Large threads will be published here every Friday and sometimes on additional days. Also I am now working on setting up a substack - gonna post here when done. At this point let me give a guide to navigate through already published threads - from older to newer
An introductory thread to the federalism (and diversity) in Russia dealing with these two Caucasian republics. I'm gonna do a bigger blogpost on them, but it will be paywalled
2. Introduction to a second cluster of ethnic republics in Russia - Idel-Ural
As a native of the region I find it the most interesting. For example it's the northernmost Islamic land in the world and it has the last authentic pagans in Europe
Why living near the border of the Great Eurasia Steppe is a good predictor of living in a very big empire/country
4. A very brief introduction to the origin's of the Putin's regime and political structure of modern Russia. How new elite was born in the corridors of the St Petersburg City Council, how did these guys take power and what did they do after
Here I introduce the concept of assabiyah. I find that the idea of assabiyah and its dynamics as described by Ibn Haldun are highly relevant for understanding Russian (and not only Russian) politics
6. An introduction to the concept of 'sources-myths' and 'sources-remains' important for future discussions
The usual assumption that the Horde was an 'Oriental despoty' is just false. However, the argument that it did contribute to the development of Russian absolutism is correct
That's all for now - I'll be adding new threads here as they are published. Every Friday, may be more frequently. Substack coming soon
8. Assabiyahs in Russian history. Part 1: Praetorians, 1697-1825.
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.
The first thing to understand about the Russian-Ukrainian war is that Russia did not plan a war. And it, most certainly, did not plan the protracted hostilities of the kind we are seeing today
This entire war is the regime change gone wrong.
Russia did not want a protracted war (no one does). It wanted to replace the government in Kyiv, put Ukraine under control and closely integrate it with Russia
(Operation Danube style)
One thing to understand is that Russia viewed Ukraine as a considerable asset. From the Russian perspective, it was a large and populous country populated by what was (again, from the Russian perspective) effectively the same people. Assimilatable, integratable, recruitable