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[Quarque]

Give Europe back to the Neanderthals, I say. Genetically engineer them back into existing and end the illegal occupation of Europe by homo sapiens.

actually we might be on a path to do just that - at least the latter half 

[brewer bob]

Bring back Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, I say!

[MaxTheFox]

Bring back Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, I say!

My favorite roast aimed at pro-war people who say it's justified because Ukraine was once part of Russia?

"Both countries were part of the Mongol Empire a few centuries ago, let's just give half of Eurasia to Mongolia then?"

They usually either ragequit or start arguing in bad faith after that.

[scriver]

You are wrong. I loathe Russia in whatever state it was since it began existing.

But if you apply that statement far back enough you will make Sweden sad. :V

Luckily before that it will involve the Kievan Rus

It won't. Kievan Rus has no more relation to Russia than Romania to Rome. Kyiv is as Russian as Rome is Romanian.

At some point, Muscovy decided that calling itself Tsardom of Russia sounds cooler.

Lol yeah Romania has absolutely nothing to do with Rome except everything

So, is it time for Romania to lay claim on Rome, and can we call Italians and Romanians one nation?

Obviously, Russia is related to Kyiv Rus but Kyiv Rus wasn't Russia, Roman Empire wasn't Romania.

Let's imagine I said, "I loathe the USA in whatever state it was since it began existing."  Wouldn't it be absurd if someone said that it includes the Kingdom of England and that pesky American William the Conqueror?

No, that wouldn't be absurd at all. Because you literally just said "in whatever state". And the Kievan Rus definitely come in between the Roselaw and Russia.

[Random_Dragon]

Basically that. Saying "in any state it's existed in" is not a good emphasis to add, because countries and the people living in them evolve in really weird ways, and it only gets even weirder before our modern understanding of nationalism become popular.

Though I would say that the common argument that"nationalism and the nation-state as a whole are modern things" is a bit flawed, but anything resembling nationalism and nations before the Early Modern period would indeed be very different, and it still makes arguments about tracking the continuity of a modern nation rather murky the farther back you go.

Let's imagine I said, "I loathe the USA in whatever state it was since it began existing."  Wouldn't it be absurd if someone said that it includes the Kingdom of England and that pesky American William the Conqueror?

Fun example, following this line of logic back far enough probably would include Colonial America at the reasonable extreme, possibly the Iroquois League given its important but under-appreciated importance on influencing American concepts of democracy. But you could indeed trace the obvious English influence on it and say that yes, by definition Colonial America is going to have a link to the British Empire that can be walked back towards, and in turn that means you can follow the history back from there.

Hence blanket statements about the existence of historical nations really is getting opening a much bigger can of worms than one may intend, because History Is Fun™.

[LordBaal]

Half the world belongs to England, and the other half is split between Russia and Spain, with the rest of european countries figth for the scraps.

[voliol]

I’d say loathing a state based on nationalistic notions going far back in time requires the same leaps of logic as when supporting one. But more importantly it is beside the point. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not terrible because their nationalistic claim is weak, it is terrible because they are invading a sovereign state.

[bloop_bleep]

Moscow, and thus the Russian nation, has very little to do with Kyivan Rus. Moscow was founded as a Mongol outpost after the Mongol Empire conquered Eastern Europe to manage that section of its holdings. It acted as an enforcer for the Golden Horde on Kyivan Rus and the whole region. The Mongols never left Moscow. After the retreat of the Mongol Empire and the splitting of Kyivan Rus, the lords in Moscow declared they were the successors to Kyivan Rus despite little ethnic, historical, or geographical continuity between the two, and embarked on a campaign of conquest. Since then they have been trying to crush its culture, subjugate and assimilate its people, and rob it of its wealth. The differences between ethnic Ukrainian and ethnic Russian are significant. I remember hearing that some 70% of Ukrainians needing an organ donor can find a match in a European network, as opposed to 30% of Russians. The idea that Ukraine came from Russia is a bullshit Russian line. The claim to a nation is the same strength as Poland's from Germany.

[MaxTheFox]

Well both originate from the same East Slavic tribal group is what I meant, I never claimed they were literally the same or that Ukrainians came from Russia. Russians have more Tatar-Mongol blood I think.

[martinuzz]

Our government has forbidden any company from buying rubles to pay for gas and oil.
Doing so would be a violation of EU sanctions.

[Svarte Troner]

Though I would say that the common argument that "nationalism and the nation-state as a whole are modern things" is a bit flawed

In what way?

Specifically on Ukraine (not trying to single it out though, every modern nation-state is a fabrication); the observations of a British diplomat in the Ukraine in 1912, quoted in Bini Adamczacks Beziehungsweise Revolution:

"when one asks the average peasant farmer in the Ukraine about his nationality, he will answer, he is "Greek-Orthodox"; when one pushes him to say whether he is a Russian, a Pole, or a Ukrainian, he will answer, he is a farmer; and when one demands to find out which language he speaks, he will say that he speaks "the language from around here". ... i.e. when one wants to find out which state he would like to belong to – whether he would rather be governed by an pan-Russian or a specifically Ukrainian government – one will find out, that in his opinion, all governments are a plague on the land, and it would be best, if the "Christian peasant-folk" were left to themselves.

And here's one from Italy for fun (Donna Gabbacia's Italy’s Many Diasporas):

"There was no Italian nation or Italian people before 1861. An infinitesimally small group of nationalists first imagined a national community of Italians and then created an Italian national state in 1861. Italy was still such an abstraction to Sicilian peasants that when they heard "il Mille" (the 1000 supporters of Garibaldi, who invaded the island) crying "Viva Garibaldi; viva l'Italia!" they assumed "Talia" was Garibaldi's wife. Italy's national state quickly took on the task of nation-building. But even today, some scholars firmly maintain there is no such thing as "an Italian"

Yes I have many more prepared examples like this because arguing with nationalists on the internet is fun.

[Strongpoint]

Well both originate from the same East Slavic tribal group is what I meant, I never claimed they were literally the same or that Ukrainians came from Russia. Russians have more Tatar-Mongol blood I think.

Blood is absolutely irrelevant. Culture is the only thing that matters.

And culture is the only way to see if you are still of the same nation as people from a few hundreds of years ago. If you understand their literature, their legends, their art, their ideas and if you share some of their values then you are, to some extent, of the same nation as them.


I always find it hilarious when some Russian says something like "my grandma was a Ukrainian so I am 25% Ukrainian!".

I can claim that I am partly Russian because Russian is my native language and because I consumed tons of Russian content ranging from Russian literature to modern Russian music. I don't share Russian values (at least the vast majority of them) but at least I know them. Russians know nothing about who Ukrainians really are assuming that we are just like them. And this is one of the reasons they make plans like "We'll capture Zelensky, he'll order the troops to surrender and we'll have Ukraine in our hands." One needs to know nothing about how Ukraine works to assume that this can work. Don't invade people who have a "we'll sacrifice our bodies and souls for our freedom" line in their anthem and expect to win with no effort.

Sorry for writing novel-sized posts barely related to the topic of the thread... But it helps to distract myself from... Everything.

_______________________
Not that there is much to discuss about the war in Ukraine, war became a daily routine, Ukrainian army advances in one areas, Russia in others... Hundreds (if not thousands) die each day, no major changes whatsoever...

[heydude6]

Specifically on Ukraine (not trying to single it out though, every modern nation-state is a fabrication); the observations of a British diplomat in the Ukraine in 1912, quoted in Bini Adamczacks Beziehungsweise Revolution:

"when one asks the average peasant farmer in the Ukraine about his nationality, he will answer, he is "Greek-Orthodox"; when one pushes him to say whether he is a Russian, a Pole, or a Ukrainian, he will answer, he is a farmer; and when one demands to find out which language he speaks, he will say that he speaks "the language from around here". ... i.e. when one wants to find out which state he would like to belong to – whether he would rather be governed by an pan-Russian or a specifically Ukrainian government – one will find out, that in his opinion, all governments are a plague on the land, and it would be best, if the "Christian peasant-folk" were left to themselves.

I would argue that things have changed a lot since the Holodymor.

[Svarte Troner]

Specifically on Ukraine (not trying to single it out though, every modern nation-state is a fabrication); the observations of a British diplomat in the Ukraine in 1912, quoted in Bini Adamczacks Beziehungsweise Revolution:

"when one asks the average peasant farmer in the Ukraine about his nationality, he will answer, he is "Greek-Orthodox"; when one pushes him to say whether he is a Russian, a Pole, or a Ukrainian, he will answer, he is a farmer; and when one demands to find out which language he speaks, he will say that he speaks "the language from around here". ... i.e. when one wants to find out which state he would like to belong to – whether he would rather be governed by an pan-Russian or a specifically Ukrainian government – one will find out, that in his opinion, all governments are a plague on the land, and it would be best, if the "Christian peasant-folk" were left to themselves.

I would argue that things have changed a lot since the Holodymor.

Yes and especially after the birth of the modern Ukrainian nation-state (in the 90s, though the first attempt at creating it was after ww1, 1917, and ideas of Ukrainian nationhood go back to the period of romanticism and national revival in the 18th-19th centuries), consciousness of the Holodomor was fostered by the state (after being suppressed by Soviet authorities since the moment it happened). I will say that cultural differences are real, Ukrainians really do speak a different language from Russians, they have meaningfully different cultures, but the discreteness of these differences (as opposed to a smooth gradient between cultures) is largely an artifact of the state (and modern technology) creating those differences through shared schooling, shared cultural products, etc. Without mass state-sponsored education for instance, nationalism would not take root so easily.

I'm paraphrasing Rudolf Rocker; the nation is not the cause, but the result of the state. It is the state that creates the nation which is the artificial result of the struggle for political power, just as nationalism has never been anything but the political religion of the modern state. It's why I think ordinary Russians and ordinary Ukrainians have much more in common with each other, not in some creepy imperialist Putinist pseudo-historical nationalist myth way, but in that there's a transnational capitalist class in charge of everything, starting bullshit wars based on made-up nationalist bullshit that splits up and pits the mass of people against itself, and they need to be 'done-away-with' as a social class if we want to survive as a species, let alone different cultures. In Minecraft of course.

"Nationalism was so perfectly suited to its double task, the domestication of workers and the despoliation of aliens, that it appealed to everyone — everyone, that is, who wielded or aspired to wield a portion of capital. [...] Languages, religions and customs became welding materials for the construction of nation-states.
The welding materials were means, not ends. The purpose of the national entities was not to develop languages, religions or customs, but to develop national economies, to turn the countryfolk into workers and soldiers, to turn the motherland into mines and factories, to turn dynastic estates into capitalist enterprises. Without the capital, there could be no munitions or supplies, no national army, no nation."

[Strongpoint]

I'm paraphrasing Rudolf Rocker; the nation is not the cause, but the result of the state.

Nonsense

State borders do influence the genesis of nations but true roots for nations ("small" things like languages, religions, traditions) existed long before states even become a concept. Nations predate countries by millennia.

States can't even create nations, they merely combine different nations in one, either in a form of a merger or via forceful assimilation.