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Comment by ghostbrainalpha | Hacker News Reader

I just think it might be more helpful to think about this as "Putin vs The U.S" instead of "them vs us".

You can probably include his network and the oligarchy in there, but the average Russian citizen shouldn't really have a problem with the U.S.

Before Putin started working on actively fear mongering, our relationship was good and trending upward. They have slightly different cultural values than us, but its nothing like it was in the cold war. Our interests are aligned on most significant issues for the average citizen.

If both our countries could get rid of their current leader we could quickly become allies.

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I think it's not that simple. Russians are "proud" peoples, as they say. He has high approval rating. An affront to Putin is an affront to Russia. The Clinton "diplomatic" tack and tact was not effective and likely very unproductive and has lead to much distrust at the govt level but also among the average Dmitrys and Marinas on the street.

> Russians are "proud" peoples, as they say.

I doubt that as a people Russians are any more "proud" than any other nation; such a sentiment reminds me of the age of Romanticism, when such kind of analysis of nations, or of national spirit, was commonplace. It is so very human (and so very superficial, too) to want to feel superior to or at least no worse than others, that states exploit this via propaganda. If people are being systematically told that they belong to a great nation (which defeated the Germans in WWII, or was the first to send a man in space, or has a magnificent cultural legacy in XIXth century writers, or has the second largest nuclear arsenal, or other such stuff intended to boost nationalism), they get "proud". When this propaganda stops, they go back to normal again.

> I doubt that as a people Russians are any more "proud" than any other nation

As a people, rather than as individual people, it's quite plausible that one nationality would be prouder than another; strength and centrality of national identity isn't a universal constant.

Being proud as a people means, essentially, that the individual people have (compared to other groups of the same kind, in this case nationalities) the group identity as a strong/central feature of individual identity.

What I mean is if you criticize Russia in most aspects, even if true, people will tend not to receive it well and take it as a personal attack against them or the people as a whole. So unlike the US where people frequently criticize the country as well as people whole distancing themselves from those "bad" others.

> So unlike the US where people frequently criticize the country as well as people whole distancing themselves from those "bad" others.

People in Russia, like in the US, frequently criticize the country as well as people. What they don't like, like people in US, is "others" criticizing their country and the people.

There are people who do, but go too far and you get into trouble. For historical reasons, people don't separate the state from their own identity as much as people do in other countries. It really is different. Even Putin haters will find "good" things in him, oh but he's defending Russia, etc.

> It really is different.

Citation needed.

Talk to Russians is all I can say.

> Talk to Russians is all I can say.

I do it quite often. Daily in fact.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Agreed on everything, friends if not allies.

But Russia as a state is pretty much synonymous with Putin as a person, right now. Until that changes, it's splitting hairs.

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