Thread by @kamilkazani

Very good thread, I actually mostly agree with what is said here. Still, I will outline my own perspective on it:

First, it is of crucial importance to understand that the "popular uprising", generally speaking, is not a category of politics. It is a category of *theology* 🧵

We often see the debates on whether this or that upheaval constituts an "uprising" or a "coup". But the truth is that a successful uprising usually has at least an element of a military coup in it. If the military/paramilitary stands united for the regime, the regime will stand

In the popular perception a revolution is a miracle, a magic, when the impossible happens: the people defeat the regime. Hence, its theological significance. Credo quia absurdum

The element of absurdity is very important. If it is not absurd, it won't make a miracle

Consequently, criticising a revolt, usually a successful revolt as a "coup" is basically pointing out that it is not a true miracle. True miracle should be absurd and what happened there is not absurd, so it is not a revolution. It does not meet our strict theological standards

That is why differentiating *successful* revolts as either a popular uprising or a coup makes little sense outside of the field of political theology. If it was successful, it had both elements in it.

It wouldn't work with just one

Like having an angry mob in Paris is nice. But to actually take the Bastille you may need the French Guard. Having an angry mob in St Petersburg is nice, too. But you probably won't overthrow the regime without the St Petersburg garrison and the nearly based Baltic Navy

Popular will is not a category of political science, but of political theology. The former deals with mechanics, the latter - with miracles. These two are inherently contradictory. So, if you pay too much attention to the mechanics, the miracle may look less miraculous

I personally very much like Ivan Vladimirov's caricatures on the 1917 revolution and the Civil war. They visualise what you can read in so many diaries and memories of the era. Not so much the popular upheaval as the people in grey coats running amok

See tipolog.livejournal.com/23449.html

An idea that civilians in any numbers can defeat the organised military force if this force stands united behind the regime is purely delusional. If we don't see it, that is because we are used to think in categories of theology and ignore the mechanics

So let's talk about the mechanics

There is another theological category that only seems to be political. It is the "democracy vs autocracy" distinction. When framed in binary terms, it has little usage except to distinguish the saved from the damned, the lambs from the goats

If we presume that:

Autocrat = damned
Democrat = saved

discussions like this start making sense. Putin, Erdogan, Duda (Kaczynski?) are all autocrats -> will burn in hell

There's nothing wrong with this kind of thinking. It's just that it is theology

nytimes.com/2023/06/06/opi…

If we are theologists, then what we should care about is probably about drawing a correct line between the lambs and the goats. Hence, the heavy focus on the normative over the positive

And that is exactly how much of the media and often the academic discourse looks like

So let's forget about the normative for a while and focus on the positive. Under normal circumstances, the transfer of power comes as a result of the civil war.

Democracy is supposed to provide an alternative to the civil war - a mechanism of peaceful transition of power

So the key test for democracy is: does this mechanism work? And, as we cannot answer it otherwise than based on the past, what we should be asking is - did it ever work? In other words:

"Did the supreme executive power in this country ever change as a result of elections?"

"Did the supreme executive power ever change as a result of elections?"

Poland - Yes
Turkey - Yes
Russia - No

The prospect of the supreme executive power in Russia changing as a result of elections is purely hypothetical (not to say made up). It never materialised in reality

Russia does not have elections and never had. Elections have a least a chance of the supreme executive power changing = the sitting President losing. As the sitting President in Moscow never loses, then it is not elections at all, but rather the acclammations. A ritual

The foreign analysts' autistic obsession with "approval" is just laughable. Approval matters when you have to be elected. But when you only need to be acclaimed it does not matter much. Yeltsin was successfully acclaimed with about 6% rate of approval

"Approval" does not matter

The undervalued fact:

In 1999, Putin was a nobody elevated from nothing. Totally unknown, having little reputation or credibility even in the security apparatus. Not to say in the masses who just did not know who he was. With the supreme power backing him, it did not matter

The Putin's rule is not an aberration from normality. It is the normality. Because the normality is:

1. The acting ruler never failed to be elected
2. Therefore, Russia never had elections, only acclamations
3. Consequently, it has no working alternative to the civil war

When the Russian oppositionaries discuss the prospect of the "fair elections", keep in mind that they discuss something purely hypothetical that has never materialised in reality

An alternative to the civil war in form of "elections" does not exist here and never did

"Did the supreme executive power ever change as a result of elections?"

So in other words: "Have you ever had any elections at all?"

Is not a bad litmus test for the democratic institutions of a country. If the answer is no, they probably do not exist and never did

If the democratic institutions never existed in the first place, then building such institutions will require a fundamental change, rather than replacing a bad ruler with a good one. Those who advocate for the latter solution are hardly aiming to change the system

They are most probably aiming to keep it intact.

The end of thread 🧵

PS As @elonmusk or the managerial hivemind in general are suppressing my outreach here, I will be gradually increasing my presence on other platforms. If you want to read my content, add yourself to the email list in the description of the profile