Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Mar 19, 2022 52 tweets 17 min read Read on X
Why Russia can't win against the West

Russia is often portrayed as the invincible military power. And yet, this reputation is based on two wars - Napoleonic and WWII. In both cases Russia won only thanks to the alliance allied with *the* leading economic powerhouse of that era🧵
Napoleonic Wars were won only because of the Russian alliance with the UK. WWII - only because of the alliance with the US. In both cases the leading economic, industrial and technological power of the age supported Russia, giving it almost unlimited credit and supply line
Let's start with the WWII. Early Bolsheviks were absolutely fascinated by America and its industrial power. The last movie Vladimir Lenin watched before his death was the video recording from the Ford assembly lines in Detroit. They dreamed of emulating the American industrialism Image
Soviet industrialisation is portrayed as the "competition" with the capitalist West. It is a lie. In fact, it was a meticulous emulation of American industrialism. America built Soviet industrial power. American companies, technologies, engineers made the USSR a powerhouse Image
Most of technological transfer from to the US to the USSR was personaly supervised by Saul Bron. Born in Odessa in 1887, he earned his PhD in Economics at the University of Zurich. After the revolution he became the key figure of Soviet economic policy, specifically foreign trade Image
Saul Bron was the member of the Supreme Economic Council and CEO of many state owned companies. He headed the Exportkhleb - a company for the grain export to the West and the Bank for Foreign Trade Vneshtorgbank. He supervised most of Soviet trade with the capitalist countries
When Stalin picked up Mikoyan as the commissar for foreign trade, Mikoyan was hesitant and not sure if he could manage it. Then Stalin assured him he would dispatch some experienced people, especially Saul Bron, who could “boost any commissariat” Image
In 1920s USSR wasn't recognized by the US and thus couldn't negotiate directly. And yet, a number of DC establishment like Senator William Borah, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had favorable views of the USSR. So some sort of proxy trade was possible Image
The main proxy for Soviet-American trade was the Amtorg Trading Corporation established in 1924 as a result of merger of a few companies including another quasi private entity Arcos America (Arcos was Soviet proxy for trade with the UK led by Krasin - I'll elaborate next time) Image
In 1927 Stalin appointed Saul Bron as the CEO of Amtorg Trading Corporation. Theoretically Amtorg was an American corporation. In practice though it was a Soviet proxy controlled by Politburo. It was a monopoly controlling all the Soviet-American trade Image
As the head of Amtorg, Saul Bron would personally look for and choose American partners who would help with the Soviet industrialization. One of Bron's first findings was a Detroit industrial architect Albert Kahn - here you see them signing a contract Image
In 1929 Albert Kahn Associates secure a mega contract on designing and supervising construction of the Stalingrad tractor plant. It was modeled after the International Harvester Milwaukee plant. Kahn prepared architectural and engineering drawings including road & railroad access Image
Kahn company fully organised the entire process. They procured American materials, machinery, and equipment, provided American experts. To put it simply, Stalingrad tractor plant was LEGO. Details were produced in America and assembled in the USSR under the American supervision Image
The Stalingrad tractor plant was assembled from the details and machinery prefabricated in the US and shipped by the sea. Kahn provided the key personnel - construction supervisors, installation specialists, foremen. It was built from American details and installed by Americans Image
All the heating, plumbing, welding & electrical works were supervised by Americans. For every 20-30 Soviet workers there was an American foreman. The Traktorstroi recruitment office on 255 West Congress Street, Detroit provided most of the qualified workforce for Stalingrad plant Image
"Structural steel elements were prefabricated in New York by McClintic-Marshall Products (Bethlehem Steel Corp), shipped in a knock-down state to Stalingrad, via Black Sea and Volga, then assembled under the supervision of American builders and engineers selected by Kahn’s firm" Image
Kahn Associates commissioned over 100 American companies with supplying and assisting the construction. All the building materials, equipment and tools were American produced. Kahn even designed a special railroad to bring materials from Stalingrad docks to the construction site Image
In 1941 and 1942 Stalingrad tractor plant would be the main producer of famous T-34 tanks which contributed so much into the Soviet victory. T-34 is glorified as the example of Soviet engineering genius. Not wrong. But it was assembled on American-built plants and infrastructure Image
Next year they scaled up. In 1930 Kahn was commissioned to design and supervise almost all Soviet industrial construction under the first & second Five Year Plans: more than 550 plants & facilities all over the USSR, all Soviet tank, car & tractor industry, etc for 2 billion usd Image
Of course mass involvement of American architects and engineers in Soviet industrialisation looked problematic. That's why it was disguised. USSR established an enormous government architecture bureau Госпроектстрой as a cover for American experts who lived and worked in the USSR Image
Initially the work was conducted from the Detroit office. Later, much of it was transferred to Moscow office where it was done with assistance of the Soviet staff whom Americans instructed and supervised. Here you see Moritz Kahn and his engineers departing to the USSR in 1930 Image
Kahn engineers operated all over the USSR building "tractor, car, aircraft power plants, foundries, forges, steelmaking and rolling mills; metallurgical, ball-bearing, aluminum, asbestos plants; machinery and tools manufacturing factories; textile mills, food processing plants" Image
Soon they built bigger plants in Kharkiv and Chelyabinsk. That's a group of Soviet engineers at Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant office in Detroit, 1930. Kahn allowed great flexibility of production, making the plant "more universal" = not only for civil but also for military production Image
Kahn knew he's helping USSR to prepare for a war. In 1931 he told:

"There is no question about Russia’s preparing herself as fully as possible for such an event, nor is there any doubt that many of the newer plants are planned for the production of war materials when needed" Image
That's a partial list of some largest plants Kahn designed. After Kahn engineers departed, they left their blueprints, calculations, and specifications. They left-American trained Soviet experts who could use these models and emulate them with minimal changes (привязка) Image
While Albert Kahn was the main planner of Soviet industrialization, hundreds of companies participated. Arthur McKee company designed and supervised construction of the largest Soviet steel plant in Magnitogorsk, modelled after the U.S. Steel Corporation plant in Gary, Indiana Image
Henry Ford participated, too. Here you see him negotiating with the Amtorg Chief Saul Bron. In 1929 he signed a contract to build a GAZ vehicle factory in Nizhny Novgorod, supply it with equipment, machinery and technologies Image
Here you see a Colonel Hugh Lincoln Cooper, of the US Army Corps of Engineers, standing in from of the greatest construction project of Stalin - Dnieproges hydrolectric dam. Colonel Cooper was its chief construction consultant, supervising the entire process Image
Now you make ask, ok, how did the USSR pay for all of it? Technological import from the US should have cost hella lots of money. Well, that's why Stalin had to milk his people dry. To pay for import, he exported all the food abroad. That's the reason of mass starvation, Holodomor Image
In 1930 Stalin had to pay to Caterpillar Inc for equipment and wrote to Molotov:

"We need to increase grain exports from 1-1,5 to 3-4 million puds a day minimum. Otherwise we are risking to lose new metallurgy and machinery plants. We need to ferociously бешено enforce export" Image
That was the main reason of Holodomor. To build his military power Stalin relied on technological import. To pay for this import, he took all teh food and sold it abroad. Millions starved as a result. Entire districts dying out, mass cannibalism and so on were the price of import Image
Ok, you may ask, but what happened with all these American-trained, American-connected managers and engineers? They would be a tool of American softpower? Yep. Exactly for this reason they were cleansed en masse in 1937-1938, during the Great Purge. Including Saul Bron of course Image
The narrative of "autarkic" and "self-sufficient" USSR is total BS. Soviet Industrialisation fully relied on American assistance, expertise and the technological import. And even with it all, USSR *still* didn't become self-sufficient. It had so many technological bottlenecks
One of these bottlenecks was fuel. USSR had Azerbaijani oil, but couldn't produce the high-octane aviation fuel. Its own production covered only 4% of Б-78 fuel necessary for its modern Як-1, Як-3, МиГ-3, ЛаГГ-3, Ил-2, Ил-4, Пе-2, Ер-2, Су-2 military planes Image
The USSR had no problem with producing low octane aviation fuel for the obsolete fighter and bombers like this fighter И-15 called "the flying coffin" by those unfortunates who had to use it. Meanwhile, modern Soviet aviation fully relied on imported fuel Image
Why? Some argue that this was a result of negligence. I however, have a conspiracy theory. I suspect that when building Soviet industry Americans might purposefully include there a number of bottlenecks and limitations. Soviet army was fully functional only as an American ally Image
Consider the following. Spend a day googling the papers on industrial archaeology and you'll find tons of American projects on building Soviet "tractor" (=tank), car, metallurgy and many other plants. But I failed to find a single mention of Americans building Soviet Navy Image
Did the Soviets want a Navy? Sure they did. In 1932 they accepted a "big fleet" program, designing and constructing big battleships. But now they unironically had to it on their own. Americans didn't help at all. Soviets build ships on Tsar's shipyards with their own technologies Image
As a result very expensive Soviet Navy was super dysfunctional. In 1943 Stalin prohibited a battleships larger than a minesweeper to leave their bases without personal order. As a result most of Soviet battleships simply stayed there till 1945. Stalin's navy was largely useless Image
Why wouldn't Soviets secure American assistance for the navy as they did for the army? I don't any evidence. But I suspect that Americans wouldn't provide help with building a force that could potentially endanger them. They prepared the USSR for the continental war and that's it
Let's sum up. All the narrative about the "autarkic" USSR is BS. Soviet Union wasn't autarkic and modern Russia is even less so. It's totally dependent upon technological import.
Soviet industrialisation was real and successful. But it was managed from abroad and had a number of (purposefully? I've no evidence though) built bottlenecks that made USSR a very fragile power. It couldn't fight a major war on its own, too many bottlenecks
Stalin might not realise that immediately. He might have believed in his power and invincibility. The war started 22 June 1941 and only on 29 June Stalin realised how badly it's going. So on July 6 general Golikov flew to London to secure lend lease, beg for the US help Image
And Americans did help. They covered all the Soviet needs, supplied it with food, equipment, explosives (I know that sounds funny, but explosives production was a major Soviet bottleneck for some reason), vehicles. See American Steudebakers shipped to the USSR Image
This might explain Hitler's decision to launch the war with the USSR. He correctly understood the military aspect of the war. He was right that the German strike would destroy the Soviet economy. Indeeed, by August 1941 they broke Soviet supply and technological chains completely Image
What Hitler didn't understand however, is that Americans would fully, 100%, cover all Soviet needs in everything, from food to trucks, from high octane fuel to explosives. Hitler couldn't know that the US would put the USSR on an emergency life support apparatus Image
Russia is not self-sufficient and it never was. It's not so much an evil empire as a Trade Federation, dependent on technological import from the West and export of natural resources. That's why every major war without Western allies ended in catastrophe like Crimean or Livonian Image
Now Russia is going full Livonian War scenario. This will again end with поруха, the disarray, and eventually with the Time of Troubles. I'll cover the new institutional trends in Russia in my next thread
And yet, the question may arise. Why Russia is so technologically dependent? Why despite having great technological expertise it fails to produce competitive products of its own? I'll outline my view on this in a future text "Why Russia didn't produce Bayraktars". End of🧵
Regarding the Albert Kahn and Saul Bron stories I relied on brilliant papers by Sonia Melnikova-Raich which I absolutely recommend. That's part I on Albert Kahn, there's also a part II on Saul Bron Image
If you like reading my longreads, you can subscribe to my substack kamilkazani.substack.com
And of course if you want to support my work, I'll be grateful for donations, be it in crypto or in fiat - posted all the links here

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More from @kamilkazani

Jul 1
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)

So, yes, living under the actual communism sucks
Read 5 tweets
Jun 28
Some thoughts on Zohran Mamdani’s victory

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 Image
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
Read 8 tweets
Jun 28
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.
Theory: X -> Y

Reality:

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
Read 6 tweets
Jun 26
Some thoughts on Zohran Mamdani's victory:

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
Read 12 tweets
Jun 21
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.Image
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 Image
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. Image
Read 4 tweets
Jun 19
On the impending war with Iran

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
Read 12 tweets

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