While you’re not wrong that there were protests in the city against Russians, telling them fuck off and go home and people were discouraged to speak Russian, refused to do so. There is no such thing as “Baltic people” Some areas are quite phobic, others less so, we still have ones where overwhelming majority speak Russian. And like I have gotten weird looks at school when my babushka once took me to school and everyone started talking about “omg her grandma speaks Russian :O” so I’m not gonna sit here and pretend like it’s totally not a thing. ofc it has been even outside of the setup protests.
But it’s quite complicated and in general people are pretty segregated along class and identity lines. But that’s like liberalism they love segregating. In general the population has become totally pacified, the only constant thing everyone I’ve ever run into has in agreement is that Politicians are corrupt cockroaches who can’t be trusted and nobody will do anything to stop them.
Another issue is that a lot of the most pro-soviet places have been obliterated by free market economics and de-industrialization. Pretty much completely erased from history. Like we literally had people burn books to stay warm in their homes after free market came in and sold off parts of the system, that were keeping people’s homes heated. And this is like relatively tame all things considered I can’t imagine the horror show people in Korea f.ex must have experienced.
I didn’t mean to suggest Baltic states are one people! And of course I’m aware of class and social differences. I lived through much of shock therapy suffering you mention, I wish we could talk in person, I have lots of thoughts I’m not sure how to put into writing…
I think culturally, from Catholicism and Lutheranism to Latin script to just architecture surrounding them in their cities, people in Baltic states feel European in the way Ukrainians, Moldovans, and Georgians simply can’t.
I remember a lot of late-Soviet Russians coopting reactionary language - when state informed them of the crimes South African whites commited on the black population, Russians would say “aren’t we whites too?” which was of course in part a joke, but there was an underlying sense of entitlement to be the oppressor, to be the slave master. I bet you’d find less of that in the Eastern republics where people still remembered living under Russian Empire yoke and had less reason to self-identify as prospective oppressors. When in the referendum Russians voted lowest of all the republics in support of preserving the USSR (except Baltic republics), I think this is a large part of the reason why (also worth mentioning Eastern republics voted by far the highest to preserve it). It’s the feeling of belonging to a powerful, respected, “cultured” nation that deserves more than the plebs around them. I think Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, and Balts had even stronger claim to proper “Whiteness”. Ukrainians on the other hand needed much more mental gymnastics to devise a theory where Russians were “Mongolised” since medieval times and Ukrainians were the only “pure” Slavs which also somehow made them essentially Nordics… They managed of course, but it was laborious.
Again I wish we could talk in person cause I can see I’m fumbling.
I would like to say more, but there’s like weird shit happening, like explosions at eternal flame memorials and part of me is scared the US aligned nationalists might drag everyone into a grave.
While you’re not wrong that there were protests in the city against Russians, telling them fuck off and go home and people were discouraged to speak Russian, refused to do so. There is no such thing as “Baltic people” Some areas are quite phobic, others less so, we still have ones where overwhelming majority speak Russian. And like I have gotten weird looks at school when my babushka once took me to school and everyone started talking about “omg her grandma speaks Russian :O” so I’m not gonna sit here and pretend like it’s totally not a thing. ofc it has been even outside of the setup protests.
But it’s quite complicated and in general people are pretty segregated along class and identity lines. But that’s like liberalism they love segregating. In general the population has become totally pacified, the only constant thing everyone I’ve ever run into has in agreement is that Politicians are corrupt cockroaches who can’t be trusted and nobody will do anything to stop them.
Another issue is that a lot of the most pro-soviet places have been obliterated by free market economics and de-industrialization. Pretty much completely erased from history. Like we literally had people burn books to stay warm in their homes after free market came in and sold off parts of the system, that were keeping people’s homes heated. And this is like relatively tame all things considered I can’t imagine the horror show people in Korea f.ex must have experienced.
I didn’t mean to suggest Baltic states are one people! And of course I’m aware of class and social differences. I lived through much of shock therapy suffering you mention, I wish we could talk in person, I have lots of thoughts I’m not sure how to put into writing…
I think culturally, from Catholicism and Lutheranism to Latin script to just architecture surrounding them in their cities, people in Baltic states feel European in the way Ukrainians, Moldovans, and Georgians simply can’t.
I remember a lot of late-Soviet Russians coopting reactionary language - when state informed them of the crimes South African whites commited on the black population, Russians would say “aren’t we whites too?” which was of course in part a joke, but there was an underlying sense of entitlement to be the oppressor, to be the slave master. I bet you’d find less of that in the Eastern republics where people still remembered living under Russian Empire yoke and had less reason to self-identify as prospective oppressors. When in the referendum Russians voted lowest of all the republics in support of preserving the USSR (except Baltic republics), I think this is a large part of the reason why (also worth mentioning Eastern republics voted by far the highest to preserve it). It’s the feeling of belonging to a powerful, respected, “cultured” nation that deserves more than the plebs around them. I think Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, and Balts had even stronger claim to proper “Whiteness”. Ukrainians on the other hand needed much more mental gymnastics to devise a theory where Russians were “Mongolised” since medieval times and Ukrainians were the only “pure” Slavs which also somehow made them essentially Nordics… They managed of course, but it was laborious.
Again I wish we could talk in person cause I can see I’m fumbling.
I would like to say more, but there’s like weird shit happening, like explosions at eternal flame memorials and part of me is scared the US aligned nationalists might drag everyone into a grave.
Off-topic, but I don’t think I’ve encountered a non-ASCII username on Lemmy before. There seems to be a subtle bug in the default web UI where this generates an error: https://lemmygrad.ml/u/Богданова
while this doesn’t: https://lemmygrad.ml/u/Богданова@lemmygrad.ml