I can't tell you how helpful your writings and podcasts have been for me the last few months. I have appreciated your perspectives over the past few years--and sometimes felt compelled to thank you for your (both of you) rare, searching kind of honestly, including intellectual honesty. Now I appreciate it more than ever. Thanks so much..
I'm browsing random stuff, so not completely sure about the timeline. But the last time I heard your takes on Finland, it was in some podcast episode where you both had this take on why some Finns are these blobby doughfaces and the rest look more Scandinavian or something, then pulling this so edgy, self-deprecating and totally satirical fake-eugenicist/Nazi hypothesis out of your asses about the Swede as the handsome Übermensch dominating the formless Finnish gnome. I didn't mind the stupid joke that much. But as I recall it, it was too much to listen to Yasha confidently mansplain about how Finland gained its independence from Sweden (!!), and then some stuff about the Finland Swede minority that made little sense. Glad you got the independence right this time. 😂
As for the substance, there's actually a reeeally tiny grain of truth to it, although more than anything, the whole thing probably has more to do with Finns carrying a higher share of ancestry from hunter-gatherers, both European and Siberian, who probably were prone to binge-eating and were built to bothinsulaye themselves as well as store the fat more evenly for the long winters (just think about fat distribution and facial features in Arctic people like the Inuit). Plump faces, along with some traits and cultural norms that especially still a few decades ago almost resembled some more recently modernized hunter-gatherer populations, like binge-drinking preferences and alcoholism, propensity to gain weight, silent demeanor... Those I have come to associate with Eastern and Northern Finns in particular. The land there is barely or often not at all arable, so even the HG lifestyle survived there for quite long among the Sámi. Even with Finns' more versatile sustenance toolkit, the areas have staid very sparsely populated. Genetically, there's a big faultline running through Finland NW to SE: just try to draw the line south enough, slicing only the peninsular part in half and leaving Lapland and its southern vicinity on the eastern side.
This kind of ancestry has been less prevalent in Western and Southern Finland, the arable parts basically, which have almost always been more populous and went through a couple of instances of more significant North-Germanic/Swedish gene flow. By far the more significant one of those dates to about 1800 BC, after which the coastal areas in particular, and also the more-arable SW corner and the Western flatlands were occupied to a large degree for a long time by the Scandinavian master race.
That is, until the Finnish tribes with a language with relatively recent roots somewhere in Yakutia (or maybe more south near Lake Baikal, it's still disputed a bit) and 5%+ of very distinct East-Siberian ancestry (the rest doesn't differ much at all from the neighboring Scandis and Balts too) started crossing in increasing numbers from the Estonian side of the Bay around 500 AD or so, going straight for the best land in the SW and mixing with the Scandinavian inhabitation. Or mixing especially with the women: the rapid expansion of the Uralics — the name of the whole language family, unlike Finno-Ugric (or Ugoric...😁) — which was likely related to the Seima-Turbino phenomenon at first, was curiously heavily male-mediated pretty much all the way. Apparently much the same happened in Finland when the Finns start mixing with the North-Germanics in Western Finland, and later with their Sámi linguistic cousins. At least one thing is certain: they brought no women with any Siberian ancestry with them but rather opted for the Germanic and other local ladies, and en route, maybe even some Indo-Iranian chicks (who at this point would have looked broadly European, maybe a bit Slavic), since they were engaged in active bronze trading and hustling with them during the Seima Turbino period when drought and climate abnormalities forced these pastoralists closer to the forests and river routes of the Siberian taiga. The paternal haplogroup I1, associated in Finland with the 1800 BC Germanic expansion is still quite common in Western Finland, so it's not that the Finns wanted, could or did wipe out the North-German male lines wholesale:m — something the Indo-European themselves have at least attempted to do regularly theoughout prehistory. Looking at the scarce DNA findings from around this time, it looks like the west and SE coasts of Finland were more like busy places of trade and interaction by people from the Estonian and Swedish side, with at least Finns, North-Germanics and also the Sámi maintaining a presence merely on Finnish soil.
The other influx of Swedish genes came about mostly during the Middle Ages, and again to the West and SW coasts mostly. This was already the Kingdom of Sweden, so they kept their language. Actually, up to late 1800s at minimim (yes, even during the autonomous period under Russian rule) Swedish was the language of the elites, whether you were originally of Swedish stock or not. Relatively small populations don't have people to waste, so the Finnish side of the kingdom at least was comparatively meritocratic for that age: e.g. military hoovered talented Finns who could rise in the hierarchy, get knighted and sliden into the elite perhaps changing their name if not already done.
Even the biggest proponents of a Finnish nation and language during the mid- to late 1800s' "Fennomania" were natively Swedish-speaking, had Swedish names and so on. About names btw: Finnish and Swedish (last) names are easy to tell apart, but you shouldn't make any assumptions based on them. Except for some residents of certain rural Swedish-speaking communes on the coasts, all Finland Swedes (about 3–4% of the population in total) are basically bilingual. However, many people with Swedish last names can't actually speak Swedish above the general rudimentary "school Swedish".
So no, we weren't subjugated by the well-featured Swedish Aryan elites. You were probably to Helsinki where you can see all of the regional variation because everyone moves to the only real metropolitan area at least once on their lives. But you might detect a difference of proportion in the genetically Western and more stable SW regions and cities, Turku being the biggest. And more Finland Swedes and Swedish names in general.
there's a great boris kargalistsky article from 20 years ago on russia's managed democracy that began under yeltsin and that putin perfected and streamlined. it focuses on the communist party...but you can read it as an indictment of the whole system:
"The wise Yeltsin knew perfectly well that the surest way for him to retain his dictatorial powers was to create the appearance of democracy. There was, indeed, democracy in Russia, only it did not extend to the Kremlin. The opposition could speak, the press could criticise, the citizens could vote, and everything was wonderful — except that none of this had the slightest bearing on the question of power.
"For the system to work properly, it required an opposition that was incapable in principle of taking office. Zyuganov's party coped with this role to perfection. In this sense it has always been one of the system's fundamental political elements. The KPRF has also been assigned another task, no less important and perhaps even more so: to struggle against any attempts at founding a political alternative to the regime. Zyuganov and his associates have fought consistently and with determination against anyone who has tried to attack the regime from the left. The Communist leaders have denounced such people as extremists, as "traitors", or simply as "unserious individuals"."
that's a superficial read. america has it's own problems, yahweh knows, but here the discipling and organizing forces are corporate and billionaire power, as america is a true oligarchy. in russia putin has really organized the state where ultimate political power rests with himself. this war has demonstrated it to be true, as it goes against the economic interests of the vast majority of russia's billionaires. "power vertical," they call it in russia.
I read a lot of random things, but i cant remember anyone referring to the Us as an oligarchy.. Describing it in so many words, perhaps- but the word oligarchy is so specific and final it seems better than any description. Maybe this is hindsight, but putins east german pic is terrifying, thats a little napoleon if ive ever seen one, if not a ted bundy to boot. Do you think oligarchy is a compromise between roughly equally strong power factions when one cant win outright, that otherwise would just be a dictatorship? When one thinks about power in the Us in oligarchical terms, my first impression is how much it is always rearranging and shifting alliances over time. Why doesnt one faction ever win in the Us- or does it? Am i right to think most polities usually end up with a single power faction rather than true oligarchy?
i'd say the duma is a shell. it's not a force of popular will. it can't push him to do anything. it's pretty much understood in russia that any major laws or initiatives coming out of it either get handed down from above or get rubber stamped and approved in the process, especially ones that are important to him or touch on his personal initiatives, like this war. to frame this as putin's being goaded into something because of duma pressure is...well...i wouldn't put much credence in these things.
turkey's against nato, accusing sweden and finland of harboring "terrorist" -- kurds, i guess. it's all for show is my sense to get some sort of massive concession...and yeah multiple crisis on every front and we’re desensitized by nonstop always on holographic information flows designed to rile us up and distract us.
I can't tell you how helpful your writings and podcasts have been for me the last few months. I have appreciated your perspectives over the past few years--and sometimes felt compelled to thank you for your (both of you) rare, searching kind of honestly, including intellectual honesty. Now I appreciate it more than ever. Thanks so much..
thank you, barbara. means a lot. you'd be surprised how much angry hate mail i've been getting lately. haha.
At Yasha Levine ⁉
Beings this thread is delving into "your rare, searching kind of honestly(?), including intellectual honesty"; how did those sending you all that "angry hate mail"© acquire your private mailing address❔🤷♂️
As Usual,
EA☠
Post Script/edit: Are you familiar with Naomi Klein's writing?
I'm browsing random stuff, so not completely sure about the timeline. But the last time I heard your takes on Finland, it was in some podcast episode where you both had this take on why some Finns are these blobby doughfaces and the rest look more Scandinavian or something, then pulling this so edgy, self-deprecating and totally satirical fake-eugenicist/Nazi hypothesis out of your asses about the Swede as the handsome Übermensch dominating the formless Finnish gnome. I didn't mind the stupid joke that much. But as I recall it, it was too much to listen to Yasha confidently mansplain about how Finland gained its independence from Sweden (!!), and then some stuff about the Finland Swede minority that made little sense. Glad you got the independence right this time. 😂
As for the substance, there's actually a reeeally tiny grain of truth to it, although more than anything, the whole thing probably has more to do with Finns carrying a higher share of ancestry from hunter-gatherers, both European and Siberian, who probably were prone to binge-eating and were built to bothinsulaye themselves as well as store the fat more evenly for the long winters (just think about fat distribution and facial features in Arctic people like the Inuit). Plump faces, along with some traits and cultural norms that especially still a few decades ago almost resembled some more recently modernized hunter-gatherer populations, like binge-drinking preferences and alcoholism, propensity to gain weight, silent demeanor... Those I have come to associate with Eastern and Northern Finns in particular. The land there is barely or often not at all arable, so even the HG lifestyle survived there for quite long among the Sámi. Even with Finns' more versatile sustenance toolkit, the areas have staid very sparsely populated. Genetically, there's a big faultline running through Finland NW to SE: just try to draw the line south enough, slicing only the peninsular part in half and leaving Lapland and its southern vicinity on the eastern side.
This kind of ancestry has been less prevalent in Western and Southern Finland, the arable parts basically, which have almost always been more populous and went through a couple of instances of more significant North-Germanic/Swedish gene flow. By far the more significant one of those dates to about 1800 BC, after which the coastal areas in particular, and also the more-arable SW corner and the Western flatlands were occupied to a large degree for a long time by the Scandinavian master race.
That is, until the Finnish tribes with a language with relatively recent roots somewhere in Yakutia (or maybe more south near Lake Baikal, it's still disputed a bit) and 5%+ of very distinct East-Siberian ancestry (the rest doesn't differ much at all from the neighboring Scandis and Balts too) started crossing in increasing numbers from the Estonian side of the Bay around 500 AD or so, going straight for the best land in the SW and mixing with the Scandinavian inhabitation. Or mixing especially with the women: the rapid expansion of the Uralics — the name of the whole language family, unlike Finno-Ugric (or Ugoric...😁) — which was likely related to the Seima-Turbino phenomenon at first, was curiously heavily male-mediated pretty much all the way. Apparently much the same happened in Finland when the Finns start mixing with the North-Germanics in Western Finland, and later with their Sámi linguistic cousins. At least one thing is certain: they brought no women with any Siberian ancestry with them but rather opted for the Germanic and other local ladies, and en route, maybe even some Indo-Iranian chicks (who at this point would have looked broadly European, maybe a bit Slavic), since they were engaged in active bronze trading and hustling with them during the Seima Turbino period when drought and climate abnormalities forced these pastoralists closer to the forests and river routes of the Siberian taiga. The paternal haplogroup I1, associated in Finland with the 1800 BC Germanic expansion is still quite common in Western Finland, so it's not that the Finns wanted, could or did wipe out the North-German male lines wholesale:m — something the Indo-European themselves have at least attempted to do regularly theoughout prehistory. Looking at the scarce DNA findings from around this time, it looks like the west and SE coasts of Finland were more like busy places of trade and interaction by people from the Estonian and Swedish side, with at least Finns, North-Germanics and also the Sámi maintaining a presence merely on Finnish soil.
The other influx of Swedish genes came about mostly during the Middle Ages, and again to the West and SW coasts mostly. This was already the Kingdom of Sweden, so they kept their language. Actually, up to late 1800s at minimim (yes, even during the autonomous period under Russian rule) Swedish was the language of the elites, whether you were originally of Swedish stock or not. Relatively small populations don't have people to waste, so the Finnish side of the kingdom at least was comparatively meritocratic for that age: e.g. military hoovered talented Finns who could rise in the hierarchy, get knighted and sliden into the elite perhaps changing their name if not already done.
Even the biggest proponents of a Finnish nation and language during the mid- to late 1800s' "Fennomania" were natively Swedish-speaking, had Swedish names and so on. About names btw: Finnish and Swedish (last) names are easy to tell apart, but you shouldn't make any assumptions based on them. Except for some residents of certain rural Swedish-speaking communes on the coasts, all Finland Swedes (about 3–4% of the population in total) are basically bilingual. However, many people with Swedish last names can't actually speak Swedish above the general rudimentary "school Swedish".
So no, we weren't subjugated by the well-featured Swedish Aryan elites. You were probably to Helsinki where you can see all of the regional variation because everyone moves to the only real metropolitan area at least once on their lives. But you might detect a difference of proportion in the genetically Western and more stable SW regions and cities, Turku being the biggest. And more Finland Swedes and Swedish names in general.
"how much power Putin really holds in Russia?" -- he holds a lot of power and this special operation is totally his baby. it's wholly his.
there's a great boris kargalistsky article from 20 years ago on russia's managed democracy that began under yeltsin and that putin perfected and streamlined. it focuses on the communist party...but you can read it as an indictment of the whole system:
"The wise Yeltsin knew perfectly well that the surest way for him to retain his dictatorial powers was to create the appearance of democracy. There was, indeed, democracy in Russia, only it did not extend to the Kremlin. The opposition could speak, the press could criticise, the citizens could vote, and everything was wonderful — except that none of this had the slightest bearing on the question of power.
"For the system to work properly, it required an opposition that was incapable in principle of taking office. Zyuganov's party coped with this role to perfection. In this sense it has always been one of the system's fundamental political elements. The KPRF has also been assigned another task, no less important and perhaps even more so: to struggle against any attempts at founding a political alternative to the regime. Zyuganov and his associates have fought consistently and with determination against anyone who has tried to attack the regime from the left. The Communist leaders have denounced such people as extremists, as "traitors", or simply as "unserious individuals"."
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/russia-there-life-kprf-after-yeltsin
that's a superficial read. america has it's own problems, yahweh knows, but here the discipling and organizing forces are corporate and billionaire power, as america is a true oligarchy. in russia putin has really organized the state where ultimate political power rests with himself. this war has demonstrated it to be true, as it goes against the economic interests of the vast majority of russia's billionaires. "power vertical," they call it in russia.
I read a lot of random things, but i cant remember anyone referring to the Us as an oligarchy.. Describing it in so many words, perhaps- but the word oligarchy is so specific and final it seems better than any description. Maybe this is hindsight, but putins east german pic is terrifying, thats a little napoleon if ive ever seen one, if not a ted bundy to boot. Do you think oligarchy is a compromise between roughly equally strong power factions when one cant win outright, that otherwise would just be a dictatorship? When one thinks about power in the Us in oligarchical terms, my first impression is how much it is always rearranging and shifting alliances over time. Why doesnt one faction ever win in the Us- or does it? Am i right to think most polities usually end up with a single power faction rather than true oligarchy?
yes. putin began consolidating his power -- using his old kgb and leningrad buddies as sort of security state boyars -- long before the sanctions hit.
i'd say the duma is a shell. it's not a force of popular will. it can't push him to do anything. it's pretty much understood in russia that any major laws or initiatives coming out of it either get handed down from above or get rubber stamped and approved in the process, especially ones that are important to him or touch on his personal initiatives, like this war. to frame this as putin's being goaded into something because of duma pressure is...well...i wouldn't put much credence in these things.
turkey's against nato, accusing sweden and finland of harboring "terrorist" -- kurds, i guess. it's all for show is my sense to get some sort of massive concession...and yeah multiple crisis on every front and we’re desensitized by nonstop always on holographic information flows designed to rile us up and distract us.
Already are