How did socialism change countries in the past (genes and culture)

[Kristoffer Trolle]

We all know how socialism is changing the west today (the welfare state reversing natural selection, the importation of low iq high crime voters, the destruction of western culture and values etc.), but I know very little of how it has affected socialist/communist/collectivist countries of the past. Some of the ones I know about:

Communist China: if you visit China you see how the polite buddhist culture (you normally see in high iq asian countries like Japan) is gone, people are very rude. I have been told by several chinese it changed under communism, anybody can confirm? They wanted to get rid of the old "evil" religion and also got rid of all the good traditional values in society. Another thing: the population exploded under communism from less than 560~ mio to 1265 mio in only 50 years. I have been told the communists heavily rewarded people who got lots of kids, and since there was mass starvation a lot of people got many kids. I bet it wasn't the most high quality people that followed the government's incentives, so that probably affected the genes in a negative way?

Yugoslavia: seems like a lot of the same stuff goes on in europe today also happened in Yugoslavia back then. The high iq christian serbish group was the producers, the low iq high crime muslim bosnien group was the receivers. During the communist regime population changed, muslims got lots of kids and outbreeded the serbs. Serbs got pissed and went on a killing spree. Check some of the last replys in this forum post.

Soviet Russia: don’t know much, but I bet the same stuff happened here. Just look at the chaotic impolite high crime culture of russia today, was it really always like that? Looking at Russian culture before the communists it seems very different. And shouldn’t the tough winters have created a different gene set, i.e. only the smartest and toughest can survive there, you would had to work together to survive, etc.?

Any other places people can think of where collectivism fucked up culture and genes and how it happened? 

[Jsbrads]

Russia was always a crap hole on the edge of society. One of their techniques of updating society, was to superficially copy Europe, but it was usually a generation late. Prior to communism, it was a brutal monarchy, no Magna Carta, no personal rights, too dispersed for the poor king to actually protect citizens from brigands. 

The USSR was so many different cultures. So is Communist China, from Tibet to Shanghai, Hong Kong to the Gobi desert. We may see population shrinkage as if seems the one child policy seems to have entered the culture.

Also Buddhism wasn't always what it is today. Buddhism was just another form of control. Priests used to kidnap women and children and prostitute them in their temples to raise funds for the Temple. Christianity was probably the largest force suppressing that behavior. 

Like real life... it's complicated. You can find some things that were created by a particular influence, but usually it is a hundred reasons for millions of people. 

[Kristoffer Trolle]

Jsbrads> Hmmm not sure what you base that on regarding russia? I'm pretty sure the communists in russia went for the conservative (probably religious) values just like everywhere else, and I'm pretty sure it had the same consequences as everywhere else. Problem is the people that lived before communism are dead a long time ago and during communism you had no free speech to talk about it.

And what about Argentina: high iq europeans + low iq native people + democracy (from 1983), sounds a lot like a classic recipe for disaster? We all know about the hyper inflation madness that has been going on again and again, but would be cool with some more detailed insight, anybody has some sources? 

[ofd]

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I have been told by several chinese it changed under communism, anybody can confirm?

Chinese people (Naxalt) were always nasty to be around, especially Southern Chinese.

 

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The high iq christian serbish group was the producers, the low iq high crime muslim bosnien group was the receivers.

Bosnians, Croatians, and Serbians have all the same genotype with different cultures.

Genes can't be fucked up. If there is such a thing as r/K selection, the enviroment can favour a disadvantageous breeding behaviour that selects for bad traits. That doesn't mean the 'good genes' are destroyed, they go back in proportion.

 

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Just look at the chaotic impolite high crime culture of russia today, was it really always like that? Looking at Russian culture before the communists it seems very different.

Here's the thing. The Jewish led NKVD killed most middle class people that were left in the USSR, plus wealthy farmers.

 

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And shouldn’t the tough winters have created a different gene set, i.e. only the smartest and toughest can survive there, you would had to work together to survive, etc.?

In HBD literature, there is a thing called the Hajnal line. It goes from Finland in a more or less straight line down Northern Italy. West of it, you had the prohibition of cousin marriage by the Catholic church, a special form of manorialism that favoured small family owned farms and as a result small nuclear families that were outwards oriented and that had a high trust.
East of the Hajnal line, you were allowed to marry your cousin, you had clannish structures and the concept of individual property became popular only until recent times.
Those different enviroments led to different breeding strategies, which over a long time led to a different culture.

 

[Wuzzums]

In Romania after communism the religious aspect swung back towards christianity. Much like you see in Russia with Putin we see a strong embrace of religion and great resistance against anything that might undermine it. This is something more cultural rather than state-imposed. Romania is a truly secular country, the state does not recognize the church's authority and vice versa. For instance the marriage ceremony has 2 aspects independent of each other. The civic/civil ceremony where the union is officiated by a state official, and a religious ceremony where the union is officiated by a priest. Unlike in the US if you just get married in a church you're not married in the eyes of the law. However because religion holds such a strong cultural bond with the people, you're not seen as married in the eyes of the community if you're not married in a church. Religion has no say in state. Religion might have no say in the eyes of the law but the people recognize its authority therefore in practice it holds a lot of say. Another example I can give of this theory-practice dichotomy is of policemen not wanting to arrest gypsy witches for fear of curses, true story.

I looked up statistics in the past and the crime rate is half of that of the US. The bulk of the violent crimes (murder/rape/theft) come from the gypsy communities (though to be fair it's mostly theft, for them it's literally a cultural thing to steal, not joking). The corruption is ultra-high here, though. You might have heard the communist work ethic mantra "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work". This is the attitude most people have towards authority including those in authority. It's game theory, if I know everyone cheats how could I possibly play the game if I also don't cheat. For instance Turkey wanted to fund the building of a Mega-Mosque, the largest in the EU, to be built in our capital. Of course nobody wanted it built including the state officials but they agreed. They took the money, started the construction, at which point "someone" desecrated the land by throwing pigs' carcasses from a helicopter. Ooops, it appears we can't build the mosque there anymore. Sorry, no refunds. This might be a funny story but it applies to most of everything, from hospital funding to road construction. Nothing ever gets done here and if you want to do something you have to learn how to hustle. This is a remnant of the communist era. Because the state was so inefficient in order to survive people had to learn ways to go around it.

Oh, and politics make absolute zero sense here. I'm fascinated by countries like the US where people actually hold principles. Here the liberal party (the equivalent of he US Republican Party) wants to raise taxes and the socialist party wants to lower them. It's as if they have no idea what their party stands for, the only thing that matters is whether or not they're in power and they're gonna promise anything in order to get the votes. I have read their manifestos during campaign elections, if you switch them up at random you won't be able to tell the difference. Everyone's mind was blown here when Donald Trump started doing what he promised he was gonna do. People can't literally process it.

Here it's not the low-IQ receivers and high-IQ givers type of dichotomy. It's the pensioners who have nothing better to do than to vote for people who promise to raise their pensions and the working people who are too busy trying to make a life for themselves.

[M.2]

Hi, Kristoffer Trolle

Ever since you first posted this topic, I have been digging on the internet for data on genetics of pre-communist countries, but I couldn't find any presentable evidence for the pretty obvious fact that genetic composition does change under communism. Genetics is a rather new field, and was certainly not applied before the rise of communism, and was even more certainly not applied during communism. Now... so far I have been only using the word "communism" for a reason. That is because it is a universally accepted theory that Communism is the ultimate form of Socialism.  There have been some developments that, safe to speculate have had a considerable effect on the genetics of the population. Here are the big ones. Maybe you will have better luck finding data.

1. Purging of intellectuals: In almost all communist countries, the higher and intellectual classes (you know, the smart ones) were systematically eradicated. I don't think it is a question whether or not that affected the gene-pool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

2. Cultural Genocide: Socialists generally do not like culture, and are all very big on "progression" and leaving the past behind. This had manifested itself in the destruction of religion, manners, tradition, language and history. Example: The Great Leap Forward. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

3. Population Control:  For some sick reason, people like to control how many of the lowly peasants there are. The old communists were no exception. They promulgated decrees on how many children should be born, shamed women through media who had too many or too few children. We all know about the Chinese One-Child policy, but this has happened and is still happening in all socialistic governments. I posted a reference to a Romanian state action. I'm sure Wuzzums can tell more about it from a personal standpoint.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770

4. Forced Labour Participation: It was literally a felony to not have a job in the old communist states. If I'm not mistaken, maternal leave was restricted to 3 months or even less in most countries. That has no doubt influenced the decisions of many mothers. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1937939?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

5. Orchestration of ethnic conflict: Although divide and counquer is an ingenious tactic short term, even Caesar failed at it eventually. Such was the case of Ceausescu of Romania, who tried to blame every problem in his country on the Hungarian minority and other hostile powers threatening the integrity of Romania. In his last speech ever, he does that as he always has, by then however, it has been sorely played out. That said, by this time, the percentage of the Hungarian population was halved compared to the pre-war era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Romania

6. Transplantation of Populations: There were some crazy things socialists always fancied doing to ethnic groups, but probably one too much even for Sweden (don't get any ideas, Merkel!) is the literal uprooting of an entire country and its population, and transplanting it thousands of miles away, only to maybe return them to the same location a few years later.
An example of this is the expulsion and repatriation of the Chechen population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardakh
Another example, and most tragic in my opinion, is the displacement of the Germans of Prussia Sudetenland, Silesia, Transylvania, Hungary, Vojvodina, Volga and elsewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944–50)

7. The big one... Feminism. I don't think I need to explain. Unfortunately, I could not find data aside from a book here that addresses the question of labour and women in the USSR It is not for free though, so I haven't read it:  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0147596783900835

 

[EGreg]

Milton Friedman describes how Socialism changed cultures. Namely, people made all kinds of systems for bribery and corruption, and when the laws were repealed, the systems remained. So, many of the formerly Socialist countries have a lot of systemic corruption, because that's how people used to get things done.

[Kristoffer Trolle]

Thanks for the answers, espcially Mishi2: that list pretty much sums up how socialists destroy cultures. Didn't know about those crazy population transfer programs in ussr 

Just to get back to russia, I think there might be something to the theory of socialism destroying that countries culture and genes:

• The industrial revolution was also starting to happen in russia around the same time it happend in the north european countries. Means that some parts of russia before communism wasn't that undeveloped.
• Even under communism there where many achievements that makes you think that there where some high iq people in that country (those people was probably made into a minority pretty quick). Would europa had been more productive under communism than russia was? The economy was crap yes, but you see some signs that show that there where some smart people still there, inventions, technologi. Look at their space program or (as a camera nerd like me) I buy a lot of old ussr camera lenses on ebay, some of them are still pretty good and unique (no camera lenses ever came out of other low iq places, not a solid argument but you get my point).
• Had russia been more like another european country today if the revolution hadn't happen? Or is russia something completely different? If somebody finds some stories of what happened please share.
• Russia is moving in the right direction but the culture seems destroyed. Check out these "Stop a duchebag"-videos, it almost seems hopeless.

[Jsbrads]

Much like piano makers in the US & Russia were of German descent, I'm guessing lens makers in Russia were of German descent. 

I am not saying it isn't possible for Russians to make things, they probably could have invented lots of stuff if they were free, but they weren't, and most of what they made was based on tech stolen from the US. 

German aerospace engineers, Ukrainian mathematicians, Romanian scientists... Russia was on the edge of the west.

As to southern Chinese being brutish, only according to northern Chinese. China is actually two societies. And always the city more educated than the farms. 

[ofd]

Communism kept the ethnic composition of Eastern Europe more or less intact. Plus, the people in Eastern Europe got immunize against the neoliberal globalist agenda of open borders and unlimited immigration.

[plato85]

This is not stricly about socialism, but In Carol Quigley's book The Evolution Of Civilizations, he talks about different cultures mixing together. It's a very interesting book if this is what you're interested. Keep in mind the establishment thought he was one of them.

He says that civilisations go through 7 stages, but don't necessarily move forward through these stages, sometimes backwards.

1. Mixture - a new culture mixing with an old culture can be very difficult
2. Gestation - the cultures start to merge and forge a new stronger culture
3. Expansion - Good times, good economy
4. Age of Conflict - war
5. Universal Empire - All enemies defeated world government - Roman empire / Ancient Chinese empire only two examples so far. Good times leads to decay.
6. Decay
7. Invasion

He says a unique feature of Western civilisation is that we keep getting to age of conflict and then resetting to expansion, rather than getting universal empire and decay. Thich is how the West became so advanced.

 

This probably meant more in the 50s when he wrote it. It feels like right now we're in all of those stages at once.