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Kamil Galeev Profile picture
@kamilkazani
Jul 30, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
You see, too many intuitively plausible assumptions about Russia are wrong. For example the one that the war will be exclusively fought with young men. It was in the beginning. Now however, they are actively recruiting in older ages, around 50 and even plus
Makes sense. Russia is ageing and depopulating country. There is not so much youth to start with. Theoretically you could have used massive human resources of much younger Central Asia. But for a number of reasons Central Asians are extremely unwilling to fight for Russia
That has nothing to do with regime or ideology. That has always been so. During the WWI, Tsar's attempt to mobilise Central Asians (simply for wartime labour) resulted in the massive rebellion of 1916. During the WWII, there was no rebellion. But the desertion rates were enormous
With Slavic population shrinking, the regime has to recruit anyone. Prigozhin is now touring prisons to recruit folk for the Wagner. "I'm one of you, I spent 10 years behind bars myself". They had to drastically lower the standards. They now don't even test recruits for drugs
From what I know, they now take very many older recruits, in their 40s and even 50s. That makes sense. Russia has lots of people with no money or perspectives. When you are 20, you hope one day it may change. When you are 40, you don't hope anymore
Why do they go into army? Money. My friend recently made a long trip through the Urals province. Two observations. First, there are no roads, only directions. Second, he didn't see a single Z or V patriotic poster. But recruitment posters offering 200 000 per month are everywhere Image
They specifically recruit older guys who lost any hope and offer them huge monetary compensations. You probably can't even imagine how much money they pay by the standards of destitute province. And they accentuate *salary*, not some BS like fight on fascism. That's for Moscow
Regarding that video with parents of a soldier KIA buying a car on the coffin money. I get many messages that I didn't confirm that the episode with a car was shown only in province, not in Moscow & St Petersburg. If true, that means that's not a report. It is an advert. The end

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More from @kamilkazani

Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Nov 2
For decades, any resistance to the Reaganomics has been suppressed using the false dichotomy: it is either “capitalism” (= which meant Reaganomics) or socialism, and socialism doesn’t work

Now, as there is the growing feeling that Reaganomics don’t work, the full rehabilitation of socialism looks pretty much inevitable
I find it oddly similar to how it worked in the USSR. For decades, the whole propaganda apparatus had been advancing the false dichotomy: it is either socialism, or capitalism (= meaning robber barons)
Now, as there is a growing feeling that the current model does not work, we must try out capitalism instead. And, as capitalism means robber barons, we must create robber barons

We have to distribute all the large enterprises between the organized crime members. This is the way
Read 4 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Oct 29
Truth is: the words like Rus/Russian had many and many ambiguous and often mutually exclusive meanings, and not only throughout history, but, like, simultaneously.

For example, in the middle ages, the word "Rus" could mean:
1. All the lands that use Church Slavonic in liturgy. That is pretty much everything from what is now Central Russia, to what is now Romania. Wallachians, being the speakers of a Romance language were Orthodox, and used Slavonic in church -> they're a part of Rus, too
2. Some ambiguous, undefined region that encompasses what is now northwest Russia & Ukraine, but does not include lands further east. So, Kiev & Novgorod are a part of Rus, but Vladimir (-> region of Moscow) isn't

These two mutually exclusive notions exist simultaneously
Read 6 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Oct 27
The greatest Western delusion about China is, and always has been, greatly exaggerating the importance of plan. Like, in this case, for example. It sounds as if there is some kind of continuous industrial policy, for decades

Which is a huuuuuuge misrepresentation of reality
It is more like:

1. Mao Zedong dies. His successors be like, wow, he is dead. Now we can build a normal, sane economy. That means, like in the Soviet Union

2. Fuck, we run out of oil. And the entire development plan was based upon an assumption that we have huge deposits of it
3. All the prior plans of development, and all the prior industrial policies go into the trashbin. Because again, they were based upon an assumption that we will be soon exporting more oil than Saudi Arabia, and without that revenue we cannot fund our mega-projects
Read 14 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Oct 9
Yes. Behind all the breaking news about the capture of small villages, we are missing the bigger pattern which is:

The Soviet American war was supposed to be fought to somewhere to the west of Rhine. What you got instead is a Soviet Civil War happening to the east of Dnieper
If you said that the battles of the great European war will not be fought in Dunkirk and La Rochelle, but somewhere in Kupyansk (that is here) and Rabotino, you would have been once put into a psych ward, or, at least, not taken as a serious person Image
The behemoth military machine had been built, once, for a thunderbolt strike towards the English Channel. Whatever remained from it, is now decimating itself in the useless battles over the useless coal towns of the Donetsk Oblast
Read 6 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 7
Yes, and that is super duper quadruper important to understand

Koreans are poor (don't have an empire) and, therefore, must do productive work to earn their living. So, if the Americans want to learn how to do anything productive they must learn it from Koreans etc
There is this stupid idea that the ultra high level of life and consumption in the United States has something to do with their productivity. That is of course a complete sham. An average American doesn't do anything useful or important to justify (or earn!) his kingly lifestyle
The kingly lifestyle of an average American is not based on his "productivity" (what a BS, lol) but on the global empire Americans are holding currently. Part of the imperial dynamics being, all the actually useful work, all the material production is getting outsourced abroad
Read 8 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 1
Reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Set in southwest England, somewhere in the late 1800s. And the first thing you need to know is that Tess is bilingual. He speaks a local dialect she learnt at home, and the standard English she picked at school from a London-trained teacher
So, basically, "normal" language doesn't come out of nowhere. Under the normal conditions, people on the ground speak all the incomprehensible patois, wildly different from each other

"Regular", "correct" English is the creation of state
So, basically, the state chooses a standard (usually, based on one of the dialects), cleanses it a bit, and then shoves down everyone's throats via the standardized education

Purely artificial construct, of a super mega state that really appeared only by the late 1800s
Read 10 tweets

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