Have you watch John Wick before?
(Yes I know it's a movie, but pen can certainly be used for murder.)
The Death of Russia - TL
- Thread starter Sorairo
- Start date
(Yes I know it's a movie, but pen can certainly be used for murder.)
I see. I presume the next chapter is about the Chechnyan War as Russia collapses.
In case anyone thinks I was exaggerating, here are a few excerpts from the book I mentioned:
“You can get a beating for anything at all. If a spirit doesn’t show respect in his conversation with an older soldier, a ‘Granddad’, he’ll get beaten up. If he talks too loudly or goes about the barracks clattering his heels, he’ll get beaten up. If he lies on his bed in the day, he’ll get beaten up. If the people back home send him good rubber slippers and he decides to wear them to the shower, he’ll get beaten up and lose his slippers. And if a spirit even thinks of turning down the tops of his boots or walking around with his top button undone, or if his cap is tipped back on his head or to one side, or he doesn’t do his belt up tightly enough, they’ll thrash him so hard he’ll forget his name. He is a spirit, the lowest dregs, and it’s his job to slave until the older soldiers have been discharged.
But at the same time the older soldiers jealously guard their rights over their spirits. Every self-respecting granddad has his own spirit, a personal slave, and only he is allowed to beat and punish him.”
“We stop noticing living people, in fact we hardly see any. Everything that’s living seems temporary to us, everything that leaves this runway, everything that arrives here in columns, and even those who have just been called up into the army, all of them will end up heaped on top of one another in the helicopters. They simply have no other choice. They’ll be starved of food and sleep, tormented by lice and filth, be beaten up, have stools smashed over their heads and be raped in the latrines - so what? Their suffering is of no importance; they’re going to get killed anyway.”
“Everybody beats everyone. The dembels, with three months service to go, the officers, the warrant officers. They get stinking drunk and then hammer the ones below them. Even the colonels beat the majors, the majors beat the lieutenants, and they all beat the privates; and granddads beat new recruits.
“No-one talks to each other like human beings, they just smack each other in the mouth. Because it’s easier that way, quicker and simpler to understand. Because ‘you’re all going to snuff it anyway, you bitches’. Because there are unfed children back home, because the officer corps is addled with impoverishment and hopelessness, because a dembel has three months left, because every second man is shell-shocked. Because our Motherland makes us kill people, our own people, who speak Russian, and we have to shoot them in the head and send their brains flying up the walls, crush them with tanks and tear them to pieces. Because these people want to kill you, because your soldiers arrived yesterday straight from training and today they are already lying on the airstrip as lumps of charred flesh, and flies lay eggs in their open eyes, and because in a day the company is reduced to less than a third, and God willing, you’ll stay among that third. Because the one thing that everyone knows is how to get drunk and kill, kill and kill some more.”
“Fourteen members of our company are AWOL, absent without leave. Young conscripts flee in their droves, heading straight from their beds into the steppe, barefoot and wearing only their long johns, unable to withstand the nightly torment any longer. Even our lieutenant, who was called up for two years after he graduated from college, did a runner. There are only eight of us left, us five and three local boys - Murky, Pinocchio (or Pincha) and Khariton. We live together in the reconnaissance company, and the recon regard us as their personal slaves and do what the hell they like with us.”
“You can get a beating for anything at all. If a spirit doesn’t show respect in his conversation with an older soldier, a ‘Granddad’, he’ll get beaten up. If he talks too loudly or goes about the barracks clattering his heels, he’ll get beaten up. If he lies on his bed in the day, he’ll get beaten up. If the people back home send him good rubber slippers and he decides to wear them to the shower, he’ll get beaten up and lose his slippers. And if a spirit even thinks of turning down the tops of his boots or walking around with his top button undone, or if his cap is tipped back on his head or to one side, or he doesn’t do his belt up tightly enough, they’ll thrash him so hard he’ll forget his name. He is a spirit, the lowest dregs, and it’s his job to slave until the older soldiers have been discharged.
But at the same time the older soldiers jealously guard their rights over their spirits. Every self-respecting granddad has his own spirit, a personal slave, and only he is allowed to beat and punish him.”
“We stop noticing living people, in fact we hardly see any. Everything that’s living seems temporary to us, everything that leaves this runway, everything that arrives here in columns, and even those who have just been called up into the army, all of them will end up heaped on top of one another in the helicopters. They simply have no other choice. They’ll be starved of food and sleep, tormented by lice and filth, be beaten up, have stools smashed over their heads and be raped in the latrines - so what? Their suffering is of no importance; they’re going to get killed anyway.”
“Everybody beats everyone. The dembels, with three months service to go, the officers, the warrant officers. They get stinking drunk and then hammer the ones below them. Even the colonels beat the majors, the majors beat the lieutenants, and they all beat the privates; and granddads beat new recruits.
“No-one talks to each other like human beings, they just smack each other in the mouth. Because it’s easier that way, quicker and simpler to understand. Because ‘you’re all going to snuff it anyway, you bitches’. Because there are unfed children back home, because the officer corps is addled with impoverishment and hopelessness, because a dembel has three months left, because every second man is shell-shocked. Because our Motherland makes us kill people, our own people, who speak Russian, and we have to shoot them in the head and send their brains flying up the walls, crush them with tanks and tear them to pieces. Because these people want to kill you, because your soldiers arrived yesterday straight from training and today they are already lying on the airstrip as lumps of charred flesh, and flies lay eggs in their open eyes, and because in a day the company is reduced to less than a third, and God willing, you’ll stay among that third. Because the one thing that everyone knows is how to get drunk and kill, kill and kill some more.”
“Fourteen members of our company are AWOL, absent without leave. Young conscripts flee in their droves, heading straight from their beds into the steppe, barefoot and wearing only their long johns, unable to withstand the nightly torment any longer. Even our lieutenant, who was called up for two years after he graduated from college, did a runner. There are only eight of us left, us five and three local boys - Murky, Pinocchio (or Pincha) and Khariton. We live together in the reconnaissance company, and the recon regard us as their personal slaves and do what the hell they like with us.”
Seems doing badly at least when it is in action.
Seriously one affect seems being that Russian army is pretty ready to commit horrible atrocities and obey eveery order no matter how horrible/non-sense these are. And soldiers have not capacity to use their common sense.
It doesn't. Not really. But by picking your fights wisely - read, only attacking those who are vastly inferior to you - you can still win. A starved giant may still be able to beat a dwarf up.
Of course, here Chechnya got aid from NATO, which changed the situation.
Of course, I don't know anything about the Chechnyan War, so I don't know how this compares to OTL. Other factors, such as aircraft being used in parades instead may also play a part.
The worrying topic of the 21st century will probably be the American Civil War. All of US foreign policy is so heavily focused on "containing the evil enemy" that once said enemy is gone, it will begin to devour itself. As we saw in OTL with Afghanistan and Iran and Iraq, if the United States lacks external enemies, it tends to make them up.
No one is going to give a damn how economically powerful China is. On the contrary, that will be pointed out precisely as the reason why they are a threat that must be contained at any cost.
The difference is that in this case China has a vested interest in the United States. So it is most likely that the division that fractures the country will be "China is not hostile and whoever says otherwise is an anti-Chinese racist" vs. "China is a very dangerous threat that must be contained before it can carry out its crazy and evil plans."
I can also see a greater divide between Eastern and Western Europe as without Russia as an enemy and the possible earlier expansion of the EU into the region the things are tolerated know might not be tolerated in this timeline leading to potential break between both areas.
Edit: As for civil war, I find it more likely that something like the revolutions of 1848 will occur where the Army defeats the rebels and many are forced to move elsewhere.
Edit: As for civil war, I find it more likely that something like the revolutions of 1848 will occur where the Army defeats the rebels and many are forced to move elsewhere.
What would be the reason for the divide, tho? Both sides here have an interest in coming closer. Western Europe to expand their economies there (I mean, an Eastern European market without Russian influence is any Germany's wet dream). The post soviet states have a clear objective of modernizing their economies and integrating themselves into the new order without Russia, and who better to help them than Western Europe (and of course the US).
Its a funny odd world when pretty much everyone will iook round and say oh a jihad and conciude that it's completely justified
Remember the Afghan Muyahidins were still at the time perceived as freedom fighters...