Thread by @kamilkazani

Much of the expertise on Russia has negative value not necessarily because the experts are wrong (they may be right), but because they are right about the unimportant stuff. Lacking the deep understanding of and the deep guanxi in Russia they have no idea what to focus on

That creates an absolutely false and distorted image of Russia in the West. The analysts and the media might not be technically "wrong". They are lying by omission in most cases, not noticing or pretending not to notice a nice herd of elephants in the room. Like the Metodologiya

The impact of Metodologiya on politics & governance is well-known in Russia. Consider this very good introduction by a media I don't really like. It may not be 100% correct but it's a great intro to a topic virtually unknown in the West

meduza.io/feature/2022/0…

One might object that there are quite a few studies on the methodologists. That's correct. But they're mostly treated as a logical club, rather than a wide and influential expertocracy claiming to possess a monopoly on the objective truth

It's not that the Metodologiya is something unheard of in the academia. It's just that almost no one would study their philosophy, business & political activities and integrate it altogether. Why? Well, I fear that the insectoid overspecialisation killed the Western academia

A hypothesis. Much of the lie by omission is unintentional and happening largely for two reasons. First, the overspecialisation disincentivizes doing anything even slightly cross disciplinary. Second, the cut throat academic job market disincentivizes the slightest nonconformity

For now I'm done. In the nearest future I'm planning to make a thread on Sergey Kiriyenko, elaborating some of the points I made here. The end