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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jun 6, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X

https://twitter.com/Brimson1/status/1533853400626077700

Yes, but that's unimportant. Nobody cares about the suffering of the few. It can and will be ignored. What can't be ignored however is the problems in dentistry. You might not give a damn about kidney dialysis, but very soon you'll need to fix your teeth. That gonna be hard

https://twitter.com/Brimson1/status/1533853400626077700

You can see a good overview here. Russian dentistry is critically dependent upon Western materials, tools and anaesthetics. So the prices are skyrocketing and very soon many services will either be unavailable or will have to swtich to Soviet technologies ngs55.ru/text/health/20…

Unavailability of some high tech services like the kidney dialysis doesn't have political significance. Nobody really cares. What does create political consequences however is the general decrease in life standards for everyone. Dentistry >>> Dialysis, politics-wise

You see, any sort of regime however horrendous it might look from outside can exist only as long as it relies on some sort of social contract. Which is generally accepted by the population. And Putin's regime can exist only as long as it fullfills the social contract conditions

Westerners generally misunderstand Putin's social contract . It's not about "gimme your freedom, and I'll give you money". Not at all. Much of Russian population lived in horrendous conditions and that was ok. Cuz it's not what Putin's social contract is about

Putin's social contract is not about securing some life standards or employment or even economic growth. It's primarily about securing FULL SUPERMARKET SHELVES. That's the basis of his legitimacy

Westerners generally underestimate how much Russian population is traumatised by the Soviet empty shelves. It was not "poverty" that damaged the Soviet legitimacy. It was the empty shelves. You kinda have money, but what are you gonna buy?

Putin's social contract is not about everyone having something to eat. It's about food being always available in the supermarket and available in variety and abundance, which never really happened in Russian history before, at least since 1917

It's not poverty that damages the legitimacy of the regime. It's the deficit. If you can't buy food cuz you're poor, then well, fuck you. You're lazy or stupid, because if you were smarter you'd earn cash or take a loan. And buy food which is available in a supermarket, just look

If you can't buy food cuz you don't have cash, it's your own fault. Putin's responsibility is to provide you with supply. However, if you can't buy food, because there is no (or little/limited choice of it), that's Putin's fault. He didn't fulfil the implicit promise of abundance

Paradoxically enough, poverty or starvation don't damage the regime nearly as much as the limited choice of yogurts does. Starvation is your own fault. The limited choice of yogurts is Putin's fault. Know the difference

Russian people love to consume. They love to consume way more than Europeans do, because they didn't have much chance to consume at least since Stalin took the power. Limiting the consumption choice or consumption dreams is way more painful than it would be in Europe. End of 🧵

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Feb 8

Why does Russia attack?

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.

Let's see why

Read 24 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Feb 2

On the origins of Napoleon

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.

Read 7 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jan 4

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

Read 4 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Dec 16, 2024

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

Read 10 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Nov 30, 2024

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:

You know what does this Huntingtonian classification remind to me? A fictional “Chinese Encyclopaedia” by an Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges:

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

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Nov 23, 2024

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.

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

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

Read 7 tweets

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