Post

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
Click again on or Share Via icon
Click on Copy Link to Tweet
Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
More info at Twitter Help

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 11, 2022 • 10 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X

Scrolly

You can't really "study" a culture. You can only verstehen it. And in order to verstehen, you need to live into it. The rapid escalation of Z-war hardly came as a surprise to anyone who lived in the context of Russian culture. Watch this fragment from a super popular movie Brat-2

Aleksei Balabanov may be the most talented and the culturally influential film director of the post-Soviet Russia. Some even argue that he created the post-Soviet Russian culture. That may be an overstatement but the absolutely iconic status of his movies is hard to deny

Most of Balabanov's fame and influence is based on just two movies: Brat and Brat-2 covering fictional mafia wars of the Russian mafia. The first movie is taking place in Russia (St Petersburg), in the second movie they make a work trip to America

One of the more iconic meme phrases from the movie is:

"You scumbags will yet answer me for Sevastopol"

A Russian bandit is telling this to a Ukrainian before killing him. Crimean Sevastopol becoming a part of Ukraine was perceived as a major injustice by Russian nationalists

And indeed, the annexation of Crimea brought this iconic image back to the Russian discourse and meme culture. Consider this marshrutka, a passenger minibus

Or a pro-government demonstration in Vladimir. Notice a single word "ответили" = "[they] answered" on a poster. Everyone immediately gets the message and the cultural allusion. It's universally known

Some meme authors would notice a similarity between a newly appointed prosecutor of Crimea and the actor from Brat movie. In a sense, the annexation itself was seen in the Brat context

Extreme brutality of Z-war impressed many observers. Here you see Russian troops launching rockets with thermobaric warheads with a TOS-1A Solntsepyok heavy flamethrower system

Here you can see a Russian TV host Skabeeva praising the use of thermobaric warheads in Ukraine (with English subs). It's two minutes long and I strongly recommend to watch it through to grasp some understanding of the state of public discourse in Russia

Current derangement of the Z war may seem as an unfortunate accident to a foreigner who hadn't lived in the context of the Russian culture. But it seems logical and pretty much inevitable to the ones who did and consumed its cultural content. The end of🧵

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @kamilkazani

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 14

On Trump's birthday

Let's have a look at these four guys. Everything about them seems to be different. Religion. Ideology. Political regime. And yet, there is a common denominator uniting all:

Xi - 71 years old
Putin - 72 years old
Trump - 79 years old
Khamenei - 86 years old

Irrespectively of their political, ideological, religious and whatever differences, Russia, China, the United States, Iran are all governed by the old. Whatever regime, whatever government they have, it is the septuagenarians and octogenarians who have the final saying in it.

This fact is more consequential than it seems. To explain why, let me introduce the following idea:

Every society is a multiracial society, for every generation is a new race

Although we tend to imagine them as cohesive, all these countries are multigenerational -> multiracial

Read 7 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 7

In 1927, when Trotsky was being expelled from the Boslhevik Party, the atmosphere was very and very heated. One cavalry commander met Stalin at the stairs and threatened to cut off his ears. He even pretended he is unsheathing he sabre to proceed

Stalin shut up and said nothing

Like obviously, everyone around could see Stalin is super angry. But he still said nothing and did nothing

Which brings us to an important point:

Nobody becomes powerful accidentally

If Joseph Stalin seized the absolute control over the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union, the most plausible explanation is that Joseph Stalin is exercising some extremely rare virtues, that almost nobody on the planet Earth is capable of

Highly virtuous man, almost to the impossible level

Read 7 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 1

Growing up in Russia in the 1990s, I used to put America on a pedestal. It was not so much a conscious decision, as the admission of an objective fact of reality. It was the country of future, the country thinking about the future, and marching into the future.

And nothing reflected this better than the seething hatred it got from Russia, a country stuck in the past, whose imagination was fully preoccupied with the injuries of yesterday, and the phantasies of terrible revenge, usually in the form of nuclear strike.

Which, of course, projected weakness rather than strength

We will make a huuuuuuge bomb, and drop it onto your heads, and turn you into the radioactive dust, and you will die in agony, and we will be laughing and clapping our hands

An old man yelling at clouds

Read 9 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

May 2

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

(what kind of input produces this kind of output)

Read 6 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Apr 12

There is a common argument that due process belongs only to citizens

Citizens deserve it, non citizens don’t

And, therefore, can be dealt with extrajudicially

That is a perfectly logical, internally consistent position

Now let’s think through its implications

IF citizens have the due process, and non-citizens don’t

THEN we have two parallel systems of justice

One slow, cumbersome, subject to open discussion and to appeal (due process)

Another swift, expedient, and subject neither to a discussion nor to an appeal (extrajudicial)

And the second one already encompasses tens of millions of non citizens living in the United States, legal and illegal, residents or not.

Now the question would be:

Which system is more convenient for those in power?

Well, the answer is obvious

Read 10 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Apr 5

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.

Read 30 tweets

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

Kamil Galeev

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @kamilkazani

Kamil Galeev

Kamil Galeev

Kamil Galeev

Kamil Galeev

Kamil Galeev

Kamil Galeev

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Send Email!