The thing is: we don't really understand other societies. We don't really understand their realities, balance of power or mechanics of functioning. There is always a cultural barrier preventing this understanding. We tend to assume that a foreign society works just like ours
Smart PRmaxers can leverage this assumption to brand themselves abroad more successfully than at home. Consider a Ukrainian (pro-Russian) oligarch Medvedchuk. In Ukraine he is always styled as Putin's "kum". If A baptised B's child, A and B become "kum" after that
Indeed, Putin baptised Medvedchuk's daughter. And a PRmaxer Madvedchuk leveraged it to the fullest for PR purposes. I'm the Putin's kum, the Putin's kum I am! Very important!
In reality he leveraged a cultural barrier. Because in Ukraine being kum matters. In Russia it doesn't
Russia and Ukraine seem to be very close culturally. They can speak the same language, share the same cultural memes, profess the same religion (mostly). So most Russians and Ukrainians often assume that things in their countries work alike
But they don't. They're very different
In Ukraine being "kum" is very important. The term for nepotism "kumovstvo" must be understood literally. In Russia the same word must *not* be taken literally. When discussing "kumovstvo" nepotism networks, Russians do not mean they are actually kums. That is just unimportant
Medvedchuk weaponised the cultural barrier between Ukraine and Russia. He became Putin's kum. Russians do not take being kum seriously, but Ukrainians do. So he persuaded the Ukrainians that he is super close to Putin, has influence on him, represents him
That backfired
I agree that Medvedchuk is Putin's agent of influence. But I will also argue that the Ukrainian public opinion tends to exaggerate his importance. Why? Because Medvedchuk himself successfully exaggerated his own importance weaponising the cultural barrier between two countries
I do not have any evidence of who organised the yesterday's attack, but the factor of Dugin having successfully exaggerated his own importance on the world arena might have played a role. He made his surname a global brand, far more successful abroad than in Russia
His daughter Darya weaponised the dad's brand and tried to act as an intermediary between:
1) Kremlin and the European far right 2) interest groups in Russia
Both of which could have had her killed. The first one, for financial reasons. The second, for political ones. The end
The younger guy on the previous photo is Akim Apachev, a Wagner-connected musician. Both Alexander and Darya Dugina took pro-war stance and were very active in the Z-movement. Neither of them was innocent
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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.
The single most important thing to understand regarding the background of Napoleon Bonaparte, is that he was born in the Mediterranean. And the Mediterranean, in the words of Braudel, is a sea ringed round by mountains
We like to slice the space horizontally, in our imagination. But what we also need to do is to slice it vertically. Until very recently, projection of power (of culture, of institutions) up had been incomparably more difficult than in literally any horizontal direction.
Mountains were harsh, impenetrable. They formed a sort of “internal Siberia” in this mild region. Just a few miles away, in the coastal lowland, you had olives and vineyards. Up in the highland, you could have blizzards, and many feet of snow blocking connections with the world.
Slavonic = "Russian" religious space used to be really weird until the 16-17th cc. I mean, weird from the Western, Latin standpoint. It was not until second half of the 16th c., when the Jesuit-educated Orthodox monks from Poland-Lithuania started to rationalise & systematise it based on the Latin (Jesuit, mostly) model
One could frame the modern, rationalised Orthodoxy as a response to the Counterreformation. Because it was. The Latin world advanced, Slavonic world retreated. So, in a fuzzy borderland zone roughly encompassing what is now Ukraine-Belarus-Lithuania, the Catholic-educated Orthodox monks re-worked Orthodox institutions modeling them after the Catholic ones
By the mid-17th c. this new, Latin modeled Orthodox culture had already trickled to Muscovy. And, after the annexation of the Left Bank Ukraine in 1654, it all turned into a flood. Eventually, the Muscovite state accepted the new, Latinised Orthodoxy as the established creed, and extirpated the previous faith & the previous culture
1. This book (“What is to be done?”) has been wildly, influential in late 19-20th century Russia. It was a Gospel of the Russian revolutionary left. 2. Chinese Communists succeeded the tradition of the Russian revolutionary left, or at the very least were strongly affected by it.
3. As a red prince, Xi Jinping has apparently been well instructed in the underlying tradition of the revolutionary left and, very plausibly, studied its seminal works. 4. In this context, him having read and studied the revolutionary left gospel makes perfect sense
5. Now the thing is. The central, seminal work of the Russian revolutionary left, the book highly valued by Chairman Xi *does* count as unreadable in modern Russia, having lost its appeal and popularity long, long, long ago. 6. In modern Russia, it is seen as old fashioned and irrelevant. Something out of museum