Re: [HIST??] Culture shock

> > close. Germans and Russsians had firearms as early
> > as anybody. We needed the
> > end of WWII to get a solid democracy and the Russian
> > are only now getting
> > one (let's hope).

The Russians simply replaced the aristocracy of the Communist Party with
an
aristocracy of Oligarchs.  Before that, they replaced an aristocracy of
nobility with an aristocracy of the Communist Party.  The more Russia
changes, the more she stays the same...

> The Russians are a complicated issue--terror can hold
> off any social change, the question is how long?

If you are talking the Soviet period, terror was used.	If you are
talking
pre-revolutionary Russia, you are wrong.  The Russians simply kept the
average serf illiterate and drunk.  It worked until Russia started
widespread industurialization in the late 1800's.

> The German question is also not very clear-cut.  Most
> of the 19th century was spent trying to actually
> create a German state rather than a collection of
> culturally simillar entities in an area generally
> referred to as "Germany".
>
> The situation was not conducive to creating liberal
> democracy.

Actually, I suspect that these exceptions are enough to make the general
rule rather suspect.