In case you missed it, others besides yourself might be interested in this post which concerns (among other things) the use of statistics:

http://theivanovosti.typepad.com/the_ivanov_report/2009/01/umland.html

AK

I’m glad to receive word of your enjoyable trip.

As per your advice, I’m not the one in as great a need for a chilling down. If anything, that advice is more appropriate for some of the folks you’ve mentioned over the course of time. From time to time, all of us can benefit from what you suggested.

As for smoking weed, I prefer a good workout and/or a few brews.

On the matter of updating your blog roll, please note that your current hyperlink to my AC column is outdated. The updated one is at my name on this post.

I look forward to reading your future commentary.

Salut!

Post 2

AK

Just to follow-up on some related points to your post and the discussion about it, there has been some misrepresentative commentary about a couple of issues relating to the White Russian perspective and Jackson-Vanik Soviet era emigres of Jewish background. These misrepresentations can be due to any number of factors that could include the biases of the presenters and/or their perhaps smoking too little or too much weed

As is true with any political grouping, the White Russian view has its intelligent and not so intelligent aspects. Likewise and without naming names, I’ve come some simplistically idiotic commentary about the White Russian community at large.

There’s also the false impression that people of Jewish origin from the former USSR are prone to not being sympathetic to Russia. Several years ago, Zhirik’s appearance in Brighton Beach drew a packed and enthusiastic audience, which was critically noted by one source I came across. This point isn’t said as an endorsement of Zhirik. The mentioned reception he received at Brighton Beach indicates that the former USSR emigres of Jewish origin don’t all think like Masha Gessen. Like any other patriotism, the Russian variant comes in varying degrees. I subscribe to the one acknowledging Russia’s benefit from embracing peoples of different backgrounds – with the latter sometimes becoming more Russian than the Russians themselves.

Part of the mis-impressions relate to the imagery being hustled at the propped venues. For quality sake, this is why it’s important to properly note those who are doing the right thing – when it comes to presenting a more accurate accounting.

On a related note, in English language mass media, it often seems that some Ukrainian views are more equal than others. I’m periodically shocked at how some seemingly well informed former USSR observers have been led to believe that Ukrainians at large hate Russians.

AK responds: Hyperlink fixed.

Dude, chill down, go smoke some weed, etc. I wrote this post quickly since I had to leave soon. Compiling a tally of everyone I corresponded with was not one of its goals.

I agree with you on how Russophobic sentiment is less prevalent in Lithuania than in Estonia and Latvia, for the reasons stated. In the latter, it is practically universal; this is far from the case even in countries like Poland, where such sentiments affect probably no more than 50% of the population (although unfortunately, some of the loudest Russophobic voices come from Communist-era migrants to the West).

What you write about ethnic Russians living in the West during the Cold War resonates, me having known and talked with quite a few of them. And not only during the Cold War. Arguably the 1990′s were worse. At least before then the country was a respectable if disparaged (in the West) global superpower; during the 1990′s, it was so chaotic, hopeless, incompetent, drunk, etc, that morale collapsed, amongst Russians both in Russia and abroad, to such an extent that most actually joined in the rhetorical assault against it. The reversal of the above, in Russians’ opinions of Russia, especially after about 2005, is IMO one of the most positive and necessary developments of its post-Soviet history. (This reversal was helped to quite an extent by the duplicity of Western reporting about the country – this incites many Russians who’ve come across it (i.e. especially the more connected and educates ones) to defend it, even if they’d otherwise have no particularly strong liking for the Putin gov’t.

@Lyndon,

Thanks, I enjoyed the trip immensely and feel I’ve improved quite a lot, even if I do say so myself

Also added your blog to the blogroll (it was on the old DR but I originally compiled the new one in a hurry and forgot about some).

“I have this problem, too, I don’t think it’s just a Russian thing – unless it’s something that rubbed off on me during the time I lived there.”

Everybody has this sympton, although I still suspect Russians have it more than average. Even looking at its history, brief periods of great reform or economic progress (Peter the Great, Emancipation, 1905-1914, Stalinist industrialization, 1998- ?), are interspersed amongst much longer periods of zastoi.

“I think anyone who writes opinion pieces about matters they care about runs the risk of falling into this trap.”

Agreed. While I don’t actually believe the Western media are always or even mostly “shills for their neocon masters” (I much favor Chomsky’s propaganda model), my disgust with their coverage of the Ossetia conflict coupled with the knowledge that shrill rhetoric attracts more attention than a more accurate but insipid title, led me to title that post this way.

BTW, feel free to contact me if you need some tips with WP.

I am a cyclical worker, capable of great feats of production over short periods but prone to long periods of idleness and procrastination (one nineteenth-century Russian historian attributed this quality to Russians in general, due to their long winters and short growing seasons).

I have this problem, too, I don’t think it’s just a Russian thing – unless it’s something that rubbed off on me during the time I lived there.

I agree that sometimes my rhetoric is too shrill and detracts from my points (although it does draw attention). [...]

I think anyone who writes opinion pieces about matters they care about runs the risk of falling into this trap.

Probably one of my bigger mistakes early on was taking my conception of myself as a ‘polar opposite’ to La Russophobe a bit too literally.

You needn’t worry (as I’m sure you know) about rising (falling) to LR’s rhetorical level. Also, whether one agrees or disagrees with the way you present your data or with your conclusions, the amount of substantive original content you’ve generated has been impressive.

Anyway, happy blog birthday, happy new year, good luck with all of your plans (those enumerated above and those which are still just a spark in your mind), and congratulations on migrating to WordPress – I still haven’t made the switch, although it’s something I’ve wanted to do for some time.

AK responds: While I’d love not to, to ‘look truth in the eye’ LR is one of the most popular Russia blogs on the Internet and as such merits a degree of attention and concern. (Same if commentary on Jews or Israel were dominated by Holocaust-denying voices, for example).

Anyway, keep going and good luck. You know you make various LR’s furious, and if anything, it can provide hours of amusement.

AK responds: Thanks Fedia! Not lazy, I‘d say…just not always motivated enough. Feel free to rejoin the struggle with your excellent sleuthing skill whenever ready