Time of the Strikebreakers
By Sean at 15 September, 2007, 5:52 pm
The following is a fascinating article titled “Time of the Strikebreakers” by Oleg Aronson published in the Russian edition of the Index on Censorship. Aronson argues that the biopolitical nature of contemporary Russian politics has turned democracy into a limit rather than a means of political action. This rendering of democracy has made revolt the only politically viable negation of the state’s biopolitical grip. As he writes, “life itself uses revolt to falsify politics, to point out the falsity of its claims.” The philosophical echoes of Negri, Agamben, Foucault, and Deleuze in Aronson’s treatise brings an fresh analysis of present Russian political condition.
Aronson is a kandidat in philosophy and a senior research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and the Russian Anthropology School. He is the author of many articles on contemporary philosophy, film theory, and mass media. His most recent books are Bogema: opyt soobshchestva (2002) and Metakino (2003).
Thomas Campbell provided the English translation. Campbell is the author of many articles on Russian film in the journal KinoKultura and currently serves as the English language editor of The Contemporary Art in Russia newsletter.
Because of the article’s length, I provide an excerpt with a link to a complete .pdf version.
Oleg Aronson
Time of the Strikebreakers
Index on Censorship (Russian edition), 26 (2007)
It is difficult to write about Putin’s Russia, something one does reluctantly. One hesitates to use the word Putin because by this act alone you intrude into the political arena, where your least utterance doesn’t remain mere hot air but can also turn on you and make you regret what you’d said. Such regret doesn’t arise because you were wrong or unfair, or because you were misinterpreted, but because your words are always addressed not to those who listen, but rather to those who eavesdrop. Some might be inclined to detect paranoia in this last phrase, to interpret it in the light of conspiracy theory, the “rise of the secret services,” or something of the sort. I have in mind something else, however: the specific shift in Russian political sensibility that has taken place before our eyes. A hypersurplus of mutually repetitive utterances has now been stockpiled, and their lack of content underwrites their existence in the mediaverse. It is simply impossible to listen to them any longer, just as listening itself has become a chore.
It is not so much the political situation (in which power, capital, and the mass media are concentrated in one and the same hands) that I would like to discuss, as it is the “nonpolitical” situation. When we examine the zone of the nonpolitical, the lifeworld of the ordinary man, however, politics is, all the same, one of the conditions that shape it. Politics has long since ceased being something in which people take part; instead, it has become something that shapes people. It has ceased being a clash of parties, social groups, views, and convictions; it has ceased being a concern only of the state and its institutions. Politics courses through our bodies—bodies that vote, work, watch TV, sit in cafés, smoke cigarettes, sleep, die, etc. Politics has long ago become biopolitics. This is not news. It is always the time you live in that is the news.
It is this that makes us speak out today: this strange time that we didn’t anticipate and where we find ourselves now. One struggles to find a precise description for this time. Or even an imprecise description, one that would nevertheless capture the situation of the time. In our case, defining even a few of the situation’s peculiarities means giving a chance to the absolutely mute, feeble forces of the nonpolitical. It means revealing the possibility of another politics—not a politics devised by the political scientists and political operatives, but one that grows out of the life of society itself. In our time it is extremely hard to imagine such a thing. For a start, however, it would be good to describe this “strange” time in some way. When does it begin? In what sense is it strange?
We would be mistaken to think that the time of this new political sensibility begins with the rise to power of the new politicians. Their rise is a symptom, rather. Many still remember (although the mass media have done everything they can to make us forget) Gorbachev’s perestroika and the first years of the Yeltsin administration. It was a romantic period, when the experience of democracy became part of our lives. And it was precisely because this experience was new that the very idea of democracy itself was perceived romantically. Ours was an anarchic democracy, one without the institutions that democracy depends on. In this sense it was a popular democracy independently of the fact that a significant part of the population might not have supported it. In turn, the spontaneity and popular character of the democracy in the late eighties and early nineties might not have manifested themselves had not revolt become a vital necessity in Soviet times (especially during the Brezhnev years).
I consciously use the word revolt here, rather than “resistance” or “social change,” because the latter were the bailiwick only of society’s politically active members. Revolt, on the contrary, is always nonpolitical in nature: it springs from life itself, not from its political realities. Revolt is born of hunger and fear, of humiliation and injustice that exceed the individual and thus become social phenomena. Revolt is a resistance of bodies that marks the limits of biopolitics.
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Revolt, on the contrary, is always nonpolitical in nature: it springs from life itself, not from its political realities. Revolt is born of hunger and fear, of humiliation and injustice that exceed the individual and thus become social phenomena. Revolt is a resistance of bodies that marks the limits of biopolitics.
Naive.
Come on, Wally, don’t you have room for a bit of revolutionary romanticism amidst the cynicism?
I guess (though I don’t want to assume) that you’re pointing out that “revolutions” can be manipulated by non-mass forces, which history has indeed shown time and again. But for what it’s worth, the word Aronson used in Russian is бунт which has a lot of different possible translations into English, but none of them really equates to “revolution” – it’s more like rebellion in the sense of a peasant rebellion, or even a riot, a spontaneous explosion of personal (or perhaps class, if that’s your cup of tea) anger and grievances.
On the other hand, to say that a бунт is always nonpolitical in nature… well, it may be true that politics isn’t the first thing on rebels’, rioters’ or mutineers’ minds – they may be thinking about their personal needs, wants and beefs – but if there’s anything I’ve learned from the feminist movement it’s that the personal is political. So maybe it’s true that there’s no such thing as an apolitical revolt, even if it’s an elemental бунт.
“but if there’s anything I’ve learned from the feminist movement it’s that the personal is political.”
***
In honor of the role women play in politics and the analysis of that soft science which doesn’t require a doctorate for acceptance, here’s a panel discussion proposal:
Natalia Narcohnitskaya, Natalia Vitrenko, Yulia Tymoshenko and Nina Khrushcheva
The moderator of such a gathering would definitely earn his/her keep and the panel would be undoubtedly more entertaining than a good deal of the wonky tonk regularly getting propped.
Well, I’m not sure in what sense WSpart meant “naive,” but I agree in the sense that it seems to lean more on late 19th-century ideas of spontaneous revolt that have been somewhat complicated by two generations of social historians and anthropologists who have excavated the complicated political organizing (if not through a party) behind many ostensibly spontaneous revolts (e.g. bread riots, slave revolts, etc.).
Overall, I was struck more by the ways in which this essay tapped into fin-de-siecle syndicalism/anarchism than it’s nods toward contemporary theorists. But I’m no expert on this stuff, and I’m also in the middle of writing something else, so I can’t devote much attention to the essay. It was a refreshingly reflective and provocative essay, though, and thanks to Sean for posting it.
I’ll come back to it in a week when I’m done with my own writing.
(Also, I think when he says revolt’s not political, it has much to do with how he’s using the distinction political vs. nonpolitical (I should look at the Russian, but I’m too tired and have a feeling it’s a simple pol./nepol. pairing); Lyndon, I think that your “personal is political” might fit within his realm of “non-political,” but important actions. That is, I think Aronson wants to critique the construction of democratic politics as part of the problem. It could be more clear, though, as this also brings up a theoretical set of questions that are brushed aside.)
“the very idea of democracy itself was perceived romantically. ”
By part of the intelligentsia, maybe.
Yes, it is an interesting article, and thanks for posting it (as well as linking to the journals, which also seem interesting). Bunt is a tricky word in Russian; it has associations of “a massive, violent revolt that wreaks nothing but havoc,” and was most famously used by Pushkin in “The Captain’s Daughter”: Не приведи Бог видеть русский бунт – бессмысленный и беспощадный. God forbid a Russian revolt – useless and ruthless. For Russians it means the moment of revolt when the original cause or impetus is lost and it is all just pointless violence. Classic examples are the peasants who burned down the schools Chekhov built and funded for them, or the attendees at the Congress of the Workers and peasant shitting in the Ming Dynasty vases and bathtubs in the Winter Palace right after the 1917 Revolution.
I’m not sure of his characterization of society today being made up of victors and vanquished, although it’s rather compelling, and I agree wholeheartedly that “politics” today are not made up of? Characterized by? Defined by? Divided by? “right” or “left” or any other typical Western political science divisions.
CM: oh no, the “romanticism” was not just among the intelligentsia. I did a lot of filming in documentary films in the late 80s and early 90s, and even in villages there was a kind of naïve excitement. Maybe you don’t recall (you are, after all, a young man:)) but there were Glasnost Booths where everyone from drunks to teens to grandmas to engineers would climb in and offer up their weighty opinions. There was a sense that somehow the step from “speaking the truth” to “having a nice life” was easy and would take a couple of months. I was also here for the first Congress of People’s Deputies that was aired live, and the whole country just stopped everything to watch and listen. I still recall people coming out of the metro holding radios to their ears. It was “romantic” in the sense of all emotion – not grounded in the actual hard work of making change. Much of the criticism of the first Russian gov’t is that they “pandered” to this instead of convincing people to wait, take it slow, develop institutions, etc. But I’m not sure that was possible.
Эoh no, the “romanticism” was not just among the intelligentsia. I did a lot of filming in documentary films in the late 80s and early 90s, and even in villages there was a kind of naïve excitement. Maybe you don’t recall (you are, after all, a young man:
Well thank you. I’m 37.
You are right that I did not experience it, and I am glad that you, someone who did (Ivanov would probably also fall into this category), can tell me about it. When I think of “Russian democracy,” I think of the 1990s, Chubais refering to striking miners as “lumpen,” Novodvorskaya, and a general attitude of elitist nihilism.
Listen, honey, in my book, 37 is barely the age of majority…:)
Yeah, people tend to kind of start count with the 90s, but the end of the Brezhnev era and the 80s are really important for the full picture. This is true for Russians as well as foreigners. It’s like everyone has forgotten about Gorbachev, except to dismiss him with a few words about “half measures.”
“This is true for Russians as well as foreigners. It’s like everyone has forgotten about Gorbachev, except to dismiss him with a few words about “half measures.””
This is very true. There is a complete attempt to airbrush Gorbachev out of history.
I think this is in part because people want to identify the breakup of the USSR (which Gorbachev was against) with a victory for democracy. The end of the USSR is supposed to coincide with the beginning of democracy, ideologically. Thus Gorby must be shoveled out of the picture.
That is, I think Aronson wants to critique the construction of democratic politics as part of the problem.
Buster, I think you’re right and Aronson uses “political” to mean “related to politics,” referring to “bol’shaia politika” as opposed to the “political” decisions individuals supposedly make every day (and sorry for all the quotation marks). I was just pulling out that old “personal is political” chestnut half in jest.
When I think of “Russian democracy,” I think of the 1990s, Chubais refering to striking miners as “lumpen,” Novodvorskaya, and a general attitude of elitist nihilism.
I think there was a lot of hope among many segments of society, which soured at various speeds among various segments (a couple of old-school intelligenty I know remain hopeful and still stump for Yabloko). Mab describes the early romantic intoxication with change better than I could; although I was there briefly in ‘92, I was only 16 at the time, and I didn’t start going to Russia more frequently again until ‘96. Even in ‘96, a lot of people were still hopeful (though you could say it was thanks to the atmosphere of hope which some media were intent on creating) – it wasn’t until ‘98 that the bloom finally and irretrievably fell off the rose for most, I think.
It’s worth keeping in mind that without the atmosphere of freedom, the miners probably wouldn’t even have been striking (then again, they might not have had the wage arrears that drove the strikes), and their strikes certainly wouldn’t have been the subject of national news coverage in Russia. Also, it may just be a matter of my perspective, but I think the ’90s had a number of more visible and more appealing leaders than Novodvorskaya – I’m thinking of people like Nemtsov and even Lebed’. Regardless of all that, much of what happened during the decade was a disaster for most people in the country (though it’s not as if people were particularly well-off in 1990, even if this is what Nashi now tries to tell people).
I just think it’s too easy to look at the ’90s in retrospect, knowing the outcome, and conclude that it was all hated by the masses from the get-go as just a bunch of cynical elite machinations, assisted by Western experts whose sole goal was to weaken Russia and profit personally. Although some of these negative elements were certainly present, it wasn’t that simple.
Oh, and I think Gorby still comes in for a fair amount of praise in the West, though of course for many years it’s been qualified with the fact that he’s forgotten and hated in Russia.
Novodvorskaya is just kind of a symbol in my mind for everything bad about a certain segment of the intelligentsia. The woman is vile.
Well, I’m not sure in what sense WSpart meant “naive,”
All revolts are political and to suggest they spring forth from the people with no political idealogy or outcomes is hopelessly naive.
It is the same sort of naivety that argued governments sole purpose was to oppress the proletariat to keep them enslaved for exploitation by the capitalist.
Politics is a natural occurrence formed as a result of leadership. Even the mob has leaders, or else it would never have the impetus to do actually do anything at all.
A lot to say, a lot to say. On the intellectual linage of Aronson’s essay. While it’s difficult to pinpoint because he doesn’t use footnotes, I think that there is certainly a romantic element in it. But not an anarchist romanticism from the late 19th century. (Though his idea that revolt=the stoppage of work has a syndicalist ring to it.) I think Aronson’s roots are in the anarchist romaticism that pervades a lot of contemporary leftist theory. I see this simply in some of his terms and how he joins them together. Terms like “biopolitical,” “bodies,” “revolt,” “work,” and “ethics” all scream Antonio Negri, which of course begins the descent to Foucault and Deleuze. Also the lack of class terminology but still maintaining class antagonisms also speaks to Negri. Instead of working class and bourgeoisie he uses terms like “losers” and “victors.” He might as well be talking about Negri’s multitude. I mention this not so much to uncover the intellectual background of the essay, but to point out how this line of thought appears to be taking hold among some Russian left academic intellectuals. With both hardcore Marxism and Liberals discredited, the leftism of the French post-structuralists appears quite appealing. I for one was struck by how much of the post-Marxist/pomo heavy hitters are being translated into Russian: Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser, Derrida, Negri, Bauldrillard, and others. Aronson’s essay is just once example of how it’s being applied.
In regard the substance of the essay, I’m not sure if Aronson is using “revolt” the same what some have used it above. Sure he uses бунт, which as Lyndon and mab note has a variety of meanings. I don’t think he is using it in this classic sense of mob or peasant revolt. In fact I don’t see any organization (i.e. leaders, coordinated action etc) in his usage. Revolt simply stands in opposition to “democracy.” The latter has been fully incorporated into the system as a means of domination and control. Following someone like say Foucault or Deleuze, the biopolitical machine is far more effective in controlling and subordinating bodies than any other system that came before it or existed alongside it. Deleuze outlined the liquidity of liberalism’s control in a short but profound essay “Society of Control“. If one buys into Deleuze, and I do to a degree and I suspect Aronson does too, one must find someone sort of politics that acts as negation to all this. For Aronson this is revolt. Revolt reveals democracy’s political lies. The supposed “freedom” democracy promises doubles back as control when concerning revolt. One can protest the liberals say, but only within certain boundaries and means according to, you guessed it, the liberal’s own laws (which of course control us in the first place). I suspect that Aronson thinks that big “D” Democracy has completely subsumed small “d” democracy into its apparatus of domination.
And revolt’s ability to expose the democratic lie is what gives it is real potential as a basis for constructing a politics that stands outside. I think this passage is relevant to this point:
“In fact, revolts have become an important factor in our attempt to make sense of the present situation. From the political point of view they don’t exist. There are only random excesses committed by marginalized groups, and these excesses are described in a purely negative key. There is, however, a principally positive element in revolts that isn’t visible to political analysts. This positive element has to do with the fact that any revolt falsifies politics. To put it another way, life itself uses revolt to falsify politics, to point out the falsity of its claims.”
What this allows is not so much a political force, but what Aronson calls an “ethic of community” (again this is really tied to Negri’s multitude) which acts an means of solidarity that goes beyond ideology and all its crafted binaries but nevertheless stands against the “corporate ethic” which is “ubiquitous” and acts as the ideology above all others as a means of control.
Sean, haven’t read your list, so have no intelligent, or even semi-intelligent commentary. But: “Instead of working class and bourgeoisie he uses terms like “losers” and “victors.”” — isn’t that just because the categories of working class and bourgteoisie, left and right, etc. don’t fit in Russia, that is, the population is not divided into these categories?
“Instead of working class and bourgeoisie he uses terms like “losers” and “victors.”” — isn’t that just because the categories of working class and bourgteoisie, left and right, etc. don’t fit in Russia, that is, the population is not divided into these categories?
I think that Aronson (and others of a similar politics) would argue that they don’t apply anywhere anymore. In its present form, capital cuts populations not just vertically and horizontally, but also diagonally. Therefore identities form solidarities that transcend class more than ever. Not just in terms of something like nationalism and race, but in terms of gender, sexuality, style, consumption, taste, etc. The changes of the capitalist system away from industrial production to a service-information economy has produced a “classes” of the into something that can’t be reduced to the bourgeois/proletariat binary. This, along with the proliferation of identities that capital allows, feeds upon, encourages, and even hold up as examples of “freedom” complicate the political effectiveness of categories such as class. In some ways, class consciousness has become a fetter on revolutionary politics under the present conditions of capitalist globalization. The solution is to come up with a politics that maintains class antagonisms without classes as such. A politics that embraces diversity and the proliferations of identities as a strength but still finds a common denominator for solidarity. This is Aronson’s “ethics of community”.
For those interested, the main canonical text for all this is Hardt and Negri’s Empire which is available for .pdf download. The books introduction gives a good breakdown of the historical state of things as they see it.
My main critique of this type of politics (even though I share some of its analysis) is that it smacks of Eurocentrism in how it views the global conditions of labor. An industrial working class still exists and is growing, just not in Europe or the US. It’s in Asia. And to revel in our proliferation of our identities, which exist in some measure thanks to the exploitation of the Asian proletariat, as a means of global liberation hints at a bourgeois politics that masquerades in the anarchist clothes of the “multitude”.
My fear is that merely finding an outside to capital through the development of an “ethic” underestimates capital’s power to subsume that ethic into its machinery. As we’ve seen in the last few decades, even the most sacred symbols and forms of resistance can be turned into points of profit. All one has to do is visit the Che restaurant near Lubyanka to see it in action.
Well thank you. I’m 37
Turning 42 in a few days, which might make me the 2nd oldest regular commentator in this forum.
Sadly, it hasn’t made me much wiser.
The changes of the capitalist system away from industrial production to a service-information economy has produced a “classes” of the into something that can’t be reduced to the bourgeois/proletariat binary. This, along with the proliferation of identities that capital allows, feeds upon, encourages, and even hold up as examples of “freedom” complicate the political effectiveness of categories such as class. In some ways, class consciousness has become a fetter on revolutionary politics under the present conditions of capitalist globalization. The solution is to come up with a politics that maintains class antagonisms without classes as such. A politics that embraces diversity and the proliferations of identities as a strength but still finds a common denominator for solidarity.
Good luck with this. Sounds like “Nationalism to the Rescue” as it is the only political solution that I know of that unifies diverse groups within a country.
Without some perception of an outside threat, it is difficult to get varying groups or classes of people to set aside their internal squabbles and focus upon larger issues.
I’m not convinced that the move from an industrial to a service sector economy has really done much to change the bourgeois/proletariat binary. There is still a white collar vs. blue collar political and social divide based largely on education and income. Factory jobs have been replaced with “would you like fries with that” and “mexican backhoe” jobs. The B/P binary was always overly simplistic, but I see little evidence that classes are more complicated in the early 21st century than they were in the early 20th century.
Thank you, Sean, for your shrewd comment.
ЭAll one has to do is visit the Che restaurant near Lubyanka to see it in action.Э
Or the Das Kapital restaurant in the same general area! (I didn’t know there was a Che restaurant.)
(It’s another question as to what the average Muscovite would actually want to revolt against. “Revolt” is a pretty strong word, and corrupt traffic cops ain’t a sufficient reason.)
This may be irrelevant, but can anybody tell me how old Aronson is?
Thank you, Sean, for your shrewd comment.
I hope you didn’t find it too shrewd, Oleg. I would say “friendly criticism.”
But Wally, you are essentially right about classes always being messy. This is a main fault of translating Marxism from an analytic into a political program.
But in regard to class, America is always a difficult place to draw the class lines because class has never been a strong basis for identity. And yes while there are political and economic divisions, there are also cultural divisions that vertically cut them making it so two people with different economic class positions share the same political position. I think that this has been the genius of the Republican Party over the last 20+ years.
But I do think that class has become more complicated in the last 50 years to the point where the term has almost lost its analytical power. Thanks to the hegemony of identity politics, class has become one identity among many, and one often subordinated to gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, etc.
Another problem is how you define “class”. But what criteria?
In my opinion, the main problem with defining class is that the fluidity of identities under global capitalism has made such “fixed” categories such as class become messy upon application. All that is solid has truly melted into air.
This may be irrelevant, but can anybody tell me how old Aronson is?
No, but The Moscow Times says he was chatting up a “willowy model” during a February 2006 Vadim Zakharov Exhibit at the New Tretyakov Gallery.
Which is maybe even more irrelevant.
This is the snake’s eye view again… but some revolted when that driver was sentenced to 4 years for “not getting out of the way fast enough” when the governor’s car came out of nowhere and hit him. I’ve just blanked on his name — he was the TV comedian who got elected governor. That struck people as Not Fair and they protested. Okay, it wasn’t a revolt, but there were lots of drivers who protested. I think it had nothing to do with “big politics,” but was a close to grass roots protest.
There are grass-roots protests all the time, e.g. over monetization of benefits. The KPRF organizes things like this incessantly. That might not count as grass roots though, as it is party-organized.
On the darker side of things, one could describe antiimmigrant mobilization as grass roots revolt.
This is the snake’s eye view again… but some revolted when that driver was sentenced to 4 years for “not getting out of the way fast enough” when the governor’s car came out of nowhere and hit him. I’ve just blanked on his name — he was the TV comedian who got elected governor. That struck people as Not Fair and they protested.
Just FYI – it was Oleg Shcherbinsky.
http://accidentalrussophile.blogspot.com/2006/02/oleg-shcherbinsky.html
I would say protests are quite different from revolts, however. One works within the confines of the existing government and laws, the other seeks to overturn them.
Oleg Shcherbinsky
That’s the driver. He’s been fully exonerated on appeal.
The governor’s name was Mikhail Evdokimov.
“One works within the confines of the existing government and laws, the other seeks to overturn them.”
Or may be satisfied in just breaking stuff.
Or may be satisfied in just breaking stuff.
Yes, and stealing. Perfect example was the Tulip Revolution in Bishkek. Protestors came in from the south of the country, looted the city, smashing glass everywhere, and drove home with everything that wasn’t nailed down tied to the roof of their cars.
The governor’s name was Mikhail Evdokimov.
Yes, of course you’re right. That was my own bias slipping in, I didn’t give a rats ass about the governor.
“Yes, and stealing. Perfect example was the Tulip Revolution in Bishkek.”
***
A news reel of that with Tiny Tim’s “Tip toe thru the tulips” hit.
Eng. lang. mASS goin ol’ school.
Forgot Tiny’s jingle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skU-jBFzXl0
Not at his best.
Eng.lang.mASS is Da Bomb, Straight Outta Bishkek.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that in Russia (and everywhere else) these notions that keep getting tossed around — revolt, civil society, grass roots action/organization — are ambivalent. Civil society etc. are not necessarily good things. Lynching is civil society and grass roots action. So are pogroms and riots and massacres in Rwanda.
Yes, Evdokimov. Ah, at my advanced age, one can expect some lapses of memory.
To both the Romans — yes, I did qualify that it wasn’t quite a revolt, more a protest, but what I thought was interesting was that it was apolitical, ie, not associated with any political party or even political point of view, and seemed to fit Aronson’s notions of the “losers” rising up to fight the “winners.” Well, perhaps that’s an overstatement, but given the flatness of the politcal — biopolitical — scene, it seemed a big deal. I also heard that when a group of “concerned citizens” – including elderly folks and moms — protested against the “culling” of the woods around Tsarytsino, the cops were ordered to arrest them — and refused. Isn’t that amazing? Don’t know what happened to them.
CM, I’m not sure where you’re going with that either, but if it’s a reminder that political concepts have different meanings in different languages/cultures, and that they are valued differently — it’s a good reminder.
“I’m not sure where you’re going with that either, but if it’s a reminder that political concepts have different meanings in different languages/cultures, and that they are valued differently — it’s a good reminder.”
MAB
In some circles, conflicts like what what went on in ex-Yugo. are described as centuries old rivalries, whereas in Africa it is more typically called tribal warfare.
Depeding on what is involved, they (no need to explain who the they are) behave differently in their prose and we know why.
Pardon misspell.
“Eng.lang.mASS is Da Bomb, Straight Outta Bishkek.”
It was bad. So was the Montenegrin Precedent (UT) or Russia-Ukraine on the Brink (UPI), as well as IS’ example of the “Syrian disease”.
“I’m not convinced that the move from an industrial to a service sector economy has really done much to change the bourgeois/proletariat binary. There is still a white collar vs. blue collar political and social divide based largely on education and income. Factory jobs have been replaced with ‘would you like fries with that’ and ‘mexican backhoe’ jobs.”
****
It has arguably become worse. Archie’s job was able to afford a house and kid.
As if this isn’t known, a number of “white collar” types moonlight at “blue collar” jobs or put in massive hours to have the 911 and X5 in their garage.
“CM, I’m not sure where you’re going with that either, but if it’s a reminder that political concepts have different meanings in different languages/cultures, and that they are valued differently — it’s a good reminder.”
It’s just one of my pet peeves — Western (usually) complaints that there is “no civil society in Russia.” Yes there is. They just don’t acknowledge it as existing, because for them “civil society” = “liberal society.” Civil society just executed a Tajik and Dagestani on videotape, or pretended to.
I think this strange blindness comes from an ideology on the part of many Westerners (and others) that the state is always bad and trying to keep the people down, and the people are in essence always good. They just can’t get it into their brains that Russia’s problems do not all derive from the State, or that many might actually be the result of the State’s weakness, not its supposedly overweaning strength.
A true but very under-represented point.
Well, that’s a good pet-peeve to have. The same is true of the media; we Westerners think that “a free press” and “a multitude of points of view” are Good Things, but in the 90s the media was largely a battleground of conflicting political/economic interests and not in the business of “informing the public.” On the third hand, in regions where the governor and mayor had opposing political/economic views and the local media was owned/patronized by different clans, the general media coverage was sensational, flled with disinformation, and sometimes hysterical, but ultimately far more balanced and informative than in regions where there was no war between the governor’s offce and the mayor’s office. That is, the distinctions used in the West didn’t fit the situation at all.
Good comments. Similarly, people don’t get that when someone like Kasyanov starts talking about “democracy,” he does not mean anything like what most Westerners inchoately mean by the term. He means a society in which the elite answer to no one, in which they are given free rein. Groups like Other Russia do not stand for democracy — they are the desperate last stand of the oligarchy trying to defend itself from the State.
Now, Yavlinsky is a real democrat. He’s just hopeless for other reasons.
Eng.lang.mASS is Da Bomb, Straight Outta Bishkek
As is the Russian band Gorod 312, who had a couple of decent hits, one of which made it onto one of the Nochnoy/Devnoy Dozor soundtracks. 312 is the telephone dialling code for Bishkek, I am led to believe.