We are used to think of Russian aristocracy as of gallophones. That was true for circa 1800 when the elites indeed talked to each other in French (as described by Tolstoy). But by 1900 everything changed - now upper aristocracy including the imperial family talked in English...
Why? I think it's a good example of the elite cultural dynamics. Around 1800 very few people in Russia were fluent in French. If you were, it meant that you are a rich and powerful aristocrat. Poorer gentry spoke in broken French. So fluency in French was a rare status signal
However, during the 19th c. with literacy rising and the system of public education improving, the French became too popular and common. Not only the aristocrats, but even many middling classes were fluent in it. Becoming so common, it couldn't remain a status signal anymore
So by the 20th c. the higher elites had to choose new status signals, including a new language to differentiate themselves from the lower strata. They chose English. Interesting choice, cuz English was not so common or popular back then. But that's exactly why it was chosen
In 1800 Alexander I talked and corresponded in French, because very few people knew French back then. But once French became too popular, Tsars abandoned it. And by 1900 Nicholas II talked and corresponded in English.
So, we can see how cultural patterns work. First they are adopted by the elites as a status-signal, adopted for their rarity, to distinguish themselves from the masses. From there they tricked down. Cuz humans are imitative and they imitate the higher-ups.
The problem is - once they trickle down, they can't serve their initial purpose anymore. Once trend is too popular, it can't really be a status marker. Therefore, higher elites abandon it, and choose new status-signalling habits instead.
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In 1927, when Trotsky was being expelled from the Boslhevik Party, the atmosphere was very and very heated. One cavalry commander met Stalin at the stairs and threatened to cut off his ears. He even pretended he is unsheathing he sabre to proceed
Stalin shut up and said nothing
Like obviously, everyone around could see Stalin is super angry. But he still said nothing and did nothing
Which brings us to an important point:
Nobody becomes powerful accidentally
If Joseph Stalin seized the absolute control over the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union, the most plausible explanation is that Joseph Stalin is exercising some extremely rare virtues, that almost nobody on the planet Earth is capable of
Highly virtuous man, almost to the impossible level
Growing up in Russia in the 1990s, I used to put America on a pedestal. It was not so much a conscious decision, as the admission of an objective fact of reality. It was the country of future, the country thinking about the future, and marching into the future.
And nothing reflected this better than the seething hatred it got from Russia, a country stuck in the past, whose imagination was fully preoccupied with the injuries of yesterday, and the phantasies of terrible revenge, usually in the form of nuclear strike.
Which, of course, projected weakness rather than strength
We will make a huuuuuuge bomb, and drop it onto your heads, and turn you into the radioactive dust, and you will die in agony, and we will be laughing and clapping our hands
Fake jobs are completely normal & totally natural. The reason is: nobody understands what is happening and most certainly does not understand why. Like people, including the upper management have some idea of what is happening in an organisation, and this idea is usually wrong.
As they do not know and cannot know causal relations between the input and output, they just try to increase some sort of input, in a hope for a better output, but they do not really know which input to increase.
Insiders with deep & specific knowledge, on the other hand, may have a more clear & definite idea of what is happening, and even certain, non zero degree of understanding of causal links between the input and output
I have recently read someone comparing Trump’s tariffs with collectivisation in the USSR. I think it is an interesting comparison. I don’t think it is exactly the same thing of course. But I indeed think that Stalin’s collectivisation offers an interesting metaphor, a perspective to think about
But let’s make a crash intro first
1. The thing you need to understand about the 1920s USSR is that it was an oligarchic regime. It was not strictly speaking, an autocracy. It was a power of few grandees, of the roughly equal rank.
2. Although Joseph Stalin established himself as the single most influential grandee by 1925, that did not make him a dictator. He was simply the most important guy out there. Otherwise, he was just one of a few. He was not yet the God Emperor he would become later.
The great delusion about popular revolts is that they are provoked by bad conditions of life, and burst out when they exacerbate. Nothing can be further from truth. For the most part, popular revolts do not happen when things get worse. They occur when things turn for the better
This may sound paradoxical and yet, may be easy to explain. When the things had been really, really, really bad, the masses were too weak, to scared and too depressed to even think of raising their head. If they beared any grudges and grievances, they beared them in silence.
When things turn for the better, that is when the people see a chance to restore their pride and agency, and to take revenge for all the past grudges, and all the past fear. As a result, a turn for the better not so much pacifies the population as emboldens and radicalises it.