Russian bureaucracy is *massive*. It's also diverse. Judging from my observations, it's less integrated than let's say the apparatus of the U.S. federal bureaucracy. Different agencies have different cultures and operate by different rules. Avoid sweeping generalisations (not🧵)
I see a very common attitude among the Russian pro-war community. It can be summarised this way:
"We expected dumb and incompetent bureaucrats to destroy our economy. But our glorious army would prevail against all odds. It turned out we were wrong. It's the other way around"
Now much of the Z-community argues that they greatly overestimated the Russian army (and the military apparatus). It's very, very much worse than anyone thought before. But they underestimated the economic bureaucracy. Which is very much better than they could have thought
That kinda makes sense. Portraying *all* of the federal bureaucracy as stupid incompetent thieves is a lie. That's simply not true. Some of the agencies indeed are absolutely rotten and crony (Foreign Ministry). Some are incredibly meritocratic (Ministry of Economy)
There's only one way to get into the foreign ministry. You need to get into their university MGIMO and do step by step linear career after the graduation. They're carefully protected from the competition with outsiders and nonames. The result is expectedly horrendous
Ministry of Economy is exactly the opposite. When Oreshkin became a minister he published a post:
1. Anyone can send me a CV via Facebook 2. I'll personally read each one
I don't know if he read them himself. But I know a number of ppl who just sent him their CVs and were hired
Ministry of Economy is extremely competitive and meritocratic. They are actively hunting for ppl. Like I know a girl who worked in Google in an Asian megapolis and the ministry invited her back to Moscow to work with them. She agreed. Most probably, their conditions were good
In 2021 they tried to invite me for an interview five times and I didn't even apply. As I said, they're actively headhunting. I didn't say yes or no directly, because I waited for my U.S. visa and chose to тянуть резину, until my flight. Sometimes ambiguity is the best strategy
There's a huge contrast between the super open, competitive and meritocratic economic bureaucracy and let's say the unhealthily sheltered diplomatic corps which works just the other way around. From my perspective economic bureaucracy is objectively very good
That is not to say it doesn't have its own drawbacks. In the recent years, the concept of the "Deep State" entrenched in the English vocabulary and the political discourse. Indeed, the US or the UK states are objectively very deep. Which is not the case with Russia. It is shallow
The US and the UK are deep and mechanistic. Russia is shallow and manual. Let me give you an illustration. Lots of pharmaceutical industry regulations were personally made by one single deputy minister of economy. He just sat at his office and made all the regulations "manually"
Theoretically his decisions could be overruled. By whom though? Let's be honest, a minister never gonna get into the meticulous details of regulations in every single industry. That's absolutely impossible. He just delegates it to his deputies. PM or President won't either ofc
As a result, the entire pharmaceutical industry would be "manually" directed by one deputy minister sitting in his office. No one above him will ever go through all the paperwork and documentation to get even the slightest understanding of what's going on. His decisions are final
That's what I call a "shallow" state. Government official takes *all* the decisions which in practice can't be overruled. There is no permanent bureaucracy staying in shadow like in England. There is no congressional authority like in the US. Deputy minister decides and that's it
As a result, changing individuals has far deeper effect than in the West. In the West a new official or a politician coming after his predecessor often understands he can't really change much. And soon his term is over. In Russia you often can overturn anything at any moment
What I find puzzling is the obsession of so many US conservatives with Russia. Imagine that in the US the federal bureaucracy in DC could literally decide *everything*. They would just take all decisions for Texas or Oklahoma which can't be overruled. That's how Russia is ruled
That doesn't necessarily mean that all of this bureaucracy is vile or corrupt. The economic apparatus is quite competent and conscientious. They use their power according to their best judgement. It's just that they have too much power and no human on earth should have so much
In the U.S. many blame the party politics for all the ills of the country. I disagree. I'd argue that the party politics are a *healthier* element of the US political system. They introduce an element of healthy randomness into the otherwise too technocratic federal government
I would argue that the centralised rule by the honest and competent bureaucracy may work out only in very, very small polities, where the bureaucrats can see and feel the immediate effect of their actions on their own skin. This model works, but it doesn't really scale up
Centralised technocratic rule in a massive country of continental scale is a guaranteed recipe for a disaster. The bigger a country is, the slower is the feedback, the slower the learning process. The more catastrophic mistakes you can afford to make before reality strikes back
When discussing the Putinism, we concentrate too much on its kleptocratic element. It exists indeed. But if the system works, it can't be purely kleptocratic. It works thanks to smart, competent and conscientious technocracy. Which is too powerful and that's exactly the problem🧵
PS obsession with PR masters as Surkov, or even worse Dugin proves that the quality of expertise available to the English-reading audience is below any criticism. If those opinion makers in media and in academia had a grain of competence, they would write about Andrey Belousov
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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
Global politics are usually framed in terms of kindergarten discourse (“good guys” vs “bad guys”) with an implication that you must provide “good guys” with boundless and unconditional support
BUT
Unconditional support is extremely corrupting, and turns the best of the best into the really nasty guys, and relatively fast
Part of the reason is that neither “bad” nor “good” guys are in fact homogenous, and present a spectrum of opinions and personalities. Which means that all of your designated “good guys” include a fair share of really, really nasty guys, almost by definition.
Purely good movements do not really exist
That is a major reason why limitless, unconditional, unquestioning support causes such a profound corrupting effect upon the very best movement. First, because that movement is not all
that purely good as you imagine (neither movement is),