The wonderful story about St. Vladimir inviting emissaries from the major religions of the time (Judaism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam & Judaism) is certainly nothing more than a fable manufactured for consumption by the unlearned faithful, but an interesting one nonetheless. Just think of how the course of history would have been changed, if at the court of Kievan Rus' the lot was cast with Judaism or Islam. Wow One thing I have never got about the history of Russian Orthodoxy (disclaimer: I was born & raised Lutheran, but converted to Orthodoxy 6 years ago - not for any appreciable reason other than I just love the sound of the Russian Orthodox choirs & appreciate the ceremony, seems more meaningful than 'catch-all' Lutheranism and not nearly as phony as the Roman Catholic ritual.) How did this "3rd Rome" thing come about, when Russian Orthodoxy, even to the present day (Alexei II is a throwback to the old days, and if you don't believe me, listen to him the next time he's on the tube) views the Roman Church as something 10x worse than garden-variety apostasy? Wouldn't "2nd Byzantium" have made more sense?
Not true, my friend. There have been a lot of digs which have unearthed evidences of the D’yakovo, Vyatich, Radimich, & Severyan Slavonic tribes, dating back to the 6th-7th century, all of which were still in the vicinity when Kievan Rus' decided to expand northwards.
Byzantians had considered themselves Romans so they called Byzantium, respectively, "the Second Rome". So, Moscow, to continue with the tradition, would have to be the third Rome. Not for religious but, rather, for geopolitical reasons.
Par excellence - all 3 trick questions - commonly accepted answers : 1/ Vladimir Monomakh - Kyiv 2/ Ivan Kalita - XIV 3/ Beresta - while Nikanor wrote on Greek Papyrus/Paper. yasik - you ever in LA - a git beer fin mois' in order. Now SLitty - knows zatz of his heritage, files p/u/ssy under alcohol, likes to spit at the ceiling while reposing - yes - my fault - he is truly Russian. Yasik - versed in History, Geography, and Poetry, ready to trade Lois Vuitton for some trim, works like a fiend, must be a Yid.
I put alot of things from clubbing to playing bingo under alcohol. Also, depending on what kinds of Poetry, History, and to some extent Geography - I bet I can kick yasik's tushkis. Secondly, what do the questions prove about my nationality personally, or anyone's for that matter? What do you they prove about nationalities in general? Me thinks not too much... yet they were fun anyways.
Trouble is, you dont idenitfy yourself as being Russian nor do you hold a passport of the RF. I dont know your background and ancestry - so I dont know if you qualify as a Russian, but you could always be a "Rossiyanin" as is the current politically correct term. I dont know about your god, but mine doesn't have an ethnicity that I am aware of.
Well, when those pure-bred, blue-blooded Russians stand on their knees and bow to an effigy of a dead Jew... that says something, don't it? What, you are going to deny the indisputable fact that Yeshua of Nazareth was a Jew? This is downright insane! Or are you a follower of a different faith?
Yes and yes. I speak the language and pay taxes to the greedy Mama-land, that qualifies in my eyes. Now, to you apparently other qualifications are needed, such as: Yep, thought so. What are your criteria? Do you have your own, or borrowing from German political literature circa 1934 is easier? No. I don't want to be different from others. I don't want to be discriminated. I want to be recognized as being as Russian as every Vasya Pipiskin in Tver, because, hell, this is the freakin' 21st century, damn it! We, human beings, are not supposed to be looking at backgrounds and ancestry, not supposed to give a damn about last names and curliness of hair, not supposed to inquire as to one's father's Line Five, not supposed to nitpick religious believes. Now, of course, all of this will be news to any self-respecting "Russian". All of the above takes paramount importance in determining the "ours" and "non-ours". Am I right? Don't you dare saying I am not.
Sorry, I am lost - why do you want to be considered Russian if you don't consider yourself Russian? Whats this righteous campaign to be seen as a full fledged Russian when you spit on Russia regularly and frankly would rather see the country as well as nationality fail miserably rather than succeed? Now, in Russia one generally recieves a dirty look or is reprimanded when one says he is Russian in a formal setting. There is a whole idea of being a Rossiyanin - which encompasses theoretically you, the Georgian selling watermelons at the Bazaar, Viktor Tsoi, and Vasya Ivanov. Being Russian is an actual ethnicity - which I daresay you are not. This is not based on religion, I dont believe in the whole Jews are a seperate ethnicity bullcrap... Jews are far too diverse; ranging from Russian to Arabic to for it to be true. From what I know of you Moldovan heritage and from what I can infer from the single picture I have ever seen of you- I do not believe you are Russian. You are fully qualified to be a Rossiyanin if you so choose, and that is hardly descriminatory, as I am one as well. Do you think Marat Izmailov is Russian? No, he is a Rossiyanin, but he is still "nash". Frankly, the Russian Federation is a multicultural nation - and your complex of inferiority has you thinking this is a bad thing and always fretting that you are being descriminated against. No, a true Tatar is proud to be a Tatar and also proud to be a Rossiyanin. Some goes for a Tajik, Kabardino-Balkarets, Mordvanin, ect.... Ethnic diversity is a good thing, and recognition of it doesn't automatically mean Nazism and concentration camps. The word Nazi is hated in Russia more so than in any other nation in the world. The fact of the matter remains the same - its pretty obvious when someone is an African American and when someone is an American of European heritage. Same goes for Russia- there is the ethnically Russian Rossiyanin and the Rossiyanin of one of Russia's numerous minority groups.
So, to distill your rant, what disqualifies me is the follows: * "spitting on the country" (holding political opinions that are in sharp disagreement with the government line) * wanting the country and nationality to fail miserably (OK, this works, unless you are fully prepared to disqualify a blond-haired Petya Smirnov on the same grounds) * Moldovan heritage (anyone born outside of RSFSR does not qualify) * facial appearance (please provide the list of exact qualifications) * last name and the contents of my father's Line Five Furthermore, you are insisting that "Russian" is a separate ethnicity, while "Jew" is bullcrap, which is an interesting view to hold, since Russians are at least as ethnically diverse as Jews. I bet your pure-blood arse doesn't know a simple ethnographical fact that an indigenous person from Rostov and an indigenous person from Novgorod will have absolutely no common ethnical lines, though both fathers' Line Five will say "Russian". In fact, a Kolya Lyapkin from Smolensk may have a lot more in common ethnically with a Farid Abdryakhimov in Nizhniy Novgorod than with a Pasha Styopushkin from Vologda, but Kolya's and Pasha's Line-Fives will be in perfect agreement with each other, while Farid's will be substantially different. Knowing the wild diversity of Slavic, Nordic and Turkic tribes which intermixed with one another during the course of Russia's history (which isn't nearly as long as that of the Jews, by the way, so all the mixings are still relatively fresh), how can anyone be able to come up with the perfect formula for the Russian Ethnicity. You imply that you can. I will be interested to know. Will you be comfortable with enumerating the EXACT ETHNICAL qualification for being called Russian? Something tells me you will not get much farther than the whole last-name/facial appearance business. Which, if I may, I will render to my "Bullcrap" file. Now, I will be so kind to tell you what my conditions are. What qualifies me, in my view, is the following: * having command of the Russian language better than you or 99.9999999% of Seryozha Klimovs everywhere * paying taxes to the Russian Federation * considering my cultural background to be Russian and Russian only, albeit without such integral parts of it as virulent anti-Semitism, myopic chauvinism and the wholse slave mentality thing. To me, Point 1 has a lot more significance than all your points combined and multiplied by a million. There are plenty of blonde, blue-eyed people with Slavic blood in their veins who are by no means Russian, but the Russian language is the one and only. To summarize. Yes, I am Russian. Much more than you. Yes, I am a Jew. Goes without saying. Yes, you are a chauvinist bigot.
Well Shurik... I bet I can employ the French language much better than yourself. This doesn't make me anymore French than you nor does it make me French at all. So I implore you, why does my mastery of the French language not make me French while your ability to write sports articles in Russian suddenly makes you Russian moreso than anything else? Anyone born anywhere qualifies as being Russian if they have roots in and around Russia. For all I know you could have Romanian roots coming from Molvoda and not have the slightest bit of heritage from Russia. If you ancestors are from Africa... I hardly see how you can be ethnically Russian. Anyone can be a Rossiyanin just like anyone can be an American... but to be Russian is just like being Cree: you can't just suddenly take on an ethnicity. A nationality yes, and ethnicity comes from lineage. As I said, I have no idea what your ancesty is... your grandfather could be from Iran, Argentina, or Vladivostok as far as I know. I don't discount you being Russian on those grounds. In terms of appearance you just didn't seem what would generally seem Russian to me. In all honesty I have no idea what ethnographically makes a Russian. Typically I would think Russians have fairly light skin, heritage IN Russia, and most times a Russian will have a certain look. They will differ from Western Europeans and not quite posses that cool composed look of the Marat Saffins. Its hard to explain what I mean, but often times you can tell someone from Russia apart from someone from Western Europe or even the more western Eastern Europe apart based on appearance. For example, Pavel Bure does not look Russian and rightfully so as he has Swiss heritage while Alexei Kovalev, Alexander Nemov, and even Shevchenko do look Russian in their own specific regard. Personally, I've been told that I look European but lack that "Russian" look that oft times instantly gives someone away as being Russian without hearing them speak a word. In terms of you always pooring shite all over Russia... its not just the goverment, you constantly mock Russians as an ethnicity. The Russian nationality does not exist... neither you nor I can be a Russian in terms of nationality - we can only be Rossiyanins. That is a majour point you seem to miss. You mock the ethnicity constantly, making it out to be the most vile scum of the Earth- yet you want to be considered part of this ethnicity? Seems bogus to me. If you want to be considered Russian as your nationality, by all means join me in being a Rossiyanin. I have no idea what your heritage is again, for all I know you are in fact Russian ethnically... but from the way you seem to detest us Russians, I would bet against it. In terms of your cultural background being Russian - thats swell but that doesnt necessairly make you Russian. My cultural background is both Canadian and Russian... that cetainly doesnt make me Canadian ethnically. I could have lived in Africa from birth and been influenced only by African culture but I wouldnt have been anymore Zulu than I am now. My friend and the 2005 Junior World Wrestling champion at 55kg Besik Seradinovich Kudukhov is far more of a Rossiyanin and influenced by Russian culture than me. Yet I hate to break it to yo:; he aint Russian. Let me list some medalists from the Russian Federation at the very recent European wrestling championships for you: Murat Batirov, Dyamal Sultanovich Otarsultanov, Makhach Murtazaliev, Bouvaisa Saitev (the most dominant wrestler in the wrorld), Adam Saitev, Khadshimourad Gatsalov, Kuramagomed Kuramagomedov, and so forth to the Greco-Roman wrestlers. Now truth be told I have only ever met 4 of these guys... but I consider each one "svoi"/"nash", respect him deeply, am proud of him, and consider him a full fledged Rossiyanin and my equal (or truith be told superior). Hate to break it to you, but not a single one of them is Russian. Alexander Zakharuk who won Gold for Ukraine on the other hand I dont really care for sinse he isn't a Rossiyanin at all, but he is more Russian ethnically than any of the aforementioned guys. In terms of Jews, a religion spreads through ethnicities and cultures. Muslims are for more analagous than Jews - and they are hardly an ethnicity. Chances are your ancestor either got converted to Judaism after the diaspora or only a very small percentage of you is actually ethnically Jewish as in having the genes of those Jews that originally left Palestine as Jews. Chances are, if you do have a direct connection to those Jews in your lineage (which you probably dont) its quite muddled with genes of other ethnic origins. You are no doubt Jewish religiously, and all the power to you to be proud of that, but I dont believe in the ethnicity of being Jewish. Many Russian Jews and Eastern European Jews look no different from myself, while others are as swarthy as Africans... I find it hard to believe that they are Jews as one ethnicity rather than a product of a spreading religion. As always, hide behind your natural defense of accusing everying left and right of being a chauvinist bigot.
Slitty, you did reasonably OK - until you got to jews = you seem to eff that topic up all the effen time.
By all means impart on me where I have gone wrong with my reasoning that Judaism is not an ethnicity and nor is Christianity, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Animism, Scientology, Shintoism, Zoroastianism, Jainism, Paganism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Athiesm, as well as various forms of Devil Worship? Technically I could convert to Judaism and become a Jew in one easy painfree process. I would be a Jew, but would my ethnicity be somehow magically altered as well? Will my Russian heritage be somehow earased and replaced with a long proud geneology of rabbis and hazzans? Somehow I am doubtful of that occuring. An African dictator suddenly chooses to institute Judaism as a national religion, would that herby convert every single black citizen of that country into the ethnicity you loosely desercibe as "Jewish". Nah, kid me not - religion and ethnicity are not one and the same thing. I would be surprised if a significant portion or Jews today had genuine roots to the Jews of the diaspora. Its a nice story that all Jews came from the same wandering band that lived together in the desert for 40 years... but you guys are all to different for that to be. Judaism, albeit less so than other religions, spread over numerous ethnicities. I personally know of several examples of poeple converting and becoming Jews. Don't fret about it too much: its the idea that counts behind the religion and not your appearance or heritage anyways. There are black christians and there are white christians, they are brothers, but because of belief and not ethnicity. Religion is something that is greater than ethnicity and surpasses its dull boundries.
I can distill this new rant in two ways. The honest way would yield the following: "Russians are only those who look reasonably like myself and have roughly similar last name structure. Russians are by no means people who look like Jews and have Jewish last names, no matter what connections to the country and its culture they may have". You can replace "Jews" with "Caucasians" or "Koreans" at your leisure. The dishonest way would yield the only qualification you mustered to actualy offer: "Russians are those who have their roots in and around Russia". I was born in the Soviet Union, the predescessor of modern-day Russia. My ancestors (and unlike the aristocratic Russian nobles like all of Kolya Potapovs everywhere, I can only trace my bloodlines three generations back) were born within the boundaries of the Russian Empire. I don't know any further, other than the probable fact that all the traces will eventually lead to Africa. As is with you. How am I different from you? Please provide EXACT ETHNICAL QUALIFICATIONS that would automatically distinguish Russians from non-Russians. Yes, it's a sly question: you cannot. There isn't a singe Russian alive who would meet any of them. And how on Earth would you be sure without obtaining a time machine and holding a candle at every "Russian" woman's bed? You would invariably return to my honest way of distilling your rant. But this way you'd have to say that an alcoholic from Vologda with Slavic facial features is more Russian than Pushkin and Lermontov. Are you prepared to say that? To answer YOUR sly question: if you considered your cultural background to be French, had legal and personal connections to France and spoke French language reasonably well - yeah, you'd be no less French than 100% of the French national soccer team. And certainly no less French than any Jean-Louis Louvet from Provence, with all his Gaellic/Mourish/Romance blood to puff his chest about. Language and culture are what originally and ultimately make up an ethnicity 100% of the time. Everything else is indiscernable with any degree of exactitude and variable to the point of being irrelevant. My cultural background is Russian, I have perfect command of the language, I pay taxes in the RF, I even work in the area of Russian culture, to an exent, for crying out loud. But you and everyone like you will always call an illiterate bomzh in Lithuania more Russian than me if his hair is lighter, his eyes are bluer and his last name ends with an "ov". If this is not chauvinist, I have no idea what is.
You are being overly dramatic and adding in alot of pre-menopause esterichka crap... but in essense you are somewhere in the ballpark (just over the deep left field foul line). However, you fail to see the difference between nationality and ethnicity. You keep on defining nationality and insisting that it is ethnicity, not so. Thats why the whole concept isnt the least bit chauvinist.
I think, at this point, ethnicity, linguistics, nationality, religion, and phenotype have been mixed all in one to answer no question in particular. Makes for exciting reading, to be sure, but WHY? I am a 100% Jew (and can trace such to about 6th or 7th generation from me), my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was the main Rabbi of Pinsk in mid-to-late 19th century. Yet, I have a potato for a nose, light hair, bushy mustache, and speak without any speech impediments (did I cover every stereotype?). As soon as phenotype (the looks of an individual) was mentioned you, guys, lost me.
I think you have just invented a word for an estetichka in an elektrichka, but you staunchly fail to define a Russian ethnicity for me by providing exact ethnical qualifications, which I stubbornly ask for. Especially since you insist that a Russian purity standard is practically the highest in the known universe, certainly much higher than the Jewish one, which is so low that a "Jew" has ceased to be an ethnicity altogether. At this point in the history of our planet, most inhabitants of large ex-imperial states carry a vast array of ethnic and racial genotypes to the point where a person's "ethnicity" is entirely arbitrary and only interesting to those who want to discriminate on the basis of it. In an ultimate irony of things, nobody cares about ethnicity more than Russians, the least defined ethnical group on Earth. And the only reason Russians care about ethnicity is their undying, phisiological desire to separate those from their midst whom they may designate as Jewish. Canadians, an example you inexpertely ushered in, have gotten it right, as have Americans. "Canadian" and "American" ethnicities do not exist. These are purely cultural and legal terms. The only difference between the Yanks, Canucks and Russkies is that the first two realize this fact, while the latter cherish their anti-Semitism too much to admit the fact that Misha Ziskins next door are in no way less Russian than they are.
99% of Jews trace their roots to the ancient Hebrews ( who were acutally black), I don't see how you are Russian.
What color were the original hebrews ? Not to use the Bible as a refference, but it states that Jesus had " hair of wool and feet the color of brass". The original inhabitants of North Africa and the Middle East were black. I assume you are a practising Jew who knows and believes in Moses and his story. Moses if he in fact existed had to be black. Remember, the Egyptian Pharoah thought that Moses was a native Egyptian and treated him like a son. The ancient Egyptians were of black skin color, if the Pharoah truley believed that Moses was an Egyptian, Moses would have to have been black.
Well, I truly care not what color the ancient Slavs were once you scraped all the filth off of them. After centuries of mixing with Turkic, Mongoloid, Nordic and Iranian tribes, they are hardly any whiter than the darkest part of my arsehole. But judging by your standards, I know I am certainly WAAAAAAY more Russian than this brudda:
WHich pulpit are you preaching the aforementioned from? Can you please give me valid references for the 3 highlighted statements?