Thread by @kamilkazani

Russian bureaucracy is *massive*. It's also diverse. Judging from my observations, it's less integrated than let's say the apparatus of the U.S. federal bureaucracy. Different agencies have different cultures and operate by different rules. Avoid sweeping generalisations (not🧵)

I see a very common attitude among the Russian pro-war community. It can be summarised this way:

"We expected dumb and incompetent bureaucrats to destroy our economy. But our glorious army would prevail against all odds. It turned out we were wrong. It's the other way around"

Now much of the Z-community argues that they greatly overestimated the Russian army (and the military apparatus). It's very, very much worse than anyone thought before. But they underestimated the economic bureaucracy. Which is very much better than they could have thought

That kinda makes sense. Portraying *all* of the federal bureaucracy as stupid incompetent thieves is a lie. That's simply not true. Some of the agencies indeed are absolutely rotten and crony (Foreign Ministry). Some are incredibly meritocratic (Ministry of Economy)

There's only one way to get into the foreign ministry. You need to get into their university MGIMO and do step by step linear career after the graduation. They're carefully protected from the competition with outsiders and nonames. The result is expectedly horrendous

Ministry of Economy is exactly the opposite. When Oreshkin became a minister he published a post:

1. Anyone can send me a CV via Facebook
2. I'll personally read each one

I don't know if he read them himself. But I know a number of ppl who just sent him their CVs and were hired

Ministry of Economy is extremely competitive and meritocratic. They are actively hunting for ppl. Like I know a girl who worked in Google in an Asian megapolis and the ministry invited her back to Moscow to work with them. She agreed. Most probably, their conditions were good

In 2021 they tried to invite me for an interview five times and I didn't even apply. As I said, they're actively headhunting. I didn't say yes or no directly, because I waited for my U.S. visa and chose to тянуть резину, until my flight. Sometimes ambiguity is the best strategy

There's a huge contrast between the super open, competitive and meritocratic economic bureaucracy and let's say the unhealthily sheltered diplomatic corps which works just the other way around. From my perspective economic bureaucracy is objectively very good

That is not to say it doesn't have its own drawbacks. In the recent years, the concept of the "Deep State" entrenched in the English vocabulary and the political discourse. Indeed, the US or the UK states are objectively very deep. Which is not the case with Russia. It is shallow

The US and the UK are deep and mechanistic. Russia is shallow and manual. Let me give you an illustration. Lots of pharmaceutical industry regulations were personally made by one single deputy minister of economy. He just sat at his office and made all the regulations "manually"

Theoretically his decisions could be overruled. By whom though? Let's be honest, a minister never gonna get into the meticulous details of regulations in every single industry. That's absolutely impossible. He just delegates it to his deputies. PM or President won't either ofc

As a result, the entire pharmaceutical industry would be "manually" directed by one deputy minister sitting in his office. No one above him will ever go through all the paperwork and documentation to get even the slightest understanding of what's going on. His decisions are final

That's what I call a "shallow" state. Government official takes *all* the decisions which in practice can't be overruled. There is no permanent bureaucracy staying in shadow like in England. There is no congressional authority like in the US. Deputy minister decides and that's it

As a result, changing individuals has far deeper effect than in the West. In the West a new official or a politician coming after his predecessor often understands he can't really change much. And soon his term is over. In Russia you often can overturn anything at any moment

What I find puzzling is the obsession of so many US conservatives with Russia. Imagine that in the US the federal bureaucracy in DC could literally decide *everything*. They would just take all decisions for Texas or Oklahoma which can't be overruled. That's how Russia is ruled

That doesn't necessarily mean that all of this bureaucracy is vile or corrupt. The economic apparatus is quite competent and conscientious. They use their power according to their best judgement. It's just that they have too much power and no human on earth should have so much

In the U.S. many blame the party politics for all the ills of the country. I disagree. I'd argue that the party politics are a *healthier* element of the US political system. They introduce an element of healthy randomness into the otherwise too technocratic federal government

I would argue that the centralised rule by the honest and competent bureaucracy may work out only in very, very small polities, where the bureaucrats can see and feel the immediate effect of their actions on their own skin. This model works, but it doesn't really scale up

Centralised technocratic rule in a massive country of continental scale is a guaranteed recipe for a disaster. The bigger a country is, the slower is the feedback, the slower the learning process. The more catastrophic mistakes you can afford to make before reality strikes back

When discussing the Putinism, we concentrate too much on its kleptocratic element. It exists indeed. But if the system works, it can't be purely kleptocratic. It works thanks to smart, competent and conscientious technocracy. Which is too powerful and that's exactly the problem🧵

PS obsession with PR masters as Surkov, or even worse Dugin proves that the quality of expertise available to the English-reading audience is below any criticism. If those opinion makers in media and in academia had a grain of competence, they would write about Andrey Belousov