Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 11, 2022 23 tweets 8 min read Read on X
It's time to update the list of introductory threads

1. By February 27, I concluded that Russia would lose this war. Russian army was overrated, Ukrainian - underrated, while Russian political goals misunderstood. They planned for 1968-style pacification

2. Avocado economy: Why Russia cannot manufacture anything?

An industry's level of complexity negatively correlates with the rank of interest groups controlling it in the Russian hierarchy. The more mafia-like, the more dominant, the simpler the industry

3. Russian military industry completely depends upon technological import from the West, not from China. Whereas Kremlin closed their eyes on importing European equipment and pretending it's Russian, it jailed those who tried to do the same with Chinese

4. Russia is primarily the natural resources exporter. This created two problems. First, sources of cheap-to-extract resources are depleting. Second, it can't compensate for losses on Western markets in China. It just doesn't pay off

5. Crisis and Jubilee

Russia's spiralling into a deep crisis. It was visible before the war but now it's rapidly accelerating. And every major crisis entails mass redistribution of power, property and status. Because crisis is essentially a Jubilee

6. A crash introduction into Chechnya

7. How to hack the system. On the procedurality of bureaucracy and thus of state, etc.

8. Vladislav Surkov and Putin's rise to power

9. Stalin's industrialisation. Mostly based on Sonia Melnikova-Raich's research which I absolutely recommend

10. The motivation behind Z-war is not "security", "alliances" or even political affiliation. It's the need to extinguish wrong cultural memes and impose correct ones. That's why the war has wide popular support and why Russians so easily agreed for it

11. Parliamentarism in Russia. What should you know about the Communist Party (TL;DR Communists = Russian GOP)

12. TDZ Turn -> Kr Prom -> Krasmash

Case study on supply chains of the Russian nuclear delivery systems producing industry. Krasmash is the only* liquid propellant ICMB producing plant in the country

* MAAZ may be doing it too, but I'll cover it later

13. Die Fürstenstadt

Moscow is the city built around a princely court and living off prince's expenses. Its prosperity results from its central status in the imperial system. Moscow is uniquely expensive to feed. That's why its colonies are so destitute

14. Why mass mobilisation in Russia won't work?

TL;DR Mass Soviet style mobilisation requires expensive infrastructure and cadres being maintained for it even in the peace time, just in case. In the post-Soviet era these inefficient expenses were cut

15. Elon Musk

Innovators create wealth. And yet, they're greenhouse flowers who flourish only in *very* safe societies. They prosper because they've outsourced their security. If they don't get it, ignore their opinion on security and foreign policy

16. Fall of Kazan

or deescalation: the limits of applicability

17. Poverty of Realism



On the fallacies and intellectual dishonesty of Mearsheimer's analysis which is instrumental in legitimising the appeasement advocacy
18. National Divorce

Every Russian setback in Ukraine increases the chance of imperial collapse. Still, debates about Russian breakup are mostly based upon the Wilsonian axiom (ethnolinguistic differences -> nation building). But that's not how it works

19. National Divorce: Q and A

There's a major misconception about Russia "being 77% Russian". This view is incorrect as it ignores:

1. Massive census fraud
2. Suppression of regional "Russian" identities
3. Ethnic balance depending upon ethnic hierarchy

20. @navalny



TL;DR Started independent political career with hate propaganda. Repeatedly confirmed his ultranationalist platform has not changed, never apologised (except for a few slurs). Enjoyed thorough whitewashing by the Moscow and Western media
@navalny 21. Disintegration of Russia: a plausible scenario

TL;DR It's not some cartoonish regime fighters raising arms. It's moneyed interest groups integrated into the previous regime, deciding that

a) Costs >>> benefits
b) No "doctors" will come from Moscow

22. Why Navalny's succession is not an answer

TL;DR Westerners are often astonished to see many Ukrainians/Russian minorities being rather unenthusiastic about the @navany's succession to the Russian throne. In this thread I will try to show why

23. Why Russian elite is "acting mad"?



TL;DR. They are not acting mad, they are playing mad to show Putin they are not dangerous:

😛 You are playing mad-> 🐷Reputation destroyed -> 👁️Putin sees you can't betray him now-> He lets you live 😊

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More from @kamilkazani

Dec 16
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. Image
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
Read 10 tweets
Nov 30
In his “Clash of Civilizations” Samuel Huntington identified eight civilisations on this planet:

Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Western, Orthodox, Latin American, and, possibly, African

I have always found this list a bit dubious, not to say self-contradictory:Image
You know what does this Huntingtonian classification remind to me? A fictional “Chinese Encyclopaedia” by an Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges: Image
Classification above sounds comical. Now why would that be? That it because it lacks a consistent classification basis. The rules of formal logic prescribe us to choose a principle (e.g. size) and hold to it.

If Jorge Borges breaks this principle, so does Samuel P. Huntington.
Read 15 tweets
Nov 23
Revolution and the Jews

Literacy rates in European Russia, 1897. Obviously, the data is imperfect. Still, it represents one crucial pattern for understanding the late Russian Empire. That is the wide gap in human capital between the core of empire and its Western borderland. Image
The most literate regions of Empire are its Lutheran provinces, including Finland, Estonia & Latvia

Then goes, roughly speaking, Poland-Lithuania

Russia proper has only two clusters of high literacy: Moscow & St Petersburg. Surrounded by the vast ocean of illiterate peasantry Image
This map shows how thin was the civilisation of Russia proper comparatively speaking. We tend to imagine old Russia, as the world of nobility, palaces, balls, and duels. And that is not wrong, because this world really existed, and produced some great works of art and literature Image
Read 7 tweets
Nov 21
How does Russia make marine reactors?

The OKBM Afrikantova is the principal producer of marine nuclear reactors, including reactors for icebreakers, and for submarines in Russia. Today we will take a brief excursion on their factory floor 🧵 Image
Before I do, let me introduce some basic ideas necessary for the further discussion. First, reactor production is based on precision metalworking. Second, modern precision metalworking is digital. There is simply no other way to do it at scale. Image
How does the digital workflow work? First, you do a design in the Computer Aided Design (CAD) software. Then, the Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software turns it into the G-code. Then, a Computer Numerical Controller (CNC) reads the code and guides the tool accordingly Image
Read 21 tweets
Nov 21
Relative popularity of three google search inquiries in the post-USSR. Blue - horoscope. Red - prayer. Green - namaz. Most of Russia is blue, primarily googling horoscopes. Which suggests most of the population being into some kind of spirituality rather than anything "trad". Image
The primary contiguous red area is not in Russia at all, but in West Ukraine. Which is indeed the only remotely "conservative" (in the American sense) area of the East Slavic world. Coincidentally or not, it had never been ruled by Russia, except for a short period in 1939-1991 Image
In the blue and occasionally red sea, there are two regions that primarily google namaz, the Islamic prayer. That is Moscow & Tatarstan Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 16
Why the USSR failed?

There are two ways for a poor, underdeveloped country to industrialise: Soviet vs Chinese way. Soviet way is to build the edifice of industrial economy from the foundations. Chinese way is to build it from the roof.

1st way sounds good, 2nd actually works. Image
To proceed further, I need to introduce a new concept. Let's divide the manufacturing industry into two unequal sectors, Front End vs Back End:

Front End - they make whatever you see on the supermarket shelf

Back End - they make whatever that stands behind, that you don’t see
Front End industries are making consumer goods. That is, whatever you buy, as an individual. Toys, clothes, furniture, appliances all falls under this category. The list of top selling amazon products gives a not bad idea what the front end sector is, and how it looks like. Image
Read 18 tweets

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