I won’t venture to judge the details of another round of protests in Russia that took place yesterday, but I am glad that it has increased in size, and it seems to me that either people have learned how to avoid detention, or the Moscow authorities are no longer daring to be so fierce. Either way, there are fewer detainees than a week ago, and no particularly mass cruelty is visible in the photos.
In Georgia, everyone I talk to, upon learning that I am from Russia, immediately asks what is happening in Moscow, from which it can be concluded that in the information space, the protest has long since overcome local boundaries. Moreover, this cannot be attributed to biased coverage of the situation by Georgian media: I was asked questions by tourists from Turkey, Romania, and the Netherlands. I should also note that I am not at some political conference here—all around are carefree vacationers; one would think they wouldn’t care.
Naturally, the sympathy of the global public is on the side of the protesters. However, it is equally on the side of the protesters in Hong Kong, the yellow vests, the Venezuelan opposition, and so on. When volunteers are on one side and salaried employees are on the other, people sympathize with the volunteers. Even regarding the events in Kyrgyzstan, where it seems to be a matter of “the toad and the viper,” the mere fact that people are ready to voluntarily stand up for the former president and fight for him against the authorities already tells people that the government probably shouldn’t have started this whole assault.
I am also constantly assured that I have nothing to fear, that the attitude toward Russians here is still just as friendly. To be honest, this sometimes looks like a mantra for self-convincing. Evidence to the contrary also turns up. I won’t say much, I’ll just provide a few photos.
Suggesting not to feel at home
Ruining good drawings because of the author’s Russian language
But there are also statements that any Russian patriot would sign
Yesterday I checked into a hotel, and in the evening we sat with the owner and chatted. He told me:
that the cursed Saakashvili started a war with Russia, caused a rift between two good countries, and they still haven’t been able to reconcile.
that under the cursed Saakashvili, the police killed and raped, and now, finally, they have stopped.
that in 2012, Saakashvili prepared to usurp power after losing the elections, but half of the special forces refused to fight the people, and the dictator had to leave.
that during the war with Russia, many officers abandoned their weapons because they did not want to fight for the regime, but wanted Georgia to become Russian; later they were imprisoned for 10 years, but were released under the new government.
that under the cursed Saakashvili, LGBT people became completely unrestrained and felt at home in an Orthodox country.
that this clown has no and never had popular support.
And then I watched a recent interview of Saakashvili with Alexey Romanov, and there Saakashvili says that Ivanishvili’s regime is illegitimate, he no longer has popular support, and decisive clashes between the regime and the people are about to begin.
What conclusion would I like to draw from all this? Value sociological data! As long as you are surrounded by your comrades, you are in an echo chamber. You have no idea how popular your views are in society, and when you decide to hold a rally or participate in elections, unpleasant surprises may await you. On the other hand, if conducting sociological research is for some reason impossible for you, then mass actions themselves become sociology for you. If you managed to bring tens of thousands of supporters to a rally — perhaps hundreds of thousands will vote for you. If you didn’t — then do not be deceived, work on recognition and fight the anti-rating (for example, by changing your leader).
As for the interview, watch it; it is actually mostly not about Georgia, but about Russia.
I remember defining capitalism as a social arrangement in which the dominant form of relations between people is commodity-money relations. A more classical definition, which was common in the Soviet Union, states that capitalism is a social arrangement in which the means of production are privately owned. It is quite obvious that in the nineties in Russia, there was no pure capitalism according to either of these definitions, but rather a transitional form of society, where old socialist (or despotic, in my understanding) relations were dying out, and capitalist ones were replacing them (as for the features of feudalism in the “sovok,” they did not disappear under the new order and have persisted to this day).
However, it must be remembered that, generally speaking, the term “capitalism” is more journalistic than scientific; therefore, when speaking about the existence of capitalism in a certain country at a certain time, we are speaking more about the society’s correspondence to certain values at that time. That is, capitalism rather in the sense of Weber (the spirit of capitalism as rationality and the Protestant work ethic) or Schumpeter (the spirit of capitalism as entrepreneurship and creative destruction).
Now, in the Russia of the nineties of the last century, the spirit of capitalism according to Schumpeter was present in abundance. It was a time of enormous opportunities and that very creative destruction. As for the spirit of capitalism according to Weber, it was nowhere to be found. What work ethic? Man is a wolf to man; if you want to survive, you have to know how to hustle. Capital was created primarily by plundering the Soviet legacy, by that same creative destruction, and by the ability to adapt the fragments of the old to new conditions better than others, rather than by the capacity for hard work, painstaking saving, and careful investing.
Here, I really want to start with an extended quote from a source I constantly refer to—our Political Science-chan, Ekaterina Schulmann:
As for the actual state of affairs, generally speaking, the Russian person is a spontaneous libertarian, but does not know it and would never call themselves such. In reality, they are very inclined toward libertarian values, namely: they do not trust the state, state institutions, or law enforcement agencies. In general, they trust no one except personal acquaintances. They tend to rely only on themselves and their closest relatives. Accordingly, they would like it if no one messed with them, if they were left in peace and not told how to live. In other words, these libertarian values are very strong in Russian people.
At the same time, the opposite view is entirely justified: Russia is a country of ingrained social-democratic values, and the ideal state for the majority of Russians is the Scandinavian countries, with low levels of inequality, comfortable prisons, officials on bicycles, and broad public discussion of all issues—in short, a proper Soviet government as it should be, according to the project documentation. The high taxes and strict regulations attached to this model are perceived as a fully justified price for this paternalistic paradise.
And finally, it would be strange not to mention the viewpoint that the Russian person is a sucker and a doormat, burdened by Stockholm syndrome and learned helplessness. Their motto is “initiative is punishable”, and not “punishable by being ordered to implement the initiative”, as in the ideal Confucian China, but literally punishable by a blow to the head so that they don’t stick their neck out. They harbor no illusions about the benevolence of state power, but justify the actions of officials by believing that they themselves would behave the same way in their place.
The first category—these are our natural allies. They might not provide active support because they are busy with their own peaceful anarcho-capitalist affairs, but at the very least, at the right moment, they will look away and not snitch on people for their peaceful anarcho-capitalist affairs.
The second category—these are our natural allies. They understand the importance of jointly solving local problems, the ability to negotiate, and the desire to unite around common interests, rather than simply on the principle of “us versus them.”
The third category—these are our natural allies. Gradually, it dawns on them that an official is not some inexorable force, omnipotent and omniscient. An official is a ridiculous idiot who doesn’t dare take a step without instructions, yet treats orders according to the principles of “wait to execute—they’ll cancel it” and “if you can shift the responsibility—shift it.” Finally, these people realize that an official immediately loses all their superior arrogance when facing a crowd one-on-one. And then officials can be peacefully pelted with snowballs, as in Volokolamsk, or subjected to “garbage lustrations,” as in Ukraine, but if things get really heated, it can even lead to defenestrations, which our Slavic brothers in the Czech Republic loved to use.
mm, lustrations!
Of course, sometimes with allies like these, you don’t even need enemies. Of course, such allies are too easily lured by communist slogans, and then they will go beat up the liberalists and the bourgeois. Therefore, as unpleasant as it may be, it is necessary to perform the important work of creating the correct image of the enemy in these people’s heads. This is precisely why Mikhail Svetov, with his propaganda of hatred toward the nomenklatura, is also doing important work; I couldn’t do it, I find it much more pleasant to tell various optimistic tales about how we can organize ourselves.
What happened to Crimea in March 2014 was the seizure by one state of part of the territory of another state. Theoretically, such a seizure can lead to either a benefit or, conversely, a loss for the residents of the seized territory. Off the top of my head, I can recall only one precedent where the residents of a territory severed from another state now live wealthier and freer than the residents of the state from which the territory was severed. This refers to Texas, severed from Mexico. As for the territories that the Soviet Union took from its neighbors, all of them now live poorer than the countries from which the territories were severed. Moldova is poorer than Romania, the Kaliningrad region is poorer than Germany, Karelia is poorer than Finland… So history is not on the side of the residents of Crimea, although it is still too early to assess all the consequences of the reconfiguration of state borders for Crimeans.
However, there are also, imagine that, the residents of the Russian Federation itself, and the annexation of Crimea has already made them noticeably poorer, and there are no prospects for a reversal of this process.
Please note that in my analysis I absolutely do not touch upon international law and other interstate complications, because the problems of bandits don’t fuck honest people and shouldn’t. If Russia were minarchist, and the Crimeans had asked to move from socialist Ukraine to a freer Russian jurisdiction, I would have warmly welcomed the Crimeans’ decision—provided, of course, that they were ready to pay for the services they purchased—while the Ukrainian government’s attempts to refer to the sacred right to personally rob its serfs would have been met with a contemptuous “pffft.” But in our case, we are talking about two equally wretched bandits, and I can only hope that they both drop dead, choking on Crimea.
So you look at it—and you wouldn’t say it’s a disaster zone
I hope the answer was unconventional enough; honestly, I’m tired of all the legalists jumping around with papers about what one bandit once promised another bandit. I will gladly accept a reward in unconventional currency to the bitcoin wallet 1A7Wu2enQNRETLXDNpQEufcbJybtM1VHZ8
