What the hell?
Edit - Quoting @[email protected]
Wikipedia is not currently banned in Russia. But the Russian branch of Wikimedia as an organization is. Also, pretty much nobody in Russia uses Ruwiki, everyone keeps using Wikipedia.
That’s all not to say it isn’t a troubling development, though. But Russians are more likely to access Wikipedia through VPN than to rely on Ruwiki. The game’s not lost.
“Mature democracies” buy Russian gas and support Azerbaijan.
Nothing in the past makes an existing democracy more stable.
What does is culture of bravery\heroics AND fairness AND individualism. Bravery AND fairness without individualism get you communism. Bravery AND individualism without fairness get you either the British Empire or Somalia. Bravery without fairness and individualism get you fascism. Individualism AND fairness without bravery lead to something like most “mature democracies” of today.
Now, Russia has problems in culture with every one of these. Each of them pops up locally here and there in the social fabric, but the lumpen layers don’t like the idea of fairness and bravery, while the worker class, so to say, doesn’t like the idea of individualism, and the “well off” people are similar to the lumpen class sometimes in this. Bravery is the one most lacking, though.