Let's talk about Russian demography. As you see vast spaces in Siberia & European Russia are depopulating. There are two factors behind. First, low fertility. The only places with natural growth are Muslim areas of Caucasus, Idel-Ural and clusters of indigenous Siberians (thread)
Secondly, migration. Huge areas are depopulating because people are moving elsewhere. Where exactly? Over 90% move to just three locations:
1. Moscow (that large city inland) 2. Krasnodar (Black Sea, near Crimea) 2. St Petersburg (Baltic shore, near Finland)
in that order
Let's talk of them. The case of Moscow is simple: it's by far the biggest and richest city. Moscow agglomeration alone attracts between 50-55% of all internal migrants. All the power's in Moscow -> all the money -> all the economic opportunities. Like in some LatAm countries
Another important attraction spot is St Petersburg. The second largest city, the biggest seaports cluster, the former imperial capital. Locals usually look down upon Muscovites considering them too uncouth and unsophisticated. And yet, it's poor, very much poorer than Moscow
Why? Petersburg's been long suffering from unpopular, and incompetent governors who don't do the basic stuff - like cleaning the city from snow and ice. As a result, touristic downtown tends to look like this every winter - city center is often impassable. And so on
Some argue Moscow is purposefully keeping St Petersburg in desolation. Why? Because it's a rival. St Petersburg is the only city that can realistically compete with Moscow as an alternative seat of power. Therefore, any popular and competent governor'd be too much of a threat
This might be parallel to the situation in China. For the past 500+ China had two capitals: northern or southern, Beijing or Nanjing. Some argue that for this reason Beijing is purposefully obstructing the development of Nanjing. It's the only potential alternative seat of power
But let's talk of Krasnodar. It's located in the very south, near the Black Sea coast. It doesn't have much of history, architecture or as Muscovites would argue - culture. It was built in 1792 as a frontier fort in sparsely populated land and till recently was very small
And yet's now it's the fastest growing city in Russia. According to official data, it's population increased by 74% for the recent seven years. Unofficially - much faster. Which creates problems - enormous traffic congestions, electricity and water supply, etc. Problems of growth
Why do people move here? First, Krasnodar is the Russian sunbelt. Let's look at this map classifying climate zones of Russia. It goes from 'absolutely uncofortable' deep purple to 'the most comfortable' orang). And Krasnodar is the warmest, sunniest, closest to the warm Black sea
I'll take a pause, gonna continue in an hour or two
Second, geography. As you see, Krasnodar region (red) covers the entire Black Sea shore. Theoretically Russia theoretically has lots of seas, but they freeze. The navigation across the Arctic is really possible only with expensive ice-breakers
Which means there are only three convenient areas for seaports, connecting Russia with the World Ocean. St Petersburg on Baltic (upper left), Krasnodar on the Black Sea (lower left) and Vladivostok on the Pacific (lower right). Other waters just freeze too much
Which is why three busiest seaports of Russia are located in these three regions.
1. Novorossiisk (Krasnodar) 156 million tons 2. Ust-Luga (St Petersburg) 103 million tons 3. Vostochny (Vladivostok) 73 million tons
But the Pacific seaports like Vladivostok have a problem. They r too disconnected from the rest of Russia. The only real link is the Transsiberian railway. Which is now busy shipping cargo from China to Europe: trains can go as often as every 3 minutes. The railway is overwhelmed
That's why in the view of economic geography Krasnodar is uniquely well-positioned. It's one of only three viable access points to the world ocean, and is located near the warmest sea which Russia has
With best soils and climate in Russia, Krasnodar is highly agricultural. At this moment top 3 farming regions are:
1. Krasnodar 2. Rostov 3. Tatarstan
But Tatarstan is deep inland, while Krasnodar's on the shore and thus can easily export domestic and Rostov-produced grain
Being located in the sunbelt and on the sea shore it became a region of heavy government investments. Sochi olympics, a number of SEZs, the Putin's palace where he spends more time than in Kremlin - they're all located here. Because it has sun and the only warm sea in Russia
Interestingly enough, while growing so quickly and attracting huge number of migrants, the region has quite bad reputation. First of all, northerners consider them as Russian rednecks - uncultured rustic ppl. A common slur is 'Kubanoid', Kuban being the main river of Krasnodar
Which can partially result from the ethnic differences. Krasnodar was colonised only since around 1800 and predominantly from Ukraine. If you look at this Soviet ethnic map of 1941 you'll see that ethnic Ukrainians dominate in the region
Consider Bastrykin, Chief of Investigation Committee of Russia. He publicly told to his staffer, a Krasnodar native:
«You're not a Petersburg (Leningrad) man. In the past they wouldn't allow you here and now they do. Go back to Kuban, to your Cossacks. Y'all just flocked here"
Ofc that was considered extremely rude and provocative. But what one person will say, very many think, they just keep silence. In a sense that might reflect the attitude of originally St Petersburg ruling class - the close circle of Putin are all from there - to the southerners
Which might be mutual. Anecdotally, a friend of mine, a very Nordic looking (blonde, blue eyes) girl from Taganrog which is in nearby region was teased by her family as 'katsapka', кацап being a Ukrainian slur for Russians
Another stereotype about the region is that it's very criminal. And that the entire south of Russia is super criminal. That's not completely wrong. However, the main difference is not the scale of organised crime, but rather its institutional organisation and culture
To put it simply, Russia has two very different and largely incompatible organised crime cultures - thieves and bandits. Btw here's a nice book with good conceptualisation of this phenomenon
Let's start with thieves who dominated till 1991. Thieves culture originated in the Stalinist era. The thing about thieves is that they're very networked, very cooperative and very ideological. Their (public) agenda is not money-making but building parallel state and institutions
If you listen to thieves, they don't care about money at all. They care only about justice. And true justice can be found not in the official laws (= Law of Cops), but in the criminal tradition (= Law of Thieves). Which is very much superior and based on true Christian principles
Ofc it's cheap propaganda. But the thing with propaganda is that it works. If it doesn't fool everyone, it fools very many. Quite a lot of people sincerely believed they could find justice with thieves who are legalistic and rigorous Christian paladins (if you listen to them)
E.g. two business partners have dispute and come to thieves for justice:
- Will you demand payment?
- No, I care only about justice
But after making a judgment he says:
- I don't need money. But our brothers in prison do. So you must contribute 100 000 bucks
Many such cases
I gave this as an illustration of thieves' logic and thieves' propaganda. We are selfless, virtuous men who don't need money. Why do we do crime then? Largely because we need to help our brothers in prison.
Sounds stupid? Well, if it works, it ain't stupid
Thieves largely held monopoly on the organised crime all over the former USSR till late 1980s. By the late 1980s with the Soviet system crumbling and the opportunities for shady business schemes booming, a new culture emerges from almost nothing. The bandits
Unkile thieves, bandits were openly about money. While thieves developed complex ideology and presented them as the warriors of light, whose sufferings in prison are parallel to the passions of the Christ (as shown in the screenshot below), bandits didn't really care to do that
According to thieves logic, these new upstarts could enter the criminal world. But they had to do it be entering existing thieves' organisations and doing the long arduous apprenticeship in a hope that may be one day that could rise. These guys didn't care
What followed next was a pretty brutal fight. Bandits who didn't care about the Law of Thieves but cared a lot about physical exercise, gunnery and business were mostly winning. However, the outcomes varied over the different regions
St Petersburg was the place of the most clear and unconditional victory of the bandits. Which is reflected in culture - e.g. in a super popular TV series 'The Bandit Petersburg'. That's not a fiction - here they exterminated the opposing forces almost completely
Of course there were casualties. For example, Putin's judo coach Usvyatsov who probably organised his admission to the prestigous St Petersburg university was killed by thieves:
translation
"The grave. On the grave there's an epitaph
I died, but the mafia is immortal'
And Russian ruling elite originated in the Bandit Petersburg. See funerals a mafia boss in 2004. They're attended by (1) Zolotov, then chief of Putin's bodyguards, now of the National Guard, (3) Vanichkin, Chief of St Petersburg Police, and Kumarin (2) the leader of Tambov gang
Also - do you see a guy in a green coat? That's Andrey Konstantinov, the author of the book 'Bandit Petersburg' on which the series was based. He's very well-connected and well-informed
While the rise of bandits made the devastating effect upon thieves, there were two regions, where they did beat off all incursions. They were 1) the Far East 2) the South of Russia, including Krasnodar. The criminal culture of these regions remains super thief-style even now
While the Far East is contracting, depopulating and apparently is not gonna make any difference in the foreseeable future, Krasnodar is skyrocketing. So, when thinking of the future of Russia we should keep in mind, that demographic and economic center will gradually drift south
And it will drift to the regions which are:
1) recently colonised 2) ethnically different from the heartland 3) don't have much imperial legacy or tradition 4) overlooked by the state 5) looked down upon 6) have different institutional culture 7) economically self-sufficient
The end of thread. I think that's enough for today. This time I described how Russia is changing sociospatially-wise. Next time, I'll cover how did it come to this sociospatial distribution in the first place. On Friday I'm planning to write
Why Russia became so large
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Wagner march was incredible, unprecedented to the extent most foreigners simply do not understand. Like, yes, Russia had its military coups in the 18th c. But those were the palace coups, all done by the Guards. Purely praetorian business with zero participation of the army.
Yes, there was a Kornilov affair in 1917, but that happened after the coup in capital. In March they overthrew the Tsar, then there was infighting in the capital, including a Bolshevik revolt in July, and only in September part of the army marches to St Petersburg.
Half a year after the coup. Not the same thing
I think the last time anything like that happened was in 1698, when the Musketeers marched on Moscow from the Western border. And then, next time, only in 2023.
(Army leaves the border/battlefield and marches on the capital without a previous praetorian coup in the capital)
As a person from a post-Soviet country, I could not but find the institutions of People’s Republic of China oddly familiar. For every major institution of the Communist Russia, I could find a direct equivalent in Communist China.
With one major exception:
China had no KGB
For a post-Soviet person, that was a shocking realisation. For us, a gigantic, centralised, all-permeating and all powerful state security system appears to be almost a natural phenomenon. The earth. The sky. Force of gravity. KGB
All basic properties of reality we live in
It was hard to come up with any explanation for why the PRC that evolved in a close cooperation with the USSR, that used to be its client state, that emulated its major institutions, failed to copy this seemingly prerequisite (?) institution of state power
Soviet output of armaments was absolutely gargantuan, massive, unbeatable. “Extraordinary by any standard” , it was impossible for any other country to compete with.
From 1975 to 1988, the Soviets produced four times as many ICBMs and SLBMs, twice as many nuclear submarines, five times as many bombers, six times as many SAMs, three times as many tanks and six times as many artillery pieces as the United States.
Impossible to compete with.
Which raises a question:
How could the USSR produce so much?
It is not only that the USSR invested every dime into the military production. It is also that the Soviet industry was designed for the very large volumes of output, and worked the best under these very large volumes
We are releasing our investigation on Roscosmos, covering a nearly exhaustive sample of Russian ICBM producing plants. We have investigated both primary ICBM/SLBM producers in Russia, a major producer of launchers, manufacturers of parts and components.
Each material includes an eclectic collection of sources, ranging from the TV propaganda to public tenders, and from the HR listings to academic dissertations. Combined altogether, they provide a holistic picture of Russian ICBM production base that no single type of source can.
Overall, you can expect tech moguls to have much, much higher level of reasoning abilities compared to the political/administrative class. But this comes at a cost. Their capacities for understanding the Other (masses count as the “Other”) are much poorer.
E.g. Putin is much, much less of an outlier in terms of intelligence compared to Thiel. He is much more average. At the same time, I am positively convinced that Putin understands the masses and works with masses much better.
One problem with that is that too much of the supply chain for drone production is located in China. The thing with drones is that they grew out of toys industry. Cheap plastic & electronic crap that all of a sudden got military significance
That is also the major problem I have with "China supports Russia" argument. China could wreck Ukraine easily, simply obstructing & delaying the drone/drone components shipments. That would be an instant military collapse for Ukraine.
Both Russian and Ukrainian drone industries are totally dependent upon the continuous shipments from China. To a very significant degree, their "production" is assembly from the Chinese components which are non alternative and cannot be substituted with anything else (as cheap).