The minority factor in Russian army is vastly underrated when discussing the course of Ukrainian war. Firstly, ethnic minorities are not so much a minority there. Judging from the casualty lists, minorities are wildly overrepresented on the battlefields as the cannon fodder🧵
We don't have aggregated data for the entire Russian army. But we can get some idea of who fights in Ukraine from this list of wounded Russian soldiers lying in Rostov hospital. More than half are clearly Dagestani. Magomed (Muhammad) - the most common name in the list of wounded
It makes total sense. As you see almost all Russian regions with high fertility are either ethnic republics or ethnic autonomous okrugs. Caucasians and Siberian natives reproduce, providing a lot of draftable males. Plus they are mostly poor so can be easily lured into the army
That's true both if we look at the country in general, and if we zoom in to the regional level. Consider Astrakhan Oblast - region studied by social anthropologist @TBaktemir It has many ethnic groups ordered into a complex racial hierarchy. It's 67,6% Russian and 14,8% Kazakh
Astrakhan Oblast officially confirmed 7 deaths in Ukraine
Arman Narynbaev
Ali Batyrov
Temirlan Jasagulov
Rysbek Nurpeysov
Anwar Irkaliev
Aynur Nurmakov
Alexander Bezusov
6 Kazakhs, 1 Russian. Being only 14% of population, Kazakhs give 85% casualties. Russians give 14% being 67%
Why? Well the answer is obvious. In Astrakhan Kazakhs stand low in racial hierarchy. It's mostly poor rural population, uneducated and without any real perspectives of social mobility. They're locked on the bottom of social ladder and ofc are looked down upon by other ethnicities
I wanna clarify, I don't say Kazakhs stand low in Russian racial hierarchy in general. They stay low in this specific region. Here they're considered bumpkins with no future and other ethnicities including Turkic and Muslim avoid marrying them. That would be marrying down
Isn't it interesting that in Astrakhan where Kazakhs are underprivileged they, according to official sources, comprise almost all military casualties in Ukraine? Actually it makes sense. Russian army is the army of poor and minorities. That can't be any other way
How do you get to the Russian army? Well, first you need to be drafted. Affluent people are selected out at this stage. People with social capital view military service as the fate of losers. So it's the poor and naive who don't know how (or why) to dodge who are drafted
Then you need to sign a contract. They'll be persuading, shaming, luring, seducing you into signing a contract. A person with social capital who accidentally got drafted will avoid it at all cost, call his lawyers, human rights advocates. So they probably let him go
While signing the contract is usually voluntary (though not always), they heavily concentrate on rural bumpkins. First, it's easier to pressure them, they don't know their rights. Second, it's easier to bribe them with salary prospect, they don't have career anyway
Thirdly, they are disposable. Imagine kids of Moscow intelligentsia getting killed in Ukraine - that's a headache. Their families gonna call lawyers, media, human rights organizations, give interviews. Meanwhile rural bumpkin moms will cry in the pillow and that's it. AMAZING
That's why Russian army is increasingly turning into the army of minorities. Yes, it has always been the army of country folk. But in the past they were mostly ethnic Russian. Nowadays however, there is not so much youth left in ethnic Russian countryside
They're so desperate for manpower that are even pressganging the Central Asian immigrants. Technically these guys could just refuse to sign anything and go. Recruiter would yell, curse, hit his fist on the table and that's it. He can't really do anything. But they don't know it
Recruiting Gastarbeiters is a sign of desperation. It's being done simply because it's easy to persuade them that they must enlist and threaten them with heavy consequences if they don't. There will be no consequences, they have legal rights. They just don't know it
My recommendations to encourage defection and sabotage should be considered in this context. Very soon Russian army will be filled by a number of people who don't share Russian imperial mythos and got there absolutely accidentally. Their motivation will be very, very low
The same was true in WWII. These cases were not published to maintain the illusion about the "unity of Soviet people" but in fact morale of Central Asian troops was very low and they were defecting to Germans en masse, much more than Russians. They didn't see it as their war
That makes sense. Imagine you are a rural Uzbek. Do you view yourself as Russian? Ofc not. Do you believe in Communism? Well, you have to perform all the rituals because authorities demand it but it's not very much interiorised. I like this photo of dekulakization in Uzbekistan
NB: I'm telling about regular minorities and not about Chechens. Chechnya is different. Chechnya is more a vassal kingdom in personal union with Russia and Chechen troops play more an NKVD than regular army role. They are to check and control, not to fight. Strelkov confirms it
Kadyrov had to personally deny that Chechens don't fight:
"I often read as Chechen fighters are accused in inaction, in gowing only in a second or third echelon. Or in just taking recordings with civilians and skipping the real fights"
And posted a "real fight" footage
Doesn't look too persuasive to be honest. By his posture and muscles, the dead is probably dead for several hours. Most probably a fresh and clean Chechen came there much later to take a footage of how Chechens really fight so Kadyrov can post it in Telegram
Funny fact: a Donbass levy field commander Khodakovsky accused Chechens in skipping the real fights. So Kadyrov's henchman Delimkhanov "talked" with him. Ofc Khodakovsky confirmed Chechens absolutely do fight and said "Akhmad Sila" on camera. Kadyrov's troops are more like NKVD
There's a real fighting Chechen force, not on Russian side though. It is a Sheikh Mansur batallion composed from Ichkeria emigres and fighting for Ukraine. Notice the difference with Kadyrov's footages. These are real soldiers, not PR & security troops of Kadyrov
Z-invasion is when (non-Chechen) minorities fight and die for the Russian ethnonationalist project. What do they get in return? Well, assimilation. Notice this poster - it's like "I'm Welsh but today we're all English". For your sacrifice you're allowed to abandon your identity
From the minority perspective Z-invasion looks like a worst trade deal in the history of trade deals ever. They'll bear disproportionate burden of war, taking huge number of casualties. If Z-invasion succeeds, they'll get forced assimilation and will be losing their autonomy
Z-invasion is largely the Russian ethnonationalism run amok. If allowed to succeed in Ukraine it will obviously choose Russian minorities as the next target, that's just too predictable. Why would they need to support it? That's the question many are asking today. End of 🧵
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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