When discussing the future of Russia, many rule out this or that scenario as "impossible". But how do they know what is possible and what is not? The main reason why people are so bad in prognosing the future is that they can't conceive how different is the present from the past
Most people underestimate how different is the present from the (recent) past. And that lack of historical thinking leads to underestimating how different the things will be in the (near) future. That's why people presumptuously rule out possibility of sudden and abrupt changes
Consider the following. A Westerner X who knows post-Soviet space more deeply than many, expected the Russian army to crush Ukrainians in a few day. He wasn't ignorant or ill-informed. He travelled to Russia and Ukraine extensively, visited their military, etc
Why X's prognosis was so wrong? Partially because his last trip to Donbass happened in the mid-2010s when the things were *very* different from now. And indeed, the prospect of Ukrainian army standing their ground against a full scale Russian invasion was unrealistic back then
X. made a trip. Visited the region, visited the military. Made (correct) estimate that in case of a full-scale clash, Ukraine gonna be destroyed quickly. And left off for years. What he missed however, that a lot happened during those years and changed the balance of power
As a general rule we underestimate how dynamic this world is. We also tend to forget that major Metamorphoses, though happening over the years, reveal themselves suddenly and abruptly. That's why we are so shocked after every such revelation. And again. And again. And again
A theory. The main reason why we are so bad in predictions is that we seek psychological comfort more than intellectual integrity. We are so attached to the delusions of "consistency" and "immutability" that it destroys our ability to make accurate prognoses in a dynamic world
PS this is not a thread. I'm done
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- What is long, green and smells with sausage?
- Moscow-Tver train
Why? Well, under the USSR provincials had to go shopping to Moscow. Their shops had no food, often very literally. Today we'll learn an expression "supply category"🧵
Under the centrally planned economy it was the state which supplied food to the localities. It would assign each city one of four "supply categories" determining how much food there will be on shelves. Moscow was supplied far better than anyone while cities like Tver - horribly
Provincial Soviet cities of the lower supply categories might have no food on the shelves at all. Sometimes very literally. Sometimes they would have only the scraps from the table of the higher status city: like some algae, or the disgusting paste "Ocean"
I find this line of argumentation illustrative of the general state of Russian discourse, whether "patriotic" or "liberal". Everything Turkic occupies the same place in the Russian debates as everything Irish in the Imperial British. The Inner Other and the source of all the evil
Reading the Russian-Ukrainian debates with both sides accusing each other of racial impurity and having too many Steppe admixtures or influences, I noticed that their argumentation is mirroring each other. See this Russian nationalist material for example sputnikipogrom.com/history/15934/…
This mutuality and almost exact symmetry of Russian-Ukrainian accusations reminds me of a brilliant
thread on the British rule over the Ionian Isles. Bach then the discourse was similar. Brits and Greeks were constantly accusing each other of Irishness
Russian bureaucracy is *massive*. It's also diverse. Judging from my observations, it's less integrated than let's say the apparatus of the U.S. federal bureaucracy. Different agencies have different cultures and operate by different rules. Avoid sweeping generalisations (not🧵)
I see a very common attitude among the Russian pro-war community. It can be summarised this way:
"We expected dumb and incompetent bureaucrats to destroy our economy. But our glorious army would prevail against all odds. It turned out we were wrong. It's the other way around"
Now much of the Z-community argues that they greatly overestimated the Russian army (and the military apparatus). It's very, very much worse than anyone thought before. But they underestimated the economic bureaucracy. Which is very much better than they could have thought
No. Describing Russian regime as "kleptocracy" is misrepresentation. It's not technically false, just absurdly reductionist. Let's be honest, if Putinism was *entirely* about stealing it would not be able to wage wars or produce armaments. And it produces hella lots of them
Keep in mind that public rhetorics work according to the rhetorical logic. Public position doesn't have to be factually accurate, it has to be rhetorically advantageous for it to work. They talk about "corruption" so much because it's rhetorically advantageous. That's it
When you don't have a positive agenda/vision of future or it's too hideous, you talk about "corruption". Examples - Lukashenko or Yeltsin. "Anti-corruption fight" is an ideal topic for a power hungry politician. Because talking about corruption = avoiding the actual conversation
Kremlin may not have a grey cardinal. But it has a bald engineer. The Kinder Egg is a major architect of Putinism. In 1998 he made Putin the FSB Chief. In 2000s he dismantled the regional autonomy imposing the centralised rule. Now he manages Putin's domestic policy and Ukraine🧵
Sergey Kirienko was born as Sergey Israitel in a mixed Russian-Jewish family. After the divorce his mother changed his surname from father's "Israitel" to her own "Kirienko". That could be a pragmatic decision. A boy with a Slavic name would have better career chances in the USSR
In childhood Kirienko lived with his mom in subtropical Sochi. Here he started the bureaucrat career as a Komsomol manager (комсорг) of his high school class. NB: the role of Komsomol in Soviet to post-Soviet transition is underrated. Komsomol management were its main benefactors