HD:
Anne Applebaum discussed some of this in Gulag. She concluded most Russians don't give a shit about Stalin's crimes. They want to move on I guess. However, a large number of them revere him. I don't give a shit if Russians don't want to remember their past. I think its important, if only as a lesson to the West about how dark things can get if we start going down the road of Collectivism, if we start limiting speech, if we tear down the family and try to legitimize socially destructive policies. Ironically, no one gives a shit about history in the West anyway, so we in all honesty have already forgotten the lessons anyway and are probably doomed.
Tbh, I don't think anyone (in power) in the West, East, South or even North
ever really cared much about history unless it could be
used, somehow. The reason history, as a scholarly/academic discipline, should exist is primarily to counter all the ideological, religious, philosophical and even personal, familial and dynastical interests people may have to paint history in a - to them and their message - favorable light. While tyrannies will simply destroy the historical evidence, plenty of people in democracies will simply stuff their fingers in their ears and declare that historical source so-and-so should not be considered because it's racist/Communist/Nazi/ginger/from "Clan McWrong whereas my clan, McRight's stories are always right.. Freedooooom!".
History in the West for most people today is primarily about
entertaintment. About getting an "experience". I think what comes closest to genuine, historical interest for average people, as in people not in positions of power, are those people who do or have done genealogical research into their own familiy's past. Sure, alot of them start out
wanting to find someone "impressive" or have some ideal image of some ancestor of theirs, and a few of those may stop when it looks like they won't find that... but in my experience more of those people go on to become interested in the, sometimes ugly, unflattering or sometimes just plain...
plain truths of their family history.
Zlaxer:
Most Russians are drunkards.....seriously...look up the stats (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_c ... _in_Russia)....it's a country full of but hurt drunken proles who long the glory days of the USSR when they weren't the laughing stock of the world.
Not that the Russian Mil and Scientists shouldn't be respected....but not surprised that most Russians shrug off Soviet Crimes....
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/euro ... rend-grows
Russians are drinking less than at any point since the fall of the Soviet Union, figures show, as a raft of government measures bear fruit and healthy living becomes ever more fashionable.
Vodka might still serve as a national symbol but last year Russians drank less alcohol per capita than the French or Germans, according to World Health Organisation data that factored in consumption of bootleg booze.
And tobacco use also plummeted by more than a fifth between 2009 and 2016, down to 30 per cent of Russians smoking according to the most recent Global Adult Tobacco Survey.
Simply blaming the "proles", when it's the Russian elites who are those giving those "proles" the impression that everything will be better for them once they regain their old borders and turn their neighbouring countries into the vassal states they were under the Soviet Union, seems rather unjustified. Russians do generally feel that the world slights them, sure. But it's not simply your no-longer-really-existing stereotypical vodka-drinking Russian lowlife slobs who think that Russia is better off without laws that guarentee freedom of speech (unless it praises the government).
Fame is not flattery. Respect is not agreement.
