Do you realise that the Moscow Kremlin is the largest Italian fortress in the world? Far surpassing anything you can find in Italy, Europe or elsewhere? That its construction in the late 15th c. required around 200-250 million bricks, making it a project of Albert Kahnish scale?
Do you also realise that Moscow Kremlin is only *one* of the fortresses Italians built in these god forsaken lands in around 1500? There were more, see the Kolomna Kremlin for example. Don't look at the architecture, think about the insane quantity of bricks it took to build it
Obviously, original Kremlin was significantly larger. Moats and outworks were all destroyed in the 19th c. The sheer size, the speed of construction (-> material production) suggests the concentrated efforts comparable with Stalin's industrialisation happening in around 1500
So let's get this straight. You are let's say a skilled architect from Bologna. You sort of have customers and orders in Europe. But a brutal savage warlord in the far Northeast can concentrate resources at a far greater scale (& commission a larger construction) than anyone
What you don't get is that savagery and brutality of the Russian state is not a bug. It's a feature. A perk. Facing no checks, having no legal or institutional constraints, the northern warlord can just rob the country and concentrate resources for your megaproject right now
It is the brutality, savagery & absence of legal or institutional constraints that turns Russia into the dream customer of a European industrialist that has a nice defence related project to sell. Kremlin. A tank plant. An integrated manufacturing solution
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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
I have recently read someone comparing Trump’s tariffs with collectivisation in the USSR. I think it is an interesting comparison. I don’t think it is exactly the same thing of course. But I indeed think that Stalin’s collectivisation offers an interesting metaphor, a perspective to think about
But let’s make a crash intro first
1. The thing you need to understand about the 1920s USSR is that it was an oligarchic regime. It was not strictly speaking, an autocracy. It was a power of few grandees, of the roughly equal rank.
2. Although Joseph Stalin established himself as the single most influential grandee by 1925, that did not make him a dictator. He was simply the most important guy out there. Otherwise, he was just one of a few. He was not yet the God Emperor he would become later.
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.