r/worldnews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 21h ago

Russia/Ukraine ‘We Were Mistaken’: Putin Admits Russia Was Unprepared for Ukrainian Strikes on Oil Refineries

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/83674
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u/Westerdutch 19h ago

I don't think he actually believes what he says

Russia has a long and proud history where everyone lies, everyone knows they all lie and they all play along anyways because telling the truth or showing a divide in opinion makes everyone look worse than just playing along with the lie.

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u/MyUsername2459 18h ago

This is the same civilization that brought us "We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us."

That sort of "we all know this is BS, but let's just pretend it's normal" is baked pretty deeply into their society after generations of Tsars and dictators.

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u/vladikusi 18h ago

Funnily enough, my Russian university teacher (she was teaching workplace ethics/psychology or something along those lines, but absolutely loved to share her political opinions for whatever reason) attributed this phenomenon to Russia's rapid westernisation and transition to capitalism in the '90s. She argued that the newly established system didn't fit the Russian spirit and only encouraged the things you're talking about, bringing out the worst tendencies of people. She also recounted some anecdotes about first Western factories in Russia facing the harsh reality of the local workers. (Though, of course, NOW Russia is heading in absolutely the right direction!!!)

I honestly disagree with the notion of it being something "cultural" and deeply ingrained, but for what its worth, I find it interesting that even the Russian patriots would kinda agree with you, just with a different idea of who/what to blame.

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u/BigUptokes 18h ago

The word "hypernormalisation" was coined by Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad and later went to teach at the University of California, Berkeley. He introduced the word in his book "Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation" (2006), which describes paradoxes of Soviet life during the 1970s and 1980s. He says everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, and politicians and citizens alike were resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning society. Over time, the mass delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy, with everyone accepting it as the new norm rather than pretend, an effect Yurchak termed "hypernormalisation".

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u/ContractElegant4310 17h ago

I've talked to older Russian immigrants who came to the US literally as soon as they could in the early 90s, and they said that no one, not even the party apparatchiks, believed the stupid propaganda on TASS or in the pages of Pravda or Izvestia in the 70s-80s. Everyone knew the system was a mess but until Gorbachev came along the cost of expressing any skepticism or dissent was too high, so almost everyone just played along to avoid any trouble.

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u/BloodShotEye13 18h ago

This sounds like my North American workplace.

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u/Puzzled-Relief2916 18h ago

Sounds like a certain orange buffoon took a page out of the Putin playbook.

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u/Westerdutch 18h ago

I genuinely doubt he is aware that he is lying, hes so far gone that he thinks whatever he makes up is now the truth and that's so much worse.

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u/funguyshroom 16h ago

I think it's worse, they purposefully repeat the lie until they start actually believing their own lies and forget that originally they were supposed to be lies.