"There's now a shortage of places on Nizhny Tagil graveyards"
Nizhny Tagil is located in the Urals. It's one of the most heavily industrialised Russian cities. Metallurgy, chemicals, machinery. Uralvagonzavod which is usually considered to be the largest Russian military producer is located in this city
Despite its massive industrial production, Nizhny Tagil is one of the most quickly shrinking cities in the region. People die or leave. All the revenues from the industry are sucked by the insatiable Moscow, while the locals get only the poisoned air and water
As pretty much the entire eastern part of the country, the Yekaterinburg Oblast where Tagil is located became a massive supplier of the cannon fodder the Putin's Special Operation in Ukraine. See the number of confirmed deaths by region by Mediazona zona.media/casualties
Geographic asymmetry of Russian casualties in Ukraine is impressive. Consider the following example. So far Moscow has less confirmed deaths (11) than Kamchatka (14). Population of Moscow - 11.9 million, Kamchatka - 312 thousand. Moscow has 38 times more ppl but less casualties
This is Kamchatka. It is located half the world away from Ukraine, just across the Bering Sea from Alaska. And this sparsely populated region that has 38 times less people than Moscow, lost more people in Ukraine than the capital
How is that possible?
Russia is not a "nation". It's the last colonial empire. Its metropole is localised in the Furstenstadt of Moscow. It is the northernmost megapolis of the world, located furthest from the waterways and on the infertile soil. It is too expensive to feed
In such a centralised empire as Russia, opinion of Muscovites is of critical importance to Kremlin. They invest every effort and resource so that Moscow wouldn't feel any discomfort at all. The rest of empire will be sucked dry for the benefit of Moscow
Even the most productive regions are sucked dry to feed Moscow. So Moscow can use them again as the cannon fodder suppliers. Go through all the adverts with "short term army contracts" and you'll notice they focus on material benefits. 200 000 a month, zero ideology. Money talks
Still that doesn't explain all the casualty asymmetry. Yes, it's very much easier to lure the destitute provincials than Muscovites with the few thousand bucks. Still, even in the peace time Moscow had *tons* of military and paramilitary quartered there. Why no casualties then?
Most probably, because Siloviki from Moscow are spared from the war. If Moscow suffer almost zero casualties, it means they're probably in the most privilege position in Russia. They're not sent to the frontline
Even their St Petersburg colleagues are less lucky
Meanwhile, provincial Siloviki suffer massive casualties, including the senior officers. On March 20 in one day the buried the entire leadership of the Vladimir SOBR - the National Guard SWAT branch. All four Vladimir lieutenant colonels were KIA in Ukraine
Photo of the funerals
Russia is not a nation. It is the empire with a metropoly - the Fürstenstadt of Moscow. Moscow is too expensive to feed, so its massive colonial empire is being sucked dry. Which gives an additional perk: since they're so destitute, you can buy cannon fodder from there cheaply
There's nothing unusual about it. It's a typical behaviour of a colonial empire, British did the same
“We don’t want to fight,
But by Jingo, if we do,
We won’t go to the front ourselves,
But we’ll send the mild Hindoo”
As formulated in the popular parody to the Jingo Song
What is peculiar about Russia is not that its practices are unprecedentedly evil or hideous. They very much remind of what Western powers did with their colonies. It is that Russia is the last European colonial empire that still exists. The end
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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
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.
The great delusion about popular revolts is that they are provoked by bad conditions of life, and burst out when they exacerbate. Nothing can be further from truth. For the most part, popular revolts do not happen when things get worse. They occur when things turn for the better
This may sound paradoxical and yet, may be easy to explain. When the things had been really, really, really bad, the masses were too weak, to scared and too depressed to even think of raising their head. If they beared any grudges and grievances, they beared them in silence.
When things turn for the better, that is when the people see a chance to restore their pride and agency, and to take revenge for all the past grudges, and all the past fear. As a result, a turn for the better not so much pacifies the population as emboldens and radicalises it.
The first thing to understand about the Russian-Ukrainian war is that Russia did not plan a war. And it, most certainly, did not plan the protracted hostilities of the kind we are seeing today
This entire war is the regime change gone wrong.
Russia did not want a protracted war (no one does). It wanted to replace the government in Kyiv, put Ukraine under control and closely integrate it with Russia
(Operation Danube style)
One thing to understand is that Russia viewed Ukraine as a considerable asset. From the Russian perspective, it was a large and populous country populated by what was (again, from the Russian perspective) effectively the same people. Assimilatable, integratable, recruitable
In 1991, Moscow faced two disobedient ethnic republics: Chechnya and Tatarstan. Both were the Muslim majority autonomies that refused to sign the Federation Treaty (1992), insisting on full sovereignty. In both cases, Moscow was determined to quell them.
Still, the final outcome could not be more different. Chechnya was invaded, its towns razed to the ground, its leader assassinated. Tatarstan, on the other hand, managed to sign a favourable agreement with Moscow that lasted until Putin’s era.
The question is - why.
Retrospectively, this course of events (obliterate Chechnya, negotiate with Tatarstan) may seem predetermined. But it was not considered as such back then. For many, including many of Yeltsin’s own partisans it came as a surprise, or perhaps even as a betrayal.