Orthodox SIDS

"Woke Beria", who may or may not be a Stalinist himself, explains why villagers accepted Stalin. This despite the famines - which might have been forgiven in part because of the Beria purges. Answer: before the Soviets, life on the farm was terrible. Yes even post-serfdom.

I recommend every "pro-life" Catholic in Colorado read this before attending their scheduled Federally-administered beatdown 4 April. From which whoopin', this Bishop will abandon you.

Woke Beria warns that Olga Tian-Shanskaia's 1902 ethnography, translated as Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia (after 1917 one assumes) is a damned grim read and, if the Twitter thread is anything to go by, we're Not Disappointed. Alexander II left the Russian peasantry better than they were under serfdom but the bar was just THAT low. And that was just on the face of things. Over the next - and last - Tsars after him came a lot of maternal suffocation.

For fin-de-siècle Russia, contraception and even abortion weren't so much a moral issue. Promiscuity remained a moral issue but, by that token, uncommon in the villages. It was more that these methods flat didn't work. Honestly, most of the problems started with the legal husband (how good has a vodka-drunk ever been with a condom?). As for "Plan B" up-to-three-months before ensoulment is Justinianic, so it was more that abortion was simply unavailable out in the deep woods and frozen steppe.

The witches-brew in Russian-peasantry Fail would appear to be, in reverse order: the poor options aforementioned; alcohol; a culture of self-loathing amongst the poor. I'd add: improved childrens' health and better farming. Before Alexander II's reforms (and the late-19th-century's revolution in hygiene) marginally-healthy children would simply die on their own; now they'd live, only to impoverish their families. Unless mummy-dearest accidentally misplaced the pillow.

The road to the pillow, I suspect, ran from the psychic ruin of the Russian rural soul.

The Orthodox Church didn't attend Trent. The people still believed in indulgences, their Orthodox equivalent anyway. The aristos and the Tsar kept up the churches; the poor could not. Whether or not the Orthodox priesthood admitted as much - and many saints did try to help or at least minister to the rural poor - the rich were lauded and the poor felt like a burden. This led to booze. Tian-Shanskaia mostly blames the men but if someone really dug for it, they might find some less-documented dysfunction amongst the women as well.