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Kamil Galeev Profile picture
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Dec 16 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Georgi Derluguian once told a story. He studied at the Institute of Asian and African Countries in Moscow. For obvious reasons his classmates with "historian-orientalist" degrees are very-well represented in Russian elites. Many years later he met a Very Rich Classmate and asked
- Your palace is *really* nice. But how did you get so rich? Where is all of this money coming from?
- Das Kapital, Volume 1, Chapter 26. Just look up, everything is written down there. Let's remain friends

I find this anecdote very telling
Having studied in Soviet unis, emerging Russian elites were well-aware of Marx's criticism of capitalism. In fact, their understanding of capitalism was shaped by Marx's criticism. They could not think of the capitalism otherwise than in (somewhat reductionist) Marxist terms
So when building capitalism, new Russian elites took this Marxist caricature as a model. Not as a nightmare to shun away from, but as an ideal to be emulated. Marx taught that primitive accumulation is criminal. And we are doing crime exactly as he taught!
See an opening scene to the "Dead Man's Bluff" (Жмурки) as a mass culture reference. The reference to the Primitive Accumulation is included there, exactly because everyone could relate to it

Marx's writings did a good job in legitimising the Russian mafia rule Image

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More from @kamilkazani

Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Dec 16
No, that would happen in case of regime change with the fundamental structure of the empire remaining intact. Should Moscow rule everyone under a different rhetorical disguise, then "Russia experts" with deep contacts in Moscow and few anywhere else will be in high demand
That may explain why many in academia are so invested into a regime change with the "liberal opposition" coming to power. Many Western experts have strong connections there and should those fellows take power, these connections would be worth more

Ofc they want it to happen
On the other hand, almost no one in academia has strong contacts in or even the basic understanding of the regions that could become the nuclei of functional states. I am talking about richer regions that now pay the bills of Moscow and thus could pay their own, too
Read 4 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Dec 14
I think you're both right and wrong. You're right in a sense that all influential groups are:

1) identified by regime
2) forced into submission & cooperation

But that's totally normal. And many of them can and should become nuclei of new political order(s)

There's no one else
Your observation is right, you're just making wrong implications out of it. If you study history of most anti-colonial movements, both successful (USA) and failures, you'll see that local notables well-integrated into a previous regime were very prominent in almost all of them
I would even say that popular imagination tends to exaggerate the "people's rebellion" factor and simultaneously underrate "notables changing colours" factor when studying most political changes, either anti-colonial and not
Read 7 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Dec 11
Daily reminder that as a rule Western Academia has great contempt towards public imagination of non-Western countries. They misrepresent their internal debates ignoring whatever doesn’t fit to their preconceptions

Galkovsky is wildly more impactful than Dugin for example
Galkovsky has been the most influential Russian nationalist thinker of the recent decades and Sputnik and Pogrom - the most influential media. They largely shaped the worldview of young Russian nationalists

Meanwhile they’re almost totally ignored by most “Russia experts”
Why? Well, for the same reason they love Dugin. Once they established Russia is so Mystic and Irrational, they’ll look for whatever fits into their preconceptions and ignore the rest

Every Russian with half a brain knows how to use it for their own advantage
Read 6 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Dec 10
National Divorce: Q and A

In this thread I am going to cover some of the more common misconceptions about the current state of affairs in Russia and potential scenarios of its breakup. I am going to start with the most common objection:

"Isn't Russia like 80% ethnic Russian?"🧵 Image
Both honest sceptics (mostly foreigners) and more biased critics (mostly Moscow literati) love pointing to the official census results. Indeed, official censuses picture Russia as almost homogenous country with 77% pop being ethnic Russian

How reliable are these results though? Image
Much of aggregate data from Russia/China etc. looks very appealing. That's until we start disaggregating it. Aggregate figures can be just as reliable as the raw data they're based upon. Therefore, Russian/Chinese statistics too often have the "Garbage in, Garbage out" problem
Read 47 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Dec 10
For context: that's how the most popular Russian ethnonationalist media of the recent decades "Sputnik and Pogrom" pictured their dream - "Russia for Russians". Very decolonizing, indeed

Honestly, I am appalled to see what can pass for expertise in modern Western academia Image
NB: This is not only about Russia. That's about absolute contempt of too many Western intellectual circles towards the public imagination of non-Western countries, Russia included. This problem lies so deep that I am not sure whether it can be fixed or not
If you have just a bit of empathy towards the Russian ethnonationalists, the idea that they want to make their empire *smaller* would strike you as absolutely improbable. Even when they all agree that certain regions are a liability in each and every respect, the idea of ...
Read 5 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Dec 10
With may be a single exception of North Caucasus (specifically "ДИЧ" - Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia) this is just false. There are *some* Russian ethnonationalists who argue for letting these three regions out. There is about zero who want general decolonisation Image
"ДИЧ" abbreviation which stands for Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia is indeed popular in the Russian far right discourse. It refers to these three mountainous regions whom some want to see out, and some want to see under a régime du sabre Image
While there is limited support for "solving the ДИЧ question", one or another way, there is exactly zero support for letting out anyone else. In fact Russian ethnonationalists are very suspicious of either ethnic and "Russian" regionalism, seeing them as a separatist threat
Read 4 tweets

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