Thread by @kamilkazani

Great statistics, awful analysis. The fact that the majority of Russians will support either escalation or peace shows that they *do* have a clue. And the clue is - submission to the supreme power in whatever. The culture of obedience in Russia is unimaginable to a Westerner

https://twitter.com/ABarbashin/status/1557105907955384320

That's why discussion about Putin's "rate of approval" figures is so dumb. It just doesn't matter. Yeltsin ruled perfectly with a rate of approval of like 6%. He waged wars, and won elections and commanded a perfect obedience being almost universally hated. Culture of obedience

It's analysts making arguments like "it's all Putin's fault, Russian people would accept whatever decision of the Supreme Ruler" who are clueless. It's not Bad Putin who is the problem here. It is the culture of perfect obedience to the ruler and his *whatever* decisions

That's why changing "bad" Tsar for a "good" Tsar isn't solution. Good Tsar will command just as perfect obedience. And he'll break the bones of the disobedient just as diligently as the Bad one. Except media won't notice it this time, because they're already too invested into him

Russians often say "we can't bear any responsibility for this war, we can't do anything really" and that makes Ukrainians very angry. But this observation is not technically wrong, there's a lot of truth in it. It just means that Russia should not exist as a political structure

Enfranchisement of the Russian empire's population requires scaling down. Right now perfect obedience is the only evolutionary stable strategy for its subjects. To gain sense of responsibility for their lives, they must be physical taken from under the power of Kremlin

Btw, don't you feel that "we bear no responsibility, we couldn't and still can't do anything" arguments are kinda... infantile? Because they're. In a sense subjects of a tyranny do behave and reason like kids, because they never really grew up

I think that Russian political and institutional culture can change relatively quickly. But for that to happen its political structure must be dismantled and Moscow must have no power over the periphery. Because it's Moscow that keeps the empire in its current degeneracy. The end