Many argue that only few Russians travel to Europe. Fair enough. But those in power not only travel, they're relocating. The family breadwinner must stay, but he'll send kids abroad. Zolotov commands the Russian National Guard. His grandson Artem studies in Cranleigh School, UK
Zheleznyak is one of the United Russia party leaders. His daughter Anastasia McClymont. She studied in London, worked at the BBC, married her Scottish co-worker and changed her surname from Zheleznyak to McClymont
Dmitry Peskov is the Putin's spokesman. His daughter Yelizaveta has long lived in France. She had an internship in the European Parliament, then worked in Louis Vuitton
This news from 2011 is very telling. Britain denied the ex-mayor of Moscow Luzhkov the residence permit but gave him the entry visa. To visit his family. Well, of course he had long relocated his family to London, that's kinda obvious
I gave only a few examples of well-known public figures. You can find many, many more. How does the Russian ruling class live? Head of the family, the hunter gatherer lives in Russia. But at the first opportunity he'll relocate lady and kids to Europe and try to join them later
Argument about European tourism being unimportant kinda misses the point. It is very, very important. Because the Russian ruling class lives with idea of relocating to Europe (90%) and North America (10%). If not myself than at least my kids should leave as "White People" (=well)
PS Joseph Stalin and his granddaughter. Upon father's death his daughter Svetlana moved to the USA and married an American citizen. So dictator's granddaughter Chrese Evans now lives in America. Last time I checked it was Portland, Oregon
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Scientific rationality is overrated, evolutionary rationality is underrated. If such behaviour is common, it suggests it is evolutionary stable = rational
Tribe needs mythology to unite it. And mythology must be dumbed down for the entire tribe to get it, otherwise it won't work
It is absolutely rational to believe in some dumbed down crap. Reality is incomprehensible in all of its complexity anyway. And when you start adding 1st nuance, 2nd nuance, 3rd nuance, it can't unite the tribe anymore. Working tribal mythologies are very dumb. Hence, rational
That's a common mechanism of social changes. When a party is small, its myth is nuanced, complicated. But once it expands, it *must* dumb it down to unite everyone. As a result, the old core (inner party) has a nuanced myth and the newcomers (outer party) have dumbed down version
"There is destructive energy in the air this month and it will manifest someway. So I must take preemptive action and trigger a crisis *of my choice*. All the bad energy gonna flow there and voila, it's all gone"
That's very easy to understand. In some countries they trigger forest fires for this very reason. There's lots of dry wood in the forest, so we create a controllable fire artificially. Otherwise, we'd have to wait for the uncontrollable one, which is more dangerous
In other places they provoke the avalanches with special cannons for this very reason. There's *objectively* lots of snow on the mountains, so if we just let it lie there, it will go down in an uncontrollable avalanche. Creating a controllable one artificially is way better
Most analysts would dismiss a hypothesis that numerology plays a big role in Russian scheduling of key events (invasion, important political assassination, etc)
While it is almost certainly true.
Russia is run by state security. Who are not "rational"
Let me get it straight. There are plenty of absolutely "rational" (Western-style) people in Russian bureaucracy. They're smart, they're following the recent Western intellectual fashion, mimic the language, the conceptual framework
But they're not rulers. They're servants
Russia has high ranked officials who would easily communicate with people on the US campuses and fit in well. *These people do not make decisions*. They follow orders, that's it. When hearing an order they consider dumb/counterproductive/dangerous, they just bow and execute it
For high quality investigative journalism from Russia I strongly recommend following the Агентство (Agentstvo) media. They're not super big or super famous, and that's good. World famous media do not feel evolutionary pressure to do their homework. These guys do, and do it well
Their first material - on Shoygu was the work of art. Strongly recommended
This one may be even more interesting. On the Putin's mortality. What do we know of his health, of which doctors visit him and how often, which procedures he is taking (including baths from deer antlers), what and how is reported in media
Some are asking, why should even care about Darya Dugina's assassination? Because:
1. It is almost certainly the FSB false flag operation 2. Most likely, it will be used as a pretext for strikes that had been already pre-scheduled for the Ukrainian Independence Day this Thursday
Once again. Strikes later this week are highly likely, they have must been prescheduled long ago. Most probably, on Thursday-Friday. It's quite probable that Putin wants to scale up and sacrificed Dugina to needs justify future strikes as counter-terrorist action or sth like that
Assuming this is true, why was Dugina chosen as a sacrificial lamb? Presidential plenipotentiary Schegolev's speech on her funerals gives some idea:
1. Alexander (and Darya) Dugina were nobody in the Russian system of power 2. But the West believed they were somebody
Let's be honest, what Yeltsin did in 1991 certainly had an *element* of military coup, to say the least. Yeah, it's kinda nice he had crowds on his side. But the fact that a few army regiments and lots of KGB joined him didn't hurt either. Peaceful protests are hugely overrated
In fact, it was the coup element of 1991 that determined the face of the Russian army leadership till around 1996. Upstarts with no relevant experience, credentials or network heavily dominated the military command. Why? They just happened to switch to Yeltsin in August 1991
I see why media and academia tend to wildly exaggerate the power of peaceful protests. But honestly I'm sick of that BS. For a regime change to happen you need at least few regiments to switch sides. If that doesn't happen, regime not gonna change. Army always beats the "people"