[HN Gopher] The Closing of the Bulgarian Frontier
___________________________________________________________________
The Closing of the Bulgarian Frontier
Author : rubin55
Score : 136 points
Date : 2023-12-19 21:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.switchyardmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.switchyardmag.com)
| hondo77 wrote:
| A couple of gems here:
|
| > The States felt like an old place, weirdly older than Europe, a
| place where, for all its breathless movement, time seemed to have
| stopped. There was too much of everything: rules, work, wealth,
| poverty, guns, art.
|
| > Perhaps that was why the Communist regimes all across Eastern
| and Central Europe collapsed in the final run. Not so much
| because of their beleaguered economies, although that was an
| important factor, but because no one believed anymore.
| rubin55 wrote:
| Heh, that one about the states resonated with me as well, even
| more generally instead of specifically the US, but I guess to
| my own consumerism.. I have 1200+ music albums, 800+ games,
| 400+ books.. Too much of everything! A blessing and a curse at
| once.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| People had thousands of books and hundreds of music records
| back in Soviet times too.
| foobarian wrote:
| What's funny is that nobody steals any more. My apartment got
| burgled in the 90s and they stole a DVD player, some CDs, and
| a pile of change. Nowadays you have to pay someone to take
| your junk away.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Crime rates have gone down, but I think it's because there
| is nothing worth stealing anymore. I even looked at Craig's
| List and found a bunch of legit used older laptops for
| $100.
|
| What has happened is that the only thing worth anything
| anymore is property... and the prices of that have gone
| through the roof!
| crq-yml wrote:
| The decline of consumer goods theft is actually a strong
| signal that the project of consumerism has run its course
| - part of "making it" in the late 20th century was having
| the toys, but the toys are now prolific, and that's
| happened in the most literal sense too, when you look at
| the pricing of children's toys and how many families now
| feel inundated with them. "Unboxing" is just an
| influencer ritual now.
|
| The recurring themes now are all nuts-and-bolts concerns:
| housing, transport, employment, the environment, public
| spaces. These are things that aren't solved well with our
| existing coordination structures, since they tend to
| result in win/lose or lose/lose game-theoretic outcomes.
| klipt wrote:
| Iceland seems to have done well with creating community
| centers to reduce drug use among youth. Isn't that a win-
| win situation?
| simonblack wrote:
| _The States felt like an old place, .._
|
| I always felt that the States was "tatty", more "run down" than
| old. Public places were considered to 'belong to nobody', so were
| often dirty or defaced because nobody took pride in them. Subway
| trains were covered in graffiti.
|
| In many countries overseas, public places are always well looked-
| after because they 'belonged to all of us' rather than 'belonged
| to nobody'.
|
| It's just a difference in national cultures.
| dimitar wrote:
| Yet in many places in Europe public spaces are also run down.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Many look like they were already run down 500+ years ago.
| That adds a level of sophistication.
| baud147258 wrote:
| > public places are always well looked-after because they
| 'belonged to all of us'
|
| Or mostly the local govs have the will and means to look after
| them. I don't really think people's attitudes regarding public
| places is that different in Europe compared to the US
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I agree. For way to many people in the US "muh taxes" is
| their single voting issue and they wonder why infra is
| crumbling. Obviously you don't want to be overtaxed but
| people will vote for the guy who wants to reduce school
| funding so their property taxes go down 0.1%. It's insane.
| grecy wrote:
| > _I always felt that the States was "tatty", more "run down"
| than old_
|
| Driving in and around the freeways in New York a foreign friend
| exclaimed "It's like everything is half finished".
|
| I've never been able to get that out of my head.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| I thought this was going to be an article about the Byzantine
| border with the Bulgars, and now I'm disappointed...
| iddan wrote:
| Great writing piece, thank you for submitting!
| lostlogin wrote:
| The advert for Philips 'Lets make it better' that somehow beat
| my adblocker had me checking if it was part of the story.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It is part of the story. It's presumably from the Bulgarian
| Visual Archive, so it's unfortunate the author hasn't cited
| the images properly.
|
| https://visualarchive.bg/en/
| bjord wrote:
| right at the top of the essay it is the following:
|
| "All illustrations featured in this essay are part of the
| Bulgarian Visual Archive, a digital project that curates
| thousands of found and donated photographs. BVA aims to
| narrate the history of 20th-century Bulgaria through the
| visual record of both private and public events that have
| usually been pushed to the margins of official narratives.
| As part of its mission, BVA offers all of its photographs
| for download free of charge, for both personal and
| commercial purposes."
| Symbiote wrote:
| A proper citation credits the author of the image as well
| as the source, and ideally a direct link.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| At least that advert was less cynical than Hilton's huge
| billboard in Sofia with the slogan "Forget where you are" (in
| English, of course).
|
| (circa 2002-2005)
| dimitar wrote:
| I've been abroad and compared to it Bulgaria does feel like a
| frontier, like a good place for a certain type of nonconformist,
| especially in terms of career and business. There is no playbook
| and beaten road for a lot of things.
|
| If you try to have your career go the same way as you would
| expect in Western Europe/USA - go to the best school, get the
| best internship in the best company and be rewarded for following
| the rules you'll be infinitely disappointed in this country.
| There is no shortage of people who feel unrewarded and
| unappreciated for their qualifications and credentials.
|
| But if you try to make your own way - getting a skill by
| practicing yourself and searching out people who need that skill
| it might work surprisingly well and take you far.
|
| Btw if you enjoy the linked writing you should check out Time
| Shelter, it won the Booker prize recently.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| as someone who has done similar thing (~10y older than OP) - go
| to oz to see how it is, then one day, return back, to see how
| it is .. and stay since .. yeah, Time Shelter is quite a thing.
| Although at the end it went rather close-to-real and too dark.
| Which after all, might as well be. And while i'm not _that_
| pessimistic.. the Hydra heads can be seen+felt all around..
| covered in various puff.. just watch carefully..
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's not hard to find the frontier. Just go to the cold areas,
| but that's not what this really is about, it's just finding
| cheap cool hipster enclaves.
|
| I assure the readers that there is ample frontiers in northern
| canada
| keiferski wrote:
| It's interesting how the various post-communist states in
| Central/Eastern Europe have played out since the 90s. Having
| lived here for roughly the last ~8 years, it seems to me that the
| ones succeeding the most are those which have a nearly universal
| negative appraisal of the communist era. Poland, for example, is
| on a pretty great trajectory and will probably be in the top 2-3
| EU economies in a decade. The Soviet system was forced upon
| Poland and very few people look upon that era favorably. The
| break between eras was also fairly clean and without too much
| internal conflict.
|
| Compare that to some other states like Bulgaria or Ex-Yugoslavia,
| which have a more complicated memory of the communist era, and
| which also had a lot of conflict during the transition period.
| There is less of a pre-packaged "social imaginary" of what the
| country could be/used to be prior to the communist era - unlike
| Poland, which was occupied and spent a couple centuries building
| an oppositional identity during the Partitions/occupations.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Well, if people start missing the Soviet union, you probably
| got concerning problems. I think there is very little causality
| the other way around (missing the Soviet leads to problems).
| danieldk wrote:
| I think it happens naturally in many places because older
| people tend to look at their history with rose tinted
| glasses. You forget the bad parts and treasure the good parts
| (which is not a bad psychological coping mechanism in
| itself). Add to that that the current world looks more
| complex as it becomes harder to keep up with age.
|
| We see that even in Western countries, where a sizable set of
| boomers want to restore the order of the good old 50 or 60ies
| and vote conservative or right wing populist parties..
|
| The question is what do the younger generations think and
| what portion of the population they are.
| incompatible wrote:
| This period was a time of rebellion against the more
| authoritarian styles of government/society that existed in
| Western countries historically. I doubt that it's nostalgia
| for the 1960s that's driving modern conservativism. Perhaps
| any nostalgia for that period would be economic, in that it
| was still possible for a person (man) with one job to
| support a family and even own a house without much
| difficulty. Today, it seems like more of a struggle where
| people are working multiple jobs for decades to buy over-
| priced real estate. But modern conservatism doesn't seem to
| have any particular plan to go back to that kind of economy
| ... actually I'm not clear what it's actually trying to
| achieve.
| keiferski wrote:
| My point is more that in Poland, communism was always
| something of a foreign imposition by the Soviet Union, as the
| history (the Soviet invasion in 1939, plus Russian partitions
| before that) didn't lend itself to being happy about the
| situation.
|
| Bulgaria, on the other hand, was a close ally of the Soviet
| Union and more historically, of Russia (at least, more of an
| ally than Poland.) Yugoslavia wasn't in the Soviet sphere at
| all and was more "indigenous" and not as repressive as the
| Soviet states. So in Bulgaria and Ex-Yugoslavia, the memory
| of the communist era is not as clearly negative as it is in
| Poland. (Even if it's not positive, either - it's just more
| murky.)
| f6v wrote:
| > My point is more that in Poland, communism was always
| something of a foreign imposition by the Soviet Union
|
| I think communism or not is besides the point. Poland has a
| strong imperial tradition where the state spanned from
| Baltic almost to the Black Sea. They've been occupying and
| ruling for much longer than they've been in a socialist
| camp, and that had a much bigger impact on their national
| identity. And, as some others noted, being close to Germany
| gives Poland a big advantage.
|
| On the point of "communism", take Romania as an example. I
| took a tour of the Presidential palace when I was in
| Bucharest. The guide was extremely negative about the
| communist era(when the palace itself was built), as many
| Romanians are. She went on and on how the dictator forced
| the palace construction and how terrible it was.
| Ironically, the palace is one of the few attraction in
| Bucharest. Walk just 200m away and it's going to be rubble
| and desolation. In summary, I don't think being anti-
| communist helps them all that much.
|
| > Bulgaria, on the other hand, was a close ally of the
| Soviet Union and more historically, of Russia
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but Bulgaria never was an economic
| powerhouse or major European power, unlike Poland. Between
| the Ottomans and other empires, they probably don't have a
| history of building a strong economy. Being between rock
| and a hard place, not having resources, etc. probably
| contributed much more than what you say.
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| If you think Bucharest has few attractions besides Casa
| Poporului, you must have not had a good guidebook and
| really missed out. The city is full of interesting sites.
| Yes, the socialist era and the big earthquake damaged the
| city, but there are still great museums, churches, parks,
| and sites connected with the artists and men of letters
| of the 19th century and prewar era.
| keiferski wrote:
| Poland was occupied / colonized almost continuously from
| the late 1700s to the 1990s. The idea that their imperial
| history before that had more of an effect on the modern
| person's psyche is nonsense.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Ironically, the palace is one of the few attraction in
| Bucharest. Walk just 200m away and it's going to be
| rubble and desolation. In summary, I don't think being
| anti-communist helps them all that much._
|
| You got it wrong here.
|
| 1)Bucharest doesn't have many eye-catching tourist
| attractions like a quaint historical old town because of
| the 1977 earthquake that destroyed a large part of the
| old historical buildings, and Ceausescu in his infinite
| wisdom, decided "fuck it, we'll just build concrete
| commie blocks instead for the communist party members", a
| highly unpopular decision even back then in those days,
| that even the lead architect in charge fled the country
| for speaking up against this idea because he didn't want
| to desecrate history to build commie blocks.
|
| The only somewhat silver lining of this today, is that
| due to the over construction of commie blocks back then,
| Bucharest housing remains somewhat affordable for the
| average person today despite gentrification, when you
| look at housing affordability in other EU capitals.
|
| 2) People in Romania are rightfully anti-communist due to
| the atrocities of the regime, and a giant building as a
| big tourist attraction doesn't change that. Being anti
| communist does actually help with the imense progress the
| country made becoming business friendly and attracting
| foreign investors.
| berdario wrote:
| > the ones succeeding the most are those which have a nearly
| universal negative appraisal of the communist era.
|
| A simpler explanation is that you swapped cause and effect:
| it's the countries where the economy struggled, where their
| people regret leaving their previous socialist economy.
|
| Why some economies struggled less than other is something that
| probably requires a lot more of country-by-country
| investigation, rather than generalisations... But I think that
| a common trend might be:
|
| How accessible (and geographically close) is the country to
| potential investors? Poland is close to Germany (and German
| investors could already find a German speaking minority, which
| could help bootstrap), likewise the Baltic republic are close
| to Finland and Sweden (Sweden is the first country to open an
| embassy in Estonia for example, which is arguably a
| prerequisite for a lot of investment in Estonia)
| toyg wrote:
| So much this. Among other causes: Poland has a population of
| more than 35million people, so they were able to export _a
| lot_ of workforce - which then generated significant
| remittance income, a fundamental driver of capital creation
| in poor economies. Bulgaria is less than 7 million, they
| obviously could not do it on the same scale; they also
| suffered from blocks on free circulation of workers, imposed
| on Romania and Bulgaria on accession precisely on the back of
| the experience with Poland. These blocks were only lifted
| about 10 years ago - and significantly increased the lag they
| already had versus the Baltic states (which were allowed to
| join much earlier, largely because of strategic German
| interests that did not apply to Romania and Bulgaria).
| username332211 wrote:
| > A simpler explanation is that you swapped cause and effect:
| it's the countries where the economy struggled, where their
| people regret leaving their previous socialist economy.
|
| That's a simpler explanation, indeed. It's also wrong.
|
| Take the 2 examples of GP. In Bulgaria, the first elections
| after the first president after the fall of the dictatorship
| was Petar Mladenov, a former politburo member. The first
| parliamentary elections were similarly won by the communist
| party.
|
| In Yugoslavia, Milosevic remained leader for decades.
|
| In both cases the "nostalgia" had already set in before
| anyone had the chance to experience any I'll effects caused
| by democracy.
| soundarana wrote:
| You also need to take religion into account - Catholic vs
| Orthodox.
|
| Orthodox countries are statistically more corrupt due to
| relation to God and it's translation to relation to authority.
| This is well researched.
| keiferski wrote:
| That's a pretty big claim and I'd be curious to see this
| research. I think you'd have a hard time untangling the
| communist effect (and earlier Ottoman effect) on Orthodox
| states to make any kind of deeper argument here.
| soundarana wrote:
| One sample:
|
| > Religion plays a significant role in influencing
| corruption levels [26,[29], [30], [31], [32], [33]]. While
| all religions encourage good moral conduct and ethical
| behavior, studies show that different religions are
| associated with varying levels of corruption. Notably,
| countries whose primary religions are hierarchical
| religions such as Catholic Christianity (Catholicism),
| Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and Islam, tend to have
| higher corruption levels, particularly in comparison to
| Protestant Christian countries [21,30,[34], [35], [36],
| [37]]. Supporting this claim, [30] found that corruption
| levels are lowest in countries with a Protestant majority
| and highest in countries with an Orthodox Christian
| majority.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10360949/
|
| To disentagle communism you can look at 1800. But there you
| have other confounders (colonialism, industrialization,
| feudalism...)
| keiferski wrote:
| But how many of these Orthodox countries have been
| Orthodox countries officially for more than a few
| decades? I'm struggling to think of any besides Greece.
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| Lebanon never got communism and the country was founded
| as largely a Catholic and Orthodox project, but it still
| has considerable corruption. (Not defending the OP's
| claim, just offering another data point.)
| njs12345 wrote:
| Confessionalism is probably just as large a confounder as
| communism in this context though..
| bojan wrote:
| Different iterations of the Serbian state have been
| Orthodox since the 12th century. The entire Orthodox part
| of the Balkans is in that range as well.
| keiferski wrote:
| But the question is concerning studies done recently, not
| centuries ago. So I think the only way to determine if
| Orthodoxy leads to "more corrupt" states would be to
| analyze one that _wasn 't_ something un-Orthodox (e.g.,
| socialist Yugoslavia) for the last half-century.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Huh, Orthodoxy is very old and widespread. Ofc during
| Communism, it tended to be suppressed, but as a bedrock
| of the society, Orthodoxy definitely prevails in Serbia,
| Rumania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Belarus and Russia at
| least.
|
| Ukraine is more complicated, a nation sewn together from
| very different regions; Greek Catholics are an important
| minority, mostly present in the formerly Austro-Hungarian
| western part of the country, which also seems to be the
| most nationalist one.
| keiferski wrote:
| Presumably these studies have been done recently, not two
| centuries ago, so I'm not sure how useful they are in
| determining that Orthodox states are "more corrupt."
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am not sure either, but I wouldn't rule it out either.
| Caesaropapism was probably, on the net, a negative
| shaping force in societies which indulged in it.
|
| In the world of Islam, the Shi'a system of ayatollahs is
| structurally fairly close to Christian Orthodox Churches,
| and the Iranian theocracy which builds on it is corrupt
| beyond belief.
|
| That said, it probably makes sense to study why some
| countries are somewhat less corrupt or how they managed
| to keep corruption in check. Corruption seems to be
| fairly widespread across space and time, one of the
| universal blights of mankind.
| wooque wrote:
| All studies analyzing countries as a whole are flawed.
| First of all, it's low sample size, there are 200
| something countries. Secondly, countries are complex
| systems with thousands if not more variables, that are
| impossible to account for, so any finding is incidental
| at best.
| doneata wrote:
| Maybe relevant, from Conversations with Tyler (Ep. 184, with
| David Bentley Hart): COWEN: Let's say Poland,
| Slovenia, Czechia, which have a lot of Catholicism in their
| backgrounds -- they seem to be converging on Western norms,
| living standards much more than, say, the EU members to the
| East: Bulgaria, Romania. HART: Well, they had
| certain advantages to begin with, too, but better relations.
| Again, I don't think it has any particular... To be honest,
| Polish Catholicism is basically culturally very much like
| Slavic Orthodoxy. There, you're going to find that
| culturally, Catholicism and Orthodoxy are closer to one
| another in many ways than Catholicism in the East is with
| Catholicism in the West. Trying to draw causal
| ties between what are very complex social histories, I just
| think is a mistake. There's no way of saying one way or the
| other. Greek democracy flourished in the modern age for a
| while after Greek independence in the early 19th century, and
| Greece remains Orthodox, too. Even more than Poland, it is
| committed to a set of real democratic norms. In Poland, there
| are stronger reactionary forces at present than there are in
| Greece.
|
| and also from Ep. 192, with Jacob Mikanowski:
| MIKANOWSKI: [...] I think that idea of an Orthodox disease is
| maybe a figment of geography more than a deeply cultural
| matrix that we think. I'm not -- I think we could be
| optimistic about Croatia and Romania simultaneously. Bulgaria
| maybe too. I'm not sure that I believe in a kind of Orthodox
| curse. I think it has more to do with how things shook up
| internally in former Yugoslavia and where those countries are
| in relationship to that industrial core of Germany, Austria,
| Switzerland.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yeah, I also don't think I'd really call Czechia a place
| with a "lot of Catholicism in its background." It was a
| hostile top-down imposition from the Austrians, with the
| consequence that Czechs are largely agnostic/areligious
| today.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republi
| c
| pjc50 wrote:
| Some of ex-Yugoslavia (mostly Croatia) is doing rather well.
| But the Yugoslavs _did_ have oppositional identity: it 's just
| that their identities were the ones from before WW2 and even
| WW1. The lifting of Communism wound the clock straight back to
| the smoking gun of Gavrilo Princep, and the place tore itself
| apart over nationalism and religion again.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yes Croatia (along with Slovenia) is a good example of a
| place that has a strong oppositional attitude toward the
| previous communist era. My impression is that Croatians want
| nothing to do with the Yugoslav era and much prefer to be an
| extension of Catholic Europe / the EU. Compare that to Serbia
| which is still trying to be unaligned, just as Yugoslavia
| was.
| sensanaty wrote:
| As a Serb, I wouldn't really describe Serbia as being
| unaligned/centrist. The corrupt politicians (I wouldn't
| dare call them people) in the gov't itself eat from the
| laps of Russia because the West = Evil for some nebulous
| reason that nobody quite understands anymore (slightly
| exaggerating, it's mostly to do with Kosovo and NATO
| involvement in the Yugo wars in the 90s but most of the
| youth don't give a shit about that anymore), while the
| youth, at least in the bigger cities, tend to support the
| EU and want Serbia to join them one day if we're to have
| any hope of advancement.
|
| At the same time they're also selling the country to the
| highest bidder, which for now are various Arab states like
| the UAE and the Saudis (lookup the Belgrade waterfront as
| an example), though there's also lots of Chinese money
| flowing into the pockets of the politicians as well.
|
| It's a horrifically corrupt country with legitimate war
| criminals and their leashed dogs (like current PM Vucic)
| still holding the reigns, trying to scam and bruteforce
| their way to as much money as they can muster before the
| inevitable happens. Meanwhile it experiences insane levels
| of brain drain as anyone sensible and with the means to (my
| parents in the 80s and myself and pretty much everyone else
| in my family now included) gets the fuck out and never
| looks back twice.
|
| Mind you, myself and most Serb diaspora I know don't want
| anything to do with the place. I was born and grew up in
| Indonesia and have visited Serbia a handful of times at
| most, so it's not a country I'd call home in any sense of
| the word. Even then, it still depresses me how hopeless the
| situation seems for anyone living there, as relayed to me
| by the few friends and family that are still stuck there
| with no way out.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I find this extremely true. Hungary has a neutral/good memory
| of Soviet times.
|
| Despite oppression, people felt more safe, because there were
| clear guidelines to life in general. If you adhered to them,
| you had a boring and regulated life. Everyone had a job (it was
| mandatory to work), and most people could afford to own a
| holiday home in the countryside.
|
| The "state" provided a life where you played along the rules
| and with minimum input you reaped maximum rewards. That's
| difficult to duplicate in a capitalistic scenario.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Hungary was also way more liberal, than east germany for
| example, which practiced Stalinism till the very end (but
| still we have people nostalgic for that).
| noir_lord wrote:
| As someone from the UK with a Hungarian partner - you pretty
| much nailed it.
|
| The older members of her family look back with fondness on
| that period in time which sounds strange to someone from a
| western country but I can sort of understand it - some of it
| is just the nostalgia of youth but some of it is I think
| caused because the freedom to make choices comes with the
| requirement to live with your choices.
|
| When the state keeps the safety rail up in where you live,
| where you work and how you spend your leisure time you have a
| clear path towards how to live your life - which is a
| comfortable if stifled existence.
|
| That said, the younger diaspora have a different way of
| looking at the world - many left to move to other EU
| countries because they wanted to avoid that nostalgia.
|
| That said I truly love visiting Hungary, the history, art and
| food is amazing, the people are warm and friendly and the
| countryside is staggeringly beautiful (as is the Balaton).
|
| It's certainly on my list of places to suggest people visit.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Wasn't there a bloody rebellion against the Soviets in 1956
| in Hungary?
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| The nostalgia is for the period _after_ 1956. While the
| USSR and Warsaw Pact helpers succeeded in putting down the
| Hungarian uprising, they had to manage the discontent in
| the country so that it wouldn't happen again. (Moreover,
| the Hungarian uprising was fed by frustration at
| specifically the Stalinist regime forced on Hungary, but
| Stalin's death was eventually followed by a thaw even in
| the USSR.)
|
| So, for the remaining thirty years of socialism, Hungarians
| found it easier to travel abroad, publish literature or
| present art and music that was previously forbidden, and
| there was even some limited private enterprise. In rankings
| of which countries had it best in the Eastern Bloc, Hungary
| is usually at or near the top.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| It's more complicated than that, you are ignoring some
| significant facts.
|
| First of all, Poland, your example, has major human rights
| issues.
|
| Even ignoring the LGBT issues (the so-called "lgbt free zones"
| in Poland), Poland has practically abolished abortion rights.
| Abortion has been denied to Ukrainian women refugees that were
| rape victims.
|
| Amnesty International: _Access to abortion was further limited.
| Criminal charges were used to curtail freedom of expression.
| The authorities continued to erode the independence of the
| judiciary. Freedom of peaceful assembly was restricted.
| Violations of LGBTI rights persisted_.
|
| Ironically under the Soviet Union Poland was one of the first
| Countries in the whole Europe (and probably the World) to have
| legal abortion, because communist countries did not have to
| please the Catholic Church (or any church).
|
| _Under Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union became the first
| modern state in legalizing abortions on request -- the law was
| first introduced in the Russian SFSR in 1920_
|
| So there's that.
|
| The second issue is nationalism, mainly far right nationalism,
| that spread throughout Europe from the former eastern block,
| that was once put under control by the Soviets.
|
| AfD in Germany, Sweden Democrats in Sweden (despite the name
| they have roots in white nationalist and neo-Nazi parties),
| Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom in the Netherlands,
| Giorgia Meloni and FdI in Italy, Vox in Spain etc. etc.
|
| Look at Milosevic for an example gone really bad, former
| leftist, he joined ranks with far-right nationalists extremists
| and things went south.
|
| A very popular representative right now in Europe is Viktor
| Orban in Hungary, who took a more moderate approach but is
| still a far-right conservative dictator-wannabe who's causing
| lots of troubles to the EU.
|
| All of the aforementioned far-right parties in Europe are
| allied to, or close friends with, Orban.
|
| Third: the so called Visegrad Group formed by Czech Republic,
| Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, has strong ties to Germany, which
| in turn means they sustain German economy by importing their
| goods (combined, they are the second largest export market for
| Germany) and vice versa.
|
| Last, but not least, the EU has invested a lot of money in
| those Countries and sustained their economy to keep them in,
| even though their politics have raised more than an eyebrow.
|
| So it's like the end of WW2, by looking at the numbers one
| could think that the war produced the economic growth in
| Europe, but it actually was the Marshall Plan.
|
| p.s. Poland is far from being one of the 3 major economies in
| Europe
| puszczyk wrote:
| > Ironically under the Soviet Union Poland was one of the
| first Countries in the whole Europe (and probably the World)
| to have legal abortion
|
| >> the law was first introduced in the Russian SFSR in 1920
|
| Poland was never part of the Soviet Union. It became
| socialist and part of the eastern block only after WW2, so I
| doubt the legal abortion date.
|
| Also I mean, yeah the eastern block was quite progressive in
| some ways, but human rights were not one of them. Some of the
| gain were hugely offset by the millions of people who were
| tortured and killed by the system. Also much more blood
| thirsty in the Soviet Union than in Communist Poland.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Quoting here
|
| _In 1932 the new Penal Code legalised abortion only when
| there were medical reasons and, for the first time in
| Europe, when the pregnancy resulted from a criminal act.
| This made Poland the first country in Europe outside the
| Soviet Union to legalize abortion in cases of rape and
| threat to maternal health._
|
| In 1920 Lenin legalized abortion in the Russian Federation,
| not in Poland.
|
| > but human rights were not one of them
|
| Poland has major human rights issues right now, in 2023, as
| a member of the EU.
|
| Stricter laws about the abortion rights have started
| popping up in 2011 and the latest reform is from 2021. They
| are quite bad, they basically abolished abortion for 98% of
| the cases it was performed and for the rest of the cases
| the waits are so long that it becomes virtually impossible.
| jlangenauer wrote:
| I was born in Australia and live in Germany, and I think I see
| something of the same: in both countries, there is no sense of
| purpose, no raison d'etre. There is no national project beyond
| managing a series of externally-imposed and self-inflicted
| crises, and no obvious direction for the future to guide the
| decisions taken today.
|
| So our politics (in both countries) becomes reactive and
| unanchored, solving whatever problem seems most pressing today,
| and ultimately devoid of meaning. What do individuals do in such
| an environment? They look after themselves, they partake in
| consumerism, they try to protect themselves against things the
| state can no longer be bothered to. It's all very nihilistic, and
| thus the deep anomie that seems to have infected most Western
| societies, and the younger generations most of all.
| afarrell wrote:
| My purpose is to care for the people I can as I learn to love
| and be loved.
|
| It is not the job of the nation-state to give people a deep
| sense of purpose. That is a job for a church, temple, or other
| spiritual community. Governments which try to do that job tend
| to do badly, sometimes with monstrous results. They ought be
| separate.
| neffy wrote:
| Let me suggest that the reason you label the church as the
| body responsible for the deep sense of purpose, is that the
| Church in all societies used to be, and in some cases still
| is, the Government. Europe's cathedrals were the middle-ages
| equivalent of work programs. (All those church tithes had to
| be spent on something.)
|
| It has also done that job spectacularly badly at times.
| arp242 wrote:
| It seems to me that historically, "the church, temple, or
| other spiritual community" filling that role has come with
| all the same downsides as the nation-state filling that role.
| And that's not a comment about religion - _any_ organisation
| is at risk of abuse of that type because that 's just how
| humans and organisations work.
|
| And fully agree with "care for the people I can as I learn to
| love and be loved", but at the same time people do need some
| sense of "community", "togetherness", and "we're all in it
| together"-ness, especially in times when things are perhaps
| not going so well, and I do feel that's rather been lost.
| afarrell wrote:
| Any organization made of humans is indeed fallible and
| corruptible. I have heard some dark stories of this. They
| are not mine to tell.
|
| Still, the people who say they are trying to uphold a
| responsibility are more likely to do so with care than
| those who are trying to do something else.
|
| If a father needs someone to watch his 4-year-old daughter,
| is it wiser to drop her off at a daycare or at a post
| office logistics warehouse?
| arp242 wrote:
| Every organisation attracts all sorts of people with
| different motivations, interests, desires, which often
| conflict within the organisation. I don't think there are
| big differences there. Daycares and post offices are
| narrowly defined specialist organisations, not broad wide
| organisations such as the church or government.
|
| And besides, I don't think churches can be a general
| solution to sense of purpose or community, because it
| would exclude the growing majority of secular people who
| don't really have any religious affiliation, or are
| explicitly agnostic/atheist. You need ... something else
| for that, something more secular. I don't really know
| what that would be.
|
| And let's not view the past with too much rose-coloured
| glasses either, as religion could be ugly business just
| as much as nationalism can. A famous example is Tolkien's
| mother, who converted from Anglicism to Catholicism and
| was pretty much ostracized and consigned to poverty by
| her family (her husband died of illness when Tolkien was
| about two). A Catholic priest took Tolkien in and that's
| how he got his education so the church/religion isn't all
| bad in this story, but there was a lot of needless
| misery, and he was "saved" by a stroke of good fortune.
|
| I remember this type of stuff from my grandfather as well
| (in the Netherlands). Their house burned down during the
| war and after the war they relocated to the next village,
| which was protestant instead of catholic (or the reverse?
| I forgot) and were ostracized because of that. Especially
| in the context of post-occupation Netherlands this was
| double ridiculous because you'd think that these kind of
| small differences would fade away, but there you have it.
| One of the reasons they ended up moving to the city.
| personomas wrote:
| The states of Germany and Austria take away a persons purpose
| because these states are very authoritative and oppressive.
| Governments shouldn't try to give people a purpose, but they
| should develop a country via laws that enable or encourage
| its people to find purpose. Socialism does the opposite, as
| it's based on the logic of taking away from people who have,
| and giving to those who don't, which means taking away from
| those people who found purpose, and giving to those who don't
| and usually don't seek purpose but instead search for
| temporarily pleasures like alcohol.
| derstander wrote:
| > it's based on the logic of taking away from people who
| have, and giving to those who don't, which means taking
| away from those people who found purpose, and giving to
| those who don't and usually don't seek purpose but instead
| search for temporarily pleasures like alcohol
|
| I'm with you in your opinion that government shouldn't try
| to give people purpose but I think the last part of your
| argument is an overreach.
|
| You're conflating purpose with making money. They're not
| the same. Counterexample: Vincent van Gogh. His purpose was
| clearly art but he did not see professional success while
| alive. If you don't consider Van Gogh's purpose to be
| something like painting or art then I'd suggest you're not
| using the word as it is commonly defined.
|
| Also I'd suggest that it's unfair to paint the poor broadly
| as not seeking purpose and instead searching for temporary
| pleasures. I have simultaneously known both an economically
| struggling person who refrains from drugs and alcohol and a
| well-to-do person who is a functional alcoholic.
|
| Certainly alcoholism can make people lose money,
| relationships, etc. But it does not follow that simply
| abstaining from these things will make one wealthy.
| personomas wrote:
| Of course they're not the same, but before people can
| developer higher spiritual or social purposes they have
| to develop their material life. For most people, on top
| of what I just side in the previous sentence, developing
| their material life itself is a journey that leads them
| to developing and furthering their social and family life
| which then leads to a higher spiritual life.
|
| Point being Vincent van Gogh who was "Born into an upper-
| middle-class family" according to Wiki.
|
| > Also I'd suggest that it's unfair to paint the poor
| broadly as not seeking purpose and instead searching for
| temporary pleasures.
|
| Of course, but I was talking about those poor people who
| live their lives by becoming dependent on the social
| states without trying to further their lives. I'm not
| talking about poor people in general.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Hundreds of millions of people around the world somehow manage
| to live perfectly decent lives dedicating themselves to the
| personal purposes of their choice and to giving their loved
| ones a bright future. Much of this is what you might deride as
| "consumerism". It's generally a good thing to aspire to, and
| without having to have some collectivized state-level notion of
| "purpose" crammed into one's life.
|
| No thank you. For those who want such wider purpose, by all
| means, aspire away while leaving others alone to live their
| peaceful private ends, but it's absurd to think that a country
| "needs" it, or some crisis to be a good place to live. A
| country only needs stable, law-abiding, transparent government
| for decency. Considering how many places lack even that, it
| should be purpose enough in a basic sense, with a firm onus on
| the bureaucrats to provide it.
|
| If anything, bullshit about purpose and so-called national
| projects has been used to justify centuries of horrific
| repression and destructiveness while a select few leaders
| impose thier specific idea of what's needed on those they can
| dictate to.
| macNchz wrote:
| The article being discussed describes the collective sense of
| purpose in Bulgaria as being at its peak post-communism, when
| the populace was excited to be free from repression and able
| to try new things, start businesses etc. You're basically
| agreeing with the author.
|
| It does seem, however, that there are many concerning trends
| in social measures in western countries these days,
| particularly among things that have traditionally given
| people a sense of purpose on an individual level. So it may
| behoove us to discuss and think about why that may be, and
| what we can do collectively to inspire the kind of societal
| outlook that is likely to promote a different trend in those
| measures.
| Vektorceraptor wrote:
| In Bulgaria, the people are able to agree, that life is shit.
| Why can't we agree in the west?
|
| I mean - why is there always someone who is eager to prove you
| wrong? What has western society become? So many people feel the
| same, yet they can't get together to agree ... why?
| bratbag wrote:
| Maybe not as many people feel this as you think.
| Vektorceraptor wrote:
| I don't believe that. I don't think the number is
| important, nor does it correspond to my experience. If
| people were truly happy, they wouldn't be in constant fear
| and fighting each other publicly. The division is pretty
| clear.
|
| And a honest talk with people who even percieve themselves
| as happy, also reveals their concerns and worries and
| feelings of discomfort.
|
| But my point was more of this kind: why do western
| societies struggle so much with unhappyness and discomfort?
| The compulsive therapeutic approach only came with the
| advent of psychoanalysis and happiness guide literature at
| the beginning of the 20th century. Today everything has to
| be translated into positive psychology. For me, this is one
| of the greatest deceptions against yourself. Because the
| political enemy is evidently unbearable to the other party
| - so facts you can't translate into something positive
| exist.
|
| Real happyness is above such contradictions. Real decadence
| is ignoring them. The west has become very decadent and I
| can't see any real happyness in decadence.
| grecy wrote:
| I was once told "Australian's don't know how to live, they just
| die slowly". I've spent a lot of time thinking about that.
|
| (For context, I was born there, but left almost 20 years ago. I
| recently spent 18 months exploring the whole country, and sadly
| I now agree with the above quote)
| flextheruler wrote:
| I think what you're getting at is that societies define
| themselves based on external threats.
|
| Psychologically speaking on a group level it is much easier to
| say what we are not and define ourselves based on that than it
| is to develop an internal definition of ourselves.
|
| You can see this in the history of national identities
| coalescing around external threats such as the American
| identity being sidelined for state identity until the
| revolution.
|
| This is a well-studied phenomenon and contributes to the post-
| colonial failed states with arbitrary borders. Remove the
| colonial power and you've removed the national identity and
| cause massive fragmentation and dysfunction.
|
| I'm not sure there is a solution to this in a nuclear world as
| it is in our biology and has served us well up until the point
| where we developed genocidal tools and processes which
| justifiable scare the developed world into relenting from
| defining external groups as major antagonists.
|
| As much as a strong national identity can give great cohesion
| and confidence it can now also teeter the world or parts of it
| into apocalypse which it has basically done twice now and
| loomed over us a third time with the Cold War. I sense we have
| a new Cold War now and it has been looming for almost decade.
| To me this is our great filter and I am forcefully optimistic
| we can figure something out because the alternative is utter
| destruction.
| Vektorceraptor wrote:
| I am a Bulgarian, born in 1986 and immigrated to Austria in 1997.
| But it pains and scares me that an exiled Bulgarian now wants to
| take on the Bulgarian collective with postmodern, cosmopolitan
| and American ideas. The cycles he describes exist mostly in the
| minds of postmodern cosmopolitans. And these arise because
| cosmopolitans in reality cannot produce anything other than
| ideology and services. Yet the terrible and boring every day
| bread still comes from the bakery! And since you can't invent a
| new ideology or service or produce a new work of art every day
| (except for journalists of course, who mastered the producing of
| "nothingness" every single day), at some point you get lost in
| pondering and start looking for the culprit. Of course, the first
| scapegoat is politics, society, people - always the others. Just
| because you can't free yourself from your nihilistic mental
| wheel, you have to conjure up and condemn the entire collective.
| Herein lies the birth of all 'structural arguments', I claim, ad
| hoc. 'My dissatisfaction must have structural reasons, otherwise
| I wouldn't be dissatisfied.' The eternal lamentation of the
| upper-urban-class cosmopolitans.
|
| No, I know and admire people for whom such complaints are
| distant, even annoying. People who don't have time for it. And
| you can just as freely and willingly decide to lead a calm and
| regulated life. This life is not a danger to humanity, as the
| postmodernists and cosmopolitans have always wanted to tell us,
| and I do not want Bulgaria to be 'Americanized' that way. I would
| rather listen to a Kaba Gaida in the mountains than have to read
| through a capitalist-cosmopolitan lament. The former gives me
| power and strength, a connection to the world, the latter just
| makes me sick and weak.
|
| I know Bulgaria has its issues, but losing its uniqueness to
| solve them, is for me the bigger issue.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| How do you define a "postmodern cosmopolitan"? You must have a
| very specific definition in mind, but without it your comment
| seems to lack substance.
|
| For example, how do I know if I'm postmodern or not?
| bgrn89 wrote:
| The poster is complaining about the city dwelling
| intelligentsia being out of touch with the everyday values
| and ambitions of the 'common' man. This is due to liberal
| Western ideals apparently. To get the same effect for a US
| context, you could replace 'postmodern cosmopolitan' with
| 'urban coastal elite'.
| Vektorceraptor wrote:
| No, not only the "ambitions of the common man", but of man
| or life itself, no matter if common or exceptional (if
| there is such a difference at all here). I'm living in
| Austria, and I feel that I have to leave this country. I
| want to move back to Bulgaria or somewhere else, where life
| is wild, natural and rough. The west has become tame and
| sick, and I got exhausted of it. I don't fit in this
| society anymore, and I can't be productive under its
| conditions. But you can't even say that out loud anymore,
| because that means "questioning the whole western ideology"
| and suddenly someone feels threatened, and myself becomes a
| criminal. I'm tired of a society where the fears of person
| A makes' person B a criminal, and of people lacking any
| decisiveness or spontaneity - and being afraid of
| spontaneous and decisive people. If wester culture is
| anything, then it is "fake". Probably the reason, why the
| author, "the rootless cosmopolitan" moved back to Bulgaria,
| and found again a sense of feeling home. I claim that the
| West has forgotten what "home" means. Western culture has
| become empty and fake - and I'm tired to explain the most
| obvious thing to so many people - and in the end, they
| don't believe you anyway. They really believe, they are
| part of something bigger, are very important and are going
| to be famous or something. Intellectual vanity and luxury
| and bragging.
|
| And someone knows, very well, how to define himself and
| where he stands. The question is not how to objectively
| categorize or define you, but rather how and what you have
| to say about yourself.
|
| edit: in Bulgaria, there is a common truth: life in
| Bulgaria is shit. But it is impossible to agree on the same
| truth in western societies, because that's the strong myth
| they rely on - that they are better, than the rest of the
| world. Do you get what I mean? Anyone who is dissatisfied
| with the west must be out of their minds.
|
| There are things that have now become impossible in the
| West. Simply expressing unsatisfaction has become a danger
| for the status quo or the state.
| hydrok9 wrote:
| I find your views very interesting and that they resonate
| with me. are you in fact planning to move back to
| Bulgaria?
| Vektorceraptor wrote:
| Thank you. Feels good to know others think or feel alike.
| It's not concrete yet, but I'm thinking about it out
| loud. The last time I applied for a job, I applied
| abroad. I don't feel fully ready to move to Bulgaria yet,
| but maybe later.
|
| Most of my childhood Bulgarian friends were in the UK for
| many years, and some have returned. Well, I don't know
| yet... but it sounds nice.
| daemonk wrote:
| I appreciate the perspective. There appears to be a lot
| of commonalities between your viewpoint and themes of
| classic Russian literature.
| woah wrote:
| > There are things that have now become impossible in the
| West. Simply expressing unsatisfaction has become a
| danger for the status quo or the state.
|
| What? Expressing unsatisfaction is one the primary genres
| of social media post.
| arter wrote:
| I have never in my life felt that countries matter. That a person
| might be better off in one country than another. As such I cannot
| understand the feelings in this article even though I am
| Bulgarian and know the events by heart.
|
| My parents spent 15 years of their life in Spain and hated every
| second of it. They hated it so much because I wasn't there with
| them. And they had a horrinle opinion of the culture and daily
| life there. While in opposite my 2 uncles that went with them and
| took their own kids with them, like it there and have never went
| back.
|
| I with half the life span of my parents believe that personal
| issues and events completely eclipse any effect the political and
| cultural environment has. For me political and/or cultural events
| were just a new conversation topic in my social circles.
| Something to be part of because well everyone is part of it.
|
| All my life I've been told that there is opportunity abroad,
| there is opportunity in the capital, in X large city. But
| opportunity isn't somewhere it just arises sometimes. I know for
| sure that opportunity doesn't come while sitting in one place you
| don't like.
|
| But what I am trying to say is that: cities and countries aren't
| really colored in a specific way. They aren't dull, closed,
| eventful and such, they just are places. They have as much effect
| on an individual as does a single individual on them. Even so
| undoubtedly some places have a personal color to us - my parents
| will never again try to work in Spain and it would not end well
| if they did. I myself will never go back to the town of my high
| school, but others like it there.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am a Czech with a Bulgarian father and I understood the
| feelings in this article perfectly. The 90s were pretty similar
| all across the former Eastern Bloc, excluding Russia proper; a
| time of massive change and also hope for a better future.
|
| Well, better future is here, but there is nothing more to
| aspire to anymore. No radical improvement to hope for. All
| changes are now marginal and usually translate to "more stuff
| in shops".
|
| Also, I would say that countries and cities are _plenty_
| colored. There is a world apart between, say, cosmopolitan St.
| Petersburg and Novosibirsk. If the mentality of the former held
| sway in Russia, there probably would be no war.
|
| (And yeah, I know that Putin's rise to power happened in
| Petersburg first, but he didn't really fit into the spirit of
| the city and now dwells elsewhere.)
| kubanczyk wrote:
| > a world apart between, say, cosmopolitan St. Petersburg and
| Novosibirsk
|
| Please tell more? If there were/are any drastic differences,
| I wasn't seeing them emanating here onto Poland.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Ofc those Russian people who are unhappy with the status
| quo in Putin's Reich will shut up right now. The propaganda
| that streams into the world is coordinated and one of the
| prevailing motifs is "united Holy Russia against all the
| enemies".
|
| But Putin's mafia is still somewhat afraid to start
| mobilization in Petersburg and Moscow. Both cities are a
| potential mutiny threat, full of young people including
| students, and not easy to subdue if shit hits the fan.
|
| Peterburg is the more global of those two, as contact with
| Sweden, Finland and Estonia was extensive prior to the war,
| while the location of the city with respect to the core of
| Russia is a bit peripheral. The ports of Helsinki and
| Tallinn used to have a thick schedule of ferries there.
|
| Russia as a whole cannot become part of the EU, not in 30
| years at least, possibly ever. But, in the improbable case
| of St. Petersburg seceding from the empire, we could
| integrate them a lot better than some Balkan states.
| cstross wrote:
| Here, in case you don't want to read the entire piece, here's the
| conclusion it's all there to lead up to:
|
| _Today, we have become citizens of a global, Brezhnevian
| capitalist state, which, in its failure to provide an inspiring
| frontier--gone are the days of Kennedy's "New Frontiers" or
| Obama's "Change We Can Believe In"--has slowly ossified and
| wrapped back upon itself. My feeling is that all the troubles
| we've been witnessing over the last decade--Trumpism, Brexit, the
| rise of nationalism all over Europe, Russia's virulent
| imperialism--are attempts to disrupt not just the dominant
| political systems, but the zone of eternal repetition._
|
| (And when the author mentions a Brezhnevian state, bear in mind
| he actually grew up in one: he knows whereof he speaks.)
| bgrn89 wrote:
| I think the authors argument is fascinating; the idea that
| Western capitalism is self-defeating precisely because it is so
| successful in ensuring political and social stability, thereby
| stifling the people living under it. However, I wonder if
| 'Trumpism, Brexit, rising nationalism, etc.' are better
| explaining within the context of wealth inequality. In other
| words by capitalism failing to provide benefits to subset of
| the population while still keeping the status quo.
| foobarian wrote:
| I feel that part of the problem is that we kind of ran out of
| advancements and reached a plateau. It's not capitalism's
| fault this happened (other than getting us there); but
| unfortunately it's possible that capitalism with its focus on
| growth is not compatible with that kind of regime and it will
| break. Hopefully something else big will come up and unblock
| more growth for a while (Starship + space colonization?)
| kubanczyk wrote:
| I feel like this article could be a lot better, but it stopped in
| its metaphorical tracks, turned its turrets and started shooting
| darts at US readers. All for the sake of controversy/publicity.
|
| But TFA's points can traverse the cheapness easily, just a small
| push:
|
| > The States felt like an old place, weirdly older than Europe, a
| place where, for all its breathless movement, time seemed to have
| stopped. There was too much of everything: rules, work, wealth,
| poverty, guns, art.
|
| Many HN readers are probably familiar with how does it feel to
| start a greenfield project. The magic that happens on a
| greenfield project is not so much about your beliefs or your open
| mind, it's more about _all the other people_ mentally unblocking
| you and not putting spokes in your wheel.
|
| So, yeah, if the whole hierarchy crumbles and entire lifetimes of
| curated opinions, thoughts, social norms become garbage, people
| let others be. For a time.
|
| I'm just pointing out that there is a specific recipe offered
| here for unblocking "the time", and that recipe has a huge cost.
|
| > Perhaps that was why the Communist regimes all across Eastern
| and Central Europe collapsed in the final run. Not so much
| because of their beleaguered economies, although that was an
| important factor, but because no one believed anymore.
|
| Hah, that alone? Roman Empire was falling for hundreds of years
| (thousand, actually, if you count Byzantium).
|
| Actually two factors were needed for Communist downfall.
|
| 1. Lack of belief.
|
| 2. A better model how to prosper, proven and readily available
| just across the border (or two borders).
| tuzemec wrote:
| As someone who's a bit older than the author and from the same
| corner of the world - this was a really nice piece.
|
| Brought a lot of memories from the early 90s. The blackouts, the
| queues for bread and fruits, and the empty shelves... I was a kid
| back then and I didn't had any perspective. But I wander how my
| parents dealt with all that. I can't recall they complaining too
| much.
| BAHKA wrote:
| I can barely understand the logic behind "Hurtling toward a black
| hole, we seem to be endlessly stuck, horizonless, in the event
| horizon." and "Ukraine has turned into a rallying call for much
| of Europe, a vicarious way (dangerous, but not too dangerous) to
| experience once again the forward vector of time. "
|
| Integrate Ukraine to EU and after that... What? "Hurtling toward
| a black hole..." again, but this time with Ukraine? ;-)
| woah wrote:
| The hip neighborhoods in western cities are no longer secret
| and have become expensive and have a lot of tourists. Also, the
| author is approaching middle age.
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