Script & sources at: www.thenandnow.co/2023/05/25/putins-sense-of-russian-history/ ► Sign up for the newsletter to get concise digestible summaries: www.thenandnow.co/the-newsletter/ ► Why Support Then & Now? www.patreon.com/user/about?u=3517018

quite honestly, I have no idea how most of your videos end up averaging 15k, your production, narration and insight is all on point. They should all be blowing up to well over 100k. Keep up the good work.

I see a lot of comments about this channel not getting enough viewers, which I agree with, but sometimes it isn't HOW MANY people see your ideas, but WHO sees your ideas. The number of patrons you have relative to your viewership is incredible. Keep doing what you are doing - I can speak personally - You are making a difference in the way people see the world.

"It wasn't reason or divine truth that drove world history: it was resentment". Wow!

About the first 3 minutes and Marx /communism: it is true, that marxists believe in the inevitable fall of capitalism. However we influence the timetable and the outcome through our actions. If Marxism said that we have to do nothing to achieve liberation from capitalism, why would so many people be willing to fight a violent revolution? Just something I wanted to say.

From the outside it’s hard to tell whether the nationalist-essentialist philosophy or the individual ambition came first. Both surely compliment each other. I was raised on a Western perspective in which the superiority of liberal and capitalist values was pretty much seen as fact. Before the War on Terror which started when I was just in my teens the expansion of said values seemed almost inevitable - we had won already and everyone else just had to catch up. Now, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Arab Spring, the Financial crisis… I was incredibly naive and ate up the arrogance because it was so very comfortable. There is no inevitability in history and as much as I may despise autocrats like Putin and Jinping or religious fanatics like the Taliban - they hate us for a reason. I do still believe in democracy and think that going back to nationalist zero-sum games will and does royally screw us but I cannot assume that everyone else will eventually agree with me automatically.

This idea about how resentment leads to the rejection of the most powerful and the choice of a counter-model is a bit similar to a phenomenon that was reported in segregated underclasses. Never being able to attain the upper class only by changing their behavior, many people of the underclass embrace a counter-culture identity that defines itself in opposition to the upper class. See "American Apartheid" by Massey and Denton for a discussion. It struck me just now how close this is to Nietzsche's slave/master analogy. This is also close to postmodern warnings against the essentialization of identity politics. These ideas come up very often, it seems.

‘Notes From Underground’ is by no means Dostoevsky’s FIRST major work. He had published at least two novels and many other extensive pieces of writings before it. Just to let you know :)

Excellent video, great writing, well researched and interesting topic as always. You are one of my favorite creators on this website!

Very enlightening perspective. Thank you for the effort you(and your team) put into this work.

I cannot explain how refreshing, enlightening, and frightening this video essay is. Thank you so much for your hard work.

Very interesting video, thanks alot from Russian. But I have to add few remarks: - Mentioning middle class during times of Catherine the Great is wrong,she did everything for the benefit of nobility. Solely. Bc they were her source of power. Khomyakov and slavyanofils weren't preaching what they themselves didn't practice - unity with other classes. While their direction of thinking of unique Russian path had some good points, they lacked intellectual flexibility to reach more sounding conclusions. Their misconceptions were solved by Lenin, more or less. As for Iliyin, hewas a known fascist sympathizer, and the reason why he's so loved by Vlad is his concept of "feeling of rank", meaning that lower classes should know their place and obey their "superiors" , ie nobility and wealthy. So that we, Russians, should shut up and accept living in poverty in one of the richest places on this planet

Excellent all round production - thank you.

As usual. Outstanding, thought provoking and beautifully crafted. This you so much.

Brilliant presentation. So much food for thought in here that I think I'll have to watch it again tomorrow!

Very well narrated and insightful! Also beautifully written. Thank you

Just wonderful. Loving your work

Actually insane that you have this few views. Insanely underrated! Keep up the fantastic work!

Very good work 👍

I recently found you through your Mr. Beast video and I must say, I love your work. Your candor, your ability to tie in history, philosophy, and psychology into a nice neat little bow, and your superb graphic design make you one of a kind. Keep up the great work.

Interesting. I think the most important figure in Putin's ideological transformation was Vyacheslav Surkov, who has taken the ideas of Russian exceptionality by Ilyin, Dugin & others and incorporated them into the reality of Russia of 00's (with Putin moving away from the initial course of trying to establish a closer relationships with Western leaders & booming economy due to the rise of the oil & gas prices). He has invented, at least in its current meaning, the term "sovereign democracy" - which had a lot of sovereignty and a pinch of democracy. The "better way" of ruling which was basically the modernised enlightened absolutism that was facing the past instead of the future. I'd probably mention the role that the Great Patriotic War (the part of WW2 that starts from Hitler's invasion of Soviet Union) had played in the reappearance of this pan-slavic sentiment. Every nation needs a nation-defining moment and post-Soviet Russia didn't really have one as the fall of the Soviet Union was exactly that in public's perception - the end of the big country, not the beginning of the new one. The August Coup also didn't really qualify in the way that the Great October revolution did for USSR... so Putin chose the Great Patriotic war and the Victory over the Nazi Germany as the starting point of his ideology. And it was, sadly, a brilliant move - the trauma of war was never fully processed by USSR as a country, so it was easy to transform the greatest tragedy of the XXth century into this fairy tale of Russian (Soviet) exceptionalism. The Victory over the Nazis was the crowning moment of Russia & USSR, you don't even get to hear about the role that the Allies had played in all of that... an entire world went against Russia and Russia prevailed - that's how the sentiment goes. Russia saved everyone from the greatest evil that this world has ever known so the world should be forever grateful - but it isn't, hence the ressentiment. This is partly the reason of why Putin's propaganda is so effective in Russia when it talks about the invasion of Ukraine. There's clearly a fascist state in this war, but Russians can't quite believe that it's them in this case, so they are quick to believe about those unspecified "Nazis" that rule over Ukraine, forcing Putin's hand into engaging in yet another Great Patriotic War - to save itself, Ukraine and the world from the virus of nazism. Dugin had this figure of Katechon in his philosophy if you can call it that, taken from the Bible - the one who would stand up to the Antichrist at the verge of the Apocalypse and at this point it looks like Putin truly believes that he is one. Spending so many years with Medinskiy on one shoulder and Volodin on the other can't be healthy for the psyche.

This was an awesome introduction to the idea of 'reading' history in different ways... love it.

Great writing and research, thank you for putting this together

Absolutely riveting. Helped my understating of this period of history so very much.

Holy S**it This was EPIC. Well done, a really really good video!

Thank you for the outstanding content!

Thank you for sharing all your Knowledge 💐🙏🏼❤️🌎✌🏼

Just found this channel. Really great work, man.

Wow! Huge kudos. Great video

Great video, really enjoyed it.

Thank you for an excellent video. As a russian, I was sorta dreading it since the announcement, because there's a lot of really bad takes about culture, literature and philosophy floating around. But, have to happily admit, I was wrong. Great work, looking forward to seeing more of your videos

Income inequality is the killer of innovative societies.

I find this to be a very idealistic view of cultural and philosophical history, one that barely acknowledges the role economic conditions play in the spread of conservative nationalism. The best we get is a reference to the dire state of Russia in the 90s

I am dissapointed with the conclusion. It kind of boiled down to "Russia is turning fascist and Putin is literally Hitler". The video feels unfinished and did not mention Russia's geopolitical problems and how putin must deal with these problems both internally and externally.

Great video, once again.

this is a mind blowing video - fantastic context

Excellent video !

Amazing insightful analysis as always.

I think the cultural and spiritual mindsets of people are greatly influenced by geography and history. But that history itself is so strongly molded by geography that it's the predominant factor. So I think discussing Putin's views without mentioning the geographical disadvantages Russia has from a defensive standpoint makes this analysis lacking. It was very well written and enjoyable to watch nonetheless.

One thing I'd add: Russia and Ukraine had very similar post-Soviet experiences in the 90s, but both ended up in a place with much of their population fervently supporting opposing ideals. It suggests much of history is based on small chances and imponderable factors.

Just wanted to say, someone asked me yesterday if I had a favorite KZfaq channel. In 2022 it's not an easy question. But for me, it's easy, its you! Love the videos

Loved the video and ... actually loved the comments as well.

This was really nuanced and expansive all at the same time. Very well done.

Outstanding content. You join the dots well

Very, enlightening. Your imageries are moving.

Above my head but I've liked and subscribed. I'm going to listen carefully and learn. Thanks!

I love your videos and perspective! Is there a general reading list you'd recommend?

I just came across this channel, as as someone who teaches social theory at university, I am very impressed. I would push you on a couple of points, however. You substantially take an Irving Berlin tack of creating a sort of German-based "counter-Enlightenment" as a foil for Enlightenment Universalism and Rationalism. This is done at the cost of some violence to both sides of this seeming divide. Locke, for example, is a hero of the Enlightenment, but one of his best-known work is a long Essay on the limits of Reason, limits that existed in human particularities of language, history and habit. At the same time, Herder did indeed argue that "national difference" was infrastructural for human beings, but he also had a strong species consciousness. The fact was that one could only be human in the particular, as it were, but since all such differences were created by humans, they were all accessible to understanding by other humans. Putin, for all his invoking of Russian history, strikes me as much more shallowly-rooted philosophically and historically. He exists as part, and is a product, of the kind of state machinery that emerged under Louis Napoleon in the 19thC -- a competent, if cumbersome, internal security apparatus, combined with a regular army which is simultaneously valorised and rendered ineffective through rampant corruption. If his leadership places him in a "state of exception" then it is a very 19thC one, where the machinery, rather than the person running it, is considered essential. While Putin has toyed (hilariously) with Mussolini-type imagery, throughout his career, he has presented himself mostly as an arch-bureaucrat, the only guy who can keep this state machinery in working order. and hence, chaos at bay. Yes, he has looted to his heart's content along the way, but the sort of cult of personality that defined 20thC Fascism has not formed around him, thus many of the philosophers you mention (even the ones he quotes) don't seem to apply to him or his thinking. He has, for example, occupied multiple positions in regular changing constitutions -- very unlike the sort of Leader Schmidt imagines. Unlike current leaders who channel this kind of Fascist style (such as Trump), Putin even seems uncomfortable at rallies, as if such crowds might well turn into the sort of forces he so fears. Russia, for Putin, it seems to me, is not so much a distinct "culture" in the way that I, as an anthropologist, would use the term, but more an entity embodied in a particular bureaucratic configuration. This state is being threatened from without by hostile forces (which recently forced it from its natural borders) and within by a tendency to anarchy, a tendency that is encouraged by those same hostile forces. Anyway, great job.

most underrated channel on youtube literally no one doing philosophy like you

Top notch. Thank you.

you are keep getting better!

Amazing! Thank you for the a different perspective on history

Great vid

I really cannot add much to what has been said already. It is all too prevalent that we logically beg the question regarding our national identity, politics, history, etc. - things will BE exceptional because we ARE exceptional. Likewise, we cannot be bad BECAUSE we are good. So on and so forth. Thank you for this production. You truly deserve more views than you've received.

12:00 always enjoy the soundtracks for your videos. Nice to hear some Satie that isn't *that* Satie for a change! 😄❤️ (I think this number is from the "Pieces Froids" if anyone wants to hear more)

It's not true that 'nobody knows what Putin's thinking'. He was clear in his Munich speech in 2007; he's given lots of interviews since. He's a straight talker

Exceptional. You have a long way to go. Much Much better than university professors who run on sensationalism of media...

Outstanding analysis!

I'm glad to see this video has 56k views at this point- but it still deserves more

🔎 Just discovered this channel. 👍🏻 I came, I saw, I liked, and SUBBED! ✌🏻

you are brilliant. ❤️

I have only just discovered your work tonight, 9 v '22 & myself a follower of Spengler & John Lukacs in particular, let me say, thank you.

I would love to know what is the music you used at the end. Like the soundtrack. Also, awesome video. A few things I disagree though, but it's great.

Thanks! Please keep the good work! By the way may i ask what is the cello tune you used in the video twice?

I hope this gets a lot more views

This is excellent

Thanks

Does anyone know what the music playing at this point 12:01 is? Amazing piano solo Update - I Shazammed it. It’s Gnossiene, possibly number 3 😊

Really well done, feels like watching a well funded documentary.

Very strong video

Putin called the American's NATO bluff. Its called 'current state of affairs' and its not a lot to do with navel-gazing over ancient history with advanced hypersonic missile and drone technology and nuclear power plants/ weapons

Genuinely brilliant articulation of this very high level view of reality

An interesting presentation on an interesting perspective. The politics of resentment is a powerful thing.

I am skeptical of narratives that posit a flawed human nature, including an emphasis on envy, as responsible for the current state of human ill. These read to me as bourgeois handwavings of deeper criticisms of structure, that leave us to sit and wait for history to unfold cynically. We can and should educate people out of these inclinations where they exist.

Thanks much

Overall, good video. I question, however, your final analysis, which seems to indicate that romanticism and a romantic critique of liberalism inherently leads to political fascism. If this is the case, we are in a very dark place indeed, given the obvious problems, from worldwide-ecological to the psychological health of the average person in the West, to the oligarchic structure, etc etc etc. You seem to thereby tacitly endorse liberalism despite a well researched and well spoken explication of why some countries have rejected it.

It ought to be clear that middle grounds exist between borrow _everything_ from abroad and borrow _nothing_. And that sense of proud, absolutely unique Russian exceptionalism and demand for recognition ought to look hauntingly familiar for those of us in the U.S. too.

Thank you for your fine distillation of a great deal of history and philosophy concisely, backgrounded by great video clips. The prominent role of fascism in Putin's brutal miscalculation is especially worrying as it appears to be generating something of a mirror response.

thanks man

Very good

History is based on “national identity”, maybe a dialectic, and proceeds in a straight logical line? How about national identity being based on a collective grasp of “don’t take our stuff” and “don’t insult our mothers”? I listened to half of this waiting to hear about Putin (as the title said) and found that our lecturer was still context-setting after 20 minutes.

bro the first five minutes of this video are amazing.

the problem is that putin's view of history - the one you explain here - is directly in conflict with our long term survival. And more importantly it isn't universal - you can't explain everything with it. Rationalism and scientific discourse CAN explain nationalism, But you can't twist it round - nationalism CAN'T explain everything that rationalism can. My favorite quote about this is in 'who speaks for earth' in cosmos's last season. Sagan - talking about nuclear war - "In our tenure of this planet, we have accumulated dangerous, evolutionary baggage -- propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders, all of which puts our survival in some doubt. We have also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience, and a great, soaring passionate intelligence -- the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity." This explains in a very distinct nutshell why we have the problems we have with nationalism in rational terms. And in short if we listen to our nationalist side, if we follow our tribal instincts, we are doomed. If we listen to our rationalist side we'll get through this. Putin is ALL dangerous evolutionary baggage, and frankly I'm more worried about the prospect of nuclear war than I've ever been. But there is hope - if this great soaring passionate intelligence can do anything it can domesticate our id. We've seen this in the past 500 years as wars have become rarer, people have become more prosperous, and we've increased our lifespan. People like putin endanger all that. Anti-rationalist movements endanger all that. We could easily give up 200,000 years of progress at a touch of a button. If that happens, I sincerely hope that I'm incinerated in the first milliseconds of that strike because knowing that we destroyed our civilization right at the cusp when we could have gone to conquer the heavens and provide abundance for all on this planet would just be too much heartbreak for me to bear.

Thank you for your insightful content. Love your work. I wish you made an inquiry into the Ukrainian character as well. How people manage to fight the evil is no less interesting than the evil itself.

I love your stuff but can you please put the music in the credits of your videos? I've had it happen multiple times that I found a song in your video so amazing that I wanted to find it but couldn't. why don't you put them in the description underneath the credits? I'd say the music is worth being credited

Does anyone know what the music played in the background is, throughout the quotation of Dostoevsky's discussion of London?

Do you have a source for that poetry quote at 19:55 : "among us, orthodox, however work is like fire under our hands."

The reason I believe not many people view these videos. Is because they don’t deserve to. Your work is beautiful and deservingly so.

Great video, really makes one think the alternative ways in which civilizations develop. One thing though, and you might find this stupid but, the way you pronounced "ressentiment" really sounded like "resentment" and got me confused until the word was displayed in text. Maybe just me though.

I'm at the beginning of the video still, but what you seem to be describing about how we view history as a teleological view. We assume things are going in one way, and they will hit a certain point (The best example I can give is a musical one, the English "Semi-Opera" was given that term because it was viewed to inevitably end up in real "opera")

The 24:00 mark, gave me chills honestly. I just learned about what schismogenesis meant from the book "the dawn of everything" by David greaber and David Wengrow, and the term reminded me of the pure resentment that the underground man felt. And then I hear it all put into a well made documentary like this. The Segway was amazing, it really does sum up recent Russian history.

Okay, calling nonsense on the 14:10 bit about Russian and Old Church Slavonic. OCS was (and still is, in religious settings) an early Mediaeval hold-over from the Christianisation of the East Slavs, by Greeks (that's the source of the opposition to Latin, nothing to do with Russians). The language is essentially a dialect of Old Bulgarian, and it dominated Russian literature until late 1700's. The period you're talking about there is notable for its rejection of the alien OCS, and the acceptance of the real Russian vernacular in non-religious writing.

This channel is amazing. I recommend it anytime I get an excuse too. Putin is a fascist and its annoying when people pretend he is the one to bring us into socialism, as if he hasn't always been a reactionary

personally I think it's possible to overplay the historical mindset thing. it's true that Marshall Berman emphasizes the break between Occidental and Oriental in focusing on conceptions of modernity. However, Kossellik is surely right in seeing the birth of temporality in modernity, and a part of that is a strong executive over parliamentary/governmental procedure (one looks forward, the other back) in setting the store of what a potential future entails

I feel it's worth noting that Russia isn't the only country with similar ideology. Most of Eastern Central Europe developed a mindset based on resentment, almost religious exceptionalism blend with self-loathing and a desire to belong. I'm Hungarian, and we had a similar line of events following '89. We were forced into the Soviet sphere, then in '90s capitalism came and all its problems and benefits (tho the situation wasn't nearly as bad as in Russia), however a sentiment of Westernization was ruling. It changed in the 2010s, when Viktor Orbán got elected, and slowly moved the country away from western liberalism to a hybrid form of authoritarian parlamentarism. It included strenthening the ties to the East, mostly Russia and Central Asia, also building an. EU-skeptic block with Poland, Slovakia and Czechia (which came to an end last month). Hungary had a similar historical problem of never belonging to west, with a group of thinkers pursuing to be, and an other group that purposfully wanted go away from it. Because Hungary always had an eastern bond as well (coming from steppe nomads, then influence of the Ottoman Empire and being basically colonised by the Habsburgs the national idea stem from the difference to the West). No wonder that Hungary is the most indifferent country to the Ukraine War right now, with a huge amount of people supporting Russia out of sheer spite against the West.

I feel like I understand wtf that Haz guy goes on about all the time now, thanks

What music have you got going in the background?

nice soundtrack, is it yours?

Could someone make my day and find out the name of that beautiful ambient music starting at 9:21?

does anyone know what song is in the background? i’m a pianist and id love to learn it, it’s so pretty