Kamil Galeev Profile picture

Nov 21, 2024, 5 tweets

Relative popularity of three google search inquiries in the post-USSR. Blue - horoscope. Red - prayer. Green - namaz. Most of Russia is blue, primarily googling horoscopes. Which suggests most of the population being into some kind of spirituality rather than anything "trad".

The primary contiguous red area is not in Russia at all, but in West Ukraine. Which is indeed the only remotely "conservative" (in the American sense) area of the East Slavic world. Coincidentally or not, it had never been ruled by Russia, except for a short period in 1939-1991

In the blue and occasionally red sea, there are two regions that primarily google namaz, the Islamic prayer. That is Moscow & Tatarstan

And, finally, there are other namaz-googling regions in the south, primarily in the North Caucasus but also in Astrakhan. These, however, directly border the Central Asia & the Transcaucasian countries.

The primary lesson is that most people cannot make any distinction between the high politics (what the political leadership chooses to broadcast) and the actual convictions and practices of the demographic majority. These are two different things most people conflate

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