Germany to Pass Japan as Third-Largest Economy, Helped by Weak Yen

Re:Germany to Pass Japan as Third-Largest Economy, Helped by... by keiferski on Tuesday October 24, 2023 @01:15PM (#38002170)

The entire reason Romania had a communist government was because of the Soviet Union. The fact that they later distanced themselves from the USSR doesn't change this fact. That seems like a pretty major Russian cultural influence to me.

Unless you're suggesting that Romanian culture under communism arose independently and had no connection whatsoever to the USSR at any level? It just appeared from the ether, and Romania's presence in an Eastern Europe dominated by the Russian Empire and then USSR made no difference whatsoever, that it's at the same level as Russian influence on Zimbabwe or on Indonesia?

Here's the actual reality: all states are influenced by larger powers in their neighborhood, even the unpopular ones. Especially in Eastern Europe with regards to Russia. It may be unpopular, especially these days and especially in places like Romania, Poland, and Lithuania, but to pretend that somehow these cultures evolved on separate planets is not an intellectually honest position.

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Re:Germany to Pass Japan as Third-Largest Economy, Helped by... by OfSanguineFire on Tuesday October 24, 2023 @01:21PM (#38002246)

Political influence does not equal cultural influence. There are innumerable instances throughout history of powers politically influencing smaller states but without making any significant impact on their culture. Why you keep trying to assert Russian cultural influence on Romania without evincing any actual familiarity with the country, or being able to produce any concrete examples, is baffling. Just admit that you don’t know this region very well and are operating from vague stereotypes.

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Re:Germany to Pass Japan as Third-Largest Economy, Helped by... by keiferski on Tuesday October 24, 2023 @01:29PM (#38002368)

Romanian culture becoming communist didn't happen because of Russian political influence? They just decided to become communist entirely on their own? The Romanian communist government wasn't put into place by the USSR? And all the communist cultural elements in Romania from 1945 to the 1990s didn't exist?

P.S., I live in the region in an ex-Soviet country.

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Re:Germany to Pass Japan as Third-Largest Economy, Helped by... by OfSanguineFire on Tuesday October 24, 2023 @01:37PM (#38002495)

The Romanian Communist party was famously tiny before the war, it was never any major force bringing Russian culture into Romanian culture. While Soviet Russia as World War II victor did elevate that party to rule, that determined only the organization of the state, it did not introduce any distinctly Russian cultural influences into the Romanian population.

Then, the “Communist cultural elements in Romania from 1945 to the 1990s” changed significantly in the 1960s as Romania went its own course. Thereafter, Romanian communism was increasingly blended with Romanian nationalism.[0]

> P.S., I live in the region in an ex-Soviet country.

That doesn’t make you qualified to speak on Romanian culture and history. The Eastern Bloc was not a monoculture, and many countries in the region are poorly understood by their neighbours. Romania is unusual in the region in its culture being marked by two traits besides Greek-aligned Orthodox Christianity: francophilia and dacomania. Those circumstances left very little room for Russian culture to make inroads.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_communism_in_Romania

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Re:Germany to Pass Japan as Third-Largest Economy, Helped by... by keiferski on Tuesday October 24, 2023 @01:52PM (#38002712)

There are innumerable instances throughout history of powers politically influencing smaller states but without making any significant impact on their culture.

Again: you're telling me that communism in Romania didn't happen because of the Soviet Union, and that the Soviets implemented a communist political structure but this had zero effect on the culture? There was no communist culture in Romania? Zero? That's what you just claimed.

You do understand that just because Romania shifted away from the USSR a couple decades later doesn't change the fact that the communist party was still in power and only became in power in the first place because of the USSR?

This is a bit like arguing that Japan has no cultural influence from America, even though America conquered the country and replaced its government with a westernized one.

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Re:Germany to Pass Japan as Third-Largest Economy, Helped by... by OfSanguineFire on Tuesday October 24, 2023 @02:06PM (#38002920)

Viewing the Communist regime in Romania as an example of distinctly Russian culture is questionable inasmuch as it initially claimed to be internationalist, its first years involved a cult of personality of a man from Georgia and then local acolytes of that man, and aside from Russian teaching in schools that (as is well known) had extremely limited impact, it operated entirely through the local language where special Communist terminology was overwhelmingly of French or other Western origin, not from the Russian language.

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