjevic

I post it here, as he considers Serbs to be a subdivision of Russians and is arguing for Serbia to adopt the Eurasian paradigm and re-orient towards Russia.

Wonder what the Saker thinks?
Vin on January 06, 2017 · at 3:09 pm EST/EDT

Interesting article over all, thanks for the work, but obviously very biast towards the authors own wishes as well.
Cathy on January 06, 2017 · at 6:07 pm EST/EDT

Wonderful article over all.
- Davi on January 08, 2018 · at 8:24 pm EST/EDT
  
  Agreed, Thinking back awhile, my wife Svetlana was asked if she considered herself “white” by some idiot who had never met a Russian. She replied, I am Slavonian, although Gengis Khan rode though here awhile back.