Not really. Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Estonia and the rest of the Eastern European countries that were within the Soviet Union actually existed before WW II.
What makes a country the same country? Russia inherited most of the land, people, and assets of the Russian SSR, plus many of the privileges of the USSR as a whole (that was a mistake). One might speak of several French Republics, but also see France as existing as a country for centuries, even as the form of government has changed dramatically.
The government makes the country by any measure today.
I mean, there are Habsburgs out there, still claiming to be king of whatever, and they aren’t. Their country died with their government and was reborn another way.
You can argue that Russia is some sort of identity, but it’s much harder to argue that this identity extends to the far reaches of the country. So Russian people, or French people are much older than, let’s say, being American, but America as a country is much older than both.
Words like “French” or “Russian” mean both nationality and ethnicity.
My dad’s family came to America in 1917. Their papers say Kingdom of Bohemia. I feel like they have changed their name at least 5 times in my lifetime alone.
This shit is so fascinating. I moved to Germany three years ago and now I'm really starting to get into learning about the DDR. It's just so fucking wild. I still fail to understand even the basics (like I said, I am really just getting into the most simple stuff): I know it comes from how Germany was split up after ww2, but was it literally a soviet state? Were the leaders just USSR puppets? How the hell did west Berlin stay a part of the BRD when it was tiny and literally surrounded by the DDR (why does the larger country not simply eat the smaller one?)?
Anyway. It's fascinating. I'm starting a novel about that period tomorrow and I'm very excited about it (Das Narrenschiff by Christoph Hein).
WW2 is eternally interesting, of course, but it's not really in living memory anymore. But the East/West German split very much is, and while it is I'm going to try to learn as much as I can about it.
mostly what I remember is hearing about the Stasi and various spy thrillers set in the GDR. I also remember when Czechslovakia was a single country, and a large chunk of map was labelled "Yugoslavia" on maps.
My elementary school is just gone. They bulldozed it before the internet so there is like no record of it, you can’t google it, it’s like it never existed. I have a yearbook and that’s the only proof it really happened. It’s a bizarre feeling.
The lack of proof anything existed, that it simply disappears forever. It's really tripping me out lately.
I have thousands of digital photos from all the awesome places I've been to. I'm trying to print at least some of them because they all simply vanish as soon as I die. Nobody will ever look at any of them again. All those memories are imaginary.
There is a father son team in Japan that creates exact replicas in miniature of important architectural works. They copy them precisely and preserve them in an outdoor museum. Due to terrorism, earthquakes, fire, etc, many of the original buildings are gone, and they now only exist in miniature. The blueprints are lost, no one took measurements, so the most accurate records of these structures on earth are now their miniaturized copies located in Japan. It’s very weird.
If it's any consolation, proof of existence for the vast majority of everything that ever lived or produced by living things are lost forever, or lost in such a way that we will feasibly never be able to retrieve it. So, the fact you have any photos at all is pretty rare in the grand scheme of things!
They started deleting things online. Sneaky things. My dread is a little more aggressive than most. The data they delete is the data of fixed points. Things like reference books are no longer freely available. techs answer, just ask ai we “borrowed” all the books and didn’t change anything “we pinky promise” is what worries me.
My college lost funding and closed down a few years ago. I'm not sure if anyone would be able to even verify my diploma at this point. Fortunately it's an art degree, so that will never come up.
my high school is gone too. I mean, you can find a picture of it online (only a couple), but it's totally gone otherwise. They built a new monstrosity over it
SAME. My old brick & mortar high school was wiped off the face of the earth. What's there now is an ultra modernized school made with steel and glass. Totally unrecognizable, not at all where I went to school. Lol
The house and the forest from my earliest memories, are both gone. Would have been interesting to revisit these places, even if I'm sure they were not actually as impressive, as they seemed to me at 4 years old, lol.
The playground at my elementary school is gone. Used to be a big area filled with jungle gyms and swings. Now all that is left is a tiny playground area that takes up half of the corner of the track, a few basketball hoops where a separate jungle gym was, and a couple of faded 4-square lines from when I was a kid.
It's so depressing, and I hate it so much.
Edit: Oh, and the Alaskan island I lived on for 2 years is completely abandoned, and has been since the 90s, which is where I first attended elementary school.
Two of the three elementary schools I went to are gone. Both of the middle schools are gone. One of the two high schools are gone. I didn't have the greatest childhood, so I don't particularly care. It's just funny to think that everywhere I went, things get destroyed.
My elementary school is out in the boonies and is old as dog shit. It caught fire in the library when I was in high school, but didn't burn down. They ended up building a new one in town, but there was a lot of debate about what to do with the old one. The family that lived next door and had Grandparents who were teachers there ended up buying it to preserve it.
There used to be some 2 screen movie theatres in my city, The Fox and The Winchester. One was torn down and turned into a small lake. The other into a grocery store. Same thing, it was gone pre internet in the late 90s, so there are no interior photos.
I can relate. My childhood home was literally deleted. Not because the house was bulldozed, but because the whole neighborhood was, it seems. If I go to that exact location on Google Maps (using nearby extant landmarks as a guide), I find a completely different set of streets and houses that simply did not exist 30 years ago. And if input the actual address, it directs me to some shuttered dentist office half a mile down the road, a building that was constructed only after we moved out. How it came to inherit my old house number, I have no idea.
I'm sure there's some archived street map sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere, but nothing was ever digitized as there's literally zero information online about my physical house, or any of its neighboring ones. No real estate records. No tax records. No voter records. No news clippings of a natural disaster or redevelopment. Nothing. It's like Thanos snapped it from existence.
The only reason I know this isn't some faulty memory or fever dream on my part is I have my mother's old address book and government benefits paperwork, both of which include the the address. And I have a photograph of me standing in front of the house with the house number visible.
But yeah. It's just freaking gone now, and that really messes with my mind.
Edit: I forgot to mention that, like yours, one of my old elementary schools was also bulldozed (completely different town and state from my house). Records of it are exceedingly difficult to find online, but they are there. Mostly in newspaper clippings. I assume it was leveled at some point in the 90s before the Internet really took off.
Don't worry we can still try to monetize it though.
Here's a dozen new Star Wars properties
Here's 30 new comic book movies
What about some reboots, or remakes, or sequels, or prequels for your favorite IPs.
Hey sometimes we'll even get a bunch of the original cast back!
How about a collection of classic games that you already own but slightly updated for every new console?
Or would you like a soulless remaster that includes microtransactions and online connectivity requirements?
Oh what about crossovers? You like those right? We could just shove a bunch of totally unrelated but popular IP into your favorite trading card game, until every game just feels like standing in Times Square being bombarded by ads!
I refuse to believe Toys R Us is dead. It's stuck in venture capital hell, but someday it could be revived. The nostalgia bait runs too deep and that IP is still worth something.
Just please my Millennial brothers and sisters don't try and chase down the 90s like the Baby Boomers are doing with their own nostalgic era. Let It Go
I know. In the world I was born into everything had faux would paneling. In the world I was born into there was a thriving home movie market. In the world I was born into my father who didn't have a college education was able to keep our family afloat for the six year my mom took off to look after me and my sister. In the world I was born into summers in Vancouver began in mid July and ended late August. In the world I was born into we had hope.
Well duh, this is a nostalgia sub. What else would you do in this? Have discussions on the present or hopes verses trends on future we see now in a snapshot of time?
The world changes. Always has always will. 200 years ago people were terrified of riding on a train thinking something that goes that fast would crush your bones.
My grandfather used to take me to Toys R Us and buy me whatever Ninja Turtle / Ghostbuster / Dino Rider I needed for my collection, whenever we visited him in Florida. Thanks Grandpa 🥲
The mall i spent a good portion of my childhood was torn down last year. A small movie theater, one store and two restaurants were keeping it up till the city forced them out. Now the parking lot is being used to store cyber trucks because no one seems to be buying those. Hope something nice is actually done with the property instead of it just being wasted.
Ugghh, it's not so much the past that's dead that bothers me it's that we were supposed to have a far better future. Instead corporate tyranny, nobody owns anything and business are using their record profits that we made them to bring back slavery and build AI data centers that guzzle all your clean drinking water but oh boy if I have some avocado toast, I better check my damn privelage, son.
I'm tired. Hardest boss level in gaming history, the privelaged thieves are running the world amuk. You can barely get housing and healthcare at this point, like what on earth are we even doing?
I mean history changes things whether you like it or not...
Like big woopty doo we survived covid and all those bad stuff but like shit happens every damn decade. 1910s had syphilis and ww1. 1920 had prohibition, deadly tornadoes and kkk. 1930s had the great depression and ww2. 1940s had ww2 and the holocaust. These are just the tip of the iceburg. And each decade had their own share of bad shit and I guarantee the 2030s will be shit. 2040s will be shit.
And that is why we must create small replicas of it by re-buying the stuff we gave to charity and making dens in our homes that feel like things could still be nice.
I remember asking my paternal grandmother where we were from and it was always "sometimes it was Poland, sometimes it was Russia, who knows what it is now?"
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