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Jun 9 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Scrolling ticker in Moscow informs passerby about the forthcoming execution of POWs in Ukraine:

"TASS: The Supreme Court of the Donetsk Peoples Republic sentenced mercenaries from Great Britain and Morocco to death"
Moscow doesn't look as a wartime city. Putin is trying hard to keep an illusion of normality and business as usual. Kremlin will work hard so that Moscow wouldn't feel the hardships of war. At the same time, regime lacks resources for other cities, even for the St Petersburg
Source of the video. Btw if you are really interested in what's going on in Russia, it's a good idea to explore the Telegram. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Telegram is the most important independent media & blogging platform in modern Russia

ASTRA Проект независимых российских журналистов, подвергшихся цензуре или преследованию в РФ. Эксклюзивы. Мы существуем только за счёт донатов и рекламы, поддержите проект: @astradonate Прислать инфу: ast… https://t.me/astrapress
Paradoxically enough, the livejournal (ЖЖ) also can be useful. In the 2000-early 2010s it was by far the most important internet platform, the main oasis of public discourse and intellectual life in the country. Now it's dying and dying quickly, with users leaving it en masse
Readers are leaving livejournal, yes. But bloggers still post there their content. Which now almost none is reading (well, some do, but these numbers are shrinking quickly). Some of this content is really interesting and provides the unique perspective
Consider this livejournal of a DPR fighter (that's a real verified person). I read it with great interest as it's really informative. kenigtiger.livejournal.com

The end. This is not a thread
https://kenigtiger.livejournal.com

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More from @kamilkazani

Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 11
You can't really "study" a culture. You can only verstehen it. And in order to verstehen, you need to live into it. The rapid escalation of Z-war hardly came as a surprise to anyone who lived in the context of Russian culture. Watch this fragment from a super popular movie Brat-2
Aleksei Balabanov may be the most talented and the culturally influential film director of the post-Soviet Russia. Some even argue that he created the post-Soviet Russian culture. That may be an overstatement but the absolutely iconic status of his movies is hard to deny Image
Most of Balabanov's fame and influence is based on just two movies: Brat and Brat-2 covering fictional mafia wars of the Russian mafia. The first movie is taking place in Russia (St Petersburg), in the second movie they make a work trip to America ImageImage
Read 10 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 10
Traditional Tatar literature is virtually inaccessible for modern Tatars for a similar reason. Till the 20th c we used to be a Persianate culture, so being "educated" implied a decent knowledge of Farsi (at least) and Arabic (ideally). You needed to be at least bilingual
That helped to differ the registers of language. For example, in English a word constructed on a original Germanic root would be of lowest register, with French root being higher and Latin even higher than that. Consider terms "kingly", "royal" and "regal" for example
In Tatar a word with an originally Turkic root would be considered of a lower register, while a borrowed Arabic or Farsi word - of higher. For example a Turkic word for a nightingale "Sandugach" would be viewed as mundane while a Farsi "Bulbul" - very poetic
Read 10 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 10
Peter I's figure is very much misunderstood. There was hardly any other Russian ruler so widely and universally hated during his lifetime. No wonder so many of his reforms were reversed almost immediately upon his death: Navy budget cut, the capital brought back to Moscow, etc
Some effects of Peter's reforms:

1) Transformation of all varieties of bondage & servitude to a chattel slavery. Rapid expansion of unfree labor in industry

2) Depopulation & de-urbanization

3) Extremely arbitrary military regime, to the extent unknown since Ivan the Terrible
If there is any decent and readable narrative of how Peter's regime was perceived by his subjects in English, then I'm unaware of its existence. But you can take a Sergey Sergeyev's book, open it on this page and google translate it loveread.ec/read_book.php?…
Read 4 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 9
Much of the expertise on Russia has negative value not necessarily because the experts are wrong (they may be right), but because they are right about the unimportant stuff. Lacking the deep understanding of and the deep guanxi in Russia they have no idea what to focus on
That creates an absolutely false and distorted image of Russia in the West. The analysts and the media might not be technically "wrong". They are lying by omission in most cases, not noticing or pretending not to notice a nice herd of elephants in the room. Like the Metodologiya
The impact of Metodologiya on politics & governance is well-known in Russia. Consider this very good introduction by a media I don't really like. It may not be 100% correct but it's a great intro to a topic virtually unknown in the West

meduza.io/feature/2022/0…
Read 7 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 8
Those who dismiss this move as an "inconsequential" personal initiative of an MP, miss the point here. It gives a good indication of the current spectre of political views within the central elite and apparatchiks in Moscow. That is more or less a consensus among the Tsar's Court
The entire Tsar's Court in Moscow holds or parrots opinions within this spectre. There are indeed forces which might disagree or while agreeing in principle think that the Tsar went too far. Consider the recent conflict between the Communist leadership (=Tsar's Court) and ...
... the regional Komsomol leadership (= not the Tsar's Court). The latter while agreeing in principle with the "defense of Donbass" argued that Putin went so far.

Such views exist in Russia but they don't exist or are not expressed at the Tsar's Court
Read 7 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jun 8
Diversity is natural, uniformity is artificial. Whenever you see the uniformity of cultural memes, be it the linguistic map of modern France or the style of Russian icons, you may be sure it is a result of violent homogenisation. Consider this trifacial Trinity from Tobolsk
Trinities with three faces and four eyes were quite common for the Early Modern Siberia. Ecclesiastical authorities of Tobolsk issued two orders in 1748 and 1770 forbidding the use of these "Hellenic" (=pagan) images. Still they were used in churches and privately till the 20th c
Imperial authorities disapproved three facial trinity icons. When Catherine II was visiting Kazan in 1764, a local merchant brought her such an icon as a gift. She ordered to arrest him and investigate immediately. Heterodoxy in iconography would arouse suspicions in heresy
Read 7 tweets

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