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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The primary weakness of this argument is that being true, historically speaking, it is just false in the context of American politics where the “communism” label has been so over-used (and misapplied) that it lost all of its former power:
“We want X”
“No, that is communism”
“We want communism”
Basically, when you use a label like “communism” as a deus ex machina winning you every argument, you simultaneously re-define its meaning. And when you use it to beat off every popular socio economic demand (e.g. universal healthcare), you re-define communism as a synthesis of all the popular socio economic demands
Historical communism = forced industrial development in a poor, predominantly agrarian country, funded through expropriation of the peasantry
(With the most disastrous economic and humanitarian consequences)
Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc
Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one
1. Public outrage does not work anymore
If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while
For a while, this tactics worked
Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.
Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation
And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.
In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention
Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings
Out of date
2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women
What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.
Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain
According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her
Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.
Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important.
One thing you need to understand about wars is that very few engage into the long, protracted warfare on purpose. Almost every war of attrition was planned and designed as a short victorious blitzkrieg
And then everything went wrong
Consider the Russian war in Ukraine. It was not planned as a war. It was not thought of as a war. It was planned as a (swift!) regime change allowing to score a few points in the Russian domestic politics. And then everything went wrong
It would not be an exaggeration to say that planning a short victorious war optimised for the purposes of domestic politics is how you *usually* end up in a deadlock. That is the most common scenario of how it happens, practically speaking