> answered by Susanna Viljanen, Works at Aalto University, June 28

> We have a saying in Finland: "Scratch a Russian, reveal a Mongol". The
> Russianness - the Russian core value set (or rather lack of it) and the idea
> of Russian society is product of the Mongol Yoke - the 250 years of slavery
> under the Golden Horde 1237 to 1480.

> No matter what the Russians themselves say about it, the Mongol Yoke was a
> disastrous period to the Russian society, Russian culture, Russian state
> apparatus and Russian mentality. This era saw Russia departing its
> Scandinavian and Norse roots and becoming a Central Asian society.

This load of hateful nonsense is under essentially racist keynote:
a contradistinction of noble 'white' "Scandinavian and Norse roots"
to dirty 'non-white' "Asian".

It becomes more amusing when combined with "leftist" claims that
Russia is a world beacon for the adherents of white supremacism (eg.
<https://tinyurl.com/ycup2bgr>).

Russia is in many respects peculiar, it does not fit to "standard"
models, so different haters would seek to attribute something "bad"
to it depending on what they consider bad themselves. Those
"progressives" who feel unhappy that the Russians aren't very
enthusiastic about their cultism, will attribute "far-rightness" to
Russia. Those less left-progressive, within more traditional matrix
of Western supremacy, will attribute "Mongols".

I.e. the lust to attribute something is primary, while compliance
with reality is secondary. Russia is annoying with its peculiar and
independent stance. So they invent hateful rationalizations.

* * *

The notorious "Scandinavian and Norse roots" is a myth promoted
since the 18th century. This idea didn't emerge before, when Russia
was weak and standing aside of major European affairs. Since the
mid-16th century and throughout the 17th century, Russia had greatly
expanded its territory and became a big power against Europe, so for
Europeans, who by the time were already obsessed with "scientific
racism" due to their "age of enlightenment", it seemed important to
stake out the idea that such a great formation like Russia had been
founded not by the Slavs but by a truly high (Nordic) race.

The Euros remain Nazis in their heart and they desperately cling to
this myth, which is linked to their Vikings fetish. And the latter is
quite an ugly cult itself, a BDSM-porn under guise of history.
Anyway, in the places where those Vikings really came, they left
behind noticeable cultural and linguistic traces. In the Russian
culture and language, there are absolutely no traces that might be
somehow comparable to the traces from the Vikings in the places where
they *really* appeared. The myth rests solely on wishful thinking
backed by misinterpretations of a couple historical records.

In turn, the idea of "Mongol slavery" was first developed in the 15th
century Poland (i.e. even before the "Scandinavian" myth had emerged).
Initially, this "slavery" was figuratively applied not to the whole
society but to community of nobles (while for the low class peasantry
there was no principal difference, and the ideologists at the time
were even not interested in paying attention to low classes at all).
Polish nobles maintained sort of "democracy" among themselves, while
rules of subordination within the Russian hierarchy were more strict.
I once posted about it before <https://tinyurl.com/yydsssuu>. Also, a
fact is that at the time when Russia was in vassalage to the Golden
Horde, discipline within the Russian hierarchy ("monarchical
absolutism") was less strict than it became one-two centuries later,
long after the full release from the dependence. So it was linked not
with the "Mongol" impact but with some other - internal and external
- factors, while the haters promote a far-fetched cartoonish picture.

Such hateful narratives got a second wind / more modern design since
the mid-19th century, when the hate towards Russia became an integral
part of the European "progressive" discourse, and since this kind of
"progressivism" promotes an ethnic hatred, it's rotten from the core,
and it gets a natural negative response from the Russia's majority.

> There are two words for "truth" in Russian, and three words for "lie":
> "istina" means a scientific truth while "pravda" means truth as the one who
> insists it sees it; "lozh" means a blatant lie, "vranyo" means bullsh1tting
> (as a deception) and "nyepravda" as untruth. There is a constant state of
> greyshades between lie and truth in the Russian mind.

That's quite an inaccurate explanation, but it would be too boring
to rake all these big heaps of nonsense. Russian is a well-developed
language, it provides rich means for expression, which is good rather
than bad. When good Russian literature is translated to English,
about half of its layers of meaning and subtle hints is usually lost.

> Russians fail game theory. They see everything as zero-sum games and they
> cannot understand the concept of mutual benefit. This is why Russia can
> never tolerate independent Baltic states - their security is off from the
> Russian security and their wealth is off the Russian wealth.

The independent Baltic states exist since the 1990s, and Russia just
don't give too big attention to them, so they're desperate to seek
for attention with noises (and it's somewhat the same about Poland).

Also, it'd be appropriate to remind, that the current Ukraine-related
mess was started when the EU chose a zero-sum game and rejected the
concept of mutual benefit.

| "The now exceedingly dangerous confrontation between the
| two Ukraines was .. "ignited" .. by the EU's reckless
| ultimatum, in November, that the democratically elected
| president of a profoundly divided country choose between
| Europe and Russia. Putin's proposal for a tripartite
| arrangement, rarely if ever reported, was flatly rejected
| by US and EU officials." <https://bit.ly/3CCYKee>

The rhetoric "the Russians understand only zero-sum games" was in
common Atlanticist use before 2014. However, the EU-Ukraine "economic
association" case was so blatantly obvious, that such phrasings
disappeared from the MSM after that. In Quora, a backward Finnish lady
employs outdated narratives.

* * *

Finland has a long common border with Russia, and the Russia-Finnish
contacts have a long history (read also <http://tinyurl.com/szq5575>).
The Russia's north was not affected by the Mongol-led invasion in the
13th century, however, the Russians are culturally about the same
everywhere (some regional features exist, of course, but they are not
so significant). It illustrates the fact that the cartoonish stories
about "the Mongols", which the Finnish thinkers picked up later from
the Polish use, is rather a rationalization of their own inferiority
complex.

Yes, the Finnish nationalists have an inferiority complex due to the
fact that they want to be "European family", but the Finnic people
are not of Indo-European origin. The German racist theorists from the
very beginning considered Finns "Mongolian race" (and genetically the
Finnic people are more relative to the Mongolic ones, yes). When
Finland was once under Swedish rule, the Swedes treated the Finns as
an inferior group. It explains why some in Finland are enthusiastic
to compensate their insecurity with promotion of hatreds against the
Russians. The same is relevant for the Poles and west-Ukrainians.

In the Soviet period, "finlandization" was good for Finland, they
were engaged in independent domestic development without being
distracted by unnecessary unhealthy passions. If now they fall into
anti-Russia ardor out of nothing then they will get certain problems
in the future. Russia stands at the place and won't go anywhere.