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Comment by thedevil | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat tangential, but does anyone know why Russia likes the word "geopolitics" so much? Does it mirror a Russian word with a similar meaning?

In my experience, it's used so much by Russian propaganda sources and so rarely elsewhere that it serves as a good fingerprint of the Kremlin's influence. If someone uses it, I know there's a good chance that either they're Russian (and read Russian news) or that they read/watch RT.

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The interest in geopolitics is deeply imprinted in the Russian mindset from the Soviet era. Since the dawn of the USSR the Communists always thought in terms of geopolitics and influence expansion. It constantly translated through the state propaganda to the masses. Therefore, an average Soviet person would be more interested in the progress on "helping our friends / fighting our enemies abroad" rather than in having good schools and roads in his/her local community. The vast majority of the country were in ruins yet its people were immensely proud of advances in Korea/Afghanistan/Vietnam/Egypt and whatever other warzone the USSR was involved at that time. This mindset has successfully survived the collapse of the USSR and is now widespread in Putin's Russia. Only this time it's about Georgia/Ukraine/Syria as warzones in a traditional sense, and US/Europe as cyber-warzones.

> The vast majority of the country were in ruins

The vast majority of USSR were in ruins? Reality check hello? I see you here from time to time, every one of them political load >> facts.

That makes you a Soviet person like the one you describe.

> The vast majority of the country were in ruins

He's talking about WWII, probably the single biggest even to shape Soviet/Russian worldview.

"yet its people were immensely proud of advances in Korea/Afghanistan/Vietnam/Egypt and whatever other warzone the USSR was involved at that time"

Afghanistan was in late 1970-s, I mean come on. Egypt before that but pretty far from ruins period. One can probably only claim it about Korean War.

The Russian word is nearly the same - "geopolitika".

It does seem to have been popularized by Dugin and other modern Eurasianists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasianism

http://silentcircle.co.uk/zero-hedge-hacked-emails-confirm-n...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard

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