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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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Fuck off with your xenophobia-biased opinions.
If you actually spent any amount of time communicating with people in Russia, you’d realise the overwhelming majority are not genocidal imperialists.
The overwhelming majority of Russians I’ve spoken to do not support the ongoing war, and would prefer if Ukraine was left alone.
I’d be interested in seeing where you’re pulling these extrapolated statistics from, including the demographics of the people who were surveyed.
If 7/10 Texans oppose abortion, does that mean 70% of the country believe the same thing?
You do understand that anecdotal findings don't mean anything, right? I've lived in russia for a decade; the three russians I still speak to are anti-war. That's not how any of this works!
I've posted links and reference to various research works previously in this thread. You can start by looking at polling from Levada (lots of age group information), Russian Field and a paper by LSE that uses list experiments (URL in one of my comments in this thread).
Even qualitative research by russian academics is damning for russian society. They find that even among those who don't actively support the invasion, a majority still want to see their army win (i.e. annexation Ukrainian territories, steal children, bomb children's cancer hospitals). This was a recent project done in a small town (15K) in Siberian russia, released just last month.
A strong majority of russian are most definitely genocidal imperialists (including the 19-29 age group, although it may be more of a regular majority than a "strong majority"). You're really ignorant (of practically all quantitative and qualitative research as well as of history) and/or you are naive and not willing to ask yourself difficult questions.
Do you have a link to the qualitative research in the Siberian town? Would like to read it specifically
https://meduza.io/feature/2024/06/25/a-kogda-uzhe-pobeda-to-nasha-budet
The article is in russian. Very stuffy and verbose writing style.
They've only released an in-depth preview news article. I believe the full paper (with an English translation) will be released later this month.
I'm willing to accept your claim, I'm just yet to see enough evidence to prove it.
Put yourself in their shoes for a moment.
People who criticise Putin over there don't seem to last very long.
Maybe the average Russian citizen won't have to worry about that, but there's still the implication that having different political beliefs is something that should be shunned.
Checking the Levada polling methods, it doesn't sound like those who are polled are always able to answer anonymously.
Judging by that page, they seem to prioritise door-knocking and in-person interviews.
Are you going to tell the person interviewing you, without knowing if they work for your corrupt government or not, that you disagree with your government?
I'm not a statician, but I think this is called social desirability bias. And when there's a potential risk to your safety, or even the slightest suspicion that your answers could negatively impact you, that bias increases.
Yes, I'll admit anecdotal findings are essentially useless when discussing a population, but those statistics aren't much better.
Considering the points that you raised, what are your critiques of list experiment methodology (e.g. the one by LSE that I referenced earlier) and their findings that preference falsification is just 10%. I will note that you are the one who brought up personal safety.
If the vast majority of your country are genocidal imperialists, it really doesn't matter that a tiny micro-minority are hiding their preferences does it? At the very least you can admit that this logic is consistent, no?
Since you brought up Levada, they show that something like 84% of the Russian population supported the annexation of Crimea (i.e. at the very least they are committed imperialists). This data point has been consistent since 2014.
In context of your critique of Levada, how is that list experiment research had a comparable level of support at 80% for the annexation of Crimea?
The truth of the matter is that your have no evidence (quantitative or qualitative) or even a working theory to justify your view that the vast majority of russian are just poor souls who got stuck with putin.
This is nothing new for me btw. On the English language internet, you constantly see comically dumb takes about russians being little angels and putin being solely responsible for all evils committed by the russians.
Read the conclusion of the study. The list experiment very clearly proved that there's a lot of preference falsification happening, which was all they were testing for.
The survey results are unlikely to be an accurate representation of the public's support of the war, there are many factors which could raise or lower the true level of support. Getting an accurate percentage wasn't the purpose of the study.
And I don't think Russians are innocent. Propaganda and local news may have a strong influence, but the genuine levels of support for their government's actions is still seemingly much higher than it has any right to be.
But I don't think its fair to say the vast majority of Russians are genocidal imperialists without accurate figures to back it up.
Those sort of blanket statements lead to racism, hate crimes, etc, against many innocent people.
And what is their estimate of preference falsification? It's just ~10%, no?
What impact does this level of preference falsification have with respect to the % of russians who support the invasion of Ukraine, annexation of its territories and extermination of Ukrainian identity?
We go from ~75% to ~65% with preference falsification w.r.t. support for the above, is that not the case?
Do the numbers cited (less preference falsification) in support of the war not fall under the definition of "strong majority"? Is 65% not a strong majority?
Don't the authors clearly state that their methodology (even with weights) likely underestimates the true level of support?
Their numbers (for support of the invasion of Ukraine) align with other polling methods; which is damning for the "innocent Russians just got played a bad hand, they are not really genocidal imperialists" narrative.
Why did you leave out these numbers? I don't understand. They clearly reference them. Why would you do this?
But you would never accept any methodology or research that doesn't show what you want to see. Be honest! It's not about the research or the numbers for you.
So why bring up "accurate figures"?
White washing the genuine support for genocidal imperialism among a strong majority of russians leads to 100 of thousands of deaths, 10 of thousands people being tortured (UN stated that 95% of Ukrainian POWs were tortured, and that doesn't include civilians) and millions having their livelihoods ruined.
And I am just referencing Ukraine. There are many other examples. The russians killed 5% of the civilian population of Chechnya in the 90s. That would be equivalent to killing 7 million russian civilians.
In that particular study, yes, they measured a ~10% difference in support when using the list method vs directly asking.
I didn't mention the exact figure because if you read the study, you would see that even they claim this isn't a perfect method.
There could be many more supporters of the war, but there could also be many fewer.
As they say, they sampled a relatively liberal demographic, so it's likely that the national average result from this survey would be higher, which would certainly help your argument.
But they also say that there's "empirical evidence that list experiments reduce response bias but do not eliminate it entirely (Rosenfeld et al. 2016)."
Like I said earlier, I'm not a statistician, so I have no idea if the bias can be estimated to have been reduced by 90% or 20%.
All I know is that you shouldn't jump to conclusions, especially when there's many external factors at play.
I'm willing to be proven wrong, and I don't appreciate your attempts to strawman me as somebody who isn't.
I'll admit that I'm biased because I want to believe that most people over there aren't terrible, and in my anecdotal experience, they have been. So yes, I'm more likely to be skeptical of results that indicate the opposite, especially if they don't properly account for the external social influences at play.
I've never stated that there isn't a large percentage of Russians who are genocidal imperialists, I'm arguing that we should try and figure out the facts before claiming that the overwhelming majority of the population are that way.
The way you jump to the opposite conclusion without definitive evidence leads me to believe that you are also biased in your beliefs.
I'm not sure what this argument is trying to accomplish anyway?
I'm not convinced that 'white washing' the beliefs of the Russian population are to blame.
What Russia is doing is fucking horrific, there's no argument to be had there. But should the entire population be monstrified for the actions of their government?
Instead of just slapping a label on the entire population, we should be working on lowering those statistics, and spreading awareness that there's a huge percentage of Russians who disagree with their government.
The people over there need to know that they aren't alone in their beliefs, and that they have more like-minded supporters than they realise.
Otherwise the thought of fighting back and enacting change seems hopeless.
Can you stop trying to imply that I didn't read the study? What are you trying to achieve with such petty passive aggressive jabs?
Of course it's not a perfect method, but it aligns with other studies (quantitative direct polling and other list experiments, as well as qualitative). It also aligns with long term historical studies around positive attitudes of the russian population towards imperialism (increase in approval of government following invasions, annexations and genocides) over the past ~30 years.
How am I trying to strawman you? Critiquing your reliance on annecdotal experience (that funnily enough mirror my own - although I don't claim my anecdotal experience means anything) is a straw man?
Show evidence for your framing around "let's not jump to conclusions"!
What external factors? What external social influences? Be clear and direct in your claims and back them up with something more than "I feel so"!
Show how these factors are important! Going back to my original post, fully uncensored YouTube has been a click away for every russian with smartphone until recently, is this not the case? Can the same not be said about telegram?
What am I trying to accomplish with my argument?
To show reality and not let well meaning, but completely unverified platitudes (that contradict all research and even history) get in the way explaining the nature of russian imperialism.
You're not convinced that white washing the genuine support for genocidal imperialism among a strong majority of russians is relevant because you don't have to deal with the cruelty and degeneracy of the russians.
Why should we not make russians who support genocidal imperialism (both conceptually and as implemented by their leaders) responsible? Are they children? Of course they should pay for their actions.
And what if the reality is that a strong majority of russians are not interested in implementing any kind of change in their society?
Or that the russia as a society has dug itself into such a hole (supporting putin for 25 years and supporting genocidal imperialism for ~35 years) that there is no easy way out other than violence; something the absolute majority of allegedly "opposition minded" russians are not willing or able to engage in.
By the way, that's totally understandable; but in that case they shouldn't talk about magical fantasies of a democratic russia of the future appearing out of no where.
Let's say for the sake of argument I agree with your take that genocidal imperialism of russia since it's founding is not representative of current russian society.
How and when do you expect any changes to happen?
How - I am not asking for in-depth details, just a general outline that goes beyond "somehow in the future".
When - 5 years? 10 years? 50 years? 100 years?
Addendum question - while we wait for these changes, what would you like people in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Chechnya and Belarus to do? Please be specific.
How would you sort those who support war from those who don't?
It would depend on the geo-political context, currently there are less viable options.
In a different context, beyond the main mass of hardcore criminal (several million russian) that require strict punishments, you could leverage a legal proof method.
Every russian signs a legal paper outlining and their overall support for genocidal imperialism, putin, knowingly promoting false russian propaganda and so on.
Based on the of level severity of their support for genocidal imperialism, they would have to pay financial compensation and engage in global community service work (de-mining in Syria, junior janitor in an infectious disease hospital in rural Africa).
The legal paper would have a clause stating that if you claim you never supported genocidal imperialism (as certified in the legal paper), but later evidence comes up that you were actually supportive of russian degeneracy, you lose all your assets and will be required to do two decade of global community service (or go to jail). This clause would be valid indefinitely for the life of the person.
Note, I am not saying the above-mentioned approach is viable right now. I am trying to show that there methods to create incentives for russians to be open about their support for genocidal imperialism.
Sorry, I was under the impression that you hadn't read the study because of our vastly different takeaways.
And strawman was probably the incorrect term in that context.
By external factors and social influences, I mean the social consensus that going against the government is unsafe.
That presidential candidates who have any chance of beating Putin are banned from the ballots, jailed, or coincidentally die before they're able to build a large enough following.
That it's safer to just play along than to put a target on your back.
If you were unable to piece together what I meant in the context of this conversation, I'm not convinced this discussion will lead anywhere productive.
Given that the study makes no claim that the statistics accurately represent the true beliefs of the Russian population, I'm suggesting that taking those numbers and concluding otherwise so you can justify calling the overhwelming majority of Russians 'genocidal imperialists' is irresponsible at best.
I've also never stated that Russians who genuinely support genocide should not be held accountable for their actions. Maybe this is a better example of a strawman argument?
Checking the latest released polls from levada, you can see that the majority of polled participants indicated support for what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
Yet, further down, it shows more participants indicated support for diplomatic resolution over military action.
I see this as a reasonable indicator that the majority of Russians are not genocidal.
And taking preference falsification and levada's polling methods into account, the numbers could be even more in favour of both diplomatic resolution and disapproval of the war as a whole.
Maybe the overwhelming majority don't want change in their society, or maybe they don't have a choice (I'm talking about rigged elections, in case you were struggling to figure out the context again).
I have no idea when any societal changes within Russia will happen, I don't happen to own a time machine.
I can only guess and assume that there won't be any substantial publicly-expressed change in ideology while Putin is still in charge.
I'll let people in those countries make up their own minds about what they should do, and I would hope the rest of the world will continue to support them with whatever that may be.
I'm not sure why you're asking me these things, they aren't really relevant to any of the points I've been trying to make.
I appreciate you sticking around for this argument, but I think I'm done.
That's not a convincing answer.
Before our exchange you didn't know what a list experiment was or what the term preference falsification meant.
Yet you were aggressively parroting the standard polemic about "innocent russians" and "all polling is wrong because it doesn't align with my message".
And now you're acting all high and mighty with strawn men and "vastly different takeaways".
You claim that the paper shows the mere existence of preference falsification. This is complete bullshit and you know it.
Preference falsification = A - B
Where:
A (~75%) = support for genocidal imperialism via regular polling
B (~65%) = support for genocidal imperialism via list experiments
If you don't believe A or B to be true, then you can't define whether preference falsification exists.
This is basic logic and you've totally failed it.
Diplomatic resolution? What's that?
Russia continues to occupy 20% of Ukraine and then attacks again when they are ready?
Fucking awesome diplomatic resolution!
I am asking you about the hows and whys because you made a claim that we need to support russian "dissidents".
Is it not reasonable to ask what and when we'll see the outcome of this?
Why would you do something if you have no plan for how and when to achieve a given outcome?
You've thankfully never had to actually deal with russians, that's what's driving your petty bullshit and delusions.
Let's hope things stay that way, for your own benefit.
Here's a link to the study I mentioned earlier, which indicates that list experiments are not an accurate way to determine the level of preference falsification.
In it, the real response was often more than double the difference between direct polling and the list experiment results.
You continue to argue against things I've never said. Calling you out for saying I've said or argued for something which I haven't is not acting high and mighty.
And yet, here you are doing it again...
I never said all polling is wrong, just polling that didn't properly account for falsification, which the list method is clearly unable to do.
More of the surveyed Russians said they would prefer to talk with Ukraine over continuing military actions.
That doesn't mean that's what the government/Putin also believes, it means the population would generally prefer diplomacy over war.
By your same line of logic, why should anyone support LGBT people in places where it's illegal if you don't have any plans to change their country's laws?
We need timeline estimates otherwise it's pointless.
It's a terrible defeatist argument which is not worth humoring.
I'm done talking with you now.
You're deliberately ignoring and misinterpreting any points that don't align with your view, and its tiring.
All that said, this has been an interesting bit of insight into the mind of a bigot.
I will need to take a more in-depth look the paper, but reading the introduction and conclusion, I don't see such a clear critique, it sounds like you mostly made it up.
You just learned what a list experiment was just a few days ago and were arguing for a comical anecdotal view, so pardon my scepticism regarding your ability to read papers or act in good faith.
Prefer to talk to Ukraine = continue to occupation of Ukrainian territory, with torture camps and experimentation Ukrainian identity. I.e. genocidal imperialism.
We've seen how the russians acted after 2014, there is no reason trust them to act differently now.
You're a delusion child, that is too cowardly to admit their mistakes and take a sober look at reality.
I'm not going to waste any more time arguing against your assumptions, false claims and flawed reasoning, when it's clear you have no interest in thinking critically about the matter.
Congrats, you win 👍
Nothing to do with "winning" and I never framed it as such. For me "winning" is kicking the Russians out of my country, not some internet discussion (like for you).
Keep on white washing russian crimes and enabling the degeneracy of a strong majority of russian society.
Just watch that it doesn't bite you and your family in the ass one day! Your delusion will not be of much use then!
👍