Russian Migrant Identity Struggle-‘I Don’t Want to Be Called Russian Anymore (Canada, revolution)

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

Why is there a need for a divisive language policy at all? In the U.S., Britain and Australia English is not the official language. It is a commonly used "working language." Let people speak what they speak and provide services in commonly spoken languages where they are spoken. In the U.S. services are provided in Chinese in Chinatown, Spanish in appropriate areas, etc. Why enforce oppressive policies by including or excluding languages unless you are "fishing for a gas leak with a match"?

Hint, official bilingualism has caused far more language friction since 1968 than existed before then, when French could be used where justified.

What oppressive policies? The fact is, when the USSR collapsed, Russians in the Newly Independent States found themselves living in foreign countries. Those countries had their own national language. They chose to make their own language the official one. How does that oppress any ethnic minorities: German, Russian, Tatars in the Caucasus and Central Asian states, etc.? Would it kill Russians to learn the local language? Why the resistance? The Baltic languages are fairly close to Russian; it wouldn't be that difficult to learn one of them. Yet most Russians preferred to pick up and move to somewhere in Russia (but where? In many cases, their families had been in the ethnic republics for at least a couple of generations), rather than attend language classes. That's a staggering reaction, for people who literally had nowhere to go.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

See above. Most Russians, except spies, are here because Putin's Russia is what they did not want.

The overwhelming majority of Russians in the US arrived before Putin. The Putin-era Russians are a drop in the bucket, a tiny percent. That tiny percent may grow to a slightly larger percent. As someone with heritage from Russia yourself, I'm sure you know this. I don't know why you made the quoted statement. Perhaps you misspoke.

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

The overwhelming majority of Russians in the US arrived before Putin. The Putin-era Russians are a drop in the bucket, a tiny percent. That tiny percent may grow to a slightly larger percent. As someone with heritage from Russia yourself, I'm sure you know this. I don't know why you made the quoted statement. Perhaps you misspoke.

I literally know that, but Russia has always been incompetently governed, the worst combination of despotism and anarchy. I could substitute "Brezhnev's Russia" or "Stalin's Russia" or "Czar Nicholas' Russia." If that weren't true I wouldn't be here, literally.

[William Blakeley]

I'd love to attempt an answer of sorts to your query OP , but first I'd like to ask for a bit of clarification if you don't mind :

More specifically does this topic solely concern whether or not anti Russian sentiment is on the rise throughout the " West " as a result of the ongoing conflict ?

Or does it concern whether or not the Russian tradition of sociopolitical arrangement is better than its American counterpart or vice versa ?

Also is the subject of whether or not Europe ( in sociopolitical terms ) is fundamentally different from and/or better or worse than the USA relevant to this discussion ?

I do hope you'll forgive the ( quite probable ) pedantry of this post , but I'm honestly at a bit of a loss regarding the direction of this thread and don't wish to inadvertently scatter it in many different directions by ( f.ex ) trying to answer all three of these questions at once .

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by William Blakeley

I'd love to attempt an answer of sorts to your query OP , but first I'd like to ask for a bit of clarification if you don't mind :

More specifically does this topic solely concern whether or not anti Russian sentiment is on the rise throughout the " West " as a result of the ongoing conflict ?

Or does it concern whether or not the Russian tradition of sociopolitical arrangement is better than its American counterpart or vice versa ?

Also is the subject of whether or not Europe ( in sociopolitical terms ) is fundamentally different from and/or better or worse than the USA relevant to this discussion ?

I do hope you'll forgive the ( quite probable ) pedantry of this post , but I'm honestly at a bit of a loss regarding the direction of this thread and don't wish to inadvertently scatter it in many different directions by ( f.ex ) trying to answer all three of these questions at once .

A good place to start is the OP itself:

Originally Posted by jbgusa

‘I Don’t Want to Be Called Russian Anymore’: Anxious Soviet Diaspora Rethinks Identity; (link), excerpts below:

I have never gotten this thing about hating emigres and their descendants for the horrors committed by their ancestors' rulers. It seems to me that most people emigrating from Eastern Europe or, for that matter China did so to escape the madhouses that those areas have historically been.

Speaking for myself, I am Jewish; half Slovak/Hungarian and half Russian, from modern Poland and Ukraine. I believe, unashamedly and unapologetically, in my Jewish and American heritage. I have no pride or longing for my European roots.

How do others feel?

It's base was a news article about people who didn't want to be called "Russian" any more. What I said and meant was that I consider myself an American. My ancestors kept no ties to the old country(ies). The subject is not Europe v. America. It is, quite simply, whether descendants of European emigres seek to maintain any group identity. I do; my group identity is American. And I don't see any "pedantry" in the post. See Pedantry Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster. I am at a loss for knowing what I am trying to teach.

[William Blakeley]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

A good place to start is the OP itself:

It's base was a news article about people who didn't want to be called "Russian" any more. What I said and meant was that I consider myself an American. My ancestors kept no ties to the old country(ies). The subject is not Europe v. America. It is, quite simply, whether descendants of European emigres seek to maintain any group identity. I do; my group identity is American. And I don't see any "pedantry" in the post. See Pedantry Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster. I am at a loss for knowing what I am trying to teach.

Ah ok I think the confusion on my part is cleared up now , for the record I was referring to my own post when I typed pedantry , since I thought all my questions may have come off as pedantic .

At any rate as far as the subject of Russian descended people living in the " West " not wanting to identify as Russian is concerned , it obviously varies widely from individual to individual , however in my limited experience said subject takes on a rather interesting form in the case of many Rusyn descended people living in Pennsylvania which I'll be expounding on a bit below :

To my knowledge the past historical dynamics of the Catholic Church in the USA , more specifically the fact that it was dominated by Irish descended functionaries who were hostile to Eastern Rite Catholicism , resulted in many otherwise ethnically Rusyn individuals becoming " Russified " as a result of them defecting to the Orthodox Church in protest .

In fact I do believe that Alexis Toth ( https://www.acrod.org/readingroom/saints/stalexistoth ) in particular was the fellow best known for bringing about this process , though I could very well be mistaken on this count .

I myself knew quite a few otherwise ethnically Rusyn individuals growing up who identified as " Russian " , even though strictly speaking Rusyns are/were much closer to Ukrainians with respect to both their ethnogenesis and culture .

Come to think of it the film " The Deer Hunter " might actually showcase some of this odd transatlantic ethnic shift , but I could be very wrong about that since it's been ages since I've seen it so I must digress , but my point is that some non Russian people living in the " West " actually identify as Russian to this very day as the result of curious historically based ethnoreligious fusion .

Making the answer to this question a good bit nuanced .


By the way would you mind if I replied to your post ( #93 I think ) concerning Russian government that was right above my last one ?

Because I think that issue is worthy of some fleshing out as well , if it falls within the scope of your thread of course .

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by William Blakeley

By the way would you mind if I replied to your post ( #93 I think ) concerning Russian government that was right above my last one ?

Because I think that issue is worthy of some fleshing out as well , if it falls within the scope of your thread of course .

Go ahead. Just because I'm a thread starter doesn't give me the powers of Putin. I doubt you will find many examples of competent, well-run Russian government or bureaucracy though. Part of the reasons I am here and they are there.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

I literally know that, but Russia has always been incompetently governed, the worst combination of despotism and anarchy. I could substitute "Brezhnev's Russia" or "Stalin's Russia" or "Czar Nicholas' Russia." If that weren't true I wouldn't be here, literally.

OK, so for clarity and accuracy, you could have said, "because an oppressive, poorly-governed Russia (in any era) was not what they wanted".

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

OK, so for clarity and accuracy, you could have said, "because an oppressive, poorly-governed Russia (in any era) was not what they wanted".

There are a lot of ways I could have worded it. Rather than making a "word salad" I try to use shorthand when possible.

Turning back to substance and away from vocabulary, Russia, in its various guises has always spent more time and resources stirring the pot on its borders than doing anything productive with the land it already governs. The Holodomer, a deliberately inflicted lethal famine in Ukraine that killed over 10,000,000 was not the beginning but it is certainly illustrative. The pogroms against the Jews in Kisinev (modern Moldova) is another example. Going further back, Czarina Catharine unleashed a needless bloodbath in Crimea, and then trying to seize Turkey. The Siege of Plevna was particularly gruesome.

In short, Russian leadership rarely finds much useful to do than kill people. Before regaling me with examples of Western atrocities, keep in mind, we have a largely constructive history. Russia does not.

[William Blakeley]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

I literally know that, but Russia has always been incompetently governed, the worst combination of despotism and anarchy. I could substitute "Brezhnev's Russia" or "Stalin's Russia" or "Czar Nicholas' Russia." If that weren't true I wouldn't be here, literally.

While I'm certainly no expert on Russian history and political culture , I must nonetheless disagree with the claim of Russia always having been a backwards and oppressive country .

While much can actually be said in favor of the Russian monarchy throughout history , I'll focus on dropping a few brief lines concerning the Russian Empire as it existed between 1905/1906-1917 as a manifestation of the Russian state that was fairly commendable/could have developed into something even better had the revolutions of 1917 not come to pass .

As documented by historians like Manya Gordon in her book " Workers Before and After Lenin " , Russia was actually a pioneer in labor rights legislation at the time , what with ( as stated in Kuehnelt-Leddihn's " Leftism Revisited " ) the Okhrana going as far as to actually assist workers in setting up labor unions .

The State Duma was far more diverse in its party based/ideological makeup than the US Congress of the same time period and the spirit of public debate/criticism was also far more vibrant than in the USA of the same time period as ( again ) documented in Kuehnelt-Leddihn's book .

Stolypin's agrarian reforms were widely praised by advocates of agrarian reform throughout Europe at the time , in fact I've read several ( sadly non English so no use referencing them here ) writings by historians who have claimed that the social tension which existed between the peasantry and the nobility in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary would have been greatly reduced had Stolypin type agrarian reforms been introduced there , a measure which would have made it all the more harder for Communism to break through later on .

All this is not to claim that Russia during that time period was a literal earthly paradise or what have you , only that the destruction of the monarchy as it existed back then set Russia back rather greatly , the results of which can be seen to this very day IMHO .

In short I believe the view that the Russian state was always an utterly oppressive " Mongol " style despotate is a rather incorrect one , especially if one considers the fact that no manifestation of the Russian state prior to the Soviet Union ever claimed as many innocent victims as the Soviet Union did .

As an aside while ( unfortunately ) most of the books/articles I've read about Russian history/political culture aren't in English , I can besides the aforementioned works by Manya Gordon and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn recommend the book " The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825-1917 " as well as the article " Russian in Europe: The Conflict of Values " both by Edward Crankshaw if you're interested in checking up on which sources I'm basing my stance regarding this issue on .