Georgi Derluguian once told a story. He studied at the Institute of Asian and African Countries in Moscow. For obvious reasons his classmates with "historian-orientalist" degrees are very-well represented in Russian elites. Many years later he met a Very Rich Classmate and asked
- Your palace is *really* nice. But how did you get so rich? Where is all of this money coming from?
- Das Kapital, Volume 1, Chapter 26. Just look up, everything is written down there. Let's remain friends
I find this anecdote very telling
Having studied in Soviet unis, emerging Russian elites were well-aware of Marx's criticism of capitalism. In fact, their understanding of capitalism was shaped by Marx's criticism. They could not think of the capitalism otherwise than in (somewhat reductionist) Marxist terms
So when building capitalism, new Russian elites took this Marxist caricature as a model. Not as a nightmare to shun away from, but as an ideal to be emulated. Marx taught that primitive accumulation is criminal. And we are doing crime exactly as he taught!
See an opening scene to the "Dead Man's Bluff" (Жмурки) as a mass culture reference. The reference to the Primitive Accumulation is included there, exactly because everyone could relate to it
Marx's writings did a good job in legitimising the Russian mafia rule
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.