After the Soviet collapse- A globe redrawn

[Pelranius]

Seeing as how the population of Ukrainians and Russians in Crimea are dropping and the population of Crimean Tatars is rising and seeing as how Russian population is projected to drop from 142 million to 109 million in 2050 while Turkish population is expected to grow from 75 million to 100 million I suspect that the question "what happens to Crimea" is going to be even more interesting than you think.

I wouldn't put too much into that. The Crimean Tartars are notoriously pro Ukranian, if I recall correctly (or at least they've consistently supported the positions of the Ukrainian nationalists since the Soviet implosion).

[Big Orange]

Could modern Russia split off from its original Imperial/Soviet bulk and shrink back to pre-18th century dimensions over the next century? The Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia split off very quickly, Chechnya is a nightmare to hold down and Georgia got pretentious almost out of the blue (to outsiders).

[Pelranius]

Could modern Russia split off from its original Imperial/Soviet bulk and shrink back to pre-18th century dimensions over the next century? The Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia split off very quickly, Chechnya is a nightmare to hold down and Georgia got pretentious almost out of the blue (to outsiders).

I doubt it. Tartarstan, Siberia and the Far East (for the record, there is no wave of Chinese migrants, who are for the most part temporary workers and trades, overruning the RFE) seem to be quite happy living in Russia, since they need a lot of things like personnel and technology from the European part.

[Sidewinder]

A low birth rate is not necessarily a bad thing (it's something the UK really needs) but I doubt a cratering birth rate in a huge industrialized superpower seemed desirable.

I wonder if this will give Russia the same damn headaches the US has now, i.e., they need a large number of low-wage workers in their nation, but they do not want to pay for the workers' welfare & retirement benefits, which means the government will look the other way as massive amounts of illegal immigrants pour into the country, look away as these immigrants get jobs at sweatshops and farms, and then crack down on illegal immigration when those people try to enroll their kids in local schools or apply for other benefits the citizens get.

[fgalkin]

A low birth rate is not necessarily a bad thing (it's something the UK really needs) but I doubt a cratering birth rate in a huge industrialized superpower seemed desirable.

I wonder if this will give Russia the same damn headaches the US has now, i.e., they need a large number of low-wage workers in their nation, but they do not want to pay for the workers' welfare & retirement benefits, which means the government will look the other way as massive amounts of illegal immigrants pour into the country, look away as these immigrants get jobs at sweatshops and farms, and then crack down on illegal immigration when those people try to enroll their kids in local schools or apply for other benefits the citizens get.

This is already happening with immigrants from the Central Asian republics.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[K. A. Pital]

Yes, this is already happening and it ain't pretty. It's a major rallying point for neo-Nazis as well.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, this is already happening and it ain't pretty. It's a major rallying point for neo-Nazis as well.

Russian neo-Nazis...

Ow. I think I just blew another fuse in my cerebral cortex. That is just wrong on so many obvious levels.

Are we talking actual neo-Nazis here, or just the generic sort of people so far to the right that they think Ghengis Khan was a goddamn pinko liberal?

[K. A. Pital]

No, actual neo-Nazis. With "Heil Hitler".

What is more mind blowing, is Russian-Israeli Neo Nazis. There was a thread about it just recently. Yeah, talk about insane.

[montypython]

No, actual neo-Nazis. With "Heil Hitler".

What is more mind blowing, is Russian-Israeli Neo Nazis. There was a thread about it just recently. Yeah, talk about insane.

Don't know if it's been said before, but in a way it reminds me of the concept of how people often end up emulating enemies due to similar obsessions.

[Simon_Jester]

No, actual neo-Nazis. With "Heil Hitler".

What is more mind blowing, is Russian-Israeli Neo Nazis. There was a thread about it just recently. Yeah, talk about insane.

Dammit, Stas, do you have any idea how hard it is for me to change the fuses inside my own head!?

Where did these lunatics even come from? Where did they originate? Who was the first person to be this absolutely insane?

[Norseman]

Is this something like National Bolshevism?

[stormthebeaches]

The National Bolshevism video may look like nazism but it looks more like Stalinism. Fascism pretending to be Communist.

[Kane Starkiller]

As long as we are mentioning Russian Far East I recently ran into several pictures supposedly depicting Russian highways M53 and M56.
LINK


Apparently the "highways" are not actually covered in asphalt and basically turn into muddy traps after rain. To those more familiar with Russia is this for real? Because those highways are the main roads connecting Far East to the West of the country. Paving them should be the very first thing on the checklist otherwise the east will naturally drift away and integrate with Japan, South Korea and China economically. Oceanic transport>1000km muddy roads

[Sidewinder]

No, actual neo-Nazis. With "Heil Hitler".

What is more mind blowing, is Russian-Israeli Neo Nazis. There was a thread about it just recently. Yeah, talk about insane.

I seriously wonder what those people were thinking when they decided to go "Heil Hitler."

"Gee, those people invaded the land of my ancestors; raped, mutilated, and mass-murdered my countrymen; looted and destroyed anything of value they got their hands on, dooming people whose blood flows in my veins to years of poverty, starvation, and slave labor. But they have cool uniforms and wicked rides (Panzers), so I guess that makes up for what they did. Where do I sign up?"

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Most transit in Russia, Kane, still runs based on the railroads. Roads are simply completely unnecessary for commerce outside of urban areas, and the fact that you think otherwise shows a great deal of ignorance about infrastructure on your part. The Russian State Railways are actually an excellent service and do a great deal to keep the economy of Russia from falling apart, and the Trans-Siberian and the BAM are the only links Russia really needs to the Far East in any sense.

[Pelranius]

No, actual neo-Nazis. With "Heil Hitler".

What is more mind blowing, is Russian-Israeli Neo Nazis. There was a thread about it just recently. Yeah, talk about insane.

I seriously wonder what those people were thinking when they decided to go "Heil Hitler."

"Gee, those people invaded the land of my ancestors; raped, mutilated, and mass-murdered my countrymen; looted and destroyed anything of value they got their hands on, dooming people whose blood flows in my veins to years of poverty, starvation, and slave labor. But they have cool uniforms and wicked rides (Panzers), so I guess that makes up for what they did. Where do I sign up?"

They just recast the Slavs as "Aryan" (which I think Alfred Rosenberg wanted to do in the first place, anyways). So they figure that now they're part of the master race, they can just go and dispose of all those bothersome Jews, Turks and Chinese. I suspect its also a last place of refuge for various monarchists, since it's pretty clear that the Romanovs aren't coming back.

[Simon_Jester]

Most transit in Russia, Kane, still runs based on the railroads. Roads are simply completely unnecessary for commerce outside of urban areas, and the fact that you think otherwise shows a great deal of ignorance about infrastructure on your part.

When you see roads that can best be described as a rutted, mud-filled trench, I think it's an easy mistake to make. Especially when they are (relatively) major highways. You don't normally expect the government of a developed nation to designate a road as a "highway" wand not bother to pave it.

Russia is a special case, but if you're not Russian or an expert on transportation in general, that is not obvious.

[K. A. Pital]

To those more familiar with Russia is this for real?

Yeah, it's real. Explanation: one of Russian officials' stellar idea was to re-lay asphalt in the last days of Autumn. You could imagine how well that went

[Simon_Jester]

Let's see... at a guess, they're laying it on top of a deep ocean of mud, and then a blizzard dumps I don't want to think about how much snow on top. Did I get it right?

And if I am identifying the problem with a civil engineering project, given my penchant for unrealistic expectations... something is badly wrong.

[K. A. Pital]

Let's see... at a guess, they're laying it on top of a deep ocean of mud, and then a blizzard dumps I don't want to think about how much snow on top. Did I get it right?

Yeah. Because they thought the snow and bad weather wouldn't strike that soon. Essentially they hoped for it... so hard.... but they failed even harder.

[Simon_Jester]

Were I Russian, I would consider these people a disgrace to my people. Not so much because of their gross stupidity; gross stupidity is common throughout the world.

But the complete failure of their pessimism and ability to anticipate bad weather are distinctly un-Russian.

[Pelranius]

Let's see... at a guess, they're laying it on top of a deep ocean of mud, and then a blizzard dumps I don't want to think about how much snow on top. Did I get it right?

Yeah. Because they thought the snow and bad weather wouldn't strike that soon. Essentially they hoped for it... so hard.... but they failed even harder.

At least they actually tried to do it instead of just pocketing the money.

[Big Orange]

Russian/Belarus/Ukrainian roads always got shot to shit during the Autumn and Winter, as the invading Axis armies soon learned well before 1941 was out.

The idea of Russian Neo-Nazis is not as absurd as it first appears, since not only was the Soviet Union under Stalin almost as brutally authoritarian as the Third Reich, Russia has had institutional anti-Semitism long before the formation of the Nazi Party (with a whole disproportionately policed region designated for Jews alone known as the Pale of Settlement). And Russia/Eastern Europe is appallingly homophobic, with the first Gay Pride event ending in a debacle and the cheesy (but harmless) Richard Fairbrass getting attacked in the next annual Gay Pride event.