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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
Jul 7
Victory has a hundred fathers, defeat is an orphan

Everyone is trying to appropriate the rise of China for their own purposes, like it proves their theory, ideology whatever

No one, however, wants to appropriate the post-Soviets, who, by the way, also made capitalist reforms
What I am saying is that "capitalist reforms" are a buzzword devoid of any actual meaning, and a buzzword that obfuscated rather than explains. Specifically, it is fusing radically different policies taken under the radically different circumstances (and timing!) into one - purely for ideological purposes
It can be argued, for example, that starting from the 1980s, China has undertaken massive socialist reforms, specifically in infrastructure, and in basic (mother) industries, such as steel, petrochemical and chemical and, of course, power

That was almost entirely state's job
Read 4 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jul 1
The primary weakness of this argument is that being true, historically speaking, it is just false in the context of American politics where the “communism” label has been so over-used (and misapplied) that it lost all of its former power:

“We want X”
“No, that is communism”
“We want communism”
Basically, when you use a label like “communism” as a deus ex machina winning you every argument, you simultaneously re-define its meaning. And when you use it to beat off every popular socio economic demand (e.g. universal healthcare), you re-define communism as a synthesis of all the popular socio economic demands
Historical communism = forced industrial development in a poor, predominantly agrarian country, funded through expropriation of the peasantry

(With the most disastrous economic and humanitarian consequences)

So, yes, living under the actual communism sucks
Read 5 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 28
Some thoughts on Zohran Mamdani’s victory

Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc

Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one Image
1. Public outrage does not work anymore

If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while

For a while, this tactics worked

Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
Read 8 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 28
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
Theory: X -> Y

Reality:

There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.

Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation

And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
Read 6 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 26
Some thoughts on Zohran Mamdani's victory:

1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.

In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention
Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings

Out of date
2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women
Read 12 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 21
What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.Image
Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain

According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her Image
Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.

Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important. Image
Read 4 tweets

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