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Kamil Galeev Profile picture
@kamilkazani
Jul 21, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Last time I discussed Volgograd - the poorest large city in Russia. Today I read a news about relatives of a Volgograd corporal KIA in Ukraine who are fighting over 12 million rubles of compensation. His aunt illegally appropriated all the money, so other relatives are suing her
That's something that misses from most of discussions. Compensations for soldiers KIA in Ukraine are huge. They are absolutely enormous by the standards of poor Russian province. 12 million rubles is the entire fortune for Volgograd

volgasib.ru/virtual/skanda…
Average salary in the Volgograd oblast is about 38 000 rubles. So 12 million is 315 average monthly salaries (median is lower). In other words, the coffin money amount to 26 average yearly salaries in Volgograd region. Average guy will never ever earn that much money in his life Image
It's delusional to discuss public attitude towards the war ignoring how lucrative it is not only for soldiers but also for their families. Soldiers can easily earn 5-8 average regional pay checks per months. Should they be killed, family can get 315 average paychecks. A fortune
Traditionally peasant communities had to pay the blood tax to the Tsar, giving him recruits first for life and then for 25 years long service. Whom would they give? Ideally, the most useless villagers who were of no big help at home. They would try to keep the good workers though
In the past communities would give recruits for free, that was simply the imperial blood tax. Soviet Union didn't compensate the families too lavishly either. Now however, soldier's service and death is compensated beautifully, much better than anytime in the Russian history
I would even say that now families are incentivised to send their members to war, ideally the most useless ones, who would not earn much (or have no job at all). If you think in financial terms, they can sell a commodity of zero or negative value for a far above market price
Unthinkably high monetary compensations of a size absolutely unprecedented in the entire previous history of Russia - that's the elephant in the room ignored so often when discussing the passivity of the families. That's a lucrative business. The end

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More from @kamilkazani

Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 17
Wagner march was incredible, unprecedented to the extent most foreigners simply do not understand. Like, yes, Russia had its military coups in the 18th c. But those were the palace coups, all done by the Guards. Purely praetorian business with zero participation of the army.
Yes, there was a Kornilov affair in 1917, but that happened after the coup in capital. In March they overthrew the Tsar, then there was infighting in the capital, including a Bolshevik revolt in July, and only in September part of the army marches to St Petersburg.

Half a year after the coup. Not the same thing
I think the last time anything like that happened was in 1698, when the Musketeers marched on Moscow from the Western border. And then, next time, only in 2023.

(Army leaves the border/battlefield and marches on the capital without a previous praetorian coup in the capital)
Read 17 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 14
As a person from a post-Soviet country, I could not but find the institutions of People’s Republic of China oddly familiar. For every major institution of the Communist Russia, I could find a direct equivalent in Communist China.

With one major exception:

China had no KGB
For a post-Soviet person, that was a shocking realisation. For us, a gigantic, centralised, all-permeating and all powerful state security system appears to be almost a natural phenomenon. The earth. The sky. Force of gravity. KGB

All basic properties of reality we live in Image
It was hard to come up with any explanation for why the PRC that evolved in a close cooperation with the USSR, that used to be its client state, that emulated its major institutions, failed to copy this seemingly prerequisite (?) institution of state power

Unexplainable Image
Read 7 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Aug 30
Soviet Union was making a lot of weaponry.

No, it was making A LOT of it.

Soviet output of armaments was absolutely gargantuan, massive, unbeatable. “Extraordinary by any standard” , it was impossible for any other country to compete with. Image
From 1975 to 1988, the Soviets produced four times as many ICBMs and SLBMs, twice as many nuclear submarines, five times as many bombers, six times as many SAMs, three times as many tanks and six times as many artillery pieces as the United States.

Impossible to compete with. Image
Which raises a question:

How could the USSR produce so much?

It is not only that the USSR invested every dime into the military production. It is also that the Soviet industry was designed for the very large volumes of output, and worked the best under these very large volumesImage
Read 5 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Aug 24
We are releasing our investigation on Roscosmos, covering a nearly exhaustive sample of Russian ICBM producing plants. We have investigated both primary ICBM/SLBM producers in Russia, a major producer of launchers, manufacturers of parts and components.

Image
We have five OSINT materials, one per each plant. To access our materials, you can either:

a) Click on a respective plant in the diagram
b) Choose it from the list below it

Follow the link: rhodus.com/roscosmos
Image
Each material includes an eclectic collection of sources, ranging from the TV propaganda to public tenders, and from the HR listings to academic dissertations. Combined altogether, they provide a holistic picture of Russian ICBM production base that no single type of source can. Image
Read 20 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Aug 8
Two observations. In the recent years,

1. Silicon Valley has been turning red
2. MAGA discourse has been increasingly dominated by a few tech moguls

Now the thing with moguls is they are extreme outliers, who do not understand they are outliers.
Overall, you can expect tech moguls to have much, much higher level of reasoning abilities compared to the political/administrative class. But this comes at a cost. Their capacities for understanding the Other (masses count as the “Other”) are much poorer.
E.g. Putin is much, much less of an outlier in terms of intelligence compared to Thiel. He is much more average. At the same time, I am positively convinced that Putin understands the masses and works with masses much better.
Read 12 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Aug 3
One problem with that is that too much of the supply chain for drone production is located in China. The thing with drones is that they grew out of toys industry. Cheap plastic & electronic crap that all of a sudden got military significance

America forgot how to produce cheap
Image
That is also the major problem I have with "China supports Russia" argument. China could wreck Ukraine easily, simply obstructing & delaying the drone/drone components shipments. That would be an instant military collapse for Ukraine.
Both Russian and Ukrainian drone industries are totally dependent upon the continuous shipments from China. To a very significant degree, their "production" is assembly from the Chinese components which are non alternative and cannot be substituted with anything else (as cheap).
Read 4 tweets

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