Darya was an ambitious young woman. She leveraged her father's *international* brand to build herself a network in Russia. She was indeed smarter than an average golden kid and viewed herself as a potential national leader
In the last months she would not shut up about bad Russian military performance. She constantly criticised Shoygu (privately) and insisted that if *she* was a minister of defence, it'd be alright. For some reason, she was trying to pitch herself a a minister of defense, Idk why
Becoming a minister of defence was a new topic that emerged only recently. Previously to that, she was obsessed with Le Pen. She constantly talked about how great, amazing and misunderstood Marine Le Pen is, boasted how well she knew her and clearly viewed Le Pen as a role model
What was interesting about Darya was an extreme contrast between her public and her private discourse. Publicly, she largely followed her father's footsteps. Publicly she complained about too gentle mode of war in Ukraine and called for the tougher measure against "nonhumans"
On public Darya was fiery and uncompromising. Privately though she was the opposite of that, a sort of chameleon. She'd figure out what her interlocutors think and present herself as their thinker. If a (useful) interlocutor was against the war, than she was against the war too
On public she was a hawk, calling for escalation, tribunals in every Ukrainian city, lynching Azovstal defenders, etc. Privately though, she would mock the entire DPR/LPR project, Russian irredentism, etc. if she felt that would help her to win her interlocutor's sympathy
Audience largely perceived her as dad's attribute. Publicly she played by the rules and leveraged it. Privately though, she hated that. She wanted to be seen as a political figure in her own right. That's why she took "Platonova" nickname and tried to brand herself as such
Whenever Darya felt it could win her a sympathy, she mocked and criticised her dad's insane and ridiculous agenda. She would also argue that most of her social circle (other Russian golden kids) share this feeling. Most feel only contempt towards their fathers
Psychologically this may be understandable. Imagine yourself as a golden kid. On the one hand, you owe your dad everything and you would be a total zero without his resources. On the other hand, you want to be seen as great and amazing in your own right, not a dad's attribute
In search of glory and self-affirmation, you'd rather distance yourself from dad. But the more you do that, the more of zero you become. The world doesn't give a damn about you as an individual. For them you are and will always be the Daughter of Dugin
Of course you'll hate him
Didn't you find it funny that the media are describing this 30 year old woman as a child or a kid? On the one hand, it sounds kinda absurd. On the other hand, it is very, very true. Darya never could brand herself to the outer world as an independent person. Only as Dugin's child
Many describe Darya as "innocent". But she was the opposite of that. I don't rejoice at the death of conscripts or rural idiots lured into the army by high wages. But a golden kid who leveraged war and genocide to boost her career, that's as close as you can get to unmixed evil
The end
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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