A great comment that sums up what is wrong with modern academia. Apparently Professor Radchenko lives in a social bubble where "Brat" movies were viewed just as ironically as the "Pulp Fiction". I am afraid he cannot comprehend that most of the audience watched them unironically
Hard to swallow pill:
A (seemingly) unsophisticated criminal saga could become and indeed has become an integral part of the Russian state mythos. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 for example was widely viewed in the context of Brat-2 movie and described with its language
A hypothesis
Much of the poverty of the modern academia when it comes to studying other sentient and intelligent beings largely derives from:
1) personal arrogance and social prejudices of so many scholars 2) flawed system of incentives within academia itself
The major flaw of the modern academia is a bias towards studying everything "sophisticated" (and relatable). Unfortunately, much of what is impactful and popular among the masses doesn't necessarily seem sophisticated or even relatable enough to be read and studied unironically
So what are you gonna do? The very common approach is:
1. Take a popular phenomenon (Galkovsky or Goblin/Puchkov in case of Russia) 2. Identify a "sophisticated" and relatable part. Usually it could be language, stylistics or other literary aspects 3. Ignore the rest
Bias towards studying everything "sophisticated" and "relatable" is not bad for your academic career, due to the flawed system of incentives in modern academia. However, it has an absolutely disastrous effect on a discipline as a whole (in this case - on the area studies)
Due to the personal social prejudices and due to the flawed system of incentives in academia, researchers systematically understudy and underrepresent the mass culture. And "culture" should be understood way broader than simply "arts". Academia ignores what the masses think
Mass culture which is way wider than "arts" is largely ignored by the academia. As a result the mass sentiments are ignored, too. Consider this video with a popular psychologist Veronika Stepanova who has 2,2 million subscribers on YouTube. I recommend to watch it through
Let me clarify that the problem I described is systemic. It's not about personal biases, arrogance and prejudice, it's about the less judgemental approaches to what to study being disincentivized. As a result the whole picture is absolutely distorted thanks to the lie by omission
Regarding the Distinguished Professor Radchenko, next time I see the Pulp Fiction quotes and images being widely used in the political propaganda, on pair with the official state symbolics, I might take his opinion or his research seriously. End of 🧵
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Counterpoint: Western unity is a myth and might have never existed in the first place. For example, during the Cold War, West Germany was not only the major trade partner of the USSR, but also a proxy for the Soviet technological import bypassing the American trade restrictions🧵
That's not some kind of secret knowledge. The narrative presented below will be fully based on a single book. "N. Krotov. The history of Soviet and Russian Foreign Banks, Volume 1". It is a collection of memories of Soviet bank officials commissioned by the Russian VTB Bank (ВТБ)
Consider the memories of S.M. Bochkarev who was the General Commissioner of the Ost-West Handelsbank in 1980-1985, Instructor of the Economic Department of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in 1987-1988, and the Chairman of the Ost-West Handelsbank in 1988-1993
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
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
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
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
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?…
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
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