This, of course, is a deeply Marxist idea that, like all Marxist ideas, collapses when confronted with reality. Last week, a survey was released indicating that Russians consider Putin’s greatest achievement to be. . . the way he dramatically improved the economy and – get this – raised the price of oil on the world market.
How can that be, you’ll ask? Easy. The people of Russia find out about the state of the economy not from their wallets but from their TVs.
Remember, people, money is nothing. Ideas are everything. Yesterday Putin told his people that the US is weak and Russia rules the world. And that feeling is much more enjoyable than being able to go buy crap at a store. People only go buy crap at a store because it helps them get a certain idea of themselves in place, anyway.
Clarissa's Blog 
World literature is full of praise for the generic concept of “idea(s).” But when it comes to mob behavior — or on a larger scale, a brainwashed nation’s national policy — people forget the deadly accuracy of this statement by the French philosopher Emile Chartier:
“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”
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\ “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”
Loved that.
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Yes, and you can’t eat nationalism so eventually something has to give.
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\ Remember, people, money is nothing. Ideas are everything.
Haven’t you written about the super-materialistic people of the FSU? How does it work together?
What about materialistic citizens of the third world who aren’t the “spiritual Africans” of the Western imagination, which you wrote about recently in your post on the literature of the crisis? What about economic migrants risking their lives to reach Europe?
I think many expremely poor Russians (f.e. poor village dwellers) haven’t noticed any real changes in their lives, so they repeat what they heard on TV. I doubt Russian businessmen would talk about rising oil prices. If standard of living of most falls significantly, patriotic slogans will stop working at some point.
Btw, people may believe Putin is the key to prevent the current economic situation from becoming even worse. Don’t ask me how it works.
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The Soviet people were so materialistic precisely because they weren’t allowed to develop in any other sphere. Human beings need to want something, have a goal, a life plan. In the absence of everything else, they will choose as their life goal the purchase of an ugly Soviet carpet.
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