Vatniks are the Soviets of Today and West Must Deal Decisively with Vatnikistan, Vladimirov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – The overwhelming majority of residents of the USSR were “Soviets” by nationality, and Moscow should have allowed them to declare that, Lev Vladimirov says. Now, at least 80 percent of the residents of the Russian Federation are “vatniks,” a term that arose from an Internet meme in 2011 to refer to Russian residents blindly loyal to the Kremlin.

            Because they are so numerous and because they will quite willingly be equally uncritical of a future Russian dictator, the vatniks are the true nationality of the Russian Federation today, dominating the country now and likely to continue to do so in a post-Putin future, the Russian commentator now in emigration says (kasparovru.com/material.php?id=69806A66B1DBA).

            Like many Soviets in the past, the vatniks of today are hardly loyal to their country as such, he continues. Many of them want to “leave Russia, find a city abroad with a large Russian-speaking population, and get a job as a courier, plumber or drive,” naively believing “they can create their ‘Soviet’ mentality abroad.”

            “To some extent,” Vladimir says, “this was the case in Brighton Beach [in New York city] in the eighties;” but that era has passed – and indeed, the era of the vatniks may be passing as well, although hardly in ways that many in the West say they hope for and indeed with a possible change that may make things even worse.

            According to the Russian commentator, “even with all their backwardness, their prison-camp ideals in everyday life, and their aggressiveness, the vatniks are losing out to the Chinese and to residents of neighboring countries; and it is logical that these segments of the population will replace the vatniks.”

            If that happens, he continues, “Russia will become Asiropa; but this will only happen if the West, despite the Russian threat, continues to sit on its hands and speculate about ‘what to do with Russia?’” According to Vladimirov, “it’s high time to deal decisively with Vatnikstan. Enough of liberalism.”

“Do the Europeans not fear the smell of Russian footcloths, the devastation of Berlin, Riga, and Prague by the soldiers [an army directed by Moscow]?”  he asks. “Can they not imagine how these roughnecks, who didn't fight against Ukrainians in Ukraine, will defecate in their beds and rape their women and daughters?”

And Vladimir concludes: “it's time for Europeans to cast aside secular humanism. Russia needs to be put in its place. Like a failing student in school, like a kindergartener who wets the bed. Otherwise, the vatnik gang will impose their habits, both in immigrant forums and in political refugee camps.”