This week’s Open Thread.
Open Thread 121
This Post about *default,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for Russian Reaction on October 2, 2020
Apart from writing books, reviews, travel writing, and sundry blogging, Karlin Tweets at @powerfultakes and runs a Substack newsletter.
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This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.
If you are new to my work, start here.
https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/1311782967983960065
The contemplation and acceptance of political violence is the surest sign of a society in decay and degeneration.
Who’s winning in the fighting in the Caucasus? We have no reliable news in English.
Strategic stalemate after (very minor) T*rkish gains were made in foothills around the south of Artsakh, people are still dying on both sides, though Azeris have done a good job of shelling civilians, as is their usual wont. Some news came to light that Erdogan is largely responsible for this, as made recent promises to support the Azeris in another offensive, they probably wouldn’t have declared war otherwise.
It’s ok, anti-racist seminaries and green energy will fix it
Hand-writing is good for you. Stay trad, do cursive:
https://neurosciencenews.com/hand-writing-smart-kids-17113/amp/
Results from several studies have shown that both children and adults learn more and remember better when writing by hand.
Now another study confirms the same: choosing handwriting over keyboard use yields the best learning and memory.
Sinotriumph:
https://www.space.com/amp/china-rocket-for-crewed-moon-missions
China has revealed that it is working on a new rocket that could send astronauts to land on the moon.
The virtues of taboos and demanding in-group members to adopt extreme views:
https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1301927713234714624
Groups benefit by adopting beliefs that make you unacceptable to other groups.
Ray guns and iron man suits: Russia ahead because of Syria, military experts say.
https://taskandpurpose.com/.amp/military-tech/russian-military-exoskeleton-video
The development of the Ranik-3 and Stormer exoskeletons indicates that the Russian military remains significantly ahead of the United States when it comes to developing a powered armor for combat applications.
Indeed, the Pentagon has been pursuing the dream of a powered exoskeleton for nearly a half-century, with its latest effort, U.S. Special Operations Command’s Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS), failing to yield a fully-integrated suit of combat armor following its unveiling in 2019.
Where the U.S. has remained stymied by system integration issues, Russia has benefitted in its exoskeleton development from its ability to field test such gear in its weapons playground of war-torn Syria, Bendett says.
Chad Turkey advances in CK2 through multiple casus belli claims so he can press claims in a Holy War
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jerusalem-is-our-city-turkeys-erdogan-declares/
India Superpower 2030: the secret sauce
https://mobile.twitter.com/asxyzp/status/1311370812419485696
India is creating a national subscription plan for potentially all research publications through it’s “one nation, one subscription” policy. This would make any research paper accessible to any Indian citizen at no cost.
Guitars and tanks. Flamethrowers when?!!
https://mobile.twitter.com/simulacrax/status/1311772844364361728
Looking at the composition of the State Duma of the Russian Empire the last tsar was really unpopular. The main political forces were leftists (social-democrats, socialists, anarchists and communists not well differentiated from each other) liberals (urban kadets and octobrists who wanted a state controlled by the Duma like in the West) and autonomists (from various conquered peoples eager for secession)
It took a big change in voting laws to get a Duma less hostile to the tsar, but even that Duma was central in the February Revolution that forced the tsar to abdicate.
The monarchist Black Hundreds organization was relatively popular only for 2 years then faded away. Academia, intellectuals and the bourgeoisie were largely against the tsar and so were workers and peasants. Only the landlords and army officers supported him, but many died in WW1 or became disillusioned by the poor leadership shown during the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Duma_(Russian_Empire)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hundreds
Rate the look on the soldier’s face.
Russian Empire fanboys conveniently forget that RE was an economic trainwreck. Instead they are reduced to making a series of ‘what-if’ counter-factuals of a sudden dynamism post-WWI hitherto completely absent.
https://i.imgur.com/gwUsamJ.jpg
I think my favourite development of the year has been the character known as ‘Bronze Age Pervert’ turning out to be a twink failed neocon intellectual who doesn’t even lift and was using the whole thing to trick gullible young men into sending him shirtless pictures.
Not worth addressing at length (as it falls into the “not even wrong” category), plus Piketty’s series being at odds with more well-established historical GDPcc series.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/634685514512101376
Interesting editorial from a Russian mainstream thinking venue:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/10/02/nato-member-turkey-must-back-off-armenian-azerbaijani-conflict/
The concept that a more “free-market” Russian Empire would have developed economically more stably and effectively across the 20th century, than the Soviet Union, is not implausible to my amateur thoughts, and I think there is a lot of evidence for such revisionism, if you accept economic theories like the “calculation problem”, and when we think about the high cost and inefficiency of trying in 21st century to even mildly recreate the 20th century Soviet strategies like “import substitution”.
Last week though I was discussing about your demographic claims, which seemed to me directly incompatible with the economic claims (as political instability and wars delaying economic development, has likely delayed completion of the demographic transition that had begun in the late 19th century). You replied that (as I interpreted) these demographic claims are based on the concept Hitler would not invade a hypothetical Russian Empire in 1941? Or that the demographic losses of such a war with Germany would have been less in a Russian Empire? https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-119/#comment-4181596
There is barely any meaningful comparison between abolishing most markets (Bolshevik zealotry) and selectively banning imports (something practiced with varying levels of success by most developing, some of them now developed, nations in 20C).
Russia’s current level of “economic freedom” is well above that of much of Western Europe (certainly pre-Thatcher Britain and Gaullist France) before the 1980s.
Assuming demographic “normality”, i.e. no big wars that significantly affect fertility rates (something that killing half the young male cohort is guaranteed to do). With an extra decade of industrial development lost to Civil War, and a significantly larger population, it is almost inconceivable that a Russian Empire would have done worse than the USSR. (Most “Soviet” development programs “started” where the Russian Empire left off (GOELRO being a prime example).
I posted a comment on Steve Sailer’s forum post about Trump receiving coronavirus.
And someone responded with an interesting statement – presumably speaking about their experience in America:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/trumps-got-the-virus/#comment-4198105
Is this true? (Perhaps we could verify this by finding on YouTube some recent walking videos in American college areas).
Here it sounds like maybe American college students are not so irresponsible and bad people, as we read on forums. The country could have some optimism, if its college students are really that conscientious to preventing epidemics in their society that they wear masks even when outside.
In North Western Europe, young people do not wear masks outside (which is fine from the practical view, as risk of transmission is many times lower outside). But after the initial incompetence of response of the virus earlier in the year, you now will see the population seems to be quite careful (for example, everyone wearing masks in public buildings).
I think the stupidest thing now is the media pressure against people wearing of valved masks. (Unvalved masks are particularly difficult to wear for more than a short time). Ironically, the only very comfortable masks were the most expensive full face masks, which unfortunately had too much of a visual sense of postapocalyptic overkill for anyone to wear them.
Of course, there is nothing suspicions about anonymous “dissident” whose writings are top best seller on Amazon and who on foreign policy issues (Venezuela, Bolivia, Hong Kong, Uyghurs etc…) 100% agrees with CIA line. Nothing glows here in the dark, nothing at all.
Had he been positively identified as the Romanian neocon writer?
https://twitter.com/Antifagator/status/1303343114439069696
Anyway, the whole schtick of his – build huge muscles to prepare for coming civil war – is beyond stupid on its own terms.
Look at real life guerilla warriors – they are slim and wiry. Roided up muscle monsters raised on all beef diet would not last a day in mountains or desert.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Afghan_Muja_crossing_from_Saohol_Sar_pass_in_Durand_border_region_of_Pakistan%2C_August_1985.png
If you are so dumb that you want really take part in guerilla warfare, train endurance by running marathons and learn to survive on starvation diet.
Of course, no one does it, because there is nothing “romantic” and “heroic” about real partisan war.
There’s also the known association with Peter Thiel, founder of Palantir which is effectively an arm of the CIA.
I believe the podcast subscriptions were going to that account, the writing style and interests match with the Romanian’s articles from years ago and it was confirmed by his frenemy ‘Kant Bot’ (also a loathsome character).
The obsession with male models (not strong or muscular men, but specifically male models) is obviously a gay thing.
Of course, Hitler came to the power because of fear of Communism. Hitler’s main attraction was he was not Red, antisemitism and living space in the East were minor details.
In alternate world where there is no Communist threat, there is no Hitler.
Maybe, you can make timeline where Whites win, all Red atrocities during the revolution and civil war are well documented and publicized all over the world, and world public opinion is even more frightened of communism as in OTL, but even then is difficult to imagine the great powers letting Hitler gain strength as in OTL.
Seems as though actor Rick Moranis was the target of a knockout game.
I don’t know his politics and wish him well, but it seems to me that Jews ought to rethink their support for blacks, if they like urban living.
Luke Turner’s thread about BAP makes BAP sound a bit like James J. O’Meara.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13501677108577102?journalCode=feej19
Judeo-Bolshevism was what Hitler pretended saving Europe from. Of course by the time of Hitler’s rise to power the Bolshevik already moved towards Stalinism, which was much less Jew-centered than Trotskyism. That’s what the Jews dislike about Stalin, he sidelined them a little, although people like Kaganovich were still part of the inner circle and stayed central figures of the communist party until Stalin’s death. So Hitler was a bit wrong about the stage of the communist evolution. Stalinism was much more Russian oriented than the Old Bolshevism of Lenin (himself of Jewish descent).
So yeah, no 1917 Revolution = no Holocaust.
https://twitter.com/rievaulx_/status/1311461971515125760?s=19
Britain needs another Falklands situation to awaken from its slumber and reclaim its glory, the job of the Anglo is to expand.
https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/9-cecil-john-rhodes-1853-1902-granger.jpg
If you want to use hypothetical histories for “counterfactual claims”, you would try to keep everything else as much the same – except the component between the histories that you are comparing.
If you would remove things like Hitler from the 20th century (Hitler was quite an unpredicted “black swan”), to attain a certain demographic projection, then you could as arbitrarily re-insert other “black swans”, like a nuclear war, or a pandemic.
“Other things not equal” – perhaps there would also have been no Hitler, or he would not invade Russia, and therefore there would be 27 million more people to play with. But the relation you would be looking at then is between a world with or without Hitler (you could just as well imagine a different sperm fertilized a different egg), rather than between the economic predictions and the demographic projections.
The problem with RE fanboys’ fantasies that this could be conceivable – and I am not accusing you of this – is that it ignores the vast literature on extractive institutions. A self-serving and highly corrupt ruling class is unlikely to make the necessary changes that would weaken its grip but simultaneously enhance the country.
There is a somewhat pessimistic conclusion to be drawn when you study the literature: “reform from within” is exceptionally rare. Almost always you have to have either a revolution, a foreign power colonising you or a devastating war that wipes out much of the old elite, either by warfare or by exile. Self-serving elites are more than happy to profit while the country is decayed. Modern-day Ukraine or Lebanon are perfect examples.
The Russian revolution was inevitable due to the decaying old elite’s utter failure to reform Russia. What was far from obvious was which group would ultimately be victorious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Russia#Recent_trends
Net migration to Russia reaches new highs in 2019. From Tajikistan alone it reaches 48K. In 2010 it was only 17K. Seems incongruent with the narrative that putlet is cracking down.
[Insert joke here]
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTYqw7qbx3ImZRxiFYTZN7NcpVLlyAJ7Xez0g&usqp.jpg
I was thinking that Germany seems to be significantly lacking in “soft power” for a major European country. It seems that it exports almost nothing in terms of music and cinema, practically no one abroad listens to German music or watches German TV shows/films. Contrast that with somewhere like Sweden, which despite being a small country exports large amounts of music and cinema, especially TV dramas.
About the closest thing Germany has to soft power is how respected their automotive and engineering products are abroad, but even that is arguably hard power in reality because it is a reflection of their industrial base so not really “soft power” at all.
Germany had Rammstein but they are well past their peak.
Very few countries export cultural products, except the Anglosphere. Japan exports globally video games and anime so it’s the only other global contender. Korea has started exporting kpop, kdramas and variety shows, but it’s mostly to other asian countries. Egypt, Turkey and India export soap operas in their regions. Latino music and telenovelas are global but they are not produced by a specific country. Europe is dead, except art movies that no one watches or music that it’s mostly in English so it strengthens american soft power.
Britain has a big music industry, but because it’s obviously in English I would say that overall it probably has the affect of strengthening American soft power, not British soft power.
The Anglospheres’ cultural exports in general tend to get subsumed into American culture, because of the language and the much greater size of the US, so I’d say that Anglosphere countries struggle to maintain an identity that is distinct from the US and it’s getting harder and harder to do so.
The only non-Anglo equivalent I can think of in the West is probably Quebec and France, because Quebec is so much smaller and politically non-important compared to France, any Quebecois cultural export just get subsumed into French culture, and I think Quebecois have a hard time maintaining cultural distinctness from France.
The Spanish show La Casa del Papel (Money Heist in English translation) is big worldwide.
https://observer.com/2020/04/netflix-money-heist-la-casa-de-papel-most-watched/
The French animation Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir airs in more than 120 countries, regularly scoring the No. 1 ranking for ages 4-11, and has been extended to 4 seasons.
https://youtu.be/_QnNSr86s-4
This did not mattered at all. Nazis were completely ignorant and uninterested what is Soviet Union really like.
“Red menace” was how the war in the East was sold to the German public, but the real reason for attack on Soviet Union was to gain resources and “living space”.
Despite what Suvorov and his followers say, the Nazis were not concerned with strength of USSR at all, the prevailing feeling was contempt not fear.
Not “we must kill the horrible giant bear before he eats us” but “one strong kick and the rotting house will collapse”.
Fear of communism was for propaganda, but in official planning, they fully expected to overrun all European Russia with little resistance and get all the way to Astrahkan before winter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-A_line
The plan was for the Red Army to the west of the line to be defeated in a quick military campaign in 1941 before the onset of winter.[5] The German Wehrmacht assumed that the majority of the Soviet military supplies and the main part of the food and population potential of the Soviet Union existed in the lands that lay to the west of the proposed A-A line.[5] If the line were reached, the Soviet Union would also be deprived of around 86% of its petroleum assets (oil territories in the Caucasus).
No. This is lazy, mass produced alternate history where “one thing changes” and rest of the world stays as in OTL.
Like Turtledove’s extruded product, where pre-WWI alliances and start of WWI are the the same despite Confederate victory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Victory
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Timeline-191_WWI.png/1280px-Timeline-191_WWI.png
Like Stirling’s infamous work where all Africa belongs to super advanced, super efficient, super evil, super LGBT slave state, while rest of the world is just like in OTL and does not notice at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domination
https://i.imgur.com/OtFnPuV.jpg
Real alternate history is changing one thing that could plausibly happen differently, called POD (Point of Divergence) and then examine the consequences.
Hitler was not some incomprehensible demon from beyond, not some natural disaster that hits without warning. There was nothing much special about Hitler at all – browse some unmoderated comments on the internets and you will find dozens of wannabe Hitlers who will never do anything more in their lives than shitposting.
What was exceptional about Hitler was his rise to power, and it was product of very special conditions of his time, conditions that would be absent in TL where is no Communist threat.
Both ifs are very big ifs.
Just like Nazis in Germany, Bolsheviks in Russia were not some invaders from Mars, but products of their respective society. Bolsheviks were one of many crazy groups that rose on the top in extremely split and extremely crazy society.
Not just lawyers, teachers, doctors, and engineers, but even industrialists and bank directors raised money for the terrorists. Doing so signaled advanced opinion and good manners. A quote attributed to Lenin—“When we are ready to kill the capitalists, they will sell us the rope”—would have been more accurately rendered as: “They will buy us the rope and hire us to use it on them.” True to their word, when the Bolsheviks gained control, their organ of terror, the Cheka, “liquidated” members of all opposing parties, beginning with the Kadets. Why didn’t the liberals and businessmen see it coming?
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/10/suicide-of-the-liberals
linked through Derbyshire article here on Unz
https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/september-diary-a-nation-gone-crazy-no-pre-revolutionary-russia-into-manhatttan-jeet/
The more one learns about pre-revolutionary Russian empire, the more one thinks only thing that could save it would be Stalin-style purge of the whole elite and educated strata ;-(
I’m not sure how much Korean soft power helps their reputation. I used to go out with a girl from North-East China who hated Koreans; One of her main charges was K-Pop (the other was ‘feudalistic’ attitudes)
I am sceptical of that, not that someone said that, but that it is accurate. K-pop stans would know they are Koreans and people wouldn’t know that they are Koreans would be unlikely to care about K-pop (also skirting aside the increasing general Americanisation of K-pop as seen in rap interludes in songs).
In any case looking at an actual Chinese export, Azur Lane, instead serving as Chinese soft power it acts as a branch of Japan’s.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/27/cities-green-orthodoxy-and-the-future-of-sustainable-development/
Moreover, it is a well known fact that cities are population sinks.
Hardly, the course of German history was going in that direction since 1871. Not to mention all of interwar Europe was inundated with virulent nationalist movements as well, everyone assumed another major war was just a matter of time.
If you think you could have predicted Hitler and “Operation Barbarossa” in 1871 – then sure, whatever. That would support the point even more.
To present demographic claims about the Soviet Union, based on counter-factuals – it could only say something interesting if you can try maintain the other components of history the same. This hypothetical way of thinking is only not reduction to trivial tautologies, if you change one variable, and imagine the other things are the same.
If you want to say that Soviet Union resulted in less people, but the reason is because of “Operation Barbarossa”. This can be reduced to a more precise and trivial sounding statement “”Operation Barbarossa resulted in less people”.
You aren’t talking about a comparison between the Soviet Union and hypothetical mid-20th century Russian Empire, but rather between a 20th century with and without a particular war. If you arbitrarily remove the war, then you could arbitrarily add another event which would have the same effects, and the comparison would be the same.
My point is that if a Russian Empire has more successfully and stably developed economically (which is not completely implausible, if we accept things like calculation problem, and the high cost of the Soviet trade policies like import substitution) – then we know that there would be faster completion of demographic transition, earlier in the 20th century, and that this would have resulted in less births. I.e. that the population of this hypothetical economically successful Russian Empire would have been smaller than the population of the Soviet Union was.
So the two claims about demographics and economic development, are contradicting each other, to the extent that we know can generalize about these trends across different countries in the 20th century (i.e. to the extent the connection between economic development and demographic transition seemed to be a universal one).
You are saying that you believe a hypothetical Russian Empire would less successfully and stably developed economically in the 20th century. If true, this would have delayed completion of demographic transition, in comparison to the reality of Soviet Union, and therefore resulted in more births and a larger population in the 20th century.
–
Karlin is saying that there wouldn’t have been Hitler, or that Hitler would not have invaded (or the war would be less disastrous), and that therefore a Russian Empire would be both more economically successful and having a larger population.
The only perhaps insightful, purpose of this game, can be to highlight which relations are more contingent and which are more necessary, parts of our historical furniture.
The relation between demographic transition and economic development in the 20th century is one of the more necessary or non-arbitrary ones, as we see it repeating in a lawlike way across different continents and cultures.
So in most possible worlds, there would be a trade-off between size of population and economic development, by the end of the century. Whichever choice of political system in Russia by the end of the century, there would be “other things equal”, a relative (to the other scenario) economic successful development with a comparatively smaller population, or relative economic failure of development with a comparatively larger population.
On the other hand, if you make inferences about demographics based on Hitler’s decision to invade Russia, or whether Hitler would exist, or if Germany would have invaded without him, and who would win such a war in different scenarios or under different political systems – then you’re talking about very contingent and “roulette” type of relations based on small differences chance, and the value of the different statements about them can probably be only a literary one. I.e. it’s a good material for novels and screenplays, but not for verifiable claims.
I strongly agree with you and I think that Soviet losses in the Winter War against Finland made Germans believe that the victory would be swift and easy. Strange that historians never bring this up. For the Germans such loss against Finland of 3.8 million people didnt go unnoticed. After all if remote and small Finland could successfully resist Soviet Army, what then the strongest and most victorious army on earth could do…
Stalin style purge would have saved the Polish Commonwealth, a country where nobles sold the rope to the foreign invaders. But imperial Russia would have been easily saved by a traditional Russian strong man, but for some reason almost all dynasties lose their vigour when they get over 200 years old. Habsburgs and Ruriks are rare exceptions.
Dmitry we have had our disagreements but I just cant express enough how grateful I am for your explanation and I whole heartedly agree with you. I just dont get this obsession to build highly elaborate and subjective alternative histories by many commenters of this site.
I think its more far fetched to imagine a different ending to a world war or for the Russian empire, than its to imagine that Hitler, Napoleon or Peter I died in a childbirth.
McDonalds realising that there isn’t a huge market for black transgender people and so is now going for the the market that really matters.
https://twitter.com/McDonalds/status/1313094348221886464?s=19
Happening: another Maidan in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-54422884
Found out that the English Wikipedia kowtowed to svidomy pressure and renamed its article about Kiev to “kYIv”. How long before they end up buckling to zmagar pressure and renaming the Minsk entry “mIenSK”?
Democracy in full swing in Kyrgyzstan: widespread looting, muggings, holdups and overall criminality.
Glory to the (third) Kirgiz revolution!