Since the Ukrainian/Russo war began the tendency has been for some observers to say, albeit rhetorically, change will happen in Russia when its people know of the war crimes. But what if they know, and don't care?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-rating-russia/
In August 2023, eight out of ten percent of Russians approved of activities of the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The popularity level was three percent higher than in September 2022, when the figure declined following the announcement of a partial mobilization in the country. After Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February 2022, the approval rating increased. During the COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020, the figure declined.
(Citation from the source).
Most of the Russians on here, that is those I have dealt with, not only support Putin but echo his ideas, especially on Ukraine and the past they share. My work on Kyiv Rus demonstrates that the north east of the federation, based on Suzdal, Vladimir and Muscovy, culturally split from the south in the second half of the 12 th century, and by the 13th century no longer resembled the southern parts which was based on laissez faire political behaviour within elite groups. They were already culturally separate from them with the south eclipsed and the northeast emphasising fierce autocracy based on brutality . My work indicates that by then Muscovy had assumed Tartar/Mongolian political and military institutions.
I hear from them about the multipolar world, which at the beginning of the war it already was. Putin created this idea in order to establish Russia again as a superpower and have people regard it as one. But Russia isn't a superpower. Its army struggled against Chechnya, a country of less than 2 million people, and its economy is less than Spain's. Russians love or appear to love Putin because they feel he has returned greatness to them, seen as acquisition of territory. On Russian TV you often get speakers claiming that Russia will retake all the territories that once belonged to them including Baltic countries.
They do not care about Ukrainian deaths, They rejoice over the destruction of Mariupol. They appear to believe Russia has rights over others. Evidence coming from Russia reveals an increasingly militarised society. (I watch Russian TV-honestly it involves a gabble of brutish morons-watch it yourself)
While similar criticisms can be made of the US and of colonialist Europe, these countries learnt or are capable of learning. I know that the US in Vietnam were no better, but to use this as a rationale for genocide in Ukraine is ridiculous and indeed Vietnam posed different conditions. (It was still a crime) Russians tend to believe, even those that have left, Putin's narrative. Their right to kill and ideologies of killing. The Russians, as taught by the Orthodox Church, are a special people (sic) with a mission-of death?
Ethnography is surely important, but just look at the following document:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_letter_to_Gorbachev
So, understanding the full katastroika is essential.
In addition, although attempts were made to progress RussIan economic science, in the tradition of Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky and Nikolai Kondratieff, Western paradigms were merged with old Soviet ones, i.e. economic thought matters.
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History is the autobiography of a madman. Alexander Herzen
Stephen, I am not against economics affecting history and culture, as surely it does, but Russia seems a country informed by ideologies, many ones based on concepts within history. Now, Yeltsin was marginally different to Putin because the economic fission that should be applied is the oligarchs, a system found in early Vladimir and Muscovy in a similar fashion-based on extraction.
One: Putin is similar to Hitler in that, a deluded individual, he has successfully impressed his delusions on the people he governs and like Hitler convinced them that his (now their) delusions need to be excised. In effect, they have become both witnesses and perpetrators of murders within the spectrum of delusion. Only Hitler achieved the same.
Two: The New York Times this weekend described Putin as a Mafia Boss pretending to be a politician. This is an extremely sure-footed conclusion.
So economically? An extraction economy in the hands of oligarchs and within an oligarchical system run by the Mafia in which more and more money needs to be made in order for it to be extracted and the extractors need to be constantly protected by the public they are using. It is a lethal circle fuelled by constant violence! Stephen, your explanation requires agency but the Russian public participates as the audience not the agents themselves. They are meant to die and be replicated.
Quickly, before I forget:
Stephen,
Your determining that aspects of capitalism are responsible deflects the responsibility from where it actually lies: in Russian culture. Again, we must avoid any 'the West is to blame' narrative. The only aspect to blame is Russia. Four times this has occurred within modern times. Stalin was unveiled as a monster then revered again over the last twenty odd years.
The West is to blame, where at all, for believing that Russia is a European country. It isn't. If the past determines the present, then it is a culture from the Western Steppes. We will bring more trouble on ourselves if we continue to place Russia within European civilisation.
The greatest impediment for progressing economic thought is definitely serfdom Stanley Wilkin aka Asiatic mode of production.
Wittfogel, Karl (1957), Oriental Despotism; A Comparative Study of Total Power, New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will.
Ludwig Von Mises, Omnipotent Government
The serfdom model was two hundred years ago, although no one can dispute its effects other cultures have shaken off their pasts. Still, communism was probably the worst thing to happen to Russia as it entrenched obedience and lack of individual creativity.
Stephen, you may not agree with this, but I see Russia's ultimate failure or a failure event with the Jewish writer from WW2 whose book, an epic novel, was almost completely destroyed by a communist committee. He had to rewrite brilliant passages and excise brilliant symbolism and events. One of those destroying what should have been the greatest book from WW2 was a dime novelist, a writer of a Russian secret agent, whom Putin adored and whose trashy novels influenced him.
One of the Russians on here sent me the photo of a stature made during Communism of a huge muscular man beating his sword into a plough. The Russian rhapsodised over what I saw as a symbol of brute force with little genuine artistic merit. I told him about a stature in a small town near where I live of a young woman turning into a horse, her bottom half a horse's rump and rear legs, her top half a beautiful young woman. The astonishing touch is she is pregnant, and grasping a pole signifying she is about to give birth. Astonishing! In a small town which breeds horses! A powerful country produces crap, a small one an artistic wonder!
Some points from economic history:
In the 1690s, there was a substantial GDP per capita gap between Russia and northwest Europe, with Russia at barely half the Dutch level and less than 60% of the British level. Russia was also lagging behind Mediterranean Europe, at less than 70% of the Italian level. During the first half of the 18th century, however, Russia entered a catching-up phase, as per capita GDP grew faster than in Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands. By the 1760s, Russian GDP per capita had reached over 60% of the Dutch level, nearly 70 of the British level and almost 90% of the Italian level. However, this period of Russian catching-up was followed by a period of falling behind during the second half of the 18th century, as GDP per capita declined in Russia while it grew rapidly in Britain and stagnated in the Netherlands. By the 1800s, Russia had fallen further behind northwest Europe than in the 1690s. As Russia stagnated during the 19th century, growth continued in Britain and the Netherlands, so that by the 1880s GDP per capita in Russia was just over 20% of the British level and less than 30% of the Dutch level. For Russia, the late industrialisation of the 1890s was followed by another phase of shrinking after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. It was only after Stalin’s Big Push industrialisation of the 1930s that GDP per capita gains were permanently consolidated .
Conclusion: Failing to do something fast enough or on time, with respect to economic measures, seems to be an internal (chronic) issue of Russia, i.e. of the people and its leadership as mentality and economics are deeply connected.
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https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03874282v1/file/2022_zhuravskaya_guriev_markevich_new_russian_economic_history.pdf
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ALEXANDER GERSCHENKRON, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, A Book of Essays, Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962
No past experience, however rich, and no historical research, however thorough, can save the living generation the creative task of finding their own answers and shaping their own future. Alexander Gerschenkron
Stephen,
Dostoievski's Crime and Punishment deals with the loss of innocence of people within urban environments. So what the wealthier countries gained they lost in terms of soul. Absurdly, thinking is presented as a crime. A particularly Russian term traced to the Orthodox Church. Where is the Russian soul now?
These wars can be viewed symbolically but as a means of punishing others for having what the Russian's do not have and cannot appear to acquire. For Putin this war is a means to take Russia back into the past (view the feudal process of North Korea), by killing aspiration you kill revolt. Putin failed to grasp economics (claims for his intelligence are not backed up by what he says and does=failure certainly is. Gaining power within Russia, supported by other criminals and KGB officers was not difficult).
While I am sure your version has purpose, let me give you another economic model based of serfdom.
In the 14th century serfdom lingered in England. The Black Death scythed through the population and up to half, in some regions, died. As a consequence fewer men were available for sewing and tilling the soil. The peasants that survived demanded freedom and payment. An economic change that produced societal changes. This was repeated in various degrees across Western countries alongside urban growth and the emergence of a middleclass. Trade and wealth production is a province of the middleclass. Feudal systems began to weaken as wealth and power was diverted to the middleclass.
The process Europe was inclined towards involved class and societal change based on a different source of wealth than that of the 'ruling class' of the time, one of land, family and privilege. Not though in Russia where different processes ruled. You, Stephen, have linked Russia's processes to Europe, but why and on what basis? If you look to societies nearer to Russia the processes within Russia within the same conditions can be found. Linking Russia so totally to Europe has not brought understanding simply because, although there are similarities, they only go so far. Other cultures, particularly in parts of Western Asia, in the Steppe regions and elements of Eastern Europe, remained economically backward like Russia.
Mr. Putin has definitely failed to grasp economics, with respect to Russia Stanley Wilkin and its economic history and future prospects. Statistical comparisons are methodical means to understand the developmental path of countries, not a cultural linking of geo-political entities. One can also argue that by crossing the Danube in Central Europe, one arrives already in Asia as per available data of economic history.
The most important factor behind the very limited increase in Russian GDP per capita over centuries was the failure of Russian agriculture to increase output sufficiently to keep pace with the acceleration of population growth from the 1760s, so that much of the per capita income gain of the previous half-century was lost . This view is broadly consistent with the views of Baykov (1954), who focused on agrarian overpopulation in economies where abundant resource endowments were not effectively used before the railways brought about more effective economic integration from the late 19th century.
Conclusion:
The extent of territorial expansion inevitably exacerbated this issue.
——
Baykov, A (1954), “The economic development of Russia”, Economic History Review7: 137–49.
Lyashchenko, P I (1949), History of the national economy of Russia to the 1917 Revolution, New York: Macmillan.
https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2020?lang=en
Well, Stephen, if you had read my other papers you will see that I do make such a cultural connection.
Whether economics can effect cultural differences is not the same as economics reflecting difference. If you see economics as functioning outside of culture, which in some ways it does today because resources as a means of exchange are similar or the same, in the past it responded to neighbours or environments. Oil, so important to us, was not important to them but the means of production creates cultural change and links one culture to another. Intense physical activity alongside the time involved enabled serfdom, but as the rulers extracted from intensive peasant labour no further change was possible unless conditions changed.
There are significant parts of the world where the competitive economic environment with its view of commodities indicating by themselves wealth and the functioning of such commodities within abstract conditions did not and could not emerge. (one clue to Russia's un-European development, even within the diversity of such development over time, is its assumption of Tartar or Mongolian political institutions and military systems. Such cultural choices shape later cultural choices. Russia responds to changing environments through Steppe behaviour, overwhelm and crush. Through violence a consequence of a lack of institution development outside Tsardom-a tartar political invention, whereby a single powerful ruler is enhanced by mystical qualities. As I write in these papers, Kyiv Rus princes claimed to be khans running Khanates, and did not employ European terms. References to all this is in my Kyiv Rus papers-every significant factor linked to every significant authority.
The past, Stephen, as they say is another country, one which we attempt to make familiar.
Putin could not create a healthy economy as he is a kleptocrat and was and is taking huge amounts from that economy. His rule depends on a wide circle of politicians and businessmen doing the same (as well as gangsters who play an economic role in Russia as well as one of social control-read Bill Browder whose company was taken by Putin and handed to a gangster just out of prison, mafia style). To create a healthy economy would have involved his giving up of power and losing control of Russian society.
Baron d'Holbach opined: Better to own a little piece of Rhenish Palatinate than the whole of Moscovia Stanley Wilkin Steppe behavior, with respect to economics, is a workable hypothesis; once your nearest economic neighbour begins to outperfom you, the traditional behavioral measure is to destroy the emerging capacities by invasion.
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The wind whistles over the bare steppe — hot and dry in the summer, freezing in winter. Nothing has ever been known to grow on that steppe, least of all between four barbed-wire fences. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ,One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Stephem,
I used steppe culture because honestly I couldn't think of anything else. I will just make my points on this.
Russia keeps repeating, Stalin is followed by Putin and a resurgence of reverence for Stalin, one of the greatest human monsters. Loved by Russians because he oversaw Russia at its greatest extent. The symbolic issue of land acquisition is on the one hand an appropriation of European identity (which Europeans have strangely accepted: one Hitler is not the same as a hundred Stalins and Putins), in order strangely enough to identify as European because other identifies are unsatisfactory. Claiming its roots in Kyivan Rus is part of the same. This is myth but part of an uncertain identity.
The issue of Tartar identity is different. The Mongols were not attacking Kyiv, the Kyivan Rus just happened to be there. They were intent on destroying the Volga Bulga and Kipchats. By then Kyivan Rus polities had relatives amongst the Tartar but also Vladimir/Suzdal (the future Muscovy) was as much tartar as it was Kyivan Rus. Remember, the tartar polities were powerful and extremely wealthy. The concentration on Kyiv may simply be Eurocentrism!
The issue of the Tsar institution: although the name came from Greek Orthodoxy, Caesar of course, it reflects Tartar/Mongolian political institutions. While the Greek emperor had checks and balances the Russian imperial system had none and even under the 19th century Tsars barely tolerated the duma as a necessary evil. It is from the 19th century academics that the myth of Russian connection to Kyiv Rus evolved. Again this was about identity. The Muscovy Tsar was like the Mongol Khan a charismatic leader touched (in Putin's case this takes on additional British meaning) by god. The Russian Tsar ruled over both state and religion. The Tartar leader was not only charismatic but could only be deposed by a similar charismatic leader. Kyiv Rus was not like that, but Muscovy was. Isn't Russia similar if not quite the same.
Muscovy obtained its wealth and power as the debt collector for the Mongols and over time, although they hated being colonised, identified with them. The subsequent love/hate situation produced modern confusion. But, But, but.....no European country would attack another for the reasons Russia gives for attacking Ukraine. Part of cultural identity is the behaviour you reject as well as accept. Early Vladimir leaders on devastating Kyiv and establishing control were seen as 'foreign', not like us.
The Importance of the Eurasian Steppe to the Study of International Relations Iver B. Neumanna and Einar Wigenb(2013) “The Importance of the Eurasian Steppe to the Study of InternationalRelations”, Journal of International Relations and Development 16 (3): 311-330. (PDF) The Importance of the Steppe in the Study of International Relations. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263226937_The_Importance_of_the_Steppe_in_the_Study_of_International_Relations [accessed Oct 10 2023].
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Today’s international society still carries the marks of struggles between different ways ofconceiving the political. The steppe tradition has lingering importance for how polities suchas Turkey and Russia, but also Iran and Afghanistan, are constituted, and how they conceiveof their place in the world. Harking back to the discussion of how steppe politics were notunderstood as politics proper by the founding fathers of the study of academic social science,the second part of the conclusion differentiates European states from polities that bear animmediate affinity to the steppe tradition.
Studiesof the Eurasian steppe tradition are long overdue. It is indefensible to overlook an entire classof polities and an entire set of relations, namely relations between polities coming out of whatwe have called the steppe tradition on the one hand, and sedentary polities on the other (citation from the source).
Stanley Wilkin
Stephen,
I strongly agree with you on the above. Is that mine? I came across the other day a paper on Isis. Found it familiar and realised it was one of mine. Thankfully, while reading it I thought it was astonishingly good.
Adding to the above: Above Muscovy was a tribe or polity of Finns who were taken over. They had a name for passivity and were used as cannon fodder in the conflicts of the time. Most of that area, now called Russia, was occupied by Finns and Bulgars. Smirnoff, the vodka, is the most popular name in Russia as well as the most popular drink and this comes from the Finns above Muscovy.
Could I recommend watching a Russian cartoon Masanya on Facebook? Of course they know, of course majority disagree, but when you are living in Russia it's not safe to share your opinion, when it's against the Kremlin Mafia.
Tomasz,
From what I've seen, the younger Russians know but seem confused and do not know what to do. But their seniors merely repeat Putin's narrative. I saw one recently saying Zelensky should be caught and executed on the Putin narrative that the ordinary people want to join Russia but are held back by an elite group in Ukraine. A Russian scientist on here made the same claim. Once Ukraine is dealt with, the Russian army will break through Europe and destroy the Satanic European elite and all will come into the legitimate embrace of Russia.
Crazy? But many seem to believe this narrative.
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