Many argue that only few Russians travel to Europe. Fair enough. But those in power not only travel, they're relocating. The family breadwinner must stay, but he'll send kids abroad. Zolotov commands the Russian National Guard. His grandson Artem studies in Cranleigh School, UK
Zheleznyak is one of the United Russia party leaders. His daughter Anastasia McClymont. She studied in London, worked at the BBC, married her Scottish co-worker and changed her surname from Zheleznyak to McClymont
Dmitry Peskov is the Putin's spokesman. His daughter Yelizaveta has long lived in France. She had an internship in the European Parliament, then worked in Louis Vuitton
This news from 2011 is very telling. Britain denied the ex-mayor of Moscow Luzhkov the residence permit but gave him the entry visa. To visit his family. Well, of course he had long relocated his family to London, that's kinda obvious
I gave only a few examples of well-known public figures. You can find many, many more. How does the Russian ruling class live? Head of the family, the hunter gatherer lives in Russia. But at the first opportunity he'll relocate lady and kids to Europe and try to join them later
Argument about European tourism being unimportant kinda misses the point. It is very, very important. Because the Russian ruling class lives with idea of relocating to Europe (90%) and North America (10%). If not myself than at least my kids should leave as "White People" (=well)
PS Joseph Stalin and his granddaughter. Upon father's death his daughter Svetlana moved to the USA and married an American citizen. So dictator's granddaughter Chrese Evans now lives in America. Last time I checked it was Portland, Oregon
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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),
Let's have a look at these four guys. Everything about them seems to be different. Religion. Ideology. Political regime. And yet, there is a common denominator uniting all:
Xi - 71 years old
Putin - 72 years old
Trump - 79 years old
Khamenei - 86 years old
Irrespectively of their political, ideological, religious and whatever differences, Russia, China, the United States, Iran are all governed by the old. Whatever regime, whatever government they have, it is the septuagenarians and octogenarians who have the final saying in it.
This fact is more consequential than it seems. To explain why, let me introduce the following idea:
Every society is a multiracial society, for every generation is a new race
Although we tend to imagine them as cohesive, all these countries are multigenerational -> multiracial
In 1927, when Trotsky was being expelled from the Boslhevik Party, the atmosphere was very and very heated. One cavalry commander met Stalin at the stairs and threatened to cut off his ears. He even pretended he is unsheathing he sabre to proceed
Stalin shut up and said nothing
Like obviously, everyone around could see Stalin is super angry. But he still said nothing and did nothing
Which brings us to an important point:
Nobody becomes powerful accidentally
If Joseph Stalin seized the absolute control over the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union, the most plausible explanation is that Joseph Stalin is exercising some extremely rare virtues, that almost nobody on the planet Earth is capable of
Highly virtuous man, almost to the impossible level
Growing up in Russia in the 1990s, I used to put America on a pedestal. It was not so much a conscious decision, as the admission of an objective fact of reality. It was the country of future, the country thinking about the future, and marching into the future.
And nothing reflected this better than the seething hatred it got from Russia, a country stuck in the past, whose imagination was fully preoccupied with the injuries of yesterday, and the phantasies of terrible revenge, usually in the form of nuclear strike.
Which, of course, projected weakness rather than strength
We will make a huuuuuuge bomb, and drop it onto your heads, and turn you into the radioactive dust, and you will die in agony, and we will be laughing and clapping our hands
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