Professor of International Relations @LSEIRDept. I work on Russian and comparative politics; special interest: historical legacies, social structure.
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Oct 1, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
thread contd. 20/and who increasingly trained as engineers and doctors; scores became prominent entrepreneurs. An equally important social group constituting the modern professional class were the non-Russian princes and lesser nobility in the colonial possessions of the frontier
21/And then there were the sons and daughters of Tatar mullahs—Muslim clerics. Like children of the Orthodox clergy, even in rural areas, they habitually aspired to a modern education.
Oct 1, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
thread contd. 15/as indeed in the sense of exposure to enlightenment because of travel, and through marriage. Their matrons, home tutors, and schoolteachers, were habitually French, German, and English. The schools that the privileged attended were often Protestant in spirit,
16/engendering a certain ethos of a civility and public service.
And in the provinces, the civic notables dominating the public sphere were not just of Russian aristocratic Orthodox and Old Believer merchant stock but were often of Polish or German extraction.
Oct 1, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
thread contd: 9/ few people discuss Putin's attitude towards the liberal intelligentsia as shaped by his origins in the social bottom of Leningrad/St Petersburg society, a city which towards the end of the Tzarist period had districts where one/ten people were in the nobility
10/Many aristocrats continued to colonise prestigious inner-city districts even after the Revolution; many quietly morphed into the soviet intelligentsia, occupying elite professions in the arts, academia, publishing.
Oct 1, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
1/ Why is there no uprising in #Russia against #Putin? And what motivates the conscripts to join the brutal #WarinUkraine? A long thread on social divisions in #Russian society. There have been other periods in history, when commentators have asked:
2/ “How does it chime, the barbarity of rapes, the shelling, pillage, devastation—and, indeed, the apathy of Russian society—with the magnificence of Russian Culture? Did not this nation give us Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shostakovich, Sakharov, maestroslike Evgeny Kissin,Emil Gilels?”
Sep 20, 2022 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
26/While other nations may have shared similar legacies of social divide, the impulse to resist against a large colonising power created a shared sense of national unity and purpose that helped bridge social divides(on legacies of division and empires see @vcharnysh).
27/The social inequalities had a pronounced territorial component. Natalya Zubarevich and other Russian economic and political geographers have written about multiple “Russias” within one country.
Sep 20, 2022 • 11 tweets • 6 min read
Continuing on prev. thread: 15/to understand Putin’s actions and social support, we need to look at domestic power consolidation, economic oligarchy (@CatherineBelton, K.Dawisha, A.Ledeneva), or gendered politics (V. Sperling,others), factors far removed from concerns about NATO
16/I find the work of scholars on the wider region far more relevant to understanding Russia than what the Kissingers and the Measheimers and the other “pundits” have to say about the motivations for aggression, Russian nationalism, or the future of Russia.
Sep 20, 2022 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
A longish thread elaborating on my concern with the sweeping generalization about “Russianists” @apmassaro3 1/ When we hear that “Russianists” have got it wrong let’s first establish how different people understand “Russianists”; then we can discuss what they got “wrong.”
2/ First, I sense from comments that some misunderstand “Russianists” to mean “Russians.” Let’s dispense with that assumption first because I think @apmassaro3 was referring to pundits of whatever national provenance who write/comment on Russia.
Apr 19, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
I have eschewed contacting #Russia friends from high school times recently as talking politics has been pointless and unpleasant since 2014. Last night I reached out to dear friend as I know they have relations in Mariupol :short 🧵
2/The connection wasn’t very good but I kept hearing the word solidarity. I assumed it was about being w #Ukraine people but no it was about how the Russian circle of friends united in solidarity so even those hitherto living in Europe with kids at schools there came back /3
Feb 25, 2022 • 9 tweets • 7 min read
I wanted to thank the many people who expressed support for my brother who was arrested in Moscow protest #StandWithUkraine. This means a lot to us. His last message was that he was released close to midnight. I brought up his plight 1) (thread)
2) not because I see equival. in Moscow protesters' plight and of kids hiding in shelters in Kiev hearing rockets and sirens. It is to highlight the obvious-that #Putin claim that "Russian people" desire the #occupation is a sham. That he has been waging a war on his own people
Feb 23, 2022 • 9 tweets • 7 min read
The segment in the @BBC feature below is taken from a longish interview @BBCChrisMorris recorded with me about #Russia#sanctions last week. I don’t blame journalists or producers but worth mentioning that perhaps due to editorial issues it omitted the following (see thread):
1) That I began by saying this was an opportune moment to discuss #sanctions against #Russia. I was on strike supporting #UCUStrikes and colleagues on precarious contracts and protesting against #USS pension cuts.
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