Russia - threadbanned users in OP

There are also cultural differences as far as mass portest goes. Russians, save for a sadly all too brief time when they riddled or drove out their aristocracy and czar, live in a culture of a strong man leads and protects us all we have to do is swear allegience to him as Russia personified. A culture that is far more like an old style European feudalism bolstered by the church. Something that Western Europe and her colonies moved away from during the Enlightenment. The French revolution a more bloody example. The "divine right royals" of most of Western Europe saw their power diluted or removed, even if royalist sympathy as a prop of patriotism was retained(our nearest neighbour an example of that).

This didn't happen to nearly the same degree in Russia, if at all. Maybe because such a vast land empire needed that to survive? America took to federalism, invivdualism under one flag and the American Dream(tm) to keep that together. The czar retained the power exercised by his lords/boyars over the mercantile class and peasants. Well right until the people thought sod this and took them down. But the culture remained. So after a while they installed another version of what they were used to in Stalin and faith in communism replaced the church.

Now in war this arrangment(and this was in play in feudal Europe too) generally meant their king and his nobles waged wars, with peasant armies yes, but at some remove. Most peasants were quite distanced from the actual fighting and dying. This was the "agreement" between peasants and kings. We swear fealty and pay our taxes, you do the nasty stuff for us. Then mechanised massed armies and death came along and that shifted things about. In Western democracies the arrangement became this affects us all so you will fight to protect these rights of yours behind people you voted for, or felt like you voted for. In Russia it didn't and the chickens came home to roost when during the Great War the peasants of Russia were being directly affected by massive losses and hardship at home. Cue the Russian Revolution.

Post the Revolution and after a glimmer of hope it was back to a mix of the old feudal behind Uncle Joe, but with nationalist propaganda and zeal on top. Dying for Mother Russia and all that. Something that putin has been pushing over his reign milking the memory of the tens of millions Russian dead in their fight against the Nazis(who Uncle Joe was in bed with before the war dividing up Eastern Europe, but never mind...).

So IMHO this Czarist feudal system of culture is still very much in play within the empire of Russia today and putin has encouraged it as a protection and insulation against dissent. And after the horrific 90's and a serious insecurity within the Russian psyche over being seen as a bunch of failed primitives, he gave them back a semblance of a balanced society and national pride. Note after their failure to take Kyiv and their Special Run Away Operation recently in the east, Russian criticism and there was much, was aimed at his boyars, his generals, anyone but the Czar.

It was also a Special Military Operation where the Russian everyman was like the peasant of old, largely insulated and distanced from it. Especially in his western powerbase of support. They could watch their nightly news, support our boys and our Czar, smash up iphones on Telegram, with the Punch and Judy shows on TV telling them they were against the nazis and the west telling them they were winning against both. Until the cracks became too obvious and putin needed to throw more people at the problem.

The problem for putin with this mobilisation is he's changed that old contract now. It's not just ethnics from Arsebackistan dying for Mother Russia, or paid groups like Wagner, it'll be Oleg and Vasily from your neighbourhood coming back in boxes, or maybe you. On top of sanctions that will bite more and more in his Western powerbase cities. I don't see a Russian Revolution Part Deux, but it's not too unlike how the first one kicked off.