As you correctly note, it's invalid to compare 2009!Russia with 2024!Poland.
Re-1. Correct. For beauty you should go to Krakow. FWIW, yes, Russian women have advanced closer to the Polish/Western archetype over the past two decades.
Re-2. This is the one point I disagree on, and quite profoundly. During my three weeks in Poland (2020), I found it to be the country with the people closest in character to Russians (much more so than, say, Serbs, who are outspoken Russophiles - it's one of the few countries in the world where something like "Russian privilege" can be said to exist - but feel just as "foreign" as Romanians). Both peoples will seethe at this claim, especially Poles, but that just confirms the point - puffed up exceptionalist complexes, albeit by force of circumstances, channeled through different ideological avenues (derzhavnost/national greatness in Russia's case; promethean messianism/Christ-like national suffering to redeem humanity in Poland's).
One way of looking at this is to imagine an alt history in which Poland became big while Russia remained small, and the Church played a major role in its liberation struggles. It would then be a mirror image. (The Church x liberation nexus no longer being in play, Poland is probably the world's most rapidly secularizing country, having gone from a culture in which people would make the sign of the Cross when passing a church on a bus, to one where young people are no less secular than Hungarians or Russians).
Re-5. Standard throughout Eastern Europe, including in Russia, for almost a decade now.
Re-6. First night I was in Poland (Krakow) I saw two buckos after a night out fighting each other, with one knocking the other out. Not to say that it is typical, of course.
There is less alcoholism in Poland than in Russia. However, its incidence has plummeted in Russia, and will likely converge fully in another 1-2 decades. Its provenance in Russia is a matter of pretty concrete historical contingency (role of vodka as tax revenue generator).
Re-8. Accurate. Though when I was there The Witcher show (with its Black actors) was being extensively advertised. I'd say subcons are at 1-2% in Warsaw.
This is just not true! (* two caveats later) Speaking as a lifelong Muscovite, now 45. Search Девушки в москве in YouTube and see the latest vids. My recent personal experience is this: for the last 4 years I’m spending most of my time in the suburbs and sometimes do not go to the city centre for weeks. A few days ago I went there and it was late in the evening and the weather was great and people were sitting dining at the terraces and the beauties were everywhere and people were laughing and enjoying warm summer evening and I caught myself feeling like I was 30 again (still young but having money). Ok 2 caveats: 1) don’t go out on weekends and public holidays when it’s not people living and working in Moscow who are on the streets, and 2) go outside of Sadovoe ring and yes people and girls in particular are not as beautiful, the farther you go the worse it gets. But if you know where and when to look and the time of the year is right- Moscow is one of the best cities next to Kyiv to enjoy girls and pleasant summer evenings. St Petersburg is not very close. Been to many US and European cities - yes nothing like this there.
Era stereotyping aside, the late 2010s+ Moscow of yoga pants, hoodies, dyed hair vinishkas, and SWPL amusements was no longer the 2000s Moscow of cake faced (aspiring) models lounging around face controlled nightclubs with squat oligarchs and their burly bodyguards and Mercedes waiting outside. Even bill splitting has become semi-normalized.
This is, of course, a good development in Russia's road back to bourgeois civilization.
Richard, I have never been to Russia, but I have a personal story that speaks to the beauty of Russian women. For five years I was involved with a Russian woman, “D,” who had immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager after the fall of communism. D was in her 30s when I was with her, and moving forward in her career as a medical doctor. She was smart and a brilliant conversationalist with a sexy Russian accent. She was also a big fan of Putin, about which we agreed to disagree: “You Americans don’t understand! Ukraine is southern Russia, and Kiev is where our nation was born!”
Though D had been in America for 20 years, she still thought of herself as Russian more than American. She was focused, sometimes obsessively, on what she called her “aesthetics.” She always dressed exquisitely in fashionable outfits, perfectly applied makeup, and high heels. D was once late for a dinner date claiming she had “an eyelash malfunction.” In her 20s D was a blonde, but when I knew her, she had gone back to her natural brunette hair color. Being with D led me to upgrade my own style of dress to bring it up to her level. And D was quite critical of American women who she thought did not pay enough attention to their appearance: she thought American women “dressed like crap.”
Though I often told D that she was aesthetically perfect, she was never satisfied with her appearance. She would check in the mirror everyday for gray hairs and wrinkles, and would go on a water diet for days whenever she gained a pound, crying “I’m fat!” In truth she was quite slim, worked out, and was in shape. She always talked about getting botox, a facelift, or a butt lift, though she did not need any of them. D said her greatest fear was getting old and fat, losing her beauty, and turning into a stereotypical babushka.
Anyway, D and I broke up four years ago, our relationship a casualty, in part, of the COVID crisis. D was treating a lot of COVID patients which took a heavy emotional toll on her. She has since gotten married and is now a mother, something far more important than aesthetics.
Interesting takes - but disagree on characterization of Poles as rule-following. I'm perhaps not objective here as I grew up there but my closest comparison of Poles would be Florida men, i.e. someone who gets into all sorts of different situations by bending and breaking the rules, especially ones around safety. This is why construction is so cheap in Poland compared to other European countries - everyone routinely breaks safety rules. This is also why the tax code in Poland is one of the most complex in Europe - because everyone tries to use every possible loophole, and unless it's explicitly written down, it's presumed allowed. Jaywalking is an interesting exception to this but if you went on a freeway in Poland, you'd find yourself fighting for survival (sadly).
Not sure low murder rate means less interesting society, but it is making me think deeper into why I feel like disagreeing with that statement. Having spent a decent amount of time in Austria, Netherlands, and Germany, I found many locals enjoyably fun, albeit it does take a little longer to get them to warm up than let’s say a person from SoCal or a native Brooklyn-ite. I could also likely have had a biased experience, since people will assume I have Asian timidness when they first see me (my parents are Korean), but I’m more extroverted and willing to engage in weird and direct conversations than the typical stereotype. I would CERTAINLY agree that having a beer with strangers was very easy, since conversations always led to, “… is it true Asians can’t drink normal alcohol?”, which would quickly lead to impressive drinking games :)
Your comment about Warsaw being rebuilt after the war is misleading. Only a tiny part of the old town was rebuilt to look like it was before the war. The rest was plastered with Stalin era monstrosities from which the city is still trying to recover. The Palace of Culture - Stalin’s “gift” to Poland - is arguably the ugliest building in Europe.
Vehemently disagree. The Palace is a great example of monumental communist architecture, as is the Marszałkowska Dzielnica Mieszkaniowa (south of the Palace, along the main Marszałkowska street). Such things are the only things Soviet-style architecture is good for. The truly ugly stuff are the residential blocks peppered all around town, and the country.
Anyway, Warsaw sure isn’t like St Petersburg, but is definitely a great place to live, and much, MUCH prettier than it was 20 years ago. Lots of parks, etc.
My only visit to Poland in, I think, 2007 or so, I was attacked late at night in central Krakow by a group of five or six Poles who thought I was English (they desisted when I was able to make them realize I was American, and to be fair it was more like they surrounded me and wanted to fight than pummelled me to a pulp. They did throw food at me though), I was glowered at fiercely in a club by a random single Pole who clearly wanted to fight me, and there was a drunk stumbling around near an outdoor restaurant I was eating at.
I remember being shocked that white people can behave this way, as New York has no equivalent among whites.
Interesting how different times are now. It's almost as if behavior is affected by culture, is different in different time frames, is influenced by countless intangible factors that evolve and change over time, and isn't invariable and static as certain simplistic theories of human behavior would have you think :)
As for East Asia, you really have to get rid of this silly notion they they are bland conformists and addicted to order. In some ways, yes, fair enough. But one of the delights of visiting Japan or Korea for Westerners is coming into contact with cultures that are not as "left brained" - they don't prioritize bland efficiency and organization and control as much as the West, at least officially, does. Tokyo back alleys, for instance, are riotous cacophonies of color and disorganized commerce and fun, without strict zoning rules, full of bars, cafes, eateries, throw together, garish bright signage, etc.
It's carnivalesque.
Watching YouTube videos of East Asia, if one cannot visit, cannot help but convince one that here is a culture that even if on one level emphasizes order and conformity, on another level positively revels in spontaneous, carnivalesque fun, a kind of freedom and exuberance and lack of control, and an aestheticism that is very far from a bland worship of utility that all too often characterizes the drearier quarters of the West.
As in all things, catching hold of one side of East Asian culture - it's love of order and surface conformity - may give the misleading impression one has exhausted it. One must guard against simplistic reductionism in all things.
1. Warsaw is plain. It is the plainest capital city in Eastern Europe.
2. The dichotomy between Western Europe and Eastern Europe is a post-World War II concept. Before World War II, Germany, Poland, the western parts of Ukraine, Czechia, and Hungary were defined as Central Europe. There were some debates about whether Denmark was part of Central Europe or Northern Europe, and whether the Baltic countries were part of Central Europe or Northern Europe. Eastern Europe as we know it today is quite an artificial concept.
I have always had the impression that when talking about Russia, there is a huge distinction between Moscow and St. Petersburg on one side and provincial Russia on the other. Not just wealth differences, but cultural difference. One is civilized, while the other, barbaric, and extremely backward. Many years after the collapse of Soviet Union, I read that in Siberia, there are cities where approximately 40% of the male population has served time in prison.
During the late Soviet era, I traveled from Estonia (my home country) to Russia, and I was totally shocked by provincial Russia. It was like a third-world country. There was garbage everywhere, and nobody seemed to care. You could barely see the houses because of the overgrown weeds and piles of garbage. The people were unkempt and dirty. In the same time frame, I also took a trip to western Ukraine, to Lviv and the Carpathian region. It was different there—poor, but it seemed that people cared. They mowed their lawns, painted their fences, and maintained their surroundings.
Petersburg and Moscow were different— maybe disorderly and dirty compared to Estonia—but still very distinct, absolutley different from provinical Russia, visually, but also how people acted, talked, etc. In recent years, I think, they have changed even more. A few years ago when I was in Moscow, it was basically a modern, clean, orderly, and safe city. People were nice and polite.
Even in Estonia, when I was growing up during late Soviet Union, I always wondered why Russian neighborhoods were so dirty, ugly, and less safe. Why did Russians throw garbage everywhere? Why were their mouths always full of sunflower seeds? Why did they spit everywhere? Why was it that you build them a new bus stop, and two days later it was already broken, covered with graffiti, or otherwise damaged? It was impossible to use public toilets in Russian neighborhoods because everything was covered with feces, from the floors to the ceilings.
One of my Russian friends once explained that the Russians who arrived in Estonia did not come from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from the provinces. They belonged to the underclass and brought with them their low, underclass blatnoi culture and kept it.
I have never felt that kind of difference in other Eastern European countries. They do not have a massive underclass culture. In Estonia and Latvia, which I know best, it did not exist during Soviet times (except amongst Russian immigrants) and do not exist now. I have not detected it in Western and Central Ukraine, where I have traveled extensively, nor in Poland. Yes, there are poorer and richer regions, but not a massive underclass culture, or blatnoi culture as they say.
Maybe it has changed in Russia too, I do not know.
6. Not just Poland, Eastern Europe is safe in general. Crime levels were high in 1990-s, but are very low now.
8. All of Eastern Europe is still white. I was maybe 10 years old when I saw a black man for the first time; it was during a school trip to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in the late Soviet era.
1. Warsaw is ugly, but there are many other beautiful cities. Come to Krakow!
2. Poles don't jaywalk because they don't break rules - they don't jaywalk, because it's dangerous when drivers break rules all the time.
3. The introversion anxiety, conformity and risk-aversion is a result of 200 years of partitions, wars and communism/Soviet rule. Sadly, this keeps us in the middle income trap.
4. Polish parents are terrified of pedophiles and kidnappers. As a result, it is an universal and strong social norm to tell kids to NEVER EVER talk to adult strangers. Also, it is not acceptable for an adult man to look at or try to talk to children other than his own - if one does that, people will think he's a pedophile or a kidnapper and, in worst case, may assault him verbally or physically.
5. Polish alt-right cash-defending conspiracy theorists say that Poland was chosen by the international finance establishment as a proving ground for adoption of various cashless payment technologies. Even if so, the result is convenience - I never use cash, only carry it on me for emergencies.
6. Agree, much progress was done on this in recent 30 years.
7. It is a Polish custom to put out flags on national holidays (like Independence Day or Constitution Day) and then take them down afterwards. Another thing is that the national symbols like the flag are associated with the political establishment most poles basically hate.
8. Warsaw is unique, you would be lucky to see anyone other than white elsewhere. Also, DEI is not a thing in Poland, unless you support a fringe leftist party or have it at work if you work in a branch of a big American corporation.
9. No comment, probably never seen an American crow.
10. Agree, but these tendencies are also more vivid in Warsaw than elsewhere.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just getting used to it after living in Warsaw for 15 years, but I’m always perplexed at the aesthetic slander the city receives. I definitely don’t think it’s ugly!
This made me interested in personality traits of Poles, so I looked it up and in fact Poland apparently has a higher percentage of INTPs and INTJs than any other European nation. Which would explain the lack of expressiveness. Who knows whether it's valid, but according to the site they've had an astronomical number of respondents: https://www.16personalities.com/country-profiles/global/europe#global
I wondered because my family is half-Polish in ethnicity, and my husband's family is 100% Polish, and neither of our families have any real attachment to or knowledge about our ethnicity/ancestors. And literally nothing in common as far as social class, religion, politics, etc. Yet both of our families have extremely similar personalities -- stoic, zero drama, steady, fairly rational, close but not not expressive, no one ever fights, attention-seeking or emotional weakness is looked down upon, etc. So maybe it's the Polish genes.
I really don't know anything about Polish people at all. When I was a kid, all you heard was dumb Pollak jokes, and the Irish and Italian kids all seemed to have some kind of ethnic pride and they have their parades and holidays etc, but the Polish kids never said a peep about it. Which I guess fits. Never been to eastern or middle Europe either. I'm somewhat curious, but on the other hand, sometimes being around a bunch of other people that are too much like you is disorienting and weird.
Yeah, I was thinking that a great way to start an argument anywhere in Italy would be to suggest that all "Italians" are the same kind of people. Or perhaps go to a dive bar in Barcelona and proclaim that Catalonia is just a political boundary in a uniform sea of Spaniards...
Poland is in line to lose it's identity in a similar fashion to the way that Ireland is actively choosing to do. EU membership generated wealth increase, mass immigration, Catholic Church rejection, historical national enemy reaffirming/reminding,collapsed birth rates. Polish women take the cake on that one. Starting work 2 years later than their menfolk and finishing 1-2 years earlier and Poland has just registered the lowest number of births since WW2.
I wonder if you are extrapolating Russia too much from just St. Petersburg. Russia is more of an Empire than a country, like a collection of countries.
Richard, sorry for a little nepotism here but I've decided that you definitely have strong Jewish roots. Almost all of my favorite Substack writers happen to be Jewish, and most of them I didn't even realize when I signed up. Noah Smith (my favorite), Scott Alexander, Matt Yglesias, and Nate Silver. We must all be genetically predisposed to the same intellectual style. You are also a favorite and basically the only one not on the list. Well, it's hardly surprising that geneticists have recently concluded that over 90% of Palestinians are descendants of Jews who converted to Islam during the Muslim conquest of the 7th century.
It's a little funny. A bunch of alt-right writers, including BAP, L0mez, and Sailer were outed as halfies a little while back. Verbal ability + political interest, I guess.
That said all of those writers have a certain centrist-libertarian or centrist-liberal slant that's critical of wokeness and populism, and a certain rationalist-adjacent style that favors drawing conclusions from data, as well as a general sympathy for pre-postmodernist ideals of tolerance, objectivity, science, and a bunch of other things.
My guess is it's appealing to high-IQ types for whom figuring out stuff for yourself is more often a good idea.
> Polish women are less naturally beautiful than their Russian counterparts, but the real difference is they’re not trying that hard to look nice.
When examining whether women are trying to look nice, and especially, trying to look sexy, always check out what the effective sex ratio is for the particular location/ethnicity/social class/age group. The sex ration can get remarkably unbalanced by relatively small social forces and historically has caused significant shifts in people's behavior. (See Guttentag and Secord https://www.amazon.com/Too-Many-Women-Ratio-Question/dp/0803919182 for historical sociology.) In Russia in particular, I expect alcoholism to take a severe toll on employed and functioning men, especially after age 30, so the women generally might be seeing an unfavorable sex ratio.
As you correctly note, it's invalid to compare 2009!Russia with 2024!Poland.
Re-1. Correct. For beauty you should go to Krakow. FWIW, yes, Russian women have advanced closer to the Polish/Western archetype over the past two decades.
Re-2. This is the one point I disagree on, and quite profoundly. During my three weeks in Poland (2020), I found it to be the country with the people closest in character to Russians (much more so than, say, Serbs, who are outspoken Russophiles - it's one of the few countries in the world where something like "Russian privilege" can be said to exist - but feel just as "foreign" as Romanians). Both peoples will seethe at this claim, especially Poles, but that just confirms the point - puffed up exceptionalist complexes, albeit by force of circumstances, channeled through different ideological avenues (derzhavnost/national greatness in Russia's case; promethean messianism/Christ-like national suffering to redeem humanity in Poland's).
One way of looking at this is to imagine an alt history in which Poland became big while Russia remained small, and the Church played a major role in its liberation struggles. It would then be a mirror image. (The Church x liberation nexus no longer being in play, Poland is probably the world's most rapidly secularizing country, having gone from a culture in which people would make the sign of the Cross when passing a church on a bus, to one where young people are no less secular than Hungarians or Russians).
Re-5. Standard throughout Eastern Europe, including in Russia, for almost a decade now.
Re-6. First night I was in Poland (Krakow) I saw two buckos after a night out fighting each other, with one knocking the other out. Not to say that it is typical, of course.
There is less alcoholism in Poland than in Russia. However, its incidence has plummeted in Russia, and will likely converge fully in another 1-2 decades. Its provenance in Russia is a matter of pretty concrete historical contingency (role of vodka as tax revenue generator).
Re-8. Accurate. Though when I was there The Witcher show (with its Black actors) was being extensively advertised. I'd say subcons are at 1-2% in Warsaw.
“ Russian women have advanced closer to the Polish/Western archetype over the past two decades.”
This is the part that truly matters. I’m heartbroken.
This is just not true! (* two caveats later) Speaking as a lifelong Muscovite, now 45. Search Девушки в москве in YouTube and see the latest vids. My recent personal experience is this: for the last 4 years I’m spending most of my time in the suburbs and sometimes do not go to the city centre for weeks. A few days ago I went there and it was late in the evening and the weather was great and people were sitting dining at the terraces and the beauties were everywhere and people were laughing and enjoying warm summer evening and I caught myself feeling like I was 30 again (still young but having money). Ok 2 caveats: 1) don’t go out on weekends and public holidays when it’s not people living and working in Moscow who are on the streets, and 2) go outside of Sadovoe ring and yes people and girls in particular are not as beautiful, the farther you go the worse it gets. But if you know where and when to look and the time of the year is right- Moscow is one of the best cities next to Kyiv to enjoy girls and pleasant summer evenings. St Petersburg is not very close. Been to many US and European cities - yes nothing like this there.
Thanks for the report.
advanced closer =/= converged
Era stereotyping aside, the late 2010s+ Moscow of yoga pants, hoodies, dyed hair vinishkas, and SWPL amusements was no longer the 2000s Moscow of cake faced (aspiring) models lounging around face controlled nightclubs with squat oligarchs and their burly bodyguards and Mercedes waiting outside. Even bill splitting has become semi-normalized.
This is, of course, a good development in Russia's road back to bourgeois civilization.
Re: number 1 and beauty: I just returned from 4 days in Kracow and you are correct. A gorgeous city, especially Old Kracow.
Very interesting. I enjoyed this.
Same.
Richard, I have never been to Russia, but I have a personal story that speaks to the beauty of Russian women. For five years I was involved with a Russian woman, “D,” who had immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager after the fall of communism. D was in her 30s when I was with her, and moving forward in her career as a medical doctor. She was smart and a brilliant conversationalist with a sexy Russian accent. She was also a big fan of Putin, about which we agreed to disagree: “You Americans don’t understand! Ukraine is southern Russia, and Kiev is where our nation was born!”
Though D had been in America for 20 years, she still thought of herself as Russian more than American. She was focused, sometimes obsessively, on what she called her “aesthetics.” She always dressed exquisitely in fashionable outfits, perfectly applied makeup, and high heels. D was once late for a dinner date claiming she had “an eyelash malfunction.” In her 20s D was a blonde, but when I knew her, she had gone back to her natural brunette hair color. Being with D led me to upgrade my own style of dress to bring it up to her level. And D was quite critical of American women who she thought did not pay enough attention to their appearance: she thought American women “dressed like crap.”
Though I often told D that she was aesthetically perfect, she was never satisfied with her appearance. She would check in the mirror everyday for gray hairs and wrinkles, and would go on a water diet for days whenever she gained a pound, crying “I’m fat!” In truth she was quite slim, worked out, and was in shape. She always talked about getting botox, a facelift, or a butt lift, though she did not need any of them. D said her greatest fear was getting old and fat, losing her beauty, and turning into a stereotypical babushka.
Anyway, D and I broke up four years ago, our relationship a casualty, in part, of the COVID crisis. D was treating a lot of COVID patients which took a heavy emotional toll on her. She has since gotten married and is now a mother, something far more important than aesthetics.
Interesting takes - but disagree on characterization of Poles as rule-following. I'm perhaps not objective here as I grew up there but my closest comparison of Poles would be Florida men, i.e. someone who gets into all sorts of different situations by bending and breaking the rules, especially ones around safety. This is why construction is so cheap in Poland compared to other European countries - everyone routinely breaks safety rules. This is also why the tax code in Poland is one of the most complex in Europe - because everyone tries to use every possible loophole, and unless it's explicitly written down, it's presumed allowed. Jaywalking is an interesting exception to this but if you went on a freeway in Poland, you'd find yourself fighting for survival (sadly).
Not sure low murder rate means less interesting society, but it is making me think deeper into why I feel like disagreeing with that statement. Having spent a decent amount of time in Austria, Netherlands, and Germany, I found many locals enjoyably fun, albeit it does take a little longer to get them to warm up than let’s say a person from SoCal or a native Brooklyn-ite. I could also likely have had a biased experience, since people will assume I have Asian timidness when they first see me (my parents are Korean), but I’m more extroverted and willing to engage in weird and direct conversations than the typical stereotype. I would CERTAINLY agree that having a beer with strangers was very easy, since conversations always led to, “… is it true Asians can’t drink normal alcohol?”, which would quickly lead to impressive drinking games :)
Your comment about Warsaw being rebuilt after the war is misleading. Only a tiny part of the old town was rebuilt to look like it was before the war. The rest was plastered with Stalin era monstrosities from which the city is still trying to recover. The Palace of Culture - Stalin’s “gift” to Poland - is arguably the ugliest building in Europe.
Vehemently disagree. The Palace is a great example of monumental communist architecture, as is the Marszałkowska Dzielnica Mieszkaniowa (south of the Palace, along the main Marszałkowska street). Such things are the only things Soviet-style architecture is good for. The truly ugly stuff are the residential blocks peppered all around town, and the country.
Anyway, Warsaw sure isn’t like St Petersburg, but is definitely a great place to live, and much, MUCH prettier than it was 20 years ago. Lots of parks, etc.
Interesting.
My only visit to Poland in, I think, 2007 or so, I was attacked late at night in central Krakow by a group of five or six Poles who thought I was English (they desisted when I was able to make them realize I was American, and to be fair it was more like they surrounded me and wanted to fight than pummelled me to a pulp. They did throw food at me though), I was glowered at fiercely in a club by a random single Pole who clearly wanted to fight me, and there was a drunk stumbling around near an outdoor restaurant I was eating at.
I remember being shocked that white people can behave this way, as New York has no equivalent among whites.
Interesting how different times are now. It's almost as if behavior is affected by culture, is different in different time frames, is influenced by countless intangible factors that evolve and change over time, and isn't invariable and static as certain simplistic theories of human behavior would have you think :)
As for East Asia, you really have to get rid of this silly notion they they are bland conformists and addicted to order. In some ways, yes, fair enough. But one of the delights of visiting Japan or Korea for Westerners is coming into contact with cultures that are not as "left brained" - they don't prioritize bland efficiency and organization and control as much as the West, at least officially, does. Tokyo back alleys, for instance, are riotous cacophonies of color and disorganized commerce and fun, without strict zoning rules, full of bars, cafes, eateries, throw together, garish bright signage, etc.
It's carnivalesque.
Watching YouTube videos of East Asia, if one cannot visit, cannot help but convince one that here is a culture that even if on one level emphasizes order and conformity, on another level positively revels in spontaneous, carnivalesque fun, a kind of freedom and exuberance and lack of control, and an aestheticism that is very far from a bland worship of utility that all too often characterizes the drearier quarters of the West.
As in all things, catching hold of one side of East Asian culture - it's love of order and surface conformity - may give the misleading impression one has exhausted it. One must guard against simplistic reductionism in all things.
1. Warsaw is plain. It is the plainest capital city in Eastern Europe.
2. The dichotomy between Western Europe and Eastern Europe is a post-World War II concept. Before World War II, Germany, Poland, the western parts of Ukraine, Czechia, and Hungary were defined as Central Europe. There were some debates about whether Denmark was part of Central Europe or Northern Europe, and whether the Baltic countries were part of Central Europe or Northern Europe. Eastern Europe as we know it today is quite an artificial concept.
I have always had the impression that when talking about Russia, there is a huge distinction between Moscow and St. Petersburg on one side and provincial Russia on the other. Not just wealth differences, but cultural difference. One is civilized, while the other, barbaric, and extremely backward. Many years after the collapse of Soviet Union, I read that in Siberia, there are cities where approximately 40% of the male population has served time in prison.
During the late Soviet era, I traveled from Estonia (my home country) to Russia, and I was totally shocked by provincial Russia. It was like a third-world country. There was garbage everywhere, and nobody seemed to care. You could barely see the houses because of the overgrown weeds and piles of garbage. The people were unkempt and dirty. In the same time frame, I also took a trip to western Ukraine, to Lviv and the Carpathian region. It was different there—poor, but it seemed that people cared. They mowed their lawns, painted their fences, and maintained their surroundings.
Petersburg and Moscow were different— maybe disorderly and dirty compared to Estonia—but still very distinct, absolutley different from provinical Russia, visually, but also how people acted, talked, etc. In recent years, I think, they have changed even more. A few years ago when I was in Moscow, it was basically a modern, clean, orderly, and safe city. People were nice and polite.
Even in Estonia, when I was growing up during late Soviet Union, I always wondered why Russian neighborhoods were so dirty, ugly, and less safe. Why did Russians throw garbage everywhere? Why were their mouths always full of sunflower seeds? Why did they spit everywhere? Why was it that you build them a new bus stop, and two days later it was already broken, covered with graffiti, or otherwise damaged? It was impossible to use public toilets in Russian neighborhoods because everything was covered with feces, from the floors to the ceilings.
One of my Russian friends once explained that the Russians who arrived in Estonia did not come from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from the provinces. They belonged to the underclass and brought with them their low, underclass blatnoi culture and kept it.
I have never felt that kind of difference in other Eastern European countries. They do not have a massive underclass culture. In Estonia and Latvia, which I know best, it did not exist during Soviet times (except amongst Russian immigrants) and do not exist now. I have not detected it in Western and Central Ukraine, where I have traveled extensively, nor in Poland. Yes, there are poorer and richer regions, but not a massive underclass culture, or blatnoi culture as they say.
Maybe it has changed in Russia too, I do not know.
6. Not just Poland, Eastern Europe is safe in general. Crime levels were high in 1990-s, but are very low now.
8. All of Eastern Europe is still white. I was maybe 10 years old when I saw a black man for the first time; it was during a school trip to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in the late Soviet era.
Few comments from a Polish reader:
1. Warsaw is ugly, but there are many other beautiful cities. Come to Krakow!
2. Poles don't jaywalk because they don't break rules - they don't jaywalk, because it's dangerous when drivers break rules all the time.
3. The introversion anxiety, conformity and risk-aversion is a result of 200 years of partitions, wars and communism/Soviet rule. Sadly, this keeps us in the middle income trap.
4. Polish parents are terrified of pedophiles and kidnappers. As a result, it is an universal and strong social norm to tell kids to NEVER EVER talk to adult strangers. Also, it is not acceptable for an adult man to look at or try to talk to children other than his own - if one does that, people will think he's a pedophile or a kidnapper and, in worst case, may assault him verbally or physically.
5. Polish alt-right cash-defending conspiracy theorists say that Poland was chosen by the international finance establishment as a proving ground for adoption of various cashless payment technologies. Even if so, the result is convenience - I never use cash, only carry it on me for emergencies.
6. Agree, much progress was done on this in recent 30 years.
7. It is a Polish custom to put out flags on national holidays (like Independence Day or Constitution Day) and then take them down afterwards. Another thing is that the national symbols like the flag are associated with the political establishment most poles basically hate.
8. Warsaw is unique, you would be lucky to see anyone other than white elsewhere. Also, DEI is not a thing in Poland, unless you support a fringe leftist party or have it at work if you work in a branch of a big American corporation.
9. No comment, probably never seen an American crow.
10. Agree, but these tendencies are also more vivid in Warsaw than elsewhere.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just getting used to it after living in Warsaw for 15 years, but I’m always perplexed at the aesthetic slander the city receives. I definitely don’t think it’s ugly!
This made me interested in personality traits of Poles, so I looked it up and in fact Poland apparently has a higher percentage of INTPs and INTJs than any other European nation. Which would explain the lack of expressiveness. Who knows whether it's valid, but according to the site they've had an astronomical number of respondents: https://www.16personalities.com/country-profiles/global/europe#global
I wondered because my family is half-Polish in ethnicity, and my husband's family is 100% Polish, and neither of our families have any real attachment to or knowledge about our ethnicity/ancestors. And literally nothing in common as far as social class, religion, politics, etc. Yet both of our families have extremely similar personalities -- stoic, zero drama, steady, fairly rational, close but not not expressive, no one ever fights, attention-seeking or emotional weakness is looked down upon, etc. So maybe it's the Polish genes.
I really don't know anything about Polish people at all. When I was a kid, all you heard was dumb Pollak jokes, and the Irish and Italian kids all seemed to have some kind of ethnic pride and they have their parades and holidays etc, but the Polish kids never said a peep about it. Which I guess fits. Never been to eastern or middle Europe either. I'm somewhat curious, but on the other hand, sometimes being around a bunch of other people that are too much like you is disorienting and weird.
You can have both fun and monoethnic states in southern Europe
Where exactly would those states be?
Yeah, I was thinking that a great way to start an argument anywhere in Italy would be to suggest that all "Italians" are the same kind of people. Or perhaps go to a dive bar in Barcelona and proclaim that Catalonia is just a political boundary in a uniform sea of Spaniards...
Poland is in line to lose it's identity in a similar fashion to the way that Ireland is actively choosing to do. EU membership generated wealth increase, mass immigration, Catholic Church rejection, historical national enemy reaffirming/reminding,collapsed birth rates. Polish women take the cake on that one. Starting work 2 years later than their menfolk and finishing 1-2 years earlier and Poland has just registered the lowest number of births since WW2.
I wonder if you are extrapolating Russia too much from just St. Petersburg. Russia is more of an Empire than a country, like a collection of countries.
Richard, sorry for a little nepotism here but I've decided that you definitely have strong Jewish roots. Almost all of my favorite Substack writers happen to be Jewish, and most of them I didn't even realize when I signed up. Noah Smith (my favorite), Scott Alexander, Matt Yglesias, and Nate Silver. We must all be genetically predisposed to the same intellectual style. You are also a favorite and basically the only one not on the list. Well, it's hardly surprising that geneticists have recently concluded that over 90% of Palestinians are descendants of Jews who converted to Islam during the Muslim conquest of the 7th century.
It's a little funny. A bunch of alt-right writers, including BAP, L0mez, and Sailer were outed as halfies a little while back. Verbal ability + political interest, I guess.
That said all of those writers have a certain centrist-libertarian or centrist-liberal slant that's critical of wokeness and populism, and a certain rationalist-adjacent style that favors drawing conclusions from data, as well as a general sympathy for pre-postmodernist ideals of tolerance, objectivity, science, and a bunch of other things.
My guess is it's appealing to high-IQ types for whom figuring out stuff for yourself is more often a good idea.
Doesn't make him genetically Jewish.
So you're saying over 90% of Palestinians are eligible for birthright citizenship to Israel?...
> Polish women are less naturally beautiful than their Russian counterparts, but the real difference is they’re not trying that hard to look nice.
When examining whether women are trying to look nice, and especially, trying to look sexy, always check out what the effective sex ratio is for the particular location/ethnicity/social class/age group. The sex ration can get remarkably unbalanced by relatively small social forces and historically has caused significant shifts in people's behavior. (See Guttentag and Secord https://www.amazon.com/Too-Many-Women-Ratio-Question/dp/0803919182 for historical sociology.) In Russia in particular, I expect alcoholism to take a severe toll on employed and functioning men, especially after age 30, so the women generally might be seeing an unfavorable sex ratio.
You should go to Krakow. I liked it better than Warsaw.