Fair enough. While Crimea had separatist attitiudes, Donbass did not. In fact, it was a major power center of pre-2014 Ukraine. While Russia is picturing Ukrainian political system as dominance of Galicia, picturing it as Donetsk & Dnipro dominance may be more factually accurate
I would argue that the actual political influence of the West Ukrainian interest groups on Kyiv politics had been exaggerated. While the influence of interest groups from the large industrial cities of the South East: especially Dnipro and Donetsk had been vastly underrated
In 2014 Donetsk interest group lost massively. They chose to welcome the Russian involvement. A dog was losing in a fight and called for the wolves to help. As a result, the Donetsk group not only lost everything but the Donbass itself turned into the country of depopulated ruins
Azovstal where the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol took their last stand was the major asset of Rinat Akhmetov. The richest businessman of Donetsk, who was the force standing behind Yanukovich and who was a big loser of the 2014 Maidan
There is a strong reason to believe that the "Owner of Donetsk" as he was styled helped the Donetsk People's Republic on its very early stages, securing the smooth switching of allegiance by the local police and state security. But then Russia took direct control, kicking him out
When discussing the "separatism" of Donetsk we miss the elephant in the room: the massive switching of colours by the local state security and the cops. Which was massive. It was probably orchestrated by the businessmen of the Donetsk interest group who lost during the Maidan
Consider the following. All of the "heroes of the Russian spring", separatist commanders in Donetsk were later cleansed by Russia. Kremlin killed every single of them, even those who left to Russia. Yes, they were kinda useful but too chaotic and unruly from Kremlin's perspective
Only two early DPR commanders are still alive: Strelkov and Khodakovsky. Two things in common between them:
1. They're both alive. Russians did not kill them like the rest 2. They're both from the state security. Strelkov from the FSB, Khodakovsky from the SBU
Yeah, the only Donbass separatist commander of Ukrainian origin the Russians did not kill used to be a career officer of the Ukrainian state security. From the FSB perspective it makes him socially adjacent. He will be spared and allowed to command, he is kinda one of us
The elephant in the room is that the institutional gap between Russian and Ukraine before 2014 was not great. It was basically the same military industrial complex. Dnipro played the key role in Russian missiles production, Zporizhya in engines, Mykolaiv in shipbuilding
Russian army and state security worked very closely with the Ukrainian ones and in a sense comprised one organism. It was in 2014 when these ties were finally broken. Some would argue that the USSR fall in 1991. I would argue that the Soviet Union died for real only in 2014
The end
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What I am saying is that "capitalist reforms" are a buzzword devoid of any actual meaning, and a buzzword that obfuscated rather than explains. Specifically, it is fusing radically different policies taken under the radically different circumstances (and timing!) into one - purely for ideological purposes
It can be argued, for example, that starting from the 1980s, China has undertaken massive socialist reforms, specifically in infrastructure, and in basic (mother) industries, such as steel, petrochemical and chemical and, of course, power
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.