1. Putin's decision to start the war on Ukraine isn't foreign policy. It's domestic one. Putin first consolidated his power through the war in 1999-2000 and it worked. So he repeated this trick every time his popularity started waning🧵
Putin was confirmed as the Prime Minister on 16 August 1999. By that point Yeltsin chose him as a successor and Putin controlled intelligence. But he still had to stand on elections - and he was unknown. His rate of approval was between 3-4% because ppl didn't recognise his face
Just two weeks later apartment bombings started. Since September 4, a number of residential houses in Moscow, Volgodonsk, Buinaksk were blown up. More than 300 people died, 1700 were wounded. Putin accused Chechen terrorists in these attacks and invaded the separatist region
He won. In the course of the war he built his image as a tough victorious military leader. And Russian public opinion likes victorious military leaders. By the end of the year with the Chechen resistance largely crushed, he became very electable. That's how he became a President
Of course, the entire story with so timely blown up houses looked kinda shady. There were certain suspicions regarding who really organised these attacks, especially in the context of the Ryazan case
With all these explosions, the country became vigilant. On September 22 Alexey Kartofelnikov living on Novoselov 14/16 in Ryazan noticed a strange white car parked near their residential building. Its passengers took several bags and brought them into the basement of the house
After the strangers left, locals called the police. Police came and found several large bags from sugar - with a detonator. People were evacuated and the police expertise showed that the bags contain hexagon. Next day it became the national news - the media were still free
Prime Minister Putin congratulated them with preventing a terrorist attack. The same night police (police is MVD - different from FSB) arrested two suspects. To their surprise they showed the FSB IDs. Ofc Moscow HQ of FSB called the police and ordered to release their agents
Next day Putin gave a different version. Now he said that those were simply the trainings, the manoeuvres. The FSB was learning how to prevent terror attacks and these bags contained regular sugar. The detonators were fake
It all sounded shady. But the military planes were already raising Grozny to the ground. Successful invasion that followed changed the electoral balance completely. In August 1999 2% voters would vote for Putin, in 2000 - 53% did. Russian people love victorious wars
So, it worked. And that's how the institutional inertia dynamics commence. Whatever worked out in the past, will likely work out again. So why bother with making up new ideas if older ones are completely reliable? And indeed, reliable they were
In 2010s Putin was clearly losing popularity. Fraud on the parliamentary elections of 2011 triggered the largest street protests since Putin came to power. That was a bad marker. Economy was rising, quality of life improving. And many were still angry
But streets protests could be ascribed to a politicised minority, whereas silent majority supported him. That's why he confidently came to a boxing championate to give a speech, with the federal TV broadcasting it in real time. And he was booed with millions people watching
That was a heavy blow. He came to power as a victorious military leader. But now, 11 years later, ppl didn't recognise him as such. They saw him as a pathetic gerontocrat with too much botox fillings. He became a joke. So he had to take urgent action to be treated seriously again
His popularity falling, he had to restore his image as a serious leader. How? Well, by winning wars. Again, he initially built his legitimacy through a military victory, so why not do it again? Thus Russia engages into wars: Syria, Ukraine, Africa. Domestic policy by other means
So the real audience of this play are neither Ukrainians, nor Westerners. It's Russians. Of course many won't wholeheartedly support the war. But it will make them take Putin seriously. And for Putin it's much better to be regarded as bloody and merciless, rather than ridiculous
2. Many in the West exaggerate how robust the Putin's regime is. It's not only dependent on Western technologies and imports, it also can't decrease its dependence without a renegotiation of power balance. Which means it exists only as long as the West doesn't take action
Infrastructure-wise there is one thing it's doing well - building and maintaining communications for exporting raw materials. Railways, pipelines, seaports
And yet, sanctions obstruct development of new oil or gas deposits. There are new deposits introduced, but they don't compensate the depletion. Theoretically Russia has huge deposits, but they're primarily on Arctic shelf and Russia lacks the technology to extract them alone
Russia is not the USSR. The USSR was a theocracy legitimised through technological progress, which valued scientists and engineers highly. Modern Russia doesn't. Consider salaries which state corporation offers to aerospace engineers - kinda 150 usd/month
That's important to keep in mind. Unlike USSR, Russia doesn't value people who produce stuff. It's not prestigious, it doesn't pay. So whoever can leave to the IT and work for international market directly, will do it. There's huge negative selection in production of hardware
Which means that Russian industry, including military, is highly dependent upon Western technologies and equipment. Precision manufacturing is done on German, Swiss, Italian machines. Production of literally anything complicated continues only as long as it is allowed to continue
3. What will be the result of this war? That largely depends on Western, primarily American reaction. If Putin manages to win a small victorious war again and get away with that, it will not only increase his authority but trigger tons of terrirotiral conflicts all over the world
Let's be honest, in most countries there're groups who believe that their neighbours occupy a piece of our sacred land illegitimately. That's very typical feeling and usually it's mutual. The only reason why wars over the land don't happen more frequently is the fear of reprisals
If this invasion succeeds and Putin gets away with it, this will trigger a chain of imitators waging their small victorious wars all over the world. More powerful powers than Russia will certainly do, less powerful ones will try their chance, too. That will be a very bloody era
Paradoxically enough, even the military defeat of Russia is not necessary to prevent that scenario. Simply Putin losing his power would be enough as a warning. And counterintuitively, that would likely result naturally if he doesn't achieve a quick victory
There's a big difference between an easy war and a hard war. An easy war makes regime stronger because it achieves victory without having to transform. But a hard war will transform it. The longer WWI lasted, the more the real power over Germany flowed from Kaiser to Ludendorff
Russia plays hard. But hard war is incompatible with the state security rule. They aren't guys who do stuff, they are the guys who find wrongdoings in the work of others. Critics, not doers. So once the war becomes existential, power will start flipping from their hands. End of🧵
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
In 1991, Moscow faced two disobedient ethnic republics: Chechnya and Tatarstan. Both were the Muslim majority autonomies that refused to sign the Federation Treaty (1992), insisting on full sovereignty. In both cases, Moscow was determined to quell them.
Still, the final outcome could not be more different. Chechnya was invaded, its towns razed to the ground, its leader assassinated. Tatarstan, on the other hand, managed to sign a favourable agreement with Moscow that lasted until Putin’s era.
The question is - why.
Retrospectively, this course of events (obliterate Chechnya, negotiate with Tatarstan) may seem predetermined. But it was not considered as such back then. For many, including many of Yeltsin’s own partisans it came as a surprise, or perhaps even as a betrayal.